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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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May 18, 2016 - 08:49pm PT
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That's why I am excited about the new “Meta Mind” project, which presents a program melding cognitive and contemplative approaches (JL)
"The project “MetaMind” highlights innovative interdisciplinary approaches to the theoretical, artistic, and social aspects of Western culture. The project commenced in 2005 when the International Association of Semiotic Studies approved the idea, proposed by a representative of Latvia, of theoretical and artistic approaches to topical themes, with the methodology of these approaches based in semiotics
The main objectives of the “MetaMind” project are to foster the development of new creative platform in Europe and advance the creative capacity of Latvia, not only through the participation of Latvia in theoretical and artistic projects organised by other countries, but also by organising such projects in Latvia"
I can understand your excitement, John.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 18, 2016 - 10:22pm PT
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How could they not?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 19, 2016 - 08:45am PT
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the links about sleep started me thinking about a sleep as a phenomenon that is common, and universally familiar to all of us (as is being awake).
In particular, I wondered where Largo's "mind" went when he was asleep? While sleep seems to be an intense subjective experience, and one for which the "idealists" conjecture seems nearly entirely realized, the attributes of the "sleeping mind" are radically different from the meditative state that Largo (and others) so often refer to.
Sleep is often characterized as an "unconscious" state. While profoundly subjective, it is also characterized by a very diffuse sense of "I" during dreaming, which is one well characterized states of sleep. But in other states there seems to be a complete attenuation of the "mind" we experience when awake.
In a physical model of "mind" associated with "brain" there is no problem (I believe) incorporating the various physical states of the brain into the expression of mindful behavior. The brain "creates" mind.
In other proposals of "mind" I wonder just how our sleeping state is explained.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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May 19, 2016 - 10:07am PT
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It gets even more exciting . . .
Meta Mind
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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May 19, 2016 - 11:06am PT
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Thanks for the sleep papers. It has long been known that electrolyte concentrations affect the excitability of neurons but I had not seen that connected with sleep previously.
I once worked for a neurologist who did research on epilepsy. We recorded from hippocampus slices which were induced to fire synchronously by not adding the usual 2 millimoles per liter of magnesium to the bath fluid.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/000689939291688B
Higher-than-normal magnesium concentrations suppress neuronal excitability. In the book Disorders of Consciousness, edited by G. Bryan Young and Eeico F. M. Wijdicks, high magnesium is said to be associated with lethargy and confusion.
Chapter 1 of Disorders of Consciousness, by Adam Zeman, looks at the difference between the medical and philosophical views of consciousness. Zeman acknowledges that, "... the scientific world view will be incomplete until it incorporates a clearer understanding of our subjectivity."
There is also a quote attributed to Hippocrates:
"Men ought to know that from the brain, and from the brain only, arise our pleasures, joys, laughters, and jests, as well as our sorrows, pains, griefs, and tears. Through it ... we think, see, hear, and distinguish the ugly from the beautiful, the bad from the good, the pleasant from the unpleasant ... sleeplessness, inopportune mistakes, aimless anxieties, absent-mindedness, and acts that are contrary to habit. These things that we suffer all come from the brain."
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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May 19, 2016 - 08:44pm PT
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"Meta-Mind Enterprises has been into the research, experimentation and creation of new and exciting Metaphysical tools and devices designed to put into your hands the power of subtle energies.
These products will tremendously help you in the manifestation of your desires, honing of your psychic senses and generally connect you to a whole new world unseen by the naked eye !
Browse through our custom-created products and imagine now, how these can propel you to a life you never thought possible ! Get the woman you want ! Create opportunities at the flick of a switch ! Start seeing etheric beings ! Heal people remotely ! All these powers once thought to be beyond the reach of ordinary humans are now within your reach !"
You sure you want to go in this direction, John? I thought you were moving away from woo.
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WBraun
climber
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May 19, 2016 - 09:16pm PT
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You sure you want to go in this direction, John? I thought you were moving away from woo.
They told Pele to go away from the woo.
And he tried and it only made things worse.
They then once again gave him the green light for the woo to return,
and then all beautiful and divine returned and world smiled once again from deep within their hearts .....
(Never underestimate what you're up against)
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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May 19, 2016 - 09:32pm PT
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Weak emergence . . . Ring of the Nibelung
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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May 19, 2016 - 09:38pm PT
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It gets better . . . from the Meta Mind Project:
"The Daydreamer Psionic Amplifier Helmet is an amazing psionic tool which can be used in conjunction with radionics boxes for operations
involving the crown or the 3rd eye chakra, or as a standalone manifestation device.
Psionic Amplifier helmets work by increasing the quantum energy in the mind/brain area and under these conditions of increased energy, the mind is able to connect effectively to higher dimensions . The Daydreamer operates along the same lines, by using the same circuitry as the well-renowned Minimax Reality Manifestation device. With the Daydreamer, etheric energy is pumped into the head of the operator which allows him to connect to higher realms to achieve uncanny powers, such as remote viewing, clairvoyance, thought reception and thought projection. The Daydreamer may also be used to connect to discarnate intelligences and the “Cosmic Wisdom” for problem solving and knowledge seeking."
Oh, John, many thanks! You do bring a spark to the thread.
;>)
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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May 19, 2016 - 09:47pm PT
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There is no final answer to anything.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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May 20, 2016 - 11:35am PT
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John Gill, You're better than someone who posts snake oil salesman ridicule to the original poster (JB)
OK, good point, Jim. I never know if JL says these things to provoke a response such as mine, or if he is quite serious. In this last instance I would appreciate it if he:
(1) Directs us to a website I didn't find, describing a meta mind project more in line with the current discussion and devoid of the questionable devices in the site I found.
or
(2) Explains what his interests are in the site I found. Maybe there's a link to more substantial material than the psionic gear they sell.
It would have helped had JL inserted a link clarifying that comment in his post.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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May 20, 2016 - 02:56pm PT
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Holy crap, there is some bad reasoning by Largo and others on this thread. That's what it is...bad reasoning. I contend that you need to be relatively knowledgeable about world, but that you don't need a specialized scientific education to understand that the bottom up approach to consciousness and mind is far more likely to be the correct path as opposed to the top down -- or some already-in-place something or other.
First of all, we know that there is this thing we call the tree of life that, along with evolution, can explain essentially every facet of biology on this earth that we know about. We know that it was bottom up. Life started as single-celled organisms. More complex life "emerged" and continues to emerge.
Now, why would consciousness, which is clearly "highly-correlated" with the brain, be any different. Duh!
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - May 20, 2016 - 05:03pm PT
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the MetaMind project going on in Europe is a different animal form Meta Mind.
The organizers need to look into the name.
The work has nothing to do with the European project.
It is a propriety project that is still being worked on and involves a series of questions that a subject answers in his own way. I'll see if I can get a link to the questions, or maybe make an mp3 file and provide a link.
There are several basic points that people might consider per "mind," and especially attention.
The first is MH3's take on experience. Which he equates to a car. It does little use to bray on and on about the qualitative difference between aware experience and a Ford Pinto. If one can't tell the difference (called subjective autism), it's like that you are captive to the analytical mind which can only fathom physical objects, things, stuff "out there." And so all of your metaphors will lead you to that take on your own life, like water running downhill.
The other thing, what Ed is pursuing, is the philosophical belief that if you can nail down the origins of some thing, and also nail down what it does, and predict what it will do, to some extent, you have "explained" what the phenomenon IS.
This is true with most all if not all physical objects. There is no more than that: where it came from, what it is made of, does, and what it will do.
But there are aspects of mind that are not discernible through an molecular investigation, and the Meta Mind Project is all about making those known. Early on they recognized the trap of considering mind in terms of tasking, sleeping, states, etc., and designed the investigation to experiencing and making known what awareness, attention and focus is when A) it is NOT tasking (given that scads of unconscious tasking is going on), and B) what happens when you consciously investigate these three aspects of mind when mind is NOT locked onto an object, much as science looks at matter as mind-independent. Meta Mind investigates mind in an object-independent way - not perfectly, by any means, but enough for people, over time, to get a handle on the triad just mentioned.
The designers (mostly scientists) were very ingenious in working up their inquiry. I'll see what I can do to bring it to this thread.
JL
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 20, 2016 - 05:41pm PT
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I was pursuing a common experience, sleep, and asking how this fits into "mind"
that fact that sleep states are well defined, and that they can be turned on and off by physical means certainly points in the direction of a physical explanation, but I'm open to a description other than a physical explanation.
in some parts of sleep there is no awareness, attention or focus consciously or "unconsciously," and those parts of sleep where the "triad" might exist is well defined, and our experience of those states are very subjective, what we "see" in our dreams.
Every night we go through these cycles, where does the "mind" go when awareness, attention and focus are absent?
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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May 20, 2016 - 05:46pm PT
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The first is MH3's take on experience. Which he equates to a car.
So you know a car by some other means than experience?
You certainly mistook what I meant, but that is good by me. My main intention here is that you do not guess my main intention. So far I see no danger, there.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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May 20, 2016 - 08:06pm PT
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eeyonkee: That's what it is...bad reasoning.
I would ask you what constitutes “good reasoning.” I think you’d have to say a great deal beyond what appears in your post to be your intuition. A couple of thoughts for you:
(i) Associations are correlations; they are not causal. If you give it a little bit of thought, any thing is correlated with everything else. (Everything shows up in the same world / reality, doesn’t it?)
(2) In the physical world, intuition is most often found to be inaccurate and misleading.
(“Duh” back at ya.)
Hey, Ed:
You’ve been saying that sleep states are well-defined. I’ll question that.
You claim sleep states are well-defined and clearly associated with what you think is unconsciousness or no awareness. Should I then suppose that definition implies what awareness or consciousness is?
I think you might be looking at different states, but not opposites of one another. Hegel once thought there was an unequivocal error in thinking about the world in opposites. He thought there were no opposites, because there are no true identities (“A” is “Not A”). Logic be damned. There are only theses and antitheses, and those are only concepts.
Anyway, just because you seem to blank-out does not mean your consciousness is null or void.
As for where “mind goes,” that seems to me to be a red herring in the conversation. You have many different terms floating about in the conversation to my way of thinking.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 20, 2016 - 08:39pm PT
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so MikeL, were is your mind when you're sleeping?
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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May 20, 2016 - 09:47pm PT
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Thanks for the clarification, John.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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May 20, 2016 - 10:17pm PT
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You claim sleep states are well-defined and clearly associated with what you think is unconsciousness or no awareness. Should I then suppose that definition implies what awareness or consciousness is?
well if you wanna be scientific about it , you should first consider what they are not.
Awareness is not consciousness. Consciousness is not only awareness.We must sharpen our sword if we're to joust with science. Science says we are not conscious when asleep, or when not perceiving of the moment.. That's telling. What does your conscious tell you of that?
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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May 20, 2016 - 10:52pm PT
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do you know what either has not?
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