What is "Mind?"

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WBraun

climber

Jun 23, 2016 - 08:06am PT

The pragmatic scientists are too busy trying to unravel the mysteries of the universe

If that were true then you'd be done a long time ago.

Instead they shoot themselves in the foot perpetually with their stoopid stubborn fixation on only western gross materialism.

Wasting everyone's hard earned money mental speculating and building defective stoopid machines that make everyone else even more stoopid
all as masquarading as advancement in intelligence ....

MH2

Boulder climber

Andy Cairns

Jun 23, 2016 - 09:45am PT

This guy said much the same, Werner.

MikeL

Social climber

Southern Arizona

Jun 23, 2016 - 09:54am PT

Jgill: I suppose at a humanistic level it is not unwise to feel we are all connected and to harm another is to harm one's self.

Not even about being human; not about any conventional notion of wisdom; not about folks being connected. You are THAT, and THAT is emptiness. When you begin to see it, then you cannot help to feel compassion rising up in experience for those who are shoulder deep in delusion. What can one really do for another? Everything is “an inside job.”

. . . arising from a history of Hilbert spaces and quantum flux I think this may be a metaphysical pronouncement that there is no distinction between objects. If I am wrong please show me the error of my ways.

You either see it or you don’t. There's no explaining of it.

It’s said that everything is of “one taste.” Although everything looks to be different (and maybe even unique), they are indeed the same. Everything is just phenomena or noumena, in either instance a display that is perceived by mind. That display is not substantive. Looked at closely, any phenomenon or noumenon will be found to be empty. That’s the “one taste.” That “one taste” is how objects cannot be distinguished from one another.

This is pretty esoteric stuff—but stuff that anyone can see if they only look for themselves . . . carefully, systematically, without conceptualization, without the discursive mind chattering away.

Largo

Sport climber

The Big Wide Open Face

Topic Author's Reply - Jun 23, 2016 - 10:04am PT

when I read one of Largo's well penned stories, I'm looking at pages of words built out of letters, ink on paper... where's the story
-

I think that when viewed from without, when we are trying to objectify words built out of letters (parts) and "find" a story therein, it's like looking at the brain and expecting to discover a material thing called "sentience" or awareness, and finding none in the neurons, we conclude that there is no such "thing." I'm reminded of the old turn, "There are six rules (quantifications) to writing a good story, but no one knows that they are."

An interesting issue here is what Hemmingway said about stories, that the key to good ones was to suppress information, and relate experience. Not easy, especially when you avoid windy landscape descriptions and steer clear of any commentary. Just serve the story up neat.

In my mind, an existing "story" is the interface of several factors. First you start with the black marks on the page. You have to have those. Next, you have to have a brain to crunch the data, giving the black marks significance in terms of a living person. And of course you need consciousness to ingress all this so the host (1st person) can have an experience - and that experience is "the story," a quintessential "no thing."

One can say, well, the story is reducible to the marks on the page, which sources the story. But in fact that fails to recognize the consciousness that originally cooked up the black marks which were drawn from experience.

We could keep fighting and say that the experience was stored in the brain so the brain sourced the experiences, then conclude that the brain actually wrote the story. But anyone familiar with the writing process knows that without the ability to direct your attention to what geysers up from the brain (a million options for every line in a story), you'd never be able to cull a story from the geyser. And that's just the first draft. The story is actually made in the editing.

They key here is that you can't separate out one aspect from the whole and say: That's the story. All factors are involved and none of them are either object or mind independent.

Another crucial factor is to recognize that if a machine was to write a story, it wouldn't be doing so from a first person, experiential conscious perspective because so far as we can tell, machines don't have an interior or experiential life.

A machine senses data, runs the data, and outputs a response. It does not have an internal response to the data. And most importantly, noting the qualitative difference between a sensor in a machine and sentience, if you wanted to ascribe "experience" to a machine, the only source of that experience would be the data itself, whereas in us humans, experience does not draw solely from the data and objects of reality, but also and principally from the phenomenon of BEING conscious.

That's always at the heart of every story: The sense that what is being related is not just data, but the experience of being conscious during the bombardment of data in our field or awareness. When you side with the data, that's called journalism. When you side with the sense of conscious experience - of not just the data, but of consciousness itself - that's called literature. And I think this so one of several reasons that literature is so hard to quantify, because it is not so easily nailed down to things and forms.

Just a few thoughts on a slippery subject...

Jan

Mountain climber

Colorado & Nepal

Jun 23, 2016 - 10:22am PT

Thanks to live streaming, I just saw the Dalai Lama's talk this morning at the University of Colorado.

He opened it by saying, "Compassion alone is not enough. We must put it into action.
We must act on ourselves to clear our own obstructions and we must also act in a social sense".

He also said, "I never try to propagate Buddhism. Shakya Buddha also said, unless requested one should not propagate one's religion".

On the topic of doctrinal differences he made this comment on emptiness. " I was once asked about emptiness by a Catholic monk and I told him, "Don't ask that, it's not your business". He then added, "I did not want to undermine his theistic faith".

Another comment in vintage Dalai style, "If my philosophical views today are uncomfortable for you, better you just go to sleep".

jogill

climber

Colorado

Jun 23, 2016 - 11:55am PT

Great comments by the Dalai, Jan. Thanks.

You are THAT, and THAT is emptiness. When you begin to see it, then you cannot help to feel compassion rising up in experience for those who are shoulder deep in delusion (MikeL)

It's too bad that Nobel Award scientists are "shoulder deep in delusion" as they toil away.

These chats are entertaining, but it's obvious that the two camps here are from different worlds. Nevertheless it's fun talking to the Martians.

PSP also PP

Trad climber

Berkeley

Jun 23, 2016 - 12:58pm PT

It's hard to get certain items up here on mars so if you come visit could you bring some balsamic vinegar , and some good sun screen.

MikeL

Social climber

Southern Arizona

Jun 23, 2016 - 02:00pm PT

Jgill: It's too bad that Nobel Award scientists are "shoulder deep in delusion" as they toil away.

You seem to imply a number of value judgments with this statement, judgments that I might challenge. A few of them might be:

(i) Nobel award recipients are noble.
(ii) Being “shoulder deep” in delusion is a problem.
(iii) Toiling away is a good thing.

Would you say that any phase or state of development in evolution would be a good thing or a bad thing? Would you not perhaps say that they “just are,” and leave it at that? Does the configuration of physical properties of a duck-billed platypus strike you are poor, great, or neutral?

People and situations are who and what they are because that is their state of unfoldment. Good or bad is irrelevant; value judgments are a form of delusion. What I’m saying is that, in truth, delusion is a delusion. Everything is fine, infinitely fine . . . noble Nobel award recipients notwithstanding.

The Protestant work ethic of being and staying busy, of doing service for others, of being productive, of material productivity is a cultural, religious, and historical norm and value that has been inculcated throughout most Western and Eastern societies. It may be very difficult for some to see it for what it is. (Everyone tends to take for granted their own cultural norms, values, and beliefs. They are assumed implicit truths.)

When it comes to spiritual development, being a free and easy vagrant in the mountains or woods has often been advised by the masters in many religious traditions—Buddhism being one among many.

Be who and what you cannot help but be. If that means you are a vagrant, then fine. There’s nothing wrong or right about it. Ditto for a Nobel prize winner. Do and be what and how the body and mind most fully expresses themselves in the environment they find themselves in.

I am a teacher of business and corporate strategy, of embryonic industry dynamics, of strategic HRM, of professional service firms, and of multi-sided platforms. I see all of those subjects as inherently empty, *AND* I find that I express the self just about fully within my role as university teacher when I teach them. The “me” and the role of teacher interact such that neither “me” nor the role dominates the other. “I” “show up” in an unimpeded flow state that feels like a full-on, trance-like, out-of-body possession (wu wei) to me. When I go to class, my intentions are vague, I suit-up and show up (I look at some notes), and I open myself up to an uncertain and unpredictable dynamic environment (40-50 students who know I am there to challenge them). Viola: a multi-dimensional “dance” emerges. It operates on many levels: emotional, mythological, psychic, scientific, intuitional, and on some levels I don’t even know how to talk about. I don’t know my steps in the dance that emerges, nor do they. We improvise, we adapt, we connect to our unconscious, we interact non-linearly, we come to ideas and thoughts and feelings that we don’t understand where or how they arrived. We are alive.

Isn’t beautiful, amazing, wondrous rock climbing not like this?

You seem to hold many certainties dear. Maybe it’s the mathematician in you. Maybe that’s your role here.

What is the “I” that is fully expressing itself within that role?

MikeL

Social climber

Southern Arizona

Jun 23, 2016 - 02:10pm PT

"Still is still moving to me
I swim like a fish in the sea all the time
But if that's what it takes to be free I don't mind
Still is still moving to me
Still is still moving to me
And it's hard to explain how I feel
It won't go in words but I know that it's real
I can be moving or I can be still
But still is still moving me
Still is still moving to me"

"There is only one map to the journey of life, and it lives within your heart."

(Willie Nelson)

Largo

Sport climber

The Big Wide Open Face

Topic Author's Reply - Jun 23, 2016 - 02:52pm PT

It's too bad that Nobel Award scientists are "shoulder deep in delusion" as they toil away.
-

Depends what Nobel scientists you are reading about. The effect of an observer is nothing new in physics - the fathers of quantum mechanics themselves debated the role of the observer for decades: Planck, Pauli, Heisenberg and others believed that it was the observer that produced our perception of the world around us. This view is deeply rooted in the 'Copenhagen Interpretation' of quantum physics and eventually became known as the 'measurement problem.'

I had a prof in grad school (himself a math dude) who ranted on and on about this. His angle was that what we perceive as reality is a process that involves our consciousness. An "external" reality, if it existed, would by definition have to exist in space. But this is meaningless - at last to this prof, because space and time are not absolute realities but tools of consciousness. What's more, he claimed the "problem" was not a measurement problem at all but an "observer" problem. It got fumbled as a measurement problem because folks claiming that Plank and the boys had "merely misinterpreted the data" were in fact "shoulder deep in delusion" because they were still fiddling about with WHAT was observed when Plank and others point was the primacy of the observer.

Point is, many have taken issue with Plank and all the others (functionalism) but it is in fact delusional to believe they never "stopped calculating and shut up." Or if they did, they were just fooling away some free time with metaphysics, when their real work, their heavy lifting was always with the ruler, then going from there.

BASE104

Social climber

An Oil Field

Jun 23, 2016 - 02:54pm PT

In general, one cannot take care of another until one has taken care of him or herself.

Oh, man, that is such bullshiit!!!!! Sorry to be so blunt, but it is. How you could actually say that just baffles me.

Waiting until you have taken care of yourself? What does that mean? Are you gonna wait for an enlightenment that may never come? If you have time to waste reading and hanging out on this silly website all day, then you certainly have enough time to go online and give to the Red Cross or other agencies that help people in need. Go to the poor part of town and hand out candy to the poor kids. Something. Anything. You will find that there is more need than you could ever satisfy. Just do what you can.

I started giving money to all beggars. Even if I knew that they were heroin addicts scoring their next fix. You see, it isn't up to me to judge these people. When you toss away judgement of others, the world becomes a simpler place.

There is probably no more important human act than helping those in need, and probably no worse human act than judgement of the poor or sick. I try to do good when I can, but there is more that I could ever do, of course. I'm not Mother Teresa, but I can now look at her and see that her endless compassion made her a remarkable human, and if we all did just a little, we could help out a lot of people. Together, we could do a lot.

You can walk out your door and go help people any day, within minutes. It isn't hard to find human beings in need, or who are suffering. There are zillions of support groups that you can join. I've found that helping others, when I can, are the proudest moments of my life. Far more important than some silly personal adventure. That mind frame didn't come over night. It took some self reflection over years. I had to look at myself truthfully.

We spend very little on the poor, but we spend HALF of our discretionary budget on weapons. Our country has gone to war or interfered with about half of the nations on this world.

Who are we to judge others? I'm not talking about nations here. I'm talking about people.

Seriously, that is the root of it all. You have to stop judging others, especially when it comes to their faults, which we all have. Judging is the only sin that I really feel is important, and we do it all of the time.

If you wait until you are Mother Teresa, you will never help people. If you are waiting for enlightenment before helping others, you are just plain old selfish. Anyone can help others, and there are always people who are in need. I have found that simple acts of kindness are by far the most satisfying parts of my life. What many would call the "spiritual" side of my life, but I do not believe in spirits.

Buddhism is rooted in compassion. I've never read anything that didn't make that clear.

My right wing Christian friends think that the poor are lazy, and get what they deserve. Welfare or food stamps are rewarding the lazy in their minds. They even think it is why we are going broke as a country! Geez, we spend half of the discretionary budget on weapons. They forget that the Gospels were devoted to the poor and marginalized. Jesus didn't hang out with the rich. How they can judge and refuse to help others is to me a huge lie.

There is something that I call the vaginal lottery. We here are lucky. Most of us fell out of a vagina into a middle class white family, in a rich country. They paid my way through college, as is probably the case with many of us here.

Most of humanity didn't win that lottery. By no fault of his own, a black kid can be born to a teenage mother and no father. He has no prospects. His future will be difficult. Blaming him for it is inconsistent with what Jesus said.

I once took in a homeless guy that I met and had a conversation with. It was the dead of winter, and he couldn't stay outside. My wife went berserk, but offering him some food and a warm bed wasn't much of a sacrifice on our part. We kept him for about a week, until we could arrange for him to stay with his very old mother, who was also very poor. It was such a sad story.

I'm friends of his to this day. He's in his 50's, and walks 5 miles to and from work every day, where he works in a fast food restaurant. He can't afford a car or insurance, but he works harder than me. Giving him a little help isn't difficult. It just takes a little bit of compassion. We text each other about NBA hoops almost every day. He has his own place now. He was just caught without a home for a short while. Circumstance that isn't likely to befall any of us on this thread.

I can say this much. He doesn't get to play on the internet while he is working.

Kenny is his name.

Largo

Sport climber

The Big Wide Open Face

Topic Author's Reply - Jun 23, 2016 - 02:58pm PT

BASE said: "I started giving money to all beggars. Even if I knew that they were heroin addicts scoring their next fix. You see, it isn't up to me to judge these people. When you toss away judgement of others, the world becomes a simpler place."

You're missing the point, BASE. There is no material or actual line you cross where the "work on yourself" suddenly becomes real or valid. You had worked on yourself or were just born at a level that giving money to homeless was what you did. If you start at that baseline, and work on yourself, then your next act of graciousness might have an even greater effect. But the next level is the consequence of self work, which leads to grater understanding, and in turn, more effective actions.

A practical model of this are the instructions you get on an airplane in the event of an emergency. You FIRST put on your oxygen mask, THEN you put the mask onto your child. If you pass out first, you both die.

WBraun

climber

Jun 23, 2016 - 03:16pm PT

Yes

Sometimes this stuff goes right over the top of Base104's head. (Knee-jerk reaction)

They say in YOSAR we save lives.

We've never saved anyone at all ever.

All we can do is help save a body but we we are useless to save anyone's soul.

The soul (the real you within the body) will leave the material body at the designated time regardless of any material action.

Is your car YOU? Are you your car? No you are the driver and not the car.

YOSAR is just tow truck drivers for human material bodies to be fixed later in the human body shop called hospitals.

If your vehicle (human body) becomes damaged you'll be very unhappy.

It will need to be fixed. When it becomes beyond repair you'll leave that vehicle.

When your car dies do you say I'm now dead? (crude material analogy to life)

No you go and get a new one according to the means you have at that time and circumstance.

Giving money to heroin addicts is called "giving in the mode of ignorance" ......

MH2

Boulder climber

Andy Cairns

Jun 23, 2016 - 03:35pm PT

It's hard to get certain items up here on mars so if you come visit could you bring some balsamic vinegar , and some good sun screen.

Is that mars or Mars?

Either one the answer is yes.

MH2

Boulder climber

Andy Cairns

Jun 23, 2016 - 03:40pm PT

next level is the consequence of self work, which leads to grater understanding

We are cheese.

MikeL

Social climber

Southern Arizona

Jun 23, 2016 - 07:57pm PT

Base: You have to stop judging others, . . . .

(Ahem.)

Ed Hartouni

Trad climber

Livermore, CA

Jun 23, 2016 - 07:58pm PT

We are cheese.

no, our understanding is...

Ed Hartouni

Trad climber

Livermore, CA

Jun 23, 2016 - 08:11pm PT

Another crucial factor is to recognize that if a machine was to write a story, it wouldn't be doing so from a first person, experiential conscious perspective because so far as we can tell, machines don't have an interior or experiential life.

I don't think you can make that assertion... that "as far as we can tell..." because of precisely the difficulty in then claiming you know how other humans "have an interior or experiential life."

And machines write more and more stories, and are undetectable by the humans reading them...

Kenny O'Brien did his best to change the outcome, but the sophomore couldn't will George Washington past Virginia as the Colonials lost 2-0 at Davenport Field on Tuesday.

Kenny O'Brien gave the Cavaliers fits on the mound. Virginia managed just three hits off of the Colonials' pitcher, who allowed no earned runs, walked two and struck out one during his four innings of work.

Twenty-seven Colonials came to the plate and the Virginia pitcher vanquished them all, pitching a perfect game. He struck out 10 batters while recording his momentous feat. W. Roberts got Ryan Thomas to ground out for the final out of the game.

Tom Gately couldn't get it done on the rubber for George Washington, taking a loss. He went three innings, walked two, struck out one, and allowed two runs.

The Cavaliers went up for good in the fourth, scoring two runs on a fielder's choice and a balk.