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WBraun
climber
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The mind is always accompanied by six enemies.
Lust, anger, intoxication, illusion, envy and fear.
Yet the gross materialists always put so much emphasis on their defective bodily components
and remain totally clueless on the superiority of their own true selves which transcend those material components .......
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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I hope that's not jgill's current state was the next one
It's getting there, wading through the back and forth about machine sentience.
The origins of human abilities for mathematics are debated: Some theories suggest that they are founded upon evolutionarily ancient brain circuits for number and space and others that they are grounded in language competence
My experiences with fellow mathematicians demonstrates little to no correlation with language skills. Personally, foreign languages do not come easily. If anything an inverse relationship might exist. There does seem to be a linking of musical ability with mathematics, however.
Abstract: "The upper body checks the posture, while the lower limbs are mainly involved in sustaining the body mass [Bourdin et al., 1998]"
Way off target for boulderers, here!
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Iranian Dreams
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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In terms of explaining things, saying our mind works by unspecified algorithms that we are unconscious of
I recommend the vestibular system as a good place to start. The semicircular canals resolve angular accelerations of the head into 3 orthogonal components. The signal in the 8th cranial nerve is proportional to angular velocity because of the dynamics of the fluid in the canals, and the brain integrates the signal again, which gives head position. That signal is used to counter-rotate the eyes to mitigate motion blur when you are walking up a rough trail to the base of a climb.
This should be a good resource, and it may be available to those associated with an academic institution:
http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195167085.001.0001/acprof-9780195167085
A working academic probably doesn't have the time, though.
Jay Goldberg was my thesis advisor and he is very good. He also made important contributions to our understanding of how the brain makes use of timing and amplitude cues to locate the source of sounds. He once had ambitions of learning why it is that music appeals so much to us, but he realized that so-called higher mental function was likely to remain mysterious in his lifetime, and perhaps for all time.
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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So Werner, do you know anything about all these new pay-to-publish-open-access journals? IMO this is one of the most disturbing trends in modern science. I'm pretty old and won't have to see the effects of this crap has on science, but my daughter will. May God have mercy on her soul.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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jgill: And why should I be reluctant to describe my adventures?
Describing your "adventures" (dreams?) was not my question. My question was: in that you have experienced lucid dreaming, does that experience give you any pause in defining or saying what consciousness is?
You were apparently asleep while you were seemingly an aware “I” inside a so-called lucid dream.
Where or how were you conscious? Of what? Manifestations within a temporary coma or trance?
What is the difference between being asleep and being awake?
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Seems there are certain conclusions to draw from this thread:
I’d argue that, like life, mind (consciousness, awareness, intelligence) is an inevitable construct in our universe based on its nature: the laws of physics and the certain evidence of its existence.
I’d also argue that mind or at least aspects of mind (intelligence) comes in degrees: an ant has less, a human more.
If we accept the notion of the inevitability of mind and the idea of scale or degree of mind (mind as a kind of continuum from less to more) then we also have to accept that we don’t know with any certainty our own position on that scale. The implication is that that scale goes beyond our own position. If so, how far? At what point does mind and intelligence rise to the position of divinity or what humanity has accepted as divine for millennia? Not in the sense of magic or woo but within the structure of the laws of physics, though perhaps a physics we don’t yet understand.
Isn’t the structure of mind we find on this planet from simple to complex at least an implication of deity? If we define deity as consisting of an intelligence remarkably greater than our own with a resulting control of nature remarkably greater than our own.
Ultimately I gain more confidence in the human mind through a thread like this, though no doubt human thought has its faults. The proclivity of those in science to see humanity as some how insignificant and the proof of this is humanity’s scale in relation to the universe discounts mind’s remarkable nature and its rarity, and that rarity, at least in our solar system, validates mind as important, scale be damned. One wonders at the need to diminish what is really one of the most remarkable aspects of our universe: the ability to know.
And if our sense of knowing and awareness are simply illusions, who or what is having the illusion? Escaping the "I" is no easy matter.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Paul: . . . mind (consciousness, awareness, intelligence) is an inevitable construct . . . .
I like this articulation. Mind is indeed, from my experience, a construct. Here we search for a model of the mind, but models are abstractions.
. . . if our sense of knowing and awareness are simply illusions . . . .
The doubt of awareness seems self-contradictory; but as Hegel wrote, self-contradiction of an identity (that A = A), can be doubted in many ways. All identities seem to be impermanent. It appears impossible to find anything that is static and unchanging.
Knowing, on the other hand, seems less and less important to me these days. I can imagine this amounts to an iconoclastic blasphemy with this crowd. We make so much of intelligence and knowledge—as if those two things make everything whole and right. Knowing doesn’t seem to make any difference from what I can see. It doesn’t seem to solve conventional problems (often generating even more), and knowing what any master or spiritual leader has said doesn’t appear to lead anyone to liberation or enlightenment (viz., seeing What-This-Is or Being-in-the-Moment). One cannot seem to analyze one’s way to happiness or realization. Both seem to be mysterious to me. If anything, the more I let go of things, the more both of those things seem to be showing up for me. But I don’t really understand how any of it really works or what either really are. That seems to be fine.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Knowing, on the other hand, seems less and less important to me these days.
good for you
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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I’d argue that, like life, mind (consciousness, awareness, intelligence) is an inevitable construct in our universe...
[editorial note, ellipses used correctly here]
I'd change "inevitable" with "possible"
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Genetics gives the basis from which "mind" unfolds, to a certain extent modified by culture, secondary nature.
Atoms and molecules gives the basis upon which genetics unfolds.
What holds atoms together - call it Higgs particle or "spirit" or "something/no-thing" behind.
The cultural verbal expression on the Mind thread will never come closer to something real than you do when shooting shadows with a gun...
Old men fooling around like this... you should be ashamed of yourself...
:o)
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Old men fooling around like this... you should be ashamed of yourself...
I agree.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Where or how were you conscious? Of what? Manifestations within a temporary coma or trance? What is the difference between being asleep and being awake?
Sorry. Misinterpreted. The consciousness in this state seems exactly like that in normal awakeness. But one feels that the I-consciousness is no longer inhibited by the limitations of the body. There is a profound sense of freedom. As for the difference between asleep and awake (when conscious in both conditions), being awake in the normal sense subjects one to physical laws; being awake in the dreaming sense allows those laws to be circumvented. This experience goes beyond what I suspect is a simple lucid dream in that one has volition and can shape the environment.
Controlling the Matrix?
But I was never able to read newspaper print although I stared at the pages and made the effort. Curious.
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Returning to the general discussion, I still want to know why a prolonged focus on empty awareness is warranted? And to say this stage is axiomatic is to say very little . . . or nothing.
(the . . . was inserted to excite Sycorax!)
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Old men fooling around like this... you should be ashamed of yourself...
As an old man I take issue with this statement. The search for wisdom may appear foolish but that would be the perspective of those not only unwise, but certain of their wisdom.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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For how much value is put on wisdom, the Universe is equally indifferent.
Certainty with regard to the indifference of the universe is a staggering and poorly defined assumption.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Hey Marlowe, don't forget there is an old woman on this thread too (I leave Sycorax to define herself).
And very nice jgill. striking colors and symmetry. Iranian? I'd have guessed rows of fruit or Gypsy flamenco dancers myself. Mathematical art as the new Rorschach test.
Speaking of knowledge and wisdom, I just heard a very good series of Ted Talks today on the topic of neuro science and religion. Here are two that this crowd might like as they don't define religion in the traditional terms that so many object to.
This one talks about how we have two different minds within one brain (dual process theory), the mind that is logical and supports science and the mind that is intuitive, emotional, and socially oriented from which religion springs. The increased emphasis in STEM subjects has brought about a measurable, researched decline in empathy among students. Therefore we need to use both halves, but the non analytical side according to your own decisions rather than traditional authority.
A Scientific Defense of Spiritual and Religious Faith
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BihT0XrPVP8
Reality Reconciles Science and Religion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QeTWVw9Fm4
Reality is the new word for God here. Religion always tried to reconcile us to reality, but we have frozen it into a set of dogmas which no longer reflect natural reality, nor understand the symbolic and myth making properties of religion about reality.
Three quotes
Our brains are remarkable, but they're not perfect.
Reality is what doesn’t go away when you no longer believe in it.
Evidence is modern day scripture.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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And for Mike, a class taught by a neuro scientist which is half science and half humanities, dealing with the same age old questions from both neuro-science and a religious but not deniominational or prosyletizing point of view. He made groups of students present papers each week from first one and then the other point of view. They then led class discussions on the papers. On the student evals, they stated that their favorite parts of the course were writing their essay papers (imagine that?!)
Neuroscience and religion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWIf6mOSPkQ
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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And very nice jgill. striking colors and symmetry. Iranian?
Think missiles and nukes.
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