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MikeL
Trad climber
SANTA CLARA
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Oct 23, 2011 - 06:35pm PT
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Largo, you say that the unconscious works for you, but I think you minimize it. I’d say the unconscious is vast. (See comment to Ed.)
You’re saying that experience to each of us is subjective, 1st-person. One cannot have a 3rd-person experience of one’s own experiences.
If there were no self, then there would be no 1st person. Without a conception of yourself, what would experience be? Maybe something like a 3rd-person experience. Like WB said, look and see directly and try to find mind and see where consciousness comes from.
All of us believe we can observe our experiences and ourselves through an “I,” but when going through some exercises watching thoughts come and go, people report that the “I” falls away leaving only observation. No “I” but simply experience—only observation.
Csikszentmihalyi’s studies report athletes in flow states experience narrowing focus, being lost in activities, transcendent states of mind, and strong feelings of well-being. Ilger reports the same kind of experience in his book on the higher levels of the mental game of climbing. So did Peter Haan in his report on the first ascent of the left side of the Hourglass on the web. So did Michael Jordan and others who find themselves “in the zone” regularly.
If there were no “I” available, then what would experience be? I think it approaches the 3rd-person experience you doubt, Largo. Surely, many spiritual masters talk similarly. Just a thought.
Ed, you are a level-headed optimist. (I like that.) I think you'll need a higher level of consciousness to do that reverse engineering of mind and consciousness you’re expecting.
Are you open to Freud / Jung / Neuman’s ideas of a collective unconsciousness? 110 billion beings over 6 million years could be passing forward their subjective experiences that way. FJ&N thought that the collective unconsciousness shows up as inter-related sets of archetypes, which provide humans with templates and filters (symbols) to use on reality, and in turn their experiences become internalized using the reified symbols as “realities in the world.” What is believed, is perceived. What we believe as a species is what has worked over some 6 million years. (Neuman argued for evolving states of consciousness and the emergence of ego that achieved considerable autonomy from the unconscious.)
The collective unconscious (symbols, archetypes) doesn’t have to pass forward every individual, minute experience. (Heck, I can’t even remember what I had for breakfast yesterday.) What it passes forward is the collective’s subjective experiences coded as symbols and archetypes.
Secondly, individualized, subjective experience may be over-rated simply because subjective experience is centered about the ego and reflects its desires. We babble constantly (discursive conversations) in our heads, and it may be simply filler and unimportant garbage.
For the most part we are walking somnambulists. If we could fully awaken, we’d be transparently timeless, spaceless, and infinite. There would be no place to go and nothing to do . . . sort of like post-coitus or post near-death experiences.
When you get right down to it, simply breathing in and out is almost unbearably exquisite.
(I can imagine that these last ideas would seem over the top to most everyone.)
Gotta go. My wife just came back from the gym and told me it was empty. That means I can go and suffer in solitude.
Cheers.
Consciousness: That annoying time between naps.
(Anonymous)
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Lynne Leichtfuss
Trad climber
Will know soon
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Oct 23, 2011 - 06:57pm PT
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JL, I won't pretend I read the posts or even your entire Thread topic slowly and carefully, too hot today, but I do love the subject matter.
What held my attention most was your last paragraph. To respond, simply put, perhaps we will never know in full.
Often it's all about the Journey. lrl
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cintune
climber
Midvale School for the Gifted
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Oct 23, 2011 - 09:04pm PT
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"Tide comes in, tide goes out, you can't explain that."
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 23, 2011 - 10:48pm PT
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Largo, you say that the unconscious works for you, but I think you minimize it. I’d say the unconscious is vast. (See comment to Ed.)
I AGREE. THE UNCONSCIOUS IS VASTLY MORE VAST THAN THE CONSCIOUS MIND. IF YOU WANNA GET INTO PLATONIC FORMS AND JUNG'S COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS THEN YOU GET INTO ENTIRE UNIVERSES OF MATERIAL.
You’re saying that experience to each of us is subjective, 1st-person. One cannot have a 3rd-person experience of one’s own experiences.
CLOSE, BUT YOU'RE STILL WHIFFING ON THIS ONE - AND IT'S COMMON TO DO SO. I SUSPECT WHAT YOU'RE THINKING IS THAT I AM SAYING THAT YOU CANNOT HAVE ANY OBJECTIVITY TOWARD YOUR OWN MIND. NOT SO. I AM SAYING YOU CANNOT GET TOTALLY OUTSIDE OF YOURSELF AND LOOK AT YOUR SELF/LIFE/EXPERIENCE AS ONE LOOKS AT A TREE OR A PHOTON. THAT'S A LOT MORE TO IT THAN THAN, INCLUDING WHAT APPEARS IN YOUR OPEN AWARENESS BUT THIS IS A START.
If there were no self, then there would be no 1st person. Without a conception of yourself, what would experience be? Maybe something like a 3rd-person experience.
THIS IS ACTUALLY THE POINT OF MOST MEDITATION - TO GET THE EGO SELF OUT OF THE WAY SO WE CAN "SEE." BUT FOR MOST PEOPLE, "SEEING" IS A NEOCORTEX JOB OF EVALUATING. BUT YOU SEE, WE HAVE A TRIUNE BRAIN, SO YOU HAVE TO KICK THE LIMBIC (SUFIS CALL IT THE HEART CENTER) SYSTEM TO REALLY HAVE ANY VISION, OTHERWISE YOU'LL JUST BE QUANTIFYING, NOT SEEING.
All of us believe we can observe our experiences and ourselves through an “I,” but when going through some exercises watching thoughts come and go, people report that the “I” falls away leaving only observation. No “I” but simply experience—only observation.
ACTUALLY THIS IS JUST THE START OF IT. "OBSERVING" STILL IMPLIES AND "I" OR "NON-I" OBSERVING. SO THERE'S A SUBTLE OR NOT SO SUBTLE DUALITY OR SPLIT GOING ON BETWEEN THE OBSERVER AND OBSERVED. ONCE EVERYTHING DISSOLVES INTO PURE PRESENCE, THEN THE UNIVERSE SPLITS OPEN, IME.
If there were no “I” available, then what would experience be? I think it approaches the 3rd-person experience you doubt, Largo. Surely, many spiritual masters talk similarly. Just a thought.
I DON'T DOUBT 3RD PERSON OR DISCRIMINATORY FUNCTIONING WITHIN OUR FIELD OF AWARENESS, BUT SUCH EVALUATING IN QUALIA, OR CONTENT OF YOUR 1ST PERSON EXPERIENCE.
MORE LATER.
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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Oct 23, 2011 - 10:49pm PT
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Nah, tides are easy.
Wondering if you are living your life or are actually in a mental hospital is an interesting question. You don't have to invent words like qualia. Actual mental processing of quality and experience could be so far gone that you might think you are Neil Armstrong.
The mind is built on the brain. Take a hammer to your noggin and see what happens to "mind."
I readily agree with Ed that eventually the brain will be understood. It would be well on its way if we were Nazi's and did cruel experiments on living subjects. Hell, we are already doing cruel experiments with animals.
I see nothing in Jung's idea of a collective consciousness. Would we exclude other reasonable intelligent and self aware animals? It wouldn't just be billions of people. My dog is damn smart.
Psychology is a baby science. The future is huge though. Neuroscience is coming along now with the non invasive techniques.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Oct 23, 2011 - 11:04pm PT
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I see nothing in Jung's idea of a collective consciousness. Would we exclude other reasonable intelligent and self aware animals? It wouldn't just be billions of people. My dog is damn smart.
If you don't see Jung's idea of the collective unconscious, then you're probably not aware that's what you're doing. Symbols, myths, rituals all make use of the collective unconscious.
One of the questions in my mind about it, is how much is genetic and how much cultural or even ethereal as Jung postulated (the endlessly recurring question). I've often wondered if past life remembrances and the theory of reincarnation for example, weren't based on some kind of genetic memories passed down by ancestors? People think they are remembering their own past lives and actually they're remembering those of ancestors.
And given Hindu and Buddhist ethics toward animals, some belief systems and cultures do include animal consciousness as part of the total human experience.
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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Oct 23, 2011 - 11:24pm PT
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Jan,
All of us live our lives differently. We all have different objective and subjective influences. This is what makes each of us us.
I see no evidence for a collective subconscious. By the name itself it..subconciousness, is pretty much impossible to see. We aren't a bunch of networked computers. That is pretty easy to see.
Certainly we can share many subjective experiences orally, but that is like describing a roller coaster to a child in Burma or something.
As for reincarnation, yes, I know it is an important part of many religions. and the others usually preserve the massive amount of knowledge and experience that makes us us. Is eternal life a sad human need based on invention, or does life just blink out like a light switch?
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MH2
climber
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Oct 23, 2011 - 11:31pm PT
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One cannot have a 3rd-person experience of one’s own experiences.
Then what is memory?
What happens when you watch a movie or listen to music?
It is easy to grant that if you free your mind of all thought you are in a different mental state than the usual one.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Oct 24, 2011 - 02:12am PT
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Base-
I think the way people behave at mass sports events, what happens during a riot, and the mutual emotions shared during a common religious ritual are all examples of the collective unconscious. Certainly none of them are based on logic.
Jung thought that mandalas were an example of the collective unconscious as they appear in so many cultures from Navaho sand paintings to Tibetan art to the great stained glass windows of European cathedrals. He also noticed that as mentally disturbed patients began to heal, they drew mandalas - completed circles of wholeness.
Music is another powerful example. We can hear music we have never heard before which is completely different from out own tradition and yet appreciate it because our collective unconscious shares an appreciation of rhythm and melody.
And then there's dream interpretation, probably the easiest way to access one's own unconscious. There are nearly universal symbols, culturally specific symbols, and our own personal dreamscape symbols. The fun comes in figuring out which is which and those aha moments when you suddenly understand the personal message your unconscious was sending you in a particular dream, all without the benefit of words.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Oct 24, 2011 - 02:24am PT
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MikeL
Trad climber
SANTA CLARA
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Oct 24, 2011 - 12:16pm PT
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Honestly, Largo, I don’t believe what I wrote either. I don’t think that when the “I” drops off for me that I’m experiencing a 3rd-person view. But it doesn’t seem like a 1st-person view, either. (What I wrote was a thought experiment and speculation.)
My practice relies upon direct experience rather than analysis. I have spoken from my experiences and studies, and my direct immediate experience transcends my language skills. And, I am just an egg.
I probably can’t contribute more to the conversation if it goes much further forward from here.
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cintune
climber
Midvale School for the Gifted
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Oct 24, 2011 - 02:27pm PT
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MikeL
Trad climber
SANTA CLARA
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Oct 24, 2011 - 04:15pm PT
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MH2, you got me thinking (memories are 3rd-person experiences of subjective experiences). So has John. In my last post I was indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.
There are no 3rd-person experiences. That's an oxymoron. Every experience is a 1st-person experience: whether it is a memory of an event, a measurement from an instrument, or what someone has related to us of their subjective experiences.
Replicability and cross-verification of phenomena encourage us to believe in an external objective reality, but we do not have direct access to an external reality. What we feel are sensations transmitted from the body or things that we have sensed from consciousness (e.g., imagination). We then take those sensations and put them through notion-building mechanisms (frameworks, archetypes, concepts, prototypes, family resemblances, theories, symbols, signs, etc.), and then we evaluate or assess them (good, bad, neutral), maybe add cultural influences, and viola: final meaning and understanding (one would hope). As said earlier, this all happens is very quick form.
It's all mind.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A community of hairless apes
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Oct 24, 2011 - 04:20pm PT
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Congratulations, you described what brain does. I knew you'd come around. To what? To the modern neurosciences model. ;)
In different terms, it's all mind-brain mechanics.
.....
All this recalls the film, Roxanne, with Steve Martin who reminded us... sometimes when something's right in front of your face (like your nose) you don't see it.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A community of hairless apes
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Oct 25, 2011 - 02:36pm PT
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So I think as the whole of this thread's made clear, the modern scientific model for how the mind-brain works is the most reasonable choice of model to be employed in one's practice of living going forward in the 21st century.
As Whack I think pointed out, the modern evolutionary psychology books are a great leg up in this area. Example: Steven Pinker's How the Mind Works is as much a boon to this field as "How to Rock Climb" is to, well, rockclimbing.
Also, you just have to ignore the paranormal nonsense that some like to read into consciousness, intuitions, perceptions, etc. This all derives from either poor brain machine functioning in the first place or to bad input (bad software input) to the brain (gigo) or both.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Oct 25, 2011 - 09:34pm PT
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Oct 25, 2011 - 11:36am PT
So I think as the whole of this thread's made clear, the modern scientific model for how the mind-brain works is the most reasonable choice of model to be employed in one's practice of living going forward in the 21st century.
it will be fun watching HFCS holding onto that thought, going forward in the 21st century
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Oct 25, 2011 - 09:39pm PT
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The idea that "consciousness" is a property of matter is simply untenable.
quite correct
'matter' is a property of 'consciousness'
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A community of hairless apes
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Oct 25, 2011 - 09:58pm PT
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Now why'd you have to go stir up the sleeping dog which was lying so peacefully?
.....
'matter' is a property of 'consciousness'
With all due respect this is no more serviceable than...
'matter' is a property of 'imagination'
.....
I remember from my engineering days - from either engineering school or the engineering industry - how narrow-minded many if not most of the engineers were. So uni-dimensional in their thinking. Not to mention nerdy or nerdie. I think the bulk of them would've done themselves well to leave their pocket protectors and slide rules home every so often and go climb or skydive or something - also many were so lacking in life sciences - they just seemed to lack the full-bodied experience.
Thank goodness times have changed.
.....
After 700 plus posts (a) the models of mind-brain have been depicted, (b) the supporters of each model have weighed in and everybody knows where everybody stands in their decision-making. Now time will tell. Good luck all. May the best model or models win. ;)
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Oct 25, 2011 - 10:26pm PT
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stand here on top of Half Dome for a while, feeling the wind in your hair and your heart beating inside and chant the phrase:
'it's all just a mechanism and i will just cease to exist if i take the next step'
or not...
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MH2
climber
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Oct 26, 2011 - 12:17am PT
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we do not have direct access to an external reality
We have to make do with what we have, until we come up with something better.
I wouldn't care if "external reality" turned out to be built up from lego blocks moved by the action of invisible 6-year-olds.
I've been to visit the words of the guy who popularized the term "the hard problem of consciousness."
http://consc.net/papers/facing.html
In his words: "The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience."
My impression is that it is a hard problem because he makes it one. Showing him measurements of brain activity which correlate perfectly with consciousness would not be good enough for him.
He takes a study connecting a type of brain activity to consciousness and says:
"[such and such] are the neural correlates of experience...but ...the explanatory question remains: why do the [such and such] give rise to experience?
the question of why [such and such] should themselves be accompanied by experience is never addressed."
I believe most people would accept that the neural correlates of experience are the thing itself. Unless you believe that experience and consciousness are not tied to the brain. Of course the measurements are not the thing, they just point to it. To confirm the connection it would be helpful if you used the same brain you recorded from, stimulated the pattern you measured, and the subject reported an identical experience. I don't know if Chalmers would be satisfied, but in my view the question of why the neural correlates are accompanied by experience is answered by concluding that they they don't accompany experience, they are experience.
However, if I read him rightly, Chalmers is unwilling to accept any description of experience which relies only on physiology, or as he puts it, function.
There will always be room for philosophy but it is also important to not think too hard.
Ludwig Wittgenstein believed that philosophical problems needed to be addressed not so much with solutions as with therapies.
On a different side of a different fence,
Things are never what they seem.
Even if we did have a reasonable explanation of brain function as the product of neurons and their connections, we would still have the problem that we might have missed something.
from
Scale in conscious experience: Is the brain too important to be left to the specialists?
It was clear to Umezawa that the mechanism of the dynamical generation of long range correlation in spontaneous breakdown of symmetry was of such a general validity and so relevant that it could not be "confined" to the domains of particle physics and solid state physics.
L. M. Ricciardi and H. Umezawa
Quantum Brain Dynamics
Kibernetik 4, 44 (1967)
In Umezawa's words, "I noticed that this could provide a remarkable mechanism for memory recollection. Suppose that an ordered pattern was printed on the brain by condensation mechanism in the vacuum which was induced by certain external stimuli. Though an order is stored, brain is not conscious of this because it is in the ground state. However, when a similar external stimulation comes in, it easily excites the massless boson associated with the long range correlation. Since the boson is massless, any small amount of energy can cause its excitation. During the time of excitation, brain becomes conscious of the stored order (memory)."
and even deeper we go
from
Modeling the Heisenberg Matrix: Quantum Coherence and Thought at the Holoscape Manifold and Deeper Complementarity
Richard L. Amoroso
Barry E. Martin
Superstring Theory, nonlocality in N compactified + D extended dimensions is presently the most fundamental concept being touted.
Nah,
Legos!
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