Because I see headlines talking about scientist finding the source out in the cosmos, or inside geometric whatever-it-is, how does thought get reduced to geometry, yet someone claims it, then there’s Hoffman conscious agents. All the fun stuff.
I want to hear others acknowledge as much. Which seems to me you what you are doing: “Consciousness arose in biology.” Which brings us right back to what seems obvious to me, that our thoughts are produced by our body, ergo our Gods come from within us.
You are being deliberately obtuse. Scientists can tell us all about our bodies and how they function.
It is something philosophers really should take into account more than they do.
I don’t think it’s ironic, I think it’s a crying shame.
You see, back in the 1950s, '60s, '70s scientific discoveries and studies made it clear that something momentous had changed. Humans were starting to catch up to Earth’s life support systems, and at continue skyrocketing rates we would overwhelm Earth’s ability to support our society and its expectations.
Humans received a truly cosmic challenge: Start using our rational brains to push back at humanity’s consummate self-absorbed thinking and self-serving nature. And we failed big time.
Now we get to watch things get rough, so the better you know yourself and your place in the bigger scope of things, the better your mental health to deal with what hits you.
Of course, that’s one of the fundamental lessons to master, before the rest of the so-called hard problem of solipsism can even be approached. Right now it’s talk for talk.
Then you should be able to come up some facts to dispute it. But you don’t, you just wave hands.
There are several billion people who believe in God(s).
That doesn’t mean gods exist.
Anil Seth posits that the brain can only make a best guess from any given sensory cognition. The brain changes chemically based on the sensory input from the immediate environment and creates an expectation which is then compared to additional incoming sensory data.
It is a self-referential system.
After all, it has to selectively process data from a continual stream of all data against “known” data in memory. But that knowledge in memory may be based on false information to begin with.
How We Use Selective Attention to Filter Information and Focus
Selective attention is the cognitive process that allows us to:
Choose and focus on something in the environment while suppressing irrelevant information1 2 3 4 5.
Tune out unimportant details and concentrate on what matters 2.
Filter out distractions and perform tasks effectively 4.
No. He says you can choose an emotion no matter what state you are currently in, overriding all environmental factors. I’m saying there are many factors affecting your emotional state all the time, too many to be aware of or control all of them. There is some type of choice, but we are still working on understanding what it is. Gary certainly doesn’t know.
If you don’t know the facts, your philosophy will be flawed.
I know, but all of us are born with something and we can learn to deal with it. I have no idea what your limits are, but there isn’t just one thing called “autism” that can or can’t be dealt with. In one post you argued that Gary is right, that you can choose your emotions, then you said you absolutely can’t change how you think. You are choosing argument over examining the evidence and using your rational abilities.
Have you made a serious effort to listen to “good” music?
How Music Can be Beneficial for People with Autism
Despite their challenges in certain areas, people with autism typically have the same abilities as anyone else when it comes to recognizing, experiencing, and processing the emotional aspects of music. This has been studied in scientific research.
For instance, it has been found that when people with autism are listening to specific types of music, such as happy or sad music, they demonstrate specific activity in the brain that is related to emotional functioning. Specifically, their cortical and subcortical brain regions are activated which suggests that music triggers an emotional processing even when other non-music stimuli don’t have this same impact.
Please listen to this little duet by Pat Metheny (guitar) and Toots Thielemans (harmonica). Use headphones if you can. As ex musician, I tear up every time I listen to this little masterpiece.
Close your eyes and “soak up” the melody and improvisation. Listen to the musical poetry. If this does not affect you in a positive way, then I cannot be of help.
(I have no idea what “serious” means in this day and age, who takes anything seriously anymore, need not look any further than the recent US election.)
Google Prof H. sometime, pages and pages of reviews and such for his book.
or YouTube, one could spend all day watching his videoed talks.
Philosophers differ from non-philosophers in their intuitions about what consciousness is.[42] While most people have a strong intuition for the existence of what they refer to as consciousness,[30] skeptics argue that this intuition is too narrow, either because the concept of consciousness is embedded in our intuitions, or because we all are illusions. Gilbert Ryle, for example, argued that traditional understanding of consciousness depends on a Cartesian dualist outlook that improperly distinguishes between mind and body, or between mind and world. He proposed that we speak not of minds, bodies, and the world, but of entities, or identities, acting in the world. Thus, by speaking of “consciousness” we end up leading ourselves by thinking that there is any sort of thing as consciousness separated from behavioral and linguistic understandings.[43]
Types
Ned Block argued that discussions on consciousness often failed to properly distinguish phenomenal (P-consciousness) from access (A-consciousness), though these terms had been used before Block.[44] … (and so on)
What I’m doing is bringing it into the realm of an individual coming to terms with the knowledge said individual possesses.
By, providing an overall down to Earth framing.
My framing grew out of my own life of striving to keeping up on the scientific adventure of the past half century (and more), and to experience life to the fullest that a poor boy can.
Write4u,
regarding Anil Seth, he’s doing deep science and interpreting it for us, he is an expert. I don’t dismiss anything he says - even if I’ve complained about the way he’s used explanatory metaphors - that’s superficial to the full scope of the story he’s telling. Still keep in mind, to truly understand that ‘full scope’ requires advance knowledge (education) we don’t have.
Though the details do get utterly fascinating and interesting, still we laypeople should never forget how little of that we can actually accurately follow, and give the expert his dues.
I bring that up because regarding what I’m writing, it isn’t about the amazing details in themselves, it is about the overall basic understanding that those infinite details add up to.
My framing is focused on how we individuals deal with the knowledge we possess. I believe that’s an important distinction to keep in mind.
Don’t forget about the importance of “what will you be present to?”
Specific circumstances and interactions, bring with them a probability of arousing specific predicable emotions.
What circumstance do you choose to find yourself in, has bearing on the experience you live through. (An extreme example - hang out with the thugs, or hang out with the kayaker river rats, each produces a probability of a specific range of experience and emotions.)
Strive to be aware.
Well Evolution and biology and physiology isn’t a philosophical position.
Philosophical positions are for those who rather daydream, than do the hard work of observing and learning.
Well I’m here to tell you that isn’t always the case.
I see. The claim he makes is that by observing you can root out the building blocks of all these thoughts and beliefs or whatever and then put them back together.
The whole thing behind the “things don’t make you feel” was that it’s our thoughts and beliefs that do that. And if that were true then you could just edit them to whatever you want to always be happy. But to me that begged the question of what would make you do that if “things don’t make you feel”. My point was that something out of your control was at the root of it all.
All I know is that he dodged questions about it a lot and things didn’t really add up about it.
I asked a Buddhist guy I know and he said it was like “triggering an emotion” because the object doesn’t have emotional properties in it. Though part of me felt like that was splitting hairs since it’s still making you feel things.
Though I think it’s more like the guy is ignorant and out of touch from the stuff I read he writes. The recent one was about the election outcome and how it’s just a Narrative story when I told him about everything the guy plans to do and how last term he had was still bad and was only held in check by the guardrails that are now gone. Like…to me if you aren’t worried about him being president again you have no idea what is going on in the country let alone what his last one did and how it permanently altered the political landscape of the US, and then I got banned on there. Even reading the responses from other people I don’t think they grasp the scope of issues in the world.
for some reason he also thought that imagination proved his point as well. That if you can imagine how something feels then you can create any emotion you want. But I don’t know, even if you imagine something you can’t really choose how you feel about it.
But as for choice, I thought you didn’t believe in free will, so there would be no choice. Rather there was some realization or whatever that makes you change.
I often try to argue things from their view to find faults in it that other people can point out that I don’t see. If I used my own rational abilities I’d be stuck on a treadmill.
That song literally did nothing for me. But even so why would that prove anything? Not everyone likes the same music or feels the same about a song.
Red flags go up every time I hear someone say “good” music.
There are people much more stupid than him who have large followings. That’s how things work now. A million followers ain’t what it used to be. By “serious” I mean something more than fame, I mean scientific consensus, academic accolades, that his work is referenced in other work and is built upon.
Are you going to humor me and give it a few tries? It gets better each time you listen to it!
I have humored you and done research on your behalf and even found a term for your condition that suited you, by your own admission.
Afford me the same courtesy and take 5 minutes of your (valuable?) time, to see if my empathic reaction to your condition might yield a positive approach to and reaction in your psyche.
That’s you applying logic and critical thinking to the situation.
I agreed with that months ago, then you just bring it up again as if that never happened. Now you say it again as if we didn’t discuss it earlier. See why I get annoyed?
Since you did use them effectively, in this thread, I disagree.
It shows that people with autism can respond to something. I don’t need you to confirm or deny that. I know that it happens.
It does not. I already told you it did nothing for me. It also doesn’t change what I said about music. Not everyone likes the same stuff. I don’t know what you thought was going to happen by me agreeing the song is good or all that, I don’t really like it.
How do you think I feel when I think something is resolved but it sticks around. It feels like I read something that might prove him right and that snowballs into everything he said is right. But that’s hyperbolic, yet for some reason I can’t see that. I also feel like if I can’t convince them (people on his page) he’s wrong, that I’m missing something.
Imagination is one thing I’m stuck on because he says if we can create stuff in our head and imagine how it feels then we can create emotions.
Is there anything you can create just by imagining it? If you work hard, if give some love, you might get some back, but it’s not magic. It’s amazing and wonderful when it happens but but you don’t get happiness simply by imagining it.
Well some Buddhists I talked to say that’s what they do with Metta meditation, but that’s training yourself to love everyone, that’s not really picking and choosing or just imagining it to be true. I also have my doubts about their notion of unconditional love as it sounds more like an abstract concept of it without the work and actual attachment to it. Love without attachment is just fooling around IMO.
And that was my first thought too. I can try to imagine myself angry and furious but it’s not close to the real thing. Same thing with being happy. But then I wonder if maybe I’m holding myself back to avoid proving him right.
And furthermore I back down if I can’t convince him or the people on there they’re wrong about this. They claim otherwise and…well I don’t know.
I know he used an example in the lesson I linked about his cousin or something getting hit in the face with a ball (young kid) and just looking at him and then he acted happy and so did the kid. I guess the point is something about being taught to react a certain way to things or something like that.
But even if that story is true (and all he has for examples are personal stories) it’s just one case, and it doesn’t really prove anything. I’ve seen plenty of kids react by crying if they get hit in the face with something, I wouldn’t say their parents taught them that.
Here it is:
"A lot of nature, you can feel emotions from nature. But a lot of, and I’d say 80% 90%, of our emotions come as our reactions to events. And those reactions are based on conditioned responses. I remember I was playing with my nephew, and he was about three. And we were kicking the ball back and forth. I kicked it to him and only went like halfway. And so I’m running up to the ball to go kick it the rest of the way. And I’m looking down at the ball and I go to kick it. I didn’t realize he was running towards the ball too. And he’s like, 10 feet away, and I kick it, it’s this little softball, but it hits him in the face. And he looked at me with this surprised look, not knowing how to respond. This is a new experience. “I don’t know what this means.” “I don’t know what I do with this.”
And I saw that surprise look of not knowing. And I threw up my hands and smiled, and I laughed. And he laughed. You’ll see this when kids fall down. They’re learning to walk or they stumbled. Two or three or four years old. They’ll look around, they’ll see who notices. They’ll see how they respond. And to see a parent rushing to save them and go “Oh no, no. Are you okay?”. And then they start crying. Like they’ve contemplated “Okay, I should react with crying”. That’s what it looks like to me.
One of the things that we realize or distort is this notion that “Oh, this person makes me so angry.” “They make me so sad.” “They make me so happy.” And the way we’ve hypnotized ourselves with thinking and saying that sort of thing multiple times over the years. And now you come to this realization like “Wait a minute, I’ve been giving my power away. I give my power away to this person.” That’s not what’s been happening."
I find the story suspect but that’s neither here nor there. The point is it’s one case.
I know he talks about giving power away but like…that’s how brains and humans work. We are influenced and shaped by environment and everything we come into contact with and we don’t really control what impacts us. Two people can hear the same thing and one is convinced and the other isn’t. You can’t give away what you never had in the first place.
He was taught by that Don Miguel Ruiz guy and because he was convinced by what he said the rest is history. I read the guy’s book, it’s pretty much a How To for confirmation bias, which explains my interactions with everyone on there and the guy’s lessons.
Actually I think that’s important. This is typical of him and his repetitious rhetoric. Parents do this all the time, react with laughter and tell a kid “you’re okay”, instead of panicking. He didn’t discover this and it’s barely related to his “give your power away” theme.
You keep showing me you use reasoning, then you say you can’t. I do have other things to do, so if I ignore you, this is why.
My problem is that I don’t believe it because, in my mind, it feels like confirmation bias to argue against something that is distressing to me. It’s sorta built on the notion that “truth hurts” and that if I am arguing against something someone said that causes me duress then it’s just confirmation bias and me wanting to deny reality.
If I were to paint a picture it’s like a child wanting to say something important to adults in a conversation and just being told “that’s nice X” and then everyone ignoring me.
It doesn’t matter how well I reason things out if, at the end of the day, I don’t believe it. I always feel like I need other people to approve or back me up before I go forward with this.
I’m not entirely sure what you mean here. Do you mean that he is right that it’s based on conditioning? If so then what does that mean exactly, that our feelings aren’t genuine but just programmed.
That is not logical. The truth can hurt, or not. It’s not true or not based on how much it hurts.
that’s ridiculous. that means you don’t believe what you just said. there isn’t some “knowing” that comes before reasoning, there’s just reasoning. Needing others approval is something different. You can deal with that in a number ways, including using your reasoning skills.
You have some black/white thinking going on that I’ve tried to untangle before. “conditioning” and “programmed” are two different things. So, you can condition your thinking without that being the same as programming. Even the word “genuine” is a weird word to apply to feelings. No matter what I say, you’ll change what you mean by that. So, not going to bother.
I’m aware of that, I’ve been trying to convince myself of that for years but it never lands and I can’t figure out why. The truth of a statement is not related to how it makes me feel, just because it hurts me doesn’t mean it’s right. I keep telling myself that…
It’s complicated. I can reason well enough, but the final result is sort of like handing in a paper or homework for the teacher to grade. It feels like I’m doing an assignment but I can’t be sure of any of it unless someone “grades” it.
As for needing others approval, I’ve tried that before. I’ve tried to reason my way out of it, but it ultimately came down to some sort of confirmation bias that I explained above. In my mind it reads like just wanting to believe what makes me feel better instead of what is true (and yes I know you mentioned that already, but I’m explaining things here to paint a picture). I don’t fully get why I need other’s approval, maybe it’s insecurity or something else. I just know that mentally I can’t move on unless I get it, and preferable from the person who said the thing that bugs me (which doesn’t make sense).
I want to know though. Is programming like just hitting buttons over and over again? IS conditioning just exposing someone to something over and over again.
As for genuine…I’ve heard people say that often. Usually in regards to how they really feel and not what they are pretending to feel. Like coming clean about hating something while they were trying to either be polite or put on a front for some reason or another.
I’m not a therapist. This stuff requires a relationship with someone who can establish trust with you and give you plans to follow, maybe medicine too. As long as you are free to argue and be combative, I can’t help you.
