What is "Mind?"

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Largo

Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
Topic Author's Reply - Oct 30, 2015 - 03:06pm PT
Blue is not an objective reality

Actually, it is an objective reality. It is a specific wavelength of radiation.
--


It's amazing how people keep bungling this. I think it has something to with not only the object constancy rap discussed earlier, and the fact that many can't differentiate their own inner life as being different from and not selfsame at external reality, whereby blue (a human experience) IS a specific wavelength no matter how and by whom it is observed, from a Venutian on down.

I argue with Fruity but take his cue to look at a little neuroscience and see how our brains fashion reality that we swear is an object "out there."

There's an old Zen koan: What's the reality of the moving flag?

And what do you think is moving the flag? The wind?

JL
Ward Trotter

Trad climber
Oct 30, 2015 - 03:59pm PT
Claim #1: No perception system, no color. Agree or disagree?

Is it being asserted here that there isn't a UV frequency corresponding to blue independent of an observer?

I argue with Fruity but take his cue to look at a little neuroscience and see how our brains fashion reality

So "our brains" created the blue light streaming from the sun by retroactively travelling back 5 billion years to somehow manufacture the physics that made blue light possible?
jgill

Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
Oct 30, 2015 - 04:51pm PT
I argue with Fruity but take his cue to look at a little neuroscience and see how our brains fashion reality that we swear is an object "out there."

There IS something "out there" with which we interact, particularly in physical contact. We may sense it differently but when we walk into a stone wall there are physical consequences. Please retreat from this metaphysical flapdoodle about the world being a construct . . . admittedly it may look or sound or smell or feel different to different people but as biological machines we suffer the damage from an encounter with physical reality.
Ward Trotter

Trad climber
Oct 30, 2015 - 05:22pm PT
Blue light Rx:

Very good idea to wear blue blocker glasses after the sun goes down and when staring into computer and phone screens. The blue light from artificial light,television, phones,computers (especially mandated LEDs) signals the brain to stop producing melatonin, among other unwanted effects.( Blue light over-exposure is now thought to be perhaps responsible for forms of retinal damage being diagnosed with increasing frequency in today's blue light world)

Blue light is quire rarefied (biologically) and is therefore used by living systems as a signaling frequency.

It is further thought that an over-abundance of blue light (at night) has a deleterious mismatch effect on the Suprachiasmatic Nucleus which is the region of the brain known as the body's master clock. This clock is yoked to circadian rhythms and is responsible for controlling all the peripheral clocks located throughout the body.
The interesting thing about the SCN is that it must run slightly faster than the peripheral clocks in order to be properly synchronized. This is because the SCN is located in the brain and is further from the earth (most of the time) than the peripheral cellular clocks. Lol.

Blue light overexposure is is akin to space station astronauts who experience numerous dawns and sunsets in relatively short amounts of time. Not good.
Largo

Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
Topic Author's Reply - Oct 30, 2015 - 06:16pm PT
Is it being asserted here that there isn't a UV frequency corresponding to blue independent of an observer?

-


There most assuredly is a UV frequency that WE as humans call blue. Other creatures might call it gold or orange or whatever, according to what their sense data tells them and how their biology processes said waves.

The point to all of this is to start to get a handle on how our minds and our bodies in part determine what we believe is "objective" reality "out there."

Look at it this way: Strip away all human sense organs - sight, sound, feel, etc. What is "out there?" A blue sky?

Nope. No scientist will ever tell you that light itself is a specific color.

JL



MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Oct 30, 2015 - 07:46pm PT
The point to all of this is to start to get a handle on how our minds and our bodies in part determine what we believe is "objective" reality "out there."

By interacting with it. By seeing, feeling, hearing, and tasting it from the time we come out of the womb if not before. Our nervous systems give us the basics to get by in this world but genes can't transmit instructions in enough detail to allow us to be mechanisms ready to tackle the challenges of reality from the moment we roll off the assembly line.





Look at it this way: Strip away all human sense organs - sight, sound, feel, etc. What is "out there?" A blue sky?

Well, if you are a goldfish, apparently so. Unless you require language skills for a blue sky to be "out there."
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Oct 30, 2015 - 08:12pm PT
Try Faulkner.


"I can tell you something simpler than that," she said. "Weep." Then she reached the table.. But it was only her body that stopped, her hand going out so smooth and quick that his hand only caught her wrist, the two hands locked together on the big blue pistol, between the photograph and the little hunk of iron medal on its colored ribbon, against that old flag that a heap of people I knew had never seen and a heap more of them wouldn't recognize if they did, and over all of it the old man's voice that ought not to have sounded like that either.

The Country Shall Not Perish
William Faulkner




Good comparison.

Sturgeon brought a stream-of-consciousness technique to his characters, and his writings were compared to those of William Faulkner and James Joyce, although Sturgeon's troubled souls were found in far-flung worlds.


http://articles.latimes.com/1985-05-11/business/fi-9870_1_science-fiction
healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
Oct 31, 2015 - 03:48am PT
Did Humans Evolve to See Things as They Really Are?
Do we perceive reality as it is?

By Scientific American / Michael Shermer | Oct 20, 2015

One of the deepest problems in epistemology is how we know the nature of reality. Over the millennia philosophers have offered many theories, from solipsism (only one's mind is known to exist) to the theory that natural selection shaped our senses to give us an accurate, or verdical, model of the world.

...
paul roehl

Boulder climber
california
Oct 31, 2015 - 09:02am PT
Beginning of chapter three in Joyce's "Ulysses": "Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more..." It's a kind of "I refute it thus" passage, brilliant and fascinating dealing with exactly the recent issues on this thread:" the limits of the diaphane..." Try reading, highly recommended.
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Oct 31, 2015 - 09:11am PT
Why read crap when quality is out there?


My motivation was having fun with variations on blue as humans see it.

Your reactions nicely illustrate another issue on this thread, though. In the most common usage subjective refers to opinion as compared to fact.
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Oct 31, 2015 - 09:31am PT
a UV frequency corresponding to blue

(1) A "UV frequency corresponding to blue" or an EM frequency corresponding to blue? Accuracy matters. Right?

(2) Interesting point / research about 470nm light (aka blue light) possibly suppressing melatonin and interfering with sleep and rhythms. I heard about this before in passing, thanks for the reminder.
paul roehl

Boulder climber
california
Oct 31, 2015 - 09:45am PT
One of the deepest problems in epistemology is how we know the nature of reality. Over the millennia philosophers have offered many theories, from solipsism (only one's mind is known to exist) to the theory that natural selection shaped our senses to give us an accurate, or verdical, model of the world.

There are some blatantly obvious aspects of sensory perception that feed the brain false information like the refraction of water that places the fish somewhere besides the place we perceive. It seems reason often assists the mind in understanding these falsities. It does seem nonsensical that evolutionary adaptation would endow us with less than perfectly accurate sensory ability but in some cases it certainly does.
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Oct 31, 2015 - 09:54am PT
It does seem nonsensical

Actually in the fullness of evo theory it makes sense. E by ns is a blind watchmaker. It adapts the best it can given the circumstances.

Also, it evolved reason (you cited it in your post) and learning to override faulty shortcomings (e.g, refractive effects). Pretty impressive I say.

Another fave along these lines...


So we use our reason and learning abilities to override the illusion, in this case a color illusion.

You'll note both A and B squares reflect the same lightwave packages (or profile) yet they are perceived differently ("interpreted" differently, "constructed" differently) by our brains and their perception circuitry.

This jives 100% with Largo's neuro/psych description.
BASE104

Social climber
An Oil Field
Oct 31, 2015 - 10:46am PT
There most assuredly is a UV frequency that WE as humans call blue

Largo, you are making this too complicated. Yes, people do all share (with some color blind exceptions) the perception of color. This particular color we named blue. Blue, of course, is just a name, but we have taken this consensus of blue and put it in a slot in the electromagnetic spectrum.

This isn't that hard to understand. It only gets difficult when you swear off all human knowledge and try to recreate your perception as an individual, perhaps a meditating fellow who has come to question all physical reality.

When you go that far, I think it is time to come home. The color of the sky is a specific wavelength of light. We know the entire spectrum now, all the way to gamma rays (the most energetic, short wave, COLOR of light), and have for a long time.

What color do you say the sky is? Has all of this Zen stuff made you like MikeL, who apparently believes nothing? We would all be living in caves if we, as creatures, weren't curious and able to learn. It is our greatest attribute as a species.

All it is is a specific wavelength of light that we call blue. Other languages use different words, but they all mean the same thing.

Jesus. We are arguing over whether blue light is real now. How far are you willing to go in order to unlearn things? Is Zen perfection some sort of solo voyage where you start from square one, and the universe is only perceptible by a single person?

You say that you work in a group setting. Do you all stop at red lights on the way to your meetings? If so, my case is settled. You should use a different analogy to get your point across.

Some animals, mainly the nocturnal ones, are colorblind. Other animals, such as some birds, can see more color than we can. All you need to do is dissect the eye and examine the ration of rods to cones.
jstan

climber
Oct 31, 2015 - 10:55am PT
I never got an answer to a comment I made when Largo smashed his leg so badly amputation became an option, I said, at a minimum, this horrible state of affairs did mean that Largo would no longer claim there is no real world out there.

Silly me.
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Oct 31, 2015 - 11:01am PT
BASE, with all due respect, stick to ff discovery.

Every single one of your paragraphs is in error.

You do neuro/psych an injustice by posting so recklessly.

Sorry to have to be so harsh.

.....

Moose, before we get to your great questions in your last post (re: perceptual differences, etc), weigh in here so we are clear: Opine on the latest BASE post. Thanks.

.....

If BASE or anyone else were truly interested in this subject, or resolving the misunderstanding herein, they'd get off their posting egos and go watch just the first few minutes of episode one of The Brain, by David Eagleman in which coincidentally he opens with this very issue: the world without color, without sound, without taste and smell in the absence of perception. But it seems the detractors from basic neuro/psych on this thread have no interest to do this; they'd rather just post counterfactual nonsense. Humans being all too human I guess. It's depressing.

Because Largo is incorrect about some things in his metaphysical push or "agenda" (let's say) doesn't mean he's incorrect about everything.
jstan

climber
Oct 31, 2015 - 11:07am PT
Sorry? That's not like you.
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Oct 31, 2015 - 11:12am PT
Sorry?

Don't you mean only around the vulgar insolent bully?
He's set the tone here going back years.

Anyways, thanks for the glasnost.

.....

You're welcome, Jammer.
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Oct 31, 2015 - 11:34am PT
Largo, I think it's pretty clear a few here read only your posts.

So, if I may, YOU might have better luck making YOUR points re: reality vs perception of reality... the distinction thereof... with smell, the sense of smell.

YOU might ask BASE or dtm, for eg, if you can get past their egos, if the smell of dogshit or the smell of puke - or if that's going to be a quibble because they are products of living things - if the smell of hydrogen sulfide gas - would exist in the absence of living things and their brains and their perception circuitry.

Step #1: clarity on smell: smell (perception/sense) vs chemical (reality)

Then, once that's clear for them (if in fact it ever becomes so, lol) then bridge to the harder wave (sound and light) inputs/perceptions.

Step #2: clarity on color: color (perception/sense) vs electromagnetic wave (reality)

.....

Moose, instead of referencing "blue" at wiki, I'd suggest referencing "color" at wiki, it's even more clarifying and to the point - stating right up front that color is a perception. No brains... no perception... no color.

Or else "smell" at wiki.
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Oct 31, 2015 - 03:49pm PT
I said, at a minimum, this horrible state of affairs did mean that Largo would no longer claim there is no real world out there.



If there is a pervasive consciousness in the universe it would be a great pity if it were not amused by our giant brains acquiring this capacity to stun themselves.
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