What is "Mind?"

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paul roehl

Boulder climber
california
Mar 30, 2015 - 07:46pm PT

I appreciate nature for what it is, when it is.

Yes, and what is it exactly, and when is it?

The source of our awe is likely much older than our species, given that a dog enjoys an expansive view as much as I do.

We're wired to love our home.

It's good you can communicate so intimately with your animals, but what is that thing you call awe? How is your awe in the experience of nature any different from a religious experience? The power of such an experience lacks all practicality. And yet in it is the redolence of consolation. So sweet, so "religious."

We're wired to love our home explains little of the profundity and the ecstatic experience of the sublime which has little to do with one's home. Were you the one giving out cigars? Misplaced trust.
healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
Mar 30, 2015 - 07:54pm PT
Real time self-observation (presence) not fused to content is unlike any other phenomenon in the known universe. The only viable refutation to this is to simply say such a "thing" does not really exist.

Wait, which is it? One minute it's a 'no thing', now it's a 'phenomenon' - and not just any phenomenon, but one "unlike any other in the universe". Others here would have us believe it is 'the universe'. From where I sit the word 'phenomenon' doesn't exactly constitute a "report back", but then I suppose the [non] experience is simply too overwhelming even for masters of the word.

The rub is there are some aspects of reality that you cannot "look" at and measure in the normal way.

And now we're weighing and measuring 'no thing' - got to get myself a PhD in the metrics of no thing - and maybe explain to the folks in my business the hot new deal isn't 'big data', it's 'no data'.

The romantic movement and its worship of nature has permeated western culture to such a degree that it's almost impossible for its acolytes to recognize in themselves. Kind of like a smell you get used to.

The only "smell" here is your devotion to the notion human beings are somehow special. You've clearly had enough philosophy, maybe what would be in order now is some microbiology.

Next time you're in the Sierra and you're standing at the top of some peak or climb looking into prodigious space and you're plainly too moved to speak, ask yourself what is the source of this feeling?

And you think those feelings come from where? It's all the same with you guys, all self-obfuscatory woo, no reporting back. Life obviously just couldn't be worth living - and couldn't be lived 'morally' or ethically - without some form of guiding woo. My god we'd all just be animals without it...
TGT

Social climber
So Cal
Mar 30, 2015 - 08:00pm PT
"being just an animal" absolves you of any responsibility for your actions.

BLUEBLOCR

Social climber
joshua tree
Mar 30, 2015 - 08:09pm PT
^^^Good one TGT! but isn't that their mission!?


The source of our awe is likely much older than our species, given that a dog enjoys an expansive view as much as I do.

dogs don't see well. My dog barked at me when i put on a suit. He didnt know who i was till he smelled me. Hell they don't even see colors.

isn't Ur awe is inspired by being in a grandiose place that provokes your smallness.

maybe get out of your cubical more?

Come to JTree, it's aweinspirering.

healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
Mar 30, 2015 - 08:20pm PT
"being just an animal" absolves you of any responsibility for your actions.

In your delusional world.
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Mar 30, 2015 - 08:31pm PT
And where is the peer-reviewed article proving that gravity is "created" by matter?
Largo
ah, you maybe missed that 7th grade science class where they went over the "scientific method"

you know, where they say that science is about falsifying, not about proving a thing... so you are right, there is no peer reviewed article "proving" gravity is created by matter...

from Einstein's 1915 paper "Erklärung der Perihelbewegung des Merkur aus der allgemeinen Realtivitätstheorie"

"We place a point mass (the Sun) at the origin of the coordinate system. The gravitational field, which this mass point produces, can be calculated from these equations through successive approximations."


now of course, this is a description of the quantity he is about to calculate, the perihelion shift of Mercury's orbit, that had been observed (current value is 574.10±0.65 arcsec/century) but Newton says this should be 531.63 ±0.69 arcsec/century (also assuming the Sun's mass gives rise to a gravitational field as conveyed in the Universal Law of Gravity). This is inconsistent with expectation, we conclude that Newton was "wrong."

General Relativity calculates a correction term of: 42.98 ±0.04 which when added to the Newtonian expectation gives: 574.64±0.69, in agreement with the observation (within the uncertainties).

We then say that General Relativity (and it's assumptions) are consistent with observation.

IT'S NO A PROOF

but obviously we can push our theory to predict other things (like the correction to the clocks circling in orbit around the Earth that give you your GPS position), and we take the assumptions to be entirely workable.

Now we can also hypothesize other things, too, like some expansive "psi" field expands throughout the universe and our consciousness taps into that field in some unknown and unknowable way and provides us access to the "Big Book of Facts" from which we know how to do things and how to think about things.

Some of us (the scientist sausages) deceive ourselves into believing that we aren't connected to this, and make the error that the consistency of our theories is due to their correspondence with a quantitative system, a theory, which is verified by empirical observations, when what is really happening is that we know the answer coming in off the psi field in the first place.

So our game is jiggered in a way we don't know or don't recognize... of course we get it right. Sort of the ultimate "self-esteem" con game...

And the fact that we have constructed a scenario to account for the facts necessarily makes that scenario consistent with the observations...
...and we have no way to know what is right, does science do anything? or are we lead to the answer by peeking in the BBoFs via the psi field?

Game done, no need to continue... let's just be intuitive (i.e. pick up the psi field and go with that) and drop the pretense that we have to understand anything from a science point of view.

Better that we all spend our time writing and reading gossipy literature about people, their lives, loves and losses... isn't that what it's all about anyway?
healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
Mar 30, 2015 - 08:39pm PT
Face it, 'no thing' is the only knowable thing in the universe.
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Mar 30, 2015 - 08:46pm PT
EDMUND: "You've just told me some high spots in your memories. Want to hear mine? They're all connected with the sea.
...
The peace, the end of the quest, the last harbor, the joy of belonging to a fulfillment beyond men's lousy, greedy fears and hopes and dreams! And several other times in my life, when I was swimming far out, or lying alone on the beach, I have had the same experience. Became the sun, the hot sand, green seaweed anchored to a rock, swaying in the tide. Like a saint's vision of beatitude. Like the veil of things as they seem drawn back by an unseen hand. For a second you see - and seeing the secret, are the secret. For a second there is meaning! Then the hand lets the veil fall and you are alone, lost in the fog again, stumbling on toward no where, for no good reason!"


so what? you need to read it? you've never felt that way yourself? never experienced it yourself? or you just couldn't describe it that well? why would you need to?

or perhaps you just love playing with language and watching others do that, and admiring the beauty and being surprised by the inventiveness and taken in by the wit, or emoting with the pathos...

...and if that, perhaps you might glimpse at what I see in mathematics and physics. The only sorrow being that I can appreciate your passage and perhaps see what you see, but you can't mine.
WBraun

climber
Mar 30, 2015 - 09:04pm PT
You big big mean lab coat sausage scientists are now picking on a poor little girl?

:-)
Jan

Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
Mar 30, 2015 - 09:22pm PT
It seems that some (not all) big mean lab coat sausage scientists pick on anything female. Case in point, I used the term Joe Sixpack a while back and a certain lab coat here jumped all over me for that, accusing me of being a typical conservative getting all my news from Fox. A little later in the conversation, three different men used the same expression while the same lab coat was participating in the discussion, and not a word was said to any of them. Since I'm not conservative and I never watch Fox News I found that typically insulting.

BLUEBLOCR

Social climber
joshua tree
Mar 30, 2015 - 09:34pm PT
DrEd hits a homerun with two on, in the top of the eight. Tie game!
jgill

Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
Mar 30, 2015 - 09:36pm PT
The rub is there are some aspects of reality that you cannot "look" at and measure in the normal way (JL)

Rub the lamp vigorously and the djinn will explain these aspects to your satisfaction.

Real time self-observation (presence) not fused to content is unlike any other phenomenon in the known universe (JL)

Once again, the level of absolute certainty of a true believer. No mysteries for John - all reduces to no physical extent, the God of No-Thing.

. . . we can also hypothesize other things, too, like some expansive "psi" field expands throughout the universe and our consciousness taps into that field . . . (Ed)

How would the psi field interact with the aether? No-thingness?
This takes us alarmingly close to Tegmark's mathematical universe, itself a fun bit of metaphysics.
WBraun

climber
Mar 30, 2015 - 09:46pm PT
Rub the lamp vigorously and the djinn will explain these aspects to your satisfaction.

Yes this is true.

But it must be the correct lamp and correctly chanted mantras.

Thus the scientific method remains intact .....
Bushman

Social climber
Elk Grove, California
Mar 30, 2015 - 09:52pm PT
"The source of our awe is likely much older than our species, given that a dog enjoys an expansive view as much as I do."

"dogs don't see well. My dog barked at me when i put on a suit. He didnt know who i was till he smelled me. Hell they don't even see colors.

isn't Ur awe is inspired by being in a grandiose place that provokes your smallness."

'The Nose of Ignorant Bliss'

Unlike we puny humans,
Dogs smell the world in all its splendor,
Even from the mountain top,
Dogs smell things but would not render,
Philosophy to what they smell.
With nose as eyes how could it be,
That dogs with such sensitivity,
The Labrador particularly,
Would fart so injudiciously,
And not depart like you and me?

-bushman

Tvash

climber
Seattle
Mar 30, 2015 - 10:02pm PT
From...you guessed it...science:

Dogs are not color blind, although they perceive colors somewhat differently (and more simply) than we do. For example, red/orange/yellow all appear to a dog a differing shades of yellow.

Their close in and far off vision is worse than ours (their focal range is narrower), but within their focal range, they see just about as well as we do. Their low light vision is better than ours.

Your dog notices you've got a suit on and you claim it can't see well? That makes no sense at all.

What does make sense is that dogs can react to changes in their environment - a new piece of furniture, a strange hat, a suit. They can become nervous and they often bark to express that. Perhaps the dog didn't recognize the smell of the suit. Perhaps your demeanor changes when you have a suit on. Hard to say, really.
Tvash

climber
Seattle
Mar 30, 2015 - 10:19pm PT
As for religious experiences - I know nothing of them, so any comparison is meaningless. It seems, from those who've documented them, that they often come after trauma or or some other severe trial - addiction being a common one. This is particularly true for the Born Again experience - probably the most common type of religious experience in this country.

The nature of such experiences seems to be similar across many individuals - so I'd guess it's the result of some kind of PTSD or other reaction to severe stress, coupled with enough suggestion from religious peddlers (no shortage there) to give them a common form.

I've known no one who was content with life who suddenly had the Born Again experience, but plenty of very troubled people who have. I would guess the former is exceedingly rare.

Religious people filter life's experiences through God - they attribute their fortunes to Him and misfortunes to His disappointment with them - or, in some cases, opt to blame Satan.

Irreligious people realize that life has its ups and downs, we all make mistakes, and that's just the way the cookie crumbles.

Artistic inspiration has historically been another type of religious experience. An idea that bursts forth from our subconscious, perhaps triggered by an external sensation - a sound, a sight... can seem like it comes from a source outside of us.
BLUEBLOCR

Social climber
joshua tree
Mar 30, 2015 - 10:49pm PT
Perhaps the dog didn't recognize the smell of the suit.

i did get it from the thrift store;)

gotta have a good sense of humor to last around here..!

Let us praise evolution for a sense of humor.

Thank YOU, Anglerfish?!

Bushy, i bet even God chuckled on that one!?
Bushman

Social climber
Elk Grove, California
Mar 30, 2015 - 11:17pm PT
God made cute little puppies.
Satan made them go boom boom on the rug.
Somebody decide who gots to clean that up!

(Sarcasm)
paul roehl

Boulder climber
california
Mar 31, 2015 - 08:01am PT
The only "smell" here is your devotion to the notion human beings are somehow special. You've clearly had enough philosophy, maybe what would be in order now is some microbiology.

Even the most scientific mind realizes that in terms of knowing and the ability to put that knowledge into use, humanity is "special." Humanity has done things in this and other places in the solar system that no other earthly creature could ever imagine. Declaring equivalence with some microbe tests credulity. What such a thought does do is aggrandize nature and notions of evolution into an infallible deity. That we must “surrender“ to the realization we are nothing more than an athletic ant colony shares more with Islam than it does science.


And you think those feelings come from where? It's all the same with you guys, all self-obfuscatory woo, no reporting back. Life obviously just couldn't be worth living - and couldn't be lived 'morally' or ethically - without some form of guiding woo. My god we'd all just be animals without it...


"You guys?" "Guiding woo." Your assumptions are more than remarkable... hope you don't take them into the lab.

Artistic inspiration has historically been another type of religious experience. An idea that bursts forth from our subconscious, perhaps triggered by an external sensation - a sound, a sight... can seem like it comes from a source outside of us.

Oh my, the woo of art rearing its disconcerting head.
Tvash

climber
Seattle
Mar 31, 2015 - 08:16am PT
I think human beings are pretty cool. What we've managed to accomplish and create is stunning, and that creativity appears to be boundless. We have an innate desire to do better and connect - with each other, and with our world.

We have an over population problem, that is obvious. But taken as individuals, my experience with our species has been overwhelmingly positive.

Paul, I apologize for the language comments. The difficulty of becoming fluent in a second language needs no introduction.



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