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zBrown
Ice climber
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Oct 10, 2015 - 04:43pm PT
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"Consciousness is part of the natural world. It depends, we believe, only on mathematics and logic and on the imperfectly known laws of physics, chemistry, and biology; it does not arise from some magical or otherworldly quality."
We know this how? Imperfectly?
You know what they say about practice and what it makes, right?
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cintune
climber
The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen
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Oct 10, 2015 - 05:11pm PT
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"At least it hides the face partly well,
so you have the apparent face, the apple, hiding
the visible but hidden, the face of the person.
It's something that happens constantly.
Everything we see hides another thing;
we always want to see what is hidden by what we see.
There is an interest in that which is hidden
and which the visible does not show us.
This interest can take the form of a quite intense
feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between
the visible that is hidden and the visible that
is present."
-Magritte
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Oct 11, 2015 - 05:16pm PT
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Where is the (quantum) Hilbert space? What are its vectors? What is the inner product and norm and metric?
First steps for mathematizing one's metaphysics!
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Oct 12, 2015 - 06:40am PT
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"Lady Tsogyal asked the Lotus-Born master: What is the dividing line between pain and pleasure? The master replied: Pain is uneasiness of mind, while pleasure is mental ease. When applying this experientially to your stream-of-being, look into the painful state of uneasiness and see that it does not consist of any concrete substance but rather is mind. Mind is empty, and this empty quality is a state of ease—this is the vital point of changing pain to ease."
(Rinpoche, Tulku Urgyen. Padmasambhava. Treasures from Juniper Ridge: The Profound Treasure Instructions of Padmasambhava to the Dakini Yeshe Tsogyal. p. 98.)
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Oct 12, 2015 - 10:19am PT
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Healje said "bummer you can't simply cut to the chase, explicitly own your sh#t and say something specific about what you do believe. "
"And that's mainly because you're arguing against a bunch of strawmen of your own warped construction rather than simply arguing for whatever it is you believe. "
Beliefs? what are they and how important are they? Healje want's JL to state his belief's so he can argue with him about them.
Buddhism says if you look closely you will see that beliefs are a construct of the mind ( just thinking) not good or bad, just an act of thinking. IMO you have to be very careful with beliefs, hold them very loosely . People have been known to kill in the name of beliefs.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Oct 12, 2015 - 12:24pm PT
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In any physical theory it should be possible, at the least, to give a probability for the outcome of an experiment. In particular, it should be possible to give a probability for the outcome of a measurement of position. Given a probability function for the result a measurement of position, it is is possible to construct a Hilbert space in which that probability function is given by the inner product. It is then possible to show that, in the absence of other interaction, vectors in this Hilbert space must satisfy a Schroedinger equation. This describes the whole value and interpretation of Hilbert space in quantum mechanics
C. Francis, Cambridge
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Oct 12, 2015 - 04:02pm PT
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Cintune:
Magritte’s writing that you posted is wonderful. (It's postmodern, don't you think?)
Ed:
(That Wiki URL on cognitive maps is woefully meager by academic standards.)
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Oct 12, 2015 - 06:41pm PT
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MikeL, I find your criticism woefully meager.
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Oct 12, 2015 - 06:54pm PT
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Academics? Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.
Committee: You just thought you became a bird and were flying, right?
Carlos: No I became a crow.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Oct 12, 2015 - 09:02pm PT
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Beliefs? what are they and how important are they? Healje want's JL to state his belief's so he can argue with him about them.
The only belief of his I have an argument with is his claim that the only meditative experiences worth having happen in groups with a teacher.
Seriously? And you don't have a problem with that statement?
As for the rest of it, it's him who's arguing relentlessly against science without ever explicitly stating what he's prepared to argue for. He implicitly drops enough clues in his arguments against science, which are getting boring, more interesting would be him explicitly discussing what he does believe in - far more interesting.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Oct 12, 2015 - 09:19pm PT
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It seems to me JL is not necessarily arguing against science so much as he is arguing for the Experiential Adventures, whatever they may be (a lot of sitting required). To me experiential adventures would include lots of climbing, but he defines them as group Zensits. Go figure . . .
;>)
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Oct 12, 2015 - 10:53pm PT
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I think he believes those 'Experiential Adventures' illuminate unique universalities and paradoxes, but he never speaks of them directly, but rather in just terms of what isn't [sciencewise].
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Oct 13, 2015 - 09:59am PT
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Ed:
Gregory Murphy: “The Big Book of Concepts”
George Lakoff: “Metaphors We Live By”
Dedre Gentner & Albert Stevens: “Mental Models.”
P.N. Johnson-Laird: “Mental Models: Towards a Cognitive Science of Language, Inference, and Consciousness.”
J.F. Sowa: “Conceptual Structures: Information processing in Mind and Machine” and “Knowledge Representation: Logical, Philosophical, and Computational Foundations.”
These are all benchmark works in the field. (Gentner was on my dissertation committee. Her claim to fame is analogical reasoning and mental models.)
I would also highly suggest Barsalou’s work for an updated viewpoint on cognition, one in particular that would be relevant in this thread: “Situating abstract concepts.” In D. Pecher & R. A. Zwaan (Eds.), Grounding cognition: the role of perception and action in memory, language, and thinking, 129-163. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
You can believe anything you want. Be well.
(A cognitive map is a concept, a mental model, even a metaphor.)
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Oct 13, 2015 - 11:40am PT
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thanks for the reading list!
You have repeated your assertion that all this stuff, collectively, can be considered "concepts,"
"mental models," "metaphors," etc... and they may well be... but earlier in these many discussions you were seeking "Truth" and everything else was "woefully meager."
Good luck to you in your search.
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Oct 13, 2015 - 01:31pm PT
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MikeL's search might be over, as in done.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Oct 13, 2015 - 05:08pm PT
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Ed:
You don’t need to read anything. I’m sure you understand all these things. Wiki was simply a poor reference to my mind.
Truth *was* an issue for me, but now I don’t care so very much. Conventionally, “truth” may be a red herring. I admit I am leaning more toward the poetic than the scientific these days, although both can be helpful.
Ha-ha (read, absurdity). Might I reverse and say that nothing is meagre anymore? (Perhaps, you dislike that statement.) Honestly, I’m having difficulty speaking / writing here. On the one hand, my past training (Madhyamika Buddhism) says that there is the conventional and the ultimate. On the other hand, there is another view that everything—but Everything—is just here now, with no elaborations. That is: the ultimate subsumes the conventional. Nothing falls outside. So, I’m stuck just talking, and for the most part, it’s just another elaboration. The capability to express myself is inadequate the the needs, as is all that I’ve been trained as an academic. I know all this “stuff” (I think), and yet most of it seems irrelevant or not-up-to-the-mark to talk about.
Sh*t, everything matters. It’s all One. What can one say?
DMT is right. Everything is possible.
I want you to know (not that it’s important), that I appreciate your commitment and conviction in what you’re doing and your views. Without those, nihilism and solipsism are indeed life-destroying. But (and I think you have these), being circumspect, systematic, thoughtful, and curious leads one to everything. You have those activities / characteristics in spades.
It doesn’t matter that we disagree. It’s the conversation that matters. I am thankful.
Be well.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Oct 13, 2015 - 05:16pm PT
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Sitting with some of my spiritual friends last week, a psychiatrist quipped, "we are all waiting for Godot."
Classic!
. . . in so many ways.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Oct 13, 2015 - 07:23pm PT
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It’s the conversation that matters. I am thankful.
we agree totally on that...
and maybe I'm a bit rough on you, but even though I know you only virtually I feel a good challenge to explain what I'm thinking to you, and I perhaps challenge you.
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