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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Feb 24, 2015 - 01:49pm PT
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What is your #1 goal, if you don't mind telling us.
Or is it goalless?
It is really about observing what ever comes up and noticing where "I" gets stuck or attached to things. "I " has a tendency to get stuck on liking comfort and not liking discomfort. first you have to notice there is a struggle or a clinging going on and then the next step is to observe the struggle with an open mind. Observe the discomfort or the bliss with an open mind with a big question; what is this? Underlying all of this is the question of , What is "I"?
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Feb 24, 2015 - 02:29pm PT
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PSP,
thanks for the reply.
You sound like a seeker.
Have a good time!
I too look forward to the TR.
:)
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WBraun
climber
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Feb 24, 2015 - 06:06pm PT
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The modern scientists still have no clue how the speed of the mind is so inconceivable fast compared to the speed of light.
The speed of the mind makes the speed of light look like a snail not even moving.
The speed of light is that which modern material science has devolved into.
And what to speak of yoga siddhi which they haven't a clue either and is instantaneous speed which is used to travel anywhere.
Modern material stupid caveman rockets is the dumbest method ever, yet they all claim advancements.
The modern fools have devolved into crude gross physical cavemen with their silly rockets .....
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Feb 24, 2015 - 09:07pm PT
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The speed of the mind makes the speed of light look like a snail not even moving
My head is spinning from an overabundance of profundity. It's almost too much to process. Please, have mercy . . .
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Spider Savage
Mountain climber
The shaggy fringe of Los Angeles
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Feb 24, 2015 - 10:04pm PT
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The speed of the mind makes the speed of light look like a snail not even moving.
I have observed this too. Read about it first, then observed it.
I'd love to know what you're reading.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Feb 24, 2015 - 11:37pm PT
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I'm now beginning to suspect what we've been reading from Werner all along is the result of a pretty serious granite overdose (and one can only wonder at the radon exposure). There probably needs to be an LD50 and exposure limits workup done on the place as, on re-reading some other posts around here, there might be more than a few cases of such undiagnosed exposure here on ST.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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this is a strange thread... how about just looking a little at what has been debated on "free will" previously, e.g.:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/
"...The majority view, however, is that we can readily conceive willings that are not free. Indeed, much of the debate about free will centers around whether we human beings have it, yet virtually no one doubts that we will to do this and that. The main perceived threats to our freedom of will are various alleged determinisms: physical/causal; psychological; biological; theological. For each variety of determinism, there are philosophers who (i) deny its reality, either because of the existence of free will or on independent grounds; (ii) accept its reality but argue for its compatibility with free will; or (iii) accept its reality and deny its compatibility with free will. (See the entries on compatibilism; causal determinism; fatalism; arguments for incompatibilism; and divine foreknowledge and free will.) There are also a few who say the truth of any variety of determinism is irrelevant because free will is simply impossible..."
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Wegner (2002) amasses a range of studies (including those of Libet) to argue that the notion that human actions are ever initiated by their own conscious willings is simply a deeply-entrenched illusion and proceeds to offer an hypothesis concerning the reason this illusion is generated within our cognitive systems. Mele (2009) and O'Connor (2009b) argue that the data adduced by Libet, Wegner, and others wholly fail to support their revisionary conclusions
And around around we go . . .
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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but more interesting in that article, I think:
A recent trend is to suppose that agent causation accounts capture, as well as possible, our prereflective idea of responsible, free action. But the failure of philosophers to work the account out in a fully satisfactory and intelligible form reveals that the very idea of free will (and so of responsibility) is incoherent (Strawson 1986) or at least inconsistent with a world very much like our own (Pereboom 2001). Smilansky (2000) takes a more complicated position, on which there are two ‘levels’ on which we may assess freedom, ‘compatibilist’ and ‘ultimate’. On the ultimate level of evaluation, free will is indeed incoherent. (Strawson, Pereboom, and Smilansky all provide concise defenses of their positions in Kane 2002.)
what is meant by "incoherent"?
for a summary look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galen_Strawson
In the free will debate, Strawson holds that there is a fundamental sense in which free will is impossible, whether determinism is true or not. He argues for this position with what he calls his "basic argument", which aims to show that no-one is ever ultimately morally responsible for their actions, and hence that no one has free will in the sense that usually concerns us. In its simplest form, the Basic Argument runs thus:
 You do what you do, in any given situation, because of the way you are.
To be ultimately responsible for what you do, you have to be ultimately responsible for the way you are — at least in certain crucial mental respects.
But you cannot be ultimately responsible for the way you are in any respect at all.
So you cannot be ultimately responsible for what you do.[2]
This argument resembles Schopenhauer's position in On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, summarised by E. F. J. Payne as the "law of motivation, which states that a definite course of action inevitably ensues on a given character and motive".[3]
http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/V014
Suitably developed, this argument against moral responsibility seems very strong. But in many human beings, the experience of choice gives rise to a conviction of absolute responsibility that is untouched by philosophical arguments. This conviction is the deep and inexhaustible source of the free will problem: powerful arguments that seem to show that we cannot be morally responsible in the ultimate way that we suppose keep coming up against equally powerful psychological reasons why we continue to believe that we are ultimately morally responsible.
one fundamental cause of our belief in ultimate responsibility... lies in the experience of choice that we have as self-conscious agents who are able to be fully conscious of what they are doing when they deliberate about what to do, and make choices. (We choose between the Oxfam box and the cake; or we make a difficult, morally neutral choice about which of two paintings to buy.) This raises an interesting question: Is it true that any possible self-conscious creature that faces choices and is fully aware of the fact that it does so must experience itself as having strong free will, or as being radically self-determining, simply in virtue of the fact that it is a self-conscious agent (and whether or not it has a conception of moral responsibility)? It seems that we cannot live or experience our choices as determined, even if determinism is true. But perhaps this is a human peculiarity, not an inescapable feature of any possible self-conscious agent. And perhaps it is not even universal among human beings.
The facts are clear, and they have been known for a long time. When it comes to the metaphysics of free will, André Gide’s remark is apt: ‘Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.’ It seems that the only freedom that we can have is compatibilist freedom. If – since – that is not enough for ultimate responsibility, we cannot have ultimate responsibility. The only alternative to this conclusion is to appeal to God and mystery – this in order to back up the claim that something that appears to be provably impossible is not only possible but actual. The debate continues; some have thought that philosophy ought to move on. There is little reason to expect that it will do so, as each new generation arises bearing philosophers gripped by the conviction that they can have ultimate responsibility. Would it be a good thing if philosophy did move on, or if we became more clear-headed about the topic of free will than we are? It is hard to say.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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It's very much like the white and gold or blue and black dress confusion, imo. With understanding of the many and various perspectives, it resolves. Otherwise it's the proverbial "timeless" question or the "timeless" mess, take your pick.
Should clarify: The first issue, namely the fallacy of so-called libertarian freewill resolves. The second issue, that of instances or varieties of accountability or responsibility in light of our automated biology (our mechanistic nature) and instincts, sentiments and tastes, like Sam Harris says in his lecture, is going to lead to a lot of problems, argument and upset.
When is that wormhole to other planets going to open up? I want in. :)
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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In practice we are held responsible for what we do.
If they catch us.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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http://faculty.georgetown.edu/lbh24/CCPC.pdf
Commonsense concepts of phenomenal consciousness: Does anyone care about functional zombies?
Bryce Huebner
Published online: 14 April 2009
Abstract It would be a mistake to deny commonsense intuitions a role in developing a theory of consciousness. However, philosophers have traditionally failed to probe commonsense in a way that allows these commonsense intuitions to make a robust contribution to a theory of consciousness. In this paper, I report the results of two experiments on purportedly phenomenal states and I argue that many disputes over the philosophical notion of ‘phenomenal consciousness’ are misguided—they fail to capture the interesting connection between commonsense ascriptions of pain and emotion. With this data in hand, I argue that our capacity to distinguish between ‘mere things’ and ‘subjects of moral concern’ rests, to a significant extent, on the sorts of mental states that we take a system to have.
Philosophical debates about the nature of consciousness have traditionally centered on competing a priori intuitions about which properties are necessary for a system to count as a locus of consciousness. But, who would have thought otherwise? If armchair reflection is going to be useful anywhere, it had better be useful in helping us to understand what it is like to sit in an armchair! Recently, however, some philosophers and cognitive scientists have attempted to shift these debates away from individual reflection, focusing instead on commonsense intuitions about consciousness.1 In this paper, I offer a further contribution to this alternative approach by examining the ascription of mental states to humans, cyborgs, and robots. I begin with a brief overview of the recent literature in the experimental philosophy of consciousness. I then report the results of two experiments designed to examine the commonsense understanding of subjective experience. I close by arguing that disputes over the philosophical notion of ‘phenomenal consciousness’ are misguided and that they fail to capture the important role of moral consideration in determining whether an entity is a locus of subjective experience.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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After deep insight, insight into faster and subtler components of the thought process is realized, and the meditator acquires an intuitive wisdom about the nature of consciousness and reality.
what is "intuitive wisdom"?
and how do you acquire it?
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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^^^^^^^
Yes.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Actually, the top speed of thought is about 250 mph. More the speed of latte than light, really.
It can seem faster if you always think the same thought. Thoughts percolating up from the subconscious can also seem instantaneous, but your subconscious could operate at the speed of spilled Jello pudding and you'd never know it.
Shine a light and send a thought to the moon. The light gets there in under 2 seconds. Your thought arrives 41 days later.
Slowpoke.
Is the modernism/post-modernism debate heating up again? Bring on the Ven diagrams!
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Two important factors to consider in the free will/determinism discussion:
1) DNA reshuffling/replication errors during conception. This ensures novel behaviors will continue at pace.
2) The stochastic effect of environment. We are products of both genetics and environment - the latter of which is largely out of our control early in life, while the former is completely out of our control.
Still, we are creatures born of an argument between our reason and instinctual proclivities. The two are often in conflict, particularly where our pleasure center holds destructive sway - as with addiction.
Addiction figures large in the free will debate. How do addicts compelled by an over active pleasure center train themselves to listen more to their reason (and long term self preservation)? How do they DECIDE to undertake such training?
Neither recovering addict nor full blown practicing addict escape from their evolutionary traits, but giving in to addictive impulses is the more primal choice in that it employs much older areas of the brain.
The question for policy makers is how to reduce the societal harm of addiction. Prohibition and criminalization has clearly done far more harm than good - it has proven to be an abject failure to achieve even modest improvements. Public education, on the other hand, has proven to be remarkably effective, with regards hard drug use in the late 1800's and early 1900's, before prohibition policies reared their ugly heads, and more recently with tobacco (although E cigs for kids are turning that around in some segments).
Access to education, training, and awareness during critical development periods - most particularly early teens, is arguably the most effective way to put a dent in addiction. The US does a very spotty job of that - but we sure do love our prisons.
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