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WBraun
climber
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no physical or biological investigation can ever account for what we call consciousness
Yes .... consciousness is NOT material but gets covered by the material energies.
That is why the gross materialists are so clueless and think they can only gather data thru their material senses.
The gross materialists are totally clueless to whom they even are.
Only the soul can understand consciousness correctly since the soul is the actual consciousness and simultaneously the self.
Thus the gross materialists are ultimately fools wasting their time studying the material coat that covers their self.
They never study themselves.
The gross materialists are so stoopid they think they are the coat.
Nobody keeps their coat (gross physical material body) when it gets worn out.
Nobody thinks they are dead when they their worn out coat gets thrown away.
Only fools think they are dead and finished after their coat wears out.
The gross materialists are total fools with their mechanistic consciousness which is just glorified animalistic caveman consciousness.
Not even on the human being platform yet, but they'll jump up and down like monkeys claiming they are advanced.
Even a monkey can jump up and down too .....
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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I'll say again that there are many forms of meditation and what Largo is describing is only one. Zen does not have an anthropomorphic western style god but at another level you can say that "emptiness" is the god of Zen. Largo claims that Zen has nothing to do with religion yet the vocabulary he uses to describe emptiness is Buddhist for sure to anyone who knows that religion well.
The Indo-Tibetan forms of meditation have a completely different emphasis. Instead of being centered in the brain only, they involve the whole body, especially the spinal nervous system and the attached endocrine glands. This tradition maintains that the mind extends throughout the body and each part can influence the other.
Personally, I think they both deal with the unconscious mind which includes the autonomic nervous system. Zen seeks to remove the discursive mind in order to experience the unconscious mind or pure awareness as Largo calls it, centered in the brain. The Indo Tibetan systems seek to unify conscious and unconscious by altering the body's chemistry and electrical circuitry so they function better together. Not surprisingly they tend to emphasize uniting oneself with a God or a god-like ideal.
Lately I've been wondering if we could change our vocabulary to describe these processes as recovering our entire evolutionary history, uniting our reptilian, mammalian and primate brains and adding human reasoning to that? Being all we can be or ever were. Maybe then we would share an identification with the other living beings we share this planet with and a sense of awe at the universe we live in, rather than being preoccupied with our own trivial and distracted pursuits?
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Bob D'A
Trad climber
Taos, NM
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"Maybe then we would share an identification with the other living beings we share this planet with and a sense of awe at the universe we live in"
Science does that.
Werner...just chant and be happy.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Yes, science does that as do many other ways of looking at reality.
Not everyone can or wants to be a scientist and most humans on this earth have no idea yet, what science is. So what to do in the meantime?
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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says the preacher of cynicism
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 3, 2017 - 08:33am PT
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Good observations, Jan. I would add that I have always been a lay Zen student. Never did the Buddhist thing and never got a Japanese moniker. It is true that my original teachers all came from Japan, but they were outliers who didn't square with traditional Japanese norms. And neither did their instruction.
What's more, most teachers these days are westerners who have gotten jiggy with the consciousness movement and have traversed the terrain in terms of meditation practices. The long time abbot of the LA Zen Center, a woman, was a Tibetan monk for years.
Point is, western Zen, as currently practiced (by few - Zen centers are usually pretty empty owing to the austere, stripped down format), is often a mixture of various disciplines, borrowing from both the Soto and Renzai traditions, plus whatever else the teacher studied, including a lot of practical psych, which has cleaned up the drinking and philanering that used to go on in all such places.
Most students have an embodied practice like hatha yoga or climbing so the meditation remains grounded. Zen has always put a premium on physical work - chopping wood, and all that. And I think this is to compensate for the rigorously mental nature of the work.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 3, 2017 - 09:23am PT
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First, happy holidays ya'all.
MH2 sez: Can you describe what you mean by sentience in such a way that we may get an idea of what sort of clues would be needed to explain it?
Or are you, like Chalmers, quite sure that no physical or biological investigation can ever account for what we call consciousness?
Problem for me is that I'm never quite sure what you are fishing for, MH2. Are you asking for a description that we can answer by way of a mechanism?
And if none is ever possible, is that the fault of the person trying to evaluate consciousness, or the fact that consciousness itself is not an external object or force that we can wrangle with our sense organs and start to pull measurements?
This difficulty is implied by the Hard Problem: Consciousness is totally unlike any other phenomenon in reality. Our normal means of evaluating and reverse engineering it back to a mechanism are made difficult by the lack of sense data to measure. Quite naturally people default out to what a person is doing, or WHAT he is experiencing, or focusing on the brain, believing that sentience is mechanical artifact sourced by brain.
Thebn this: “[We must] take consciousness seriously. … [To] redefine the problem as that of explaining how certain cognitive or behavioural functions are performed is unacceptable.”
Chalmers
What would be acceptable?
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What would be acceptable is to look at what the Hard Problem is asking. Which is, if you believe that consciousness is the mechanical output of the brain, then know that in all other cases of material sourcing other stuff, that other stuff is an external object or force physically related (in kind) to the source. Not so with consciousness, which bears none of the physical attributes found in external objects and phenomenon, and in fact is not external at all. What Chalmers is essentially saying is, the idea that matter becomes sentient by way of a physical mechanism is logically incoherent, and if you believe otherwise, demonstrate same.
The problem is hard because consciousness is probably the only feature of reality whose ontology (WHAT it is) cannot be described by referencing parts, forces, and so forth that contribute to it's composite makeup. Awareness is indivisible, is a whole unto itself, whereby any imagined part of awareness is also the whole of it. With external objects, when asked: What is that? we can usually counter with a list of physical forces, charges, densities, and nuclear components that contribute to the makeup of the object or phenomenon. Not so with consciousness.
And that might be the main challenge.
So when you ask: "Can you describe what you mean by sentience in such a way that we may get an idea of what sort of clues would be needed to explain it?" what I suspect you are saying is: "We need sentience defined and described in the same way that you would define and describe a quark or a baseball or a white star, in order to start doing science on it." If we can't do so, investigating awareness begets us nothing - as Healje said, because "something" of value - by this belief system - is something we can measure.
Part of the Hard Problem is meeting this criteria, of positing an internal subjective phenomenon as an external objective phenomenon. Since no one can do so, I consider the Hard Problem to basically be a trick question. It's a little like saying, "Our mode of inquiry is geared to examine Uncles and only Uncles. But now we're stuck with this Aunt of yours. Kindly describe your Aunt in terms of being an Uncle so we can do things like we always done them..."
Not surprisingly, many have carried on as though your Aunt IS your Uncle, but the Hard Problem dead-ends their efforts every time.
What many intelligent people flub in this inquiry is illustrated by the wonky attempts to dodge the obvious points just listed by foisting the whole shebang into a "God of the Gaps" argument. That is:
"God of the gaps" is a term used to describe observations of theological perspectives in which gaps in scientific knowledge are taken to be evidence or proof of God's existence."
The metaphor is not nearly exact, but the point is that those clinging to a mechanistic/causal model to "explain" everything accordingly, insist that anyone suggesting that a mechanistic explanation of awareness is not credible is merely playing off the gap in scientific knowledge, and that given the rapid advances in neurobiology et al, the data is soon forthcoming.
Chalmers is saying this is a misdirect that is off topic. That is, all the data in the world will never make your Uncle your Aunt, but people are addicted to Uncles (physical mechanisms), and the show goes on, as it should.
We can easily see that what drives much of this investigation is the philosophical belief that any inquiry that is not paid off with a causal/mechanistic explanation is not a real investigation at all, since epistemically, most people ascribe all sense of knowing to knowing about physical causes and factors. This, among other challenges, is what makes the Hard Problem hard, in my opinion.
One of the boons of this inquiry is that it is forcing us to explore new ways of thinking - and that is always an adventure. But adventure is not for everyone, as every climber knows.
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WBraun
climber
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Sentience = the original source of everything, consciousness .......
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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I want to comment on a couple of Jan;' last posts, which I really liked.
Lately I've been wondering if we could change our vocabulary to describe these processes as recovering our entire evolutionary history, uniting our reptilian, mammalian and primate brains and adding human reasoning to that? Being all we can be or ever were. Maybe then we would share an identification with the other living beings we share this planet with and a sense of awe at the universe we live in, rather than being preoccupied with our own trivial and distracted pursuits? I'm sure that all of the science-minded on this thread support this view. Human reasoning is on a continuum with reptile and mammalian predator/prey reasoning as well as at least mammalian mother/child reasoning and empathy.. It seems like the obvious default to me. The idea that my starting point should be my own subjective view of the world -- without regard to this body of knowledge that is simply based on what humans experience and have experienced (history) is clearly a deficient world view, in my mind.
Not everyone can or wants to be a scientist and most humans on this earth have no idea yet, what science is. So what to do in the meantime Sometimes I think that Ed, as smart as he is, is the wrong person to advocate for science on this thread. A geologist or life scientist would be better for this reason; much of science is actually just raw observation. If it repeatable -- like the sun rising every day in the east and setting in the west, it becomes a part of our body of scientific knowledge. That's it, basically. That's what science is. It is our attempt at describing the nature world. Repeatability is a biggie.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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I agree that I don't represent the sciences and the scientists, but I never said I did, I am posting my opinion. That you all are somewhat tired of hearing it certainly suggests it is time to let my posts stand as they are; there is no need to add to what is there.
I actually asked the website to delete them all but apparently they choose not to (they didn't answer my email).
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 3, 2017 - 04:10pm PT
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I hope you don't bow out, Ed. Your thoughts and the links and papers you have provided have been a source of much learning from my end.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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It seems to me that physics is natural studies taken to a much more abstract form. It's true however, that the more concrete observations of something like geology or biology are easier for most people to understand.
Even so, we appreciate Ed's contributions and hope he sticks around.
Also good point Largo, about the emphasis on chopping wood and hauling water in Zen in order to ground practitioners since it is so centered in the head.
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Bob D'A
Trad climber
Taos, NM
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Greg wrote: That's it, basically. That's what science is. It is our attempt at describing the nature world. Repeatability is a biggie.
I think it is way more that, a journey with no end in sight, answering questions with real data/information.
Stick around Ed.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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This difficulty is implied by the Hard Problem: Consciousness is totally unlike any other phenomenon in reality
The Wizard has made this point over and over; yet, apart from Zen meditation, has suggested no path of investigation.
Reams of philosophy doesn't do it, either.
Pretty hopeless. Sometimes I fear we will never get to the heart of the mind.
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StahlBro
Trad climber
San Diego, CA
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Without consciousness, there is no need to discuss reality. There is only cause and effect. Consciousnesses seems to be a level above basic causality, where the course of events can be redirected due to personal desires.
I don't support the postulate that personal desires are also predetermined.
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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What Largo wants is a very watered down version of consciousness and it would have to match all his wrong views for him to believe we had figured it out. Here is his loop:
1. His experience [of his mind] or such reporting of it's actions is the way the mind/brain works and that way is the [only?] method for study.
2. There is nothing like consciousness in the physical world [charge, magnetism, induction] therefore consciousness is something different than anything physical.
3. Go back to 1.
He has such problems because he takes on views that are groundless:
Observe: When in doubt he will play the sentience card of denial of your "mechanism" for which he has no clue what is going on otherwise and just could never see it [mind] as electrons in motion. Belief in 2.
His Grade: NO TRACTION he just slings another vague/meaningless word e.g. sentience, to obscure any clarity.
Really Largo: [Just] What is the sentience that could not be produced by known properties of the existing universe? SEE #1
Really Largo: [Just] What are the feelings that could not be produced by known properties of the existing universe? SEE #1
Chalmers and you seem to have a lock-on the idea that these attributes of a working brain are something quite non ordinary?
He is wound tightly in the ancient twine ball of duality for which there is no evidence -- just philosophical ranting [assertions] of this form: My thoughts are non physical therefore the world is mind & matter. ?
And yes Ed, arguing with an agent of duality is senseless but carry this idea with you: Some measures of the Largo of Mind = some measures of the Chief of climate change.
Some of the ranchers out here in WY will deny evolution & genetics but they dam sure weed out the skinny Bull or the cow that aborts and they do take measurements of mass and $$.
Please, no bull here.
Largo go to #1. Doing such is not science. I will never buy your book: The Knot Theory of Consciousness, Sentience and Bullshit .
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Bob D'A
Trad climber
Taos, NM
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Great post Dingus...A lot of small and mirrors from from JohnL.
Also how do you even start to have a discussion with someone like Werner who doesn't even believe in evolution?
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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I'm never quite sure what you are fishing for, MH2.
You said:
We are, in fact, totally clueless per a mechanistic explanation for sentience.
I asked if you had in mind any idea of the sort of clues that would be needed?
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