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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Aug 12, 2015 - 05:36pm PT
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HFCS:
The Atlantic Magazine articles on education and comedy are thoughtful, or should give rise to thought. I get the feeling that you see college students and the culture on most college campuses under completely negative lights. That characterization (whether true or not) is what most of this thread has come to be about: “I'm right, and you're wrong”; that which is material vs. that which is not; subjective vs. objectivism; science vs. spiritualism or even emotionalism.
It seems to me that things move forward mainly through errors, through experimentation, by a moving middle / center that is somewhat unpredictable about where it will go from here.
College students may be stupid, but they are trying and learning from themselves maybe more than they are learning from their professors or from scholars. Do they get things wrong? Oh hell yes. I’d say the same about my generation when we were in college in the 60s. Look what we became—almost everything we abhorred.
I understand the concerns of faculty. I’ve gotten called up on the carpet twice for similar problems. In 2005, I used the word “manhandle” in an MBA class, and was immediately called out by an older male who said the word was abusive. That issue went all the way to the President at Santa Clara University. I came here to UW, and 2-3 (out of two classes of 26) of written evaluation from MBAs complained that I intimidated them. The dean called me out on that one.
My view these days is if anyone is looking for right or wrong / good or bad in this world, they’re going to end up woefully unhappy. No one is right or wrong. Every one of these “conversations” are worth having among each and everyone of us.
I appreciate you posting the URLs to the articles. I forwarded them on to a number of my colleagues at a few institutions.
Be well,
.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Aug 12, 2015 - 07:55pm PT
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Not under completely negative lights, MikeL. But glad you thought the pieces worth reading / contemplating.
This is fun. Baby animal minds in action...
[Click to View YouTube Video]
Bio... magic !! :)
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Aug 12, 2015 - 11:08pm PT
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Science was especially insightful is establishing that the rock over there was not "solid," but when looked at closely the atoms comprising said rock were most empty space.
you have this very wrong, science's "insight" was to define what "solid" is... whether or not the idea of atoms being mostly "empty space" is a gross simplification of the physical situation... the "planetary picture" of the atom, point like electrons orbiting a nucleus... the utility of such a picture is quite limited... yet you maintain this slavish loyalty to the idea because it seems to support your point of view.
as for "objective" and "subjective" you cannot have one without the other, they are a classic duality... maybe you have a more poetic idea of what the meanings are, or perhaps you feel that they have a precise meaning that "proves your point." If that is the case, you should state the meanings with precision.
from my view, they are simply defining domains of experience,"subjective" experiences are simply ones that you alone have, "objective" experiences are common to many... if you are color blind, you have a different set of experiences than those who can see color.
I am quite positive that you have a set of "subjective" experiences, ones that are particular to yourself, and quite possibly are unique to yourself. Your attempt to describe them would be met with utter bafflement to others...
...but just what significance of such experience are is at issue here... I'd say they have no more significance than any other experience, they are the class of experience that you have as an individual, unshared by anyone else.
You have a number of experiences that are shared... and these "objective" experiences are not just scientific...
"Then she opened up a book of poems
And handed it to me
Written by an Italian poet
From the thirteenth century
And every one of them words rang true
And glowed like burnin’ coal
Pourin’ off of every page
Like it was written in my soul from me to you
Tangled up in blue"
That we have experiences at all is agreed upon, I believe, by most people... and is an "objective fact" by this train of logic. That we represent these experiences in language, and through that language can compare the experiences among ourselves leads to the experience's categorization, objective or subjective... both are known only through this representational language.
You can claim that you have experiences that are beyond description in our current language and I will believe your claim. You can claim that these experiences cannot, in principle, be represented by language, but you have not stated what supports such a claim. It is not unexpected that you provide no such support as there is no support for such a claim.
By extension, science is a particular language, and that language develops and changes as the domain of science grows. The language changes are important, as your confused statements about what is "solid" show (the use of obsolete language to discuss the concepts of the current language). The language of science changes, expands, morphs... we do not know what sets the limits of it.
Similarly, our own "common" language also develops, many contemporary ideas originate from quite different cultures, our knowledge of those cultures are very recent. It is doubtful that there was any serious practice of Zen in North America 100 years ago... certainly not by someone with your heritage. Our language has changed.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Aug 12, 2015 - 11:39pm PT
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Probably better to avoid discussing the reality of how many neuro-anatomy components have to work perfectly, both independently and in concert, to have either subjective or objective experiences or memories of either.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 13, 2015 - 02:14pm PT
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Ed wrote:
as for "objective" and "subjective" you cannot have one without the other, they are a classic duality... maybe you have a more poetic idea of what the meanings are, or perhaps you feel that they have a precise meaning that "proves your point." If that is the case, you should state the meanings with precision.
from my view, they are simply defining domains of experience,"subjective" experiences are simply ones that you alone have, "objective" experiences are common to many... if you are color blind, you have a different set of experiences than those who can see color.
I am quite positive that you have a set of "subjective" experiences, ones that are particular to yourself, and quite possibly are unique to yourself. Your attempt to describe them would be met with utter bafflement to others...
...but just what significance of such experience are is at issue here... I'd say they have no more significance than any other experience, they are the class of experience that you have as an individual, unshared by anyone else.
----
It makes it challenging to intentionally ask a few simple questions and to have someone reply by asking a set of other questions. The reason I asked you to state what you believe is the difference between an object and subjective experience, was to try and fast track this conversation to what I feel are the real issues. But let me first try and sort through Ed’s points.
When Ed says that we cannot separate out the subjective and the objective, that “we cannot have one without the other,” I think many on this thread would take issue with this, believing, for example, that the big blue moon is hanging out there in space whether our subjective awareness is attached to it or not.
While much of science has sought to establish an objective world that is totally independent of the subjective, one that DOES exist “separate from the other” (subjective), since the birth of QM and even before there have been those insisting on the primacy of the subjective in determining the macro-level objects of the visible world - blostering what Ed just said, that you cannot have the objective without the subjective.
I might be totally wrong, but my sense is that Ed is not really saying this, that he has reverted back to talking about content, that is experiential content (qualia), which he has divided into objective and subjective. And in the case of when an object or an objectification enters the field (for the lack of a better term) of our subjective awareness, that experience is “objective.”
Again, maybe I am misinterpreting Ed, but from my understanding, and per the standard take from the experiential camp, strictly speaking there's no such thing as an "objective experience.” Every experience we have occurs inside our personal subjective/experiential bubble, so in a sense, it's all ultimately subjective.
However, we can discover patterns in THE CONTENT of our subjective experiences: my ankle is reliably sore, fire is reliably hot, the sun reliably appears to rise in the east. We can call those experiences "objective" based on the fact that they recur, though this objective data/content never appears elsewhere but within our subjective bubble.
Likewise we know that some perceptions are not reliably measurable (e.g. the ones that occur in dreams, or after having guzzled 20 beers) so we describe them as not-objective (not referring to a measurable object) and are solely “subjective.”
Bottom line is there is no escaping our own perspective. Here is the problem with solipsism (or how does one affirm the existence of the other) which has been debated within philosophy since the beginning of time.
However for our conversation, if we forego getting bogged down with content, if we are to start devising better definitions, we need to hone in perception itself, the fundamental nature of perception, and in my experience, this is most easily started by first observing the differences between an object, and subjective experience (NOT the content of subjective experience).
It is not enough, nor yet fruitful, to say they are both sides of the same coin. Male and female people can both be called human beings but it is instructive to look at the differences. Same here.
So what do you believe or know to be the differences between an object and subjective experience? What does one have which the other does NOT have?
JL
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Aug 13, 2015 - 03:06pm PT
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. . . I used the word “manhandle” in an MBA class . . . (MikeL)
Mike, I had a somewhat similar experience about 25 years ago when I was teaching an elementary math class. At some point when discussing a word problem I said Now here is a place where it's easy to get tripped up. Instead of . . . After class an early middle-age man came up and said Why did you say I would get tripped up? That's insulting!
He didn't go to the dean, nor the department chair (that was me) and I can't recall if he finished the course or dropped out. It's been 15 years since I taught a class and I don't know if students have changed in this regard. But during my tenure as a professor affirmative action and political correctness were the most irritating aspects of the job, primarily because administrators went beyond the basic principles, in some cases actually bending the law in their excesses.
Here is a recent article that you may find interesting:
The Hell You Say
I might be totally wrong, but my sense is that Ed is not really saying this, (JL)
You might consider asking Ed rather than trying to read his mind. He's not a character in a novel.
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Aug 13, 2015 - 03:56pm PT
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Ed said "as for "objective" and "subjective" you cannot have one without the other, they are a classic duality..."
From a philosophical angle they can both exist (as subjects being discussed/studied). But from an experiential angle my experience is your either "in" a subjective or objective experience and not both at the same time. My experience is also that often when I start a meditation session I typically start in an dominant subjective state and as the session moves along I move towards or in to an objective view.
I am not used to using the terms objective and subjective so maybe I am not using them well?
From a Zen perspective the Heart sutra talks about the objective view and the subjective view and how they both exist and if you get attached to either or, or don't recognize the other it will be a hindrance. I Me My based views are subjective and mind before I, me, my is objective is the way I am interpreting this.
From my own experience I find That I can't break out of the I me mine experience without a concentrated effort ie meditation. Some might question why would you want to "break out" and I would say because it is a limited view/experience.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Aug 13, 2015 - 04:33pm PT
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From the Coddling piece...
re: cognitive behavioral therapy
Common Cognitive Disorders
A partial list from Robert L. Leahy, Stephen J. F. Holland, and Lata K. McGinn’s Treatment Plans and Interventions for Depression and Anxiety Disorders (2012).
1. Mind reading. You assume that you know what people think without having sufficient evidence of their thoughts. “He thinks I’m a loser.”
2. Fortune-telling. You predict the future negatively: things will get worse, or there is danger ahead. “I’ll fail that exam,” or “I won’t get the job.”
3. Catastrophizing.You believe that what has happened or will happen will be so awful and unbearable that you won’t be able to stand it. “It would be terrible if I failed.”
4. Labeling. You assign global negative traits to yourself and others. “I’m undesirable,” or “He’s a rotten person.”
5. Discounting positives. You claim that the positive things you or others do are trivial. “That’s what wives are supposed to do—so it doesn’t count when she’s nice to me,” or “Those successes were easy, so they don’t matter.”
6. Negative filtering. You focus almost exclusively on the negatives and seldom notice the positives. “Look at all of the people who don’t like me.”
7. Overgeneralizing. You perceive a global pattern of negatives on the basis of a single incident. “This generally happens to me. I seem to fail at a lot of things.”
8. Dichotomous thinking. You view events or people in all-or-nothing terms. “I get rejected by everyone,” or “It was a complete waste of time.”
9. Blaming. You focus on the other person as the source of your negative feelings, and you refuse to take responsibility for changing yourself. “She’s to blame for the way I feel now,” or “My parents caused all my problems.”
10. What if? You keep asking a series of questions about “what if” something happens, and you fail to be satisfied with any of the answers. “Yeah, but what if I get anxious?,” or “What if I can’t catch my breath?”
11. Emotional reasoning. You let your feelings guide your interpretation of reality. “I feel depressed; therefore, my marriage is not working out.”
12. Inability to disconfirm. You reject any evidence or arguments that might contradict your negative thoughts. For example, when you have the thought I’m unlovable, you reject as irrelevant any evidence that people like you. Consequently, your thought cannot be refuted. “That’s not the real issue. There are deeper problems. There are other factors.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/
"It's how I feel so it must be true."
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 13, 2015 - 06:23pm PT
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I might be totally wrong, but my sense is that Ed is not really saying this, (JL)
You might consider asking Ed rather than trying to read his mind. He's not a character in a novel.
Not sure what you mean here but when I ask a few questions that get "answered" with another set of questins, "asking Ed" does not seek likely to bring immediate results. I enjoy trying to field Ed's qudestions, which are often well thought out, but many times I'm gussing what he is saying or where he is coming from.
A good philosophy per emotional content is the idea that feelings are data.
JL
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WBraun
climber
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Aug 13, 2015 - 06:32pm PT
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there is no support for such a claim.
Yes there is.
It's outside the realm of gross physical materialism.
The subtle material energies and the spiritual realms are not yet understood nor even yet discovered by modern caveman science ......
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Aug 13, 2015 - 10:32pm PT
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"I, me, mine" experience is not necessarily subjective, such experiences may be shared with other people and upon comparison you might conclude that the experience is something everyone else has... on the other hand, you might find that it is an experience unique to yourself, that no one else has it..
my point is that we have a representational language for describing our experiences. This immediately "objectifies" the experience, but without the representational language we cannot speak of the experience, the representation cannot be compared and we cannot establish whether or not the experience is subjective or objective... that is, unique to ourselves or common among many.
when we read works from antiquity we have an impression of familiarity that come through from the work... if we wander among ruins we have the feeling of immediacy with the people, long gone, who built the structures and lived in them. when we see a hand painting on a wall our urge is to place our own hand on the image of the hand...
these are shared experiences, very personal in many instances, yet they evoke a commonality of those experience across time, from one person to another...
in terms of a representational language, we have no problem "testing" the idea that we have the same experiences, and we find the commonality.
while we did not "have" the identical experience of those individuals, and the language is "representational," we do not have much trouble in generalizing our own experience and finding a match (or perhaps not finding one).
these are based on our own understanding of human behavior, our "theory of mind," that generalizes our own experience of mind and presumes that other humans have similar experiences. you understand your meditation teacher... you cannot experience the teacher's experience, nor the teacher's yours... for something as seemingly personal as meditation, there seems like a lot of agreement over process and a commonality of experience.
because our experience, in the end, is described in a representational language, it is hard to separate one class of language from another. The language of science from the language of your meditation teacher, nothing selects one language over the other, both are provisional, approximate and objective.
My focus lately has been on what "experience" is, and whether or not it is a separate phenomena than any other physical phenomena. My contention is that there is no difference.
I think Largo would argue that there is a difference, but he has argued mostly that we lack a language to describe various common aspects of experience, and erroneously generalized that to be a proof that the lack of language indicates something special about experience. My point is that the lack of language doesn't prove anything about experience.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Aug 13, 2015 - 10:46pm PT
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Ed said "as for "objective" and "subjective" you cannot have one without the other, they are a classic duality..."
i agree with the "can't have one without the other" part. But "classic duality", makes them sound pitted AGAINST each other. "It takes two to Tango", seems more suited?
Without subjectivity wouldn't we just be a plant, or a planet?
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Aug 13, 2015 - 11:49pm PT
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Ed: we have no problem "testing" the idea that we have the same experiences, and we find the commonality. . . .and the language is "representational,"
You are logical and orderly in your thinking but you’re chasing down the wrong rabbit hole.
We have no way of testing ideas about experiences. Ideas are just ideas. You can’t fit a model onto something that is infinite without a helluva lot of shoe-horning. Whatever it is, you killed its essence by modeling it. (Sorry. Yeah, I know you had no other choice.) It’s just not good / close enough.
As for representational language, I think you’re overstepped your bounds here, too. Language is not representational. It’s more analogical. (Why do we refer to etymologies?) What is representational tend to be digital or measurable. Contemporary representations tend to be discrete, definitive, and operationally final. What is linguistic seems a great deal more nuanced and contextual, IMO.
I understand that these complaints are nuanced and perhaps the results of “thin-slicing,” but you cross from one category qualitatively to another, by my lights. Apples are not oranges.
It’s very difficult (impossible) to categorize experience. Experience is its own category, and it seems far too “strange” and apparently incomprehensible to compare to any conceptualization. You can go on for now to forever with neurons ad pathways, but what the hell is the very experience of consciousness? Electrical synapses? From this end, it doesn’t feel that way at all. It’s, well, . . . so much more. You see consciousness within the universe, and I see it oppositely.
What I’m saying is that I don’t think you can make real equivalence between concepts and experience that will hold up to sharp analysis. This is the very difference between subjective and objective.
Take a knife and cut smoke. Does nothing.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Aug 14, 2015 - 12:05am PT
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Jgill:
I didn’t mean to overlook your comment.
The writing of your pointer (article) was mainly jurisprudential. (I love the law.)
It was a good article. But it tends to be technical (jurisprudential).
I think (THIS SITUATION) is where we’re at on these issues. We are at a crossroads. Free speech versus minimization of harm; arguments for both sides.)
Much of the law cannot be codified and regulated. That’s why we have judges.
Law is like language: it’s organic and takes on a life of its own. We must respect that. We can't control anything that's organic.
I have family here with me right now from Germany. They don’t understand why American are so . . . well, . . . so, “AMERICAN!!!“
:-)
(What can I possibly say? I mean, . . . I really love Germans and much of Germany, but I wouldn’t want to live there with them.)
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Aug 14, 2015 - 01:02am PT
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What I’m saying is that I don’t think you can make real equivalence between concepts and experience that will hold up to sharp analysis.
we do it all the time, you just read my post and presumed to make an equivalence between what I wrote and my experience and countered with a post relating your experience and why you think my concept is incorrect...
I am not saying that there is an equivalence, that's what the use of the word "representational" is meant to convey, but a representation of the experience...
the thing is, you don't have anything except that representational language to describe your experience, or to "know" my experience. I have no idea what you mean by "cutting smoke with a knife" except you're being cute... you can cut smoke with a knife... or its equivalent...
but if you do not use language (broadly defined) you do not have experience... at least not relevant to this discussion...
try participating in this thread by not posting anything. What would we experience? no-MikeL-thing...
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Aug 14, 2015 - 09:48am PT
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Some interesting and thoughtful remarks her lately.
How does time and change fit in these discussions,especially with language and the terms we choose? In my experience, language is in constant flux. So is perception. The words I choose to describe an experience change as time rolls on. So does the experience. How many of us, as we grow older, remember an experience from our youth and get a whole different take on what happened? Why do we remember that and how did we come up with the difference?
Time, change, growth, incompleteness. Embrace this. I am grateful of the experience of not getting it quite right.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Aug 14, 2015 - 11:00am PT
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That's right, Wayno.
So do you think one's changed perceptions over time reflect more (a) one's (accumulated) wisdom or (b) one's aging (or aged) perception system?
"Time, change, growth, incompleteness. Embrace this." -Wayno
I wonder if there aren't times and circumstances (and ages) to and not to. All part of the circle of life and its evolved equilibria.
At least "to and not to" across ages, people, circumstances, etc keeps it interesting.
.....
PS I do not think I am net grateful for the experience of forgetting a basic lumber rule and setting a number of decking boards bullseye down. (When I wanted exactly the opposite effect.)
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Aug 14, 2015 - 11:10am PT
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Both and more, HFCS. Just my take on it though. I actually have more questions than answers, still, at this point.
Have you ever watched as someone slowly dies and are able to listen to their thoughts, at least how they express them? Very curious indeed. I learn new stuff every day that throws my ideas of mind off. Either a little or a lot.
edit:
PS I do not think I am net grateful for the experience of forgetting a basic lumber rule and setting a number of decking boards bullseye down. (When I wanted exactly the opposite effect.)
True that, but to me, that is just a natural circumstance that we all have to face sooner or later. I don't like it, but I face it.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Aug 14, 2015 - 11:30am PT
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I get what you are saying. And I completely agree.
And I think I should've included a lol after my lumber screw-up comment. :)
.....
"...and are able to listen to their thoughts, at least how they express them?"
...and how they express them?
How do you mean?
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