Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
|
|
|
Aug 30, 2011 - 10:29am PT
|
----------------
It seems like there is something constant in "I" though.
FC
----------------
Now that is an interesting observation. One I tend to share at first impression. While the world around me seems to change a lot.
Then as I think about it I realize that I too am not always the same. At least my actions are not. Some days for example i am stoked to jump on a route, Other days i may feel a bit lazy another day a bit unusually fearful. Each of these states affects my words thoughts observations and deeds.
Yet these observations are always contrasting a remembered "I" to the actual "I" experiencing the now.
-
The feeling of a constant "I" persists. Perhaps the it is the experiencing of NOW that never changes.
Is the I experiencing Now the constant we sense??
|
|
FredC
Boulder climber
Santa Cruz, CA
|
|
|
Aug 30, 2011 - 10:37am PT
|
I actually don't trust the apparent constancy of the I. It sure seems obvious and true but there is something fishy about it.
I think the whole thing about heaven, rebirth, etc. is our reaction to the incomprehensible notion that we vanish entirely when we die. That is a hard thought to swallow.
|
|
FredC
Boulder climber
Santa Cruz, CA
|
|
|
Aug 30, 2011 - 10:45am PT
|
I guess as you lose friends and as you get older and you begin to lose your youthful physical prowess this question becomes more interesting.
I'm not sure we will answer it here but it seems worthwhile to do your own personal exploration. If you find that the answer is unreachable then at least you found that.
The Buddhists don't exactly say you can answer this but they do say you can "wake up" somehow and I think at that point the question drops away.
|
|
climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
|
|
|
Aug 30, 2011 - 10:48am PT
|
There certainly seem to be limitations to the constancy in a way.
I go to sleep and at times upon waking recognize a significant change from the last moment I remember. I don't remember before age 3 for example. Yet that is memory based. None of these gaps seem to be experienced.
For example If we die and there is no afterlife or reincarnation or whatever, then i don't see how we could know it. We wouldn't seem to be able to experience "nothing". Based on memory gaps i appear to have been through "nothing" many times in my life, but it has no significant effect on the basic "I experiencing" later or before.
Thus it seems the persistence of the feeling of a constant "I".
This basic impression of constancy is interesting to consider. Not so much as to matters of life after or before this lifetime (bleh a whole nother set of issues i am beginning to find boring in my inability to get anywhere substantial with)
just in and of itself.
Thanks for bringing it up :)
|
|
climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
|
|
|
Aug 30, 2011 - 11:13am PT
|
I guess another way of putting this is that the only experience I actually HAVE is of always being aware.
I can suppose and extrapolate "unawareness". In the same way I can deduce that El-Capitan persists and exists when I am not there.
However in either case I can not experience it so it does not "exist" for me at those times.
What is this impression of "constancy" in "I"?
An interesting observation.
|
|
MH2
climber
|
|
|
Aug 30, 2011 - 01:12pm PT
|
Tell me your view and I will respect it. Assume your view applies to me and I will reject it.
My view is that if I lose contact with the rock I will fall. I assume my view applies to you as well but I would love to be shown wrong.
|
|
rrrADAM
Trad climber
LBMF
|
|
|
Aug 30, 2011 - 02:19pm PT
|
For some here, it is a rather hard thought to swallow that the one's soul/spirit is infinite and on a journey that never ends.
Chief... I asked you in another thread, but you failed to answer, so I'll ask again...
So, tell me, at what point does does the human get it's soul:
And, can you tell if the zygote below is human, fish, or worm...
Now... To use your words in another perspective to give food for thought:
For some here, it is a rather hard thought to swallow that life after death is the same as life before birth.
Or... More relevant to this thread:
For some here, it is a rather hard thought to swallow that mind/consciousness/awareness after death is the same as mind/consciousness/awareness before birth.
Think about it. =]
|
|
klk
Trad climber
cali
|
|
|
Aug 30, 2011 - 04:28pm PT
|
i dont care much for what most people seem to be doing with their dna, either.
heh
|
|
jogill
climber
Colorado
|
|
|
Aug 30, 2011 - 05:07pm PT
|
One problem with arguments like these is self-referencing. The mind attempts to analyze the process with which it analyzes. Hence, word games that rarely clarify anything. In mathematics, if I recall my course in naďve set theory from fifty years ago, paradoxes arise because of self-referencing or similar processes. For example, the Russell Paradox (from Wikipedia):
"Let us call a set "abnormal" if it is a member of itself, and "normal" otherwise. For example, take the set of all squares. That set is not itself a square, and therefore is not a member of the set of all squares. So it is "normal". On the other hand, if we take the complementary set that contains all non-squares, that set is itself not a square and so should be one of its own members. It is "abnormal". . . Now we consider the set of all normal sets, R. Attempting to determine whether R is normal or abnormal is impossible: If R were a normal set, it would be contained in the set of normal sets (itself), and therefore be abnormal; and if it were abnormal, it would not be contained in the set of normal sets (itself), and therefore be normal. This leads to the conclusion that R is neither normal nor abnormal: Russell's paradox."
More appropriate perhaps is the Godel Incompleteness Theorem:
"A set of axioms is complete if, for any statement in the axioms' language, either that statement or its negation is provable from the axioms. A set of axioms is (simply) consistent if there is no statement such that both the statement and its negation are provable from the axioms. In the standard system of first-order logic, an inconsistent set of axioms will prove every statement in its language . . . For each consistent formal theory T having the required small amount of number theory, the corresponding Gödel sentence G asserts: “G cannot be proved within the theory T”. This interpretation of G leads to the following informal analysis. If G were provable under the axioms and rules of inference of T, then T would have a theorem, G, which effectively contradicts itself, and thus the theory T would be inconsistent. This means that if the theory T is consistent then G cannot be proved within it, and so the theory T is incomplete. Moreover, the claim G makes about its own unprovability is correct. In this sense G is not only unprovable but true, and provability-within-the-theory-T is not the same as truth."
The Axiom of Choice is easily stated and understood by non-mathematicians:
"Informally put, the axiom of choice says that given any collection of bins, each containing at least one object, it is possible to make a selection of exactly one object from each bin."
And yet, assuming this axiom makes the following oddity possible:
"The Banach–Tarski paradox states that a solid ball in 3-dimensional space can be split into a finite number of non-overlapping pieces, which can then be put back together in a different way to yield two identical copies of the original ball."
Admittedly, this is somewhat removed from the study of the mind, but it shows the extreme importance of language and axioms and where the two intersect. A study of the mind that actually goes anywhere beyond electrical and chemical impulses might require an alteration in the premises and the paradigm from which we argue . . . a task for which formal philosophy might be insufficient.
Has formal philosophy ever dramatically altered a person’s world view, other than providing merely intellectual alternatives? I suspect that Kant’s daily routines were much the same after he arrived at his ground-breaking ideas than before. On the other hand, the father of modern set theory, Georg Cantor, suffered severe depression in the later years of his life, no doubt partly because of the anxieties triggered by his unorthodox deliberations and commentary they provoked. But was this a fundamental change in his world-view?
"Cantor suffered from chronic depression for the rest of his life, for which he was excused from teaching on several occasions and repeatedly confined in various sanatoria."
Be careful what you wish for, JL !
Certain eastern religions putatively change one’s world view, but are these changes appropriate for a discussion of the mind?
Questions phrased within one paradigm possibly answerable in another.
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Aug 30, 2011 - 05:17pm PT
|
Strangely, your attempt to understand consciousness through "the experience" is like trying to understand gravity by repeatedly dropping a rock on your head.
I think this pretty well illustrates the fact that ever for educated amongst us, dropping out of evaluating mind into experience is a non-starter. Of course the above is not drawn from any real world experience but is just another fatuous evaluation from afar - of that we may be sure.
Oddly, for people like this, they have to get up on an unprotected slab or something in order to finally get out of their evaluating minds and get absorbed in a real, first person experience.
JL
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
Aug 30, 2011 - 07:23pm PT
|
"Cantor suffered from chronic depression for the rest of his life, for which he was excused from teaching on several occasions and repeatedly confined in various sanatoria."
maybe sly like a fox! excused from teaching!!
|
|
LithiumMetalman
Trad climber
cesspool central
|
|
|
Aug 30, 2011 - 08:15pm PT
|
The mind is the greatest illusion ever created by man.
|
|
PP
Trad climber
SF,CA
|
|
|
Aug 30, 2011 - 08:46pm PT
|
I think this pretty well illustrates the fact that ever for educated amongst us, dropping out of evaluating mind into experience is a non-starter. Of course the above is not drawn from any real world experience but is just another fatuous evaluation from afar - of that we may be sure.
Zen Master Seung Sahn used to often say " more stupid is necessary"
|
|
FredC
Boulder climber
Santa Cruz, CA
|
|
|
Aug 30, 2011 - 09:22pm PT
|
I think that a logical understanding of mind might be ultimately unsatisfying, especially since we live pretty subjectively. At least I do. We seem to have some kind of raw experience and then afterward we apply some kind of quality rating to it. We all have climbs or boulder problems we really like and that change our state of mind.
I have heard it said that "understanding is the booby prize". They meant that changing the quality of your experience was the real game.
Discussing what we mean by I and me is pretty cool though because normally we take it all so for granted and it is not too hard to see the simple logical holes in our everyday assumptions.
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
Aug 30, 2011 - 10:28pm PT
|
actually I think Largo has a very literal approach to his exploration of consciousness, and his instance of a first person narrative of experience, rather than any attempt to quantify it... of course his objection to measurement is one that can be leveled at literature, too.
his exercise for me:
I think the challenge for you, Ed, in this regard, is to forego for the moment trying to quantify or define how this all works and leave off with my experience and drop into your direct subjective experience and try and describe what you find there. Trying to do so in the most simple terms is a task, for the mind revolts dealing with raw experience straight up.
I was thinking I could crib a bit from Proust or maybe Joyce... or quote from Gilgamesh, and work a bit of Homer in... spin it with the Upanishad and spice with a bit of the 道德經...
ok, you didn't like that so much you didn't even try to read it...WRONG! he says... bad boy, go back and try again... you failed...
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Aug 30, 2011 - 11:17pm PT
|
I should have mentioned that you can get nowhere in the subjective soup unless you detach and don't let the qualia pull you into jaberwocky. This requires to maintain an open focus as opposed to narrow focusing on every bit of quail that floats by. It is entirely necessary to have language and constructs and memory to wrangle quail and content and "meaning," which the mind is habituated to do, as a kind of addiction. Just notice how hard it is to keep that focus open in "no mind." This is the POV where you have some little wherewithal to se what the mind is doing, IMO. If your mind is locked onto an idea or whatever, you'll get nothing but more jive from the very level you are at, "tryiing to analyze the mind from within the mind." Not sure this leads to the kind of madness John Gill warned us about, but it's largely a waste of time IME.
JL
|
|
klk
Trad climber
cali
|
|
|
Aug 30, 2011 - 11:21pm PT
|
i think many folks in this thread wasted a great deal of youth focusing on quail
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Aug 30, 2011 - 11:25pm PT
|
Look at almost everyone's post in this thread.
They all start out with "I think".
This means they have no clue and are using their mind accepting and rejecting with their senses.
You can't understand consciousness and mind if one falsely identifies with ones body.
The root cause of all misunderstanding is one "thinking they are the body" .....
|
|
klk
Trad climber
cali
|
|
|
Aug 30, 2011 - 11:29pm PT
|
werner, i think that many of the contributions to this thread have been tongue in cheek.
heh
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
Aug 30, 2011 - 11:42pm PT
|
the direct subjective experience...
ok, I'm there,
now what?
I could give you a story from my past, but it probably violates your conditions:
Sitting and watching the illumination of the sun through the window moving across the room, the shadows cast by chessman on a chessboard making the gnomonic arc as the day progress, from morning to late afternoon, in one long mediation with no internal conversation, breathing feels animal like, but the animal is me, somehow, the flow of air through the nostrils, down the throat into the lungs in response to the powerful and supple contraction of the diaphragm.
The whole day passes like this, very very calm, serene, with a focus that has incredible depth of field. But no thoughts.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!