Excuse me “impacted” wrong word, how about “influenced by”, “vulnerable to”, “within the matrix of” such as gravitational fields, various pressure waves, and so on and so forth.
The point is the inappropriateness of that easy compartmentalization and dismissal of all outside your awareness.
The Brain is Not in Vat, the brain is connected physically to your body and your body is also connected physically to the Earth. Light waves and pressure waves are physical components of our Physical Reality, philosophers can dismiss them, but if you want to understand Earth and life, you mustn’t ignore them.
{and on another level it’s connected genetically to the pageant of evolution, also too often ignored.}
Folds within folds of cumulative harmonic complexity, not cogs and wheels.
The question is not if the brain is affected by certain naturally occurring -phenomena. The question is if the brain has awareness of these influences. If it does not, you can discount it as contributing to consciousness itself.
The point is that a brain in a vat is also subject to all those external “connections” except the actual data it receives is computer generated instead of neurally generated.
A vat connected by EM copper wires to a computer is a perfect analogy to a brain connected by EM neural wires to a body, other than that arrangement used to be infinitely more complex.
A person in a sensory deprivation chamber is still subject to gravity and all those other naturally occurring phenomena. Yet the brain will start hallucinating (uncontrolled hallucation) very soon once it is deprived from sensory inputs.
This should tell you that whatever comes in from the outside apart from sensory observable phenomena is not enough to keep the brain distracted from starting self-generated hallucinations (dreaming wide awake).
This mental confusion is one of the potential hazards now being considered by the builders of the new AI - GPT4 which will boast 100 trillion parameters (artificial synapses), that begins to approach the complexity of the brain
Personally, I can’t wait to see what genius or monster we’ll have created.
A modern-day Frankenstein story.
You know CC, I’ve come to the conclusion you an adherent to Bohmian Mechanics and Philosophy. If you have not read any of his work, please do take a peek.
Trust me, you will like what he had to say and is just now beginning to resonate with the people studying the quantum world.
Bohm is one of my heroes.
Let me illustrate:
“Space is not empty. It’s full. It is the ground for the existence of everything, including ourselves”
I’ve read enough about his ideas to know they belong in the category that repulses, rather than attracts. This obsession with thinking you can find the grand secrets 'Infinite Potential" by imaging what the tiniest of tiny is.
{You know it’s one thing for a person who’s spent years mastering their topic to muse - but when bits and pieces of that body of work is handed to lay people, then it falls into an entirely different category, one that’s closer to day dreaming than actually construct work on the problem - you never touched that}
“A clear prediction of the non-locality of the world”
“non-locality of the world” feels to me like one of those contrived sentences that doesn’t really tell us anything, that a good telescope and spectrometer can’t.
“The profound discovery of the interconnectedness of the universe”
Again, doesn’t every bit of physics and astronomy make that clear already?
We are start dust! and so on.
Or is he talking about a magic pixie dust such as “consciousness”
“Consciousness is never static or complete but is an unending process of movement and unfoldment.”
– David Bohm
Right, and the team that scores the most points wins. Tell me something that’s not obvious!
Initially presented under the name quantum-mechanical potential , subsequently quantum potential , it was later elaborated upon by Bohm and Basil Hiley in its interpretation as an information potential which acts on a quantum particle. It is also referred to as quantum potential energy , Bohm potential , quantum Bohm potential or Bohm quantum potential .
This is more of that intellectual entertainment I’m talking about. Sure lets muss about the tiniest of tiny, that’s where infinite potential lies. Infinite potential for what?
What about us making sense of our place in the world, and thereby learning how to better appreciate it, along with one’s own short life?
Sorry, find me a philosopher who writes about us taking our heads out of our heads, and I will gladly listen to hours worth of her/him discoursing. But this stuff, it’s exactly the egoistical self-absorbed mistaking ourselves for god absolutist mentality I’m talking about.
Fine and good, but if your doing it without any touchstones, or bench marks to the reality that’s always been, they’re just Playing Basketball in Zero-Gravity.
As for your wish, look around at our world - we’re seeing the fruit of our blindsidedness - enjoy the show.
This future our ultimately self-absorbed mind along with our power and profits driven day dreaming is getting us:
=======================================
Won’t you listen to my explanation of what I’m thinking. It’s as simple as absorbing
about the most fundamental fact of human reality there is, namely:
Recognizing and appreciating the Human Mindscape ~ Physical Reality divide
I’m talking about a simple prerequisite, a human reality check, before we dive deeper.
As for your previous post - when I can, I’ll be back.
The first one requires an active participation of an individual thinker.
It is an invitation to reflect on oneself in relationship to the stuff of Evolution that’s been going long before any human could contemplate on it.
The second is just a toss out line. It’s plenty true, totally true, absolutely true, been said in countless ways and discovered by countless thinkers - we are star dust bound together by gravity and the laws of physics - but that doesn’t tell us anything about our selves, or our place in it, or our “self’s” relationship with ourself to the world of our day to day.
The first is a challenge to think about one’s own relationship with the world we are embedded within. To truly appreciate of yourself, your body as belonging to another creature within Earth’s pageant of Evolution.
Not only am I the product of all the days I’ve lived, but on a level we can barely perceive, my body is the product of a lineage of creature’s going back to the beginnings of time itself.
My body created my brain, that brain collects information from more places and modes that we know as we go about our lives. What we do know makes clear that brain produces mind, metaphorically the same way a dynamo creates an electrical charge. Our brain doesn’t process a bunch of codes and algorithms, information comes in swarms and potentials, and networked layers upon layers of interconnections and complexities.
Everything through your body, processed through your brain, all that awareness, must get reflected, (why else would it have ever started?)
that’s where your consciousness is found - honed by hundreds of millions of generations, living, learning, leaving a legacy behind - a reflection of your entire body processing more information that we are aware off.
For instance, for some reason your philosophy makes it really easy to draw “Berlin Walls” between stuff, such as your stark distinction consciousness and subconsciousness, as if the two aren’t constantly in varying levels of communication.
[quote=“citizenschallengev4, post:66, topic:9697”]
Our brain doesn’t process a bunch of codes and algorithms, information comes in swarms and potentials, and networked layers upon layers of interconnections and complexities.
Actually it does process and translates a bunch of “data” which comes in several forms
Everything through your body, processed through your brain, all that awareness, must get reflected, (why else would it have ever started?)
that’s where your consciousness is found - honed by hundreds of millions of generations, living, learning, leaving a legacy behind - a reflection of your entire body processing more information that we are aware of.
Exactly, all that incoming data is compared to stored memories , some even hardwired survival mechanisms from millions of years learning to recognize what might be a threat. (the checkerboard visual)
How the brain distinguishes between objects
Anne Trafton | MIT News Office. Publication Date: March 13, 2019
Study shows that a brain region called the inferotemporal cortex is key to differentiating bears from chairs.
I believe that is a form of differential cognition.
For instance, for some reason your philosophy makes it really easy to draw “Berlin Walls” between stuff, such as your stark distinction consciousness and subconsciousness, as if the two aren’t constantly in varying levels of communication.
Oh, it is very easy to draw a wall between conscious awareness and unconscious homeostasis. Ever been anesthetized?
Visualizing the physical source of consciousness.
The purpose of anesthetization is to draw a wall between the pain centers in the brain and the body part that is being operated on.
Oh, what an awesome find! To think that these experiential images are produced by the microtubule network fields that produce cognition and recognition.
Basically yes. It is carefully controlled to only render the conscious part of the brain insensitive to stimulation and when the operation is finished, just coffee will speed the clearing of the effects of anesthesia, even as the anesthetic remains in the system for up to 24 hrs (recovery time).
Interestingly, all brains (in all animals) respond to the exact same dosage
quote=“citizenschallengev4, post:64, topic:9697”]
This is more of that intellectual entertainment I’m talking about. Sure lets muss about the tiniest of tiny, that’s where infinite potential lies. Infinite potential for what?
Have you ever considered what the term Potential implies?
I am speaking of the most generalized definition that posits"
“Potential is That which may become reality.”
Everything you see today was once merely a universal potential, an enfolded hidden (Implicate) order that stochastically unfolds and becomes observable Explicated order .
Bohm described this hypothesis in his book "Wholeness and the Implicate Order. This book has been a major influence on universal physics as well as philosophy.
People like the Dalai Lama , who very much contemplates his relationship with the universe, declared that he considers the writings of Bohm as his source of understanding physics.
OTOH, Einstein considered Bohm his dear friend and brilliant thinker.
[quote=“citizenschallengev4, post:64, topic:9697”]
Won’t you listen to my explanation of what I’m thinking. It’s as simple as absorbing about the most fundamental fact of human reality there is, namely:
“Recognizing and appreciating the Human Mindscape ~ Physical Reality divide”
And this is not a recognition and appreciation of the inclusive juxtaposition of man to the universe?
Infinite Potential
“Space is not empty. It’s full. It is the ground for the existence of everything, including ourselves”
I’m talking about a simple prerequisite, a human reality check, before we dive deeper
Bohm just laid that down for you . Read it and think about it before you dismiss it as a trivially mundane explanation.
Try to “grok it”.
No not at all. It’s platitude that makes no sense in term of Physical Reality, “Infinite Potential” - that’s nonsense, something that only the self-serving human imagination can come up with. Certainly nothing that reflects the way our universe evolved. It did not have infinite potential anymore than any creature on this planet possesses infinite potential.
Please tell me where is the profundity? What’s it actually saying? That the team with the most points wins? Please, stop jumping around so much, lets stick on these couple words - where do you see their importance?
Listen to this thing*:
2:53: of our society that there’s no evidence that people in the hunter-gatherer society were all that competitive
Are you going to buy that kind of disconnected garbage. You tell me men who go our hunting, aren’t “all that competitive” - it’s like he’s never given a thought to what he’s saying, you ain’t hunting in the first place if you aren’t proud and competitive, now or tens of thousands of years ago
3:08: So, do you think that perhaps the desire to compete is a weakness?
DB: Not a weakness, it’s a mistake.
Sorry he’s got nothing to teach me, no matter how fanatastical his math and imagination is, he doesn’t appreciate the first thing about real living on this real planet. And then transplanting quantum magic into living up here within Earth’s physical plain, it’s totally misleading and like a red flag to a bull for me.
He is another excellent example of what happens when geniuses get lost within their own mindscapes. Also please, let’s never forget how much of this also has to do with chasing celebrity and making careers.*
That is the furthest from the kind of reality check I’m trying to discuss.
I’m 67, spent all my decades trying to grok them smart guys and their, by and by increasingly self-satisfied appearing, yet surprisingly empty conversations. I’ve spent those decades intently listening to and learning from many experts, and then I watched, and remembered, sadly found more fallings than successes, and they go on an on with the more platitudes than useful information* still arrogant and self-certain as ever.
{*Regarding that useful information, I’m talking about spending more time learning about what we already know. Unfortunately, seems most rather chase the fantastical dream we have.
Yet, I look around and people are more insecure and lost and scared than ever.
Look at you, the thought of an AI machine smarter than people, seems like the most exciting thing out there. You’re happy with that. That our blind lust and obsessions with these toys have also secured ourselves into a path to utter ruin and horror, but that all besides the point. Behold look at what we can do.
2:53: of our society that there’s no evidence that people in the hunter-gatherer society were all that competitive
Are you going to buy that kind of disconnected garbage. You tell me men who go our hunting, aren’t “all that competitive” - it’s like he’s never given a thought to what he’s saying, you ain’t hunting in the first place if you aren’t proud and competitive, now or tens of thousands of years ago.
You do know that was a reply to the question if man has “original sin”?
3:08: So, do you think that perhaps the desire to compete is a weakness?
DB: Not a weakness, it’s a mistake.
So you believe man, or anything else for that matter, was born in original sin? Are you talking about an Abrahamic mindset?
You may want to listen to that video some more. Methinks you are overreacting to everything Bohm says.
p.s. that smirky face of the moderator in that link is not David Bohm.
Bohm is the one speaking of empathy and cooperation rather than existential competition for survival, which would indeed be original sin.
That original sin, you bet that’s integral to Abrahamic mindset.
In what other arena does the concept of “original sin” come into play?
(and it’s part of the video, not what I’m discussing)
Sure, there is genetic lineage, and the family (bloodline) you are born into, so metaphorically an “original” essence does flow down through the generations and each of us as to our own “kind”, getting passed along one generation at a time.
===============
Wish you pay attention to what I write. Yes, I’m over sensitive and emotionally perhaps overreacting and could be kinder. They have taught much, I’ve been reading this sort of stuff, from these luminaries all my years since high school. No grand studies, no fantastic memory where I can keep a dozen profundities juggling at a time, just simple chewing on the various fundamental ideas of physics spilling over into philosophy and learning how the origins of philosophy have been intimately tied to religious believes and debates, and still are.
They don’t add up, cumulated understanding of the decades reveals more facade than substance to these ideas. For example: Infinite Potential, indeed.
I’ve also been able to summarize my more down to Earth perspective, one that does a much better job of absorbing the realities of our evolutionary heritage, than anything we can hope for from obsessions with the tiniest of tiny.
Ignoring my words, and pointing at what I’m railing against seems rather circular, especially since you bring nothing new to their words.
Doesn’t anyone have anything constructive to offer?
Oh I do know which one Bohm is and I also know that his ideas are the foundation of lots and lots of pure nonsense, such as Donald Hoffman’s mathematical fundamental conscious agents zinging around. Oh since you keep implying I simply haven’t thought about their notions hard enough, guess I should have included a different series of links.
(3.01) [**Diary - But, wait! There's more.** ***Ten Learned Responses***](https://confrontingsciencecontrarians.blogspot.com/2021/01/diary-hoffman-responses.html)***:***
**“** [**Probing the interface theory of perception: Reply to commentaries**](https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13423-015-0931-3), by Donald D. Hoffman, Manish Singh & Chetan Prakash"
[Psychonomic Bulletin & Review](https://link.springer.com/journal/13423)**.** volume 22, pages1551–1576(2015)
It really doesn’t matter how great the mind, and intellectual pedagogy, the claim that the universe has infinite potential is patently foolish. It’s like saying that drop of water that’s in the cloud has infinite potential to go anywhere? In a metaphorical storybook sort of way that maybe be true enough - but not in this real universe.
I too consider myself an objective observer standing outside and looking in on the realities of life on earth.
My childhood perspective started a little earlier than yours as my first 6 years of my life in Holland were suffered under German occupation and the consequential war-time conditions.
I remember digging asphalt blocks from the roads for use in our wood stove during the winter of 1945. Those were hard times, with my dad’s ingenuity providing an occasional taste of luxury like my first taste of a pear.
It was then I developed an appreciation of nature’s natural candy store and my first introduction to National Geographic magazine and science fiction that offered an unimpeded look outward into the mysteries and wonders of Earth and Space.
Regarding the “Mind-Body Problem,” Dr. Solms makes a wonderful analogy that highlights the error being made: Question: Was it the lightning or thunder that killed the golfer? It’s a meaningless question. Lightning and thunder are simply different aspects of the same phenomena.
It’s a stupid question. They are different aspects of the same phenomenon alright, except that lightning will kill you and thunder will make you scared…difference!
Let’s make it a little more immediate, shall we?
“Was it the bullet or the gun flash that killed the soldier”?
I consider that a very meaningful question…
I agree, but I might have posited it a little differently.
IMO, conscious thought is the mental (and physical) “experience” of sensory data processing, unlike subconscious homeostatic processes that perform autonomous control functions rather than decision making.
An appreciation for Deep Time, billions of years worth, and Earth, the dance of geology & biology unfolding one day at a time, and that it produced me, along with all other wonders.
Oh, I absolutely agree. Sometimes I am actually overwhelmed by the sheer majesty of the incomprehensible numbers and potential and tears of sheer emotion well up.
But then I see the piles of elephant ivory and the beached whales from disease and/or human-caused disorientation.
There is no Body-Mind Problem, it is in actuality an Ego-God Problem.
I agree. But it depends on the environment that shaped your “mirror neural network”
My body has taken better care of me, than I have of it.
Absolutely! The homeostatic machine fashioned over billions of years of evolution by natural selection is extremely resilient.
All living organisms are examples of the stochastic selection process.
Consciousness is the product of Earth’s biology, of interacting and living, when we die consciousness ceases like a light bulb that’s lost its power. All that awaits us is the deep dark eternal sleep from which none awake, and it is good.
I agree. Anil Seth posits that "when you die, there is nothing to be afraid of, nothing at all.
Yes, it is good, live your blessed moment while you have it to live, the universe doesn’t owe you anything.
That depends on the environment you are born into.
Our after-life unfolds within the hearts and minds of others, and it is good.
I agree. It is your legacy that acquires immortality.
[quote=“citizenschallengev4, post:75, topic:9697”]
It really doesn’t matter how great the mind, and intellectual pedagogy, the claim that the universe has infinite potential is patently foolish.
Where did everything come from if the potential for it never existed?
It’s like saying that drop of water that’s in the cloud has infinite potential to go anywhere? In a metaphorical storybook sort of way that maybe be true enough - but not in this real universe.
Humans are some 60% water and that is one of the inherent potentials of H2O, life could not exist without it!
Abiogenesis almost certainly involved water, because of the inherent potential of water.
But more interesting is the fact that water is “wet”, whereas neither oxygen or hydrogen atoms are wet. Liquid wetness emerges as a result of the H2O mixture under certain temperatures. OTOH, “ice” is a dry solid, a and vapor is an invisible dry fluid.
These three “states” are emergent from a single set of molecules exposed to temperature variations.
That’s a perfect example of enfolded “potential”
How do I know that I’m not living a hallucination?
Do I believe I could myself could have created, imagined, all this around us from within our own petty self-absorbed minds along?
SERIOUSLY?
What you, imagine you’re capable of that?
Where would my mind have glimpsed anything like this living planet,
if it did not exist in reality already?
The existence of this planet is proof in and of itself that it had an origin, and only via immensely long periods of change, could it today’s Earthly reality have come about.
Mathematics is in your head. It’s this Earth that is real, and you are a creature that’s learned to navigate it and again too many distractions to continue. Max’s universe is in his head and guess you’re correct it is a hallucination.
A lot of people aren’t even aware of the entire sound spectrum.
How many people do you know that have “perfect pitch”?
How manty people can carry a tune at all?
The existence of this planet is proof in and of itself that it had an origin, and only via immensely long periods of change, could it today’s Earthly reality have come about.
Oh, yes, and from your sensory perspective your reality exists, but you also know that it exists uniquely for you. Your experience of reality is not duplicated anywhere else or by any other.
We create our reality by agreement and mathematical evidence.
The rest is "controlled hallucination, a best guess.
Your reality is your brain’s best guess from what your senses are telling you. But you could be a brain in a vat and never know the difference.
Mathematics is in your head. It’s this Earth that is real, and you are a creature that’s learned to navigate it and again too many distractions to continue. Max’s universe is in his head and guess you’re correct it is a hallucination.
Your reality is relative and uniquely so. It is made up of sensory impressions.
Do you know the true pitch of a sound? Doppler effect?
Is the earth real for a neutrino? Size and attraction?
Do things move or stand still? General Relativity?
How dense must an atomic or molecular pattern be for it to be solid, liquid, or gaseous?
What is the potential value of a quark, atom, molecule, cell, body?
All these question are called physics, but they are all mathematically relational. And I don’t mean human mathematics.
Human maths are just symbolic of the intrinsic relational values of physical objects
Nature counts : + =
Humans count: + = 2 apples
= 2 apples = 2 x 1 apple =1/2 x 4 apples = 1 set of 2 apples.
+ 