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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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May 15, 2016 - 03:43pm PT
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the point is to experience it
And that's great if it rings your bell. But to suppose that it points to an underlying principle of reality is arguable if not absurd. The effects on one's personality is another matter.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 15, 2016 - 07:38pm PT
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do practitioners of zen sleep?
what do they make of it?
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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May 15, 2016 - 08:53pm PT
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. . . and incrementalism is not evolution
Really? So evolution cannot occur slowly in incremental fashion?
I learn something new every day.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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May 16, 2016 - 10:07am PT
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Ed: do practitioners of zen sleep?
Well, let’s not hope during meditation.
what do they make of it?
You can run the experiment. It’s interesting, I’d say. Try to stay closely aware to that period just as you begin to fall off into unconsciousness. All sorts of things present themselves. A conduit to the unconsciousness opens up. What appears cannot be articulated at all well.
Jgill and DMT:
Incrementalism is usually seen as signalling "small" changes, but not random ones. Quantum jumps (e.g., random mutations) does not signal small, but rather discontinuities. (These concepts are different for some of us.)
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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May 16, 2016 - 12:10pm PT
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JG said " But to suppose that it points to an underlying principle of reality is arguable if not absurd."
I believe you are referring to it as zen or the "awareness" experience being held as the same or equivalent as a scientific proof or science itself (I don't think JL ever espoused that). I agree it is absurd they have nothing to do with each other, they are apples and oranges.
I think JL just said that science will not quantify awareness.
Zen is really only concerned with experiencing (or attainment of) what the root of discontent is and hence it(the discontent) disappears. And you find yourself feeling like the gorgi shooting across the lawn while doing your dishes and also being able to fully embrace sadness or anything else without reservation.
Cheers!
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cintune
climber
Colorado School of Mimes
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May 16, 2016 - 12:16pm PT
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And you find yourself feeling like the gorgi shooting across the lawn while doing your dishes and also being able to fully embrace sadness or anything else without reservation.
What if you already feel this way pretty much all of the time, and always have, without having gone through any rigorous indoctrination other than curiously perusing various zen and mahayana treatises, and finding them familiar? Just an artifact of upbringing, formative experiences, genetic predisposition, or bitchin' karma?
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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May 16, 2016 - 01:17pm PT
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Then you don't need no stinking Zen (or equivalent practice) or at least you don't think you do! Check with your wife to find out the truth.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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May 16, 2016 - 01:22pm PT
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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May 16, 2016 - 03:07pm PT
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Incrementalism is usually seen as signalling "small" changes (MikeL)
You are correct. I looked up "incrementalism" and found it is a strategy for achieving a goal, frequently in business. And, yes, the evolution of facts is debatable.
Nice post, PSP. (Corgi, not gorgi!)
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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May 16, 2016 - 04:19pm PT
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Beware of nuclear waste in the mind!
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - May 16, 2016 - 06:53pm PT
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What's funny to me, and betrays the core of scientism in JG, is the default that for the lack of a vigorous graduate education in science, I have to try and mooch the little I can know from my car pools friends, but I botch that owing to my clumsiness with a slide rule and numerical fiddlings.
When a person believes that the only real knowledge can be drawn from one well, every other water source looks polluted.
So far as trying to resurrect metaphysical inquiry, the notion belongs to John, not the real world. Constructionism - the belief that you can start with atoms and reconstruct the world, is itself a philosophical position. As is reductionism, which purports to "explain" first person awareness by way of neural activity - some day. The reason this is not so is the same reason that psychology is not applied physics - we can easily see why.
But looping around in this way, with the most basic arguments that have been argued over for years, avails no new insight.
As Ed said, the notions of the first personites has no bearing on the quantifiers, who forge on regardless. Likewise, those working from the top have only now started to take the same tract. Perhaps some day there will be a meeting in the middle.
What is really being argued here is dualism, mostly. More on that one later...
JL
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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May 16, 2016 - 09:32pm PT
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. . . but I botch that owing to my clumsiness with a slide rule and numerical fiddlings (JL)
Once again you seem to miss the point, JL. Technicians can do the basic arithmetic of the numerical data; scientists interpret it. Similar to coders writing down the computer code rather than programmers creating the programs.
But your first paragraph is hilarious!
;>)
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 16, 2016 - 10:04pm PT
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I think JL just said that science will not quantify awareness.
but it does... and it is why I asked about Zen and sleeping... only MikeL opined, and essentially it was what I expected... meditation is not sleeping, and Zen teachers seem to have a penchant for waking students who might fall off.
Meditation is purported to be a state of "awareness" and sleep is definitely a state of "unawareness" (at least some parts of sleep). We are quite "unconscious" while sleeping, and most of our mental activity can be attributed to a subjective state, that is, whatever is going on in our mind is very much not external to us.
So it is interesting to read in the April 29 Science two articles, one is
Changes in the composition of brain interstitial ions control the sleep-wake cycle
Fengfei Ding, John O’Donnell, Qiwu Xu, Ning Kang, Nanna Goldman, Maiken Nedergaard
Abstract
Wakefulness is driven by the widespread release of neuromodulators by the ascending arousal system. Yet, it is unclear how these substances orchestrate state-dependent, global changes in neuronal activity. Here, we show that neuromodulators induce increases in the extracellular K⁺ concentration ([K⁺]ₑ) in cortical slices electrically silenced by tetrodotoxin. In vivo, arousal was linked to AMPA receptor–independent elevations of [K⁺]ₑ concomitant with decreases in [Ca₂⁺]ₑ, [Mg₂⁺]ₑ, [H⁺]ₑ, and the extracellular volume. Opposite, natural sleep and anesthesia reduced [K⁺]ₑ while increasing [Ca₂⁺]ₑ, [Mg₂⁺]ₑ, and [H⁺]ₑ as well as the extracellular volume. Local cortical activity of sleeping mice could be readily converted to the stereotypical electroencephalography pattern of wakefulness by simply imposing a change in the extracellular ion composition. Thus, extracellular ions control the state-dependent patterns of neural activity.
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6285/550
from the prospective on this article:
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6285/517.full
"Although the biological functions of sleep are still elusive, sleep is essential for optimal brain functioning and general physiology that varies in synchrony with the sleep-wake cycle. In wakefulness, cortical brain activation is driven by wake-promoting neuromodulators (acetylcholine, hypocretin, histamine, serotonin, noradrenaline, and dopamine) produced in the basal forebrain, hypothalamus, and brain stem (2). These regions are interconnected in an excitatory network that sends projections to the thalamus and cerebral cortex. Together with neurons that produce glutamate and γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA), this ascending arousal system maintains conscious and alert wakefulness, characterized by low-voltage, fast-frequency activity in an electroencephalogram (EEG)...
Remarkably, directed local and brainwide manipulations of extracellular ions can control neuronal activity and extracellular volume, and can even override the overarching behavioral state. Thus, extracellular ions contribute to the state-dependent control of neuronal activity across sleep and wakefulness."
So here we look at the machine, and tune it, and what the effect... from "conscious and alert wakefulness" to "sleep" where we are unconscious and not alert, and back again. Even the rate at which this can be switched off is different than switching it on, as you might expect the "on switch" is a lot faster, something you might expect as an evolutionary adaptation.
And speaking of evolution, there is the issue of the universality, how wide spread is sleep behavior?
the second article in the same issue:
Slow waves, sharp waves, ripples, and REM in sleeping dragons
Mark Shein-Idelson, Janie M. Ondracek, Hua-Peng Liaw, Sam Reiter, Gilles Laurent
Abstract
Sleep has been described in animals ranging from worms to humans. Yet the electrophysiological characteristics of brain sleep, such as slow-wave (SW) and rapid eye movement (REM) activities, are thought to be restricted to mammals and birds. Recording from the brain of a lizard, the Australian dragon Pogona vitticeps, we identified SW and REM sleep patterns, thus pushing back the probable evolution of these dynamics at least to the emergence of amniotes. The SW and REM sleep patterns that we observed in lizards oscillated continuously for 6 to 10 hours with a period of ~80 seconds. The networks controlling SW-REM antagonism in amniotes may thus originate from a common, ancient oscillator circuit. Lizard SW dynamics closely resemble those observed in rodent hippocampal CA1, yet they originate from a brain area, the dorsal ventricular ridge, that has no obvious hodological similarity with the mammalian hippocampus.
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6285/590
you recall the first amniotes date back 312 million years...
"Mammals and birds belong to different branches of an early bifurcation of the amniotes, which occurred over 300 million years ago (Fig. 1A). Because mammals and birds are the only homeotherms among living vertebrates, and because it has been thought that only they manifest REMS and SWS, it has been suggested that REMS and SWS are the expression of convergent evolution driven by common constraints and selective pressures correlated with homeothermia (18, 19). REMS and SWS, however, could be ancestral to mammals and birds; if so, their electrical signatures should also exist in nonavian reptiles. Evidence for such signatures from sleeping reptiles has thus far been inconclusive (1, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20–22). We reexamined this issue by recording from the brain of a lizard, the Australian dragon Pogona vitticeps. Because lizards belong to the lepidosaurs, the earliest subclass to branch out from the sauropsid trunk and thus the one that is most distant from avians (23), Pogona is ideal for examining the evolution of sleep among amniotes."
so here we have evidence that sleep, that all so familiar subjective phenomenon, is shared by many species, and existed 300 million years ago long before we were a twinkle in any eye and can be caused by changing ionic concentrations in the brain.
Quantified.
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WBraun
climber
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May 16, 2016 - 10:16pm PT
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Sleep just means the living entity is in the mode of ignorance.
The intelligent class never sleeps ......
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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May 16, 2016 - 10:23pm PT
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Likewise, those working from the top have only now started . . .
By "top" do you mean the airy and profound heights of meditative awareness? Distinct from gross physicality?
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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May 16, 2016 - 11:26pm PT
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And, yes, the evolution of facts is debatable.
And, yes the facts of evolution is debatable.
MikeL points out the fact that a mutation is a sporadic abrupt change in the cell, or the cell's DNA, or even visa-versa.. That's even debatable.
Natural Selection may take her time in sculpting the wing to the specific species, but what cuased the wing was an abrupt mutation. Isn't that what science is predicting anyway?
i wish you scientist(especially DMT) would present a scenario including facts as how you see evolution working.. But i really wish the science world could come up with atleast a few facts proving how it worked. Just one regarding the rise of the eyeball would be nice:) i've heard the story of the "black spot" morphing into an eyeball, that just smells to fishy . i mean come'on, you gotta have more faith to believe that then believing Jesus walked on water..
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 17, 2016 - 01:00am PT
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i wish you scientist would present a scenario including facts as how you see evolution working..
huh? the first "scenario" can be found in Darwin's Origin...
there are many more modern discussions of evolution "working" in various texts.
It wouldn't change your mind one bit to read any of them... why do you persist in requiring "proof" that you are never going to accept?
For Darwin's hypothesis to be correct, he estimated the Earth had to be older than 100 Million years, and that there was a biological mechanism of inheritance that had the attributes required for the hypothesis.
These are predictions of Darwin's theory that are consistent with our current knowledge, but unknown to Darwin.
The fossil record is also consistent with Darwin's theory, and also as compared to genetic dating of modern species.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - May 18, 2016 - 04:25pm PT
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Ed, you are mixing apples and oranges.
Your "quantification" of awareness is at a micro level, meaning you have quantified the objective functioning believed to be associated with awareness, NOT the subjective phenomenon OF awareness.
That's what we used to do year after year with neurofeedback and other brain mapping rigs. Nobody believed we were ever dealing with awareness itself.
Connected? Absolutely.
The common metaphor is that the penthouse is supported by the bottom stories, but from the ground floor, you have little to no idea what is going on in the penthouse.
The mistake or thought distortion here (long ago argued out in the literature) is that the micro investigation tells the WHOLE story, or the most important story, when in fact it only tells us about the ground floor molecular and electro-chemical stir.
If you are satisfied that this is all the further you need look to understand what awareness itself is - go for it. Others are listening to the music, so to speak, as you measure the guitar. Valuable work, especially for medical purposes, but the larger questions of how awareness and consciousness actually work, how and what awareness is, what attention and focus is and how they are consciously directed - with practice - and all the rest, are totally different issues not disclosed from the basement. No one expects them to be. How could they?
What is most argued on this thread is the age old issue of duality, encompassing the relationship between mind and matter, or subject and object.
At the subjective end of the spectrum we have George Berkeley's Idealism, or Immaterialism, believing that only the mind is “real.”
Conversely stands physicalism, believing that only physical objects and phenomenon are real.
Cartesian (classical) dualism says mind and material stand in duality to each other.
For a radical physicalist, physical objects are entirely mind-independent.
For radical idealists, mind stands independent from matter.
Both positions are dualistic – unless the physicalist denies consciousness altogether, or insists that his own mind is in fact “what matter does” - though even few in the physicalist camp are satisfied, even less so with the wonky idea that mind is itself an object or a physical thing.
Some physicalists will say that dualism itself is a philosophical myth, that mind IS matter. But most nonetheless hold out hope that matter is mind-independent. There is much to recommend this view, particularly common sense.
Who is willing to say that paint won't dry if we aren't observing it. The notion sounds absurd. That's why I laugh to myself sometimes when
physicalists insinuate that some of us don't get something so seemingly obvious.
But as mentioned, it was also obvious that space and time were constants because human perception and discursive reasoning told us so.
Studying consciousness on the meta level is quite a different business than measuring objects/energy/phenomenon and working up calculations and experiments about what said things are doing. Much is misunderstood here, with some claiming to “get” the essence of the work through the casual reading of a few texts, or are convinced that the “states achieved” through working the meta level can easily be “achieved” through other, perhaps cognitive (or other tasking) means. Or even more bizarre and off-base, that an individuals personal process leads to a kind of group-think brain-washing that robs a cowboy's individualism and critical faculties, much as a cult might do. As though any of us would ever go for that. Would you?
The rub here is not the daffiness of these beliefs, but the circular nature of the arguments, and the fact that few learn or experience anything that can transform their understanding.
That's why I am excited about the new “Meta Mind” project, which presents a program melding cognitive and contemplative approaches. It leaves the arguments aside and relies entirely on what the subject directly experiences through a battery of (88 so far) exercises.
Not surprisingly, subjects understanding radically changes once they gain some skill with the process, whereas at the beginning (usually through the first two dozen exercises), the feedback resembles the circle jerk on this thread.
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cintune
climber
Colorado School of Mimes
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May 18, 2016 - 04:57pm PT
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Dang, 10,000 posts before we get to the real sales pitch.
Talk about a long fuse.
Now,
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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May 18, 2016 - 07:47pm PT
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Some physicalists will say that dualism itself is a philosophical myth, that mind IS matter.
As a working hypothesis, mind is made out matter.
You could equally well call the statement that a car IS matter a philosophical myth.
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