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WBraun
climber
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May 23, 2014 - 11:23am PT
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defining consciousness as being separate from the physiological processes that produce it, Largo has, indeed, created a no thing which cannot be studied
First of all consciousness is not ever created.
2nd of all consciousness is studied by the science of self realization.
As I've said so many times one must use the correct tools and the proper application of using those tools.
Modern science limits itself with poor fund of knowledge in the field of "The science of self realization".
Instead they strictly dogmatically remain fixed in their antiquated caveman tools looking and seeking answers outside of their own selves ....
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MH2
climber
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May 23, 2014 - 12:41pm PT
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In my early days of learning about nervous systems it seemed simple enough. Stimulate a neuron and it sends an impulse along its axon to other neurons. Neurons can excite or inhibit other neurons. Sensory neurons specialize in picking up information from outside the nervous system, and motor neurons make the muscles contract. All the other neurons take the sensory input and turn it into behavior. The connections between neurons can change strength and allow for learning.
There was a challenge to the simple view: why couldn't people make models which exhibited behaviors like those of nervous systems?
The short answer is that the world is more complex than it appears to be. We learn to walk, talk, and recognize our grandmother from the back at a distance out of the corner of our eye, and much much more, and we learn so well that most of what we do seems to just happen naturally.
Nervous systems have adapted to the complex problems of finding food, avoiding predators, and finding a mate by incorporating intricacy and flexibility into their structure and function. One small example: the nematode c. elegans only has about 300 neurons but also has around 200 molecules which may be released from cells, spread slowly by diffusion, and which modify the responses of neurons to other neurons (neuromodulators).
The nervous system of c. elegans has been mapped. These are the worm's neurons and their axons and dendrites:
Having the neurons and their connections should let you figure out how the worm operates, in my earlier naive view. Still missing, though, are whether the connections are excitatory or inhibitory, the timing of stimuli and responses, effects of neuromodulators, the arrangement and influence of dendritic spines, the dynamics of changes in synaptic strength, and perhaps many other things among which we could include a description of the environment in which the poor worm plays out its struggle for survival in an indifferent universe.
Despite the difficulties and uncertainties, we have learned interesting new neurophysiology from c. elegans.
A good summary:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/c-elegans-connectome/
So.
Consciousness, or what makes a worm move forwards or backwards? I'll take the worm. I gave my opinion once before that an older scientist developing an interest in consciousness may mean that senility is encroaching. Sir Francis Crick, Rodolfo Llinás, George Edelman; what significant advances have they made in understanding consciousness?
From Sydney Brenner who in 1976 began mapping the c. elegans nervous system with electron microscopy:
I spent 20 years sharing an office with Francis Crick and many new and exciting ideas (both right and wrong) were generated from our conversations. The centre point of our interests had begun to diverge and whereas we were both interested in the nervous system, I was far more interested in finding a simple experimental system which might tell me how brains were constructed, whereas Francis wanted to know about the complex activities of higher nervous systems. He left Cambridge in 1976 to join the Salk Institute where he pursued an entirely new career in neuroscience.
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2002/brenner-bio.html
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Flip Flop
Trad climber
Truckee, CA
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May 23, 2014 - 02:00pm PT
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Point: DMT
The caveman had his imagination but we've got supermachines.
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cintune
climber
The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen
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May 23, 2014 - 09:17pm PT
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http://io9.com/scientists-discover-area-of-brain-responsible-for-lovin-1580839952
Scientists Discover Area Of Brain Responsible For Loving Johnny Cash
Frontier in Behavioural Neuroscience discusses a man who received an electrical implant in his brain to combat his obsessive-compulsive disorder..... a half year after DBS surgery, Mr. B. stated that he was turning into a Johnny Cash fan.... [but] when the implant lost its electrical charge, Mr. B also lost his Johnny Cash fandom.... When the implant was recharged, he was singing "Folsom Prison Blues," and when it ran out of juice, the researchers said, "Johnny Cash is unconsciously ignored and his old favorites are played once again, just as it was for the past 40 years."
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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May 24, 2014 - 06:16pm PT
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After thousands of posts I acknowledge this thread has reached a stalemate and further efforts in any way productive require substantial changes in attitude (amazing discovery, right!). Scientists usually agree science is provisional: knowledge evolves with experimentation and theorizing and the new replaces the old. Meditationalists concur with this statement - about science.
On the other hand it would appear from many comments here that meditation is unchanging - after all it's been in practice for thousands of years and techniques have been honed and the superfluous has been trimmed away, according to some protagonists. One in particular is unequivocal in his attachment to an ultimate subjective state of awareness with no objects. To him and others it is a certainty that one's "I" is an illusion or some such vacuous entity, merely because that's the way it seems to be when one reaches a certain meditative state. No further discussion necessary; no need for experimentation - its gospel, take it or leave it.
Not once has there been a comment about subjective states evolving beyond no-thingness. This has become a biblical certainty. When other meditative states are brought to the discussion, there is the appropriate silence from most of the meditationalists that affirms their dismissal of the subject. We are instead instructed to "Do the work!" before we know that of which we speak. But "do the work" of course stops at the epiphany of no-thingness. There are no comments about going beyond this point. All is known and that's it. You reach this state after years of sitting and it's the real truth. Certainly with more sitting other aspects of internal reality open up, but apparently there is no tolerance for the heresy of replacing the established with new discoveries.
I have written about my adventures in the art of dreaming . . . only silence from the other side, dismissing my experiences by an absence of response. Tom C has had the same result with his posts. Only Jan is open to other possibilities. The Zennites seem to have put blinders on.
Until meditationalists admit no-thingness might not be any sort of ultimate state of mind (well, they refuse to call it a "state of mind") and that merging science and meditation would be to the benefit of both, there is nowhere to go here.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - May 24, 2014 - 08:15pm PT
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Not once has there been a comment about subjective states evolving beyond no-thingness.
About a year ago I quit trying to foist experiential insight onto this thread because people had no experiential reference point. The empirical data, when encountered and tested by rigorous peer review (which those in the dark thought impossible or at an rate unreliable sans instrumentation), sounds so counterintuitive we might as well be talking about QM or something else equally improbable - yet true.
Fact is, quantifying is always going to be concerned with discrete people, places, things and phenomenon, and so when it comes to the study of "mind," content, states, and processing is the main draw. Empirical, first person explorations of consciousness naturally go in another direction - they open up to the whole, and what happens is a slow detachment from the parts, content, states, and processing, and an abiding with sentience itself. We all use the instrument of sentience to do science and every other thing in our life, no matter how many other instruments are involved, but we tend to look at the business of being aware in the here and now only in terms of a computational model, something that DOES something that evolutionary psychology might someday "explain" in terms of behavior. WHAT this mind "is" above and beyond tasking is a question that rarely enters the conversation - but which has to be answered.
Anyway, what eventually happens through the subjective adventures is the emergence of another perspective that DOES reach far beyond no-thingness. That is, form (stuff) is emptiness (no-thingness), and emptiness is form - EXACTLY.
That is, stuff and no-thing at all have a dual nature. Mind itself has a dual nature, including the stuff (forms), and sentience (no-thing).
But without any empirical data from wrangling this material experientially and as described - which everyone can do if interested, and requires no woo or God whatsoever - we DO end up in a stalemate with people guessing discursively about non-discursive data. Or sadly, they take it in as a concept and not a fact of their very lives, so it has about as much impact as looking at a topo of El, as opposed to spending a week on the wall first hand.
It's a wonder anything is understood at all. Insisting that the material be broken down for discursive review is an honest question, but my efforts to do so, even with a purely technical review of sentience per the triple crown of awareness, focus and attention, were not taken up with any interest because, I suspect, the material is rather borning, and it did not concern content - the natural domain of scientific investigation.
The stalemate is no one's fault, per se, at least not from my perspective. It would be an interesting experiment to take a dozen of the people on this list yelling "woo" the loudest and put them in a monastery for a week's silent retreat - very few people are ever silent and observing of their lives, for a mere week, in their entire lifespan. That's a shame, but few are convinced beforehand.
JL
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MH2
climber
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May 24, 2014 - 10:11pm PT
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The stalemate is no one's fault, per se, at least not from my perspective. It would be an interesting experiment to take a dozen of the people on this list yelling "woo" the loudest and put them in a monastery for a week's silent retreat - very few people are ever silent and observing of their lives, for a mere week, in their entire lifespan. That's a shame, but few are convinced beforehand. (JL)
Ah, the mysteries.
Was JL actually trying to persuade people of the value of meditation? If so, his tactics were peculiar. In his posts, JL at different times said he was bored at work, trying to provoke the materialists, or battling scientism. I think his combative side got the better of any interest he may have had in persuasion. I would hope that a person who practiced self-reflection would show more patience and understanding of others.
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cintune
climber
The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen
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May 24, 2014 - 10:55pm PT
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It would be an interesting experiment to take a dozen of the people on this list yelling "woo" the loudest and put them in a monastery for a week's silent retreat - very few people are ever silent and observing of their lives, for a mere week, in their entire lifespan.
Les pauvres!
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jstan
climber
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May 24, 2014 - 11:07pm PT
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All that said, this will still go on for another thousand years, with the same result. Even after it has been solved in some detail. People will never yield up their belief that what is happening in their brain has some innate connection to "truth". And that this is the only path to the truth.
At least seems our greatest weakness as a specie.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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May 24, 2014 - 11:31pm PT
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I think Ken Wilbur's, The Spectrum of Consciousness, although published in 1993, is still the best book comparing western psychology and Eastern spirituality along with the meditative tradition of the Christian heysichasts, and would answer many of jgill's questions.It even lays them out stage by stage in parallel columns that go on page after page - a kind of measurement.
Wilbur's thesis is that most of these approaches have captured only part of the spectrum of consciousness, and one can only understand the complete meditative/spiritual/self developmental path by seeing where they all fit on the spectrum, with some more comprehensive than others - an integral approach.
He also stresses what I've observed, that you have to have a healthy functioning ego before you can lose your ego and be non dual. Many people showing up at meditation centers have serious mental problems and need the help first of psychologists, not spiritual teachers.
Wilbur has since gone on to a more society oriented view which is in fact the true end goal of most of these traditions. What I see most lacking from the meditators side on this thread is how one gets from a state of non duality (no thingness) back to life and society. There is an interesting Zen proverb in this regard.
Before meditation mountains were mountains and rivers were rivers,
During meditation mountains were no longer mountains or rivers, rivers
After meditation mountains are again mountains and rivers are rivers.
Zen is a little vague about the details, but other Buddhist traditions are quite clear. The goal after no-thingness is to live like a Boddhisattva, and come back to help others in some capacity. Serving others is the final highest state which is most effectively done if one has self awareness along with the experience of no-thingness.
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WBraun
climber
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May 24, 2014 - 11:41pm PT
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you have to have a healthy functioning ego before you can lose your ego
That don't make sense at all.
Bottom line is, one can never ever lose ones ego.
False ego of identifying oneself as the material body is the only thing one can give up or lose.
The ego itself is the individuality of the living entity.
No two are ever alike.
Merging into oneness is the false ego misunderstanding of impersonalism.
The individuality is always maintained unless one wants spiritual suicide .....
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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May 24, 2014 - 11:43pm PT
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I think part of it Werner, is a matter of vocabulary and part of it is a sectarian difference.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - May 25, 2014 - 12:33am PT
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People will never yield up their belief that what is happening in their brain has some innate connection to "truth". And that this is the only path to the truth.
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John, I can say it a thousand times: "Belief" has noting to do with what I am saying and have said. What's more, when I say "detach from content" I am saying that "what is happening in their (your) brain" is the very material that you need to give up. And here you are again insisting content is our Holy Grail. Not so, John. It's the very opposite. Can you hear these very words? Nor yet have I ever said that Zazen is the ONLY path to the truth.
You've bungled your take on the subjective work rather handsomely - and believe every word of it, blaming others because it cannot be presented in your language. You might consider asking a question rather than your continued guessing at things - the fact that you cannot is telling.
JL
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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May 25, 2014 - 01:39am PT
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Anyway, what eventually happens through the subjective adventures is the emergence of another perspective that DOES reach far beyond no-thingness. That is, form (stuff) is emptiness (no-thingness), and emptiness is form - EXACTLY.
Once again, absolute certainty of biblical proportion. This revelation is no more than another weird brain state that has no bearing on physical reality . . . unless science is employed to determine whether it does or not. This is pure metaphysical flap-doodle. But we should take your word (or the "evidence" of our own meditative experience) that it is not? I can hallucinate flying elephants with the same mental apparatus that convinces you of this ___(I can't think of an appropriate description, so someone fill in the blank!)
;>\
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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May 25, 2014 - 04:54am PT
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Brain scans would reveal Largos no thing as a state of consciousness, where wakefulness, mind, and self emerge, in concert, from activity in the cerebral cortex, thalamus, and brain stem.
they might look similar between people
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - May 25, 2014 - 06:18am PT
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Once again, absolute certainty of biblical proportion. This revelation is no more than another weird brain state that has no bearing on physical reality . . . unless science is employed to determine whether it does or not.
-----
The reason there is an impass is that everytime something is said that you do not understand or cannot get calipers around you revert to an insight BEING (conflation) a "brain state" or flapdoodle. In fact your guessing, John, and you know it. "Unless science is employed" means you need to bust out instruments. Where do you suppose awareness fits in here? Do you believe you can do science wtihout it. Is everything arrived at sans instruments "flapdoodle?" Do you believe there is a limit to the discursive and that everything beyond it is perforce flapdoodle? Why not check it out rather than this silly guessing?
The quote about form and emptiness is roughly 1,500 years old. What do you think they mean by it? You seem to enjoy guessing about stuff so take a shot. Have no fear about being "wrong."
JL
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MH2
climber
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May 25, 2014 - 10:53am PT
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The quote about form and emptiness is roughly 1,500 years old. What do you think they mean by it? (JL)
Roughly:
Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God
Romans 8:39
From chapter 12 through the first part of chapter 15, Paul outlines how the Gospel transforms believers and the behaviour that results from such a transformation. This transformation is described as a “renewing of your mind” (12:2), a transformation that Douglas J. Moo characterizes as “the heart of the matter.” It is a transformation so radical that it amounts to a “a transfiguration of your brain,” a "metanoia", a “mental revolution.”
Paul sometimes uses a style of writing common in his time called a "diatribe". He appears to be responding to a "heckler", and the letter is structured as a series of arguments. In the flow of the letter, Paul shifts his arguments, sometimes addressing the Jewish members of the church, sometimes the Gentile membership and sometimes the church as a whole.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistle_to_the_Romans
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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May 25, 2014 - 12:46pm PT
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another weird reptilian brain reaction from largo in response to a benign and narrow observation of the obvious. falling in love would also produce a characteristic neural pattern, but that wouldnt make the experience any less profound.
as usual, its all straw man, all the time.
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WBraun
climber
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May 25, 2014 - 12:53pm PT
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falling in love would also produce a characteristic neural pattern
Yes that's true except it doesn't show the actual person behind the wheel.
The brain just like a computer will show all types of output on any instrument hooked up to it.
But the instrument does not see the the operator who's input ultimately controls the computer.
Thus the instruments only see the brain neural patterns but not the soul which is actual the operator of the brain .....
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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May 25, 2014 - 12:53pm PT
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Let's start at det beginning - what is is ?
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Let us know!