Why do we like avoiding the reality of our bodies/

Science and Technology
1

In another thread, Write4U (whom I do respect, still I look at things differently), brought up Max Tegmark with his consciousness of math ideas. I don’t imply there’s anything wrong with thinking about how we can use math to describe reality, but don’t make a religion out of it.

I think Max, and most current celebrity philosophers, are missing the point (and getting lost within their own genius mindscapes, which are constrained by ego) when they expound on “consciousness”, “intelligence”, etc. They seem to ignore the fact that we are creatures who inhabit a body. The answers to those questions are to be found within the biological reality of our own bodies, which after all is what creates our mind - the meta-physical manifestation of our own unique body communicating with itself and the outside world.

Philosophy is simply our mind imaging questions and answers and telling the stories. Appreciating the virtues and drawbacks in that isn’t possible without also appreciating, all those thoughts are products of our own minds. Our Mindscapes are woven together tapestries of all we know. And we know nothing, if not through our bodies collecting and processing reflections of the Physical Reality we are embedded within.

 

All that intellectual philosophical schlagsahne happens within our little pea pick’n heads. Nothing wrong with thinking about it and making up stories about ultimate questions & answers, creating Gods, the afterlife, and all the rest, but appreciate all of it originates from within ourselves, not beamed down from some other ‘more real reality.’

 

Trying to make sense of things through creating stories that help explain the observations is a fundamentally human thing, it makes us successes. Still, it comes from creatures dealing with their environments and cumulative change over time. That’s worth musing on. I don’t know how the rest of our human condition, and the questions we want answered, can make sense without such a fundamental self awareness.

 

 

2

Despite our desire to want to avoid them, certain realities are not avoidable, like the need for sleep, and aging and the loss of strength and ability that comes with it. These are universal to the human existence and inescapable.

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@heartnsoul19, fair enough, and these inescapable realities are also rather universal to all living animals and even plants to a large extent, if we widen our field of vision, such as expanding day/night, to Earth’s summer/winter.

Now, what can we do with that understanding?

4

Most people are totally engaged with the physical world – just not in a way OP likes.

5
In another thread, Write4U (whom I do respect, still I look at things differently), brought up Max Tegmark with his consciousness of math ideas. I don’t imply there’s anything wrong with thinking about how we can use math to describe reality, but don’t make a religion out of it.
The respect is mutual. But I don't understand why you would associate Tegmark's Mathematical Universe with religion. It is the exact opposite. Religion is based on faith in an unknowable magical intentional force that we should not even try to understand, it cannot even be modelled. The very concept is illogical.

OTOH, a mathematical universe is perfectly logical. In fact, it is axiomatic. The evidence for objective values being processed via mathematical functions is inescapable. If everything in the universe acts in a way that can be described with human scientific symbolic language, there can be only one conclusion: All identified universal constants are mathematical equations. That’s why they work and produced every expressed physical or implicated abstract pattern. This proposition can be logically described with the notion that the mathematical nature of the universe endows it with a self-referential quasi-intelligent evolutionary creative function.

What a lot of people seem to reject is the concept that such a state of affairs can evolve and produce everything we see, including chemistry, biology, abiogenesis, life, awareness, consciousness and finally, self-aware intelligent functions.

Instead, all kinds of magical stories are invented which frankly fly in the face of all scientific notions and rest on the invocation of a self-aware intelligence as a motivated causal starting point, when describing the universe and its workings with human religious symbolic language. That leaves only one conclusion: All identified universal constants are magical equations?

So who is avoiding our reality? IMO, every complex atomic pattern from galaxies to every living biome is an expression of universal mathematical potential.

By Occam’s Razor, the fundamental simplicity of demonstrated abstract mathematical values and functions throughout universe make universal mathematical properties the logical candidate. Moreover, there is no valid alternative being presented by anyone anywhere else.

6

I’ve never seen Occams Razor get so complicated in my life.

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Most people are totally engaged with the physical world — just not in a way OP likes.
Well sure, there's no way to get around it, deal with it constantly, or you die in a hurry.

It’s respecting the boundaries between our thoughts and physical reality, that I’m talking about, and that is an altogether different story.

And that’s where Tegmark loses me, because it’s the same old western religious drive to define what reality is.

 

It’s the fact he thinks he’s representing Reality, rather representing an interesting intellectual tool for better understanding a reality that is beyond us (at least outside of our mindscapes), but dictates all we know and do.

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Isn’t it the ultimate goal of science to unravel the mysteries of the Universe? Is it possible that knowing might finally enlighten us?

So far we are acting like children in a sandlot, kicking in each other’s sandcastles.

It’s the fact he thinks he’s representing Reality, rather representing an interesting intellectual tool for better understanding a reality that is beyond us (at least outside of our mindscapes), but dictates all we know and do.
I get the feeling that you think reality and life is more interesting not knowing everything about it. It would kill the Majesty? I'm not so sure.
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About the OP.

Our bodies know nothing, they are biological machines designed to protect and nourish that 6lb lump on top that runs it all. Bodies don’t know their gender, the brain does. And that’s where all the gender identities originate. Gender is what YOU (your brain) believe you are.

If your brain happens to sit on the wrong body, it confuses the brain (You), not the body.

So which part of the anatomy has priority? I’d say the brain (You).

The body is a mathematical pattern. “YOU” are a metaphysical intelligence that is an emergent potential from the mathematical electrochemical actions and reactions that make up your physical reality, the atomic patterns that organize your brain.

Actually, each human biome is a universe in itself, running on the regulatory signals from the unconscious mechanistic brain (interoception), so that the metaphysical conscious You can utilize your brain for making motivated “best choices” in the exercise of living.

10

You’re repeating old assumptions that recent decades of neuroscience research has shown to be misplaced. But you need to read up on the likes of Antonio Damasio and Mark Solms and their findings in the new field of neuropsychoanalysis to understand why.

I get the feeling that you think reality and life is more interesting not knowing everything about it. It would kill the Majesty? I’m not so sure.
No nothing like that. The majesty is there. It's more an acceptance of a fundamental fact of human life.

At #347586 you make clear you haven’t been keeping up on developing neurophysiology and it feels like the fact of our evolution hasn’t really broken through the postcard phase of understanding.

Our bodies know nothing, they are biological machines designed to protect and nourish that 6lb lump on top that runs it all. Bodies don’t know their gender, the brain does. And that’s where all the gender identities originate. Gender is what YOU (your brain) believe you are.

If your brain happens to sit on the wrong body, it confuses the brain (You), not the body.

So which part of the anatomy has priority? I’d say the brain (You).


Our bodies know nothing? Who taught you how to breath and eat and shit? Who catches your fall when you suddenly slip on ice? etc.

The body is a mathematical pattern. “YOU” are a metaphysical intelligence that is an emergent potential from the mathematical electrochemical actions and reactions that make up your physical reality, the atomic patterns that organize your brain.
Think a little deeper about what you've said there, because it really is more religious/philosophical thinking than scientific fact-based rational thinking. We are a complex biological being, if you want to play Zeno's Paradox you can split things endlessly and find yourself within the molecular storm, but that's not our body any more. It's a tiny, tiny detail, and not the answer to everything, because you've left the actual organism far behind and metaphorically simply taken us back to the beginnings of evolution.

Sure, “YOU” by which you’re actually saying my “MINDSCAPE” - is a metaphysical intelligence. But it’s a metaphysical intelligence created by and housed within my unique body and experiences intent on prospering. It’s not transferable. It’s the inside reflection of that creature who possesses it.

Isn’t everything you know absorbed through your body which is fundamentally an incredible sensing organ that goes well beyond hearing, seeing, feeling. Doesn’t it reason that your body constrains what your mind can know. If you’ve never slept outside and felt the amazing moment the warming sun comes up and starts shining on your frigid body - you’ll never know what it’s like no matter how wonderfully written or filmed the experience is. And the impact of that glowing sun upon my body goes well beyond the warming rays and actually impacts my state of mind. That’s because my mind is a reflection of what’s happening to my body.

To reduce our brain to that six pound lump on top, that is some discreet organism, is a total misrepresentation of what we know.

Gut feelings turn out to be a physiological thing and not just ‘in your head’. I have the sad feeling that you haven’t done any listening to, or reading up on, the work of Mark Solms and others? Get away from the endless philosophical hair splitting (and dreams of ultimate all encompassing knowledge) and focus on the actual physical wet biological evolution that unfolded upon this planet.

Nothing about that is about denigrating scientific knowledge, or the fact that we have learned quite a bit about our world and our selves. It is about recognizing and respecting ultimate limitations.

Of course, we live in a society where limitations is a bad word, but again that’s philosophy. Reality itself is full of limitations we’d better recognize or we suffer the consequences. ( Just look at recent global weather catastrophes these days, if you don’t believe me, while sociopathic billionaires are fixated on a Me First joy ride into space.)

 

11
Our bodies know nothing? Who taught you how to breath and eat and shit? Who catches your fall when you suddenly slip on ice? etc.
Your sub-conscious brain. The process is called Homeostasis. Consider that when your brain is under anaesthesia, your body is just an object, but it still maintains homeostasis. OTOH, all motor functions, such as walking (a process of controlled falling) are processes of the conscious brain. Try walking when intoxicated.

Homeostasis is a sub-conscious process in the brain and neural network. Aside from the symbiotic bacteria, it controls all internal bodily functions, without any conscious knowledge, unless things go wrong. It is your sub-conscious brain that keeps you alive!

I stipulate that biological cells do have memory, but that is not directly related to data processes in the neural system.

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Our bodies know nothing, they are biological machines designed to protect and nourish that 6lb lump on top that runs it all. Bodies don’t know their gender, the brain does. And that’s where all the gender identities originate. Gender is what YOU (your brain) believe you are.
Hmmm, did you just say that, the body doesn't know its gender? Please think about that a bit.

Gender identity “coming purely from the brain”, doesn’t make any sense, physiological or biological. Where are those hormones coming from?

I fear this conversation isn’t possible with only a rough 20th century concept of what humans are made of and what goes on inside of our bodies.

That’s why you need to spend some time listening to real doctors and not just slick talking philosophers!

I think we are scrambling the issue. Not sure where gender identity comes into the main discussion. You know, even gender identity usually has a physical component that’s steering one’s personality. Then it bangs up against society and others expectations, but that’s a different discussion.

What I’m talking about is that everything we experience and know gets filtered through our unique bodies into our unique brains, then into our unique minds, which produces our Mindscape, the reality each of us lives within.

13
Gender is what YOU (your brain) believe you are. -- Write4
I'm not sure how to parse that one out. I guess it's basically true if you have a broad enough definition of "brain". Or, are you saying that gender is a social construct, so you are told what the word means and you construct your belief from the time you can begin to think about such things?

Where this really doesn’t fit is the stories of people who accept the sex they were assigned and no one questions it until some hormone or DNA test is done, and they are told they are not that. Do we then just accept the person’s feelings, knowing they are based on what they were told they are, or should they explore those feelings, or do we go with the scientist’s test results?

14
@write4u Your sub-conscious brain. The process is called Homeostasis. Consider that when your brain is under anaesthesia, your body is just an object, but it still maintains homeostasis.
Exactly, "but it still maintains homeostasis" because your body is NOT just an object. My point precisely.

You make sub-conscious sound like an on off switch. Turns out not to be like that at all, way more complicated.

Quite literally folds within folds of cumulative harmonic constructive complexity doing fantastical stuff to keep us creatures alive, and the mind is the conscious reflection of the sum total of all that, the conductor and the product if you wanna get poetic. Mark Solms puts it well when he asks: “What killed the golfer, the lightening, or the thunder? It’s a silly question because they are simply different aspects of the same phenomena.”

But you gotta do your homework and catch up with the bio/medical breakthroughs and happenings to fully appreciate what I’m going on about.

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You make sub-conscious sound like an on off switch. Turns out not to be like that at all, way more complicated.
No, the sub-conscious is always on. It's the conscious part of the brain that has an on/off switch. Anil Seth begins his lecture with: "while I was under anesthesia I could have been out for 5 min, 5 hrs, 5 days, 5 years, I simply wasn't there.
But you gotta do your homework and catch up with the bio/medical breakthroughs and happenings to fully appreciate what I’m going on about.
CC, on another science site I have a 100+ page thread dedicated to the research in the possible causes of consciousness, such as ORCH OR (Hameroff/Penrose) and IIT (Tononi), and why I believe consciousness emerges from the Microtubules inside the neural network of the brain.

I have done my homework for the past several years in dedicated research on Microtubules, this amazing self-assembling nano-scale dipolar coil that transports electrochemical data throughout the entire bodily neural network and is present in the brain by the trillions.

 

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Yes, I know. Sometimes it feels like Microtubules is your answer to everything, but what do they really teach us? No doubt that are endlessly fascinating a crucial to living creatures, but imbuing them with metaphysical powers, is reaching way beyond The Science and into our imaginative Mindscapes.

Why hasn’t Antonio Damasio and Mark Solms shown up on your reading list? Trust me they will open up whole new vista’s to your understanding.


Sir Roger Penrose Kt OM FRS is a British mathematician, mathematical physicist, philosopher of science and Nobel Laureate in Physics.

Stuart Hameroff is an American anesthesiologist and professor at the University of Arizona known for his studies of consciousness and his controversial contention that consciousness originates from quantum states in neural microtubules.

Orchestrated objective reduction (Orch OR) is a controversial hypothesis that postulates that consciousness originates at the quantum level inside neurons, rather than the conventional view that it is a product of connections between neurons. The mechanism is held to be a quantumprocess called objective reduction that is orchestrated by cellular structures called microtubules. It is proposed that the theory may answer the hard problem of consciousness and provide a mechanism for free will.[1] ...

Orchestrated objective reduction has been criticized from its inception by mathematicians, philosophers,[9][10][11][12] and scientists.[13][14][15] The criticism concentrated on three issues: Penrose's interpretation of Gödel's theorem; Penrose's abductive reasoning linking non-computability to quantum events; and the brain's unsuitability to host the quantum phenomena required by the theory, since it is considered too "warm, wet and noisy" to avoid decoherence. ...

Giulio Tononi is a neuroscientist and psychiatrist who holds the David P. White Chair in Sleep Medicine, as well as a Distinguished Chair in Consciousness Science, at the University of Wisconsin. He is best known for his Integrated Information Theory (IIT), a mathematical theory of consciousness, which he has proposed since 2004 and the symbol of which is Phi (φ).

Integrated information theory (IIT) attempts to provide a framework capable of explaining why some physical systems (such as human brains) are conscious,[1] why they feel the particular way they do in particular states (e.g. why our visual field appears extended when we gaze out at the night sky),[2] and what it would take for other physical systems to be conscious (are dogs conscious? what about unborn babies? or computers?).[3] In principle, once the theory is mature and has been tested extensively in controlled conditions, the IIT framework may be capable of providing a concrete inference about whether any physical system is conscious, to what degree it is conscious, and what particular experience it is having. In IIT, a system's consciousness (what it is like subjectively) is conjectured to be identical to its causal properties (what it is like objectively). Therefore it should be possible to account for the conscious experience of a physical system by unfolding its complete causal powers (see Central identity).[4]

IIT was proposed by neuroscientist Giulio Tononi in 2004.[5] The latest version of the theory, labeled IIT 3.0, was published in 2014.[6][1] However, the theory is still in development, as is evident from the later publications improving on the formalism presented in IIT 3.0.[7][2][8][9]. ...  (WIKI)

visit:   integratedinformationtheory_org

{I've gotten the impression it's sort of like the String Theory, all sorts of reasons to like the approach, still waiting for the approach to achieve fruition.}

Various aspects of IIT have also been subject to criticism. These include:

IIT proposes conditions which are necessary for consciousness, but critics suggest that they may not be entirely sufficient.[42]
IIT is said to claim that its axioms are self-evident.[43][WIKI clarification needed]
Functionalist philosophers have criticised IIT for being non-functionalist.[43]
The definition of consciousness in IIT has been directly criticised.[42][43][WIKI clarification needed]

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To every science there is a philosophical backdrop.

I dare say much of the thinking behind much of that is firmly rooting in the Abrahamic monotheistic mindset, if evolved away from religion, it's still shackled by its human egocentric superiority complex, that is, that we can Know with Certainty.  Or at least have a god given right to know and feel cheated if we can't define everything.

When recognizing and appreciating the stark divide between our Physical Bodies and outside Physical Reality  v. this Human Mindscape of ours - which is a meta-physical creation of, the Creature Body interacting with the Physical Environment, we shackle our understanding by all too easily being seduced by our own genius and thinking our ideas are an actual authoritative representation of Physical Reality, rather than a Spectator's Best Guesstimate.