What is "Mind?"

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Largo

Sport climber

The Big Wide Open Face

Topic Author's Reply - Jul 29, 2014 - 02:04pm PT

A feeling, at least as described by Damasio, isn't a direct autonomic sensation - pain, hunger, heat - it is a partly deliberate reaction to that sensation - and a whole lot of other stuff.

Example: I hit my thumb with a hammer. The pain is not a 'feeling' (sure, I 'feel' it, ) - it's an autonomic sensation. The two are different processes that require different definitions, even if they share a word. Two definitions, one word. OMG!
-

I remember when I was initially doing work with EEGs and qEEGS and so forth, one of the profs had us all go and bone up on all the triune brain material - brain stem, limbic system, and neocortex. Each has it's own language or data that presents itself to awareness, to lesser or greater extents. Standard theory says that each layer or story of the triun brain can be viewed as a gear.

The brainstem is by far the largest and exerts the most crucial stuff per our survival and behavior. All of our involuntary processes and instinctual responses and impulses, from teritorialism to regulating blood pressure et al. The "language" of the brain stem is body sensations. The limbic system generates emotions - also known as (e)nergy IN motion. Feelings never arise one at a time but move throug the net of awareness like schools of fish (hence, energy in motion). There is an energetic bio-energy aspect to feelings that we can get dialed into with enough work ("Felt Sense" and all that). Hence the term, what are you "feeling." What we are feeling is energy, in this case, emotional energy. Emotions are meant to move through us and when one gets stuck, we become "emotional" and it can become pathological.

Trying to "know" a feeling is challenging for several reasons. First, it is usually a moving target and so is ever shifting. Grief may feel heavy, but anyone who has gone through it knows it too comes in waves (bio eneregy in motion). But feelings are not things in the normal sense of the word and we sometimes can get a sense of them only by way of what they do to us. You can describe senstations like heat and pins and needles and pain and so forth, but describing what maudlin or joy feels like is often only possible by describing the attending sensations. The emotions themselves remain evanescent and strangely ungraspable - like grunyon.

Learning to separate out instinctual energies like aggression, sexuality and so forth from emotions involves some heavy lifting, but emotions are much bigger drivers per our behavior than thoughts, a fact largely unconscious to people, but dead obvious to psychologists who deal with it day in and day out.

JL

Ed Hartouni

Trad climber

Livermore, CA

Jul 29, 2014 - 02:09pm PT

Does this refer to discursive thought or simple awareness or imagery of yourself performing the action? How do you define "thought?"

my previous statements are a "gross speculation" that what we take to be our "thoughts," in the discursive mind aren't the thoughts that lead to action, but the explanation of those thoughts and actions, neither of which are accessible to the discursive mind, at least not directly.

our "narrative" is essentially a third person explanation of what we did, but this third person is associated with our brains. this narrative is a behavior used to inform others of our intention, which is an important aspect of living together in large social groups.

Largo doesn't want to recognize "information" because it is a physical thing, it can be manipulated physically, but the result of those operations, while physical, may not be interpreted as a description of a physical thing...

confusing, no doubt.

But we can think of traveling faster than the speed-of-light, a physical impossibility (as far as we know). Largo would ask the question "how can a process that is physical result in an unphysical answer?"

The point is that the manipulation of information follows physical rules. Those rules are all followed, and the result is the physical answer. The interpretation of the resulting information doesn't have to be something that can be physically realizable, that's not a necessary requirement of the manipulations.

Memory is information, the information that our nervous system uses in decision making. That decision making is the manipulation of information through a model of the world, our perception, and how we animate our decisions, the result of information processing into action.

Not only is the information, and that model "not the actual experiences and the actual world" but that that is further abstracted, both in the way our senses limit our experience and in the limitations of our perceptions. Those things can never be the "raw" experience.

But the amazing thing is that they are good enough to sustain the species, to allow it to survive and reproduce, even with no idea what so ever of the "raw" experience. It isn't necessary, our perceptions, our memories, and all that just have to be good enough.

Largo

Sport climber

The Big Wide Open Face

Topic Author's Reply - Jul 29, 2014 - 03:04pm PT

Largo doesn't want to recognize "information" because it is a physical thing, it can be manipulated physically, but the result of those operations, while physical, may not be interpreted as a description of a physical thing...

-

Not so. What I am pointing out here and elsewhere is that there are always two sides of the coin, physical and non-physical, and reality (the coin, so to speak) is impossible to know looking at only one side.

The obsession of many here is that only the physical side is "real," and sources every thing. What follows is the misguided question: What is NOT physical?

JL

PSP also PP

Trad climber

Berkeley

Jul 29, 2014 - 03:21pm PT

Marlow said "I find a lot of discursive sense in the article, but I'm not impressed by the catchfrases at the start. The article is out fishing souls, they're salesmen..."

Yes he is a zen priest so he does sell Zen. The cost is to watch your experience at a set time each day in a formal manner and then attempt to do it the rest of the day. He knows there won't be too many takers because most people are not willing to give up "their" time. Which is what the article is about. People find their time to be extremely valuable and hence the root of the suffering is created.

I think the article does a good job dicussing "no-thingness" which is so difficult to communicate a correct understanding of it.

Ed Hartouni

Trad climber

Livermore, CA

Jul 29, 2014 - 03:22pm PT

faster-than-light travel is non-physical...

next!

jgill

Boulder climber

Colorado

Jul 29, 2014 - 03:32pm PT

Ectoplasm*

*J Wilson, R Gildman, "Ectoplasm and Raw Awareness", J. Spiritual & Metaphysical Studies (2013), Vol XXXI, PP 123-123.

;>)

eeyonkee

Trad climber

Golden, CO

Jul 29, 2014 - 03:59pm PT

I gotta hand it to Largo, he's got tenacity! Sheesh, I would have caved a long time ago. I'm convinced that there is no evidence...no conceivable evidence in the world that could possibly convince him of the error in his ways. And the thing of it is, as much as he as he focuses on the pitfalls of "scientific measurement", so much of why he is wrong falls squarely in the "logic" camp.

WBraun

climber

Jul 29, 2014 - 04:29pm PT

why he is wrong falls squarely in the "logic" camp

Truth is far beyond the limitations of gross material logic.

You have poor fund of knowledge of the limitation of logic in relation to "LIFE" itself.

This is why the gross materialists are so bewildered here and do so much theory, projections and mental speculations (guessing) .......

Tvash

climber

Seattle

Jul 29, 2014 - 04:30pm PT

feelings are more like clouds than speedometers, fo shiz

eeyonkee

Trad climber

Golden, CO

Jul 29, 2014 - 04:33pm PT

Ed wrote...

whether or not the nervous system follows "chaotic" dynamics is certainly an open question, and at this point is a possibly interesting speculation.

Although it is speculation, I’m gonna go with the nervous system being chaotic. Insights from software development suggest to me that there is some threshold of independent variables that results in chaos (although it wouldn’t surprise me if Ed has some citation to the contrary). A chaotic system is fundamentally unpredictable at the individual event level, but lends itself to statistical analysis if you have enough events. I’m assuming that there must be a large number of independent variables involved in our experience of sentience, although that’s just a guess. Like I was saying earlier about my cat exhibiting this range of behaviors in the event of some general, outside stimulus like an unexpected sound; the best computer may never be able to predict exactly what her response is 100 percent of the time. On the other hand, anyone who’s observed her for a while could easily bat .750 (hint, err on the “she’s lazier than I think side”).

MikeL

Social climber

Seattle, WA

Jul 29, 2014 - 04:38pm PT

Ed: you can always choose not to be discursive...

You have me there.

I don't know who I'm arguing with here (it might be Largo . . . I am confused), but the most interesting thing about Damasio's research (even though it be based upon abnormalities alone) is that what is perceived by the mind triggers physically a mind to perceive things physically. Mind over matter. When someone tells a person a gripping story (like climbing Ahab or what not), the person hearing the story will begin to tense their muscles and FEEL an experience. This is the basis for the growth of the idea of "embodied cognition." It is something that all of us experience. What makes such experiences identical to the supposed actual experience is simply a lot more triggers cognitively.

The oft-heard joke here on this thread about "phantasms of the mind being real," is real . . . "apparently" (get it?).

Ed: Largo doesn't want to recognize "information" because it is a physical thing, it can be manipulated physically, but the result of those operations, while physical, may not be interpreted as a description of a physical thing...

Er, again, I don't know who I'm arguing with, but everything is "information" be it physical or mental or emotional or visual or squiggly little lines I see in my wood floor, even if I know of no interpretation of them. All "things" are flat out projections, constructions, displays that are seen as a light on a sheet. This is the same model as the allegory of the cave. There is an immense energy source (let's just call it light), and that light is shown through what might be naively called a personality. That personality is in large part due to karma.

What you see is what you are.

WBraun

climber

Jul 29, 2014 - 05:04pm PT

These scientists here want to grasp everything with their senses.

When they can't grasp with their material senses it doesn't exist to them and they shut down.

Thus they reach their limitation of their own material bodies which they really are not although modern science so foolishly believes "I am this material body" .....

BLUEBLOCR

Social climber

joshua tree

Jul 29, 2014 - 05:24pm PT

Ed prescribed,

Light-regulated activation of PI3K in the synaptic region, but not in other parts of the cell, switched taste-attractive behavior to taste avoidance,

Is the worms body using Light to "flip switches"? Seems like a lot of work is getting done in this realm just by flipping the magnetic poles, is that true?

jgill

Boulder climber

Colorado

Jul 29, 2014 - 06:11pm PT

That personality is in large part due to karma. What you see is what you are (MikeL)

Or what you were . . .

;>)

eeyonkee

Trad climber

Golden, CO

Jul 29, 2014 - 06:39pm PT

Like it, jgill...

High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber

Jul 29, 2014 - 07:03pm PT

re: automata

Not that anyone asked but insofar as our "automated biology" seems too incredible to accept, it's because our mind-brains were simply not evolved - and thus not "wired" - to naturally comprehend it.

We have far over-shot, thanks to cultural evo, our forest and savanna evolutionary accoutrements, yet we must employ them, work with them, put up with them.

.....

tvash, you need to review the two basic definitions of "deterministic," they are distinct. Please don't fall for the old Laplace version of it having to do with prediction.

Case in point: Tomorrow's weather on Venus (where there are no minds or science or modeling to do any prediction) is still "determined" by yesterday's antecedent causes. Now extrapolate to earth or any other system or its components, simple to complex, quantum or or not, chaotic or not.

You can be a (causal) determinist (effects "determined" or defined by causes) - accepting all the planets and their components as "deterministic" for example - without being a predictionist.

The public's terribly confused on this point.

.....

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree regarding hunger as a feeling, also Damasio's position on it. I totally get Damasio, and don't think he'd agree that the sensation or perception of hunger (let alone pain!!) is not a feeling (or instance of sentience).

Then again, all this just shows how everybody including those on this site are all over the map concerning language usage vis a vis these "deeper" post-savanna subjects.

.....

For you etymology junkies, a review...
determined < L de-, from + terminus, boundary or limit

Thus, from here, many definitions and usages. (1) Causes determined effects. (2) Inputs determine outputs. (3) Microsoft engineers determined the problem solution. (4) Great minds determined the outcome last year. (5) What happens this coming El Nino will determine this year's crop. (Very different contexts, indeed.)

Largo

Sport climber

The Big Wide Open Face

Topic Author's Reply - Jul 29, 2014 - 07:16pm PT

I have yet to see proof of the non-physical.

DMT

What you mean is: I need physical proof of the non-physical to believe it is "real" (real = physical). When you are mired in one end of the game, being it no-thing or discursive, reality is a one-note chorus, and you'll never convince th choir otherwise.

As mentioned a thousand times, much of the slippery material on this thread was the product of sustained observation of the subjective realm NOT focusing on content, but awareness itself. Without some little taste of that dirct empirical experience, you have softward developers making wonky statements about the "errors of our ways," believing, I suppose, that we are speculating or trying to reason our way to the information. Fact is, the basic material runs basically the same in ever experiential tradition, and none of it is based on beliefs, but strictly empirical data. As I've been saying for a while, most of this basic material (no-thing, space between cognition, raw awareness, open focus, detachment, and so on) is rudimentary, the 4th class of mind training. The fact that this material is not only unknown but doubted here, or is believed to be someone's person conviction or belief, is a testiment to the darkness of Plato's cave, so to speak.

While the bulk of those trying to get hold of subjective experience by speculating upwards from biology are pretty wide of the mark, or oftentimes are not dealing with the experiential at all, but rather an objectification, at least they are ATTEMPTING to grapple with the experiential the only way they know how, or by the only means they trust.

What might be an interesting investigation is what Ed was mentioning per the hermonculous and the 3rd person POV, internal dialogue, and "who" is talking and who is listening. Why I think this has promise is that to get any foothold at all with this material you must check in with your direct experience, and can't just try and "think it through."

JL

High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber

Jul 29, 2014 - 07:53pm PT

My liver's metabolism is entirely "deterministic" - its metabolic products entirely "determined" by its reactants. So it goes with my kidneys and eyeballs and optic nerve, intestines and its digestion, and, you guessed it, my brain.

But perhaps BASE104 might disagree?

"I think it is a construct (?? in other words, made up??) to say that we do not have free will."

With all due respect, till a context is defined, it's a meaningless negation / statement.

Case in point: Even I, HCFS, have said many times I believe in "free will" in the sense of a will "being free" (a) of demonic possession - a very serious concern of thousands in early medieval times;(b) of coercion (a gun to the head). But again these examples are NOT what the modern neuroscientist or evolutionary psychologist has in mind when he's either calling the brain "deterministic" in physiology or is rejecting the claim that volition (i.e., will) is free.

"The notion that every second of our lives is captive to a deterministic physics is just wrong."

Maybe BASE sides with Descarte or somebody else? believing the pineal gland's output, for instance, is "determined" by something more than metabolic physical determinants (a miracle? dark matter or dark energy? dark emergence? a betazoid's influence?).

Sure would like to see some evidence though. Would be worth a Nobel, for sure.

MikeL

Social climber

Seattle, WA

Jul 29, 2014 - 08:36pm PT

Living the Artistic Life

. . . means not paying so very much attention to what appears to be, rather paying attention to the things that you make up in your life. What is that?

It's how you make things, not so much what you make. What you are creates the display in the Lila. What makes an impact is how you do things, not what you do. It's the style that matters.

Let go, fall into your role with all that you are, and viola! There you are: physically attentive, cognitively engaged, and emotionally available--in the here and now.

You move, through life, creating and sensing simultaneously and interactively. (What's the difference?)

Living and art . . . one in the same.

What is your art?