What is "Mind?"

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MH2

Boulder climber

Andy Cairns

Mar 11, 2018 - 07:20pm PT

Are you sure that is a paradox, yanqui? Technically, I mean.

I loved hearing about it back when. It was fantasy made real.

I am sensitive after once calling something 'paradoxical' and having a senior researcher tell the audience that it was not a paradox.

But I am also reminded of a roommate at Chicago who told me of listening to Chinese colleagues of his whose conversation might have been bird song for all he could understand, until "Banach space" popped out. I often have a similar experience in the West Van Aquatic Centre sauna, though what I more usually hear is, "West Van-Koo-Vair."

jogill

climber

Colorado

Mar 11, 2018 - 07:39pm PT

B-T requires Axiom of Choice, which some regard as suspect.

Non-measurable sets are a stretch as well.

Mysterious real line

http://www128.pair.com/r3d4k7/Mathematicae4.html

zBrown

Ice climber

Mar 11, 2018 - 09:04pm PT

Enough to give one pause. Which machine did ya have in "mind"?

Since the negative answer to the halting problem shows that there are problems that cannot be solved by a Turing machine, the Church–Turing thesis limits what can be accomplished by any machine that implements effective methods. However, not all machines conceivable to human imagination are subject to the Church–Turing thesis (e.g. oracle machines). It is an open question whether there can be actual deterministic physical processes that, in the long run, elude simulation by a Turing machine, and in particular whether any such hypothetical process could usefully be harnessed in the form of a calculating machine (a hypercomputer) that could solve the halting problem for a Turing machine amongst other things. It is also an open question whether any such unknown physical processes are involved in the working of the human brain, and whether humans can solve the halting problem

yanqui

climber

Balcarce, Argentina

Mar 12, 2018 - 03:56am PT

Are you sure that is a paradox, yanqui? Technically, I mean.

It's logically sound, although it's commonly called a paradox. For that manner, Zeno's paradoxes are not really paradoxes for modern mathematicians.

B-T requires Axiom of Choice

I'm not generally a big fan of this site, but there is a pretty solid discussion here, that I have little to add to:

https://mathoverflow.net/questions/42215/does-constructing-non-measurable-sets-require-the-axiom-of-choice

Edit to add: I found it interesting to see that the "Hahn-Banach Theorem", a standard result in soft analysis that says, in a specific way, that the continuous dual of a Banach space has lots more stuff than 0, implies the existence of nonmeasurable sets (and Banach - Tarski).

Cheers mind-threaders!

healyje

Trad climber

Portland, Oregon

Mar 12, 2018 - 05:07am PT

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.

I'm pretty sure every dog chasing his own tail at some point or another has a nagging question of exactly who it is they're chasing...

MH2

Boulder climber

Andy Cairns

Mar 12, 2018 - 08:12am PT

from Martin Gardner's aha! Gotcha

The word paradox has many meanings, but I use it here in a broad sense to include any result so contrary to common sense and intuition that it invokes an immediate emotion of surprise. Such paradoxes are of four main types:

1. An assertion that seems false but is actually true.
2. An assertion that seems true but is actually false.
3. A line of reasoning that seems impeccable but which leads to a logical contradiction. (This is more commonly called a fallacy.)
4. An assertion whose truth or falsity is undecidable.

To nineteenth century mathematicians it was enormously paradoxical that all the members of an infinite set could be put in one-to-one correspondence with the members of one of its subsets, and that two infinite sets could exist whose members could not be put into one-to-one correspondence. These paradoxes led to the development of modern set theory, which in turn had a strong influence on the philosophy of science.

Back to my words:

In brief, paradoxes are surprising but not all that surprises is a paradox. The word paradox is often used loosely or even incorrectly. We can try to avoid criticism from the language usage experts (or nitpickers if you will) but to call it the Banach-Tarski Big Surprise doesn't seem to work.

Wayno

Big Wall climber

Seattle, WA

Mar 12, 2018 - 11:56am PT

Paradox is merely the shadow of infinity on a material/finite mind. Just as linear causality is only a single dimension in a multidimensional reality.(3D+time) Causality in practical terms is multidimensional and perhaps layered? I don't know, just a thought.

MH2

Boulder climber

Andy Cairns

Mar 12, 2018 - 01:17pm PT

Sounds Ouspenskian.

Learn to see it in thyself and thou wilt understand the infinite essence, hidden in all illusory forms. Understand that the world which thou knowest is only one of the aspects of the infinite world, and things and phenomena are merely hierolgyphics of deeper ideas.

jogill

climber

Colorado

Mar 12, 2018 - 01:19pm PT

Thanks for the link, Tim. After working with infinite processes for so long none of those paradoxes, like Zeno's Paradox of the Arrow, even register with me. Here is an improved version of the image I posted a few pages back. It was too dark. Think of this as a piece of jewelry designed by weak emergence from an infinite mathematical expansion:

Wayno

Big Wall climber

Seattle, WA

Mar 12, 2018 - 03:56pm PT

Sounds Ouspenskian.

I had to look that up. I am not familiar with the material. I do remember coming across the name at a library or two.

I was merely pondering the possibility of infinite mind or rather a mind that could experience infinity of time or space or both. How might the finite seem to the infinite and visa versa.

WBraun

climber

Mar 12, 2018 - 06:12pm PT

Just meditate on God who is the personification of Time and Space but infinitely more also.

Leave infinity of time or space for the gross materialists to chase their tails like dogs .......

MH2

Boulder climber

Andy Cairns

Mar 12, 2018 - 07:33pm PT

Wayno,

Your earlier post reminded me of a sentence I may have once read. What I remember: "Eternity is only a plane crossed by the line of time." I took that, in a sort of multi-verse way, to mean that there could be many different eternities, and that our time-line is only one of many.

I have never found the exact quote I remember, but a similar one occurs here:

http://www.quotations.com/subjects/wis_time.pdf

attributed to Gurdjieff, with whom Ouspensky studied between 1915 and 1918.

Times that would shake anyone's self assurance about anything.

zBrown

Ice climber

Mar 12, 2018 - 08:02pm PT

"Are you trying to make me believe I’m unreal standing here absurdly on the green pavement?"
-FKafka

WBraun

climber

Mar 13, 2018 - 01:14pm PT

This is how gross materialists approach "What Is Mind"

And this is Mind over Matter

zBrown

Ice climber

Mar 13, 2018 - 04:32pm PT

Doctors find large piece of 84-year-old man's brain taken over by air pocket

No air_head jokes, please.

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2018/03/13/doctors-find-large-piece-of-84-year-old-mans-brain-taken-over-by-air-pocket/23384883/

jogill

climber

Colorado

Mar 13, 2018 - 08:36pm PT

Doctors find large piece of 84-year-old man's brain . . .

The result of a fascination with empty awareness.

Beware.

jstan

climber

Mar 14, 2018 - 01:36pm PT

I have never been in doubt as to whether a dog wants to go for a hike. Based upon their body language I can even tell they have decided I need to be convinced.

MikeL

Social climber

Southern Arizona

Mar 14, 2018 - 04:44pm PT

[Sycorax / Bloom]: You overhear Hamlet by becoming Hamlet . . . Hamlet teaches us that imaginative literature can teach . . . .

Shakespeare's writing is art, and when art soars, it might generate a detached sense of empathy. Strong empathy, it seems to me, generates compassion and maybe even bodhichitta in some people. I don’t think the Bard had a monopoly on that result.

Many forms of art have been sold in education to the extent that it has because it promised ethical fiber through simulation, exposure, and training. Ditto for sports. One can look for oneself to see if those promises are fulfilled.

Equally germane to this thread: to what extent does any righteous (or not righteous) content in people’s minds enable them to become different people? To what extent does one consult the books he or she has read, the movies or stage plays that he or she has seen, the novels he or she became absorbed in, when coming to decisions in one’s life? (I can’t truly think of one for myself.)

If art truly affects people, it seems to me that it does so at an invisible level of awareness. (I don’t know what that means.)

Largo

Sport climber

The Big Wide Open Face

Topic Author's Reply - Mar 14, 2018 - 04:44pm PT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7mAU6YDIcU

This is a fun one. If nothing else, thought provoking.

How we humans want a center, a ground, some bedrock to which we can point and say, "That's it!"

This is one perspective that says, "Sorry, folks. It ain't there."