zeusbheld Posted April 5, 2006 Author Report Share Posted April 5, 2006 With toys like this to play with why look further? because we can? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zeusbheld Posted April 5, 2006 Author Report Share Posted April 5, 2006 as for the mind, the first question (and an important one) is whether "mind" and "brain" are the same thing Mind is content of consciousness. Brain is a concept and therefore in the mind. The brain is not the seat of consciousness. It's a manifestation of it. But I just started another thread I guess... hahaha... that's one way of looking at it. the other way is that brains are real and consciousness is an illusion, no more real than the 'desktop' on your computer. as for starting another thread, we seem to have all done so a while ago... but it's a lot more interesting than the article that launched the thread, although admittedly that set the bar pretty low. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ttesta Posted April 5, 2006 Report Share Posted April 5, 2006 that's one way of looking at it. the other way is that brains are real and consciousness is an illusion, no more real than the 'desktop' on your computer. yes... agree that it is all a matter of words. But there is one thing that cannot be an illusion: who is the one who knows "what is going on"? Who is the knower of the illusion? Who knows that the illusion is is just an illusion? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
robbie36 Posted April 5, 2006 Report Share Posted April 5, 2006 yes... agree that it is all a matter of words. But there is one thing that cannot be an illusion: who is the one who knows "what is going on"? Who is the knower of the illusion? Who knows that the illusion is is just an illusion? yeah right!! And who questions the questioner? And who knows who the knower is? (P.S. I am trying to stay up for the Arsenal match) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zeusbheld Posted April 5, 2006 Author Report Share Posted April 5, 2006 that's one way of looking at it. the other way is that brains are real and consciousness is an illusion, no more real than the 'desktop' on your computer. yes... agree that it is all a matter of words. But there is one thing that cannot be an illusion: who is the one who knows "what is going on"? Who is the knower of the illusion? Who knows that the illusion is is just an illusion? i'm not clear on why it cannot be an illusion, seems to me *anything* can be an illusion depending on how its looked at. the computer's desktop is a weak metaphor for that line of thinking as it implies a user. knowing what's going on *is* the illusion, or at least part of it, from that point of view... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ttesta Posted April 5, 2006 Report Share Posted April 5, 2006 yes, yes, yes ... but who knows all this? Everything is an illusion but the knower cannot be an illusion. Even the fact that you "are" might be an illusion, but not that you know it ... It is not my intention to start a new thread. This question does not lead to a theory of whatever. It is just something you want to find out for yourself. Or maybe you don't ... The answer is very interesting, infinitely more interesting than all cosmological theories together... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zeusbheld Posted April 6, 2006 Author Report Share Posted April 6, 2006 for zeusy....http://www.theonion.com/content/node/46943 brilliant. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zeusbheld Posted April 6, 2006 Author Report Share Posted April 6, 2006 SHORT VERSION: if the universe isn't orderly, why don't we see magic and miracles.... or do we? now thats a beautiful question.... of course the answer lies in that everything we see that we don't have some framework of understanding is "magic" ......in fact because we don't really understand anything (in any significant way) ...we can't really stand here and propose than anything ISN'T magic... the very fact that we are standing here as a carbon based substance that can percieve of its existance and seek to transcend it ....it surely "a miracle" ....even by the universes bizaar and twisted standards..... nah by 'miracle' i want to see something 'impossible' happen. although i suspect if we saw such a thing our brain and visual cortex would conspire to cram it into something familiar, if we 'saw' it at all... i would say that the average person doesnt have much framework for understanding how an LCD screen works, so to someone like me, that is 'magic, but not outside of how we'd expect the universe to work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
weaselboy Posted April 6, 2006 Report Share Posted April 6, 2006 Take the blue pill and stay here in the fantasy.....take the red pill and all will be explained Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pr0nmaster Posted April 6, 2006 Report Share Posted April 6, 2006 nah by 'miracle' i want to see something 'impossible' happen. although i suspect if we saw such a thing our brain and visual cortex would conspire to cram it into something familiar, if we 'saw' it at all... excellent point....but of course something impossible can NEVER happen ....but I'd say human conscience life is the closest to it in the universe(and thats not a throw away statement...given the few billions year our solar system has existed , and all the freakish things that had to happen to bring conscies life to be....it's pretty much freaking impossible...the odds are on "God" as much as that frightens me)....but we just can't see it for the lights.... I'm not going to respond to your critique of my other earlier post....I feel your comments are well balanced...I could force my self to disagree/play devils advocate....but i'm in far too good a mood to argue today ..... i'm sure my warm glow with soon dissapear ...then i'll yap at you ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zeusbheld Posted April 7, 2006 Author Report Share Posted April 7, 2006 ***disclaimer******** the following post is longer than a4, and the author has not read what he is written. therefore anyone who reads what i SAID instead of what i MEAN, or wants to piss and moan about how long it is, instead of just skipping it, please eat my most stank undergarment as soon as possible. thank you and have a good day. ***end disclaimer *** nah by 'miracle' i want to see something 'impossible' happen. although i suspect if we saw such a thing our brain and visual cortex would conspire to cram it into something familiar, if we 'saw' it at all... excellent point....but of course something impossible can NEVER happen ... if the universe is not smooth and regular, in other words orderly, at least in the parts we experience, then nothing can be impossible, by definition. at best, the principles we base our predictions on are no more than guildelines, and exceptions can occur that have zip zip zero to do with the 'laws'--in other words, arbitrary things can happen. that's what i mean by impossible. an asteroid (or something) with 'space bacteria' (or something) hitting a planet (or something) and affecting the chemical stew (primordial soup, or something) such that complex life including strange bipeds capable of whizbang stuff like culture and technology occur is incredibly improbable, in the sense that it would be unlikely for that particular thing to happen once, let alone be an exactly repeatable result. however, if we humans apply our limited undersanding of the process of evolution to the scenario above, the theory would predict not necessarily naked apes fancying themselves conscious, but would predict that SOMETHING extremely improbable will result in a couple billion years. so in that sense, to my knowledge, there's nothing that anyone knows of that happens which is completely arbitrary, and, to be glib, breaks several major laws of physics. .but I'd say human conscience life is the closest to it in the universe(and thats not a throw away statement...given the few billions year our solar system has existed , and all the freakish things that had to happen to bring conscies life to be....it's pretty much freaking impossible...the odds are on "God" as much as that frightens me)....but we just can't see it for the lights.... see #1 above regarding impossible vs. incredibly freakin' improbable. historically we humans have been rather smug about consciousness, especially in the west. (although mysticism, mainly eastern, has its own kind of smugness about consciousness, saladin's riddles are an example). phsyics, evolution etc. dont' *need* God necessarily to end up with consciousness. without physical evidence of physical intervention, God is best left to metaphysics. i haven't seen anything convincing that suggests science should have anything to do wtih God either, and science should stick to that tiny slice of our experience where it can make falsifiable statments, keep testing them and trying to disprove them, and admit that the rest is just speculation, discourse and careerism. as for conscousness... so many cans, so many worms, so many different kinds of worms. everyone 'feels' conscious but i'm not convinced that anyone even knows what it is. the relationship between consciousness and actions might forever be outside the scope of scientific investigation--there's a reason philosophers call it the 'hard problem'. mystical practices and science don't really overlap much at present, and contrary to what a bunch of new age bullshitters write, particle physics neither confirms nor denies their new age practices. the watered down pop discourse (that stuff you and i, miss slurps, enjoy) can be cobbled onto things like hindu cosmology or taoism rather interestingly, but it's still just a metaphor, a myth, a story. there is a kind of experience, consciousness-wise, that one can have, usually induced by mystical practices (i think that's what saladin's little riddles are about). as to whether this consciousness-expanding has any power to explain the world around us (as in look! i saw God!) well, maybe, but as soon as you try to communicate that to someone, it's just a story unless they have the same experience. and even then, the part that's real is the experience not the story. don't get me wrong i love stories and i think that we humans are hard-wired to tell stories to explain things, whether we actually have good information or pull the story out of our ass we'll do it. people with brain disorders will even make up stories as to why they did things, and not even know they did it! (confabulations, they're called). if i hated stories, i woulda got a degree in something useful instead of movie making, but much as i love 'em, stories are just stories. I'm not going to respond to your critique of my other earlier post....I feel your comments are well balanced...I could force my self to disagree/play devils advocate....but i'm in far too good a mood to argue today .....i'm sure my warm glow with soon dissapear ...then i'll yap at you ... eagerly await the yappings. it's an interesting topic. i've PM'd a mot to ask this stuff to be split out into its own thread, so that those who want to address the same old tired thread about the psuedo-science of "proving" the thai 'national character' is a certain way through dodgy numbers and teleological statements can wallow in their own um... fecesdiscourse. the 'science wars' are an interesting topic for the dorky types who read too much and / or watch too much discovery channel. eventually when i am fully caught up with work i'll make a post about physicist alan sokol's hoax which basically ass-raped one of the better known pomo journals. if you detect a subtext in my posts on this thread--that i'm a lapsed PoMo, bitter because he feels that postmodernism fed him a load of hoirseshit, you might not be too far off... although i still have a fondness for some of those lefty weirdos, even baudrillard... 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