[quote=“anandhaqq, post:200, topic:7931”]
Then if we are … Then there is not anything higher than the body. Then there is no consciousness. Then the moments of awe in Life, don’t exist; then the moments of utter oneness with existence, let us call mindlessness, don’t exist; then the moments, when you utterly immersed into the rivering of things, without even a ripple of thought, don’t exist.
That does not follow at all. Your mind is capable of experiencing all this wonderful enlightenment. When we share it with others its name “empathy” and is caused by the “mirror neural network”.
. Then if we are … Immediately, killing an innocent bird, and murdering an innocent child is the same. Then, no penalty shall be put over the perpetrator, because no dignity ahead we have from a bird. Because, no consciousness we are endowed with.
Do you eat chicken, or goat, or fish? That is killing innocent life in order to survive.
Life must die in order for life to exist. 95% of all life that ever existed is dead, to make room for new life to appear and thrive, until it too must die and make way for the next generation of life
Murdering a human being is another matter. Very few animals murder their own and if they do it is for good reason of maintaining natural balance or as a part of the evolutionary process. It’s name is “natural selection” and is a mindless process of selecting for advantageous survival skills ensuring the ability to procreate.
Your body also possesses all the senses through which you witness the environment you are embedded within.
Why belittle your body, it is the most amazing biological machinery around.
Fundamentally, it’s turning out that our mind and consciousness is the inside reflection of our body/brain interacting with its dynamic environment.Consciousness is an interaction, not a thing! It’s simple, if mind-blowing, yet explainable and understandable.
Mark Solms discusses his new theory of consciousness that returns emotions to the centre of mental life. Mark’s book “The Hidden Spring” is available now: https://geni.us/CWaA Watch the Q&A: https://youtu.be/gmOzBePcRg4
Understanding why we feel a subjective sense of self and how it arises in the brain seems like an impossible task. Mark explores the subjective experiences of hundreds of neurological patients, many of whom he treated. Their uncanny conversations help to expose the brain’s obscure reaches.
Mark Solms has spent his entire career investigating the mysteries of consciousness. Best known for identifying the brain mechanisms of dreaming and for bringing psychoanalytic insights into modern neuroscience, he is director of neuropsychology in the Neuroscience Institute of the University of Cape Town, honorary lecturer in neurosurgery at the Royal London Hospital School of Medicine, and an honorary fellow of the American College of Psychiatrists.
[quote=“anandhaqq, post:198, topic:7931”]
But who is the thinker then? Who is the enity who can think? Who is that which is witnessing the thoughts? [/quote]
Your body is the doer.
Your body also possesses all the senses through which you witness the environment >you are embedded within.
Why belittle your body, it is the most amazing biological machinery around.
Just to correct the record. I did not say that. I quoted it from, anandhaqq
However, I do agree with you . Your conscious brain has evolved for survival of the body. Which is Anil Seth’s position also.
That doesn’t follow. I don’t need anything higher than the body to then assign value to mine or other bodies. Quite the opposite. My existence is tied to the existence of others, to birds, bugs, trees, and air. If I harm them, it harms me. My actions have consequences.
. The disappearance of the ego is the disappearance of what Gurdjieff calls identification.
We get identified with everything, whatsoever we are close to.
. You are very close to the body, therefore you start thinking: “I’m the body.” You feel hungry, and you say, “I am hungry”. That is not right. The body is hungry, you are the knower, you are the one who knows that the body is hungry.
. Sometimes you are insulted and the mind feels miserable, but you are not miserable. You are the knower, you are that who notices that the mind is miserable.
. You are not the mind, otherwise your own psychobiological structure would naturally be identified with thoughts and emotions, since your very birth … it would be a given biological phenomenon. And were you born as Jealousy, were you born as Hatred, were you born as Indifference? I’m asking you … ?! No, otherwise, moments of total cessation of those emotions would not exist. And you actually, have moments when you are thoughtless … when you are emotionless. When you are one with existence.
. You are not Hatred, You are not Indifference, You are not Jealousy. You have them, but you are not them …
. You are not the body. Cutting your arm, and identifying yourself with your cutted harm would be quite stupid. Who are you? I’m my cutted harm …
. So, who are you … ?
. That’s what the sages of the past, have been questing for thousands of years …
We had a person here a few years ago who tried to convince us that we should detach from everything. He got it from Buddhism, but he was wrong. I don’t know where you are getting this idea that we aren’t our bodies, our thoughts, or our emotions.
For Buddhism, attachment is a “fetter”, meaning, you can have things, like hunger or fear, just don’t attach to them, don’t get hooked on pleasure or obsessed with avoiding pain, either one leads you away from Nirvana.
Detachment is not the solution to attachment. You can’t switch off your feelings. Modern medicine and culture has taken this to an extreme, where people believe they can do the right ritual, take the right pill, and turn off the “bad” stuff. But this idea of detaching from something has been around for a long time. Whatever you call it; our sinful appendages, our bad karma, or our brain chemical imbalances.
. Totally agree with you. Repressed people, who make great effort to be detached to that which is wordly … end up sooner or later to be whether consciously or unconsiously attached to that which they are repressing. The shadow ends up hunting them … whether subtly or not.
. That’s the Jungian concept of the shadow too.
. I’m not a Buddhist. I’m not for attachment … I’m not for detachment either. I’m not for the extremes. Because as Love, easily can become Indifference … Attachment easily can become Detachment. Extremes easily, switch around.
. I’m exactly at the middle way …
. I’m for the harmony of the myriad things which are … here-now.
. Man, I know a bit about religions. Please, don’t teach me what is Buddhism through a Internet website …
Yeah. Dripping with irony. Buddhism was used for comparison. I noted that I can’t tell where you’re coming from. But also pointed out that the general idea you are stating has many variations and manifestations. I’m not trying to teach you anything, I’m trying to reach an understanding.
The idea that we are not any part of our body, that we are not our feelings attracts me. In fact, for me, our feelings are produced by our brain cells and our relationship to our environnement.
For the world, we are defined by our actions. but our actions are not us, even if we produce them.
Let me use a very crude image : water is a mix of oxygen and hydrogen, but is neither. In the same way, we are not our components, we are more. After our death our components go back to the world and we are no more.
It means that we are more than our components without any transcendance.
[quote=“morgankane01, post:210, topic:7931”]
Let me use a very crude image : water is a mix of oxygen and hydrogen, but is neither. In the same way, we are not our components, we are more. After our death our components go back to the world and we are no more.
Yes, I agree with that, however “water” is an emergent property of oxygen and hydrogen. Atoms are not wet , molecules are not wet, yet when we have large collection of H2O at a certain temperature the substance acquires a property of liquid “wetness”. OTOH at a lower temperature the substance acquire a property of solid “dryness” as ice.
According to Tegmark it is that H2O can have emergent physical states depending on the molecular arrangement. It is the arrangement of the molecular pattern that determines the emergence of “wetness” or “dryness”.
It means that we are more than our components without any transcendence.
Exactly, There is very little atomic or molecular difference between a human head and a head of lettuce, so why is one consciously intelligent and the other in a vegetative state?
It is the way the atoms and molecules are arranged that produce an emergent property of consciousness or a candidate for the salad bowl.
Tegmark cites an example of being frozen to death. There is absolutely no difference in the number or type of molecules in a frozen body as compared to a living body.
So what is the difference?
The difference is in the arrangement of the molecules that determines whether you are dead or alive. I have wracked my brains, but cannot find a counterargument to that very simple observation.
And of course , if this is a solid observation then his proposal that consciousness or intelligence lies in the pattern arrangement of the constituent parts must be seriously considered as a possibility.
And that’s where we trip the light fantastic - next he tells you an atom is like a mini solar system with a small nucleus and way out there some electrons are orbiting like little planets.
This stuff is intellectual entertainment. Heck he doesn’t even distinguish between atom and molecules!!!
Yes it all comes down to structure, so stop belittling structure, just to supposedly build it up again.
This is why Tegmark has never impressed me even when I’ve tried real hard to shut down my thought process and simply listen absorb, he plays with the absurd too much for my tastes.
He’s too into telling stories and wowing an audience to have time for serious constructive teaching - but then they’ve learned boring don’t sell - gotta be provocative, blow 'em away so they don’t know what’s up or down - now that sells, runs with it. Tegmark, Chalmers, Hoffman, they are selling daydreams for fun and profit - sometimes being a genius isn’t a blessing.
Have any of them given evolution more than lip service?
We can’t figure out consciousness from the top down!
It’s like saying totally focusing on gates and switches will tell you what a computer is - it won’t, there are other things you need to understand before individual components have a chance to start making sense.
A stochastic process that orders the universe is the way in which our underdeveloped mind understands these phenomena … let evolution act for a few tens of millennia and our descendants (if we do not annihilate them before their birth) will understand these ideas as today we interpret the existence of a god for fire, another for wind and a third for rain, etc.
God (the capital letter is only grammatical!) Is a superfluous, unnecessary hypothesis. Neither more nor less than to take, to prove the Pythagorean theorem, the hypothesis that the sum of the angles of a triangle is 180º.
But I don’t believe that is what Tegmark is proposing.
He is not looking at the pattern of gates and switches as much as he is looking at data processing patterns in the brain (and body), how they relate, integrate , combine, verify, and elicit chemical reactions that make us experience emotions.
The difference between a human head and a head of lettuce is not the molecules, it is the arrangement of molecules and how they relate to each other.
If your brain is in a state of comfort data flows freely among the neurons. If your brain freezes data cannot flow and you cease to exist.
It is the pattern of data processing what elicits conscious cognition.
. I’m not from any school of thought. I’m a synthesis of all … A symphony of all. That’s exactly what my name means, BTW … haha
. Human’s consciousness is wide enough to not be constrained by the others … by the mob … by thao …
. Human’s consciousness is wide enough to involve paradoxes.
. But Man is still not a Man. Man is still to be born.
. We still are the biblical mustard seed, yet to be blossomed into a full-fledged human being … Or in other words … if you wish so … Übermensch … or in other words … if you wish so… Zarathustra.
. Man is still The Straw Man … Filled by straw; filled by dead ideologies … by dead doctrines; not alive, creative and vivid systems of being.
. Yes, Eliot is right in his poem - The Hollow Man.
lordie, lordie, what does one do with something like that?
And consciousness is the personal experience of physical creatures interacting with a physical environment, with its array of creatures and other living things.
