Missing in action: Where is the mind?

@JLNobody,

JL, I think I share your view about that issue, at least some version of it.
We do indeed have to relate to these things in the practical aspects of our lives.
But when someone starts talking about moral forms they are analyzing experience, which is where the divide between dualism-non dualism etc becomes evident.

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@Damcha,

Damcha wrote:

Cyracuz wrote:

I very much dislike the term "moral form". I also dislike the idea that something "has being". Such ideas are naive-realistic.

Naive realism wouldnt even exist as a philosophical consideration there wasnt some significance to its foundation. It is extreme, yes, but not to be discredited.
Meaning is an inherent property of the universe; cultures, religions, Starbucks, attitudes, the idea of 'justice' all create institutions in the name of meaning. We are networking on this very site, sharing what COULD be referred to as 'naive realisitic' opinions (but are in actuality communally conditioned to a degree), in the service of meaning. We are having this discussion because it is meaningful to us, theorists, philosophers, inquirers, pedants alike.

Damcha

Ccuz should be careful with his criticism... Anything or anyone Naive is natural, as that is the root of the word... No one would think it unnatural to refer to the brain as a physical form, and yet what is obvious, that the mind has never been anatomied because it is no object, and the forms by which we conceive of it no true forms in any sense, is called only naive...

What I say is only obvious, but what I say now may not be so obvious: It is all these moral forms that humanity fights, dies, and disagrees over -primarily because they are infinites and as infinites cannot be defined... We may not have enough of physical forms like food, or shelter, but off we go killing and dying over spiritual qualities no one can get a handle on for the obvious reason that they are not real at all, not of the physical world, not things, as the word re(s)alitiy refers to... Humanity is not troubled by physical forms, by reality, for we have mastered reality... We are perpelexed and pained by moral form describing in part our moral reality, because there, faults of the mind, errors or reasoning which are the norm bleed into our management of physical reality to the point where we must question all the moral underpinnings of our actions...

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@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

I disagree. Meaning is an inherent property of human perception. The inability to distinguish between what is perceived and the conditions set by the function of perception is the very root of naive realism.

Naive-realism exists because once upon a time it didn't occur to people to doubt or question the validity of their senses. If something appeared a certain way to us, then that was how it was to anyone or anything capable of making the observation, and even if there were no one to make an observation, the thing would still be there. Modern science has revealed that this just isn't true.

Life is meaning...The part perception plays with meaning is to set the things, the physical forms, and the moral forms into relation to life... By this I mean that we preceive physical reality by way of our physical forms and presume moral reality by way of our moral forms which are only quasi forms, and we find meaning in each as we find value in them in relation to our lives... Everything we find essential to life has more value and so more meaning to us and usually to others than something we find inessential to our lives...Life is the reality behind meaning, but value is the synonym of meaning, and we must live to sense either value or meaning... As one current song reminds us: we perceive with out minds and not with our eyes... I can produce neither a mind not a life to be examined as an object, nor can I produce any other moral form to be examined as though an object... Of physical reality I take it on faith that we can never eliminate our senses as conditions set by the function of perception... We as life must always be a part of the world in which the objects we examine are found, and this always adds to the uncertainty of every observation... But then, it is not essential to know all that is... What is essential as a question is one humanity has always asked: What does it mean??? And it is important that there we do not try to be too objective, giving an objective reality to moral forms... Every moral form has meaning without being... From where does that meaning come from??? We must supply that meaning out of the meaning that is our lives which we do only because to invest qualities life justice or liberty or God or the virtues generally pays dividends for all the meaning we invest them with...

1 Reply

@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

Quote:
science is asserting as a collective voice that 'there exists something outside our ability to quantify, physical laws completely different than our own in different universes outside our own'. Does this not sound somewhat naive-realistic?

But is that really what they are saying? I do not think so. The "outside of our ability to quantify" may be a misconception. It is not outside our ability. Our ability presents us with what we see, and what we see may be mere fragments of a larger pattern, only, we have made a complete image of the fragments and assume that that is it. Or, to state it a little differently, they are saying that "our understanding of what is real may be somewhat naive".

Quote:
as there would be no 'perception' at all without 'meaning'. 'Meaning' is a necessary condition for 'perception' to occur.

I think you got that backwards; there would be no meaning without perception. Perception is a necessary condition for meaning to occur.

What I meant by the comment about "moral forms" being naive-realistic was that the very idea of a moral form implies some kind of absolute, some transcendental frame by which we can categorize the the metaphysical. To my mind, such philosophy has less to do with understanding and more to do with satisfying the ego's thirst for a sense of accomplishment.

Meaning, that is: Life, must exist for perception to take place... As Schopenhaur said: The world dies with me... It dies for all of us since for each of us perception depends upon life, and life ranks meaning according the the positive or negative value of each quality we find affecting our lives...It is no mystery why we find great meaning in medicine and little in prayer... Only fools pray first and later give the medicine...

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@JLNobody,

JLNobody wrote:

Cryacuz, you know that I'm opposed to at least four (heuristic) delusions: absolutism, dualism, ego-centrism, and naive realism. By dualism I refer to the tendency to evaluate/categorize the world in terms of "black versus white" schema. Absolutism implies the naive realism that assumes the world to exist as we experience it but independent of our experience. Ego-centrism is what I oppose (as I believe you do) from a "mytical perspective."
But I also feel--and this is the point of this post-- that it is not likely that we (I don't know if this includes our entire species or just our cultural version) can function very well without naive realism, absolutism, dualism and the assumption of an ego-agent behind our actions and perceptions. It's just that in our philosophical modes we know that we must transcend them when in pursuit of the world as it truly is. But frankly I know of no-one, including anti-foundationalist-relativistic philosophers and practitioners of everyday mysticism, who does not swim "most of the time" in the same pool of delusions.

How would you argue with my assertion that for each of us our lives are an absolute, the sinnequanon, the meaning of meaning... I recognize that we cannot know the world until we have judged it, and that we do that through our forms, as Kant would say: knowledge is judgement; but what knowledge can we say we have of moral forms like mind, or justice, or existence or God??? It is not even realism to say we can only have knowledge of the real, but simply and basically obvious... I will not try to draw a line between the observer and the observed because it is practically pointless, and obviously impossible... Why do we look??? Why do we observe??? Why do we perceive, and then question perception??? Though we may conceive of ourselves as spiritual beings, as moral forms ourselves, we must care for our physical being which we can never exclude from physical reality... Talk of soul or mind as we will, and we must recognize as some point that these meanings without being are conjured out of the being of our brains which are recognized and defined by a physical form, and that when that actual brain dies, so dies the physical form and the moral form of mind...

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@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

JL, I think I share your view about that issue, at least some version of it.
We do indeed have to relate to these things in the practical aspects of our lives.
But when someone starts talking about moral forms they are analyzing experience, which is where the divide between dualism-non dualism etc becomes evident.

Our experience with moral forms is cultural... True experience comes of the physical world, and talk all we may of moral forms and it does not make them real, or in any sense finite... Look at it this way: We have all talked of justice though A Justice has never been produce for scientific examination... Why then do we waste time and words on the subject... In a moral sense we all recognize that the want of this quality in our lives is terrible, and even life threatening while to have enough of justice may mean happiness for us even while happiness is itself another moral form... Community sharing a common life as all life shares a common life is the ultimate reality though it cannot be considered as a reality at all... We think of life individually as though a possession when we are in fact so much matter in the possession of something conceived of as life... Like it or not, the duality is there, the spiritual and moral beside the physical, and it is within us and is reflected upon all of reality whether moral or physical... It is simply easier to see things and life as they are without the nonsense and confusion of talking about each as though they are the same thing...

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could a neurological disorder of a type clear this up ?
about where the mind is

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@north,

Are you suggesting (nah, that's not possible) that it is symptomatic of a neurological disorder to ask the question?

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@JLNobody,

JLNobody wrote:

Are you suggesting (nah, that's not possible) that it is symptomatic of a neurological disorder to ask the question?

yes

where the mind is has been seperated from the neurological physiology

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@north,

Sometimes I feel like I'm in Wonderland. Oh well that's better than Kansas.

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@JLNobody,

JLNobody wrote:

Sometimes I feel like I'm in Wonderland. Oh well that's better than Kansas.

I will explain further , it is personal experience though , so I am reluctant to share

its not a spiritual thing thought

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@Cyracuz,

...where´s the mind ?
...in the gap right between the train and the platform ! Wink

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well here goes , I owe it to you all to explain

in the morning , in bed , I do excerises , I curl my legs ( so one leg is on top of the other ) , so I'm laying on my side when I do this , left , right , doesn't matter

then I twist my torso to the opposite of where my legs are

so picture yourself , on a side , with your legs pulled up towards yourself , somewhat of a curl , but not fully , and then twist or turn your torso in the opposite direction , for just a few seconds , both ways , then center yourself , so that the next stretch is like a abdominal sit up

when I do this , I get chaos , ( my eyes are closed by the way ) , in my minds eye I see circles , that do what they want , do , and my body can go into spasms , and there nothing I can do about this body action

I feel this body action , see the brain in chaos , yet my mind isn't apart of this chaos

my mind isn't in chaos , just my physiology is

questions

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now some may think that this is a form of epileptic seizure

but it isn't

since anything that brings on this state , and I have tried , doesn't do this

what I experience is purely on its own

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@Fido,

Quote:

What is essential as a question is one humanity has always asked: What does it mean???

This is meaningful to a human being. But not all humans feel this is a vital question to have answered. Meaning, as you seem to believe is the end all and be all of existence, is merely a compulsion of humans who feel the need to justify their existence.
You can talk all you want, it doesn't change the fact that whatever meaning we find in reality is meaning we attribute to it. Meaning is an attribute of human existence. It is a term of our invention, and so we seek to validate it, but it holds no transcendental validity.

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@Cyracuz,

Going from North to you is likely to give me the bends. Great post, Cyracuz.

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@JLNobody,

JLNobody wrote:

Sometimes I feel like I'm in Wonderland. Oh well that's better than Kansas.

Or North Korea

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Fil Albuquerque wrote:

...where´s the mind ?
...in the gap right between the train and the platform !

The mind dwells where danger lies.

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@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

Quote:
What is essential as a question is one humanity has always asked: What does it mean???

This is meaningful to a human being. But not all humans feel this is a vital question to have answered. Meaning, as you seem to believe is the end all and be all of existence, is merely a compulsion of humans who feel the need to justify their existence.
You can talk all you want, it doesn't change the fact that whatever meaning we find in reality is meaning we attribute to it. Meaning is an attribute of human existence. It is a term of our invention, and so we seek to validate it, but it holds no transcendental validity.

I beleive you are wrong here, and the evidence can be found even of primitive peoples of a search for portents, and the study of Augury which we still have in words like Auspicious, and Inauguration, and even Sinister since the Romans believed that signs appearing from the left augured ill while the Greeks believe the right fortold misfortune... Only fools believe that we can know the truth of any subject in any detail, but it is quite reasonable to expect we can know the meaning of what we perceive..

More than makers of tools in a physical sense, human beings are dealers in meaning... There meaning, the value, the relationship of number to object is easy to see... The relationship of name to object is more complex, but primitives once believe the proper name for a person, or animal or spirit gave power over it.. Witness Rumpelstilskin or the name of God in vain... What we name we can call to (MIND), or consciousness, and out of sight of it can master it, and bring intelligence to bear, and really master reality rather than being mastered by it...

Meaning as a word may be a term of our invention, but as a reality has invented us rather than we inventing it...Signs, symbols, the finding the facts on little evidence has been the survival of humanity even while much mental trash has come out of it...It may be impossible to filter out all the trash... The ability to find meaning works even with the meaningless... All we can do is try, since in meaning is life....

1 Reply

@Fido,

I don't understand you...
You say that you think I'm wrong in saying that human beings assign meaning to their perception, then you proceed to give accounts that only reinforce the claim I made.

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Missing in action: Where is the mind?

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