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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Nov 30, 2014 - 07:10pm PT
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Interesting discussion of interesting and worthwhile questions for the current age - definitely more useful than jousting about religion.
Meanwhile, I think Jung is being unfairly maligned here. He had hundreds of patients draw pictures for example, to reveal their unconscious. He observed that as they recovered psychological balance, their drawings became more balanced and finally featured circles like mandalas. That seems to me to be based on empiracal evidence, not just personal theory.
My critique of him and those who evaluate him, is the fact that he is credited with a number of ideas which he did not invent but rather borrowed and translated from eastern esoteric concepts into modern psychological terminology. To my mind he was more of a cultural interpreter than an original thinker. Joseph Campbell was more open about his sources and then tied them together with a theory.
As for the archetypes themselves,Jung noted and it is my experience from dream work, that there are levels to archetypes. Some are universal or nearly so, others are strictly cultural, and some are personal. Discerning the differences is all important to understanding the meaning of the dreams and the nature and state of one's unconscious. Perhaps jgill who has also worked with dreams has some insights on this.
And finally, since we've just been able to measure brain activity and decoded the human genome I think it's entirely premature to say we have no physical evidence yet of the archetypes.Unfortunately, none of us is likely to still be around when this comes to be known one way or the other with certainty.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Nov 30, 2014 - 09:05pm PT
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Ed: Philosophy, on the other hand, has no idea whether it has or has not anything relevant to say on the matter, there is no way to establish philosophical "truth."
Very likely, but then I didn’t always think that was philosophy’s only objective. I thought it was to help people think. That might indeed be relevant to every rational conversation.
What constitutes good reason? Only empirical data, a number of tests, and a statistical probability?
I don’t think that truth can be told.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Nov 30, 2014 - 09:31pm PT
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Desire is the need for love. Love is a feeling and maybe understanding of at-one-ment.
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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Nov 30, 2014 - 09:34pm PT
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Perhaps jgill who has also worked with dreams has some insights on this
I never experienced anything like an archetype, Jan. Just what appeared to be normal reality with some of the laws of physics bent a bit and sensory signals enhanced somewhat like the description in an old Stephen King novel about a boy who ventured into an alternate reality and found he could smell a fresh onion pulled from the earth a mile away.
Good to see JL back in form. The older I become the less likely I will reject no-thingness.
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MH2
climber
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"Just remember Mickey, we all regress to the same mean. And it's a pretty mean mean."
 Jon Art
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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I think the cross up here on most discussions is that we are talking about two different kinds of inquiry - measuring and "philosophical" - and the two are clearly not the same. A common mistake is believing that philosophical investigation is actually an attmept to do science without the methodology, techniques, and matmatical exactitude Or that measuring is about the nature of things, and believing that the mesaurement IS the nature of things. End of story.
Ad Ed pointd out, questions about the fundamental nature of things are irrelevant to the scientific task of setting up experiments and deriving laws per the predictable outcome and the behavior of stuff - from how a virus replicates, to the spin of an atomic particle. Likewise, the inquiry into fundamental nature eventually makes the mesurements irrelevant since at the deeper levels, the investigation is not about stuff.
Oddly, the investigation into stuff ultimately says that when reduced down far enough, the stuff "has no physical extent."
What to make of it is a large discussion.
And John, I believe it is misleading and unproductive to search for arechetype as you might search for arrowheads. Like they are encountered outside of your own subjective experience. I believe we can only expoerience the personal manifestation of the archetype. And we do that all day every day. It would be easy for a reductinist to take this and believe that the archetypes are simply the result of DNA, evolution, genetic drivers, and so forth. We can easily see why someone would believe as much.
JL
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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The easiest way to encounter personal archetypes is to analyze repetitive dreams, or dreams with common themes. These are our mind's way of telling us that we're not paying attention to something that we should. If you think deeply about what they have in common, you'll likely discover what you've been ignoring - and be amazed at how clever the unconscious is in choosing the symbols to try to get through to you. If the issue is unresolved long enough, one or two symbols will become archetypal for you personally. After a while you'll come to recognize them as old friends. If and when you finally resolve the issue, you'll notice one day that you haven't seen them around for quite a while.
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Fossil climber
Trad climber
Atlin, B. C.
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It's probably not an original thought, but it just occurred to me...
If someone found Jesus' bones and ran his DNA, what do you suppose they would find?
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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How do you contrast Jung's collective unconscious to Platonic forms?
It would be a natural assumption ,given central aspects of the theory of the collective unconscious and Plato's ideal forms, to conclude that Jung was directly influenced by the overarching idea of the Platonic forms. I don't know if that was the case ,but If it were the case , then it would be a next step to point out that Jung may have been therefore 'tainted' or compromised by his adherence to the Platonic approach. Again, only if it can be shown that Jung, by his own admission, traced his core thinking as regards the CU to the 'mother ship" of Platonic idealism.
Jung wanted his theories to be regarded and approached scientifically. At the end of the day he thought of himself as a scientist, first and foremost. No scientist in an investigation of nature should allow the thinking of a speculative philosopher ,living two thousand years prior, to influence his thinking to such an extent that he fundamentally orders his theories to reflect an underlying shared conviction in those speculations.
This is not a dig at philosophy or an unreasonable elevation of science--- it is a thumbnail description of how these things function.
What aspect of consciousness, if any, do you consider to be "universal," or is consciousness itself - like archetypes, and other content - a cultural gizmo.
Those aspects of consciousness that I consider universal are those biological determinants that result in particular reoccurring outcomes and are traceable to identifiable causes. A good example would be hunger. I don't need to explain how the natural imperative of obtaining food orders human consciousness , or the consciousness of Lemurs. Hunger is more than just a pang in the abdominal region--- it's critical effects creates a fractal web of interlocking conciousness content. Like cultural gizmos, which socially reinforce the universality in a structural and dynamic way.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Those aspects of consciousness that I consider universal are those biological determinants that result in particular reoccurring outcomes and are traceable to identifiable causes. A good example would be hunger.
That's what we call in psychology instinctual energies, Ward. It's pretty clear that you are using a program model to approach this, whereby you can reverse engineer any outcome to a genetic "cause" as inherent in the master program. But I wasn't talking about the specific content of consciousness, but rather consciousness itself.
As was show way back when, the map is not the territory.
JL
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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"biological determinants"
Nice phrase. But what is the determiner if not the very structure of the universe itself and within that structure can't we then find the seed of social accommodation even love? And in the largest sense wouldn't those biological determinants enjoy a kind of preexistence as inevitable possibilities given the vast and time rich nature of the universe?
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Norton
Social climber
quitcherbellyachin
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If someone found Jesus' bones and ran his DNA, what do you suppose they would find?
probably a little bit of Lucy, Ardi, and Cheetah's DNA
Hi Mr. Merry!
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Fossil climber
Trad climber
Atlin, B. C.
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Hi Norton!
Just wondered what supernatural DNA looked like.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Oh Gawd, here it is again:
And BASE, what do you mean by "mystical?" Materially based? But we have already seen that material itself, when reduced to the most basic levels, "has no physical extent."
John, go Google "Zen Physics." There is already a gaggle of people who somehow think that fundamental particles somehow validate their Zen notions. Click on any or all of them. They are pure woo.
If you decide to go down that road; to marry the mystical to the material through the discoveries of the biggest measuring machines on the planet such as the LHC at CERN, then you must also accept less fundamental particles such as Protons and Neutrons. They are still units of matter. There is no way around it. You can't dismiss a grapefruit size rock capable of taking your head off just because you read the wiki page on matter.
Which is good reading, by the way:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter
This is where I really disagree with you, John. You have posted the notion that Zen understands the basic nature of matter. I have to say, again, that you are so full of sh#t, selling something that you don't have a clue about. When you meditate, do you explore the known subatomic particles? What do you have to say about the idea of symmetry. That all particles are paired with an anti-particle (such as an electron and a positron)?
Please attempt it and then fill us in.
Nobody has discovered the nature of matter by meditating the nature of emptiness. It takes a lot of hard work, and a lot of hard mathematics. I'm not a physicist, so I don't make claims about things that I don't understand.
Did you ever take a class in Physics? Did you ever take a calculus class?
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Largo , let me take this opportunity to extend my personal condolences to you on the recent loss of your good and longtime friend.
--------------------------------------------------------
That's what we call in psychology instinctual energies, Ward.
I call them 'aspects' of consciousness; universal aspects of consciousness ---- per your question.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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You have posted the notion that Zen understands the basic nature of matter.
Kindly point out where I have said anything about Zen trying to do science - that the point of meditation was to discover the basic nature of matter.
You are like Dingus in this regards - you keep responding to the answer or info you have in your head, not what is being said.
It was a physicist who said that matter, when reduced far enough, "has no plysical extent."
What do you think he meant?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3eGX-wkFgM
JL
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cintune
climber
The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen
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Uh, I don't think "Ptyl Dragon" is a physicist.
I suppose I could be wrong about that, though.
There certainly are plentiful paradoxes at the quantum level, but what we experience in the macro-world as "solidity" is actually the result of repelling forces, which are energy.
So as always, what you're actually trying to signify here is as ambiguous as ever. But please, do go on.
(Kinda funny that the previous post was #404.)
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Someone or some group has shown (proven?) what the basic nature of matter is?
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Base:
I looked at the URL. It begins with this:
MATTER
This article is about the concept in the physical sciences.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Cintune, it is telling that you consider the subject "ambiguous," which I sense you mean, "unclear or inexact because a choice between alternatives has not been made." This of course implies that to be perfectly clear, what we are talking about (matter and no-thing) can only be properly nailed down once we make a definitive choice.
Reductionistic science, as it has been explained to me, says that at the most basic level (reduced to the most basic "things"), what we have has no physical extent. Is this declaration ambiguous? How so?
JL
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