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WBraun
climber
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Aug 24, 2015 - 07:43pm PT
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Damage to the brain and its ability to reflect the mind, could well be like taking a hammer to a radio
and later only being able to pick up and relay a few out of many possible radio programs.
When one uses such an analogy it shows that even when the brain and mind are damaged
the soul (the source) like the analogy (the radio station) the source of the stations all still remain and broadcast.
Just the damaged receivers will not pick up the transmissions or will be distorted or some station frequencies will not be available due to damaged tuning circuit.
Thus one can see how the soul works thru the mind and brain in the living entity just like the radio transmitter to the radio receiver as a crude analogy example.
Still at the radio station there is a living entity as the operator sending consciousness thru the radio frequency spectrum ........
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Aug 25, 2015 - 12:01am PT
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Duck: Still at the radio station there is a living entity as the operator sending consciousness thru the radio frequency spectrum ........
Right by me.
“Damaged receivers” is also a good metaphor, although “damaged” is not quite right. Nothing is wrong. It’s just where a thing (mind) is at.
Jan: The more we know, the more we can ask. Questions don’t give way to answers so much as the two proliferate together. Answers breed questions. Curiosity isn’t merely a static disposition but rather a passion of the mind that is ceaselessly earned and nurtured.
I wish I said all of that.
Healyje: JGill is pointing out the obvious, either the mind is of the brain or someone would have to come up with some vaguely cogent arguments for how the mind comes to inhabit one and how it 'occupies' it.
I know. That’s what’s so fascinating—and instructive.
I understand that “cogent arguments” for you assume a particular paradigm. I might refer to it as a intuitive realist view: WYSIWYG. I don’t have to point out to you that if an explanation falls outside of your paradigm, then there is almost nothing that can be said to you. Least not relevantly.
There are so many things in the universe that beg for explanation, but which might only be understood using a completely different viewpoint. David Bohm suggested one such metaphor with regards to the EPR argument: how could there be nonlocal interactions? His illustration goes like this: Two television cameras observe one fish in a fish tank. The individual orientations of the cameras are such that Observer #1 and #2 sees completely different views or aspect of the same fish. One observer sees it broadside miles away on a monitor, while the second observer sees it head-on on another monitor. A third observer sees it from both views on her two cameras. This third initially believes she is seeing two fish, but after a while imagines a correlation of the fishes’ movements in the two screens. Viola, “not-two.”
The same could be claimed about temporal linearity and cause-and-effect. The two things that you see (injury to a brain and a mental breakdown of some sort) would seem to be inescapably (inferentially) causally connected. But, there might also be neither cause nor effect, but simply one single infinite nondual fact that could be described as an “unbroken wholeness.” It's one of many interpretations.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Aug 25, 2015 - 12:07am PT
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I understand that “cogent arguments” for you assume a particular paradigm. I might refer to it as a intuitive realist view: WYSIWYG. I don’t have to point out to you that if an explanation falls outside of your paradigm, then there is almost nothing that can be said to you. Least not relevantly.
Actually, you haven't the slightest idea. By 'cogent argument' I simply meant one that isn't so metaphysically-laden as to be indistinguishable from myth and fairytales.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Aug 25, 2015 - 12:29am PT
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The same could be claimed about temporal linearity and cause-and-effect.
what does "local realistic theory" mean?
what is "Einstein Locality" mean?
these are precise statements, as is Bell's Theorem... and while Bell himself was no fan of QM (liking somewhat more Bohm's ideas) the experimental tests (also precise and accurate) leads one to abandon at least one of the two: locality or "realism."
if you want, we can get down in the weeds about these physical concepts... but to go on and argue about the Mind/Brain in analogy is foolish, we have no idea of the validity of the analogy, we have no way of testing the analogy, we have nothing physical to base the analogy on... unless you argue "quantum mechanics is strange, consciousness is strange, consciousness is quantum mechanics," I'm sure MikeL can supply us with the appropriate fallacy to tag on that.
So what we have is a muddled idea of the correct QM analysis which is then applied, inappropriately, to some other problem.
Bell was known as a careful thinker, one might do him the honor of aspiring to be careful in our thoughts on other topics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem
"The violations of Bell's inequalities, due to quantum entanglement, just provide the definite demonstration of something that was already strongly suspected, that quantum physics cannot be represented by any version of the classical picture of physics."
there is a whole story in there... nothing more, nothing less...
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Aug 25, 2015 - 01:06am PT
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The two things that you see (injury to a brain and a mental breakdown of some sort) would seem to be inescapably (inferentially) causally connected. But, there might also be neither cause nor effect, but simply one single infinite nondual fact that could be described as an “unbroken wholeness.” It's one of many interpretations.
Could've been run through the head by a unicorn as well, in yet another of "many interpretations". And you'd have to buy into and be vested somehow in one of the schools of Vedic / Buddhist nondualism to consider your suggestion a valid 'interpretation'. If you mean more along the lines of Bohm's Implicate Order, then personally I think you run into problems around, "why brains?" and various nano/micro/macro scale problems. Also, in that scenario brains are the explicate manifestation of mind so, no brain, no mind. And that would also make it an analogous macro version of his idea a particle may be a representation/container for the information in the [now collapsed] wave function, hence the scale issues.
[ Ed, feel free to beat me if I'm mutilating things too badly here... ]
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 25, 2015 - 10:12am PT
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Also, in that scenario brains are the explicate manifestation of mind so, no brain, no mind.
---
I spent two weeks with Boehn hammering his "explicate order" routine. But he was so old and tired he couldn't make his ideas clear. Interesting guy, though.
If you read a little Chalmers or Harris, Healje, you might update your ideas a litle. Brains are the explicate manifestation of objective functioning - I.E., data processing. Sentience of WHAT is being processed is anothr matter for various reasons.
But let me Let me first take a shot at describing to Ed (and anyone else who is interested) how to learn to meditate.
There are many different ways to meditate evoking many different experiences. But say you are ambitious, and want to take your experience/ reality right down to the wood. This, paradoxically, involves learning and practicing certain basic techniques in order to eventually abandon all techniques, efforting, striving after, and trying in any way shape or form to know or evaluate anything.
Why learn the initial techniques? Because you probably don’t know that from sun up to sun down your mind is besieged by a torrent of white noise and automatic thinking. Yes, we need to think to live in the world, but this is technical or intentional thinking. And no untrained mind can simply turn thinking off, or cimp the torrent. This is trying to use the mind to quiet the mind, which is trying to make things different than they are, and this rarely works. It probably never works.
So in the process of getting the mind to settle, we don’t try and change the mind and the torrent of unconscious thoughts, we give our awareness something else to do – usually watching the breath and to experience breathing as deeply as possible. There are other techniques that help, like having a solid base (lotus posture or sitting upright in a chair), keeping your spine straight to keep the diaphragm from binding and to facilitate relaxed breath cycles, meditating in prescribed times in a particular place with a particular group (having a routine, since consistency is the key to all training), keeping your eyes open and softly focused on a neutral background, etc. These all have to do with working with the neurological functions that unconsciously govern our body, and give us the best shot at settling and training our attention.
The consequence of doing these techniques is that eventually, the mind will start to settle on its own, and the content of consciousness can be observed rather than remaining fused to the people, places, things and phenomenon of consciousness, whereby we move neither toward or away from any impulse that arises.
Understand that you have many millions of years of evolution working against you to do any of the above, and while a beginning technique like following the breath is a simple instruction, most people find it nearly impossible to do owing to the gravity of their thoughts etc.
More later. Including the dissolution of "I."
JL
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WBraun
climber
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Aug 25, 2015 - 10:27am PT
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The dissolution of "I" can never ever be done although the mayavadis always attempt such nonsense.
It would be the same as trying to make all snowflake patterns the same.
Impossible to do ...
As each individual has personality and their own individuality eternally.
But there will always be some Mayavadi fool who will try to "merge into the impersonal Brahmin" and commit spiritual suicide.
That's why they are so dangerous to themselves and everyone else as they will always mislead the Ultimate Truth.
The atheists are tame compared to the Mayavadi fools ......
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Aug 25, 2015 - 10:52am PT
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Gentlemen:
I repeated someone else’s scenario to suggest how multiple perspectives can allow one to see (what otherwise appears to be impossible or silly)--in order to transcend limiting paradigms.
Apparently, it’s not easy to see.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Aug 25, 2015 - 11:09am PT
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Nice exposition on meditation, John.
More later. Including the dissolution of "I"
Oh oh. That doesn't sound good!
Linear Temporal Logic
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Aug 25, 2015 - 12:27pm PT
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If you read a little Chalmers or Harris, Healje, you might update your ideas a litle. Brains are the explicate manifestation of objective functioning - I.E., data processing. Sentience of WHAT is being processed is anothr matter for various reasons
I'd have thought it would have been clear from posts a few pages back that I have been reading Chalmers and think his ideas share some of the same weakness as the infinite nondualism / 'unbroken wholeness' / Implicate Order - nano/micro/macro scale problems, problems with 'why brains?', and problems elucidating plausible (non-metaphysical) descriptions of any linkage whatsoever between objective functioning and sentience. For me that's a part of the problem with panpsychism - why us and not sentient rocks or trees or free-ranging amorphous electromagnetic intelligences ?
You really can't have it both ways. If brains are the explicate, macro-scale manifestation of "objective functioning", then by definition - and in the same way Bohm considered a particle as the vessel for wave function info - brains are also the explicate manifestation of subjective reasoning and sentience. You can't separate them and have it both ways under that paradigm.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 25, 2015 - 12:41pm PT
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Healyje, where I think you are getting hung up is not so much with the linkage or correlations between brain and experience - which is obvious to anyone who ever drank a beer or had an operation - but rather in a possible underlying belief that experience is REDUCIBLE to objective/neural functioning, that at some fundamental level, they are selfsame, or at any rate, the objective was the real and primary thing - sort of like saying heads is more "real" than tails per a coin. Sam Harris sorts this out rather handily in the following.
And when particles are held by some to be comprised with that which has no physical/material extent, the primacy of your "stuff" turns to ash in a hurry, wouldn't you say?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fajfkO_X0l0
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Aug 26, 2015 - 12:20pm PT
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In work with Pribram, Bohm and he thought the brain showed activity that looked like holograms. It later led Bohm to write a book entitled, “Thought as a System.” In it he claimed that the most significant problem facing Man is thought itself. The issue, he said, was that thought was a solver of problems—but mainly the cause of problems. He said thought was essentially incoherent as a system. Bohm wrote: “Thought [as a system of thoughts, felts, feelings, state of the body, all of society—none of it is fixed] is constantly creating problems and then trying to solve them. But as it tries to solve them it makes [the problems] worse because [a thought system] doesn’t notice that it's creating them, and the more it thinks, the more problems it creates.” Bohm describes thought systems as mutually causative systems between what we would call the mental and the physical, with information linking the two. This goes beyond the idea of social construction. I think Bohm was saying that thinking changes the physical world by thinking about it.
It might be noted that Bohm met Krishnamurti in the 50s, and they exchanged views in their correspondence.
Here is Krishnamurti:
Awareness isn't something mysterious that you must practice; it isn't something that can be learnt only from the speaker, or from some bearded gentleman or other.
… Just to be aware, what does it mean? To be aware that you are sitting there and that you are reading this; to be aware of the space you are in, its shape, lighting, acoustics; to observe the various colors that people wear, your own attitudes and their attitudes, efforts to listen, all the scratching, yawning, boredom, and dissatisfaction at not being able to get something to carry home; all the agreement or disagreement with what is being said. …All that is a very superficial part of awareness. Behind that there is the response of our conditioning: … And our conditioning is really very deep. …..
Being aware of your conditioning, you must watch it choicelessly; you must see the fact and not give an opinion or judgment about the fact. In other words, you must look at the fact without thought. Then there is awareness, a state of attention without a centre, without frontiers, where the known doesn't interfere.
Be well.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Aug 26, 2015 - 12:35pm PT
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I don't have time to respond to a bunch of the posts on both threads for another day or so, but do want to say the problem with Bohm's ideas, like Chalmer's, is you run afoul of binding and scale problems or more generally, as you would say, linkage problems.
No matter how you look at it you can't separate mind from brain - no brain, no mind - hence the binding issue. Where or how does that happen? On what scale? We can assume neurons are not decorative so does the binding happen at that scale? A neuron constituent scale? Or is it bound at the macro, whole-brain scale?
Gotta dash...
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Aug 26, 2015 - 01:31pm PT
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Probably nobody here is interested,
Paul R for eg,
but another podcast has just posted between Sam Harris and Paul Bloom (psych who studies morality, consciousness, all the hot subjects du jour). This is Round II because the last one was so good it just wasn't enough.
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-dark-side
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 26, 2015 - 05:02pm PT
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No matter how you look at it you can't separate mind from brain - no brain, no mind.
n fact we can't separate anythng for anything else. But can you see the opposite view - no mind, no brain?
Probably not, because our view of object constancy will always tell us that the tangible thing, form or object (like a brain) gives rise to that which is (sentience) reducible to its source. But as mentioned, Harris and many other have nicely, simply and cogently eliminted the mistaken notion of reducing mind to neurons.
This is one that our common sense struggles to fathom and people tend to get the gist of it all at once.
But what do Harris and other neuroscientists mean when they say, “consciousness is reducibly subjective.”
It means, says Sam, “that we cannot reduce the experiential side to talk of objective function and neurotransmitters and brain states because half of the reality we are talking about is the qualitative, experiential side. So if you are trying to study human consciousness by examining states of the brain, all we can do is correlate experiential changes with changes in brain states. But no matter how tight these correlations become, it never gives us license to throw out the first person, experiential side. Therefore the hope that we are going to talk about consciousness shorn of any kind of qualitative, experiential phenomenon is I believe a false one. So we have to understand both sides of it – subjective, and objective.”
It also means that you cannot, so to speak, understand the objective at depth by merely studying the subjective, and vica versa. This is a law of reality few understand - or believe. Most staunch materialists will disavow any limitation to measuring, instead insisting that the subjective can be entirely understood and known through analysis of the an object - the brain. This falacy is what Harris has so ably junked, and good on Sam for making it so we never have to go back to it.
JL
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WBraun
climber
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Aug 26, 2015 - 05:10pm PT
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In it he claimed that the most significant problem facing Man is thought itself.
Definitely not.
It's understanding ourselves that is the most significant problem.
Instead modern science decided it's more important to understand everything else but the self.
By the way Krishnamurti is a total Mayavadi impersonalist philosopher.
This why you have so many problems with "no thing".
The Mayavadi school always tries to reduce everything to zero, no thing.
Life itself is full of variegatedness, personality and individuality eternally .....
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Aug 27, 2015 - 03:42pm PT
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healyje: . . . . no brain, no mind - hence the binding issue. Where or how does that happen? On what scale? We can assume neurons are not decorative so does the binding happen at that scale? A neuron constituent scale? Or is it bound at the macro, whole-brain scale?
Maybe.
The binding or linkage problem could be no problem at all.
Where is awareness? Mind or brain? You seem to be assuming that the heavy lifting is being done by the brain. You might think that I’m saying that it occurs in the mind. I want you to know that some folks think that neither are the fountain of being. We just can’t say with any certainty where awareness occurs. For all we know, awareness IS what is perceived.
What makes us think that the brain is doing the heavy lifting? What makes us think that the brain could not be more than a conduit for the mind? Using the perspective described as the Allegory of the Cave, how do we know that all that what we perceive is not merely a projection?
Binding isn’t the problem. I think that’s the problem that could arise from the assumptions that you appear to be making. The problem is that we don’t know (maybe, can’t) what mind is to begin with. You’re assuming that it is the brain.
Efforts to observe plain and simple awareness are at least an effort to gather “data” directly. Actually, everything that happens in every moment is “data.” What can be seen?
Werner:
I look at all views. I’m not taking sides. I’m always confused. I appreciate impersonalists, Christians, atheists, and whoever claims they are looking closely at their lives and experience-as-experience. I like everything. I trust nothing. I’m from Missouri.
Be well.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Aug 27, 2015 - 03:45pm PT
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For all we know, awareness IS what is perceived
Not bad.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Aug 27, 2015 - 06:05pm PT
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So if a brain is required for consciousness/mind then what is required for a brain?
Well, the stuff of corporeal matter and the evolutionary need to produce it (the brain) and its byproduct mind.
And what is required for corporeal matter and evolution to exist?
Well, the solar system and our planet, appropriate temperature and water of course.
And what is required for all of the above but a universe in which there are specific and rigorous laws of nature that allow for some things and disallow others. Any miracle would, after all, violate natural law and therefore be impossible, as miraculous events stand outside the laws of nature by definition.
One does not violate the laws of physics.
So where does consciousness come from?
It is written into the possibilities/potential of physical matter and the laws of thermodynamics that are the universe itself.
In a sense then, there is an argument to be made for a pre-existing consciousness if only as a potential, some would argue, given infinite parameters, an inevitable product of what is.
Is consciousness, like matter then, an integral part of the universe based on its potential manifestation?
The mystery is not so much why there is anything but rather why there is THIS thing, and why is it so riddled with regulation and what do the products (consciousness) of those regulations imply about the nature of that order?
If we imagine a variety of universes it’s not too difficult to imagine one without the possibility of consciousness, but here we are...
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