What is "Mind?"

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MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Mar 25, 2017 - 12:36pm PT
We first must ask: Is the brain that is believed to be learning about itself conscious? Put differently, is said brain aware of learning about itself?

Second, is this "learning" any different than the processing that goes on in a computer (now, or in some future computer), and if so, how?


First: Yes, there is conscious awareness of the brain learning about itself, but there is also learning that does not reach the conscious level.


Second: Very different, probably. What kind of computer are you referring to? When you say, "some future computer" it is probably too early to tell.


Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Mar 25, 2017 - 01:25pm PT

Time 1966: Is God dead?

What the article actually described was a struggle among scholars, religious leaders, and ordinary people alike to rethink and redefine what we mean by God, and it saw that the search was on for new ways to pursue the timeless yearning to know the Infinite. “The new approaches to the problem of God,” said Time, may (among other possibilities) “lead to a more realistic, and somewhat more abstract, conception of God.”

The Time reporters were tuned into the zeitgeist. In the spring of 1966, baby boomers were in high school and college. They were the best-educated generation in history, and they also had plenty of spending money, free time, and unprecedented access to information, thanks to postwar advances in communication and technology. They also had free-thinking role models: the beatniks, the hippie vanguard, the early adopters of LSD, the political activists and others for whom “question authority” was a mantra.

And speaking of mantras, the West also had easy access to Eastern wisdom for the first time. The Beats had ushered Zen onto the scene; the Hare Krishnas had become a fixture in be-ins and other counterculture happenings; Yoga and Transcendental Meditation classes were cropping up on campuses; George Harrison had put a sitar riff on “Norwegian Wood“ and was about to be mentored by Ravi Shankar, setting the stage for the Beatles’ historic sojourn in India; and books by interpreters of Hinduism and Buddhism, like Alan Watts and Aldous Huxley, were making the rounds, along with the Bhagavad Gita, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, the East-infused novels of Herman Hesse and J.D. Salinger, and Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi.

All in all, conventional religious beliefs were being called into question as never before, and the search for answers was not confined to the young; large numbers of grownups were also questioning what they had been taught about God. People were discovering new ways of understanding and pursuing spirituality, and adopting new language to discuss it , often eschewing the very word “God” because it was laden with connotations they wished to leave behind.
WBraun

climber
Mar 25, 2017 - 02:26pm PT
Rather, the brain itself IS conscious

The brain is material and dies and returns to dirt.

Consciousness is eternal and never ever was born nor ever dies.

Thus brain is never ever consciousness itself nor is the brain the source of consciousness ever.

Consciousness itself is always anti-material .....
BASE104

Social climber
An Oil Field
Mar 25, 2017 - 03:39pm PT
Consciousness is eternal and never ever was born nor ever dies.

Does that go for all forms of life? Or is it reserved for humans?

I know that Hindu's and Buddhists all believe in the spirit of animals, but why not plants as well? How plants grow certainly shows a certain degree of planning, if not intelligence.

Christians think that only humans have a soul, and racists prior to modern times even suggested that black people do not have a soul. I think that the majority of faiths believe that the soul is limited to humans only. Same for Islam and Judaism.

To me, with a knowledge of comparative anatomy, evolution of humans, and awareness that other animals possess some degree of intelligence, makes me shake my head that only humans possess a soul. An arbitrary line is so anthro-centric.

Different faiths have different beliefs, and quite often, they directly conflict each other.
Bushman

climber
The state of quantum flux
Mar 25, 2017 - 04:55pm PT
Starry Eyed yet Indifferent

For all I know
I have no soul
Difficult as I am
It's difficult to tell
My dog might tell me otherwise
If souls were something
One could smell
And I cannot speak for the orchids
The dieffenbachia as well

-bushman
03/25/2017
jstan

climber
Mar 25, 2017 - 06:07pm PT
Why is it we have to wait for Base104 to get a crystalline statement?

Andy is well beyond that requirement already, mind you.

Do you suppose there is yet hope for this thread?

I am not ignoring JGill's contributions. Over the last sixty years no one who ignored JGill has done well.
WBraun

climber
Mar 25, 2017 - 06:48pm PT
Does that go for all forms of life? Or is it reserved for humans?

Yes .... all forms of life ..... and that is fact.

Beliefs don't really do much good ultimately ......

jgill

Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
Mar 25, 2017 - 08:41pm PT
In the past, on occasion, I have alluded to Gödel's theorem to warn against self-referential arguments, particularly mind investigating itself, citing the paradoxes that could arise. And I was tempted to at present, but fortunately I found the following comment on StackExchange-Philosophy:

"Finally, I should like to say that countless philosophically-minded authors/thinkers/hacks have appropriated Godel's Theorem to try and make points about self-reference/loops/God/metaphysics/environmental awareness and God knows what else."

So, to do so is to parallel commentaries about quantum mechanics, virtual particles, universal fields, et al, relating to the mind. I have learned my lesson.
MikeL

Social climber
Southern Arizona
Mar 25, 2017 - 08:47pm PT
All interpretations. Speculations.

Show any "thing" with absolute certainty. Say what anything is completely, accurately, and finally.
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Mar 25, 2017 - 08:49pm PT
Do you suppose there is yet hope for this thread?


Depends on your taste in humor.
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Mar 25, 2017 - 08:53pm PT
For example:


Show any "thing" with absolute certainty. Say what anything is completely, accurately, and finally.




A thing (Old Norse, Old English and Icelandic: þing; Norwegian, Danish and Swedish: ting; German and Dutch: ding) was the governing assembly of a Germanic society, made up of the free people of the community presided over by lawspeakers. Its meeting-place was called a thingstead.


The word 'thing' began life with a clear and specific meaning. Humans were not satisfied with that kind of word.
MikeL

Social climber
Southern Arizona
Mar 25, 2017 - 08:58pm PT
;-)

Just where do you think definitions are going to get you?
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Mar 25, 2017 - 09:08pm PT
I have alluded to Gödel's theorem to warn against self-referential arguments, particularly mind investigating itself, citing the paradoxes that could arise.


Here is a merely philosophical but excellent examination of the difficulties of too close an examination of your own thoughts, though it seems to begin innocently enough:




Frank:
    But how could you have access to my private mental states?

Epistemologist:
    Private mental states! Metaphysical hogwash! Look, I am a practical epistemologist. Metaphysical problems about "mind" versus "matter" arise only from epistemological confusions. Epistemology is the true foundation of philosophy. But the trouble with all past epistemologists is that they have been using wholly theoretical methods, and much of their discussion degenerates into mere word games. While other epistemologists have been solemnly arguing such questions as whether a man can be wrong when he asserts that he believes such and such, I have discovered how to settle such questions experimentally.

Frank:
    How could you possibly decide such things empirically?

Epistemologist:
    By reading a person's thoughts directly.

Frank:
    You mean you are telepathic?

Epistemologist:
    Of course not. I simply did the one obvious thing which should be done, viz. I have constructed a brain-reading machine--known technically as a cerebroscope--that is operative right now in this room and is scanning every nerve cell in your brain. I thus can read your every sensation and thought, and it is a simple objective truth that this book does not seem red to you.


http://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/epistemologicalNightmare.html
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Mar 25, 2017 - 09:37pm PT
Raymond Smullyan:

When I talk of taking a purely subjective approach, what I have in mind is to simply state what one really does believe without worrying about whether the belief is or is not rational or whether it is or is not the result of some form of wishful thinking. This is less easy than imagined. Even if we temporarily waive all requirements of justifying our beliefs, it is not all that easy to know just what our beliefs really are. At least I find it so - particularly about such topics as life and death.

Suppose I now honestly ask myself what I believe will really happen to me after my bodily death; will I continue to exist or will I go out of existence? To tell the absolute truth, both answers seem to me somehow wrong!

The idea of going out of existence is to me absolutely inconceivable, hence I (in the good company of Goethe) cannot possibly believe something that I cannot even understand - something that I can form no notion of.



I hope that those of you who are positivistically oriented will at least give me credit for knowing what I am doing in the sense of realizing perfectly that the questions I am discussing are not questions about the physical world and hence totally outside the scope of science.




From The Zen of Life and Death
chapter 9
5,000 B.C. and Other Philosophical Fantasies
Raymond Smullyan
1983


Raymond Smullyan

born
25 May 1919
went outside of time
6 Feb 2017

MikeL

Social climber
Southern Arizona
Mar 26, 2017 - 06:59am PT
Endless interpretations.
WBraun

climber
Mar 26, 2017 - 07:09am PT
went outside of time


Can't be done, impossible to do.

No one has ever done such a thing, no one will ever do such a thing, as only God is Time itself in his impersonal feature and form .....
capseeboy

Social climber
portland, oregon
Mar 26, 2017 - 11:32am PT
WB
No one has ever done such a thing, no one will ever do such a thing, as only God is Time itself in his impersonal feature and form .....

Seems like the mystics and quantum physicists are getting closer to backing each other up. I might be wrong, but it all seems relative.

Growing up I internalized, why is this happening to me, it must be my fault. As I got older I developed into a blamer too. Now I feel that nothing really is anyones fault. We are conditioned by more things then we can ever be aware of. I know a lot of people may considered this a cop out.

Many things in our short modern history appeared to be good inventions at the time. Ultimately, most of them are leading us to the destruction of the environment, each other, and ourselves.

Man, including myself, is very arrogant in his beliefs and practices. At the bottom of it, I mostly don't want to believe any truths other then water, food, shelter, fire. Our collective history has mostly been time spent as animal spirits. Everything else is just made up and sometimes agreed on.

This climbing non-sense seems to me to be an animal spirit no longer in need of being a hunter/gatherer. So what is an animal spirit to do with itself when no longer faced with survival? Seek a made up do or die environment.
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Mar 26, 2017 - 02:50pm PT
Endless interpretations.



Of what?






























Is there a Polish version?
MikeL

Social climber
Southern Arizona
Mar 26, 2017 - 03:34pm PT
This.
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Mar 26, 2017 - 05:55pm PT
This.


Good.


I thought you might have been referring to That.
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