Is consciousness explicable by "science".

Yes, Fresco. With Val I too endorse your ironical qualification ("..nothing else except of course himself as an observer with a concept of jelly!"). Ramachadran's comment epitomizes the objectivism of reductionism and the absolutist notion of the prvileged observer which he shares, as I see it, with Val's metaphysic of the ego, a metaphysic in which he always finds a self, an agent, "behind" experience.

Letty

This is the site, @ Prakriya 4 - Consciousness and Enlightenment

Though Tennysom is being quoted by Atmananda, so there isn't a fuller body of text from Tennyson,.... though there is explanation etc.

Re: Koan

From Wikipedia


A koan is a story, dialog, question, or statement in the history and lore of Chan (Zen) Buddhism, generally containing aspects that are inaccessible to rational understanding, yet that may be accessible to Intuition. Koans are used by Zen practitioners as objects of meditation to induce an experience of enlightenment or realization. One famous koan is, "Two hands clap and there is a sound; what is the sound of one hand?" (oral tradition, attributed to Hakuin Ekaku (1686-1769), considered a reviver of the koan tradition in Japan).

Koans are said to reflect the enlightened or awakened state of historical sages and legendary figures who uttered them, and sometimes said to confound the habit of discursive thought or shock the mind into awareness or an experience of metanoia or radical change of consciousness and perspective, from the point of view of which the koan 'question' is resolved, and the practitioner's religious faith is enhanced.

Koans typically include the words of, or dialog with, an awakened or enlightened person, generally one authorized to teach in a lineage that regards Bodhidharma (c. 5th-6th century) as its ancestor. Informally, the term koan sometimes refers to any experience that accompanies awakening, spiritual insight, or kensho.

As used by teachers, monks, and students in training, koan can refer to a story selected from traditional sayings and doings of such sages, a perplexing element of the story, a concise but critical word or phrase (話頭 hua-tou) extracted from the story, or to the story appended by poetry and commentary authored by later Zen teachers, sometimes layering commentary upon commentary.

English-speaking non-Zen practitioners sometimes use koan to refer to an unanswerable question or a meaningless statement. However, in Zen practice, a koan is not meaningless, and teachers often do expect students to present an appropriate and timely response when asked about a koan. Even so, a koan is not a riddle or a puzzle1. Appropriate responses to a koan vary according to circumstances; there is no fixed answer that is correct in every circumstance.

The word koan corresponds to the Chinese characters 公案 which can be rendered in various ways: gongan (Chinese pinyin); kung-an (Chinese Wade-Giles); gong'an (Korean); cong-an (Vietnamese); kōan (Japanese Hepburn; often transliterated koan). Of these, "koan" is the most common in English. Just as Japanese Zen, Chinese Ch'an, Korean Son, and Vietnamese Thien, and Western Zen all share many features in common, likewise koans play similar roles in each, although significant cultural differences exist.

Nobody

I have no "metaphysics of the ego". The "self" is not some kind of "doppelgänger" or a mysterious "ghost" inside me.
But you too always find that self. You said "As I see it". That means an "I" "behind" the experience of "seing it". You talk about "something" that "sees it".
I suggest, in order to become one with experience, you start to say"sees it". Or "that fellow named JL Nobody sees it".

Twyvel, Thank you so much for that very thorough explanation. It seems that Koans and parables have a great deal in common.

I was taken with the fact that Tennyson felt that he must say his name to validate his consciousness (existence), because it is a precept that I have always maintained is necessary to create "two" where only "one" exists.

Fresco, I'm still sifting through the lectures, and this is a marvelous thread, Brit.

Val, when I speak I must comply with the logic of my language's grammar, but that does not mean that I must also imprision my mind in that grammar. I speak as a subject dealing with objects. But when I just silently observe, there is no I and no it; there is only phenomenal process.

The "I" is the observer, concept existing from reason.

My thought on it:

I would distinguish from the being and the emotions. The "I" and the skhandas (buddhist terminology :wink: ) are not the same. Whereas feelings change, the "I", the continuation of being is still the same regardless.

What do you guys think about the hinduic notion of the universal self?

Ray, as I understand the Hindu's 'universal Self' (Brahma), it is everything. If we can use the word, soul, it should not be in the Christian ego-affirming sense of the particular soul; it should be in the Brahma-reflecting sense of a single Soul. You and I do not have souls; we ARE the same Soul.
Returning to Twyvel's reference to the Zen koan. One accepted (I do not call it an "absolutistic" acceptable) response to the koan, "What is your original face before the birth of your parents" was: the student pointed to the first thing he saw--I think it was a white cushion or the whiteness of that cushion. To him there was, at that moment, nothing that was not his true, or "original", face. Such a response reflected a perspective in which he saw himself as one with the world (Brahma), not a separate ego surrounded by the world.

Ray

Whilst discussing "science" in relationship to consciousness, I speculated elsewhere that the current physical concepts of multidimensionality (eleven dimensions or so to account for "physical objects") might allow for the possibility of "actual interconnectedness" of apparantly separate beings.
The analogy is the perception of "separate trees" which are connected through a common hidden root sytem.

I am not saying that "science" can explain "holistic consciousness", only that some of its paradigms can be utilised as part of a discursive (albeit reductionist) model. However we need to extrapolate from the picture of a common root system to the notion that "the roots" in turn have no "meaning" in themselves except in relationship to their surrounding nutrients. And taking the extrapolation to its limit, holistic consciousness is the totality of, and hence transcendent of. all such relationship networks.

The most famous of sutras, the one chanted every day in zen monasteries, is the Heart Sutra (the Heart of Perfect Wisdom). In it consciousness is listed as one of the five "skandas" (literally: "aggregates") including form, feeling, perception, tendencies and consciousness. They are all said, in the sutra, to be fundamentally empty of all substance. Here I believe "emptiness" to mean something like not having any independent or unconditioned existence. They are totally co-originating with other empty skandas. All is interdependent or relational, having no "self-being." This lack of self-being applies to all "things" including the form we call self or ego. If that is so, it appears that consciousness as such is very difficult to study by scientific means. One can look at the psychology of perception, feeling, or behavioral tendencies to see what happens when science attempts to objectify the empty skandas. They are the very "moving "non-substance" (or non-foundation) of our life experience and therefore perhaps not amenable to isolation for objective examination--at least not in the deeper sense of "enlightenment" referred to in the Heart Sutra. I suppose we can create artificial measuring devices and formal schemes and fine technical distinctions to achieve limited ends, but CONSCIOUSNESS seems to me more appropriate to the realm of mystical practice than scientific neurology and psychology. That's just my bias.

Yes, JLNobody,

Our original face is no face.
Our original eyes are no eyes.

And this original face is the face we have now. The face that others see is the mask theyThis. It's a necessity, or the only 'way' it can be, for, we dare say, duality and nonduality.


Welcome to non-being,

our 'faces' are visual 'tags' allowing an immediate 'personness' to be identified in our mental 'contacts' programme.

unfortunately they also include an interconnect to the personal 'stereotype' and 'judgemental' filters, through which we all see the world.

[while we are all 'one'; it is a one seen through a kaleidoscope!]

Nice bit, Bo. Glad to see you back with your pieces of colored rock. We were a wee bit concerned about you.

I guess if we could choose the epitome of science it would be Albert Einstein:

"I should've been a plumber."

- Albert Einstein

Sorry, Fresco. Just wanted to say "hi" to Bo.

When I read Twyvel's exercises I am reminded that ultimately there is nothing, and this includes the negation of "nothing". All distinctions, including that between truth and falsehood, dualism and non-dualism, nirvana and samsara, being and non-being, are constructions, at best useful conventions. "Neti neti" (neither this nor that) is the final word, and it is ultimately no more than a gesture intended to deny all deluding distinctions. This means, of course, that no matter what we say here (since all statements entail distinctions), we are ultimately (but not relatively) wrong.

JLNobody

Are you talking about death?
Or are you speaking of some non-reality "behind" physical reality?
Or is this physical reality a delusion?

And, if in the end it is the NOTHING, the GREAT NOTHING how can you reach the knowledge of that nothing?
By mystical experience? But even mystical experience is experience of something.

And what do you mean by "nothing"? Nothing is a relational concept. You cannot say: there is nothing. Saying this you say "nothing is" and if it is, it exists and cannot be nothing.

Val, something-nothing, being-nonbeing, life-death, are false dichotomies in the sense that they are human artifacts, not true absolutes in the world. The meaningfulness of such distinctions depend totally on human mental processing. Reality (another construction) contains no such dichotomies except as activities of human thinking. Notice, my statements here suggest that I acknowledge the objective and absolute existence of "reality", 'human thinking," "meaningfulness", etc.
Ultimately (another construction) nothing exists except as experience. Even nihilism (which is what my comments connote) does not exist. Both absolutism and nihilism are human constructions. And notice that I'm stuck here with the notion of "human construction." Just because I'm "stuck" with it does not grant it any independent, unconditioned ontological status.

This word "construction" is an opportunity to reintroduce "science" as a locus in our discussion.

In the Santiago theory of cognition a distinction is drawn between "structure" and "process". Consciousness is viewed like all "life" as a self organizing process which generates and maintains organismic structures. This implies that the subclass we might call "perceptual" structures can undergo metamorphosis or paradigim shifts (in my mind somewhat like different standing waves on a string) as a result of "internal positive feedback" and "external energy impingement". Thus "experience" is essentially interactional NOT representational.

Such a view of consciousness is (1) based on recent scientific developments and at the same time (2) has epistemological implications for science itself.

Our resolution of cognitive dichotomies may simply be the (harmonic) emergence of a "higher level structure". (Hegel Thesis/Anitithesis/Synthesis). Irrespective of Dennett's reductionism which the Santiago theory rejects, I am still testing out Dennett's accusation that we have a vested interest in maintaining the mystical element.

a good place to toss a crumb to 'system theory';

complex systems not only grow in an evolutionary manner (complete with some derogatory baggage), but they develop a 'beingness' about them that trancends the purely physical, and 'harware' aspects of the 'installation'.

[build it, and they will come - think of it, and it will occur!]

Fresco, it seems self-evident that "'experience'" is essentially interactional rather than representational." This follows from the "fact" that existence, manifest as experience, is interactional as well. The "being" of anything is not an independent "self-being" (Nagarguna): it has no substantial absolute existence apart from all that creates and sustains it. Interaction is interdependence and mutual conditioning--all expressions of the world's unity. It seems to me also that all systems within the Cosmos are open (or quasi) systems. But the Totality, if that term has a referent, is a closed system--perhaps the only closed or complete or absolute system. But, according to Nagarguna, we have no epistemological or ontological grounds for either absolutism or nihilism.

fresco

I agree with the idea of consciousness as a self organizing process.
About what you call "perceptual" structures, I also agree that interaction needs internal positive feedback - if I hadn't eyes, light would not impress my nervous system.
But mind - as consciousness and perception - is also intentional. In general we choose, from the multitude of external potential stimulations, the ones we want to see, hear, touch. It is as if most of our experience was "directional". Conscious experience is not only interaction but also "suppression".
It is as if in the process of self organizing system, like consciousness, we create at same time, the universality of wanted experiments.
Consciousness is also the rules, the ways to deal with that selected experience - Heidegger's "manual"- in a sort of previous defined interactions. I think we can see that when something completely unexpected "forces" our experience field: for a moment we are unable to think, to act, even to interact. If we have time, we try, then, to conform the new event in the "construct" that is our experience. We try to react according to all the resources of our "manual".
Most of the time we don't experience things as things, only as tools. Extensions of our consciousness. When you open a door, start a car, buy the newspaper, you are dealing with that organized field of experience, submissive to your "manual". You start seeing things as things when they no long appear as tools - the door doesn't open.

has anyone considered taking the universe 'at face value'; without assumptions, deconstruction, speculation, and excessive naval gazing?

["accept Julian, accept" - Edward Albee/Tiny Alice.]