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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A community of hairless apes
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Oct 27, 2011 - 04:29pm PT
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you say some things that just don't make sense to me
Fair enough. Peace out.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 27, 2011 - 06:53pm PT
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First, Marlow, get back in the corner and put the pointy hat on. Intemperate speech and hack humor do nothing to further your cause.
You know, the funny thing about all this is that I really DON'T have a theory of mind. Most of my comments have been directed toward the glaring deficiencies per a purely mechanical theory or consciousness, not because I am against such a thing, but because the fundamental reality for all human beings (experience) is not even taken up with 3rd person objective description. We hear all this about me postulation things about spiritual entities (huh?), disembodied minds, and so forth but really I just wondering what experience really is. Perhaps the fatuous words like "experience is in the atoms" is enough for some people. Not so for me.
When people started looking deeply into matter they pushed off from wacky religious ideas and got down to brass tacks. But when I suggest we do the same with experience, people spring back to measuring rather than even moving one inch into 1st person subjective experience - which we're all enmeshed in anyhow. That's the crazy part. An invitation to delve into where you are, right now, is viewed as a kind attack on science, rather than an adventure - meaning you don't know in advance where it might lead you or what the outcome might be.
JL
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A community of hairless apes
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Oct 27, 2011 - 07:13pm PT
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Another counter-intuitive, 100% mechanistic, mind-blowing process at work:
http://physicsbuzz.physicscentral.com/2011/10/this-video-has-been-making-rounds.html
Is something similar going on deep in neural circuits (as far as counter-intuitive marvels) - to evince memory, sentience, intention, cognitive streaming - the usual markers of "consciousness" - that natural selection has stumbled on and then over a gazillion regenerations preserved or locked into place. I think so.
Mechanistic marvels as they are discovered at the base of our being should be respected in the new century - that is the new attitude - or should be - certainly they shouldn't be dissed or denied, which is a common prevalent attitude amongst paranormalists to supernaturalists.
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MH2
climber
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Oct 27, 2011 - 07:31pm PT
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"is"
the idiocy of the word haunts me.
If it were abolished, human thought might begin to make sense.
I don't know what anything "is", I only know how it seems to me at this moment.
It seems to me that even a casual study of the structure and workings
of the brain gives an encouraging impression that anything is possible in there.
What does the phrase "purely mechanical" signify in connection to a dynamical system of billions of components?
It doesn't even work for the hundreds of neurons in Aplysia.
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 27, 2011 - 07:41pm PT
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HFCS's impedance is mismatched with his DNA and thus he has a high standing wave ratio.
This is why he is a mechanistic robot with no clue beyond "The Machine"
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A community of hairless apes
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Oct 27, 2011 - 08:04pm PT
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You're old-school, Werner. Since the emergence of digital electronics and interfacing, so-called "impedance mismatching" is by and large archaic at least as any kind of concern among circuit designers. Get with the times, bro! lol
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 27, 2011 - 08:19pm PT
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Every vehicle I built this year I had to check the Standing wave ratio from the radio to the antenna.
Our Motorola mobile astro spectra radios are analog and digital APCO25 at $3000 each.
So I don't want to fry the transmitter.
Now WTF are talking about impedance matching is not needed anymore.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A community of hairless apes
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Oct 27, 2011 - 08:28pm PT
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So I don't want to fry the transmitter.
Describe your system.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Oct 27, 2011 - 08:55pm PT
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Another counter-intuitive, 100% mechanistic, mind-blowing process at work:
does anyone else notice a certain inconsistency of thinking here relative to observing this very interesting super-cooled superconducting mag-lev demonstration?
"i see it (on video) and believe it, because i've been told that a plausible scientific explanation has been bestowed upon it, and the demonstration is supposedly repeatable"
vs
"it didn't happen to me and i don't believe it because it is not commonly observed and happened to someone else (eye witness) who can't explain it to me in terms that are acceptable to me (so it must be a fantasy or hallucination)"
What does the phrase "purely mechanical" signify in connection to a dynamical system of billions of components?
in AI and supercomputing we call it a 'combinatorial explosion' where the calculation exceeds our capabilities (global climate models have been one of the big challenges)
the challenge here is there's so much we don't know; it is basically pretty foolish to assume a delimited understanding of reality and ridicule anything outside those assumed limits
suppose i agree that 'the mind' is entirely mechanistic according to the laws of physics and biochemistry
i can actually agree to that with some cautionary notes that we certainly have a lot to learn
so perhaps factor in some of the unusual phenomena observed in quantum physics and postulated by string theory; or even confined to well tested electromagnetic phenomena
now just how 'counter-intuitive and mind-blowing' are some of the unusual phenomena we have been discussing?
suppose we postulate that sub-atomic particles could be considered to be 'thought particles'; or if different terminology makes you happier, 'spirit particles'
perhaps, in the spirit of the comments above, the Higgs boson or quarks or even hadrons should be renamed 'woowoo particles'
i'll suggest that we barely know enough to speculate on some of this; let alone claim to understand the 'mechanisms' of the universe
but i certainly appreciate all the interesting contributions people are making on this thread
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A community of hairless apes
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Oct 27, 2011 - 09:00pm PT
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Just to be clear, to be mechanistic (or a mechanist) does not mean that the "mechanist" fully understands ALL mechanisms of action whether alive or not, living or not, playing out under the sun. I think I know you know that, indeed, I think we all know that, but I just wanted to say it to help reaffirm the context.
I better rest now. Later...
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 27, 2011 - 09:03pm PT
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This is what I use and if you don't know about them then you're blowing smoke ...
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A community of hairless apes
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Oct 27, 2011 - 09:06pm PT
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I do not know about that, I'm no radio guy. Never was. Looks interesting. Tell me about it. What do you use it for? Then we can talk about impedance matching or impedance mismatching.
Later...
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MikeL
Trad climber
SANTA CLARA
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Oct 27, 2011 - 09:49pm PT
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I just wondering what experience really is . . . people spring back to measuring rather than even moving one inch into 1st person subjective experience.
IT isn't anything. IT's everything. As you say, one can look directly at it.
Personally, I think it's the most f*cking amazing thing there is. I don't think there is anything else.
I reach out around me with everything available, and IT is everywhere and now. IT is like looking into a searchlight. IT is the weirdest thing, IT is the most amazing thing. Direct experience, full-on subjectivity, is ALL there is. Everything else is like little toys and distractions: concepts, theories, frameworks, constructs, measurements, ideas, yada yada yada. IT's like living in an n-dimensional movie. Thing is, IT is not a movie. I can't describe IT, IT goes with me everywhere I go, IT is completely mysterious. I can perceptually diminish it though--by thinking about it, by analyzing it, by talking about it.
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wack-N-dangle
Gym climber
the ground up
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Oct 27, 2011 - 10:25pm PT
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ohm...
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allapah
climber
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Oct 27, 2011 - 10:57pm PT
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can't help posting, this is something i've given thought, this is the best thread ever, but why must it all be so off-topic? climbers, with their habit of skimming the event horizons of death attractors, have data which is valuable in the sacred quest to verify the existence of mind-
Gregory Bateson's Criteria for Mental Process
1. A mind is an aggregate of interacting parts or components
2. The interaction between parts of mind is triggered by difference
3. Mental process requires collateral energy
4. Mental process requires circular (or more complex) chains of determination.
5. In mental process, the effects of difference are to be regarded as transforms (i.e., coded versions of events which preceded them)
6. The description and classification of these processes of transformation disclose a hierarchy of logical types immanent in the the phenomena
Throw in Bohm's implicate order, Jung's Creatura (matter) vs. Pleroma (relations), the assumption that a Mind does need to have consciousness in its components but creates consciousness through relation of those components, use big words like "stochastic" and "nonentropy" and "realized ultimate reality piton," and: we have our hypothetical model of Mind—
now, to prove the hypothesis, employ legions of self-centered alpinists with lightweight clipboards to go gather data (in other words, they must go climb dangerous hills, in every kind of weather) which will verify the alignment of events in such a configuration so as to prove this universe we are in is permeated at every quantum pixel by Mind- though we be locked in 1st person subjective experience, the key is to triangulate what is outside the 1PSE (in the way you can calculate that a distant sun has a twin by analyzing its orbit and frequencies from afar)-- these climbers must employ their artificial prediction-intuition systems (spirituality) and thus seek resonance in their neural networks through the electromagnetic feed—
ok, electromagnetism, admittedly, there's a missing link right about here (but why must Fructose be so closed?)… are we not simply waiting for the "string theory" bit to get cranked out by the next Einstein? this may all start to come clear when that piece arrives... probably, the next Einstein is wasting his or her time right now doing offwidths in the desert...
examples of data: rate your level of certainty about the climb on 1 - 10 before the climb, compare to outcome— or, watch the face for ten years and then calculate the statistical improbability of that avalanche that annihalated last night's bivvy?
the damn problem is, Mind is a weak force-- Mind manifests more readily in non-entropy than in entropy- from our point of view, it only occasionally happens outside of our selves— nice climbers die, the as#@&%es live on-- I had a bad feeling, I didn't die… it's all BS... lots of Mind going on in the nonentropy of our brains, our pattern-replication machines....
The Eiger is a lower logical type than the book Eiger: Wall of Death, which is a lower logical type than the thoughts of Eiger: Wall of Death in the meat brain of climber scuttling up what is left of the second icefield... the more replications of Hal and Petunia's Prow climb that exist, the greater the nonentropy, and the level of mental process immanent in the system begins to creep upward through the very minerals of the quartz monzonite...
hard climbers never want to talk about any of this, because it can be some very bad space babble to have in your head while soloing...
look, i'm sorry, i was trying for 'thursday night posting while drunk' thread, but i keep landing here....
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wack-N-dangle
Gym climber
the ground up
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Oct 27, 2011 - 11:18pm PT
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^^^Kundalini?
Lost here... Asking for a more experienced perspective...
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allapah
climber
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Oct 27, 2011 - 11:23pm PT
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definitely kundalini is involved as well, the chakras being the nodal point (and therefore, the control dial) of the energy body which is the "organ" which is receiving information from outside the 1PSE, which is telling you to go back down the mountain, now, no summit today, ghosts, sahib...
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wack-N-dangle
Gym climber
the ground up
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Oct 27, 2011 - 11:39pm PT
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just a clarification before I sign off. no disrespect was intended. also, I think Dr. F had some good points quite a ways back.
an individual's examination of "mind" (sans ego), still seem to be relevant pursuit after all these years. it is remarkable to me that science is proving it (fMRI studies). maybe ironically, it was only the scientists who needed the proof. however, it does take time to put in the work to see it the old way.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 28, 2011 - 12:34am PT
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In 1698, Gottfried Leibniz wrote:
It must be confessed that experience and that which depends upon it are inexplicable on mechanical grounds - that is to say, by means of figures and motions. And supposing there were a machine, so constructed as to think, feel, and have experience, it might be conceived as increased in size, while keeping the same proportions, so that one might go into it as into a mill. That being so, we should, on examining its interior, find only parts which work one upon another, and never anything by which to explain an experience.
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The obsessive discussions about figures and motions, as they relate to experience, are in fact like wandering through Leibniz’s machine, describing various physical functions, and for the total absence of said experience, declaring, in so many words, that experience simply does not exist since it is so clearly not here. Ergo, all there is objective functioning, therefore the functioning IS experience.
This is the point where people like Dennett, once regarded in the 90s, totally lose their way, basically saying that since experience will eventually be fully explained by natural phenomena, anyone entering Leibniz’s machine was in fact looking at experience all along, they just didn’t know it.
It is one thing to say crazy things with no empirical evidence whatsoever, and quite another thing to insist that we believe them. And Dennett and others are, IMO, insisting just that.
The so-called “hard problem” of consciousness rests on the vagueness of physical meaning per subjective experience. Physical descriptions can describe functional processing like memory, perception, sight, hearing, and so forth, but to say that experience follows from atomic activity is such a conflicted notion that one wonders if the question is even valid.
The line of questioning is based entirely on things with very tangible physical meaning. A “rock” is in the atoms because the aggregate of matter that constitutes ever higher conglomerates, all the way up to something the size of Half Dome, never, at any stage, jumps to something nor yet “produces” something totally, and entirely different, qualitatively, than a mineral.
With “mind,” when experience jumps out of the meant brain, we have something that has only the vaguest similarities to matter, if any, and even material fundamentalists must pause when trying to consider the experience of chugging up the Monster Off Width crack to be the very same thing, qualitatively, as a gas can or a particle accelerator. It trule is apples and oranges, but more so.
But there is another “hard question” that is never mentioned or debated but which is really the flip side of the non-reductive argument (Chalmers "Hard Question"), and that is the plain fact that if we screw around with the meat brain, experience is immediately altered, and once the meat brain dies, experience seemingly dies as well.
These two “hard questions” seem to imply mutually exclusive truths, or perhaps they cancel each other out, but in fact the implications are apparently true in both cases. Materialists say that the non-reductive Hard Question is only so for the lack of more comprehensive measurements, and once those are in, the question shall be solved. But of course those measurements will be describing Leibniz’s machine, not experience.
But I believe there is a way out of this seemingly rhetorical circle, but I doubt very much that it will be a bottom-up casual model. What is the "third way" of looking at this, beyond 1st and 3rd person POVs?
Tiz a puzzlement . . .
JL
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Oct 28, 2011 - 01:11am PT
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with respect
it's not a hard question at all
just backwards
a thought...
(by whatever flavor name meets your fancy)
...thinks up a physical universe
thought then gets lost playing around in this physical universe
and forgets how it came about
creating this local phenomena of endlessly speculating about it
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