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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Dec 14, 2017 - 10:33am PT
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Largo,
you once again have missed the message
Yes, it could be construed by you as such since you see little differences between what is not obvious to you of your message deficiency in relation to what the rest of us see as understanding ourselves in relation to others. You do lack reading comprehension -- please read me again.
No Largo, every person that gives a 3rd person account also has access to a 1st person account. It seems you quote the 3rd person Searle often when you need such support and yet deny any validity to others use of 3rd party assessment on the grounds that it is not nor contains any 1st party experience for what it is worth.
There is no such thing as just a 3rd party perspective when we all also carry our 1st person experience. We all have 1st person accounts fused with 3rd party observations.
If you cannot see this, then Go fu*k yourself you big dummy. Your message does not describe the situation as it manifests.
Or are you so self-centered that you think only meditators can have 1st person experience?
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 14, 2017 - 11:31am PT
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Dingus, you have once more guzzled the bong water. It didn't agree with your tripe and consequently exploded all over this thread.
No one is calling you stupid etc. My point is that what you call an "understanding" is actually a philosophical position that is not derived from the data. So let's brush aside you getting unhinged and get down to what's important: The adventure of mind itself.
You said: No Largo, every person that gives a 3rd person account also has access to a 1st person account. It seems you quote the 3rd person Searle often when you need such support and yet deny any validity to others use of 3rd party assessment on the grounds that it is not nor contains any 1st party experience for what it is worth.
That's a bit hazy and sounds like all-or-nothing thinking. Quoting others is not necessarily a ploy to recruit validity to a perspective as it is a means of using someone's succinctly phrased descriptors to illustrate a point or understanding that feels right to the individual. I disagree with Searl on many points but the man is bright, virtually invented many aspects of mind studies and knows the dead ends of many avenues of thought in this regards. I look at him as a valuable resource, nothing more.
For starters, there is no absolute 3rd person "view from nowhere" because all views imply an observer, ergo a conscious agent who is merely objectifying reality. To my mind, "observer independent" perspectives are not actually so in any absolute sense. There really is no separating consciousness from WHATEVER we observe. Many disagree. So it goes...
That much said, the EXERCISE of isolating out sense data (the objective world) from subjectivity pays rich dividends. Anyone who doubts it has to answer to science and technology, which has made possible the lives we currently enjoy. So subdividing the objective and subjective and making each a special study is an invaluable technique.
It stands to reason and experience that if we can isolate out the objective, which renders such great results, giving us information otherwise not available to either subjectivity or mixed (subjective/objective) perspectives, then isolating out subjectivity will deliver information otherwise not available to a merely objective take or perspective. But this runs counter to the philosophical belief that we need only look at the objective to know the whole story.
Again, my take is that the objective and subjective are indivisible and seamless. The challenge and remarkable thing about this adventure is that, so to speak, we can't see tails when we are focused on heads. And since we ARE the coin, we can't somehow jump outside of it and see both sides at the same time. A Type A physicalist would say that by looking at the objective, we are really looking at both, we just don't know as much. However they would never say the converse is true. That is, the objective exists totally separate and independent from the subjective, while the subjective is totally beholden to the objective which births or creates sentience (the Genesis Metaphor). My take is that nothing, no one thing or phenomenon exists independent of any other thing or phenomenon. And never has.
But man, this is full of conundrums and paradoxes if we are holding fast to a classical take on reality, especially if we interject time into the mix. This link is a fun one per the time thing:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-debate-over-the-physics-of-time-20160719/
The deeper I go into this the more first assumptions want to direct my thinking. Perhaps the fundamental first assumption (and I certainly have it at many levels) is the notion that we exist inside of time. This gives traction to the Genesis Metaphor that within linear time, all forms arise and fall, are "created" and die. When we take up consciousness, we naturally think that the brain evolved over time and eventually birthed consciousness. From a classical take, this feels indisputable. But what happens to the conversation when the hegemony of linear time is set aside, along with beginning and endings?
From the above link, quoting Einstein in 1955, "For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
Deep waters, that.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Dec 14, 2017 - 12:59pm PT
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From the article:
'Perhaps the strongest statement made at the conference in favor of the block universe’s compatibility with everyday experience came from the philosopher Jenann Ismael of the University of Arizona. The way Ismael sees it, the block universe, properly understood, holds within it the explanation for our experience of time’s apparent passage. A careful look at conventional physics, supplemented by what we’ve learned in recent decades from cognitive science and psychology, can recover “the flow, the whoosh, of experience,” she said. In this view, time is not an illusion — in fact, we experience it directly. She cited studies that show that each moment we experience represents a finite interval of time. In other words, we don’t infer the flow of time; it’s part of the experience itself. The challenge, she said, is to frame this first-person experience within the static block offered by physics — to examine “how the world looks from the evolving frame of reference of an embedded perceiver” whose history is represented by a curve within the space-time of the block universe'.
An intersection of sorts with JL's perspective.
Time is more fascinating for me than mind, although the two are clearly connected.
Here is a note I posted that plays with mathematics and time:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321554337_An_Elementary_Note_Playing_With_Complex_and_Distorted_Time_in_C
(I do these as a hobby in old age)
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 14, 2017 - 01:26pm PT
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A careful look at conventional physics, supplemented by what we’ve learned in recent decades from cognitive science and psychology, can recover “the flow, the whoosh, of experience,” she said. In this view, time is not an illusion — in fact, we experience it directly.
--
This is the case so long as attention is anchored to WHAT we experience, and the visceral whoosh of same. But when we detach from the what, the whoose OF experience drops away but WE don't. In fact awareness and presence becomes oceanic. It would seem that time and the timeless are somehow embedded in each other.
Reconciling this is the heavy lifting.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Dec 14, 2017 - 03:13pm PT
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It would seem that time and the timeless are somehow embedded in each other
It might seem that way, but outside your trance the clock is ticking away. Subjective vs objective time; Bergson vs Einstein. The whole block of space-time concept seems a stretch. Can time increase when there is no motion, none at all, a static universe? Not that that can happen, just a thought.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 14, 2017 - 03:49pm PT
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outside your trance...
trance
trans/Submit
noun
noun: trance; plural noun: trances
1.
a half-conscious state characterized by an absence of response to external stimuli, typically as induced by hypnosis or entered by a medium.
"she put him into a light trance"
synonyms: daze, stupor, hypnotic state, half-conscious state, dream, reverie, fugue state
"he pretended to be in a trance"
I'd be curious to hear about your our subjective experiences that led you to believe they axiomatically lead to "half-conscious states," or that consciousness, per se, is only fully real when it is anchored to external stimulai.
Guessing about someone else's internal landscape is ok, so long as you don't mind being entirely wrong.
From my view, there is no "outside" or for that matter, "inside" in reference to time or reality. That is, there are not two parallel realms, resulting in a duality, rather the two are merely sides of one coin.
Believing as much leads to the old Uncle Dennett crack that "you only think you are (fill in the blank)," while the real deal is happening according to classical principals. You just don't know as much, lost as we are in our "trance."
Mercy....
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Dec 14, 2017 - 04:10pm PT
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Correction: Meditative state.
Of course, the "timeless" quality exists in very focused intellectual investigations as well as in Zen practices. But, in active intellect mode time vanishes. Does the same happen in Zen practices, or are you aware of the passage of time in empty awareness?
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WBraun
climber
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Dec 14, 2017 - 04:17pm PT
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But, in active intellect mode time vanishes.
No such thing ever happens, nor will it .... ever.
Time IS eternal and IS the impersonal feature of God himself.
If time vanishes then you vanish immediately since you are a part parcel of the whole. ....
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Dec 14, 2017 - 04:19pm PT
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Well, that certainly clarifies the issue.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 14, 2017 - 04:30pm PT
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Meditative "state" is in my opinion misleading, because it implies that meditation is fundamentally of a piece, and that each piece or "mode" involves a state.
In it's normal usage, state means "the particular condition that someone or something is in at a specific time. synonyms include: condition, shape, situation, circumstances, position.
It also pertains to a physical condition as regards internal or molecular form or structure. "water in a liquid state"
So we naturally think: When John G. is meditating he is in a particular state or condition.
Condition usually means the state of something, especially with regard to its appearance, quality, or working order. It can also refer to
a particular state of existence. "a condition of misery"
Basically, a state or condition refers to some describable or discernible characteristic we can know or get our minds around by contrast to another state or condition. That is, misery compared to joy, hot compared to cold. etc.
Empty awareness is the absence (that's why it's called "empty") of any and all characteristics, including an imagined "set" which is "empty."
So in the absence of characteristics (and awareness itself has no characteristics) you have no state, including a stateless state, which is our discursive minds just groping for a container for nothing at all.
One can also say, "Well, you only think that is what is happening," but thinking is also absent, rendering this comment meaningless. Empty awareness is not a thought, nor is it the absence of thought.
This sounds like double talk to the discursive mind, till it drops away.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Dec 14, 2017 - 06:02pm PT
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Empty awareness is not a thought, nor is it the absence of thought.
If you are sure about what a thought is, please tell us what you know.
If you are not sure, or cannot or will not tell us, you are just blowing smoke.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Dec 14, 2017 - 06:06pm PT
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Humans usually have better guides to decision-making than a coin toss, yanqui.
If I could observe your choice of which path to take over a long series of events, I could better compare you with the coin.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Dec 14, 2017 - 07:07pm PT
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OMG MH2! To compound your loneliness you've been mocked on the Internet! Please hang with us and try to resist all thoughts of suicide.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Dec 14, 2017 - 07:14pm PT
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My fondest wish is that no one listens to me.
That wish is as good as granted,here.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Dec 14, 2017 - 07:20pm PT
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Just in case, though:
If you flip a fair coin you do not make a free choice, yanqui. You make an arbitrary choice.
In my view, if you could make a free choice you should be able to make the same choice every time, if you felt like it.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Dec 14, 2017 - 07:29pm PT
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jogill: . . . are you aware of the passage of time in empty awareness?
Recall a myth or narrative that you are very familiar with. You seem to know how it starts, what happens within it, and how it ends. Trigger a recall of the story, and it pretty much all comes at once, doesn’t it? Where is time? Is the recall presented as a series of events serially linked and unfolded one by one, or does your apparent memory deposit the narrative all at once? Where is time?
In traditional meditation, linking with an object of meditation seems to make time go exceedingly rapidly, or time becomes “timeless” (as it were). Time is more like “where” than “when.” Look closely at your feelings and at what you know or believe. Where is time in your feelings or in what you believe or know? In the moment, it’s nowhere.
In some kinds of meditation (shikantaza for example), there is nothing but simply sitting. Simply sitting is nothing but being here and now. Sit long enough, and “here and now” become simply “being” rather than “I’m sitting here in this courtyard at 5:30 am in Green Valley, AZ, doing whatever . . . . ” One sees *here and now* as a display, a display of mind.
Here and now is simply consciousness, and consciousness can be equated to sets of manifestations (displays) *out there*—all the while there appears to be a consciousness of the displays *inside* . . . here. After a while, one might see that what is outside is the same thing as what is inside.
Time appears seemingly irrelevant in here and now. At best, time appears to be something that is artificially assigned to seeing—irrespective of any ticking mechanism in the background. Ticking is only another apparent part of the display.
Time and my narrative of what and who I am are both heavy-handed ways of talking about an instantaneous and spontaneous experience that is never anything but *now* and *here.* And those suggest that mind is a term synonymous with “time” and “here and now.” There would appear to be no difference whatsoever among any of these. It’s just this one thing.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Dec 14, 2017 - 07:34pm PT
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MH2: If you are sure about what a thought is, please tell us what you know. If you are not sure, or cannot or will not tell us, you are just blowing smoke.
Who are you to say?
Are you saying that anyone who reports their subjective experiences are blowing smoke? Are you saying that unless one can give a definitive answer to a question must be blowing smoke? Are you saying that one must have answers?
Anyone can look closely at anything and report honestly that they don’t know. That’s blowing smoke?
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Dec 14, 2017 - 07:39pm PT
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I dunno, Mike. I hiked up a mountain today, and then had to hike back down to give the dog a walk and feed it. Time felt highly relevant to me. Maybe because I had to skip lunch to get down in time.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Dec 14, 2017 - 07:42pm PT
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Okay, Mike.
Let's see if Largo says he doesn't know what a thought is.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Dec 14, 2017 - 07:53pm PT
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Empty awareness is not a thought, nor is it the absence of thought
Ineffable, and strangely like a paradoxical Biblical pronouncement. The Holy Ghost is neither a spirit nor the absence of a spirit.
And those suggest that mind is a term synonymous with “time” and “here and now
I'll have to mull this over and compare with the comments of your colleague, the Duck. You two might be on to something.
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