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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Sep 21, 2016 - 09:24am PT
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I sometimes think I understand what is being presented by the various participants on this thread and I might even attempt to participate myself. If I choose a noun(person, place or thing) to relate to someone's concept of emptiness or raw awareness or such, how can that work? After all, as Largo says, it's not a place, it's no-thing and that isn't personal either, or is it? We use the language we have, until someone comes up with a better way. Someone else could use the same words and mean something either completely or just a little different. I tried.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Sep 21, 2016 - 09:50am PT
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Ed, why not pick up a copy of Sean Carroll's The Big Picture if you have time and give it a go. There's a dozen points he raises across the book that I'd like to get your input on. Several concerning causality (our mutual passions, I think) from the physics pov, the chemistry pov and the engineering pov, also the social pov. Others re entropy and conservation of information and Bayesian reasoning ala credence and belief. Just a thought.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_M._Carroll
At amazon, The Big Picture...
http://tinyurl.com/j4pzvax
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Sep 21, 2016 - 10:04am PT
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Wayno.
The professor is sing-talking about a perpetual motion machine.
The machine goes this way
and that way
and around a little while...
The professor then gets a couple of hang ups
and starts repeating himself,
again...
and again...
and again...
and again...
They say that the machine is of no use
and the professor answers that sometimes in summer the machine goes warm
and then you can cook porridge in it...
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Sep 21, 2016 - 11:07am PT
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Thanks Marlow. I think I get it.
For those sick of reading about consciousness
I like to read about things, even no-things, but the experience is more edifying. The challenge seems to be putting those experiences in words, which then seems to be self-defeating.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Sep 21, 2016 - 11:29am PT
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Wayno.
I think we have a similar way of thinking. I could have participated more in/on this thread in a way most participants would have seen as serious. I did for a while... I love to have insight into my self and my way of feeling, thinking and acting - self curiosity - as well as exercising stringent thinking - and lazy living/letting go - in between...
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Sep 21, 2016 - 11:41am PT
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Without things, there can be no consciousness; and without consciousness, there can be no things
Good point, MikeL. To learn about consciousness it seems necessary to study the interaction with physical entities or thoughts. By itself, consciousness is sterile.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Sep 21, 2016 - 12:41pm PT
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Among curiosities - JGill and Marlow have INTJ in common...
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Sep 21, 2016 - 12:49pm PT
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Jgill said "Regarding lucid dreaming (LD) (Art of Dreaming (AD)): From my experiences this state might be the antithesis of what Zen preaches (PSP?). Also, there may be a distinction between LD and AD that stems from the approach taken to get into the state (science vs mystical literature). In AD one becomes pure will embodied in the "I", and depending on the depth of the state not subject to normal physical laws, although everything seems almost preternaturally real. "
The word "states" is probably problematic or inaccurate in regards to Zen. I think it is more about how your perspective changes due to insights when witnessing how I relate to the five senses and situations and conditions.
The meditation tool used allows for the tool user to witness their habitual ways that they relate to conditions and finally through insight to let go of the habitual POV and relate from a different POV ( the not attached to self POV).
The habitual POV is typically dominated by how I feel about the latest stimulus; "do I like it or not". The Zen approach is to not add like and dislike to the experience or at least recognize we add like and dislike to the experience and not become attached to the like's and dislike's.
Once you become attached to the like/dislike relationship it is almost impossible to recognize the original experience before the like and dislike are added. This POV experience of before likes and dislikes is what Buddhist's call your original nature (I think; I am not a Buddhist scholar); so, when you are attached to your likes and dislikes you become blocked from experiencing your original nature POV.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 21, 2016 - 02:38pm PT
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John asked about emergence, and here is a quick blast based on a handful of articles, quotes, anecdotes and personal musings that I've found most provocative and stuffed en mass inside an "emergence" folder on my desktop. I'll now attempt to unpack it. A serious review would be much longer and studied. This is merely a casual glance at what feels like the "crux of the biscuit": the principal hitch of applying emergence to the brain-consciousness discussion comes from any attempt to describe, ascribe or explain the emergent upshot in strictly physical terms, as we will see.
Here's a brief look at "emergence" from Wiki:
"In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence is a process whereby larger entities arise through interactions among smaller or simpler entities such that the larger entities exhibit properties the smaller/simpler entities do not exhibit."
With such a broad descriptor, most any organized physical activity could roughly be considered emergent of SOMETHING. For example, baseball (larger entity) is emergent from the nine ballers (smaller entities) who play it (though a ball game is not strictly speaking an "entity.") Likewise, as is often the case, consciousness can initially be viewed, at least in theory, as an emergent property of brain function.
Continuing with Wiki...
"Emergence is central in theories of integrative levels and of complex systems. For instance, the phenomenon of LIFE as studied in biology is an emergent property of chemistry and psychological phenomena emerge from the neurobiological phenomena of living things. Likewise, economic and legal phenomena emerge from psychology.
"In philosophy, emergence typically refers to emergentism. Accounts of emergentism almost always include a form of epistemic or ontological irreducibility to the lower levels."
This "irreducibility to lower levels" is a huge study I'll leave off for the moment. For now, provisionally consider consciousness as an emergent "function" of the brain, and I'll try and summarize the basic challenges involved.
To assert that consciousness emerges is to assert that something NEW comes into the world when unconscious matter interacts with itself. Few would label consciousness a thing, in the sense that a bird is a thing, but many consider consciousness a function - like flying. However the "something new" (consciousness) really IS new, and radically different in every conceivable way from the "simpler entity" (brain) believed to have sourced it.
(The issue of things is worth repeating. If mind itself is a "thing" - definition - noun ~ 1. an inanimate material object as distinct from a living sentient being - no one has ever been able to say quite HOW or WHY it is, not in a way that makes any sense.)
The emergent "new" is the 1st person subjective experience for which there seems to be no counterpart in unconscious matter. So how, many ask, can something that is intrinsically NOT subjective generate 1st person experience just, so to speak, by "flapping its wings?" What's more, what is a phenomenal quality of aesthetic presence doing in a mechanistic brain in the first place?
These are a few of the common and initial questions raised per the emergence of consciousness. And things get stickier from here.
The first big hurtle is that, by definition, "the larger entities (mind) exhibit properties the smaller/simpler entities (brain) do not exhibit." In simpler examples, like steam "emerging" from a boiling kettle, nothing much new presents itself. Steam is simply water in vapor form. But when we say mind emerges from brain, the result (mind) is clearly and vastly different then it's purported source (brain). "Came from" might be a more accurate casual term then "caused," but the point is that whatever "came" is categorically different than "that" it came from. Whatever else we might draw from this, the brain/mind deviation does to death the belief that brain and consciousness are the "same thing."
As mentioned, the emergent consciousness IS new, and exhibits an extreme qualitative divergence from brain function. It's hard to imagine a greater disparity between the 1st person experience of tasting water, say, and the physical makeup of a fig tree. In this regards, consciousness seems to lack any conceivable aspect of "philos" (with the brain), a combining form meaning “having an affinity for” specified by the initial element.
This apparent difference of type places limitations on understanding or "explaining" consciousness in strictly physical terms, as a physical "function" and nothing else. Why? Because even the most exact (imagine an ideal science) physical description of the brain would entirely miss the new, emergent reality - the experiential fact of BEING consciousness. This sometimes is referred to as the knowledge argument.
The conclusion is unavoidable: Calling on emergence to explain consciousness is a non-explanation because emergence in and of itself is not an explanation, it is an observation. When researchers observe emergent behavior in ant hills, they haven't explained that behavior. Just like researchers observing intelligence emerging from neuron activity, haven't explained intelligence. They've simply explained objective functioning. And objective functioning and subjective experience are clearly not the same "things."
Perhaps an even greater challenge concerns the belief that so long as we can anchor consciousness in brain matter, we are on solid ground at last. Bugger all this meta talk about emergence this and first person that, right? Consciousness and matter are inexorably interlocked. Perhaps we don't know exactly how, but shoot a man in the head and see where that emergent function goes. So it's all about the physical matter, where there are no wo wo "explanatory gaps," and no gaming of philosophical loop-holes.
But this is almost certainly not so in the sense it is hoped for by many physicalists.
In fact "matter" is far too vague a category to do much theoretical work per consciousness itself (though it works splendidly for objective functioning). The people I know working in advanced theoretical physics no longer think much in terms of material stuff, rather mathematical patterns. So in a real sense we are probably just as justified in speaking about the mystery of matter as we are the mystery of consciousness.
My conclusion as of this writing (and I'm sure it will change) is that any "explanation" that seeks to eliminate the "new," re the qualitative distinction between matter and mind, between objective functioning and 1st person experience, will necessarily result in a paradox. And the same may hold true for emergence.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Sep 21, 2016 - 03:00pm PT
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Marlow, I googled INTJ and then took the test. It said I was either lying or I shouldn't stop taking my meds.
But seriously, was this test a topic on this thread? I am curious to see how others did. I am actually ENFP-A. The Campaigner.
I also realized during the test that twenty or thirty years ago I would have answered differently. Does that mean that I am a different personality than I was? curious
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Sep 21, 2016 - 03:27pm PT
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Among curiosities - JGill and Marlow have INTJ in common...
This is how I test out as well.
In regard to whether one can change over time, the answer is yes, but it takes effort. Understanding one's unconscious is necessary for that change. The whole project in fact, is what meditation is really about. Do like the personality you currently have? Where did it come from? Why do you cling to it? What other personality would you like better? What other personality would feel more true to you? How do you go about being that person?
Of course once you embark on the quest, many of your family and friends may be unhappy about it as people like their fixed ideas and rigid opinions about who you are among other things.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Sep 21, 2016 - 03:33pm PT
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True that, Jan. I have a couple of different friends that I hadn't seen or spoken with for years. When we reconnected there was an obvious shift observed from both sides. Some are uncomfortable while others enjoy the wonder. I wonder.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Sep 21, 2016 - 04:27pm PT
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John, as MikeL has suggested, I don't think one can separate consciousness from the object of consciousness. There is no stand-alone entity called consciousness. If you think there is because of a meditative experience I would argue that what you seem to experience is an illusion.
On the other hand I would argue that physical objects do exist apart from our awareness of them, but exist for us when we are aware of them.
In other words I don't think anyone will be able to "distill" sentience or consciousness to the point it exists apart from physical (or mental) interactions. It is simply coupled to its focal point(s) inextricably. When we relax our focus and all seems to be connected we still experience that "all."
So, with due recognition of your intellectual abilities, I think you are chasing a rainbow.
Speaking of "coupled", here is an example of a "virtual" integral graph of two contours coupled or woven in the complex plane. An example of weak emergence:
Treasure of the Czars
This image is under intense magnification, about 20,000X scale, and if one looks very closely there is a tiny blue Christian cross in its center. Highly unexpected, to say the least! What say you i-b-gobe?
Edit: when I blow up the image here this cross actually seems to have reddish arms, but when viewed at normal (100%) magnification it appears blue (to me!).
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 21, 2016 - 06:59pm PT
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John, as MikeL has suggested, I don't think one can separate consciousness from the object of consciousness
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I think you are reading this wrong - in no place in that discussion was there mention of consciousness existing separate from anything else, though you are insisting that objects exist separate from consciousness.
I would invite you to elaborate on this one - it is a common claim. Common sense tells us the moon is there whether or not we are looking at it. But when you remove all the sense data that consciousness overlays onto our perception of reality, no one can describe a moon at all. So what manner of moon are you talking about? And how would you know as much?
Also, your claim that a particular kind of content (in your example, the belief that consciousness was non local) is an allusion, is a re-take on what's called "Dennett's Folly." The argument is NOT what we are conscious about, including beliefs, rather that we are conscious at all, of illusions or anything else. If you are saying that consciousness itself is an illusion, that we only think we are conscious, there is nobody alive that can make that comment make any sense.
It is also going back to the idea that consciousness is a thing that COULD be separate from objects, and would have all the qualities of an object with none of the substantiality, mass, etc.
In what sense can we even say consciousness "exists?" since our language and constructs are geared entirely to chase down external objects.
The idea that anything exists outside of anything else (especially objects outside of consciousness) is not true to the way the reality presents itself, which is one big moving wave of life. Another interesting bit here is that while you can do math sans time, most arguments about the seeming stand alone world of things requires time. And time, it is said, is relative.
Yesterday I posted a few short videos you might want to glance at. They are fun to watch and bring some of this stuff into sharper focus. What I say here are more thoughts and musings than anything even trying to be definitive.
Like I said to Mike, this is only a hobby for me, this mentalizing about all this. It is not the work. But what that dude from Israel did with those videos is impressive, because he took on consciousness itself, he actually shut up an stopped calculating long enough to see and make a few preliminary observations. My hat's off to him.
You said, "When we relax our focus and all seems to be connected we still experience that "all."
That's how I see it, pretty much exactly. To isolate out objects and say they can exist separate from any aspect of that all is to me, the rainbow you mentioned. It just ain't so, IME.
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i-b-goB
Social climber
Wise Acres
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Sep 21, 2016 - 07:39pm PT
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Mr. Professor Gill,
It looks like a Mardi Gras mask to me!
"There is an affinity between math and climbing. It has to do with independence of effort and good pattern recognition skills, coupled with desire to solve problems and explore."
John Gill
...Great book by Pat Ament on you Sir!
Agree...
"On the other hand I would argue that physical objects do exist apart from our awareness of them, but exist for us when we are aware of them."
...If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
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WBraun
climber
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Sep 21, 2016 - 07:46pm PT
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There is no stand-alone entity called consciousness.
Another absolute made by those who claim there is no absolute.
The gross materialists always shoot themselves in the foot.
They are forced to by consciousness itself.
They are clueless to the real source of consciousness and then simultaneously make absolute claims on it.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Sep 21, 2016 - 08:05pm PT
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Well jgill, the moment I saw your latest creation, I immediately thought of Hindu symbology ( a clue perhaps to a former life both yours and mine?). First of all mighty Shiva with his lingam and yoni, lots of gonads too - immense creativity. I can see the first primeval man standing there as well, amidst the ribs encasing creation. The color red is one of immense power and procreativity, while green is the color of the heart chakra. It takes both to do anything worthwhile. The small cross at the center is interesting as is the tiny downward pointing arrow below it. I'm pretty sure Hindus and Christians would interpret that differently.
So now one of the questions is, did that happen by chance or did your unconscious guide the math? Are the math, and your unconscious and the universe perhaps all one? Are you in the universal mind and just don't know it?
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Sep 21, 2016 - 08:32pm PT
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Jgill:
“Emergence” in my areas has been said is a result of nonlinear systems, which are essentially unpredictable. Variables are overloaded, and then the results of an equation jump into new and unknown realms. You can increasingly force a dog into a corner by escalating a threat to it with a rolled-up newspaper—up to a point, when it will all of a sudden gets violent and defends itself. The equation jumps discontinuously. You know all of this, right?
As for objects that require consciousness (and vice versa), those objects are not necessarily physical or entities. Objects are manifestations, appearances.
I think the question you continue to come back to is: “what are appearances?” That question seems to be unanswerable or unresolvable.
I would say appearances are, themselves, emergent inasmuch as they have been selected, chosen, defined through an artificial bracketing process. One makes a selection out of infinity when one brackets some (seemingly) part of reality. The selection masks wholeness and elevates the bracketed selection. That’s a kind of overloading a variable to make it concrete, when in fact it was only an impermanent manifestation and contingent on every other “thing” in the whole. How could a tree exist without the ground, the rain, the sun, the seasons, bees and birds spreading its pollen or seeds, without the rest of any other thing that exists? One cannot separate any thing out of reality. To do so creates an illusion.
To suggest that any appearance is concrete and tangible is to push a conceptualization to an illusion. Since the illusion is the result of a process by a person, the illusion is in fact a delusion. The fleeting appearance became reified . . . . into something that it wasn’t.
I would say that everything in front of me is emergent . . . but they transform into another emergent just as quickly as I see them.
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