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WBraun
climber
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Jun 14, 2010 - 11:41am PT
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Corn Nut -- "DMT, sometimes you are such a fruitcake."
Hypocrite!
By the way you are a "Leg Humper" .....
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Jun 14, 2010 - 11:53am PT
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Tony wrote: "i wonder if this david chalmers is trying to enter that territory, largo. i wish you'd stop talking down about such things and asking people to read links, which i think is the great disease of blogging. fine, a link for people who may be interested, but not in lieu of an argument you're trying to make. if you've really mastered this material, i think you ought to be able to explain it to us lesser minds down here."
Hey, I reserve the right to rip on you guys for the fun of it, and I'm open to be ripped on as well. If you can't be a wise ass here, and c*#k around, these discussions get too deadly.
For starters, I'm not trying to make an argument, per se, only pointing out the folly of a purely mechanistic idea about consciousness, whereby the evolved brain produces consciousness through an increasingly upward progression of systems, or emergent processes, triggered by an "effieient" electro-chemical activity. Try and find a highly reputed expert in the entire "mind science" field who says as much.
The belief in the mechanistic model has led people to believe that human consciousness can be replicated by a machine - which is like saying "life" can be infused into a Barbi doll once we have sufficient data. This has led silly folks the world over to seek the creation of detailed models of a brain by way of reverse engineering. If it is possible to trowl back and down through layer after layer of microcircuits, of an unknown design, and learn how the whole shebang works, why should it be impossible to construct a model of a brain, link by link, and to reproduce its functioning as a whole? The basic and incomprehensibly dim-witted false assumption here is that human consciousness can be appropriated entirely as a mechanistic function, like a car or a computer, and once you "understand" how the function is mechanically "created" by the biological machine, you have the baby licked. That's like thinking that if you could implant a big assed and super duper computer into the Venus de Milo's head, and change her marble corpus to something a bit softer, you'd have the hottest chick on the planet. Here we see the folly of considering life as merely a technical term.
I can understand people wanting to define consciousness by way of computer modeling and stimulus response mechanisms, but the experts write these explanations off as almost hopelessly childish and silly given the nature of mind.
JL
PS: If you trace back to the origins of every concept and perception, you get consciousness and light (or energy). One must suspect that they are one and the same. I find it exciting to see advances in study of the thinker/perceiver because it can only point even more clearly to what is at the source.
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rrrADAM
climber
LBMF
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Jun 14, 2010 - 11:58am PT
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These two examples are not equivalent and that's the point for spiritual people. It takes a magnetic coil inside of a special helmet to get that effect in the lab yet people have it happen without the magnetism while engaged in spiritual pursuits like praying, meditating, or chanting.
No... It is you who are missing the point, BECAUSE you are looking for any reason to dismiss anything that competes with the way you 'want' things to be.
By having the volunteer partake in a "relaxation study", they have no idea what it is really about... As if they knew, then the results would/could be biased, as is your thinking (I.e., Confirmation bias). Would you propose that they just "wait" for someone to have the experience while simply relaxing? See, the point is, he can make the experience happen, with the flip of a switch. It's a lab - For testing. And his test is transparent, and repeatable.
See, if, as you believe, chanting and praying brings about a connection to God, then that means that believers in ALL other religions, past and present, have connected with YOUR God. Shamins(sp?), the Prophet Mohamad, the Oracles of Delphi connecting to Appolo, etc... They all feel/felt profound connections. But see, you think all others are delusional, but your connection is real. (More confirmation bias - They're all delusional, but mine is real.)
The result of this test potentially accounts for all of that, irregardless of religious belief. In fact, it's not a far extention to use this result to even account for what John experiences when he meditates.
Deny... Deny... Ignore... Ignore...
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rrrADAM
climber
LBMF
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Jun 14, 2010 - 12:06pm PT
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And just so people know my 'issue' with religion... Again, it's when it's taken too far, and impinges(sp?) on the rights of nonbelievers. (E.g., education [like the recent BS in Texas], women's rights [abortion, birth control, abuse], and crap like this:
June 14: Jarretta Hamilton was fired from her fourth-grade teaching position after telling her boss she had conceived a child before she married her husband. While her former employer, Southland Christian School, maintains it was a moral issue, she tells TODAY’s Ann Curry that she didn’t know that she would lose her job. http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/37683770/ns/today-today_people/?GT1=43001
Mind you... Bristol Palin, then a minor, wasn't even planning on marrying the guy, she gets knocked up, and now she speaks to Fundie Youth about 'abstainance'... The form of birth control that statistically has the worst rate of success.
See... If there were such a place as Heaven, as many Christians believe, it would be full of hipocrites.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
Full Silos of Iowa
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Jun 14, 2010 - 12:07pm PT
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Brawny- you're so predictable. Get off my grass.
"Again, it's when it's taken too far, and impinges..."
Not just in education, either. In law.
"I reserve the right to rip on you guys for the fun of it..."
-damn straight.
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rrrADAM
climber
LBMF
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Jun 14, 2010 - 12:11pm PT
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Agreed... As I'd said earlier. For example, "Blue Laws" are alive an well in many parts of the Bible Belt.
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WBraun
climber
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Jun 14, 2010 - 12:11pm PT
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Adam -- "See... If there were such a place as Heaven, as many Christians believe, it would be full of hypocrites."
That statement is immediately totally worthless and carries absolutely no weight.
Using the words "If there were such .." means you don't know and you're just guessing.
You need bonafide facts, baby, oh yeah that's right!
Because that's the argument you people always make yourselves ......
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
Full Silos of Iowa
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Jun 14, 2010 - 12:14pm PT
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"only pointing out the folly of a purely mechanistic idea about consciousness"
See it outside your small uninformed little box and you'd see you're totally dissing (disresecting) nature's mechanistic side... also mind's mechanistic side with a comment, otherwise attitude or perspective, like this.
Ground yourself in science education (including decades of engineering experience where you increasingly grow to appreciate the intimate close relationship between material, structure and function) and you'll get this "disrespecting" claim.
What do you know about comparators, integrators, differentiators, and a host of other circuit functions? You think cowboys or farmers (to pick on them) of a just a century ago could understand memory in terms of either silicon flip flops or neuronal circuitry.
Hold your horses, give it a hundred years. Do you even know what a flip flop is? or a comparator? or a high-q bandpass filter? or digital filtering? Insofar as you don't, your lenses are murky and why would you not see consciousness or sentience as a great mystery or something beyond the mechanistic everyday.
Human sentience (incl consciousness, qualia, etc.) is what the brain does. At least that is a "model" that is worth exploring and for some of us building on. Try it. The sky won't fall, it might even prove empowering.
Consciousness, mind, sentience, or perception... is not "above the law." In this case, for lack of a better word, the natural law. (But better words are coming, trust me.)
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rrrADAM
climber
LBMF
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Jun 14, 2010 - 12:17pm PT
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You need bonafide facts, baby, oh yeah that's right! And just like at rc.com, you have yet to give one. Just endless replies of 'woo'.
I have posted endless replies of "facts", baby... They just tend to be...
Ignored... Ignored... Denied... Denied...
...by the faithfull in favor of 'woo'.
(Remember, a definition of 'faith' is a strong belief in the absense of evidense, or even despite evidense to the contrary.)
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WBraun
climber
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Jun 14, 2010 - 12:26pm PT
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Only you are constantly talking about faith and beliefs.
I'm talking about cold hard bonafide facts which you have none about the spiritual realm.
You are the one making all the arguments against this.
You need the cold facts otherwise all your talk is just evasive acts disguised as knowledge which renders you null and void.
But you have none, except pure mental speculations dreamed up in your fertile mind .....
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rrrADAM
climber
LBMF
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Jun 14, 2010 - 12:45pm PT
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Wow... Were you in the bathroom looking in the mirror when you made that reply?
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Jun 14, 2010 - 01:15pm PT
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High Fructose-
You may be right but we aren't there yet. Meanwhile, all we have to go on for the materialist- reductionist model is promises that things will change in the future. The spiritual realm however, is working just fine right now.
rrrAdams-
You are the one in denial. I know a whole lot more about human brain function than you know about meditation, prayer, and yoga. So does Werner. And Largo knows more about philosophy than all of us put together. Part of reductionism you know is to set up rigid parameters and then deny that anything is valid outside of them. It's certainly true that most science is more predictable than most spiritual phenomena, but that doesn't mean the spiritual is bogus, it's just not scientifically predictable.
You wouldn't deny that people fall in love I'm sure, but who will fall in love and with whom can not be predicted with any certainty. This simply means the process of falling in love is not scientific, but it certainly is real. Likewise the realm of spirit.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
Full Silos of Iowa
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Jun 14, 2010 - 01:29pm PT
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"And Largo knows more about philosophy than all of us put together."
What, another minion here? Authority in climbing does not make for authority outside climbing. I knew an authority in racquetball once who believed this made him an authority in non-racquetball areas. RIP.
This is perhaps the most harebrained thing I've ever heard in all your posts. Remember: religions and women don't get a free pass at the fire.
Laughable.
EDIT
"meditation, prayer, and yoga"
Yeah, I've seen it work. I've seen levitation in action. And wasn't it "meditation, prayer and yoga" too that was behind the development of corrective lenses and the polio vaccine and DNA forensics. Yeah, and the rumor is "meditation, prayer and yoga" will be giving us a new non-growth economic system that will (a) solve the problems of over-population and resource depletion and (b) beat the stuffing out of socialism and capitalism together. Can't wait.
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rrrADAM
climber
LBMF
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Jun 14, 2010 - 01:38pm PT
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I know a whole lot more about human brain function than you know about meditation, prayer, and yoga. 1. And you know this "how"? I'll give you yoga, as I haven't looked into it much, but just "how" do you know what I know about prayer and meditation to even make that statement, let alone so confidently? Again, this shows the flaws in your thinking process... As does this directly false statement:Part of reductionism you know is to set up rigid parameters and then deny that anything is valid outside of them. Asking questions that aren't pertinant serve no purpose... When talking about what's wrong with a car, one talks within parameters to narrow it down... Whether or not one likes orange juice isn't valid to the discussion.
Science doesn't care what one thinks, or how one feels... It like tests, and repeatable results cannot be denied...
"One test is worth a thousand expert opinions."
2. I may have been editing my reply when you composed this one, the one you are replying to, so you may wish to reread it, as I fleshed it out a bit more. So you have some key points to address to make it "go away"... You can't just throw out, "I know more than you", and that's it.
Copy and paste into a quote, then directly adress, as I do for you.
Unless or course, you are into...
Ignore... Ignore... Deny... Deny...
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
Full Silos of Iowa
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Jun 14, 2010 - 01:41pm PT
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I bet Jan doesn't know about impromotive prayer. I bet Jan doesn't know about revalorative prayer. Neither of which appeals to the supernatural. Neither of which appeals to a personal God (let alone God Jehovah or God Jesus) to intervene in the mechanistic process (in other words, in the physics and chemistry) of life.
Jan wrote-
"the materialist- reductionist model is promises that things will change"
This model is a "what is" model, in itself it "promises" nothing.
EDIT 10:47a It's in your implications. Plain as day.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Jun 14, 2010 - 01:46pm PT
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High Fructose-
Stop trying to put words in my mouth so you can then insult me and try to knock them down!
I never said that meditation, prayer and yoga are superior to science. I never claimed that they had developed corrective lenses, the polio vaccine and DNA forensics. But neither has science developed art, music, poetry, spirituality or love.
Only a fool would say you have to be interested in one or the other but can't be interested in both.
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rrrADAM
climber
LBMF
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Jun 14, 2010 - 01:50pm PT
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To whom are you saying that to? I didn't put words in your mouth, in fact I even copied and pasted your own words into a quote, then addressed it.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Jun 14, 2010 - 01:56pm PT
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High fructose-
I have not heard of impromotive or revalorative prayer. I am well acquainted with Buddhist and Taoist prayer however, which does not appeal to a personal God. It does not appeal for intervention in natural processes either. Rather, both religions seek to align themselves with a deeper level of nature.
Meanwhile it's 3 am in Japan and I'm calling it a night.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
Full Silos of Iowa
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Jun 14, 2010 - 02:04pm PT
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"Our tithe is half of your salary and your 21 year old first born daughters."
I wish! LMAO!
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jun 14, 2010 - 02:06pm PT
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A non materialistic notion of consciousness is a fascinating idea, also the idea that consciousness is the predicate to creation.
This does beg the question, however, what is the point of the consciousness containing organ we call the brain? Why would it become an evolutionary necessity?
How is it that material brain construction appears to determine how we think?
How is it that consciousness can be so easily altered and even eliminated by altering that material organ?
And how can we possibly explain the "ineluctable modality of the" senses?
It's all very mysterious, but there is still no direct link between mystery and deity.
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