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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Freddy Mercury (Iranian) was a genius.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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The equivalency of animal and human cognition through a common ancestry is irrelevant to the achievements of consciousness in the human mind.
Untrue. And it's not common ancestry, it's an evolutionary progression - think stepping stones. No evolutionary progression - no thinky.
The human mind has created tools that take that mind far beyond the limitations and dictates of evolutionary change.
Seriously? You can say that with a straight face?
Simply put, the human mind has built upon itself to the extent nothing outside it really compares...
Again untrue. It has not 'built up itself', it's built from and upon the evolved capabilities of our species and given we aren't smart enough to figure out the minds of other intelligent life on the planet, one really can't say nothing compares.
...and the mediator of evolution becomes that mind.
Naive in the extreme. You might as well stand on a beach and attempt mind control on an incoming tsunami. That's some real steaming arrogance there.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Healyje: Seriously? You can say that with a straight face?
Your belief in evolutionary change is absolute, isn’t it. Is there anything that is not subject to evolution in your mind?
How could one ever disprove evolution?
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WBraun
climber
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Healyje thinks his uncle was a monkey ......
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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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Congratulations ya' all has got some spirit!
Stir it up see what stinks-who can think ?
Or
who can't
Gone how many posts ?
Gone on about everything. That is NO Thing at all!
How about this thought on what is Mind;
A thought is what is mind what is A thought ?
By it self not so much, with the cosmos ?
Thoughts are all mine mines mined, mind
Did it die in custody of schmoes' with time & lotz of it
//from 1/2 way thru, //
Lago's post, & a long way around, to get to admit?
For the sake of argument, let us adopt naive realism. Let’s say that what Mary first becomes aware of on her release is neither a red quale, nor her brain state to which she gains access in a new way. Let’s say that what she becomes aware of is a bright red tulip. Now a tulip is surely a physical thing. The crucial point though, is that her awareness of it is not something physical.
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jstan
climber
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Your belief in evolutionary change is absolute, isn’t it. Is there anything that is not subject to evolution in your mind?
Modern culture among Homo Sapiens is placing great emphasis on medicine and the goal of keeping every individual alive and reproducing. Seen from the viewpoint of the individual this has much to recommend it. It does, however, have the effect of counteracting evolutionary processes.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - May 3, 2016 - 09:23am PT
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Simply put, the human mind has built upon itself to the extent nothing outside it really compares...
Again untrue. It has not 'built up itself', it's built from and upon the evolved capabilities of our species and given we aren't smart enough to figure out the minds of other intelligent life on the planet, one really can't say nothing compares.
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Sure you can say "nothing compares." If you're going to dispute this, just give a few examples other than more blather about objective functioning. And even if you cling to an old school mechanistic causal progression that you believe subsumes experience and subjectivity, when you look at subjectivity itself, it is totally unlike any other aspect of a third-person, external object - unless you can show us otherwise.
The built-up idea he is proposing cannot be explained away with a bottom-up "constructionist" model, owing to the way emergence works in complex systems. That's all basic stuff.
JL
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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How could one ever disprove evolution?
it is an interesting question, and applies to most well developed scientific theories. How could you ever "disprove" General Relativity? or Quantum Mechanics? or anything else?
In the first place, MikeL's question is based on the incorrect premise that these theories are "proved." Time and again science has tried to be very clear about theories, that they are provisional explanations of measurements and observations. They are provisional because: 1) we haven't made all of the observations possible and 2) our measurements have finite precision and accuracy.
These reasons of "provisionalism" provide the means by which we would come to see our scientific theories inconsistent with observation, that is, they failed to predict the outcome of the observation/measurement. Once this happens, the usefulness of the theory ends, as we have observed a domain where the theory is no longer valid.
Darwin wrote in later editions of Origins... of necessities for his theory to be valid, one being the age of the Earth being greater than 100M years, another being the existence of a biological mechanism for heredity, I can't recall off the top of my head the others, but these two were very interesting. The first was in conflict with physical theory, which at the time posited the age of the Earth to be no more than 10M years. The second was eventually discovered to be DNA.
The physicists were wrong about the age of the Earth, they didn't even know about radioactivity, so the calculations of performed, of the rate of cooling of the Earth from its creation reached an incorrect result, not accounting for the large heat production at the Earth's core from radioactive decay. The geologists were ultimately correct in assigning an Earth age of billions of years, more than enough time for Darwin's theory.
DNA turns out to be a huge discovery, not just because it provides a mechanism explaining heredity (in just the way required by Darwin's theory) but also as a way to associate the different living species in the "tree of life."
The fossil record also provides an observation which is consistent with Darwin's theory, and continued discoveries in the fossil record elucidate aspects of evolution which have greatly extended the theory.
The whole of biology is neatly explained by evolution, and the origin of life is framed by the requirements of evolution.
BUT
There are many loose ends in observations, and there are some interesting speculations regarding the future of evolution. In particular, I find it problematic from the standpoint of our knowledge regarding evolution and our technologies which "guide" evolution, and may actually alter it, however this may also be a misunderstanding of "natural" evolution, which might not proceed quite like we have envisioned it in the text books.
For instance, what happens if we understand the genome, and its workings, completely? or at least completely enough to be able to alter it to achieve the ability to "design" genomes. This sort of genetic engineering is then taken to an entirely new level. Genetic engineering existed with the first successful cultivations, breeding species for desirable attributes. There humans controlled the breeding and culled the desirable outcomes from the others. Now we do research altering the genetic material directly to achieve desirable outcomes.
It is interesting to speculate where this leads life's future on Earth, assuming humans persist long enough to achieve this level of directed manipulation.
So this thing which we are discussing, "mind," which is the result of evolution would have the ability to direct evolution.
As humans we swell with the notion, a la Paul, that we have achieved such a level of artifice, but there are other species which do similar things (though we wouldn't recognize it as an expression of intent, I'd argue our definitions of "intent" might be incorrect, or at least incomplete).
While these are speculations, we can reasonably ask the question regarding "intelligent design," but not of deities with supernatural attributes, but of humans with enough understanding to actually disrupt the genetic pool.
This is not an idle thought, think of the current debates addressing mosquito control, genetically engineered sterile mosquitos, where modified males are released into the wild to mate with wild females and produce offspring that die before they can breed. Sounds like a great solution.
However, life on Earth is not just a collection of individual species, these species form into an ecology, and the existence of these species are interdependent. It is easy to presume that taking out a species like the Aedes aegypti would benefit humans, but we don't actually know about effects to the ecology, what role does this species play? is it important for the ecology?
Humans are rather short sighted regarding ecological concerns (where I use "ecology" as a domain of science rather than its popular meaning). For instance, the NYTimes had an article regarding the damage to a coral reef in Miami:
Dredging of Miami Port Badly Damaged Coral Reef, Study Finds
I had two immediate reactions, the first being amazement that a coral reef still survived in the port (given the lead image showing the extensive development) and the second the profound stupidity of the proposed mitigation, to "move" the reef to another spot.
This mitigation begs the question: why do we think the coral will survive in the other spot? there is no coral reef there now, why not? I think it is safe to assume that whatever the conditions of the new spot (chosen at the convenience of humans, not the coral) that the fact that corals did not colonize it means it probably isn't fit for them.
This isn't the only case where humans have tried to "move" ecosystems to make room for human activity... and there is a long history of unsuccessful mitigations.
All this is to say that knowing the genetics is not the same thing as understanding the ecology, the two are intertwined together. So changing one has affects on the other.
Our understanding of this system is a legacy from Darwin, and understanding the limits of our understanding is also a part of the legacy of science. Were we to "disprove" evolution, it would be on the basis of scientific observations unexplainable by evolution.
While some responders to this thread have offered the "mind" as an example of something unexplainable by evolution, they have not provided any scientific evidence for their arguments. Certainly the interesting link I provided previously might be a starting point, scientific experiments pursuing those possibilities have so far not resulted in any such evidence.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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The built-up idea he is proposing cannot be explained away with a bottom-up "constructionist" model, owing to the way emergence works in complex systems.
we do not know what that implies for physical systems, and the philosophy of "complex systems" may be irrelevant to actual empirical observation. This is being "kind" as the "science of complex systems" has been a bust... I'm sure the philosophical enterprise will thrive into the indefinite future.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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when you look at subjectivity itself
Do you consider subjectivity to be an exclusively human attribute?
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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So this thing which we are discussing, "mind," which is the result of evolution would have the ability to direct evolution.
The question here becomes at what point is evolution turned on its head, its paradigm no longer in place in favor of the needs of the human mind? Mind has unraveled the human genome for its own purpose after all. The purposeful direction of that genome from the human mind contravenes what is understood as evolution and puts (will put) humanity in control of that process from mosquitoes to itself.
As humans we swell with the notion, a la Paul, that we have achieved such a level of artifice, but there are other species which do similar things (though we wouldn't recognize it as an expression of intent, I'd argue our definitions of "intent" might be incorrect, or at least incomplete).
No swelling here. No artifice either. it is important to respect the consciousness of all sentient beings and other species are, no doubt, that. But this is an issue of achievement as well as intent. Show me the Dolphin Dante or the Elephant Einstein and you might have an argument.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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. . . owing to the way emergence works in complex systems. That's all basic stuff
Let's be careful about casually contemplating "the way emergence works in complex systems", for these are deep waters and apart from some simple mathematical examples the process is quite a mystery. Not necessarily "basic stuff." I've given examples of weak emergence but once one wanders outside the comfortable confines of computer programming not much is known.
It's tempting for someone who prefers metaphysics over science to appropriate scientific and mathematical notions in an effort to strengthen their arguments. Remember the entertaining conversations about Hilbert spaces?
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - May 3, 2016 - 11:58am PT
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we do not know what that implies for physical systems, and the philosophy of "complex systems" may be irrelevant to actual empirical observation.
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I think you have yourself turned around on this one, Ed. Emergence in this instance (per experience and mind) can be appreciated entirely by way of empirical observation. If you believe that bottom-up constructionism can "explain" sentience, for example, observe microscopic brain activity and indicate where sentience itself actually is, is implied therein, or can be demonstrated to be an intrinsic aspect of micro-level activity. The question is absurd, of course - it's like claiming that psychology is applied physics. The empirical observations are irrelevant in explaining anything but early causal links in meta functioning. While you disparage "philosophy," peer-reviewed stuff is very formalized and exact in deriving logical structures and proofs - thanks to math doods getting involved with logic in the early 1900s. It's not, as is usually thought of here, just people sounding off with "opinions."
My sense of this is that a mechanistic explanation works well - in fact it is all that is necessary - with external material objects, but we are expecting too much for it too explain anything more than said causal links per mind, which for obvious reasons in more than a sum of brain parts. Belief otherwise is folk science, not a measurement. That's the quagmire that people face when they try and conflate objective and subjective, and the literature is full of those arguments, which spin and go nowhere. It's just as daffy as the philosophy that the brain is telling you that you have consciousness, when you really don't - a folk belief based entirely on the inability of anyone to quantify qual as external objects, which many feel are the only "real" things.
Of a more subtle note here is that once I started looked at the issues more comprehensively, two things stood out: First, the total impossibility of divesting the subjective from our inquires, and how intertwined perception is with the whole thing, and two, how the qualitative differences between machine mind and sentient mind are certainly real enough, it is inescapable that ontological properties have to be addressed, issues never relevant to measuring. Add to this the almost total lack of terms for even the broadest aspects of consciousness (attention, awareness, focus, etc) and the so-called First Personites are really up against it. No wonder so much time gets squandered in circular arguments.
JL
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Ed: MikeL's question is based on the incorrect premise that these theories are "proved."
Oy, vey. I DO understand the experimental method. It’s difficult here to be both exact / literal AND relevant / understandable to such a varied audience as this. I understand that generally one theory is pitted against another . . . and there results in a “loser” as such. (It’s quixotic to me that one “story” is generally eschewed in favor for another simply due to an account of variance. Why not take all in stride?)
Here’s what I’d like to talk about. Ed wrote:
. . . the requirements of evolution . . . disrupt the genetic pool . . . understanding the limits of our understanding . . . .
Ed may not have meant anything in particular with those phrases, but I'd like to expose something with them.
(1) Evolution is not an animated life force. What’s being stipulated is essentially a kind of random process that appears to have an agreeable outcome (to some). Folks also forget about the other side of the equation: the environment, which appears to be “making selections.” Why don’t we talk more about that? Why all the emphasis on the theory or story of evolution?
(2) How can a gene pool be disrupted? It simply is what it is. A gene pool has no more intent than a pool of water. One may talk as though it seems to present some kind of process or trend, but there is a bit of animation suggested in that connotation / presentation. It’s only seemingly causal post hoc, not prior to.
(3) Last, how does one understand the limits to understanding? Words.
A summation of my point here is that oftentimes people who have a great respect for science tend to give the discipline some kind of life unto itself. Science is just what people are seemingly doing. It has no life outside of life itself. There is no necessitation, no end result, no “genetics” or intentions of it. Genetics has no genetics. It is not life. It is not what life is. Science is not inescapable. It’s just a form of seeing. Evolution is a theory that seemingly has / had legs to it for a period which THIS is.
(I gotta run to class. Sorry if this is inarticulate.)
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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JL said"Add to this the almost total lack of terms for even the broadest aspects of consciousness (attention, awareness, focus, etc) and the so-called First Personites are really up against it."
From my experiential adventures on the cushion; I have noticed that it is very hard to let go or be unattached to the discursive until I start to feel some stimulation in the chakra below my belly button. LOL!
The Korean zen Buddhist's call this spot the dan tien or energy garden. When this spot is "energized" (for lack of a better word) the seduction of personalizing the discursive narratives running through my consciousness fall away very easily.
It took years before this occurred; I had heard of chakras and thought it was all fables. But once the chakra was energized my whole perspective changed. (And it happened by accident I wasn't trying to energize my chakra, I was just watching my breath and chanting.) When you first start meditating especially for longer retreats there can be a lot of sleepiness and (sloth and torpor); once the dan tien is energized that completely goes away and you feel like you are extra wide awake. The level of energy in this chakra can vary from slight to transcendently radiant.
It is very physical , yogic, and seems essential for unattaching from the discursive narrative. I know the chakras are a big part of kundalini yoga and the Tibetans work with the chakras from the little I know of Tibetan style. I also think Qigung and tai chi work a lot with this chakra.
Is stimulation of the chakras necessary to experience emptiness and to let go of attachments? what is your experience Mike L?
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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No wonder so much time gets squandered in circular arguments.
The only arguments that are tiresomely circular are those unaccompanied by empirical evidence on their behalf; sealed off as they are from real inquiry or argument-- philosophically or scientific.
2) How can a gene pool be disrupted?
It is epigenetically "disrupted" all the time by environmental factors.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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PSP, I follow the Indo-Tibetan form of meditation and for sure in that form, the chakras have to be energized before the self begins to disappear. I'm not sure from what you describe exactly what level you are talking about - chakra spinning, arousal of the kundalini etc. The literature says and my experience agrees, that the awakening of the chakras (all need to be awakened) is the beginning of the true spiritual life and there are many levels of getting away from the discursive and understanding no self. There are many mini enlightenments before the final one.
The chakra system exists in all forms of esoteric religion (this was a big question I had at the beginning). These experiences were always frowned upon by the hierarchical orthodox interpretors of scripture and ritual, so it is harder to uncover them in the West but the Jewish Hassids, the Islamic Sufis, the Catholic mystics (especially Theresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Hildegard of Bingen), the Christian Orthodox heysichasts and modern day charismatics, both Protestant and Catholic, all describe experiences which are similar to the Hindu and Buddhist yogis. The theology is different, the experiences are remarkably similar.
Whatever is going on, it is a universal human experience and potentiality which could, I believe, also be attained by agnostics and atheists if they were so inclined with the right techniques and attitudes. Sam Harris seems to be a good modern day example of a modern secular person who has started on that path.
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Thanks Jan. I still find it strange when the chakra energy happens; the scientist in me wants to know what "it" is? To become obsessed and distracted by wanting to define the experience rather than just being the experience.
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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To become obsessed and distracted by wanting to define the experience rather than just being the experience.
Not all search for"definitions" are ipso facto counterproductive, as a matter of course. Actually, given the modern world they should be embraced:
The Korean scientists studying oriental medicine with biophysical methods injected a special staining dye which coloured the meridians. By injecting the dye onto acupuncture points, they were able to see thin lines. These did not show up at non-acupuncture point sites where there are no meridians. The researchers discovered that the meridian lines are not confined to the skin, but are in fact a concrete duct system through which liquid flows, and that this liquid aggregates to form stem cells.
Previously, scientists used a combination of imaging techniques and CT scans to observe concentrated points of microvascular structures that clearly correspond to the map of acupuncture points created by Chinese energy practitioners in ancient times. In a study published in the Journal of Electron Spectroscopy and Related Phenomena, researchers used contrast CT imaging with radiation on both non-acupuncture points and acupuncture points. The CT scans revealed clear distinctions between the non-acupuncture point and acupuncture point anatomical structures.
http://upliftconnect.com/science-proves-meridians-exist/?utm_content=bufferf740e&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Ward said "Not all search for"definitions" are ipso facto counterproductive, as a matter of course. Actually, given the modern world they should be embraced:"
After I re -read my comment I thought that portion would be reacted to.
From a meditation POV the need to define things is a discursive habit. It is not good or bad, it is just the habit of "I" to need to define. It is important to observe this habit when meditating so it can be recognized and then let go so you can experience the moment rather than narrating about an experience that happened a minute ago. It becomes a form of distraction.
In the land of discursive , where I/we spend most of my time, defining things is the norm and is necessary to get things done.
what I am getting at is many people don't recognize, because they have not experienced, a POV that is very aware but is not attached to defining things.
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