Dr. F.
Big Wall climber
SoCal
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 4, 2013 - 04:42pm PT
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Total fail on the flower color
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Dr. F.
Big Wall climber
SoCal
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 4, 2013 - 04:45pm PT
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My wife calls this plant "Dolly Parton"
I call it the "double headed bird's nest show plant"
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Don Paul
Big Wall climber
Colombia, South America
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Dr. F.
Big Wall climber
SoCal
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 4, 2013 - 05:50pm PT
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Largo, if you insist that the only thing there is is what is going on in your experience, you are lead to solipsism... that is, the only thing that is sure to exist is one's own mind. This point of view cannot be refuted.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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There's an interesting article on the behind the scenes, human interest aspects of the search for the Higgs boson on the front page of the New York Times for March 5. Beautiful photos of the equipment involved also.
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WBraun
climber
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When you apply anesthesia you disable the the brain.
The soul now does not feel pain anymore due to being separated from the identification of the body.
A crude layman example you disable the car computer and it will still run but but barely as there is no feedback from all the sensors.
Limp home mode.
In more modern vehicle computers it will not run at all but you the driver is still operating but can not use the vehicle except to sit in it and go nowhere with the car.
But of course the modern materialists completely reject this due to their stubbornness even though they can observe this.
They are continually stuck that we are the body.
Modern man is not simple. modern man is over complicated mess with all their machines and data.
Their cups are filled and running over the top and can't understand the basic root simple facts and observance anymore.
They start with machines and more machines and their heads filled to over following.
Modern materialistic man is a mess that's run amok over thinking, speculating, theorizing.
Instead of calling the manufacturer of the machine they start guessing how it works.
There's always a certain class of men who reject the manufacturer of the machine because we're professionals, "we don't need no stinkin manual".
The intelligent class take to the manufacturer of the machine to understand how it functions and works ......
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Their cups are filled and running over the top and can't understand the basic root simple facts and observance anymore.
The Cup is Full analogy is one that I've been wanting to post here for a long time. Some people simply will not learn and think they know everything. Their cup is full.
Go look at the pre-human intelligence of the political thread. Talk about cup is full....
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Bruce Kay
Gym climber
BC
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Well I'd say thats about the most text I've ever seen you produce. I think you should just take a chill pill and still your mind a bit tho Werner. All you really had to say was this to sum up the net effect of Politics, God, Religion and science:
There's always a certain class of men
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MH2
climber
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The intelligent class take to the manufacturer of the machine to understand how it functions and works ......
That's why I didn't leave home for a good year and a half after birth.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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I have never said that ONLY the experiential is real. This is simply flip-flopping the materialists claim that only the material is real. The circular trap of this argument is that by their own definition, "real" and "material" are the same thing. So there's quite naturally no place to expand or to grow with this view. Just as Ed said about solipism, you end up in the same place if you artificially collapse the objective and subjective into one unwieldly wad. If real and matter are defined as the same thing, there is no refuting materialism, a notion that some have pushed so far as to say that experience (qualia) is not, in fact real, that it does not actually exist - talk about a blind spot.
The wonky thing is that this and every other view ever maintained is known only through experiencing the thought, but notice how the rational mind will immediately go back to considering the thought as an "expression of mind and energy."
It seems dead obvious to anyone who has studied the experiential directly that the rational mind has no ability to wrangle the experiential, even though the "rational mind" as we know it exists ONLY as an experience. Unless you insist that objective brain functioning IS mind - entirely.
so the default is to consider the experiential as solely an extension of the physical, that is, if you can control the physical, you can control and predict the output of the experiential. I remember studying clinical psych in grad school and discovering that psychiatry is almost entirely based on the psychological being entirely bio output. Till you run into raving borderlines and narcissists, which seemingly have no simple or uniform physical footprint but see where it gets you to say "it's only in their mind." As though there is some human rality that is NOT in your mind.
Now I'm not saying that only the mind is real, only that our experience is our fundamental reality, the one that we consciously live with, so if yo have to default back to saying the subjective is merely a product of the objective, at least have the wherewithal to understand that your Aunt in not exactly your Uncle. In reality, Mind and Matter create a perfect feedback loop, each informing the other all day long. You think about Roxanne and draw sudden wood. I get an involuntary impuse and have to eat. Yada yada.
Interestingly, Craig mentioned that mind might not be revere engineerable. I think he better reconsider because a ground up model of reality cannot brook a missing link in the progresion, where one thing becomes something else without a previous factor, cause or impetus. If you get to a certain place where there is a total disconnect between the flow, how was the bridge crossed? Or is it that if we had the right data all would be clear - according to this belief?
JL
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Don Paul
Big Wall climber
Colombia, South America
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The objective is what's real. Go ahead and smash your head against the wall if you need a demonstration. Doesnt matter what your opinion is of the wall or what my perspective is on it, it's going to hurt just the same. So my subjective experience of the same wall is different than yours because both are approximations with no real existence. Look around the room, see all the details? If you leave the room and I ask you about them, you won't know most of them. That's because your brain didn't take a picture of it, just recorded some information that seemed useful at the time. So there is no recording of reality inside your brain, not really a subjective recording either. The internal modeling tricks us, it looks so real. Sort of like people who live vicariously by watching TV shows like "Dancing With the Stars" or read the grocery store mags about Oprah.
Now here is the problem with what JL says about qualia. My brain has some concept for the color red, when I see it, the symbol is invoked, I think red and it looks red to me. Your brain has recorded this concept in some other way, and I have no idea what red looks like to you. It's just a symbol with no actual connection to reality. But we see a painting with shades of red and blue that match pretty well, we both think it looks cool. What does this mean, that our arbitrary, subjective systems for explaining red both agree its a match. So the subjective part and the modeling also corresponds to the objective in some real way.
We live in a world of imperfect replicas, in our own worlds, really, but they all approximate the real one. None of this helps me understand consciousness though. Because that imperfect recording of the world, the model I made of it in my head and constantly change, is really all I am. What else am I except the experiences recorded by my brain?
Analogy: 5 blind men are touching an elephant. This one grabs a leg, an elephant is like a tree. Next one grabs the trunk, an elephant is like a ... you get the picture. Aren't all our experiences like that? Isn't this the moral of the blind men and the elephant story?
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Investigating the thing that is doing the investigating. Tricky business, there. Like a Klein bottle.
;>\
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Dr. F.
Big Wall climber
SoCal
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 5, 2013 - 05:09pm PT
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MH2
climber
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Now I'm not saying that only the mind is real, only that our experience is our fundamental reality, the one that we consciously live with, so if yo have to default back to saying the subjective is merely a product of the objective,
I have never said that ONLY the experiential is real.
So let's agree that there is a physical material reality independent of your mind. And then suppose that there is a subjective experiential reality which is to some unknown degree independent of the physical and material.
If you are going to experience the physical world within your subjective first-person reality, there must be some kind of connection.
Can we narrow things down at all? If a person cannot see or hear, for example, does the same objective versus subjective distinction apply to their sense of touch, taste, and smell? If there is still an experiential world for the blind and deaf, how far can we simplify experience without changing its fundamental, possibly non-material nature?
How about a small example to help understand what is meant by subjective experience? Hold your hand under running water. Start with cold water and then try warm. Now go outdoors in winter for a few hours. Come inside and try the cold water again. Does it feel the same temperature as before? Is your experience of temperature objective or subjective?
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Don Paul
Big Wall climber
Colombia, South America
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Subjective, but approximates something real. If it didn't then you would have been run over by a truck by now, or some other calamity. So I think the opposite of solipsism is true. Yes the world is real, but the mental model of it that you live in, isnt.
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Dr. F.
Big Wall climber
SoCal
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 5, 2013 - 07:05pm PT
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The temperature feels the same
and the cactus spines feel almost the same when puncturing your skin if you are asleep or awake
There is so little difference, that it's not even worth considering when it comes to talking about what we experience
I can't believe we are still stuck on the difference between our senses, mind and what is the apparent reality
We all agree, it's what we see, is documented in books and media,
this post is real, it will go on, all will see it, and agree with what it says, and how it looks and smells
To say there is some great difference in what perception and experience, that changes with people and circumstances is irrelevant in the bigger picture, the reality that science can investigate, and us in the reality based world all agree on.
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Dr. F.
Big Wall climber
SoCal
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 5, 2013 - 07:16pm PT
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What if Largo is correct!!
And you can get a really super "real" warm and fuzzy feelings when you become a zen master
What does that bring us?
He won't agree that the Bible is the word of god, that you can talk to God, that you must surrender to Jebus to get to heaven, that you can commune with god
He is a religion of one.
We might agree with him on some things, but he has all his other special ways of believing that no one else can understand or wants to be a part of.
Absolutely zero consensus with any larger group of people that will come out and support his views with him.
Does it help him in any way?
Will he go to heaven or break away from the curse of Karma??
Will he be able to make it rich by guessing the winning numbers to lotto?
Or will he just be exactly like the rest of us, and nothing will come of it more than helping him relax and focus?
So many questions that will never be answered, since it's all based on faith, there Will be no answers.
Kind of like Werner, only he knows.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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if you artificially collapse the objective and subjective into one unwieldly wad.
actually, the distinction of "objective" and "subjective" is a model which seems to be robust, but a model nonetheless. Where the dividing line is to be put is an interesting point. It is only an "unwieldy wad" when put together because of the length of time we've used the model... and the difficulty of doing without the "dividing line."
But let's remove one or the other, what are the implications.
If everything is subjective then we end up with solipsism, that is, all there is is our own mind. Everything else is derived from it, only the our experience is verifiably real leaving open the possibility that all there is is our consciousness, which constructs reality.
If everything is objective then we end up having to explain how experience arises out of some physical phenomena.
Interestingly, diseases like schizophrenia produce within an individual a subjective state that is interpreted as "objective reality," this is essentially a biological process. I recall reading somewhere that John Forbes Nash answered a question "how could you do the mathematics yet believe in the reality of those voices?" by noting that "they came from the same place." The post up thread relating schizophrenia to a genetic "disorder" affecting calcium channels, essentially connecting a subjective state to a physical process is certainly suggestive.
Similarly, there is the phenomenon of hallucination, a perception of something "real" absent a stimulus. Here the subjective once again constructs reality, and believably to the individual. There are many initiators of hallucinations, and of those many are physical, e.g. drug use and sleep deprivation. Once again something physical produces a subjective state which perceives a reality that isn't, though the individual having the hallucination may not be able to tell.
Apparently, our subjective state, our experience, is subject to some external, physical factors. And though these are most prominent in what we would consider abnormal conditions, it is not such a stretch to assume that under normal conditions the same is true.
And in any case, one can take such a hypothesis and test it.
The experiment above in the article "Sane in an Insane..." is about an objective reality, the sanity of the pseudo-patience who inhabit the subjective reality of the caretakers who interpret their charges not so much in terms of some objective measures of insanity, but by the subjective cues which are circumstantial, stereotypic, and to some extent authorized. The "objective reality" doesn't seem to be obvious in that case.
The dividing line seems to be running all over the place.
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