What is "Mind?"

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Lynne Leichtfuss

Sport climber
moving thru
May 18, 2019 - 02:40pm PT
Sometimes it's just great to be blonde :)
Largo

Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
Topic Author's Reply - May 18, 2019 - 03:56pm PT
believe that a (immaterial, fleshless) soul itself experiences the likes of

Note only that from Fruity's POV, an agent is required to "experience" content (sexuality, impulses, feelings, etc.). Even his wingman, Harris, has said there is no self or soul or formless "thing" that experiences. Beneath it all there's only experience. Some say experience is "ungraspable" because there is A), no external object or force or thing to grasp, and B), there is no self or soul et al to do the grasping.

For Fruity, that leaves the brain as God, crating and experiencing it's own linear, mechanical output. You can jazz it up with non-linear, random/chaotic factors, but from this POV, the brain comes first (in time), then content.
healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
May 18, 2019 - 05:17pm PT
There is no experiencing without awareness and no awareness without context (not content).
Lynne Leichtfuss

Sport climber
moving thru
May 18, 2019 - 05:24pm PT
Since this place is going to be gone soon, I'd like to ask a question. You talk about people and souls and such as if they are quantifiable. Like mapped out, boxed out scientific jargon and sometimes speculation.

What about us that just live....with out the phrases you speak? Are we less. No I don't think so at all. Are we more? Maybe. Life is gold and like my German grandpa said, "talk is cheap." I understand the need to discuss, to learn to go forward but at some point learning and life needs to flow together. Mind and life need to meld. More than molecules, wisdom.
Largo

Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
Topic Author's Reply - May 18, 2019 - 05:33pm PT
Context: the circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood and assessed.



From this pov, awareness is beholden to something other than awareness - some content, statement, idea, lay of the land, whereby we can evaluate what arises. Ergo awareness is beholden to "that," whatever that is.

The converse is also equally true (exactly)- IME. Put differently, all "that" is, is beholden to mind.

At the core of this adventure is the belief that there is a stand-alone, objective reality that exists separate from mind. From the measurement camp, I suspect the double slit experiments with all the new iterations will shed some light on this eventually, though nobody is saying much one way or the other just now, especially per retrocausality. The mind camp is clear on this, and has been for 3,000 years - and not as a belief or concept or something "you only think is true."

MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
May 18, 2019 - 07:44pm PT
Mind and life need to meld. More than molecules, wisdom.



They do, Lynne. Molecules are what make wisdom possible. It isn't a more than or less than relation. Just different.
WBraun

climber
May 18, 2019 - 07:47pm PT
Molecules are what make wisdom possible.

You really should stop talking.

You are embarrassing yourself .....
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
May 18, 2019 - 08:01pm PT
they are near death hallucinations, recoverable by current resuscitation techniques.


Ward,

Go to your copy of The Games Climbers Play edited by Ken Wilson. Read the chapter Falling by Mike Quigley about Albert von St. Galen Heim.

Then go to The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease vol. 174 No. 3 p 165: Near-Death Experiences in India (A Preliminary Report).

There are interesting cultural differences in near-death experiences. They cast doubt on the possibility that near-death experiences are evidence of a world beyond and different from this one.

MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
May 18, 2019 - 08:03pm PT
You are embarrassing yourself .....



Yes but I don't expect it to come back and bite me.
healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
May 19, 2019 - 03:26am PT
There is no awareness without a context of self.
MikeL

Social climber
Southern Arizona
May 19, 2019 - 06:43am PT
Good comments, all.

HFCS: And if the soul, ghost or spirit of our counterfactual world is amorphous because all its structure and function has been stripped away or left behind (by vacating its biological body) then what good is it? what meaning or importance or significance would it have?


I don't know or see what or how a soul, ghost, or spirit (which does indeed seem amorphous) can be stripped of anything. To make that claim, I should suppose one would have some parts to talk about. You got any to talk about?

Second, I have to smile at the idea that souls, spirits, or ghosts have to be good or meaningful or important. This is another instantiation of instrumentalism: in order to talk or consider any thing, it must be a kind of tool for some purpose. In reference to Lynne's posts, what about "just living," being? I suppose that might seem rather "boring" to you. Have you ever had feelings of peace or just "being" after finishing a climb? I mean we find ourselves becoming interested in this or that (anything), but must the interest regard achievements, purposes, efficiencies, or productivity? I appreciate that any of those might show up naturally in everyday life as a natural matter of course, but is that how we should think of our lives and living? IMO, each of those things seem to be games / or amusements that we find ourselves involved in.


Healyje: There is no experiencing without awareness and no awareness without context (not content).

Perhaps. What do you see?

Look how context seems to shift radically for no particular reason at all. I think; I feel; I move from one environment to another; I bounce off others. Each seems to generate another context--unless you're suggesting that THE context is your own sense of self. If that's what you have in mind, then great . . . I'd say you're truly beginning to find your way to pristine awareness.

Context is a funny thing. It's always shifting and changing, and yet the thing that doesn't appears to be shifting and changing is an abiding sense of being--for most, "me" or "I." For the most part, that's that seems to be the ego, but again, there are appear to be many voices that can be heard.


Former: I know that most of the high level scientists are NOT materialists.

Really? Are you saying most are spiritualists? Among academics, I wouldn't make that claim. (I would have liked to have found them at UW, SCU, Calpoly, UWO, U of I, Warwick, and SJSU. Maybe I was just unlucky or unpopular.)

WBraun

climber
May 19, 2019 - 09:13am PT
The soul, yourself is NOT ever amorphous.

The clueless gross materialist's mental speculators should not speak on things they are 100% clueless to ......
sempervirens

climber
May 19, 2019 - 09:58am PT
The soul, yourself is NOT ever amorphous.

The clueless gross materialist's mental speculators should not speak on things they are 100% clueless to ......

How do you know?
WBraun

climber
May 19, 2019 - 10:05am PT
Study yourself and not your material body.

But you won't do it,

You people are too lazy and materially brainwashed.....

sempervirens

climber
May 19, 2019 - 10:08am PT
No answer then Werner? Ya got nothing?
Jan

Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
May 19, 2019 - 10:25am PT
I highly recommend the two articles that Ward has posted on near death experiences which are discussed from a purely scientific point of view but different than the usual scientific diagnosis of just hallucinations. If nothing else, they will show you that death is getting harder and harder to define.

As for people in India having different NDE's, of course culture plays a role. Some children under three who have had NDE's in the West, describe seeing the light as meeting Santa Claus, which makes perfect sense from their perspective.

My question among others is why these and other mystical experiences evolved if we are only material beings. What physical purpose have they served or are they just the residual result of a universal physical process ? There are many interesting questions of biology involved even if you don't want to go beyond the physical.

Here they are again.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/life-after-life-does-consciousness-continue-after-our-brain-dies

https://www.newsweek.com/where-do-you-go-when-you-die-increasing-signs-human-consciousness-after-death-800443
jstan

climber
May 19, 2019 - 10:59am PT
Better hurry up and reach a conclusion folks.
Norton

climber
The Wastelands
May 19, 2019 - 11:25am PT
from Jan's National Post link

“If you take that organ away or kill that organ or that organ dies, you cannot be conscious.” While there is no identified conscious centre of the brain — nothing you can point to and say, ‘there, that’s where it all happens” — Owen was part of an international team that recently identified two particularly distinct patterns of complex brain activity that can differentiate a conscious brain from an unconscious one.

He doesn’t believe patients who report near-death experiences get to a state where there’s no detectable brain response whatsoever. If that were true they would be classified as brain dead, “and I know of no case in the literature of a brain dead patient coming back.” Owen’s not saying they’re not almost dead. But the brain has an amazing vasculature. Unless a person dies of massive trauma that knocks out all brain function immediately, like going through the windshield of a car, parts of the brain will continue to get oxygen for some time after the heart stops, Owen says.
formerclimber

Boulder climber
CA
May 19, 2019 - 11:57am PT
Do you ever have vivid premonitions of things, before they happen?
Events that could not be possibly anticipated/predicted by any amount of regular mental effort, logic, analysis or even "intuition".
Do external events visit you in your night dreams before they happen?
This is a good place to start.
Ward Trotter

Trad climber
May 19, 2019 - 12:46pm PT
There are interesting cultural differences in near-death experiences. They cast doubt on the possibility that near-death experiences are evidence of a world beyond and different from this one.


Not necessarily MH2. If there were a world(s) beyond the one we know then it should follow that such a set of operating principles responsible for mediating something like an actual energy/information transfer interface between both, or many such worlds,, would take into account such incidentals as cultural or language differences in order to convey that critical information.

Remember the standard scifi movie scenes in which the ET is speaking and yet is understood concurrently in all the particular languages? Clearly a universal translator at work.

As for people in India having different NDE's, of course culture plays a role. Some children under three who have had NDE's in the West, describe seeing the light as meeting Santa Claus, which makes perfect sense from their perspective.

This would of course apply in Jan's example. Moreover this might dovetail into Jung's collective unconscious. Exhibit A in Jung's explication of his collective unconscious were of course the repeating forms and themes experienced in dreams by his patients. Such iconic reiterative mythological theme elements as serpents, devils, headless horseman, worm Ouroboros, and so on. What I think Jung underestimated was the degree to which these forms/themes were held in common not because they issued from a collective unconscious but rather from a collective conscious culture, transmitted intact over many centuries, despite many cultural costume changes.
For as we now know the dreams people often report in western culture today no longer or uncommonly contain these archaic forms. This is a point Joseph Campbell never fully addressed except to state that pop culture forms as Star Wars were obvious reiterations of the hero quest/redemption. This does not address in any meaningful way Jungian assertions as to the collective unconscious.

My question among others is why these and other mystical experiences evolved if we are only material beings. What physical purpose have they served or are they just the residual result of a universal physical process ? There are many interesting questions of biology involved even if you don't want to go beyond the physical

A good summation, Jan
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