Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
jogill
climber
Colorado
|
|
|
Apr 19, 2018 - 08:03pm PT
|
. . . but I did have a sensory experience of quantum mechanics, as real that way as if I could see with my own eyes what was going on, I did "see."
That's fascinating, Ed. There have been times when deep into a math study I have suddenly "seen" or maybe "felt" the entire structure in a new and revealing manner. When I was doing my thesis eons ago I was attempting to penetrate a mystery about infinite compositions, when I awoke in the middle of the night and literally "saw" a geometric image that "explained" what was going on.
Not nearly the caliber of your experience with quantum mechanics, but powerful nevertheless.
I'm not certain how this relates to a typical "aha!" moment; perhaps it's a matter of degree as well as genus. Largo's "emptiness" epiphany fits into this discussion in some way I suspect.
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
|
|
|
Apr 19, 2018 - 08:19pm PT
|
jogill,
You’re stirring the pot; you like this stuff.
If it’s a “thing,” then an understanding of emptiness [sic] fits into the discussion in a critical way.
You know, if what’s going on is completely spontaneous and expresses an absence of substantiality, yet is whole and unbounded (e.g., your consciousness), then there might be “aha”s going on all the time. Ed sees quantum mechanics with his eyes, and you get mathematical problem solutions from your unconsciousness (whatever that is).
Which side of the street are you guys on?
:-)
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
Apr 19, 2018 - 09:00pm PT
|
there's a street?
actually, while I was walking to SAN this afternoon after the conference was done, I got turned around a lot of times in that 7.5 miles... but fortunately you have the "landmark" of jets taking off...
As an undergraduate I had a number of dreams about a rather attractive wave-function.
We have all sorts of perceptions, I just don't believe there's anything particularly special about that.
|
|
cintune
climber
|
|
|
Apr 20, 2018 - 08:45am PT
|
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
|
|
|
Apr 21, 2018 - 08:58pm PT
|
All attachments are neurosis. Ditto for aversions.
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
|
|
|
Apr 21, 2018 - 10:22pm PT
|
Jim,
Help me out. What should I see?
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Apr 22, 2018 - 08:00am PT
|
Steve Simpson -- "Until we understand consciousness, we cannot understand physical reality. FC"
This is the real intelligence and the actual key to real knowledge.
The gross materialists do everything backwards.
No wonder they need sooo much guessing.
The gross materialists are mental speculating fools .....
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
Apr 22, 2018 - 09:47am PT
|
maybe this was overlooked up thread, there doesn't seem to be a direct reference to it...
Consciousness Isn’t a Mystery. It’s Matter.
Galen Strawson
though HFCS has cited Strawson
"Every day, it seems, some verifiably intelligent person tells us that we don’t know what consciousness is. The nature of consciousness, they say, is an awesome mystery. It’s the ultimate hard problem. The current Wikipedia entry is typical: Consciousness “is the most mysterious aspect of our lives”; philosophers “have struggled to comprehend the nature of consciousness.”
I find this odd because we know exactly what consciousness is — where by “consciousness” I mean what most people mean in this debate: experience of any kind whatever. It’s the most familiar thing there is, whether it’s experience of emotion, pain, understanding what someone is saying, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting or feeling. It is in fact the only thing in the universe whose ultimate intrinsic nature we can claim to know. It is utterly unmysterious.
...
His mistake [Leibniz's] is to go further, and conclude that physical goings-on can’t possibly be conscious goings-on. Many make the same mistake today — the Very Large Mistake (as Winnie-the-Pooh might put it) of thinking that we know enough about the nature of physical stuff to know that conscious experience can’t be physical. We don’t. We don’t know the intrinsic nature of physical stuff, except — Russell again — insofar as we know it simply through having a conscious experience.
...
So the hard problem is the problem of matter (physical stuff in general). If physics made any claim that couldn’t be squared with the fact that our conscious experience is brain activity, then I believe that claim would be false. But physics doesn’t do any such thing. It’s not the physics picture of matter that’s the problem; it’s the ordinary everyday picture of matter. It’s ironic that the people who are most likely to doubt or deny the existence of consciousness (on the ground that everything is physical, and that consciousness can’t possibly be physical) are also those who are most insistent on the primacy of science, because it is precisely science that makes the key point shine most brightly: the point that there is a fundamental respect in which ultimate intrinsic nature of the stuff of the universe is unknown to us — except insofar as it is consciousness."
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
|
|
|
Apr 22, 2018 - 10:25am PT
|
Strawson: The reply is simple. We know what conscious experience is because the having is the knowing: Having conscious experience is knowing what it is. You don’t have to think about it (it’s really much better not to). You just have to have it. It’s true that people can make all sorts of mistakes about what is going on when they have experience, but none of them threaten the fundamental sense in which we know exactly what experience is just in having it.
If I have penny, do I automatically know what it is? Do I know what and who I am?
The thesis is a remarkable declaration for anybody in academia. I think the quality of The New York Times is declining.
To have something is to know what it is?
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
Apr 22, 2018 - 10:58am PT
|
the lack of inhibition of those posting to this thread provides abundant evidence for Strawson's thesis
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Apr 22, 2018 - 11:32am PT
|
So sorry .... consciousness is NOT material nor is it matter.
Modern science assumes it is matter.
But modern science is in poor fund of knowledge as to consciousness itself.
This is due to modern science's fixed up material instruments are only able to see the material realm.
Consciousness itself can see both the material and spiritual realms simultaneously ......
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
Apr 22, 2018 - 11:57am PT
|
maybe read the article, Werner...
|
|
i-b-goB
Social climber
Wise Acres
|
|
|
Apr 22, 2018 - 12:36pm PT
|
Consciousness puts you in the drivers seat of the physical.
|
|
jogill
climber
Colorado
|
|
|
Apr 22, 2018 - 03:12pm PT
|
the reasonable experiencer immediately brings to mind the time his two feet are still standing in and says to the whole 'what now?!?!'
This sounds like randomly generated speech from a simplistic computer program.
|
|
jogill
climber
Colorado
|
|
|
Apr 24, 2018 - 11:06am PT
|
This is not a fractal. When you magnify a fractal it exhibits the same patterns. My images, when magnified, show different patterns, and one can blow up tiny regions to get ornate and unpredictable figures. They have quasi-symmetries, not perfect symmetries.
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
|
|
|
Apr 24, 2018 - 12:09pm PT
|
Jim: In that video, I enjoyed how everything we contemplate on this thread, being simplified into logical choices while breathing some fresh air.
I’m not sure I quite get what you’re pointing to, Jim. I don’t follow the idea of “logical choices” regarding what mind is or isn’t—at least that logic does not seem to be any kind of formal logic that I'm acquainted with (syllogisms, logical fallacies, etc.). The “logic” instead seems to be speculative interpretation that is socially shared--a narrative that “makes sense” to some people.
For example, Ksemaraja (10th-11th century)—a tantric master from Kashmir—wrote in the Sutras of Recognition that mind is wide-open, non-judgmental awareness that gets pinched down in order to accord with objects that are perceived. In other words, mind takes on the qualities of that which it perceives. Perceive happiness, sadness, or anger? Then you might be say that you are happy, sad, or angry. A mind that identifies with, or resists, a mind-state, leaves a sticky impression. Ksemaraja’s “logic” might imply that what you read or see either in that video or this thread are related to the experience of climbing. It implies how (and what) you see. It may not be what others read or see. The so-called logical choices don’t really seem to be logical; instead they seem to be “consistent” with certain beliefs that one is attracted to or averse.
Jogill,
You remind me how strongly symmetry is honored in academic science. Would it be another form of “logic” as I write above?
|
|
Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
|
|
|
Apr 24, 2018 - 12:49pm PT
|
Fascinating image, jgill. Much more abstract than the last one of similar type yet so many recognizable images/patterns can still be seen there. Probably that says more about the pattern recognition capabilities of the human mind than the mathematics portrayed??
As for symmetry. Art for the most part, certainly western art, has mainly been symmetrical, as Paul has pointed out several times. I wonder if that coincides with the emphasis on logic in western intellectual history?
Japanese art is of course quite different as are Chinese landscape paintings. Japan in particular is a society that emphasizes relationships and feelings more than logic. How else to run a country of 120 million without any street names and buildings numbered in the order in which they were built, rather than a logical sequence? And yet somehow it works.
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
|
|
|
Apr 24, 2018 - 03:51pm PT
|
Nice, Jan.
Dualistic conceptualizations versus non-dual?
|
|
jogill
climber
Colorado
|
|
|
Apr 24, 2018 - 04:09pm PT
|
The so-called logical choices don’t really seem to be logical; instead they seem to be “consistent” with certain beliefs that one is attracted to or averse. Jogill, You remind me how strongly symmetry is honored in academic science. Would it be another form of “logic” as I write above?
Good point, Mike. As for symmetry in science and math, the symmetry of distance, for example, is mirrored in metric spaces, where d(x,y)=d(y,x), and symmetry of sorts in abelian groups, where A⊕B=B⊕A. These stem from common observations of daily reality and thus "certain beliefs." In physics, it seems that Lie Groups describe important aspects of symmetry in which properties are conserved under continuous transformations. Ed could elaborate on that (I barely know what Lie Groups are).
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
|
|
|
Apr 24, 2018 - 08:33pm PT
|
My friends,
If I am open-minded about it, I can’t see why it is necessary or favorable to “find” symmetry in reality. I appreciate the elegance of it (somehow wanting closure), but I do not see the necessity of it. I’m trying to be open about it. I think I can be protestant and still be an astute participant. I guess what I’m saying is that symmetry might have a mythical component to it.
Jim,
I honestly did not initially get what you were going for with the video on this thread. I needed more guidance to “grok” the reference. As for conclusions, they all seem like a done deal to me. I’m trying to stay open about it. I have a hard time groking “decisions” these days. I don’t think they really exist. They are a convenient lie. IMO, that is, of course. (Just talking here.)
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!