Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
Apr 12, 2019 - 02:05pm PT
|
you are arguing from the philosophical position that your experience, what mind, what "I" is the subject of discussion,
you are saying that there is "something" (or "no thing") to be experienced when you transcend (?) the sense of "I"
no doubt that there is an experience, (which you describe, that others can understand and even relate their own experiences)
that is part of your commitment, and I do not dispute it, if that is your answer to "What is 'Mind?'" than so be it.
there may be other answers to that question too.
|
|
jogill
climber
Colorado
|
|
|
Apr 12, 2019 - 04:22pm PT
|
"Norm, here, means 'something that is usual, typical, or standard.'"
You've got to be kidding. It has a technical meaning. Look it up.
........
When "I" drops away, by magic the true nature of reality appears? I know you are convinced of this, but it may not be valid. I seriously doubt it is valid. But if it rings your bell have at it.
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
|
|
|
Apr 12, 2019 - 04:57pm PT
|
healyje: An anonymous sniper . . . .
You make up a story, a thought experiment, and that's "unpacking a theory?" Come on.
Ed: . . . you have not understood the description.
No description is completed, accurate, or final. (Ward could regail us once again with the story of "Rashomon.") Understanding a description would seem to call for a similar viewpoint. It's the viewpoint that's under contention. I'd say that most anyone academically trained can understand theories and viewpoints they don't agree with.
Largo neglects to provide us with what is "no thing" . . . .
Gosh, I don't think so, Ed. I think he's already done it in many ways. "No thing" simply means an absence of substantiality; even an absence is a substantiality which "no thing" denies. Are you looking for something literal? Are theories literal to you?
But, . . . in agreement with you (I think), the question of mind and its answer means little. The question itself (and any answer anyone wants to come up with) is a lesson, a koan; it's something that one works through and perhaps comes to some understanding about the world and his- or herself in it. I agree with you completely, that the question should not stop the scientific-investigation project. I'd say the question and its answer should be kept in the back of one's mind (er,). (At least one should not say that there is no question.)
Jogill (and others) continue to posit much of the issue in the conversation as some kind of feeling, perhaps as one might get from a drug. That conceptualization is misdirected and uninformed. Just try to imagine that everything about you is somewhat translucent, not completely solid. Is that what you call a "feeling?" I sometimes think that the claim that such understanding of "suchness" is a feeling, is itself an epithet. "If I don't understand it, it must be magic." Brother.
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Apr 12, 2019 - 05:23pm PT
|
Ego actually never ever drops away as it is the self itself.
As ego itself is personality and individuality of the living entity itself.
We are NOT ever impersonal and we can not merge into the impersonal Brahman.
We are always part parcel of that whole but with individual personality.
Just as no two snowflakes are ever the same pattern.
False ego is what drops away when the self realizes it is NOT the material body it dwells in while in this material world of matter.
We are NOT the material body we reside in. (False Ego)
We are NOT matter ever.
False Ego is the living entity falsely identifying with the material body as "I" .....
|
|
MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
|
|
|
Apr 12, 2019 - 06:47pm PT
|
No description is completed, accurate, or final.
This thread is entertaining.
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
Apr 12, 2019 - 07:21pm PT
|
No description is completed, accurate, or final.
that isn't an excuse for not understanding a description and its limitations. The degree to which a description is "incomplete", "inaccurate" and/or "provisional" matters.
As for literal, I think that Largo's invocation of his view of what quantum mechanics tells us about "substance" is much more literal (and very wrong).
|
|
jogill
climber
Colorado
|
|
|
Apr 12, 2019 - 08:54pm PT
|
MikeL: " Just try to imagine that everything about you is somewhat translucent, not completely solid."
Try not to let your imagination run away, and believe this is true. Imagine passing your hand through a wood table top. Now, try to do so. Report back.
John, stay away from Hilbert spaces. They are not your friends. Unpack Lynds instead. He's a friendly type.
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
|
Apr 13, 2019 - 01:27am PT
|
Your black hole example is another take on Johnson's old TE where if you doubt the opbjective reality of a rock, kick it and break your toe. Upon closer investigation (beyond sense data) we find that the ratio of empty space to "matter" in the rock is millions to one, and that "matter" is not at all what our sense data tells us it is (little globs of solid stuff). We break our toes kicking the rock NOT because of the solidity of the equivocal stuff in the rock, but rather because of forces. The "laws of physics" do not impart a force on the rock or anything else, rather they describe what is happening.
It is In fact, the solidity of the stuff and as much as you may feel you have personally conjured El Cap into existence for the rest of us I assure you it exists independently of yours and my existence and observations. In a nutshell, the problem with most of your ideas is if they held true then any given hold you used to climb the Nose wouldn't exist for anyone else and there would be no first ascents, rather only ascents because no one else could conjure up your rock let alone your route or its holds.
And the forces you speak of are certainly real as well, but what you neglect is the result of those forces is the very real stuff of objective reality its associated solidities. Your semantics are just that, philosophically entertaining no doubt. but beyond that not descriptive of the world we live in any more than your nothingness is is the source of our minds and consciousness.
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
|
|
|
Apr 13, 2019 - 05:29pm PT
|
Jogill: Try not to let your imagination run away, and believe this [translucent objects] is true.
Let's say that you are an expert in something. A novice comes to you and tells you what he knows. You demur. You see far more nuance and contingency than the novice sees. You hear his or her descriptions and you see them for what they appear to be: immensely partial.
Those "realities" are not quite real, are they John? They are shadows of what one understands.
I'm going to make a new distinction here, temporarily: what is explainable is not necessarily understandable, and vice versa. One might be able to say what things are and how they work, but that does not mean that they are understandable. Understanding seems to be totally different than explanation. The first is subjective, the other is objective.
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
|
|
|
Apr 13, 2019 - 06:20pm PT
|
Not even the esteemed Dr. Feymann can tell us what truth is.
Try to understand (not explain) that.
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Apr 13, 2019 - 06:23pm PT
|
Only God himself can tell us the real truth .....
|
|
capseeboy
Social climber
portland, oregon
|
|
|
Apr 13, 2019 - 08:21pm PT
|
Hey WB it may not be considered good form to encourage you; nevertheless, I agree with everything you said in your 5:23 post. It may be a FAFA (First All Free Assent).
Cheers.
Edit: I find it odd though, I feel like I can agree with most, if not all, the posts on this thread lately. It must be my egotistic groosss materialism, Damgumit.
Edit 2: I must be Insane!
|
|
jogill
climber
Colorado
|
|
|
Apr 13, 2019 - 08:56pm PT
|
MikeL: "Those 'realities' are not quite real, are they John? They are shadows of what one understands."
Well, I suppose the novice's perspective is not necessarily a shadow of what I understand as it is something to be corrected and put in alignment with current thought. Unless, as in Feynman's case, it is a piece of genius that jumps beyond my understanding and thus enlarges me. (I wish I could talk with the gentleman about his eponymous integral!)
Thanks for the reply.
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
|
|
|
Apr 13, 2019 - 08:59pm PT
|
capseeboy: Edit 2: I must be Insane!
You could look at that idea. There are many ways to see it, you know. You're insane, society is insane, insanity is insane, and any stipulation of what "I" consists of could be considered unbalanced.
To make a definition of insanity one needs to say what is sane.
Good luck with that minor challenge. :-) You've got your hands full.
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Apr 14, 2019 - 07:21am PT
|
Anyone who thinks the material world is a wonderful place to live IS automatically insane and masquerading due to illusion as sane .....
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
|
|
|
Apr 14, 2019 - 08:30am PT
|
Hey John,
When you watch a movie or a tv show on that flat screen, how come you aren't seeing the flat screen? Why does one get involved in the story, the drama, the characters, and even feel apprehension or sadness or anger? Why does one's muscles tense up when a scene shows a character attempting some challenging physical move? How is it that we don't see paint when we look at a picture in a museum? How is it that we "go away" when we become engrossed in a great novel?
Any perception of reality, one might argue, comes through the five senses and the active engagement of the mind. All of those things are engaged (happening) when one becomes involved in the observation of any artistic experience. Same faculties, same experiences--yet somehow different.
It should be no stretch for you to realize that while your emotions and muscles are engaged with simulations--the very same ones you'd use in real-life situations, you know that they are not real.
I say life is aesthetic. I look out at what appears in front of me, and I take it as an artistic expression (by who or what I don't know--doesn't matter). That includes that bullet that goes through my head as Healyje painted for us above.
How different is it to take an artistic expression as unreal (but engaging), and observing daily dramas in direct experience? What would make them categorically different? (Please don't say that one is real while the other isn't.)
Taking "things" to be less than concrete or serious has not seemed to hamper my abilities to navigate (another topic for discussion) experience. Instead, an uncommitted view to reality seems to make life more understandable, and I suppose enjoyable. (That may be just me.)
The next time you tune into a show on tv, go to the movies, or see a painting in a gallery, see how long you can stay focused on the flat screen, the big screen, or the paint rather than the art or "thing" you become engaged in.
Be well.
|
|
MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
|
|
|
Apr 14, 2019 - 10:12am PT
|
That 'wanting to know how things work' is a pretty cool urge we humans possess. All of us do it to some extent or other. I do it, you do it, Ed does it, Werner does it.
We see the brushstrokes of life, each to our own abilities.
Yes.
Any perception of reality, one might argue, comes through the five senses and the active engagement of the mind.
If you are curious about how that works, a good path is to study the anatomy and physiology of the nervous system.
Or you can just sit back and enjoy the show.
|
|
BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
|
|
|
Apr 14, 2019 - 10:36am PT
|
Ed,
I just read a really cool book: "The Eerie Silence" by Paul Davies.
It is about SETI, but Davies is a really imaginative thinker. A real futurist. It covers a lot of ground trodden here, but far more deeply.
Anyway, it is a good science read. I don't think the spiritualists would enjoy it. Davies makes it clear that a single species on a single planet, out of trillions of stars in trillions of galaxies is somehow overwhelmingly important. He touches on that better than I can, so I advise that the curious here read it.
"Curious" whittles this crowd down quite a bit, though. This is a dogma thread. I can't understand why many of you have devoted thousands of hours of your lives to Largo's Three Ring Circus.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!