What is "Mind?"

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PSP also PP

Trad climber
Berkeley
May 14, 2016 - 03:27pm PT
Base did you take some HFcorn pills this morning? You have a bad case of what is called attachment to form.

It is not easy to explain; that is why this thread is so long.

Off to the gym for some clinging style climbing.
Largo

Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
Topic Author's Reply - May 14, 2016 - 03:40pm PT
Nice rant, BASE, but you totally miss the point.

No one is "ignoring" our ability to measure what seem to be objects. In no place or in now way have I said that consciously designed instruments cannot dial in things on the micro and macro scale that our five senses cannot grasp. But none of that data actually become data till a conscious mind (always a first person perspective) uploads it into consciousness. None of those photos inherently have a mind-independent perspective. Or any perspective. Nor do they accord you a perspective. A perspective - and they only come in the first-person - is what YOU bring to the intersection of mind and data. In other words, data of external objects does not in any fashion create a third-person perspective. No such perspective exists. Or if it does, show us where with no default to God.

This is all Freshman-level material in the study of Mind. But you're getting turned around - I think - in believing that data to mall or too big somehow creates a mind-independent perspective. That is not science. That is a philosophical position.

The far subtler and much more controversial idea is what Planck put forth (and many others) that the appearance of any external object always, without fail, "postulates consciousness."

What do you think Plank meant by this? You won't get to the bottom of that by measuring or crunching data.

What you are really arguing for is the philosophical position that says there is a "mind independent" objective world out there, an argument I abandoned even trying to explain, for various reason. Mostly, people seem not to understand what is being said. Instruments only magnify what we cannot see or calculate data in super-human ways. But these are at best just machines. They do not have a conscious perspective.

What I was driving at is A), consciousness only comes in one flavor: first person, and B) all knowing has nothing to do with data "out there," and everything to do with the consciousness that ingresses said data. So when Dennett proclaims "Dennett's Folly," that we only imagine we are conscious, he did not generate that from some third-person perspective that "knows" as much. It all came from the first-person, because that's all that exists.

Maybe it would be easier for you to get this if you recognize that fundamental difference between a point of view, captured by a consciously designed machine, and a conscious perspective. A Mars Rover can give us a mechanical point of view, but till it is uploaded by a conscious observer, it ain't even a point of view for the lack of an observer.

What you see at play here is the desperate attempt to posit an external world that exists, just as is seems from the first person, as a mind-independent "objective" reality. It certainly seems that way from a common sense standpoint, just as space and time seemed like constants.
That's why a merely common-sense take on all this leaves you with a common understanding.

Norton

Social climber
May 14, 2016 - 03:44pm PT
Thanks for posting those, Base

very interesting and I enjoy reading and learning from your science posts
MikeL

Social climber
Seattle, WA
May 14, 2016 - 07:52pm PT
My dear Base:

Nice images. Fun to look at and imagine.

What do you think they have to do with mind, with consciousness, with what you are?

I can see that you have lots of data. They’re very interesting. Everything is very interesting.


I had a conversation with what I refer to as my teacher today in a videoconference. I told him the same thing.

Everything is interesting—but emotionally dead to me. I experience almost no emotional highs or lows anymore. That seems to be at-odds with images of buddhas portrayed with fierce drunkenness, with bodies aflame in blissfulness, with soaring heights of spiritual enlightenment. Yet (I said), it’s not like there is no access to emotions. I seem to walk into my classes and a personality possesses this body, and inspiration shows up in full flow, and I seem to become almost a madman, at times mesmerizing my students for 90-120 minutes.

Everything these days appears artistic / stylistic in its own unique way, from a knot in a piece of pine to the dreary rainfall here in Seattle today. But it is an artistry or style without passion. In this “place” or experience, there exists a perfect or universal pivot point—where nothing is solid, where everything is wide-open, spontaneous, ever-flowing, never impossible, and always available. Someone says “it’s an X,” and immediately a long list of alternatives show-up impending actualization in mind. Nothing is stable, nothing can be resolved.

My teacher says all of this is a kind of training in flexibility and adaptability, in nonlinearity. He says IT kinda seems that way to him, too. It presents a non-human context and actuality. That’s how it seems to me, too. Being human is just so confining, limiting, and dead-ended. “I” am simply a presence. I am not human.

Delusion is much like those Chinese finger traps you might have experienced as a kid: if you pull hard, you can’t get out of them.

Your focus on the images above and what they represent is a selective perception among an infinite number of perceptions. This is what you pay attention to and see. Of course I can see the same things. They’re interesting.

Be well.

P.S. My teacher laughs at all those images of flaming or serene or blissful buddhas. “That’s the advertising and promotion,” he says. (Ha-ha.)
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
May 14, 2016 - 07:58pm PT
What you see at play here is the desperate attempt to posit an external world that exists


Nice foolishness, JL.
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
May 14, 2016 - 08:47pm PT
Largo quotes from about a century ago... all but Bohm...

Said Bohr:

"Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real."

"When we measure something we are forcing an undetermined, undefined world to assume an experimental value. We are not measuring the world, we are creating it."

"Isolated material particles are abstractions, their properties being definable and observable only through their interaction with other systems ."

Said Erwin Schrödinger:

"The world is a construct of our sensations, perceptions, memories. It is convenient to regard it as existing objectively on its own. But it certainly does not become manifest by its mere existence."

Werner Heisenberg adds:

"The smallest units of matter are not physical objects; they are forms, ideas which can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language."

And Eugene Wigner:

"[T]he laws of quantum mechanics itself cannot be formulated ... without recourse to the concept of consciousness."

And lastly, David Bohm

"In principle this reality is one unbroken whole, including the entire universe with all its ‘fields’ and ‘particles. To begin with undivided wholeness means, however, that we must drop the mechanistic order.”


As these guys grappled with the meaning of quantum mechanics. Perhaps quantum mechanic has no "meaning" in the sense of seekers like Largo and MikeL, who somehow crave the absolute definitive definition, or else cast off into the sea of unknown and infinitely possible.

Bohm, whose physical ideas extended what DeBroglie started was ruled out by tests of Bell's inequality, much to the chagrin of Bell (who wished that there were hidden variables).

Bell actually laid the foundation of modern interpretations of quantum mechanics, and many of the controversies that spun out of the birth of QM are not considered relevant (the "measurement problem" being one).



Largo should go back to his car pool and get an update on current thinking on quantum mechanics (that is, if his car pool is as "cutting edge" as he leads us on to believe).

Reading this QM stuff is admirable, but as I said, most of the quotes are 100 years old or close to it... you can't really get at it without a more contemporary understanding.
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
May 14, 2016 - 08:58pm PT
today was celebrated as Buddha's birthday in So. Korea...


it was a serene place.
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
May 14, 2016 - 09:07pm PT
What is it that your are experiencing when you are sleeping?

How does that sleep state (as opposed to the wakeful state we are discussing) fit in with these issues of mind?

Sleep is generally regarded as an "unconscious" state (akin to anesthesia). I would also seem to be a very subjective state.
jgill

Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
May 14, 2016 - 09:09pm PT
Philosophy, in the spirit of metaphysics of the 19th century, is - if not dead - supine in the environment of modern scientific inquiry. There are, however, avenues of progress and applicability of value to the 21st century. An example of a philosopher who contributes meaningfully to contemporary society:

Patrick Derr.

His brother and I were colleagues for years at the college where we taught. I think Patrick has consulted with the State Department and other governmental agencies.

But the metaphysical bombshells of Kant and colleagues have little relevance in the 21st century. We all know that sentience shades perception, and that the "map is not the territory." Rather, the "philosophers" who contribute to human knowledge these days are the leading scientists, who strive to interpret their findings for the rest of us. Wigner, Bohr, Heisenberg and others are the new natural philosophers and those who claim to be interested in metaphysics as professional philosophers should quietly fold their robes and disappear back into the undergraduate classroom.

JL makes a noble attempt to resurrect philosophical inquiry into metaphysical realms (Hilbert spaces, empty awareness, quantum fields, nophysical extent, etc.) but he lacks the fundamental prerequisite for this task: a rigorous graduate education and highly productive research career in science. At best he can only be coached by his CarPool, who might actually contribute some interesting thoughts to this thread were they inclined to do so.

Nevertheless, JL is a real trooper, carrying a torch that may have fizzled out many years ago. The continuous focus on consciousness and awareness would be fodder for 19th century scholars, but 600 page tomes by Dennett or others are obsolete in the saddest sense of the word. Philosophical speculation on reality should be left to the scientific experts.

Everything is interesting—but emotionally dead to me (MikeL)

Does stepping away from one's "I" squash emotion? Too much of "being on an even keel" can destroy one's soul.
PSP also PP

Trad climber
Berkeley
May 14, 2016 - 09:15pm PT
It's not about the stuff it is about the relationship to the stuff.



WBraun

climber
May 14, 2016 - 09:51pm PT
Only the gross materialists sleep ......
BLUEBLOCR

Social climber
joshua tree
May 14, 2016 - 10:15pm PT

It's not about the stuff it is about the relationship to the stuff.

Well that just sounds like science? Science gleans mostly on the "relationship's" between stuff's, more than they know what the stuff actually is, Example; "stuff" like Gravity.

Or are you talk'in about an emotional relationship with some material object("stuff")? That seems a bit immature tho. i mean, an adult man isn't really "in love" with his car is he? But maybe that's why there seems to be so many rules/laws i keep hearing about?

Or, maybe your meaning the stuff you and i are talking about in our little relationship?

Maybe you can be more clear?


BLUEBLOCR

Social climber
joshua tree
May 14, 2016 - 10:42pm PT
Does stepping away from one's "I" squash emotion? Too much of "being on an even keel" can destroy one's soul.

That's exactly what i've gained! Sit lotus style and seperate yourself from everybody else and act like nothing matters, basically be a Monk. and stop monkeying around!

i say fooey on that! i wanna live like, every little thing means the most!

i don't want lesson's on tempering my tempers. i wanna know how to use them to their full extent! i wanna witness my "I" in the extreme pressures from summiting a mountain, to walking in the valley of death..

i wanna be predictable when tempted.

What do you do when you see a storm brewing, go the other way or prepare?
BLUEBLOCR

Social climber
joshua tree
May 14, 2016 - 10:44pm PT

Science is objectively clear and changes as the facts evolve.

doesn't that sound atleast a little funny to you?
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
May 15, 2016 - 07:19am PT
Do animal nervous systems (mind-brains) err? make mistakes?
Do they sometimes miscalculate? Over-reach? Fail?

[Click to View YouTube Video]

What's it like to be a buffalo?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6TnWW1s4hE

.....


It's not about the stuff it is about the relationship to the stuff.

In all their circular ramblings note how they never get around to any substantive, practical benefits that (1) justifies their investment (2) can't be had from plain introspection (examination of the mental life), self-reflection and psychology.


Inane.
Inanity.
PSP also PP

Trad climber
Berkeley
May 15, 2016 - 09:13am PT
JG said"Does stepping away from one's "I" squash emotion? Too much of "being on an even keel" can destroy one's soul."

Lets rephrase that question. Does being less self centered squash emotion? Too much "awareness" can destroy one's soul.

Not likely. IME the opposite is true. And as far as even keelness and soul those are your constructs.

MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
May 15, 2016 - 09:16am PT
And as far as even keelness and soul those are your constructs.



You give the man much credit.
MikeL

Social climber
Seattle, WA
May 15, 2016 - 09:25am PT
Jim Brennan: Science is objectively clear and changes as the facts evolve.


Well, then I’d say that science was not quite so clear.

Facts don’t evolve. Interpretations change. The overall impression is an evolution, but it should be more properly understood as simply incrementalism, and incrementalism is not evolution.

HFCS: In all their circular ramblings note how they never get around to any substantive, practical benefits that (1) justifies their investment . . . .

You are a materialist, through and through, but I don’t think you understand the basis, not economically anyway.

Materialism is theoretically related to happiness causally: supposedly, the more material one can acquire (affected by lower price), the happier humankind can be. Think that’s working out well these days?

No matter how much technology or more materials are made available to people, things (the intrinsic quality of human life) appears to be the same everywhere on the planet. New technologies, new value chains, new products, new social arrangements appear to make very little difference to the satiation, the happiness, the goodwill people have in their own lives and toward the lives of others.

But it’s a theory that people largely live by, and it is the theory that societies, governments, and organizations are driven by.

. . . (2) can't be had from plain introspection (examination of the mental life), self-reflection and psychology.

Like any other research or investigation, being systematic, careful, and documenting the results can generally provide far more insight and understanding than intuition. What is “plain” is rarely based upon circumspection. I’d suggest that careful, systematic observation indicates nothing is plain. The rest appears to be inextricably complicated and unresolvable. Say what you know finally, accurately, and completely.
jgill

Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
May 15, 2016 - 03:33pm PT
Too much "awareness" can destroy one's soul

That is not equivalent to what I said.

To me, Zen Buddhism seems to have a goal of suppressing individuality in favor of a more controllable group-think. The psychological effects that result I am certain can be achieved in other ways. There are those who seem born even-tempered and altruistic. (Oh, I guess that's explained as karma)
PSP also PP

Trad climber
Berkeley
May 15, 2016 - 03:36pm PT
Form is emptiness and emptiness is form. a key phrase from the Heart Sutra a central teaching in zen and Buddhism. This "emptiness" is easily misunderstood since in western thought we think it means nothing but in the heart sutra context and JL's it actually means everything.

here is link to Thich's well written explanation of emptiness is form form is emptiness. If you are not familiar with Thich he is a very famous well thought of Vietnamese zen master. Probably knew the famous burning monk.

http://www.lionsroar.com/the-fullness-of-emptiness/

I think this can help the first time reader of emptiness understand it. Not that understanding is the point; the point is to experience it. But for the purpose of this thread it might cut through some naïve misinterpretations.
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