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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Jan 15, 2019 - 12:56pm PT
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jan 15, 2019 - 02:31pm PT
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Ask Kai-Fu Lee.
Really? The man believes in a soul.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Jan 15, 2019 - 04:24pm PT
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Answering Fructose's question. The word spirit is about as overused and nebulous as the word consciousness. Since we say horses are spirited and a football team has spirit, why not talk about spirit and spirituality in nature and the natural sciences too? Even if scientists don't, I'm pretty sure the general public will, especially in the future.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jan 15, 2019 - 04:34pm PT
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Really? The man believes in a soul.
Yes, really. No surprise there. Many a scientific naturalist and scientific humanist and others do. As do I. I've expressed this here for years.
To review: We accept the concept of a carnate soul (cf: incarnate soul or immaterial soul) and we accept it "above and beyond" or "outside" any overly restrictive religious, supernaturalistic sense or context.
For some, for one reason or another, this is hard to grok.
Usage: My soul soared when I heard the good news.
....
Good to hear, Jan. Thanks for the response.
The word "spirit" is about as overused and nebulous as the word "consciousness".
A good thing - and it's conventional too - when talking about the word-symbol for a thing as opposed to the thing itself is to put it in quotes to reduce any potential confusion.
Hey, if you don't mind be paraphrasing and piggy-backing on your point, I will...
Since we (already) say horses are spirited and a football team has spirit...
in contexts or frames outside religion or religious context - e.g., music, sports, etc...
why not talk about spirit and spirituality...
in naturalistic, secular, sociopolitical, humanistic settings, too - as long as meanings are clear?
English words like "soul" and "spirit" - in addition to "faith" and "belief" - are just too good to leave exclusively to ol time religious systems.
It seems to me, after years and years in the field, various fields actually, that most people who are uncomfortable (to say the least) with changing definitions as a function of category or field of study do not have a great deal of experience, if any, across many if not a large variety of such categories or fields. Or else they just haven't given much thought to how their use of words does change as they move about.
"Work" is a classic example. In the disciplines of physics and engineering it has a precise definition. And yet outside these disciplines - in the general public, e.g., it has a different definition. Most importantly most folks don't have a problem with it, even if they've never really thought about it before.
Get to be 50 or 60 or 80 years old with decades of interdisciplinary experiences (be it in sciences, e.g., or games or sports or whatever) and you'll come around to see that most if not all of these fields of activity each have their own jargon / definitions and it's a major plus and not a negative that communications are like this.
Alone or with friends or cohorts, I think in terms of an "Einsteinian God" or in terms of "Fate" or "Fortune" regularly. Given my interests both in life and in these and related subjects, it is essential to me. It's clarifying. It's edifying. But to each their own and I understand.
...
Related:
re: terms/words best kept as general headers
James Flynn, btw, an expert in intelligence, in regards to "intelligence," has said he thinks it's important that (all these many) attempts by experts and laity alike to give it a precise definition should cease. In his view, "intelligence" - given its history and scope across a variety of fields of activities - best serves as a general header for the general subject matter. I think he's right on.
Pretty sure it was here...
https://scottbarrykaufman.com/podcast/nature-nurture-and-human-autonomy-with-james-flynn/
Confirmed. Yes, it's as 49:30 in the interview. 'How is "intelligence" like "astronomy"?' Very wise, imo.
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WBraun
climber
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Jan 15, 2019 - 05:36pm PT
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Clueless people will use semantics and word jugglery to manipulate their bias and ignorance into an illusionary masquerade they think will be real.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jan 15, 2019 - 05:48pm PT
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Pretty sure Jan is more open to immaterial soul or immaterial spirit than I am though. That's cool. :)
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jan 15, 2019 - 06:53pm PT
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When Ed climbed Chingando, did he HAVE an experience, or did he "only think he had an experience?"
How would you know? I've had hallucinations, they would qualify as a "real experience" except that they didn't have an association with an objective reality.
If he DID have an experience, and that experience was real, where might we find the experience itself on the topo, or any physical description?
IF.
Where do you find the experience?
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WBraun
climber
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Jan 15, 2019 - 07:35pm PT
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An unsupported anonymous coward making arguments for so-called unsupported claims that only he believes.
What a hypocrite ....
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Jan 15, 2019 - 08:48pm PT
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When Ed climbed Chingando, did he HAVE an experience, or did he "only think he had an experience?"
How would you know? I've had hallucinations, they would qualify as a "real experience" except that they didn't have an association with an objective reality.
If he DID have an experience, and that experience was real, where might we find the experience itself on the topo, or any physical description?
IF.
Where do you find the experience?
What Ed is driving at here is known in consciousness work as “The Problem of Other Minds.”
You can get the gist of it here.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/other-minds/
In its normal usage, the Other Minds problem is used by skeptics as an epistemic challenge. Since I can only “know” directly about the reality of my own mind, the argument runs, how can I “know” that others have minds. A behaviorialist would say it this way: Given that I can only observe the behavior of others, how can I know that others have minds?
This angle is the silver bullet of Solipsism - that no matter how complex someone's behavior is, behavior on its own does not guarantee the presence of mentality.
However my sense of Ed, a physicalist of the fundamentalist stripe, is that he is using the skeptic’s angle to salvage a 3rd person physicalist platform (what isn’t physical?). That is, using the objective info on the topo, re observable physical info, as the gold standard per what is “real,” at the sacrifice of his own direct experience since neither you or I can see “it” as an external object or phenomenon. And since “knowing” is valid only insofar as we can measure, postulate, experiment, and predict, Ed’s experience on Chingando might, by his own admission, be a “hallucination.” How would we know otherwise?
Ed must have missed Nagel’s enlightening commentary on this very point, that there are two distinct epistemic modes. Too bad Ed has to shitcan his own direct experience to clutch the liferaft of physicalism.
Either way, the truth will always be … our mailing address might be California, but we live in our experience.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jan 15, 2019 - 09:39pm PT
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AC,
You have the read the documents (sacred texts) and work through them. It’s like problem sets in grad school. You struggle all weekend long to (perhaps) realize a “trick” that the field has discovered long long ago. *You* have to see it. There is no substitute.
What is your reality? Are you "living" it? Is it felt? No? Well, then, it’s a cognitive story that you feel comfortable with. Clever narratives.
The cross you refer to is an ironic joke in so many ways. It's a medallion that we are showing right now. It’ll be replaced by something else that’ll encourage people to see their own seeing.
Hiya, PSP! Long time no see. Que pasa?
HFCS: There are many and various different types of explanation (duh) and some carry a great deal more (valid and accurate and astounding) "insight" into the world and into human nature than others (duh).
:-) Something in you has shifted, pal.
I am curious, how do you guys - naturalists and supernaturalists alike - feel about the use of these words, e.g., "spiritual," in a material, naturalistic context (outside religious or theological context re immaterial life ). Is it inappropriate
Don’t get hung up on labels. You’ll ultimately regret it.
First of all, you have to feel sure about material existence. When I look inside and outside of what I think is me, I see more than material existence—and much of it is reportedly more important than “galactic shifts” or “quantum movement” in very small fields.
Honestly, the more you look closely, the more you might see that there is no real distinction between what is simply said and what is real. Beliefs are people’s realities—whether scientific or religious or otherwise. In the end (it’s said), beliefs and reality are one and the same.
Largo on Ed: . . . how can I “know” that others have minds.
In one sense, that may be an irrelevant question. To what extent does one need to know other minds in order to know one’s own mind? I mean, honestly, . . . who else knows your mind; furthermore, one's own mind appears to be the only thing that one has access to. It is the ONLY topic of conversation.
“Other minds” is likely a rear-guard action (a problem / roadblock) to slow the inevitable recognition of one’s own mind. Don’t get distracted from (your own) consciousness. It fills the entire field we call reality.
Be well.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jan 15, 2019 - 10:51pm PT
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just answer the question, Largo:
how do you (or anyone else) know that I have the "experience" of climbing Chingando?
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jan 16, 2019 - 08:44am PT
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Apparently I can't explain it to you. Anyone who wants to learn something they don't know tends to end up studying.
But why would a person choose one thing over another to learn to begin with? (Look there for some real answers to how and what you see in front of you.)
I pointed to two texts. Did you see those?
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WBraun
climber
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Jan 16, 2019 - 08:50am PT
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He can't study anything he's too busy spewing horsesh!t all day ....
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jan 16, 2019 - 09:09am PT
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imo. Christian "sacred texts" are a historical account from 1 tribe's experience, at best... a topo drawn on a napkin of a cliff that fell down thousands of years ago. If you are taking about other texts, please specify which.
Christian texts are an amalgam of Hebraic and Hellenistic ideas in which the mystery religions of Rome and Greece are transformed into a kind of historical certainty and tempered with philosophical traditions like stoicism. Your view is so reductive that you end up ignoring the complexity and validity of Christian ideas. It's no accident that Orpheus and Christ are confused with each other in catacomb depictions or sacraments like wine and wafer are found in Dionysian and Eleusinian cults. Christianity, particularly Pauline Christianity is hardly the product of one tribe.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Jan 16, 2019 - 09:42am PT
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just answer the question, Largo:
how do you (or anyone else) know that I have the "experience" of climbing Chingando?
-
Not so fast, Ed. And, no, I'm not ducking your "question." It's just that I know how this game works from being around the consciousness movement all these years and have seen the unconscious games people play in the form of "questions."
I've also sen gifted folk like Bernie Glassman, former Roshi of a Zen movement, and how they have opened the eyes of people stuck in a perspective. Bernie was especially effective with quantifiers, having a PhD in applied math, so the "data" and mind set was never lost on him.
First, your "question" is actually what we call a "set up" because it is not asked in the normal way one asks a question: That is, to learn new information you are sure or suspect you do not possess. You almost certainly already have the "right' answer in your head and are waiting for me to respond so you can bolster your own beliefs. No harm in that, but if broadening your perspective is possible, we have to follow a step process to get there - at least that's how I see it and have seen it work in the past.
First thing is to acknowledge that your question has moved us away from consciousness itself and into epistemic ("knowing") concepts. To be thorough here we need to be on the same page about what that word means. Until we can come to agreement on that, we can't cover any ground. We'll just circle.
In this regards, note what Mike just said: “Other minds” is likely a rear-guard action (a problem / roadblock) to slow the inevitable recognition of one’s own mind. Don’t get distracted from (your own) consciousness. It fills the entire field we call reality.
At a deeply unconscious level, these rear-guard distractions can keep us from looking at mind directly, but that is what is required. There is simply no way "around" it.
FYI, I was amazed, over the last few months, to discover how I've been deeply unconscious about many of the very things I thought I was doing. To some degree, we all are like that.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jan 16, 2019 - 05:14pm PT
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Wow, so here's a podcast chock-ful of "astounding insights" re human nature, violence, war, governments, politics, Thucydides, crime syndicates, japanese watermelons, decivilization, etc. start to finish....
[Click to View YouTube Video]
https://www.skeptic.com/science-salon/savage-order-how-worlds-deadliest-cuntries-can-forge-path-to-security/
Dr. Rachael Kleinfeld,
A Savage Order: How the World’s Deadliest Countries Can Forge a Path to Security.
Grade A+
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Lituya
Mountain climber
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Jan 16, 2019 - 07:03pm PT
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I smell Asperger's.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jan 17, 2019 - 07:23am PT
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To the hard-core atheists and others...
Does it not make sense, words and language what they are, pop culture too... to be a bit flexible with some give n take in your manner of speaking in regards to terms like "spirit" and "belief" and "God" and "evil" and "faith" and even "sacred"... just as most are so already (especially amongst those with decades of experience) in regards to "socialism" and "liberalism" and "libertarians" and so on?
***apart from precise sciences, of course
Full disclosure: I do remember feeling differently about this in my 20 somethings thereabouts. At that age I was inclined to see things more from the proverbial black or white perspective, and I was inclined to stick to more rigorous definitions of words and to diss any usage outside my own sense of them.
If not, I'd be interested in hearing your counterpoint. Esp since the subject isn't any "hard" science but instead is a more social, even cross-cultural subject matter, one more relevant today than ever it seems to me.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jan 17, 2019 - 07:44am PT
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rigid as a steel arse stake...
Years ago there was a poster here, a rector squid. He used to strike me as someone pretty rigid aasas in his definitions and use of words. It probably was a carryover from some past training in science, I used to think.
For anyone confused about my standing here in regards to this and related issues, my sense of it all is pretty much aligned with Neil deGrasse Tyson's and I would bet Carl Sagan's too.
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