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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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^^^^^^^^^
Funny.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Big Macs for Believers
Sushi for Sinners
I do love the golden archez coffee, though. It's often on special for a buck, too, and I don't have to be subjected to Dave Matthews and business casual at Starbucks. Plus, their coffee tastes like charred chodas to me. I will admit that their Suburban Fascist interior design is more soothing than McDonald's Adipose Clinic style.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Ed: I can't imagine a less practical concern than the possibility that matter is the result of the symmetries of the universe.
Symmetries are dualisms that arise from conceptualizations. Drop the concepts, and the dualisms (left & right, right & wrong, night & day, positive & negative, matter & mind, heads & tails, etc.) fold into unity that is best described as empty or as an absence of substantiality. For our purposes here, emptiness might refer to complete openness, total potentiality, where nothing is reified.
‘What the heck is that?’ No one cay define it specifically.
Existence IS consciousness, but being transcends both. There is a witness of consciousness (the “I am” that is witnessed). Without the witness there is unconsciousness (just living). There can be no knowledge without a knower, and no knower without a witness so that one knows that one knows.
Mind gives rise to experience and experiencer. Mind is all that one is conscious of. Body appears in mind. Mind is centered in body, consciousness in mind, and awareness recognizes consciousness as a whole (unconsciousness, instinct, different forms of knowing, etc.). Mind is conscious of perceptions (and thus experience). It craves both. Mind is oriented to what happens (concepts and experience), whereas awareness is interested in mind. Awareness appears timeless, spaceless, objectless, subjectless. With an object, awareness is witnessing. Without an object, awareness is pure being without cognition. (Think of gerunds without subjects or objects inferred.)
Ed: ...explain to me why it matters?
Well, it really doesn’t.
But, . . . if the smallest measurement in mind or matter cannot be produced (the building blocks of space and time?), then there can be no causes or effects mechanically or morally.
So, what’s left? And why doesn’t it really matter?
The so-called emptiness (or absence) of objects is merely incidental when you get down to brass tacks. There is no conceptual position to defend, and it may seem like nothing worth talking about. The issue, Ed, is not whether objects truly exist but rather seeing correctly. Only seeing matters.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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MikeL:
"The issue, Ed, is not whether objects truly exist but rather seeing correctly. Only seeing matters."
talk about duality, perhaps you should shuck off the "correct" and "incorrect" duality in this and I think you'd probably be better off. It is at the route of the disagreement here...
and when I have argued that we have only provisional understanding, that doesn't seem enough for the "seeing correctly" crowd... who want to insist that there is a way of "seeing correctly."
In science, "seeing correctly" is provisional, and subject to testing. If you are "seeing correctly" then you're able to make predictions with precision and accuracy, which can be tested by observations of finite precision and accuracy. The observations can demonstrate the failure of the predictions and demonstrate that we were not "seeing correctly".
One then goes back and reconsiders what it was they were "seeing" and perhaps that results in another way of "seeing" and another prediction that is found to be consistent with the observations, a confirmation to some extent, but once again, provisional.
Unwinding that process into a life philosophy would be eminently doable, but then we'd give up on things like "correct" and "incorrect".
The vast majority of the post here would be very different if we gave up on that duality.
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Blueblocker said "you say Worthlessness as if a bad thing, what if "I" is a construct of Worthlessness?
Being an "I" myself, i find no celebration when dis-entached. Doesn't Celebration come when we show this worthlessness to the worthfull?
Your "No attachment to "I"" sounds alot like JGill's "pop a pill" to forget what happened and go on, approach/conclusion?
No attachment = No conclusion
Jesus is the only one i've heard preach, "Love those that hate you"
This goes as much against science as it does philosophy.
meditate on that
then tell me what is worth"
BB refer to Mike L last post it pretty much addresses all of your statements. as far as Christ being the only one to love his enemies , I have to disagree there. Tonglen style meditation wishes happiness and contentment for those who are suffering with deluded views including ourselves and our "enemies", on the out breath; and to breath in their suffering on the in breath.
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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Mind is oriented to what happens (concepts and experience), whereas awareness is interested in mind. Awareness appears timeless, spaceless, objectless, subjectless. With an object, awareness is witnessing. Without an object, awareness is pure being without cognition. (Think of gerunds without subjects or objects inferred.)
It seems to be human nature to seek religious fulfillment. Here we see an effort to bestow god-like elements to an object of metaphysics. Awareness is some sort of universal field - a God Field, perhaps - that exists independent of cognition and extends through the universe, inviolate and all-pervasive. One doesn't have to pray to this deity . . . simply acknowledge its universality.
Thoughtful and attractive metaphysics, but cosmic ectoplasm at heart.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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^^"Tonglen style" OK, Thanks i'm looking into it
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cintune
climber
The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen
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Look at those cavemen go.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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My drone broke but the kind folks at Galaxy Hobby got it flying again
THROUGH THE MAGIC OF SCIENCE (and some fly soldering skills - man, those motor wires are tiny).
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Homo Erectus was a very successful species. Hominid evolution had been rolling along, and with the arrival of H Erectus, the brain greatly increased in size, and we begin to see widespread use of stone tools far older than the 300,000 years posted above. I've seen figures that put tool use as old as 1.8 million years ago, and there is some evidence that they used fire as well.
Human evolution is really getting sorted out now with the use of DNA.
Anyway, we owe a lot to H Erectus. Its arrival was quite a leap over its predecessors, and it spread far from Africa.
Again, Jan may know more about this than me, as I believe anthropology is her field.
The 6000 year old Earth is such a flimsy fantasy. How people cling to it, and ignore human evolution, is to me like holding your hands over your ears and screaming, Naaaa! Naaaa! Naaaa!
Can't let BB or Go-B get too worked up about it ya know. They are our friends despite the ribbing, and I wouldn't want them to have a stroke.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Ed: If you are "seeing correctly" then you're able to make predictions with precision and accuracy, which can be tested by observations of finite precision and accuracy. The observations can demonstrate the failure of the predictions and demonstrate that we were not "seeing correctly".
Seeing correctly is just seeing, Ed. No objects. No subjects. That’s what I meant about seeing correctly. I think you hear an evaluative statement here. There is nothing to evaluate if so, because there is no object to evaluate, and no subject doing any evaluating. Ditto for prediction, unless you are saying that you predict the insubstantiality of appearances.
BTW, I’m totally fine with provisionality (“as if”). If only people who admitted it would live like it. I’d say for most scientists that I’ve met and worked with, provisionalism is a scientific position that they’re proclaiming, but they don’t seem to live like they experience it in their day-to-day lives. Is it always in the back of their minds that they’re living on assumption? Is that your experience?
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WBraun
climber
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300,000 years before humans evolved
Oh bullsh!t.
Humans have been around since day one and for millions of years.
You bone digging up fools will never understand.
The human race was very advanced a long time ago and they cremated everyone back then.
Only the modern fools who falsely identify with the material body as the self due to their foolish attachments bury the bodies.
Modern scientists are fools and mislead each other to the ultimate end .....
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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It's good to hear that Verdi is soaring again, Tvash.
Really neat little film, DMT!
Wanderers
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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We're going to have to find more than one conch to critique homo erectus art properly, but I have a feeling that more of their gussied up trinkets will show up somewhere.
A brit company is coming out with a cell phone operating Verdi sized drone with camera - for selfies, of course. No selfie sticks required.
How would homo erectus have decorated their selfie sticks, I wonder?
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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jgill:
From “Wanderers” . . . .
Wanderers is a vision of humanity's expansion into the Solar System, based on scientific ideas and concepts of what our future in space might look like, if it ever happens. The locations depicted in the film are digital recreations of actual places in the Solar System, built from real photos and map data where available. Without any apparent story, other than what you may fill in by yourself, the idea of the film is primarily to show a glimpse of the fantastic and beautiful nature that surrounds us on our neighboring worlds - and above all, how it might appear to us if we were there.
If there ever was a set of compounding speculations, this is one.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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From the from page video of the NYT’s today:
From Particle Physics to the Pentagon” by Natalia V. Osipova. “Aston P. Carter, a theoretical physicist and former deputy defense secretary, is President Obama’s choice to be the next defense secretary.”
Oh, just great.
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