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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Oct 22, 2011 - 02:27pm PT
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Lucky man, JL.
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MH2
climber
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Oct 22, 2011 - 02:32pm PT
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that even the most diligent and studied investigation of matter gives no clue, whatsoever, that experience resides in the atoms.
And yet, if we took away your atoms, I doubt that your ability to experience would remain, at least in these dimensions.
So although there is no necessary one-to-one mapping from your atoms to your experiences, your experience does in an important sense reside in your atoms.
To the degree that, for example, an ant colony resides in the individual ants.
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wack-N-dangle
Gym climber
the ground up
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Oct 22, 2011 - 04:51pm PT
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"Why bring God into it?"
The original argument seems a little circular: "Prove something (mind) that isn't quantifiable or provable. It seems that the concept of "mind" being proposed is really an invention (ironically by a biological organ). Kind of like the invention of god. Some people have a tenacious hold on the concept of god, he exists to them, but unfortunately you can't really prove he is real.
Hopefully, what I was trying to say wasn't that complex. Before humans, and their "mind" existed, it didn't. Without the organism called homo sapiens, there would be no "mind". I doesn't seem that problematic imagining a brain that is wonderfully plastic, can think abstractly, but is really just another chunk of flesh, one that obeys the laws of physics, and was subject to natural selection. Evolutionary psychology is starting to quantify human behavior and why we experience/react to the world the way we do (sometimes).
Also,
"the author has no idea how to quantify or frame experience by the normal method of measuring used per 3rd person, material functioning."
This is done all the time in psychology experiments.
Would your experience dropping off your daughters have been different if you were dropping off a random stranger? How about if you were unsure of the paternity of your daughters? That isn't a personal attack, but the difference between a father's and mother's jealousy has been explained in quantifiable experiments.
To me an interesting question is why do we hold on to the concept that our identity/consciousness/experience/mind is such an unquantifiable and unique thing. Then again, it is pretty cool.
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 22, 2011 - 04:59pm PT
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Without the organism called homo sapiens, there would be no "mind".
"Mind" always exists. It is eternal.
Not that it arose from matter.
The original "mind" is always there.
When one dovetails their consciousness with the original mind then there is perfection even though the gross materialist thinks " now this is fuked up".
They can not see the perfection due to being locked in the clutches of duality.
The gross materialist is like the finger and tries to feed itself independently.
The finger is not independent of the whole ......
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 22, 2011 - 06:13pm PT
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So although there is no necessary one-to-one mapping from your atoms to your experiences, your experience does in an important sense reside in your atoms.
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I'm calling you out on this. People thrown that argument out there all the time and it is not supported by any empirical evidence save that if you screw with the meat brain - shoot it, pour whiskey on it, drug it, introduce pathologies - that our perception is directly effected. But there is no one-to-one or one-to-a billion mapping sequence that suggests experience is "created" by the brain. I'm not saying that the brain is not involved - that's just as silly. But the person who can show us the causal link between matter and experience (NOT processing data - we know the meat brain does that), other than through direct manipulation of said meat brain, kindly stand up.
And the notion that "mind" is made up is truly preposterous. Mind and experience are in many ways synonymous and the human being who can show us that his 1st person subjective experience is NOT his primary mode of existence, kindly stand up. That dood will be God.
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Spider Savage
Mountain climber
The shaggy fringe of Los Angeles
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Oct 22, 2011 - 06:31pm PT
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That dood will be God
The truth is so painful that few can accept it.
Life force, the being, I, is the conscious factor. This is not an energy, though it can be measured with electricity. It is as yet unrecognized by organized science. Metaphysicians have traced it for years. To those of Eastern religion, it is common knowledge.
I am speaking to you from 1st person experience.
Evidence of life outside of the meat brain abounds. It is the anomoly in many experiments. Out of body experience, etc. Even dreaming.
Brain docs go batty trying to figure it out on a meat basis. The honest ones will tell the truth. They don't know how it works.
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MH2
climber
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Oct 22, 2011 - 08:58pm PT
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Fair enough. The atoms that were the library of Alexandria are probably still with us today even though the experiences recorded in the library have largely been lost.
Some of this mysterious stuff called experience becomes part of our memory. How does that happen?
When we remember climbing El Cap, is that a part of our 1st person experience?
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MikeL
Trad climber
SANTA CLARA
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Oct 22, 2011 - 09:41pm PT
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Largo: And the notion that "mind" is made up is truly preposterous. Mind and experience are in many ways synonymous and the human being who can show us that his 1st person subjective experience is NOT his primary mode of existence, kindly stand up. That dood will be God.
Oh no it’s not. Mind and experience are NOT synonymous.
You can’t really mean that experience is the only thing available to mind. Instincts, categories, micro-motor adjustments, assessments, underlying concepts, and raw sensations are usually not directly accessible to experience.
If mind were just experience, then people could not do most things that they do almost every minute of their lives. Think about all of the physiology that’s going on in people in every minute. They’re not aware of it, but it’s not mind at-work? Those processes are not primary? Well then, Largo, they’re unconnected to a great many important things. Most simply, their minds no longer have operational bodies.
Insight: If mind includes the simple things that are not available to consciousness, then it could include more complex or higher order capabilities that are beyond current consciousness, as well.
Second . . .
In his book, Descartes’ error: Emotion, reason, and the human brain (1994), Damasio showed that top-down simulations could trigger entire sets of body reactions as if the subjects actually experienced them. We’ve all done it, even while wide awake. The mind runs a simulation (imagination), and we experience it physically and emotionally. Our muscles tense, we skip a breath, our hearts race, we sweat or whatever, and we lose complete track of reality around us. It’s as if the mind has indeed left the body and the surrounding reality. (Wives complain about this all the time.) Or, maybe we go to another reality. (Visualization is a powerful meditative method; top athletes and adepts know.)
Insight: Mind is not limited to experience, experience is not limited to reality, and both together could suggest that there could be other bona fide realities than those available to immediate, mundane experience.
Third . . .
Minds CAN be made up. (I’ll avoid the rich but obvious pun.) We make them up all the time. We do it in educational settings, we do it in organizational settings, we do it in social settings (parents, advertising, peer pressure), etc. These are all socializations and institutionalizations. Even science, as method, attempts to create new minds, and it, too, is an institutionalization.
All these processes and their accretions are the very things that many spiritual traditions are attempting to cleanse or allow the mind to escape.
What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind.
(George Berkeley)
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wack-N-dangle
Gym climber
the ground up
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Oct 22, 2011 - 10:49pm PT
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It seems like a very old argument. Nature vs. nurture. Are we predetermined biologically, or is there a tabla raza, given to us when we are born. I don't think it has to be one or the other. I think the truth is somewhere in between.
We spent a quarter talking about human psychology and how it appears to have been affected by natural selection. Students argued vehemently about free will, variation between cultures, and exceptions to the proposal that we may be hardwired for certain behaviors. The professor showed evidence of patterns in human interactions and compelling evidence that they may have been influenced by natural selection when we lived as hunters and gatherers.
Giving up on the idea that we aren't anything more than a biological organism is essentially asking a person to relinquish their identity. Without a shock to the system, it is difficult to see how fragile and arbitrary our consciousness can be. We're too busy being to stop. At the end of the class, after proposing evolutionary arguments for two and a half months, the professor mentioned "Something we haven't talked about is choice."
I accept that there may be something like "mind" or "original mind". Also, I think the value in that thought is the acceptance that there may be something that came before me, will continue after me, and is greater than I am. The strength in that concept seems to come from the thought "I may be wrong, or may not know everything". It is very different than the assertion that "You are wrong, and you do not know everything". I think that there are a number of historical figures who understood that.
Both thoughts can be very powerful. Around the world, the organized manifestations of religion seem to posit the second thought, much to their advantage. Maybe.
Finally, I know Werner has a sarcastic streak. I hope that doesn't change. Still, I believe that saying that something human existed before there were humans doesn't seem very logical. However, I believe that if you accept that there may be consciousness in animals and we are likely an evolutionary branch in the subset of conscious animals, you may possibly see some beauty in all living things. I believe that at least, eating fewer animals at higher trophic levels is pragmatic given the rate of change in the environment.
The question about your feelings regarding your experience with your family wasn't entirely facetious. I can type more, but I don't need to muck up a climbing forum anymore. I should go pay some attention to my wife.
best...
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Spider Savage
Mountain climber
The shaggy fringe of Los Angeles
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Oct 23, 2011 - 11:19am PT
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Some people seem to be very into the whole academic "scientific" mind set. An easy conclusion to come to living and learning in our Western culture as it is. Remember that most "Science" is third person experience. You have to "believe" what authority tells you.
The ever changing definition of the mind as taught in universities went down the wrong street with the idea of the mind as a physical organ. The truth is closer to something in the physics department but that is not their specialty. Life force is not a physical thing. It is a metaphysical thing. The mind is a tool belonging to that thing, sort of like your personal computer.
Here is a quick practical method of defining and separating the mind and the "self."
First, picture a rock wall in front of you. Make it granite if you can, white with black speckles. Visualize a hold, perhaps with some chalk on it. See it? Can you feel it? In your mind, can you see it? Feel it? Get the smell of the air around it?
What you are experiencing there is your mind. It is a picture record. It is yours but it is not you.
Now, who is looking at the picture? That is you.
Don't try to figure out or explain it. Just let it be and enjoy it. :-)
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wack-N-dangle
Gym climber
the ground up
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Oct 23, 2011 - 11:56am PT
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Spider,
I understand what you're saying, but without the biology, chemistry, and the physics behind that experience you see nothing, and would experience nothing. The end.
Maybe I'm wrong but the perspective you propose, perhaps ironically, clings to an idea of self that is illusory. I believe it begins without our knowing. We just are, before we weren't. Still, maybe an adaptation, we hold onto our self identity and very subjective perspective tenaciously.
My original thought was, how can something human exist without the human. Maybe that is most easy to understand on the individual level.
Finally, there seemed to be another idea of mind. The role of experience, maybe culture, on who we are, is undoubtedly important. If that is what you call mind, it still seems that it wouldn't exist without a biological human body to experience it.
Also, my point is that our perception as humans is really very biased and limited. You can still model a biological organ that is relatively plastic and can change based on experience.
They have done psychology experiments. This really isn't 3rd person experience. There was a human doing the experiment, and interpreting the results. Show subjects two identical pictures of people. Make the person's eyes in one of the picture more dilated. When you ask subjects to pick the pictures with the more attractive person, they pick the picture with the dilated eyes. People who took belladonna understood this 500 years ago.
Talk to any jaded advertising executive and argue that we aren't inherently predisposed to certain behaviors and he would probably laugh. He may not be interested in the biological or psychological cause, but he probably likes the results.
Women are certain of the identity of their kids. They're present at conception and birth. Men not so much. Violence towards children because of infidelity is more common among men, and almost non-existent among women. Men tend to like to inseminate as many women as possible. Women choose partners depending on their cycle. etc.
Violence towards women because of infidelity or suspicions of infidelity is common across cultures. If you say that experience, or maybe culture plays a role in our mind and who we are I agree. There are cultures that are stoning people and cutting off noses. Still, that sexual jealously is manifested across cultures, however with variations.
Mike made some good points above. We are tall bipedal organisms, and experience the world that way. Dogs walk on all fours, with their nose lower to the ground. If you raise a human with dogs, does that experience make them more dog than human.
Again, without my biological brain, I believe that there is nothing for me. The other explanations are generally too contradictory, changing, and human.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A community of hairless apes
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Oct 23, 2011 - 12:08pm PT
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Of course one of the facts if not ironies to this mind-brain subject is that a person could have a totally bogus model for how mind works (e.g., Spida's) and yet still get on quite well in his day to day living.
Even an entire culture could have this totally off-track, off-base model and get on well, esp insofar as they all think the same way (e.g., the Libyian Arabic culture).
As for me, I'll stick with the modern scientific model: Consciousness is what the brain does. It's been fun, it's even been insightful, so it's all good.
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 23, 2011 - 12:17pm PT
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could have a totally bogus model
Modern science is just a speculative guess ultimately.
"Could have" means you don't ultimately know.
In the future "we will know" says modern science.
But truth is right in front of you the whole time and you try to act independent of it.
That's modern science's failure.
Thus; You can not refute the truth, for Werner is easily refuted .....
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A community of hairless apes
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Oct 23, 2011 - 12:21pm PT
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Of course one of the facts if not ironies to rockclimbing is that a person could have a totally bogus rope yet still get on quite well in his pitch to pitch ascent as long as he doesn't fall. ;)
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wack-N-dangle
Gym climber
the ground up
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Oct 23, 2011 - 01:05pm PT
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Ha ha ha! I don't think there are emoticons to really express a smile. It seems better to experience one in person. There is a saying, roughly "I am good because of you."
Also, I heard a story, about a circle of campfires that ran along the edge of a valley. You could sit and hear laughter. It would begin at one fire, and then travel around the valley in a circle. I think human behavior is probably a little more complex, but it may be stories like those that keep us together.
Earlier, I was thinking about how to express: I can never really refute your understanding of the absolute. If I try to tell you that your understanding isn't valid, that you are wrong, then immediately I am one who is wrong.
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Mad
Social climber
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Oct 23, 2011 - 01:17pm PT
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Mind is the 6th chakra...
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 23, 2011 - 01:18pm PT
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HFCS -- "could have a totally bogus rope"
Again you're assuming.
You ultimately don't know until you actually test the rope.
You are exhibiting a terrible scientist analogy.
You need to ultimately test to see where consciousness and mind comes from.
Not make models and assume ....
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Mad
Social climber
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Oct 23, 2011 - 01:24pm PT
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mind is infinite.....
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 23, 2011 - 01:31pm PT
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Oh no it’s not. Mind and experience are NOT synonymous
Mike L. I did not say mind and experience ARE synonymous. I said that in MANY WAYS they are synonymous. Not all. Of course there are unconscious factors.
My main point is that the vagueness most attribute to experience is a strange choice of words, as though abstract measurements (science) are in some way more tangible than our moment-to-moment lives, which are always experience in 1st person subjective mode. We never have a 3rd experienced of ourselves because we're not omniscient. Even when we go way into our left/discriminating minds, the data is channeled through us experientially. We have a 1sr person experience of being objective. We do not lose our subjectivity when we use our reason. If our subjective material gets too suppressed or shut down, there is always hell to pay.
JL
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Oct 23, 2011 - 01:40pm PT
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Mind and experience are in many ways synonymous and the human being who can show us that his 1st person subjective experience is NOT his primary mode of existence, kindly stand up.
I haven't caught up on this thread in a while, but Largo keeps making a statement that I find constructed in a very contradictory manner.
In the statement above, he argues that the existence of our "1st person subjective experience" is the center of his non-physical argument for mind. This whole argument takes place in the "3rd person" domain, at the most basic level, by the narrative of our experience, a narrative that is shared among us, i.e. not first person subjective. One can argue that there have been roughly 110 billion human beings that have ever lived... 110 billion first person subjective experiences. Name one other than yourself that you have ever "known." The answer is: none. The reason is the construction of the question, by definition, you cannot know someone else's first person subjective experience.
The fact that we have not yet figured out an explanation of a physically based theory of mind or consciousness, is not a proof or demonstration that it is not possible. I'd turn it around and say that for the vastness of those 110 billion people who thought about it, their method of explanation, which includes all the spiritual, religious, and more recent philosophical thinking has come up very short on something even close to an explanation. In case you don't see what I'm getting at, I'll just say that modern philosophical discussion is not going to do it, the disadvantage that it has is that science is limiting its domain of argument.
The idea that "consciousness" is a property of matter is simply untenable. There is no reason to believe that a property that we humans posses, that property being a behavior adaptation, is fundamental to the universe, and all of what we know about the universe says that it is not so. Perhaps it is an inference to conclude that "consciousness" is not special, but I think it is not a very wild inference.
Now to those 110 billion people, their first person experience was very important, and it ended with the end of their physical existence. One can hypothesize about where "it" went, but that hypothesis is best offered with very few details, and no detail that could possibly be tested.
Whether or not we can "reverse engineer" the mind-brain connection in detail is not really at question, we can and we will.
What the implications of that are seem to be scary, but there is more to be scared about in the effective reverse engineering that has happened and is ongoing, the manipulation of the rather predicable behavioral aspects to convince humans to do things... philosophy does a good job when it enlightens us with regards to ethics, for instance, and then tests our morality.
Largo is the current reigning king of our climber narrative, our climber's first person experience, and we can embrace or reject that narrative based on our own experience, or on our desire to communicate to those outside of "ourself" what we do. But we cannot mistake that narrative as anything more than ephemeral, anything more than an isolated act in some tiny part of a vast universe that permits its existence by "the rules", but has no reason one way or the other to distinguish it from any other of the things that could be by those rules.
Of course, we'll argue on and on, and enjoy it... but do enjoy it, don't squander the brief time to enjoy that 1st person subjective experience, and in so doing, make sure to enable others to too, be excellent to one another, and expand that "another" to all living things, however broadly defined.
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