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WBraun
climber
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Apr 24, 2019 - 04:15pm PT
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Option A: Brain creates mind
Nope.
Mind and brain are both already there.
The supreme manufacturer of the living entities has both mind and brain to begin with.
Gross materialists are always in extremely poor fund of knowledge.
If you are brain dead you are still conscious just by the fact the heart is beating and breathing is active.
No consciousness equals zero life symptoms, dead matter.
They always tell people to talk to people in comas because they are still conscious enough to feel your presence ....
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Don Paul
Social climber
Washington DC
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Apr 24, 2019 - 04:15pm PT
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jogill you will never convince them that they all live in the same reality. They prefer their fantasy worlds and status as immortal spirit beings.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Apr 24, 2019 - 05:27pm PT
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Seems to me that the content of the brain can be subdivided into code vs. memories. Neurons are the underlying architecture (stuff as opposed to content).
Code includes your genetic code, epigenetic code, and, what I would call, situational code. Situational code essentially amounts to the genes that are currently turned on.
Memories, on the other hand, are the imprint of the natural world onto your being -- actually, onto your nervous system. Your nervous system is like a record player. It can record and play back its imprints. Different than record players, the memory imprint can directly affect your next (unconscious) decision.
Mind is the result of code and memory.
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WBraun
climber
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Apr 24, 2019 - 07:15pm PT
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Who wrote the original code?
Let me guess :-)
It was written by a guy named chance ......:-)
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Apr 24, 2019 - 07:39pm PT
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My latest take on the question of consciousness is that one level of it at least and the most used, comes strictly from the physical world, having arrived through evolution. I had begun to suspect and was convinced by earlier arguments on this thread, that the extraordinary experiences I’ve had during meditation were produced for the most part by my own brain, strange at that seemed. Of course the mind can be tricky as pointed out by many on this thread. The unconscious mind is in fact extraordinarily clever at communicating with the conscious mind in such a way that the conscious mind senses that the information and experience comes from somewhere outside of oneself. How exactly the unconscious mind can also dramatically change one’s brain chemistry in an instant by something like solving a koan, is still a great mystery but the experience with psychedelics is so similar, one has to conclude that it was one’s own brain chemistry that was transformed. Why this exists and what the evolutionary purpose of it was or is, remains opaque.
What a physicalist explanation of the brain can not account for however, are the many experiences of a consciousness with memory and knowledge external to myself, that has imposed itself onto my brain on occasion, most especially when it was clearer than usual thanks to a lot of time spent meditating. To have a dream of something or a vision or just a remembrance while doing a daily activity, and then have the exact same experience happen minutes or days or even years later, just as foreseen, has no physical explanation as far as I can tell. Call it prophesy, precognition, or statistical anomalies, whatever, it still remains unexplained. Likewise syncronicity, the ability to occasionally understand foreign languages that one does not speak, healings and so on. The one thing common to all such experiences that I can discern is that they all involve an outside intervention in order to save a life, avoid a severe injury, or help someone in great need.
Always seeking the middle way, my current understanding is that in addition to the physical universe there is another mental/spiritual universe that runs parallel to our own and only occasionally makes itself known when we make ourselves attractive enough to serve as a vortice for it. Thus we have the apparent duality of a physically evolved consciousness that can act as a receiver, and also some kind of external consciousness that can interpenetrate our own. Whether this external consciousness is universal or not I can not say. Perhaps in a few years I will have a different explanation for it, but that is my current level of understanding.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Apr 24, 2019 - 08:16pm PT
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Lots of things remain unexplained, Jan. Thanks for telling us your experience. Those of us who like to figure things out must choose our questions carefully. I, too have had experiences, especially in dreams, that don't seem to come from my own past. However, in going over letters I wrote long ago I have found that some things from my past are as completely forgotten now as if they had never happened.
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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Apr 24, 2019 - 08:37pm PT
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Thankee, Jan, but I won't stay long. I know this is a longstanding discussion here, and, as I came across that interesting distinction--soul/spirit/mind--I thought others might find it interesting as well.
I think our ideas take form from these much-laden words, and they're not a little influenced by the Christian doctrine at the heart of Western thought, even though so many consider themselves above and beyond all that. But habits of thought die hard.
My readings about the origins of Christianity involve a number of scholars who take a holistic, rather than faith-based, approach. They consider all sources, and the so-called gnostic Gospels and the Dead Sea Scrolls open a Pandora's box to theological discussions. It becomes obvious that modern Christian religion and its vaunted Bible stem from the narrowing-down at the time of the emperor Constantine and subsequent efforts to destroy apocryphal scripture and persecute "heretics".
Pagels is just one of the holistic scholars, and she should have a certain appeal to this forum, being the widow of Heinz Pagels, physicist and mountaineer. Most modern Christians don't know that the first of their New Testament scriptures were actually the works of St. Paul. The Gospels came later, and many of the Gospels, contemporaneous with Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, were nevertheless thrown out by the Constantine-enforced Nicean councils. Christianity became an administrable, imperial religion, rather than the muddle of contradictions you get when you consider all of these scriptures.
Pagels suggests that St. Paul was just another gnostic--but his particular gnosticism became mainstream. Mary Magdalene is thought by many to have been Jesus's wife. Interesting that they should be having such a discussion--basically, forget about "soul" and "spirit" and use your God-given mind.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Apr 24, 2019 - 09:02pm PT
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What a physicalist explanation of the brain can not account for however, are the many experiences of a consciousness with memory and knowledge external to myself, that has imposed itself onto my brain on occasion, most especially when it was clearer than usual thanks to a lot of time spent meditating.
I think you might say this differently, because what you have stated you cannot know, but rather, a physicalist explanation of brain should give some accounting of this phenomenon.
Of course if you have proof that a physicalist explanation of the brain cannot possibly be realized it would be an interesting contribution to the discussion.
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Apr 24, 2019 - 09:19pm PT
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Safe to ignore haha
Ain't that the truth
Just notes to myself
REM Memory reorganization The real puzzler is synchronicity
Deja vu looking forward
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Apr 25, 2019 - 07:30am PT
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MH2: We don't need to go anywhere all together, Mike. It is fun to just talk about our individual points of view and to hear from others.
You're right, my friend. +1
Werner: You are consciousness itself . . . .
Yes. Agreed. My writing can always use editing. You know, it's not easy to express a non-state of mind that does not assume or include a distinctinons of subject, object, and gerund. Even the "you" and "are" in your phrase can be misleading. It's difficult to express anything very well using permutations of "to be." But you know all about variegatedness / unity.
jogill: Do we live in two different realities?
This made me smile. How many ways could we answer this question, John? Your question cuts to a core of the conversation.
May I turn it back to you? How would you answer the question, please?
Don Paul: They prefer their fantasy worlds and status as immortal spirit beings.
May I suggest to you that any narrative would seem to be a fantasy? I mean no negative connotation by that. Fantasies are psychologically important and reliant upon imagination--and imagination is what seems to underlie all creativity. Among many characteristics as conscious beings, creative expression (stories, narratives, imagination) is what we all do when we reflect upon anything seemingly significant, and we do it well, by golly. Without imagination, where would any discipline be?
May I also say that if anything, reflection is what most seems to separate us from other animals we are aware of. It's what this thread is all about, isn't it? Science, religion, aesthetics, and morality / ethics all seem to be the results of imagination. That's because, IMO, we cannot say what anything is with accuracy, finality, or completely. (That's OK in my book. I mean, you're not against reflection, are you?)
Tony,
Thanks to you for the brief history lesson. We could maybe use a little more of that here, now and then. Please stay if you have more to say. You could be our resident history guru (just as Ed is our science guru) to keep us all straight.
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WBraun
climber
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Apr 25, 2019 - 08:24am PT
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Science, religion, aesthetics, and morality / ethics all seem to be the results of imagination.
C'mon MikeL
You know this is not true ....
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Apr 25, 2019 - 01:57pm PT
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Whodathunkit
Laser wifi
In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers demonstrated a laser that can emit microwaves wirelessly, modulate them, and receive external radio frequency signals.
"The research opens the door to new types of hybrid electronic-photonic devices and is the first step toward ultra-high-speed Wi-Fi," said Federico Capasso, the Robert L. Wallace Professor of Applied Physics and Vinton Hayes Senior Research Fellow in Electrical Engineering, at SEAS and senior author of the study.te Here
https://phys.org/news/2019-04-transmit-semiconductor-laser-door-ultra-high-speed.amp
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Apr 25, 2019 - 02:19pm PT
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Who wrote the original code? "Alex, what would be Who is Mother Nature?" Mother Nature is ultimately responsible for both the code and the data (imprinted memories).
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WBraun
climber
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Apr 25, 2019 - 03:13pm PT
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Nope, mother nature can't do anything such as that as it is completely subordinate.
You are still in extremely poor fund of knowledge ......
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Apr 25, 2019 - 03:42pm PT
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Be that as it may, it occurs to me that I think of Mother Nature, to a certain extent, like someone else might think of God or Universal Consciousness. The difference is this. Mother Nature can only be understood with respect to how she unravels in time. It is fundamentally a bottom-up phenomenon and includes dynamical systems. God and Universal Consciousness are top-down phenomena. Bottom-up phenomena are consistent with the theory of evolution. Top-down aren't. It's as simple as that for me. What's not simple are the details. The proper adjective for details is more like interesting than simple.
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WBraun
climber
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Apr 25, 2019 - 03:50pm PT
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Mother nature is NOT God ever nor universal consciousness (God)
One can't make up their own interpretations.
The gross materialists always do that due to their ultimate cluelessness .....
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Apr 25, 2019 - 04:04pm PT
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"jogill: Do we live in two different realities?"
MikeL: "This made me smile. How many ways could we answer this question, John? Your question cuts to a core of the conversation."
As you might suspect, Mike, I was poking at the Wizard. It's such fun! When John wanders off the meditative reservation he sometimes makes mistakes. When he is on that reservation I pay attention, although I question how much experiences like "empty awareness" tell us about the mind, other than its astounding capabilities.
I would say we all live in the same reality, but there is probably so much more to it we don't understand, and perhaps, being flesh and blood, we may never understand. Who knows?
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Apr 25, 2019 - 08:22pm PT
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More things I did not know and presumably some of y'all
Have we overlooked anything?
The spin doctors: Researchers discover surprising quantum effect in hard disk drive material
In technical terms, we discovered a sizable effect from magnetic damping in nanoscale layers of cobalt-iron alloy coated on one side of a magnesium oxide substrate," added Argonne materials scientist Axel Hoffmann, another author of the study. "By controlling the electron spin, magnetic damping dictates the rate of energy dissipation, controlling aspects of the magnetization."
https://phys.org/news/2019-04-doctors-quantum-effect-hard-disk.amp
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Apr 25, 2019 - 10:03pm PT
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The sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long. withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
M. Arnold
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