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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Jun 22, 2015 - 07:24am PT
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a close second, BASE.
Hey, I don't take on the Zen platoon over the topic of consciousness. The only time I get irritated is when they start trying to spout science to further their point, and only then when they don't understand what they are saying.
What point could that be, if the fundamental nature of everything is nothing?
I'm not getting sucked into that one. I visit this thread rarely. To keep up with it is a full time job, and I have work to do to keep all of you in hydrocarbons.
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STEEVEE
Social climber
HUMBOLDT, CA
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Jun 22, 2015 - 08:03am PT
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Jan, I enjoyed your post. It was very insightful and I learned something from it. I see where you're coming from now. I'm always very careful these days to not pigeonhole any group of people. We're all vulnerable to following a lie. The human mind, in general, is too easily distracted into believing bullsh!t.
I always found the "Golden Rule" bullsh!t too. In reality if there's something you would like done unto you, then please do not do it unto me.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Jun 22, 2015 - 08:54pm PT
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I repeat my question:
Why do philosophers like to dress in togas to have their statues made?
Sullly?
Socrates-envy?
Mathematicians usually wear contemporary clothes when posing for art.
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Jun 22, 2015 - 09:26pm PT
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Question: Is that a drawing of a nautilus shell on the background board, meant to illustrate "the golden mean" ?
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Jun 22, 2015 - 10:01pm PT
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I dunno. Doesn't look quite right.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 23, 2015 - 09:25am PT
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoZsAsgOSes
If you have 2.5 hours to burn on the "Mind" question, some might find this interesting. Chalmers (originally a math whizz), is a fun-natured dude who does an excellent job of framing the questions and sorting through and presenting the various arguments and loopholes in each. Dennett, IMO, has served up one of the most forked-tongue phrases in the whole "mind" conversation: "I don't have an actual experience, rather the illusion of an experience." And for someone who keeps harping about "mathematical precision," Hoffman's conclusion about consciousness is way out there.
I had fun watching.
JL
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jun 23, 2015 - 10:16am PT
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Raphael's School of Athens the age old dichotomy between Plato and Aristotle: Plato points up to the world of idea/mind and Aristotle directs us down to the realm of earthly measurement and record and here we are on this thread more than two thousand years later messing with the same stuff. Interesting, isn't it?
How many philosophers, mathematicians, librarians and artists can you find?
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 23, 2015 - 10:36am PT
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IME, Paul, it's all perspective. And as the old NLP folks said, "Never argue with a person stuck in a perspective."
JL
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Jun 23, 2015 - 11:08am PT
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In fields such as semantics and semiotics, a distinction is made between a referent and a reference. Reference is a relationship in which a symbol or sign (a word, for example) signifies something; the referent is the thing signified. The referent may be an actual person or object, or may be something more abstract, such as a set of actions.[3][4]
Reference and referents were considered at length in the 1923 book The Meaning of Meaning by the Cambridge scholars C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards. Ogden has pointed out that reference is a psychological process, and that referents themselves may be psychological – existing in the imagination of the referrer, and not necessarily in the real world.[5] For further ideas related to this observation, see absent referent and failure to refer.
(text above taken from Wikipedia: “Referent”)
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We appear to be word and idea junkies. We seem to be addicted to semantic systems.
We seem to use words and ideas with an unchallenged confidence that they bear a somewhat accurate correspondence to the actual state of things—i.e., Reality.
Within a limited context, this may be true. We seem to be able to record information, instructions, recipes, etc. in words. Another human should indeed be able to use those words to approximate the “real-world” conditions we intend to refer to. The semantic functionality would seem to have given our species a large evolutionary advantage.
But, for “spirituality,” inquiry into Reality or into true condition, words and ideas are likely worse than useless. They would seem to be potentially our biggest impediment because most of us assume that the objects / actions that words refer to *actually exist in the way the words that refer to them seem to define them.* [Ala, Ogden & Richard’s diagram above.] That is, we seem to view our experience as being actually made up of the very objects and actions that we are verbally using to describe it.
This appears to be a mistake. Every experience seems to present an infinite, constantly changing, non-repeating, indefinable (in any final way), unknown Reality—consisting solely of unknown “energies” existing nowhere else than IN experience—perceived by an unknowable, miraculously appearing “consciousness.”
The way we use words seems to imply that objects and actions actually exist in the way we refer to them—as knowable objectively existing “things” and “situations.” (That 1, 100, 1000, or 10,000 other people appear to use the words in the same manners does not epistemologically conclude that is what reality is.)
(In satsang with Peter Brown)
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Jun 23, 2015 - 11:29am PT
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So thought can’t find awareness, because it’s transparent. It’s empty. It’s objectless. So thought imagines instead that we are a cluster of thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions–in other words, a bodymind. And with that imagination, an illusory self, an imaginary self made out of thoughts and feelings, comes into an apparent existence. Thought imagines the separate self (Spira)
Interesting.
I once read the tale of an old Tibetan monk, who, when approaching death, told a young initiate "I have never heard of a person dying while doing a headstand." Which he then did.
Every experience seems to present an infinite, constantly changing, non-repeating, indefinable (in any final way), unknown Reality—consisting solely of unknown “energies” existing nowhere else than IN experience—perceived by an unknowable, miraculously appearing “consciousness.” (MikeL)
Are these your words, or are you quoting or paraphrasing Peter Brown?
Edit: OK, I watched Brown but closed him down when he started babbling about an "all encomapssing field." I thought Here we go again . . .
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 23, 2015 - 01:16pm PT
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OK, I watched Brown but closed him down when he started babbling about an "all encomapssing field." I thought Here we go again . .
For starters, all of these avatars say the same things in slightly different terms or from slightly different perspectives because what they are encountering and experience is universal. In other words, it's not an opinion but a direct perception. Note that this concept will never be believed till you HAVE the direct perception, then the discursive mind will look for discursive "proof" of same. The come-back is that "believing" or "proving' is the booby prize, sating only the discursive. The whole point is having the direct experience - the experiential equal of actually climbing the boulder. Once that is a done thing, what others say can never compete with the direct experience. The 3rd person evaluation, for the lack of ever doing the climb itself, is so much "chin music."
Because this universal mind is no tenuous at first, there have evolved elaborate ways to test for verity, mostly non-verbal, but true to the subjective adventures as opposed to trying vainly to transpose the experience into an object they can evaluate. If they could, they would, of course, since discursive reasoning is our standard MO. But it reaches its limits at the threshold of the unborn, a term that is meaningless without the experiential referents.
But per John going, "Here we go again."
How about if you abandoned whatever discursive ideas ("babble") you have on "all-encompassing field," accept he is using the term as a metaphor or a "Hilbert Space" (a construct that allows us to work with the undifferentiated), and see how that squares with what your directly experience per your own awareness?
Do you experience your own awareness as a "partially encompassing field?" Where are the edges? And note the difference between the content and the field. Or if you consider "field" as babble, kindly furnish your own term.
The key is; when you sit with your own perception, WHAT do you experience in terms of perception and awareness itself?
And remember, Brown in not guessing, though I would wager a fortune you believe in your heart of hearts that he couldn't possibly "know" what he is talking about.
JL
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jun 23, 2015 - 01:39pm PT
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^^^ the problem, for me anyways, is that "Field" fosters the delusion of only 2D instead of 3D.
I picture a fish laying on the sidewalk, compared to a fish swimming around in the big blue ocean:) maybe instead of Field, Bubble, or Ballon. But they depict an edge. So I don't know?
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jun 23, 2015 - 02:06pm PT
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^^^ i don't think you do, got it.
That's just my opinion.
You don't seem to be giving an earnest effort.
That's my perception ;)
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jstan
climber
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Jun 23, 2015 - 02:14pm PT
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Come on Drool. Get out of the hospital.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Jun 23, 2015 - 03:16pm PT
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I understand that some people discovered through meditation they have no-thing in their heads
Oh Moose, how could be soooo wrong. It's not no-thing in their heads, it's a field that, like Buzz Lightyear, extends to infinity and beyond. To understand this you must enter a meditative trance, after which you will believe!
Good to hear you're getting out.
;>)
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 23, 2015 - 04:06pm PT
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So its not opinion, its fact, based on... your opinion.
Read more carefully - and quit embarrassing your own self LOL.
...based on direct perception. That's part A.
Part B reads: And you will never believe that till you have a direct perception.
As is, you are basically reading the topo and guessing about the route (the empirical experience). Then making silly, woo statements from peanut gallery. No harm in that, but it's useful to know when someone is simply clowning around or defaulting back into old patterns (Dingus loves him some ol' time religion, and preacherman dismissals, and he pitch forks whatever he don't know under the big top), as opposed to the solid, empirical stuff.
And also, I think Chalmers was onto something in that video with how he approached things. For example, John hates "field," and other terms, meaning he has another picture of reality in his head. Instead of ripping him for misunderstanding, Chalmers would encourage John to make the effort to develop the model he imagines that clashes with "field," etc. Work it up into something worth discussing, lest we have so much tripe pitched in from the sidelines.
Psychologists have for ages understood how easy it is to merely rip at something - a little distemper and an irritable or riteous thought will do it. An honest effort requires the contribution of new data. So if it ain't a "field," tell us what it is, based on your empirical observations.
JL
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jun 23, 2015 - 05:28pm PT
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As is, you are basically reading the topo and guessing about the route (the empirical experience). Then making silly, woo statements from peanut gallery. No harm in that, but it's useful to know when someone is simply clowning around or defaulting back into old patterns
Psychologists have for ages understood how easy it is to merely rip at something - a little distemper and an irritable or riteous thought will do it.
Have psychologists for ages also understood how people criticize others for what they do themselves? Or is that the pot calling out the kettle?
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