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WBraun
climber
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Nov 14, 2011 - 10:16am PT
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The mind according to a religious point of view is worthless as it continually changes and never comes to complete full realization.
It has to be scientific.
Real science encompasses everything "The cause of all causes" summon bonum and absolute truth.
The fools who "believe" there is no "Absolute Truth" are eternally slapped in their faces by the the four absolute truths of the the material creation.
Birth, death disease, and old age which are insurmountable for all material conditioned souls ......
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MikeL
climber
SANTA CLARA, CA
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Nov 14, 2011 - 11:11am PT
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None of the physicalists have much appreciation for institutionalization or socialization--that "believing is seeing." So I'll go to their fundamental argument / complaints, as I understand them. (If I have them wrong, kindly correct me.)
Subjective experience can be explained by, can be reduced to, and is ultimately, physical material or physical materialism. An exemplar proof: embed an axe into a brain, and mental faculties will change.
It is argued that mental faculties / capabilities--viz., subjective experience--cannot change the brain and cannot effect changes in the physical world. Causality is inferred from material to mental to material by chronological sequencing (material to mental). This makes objective material more fundamental and more real than subjective states / faculties. Hence, subjectivity is a minor and unimportant step between a physical change in the brain and another physical change in the material world.
With respects to serious scientific explanations of reality, subjective outputs / states / capabilities are ill-defined, unparsimonious, unreliable, unpredictable, and not representative of the material world (reality). Discussions regarding subjectivity are essentially wastes of time because they don't get anyone anywhere insightful, and they do not significantly contribute to our understanding of reality.
Do I have the basic arguments / complaints right?
(Be well.)
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MH2
climber
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Nov 14, 2011 - 11:38am PT
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I've simply challenged people to quantify a tear, the breeze on your back, the mental buzz of solving a problem or a riddle, the grip of fear, one3 of Ed's divine photos, sex, drugs, rock and roll, emptiness, states totally devoid of feeling, detachment, the smell of bacon, and so forth.
Why would anyone want to do that? It would be like pushing a peanut with your nose around the borders of the all the countries of the world. We already have good ways to both feel and talk about the experiences you list.
Are you asking for experiential states to be reduced to numbers? People aren't computers. People are biological.
You haven't ruled out the possibility that direct experience could be recorded in some form and played back so that people would feel it in a way close to the original. You seem to be stuck on the idea that experience would be reduced to numbers and then we would stare at the list. That might not work.
The technical problems of recording from large areas of the brain with resolution at the scale of microns and milliseconds are not likely to be solved any time soon. There is no great motivation to do that kind of research, either.
There are very small steps that point to the possibility of looking inside other peoples heads, though. There was (maybe still is) a Belgian coma patient who had been unresponsive for 5 years. While in an MRI machine, the patient was told that they could try to answer yes/no questions by thinking about either swinging a tennis racket or walking down a street. The patient was able to answer questions this way.
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-02/08/can-coma-patients-communicate-with-brain-patterns
Admittedly, the study of how the brain works offers many unsolved problems. We don't know how Alzheimer's impairs memory. We don't know how Down Syndrome limits mental abilities. We don't know why Down Syndrome people get Alzheimer's much earlier in life than the general population. There are much more compelling questions to answer than whether experience can be captured to the satisfaction of philosophy.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 14, 2011 - 12:05pm PT
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Discussions regarding subjectivity are essentially wastes of time because they don't get anyone anywhere insightful, and they do not significantly contribute to our understanding of reality.
I don't think this is my criticism... what I have been trying to point out is that there is no agreement among us as to what constitutes "subjectivity" and how we know that something else (a computer, another person, etc) actually experiences a "subjective experience."
To the extent that we do, it is something we infer... since other people "look like us, act like us, etc" they must have experiences like us... but the "precision" of this is infamously poor, and even the "accuracy" is not so good, after all, we know there are some people who have very different subjective experiences, say high functioning autistic people , Temple Grandin describes a way of experiencing the world quite different than the consensus, though no less valid.
Given that we do not have a way of defining this subjective experience hints that what we think we experience isn't the real thing, but a description created by the patch of behaviors which takes on the task of describing our "intention" and our "mood" the description is a part of our social interaction which allows humans to live in large groups...
...my criticism of the primacy of experience is that we attribute to it properties that are likely not actual.
These are observations at this point, but measurement follows from theory created by observation, so yes, there are "numbers" involved... but the numbers are very important for establishing "fact." One "fact" is the idea of "free will" which is severely tested in some of the studies I've referred to above... if we act without conscious intent then the whole concept of "free will" has to be revised. But this is something that has been swirling around for a long time in other guises... for instance, is homosexuality something that is "innate" or something that is a "lifestyle preference"? what about addictive behavior? etc... it looks like these may be determined by something intrinsic to "mind" and "body" rather than some choice the "mind" makes... so "free will" may be something that is negotiated between that patchwork of behaviors that make up "mind."
If some of this sounds like Largo's discussion above don't be surprised... there is much I agree with in what Largo has stated... but observations leading to quantifiable observations to theory to measurement is an interesting way to bypass our "subjective" manner of understanding things, a way that does not lead us from our biased views, but to a large extent, reenforces those views.
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 14, 2011 - 12:08pm PT
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Admittedly, the study of how the brain works offers many unsolved problems.
We don't know how Alzheimer's impairs memory.
Most modern people today are forced to buy our food from sources that are waging a chemical warfare against mother earth.
All these chemicals are the cause of all these modern neurological disorders.
When you make an enemy of your mother by poisoning her you will make her an enemy of you ....
This is why I call modern science fools.
They simply study the effect and completely miss the cause.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 14, 2011 - 12:47pm PT
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...my criticism of the primacy of experience is that we attribute to it properties that are likely not actual.
-----
My contention with Ed and others on this point is that they define "actual" in a way that simply does not apply to subjective experience in a meaningful way because the term was borrowed from investigating objective-material realities.
"Actual" in the sense Ed is using here requires a thing to be still long enough to analyze and cook up some numbers about what it is. This also assumes that a "thing," to be anything at all, to be real and "actual," must have consistent physical markers or characteristics which can be described, and proven to be so by way of replicatable experiment. Once a thing can be show to react or behave in the same way over time, to retain a shape and form that can be predictable, then and only then can we say what some thing is. Ergo we cannot label or "know" anything if it is constantly moving and shifting and changing.
Problem is, as anyone's life will attest, out 1st person subjective experience is not a thing but an ever shifting process that we can no more slow down or fully "grasp" than we can stop the rotation of the earth. Our experience is in a constant state of becomming and in never "finished" or still so whatever descriptions we can use are bound to be wrong the next moment. We can learn things as we go but we're still left to on-sight life by and large. And the route always changes.
When Matzumi Roshi stood up and yelled, "Life is ungraspable," he simply meant that when are finally able to know and define our "actual" life, it no longer is our life (experience), it is the past. And our experience is always a real-time, present tense fandango.
JL
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 14, 2011 - 01:14pm PT
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"Actual" in the sense Ed is using here requires a thing to be still long enough to analyze and cook up some numbers about what it is. This also assumes that a "thing," to be anything at all, to be real and "actual," must have consistent physical markers or characteristics which can be described, and proven to be so by way of replicatable experiment. Once a thing can be show to react or behave in the same way over time, to retain a shape and form that can be predictable, then and only then can we say what some thing is.
Sorry Ed is correct, although modern science only applies it to the gross material.
Once applied to everything then it will be complete.
God has form along with variegatedness and is not like the impersonalists and the mayavadis profess.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Nov 14, 2011 - 01:32pm PT
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MikeL says: "Marlow: Come to your own thoughts."
MikeL is a strange man. He asks Marlow for references to science and he gets a reference to the best medical metaresearch on earth and then he concludes "Marlow. Come to your own thoughts"
A man who asks for references/evidens and then shows no sign of understanding anything when he gets the references, he just concludes "think for yourself", that man has got a strange superficial quality to him. His science-speak is just empty words.
Though am I wrong MikeL?
This is the first time I easily get what WBraun is saying because there is more to his words than superficial generalities. I am to a large extent able to agree. The use of monocultures and pesticides and so on to protect them because of their fragility is nothing to be proud of. In "developing countries" (just stupid words yes) the use of western growth technology has destroyed very much.
Though general critisism of all of science is still just bad thinking.
Edited: MikeL - if your words "think for yourself" were just a consequence of an easily understandable problem to follow all the posts, including mine, so please have me excused. Though mind your conclusions.
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MikeL
climber
SANTA CLARA, CA
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Nov 14, 2011 - 01:43pm PT
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Werner:
Come back please.
Are you saying that replicability can be used on non-material phenomena? Is that your point? Are you arguing for observation, for "things," or for traits and characteristics?
(It's not always been easy for me to follow everyone's writings.)
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MikeL
climber
SANTA CLARA, CA
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Nov 14, 2011 - 01:59pm PT
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Marlow:
Yeah, you have it wrong.
1. I've asked for specific research studies to support your other claims. I got beliefs and intuitions instead. Show me. Give me scientific data and analysis.
2. I asked how you would construct measurements and research studies to make a number of difficult (and I think impossible) determinations. You ignore those requests repeatedly. I don't think you know anything significant about how to design and conduct research. I doubt if you've ever done it independently. That implies you don't know the pitfalls and challenges involved. That would suggest you don't know what you are talking about.
3. You provided one citation to support your claims, and as I said, I do not read the man's research to support your claims. Indeed, I think you have it completely backwards. Did you actually read the entire article on Atlantic Monthly? In your past postings, you made positive claims about science (what science can do and what it has done); his empirical research studies undercut those claims explicitly. His metaresearch studies show with data and analysis how science is going wrong in medicine.
4. What you have provided in a previous post to my questions has been a very lengthy copy of the same person's writings about corollaries. Those are not your ideas, and they certainly don't present your writing. That kind of posting is the laziest and most effortless kind of argument. "Well, here's what someone else said." Chances are if you can't express it yourself, you probably don't understand it very well.
5. You make many claims as though they were not only obvious to every reasonable person but concrete. You seem to respect the scientific approach to investigation. Great. Let's do exactly that. Show me the data.
Be well.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 14, 2011 - 02:08pm PT
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"My contention with Ed and others on this point is that they define "actual" in a way that simply does not apply to subjective experience in a meaningful way because the term was borrowed from investigating objective-material realities. "
I think you're straining, and not only that, you're making a conjecture as to what I mean my "actual." Let me be clear on this here: by questioning what is "actual" I criticize the commonly held concept that what we describe as our "experience" is not what our experience is... I think that is what Largo has also said... so I am a bit confused as to why and what he is arguing, unless his agenda here is to completely reject any possibility of using "objective-material reality" as a way of investigating "mind." (If that is his agenda, I think it's a bit premature to be throwing out tools that might be required to actually accomplish understanding.) In doing so, he assumes that the messenger (me in this case) cannot have anything but an "objective-material reality" agenda to totally render all the stuff he considers meaningful out of existence... or at least out of experience.
It is a simplistic point of view. "The lad doth protest too much, methinks."
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Nov 14, 2011 - 02:48pm PT
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MikeL says:
"Marlow: Yeah, you have it wrong.
1. I've asked for specific research studies to support your other claims. I got beliefs and intuitions instead. Show me. Give me scientific data and analysis."
Answer:
I have answered your questions time and time again, so be spesific. I have never said that everything under the sun is easily measured. If your claim is that I think that everything is measurable, so please read my posts once more and be spesific about where you think I fail.
MikeL says:
2. I asked how you would construct measurements and research studies to make a number of difficult (and I think impossible) determinations. You ignore those requests repeatedly. I don't think you know anything significant about how to design and conduct research. I doubt if you've ever done it independently. That implies you don't know the pitfalls and challenges involved. That would suggest you don't know what you are talking about.
Answer:
I have answered your questions time and time again, so be spesific. As long as you are not spesific you do not make sense to me or to anyone else. I have never said that everything under the sun is easily measured or measurable at present. If you want me to make something that is today impossible to measure possible to measure, so just forget about it. Please read my posts once more and be spesific about where you think I fail. At present you are just talking from the top of your ladder of abstraction.
MikeL says:
3. You provided one citation to support your claims, and as I said, I do not read the man's research to support your claims. Indeed, I think you have it completely backwards. Did you actually read the entire article on Atlantic Monthly? In your past postings, you made positive claims about science (what science can do and what it has done); his empirical research studies undercut those claims explicitly. His metaresearch studies show with data and analysis how science is going wrong in medicine.
Answer:
Ioannidis is showing us the pitfalls of biomedical science, but it does not undermine everything going on in biomedical science. You say "In your past postings, you made positive claims about science (what science can do and what it has done); his empirical research studies undercut those claims explicitly". He does not undercut the claim that science is a great human achievement and if conducted properly science can give us very valuable knowledge. Which positive claims have I done about science that you see problems with? Be spesific. You are again talking from the top of the ladder of inference. It is not possible to understand you without guessing or projecting my own thoughts into your answer.
MikeL says:
4. What you have provided in a previous post to my questions has been a very lengthy copy of the same person's writings about corollaries. Those are not your ideas, and they certainly don't present your writing. That kind of posting is the laziest and most effortless kind of argument. "Well, here's what someone else said." Chances are if you can't express it yourself, you probably don't understand it very well.
Answer:
You asked for references/sources and that is what you got. The reference is speaking better than I can put it into words. I see you have now changed your mind. You don't want the sources/references, you want my words. You are really a strange inconsequential man MikeL. I will not repeat.
MikeL says:
5. You make many claims as though they were not only obvious to every reasonable person but concrete. You seem to respect the scientific approach to investigation. Great. Let's do exactly that. Show me the data.
Answer:
I gave you data. What more data are you searching for. Where do you think I fail? Be spesific.
Breath well! I may be wrong but I think there is a lot of temper in your post. Fine if that is what you intended.
PS:
Now I am guessing: Is falsification one of your points?
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 14, 2011 - 03:31pm PT
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I actually think we are getting closer than we think to a meetig of the minds here.
Ed says: "Let me be clear on this here: by questioning what is "actual" I criticize the commonly held concept that what we describe as our "experience" is not what our experience is."
My problem with this and other examples of this is that I highly suspect that what Ed would describe and define what our experience "is," is not an ever changing flow state of 1st person data, rather a 3rd person description of objective functioning. This allows materialists to claim that "this" is what experience really and truly is, the "real" thing, unsullied by subjective foibles. The problem here is that "it's is no longer subjective but a derivative objective value.
Perhaps this all boils down to my earlier contention that quantifiers won't admit to the limitation of their toolbox, and are obsessed with trying to wrangle even subjective experience into a form in which experience "is" a thing for which numerical quantifying can once and for all determine the truth about it's essential nature (physical, of course).
This feels to me to be not only a strain but every bit as big a stretch if I were to say that the laws of physics should be based on my dreams.
What's more, Marlow throws out this bomb to validate my point above:
"I have never said that everything under the sun is easily measured or measurable at present."
Bet you fifty dollars that he honestly believes that while we can't yet measure 1st person subjective experience, ONE DAY we will be able to. Remember that we have been very thorough and comprehensive in establishing that the subjective is NOT the objective, that 1st person experience is NOT 3rd person discursive - and visa versa. That means, incontrovertibably, that 3rd person data about objective material functioning will and CAN never be numerical data ABOUT experience itself.
That means another method of quantifying must be wrought since the standard methods of measuring the size of El Cap, for instance, will not wash with experience. This much, I believe, we can say with certainty. So if Marlow is confident that subjective experience ITSELF can be measured, kindly tell us the method that is other than more 3rd person objectifying about material functioning.
JL
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 14, 2011 - 04:16pm PT
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My problem with this and other examples of this is that I highly suspect that what Ed would describe and define what our experience "is," is not an ever changing flow state of 1st person data, rather a 3rd person description of objective functioning.
you aren't listening... I am saying that what we usually take to be our "1st person data" (did you mean to say "data"?!) isn't, the part of the problem is in the phrase: "usually take," that part of "mind" responsible for formulating the "usual take" may not even be a party to the 1st person experience... it is "3rd person"
However it works, my only contention is that it is a physical phenomena, and requires no supernatural connection, nor does it require the extension of the usual attributes of matter.
That said, it should be entirely possible to create "mind" and all it's characteristics in an extra-biological setting. It's probably already been done, we just don't recognize it as so... but we don't recognize all of the biological instantiations of "mind" either....
Whether or not there is a physical description seems entirely irrelevant to the discussion considering the question: "what is mind?"
Maybe you can expand on what part of the question the condition of physicality becomes important.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Nov 14, 2011 - 04:52pm PT
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Largo says:
"What's more, Marlow throws out this bomb to validate my point above:"
"I have never said that everything under the sun is easily measured or measurable at present."
Answer: I have no problem with Largo's bomber irony.
Largo says:
Bet you fifty dollars that he honestly believes that while we can't yet measure 1st person subjective experience, ONE DAY we will be able to.
Answer:
To repeat what I have said earlier. I honestly do not believe we will ever be able to measure 1st person subjective experience directly. I believe that is so improbable that I will say it is impossible.
I do not even believe we will be able to measure subjective experience perfectly indirectly because of the extreme complexity of the brain and human body. But I believe subjective experience is a natural phenomenon connected to the human "flesh".
And if, hypothetically, we were one day able to measure the landscape of the brain perfectly in all it's detail and if we then simultaneously (at the same time) registered what a person continually told us about the subjectively experienced thoughts and feelings and if we did this over a long period of time until we saw patterns emerging in the registered data between the perfectly measured brain activity and the expressed thoughts and feelings, then I think we could indirectly be able to, to a large extent, measure subjective experience (to repeat: indirectly). Then we could from perfectly measured brain patterns at last to a large extent tell a person what he/she is thinking and feeling. But just because he/she had told us what he/she thought and felt during our measuring until the point where we found the correlations and then established connections. And we would then not measure 1st person subjective experience directly just establish correlations and then connections between brain activity patterns and expressed thoughts and feelings in one person.
The reason why I believe we will never be able to do this is because the brain is extremely complex and the measurement problem is nearly unsurmountable.
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Norwegian
Trad climber
Placerville, California
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Nov 14, 2011 - 04:59pm PT
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so you guys any closer to
summing up mind?
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MikeL
climber
SANTA CLARA, CA
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Nov 14, 2011 - 05:04pm PT
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Maybe, Norweigan . . . .
--------------------------
Marlow,
If the tone of my last post seemed fillled with temper, then I apologize. I admit I felt exasperated. We are just not communicating.
I now understand from your writing that you have beliefs and intuitions for which you do not have any empirical support for. Ok. When cornered, you provide scenes about trees, poison food, or the sun circling the earth. I get frustrated because I can't talk about those situations specifically in a scientific way because they don't provide me with ways to discuss them keenly. With all due respect, they present quaint, intuitive notions about physical reality. And, that's fine, too. So what if I can't come up with any real contributions to your scenes? I should just shut up. I can do that.
My regrets.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Ed:
With regards to the studies you have pointed us to (muscle movements and free will), in a way, I think we've been here before.
Skinner said that there was no reason to worry about internal subjective operations. They could be assumed away. They were not parsimonious. Skinner showed that he could predict and mold physical behaviors with stimulii and context. That constituted explanation. He was done.
Would that kind of approach be good for you?
If that would work for you, then we have finally found our resting place. Subjectivity would be irrelevant for purposes of physical investigations. (Well, not for everybody--but that's ok, too.)
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Nov 14, 2011 - 05:06pm PT
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No no no. Now it is Largo's turn to tell me I am claiming that it is possible to measure 1st person subjective experience and that I will have to step back in my corner and then it is MikeLs turn to tell me it is just my intuitions and that I will have to show him the experimental design and the data.
Each person has his place.
And Ed will take one more dance with Largo and MikeL with all the steps established beforehand. Though there is a lot of variation in the perspectives of Ed.
Edited: An answer to Norwegian.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Nov 14, 2011 - 05:11pm PT
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MikeL,
I just register that you want to stay abstract and have no intention of communicating from anywhere near the bottom of your ladder of inference.
Have a good time!
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 14, 2011 - 08:48pm PT
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you aren't listening... I am saying that what we usually take to be our "1st person data" (did you mean to say "data"?!) isn't, the part of the problem is in the phrase: "usually take," that part of "mind" responsible for formulating the "usual take" may not even be a party to the 1st person experience... it is "3rd person"
---------
This is not the most precisely phrased idea I have read of Eds, but I dash stuff off as well so I'll have to guess what is at play here.
I think what Ed is saying here is that anytime we try and formulate our subjective experience, put words to it, quantify it in any way, that "take," however arrived at, is itself not subjective, rather it's objective. I think this is accurate. And unless someone had the direct experience before the subjective got extruded through the discursive mind, you would never suspect there was ever such a thing as pure subjectivity. The Zen equal to this has been called "no-mind" for over 2,000 years, so the practice is hardly new. Provisionally abolishing the "I" or ego-self (3rd person "watcher") in experience is the golden fleece of many esoteric practices.
A worthwhile question here is: What is your experience with unformulated subjective flow. It is true that the unconscious mind mechanically formulates reality into digestible bits, but you get the idea.
My other question to Ed is his contention that subjective experience is in and of itself a physical phenomena. I'm not pressing this issue to make a point, rather than it has never been shown or even theorized how our experience of a childhood memory or of our thoughts of transcendence or even the experience of smell is itself a material thing - not the mechanism you believe materially "creates" experience, but rather experience itself. This is not to say that at some lever material and experience are not directly related, only that the differences are surely as great as a polar bear is from a white star, so to call them the "same thing" seems a fantastic stretch.
You also mentioned "the usual attributes of matter" in the sense of experiece, and I am curious where, in all of known physics, or in all of the material world, do we find a "usual attribute of matter" to include anything even remotely similar to 1st person subjective experience. Granted that subjective experience is likely a spectrum that runs across the upper stratum of biological beings, indications are that such bio life constitutes an almost infintessimal portion of reality, so if experience is a "usualy attribute of matter," I'm like to know where, our blue planet notwithstanding.
JL
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