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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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I was speaking about our difference on that particular point, not in general.
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Speaking of social insects, I "observed" something interesting in the last few days. Something that I've never seen before. In my yard, we have periodic invasions by leaf-cutting ants. Since they can strip down and kill a fruit tree in a matter of days, we pay attention to them. One folk remedy is to put out uncooked rice. The word is that the ants carry this back to their nest, where it somehow interferes with the production of the fungus they need to survive. The "scientific" buzz, on the internet, is that this is a wive's tale, but as far as I can tell (at least for the type of ants we have) this remedy really works.
The interesting thing about the latest invasion is that the ants only appeared at night. We have had multiple infestations in the past 20 years, but previously the ants moved about both night and day, making well-established, and easily visible trails to their target. However, in this latest invasion, the ants attacked several bales of hay (alfalfa) that we have stored for my daughter's horse. And they only moved in after dark. I've never seen anything like that before. Anyways, after putting out rice about a week ago, tonight there were no more ants, even though the hay is still there.
Do ants have "minds"? How could they learn, after 20 years, that they would have a better chance of invading my yard if they only move at night?
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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“What is mind” is a koan, a question that requires one to look closely at consciousness and awareness. (Mahamudra is a non-conceptual set of practices that focus on the nature of mind; Dzogchen on awareness.)
There are no definitive answers to the question of what mind is, but for those with understanding, there can arise relevant expressions. To understand the question is the undertaking, not generating answers.
In many spiritual traditions, Eastern, Western, and American Indian, there are spontaneously generated songs (thousands of them) that express realizations of reality. In Tibet and India, the songs are called dohas. Dohas (poems or songs) are expressions of What Is, rather than representations (models) of existence. Art has tended to be oriented to showing what things are. In artistic renderings—primitive, Medieval Age, and even contemporary modern art—one can claim that the central or overwhelming expressions have been about what is sublime, not about fear . . . even in caveman days—at least this is what their art tends to show us.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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I am in awe of that word, sublime. Even ecstatic. My mathematical imagery occasionally sublimates into that state, a process that humbles me. Sometimes a theorem is cloaked in the sublime, and I quiver in wonderment. Do meditators experience the sublime? It must be astonishing to perceive no-thingness and the oneness of all.
;>)
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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If you think the battles between Sunni and Shia or Protestant and Catholic or Buddhist and Muslim are religious you haven't studied the situations.
lol
This reminds me of Vincent's riposte in Collateral Damage (I watched it last night). Basically his was a spin on a spin...
Guns don't kill people, bullets do.
My man Vincent...
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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The need for religion is complex and the attempt to disparage it by relegating it to cowardice is ignoring the reality of its benefits historically and presently.
Compare: The need for guns, bombs and such is complex and the attempt to disparage them by relegating them to cowardice is ignoring the reality of their benefits historically and presently.
"I didn't kill him, the bullets did." -Vincent
Sure, Vincent.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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There are no definitive answers to the question of what mind is
Says you! I absolutely do not believe this. You just need more imagination and science.
Another way of looking at the divide between pre-existing and evolved mind (I had posted these before).
If you really think about it, Hypothesis 1 is kind of boring. Hypothesis 2 is open-ended and, consequently, more interesting.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Compare: The need for guns, bombs and such is complex and the attempt to disparage them by relegating them to cowardice is ignoring the reality of their benefits historically and presently.
Try forming an argument. The above is too incoherent to respond to.
lol
This reminds me of Vincent's riposte in Collateral Damage (I watched it last night). Basically his was a spin on a spin...
Guns don't kill people, bullets do.
My man Vincent...
Again, making sense is something positive. Give it another try.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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I'm actually a little surprised that Michael Gazzaniga's studies and findings haven't resonated more with this group. I, for one, can never go back. I can't unlearn what I learned from those podcasts. The idea that a particular area of the brain is demonstrably the seat of our conscious understanding of the world -- and that that understanding is separate from (and occurs after) an automatic decision-making process that occurs unconsciously -- this is the whole enchilada from my point of view. The rest is just details.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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I think religion appeals to both the sublime and the sense of fear. The founders of religions experience the sublime and in their lifetimes manage to convey that experience to a number of other people as well. In Christianity it took 300 years before adoption, many would say co-option as the official religion of the Roman Empire. After that, it was a religion of social order, the glue that held together a crumbling empire, Eventually it became a religion largely based on fear. Always through its many phases, there were those who experienced the sublime. I think it has been the same in all the other great religions.
The sublime basis of religion is recognizable to anyone who has experienced it and is at all undogmatic and aesthetically oriented. The major forms of art and architecture of the world's great religions are all based on the shapes and colors seen in meditation.
Carl Jung saw the similarities of the mandala pattern in art around the world but there are many other such symbols which are seldom recognized. When some of these seem to coincide with mathematically derived art, one has to wonder at the source. Humans exhibit such variety in their other aesthetic sensibilities and lifestyles, it seems notable that the symbolism of inner experiences of individuals is so similar. If it represents mutations that were selected for, one wonders the selective force.
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Speaking of oversimplification and watching movies, I watched this one with my daughter the other night
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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Jim Clipper
climber
from: forests to tree farms
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HFCS, Did god exist before we created it?
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WBraun
climber
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The seat of consciousnesses in humans is never ever the brain.
It is within the heart as the the living entity itself, called the soul.
The gross materialists always delude themselves with their uncontrolled runaway mind.
The modern scientists always use the words hypothesis and imagination because they ultimately always clueless to life itself.
They have no real clue yet always masquerade themselves as so called authorities ......
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jan: In Christianity it took 300 years before adoption, many would say co-option as the official religion of the Roman Empire. After that, it was a religion of social order, the glue that held together a crumbling empire, . . . .
It’s my reading from historians that one of the things that made the Roman Empire so successful is that the Romans were astutely and politically practical. In every land they conquered, they told the populations and their leaders that Rome would honor the cultures’ practices (to include religious beliefs). Roman personnel would even participate in them, as long as Rome was paid its dues. Men from conquered territories could even become Roman citizens. Rome assimilated *and* accommodated the people it conquered.
Here are some of Jung’s paintings from “The Red Book” (during his so-called psychotic / psychic breakdown years from 1913-1915).
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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eeyonkee: Says you! I absolutely do not believe this. You just need more imagination and science.
Of course. I think I understand your beliefs. Mine come from my academic studies, and I make no claim to really knowing what’s what.
I suppose that Ed would chide me for this opinion, but in my readings for my Ph.D. (strategic management and cognitive science), I began to see a pattern that disturbed me.
First of all, the methodologies of research studies (quantitative or qualitative) were always somewhat questionable—and not just to or for me. If you’ve ever submitted an academic study, I predict that you’ll run head-on into reviewers’ criticisms about how your research has been set up and operationalized. Research methodology is like Swiss cheese—you’ll always find lots of holes, and linkages between variables and constructs are either tenuous. The best researchers I know are all very creative with methodologies. People “tease out” their findings with methodologies. Do you think that reality is so subtle and intricate that it needs “teasing out?” Maybe what’s subtle and intricate is our thinking. Maybe reality is infinitely obvious, if one were to simply look at it.
Second, no finding or conclusion ever was final or went unchallenged academically. I suppose there could be many reasons for that, but that doesn’t change the inconclusiveness of all findings or the inconsistencies among findings. To me, the findings of academic research is not unlike the law or the tax code: it’s a patchwork of ideas that this or that faction got through / published. There is no overall scientific group whose job it is to make sure that all disciplines’ theories fit together. Incommensurability.
Last (at least for this post), it seemed to me that there was no real commitment to research and its findings by academics. In the end, the work is like any other job. (Nothing really special, at least not any more special than any other endeavor.) Researchers don’t put anything on the line other than their reputations; it’s not like *they really need to know* and go after investigations as if their lives required it. (It’s not like they are climbing El Cap or anything.)
(Later when I took a position at the U of Warwick, I met and started talking with postmodernists. They clarified my doubts and questions. Yeah, these are only my viewpoints.)
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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... it seemed to me that there was no real commitment to research and its findings by academics. In the end, the work is like any other job
I got into mathematics because I was excited to explore, to discover, to create - much like climbing. At 81 I still get a bit of a thrill if I uncover something new in mathematics, whether it be trivial or not. Several years ago I wrote a math page for Wikipedia which was designated of "low importance". And it most certainly is just that. But the math I discovered/created in the process over the years has given me great satisfaction, even though its minor stuff. All those "Aha!" moments have enriched my existence.
I'm sorry the academic life of the mind has been such a disappointment to you.
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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^^^^^^
However you might interpret that pattern, it doesn't look anything like regret to me.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Dear John,
Don't lament my situation.
In Buddhism, there are the so-called 4 Noble Truths. #1 says that life is frustration. #2 says that the basis of frustration is attachment and / or aversion, by wanting things to be different than one thinks them to be; by wanting supposed conditions and by not wanting other conditions. #3 says that with the cessation of attachment and aversion one can get the cessation of frustration. In other words, if one stops needing things to be one way or another, when one stops wanting the peace and not wanting the child torturer, then one gets a cessation of frustration, cessation of sorrow. (Let's skip #4 for the moment).
There is another basic tenet in Buddhism that takes care of the first three in one move. It is: “There are no entities." If one to see that for themselves, they would see that there is nothing whatever to HAVE attachment to or aversion from--and no one to have it. Problem solved.
The rest of the doctrines, the mindfulness, compassion, and maitri (loving kindness) are additions that one can argue was intended for crowd control and politics (Noble Truth #4). If there are no entities, which is the most basic tenet of Buddhism, then who is supposed to have compassion, and for whom?
There's no reason to feel sorry for whether I have this or that (but thanks!). My academic understanding has coincided almost perfectly with my spiritual understandings.
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