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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Aug 10, 2014 - 05:13pm PT
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Ward, this is not a political thread. However, you would do well to reread your history. It was the Portuguese and Spanish who came to Japan preaching that loyalty to a far away Pope was more important than local fealty and it was Admiral Perry who sailed into Tokyo Bay and shot up the place, demanding free trade, not the reverse. WWII in Asia was the culmination of 500 years of historical events initiated by the West. You may find it convenient to forget 500 years of colonialism and imperialism there, but it is still fresh in Asian minds. And you don't have to be a follower of Saul Alinsky to see that. Just read any intro to Asian Studies book.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Aug 10, 2014 - 05:14pm PT
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This is the best this surrender-monkey can do, Ward. I must retreat in the face of overwhelming noun modification.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Aug 10, 2014 - 05:15pm PT
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And do animals have ego? OH YEAH.
Surely! Ego seems to be present wherever Awareness and The Ability to Choose resides? Going that far, i'd even surmount plants have ego. Like consciousness, their ego's are not of the same degree as animals. And animals are not to the degree as us.
With us, we have conflated "ego" into a bad meaning. Prizing individualism, with our chest beating look how great I am mentality has only retarded our evolution.
Can't Ego be a shared/ combined representation of the whole? doesn't a "Baseball Team" like The Redsocks share an Ego when it's said,"They can't be beat" or "They'll never win a game"
And isn't there some Ego in saying, "America is the greatest nation on earth"
isn't that some whopper of conflated Egotism!?
BTW first time i used conflated in a sentence, i'm getting a little better. but thats my ego talk'in
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Aug 10, 2014 - 06:06pm PT
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BB: . . . maybe just don't respond directly to Tvish's ego? Obviously his ears aren't working
Don't act out. Your character is way above that. One of the wonderful things about you is an openness and equanimity (even though you favor the Lord). Just deal with the issues. If that is one of them, then bring it out.
Personally, I am detached but not indifferent. I am not of this world, but in it.
No matter where we are, we have irresolvable problems that will nag or haunt us. Monotheism, the scientific approach, narrative interpretation, mathematics, and or syllogistic logic--they all create silly notions that we feel we must buy into to justify something.
Integration has always been an important problem to solve and see, but MUST we explain everything? We must know everything?
I enjoy hearing others' ideas once I understand them. It continues to impress me that everything is on shaky ground. Nothing is solid, . . and where does that leave us? I'd say in the most remarkable place possible.
Ward: 1) Attention and the attention schema are two different neural circuits.
Then which one integrates? Is there some little man (or woman) in a control room finally making final judgments among these different systems? Yours is such a command-and-control model of being.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Aug 10, 2014 - 06:25pm PT
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Integration of what? How attention happens at the functional anatomical level is still a subject that requires a whole lot more investigation.
Yes, your neural body system is a control system. This was first discovered by the ancient Greeks. Is this...news? Does this actually bother you for some reason? Do you feel that Little Man In Your Head is keepin you down?
And speaking of that, the two way feedback loop between attention and the attention schema actually avoids the infinitely nested homunculus problem. Attention decides whats being attended to based on signal strength of top down and bottom up stimuli - this gets summarized and modeled in your attention schema (ei, you're consciously aware of it), the attention schema arrow B takes various actions via neural signals, both directly to the attention (not attention schema) circuitry (this is the feedback loop) and to the rest of the body (move, etc) - this feedback loop is one of the input stimuli that feeds the attention circuitry - but other signals still join to compete for shelf space there.
Such dynamic feedback loops abound in nature - within cells, within bodies, within social groups, between species. The neural circuitry used to build an attention schema has been around for a while - to create body schemas (very old) and, more recently, social schemas. Attention circuitry, of course, has also been around for a long while, albeit not with our level of sophistication, perhaps.
What you want to know or not is dependent upon your level of curiosity and interest. Humans as a whole, however, obviously evolved to explore and innovate. It's just who we are as animals.
Any expectation or desire to the contrary is likely to be met with disappointment. Each of us can choose to either embrace the future or reject it, but, invited or not, the future's coming for dinner.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Aug 10, 2014 - 06:43pm PT
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Of course I do not excuse the behavior of the Japanese once they went to war. I do however, understand it given their xenophobia and their bushido warrior code of conduct. One of several reasons I'm less than keen on Zen is because of its close connection to the samurai class.
The real problem is that the Japanese went to war in the first place and that was brought on by European powers. The initial Japanese reaction to the incursions of the Spanish and Portuguese imperialists was to completely close off their country for 260 years, wishing to have nothing to do with the outside world. They were forced out of this isolation by American mercantile interests led by Admiral Perry.
Now our government in the name of cost cutting, has encouraged a conservative Japanese government to prepare for offensive actions and to consider abandoning their peaceful constitution which I think is a big mistake. If it backfires and we find ourselves treaty bound to defend a newly aggressive Japan, we will have only ourselves to blame.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Aug 10, 2014 - 06:56pm PT
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One problem with the American-centric view of history is it tends to be short timeslice snapshots - our causal role is often edited out.
Many people are surprised to learn, for example, that Ho Chi Minh petitioned Truman to help them negotiate an end to French colonial rule in 1947. He was ignored. The seeds of that war, and our fatal misunderstanding of what it was all about, were sown many years before we sent troops there.
A recognition of our role in the world's various tragedies doesn't constitute support nor absolution for them - but this disingenuous tactic is one of the more commonly used in political debates, even among those who should know better. Understanding various nations' roles in sowing the seeds of Japan's aggression doesn't excuse that aggression. It's not cheerleading for the rape of Nanking - it's intelligently analyzing the events as a whole over a long enough timescale so as to better understand them. This gives us a remote chance of acting more wisely in the future.
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MH2
climber
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Aug 10, 2014 - 07:06pm PT
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War? The U.S. Congress has not declared war since 1942.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Aug 10, 2014 - 07:18pm PT
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Tvash: Integration of what?
Of anything. What is what? What is going on? If you contend that none of it is somehow connected, then it's truly a "buzzing, blooming confusion" (James). If that is what you believe, then you have absolutely no need for concepts or labels. You are floating. Nothing is serious or concrete.
It's not a bad thing.
Where is the master master control system? Evolution? (That would be myopic and biased.)
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Aug 10, 2014 - 07:27pm PT
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Jim: . . . about considering what is mind, the idea of a long memory and its physical result between humans has been soft pedaled, or disregarded in this thread.
Not recently here.
The physical and mental are hopelessly intertwined. Each helps to define each other. It's a dance.
"You say Tomato,
I say "tamato,"
Let's call the whole thing off."
(Gershwin)
We have plenty of empiricists who want to say that all they know is what they know through their senses. On the other hand, we have the mentalists who say that all that we know about the physical is defined by the mental. Obviously, (and I'm sure that Jan can say much here, as others), memory helps to define what is known.
So what's really what?
Just give it up. It's a dead horse. We really could use another paradigm than the empirical paradigm. It has so very little to do with what and who we are.
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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Aug 10, 2014 - 08:08pm PT
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Sorry to interrupt the stimulating geopolitical strategerizing, but I wanted to say that of all the thousands of posts on this thread, I find those related to attention and awareness being neurologically disjoint to be among the most illuminating material to appear, at least for me since I have never given much thought to either and certainly not one being separate from the other. Several articles on the internet have helped fill in the blanks, although my thinking is still a bit muddled on the issue. My age, I suspect.
Attention schema on the other hand sounds like metaphysics knocking on the door of science. And all the past discussions about no-thingness and emptiness are like a bad dream.
I can't help but think of that very old film, that probably only you and I remember, "The Three Faces of Eve" (Jan)
Sorry, Jan. That was before my time!
;>)
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Aug 10, 2014 - 08:25pm PT
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Yes, your neural body system is a control system. This was first discovered by the ancient Greeks. Is this...news? Does this actually bother you for some reason? Do you feel that Little Man In Your Head is keepin you down? TVash
That was then. Today don't we consider the brain and nervous system "A Learning Organism"? Firstly and Foremostly our brains and bodys are set-up for learning and re-learning every foot-step. Every morning we rise our bodies go through a relearning of what it learned the day before. Our memories form the models. But the Body must relearn an activity like brushing ur teeth because we are physically different each and every day.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Aug 10, 2014 - 09:33pm PT
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If it backfires and we find ourselves treaty bound to defend a newly aggressive Japan, we will have only ourselves to blame.
Is Japan wanting to become more aggressive? To gain what? i thought they were liv'in large!
One positive of war, it gets easy to predict an opponents intent by where they move their troops.
We want to move OURS to Japan. What does that tell you?
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Aug 10, 2014 - 09:37pm PT
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Thanks Jim!
Right back atch'ya!
But i'm not out to kill, i'm jus nibbling.
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WBraun
climber
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Aug 10, 2014 - 09:45pm PT
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Yes
There is the One who is the master of all sound vibrations .....
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Aug 10, 2014 - 10:09pm PT
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I find those related to attention and awareness being neurologically disjoint to be among the most illuminating material to appear, JGill
By "disjoint" do you mean the physical body isn't responsible for producing attention or awareness?
But here he said;
Attention decides whats being attended to based on signal strength of top down and bottom up stimuli - this gets summarized and modeled in your attention schema (ei, you're consciously aware of it), the attention schema arrow B takes various actions via neural signals, both directly to the attention (not attention schema) circuitry (this is the feedback loop) and to the rest of the body (move, etc) TVash
i can't understand if the schema is Giving or Taking signals from the neurons.
But either way atleast one of them is "hardwired" in the meat.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Aug 10, 2014 - 10:15pm PT
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With that said,
Where's the hardwiring to where i direct my thoughts?
i can divert my attention up, down, left, right, allaround...
But WHO/WHAT is pinpointing the discussion?
It can't be meat, can it?
Is it Chemical or Electrical
Is it written in my meat that i would rather have a Pink Prius over a black one?
Or is it the chemical and electrical stimulus' that awakens when i visualize/feel pink?
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Aug 10, 2014 - 10:27pm PT
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I don't know where Blue gets the idea that we are moving our troops to Japan. We've had them there since 1945.
I also don't know where jgill was in 1957 but I'm pretty sure he was around then.
To refresh his memory, here's the Wiki article on the Three Faces of Eve and you can even watch the whole movie on YouTube.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Faces_of_Eve
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOxxf8zJt9M
And Tvash is right about Vietnam. There are old newsreels showing Hanoi on its Independence Day with Ho Chi Minh reading a declaration of Independence worded similarly to ours, while people in the streets waved hand made American flags and drawings of Harry Truman, sure that the U.S. would support their cause. Instead we supported colonialism and the French return there.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Aug 10, 2014 - 10:35pm PT
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I don't know where Blue gets the idea that we are moving our troops to Japan.
i just heard that on CCTV our locally(free) TV station broadcasted from China about world news. It's Very good! They had said Japan is going to allow America to ramp-up it's military presence in the face of what China is doing.
try googleing CCTV
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Aug 10, 2014 - 10:50pm PT
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attention schema = informational model of our attention = awareness. Synonyms.
Graziano's entire theory in one sentence (his words): Awareness is an attention schema.
One must take political context into account. When Ho Chi Minh began to make overtures to the US for help with their independence movement, the iron curtain was already in place. Two years later the Soviets tested a nuke and the Chinese Revolution ignited. Communism was already America's political watchword - like Terrorism is today. The US' all too brief hegemony was already being challenged.
Politically, the US preferred a trusted French proxy in SE Asia to the unknown - the birth of a nascent state in close proximity to China.
What the US didn't bank on was France getting its ass kicked.
Hijinks ensued.
We didn't bank on getting our asses kicked either, but there were those in the Eisenhower administration who warned of just such an eventuality.
Ah well, the war brought our family to the West Coast, so there's that.
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