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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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Jul 31, 2017 - 02:54pm PT
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Marcus Aurelius on Purpose
"A man's true greatness lies in the consciousness of an honest purpose in life, founded on a just estimate of himself and everything else, on frequent self-examinations, and a steady obedience to the rule which he knows to be right, without troubling himself about what others may think or say, or whether they do or do not that which he thinks and says and does."
~ Marcus Aurelius
HFCS, This one is for you. Probably make you look like you bit into a lemon.
"Never forget that the universe is a single living organism possessed of one substance and one soul, holding all things suspended in a single consciousness and creating all things with a single purpose that they might work together spinning and weaving and knotting whatever comes to pass."
~ Marcus Aurelius
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Jul 31, 2017 - 04:01pm PT
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Mathematical research is different from scientific experimentation. Certainly one looks at examples, but only to gain perspective on a problem. If a number of examples support a conjectured theorem, then the researcher feels a bit more confidant in attempting to prove that result. And if the theory fails on a single example one might attempt to adjust the theorem to fit. A single substantial failure might torpedo the project, however.
The analogy of scientific reproducability is the agreement among peers that the purported "proof" is adequate, the logic correct. Thus, math is a social endeavor.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Aurelius: "Never forget that the universe is a single living organism possessed of one substance and one soul, holding all things suspended in a single consciousness and creating all things with a single purpose that they might work together spinning and weaving and knotting whatever comes to pass."
Mark,
Look. This quote can be applied to any dream, no matter how fragmented and chaotic a dream looks after waking up from it.
With that understanding, one might see what reality is—and why so many great masters use dreaming as the metaphor for it. One can get a glimpse during the first moments upon waking up every morning.
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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"You have subsisted as a part of the Whole. You will vanish into that which gave you birth: or rather you will be changed, taken up into the generative principle of the universe."
"Now every part of nature benefits from that which is brought by the nature of the Whole and all which preserves that nature: and the order of the universe is preserved equally by the changes in the elements and the changes in their compounds. Let this be enough for you, and your constant doctrine."
"So every part of me will be assigned its changed place in some part of the universe, and that will change again into another part of the universe, and so on to infinity. A similar sequence of change brought me into existence, and my parents before me, and so back in another infinity of regression."
All quotes from Meditations (Marcus Aurelius)
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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An uncanny resonance with Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" and Thoreau's "Nature."
Almost as if WW read Marcus Aurelius.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Yes, and yes.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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"it's a like, a ciiirrcle"
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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An uncanny resonance with Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" and Thoreau's "Nature."
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The key here is that the aforementioned "resonance" is not observable, so those who cannot hear the music hark to dancing neurons and say, "That's what it really is, you just think it's some woo resonance."
And yet when we look closely at the dancing neurons, they too are as ephemeral as dreams.
The illusion is that a machine is doing the dreaming ...
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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^^^Thank you.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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What is so "woo" about resonance?
I did not know that the music of the spheres went back to Elizabethans. I guess I have some research to do. I thought it was just that stony space music I used to hear on small FM stations.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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I didn't actually think that Largo was claiming resonance as woo. I was just playing around with his word choice. I am actually familiar with the concept even as it relates to woo. It is a term used by many adherents to new-age metaphysics in ways that are sometimes interesting and thought provoking.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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The key here is that the aforementioned "resonance" is not observable
And yet, someone observed it.
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The interesting thing about the above is that, like most all questions per consciousness, if you look closely enough at any false or cloudy claim, the misconceptions drop away relative to how specific you get.
For example, the way "observed" is used above is (in common usage) typically described as "you become aware" of, or "you perceive" - in this case - resonance.
"Observed" as in scientifically observe, refers to using sense data to perceive a material, external object.
But with "resonance," which is an experiential phenomenon, we cannot observe it externally as a thing or object "out there." Just like we cannot observe said resonance in another person, since sentience itself is not observable.
Observing externals and perceiving internals both play out in the field of awareness, but we have little to suggest that external objects and phenomenon and internal perceptions are selfsame, and that "observing" covers the gamut.
Where people get lost is in insisting only that which we can externally observe is real, or even more harebrained, that all reality is observable as things available to our sense organs.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Music of the spheres as the Elizabethans termed it
An ancient concept: Musica universalis
But with "resonance," which is an experiential phenomenon, we cannot observe it externally as a thing or object "out there."
"In physics, resonance is a phenomenon in which a vibrating system or external force drives another system to oscillate with greater amplitude at specific frequencies."
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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"Observed" as in scientifically observe, refers to using sense data to perceive a material, external object.
Nope. Consider the cosmic background radiation. It has most definitely been observed. No sense data was used in this observation.
Now if you want to admit that cosmic background radiation is 'material, external object' and some very smart folks used their brains to first predict, then detect it, with instruments that extended their own sensory inputs, then we're good to go.... I agree with your distinction.
You good with that?
Nope, Dingus, but I admire your fealty to mechanitus.
You're grocking onto an example that verifies mechanitus, but what I was referring to is categorically different.
I should have said, "an external object or phenomenon."
Fact remains that radiation is still external to your person and point of view, or personal vantage. It undeniably exists "out there." And you can only become aware of it through using your sense organs to observe the data recorded by instruments, or more likely, by observing equations in a book or on your computer screen that physically describe said radiation, or at any rate, it's physical effects. Put differently, radiation itself - however you might categorize WHAT it is - is not considered to be a subjective phenomenon. Rather it is considered an external, physical phenomenon, which when measured using purportedly "observer independent" methods, is ALL it can be.
Where I believe you get hung up is in insisting that all phenomenon are "things" or perhaps "objects." This is a persistent misconception and deserves a few words in reference to consciousness.
First, start with what is indisputable - that consciousness itself is not observable as an external object or phenomenon like radiation or any "thing' else in the material world. If you believe otherwise, try and read your neighbor's thoughts or sense his feelings of sensations or pull up his memories. There are clearly tasks we cannot do. And if you believe that internal, experiential phenomenon are "like," in any way, external phenomenon, kindly furnish some examples.
Second, acknowledge that the content of consciousness itself is never external phenomenon, rather an internal phenomenon. For instance, you cannot export your sensations so you or others can physically observe them "out there" as all of those smart people did with radiation.
This is a deep and tricky subject harking back to reality and appearance; but it's worth noting that physical reality, as described by measurements, has no "secondary qualities" (like color, feeling of warmth and cold, etc.), which comprise most of the the components of our experience.
Using your radiation example - we don't "see" radiation at 450nm (wavelength) and 630THz (frequency). We see blue. Since there is not a single trace of observable "blue" in radiation, we know that what is "out there" is not itself the content of sensory consciousness, because sensory consciousness is all about secondary qualities.
Again, harking back to Raymond Tallis, the material world, quantitatively described, is far from being the colorful, noisy, smelly place we experience, but instead is composed only of colorless, silent, odorless atoms or quarks, or other basic particles and waves - some of questionable materiality (like radiation) - best described mathematically.
Third, and this is the crux of it, while we have now distinguished between experiential and physical reality, between inner and outer, we run into the quicksand of "things," or stuff or fields or whatever you want to call those external objects, forces and phenomenon off which we can pull a measurement.
Note that the discursive mind is build to consider all reality in terms of material things or forces. That often leads people to believe that because we can mentally conceive of a feeling, say, and ascribe a label to it (sad, mad, cozy, etc.), that this conceiving and labeling magically reifies said internal feeling into a phenomenon that is categorically the same as external radiation or pine cones or polar bears, all external physical objects or phenomenon we can in some wise measure.
In the case of experiential content being "things," by any definition, we only use these terms and concepts for convenience, because it is the only way to externally discuss unobservable, internal phenomenon like experience. But talking about them in tangible terms, as THOUGH they were physical stuff, does not make them physical objects or stuff or phenomenon, any more that Mark Twain writing about Huckleberry Finn makes him a material fact or phenomenon of the world.
So yes, figuratively speaking we can talk about experience and the content of experience as things, but that gives us no right to consider said "things" as physical phenomenon. If you insist they are, kindly point them out to us.
Again, we can use the words "stuff" and "things" to describe internal phenomenon, but it is absolutely crucial - to avoid the curse of conflation - to understand that the "thingness" of a thirst, for instance, is not a stand-alone, external bit of physical reality, but rather is strictly an experiential phenomenon.
A common counter to this from type A physicalists is to insist that the experiential is ACTUALLY the physical brain that "created" thirst - which is the earmark of someone who cannot follow nor yet understand the argument.
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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Got a nasty blister today while shoveling today.
Been sitting in front of a computer too much.
It's convincingly real - much like the really nasty blisters I got while ski mountaineering on Shasta last month.
That's real enough of an interface along with all the other real enough people and stuff I interface with daily.
But, then I'm a rather simple and straightforward sort. Mindf*#king myself never seemed very interesting. There's much more interesting stuff going on in the realm of reality that's absolutely effing amazing awesome and "magical" and it'll keep me jazzed for the rest of my run.
Just got back from backpacking Timberline trail with my nine-year-old grandson. The alpine wildflowers were at their height and we could sweep up Sierra cupfuls of sweet mountain stream water.
Taught Declan map and compass, how to use an altimeter, how to observe weather, identify flowers and trees, talked about volcanoes and plate tectonics, changes with stages of the day and about where we fit in in relation to the night sky, cosmology and read to him from The Fellowship of the Ring each morning and night.
Nights on the ground and days in the open - seems like I've heard that phrase before. Soaking that up and savoring it; observing and delighting in it. All that is more than sufficient for me.
I resonate well enough with it and though I have meditated for 46 years the navel gazing thing never really did anything for me except result in excruciating boredom when it seemed there were more interesting adventures of the mind.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Again, harking back to Raymond Tallis
By Jove, good show! You got it right.
And a good, clear post as well. Nothing new there, but well-said.
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