What is "Mind?"

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limpingcrab

Trad climber

the middle of CA

May 27, 2015 - 02:44pm PT

Indeed Moose, but I can tell you why you push the gas pedal to move the car, I can't tell you who it is "bad" to kill everything...

Learning some things has meaning, others do not

High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber

May 27, 2015 - 02:50pm PT

"Since I don't believe we have free will, morality is an illusion..."

Moose, as pinker is fond of asserting, along with others, there are "different levels of explanation" (that reflect different levels of operation or perspective) concerning moralities and other evolved sensibilities. But to say that there's no such thing as morality or responsibility because of an absence of so-called libertarian free will is misleading I think.

Chimpanzees in chimpanzee societies demonstrate morals - good and bad, and feelings of good and bad, in regard to conduct - specifically in regard to breaking the rules of social decorum.

In humans, just as you said there is a learned component as well, an overlay on the evolved component.

Again, it is religions (esp the Abrahamic ones) that make a mess of it. In their view if there is no absolute law giver then there is no morals, only animals. It's a very outdated view.

It is not a complex subject. Yet so many are powerfully confused over it.

In regards to your quoted claim (opinion), there are truckloads of evolutionary psychologists and biologists who would disagree with you. Even C Darwin himself I believe. Their arguments, imo, would be robust.

My sense of morals: an illusion? no. a perception? okay. An evolved perception augmented by acculturation / socialization.

limpingcrab

Trad climber

the middle of CA

May 27, 2015 - 03:00pm PT

HFCS, I agree that community is one of the most effective adaptations a species can have.

You keep using the words "good" and "bad" without defining them so I have trouble following.

Is your definition of "good" that it promotes the survival of a species?

That begs the question, why is THAT good?

Edit: morals are a held set of beliefs that everyone has. Good is the concept I don't understand.

High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber

May 27, 2015 - 03:05pm PT

I'm not sure how relevant it is HFCS, but my master's and bachelor'd degrees are both in Ecology & Evolution so, although I no expert, I have an above average understanding of genetics and evolution

Then you understand that all biology is a build-up of mechanisms of action? and that evolution by natural selection is itself a mechanism of action.

Only you know how much you understand your ecology and evolution on a basis of physics and chemistry and just how much you turn to the latter as explanations of the former. But surely you'd agree that your ecology and evolution textbooks and coursework are based on them - and the mechanistic rules to which they are obedient.

With a background in ecology and evolution, then you're probably aware than most if not all of Jane Goodall's works at some point address and affirm chimp morality in chimpanzee societies.

.....

Further, with such a background in these important sciences, it seems to me your attention, education and training would be way better used addressing Blu's many issues and attitudes rather than mine.

limpingcrab

Trad climber

the middle of CA

May 27, 2015 - 03:25pm PT

I agree, cooperation evolved with good reason, as did positive and negative feedback in communities to promote it (morals).

So,

Is your definition of "good" that it promotes the survival of a species?

That begs the question, why is THAT good?

limpingcrab

Trad climber

the middle of CA

May 27, 2015 - 03:56pm PT

So what is your criteria for good for you? Helps you? Helps others? Releasing endorphins?

Then I ask, why is that good?

cintune

climber

The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen

May 27, 2015 - 04:09pm PT

"What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? All that is born of weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome."

Friedrich Nietzsche

WBraun

climber

May 27, 2015 - 04:53pm PT

there is no right or wrong.

Then you're stoopid, impotent and dead stone .....

MikeL

Social climber

Seattle, WA

May 27, 2015 - 06:03pm PT

Nietzsche.

BLUEBLOCR

Social climber

joshua tree

May 27, 2015 - 06:40pm PT

6001

Anyone catch Charlie Rose's Brain series? Here's the first one on Babies. Excellent.
5 top brain researchers collaborate on brain development starting from birth. The single most important need a newborn brain requires; Care, from the exterior environment. Without it, parts of the brain won't even develop..

It's very exciting!

I think science will soon be chanGing its theory of how much of our evolution is genetic v environment.

[quote]http://charlierose.com/watch/60566831[/quote]

MH2

Boulder climber

Andy Cairns

May 27, 2015 - 08:21pm PT

Why would it matter if one bundle of electricity and atoms shoots a hole through another bundle of electricity and atoms?

Shoot the baby! Shoot the baby!

jgill

Boulder climber

The high prairie of southern Colorado

May 27, 2015 - 08:31pm PT

Largo, I think you are ready to admit that trying to connect meditation with quantum physics was a mistake (moose)

I'm not sure how you've come to this conclusion, moose. I think he is just getting warmed up. With his prodigies urging him on we may find ourselves deep in the rabbit hole, encountering some entertaining notions.

A little straight talking would be helpful to me (ML)

You ask What is at my core? What kind of question is that, Mike? How can any of us know what is at our "core?" Bones, blood and tissue? Ethical and moral sensibilities? Our deepest secrets and fears? Is this a forum thread or an episode on a psychoanalyst's couch? I have a suspicion you want to elicit a reply like There is nothing there . . . emptiness! But I am probably wrong.

Of course if you try to get to some sort of definitive "bottom" of things
you will be disappointed. As you will if you continuously ask What comes before the beginning? Infinite regressions are delightful in mathematical analysis, but unsatisfying in the "real world." To attempt to spiral down beyond Planck levels to confirm there is nothing there is a somewhat dubious course of action. But, again, "action" doesn't seem to have a prominent place in your vocabulary. If I am wrong in any or all of this, please explain the errors of my thinking.

Over and over you have admonished that we can know nothing (as opposed to knowing no-thing I guess), that there are no truths, that we cannot make choices, that to strive and to do is futile, that nothing is provable, that academic research is all deeply flawed and the researchers all frauds and engaged in bourgeois efforts, and the list goes on . . . with you finally advocating a kind of drifting existence, surfing through life and delighting in what pops up (actually this begins to sound a little appealing after a while!) This is why, to me, you appear to be wandering in some sort of existential maze. But you infer you are not. So I am wrong again.

Meditative ectoplasm refers to panpsychic attempts to relate a "spiritual" phenomenon to actual physical science. It failed for ectoplasm in the 1920s and 1930s and I'm guessing it will fail with regard to unifying meditative no-thing with virtual particles (which themselves might be merely artifacts of mathematical formulae) If I'm wrong, then Well done, Largo!

On the other hand, when you share your professional expertise, speak of the ins and outs of meditation, and relate your experiences as a soldier (I thank you for your service) you add a richness to this and other threads most of us cannot match.

WBraun

climber

May 27, 2015 - 08:33pm PT

Is this a forum thread or an episode on a psychoanalyst's couch?

LOL hahaha

Funny ......

MikeL

Social climber

Seattle, WA

May 27, 2015 - 09:48pm PT

jgill: . . . . “action" doesn't seem to have a prominent place in your vocabulary. If I am wrong in any or all of this, please explain the errors of my thinking.

I can’t explain anyone’s errors in thinking. Thinking is whatever it is. I don’t know that anyone has said what thinking is or what it should be.

Action is fine conventionally. I have nothing to say for it or against it.

If you have no idea what is at your core, that’s ok. I don’t know why the question is characterized as a form of psychoanalysis. What do you feel you’re referring to when you say “I” or “me”? That’s all I was probing. Maybe you have never thought of such things.

I’m not trying to elicit anything in particular. I’m honestly asking. I don’t know what the answer might be for you. In my teachings about organizing, the implicit assumption of what people are (what they offer, how they should be viewed, how they should be treated, what the purpose of any of it is) comes up on my classes from time to time, and the answers vary and sometimes lead to interesting conversations. :-)

I’m not attempting to pull out any tricks to trip you up. I’m not that sophisticated. I’m just asking what you believe, see, or feel. If there is nothing to report, I’m fine with it.

No words have a prominent place in my life other than, “I’m not sure.” That’s about all I ever have to say about anything. (I dunno.) Life might well present an existential maze to me at times, but at other times it doesn’t. I can’t explain why either shows up. What I feel or see in my world was not the thing I was trying to get at in my question. I was simply asking you what you thought.

I mean nothing important by my question. I was just wondering what your views were. I’m told (mainly by my wife) that’s what I’m supposed to do to generate understanding with other people: first establish common ground by asking questions and closely listening to what gets told to me.

The questions and issues are really not important.

Be well.

jgill

Boulder climber

The high prairie of southern Colorado

May 29, 2015 - 10:14am PT

Arguments of Good vs Bad seem to have taken the steam out of this thread. I'm not sure I should admit it but I much prefer Largo's quantum physics expositions. With the help of his Prodigies some interesting ideas and theories have been floated here. I poke at him, but he adds a spark to the thread that religious discussions dampen if not extinguish. Just mho.

cliffhanger

Trad climber

California

May 29, 2015 - 12:01pm PT

Just when in the evolution of Man did human rights materialize? Did homo erectus have human rights? How about Australopithecus, did he have the right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Would a colonizing alien civilization been unethical to kill and eat him? How about the common ancestor of humans and chimps, any human rights then?

MH2

Boulder climber

Andy Cairns

May 29, 2015 - 12:36pm PT

The language we normally use to speak and write developed long before we started to explore quantum events. We can learn the word 'photon' and see effects of photons but our understanding is limited if we only use words. Mathematics is needed.

Even stranger than quantum weirdness is the way mathematics can represent quantum-scale events. Maybe the Universe IS a mathematical construct or maybe the physics of the universe determines its math, the way Ed suggested. It is crazy the way a method we invented to count sheep, days, and other easily observable stuff now helps us to understand things too small to see.

healyje

Trad climber

Portland, Oregon

May 29, 2015 - 12:53pm PT

Human rights have been around for a long time, but they were usually about your rights [and obligations] within your caste and station. That is unless you were property and then you fell under property rights.

healyje

Trad climber

Portland, Oregon

May 29, 2015 - 01:42pm PT

Put my step-daughter through four years of an 'elite' private school here in town where all the kids of the area's CXOs all go. She was befriended by quite a few wealthy families. By the time she graduated, her parents were the only ones still together among all her many friends and most of her friends were heavily scarred by the ensuing vicious divorces.

During the first three years there I think she got accustomed to wealth and its trappings to the point of semi turning up her nose at our humble lifestyle, part of town and abode. But by the end she realized - quite literally - that money can't by you love [or happiness]...