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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 9, 2018 - 08:44pm PT
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The relevance to this discussion is simply that you construct something by appealing to our "common experience," the "first person" and state that it is something that resists any scientific explanation as it exists in a realm quite outside of anything science explains.
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Not exactly, Ed.
Let me look at the way the subjective adventures actually go for people, because that, much more so than writing, is the well I usually draw from.
As I've mentioned, the human experience of reality - which I define as all that is arising right this second - comes to us through various modes of experience, during which subjective and objective are constantly at play and on line. Once I got a couple decades into the subjective adventures the practice required shifting focus to the most basic questions about what the hell was really going on. And I'm talking SUPER basic, so basic that I couldn't initially get my head around not only what I wa, s asked to investigate, but I totally lacked the required acumen to objectively observe the most basic rudiments of my own experience and identity. I was given the classic koan: Who am I?
The problem was Taizan Maezumi Roshi was a Japanese national who I could never really understand and who didn't provide the needed fine grain direction I then needed to born into the question. It seems too vague and amorphous, as though I was trying to dig a hole in the ocean with a shovel.
Only years later did another teacher give me specific instructions on what to do. I won't bore people with what that was, and is, but the process was basically to observe, as objectively as possible, phenomenon like self, attention, awareness, and so forth. This basically is a matter of using awareness as a kind of clinical instrument to observe - with no bias or interpreting - the "self" that we toss around like we know what that actually is, as it supposedly exists right this second. We assume that we actually know who we are but when I observed my internal landscape I discovered, as many had before me, that the landscape was rife in tangible elements, like the felt sense of being in a body, sensations, feelings, memories, evaluations, and so for - except none of these, individually or collectively, amounted to a "self" as an entity. And whenever I observed the residue of this belief in self as an entity, there was the nagging question of who - if anyone - was observing my self. Through a process of direct observation and elimination, my entire understanding of self and perception started shifting.
The point is, the duality of objective and subjective dissolves in this process, and so do all the "constructions" that you mentioned earlier. What I think you have always been driving at is that the subjective terrain - along with a 1st person perspective - is itself a construct. Some thing we learned - not just to recognize - but to have. Meaning that before we knew the 1st person perspective, it did not exist for us.
Tell that to the cave man 50,000 years ago who shook in his cave from fear at hearing the lion outside the cave entrance. He would't have used the language, "I'm having a terrible 1st person experience." That is language we learned, but that learning did not create or construct the fear coursing through the loins of the cave man, or his awareness of same, none of which others in the cave could see as external objects off which they could pull a measurement.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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their limbic system was telling them something, perhaps... though they didn't know what the hell that was, they knew what to do.
Interestingly, the limbic system is ancient, and has evolved over time (different structures in birds than mammals, suggesting it predates the evolutionary branching).
The ideas of "self" and "no self" are another dichotomy, which you have likely also abandoned. But you cannot but replace it with some other construction.
Just as your caveman did those many years ago...
[Click to View YouTube Video]
the cave man may not evan have been "human"
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Mar 10, 2018 - 08:09am PT
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When I read a good book or story I feel that it changes me. I think I am aware of some of the change but not all of it.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Mar 10, 2018 - 03:21pm PT
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Interesting Bloom reference. Nice to see some variety on this thread. What the mind can DO is more interesting than the same old philosophical arguments about subjective vs objective. They seem to go nowhere. Unless one submits to a Zen Master and is enlightened.
(Let's see, it's been two months since JL said he was going to "unpack" Peter Lynds' article)
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WBraun
climber
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Mar 10, 2018 - 04:09pm PT
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The mind can't do jack sh!t without the living entity itself.
The mind is NOT an independent entity within the material body.
Thus the most important is the soul (the living entity itself) and it's developed consciousness.
The gross materialists are still trillion miles away from understanding the living beings, themselves and all life and
what to speak of their material mind accepting and rejecting they so happily listen to all day & night long ........
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Mar 10, 2018 - 05:01pm PT
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the cave man 50,000 years ago who shook in his cave from fear
Isn't that something the others in the cave could observe? Why do you refer to, "an external object?" Does it have to be like a bowl of Wheaties on the breakfast table?
none of which others in the cave could see as external objects off which they could pull a measurement.
The way you describe it, I believe they could see the fear, and possibly smell and hear it, too.
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WBraun
climber
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Mar 10, 2018 - 05:19pm PT
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50,000 years ago there were highly intelligent human beings on this planet.
More so than now.
The cavemen were you gross materialists.
The intelligent class never was in a st00pid cave ......
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Mar 11, 2018 - 06:28am PT
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Truly speaking, it is not instruction, but provocation, that I can receive from another soul. What he announces, I must find true in me, or wholly reject; and on his word, or as his second, be he who he may, I can accept nothing.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Mar 11, 2018 - 08:08am PT
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Every heart vibrates to that iron string.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Mar 11, 2018 - 10:40am PT
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"Think of the last time you ran into someone you find attractive. You may have stammered, your palms may have sweated; you may have said something incredibly asinine and tripped spectacularly while trying to saunter away (or is that just me?). And chances are, your heart was thudding in your chest. It’s no surprise that, for centuries, people thought love (and most other emotions, for that matter) arose from the heart. As it turns out, love is all about the brain – which, in turn, makes the rest of your body go haywire."
from
Love, Actually: The science behind lust, attraction, and companionship
by Katherine Wu
"And finally, what would love be without embarrassment? Sexual arousal (but not necessarily attachment) appears to turn off regions in our brain that regulate critical thinking, self-awareness, and rational behavior, including parts of the prefrontal cortex (Figure 2). In short, love makes us dumb. Have you ever done something when you were in love that you later regretted? "
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Mar 11, 2018 - 10:52am PT
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[Bloom]: Many of Shakespeare’s characters are able to see what they look like from an external point of view and then change the way they behave accordingly. Bloom describes this as 'the process of self-revision'; the ability 'to change by self-overhearing and then by the will to change.'
Although most of Shakespeare’s characters were not tragic or epic heroic figures, many of them were superhuman in their ability to willfully change their character.
In the world we seem to live in, no one changes dramatically.
Story, in every form, presents models.
Everything seems to finally boil down to what we want or what we don’t want.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 11, 2018 - 10:57am PT
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Ed mentioned some of his beliefs about point of view (1st person, 3rd person, etc) in literature. Interesting subject, and trickier than one might suspect. Basically ...
First person is when “I” am telling the story. The character is in the story, relating his or her experiences directly.
Second person point of view. The story is told to “you.” This POV is not common in fiction, but it’s still good to know (it is common in nonfiction).
Third person point of view, limited. The story is about “he” or “she.” This is the most common point of view in commercial fiction. The narrator is outside of the story and relating the experiences of a character.
Third person point of view, omniscient. The story is still about “he” or “she,” but the narrator has full access to the thoughts and experiences of all characters in the story.
Another wrinkle in this is tense. For example, if you're working in the 1st person, you normally write in the past tense. "I shouldered the pack and humped up the trial toward Tahquitz." You can relate the same story in present tense but it often feels artificial and unnatural, though it plays well in movies and live broadcasts.
Some believe that the 1st person becomes the 3rd person when the story is related in past tense. The problem here is that the story is not about another person's experience, but that of the writer. His or her past experience is the well from which the story is drawn.
It gets even more interesting from there.
And John, the reason I haven't tried to unpack "Time and Classical and Quantum Mechanics: Indeterminacy vs. Discontinuity," by Peter Lynds, is because I needed a math crusher to help wrangle it down, and I only found one a few days ago who was willing to work on it. Most people have their own projects. Getting folks to try something new is always a task. I sometimes had to beg people to try new routes, when they could just do an established classic and know what they were getting into.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Mar 11, 2018 - 11:09am PT
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Getting folks to try something new is always a task.
could also be that the lack of rigorous mathematics in the paper does not warrant a deeper look in that direction. Until the author can explain his ideas in that way, to do the work himself, the likelihood of pursuing someone else's incomplete idea might be an unappealing expense of time.
A more apt simile here would be that you had made some initial looks at a potential line, maybe scoped the approach, or perhaps you just recount someone else's report of an approach, and claim it is a high quality route pushing the climbing state-of-art off the charts, but you never climbed it yourself.
the author of the report hasn't made the climb.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Mar 11, 2018 - 11:55am PT
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Sycorax comes through.
In my youth I asked, What is God? In my old age I will write scholarly books on the details of court life in France during the reign of Louis XVI. I am quite satisfied to have forgotten the things that I wanted to know, and to know all sorts of things about which I never asked. My nervous system has reached a calmer ambit, the secretions of various of my glands have changed their function, my impulses have stilled, the wavelengths of my thoughts curtailed.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Mar 11, 2018 - 12:52pm PT
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And John, the reason I haven't tried to unpack . . .
Fair enough. I couldn't find much in his paper, but maybe someone else can.
Excellent commentary about writing, John. Thanks.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Mar 11, 2018 - 02:20pm PT
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hmm, simile or metaphor... the longer Largo quote:
'Getting folks to try something new is always a task. I sometimes had to beg people to try new routes, when they could just do an established classic and know what they were getting into.'
maybe could be read differently, I read an inferred "like" after the first sentence, so not metaphorical, but more of an example...
"getting people to work on the paper (a new idea)" is like "getting people to climb my new route"
rather than creating the metaphor (which would be much enlarged) that writing a "new" paper and doing a "new" route, with all the difficulties it entails, including getting people to "read/climb" it.
That might be an apt metaphor, but not one I saw Largo writing.
But then I'm not an literary person by any means.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 11, 2018 - 04:42pm PT
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My sense of Lynds paper was that it was neither a rigorous philosophical nor yet a math presentation, and that as a hybrid - or neither - that perhaps what Lynds is saying, or whatever might be implied there, is not fully or even partially understood. I'm not surprised that Ed would consider the paper in strictly math terms, even though those were not the terms in which the paper was presented. In fact from what I read per commentary, there was no agreement about what he was saying at all. Perhaps he isn't saying anything.
I was simply made curious by this, but not enough to do much about it because I have other stuff - and assumed others do as well - to do. But I met a physicist at the gym the other day and we'll see what comes of it.
One thing about Lunds is the debt he pays to Xeno and his paradoxes. My favorite concerns plurality, and runs like this, according to Dartmouth math proff Lesley Salmom:
A PARADOX OF PLURALITY
Although Zeno is best known for his four paradoxes of motion, he did propound a number of other paradoxes, including one that is even more fundamental. Although it is generally known as a paradox of plurality, it can plausibly be construed as a geometrical paradox which calls into question the very structure of the geometrical line (or any other continuum). Zeno presents the argument in terms of physical things and their parts, but the considerations he brings to bear seem to depend only upon the fact that these things are extended — that is, they occupy some finite, non-zero stretch of space. Although he talks about the possibility of subdividing the parts, he is not talking about the possibility of cutting up a physical object into separate physical parts that can be moved away from one another. He is not dealing with the physical hypothesis of the atomic constitution of matter. Rather, his arguments depend upon the possibility of making conceptual or mathematical divisions; for example, even if there are physical atoms (or subatomic particles) that cannot be split in two, if they occupy an extended region of space — be it ever so small — that space can be divided in the sense that we can distinguish its parts geometrically.
Since physical separation of parts is not at issue, we can just as well discuss the composition of the mathematical line. Zeno's argument runs as follows.27 As we have seen from both the Achilles and Dichotomy paradoxes, any line segment is infinitely divisible. If we stop short with only a finite number of divisions, it is always possible to carry the division further. The process of halving the line, and then halving the half, is one which has no end. Hence, if the line is made up of parts, as it surely appears to be, then there are infinitely many of them. Now, Zeno poses a simple dilemma. What is the size of the parts? If they have zero magnitude, then no matter how many of them you add together, the result will still be zero. The process of adding zeroes never yields any answer but zero. If, however, the parts have a positive non-zero size, then the sum of the infinite collection of them will be infinite. In other words, a line segment must have a length of either zero or infinity; a line segment one inch or one mile long is impossible.
An immediate objection might be raised against the claim that the whole must have an infinite magnitude if the parts have non-zero size, since our discussion of the Achilles and the Dichotomy paradoxes showed how it is entirely possible for an infinite series of positive terms to have a finite sum. But this response is inappropriate here. In order for an infinite series of positive terms to converge, it is necessary that there be no smallest term; the sequence of terms must converge to zero. This condition clearly rules out the possibility of convergence for an infinite series of positive terms all of which are equal to one another. In the Achilles and the Dichotomy paradoxes we could rest content with the division of a line segment into unequal parts, for we were not trying to divide it up into its ultimate parts. It is hard to see, however, how different ultimate parts could have different sizes. If one "ultimate" part were larger than another, it would seem that the larger would be further subdividable, and hence not ultimate after all.
Zeno apparently saw this point quite clearly.28 So, the second horn of the dilemma still stands: if the (ultimate) parts have non-zero size, the whole is infinite in extent.
Salmon's paper is here. Interesting stuff:
https://math.dartmouth.edu/~matc/Readers/HowManyAngels/SpaceTimeMotion/STM.html
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Mar 11, 2018 - 06:35pm PT
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If you're looking for mathematical paradoxes Largo, Banach-Tarski blows Zeno out of the water. Imagine cutting up an orange into finitely many pieces and then moving the pieces around by rigid motions to make a new orange the size of the sun. Find a knife that cuts oranges into "nonmeasurable sets" and Banach-Tarski says you can do it!
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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