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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jul 31, 2014 - 11:42pm PT
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On re-reading, maybe I wasn't clear enough. In other words...
1) Don't throw out "disaster" (<from the stars) just because... modernity's shown the stars don't cause the troubles in our lives.
2) Don't throw out "sunrise" just because... modernity's moved past geocentrism understanding-wise.
On the same basis...
3) Don't throw out "freewill" just because... modernity (modern science) has shown/ is showing volition's not at all free of prior causes.
On linguistic grounds, I think it's a pretty good argument.
A toast to D. Dennett for the apt comparisons.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Just how tall are you, Tvash? HFCS, I need to read up on the Dennett/Harris argument. I gotta say, Dennett is one smart dude. If he's suggesting something, I'm going to be listening.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Give them another hundred years and there will be different sects and denominations of atheists just as there are of other belief systems. Human nature is human nature.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Human nature is human nature.
(1) Even better: nature is nature. (Branch and expand, repeat; it's nature's way; it's ubiquitous, leads to adaptation, growth, diversity.)
(2) I'd take different sects and denoms of "a-theists" over different sects and denoms of theists any day.
(3) We naturalists can hope 100 years hence there won't be any more to sects and denoms of rel/theism than today there are sects and denoms of astrology.
There are already, even today, different "sects" (cuts) of evolutionists. For instance I am a "feelings" evolutionist. Many other so-called "evolutionists" are not. ;)
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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The New York Times has an article today on a new 24/7 TV channel promoting atheism. Tele athievangels? Tele athiangels?
Anyway, they promise to criticize traditional religion where I think it always needs to hear dissenting voices - religion and big business, religion as the instigator of wars etc.
They might even have some good shows on neurobiology in the future.
Remember, only in America could Atheists Inc. be classified as a tax exempt religion.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jan, if all goes according to plan, young people a century from now won't even know the names a-theism or theism, a-theist or theist. Except in references to history (cf: alchemy, astrology, phrenology, luminiferous ether, demonology, exorcism, limbo, etc.). Imagine it!
A couple weeks ago was in a group, we were all philosophizing, I was asked, Do you believe in God? I tried a fresh approach. My answer: "I believe in 'God' as a personification of nature. Does that count?"
I don't think it counted with the couple Christians there. Another didn't know what a "personication" is. (ref: Grim Reaper, Father Time, even Mother Nature Herself, etc.)
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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In one of HBO's latest series, The Leftovers, ATF has morphed into ATFaC, Alcohol,Tobacco, Firearms and Cults. They are merciless with cults, sending in armed agents in combat gear and gunning down all the males, and taking females and children as prisoners.
Your fictional tax dollars at work!
Anyone here watch the fine new series Manhattan on WGN on Sundays? Excellent drama and period piece about the Manhattan Project in the early 1940s.
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Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, CA
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Don't you know there's over seven billion individual atheistic, religious, political and/or philosophical sects and counting?
-the myopic bushman philosophical society of the one
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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HFCS said
We naturalists can hope 100 years hence there won't be any more to sects and denoms of rel/theism than today there are sects and denoms of astrology.
That made me think of maybe my only hero in the truest sense of the word, Darwin (I've got a bunch of heroines). I want to contrast Darwin's approach to this problem of mind with Largo's.
Darwin was the quintessential observer. A good observer is like a good listener (I'm sure he was that too), it's not about you imposing your will on the situation, rather, it's about discovering what can be discovered, which is greatly enhanced by knowing and respecting the subject. It can only be accomplished over a length of time and reflection. Darwin knew about a vast range of subjects including the anatomy of living species, the distribution of species and genera, fossils and how fossils compared to living species, and, especially, domesticated plants and animals. It's clear he thought about all of these things a lot and over a long time. He also had the scientific mindset that an overall theory should be consistent with and explain all of these observations.
Contrast this with Largo's arguments that go along the lines of you can only "know" this thing if you've practiced what I've practiced. Largo claims to be like Darwin in that it has taken him a long time to achieve his current knowledge or state or whatever it might be. But in Largo's approach to the problem, it more or less starts and ends with him. All of those things that Darwin was so interested in are "noise" or something...something not to be trusted.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Charles Darwin had me at 17yo. I chose his Origin of Species for my English IV book report and talk. For me, it was all the more acute because the girl I was sweet on (very) was in the first row of class, not 10' away. Boy, what I'd give today for a video of that 45 minutes. Kids today are so lucky. My first semester book report was on cryonics, all the way back in 1977, on the freezing of our dead bodies in the hope future tech would be able to bring us back to life. Back then it was unheard of, such a rare thing, but today it seems such outlandish futurist thinking is on every channel and wavelength. To think, once upon a time, I wanted to live forever lol!!
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Ed: maybe a life in science is special.
Maybe you are special.
Randisi: Is meditation an exception to this "every role and discipline"?
Absolutely not. (Smirk.)
HFCS: ("Human nature is human nature"). . . . (1) Even better: nature is nature.
Those two categories should NOT be placed so close together, for reason of metaphor. Is human nature Nature?? That would smack of radical determinism, which you claim it isn't. Making classifications is more than tricky . . . it's just plain wrong. It leads to so many poor decisions and judgments. I understand you believe you need to do it to advance your understanding and knowledge. You don't.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 1, 2014 - 06:30pm PT
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He said: But in Largo's approach to the problem, it more or less starts and ends with him.
I have never claimed to be anyone but one of many who follow a structured, empirical practice of attention training. Nothng I hve ever said is remotely original per that work and all of it is immediately accessable to anyone who wants to start a practice. There are many out there.
The problem most people have with the subjective adentures is they want something for nothing - like becomming an excellent climbier without ever practicing or bouldering or cross training. Because they believe that the discursive mind has no limitations, there is no reason why any aspect of reality is not immediately accessible, the belief goes, so long as we have the relevant facts and figures and measurements. My approach does not "stope with me," it stops with the assumption that you can fully understand mind without doing what Darwin did (keen and lasting empirical observation) from the inside, from the core of experience itself.
Again, the main stumbling block here is that many simply do not belive that this is true, never asking themselves that if this really was so, that yuou nevder had to quiet the mind and observe to ever know what was really going on, why wouldn't the many millions of people who have engaged in self observation simply have taken an discursive approach? If that worlked, you really think people would not have taken that route? Why would they?
Most people nowdays who do mind training are atheists so the old argument that we are practicing old time religion is not only absurd but vastly misinformed.
But as I have said, quieting the mind will never be popular becuse most of us - myself incouded - are infatuated with hearing our own voices (thinking). It's an addiction that we never really fathom till we attempt to let it go - even for 30 minutes. Thinkking is in no wise "bad," but it is not the same as observing or listening or being present with something, which renders a much different POV.
JL
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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"The problem most people have with the subjective adentures is they want something for nothing - like becomming an excellent climbier without ever practicing or bouldering or cross training."
Really?
The problem rests with you and you alone - and it is that you've mistaken your own subjective adventure with scientific truth - or, more specifically, a rebuttal of scientific truth, which is in essence the same thing. You've stated as absolute truth what you simply do not and cannot know - and you've backed it up with nothing more than personal anecdote.
Not compelling, particularly in light of the more scientific theories presented here - which are cogent, consistent with evolution and a number of other fairly well supported areas of science, and, most importantly - do not require an umbilical cord to their author's personal inner experience.
You don't speak for most people, or even a single other person. That you get out what you put in seems to be commonly understood. The value of cross training is hardly a novel idea.
Sure, there are those who avoid difficult pursuits entirely. For those who do choose to engage, however, some concentrate, others spread themselves over several long term disciplines. Regardless of where an individual falls on this spectrum, an ethic of continual improvement and innovation can be employed.
Despite all of your work, LG, you've made the same beginner's mistake as a person who actually believes they've left their body during an out of body experience. You've managed to turn just another mental state, however profound it may be to you, into an alternative theory of mind.
Then you've gone one step further - to disparage the scientific method you're losing this debate to with a label you've declared by personal edict is bad.
In other words, you're smoking your own bullsh#t.
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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JL said " it stops with the assumption that you can fully understand mind without doing what Darwin did (keen and lasting empirical observation) from the inside, from the core of experience itself."
+1
observation = meditation
but to truly observe you have to become unattached from the discursive (opinions,situation and condition)
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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Despite all of your work, LG, you've made the same beginner's mistake as a person who actually believes they've left their body during an out of body experience. You've managed to turn just another mental state, however profound it may be to you, into an alternative theory of mind (Tvash)
Exactly what I said many pages back with reference to my own mystical adventures from forty years ago - that I emphasized were purely mental experiences no matter how profound they seemed (even though my "I" had its moments of glory).
Didn't gain traction then, not going to now. But good try.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 1, 2014 - 08:40pm PT
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Nice try, Tvash, but you're too sloppy to make much of a case.
What I have said does not contradict scientific fact. What we are discussing here is material that science has not wrangled, and attempts to do so are not measurements, but wonky speculations. And there is one stange thing that keeps getting lost here: No matter how much I insist that this has nothing to do with content, you always want to drag it beck there and insist that I am providing content that runs contrary to your measurements, or am pimping some POV the is full of mystical stuff that I believe in.
Now list up: Beliefs have nothing to do with it. Content is secondary. You can spin around and like Tvash insists, you too can belive that I am talking about a "state" that offers an "alternative model of mind."
There are two glaring errors in this. Tvash has no experience with this material whatsoever and truly believs he has a profound grasp of exacly what I am saying. I have said this is fundamntally dishobnest because he doesn't know the subject matter at all. "States?" If you dumped the content, what is let? Just because yhou can't discusively understand anything but a state, does that mean that catagorically, there are only states? "What else could there be?"
But as avuncular and sage and rational as people can sound, who has offered up one insight into the subject of mind that is not just more mechanistic rehasing or a zombie model of consciousness?
As mentioned, note how many people have actually said: Ok, I am going to quiet my mind for a sec and simply observe what is there. I will quickly learn that focusing on the what, the content, the state, is the booby prize, the sucker's bet. What is let is the study? What is that.
Not everyone is interested. Few have the curiosity to listen to the void. There is nothing that contreadicts science here. Like I was saying, there isn't much actual science that deal with sentience. Instead they deal with objective functioning and call it sugjective studies.
And the wheel turns. But IMO, the aversion to explore any discipline but the same old one remains the great barrier in all of this work.
Tvash says I have offered an alternative model of "mind." In fact there is no existing, scientific model of sentience at all, save that peoppe belive that consciousness is mechanically "created" my the brain, and that any other inquiry is woo or religion. When I have talked about sentience, I have used concrete terms like focus, awareness, paying attention, etc.
This whole business of attacking a tried and true model of sentience is a crazy exaggeration because no one has any idea at all how material can produce experience. So I'm not offering an alternative to what does not exist. It's silly to even thing that.
JL
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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to be mercifully brief:
i've claimed no expertise in meditation.
i dont care about the void. im not into crochet, either.
neither is relevant to a theory of concsciousness
the void is just another mental state - profundity of same is a personal value judgement. one manz journey is anotherz waste of time, and thats OK, personal control freak issues notwithstanding of course
sentience= cosciousness
compelling theories of consciousness have been presented
that is all
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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The 6:30 pm post was a good one, John. Without achievements and objectives what kind of reality is there? It must be a state of mind, but what would that be, Tvash? I'd bet that it would be silly and dumb, in many ways. You need an awakening. One glimpse would strongly suggest that there is something else that you are completely a part of that is not YOU. I'll speak for myself: it's profound.
Tvash: you've mistaken your own subjective adventure with scientific truth - or, more specifically, a rebuttal of scientific truth, which is in essence the same thing.
It's not.
People! Science is an approach, not a thing. It has no substance in and of itself. In some important respects, it's like any other approach: it's a tactic. What tactic becomes a religion, dogma? The one you hold sacrosanct.
Rest easy. Relax. There is no principle worthy of giving your life to it. There is just nothing that serious or concrete to warrant that kind of commitment and behavior.
Science is great. So is art. So are contemplative studies. What do you want to see?
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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My teacher says none of any of this is important or critical. No matter what you've got showing up in front of you, it's just what and where you're at: be it the trek to enlightenment, the day-to-day life of a mom, or the scientist probing the fabric of the universe. What you are is what you see, and what you see is what you get. No struggle or serenity can dislodge the hook of the sense of self to What-This-Is.
Everything is a paradox, a dilemma, an unsolvable puzzle. And in our hearts of hearts, we all know it silently, or at least we harbor a doubt that it is so.
A few lines above I suggested that most of us fall into ruts. Ed responded that people of science don't or may not. I'll go with what most have attributed to Thoreau: the majority of men lead lives of quiet desperation. I have not yet met a man who in his or her hearts does not have something that terrifies and subdues his vitality. Most of us live in ruts, and the few who don't are free of every single social practice and value that faces you or me. Yea, even more than a few scientists live in ruts.
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