Twyvel
You say: " there is no <out there> or >in here<"
If that is the case then we don't exist. I will join dyslexia as a blot on the ground after I have had my Shadow-ectomy.
Twyvel you have defeated me----driven me right into the ground.
Lola wrote:
Quote: The mind is a term we use as short hand to mean our experience of our brain function. It's a figure of speech, obviously there is no "place" that is the mind or the self.
Yes there is no "place" that is the mind, but the mind is all places. Just like the self is everywhere and nowhere. Given our lack of knowledge I think it is a mistake to restrict the mind to so called brain manifestations, it may be the other way around.
Quote:Apparently you just do not believe that the "Brain" is the entity that forms the mental image after receiving all the stimuli through the sensory organs. The "Brain" stores these mental images in the form of memory and through the "Process" of thinking forms concepts which in turn are stored in the memory for constant comparison with fresh information.
the thought plickens: "the predispositon for some people to allow false details to become imbedded in their recollection of events is raising troubling questions. Univ of Cal psychologist Elizabeth Loftus presented findings at the American Association for the Advancement of Science showed that 36% of subjects not only remember seeing Bugs Bunny at Disneyland, but also meeting the character in custone and shaking his hand. But in spite of their memories (located in the brain?) there is no Bugs Bunny character at Disney Land." if "mind" is solely a result of bio/electro/chemical processes in an reductionist fashion, from whence are originating memories of events that never occured?
Dys
That is strictly Lola's terrain.
Dys
Could your question have anything to do with making bad decisions which are the direct result of memories(real or imagined) in the brain?
mind
I am not breaking my vow not to involve myself in the futile debate across paradigms (where positivists and phenomenalists necessarily talk past each other), but I do want to say, Twyvel, that I sense, but do not yet completely grasp, the wonderful truth in your last post. Instead of arguing with it, I am going to study it, to try to milk it for all it's worth. Your level of awareness is quite an achievement.
Twyvel: "Yes there is no "place" that is the mind, but the mind is all places. Just like the self is everywhere and nowhere. Given our lack of knowledge I think it is a mistake to restrict the mind to so called brain manifestations, it may be the other way around."
Exactly. You've put the conversation back on track, I think.
Hmmmm---"the mind is nowhere but everywhere". I get this picture of a guy happily strolling along with this little cloud around him(his mind--I think) and he is talking to it. And the mind is talking back just like it was somebody. All of a sudden the guy says----hey if you're everywhere and so damn smart go look around that corner upthere and tell me if there are any bad guys there. The cloud suddenly disappears into the guys head----the cloud that was---says I can't do that. The guy says---why not?----the cloud that was--says because I'm actually right here in your brain---you just thought I was out there.
Tartarin
Quote: Exactly. You've put the conversation back on track, I think.
It depends what
track you're referring to Tartarin.
Our tracks have converged on this thread but as JLNobody has suggested we may be racing/rolling down the line yelling/signing out of the windows at each other.
If you are IN my awareness how far away can you be?
Allan Watts made the comment, "And here you were thinking you were interacting with other people."
I do appreciate your complimentary words JLNobody...........(a soft smile)
Here's something interesting re: brain/mind/consciousness, re NDE
http://www.ndeweb.com/wildcard/
a paragraph or two:
What is Consciousness?
The amount of material written about consciousness is huge, and would have one believe we understood the subject well, however, here are some real world facts that need to be considered:
Consciousness has never been observed.
Neither has it been weighed or measured.
The source of consciousness is unknown.
It's location, within or without the body, has never been discovered.
No one has determined what consciousness consists of, or contains.
And, there's not one single bit of scientific proof that consciousness is biological.
Therefor, it appears, all the material written about consciousness is subjective.
Roger Penrose, eminent physicist and winner of the prestigious Wolf Prize, in his book The Emperor's New Mind, states: "we don't have a good definition of consciousness because we don't know what it is."
True, we don't know what it is, only that it exists. Consciousness remains undefined.
"Such is the case of Pam Reynolds who is quite well known in the NDE community. She was having surgery performed to remove an aneurism from her brain. Her body was cooled to below 60 degrees F. and all of the blood was drained from her brain. Her EEG and brain stem response showed no activity, the definition of brain death in many states. During all of this, she reported rising from her body and seeing the operation performed below her. She also reported contact with "The Light" and many of her deceased relatives. Remember, she had no brain activity whatsoever. Even hallucinations register brain activity. It is interesting that upon recovering she recounted accurately many details of her operation, including conversations heard and a description of the surgical instruments. It has been postulated by a NDE skeptic, that Pam overheard the sounds in the room and generated a "mental map" of things around her. What the skeptic failed to acknowledge though is that instruments were inserted into Pam's ears that generated clicks to measure brain stem response. Her brain stem response throughout the surgery was inactive. If conversations were heard, her brain stem response should have registered them."
Twyvel
There follows an excerpt from one of my sources and is quite a good discussion. If this is of any value to you I have more on just consciousness. BTW--your article on NDE and associated phenomenon was interesting---now I know the basis for your beliefs. I can neither confirm nor deny their existence.
Mind and Consciousness
In connection with the investigation of our mental operations there arises the question, whether these are to be deemed coextensive with consciousness. Are there unconscious mental processes? The problem under different forms has occupied the attention of philosophers from Leibniz to J. S. Mill, whilst in recent years the phenomena of hypnotism, "multiple personality", and abnormal forms of mental life have brought the question of the relation between the unconscious and the conscious processes in the human organism into greater prominence. That all forms of mental life, perception thought, feeling, and volition are profoundly affected in character by nervous processes and by vital activities, which do not emerge into the strata of conscious life, seems to be indisputably established. Whether however, unconscious processes which affect conclusions of the intellect and resolutions of the will, but are in themselves quite unconscious, should be called mental states, or conceived as acts of the mind, has been keenly disputed. In favour of the doctrine of unconscious mental processes have been urged the fact that many of our ordinary sensations arise out of an aggregate of impressions individually too faint to be separately perceivable, the fact that attention may reveal to us experiences previously unnoticed, the fact that unobserved trains of thought may result in sudden reminiscences, and that in abnormal mental conditions hypnotized, somnambulistic, and hysterical patients often accomplish difficult intellectual feats whilst remaining utterly unaware of the rational intermediate steps leading up to the final results. On the other side it is urged that most of those phenomena can be accounted for by merely subconscious processes which escape attention and are forgotten; or, at all events, by unconscious cerebration, the working out of purely physical nervous processes without any concomitant mental state till the final cerebral situation is reached, when the corresponding mental act is evoked. The dispute is probably, at least in part, grounded on differences of definition. If, however, the mind be identified with the soul, and if the latter be allowed to be the principle of vegetative life, there can be no valid reason for denying that the principle of our mental life may be also the subject of unconscious activities. But if we confine the term mind to the soul, viewed as conscious, or as the subject of intellectual operations, then by definition we exclude unconscious states from the sphere of mind. Still whatever terminology we may find it convenient to adopt, the fact remains, that our most purely intelectual operations are profoundly influenced by changes which take place below the surface of consciousness.
ORIGIN OF MENTAL LIFE
A related question is that of the simple or composite character of consciousness. Is mind, or conscious life, an amalgam or product of units which are not conscious? One response is offered in the "mind-stuff" or "mind-dust" theory. This is a necessary deduction from the extreme materialistic evolutionist hypothesis when it seeks to explain the origin of human minds in this universe. According to W. K. Clifford, who invented the term "mind-stuff", those who accept evolution must, for the sake of consistency, assume that there is attached to every particle of matter m the universe a bit of rudimentary feeling or intelligence, and "when the material molecules are so combined as to form the film on the under-side of a jelly fish, the elements of mind-stuff which go along with them are so combined as to form the faint beginnings of sentience. When the matter takes the complex form of the living human brain, the corresponding mind-stuff takes the form of human consciousness, having intelligence and volition" (Lectures and Essays, 284). Spencer and other thorough-going evolutionists are driven to a similar conclusion. But the true inference is rather, that the incredibility of the conclusion proves the untenableness of the materialistic form of evolution which these writers adopt. There is no evidence whatever of this universal mind-stuff which they postulate. It is of an inconceivable character. As Professor James says, to call it "nascent" consciousness is merely a verbal quibble which explains nothing. No multiplicity and no grouping or fusing of unconscious elements can be conceived as constituting an act of conscious intelligence. The unity and simplicity which characterize the simplest acts of the mind are incompatible with such a theory.
MIND AND MATTER
The opposition of mind and matter brings us face to face with the great controversy of Dualism and Monism. Are there two forms of being in the universe ultimately and radically distinct? or are they merely diverse phases or aspects of one common underlying substratum? Our experience at all events appears to reveal to us two fundamentally contrasted forms of reality. On the one side, there is facing us matter occupying space, subject to motion, possessed of inertia and resistance permanent indestructible, and seemingly independent of our observation. On the other, there is our own mind, immediately revealing itself to us in simple unextended acts of consciousness, which seem to be born and then annihilated. Through these conscious acts we apprehend the material world. All our knowledge of it is dependent on them, and in the last resort limited by them. By analogy we ascribe to other human organisms minds like our own. A craving to find unity in the seeming multiplicity of experience has led many thinkers to accept a monistic explanation, in which the apparent duality of mind and matter is reduced to a single underlying principle or substratum. Materialism considers matter itself, body material substance, as this principle. For the materialist, mind, feelings, thoughts, and volitions are but "functions" or "aspects" of matter; mental life is an epiphenomenon, a by-product in the working of the Universe, which can in no way interfere with the course of physical changes or modify the movement of any particle of matter in the world; indeed, in strict consistency it should be held that successive mental acts do not influence or condition each other, but that thoughts and volitions are mere incidental appendages of certain nerve processes in the brain; and these latter are determined exclusively and completely by antecedent material processes. In other words, the materialistic theory, when consistently thought out, leads invariably to the startling conclusion that the human mind has had no real influence on the history of the human race.
On the other hand, the idealistic monist denies altogether the existence of any extra-mental, independent material world. So far from mind being a mere aspect or epiphenomenon attached to matter, the material universe is a creation of the mind and entirely dependent on it. Its esse is percipi. It exists only in and for the mind. Our ideas are the only things of which we can be truly certain. And, indeed, if we were compelled to embrace monism, it seems to us there can be little doubt as to the logical superiority of the idealistic position. But there is no philosophical compulsion to adopt either a materialistic or an idealistic monism. The conviction of the common sense of mankind, and the assumption of physical science that there are two orders of being in the universe, mind and matter, distinct from each other yet interacting and influencing each other, and the assurance that the human mind can obtain a limited yet true knowledge of the material world which really exists outside and independently of it occupying a space of three dimensions, this view, which is the common teaching of the Scholastic philosophy and Catholic thinkers, can be abundantly justified (see DUALISM; ENERGY, CONSERVATION OF).
mind
You're welcome, Twyvel. Just know that no matter how insistent some people are to mis-understand your intimately true discriptions of experience because of their distant perspectives, there are some who understand and who TRY to understand you. Keep it up.
I haven't forgotten you guys. I'm once again working on my reports, etc..... I'll check back in when I can.
Just wanted to make a little comment here;
There is a tendency for people to become bogged down in sparring over concepts which they do not understand.
While there is much information, endless speculation, and no shortage of opinion relative to the concept of "consciousness", it is not understood; that is, to the point of being fully defineable, described, and its function and source demonstrated.
As an analogy, I would suggest "gravity". It is well documented what the process/phenomina does; the physical measurement of its effects are quantifyable; however it is not yet fully understood as to its source, or what it actually "is"!
But we know that consciousness exists, it is demonstrable.
And we know that gravity exists, it is demonstrable.
Lets just say that consciousness "is".
In my meagre supply of grey matter, because something cannot be seen, touched, physically demonstrated, or "caged", does not prove that it doesn't exist (though it might suggest that conclusion), nor does the same scarcity of evidence, augmented by a substantial supply of speculation, and traditional belief, demonstrate that it does !
I don't think that "using' the fact that some things in this world are not fully understood, is in any way applicable to proving that some other marginally related concept is ether true or false, just because we don't "know".
Yes, Bogowo, I agree. And my point has been, let's assume it exists and start this discussion on the other side of that assumption. We can speak from the perspective of our experience of consciousness, whether it "exists" or not. Actually, to me it matters not whether it exists. If my experience tells me my consciousness exists, and there are observable data about the source of the experience, then I'm satisfied with my curiousity about this experience. Speculations about possible truths that I cannot know or don't know now are not important to me other that the possibility that my investigations about what I do know may lead me to understand something further in the future. But that's simply my own personal preference. Others are not satisfied, and it's not for me to say whether they should or should not be. I'm suggesting, for this discussion, we work inside this box and consider everything that may or may not be outside of it to be impertinent and therefore digressive.
Lola
What were we talking about----I forgot
Perception,
Heck if I know.
