What is "Mind?"

Discussion Topic

Return to Forum List

This thread has been locked

Messages 3914 - 3933 of total 22307 in this topic

<< First | < Previous | Show All | Next > | Last >>

Bushman

Social climber

Elk Grove, CA

Sep 10, 2014 - 09:22am PT

Werner,
That's all you can expect from this weekend warrior who's been out to pasture for years anyway...
munch munch

WBraun

climber

Sep 10, 2014 - 09:26am PT

Do not comment on my posts Tvash.

They are not for you.

They are not cogent and above or below your pay scale which ever way your duality mind steers you at any time.

Stick to the science as you know it.

Always remain safe in your knowledge .....

Bushman

Social climber

Elk Grove, CA

Sep 10, 2014 - 09:29am PT

Also, as we all know the man who wrote those words about revolution and counting him out and it's going to be alright was gunned down on the streets of New York back in 1980.
Ironic and tragic ending for one who espoused peace in all his writings, activism, and music. John Lennon's legacy will be true to stand the test of time.

High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber

Sep 10, 2014 - 09:31am PT

E=MC(C)

Matter is a thing. Energy is a thing. EveryTHING in the universe is a thing.

Dingus, Strassler is an interesting scientist to me, not a hero. Hero's always fall.

If the above is your assertion and belief, I will have Strassler respond to it. Just making sure before asking him to clear this up for you.

JL

But I'm still waiting for the follow-through on this one.

Please, have Strassler respond.
In whatever manner he chooses. Thanks.

http://profmattstrassler.com/about/about-me/

WBraun

climber

Sep 10, 2014 - 09:34am PT

So was Gandhi.

He preached ahimsa (nonviolence) and was killed by violence.

My teacher warned him he was only preaching one side.

Himsa (violence) is required to make complete whole.

The doctor creates violence against the body to heal it ......

High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber

Sep 10, 2014 - 09:51am PT

Not that anybody asked... but I would've suggested "dark fudge gravity" and "dark fudge pull" (in lieu of "dark matter" and "dark energy") - as placeholders - and even "dark fudge interface" (inspired by "dark fudge gravity") as placeholder for that mysterious unknown boundary condition or mechanism between brain and consciousness.

Will consciousness and/or the dark fudge interface forever remain "conceptually" irreducible? I don't know.

But the mental life (the subjective mind) sure seems to run, to operate, even to act up (when it does) as if it IS the straight-up (I won't say "simple") processing of a complex organic electronic machine charged by evolution by natural selection with the control of a body whose "purpose" (EdH, lol!) is survival and reproduction in a particular niche in a complex dynamic environment.

And the more one understands systems, computers, biology, info science, electronic circuitry, etc etc etc ... not to mention the (apish) humanities and the (apish) human factor in the mix... the more this seems true.

Largo

Sport climber

The Big Wide Open Face

Topic Author's Reply - Sep 10, 2014 - 10:02am PT

E=MC(C)

Matter is a thing. Energy is a thing. EveryTHING in the universe is a thing.

Dingus, Strassler is an interesting scientist to me, not a hero. Hero's always fall.

If the above is your assertion and belief, I will have Strassler respond to it. Just making sure before asking him to clear this up for you.

JL

But I'm still waiting for the follow-through on this one.

Please, have Strassler respond.
In whatever manner he chooses. Thanks.

I'm just bombed with work right now but I'll try and find time to talk to Strassler soon as I get back from Boulder tomorrow for the Sender Films/Valley Uprising release.

The point of all of this is that from the perspective of our discursive minds, all the stuff "out there" is a thing, and the same goes for any and all aspects of people, places, things and phenomenon. When we use our minds in a way where the discursive leaves off, then we see that this is not so, that perspective plays a determining factor. This is what Strassler was driving at when saying that terms like "matter" and energy and stuff need to a context to even be understood, hat there is no agreed upon definition to what matter even is.

Many people are made more secure by the idea that reality is a fixed "thing" full of things just as black and white as Dingus insists that they are. The Harvard physiscist has another take on this. And so do many others who have made a study of mind adventures that are not based on imagining "things."

JL

Norwegian

Trad climber

dancin on the tip of god's middle finger

Sep 10, 2014 - 10:07am PT

your hyper-fascination
of your subject
clearly screams
your surrender
to it's antonym.

Tvash

climber

Seattle

Sep 10, 2014 - 10:50am PT

"Do not comment on my posts Tvash."

Is this a quid pro quo offer? Cuz you've been my most ardent ankle biter to date, trumped only by another poster who is, sadly, no longer with us after issuing a choking threat.

I only comment on your neural stochastics when a larger point is to be made. Step away...it's not really about you.

MikeL

Social climber

Seattle, WA

Sep 10, 2014 - 11:07am PT

HFCS: there's so little exposure to hands-on nature investigation via science? Sad.

You may know content in science, my friend, granted, but I suspect you're not so much up on the method or the philosophical issues involved. The method is hardly ironclad or sure. Don't' you think that every method or approach has its problems--whether it's in rock climbing, child-raising, or geology? To read what you write, one might think that the scientific method has no issues whatsoever. Wake-up.

DMT: Can't be discussed? [Undetectable energy]

Well, not in any meaningful way. I think this has been your point now and then about "woo," hasn't it?

Werner: Himsa (violence) is required to make complete whole.

This seems right. It's how the universe appears to operate--through seeming polarities and conflict. Every drama has conflict, opposing forces, and characters who come out in the end different than when they went in. Main characters in stories transcend themselves through trials.

Doesn't everything?

As concepts go, transcendence is a pretty darned interesting idea. Somehow, whatever a "thing" is, becomes something else. An acorn becomes an oak tree. A soft summer day becomes a violent dark storm. Land masses arise, and they crumble. Rocks, molecules, energy, . . . no"thing" seems to be permanent.

Where or what is the "thing" that we are so sure of its independent, unchanging, existence?

We "know things" with such surety, . . . in the midst of never-ending change that occurs everywhere we look.

What could that apparent contradiction portend about ourselves or our universe? As Tvash says, (i) reality must be a pretty weird place. Or (ii) we are pretty weird "things" ourselves. Or (iii) our perceptions are way, way off. Or (iv) . . . .

Transcendence itself is a pretty weird phenomenon. Call it evolution, growth, change, ambiguity, uncertainty, . . . or just the lila. It's fantastic; it's interesting; it's paradoxical; you can't put your finger on it.

Bushman

Social climber

Elk Grove, CA

Sep 10, 2014 - 11:17am PT

Werner,
You are probably right in that peace and violence are both necessary in the universe, which is a terrible irony in that in human terms, violence is oft times misdirected. Would that only the correct physician guide the hand of justice.

HFCS,
Sadly, I've been informed that dark fudge interface often leads to dark fudge compaction, often precluded by a wormhole and concluding in a megablaster.
Oh the humanity!

Norwegian

Trad climber

dancin on the tip of god's middle finger

Sep 10, 2014 - 11:22am PT

f*#k werner he presents like he is stable
but really he enjoys oblivion.

Tvash

climber

Seattle

Sep 10, 2014 - 01:01pm PT

My understanding of a more updated view of the universe:

UNIVERSE: The universe is comprised of fields (gravitational, Higgs, Electromagnetic, Weak, Strong...) and particles. A particle requires a field. A field needn't have any particles, however.

ENERGY: Both particles and fields can have energy and momentum. Particles can have mass energy, motion energy, and momentum. A particle with mass at rest has only a mass energy = M c*c. Conversely, a massless particle (ex: photon per current theory) can have only motion energy, but it can also have momentum.

PARTICLES: Known particles include mass particles (electrons, quarks, etc) and force-mediator particles (photons, gluons, etc). Mass particles do not interact directly, but only through force-mediator particles within a given field - photons for the Electromagnetic, gluons for the Strong, etc)

All TBD, of course.

High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber

Sep 10, 2014 - 01:52pm PT

I'd add...

...and the whole shebang fully deterministic... deterministic not in the predictive sense of course but deterministic in the fully-caused, fully-causative sense.

A far cry, needless to say, from the Genesis account under the Warrior God of Moses.

BLUEBLOCR

Social climber

joshua tree

Sep 10, 2014 - 02:48pm PT

HIS voice was the cause

jgill

Boulder climber

Colorado

Sep 10, 2014 - 02:49pm PT

...and the whole shebang fully deterministic... deterministic not in the predictive sense of course but deterministic in the fully-caused, fully-causative sense

Quantum phenomena is fully causative? We'll have to ask Dr Ed. Could be.

High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber

Sep 10, 2014 - 02:56pm PT

Quantum phenomena is fully causative?

With all due respect, what a silly statement.

How do you think all your basic biochemistry does what it does to beget life, homeostasis, all that metabolic process, stability, etc. ?

We'll have to ask Dr. Ed.

LOL!

Just as I posted yesterday...

Even in today's America, I bet only half the population or less can say they have taken / assimilated the modern triad of physics, chemistry and biology. (Here I mean at least a year's worth of each, not a day's worth off of Wiki.) Insofar as this is true it shows I think at once both the shortcoming and the potential area of improvement.

A science education. It's the source. Change your life. I swear. :)

Tell ya what, jgill, you marshall Ed to your side and I'll marshall Hawking or Weinberg to my side. Deal?

.....

From a reviewer (amazon.com) of Waking Up, by Sam Harris, entitled "Spirituality in a Vacuum"...

"Harris addresses the "so what" question, i.e., so I have seen there is no "I," what is the actual value of this? This is interesting, because in the constrained nature of spirituality presented by Harris, the book just begs this question - which Harris admits is difficult to deal with - to be answered, and the answer is weak." - Robbins

This too, is, and will be, one of my foremost inquiries.

To date, I am NOT so eager to "cut through" either (a) the incessant train of thought (cf: "illusion of self") that (admittedly) characterizes my own mental life (to which I am so grateful in that it is so productive in my own life on an everyday basis); or (b) my own perceived "construct" of self (cf: "illusion of self") which seems to me must be useful (for modeling self in the world) or it wouldn't have been selected for as an object of consciousness by evolution by natural selection in the first place.

But we'll see, perhaps I'm missing something, I'll be clearer about this (Harris's perspective at least and choice of terminology), I hope, after finishing his whole work.

jgill

Boulder climber

Colorado

Sep 10, 2014 - 07:59pm PT

Just quibbling of course, but from Wiki on the Copenhagen Interpretation:

According to this interpretation, the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics is not a temporary feature which will eventually be replaced by a deterministic theory, but instead must be considered a final renunciation of the classical idea of "causality"

I will admit that this stuff is way beyond me. It's good to have someone around who can straighten out my thinking.