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Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
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mental masturbation
go climb a rock
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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I think you underestimate the significance of F=ma, and that is relevant to this discussion.
Before there was such a thing as "dynamics," that is, if you look at that equation, it links force to acceleration... which is the first time that is done in a quantified manner correctly. What it means is, for instance, the planets can revolve around the Sun without the help of some external agent, say angels, or the guiding hand of God, the planets are subject to a force, gravity, and they accelerate under that force.
Up until that time the motion of a thing had to be "animated" by some agent, and the only agents we knew at that time were living agents, that's why we use the verb "to animate." After F=ma it all seems drab, but the existence of a force between two objects, the universal law of gravity, is all it takes to set the solar system into motion.
That is a tremendously important insight, and it launches an era of human thought where the "life" like attributes of matter, motion for instance, need not be actual "life" but just plain matter... the attribute of mass is sufficient to both generate a gravitational force, and set bodies into motion, without recourse to some hidden life force.
These dynamics can be sufficiently complex to do quite extraordinary things, life itself, for instance. So it is not unreasonable that at least some lines of thought concerning the nature of mind, consciousness, experience, etc, are contained with in those same dynamics. And the conjecture that, in the end, it is all just the physical interactions which give rise to the wonderful phenomena of life, and of humans. It's not such a stretch, really, but for some it is unthinkable.
Largo is being disingenuous by saying no one has proposed a definition of consciousness, in a practical sense, we have all defined it as what we know when we are conscious (a reason why everyone has an opinion about it, simply because everyone has such experience). I was only trying to point out that we might be as wrong about our own idea of what our conscious state is as we are when we are judging what the conscious state of another is, or that they even have one.
I find it (perhaps too) interesting to think that we might completely misunderstand our own "consciousness" and be demanding definitions of something that doesn't actually exist. For instance, the reason why, when you put to trying to describe "consciousness" the definition evaporates... it might be because it really isn't anything like we think it is.
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WBraun
climber
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Ed ".... it might be because it really isn't anything like we think it is."
Might means guessing again.
You need to ask "Consciousness" itself to get the real answer that's free from all material contamination.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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I'm not guessing, Werner... I'm a mental speculator...
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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Ed,
I just pulled F=ma out of my ass as an example of how we manage to get around our mind's poor ability to think objectively and quantitatively.
We have to use symbols and a very specific vocabulary in order to share ideas like this in a manner that leaves zero room for interpretation. 4 symbols in that little equation mean a hell of a lot. If you speak that symbolic language, then it is easy to share without error. It wouldn't lend itself easily to a fable retold over and over.
Largo seems to act like "scientism" is something easy that we all fall back on. I am saying that it is hard, and we require a heavy symbolic lanquage, as well as an artificial objectivity cloak (the scientific method) just to keep from stepping on our dicks. Our brains are subjective and intuitive. Science requires keeping a pretty strict straightjacket on.
The more I think about it, I can't imagine quantitative work even being done before written language.
JL is saying something that I just won't accept. The idea that we will NEVER be able to peel back the lid and see experience in a brain. Never is a long time, and humans are pretty clever.
I can't bust open my hard drive and see jack on the disks, but I sure can if I look at it using a machine designed for that purpose. Slap it into another computer.
Brains have memory, albeit imperfect. It is already well known that you can see things going on in different parts of the brain during various experiences with brain imaging techniques. So the work has begun. Might take a couple of lifetimes, but the brain is physical. I would bet that it will be figured out if we don't blow ourselves up first.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 3, 2011 - 12:34am PT
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The reason I know for a fact that you'll never peel back the brainpan and "see" experience is that I know the basic idea that objective functions and subjective experience are not the same thing, ergo it doesn't matter what we find in the next 1000 years per the meat brain, your Uncle will still not be your Aunt, no matter how hard you want to make it so. remember the rule of mind: the map is NOT the territory. You can scoff at this but look back in ten years and see if it is so or not. Reality simply is not going to change in that time, whereby the objective will become the subjective.
Another thing here is that "right" has a totally different meaning in the subjective realm. So does true, and the notion of "split truth," which is a bedevilment of psychology and very hard to deal with.
Another thought is that while many people rail against consciousnss being "special," is it certainly unusual compared to all the other matter in the galaxy. For the most basic material realities science had to concoct fantastic thought systems to numerically represent things like QM and event horizons. And yet for something as unique and complicated and slippery as experience, people are trying to use causal models based on digital processing and computers, just really nifty ones.
Arg.
JL
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Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
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operating system
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Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
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anybody here OT?
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MH2
climber
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You're whiffing, Dr. Sprock.
Largo,
There is nothing but maps inside your head. Maps of whatever comes within range of your senses. Studies of the visual and auditory systems, smell, taste, touch, all show that the sensations are projected, with varying degrees of precision and accuracy, onto regions of your brain. Those maps in turn give rise to other maps which combine sense modalities and extract features from the field of awareness. Consciousness and our awareness of our experience may well be just a higher-order map of sensation.
It is a map with a purpose, though, and that purpose is mainly to use the information in the map to tell your muscles what to do.
An EEG will never give you a good idea of what is going on in the brain. It doesn't get down to the size scale necessary.
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Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
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operating thetan
any here?
anybody need free coffee house auditing?
i have my own e-meter,
we can unlock all your engrams and past life experiences,
i work on the cheap...
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allapah
climber
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human meat brain constantly making predictions and choices (based on learned memory)- some predictions resonate more strongly (pluck one guitar string, the other vibrates)- this cross-resonance in the neural network (factor in the Castenaden energy body as part of this neural network) manifests in the mammalian consciousness as a sensory register of Mental process acting on the universe, an organizing force acting at work on time/space-
Mental Process is potential at each quantum pixel in the field (here again, the still-missing link in cosmological physics) , except that some zones are more easily penetrated than others, i.e., Mind is greater in climber's neural network than in the stone of the mountain, so it's a weak force, does anybody else notice a spike in macro-mental process in the time/space surrounding big climbs that you do?
Map is not the territory- map and territory are both caught up in a synchronized movement we call Mind… True, there necessarily has to be a discontinuity between 1st person "cell" consciousness and 3rd person "organism" consciousness, but one can contain the other like a smaller radio station receiving a signal from a bigger one, so that this woo-woo we want to poo-poo is echoes we are receiving from outside our Plato's Cave- the consciousness we experience is at least a partial replication of the Mind-field consciousness containing us, which could potentially manifest in the system at any time
currently, style of a climb is measured by the following equation: how much climbing vs. how much advantage over the mountain? Another way of putting it: style is the degree to which climber and stone of mountain were engaged in collateral mental process
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Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
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the mind is a terrible waste of time,
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Largo
You say:
"I don't suspect that some folks will forego the "broadcast" or emergence model of mind, or maybe as with other non-material "things," folks will seek out a kind of experiential graviton, some physical vortext or slip stream of rip tide that we can measure and say, "There it is." Marlow is already doing thing, with nothing, and that's why he must return to his corner till he can think clearly and know that his experience of watching those old Gomer Pyle reruns is not the same thing as Washington Column."
You still haven't answered my question, only pushed it away by help of very abstract reasoning, so I repeat the question beneath in case you will try more seriously. And I repeat: I am not thinking that measurements and subjective experience is one and the same phenomenon, just read my words to see.
Repeated:
You earlier said:
You're still thinking that measurements and subjective experience are fundamentally the same, or are simply different ways of saying the same things. I'm not going to get into the years I spent doing neurofeedback and looking at qEEGs and so forth (not only is every brain different, but the measurements simply aren't the experience and don't even hint what is going on beyone the most generic mood markers).
Answer:
I am not thinking that measurements and subjective experience is one and the same phenomenon and I am not thinking of getting you into talking about the years you spent doing neurofeedback and so on.
Just think that the instruments I am talking about are far far more advanced than the instruments you used when you studied the brain and think that they are able to measure what happens in the dynamic landscape of the brain perfectly. And then think that while I measure your brain activity you tell me what you’re thinking, feeling and so on, so that connected to the different thoughts and feelings you are experiencing after a long time of study a particular and steady pattern of brain-activity emerges among the analyzed measurements. Then particular patterns of brain activity will correspond to particular thoughts and feelings. If so I can by seeing the perfectly measured dynamic brain-activity of yours alone tell you what you are thinking and feeling nearly without mistakes.
If this situation was achieved, would you then accept that subjective experience could be measured?
New comment:
Note that there is no claim made of measuring thoughts and feelings or doing directly as you are subjectively experiencing them. What is the case, is that I am able to measure your brain activity perfectly, every single cell/neuron and their connections. The only reason why I can tell you what you are experiencing is that you have for a long time told me what you think and feel as I have been measuring your brain activity. And through this measuring while telling a steady and distinct pattern of brain activity has been connected to certain distinct toughts, feelings and doings.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Base 104 said,
I would go so far as to say that prior to written language, humans were nakedly unable to think in quantitative terms. We HAVE to have written language in order to communicate on a much clearer level.
Since I have a wealth of experience dealing with illiterates in Nepal, I can address this. Many of the smartest people I've ever known are so illiterate they have to sign documents with their thumb print since they can't write their own names.
However, many of the Nepalese illiterates are very keen businessmen and women. Most of them speak multiple languages from grammars as different as Chinese and Indo-European. Their memories are vastly superior to ours since they can not rely on written notes and they are often able to sing for 24 hours straight without repeating a single song.
Only when I was quoting them large amounts of data from my notebooks many years later, was the advantage of my literacy obvious to them over their superior memories and calculating powers.
Of course these people had been kept deliberately illiterate by the ruling elites of their own country in order to preserve caste and class privileges. This nasty development began to take place within a generation of the invention of cuniform and hieroglyphics.
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WBraun
climber
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Exactly Jan
Plus .... many many years ago a mans word meant just that.
It was honored.
Now a days these stupid people need lawyers, courts, a billion files of written crap stored in buildings and computers along with billions of stupid laws because no one honors and holds their word.
Idiotic world we've created in the name of "Advancement" ......
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MikeL
climber
SANTA CLARA, CA
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You're a humanist.
Wrong thread.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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I'm a humanist too.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 3, 2011 - 12:17pm PT
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Ed wrote:
"actually, what Largo is showing, to be correct, is an image of Bev Johnson... not actually Bev Johnson, and we believe we can infer from that image something about the experience Bev is having...
...we don't know if that image is actually a Peter Haan photoshop where he has altered the details to leave us with the impression that we know what Bev is experiencing... but we somehow still insist that that is what she is doing.
If that is bullsh#t, than all the rest of it is too..."
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Okay, now I'm getting Ed's argument dialed. He's saying that by virtue of objective physical markers - the look in the eyes, the droop in the face, the lax hands and energy - that we can infer the subjective state.
Well, that's true, and anyone who cannot decipher these signals of body language is said to be autistic.
But Ed has missed the crucial piece here that allows us to reverse engineer a person's face back to a feeling or subjective experience, and that is having experience ourselves as a benchmark, and recognizing the earmarks of our 1st person experience in someone else - such as Bev having a fit of exhaustion during her solo ascent of the Dihedral Wall on El Cap, circa 1974 (??).
And as Ed points out, the physical markers (face, limp arms, et al) are 3rd person information which might or might not be correct, or might be photoshopped, etc. Point is, they are not Bev's experience, which only she can access via the 1st person because experience is NOT a 3rd person phenomenon. This is a cognitive glitch that has some people by the short hairs and apparently they're sticking with it because their world view depends on it being true.
Marlow wants me to comment about his super machine (3rd person data collection) but because said machine cannot actually have 1st person subjective experience, it will basically be autistic and tell us facts and figures ABOUT experience but the fact remains that experience is not simply an info stream, it is also a dymanic, experiential process of being and becomming that is related to but not limited by the attending physical markers. Marlow believes that experience is entirely contained in these physical markers, and apparently has never read about wholism.
JL
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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But Ed has missed the crucial piece here that allows us to reverse engineer a person's face back to a feeling or subjective experience, and that is having experience ourselves as a benchmark, and recognizing the earmarks of our 1st person experience in someone else...
no, I get that, you are missing what I'm inferring from that... if we can be mistaken in our inference of what Bev is experiencing, which we are sure to have done, not having the ability to actually be a part of her "1st person experience,"
we might also be mistaken when we look at our own experience of "1st person experience."
That is, it might not actually be what we think it is... in which case, we're debating about something that we haven't demonstrated is real... and the reason why we can't explain it is that it doesn't really exist.
By the way, isn't that a "zen" concept?
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Elcapinyoazz
Social climber
Joshua Tree
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The reason you can't replicate the first person subjective experience is because the meat-brain software/instruction-set are continually changing at every moment and no two are alike.
It would be like a computer that changed its circuitry in a continuous, never ending process, but instead of relatively simple dicreet circuitry you're dealing with multivariate chemical reactions and there is never a static state where you can attempt to replicate it. It's an exercise in nailing jello to the wall.
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