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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Jan 31, 2018 - 04:25pm PT
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Paul,
The way that I am using the word is like this; I'm pretty sure that if we could just wind back time and let evolution play out all over again, that we would end up with a very different ecology (the sum of all organisms and their interactions, basically) today. I'm assuming that chaotic principles would be at work at least here and there, that would result in a new set of organisms and behaviors. Having said that, the fact the eye has independently evolved fully 17 different times makes you wonder if there isn't a convergence on killer designs.
Evolution will become irrelevant in humans, IMO. It has been for some time, I think. As healyje has pointed out, we really have lost some average IQ points as a species since the agricultural revolution. The way to look at it is that the weeding out is not as ruthlessly efficient in a sedentary population as a nomadic one.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Jan 31, 2018 - 04:39pm PT
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I don't want to get side-tracked anymore with the word "winner" with respect to adding evolution to the mix in this discussion. The thing is, it really is important to realize that there are (at least) two independent processes going on with respect to the subject of mind. First, evolution not only creates the machinery of the mind, i.e., the brain; it also creates software for the brain. This is an important point that often gets overlooked -- particularly by Largo. The bodies that evolution creates software for are born with a complicated set of automatic processes along with learning machinery that allows for on-the-job training to keep up with the changing environment. It's only some of the neural networks that work this way. Most are automatic.
The second process is the manifestation of consciousness as a result of that inherited machinery and your particular life.
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WBraun
climber
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Jan 31, 2018 - 04:41pm PT
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You gross materialists keep using evolved.
Wrong word!
You have done nothing but devolved in the past 5000 years.
Humanity was far more intelligent than now.
Now nothing but puffed up mental speculators posing as learned so called scientists
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jan 31, 2018 - 04:56pm PT
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You have done nothing but devolved in the past 5000 years.
If we have devolved, we must once have evolved.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Jan 31, 2018 - 05:17pm PT
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You have done nothing but devolved in the past 5000 years.
Hey man, I'm old, but not THAT old. I've always considered myself immature for my age to tell you the truth. Always been kind of proud of it, actually.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Jan 31, 2018 - 05:38pm PT
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Genes/Replicators=>Vehicles => Genomes => Ecologies
Mind fits in under vehicles. That is, (human) vehicles have minds.
I edited this from the original.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 31, 2018 - 07:34pm PT
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First, evolution not only creates the machinery of the mind, i.e., the brain; it also creates software for the brain. This is an important point that often gets overlooked -- particularly by Largo.
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What makes you think I am overlooking this? I've long said that the brain creates conscious content (thoughts, feelings, sensations, memories). But that doesn't at all account for the fact that we are aware of same. Of course the idea that awareness is software (re the components of an operating system that enable the brain to function and do real work) is a non-starter for obvious reasons.
The fly in the ointment for computer models of consciousness is that awareness is there before content arises and is not defined nor yet exists only in its relation to content, data or a given task or "work."
Also note that any time we try and use physical modeling to describe experience we never get past physical descriptions.
The bottom line is that awareness is not digital, discrete, nor yet a calculation/data or output. All of these relate to lesser or greater degrees to content and consciousness, but not to awareness itself.
As mentioned before, awareness itself might be the only phenomenon in reality that cannot be described metaphorically or in strictly physical terms because it is totally unlike any "thing" else.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jan 31, 2018 - 10:28pm PT
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That is, awareness and consciousness are fundamentally unlike other "things" that physics and biology are designed to explain.
one can certainly define awareness and consciousness in this way, which is what you have done.
However, there was a time when the current phenomena of "awareness" and "consciousness" didn't exist, and strong evidence that they appear as a part of the evolution of the brain. This strongly suggests a physical, biological origin of mind.
The explanation of order from constituent parts where the attributes of that order do not exist in the constituents is fully within the domain of biology and physics.
Your truly subjective experience, the one that you have in the first person, is inaccessible to anyone else but you. Once you start to describe it you are participating in an objective exercise, descriptive observation is certainly along the road to quantification, so it seems odd that you would deny that is possible, it is not only possible, but what we do.
I know you have your own opinions about what is not a productive path to understanding mind, I don't share them. I hardly understand what you are so strongly stating, it boils down to your unsupported assertion that "biology and physics (and science)" cannot explain "awareness" and "consciousness."
And you have provided even less to support the contention that this is "fundamental."
Perhaps rereading the article from SEP would be in order
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/
we find in it the statement: "However, most arguments for panpsychism start from a datum which is known with greater certainty than the data of observation and experiments: the existence of human consciousness."
Almost all of Largo's recent discussion are described with more rigor and much more clearly in that article. Including Nagle's argument.
Back to the statement above that we know with "great certainty" of the existence of human consciousness.
I might ask, how do we know this "with great certainty"?
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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What happened with unpacking Peter Lynds?
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WBraun
climber
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Back to the statement above that we know with "great certainty" of the existence of human consciousness.
I might ask, how do we know this "with great certainty"?
Because every single living entity is nothing but pure consciousness with individuality.
In the material world, the living entity is covered by the material elements and thus thinks it is born and dies.
Only the material coverings go thru these changes.
The living entity itself always remains and transmigrates to different material bodies according to their developed consciousness in their present lives.
The spiritual soul is pure consciousness and is the living entity itself.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Because every single living entity is nothing but pure consciousness with individuality.
this statement does not answer my question. How do we know it with "certainty"? How did you even learn that that statement is relevant to the question?
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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I might ask, how do we know this "with great certainty"?
Through its experience and the communication of that experience to others who share that consciousness. Cogito ergo sum for starters. And of course all is dependent on the definitions of things like "certainty" and "great."
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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all is dependent on the defiitrions of things like "certainty" and "great."
Isn't that setting the bar too high?
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Cascade Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Because every single living entity is nothing but pure consciousness with individuality.
In the material world, the living entity is covered by the material elements and thus thinks it is born and dies.
Only the material coverings go thru these changes.
The living entity itself always remains and transmigrates to different material bodies according to their developed consciousness in their present lives.
The spiritual soul is pure consciousness and is the living entity itself. - WB
yes
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Through its experience and the communication of that experience to others who share that consciousness.
then it through the shared experience?
something we agree on.
not so subjective then.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Depends on how you mean and apply the term subjective.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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I'm pretty literal,
subjective is what is unto ourselves
we undoubtedly experience many things in ways no one else experiences them,
we only know this by sharing our experience, it is possible that there are things we cannot share because they are not experienced by anyone else, and those we share with cannot understand what we are sharing.
but for those shared experiences we might be in substantial agreement.
sounds like the beginnings of objective experience.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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subjective is what is unto ourselves
we undoubtedly experience many things in ways no one else experiences them,
The issue of subjectivity is an interesting one. The structure of our DNA, and similarly, the structure of our brains are so similar, the differences so miniscule, one wonders at how different subjective experience is from one person to another. Couldn’t we just as easily say “we undoubtedly experience things in exactly the same way everyone else experiences them” and then doesn’t this bestow a kind of efficacy on subjective experience?
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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This is a section from Michael Gazzaniga’s, Who’s in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain.
A lesion in one part of the parietal frontal lobe leads to a syndrome called reduplicative paramnesia, a delusional belief that a place has been duplicated or exists in more than one spot at the same time or has been moved to a different location. A lesion in the lateral frontal lobes produces deficits in sequencing behavior, leaving one unable to plan or multitask. Orbital frontal lesions, located just above the eye sockets, may interrupt the emotional pathways that give feedback to monitor cognitive states and may be associated with a loss of the ability to judge right and wrong. There can be a decreased ability to inhibit behavior, leading to more impulsive, obsessive-compulsive, aggressive and/or violent actions and higher-order cognitive dysfunctions. And in the left temporal lobe, a lesion in Wernicke’s area produces Wernicke’s aphasia, where the affected person may have no comprehension of either written or spoken language, and although he or she make speak fluently with a natural language rhythm, it’s gibberish.
Some patients have lesions in the temporal lobe that leaves them very poor at recognizing animals but not man-made artifacts and vice versa... There are even people with certain brain lesions who specifically can't recognize fruit I don't know about you, but I think that these kinds of observations from clinical studies are pretty telling. Two things seem obviously true to me. First, that consciousness and awareness are intimately tied up with the brain. And second, that who we are is actually this crazy bunch of separate (biochemical) algorithms that somehow are unified into a coherent story. Gazzaniga goes on to explain that the unified story is put together in a very certain part of the left brain hemisphere dubbed the interpreter.
The evolutionary/scientific model of human consciousness easily incorporates these findings. I would think that both Largo's and Tom's worldviews cannot explain these findings so easily. I can already imagine Largo's argument -- that awareness is right up there with space-time and not affected by the particular or something. I'm not so sure of Tom's ideas on how these findings would be explained.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Well, that's an explanation of empty awareness that's a bit depressing.
Does Zen produce brain lesions?
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