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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Here’s one of my silly math analogies. This time it represents an awareness field (AF).
First, imagine the space you see here completely empty corresponding to emptiness or open awareness. At this point there is no field. Next, transition to focused awareness (FA) at time t=0, where one is engaged, for example, in one of three possible focuses (green dots). This will be our starting point.
In the next second, let’s say, a new focal point arises and stabilizes and we shift our focus to it. At t=0 the new FP (NFP) first appears but it only stabilizes after one second. It is of course an attracting fixed point of the AF.
This process creates a time dependent vector field (TDVF) that draws our attention, at first in the direction of the black vectors, then by the end of the one-second period, in the stable direction of the light green vectors. The initial position of the NFP is somewhat vague, but its final position – the red dot - is where our attention would be drawn from each of the previous FPs (green dots).
Thus the awareness field comes into existence simultaneously with a NFP and directs our attention along paths toward this attractor. Notice the green dot to the right and the fact that the AF engenders a false start toward a non-existent attractor, but quickly corrects and draws our attention to the NFP. The circuitous nature of the paths is due to any sort of unknown stabilization process for the attractor.
The transition from open awareness to focused awareness may or may not be abrupt, but it’s only with the materialization of a focal object that the AF comes into existence. There is no field of open awareness.
This scenario describes the transition from existing FP to NFP. The transition from open awareness to a NFP might require that the attention path start at the point at infinity, or perhaps merely the point 0. Going from the complex plane to the Riemann sphere might solve that problem. That part needs a little work.
Mathematical woo.
;>)
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Speaking of liberal arts, here's what one of my students had to say about the scientific method. The chuckle is at the end.
The scientific method is as procedure of asking questions, doing background research, generating a hypothesis, testing it, and analyzing the results to draw conclusion and communicate the findings. With paleoanthropologists, continually discovering new evidence that either supports or completely contradicts earlier hypothesis is a common occurrence. So as a result they are doing their duty as scientists and asking more questions and fitting the new evidence into their research and constructing a new hypothesis, testing it and analyzing it. Then your fellow scientists criticize your work or find new evidence that disproves or sheds doubt and the whole vicious cycle is repeated. Science can be a fascinating academic torture.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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part II
I would first ask yo uto explore the difference between a direct experience and an interpretation. You will find that there are objective and absolutely true take-aways from the experience of having the content of mind drop away (your attachments are what actually drop away, or dissolve), and these take-aways are not simply "up to me," or you, or Cocoa Joe, but have to do with the true nature of mind. Our brain is an object, but mind/experience itself is not an object, so qualitatively it does not exist as a "thing" because your sense of being Ed is not selfsame with the physical properties of a goose egg - we can easily see why. This is not to say our discursive minds cannot objectify the manifold phenomenon of mind, and to offer up objective rules of thumb. The challenge is to avoide defaulting out of the subjective and into objective functioning - I would call this the "hard problem" of investigating mind.
what is "the true nature of mind" and how do you come to the belief that it is "true"?
What is "true" for you might not be for me... it renders your challenge implied in this sentence
"...to avoide defaulting out of the subjective and into objective functioning - I would call this the "hard problem" of investigating mind" moot, if I am being subjective, how exactly would I "investigate mind"? You must have some different word in mind...
in·ves·ti·gate
verb
1) carry out a systematic or formal inquiry to discover and examine the facts of (an incident, allegation, etc.) so as to establish the truth.
2) carry out research or study into (a subject, typically one in a scientific or academic field) so as to discover facts or information.
from all you have said, the phrase "investigate mind" cannot possibly be something I could understand in the context of your current argument. Unless you want to have it both ways, somehow... or you have some very different meaning of what is subjective and what is objective.
Our brain is an object, but mind/experience itself is not an object, so qualitatively it does not exist as a "thing" because your sense of being Ed is not selfsame with the physical properties of a goose egg - we can easily see why.
this is not so easy for me, but apparently it is easy, perhaps you can explain it...
You have asserted that "mind/experience itself is not an object", but you have not supported that assertion. I understand that this is something you believe is true... but that doesn't make it so.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Very nice. Trying to distinguish something called 'content' from something called 'process' seems unnatural to me, and I think the example gets around that obstacle.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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This scenario describes the transition from existing FP to NFP.
jgill
Very nice work, i think i get it. My question, is your scenario 2 dimensional comparative to Ed's 2 dimensional being on the surface of a balloon? Shifting from FP to NFP seems very lineal.
if so could open awareness be 3 dimensional? With no FP, awareness should have transition ability toward infinite points?
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jul 10, 2015 - 08:27am PT
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What is it like to be an Ed?
from the Wikepedia entry for What is It Like to be a Bat?
in a physicalist view each phenomenal experience had by a conscious being would have to have a physical property attributed to it, which is impossible to prove due to the subjectivity of conscious experience
Impossible to prove? That is too much burden to place on the poor physicalist. Each phenomenal experience? How about just one?
(This probably does not do justice to the original Thomas Nagel piece.)
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 10, 2015 - 10:22am PT
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Ed quoted me as saying: "Our brain is an object, but mind/experience itself is not an object, so qualitatively it does not exist as a "thing" because your sense of being Ed is not selfsame with the physical properties of a goose egg - we can easily see why."
Ed said: "This is not so easy for me, but apparently it is easy, perhaps you can explain it..."
--
An object, like a goose egg, has physical properties but so far as we can tell, said egg has no experiential, subjective/sentient existence. That's not to say the egg doesn't have a process, but it is not aware of, nor yet does it directly and subjectively experiences that process. That is, the egg is not sentient, and does not "know that it knows."
With us humans, we have a physical body including a brain, and we have a direct experience of that body and brain, as well as the outside world of things and objects - the people, places, things and phenomenon that constityute the physical world.
The starting point in this investigation is to look at what is directly and undeniably real - that our fundamntal reality is experiential (all that we know, we know through experience - including experieicning our thoughts - and nothing else), and that this experiences involves the aforementioned people, places, things and phenomenon of reality, seen and unseen.
This second part here harms back to the subtle difference between experiencing and THAT WHICH WE EXPERIENCE. This totally throws people.
Look at the phrase, "What's on your mind?" Or, "What's bothering you?"
In the first case, there is some phenomenon ("what") that is "on" your mind. That is, there is a mind that is experiencing, and that which is experienced - be it a sensation, a thought, an image, and so forth. (if you get derailed into brain function here you will lose yourself)
In the second example, we have some feeling or pestering thought or whatever that is "bothering" us. That is, there is an uncomfortable senstaion or worrisome SOMETHING that is bothering "us." "Us," in this context, is the subjective (NOT objective) process of the experien cing the content ("what" is on you mind or "what' is bothering you). These in no inherent subject that is experiencing, though there is a body and a brain.
That's the first step: acknowledging the difference between "mind" and what is "on" said mind.
JL
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jul 10, 2015 - 12:20pm PT
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"Us," in this context, is the subjective (NOT objective) process of the experien cing the content ("what" is on you mind or "what' is bothering you).
Another view is that we take our experience and turn it into a narrative. That would seem to be necessary to say anything about our experience. In some people's narrative the process of creating the narrative is called "Us."
Using a computer analogy, data can be considered either content or process. An image of the Mona Lisa and an algorithm for photo processing can both be stored as strings of bits.
If computers could construct sufficiently sophisticated narratives they might exhibit subjectivity just as we do. Our subjectivity may be generated after the fact of experience as an interpretation of that experience.
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allapah
climber
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Jul 10, 2015 - 01:20pm PT
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The avalanche on the Riondaz was set to slide in any case. This skier, next skier, or no skiers, it might never have slid at all. Haston getting buried in this slide with his neckerchief over his face is an event in Space/Time. Each person that ever read in Haston's novel about John Dunlop riding the washout from the same couloir on the Riondaz is an event in Space/Time. These events, Haston buried and people reading about Haston not getting buried, are related by pattern, and so move through Space/Time (both moving and embedded, very hard for my pitiful human brain to hold these two at the same time). They are related either by direct influence or a resonance effect which causes this set of events to move through the Continuum with a type of collateral motion that reveals a hierarchy of meaning. These events "gravitate" with each other.
This is MIND in action, an organizing tendency in the Universe. I am not suggesting Haston's book CAUSED Haston's death, only that the avalanche and the descriptions of the avalanche are subject to forces in a system which is subject to Mental Process. This Mental Process permeates the stone itself, except that stone is such a highly non-entropic material that Mental Process does not permeate it very far. The degree to which MIND permeates the stone is so slight, so weak, that scientific experiments cannot isolate it, its influence lies somehow underneath that "Plank length" you guys were bandying about earlier. But I would say any form of non-entropy must have some degree of MIND. The stone is alive and calling to us even now.
... oh man, sorry, this keeps happening, i thought this was the "Friday Night Posting While stoned all the time, man" thread. Once again, I find myself surfacing into the wrong hole in the ice. Oh well, Woo-Masters dance with the scientists daughters, Scientists dance with the Woo-Masters gals!
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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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Jul 10, 2015 - 01:34pm PT
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I am such a child about so numbers
Cheers
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Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, California
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Jul 10, 2015 - 01:39pm PT
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Woo-Masters dance with the scientists daughters, Scientists dance with the Woo-Masters gals!
...and they danced by the light of the moon!
Motivation for meditation and mystery;
Passion?
Or for religion or sprituality;
Joy?
Or for science and discovery;
Curiosity?
...you decide.
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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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Jul 10, 2015 - 01:57pm PT
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Hey
I played with that dance step too.
If the scientists daughters won't dance, what's a Woo Master to do?
Really I want to send prayers of healing to Bushmans Black lab ,Emma.
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Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, California
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Jul 10, 2015 - 02:18pm PT
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It's looking more and more like Emma might be out of the woods soon.
Thinking good thoughts for Brandon and his dog too...
Thanks Gnome.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jul 10, 2015 - 02:40pm PT
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What is it like when a Winter Raven's mind looks beyond food?
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Jul 10, 2015 - 02:55pm PT
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My question, is your scenario 2 dimensional comparative to Ed's 2 dimensional being on the surface of a balloon? (BLU)
Sort of like that, yes. However, It's an abstract field that doesn't have much to do with normal space that we live in, unlike Ed's. All it's meant to do is demonstrate that open awareness should not be labeled a "field", but focused awareness could be. Woo stuff, actually.
;>)
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 10, 2015 - 04:02pm PT
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I tried to get you to discuss this earlier...
An object, like a goose egg, has physical properties but so far as we can tell, said egg has no experiential, subjective/sentient existence. That's not to say the egg doesn't have a process, but it is not aware of, nor yet does it directly and subjectively experiences that process. That is, the egg is not sentient, and does not "know that it knows."
With us humans, we have a physical body including a brain, and we have a direct experience of that body and brain, as well as the outside world of things and objects - the people, places, things and phenomenon that constityute the physical world.
What you are describing is the human process for determining whether or not something has an "experiential, subjective/sentient existence." We observe the object and we have a set of criteria based on the objects behavior.
We might agree that the goose egg doesn't behave as if it had an "experiential, subjective/sentient existence." But we can certainly find ourselves on some shaky ground. Does our pet dog have an "experiential, subjective/sentient existence."? Do chimpanzees? How about IBM's Watson?
How about you?
Our criteria are not precise.
If you think this is not the case, please present the criteria that you use to make the determination that a thing "knows that it knows."
My bet is that you cannot, and so failing, your whole argument falls apart since you cannot even describe why you think I am sentient. You only have the fact that I am human, and you are a human, and your sensation of experience must be the same as mine.
But please, provide some description of how we determine this...
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WBraun
climber
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Jul 10, 2015 - 07:18pm PT
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whole argument falls apart since you cannot even describe why you think I am sentient.
No it doesn't.
It has been perfectly explained ad nauseum here.
Since modern science has no clue they remain completely rudderless and in the corner of poof fund of knowledge of even basic simple knowledge of sentient, consciousness, mind, ether etc etc.
All they (so called scientists) can do is drool woo woo woo.
Worthless .....
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 10, 2015 - 07:25pm PT
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how do you know I'm sentient, Werner?
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Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, California
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Jul 10, 2015 - 07:43pm PT
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'Spacrilege'
The sentient beans,
With tortillas and rice,
Liked sugar and spice,
And everything nice,
But they knew they were doomed,
When the c*#k it crowed thrice,
In Gethsemane's grove,
They were eaten by lice.
-bushman
(Damn that stupid Supertopo auto edit, it's a bird not a weener, Jeez!)
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WBraun
climber
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Jul 10, 2015 - 07:49pm PT
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how do you know I'm sentient, Werner?
For a layman answer you just proved it yourself ......
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