Young Sheldon discovers, it's all in his head

General Discussion
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I watched a fun little program “Young Sheldon” were he’s started college and a philosophy course (season 4#7). Of course the professor is introducting Descartes’ lesson: “I think therefore I am.” In excellent comedic form it portrays the existential trap those few words can create.

The class resulted in young Sheldon realizing that it was all in his head!
Ergo, he can’t be sure of anything, ergo, nothing matters, and so on.
I like thinking this existential crisis is a right of passage for all introspective individuals. I enjoyed the treatment of the topic and my thoughts have been going back to it for a couple days now.

So guess it’s time to write it out of my system.

Okay, Descartes came up with a compelling philosophical conclusion, the only thing we people could know for sure is the thoughts within our head. It’s the best he could do back then, before 1650. Meaning Descartes was never in a position to seriously ask the next question. Therefore, our thoughts/consciousness remained the domain of God given gifts.

Because no other explanation was imaginable.

This is 2024, we have enough accumulated evolutionary, physiologic, neurologic knowledge these days to have an impressively detailed understanding of neurology and most all* the different levels of bodily sensing organs and how they work together with the body and external environment and circumstance, to produce our thoughts and consciousness and sense of qualia. (*the march of science is full of surprises)

Look closely at Charmers Hard Problem, it’s a religious quest recalling ancient debates, but not a serious modern scientific question. It is a philosophical artifact, and an impossible scientific question.

To be confused about why a bat feels like a bat, is to ignore the evolutionary origins of the bats biology. A bat feels like a bat, because it inhabits a bat’s body and exists within a bat’s reality. What else could it possibly feel like, and if it felt like nothing it was eaten out of existence long ago. Our body is what creates the absolute sense of self and qualia.

Why does a rose smell like a rose, the qualia? That stuff is like expecting nature to prove itself to us.

The qualia of a rose, or a lover, is created by the entire body interacting with its environment and circumstance in a symphony, folds within folds of constructive harmonic poetry in motion produces the qualia within our thoughts - the “stuff” of your body, getting on with living and communicating with itself.

That isn’t simply poetic words, neurological scientists are imaging various signaling, thinking, consciousness cascading through our body/brain in ever increasing detail. The thing to realize is that it’s not limited to the brain creating our thoughts, it’s our body/brain.

Brains have tendrils reaching into every millimeter of our body, with independent outposts throughout gastrointestinal system, and other support systems for their own obvious, evolutionary reasons.

Very recently medical science has discovered that the connective tissues between our various muscle bundles, are way more involved in monitoring the body than ever suspected. Scientists have a great deal of internally consistent evidence - enough to say with pragmatic certainty that our Consciousness is the inside reflection of our bodies in action. (Solms)

There is no need for cosmic skyhooks, it’s Earth where life was created and thrived. That’s where awareness and consciousness is needed! Thinking has been getting honed since the first cells started thriving. That is profoundly important information for starting to understand yourself, your - me, myself, and I.

The Answers are to be found in Evolution.

Gaining a deep bottom up biological understanding of where your own body came from is empowering. Like solving a great puzzle and arriving at home. Finding that science can help me make sense of the philosophical questions that have plagued minds since forever. That feels big to me. I know who I am. Simple and wonderful.

If the afterlife is important, having a deep awakening that one is a filament in Earth’s Evolutionary Pageant, becomes very comforting. When the dynamo of your body dies, and consciousness expires, your echo’s remain. All you touched had rippling impacts. This gives me reason to try and do good and be good, and hope when I fail.

The realization that life is short, your moment is now, embrace it, use it or lose it.

Where does that leave our gods?

Probably pretty much where they are now.

God’s are infused in the power that people want to put into them.

That will never change.

But, for god sake, can we please start recognizing that the Physical Reality, the stuff on the other side of our thoughts, that is the biology, the geology, the global heat and moisture distribution engine that creates Earth and us, all of that - is beyond the purview of our Gods.

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Twisting the question. Nothing new there. You don’t get far from the tautology because it doesn’t fit your theme. You just flip to “it’s evolution” and are satisfied with that. But, what evolution? What do we know about our evolved body/brain?

We know our frontal cortex generates ideas. Not always good ones. Sometimes it listens to the monkey brain, and rationalizes eating cake. With more frontal and less “quick” thinking we can develop a healthy food and exercise program. Maybe it’s “just” survival, some bacteria wanting to reproduce and this complex system evolved to do it.

Its all interesting. It’s all worth talking about. It all leads to greater happiness. Except some people have to tell others that their thoughts are faulty, that their feelings about wind aren’t worth thinking. That there is no tiger in the bushes. How do you know? My ancestor believed there was, and survived.

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Have you ever tried googling it.

Heck, add “Solms” and it gets really interesting!

Wait, Googling is not enough, one needs to read about it with some honest curiosity.
Lots to learn about, lots to digest and internalize.

Or, are you arguing that physical reality doesn’t not exist, that it’s simply a tautology?

Are you arguing that all we know is in our head and the product of our imagine?

You really think our imagination is that good?

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Do you know what a rhetorical question is? I answer it immediately. My point is, you don’t. Your answer is, Solms, lots to digest, and asking me what I’m saying right after I just said it.

The point of the tiger story is, evolution creates thinking for survival, it’s not always concerned about what’s true, just what gets you through the next crisis. We are getting to where we can ask those counterintuitive questions, and that’s great, but what’s more important, everyone knowing facts about brain chemistry, or more people feeling connected to the environment and community?

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Truth is irrelevant to evolution!
It’s a useless metaphor to wave about.
Evolution is about learning and reacting and close enough being good enough.

What’s important is learning to understand who you yourself are,
within the greater scope of life on Earth.

A huge part of that is appreciating that your body is a product of biological evolution here upon this singular magnificent Earth and perhaps that there’s really nothing new under the sun. That is, the key to understanding our selves is to understand where we physical came from.

No I’m not suggesting this is about trying to convince the God Fearing, nope this is about helping the science literate crowd, that their science, and the accumulating evidence we love to learn about, is the key to understanding what’s going on inside out heads and hears.

I know from my own experience that science offers substantive spiritual/mystical challenges. And the beauty about science is that if offers us the insights and tools to resolve our spiritual/mystical challenges.

Unlike the endless argumentation and unresolvable contrarianism and cynicism that is philosophy.

WRONG! I flip to: the answers are to be found in Evolution.
What do you want?
Why does that response irritate you?
Do you even appreciate what evolution is?
And that’s not rhetorical!

Don’t dismiss Solms and colleagues work so glibly simply because you’ve never taken the time to learn about his insights or strive to understand them. Besides, those ideas he’s developing based on solid evidence, dovetails quite well with other advances in brain studies and physiology, and our ever more detailed appreciation for evolutionary processes. But you’ll learn that important stuff via philosophers or reading old religious texts.

Taking the time to learn about the details of Evolution and how that has created your body and all it is capable - sure beats endlessly defending ancient utterly self-absorbed human “God” driven assumptions.
Clinging to debating our brain in a cave, and such self indulgent baby steps, despite them being out of step with what we factually have learned about our selves.

Actually you haven’t defended it, you’ve simply voiced indignation because that balloon has popped for me and I chose to see what’s beyond the God bubble so many remain obsessed with, or overshadowed by (believers & a non-believers alike).

Peace of mind is impossible without understanding one self.
I contend understanding one self is impossible without appreciating how Evolution and our Earth molded us, bit by bit via countless thousands of generations.

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Hear, hear!!!.. :+1:

1 Like
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Time to stop reading you again. I don’t dismiss Solms. You just drop his name and say, “learn this and you will feel the answers to the mysteries”. I say to you the same thing I’m saying to Z, tell us your thoughts. Saying, “watch this YouTube and you’ll get it” is not discussing your thoughts. Asking me if I appreciate evolution is just an attempt at insult.

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Come on, I’ve gone way further than that.

MARCH 10, 2021

David Chalmers “Hard-Problem” demystified by Mark Solms and colleagues.

MARCH 18, 2021

The Other Side of Mark Solms PhD, professor, Freud scholar, farmer, vintner, humanitarian.

MARCH 27, 2021

Students’ Resource: A representative cross-section of Dr. Mark Solms’ scientific publications.

Dr. Mark Solms demystifies Chalmers "Hard Problem " of Consciousness.

SEVEN BASIC SYSTEMS OF EMOTION and Mark Solms

"What is a mind?" - Mark Solms, futurelearn com course,

I’m not the scientist, want to understand what I’m pointing at, since obviously I’m doing a poop job of explaining it?

I can’t do better then my rough description of an outline, after that the best I can do is point people to the source.

You know the drill:
:cowboy_hat_face: … :potable_water: … :racehorse:

Absolutely not, my personal and biased assessment is driven by the tone and direction of your own comments.
Oh sure, I’ll bet you understand what Evolution is, but with how much depth . . .

Not a tinge of snark or nasty intended, if I were so inclined I could come up with easily a dozen short quips you’ve made in these comments. But I’m not so inclined, either to keep a record, nor to spend the time searching the threads, or to argue about it, I’m simply saying that’s what I read in your words, that’s sincerely how it comes across.

It’s been good, made me work harder, so don’t think I’m complaining, I’m not!
I appreciate every piece of pushback I get. Still, in the end we all want to make ourselves understood for what we’re saying and not for what others are saying for us.

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You’ve never understood what I’m saying before, but here we go again. You are so persistent. It’s cute.

I clicked the Solms demystifies Chalmers link. Here’s what I saw:

First, you get your dig on philosophers.
Then some background on Solms.

I watched the video for the 2nd time. The old, “they told me not to ask those ask questions, it’s bad for your career story”. The details of how the processing gets to part of the brain was never interesting to me, it’s nothing to do with who we have a subjective experience, or how those results in numinous thoughts. It’s enough for me to know what a neuron is. BTW, I am also frustrated by the lack of the focus on the psyche, like Oliver Sacks was. Patient W is kind of fun. Anyway, it continues about WHERE the subject of the mind is located in the brain. This tells me nothing that will apply in my daily life. If I’m trying to make an ethical choice, I’m not going to attempt to activate my brainstem.

Finally, what does he do; he rips Chalmers, no wonder you like him. Traces the roots of the brainstem. Vision is not consciousness, feeling is. Then some big words. Repeated.
His approach, shift from cerebral cortex to the brainstem. Okay.

Then you get into the table of contents/links. But You have done nothing to get me interested in this. It has nothing to do with what I’m talking about. It’s cool that you are interested in this, but I’m not. And it makes no difference to how I navigate the world if I do know this or not. It’s not your job to describe, at least not to me, I don’t think it has the impact on people that you think it does.

So, at this point, you might ask, why am I interacting with your post at all. There is a very sharp and jarring shift that takes place. It’s where you go from discussing a scientific discovery in a way that shows passion and a connection to the universe, to just preaching on something that bugs you. That point is,

“There is no need of cosmic skyhooks”

And skip right by a philosophical question. Something you do a lot. When you say, “Thinking has been getting honed since the first cells started thriving.” Are you saying cells are conscious? You better get some data to back that up. Whatever you are saying, I don’t there is science on it. It’s a kind of poetic, deep time statement.

Then you’re back to “evolution is the answer”, bottom up, great puzzle, and your claim that you’ve made sense of the philosophical questions since forever. That you’ve found meaning in this is a philosophical position, because meaning can’t be put in a jar, or found somewhere in your brain.

I don’t know why people still believe in gods, although I’ve had much to say about that over the years, but I don’t claim to know what’s going on inside their heads. Even scientists check the box that says “believe in god”. I’m betting a lot of them just don’t want to be bothered about it.

I tried to show you where my concerns are, not in data about electronic signals in the body, but the knowledge we have of behaviors. The Young Sheldon episode was a good intro to that, but you want it to be about neuro-whatever. Do you believe that telling someone that their consciousness comes from their brainstem instead of there cerebral cortex will have any affect on how they think about Jesus?

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And that is how the brain is able to control it all. This is why I like ORCH OR as a candidate for consciousness theory. The organism’s sensory neural network determines what data gets transported to the brain for comparison with memories stored in the brain and when the incoming data resembles the stored memory, the brain “recalls” the scene of the memory and recognizes the engram (memory with an emotion attached)

IMO, consciousness is an emergent property of thinking, the processing and “interpreting” of data that the entire organism is exposed to and is forwarded to the brain via the sensory neural network that creates an internal data field that can be experienced as a 3D hologram.

Does the brain produce an emergent image from a functional neural (quantum) field?
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To me this kinda resembles what I believe David Bohm called holography.

and I believe Roger Penrose’s “the Emperor’s New Mind” can be added to this list

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I have no idea, I come at this from the perspective of an individual person, discovering the depths of experience and knowledge contained within our genetic heritage.

It’s about the relationship we have with the knowledge we possess. And the reality of our own body against the backdrop of this whole Earth.

That’s very different from all those conjectures and dreams of holographic explanations, like the computer explanation, before that the electrical explanation, preceded by the plumbing explanation, get my drift?
Penrose produces ideas for the sake of producing ideas. I don’t think that’s near the virtue others seem to believe it to be. The sexy and provocative for the sake of being sexy and provocative doesn’t impress me.
First we need to learn basics before we can start fancy dancing.

NO. I don’t believe that. We don’t know near enough to get so grand so fast. For instance, the new insights into our connective tissue and its implication for inter-body awareness are still at the baby stage. Data being digested. There’s other scientific stuff going that’s basically parallel tracking each other, lots of them.

Let’s first figure out the systems, before we tell each other how they function.

Out running our headlights. I believe in more focus on better understanding things we’ve gathered solid evidence for.

Roughly, but too little attention appreciating that our creature lives are a constant interaction with the outside world, and internal housekeeping.
“Consciousness” being more an artifact of interaction, than a thing.

As for our human level of introspective memory and recall, none of that makes pragmatic sense without having first gathered a sense of awareness
that the first prerequisites before chemical, quasi biological reactions could evolve into creatures, was awareness.

Biological creatures down to the level of single cells, and beyond, display awareness, decision making & drive action abilities. Every new advance in complexity within our ur-ancestors, increased creature level internal awareness.
We humans are the last few seconds on Earth’s 24 hour scale.
We are the product of that.

Here’s a simple cartoon that helps convey the concept:

Insider Tech

UsefulCharts

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That’s where having a deeper understanding is required.
Or at least having the good-faith curiosity to do the homework to learn the lessons.

We have to learn for ourselves what unfolded during those millions and hundreds of millions, and even billions for Earth’s foundational prep work unfolded.

I never said I’ve made sense of the philosophical questions since forever.
There again, that’s your own distortion field at work.

I’ve been working on it in my mind since forever, and I took myself off on a curious adventurous journey, and what a long strange and rewarding journey it has been. That chain of experiences and lessons has been unfolding for a half century now, most of that time I’ve been talked down to by people. Many have told me who I was and what my fate would be, I remain that same standup guy, while I’ve being repeated disappointed.

You know my little “appreciating the human mindscape ~ physical reality divide” was bit over five years ago. That was tidal shift and it took a while to soak in, but I’d arrived at home. Since then the ripples keep spreading into all sorts of aspects of my inner being and appreciation.

Yes, I can point at the failings and emptiness of much of what passes for public philosophical discourse, with a solidity of knowing and living, backed by a fulfilled life. Sorry if that upsets, but here I am, and you haven’t shown me anything but hurt feelings because I have a crisp alternate story I’m willing to defend and strive to explain.

Perhaps what I write will always offend some. That isn’t my intention, but I can’t help that. I’m trying to reach the young, the searching, the science lovers, the honestly curious and introspective.

I believe there’s a need for new “benchmarks” that are being missed. To offer younger people a way to make sense out of biology and evolution,
Yes, without the need for theological roots or meta-physical or skyhooks.

To appreciate the need to understand our bodies on a much deeper level than we currently do.

Only after we arriving at that self-aware point do we find ourselves in a position to tackle the, Who is me, myself, and I? Along with all those other ancient questions we ask ourselves.

Well I do!
Inside people are insecure, and lonely, and scared of death, we need our Gods.

The only thing I’m saying (but that I rarely hear you echo) is that: OUR GODS COME FROM OUR OWN HEARTS AND MINDS. The rest is simply what it is.
I know gods are real, they are as real a people want to make them.
It truly a resolved mystery, so far as it goes.

There again, you simply underscore how little you actually you hear my words.
“Neuro-whatever”???

I’m talking about being aware that your body has a myriad of systems, working in sync. Sure most of it various neurons, but there’s more than that, and the combined symphonies are producing an awareness of the biological creature it happens to be. A bat is a bat and a person is a person. Why do make it sound so twisted and unreachable?

Of course, I don’t understand all of them, but we don’t need to, it’s the awareness and appreciating of them existing and knowing what they are doing all on their own (because of genetic heritage (same a evolutionary parade) that important.

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So explain this. Square it with this:

I never said I’ve made sense of the philosophical questions since forever.
There again, that’s your own distortion field at work

And now you are psycho analyzing the entire world.

Inside people are insecure, and lonely, and scared of death, we need our Gods.

And you didn’t touch my question. The reason I wrote that long post.

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You keep saying you are honing your message and that you want to reach people and then you tell them they are just frightened and they need to appreciate the body/brain. That’s not a message.

You describe the body/brain functions, and they are mechanisms, and I’ve never disagreed with your facts. Then you say an appreciation of that brings you to a “tidal shift”, that it will “make sense out of biology and evolution”, and “appreciate the need to understand our bodies on a much deeper level”, and then we can get to tackling the ancient questions. What you never identify, because it doesn’t exist, is a mechanism that takes a person from appreciating facts to feeling part of the universe, to feeling connected, to getting that this earth is something we need to take care of. It happened that way for you, but you can’t put that in a bottle, or on a page, and transfer it to someone else’s brain.

It can transfer, but not through some specific steps, or set of facts getting taught. So I’m not saying you, or anyone else should stop teaching or stop writing. I’m saying stop telling me that your set of facts are the right ones, and that if I just listen to your YouTube playlist, then I’ll get it.

There is a much shorter path to feeling yourself as a human on this planet; just look at it, breathe in clean air, splash your face with cool water from a mountain stream. These steps were discovered by shamans a long time ago. Just sit in the forest for a while and you’ll appreciate the pageant. Doesn’t work for everyone, granted, most people need to get home and milk the cows, but the technology of transcendent experience has existed for a long time.

But there’s a difference, and you and I know that the path you talk about is far superior. Why? I can only speak from experience on this because I don’t know why others stick to religion, or even SPNR for their entire lives, even scientists. For me, I was not satisfied with the loving community I was in, the one that was bringing me joy and comfort and leading me to work for peace and justice. If I had stayed in Minneapolis, I might still be doing that, or I might have switched over to Buddhism, but that’s still basically the same thing.

The questioning that I was able to do because I was more or less on my own in the woods, was to study the thing that my community was telling me was the source of all this love. You know the middle part of this, and I don’t need to convince you they were wrong. That’s the difference. A study of mechanisms, of our biology, of our history, including our pre-written history gave me a much clearer sense of who we are in the universe, and provided all those other feelings of connection, and eventually I found others to share this with. So I have everything I had before, plus I have a continuing, seeming limitless, field of further exploration, one that keeps opening up, instead of leading to dead-ends, like religious narratives do.

What I don’t have, and neither do you, is a program, a key, a thing that if I tell you what the thing is, then you’ll see the world the way I do.

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Could it be that the brain doesn’t know what is true or not? It only learns from the data and argument it is exposed to. If the data is false, the brain learns a false program and will stay with that data until exposed to more accurate data.

Don’t forget that the brain only knows what it has been “told” to believe and that it can only form a qualified belief when exposed to “choices” from among several philosophies and the reasoned qualities each variant contains.

Please note; This was offered as a generality and not directed at anyone in particular.

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Thanks Lausten,
Truth be told I only got about half through it this morning, then I was peeled away and haven’t had a chance to get back since and I’ve no second wind in me tonight.

I did read enough to know it’s a top-shelf comment. Fair questions worth taking the time to offer some serious responses, explanations, clarifications. Gonna need to find some quiet cogitating time.

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Where’s Maddy?

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When you put it like that it’s pretty ugly, eh?

Then again, I don’t claim this is for everyone. It requires good-faith honest curiosity, and doing one’s own homework.

As for telling “they are just frightened” - Seems to me the state of our society, with its MAGA embrace of bullying and white suprematist attitudes. Alcohol consumption not to mention other drugs. How about escapism, computer game addictions, gambling additions, heck celebrity worship, what is all that about? The way we can ignore existential issues of utmost importance, read climate science and Earth’s physical limitations.

Normal rational grounded people would not have created the times we are living.
Excuse me if the truth feels like an insult.

That is your limited frame of reference speaking.
That shallowness of vision is what I’m calling out with this bottom up biological evolutionary perspective.
What’s happening within our body is beyond mechanism, you’d do better thinking in terms of harmonic symphonies.
Especially from the layperson perspective.
Scientists have the duty to reduce and classify into mechanistic terms, in order to study, but that’s simply a reflection of our limitations of understanding.
Not that different from the limitations of the Rutherford Atom
Then we build on that.

What don’t I identify?
It starts with the foundational appreciation of the

Human Mind ~ Physical Reality divide

In terms of philosophical musings, that realization leads to a recognition that Earth’s evolution is the evidence and proof positive that our material reality flowed down one specific chain of events.

Along with that benchmark comes a clearer recognition of oneself being part of Evolution’s ongoing pageant of change. Closer understanding of your own body as an evolved creature, with the biology of your own body containing unimagined internal knowledge, gained through its eons of surviving life and procreating.

Since our behaviors are regulated in part by our body’s biology, it makes sense that better appreciating the complexity and harmony within one’s own body, has constructive potential.

Understanding that we create our own gods, seems really important to stress, when it’s about coming to terms with one’s own struggles.

What I’m trying to do feels more like putting up sign posts: there is terra firma this way. Science won’t lead to godless emptiness, it can fulfill your deepest desires to understand the world, with the bonus of providing the keys to unlocking the world of your own spirituality and connection to infinity, deep time.

Another hideous sounding summary.
My set of fact are what science has been showing us!
That business about your consciousness being the inside reflection of your body communicating with itself - that is harmony with all the biological evidence being brought to light!

Or that you can’t understand the inside of an organism without also understanding its environment. That’s established biology, why shouldn’t I consider it correct and superior to centuries old notions about us human beings.

Or that it requires an appreciation for the origins of creature awareness and the development of bodies upon this Earth, to fully appreciation human complexity.

No it’s not as simple as the YouTube playlists or the dozens of books I’ve read and shared the titles of. All that is pointing to the bits and pieces that can introduce and wet one’s appetite. Of course, no list can enlighten anyone. We each have to do our homework.

And we have our own experiences, such a butchering that deer at 22 and realizing those were my bones and muscles, portions different, but in every other important aspect that was my muscles I was dismembering. Heck of an educational and spiritual rush, I’ll tell you that. Hotel Hirsch in Bad Wurzach. I do appreciate it takes more than watching YouTube videos. :wink:

I’m simply trying to share my own homework best I can, because it’s been way too lonely of an intellectual journey, and I’d love to help someone who’s looking for something like this simple assessment of the material evidence as science has taught those interested enough to listen.

Of course, that’s wonderful, it’s also the perfect place for adding in modern biological understanding and allowing that knowledge to enlighten and blossom the age old intuition into deep more meaningful understanding.

As for me, I was a loner. I was on my journey to understand myself and the world around me.
How ironic that fifty years later I find myself surrounded by family and memories.

I never promised anyone a “program.”

I rather think in terms of pointing out landmarks others choose to ignore.

. . . and perhaps rejecting and criticizing outdated thinking, that pretty much got us into mess we find ourselves in.

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Your facts aren’t wrong. I called them facts because they are factual. I didn’t put them in scare quotes.

What i said is that those facts don’t always lead to an appreciation of the mind/body in the same way they do for you. There are many paths to an appreciation of our place on this earth, in the great pageant of Earth’s long history.

It’s your use of words like “require”.

Centuries of humans appreciated their place on the earth without knowing the things you talk about.

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There are implications in this, like the assumption that someone who isn’t interested in neuroscience and evolution is not curious and doesn’t do their homework. I see the frightened, confused bullies, the ones turning to alcohol, I was one of the “other drugs” people for a while. Yeah, escapism isn’t exactly new. The techniques Trump is using are tried and true. They work because human psychology has not changed that much over the centuries.

I don’t know what you mean by “normal rational” people. Rationality, of the Enlightenment variety is fairly new. Lies and wizardry were in power for a long time. That’s what created the times we are living in. It’s going to some work to undo it.

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I’m not discounting any of those intellectual paths.

I’m simply making the point that all you know and experience has been acquired via your body.

To claim, a “bat” is a bat because a bat inhabits a bat’s body,
and that an individual human feels like one specific human,
because it is one specific living human creature, interacting with its world.

Isn’t some notion out in left field, it’s the very foundation of biological reality.
It’s not my fancy, it’s the sum total of what the evidence is showing us.

Ergo, learning about the Evolution of this biological organism, (the biological creature body/brain that creates your mind.), is an excellent start if looking for the information and experiences that will help one come up with their own solid understanding.
Doing one’s own homework is the road to experience those euphonies that make life meaningful.

I’ll remember to ban “require” from my vocabulary. Thanks for the tip.

Well the problem is those centuries of humans (who had the time and possessed the stolen riches to build their universities and fill their halls with learned individuals debating and establish the arguments that a great segments of humanity will repeating for millennia.) After all a good deal of modern philosophy continue to exhibit the echos of our human heart’s struggling with our Gods and demons, who are out there somewhere in the cosmos.

We been too self-absorbed and self-serving to learn more than squat about this Earth and her processes, or other animal and plant communities. All we seem to know is how to conquer, plunder and consume. Sure we make lots of precious wonders in-between, but what good are bobbles and bling, when you’re destroying your children’s very life support system?

I only have a fraction of the devotion towards the “classical” minds that you do.
Because they helped create this world with little scruple or second thought - they run out of things to teach me long ago, as I’ve been discovering with ever greater clarity.

Thank you Lausten.

inhtedarkness, I started a new book yesterday that made me think of you. You might find it interesting “Determined - a science of Life without free will.” By Robert M. Sapolsky. I’ve listened to some of his talks he’s brilliant, sometimes I don’t particularly agree with his interpretations, but he’s still someone to take seriously cause he definitely knows more than me and is a straight shooter.

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I’m only up to the third chapter so far but it’s fascinating because he brings it right up to the edge of the paradigm shift, as he’s explains neural details relating them to more basic (primitive) creatures.

And I’m thinking how much more direct and concise his talk could be had Professor Sapolsky taken an introductory minute to refer to the great long cascade of invention, innovation, refinement and attrition, that it took to develop the sort of body/brain that can produce a learning introspective creature, such as yourself. To discuss the conceptual reality of understanding our consciousness as a product of our living body, getting on with life.

The talk about consciousness is an example of the “self-absorption” I point out. It’s always about what’s happening to the subject - with too little recognition that consciousness is an interaction. Something that definitely matters in understand what’s happening within one’s own mind out in the real world.

So simple, clarifying the Earthly stage upon which we were born, and the physical reality we must navigate.

To be clear I’m not dismissing any of the science he brings to bare. I trust him and read it in good faith I take him at his scientific word. But at the same time, I also recognize a philosophical vacuum of sorts. That’s the realm I’ve delving in.

Dark, back to Sapolsky’s book, it will stretch your mind, and the parts that are over our head are good reminders of how much we don’t know. Both humbling and enlightening - good information to chew on.

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No, it’s an annunciation of a simple fact of life.
We need to do our own homework.

It’s that simple, please don’t weave more into it.

This isn’t about saving anyone in crises. You are correct, this is worthless, or at least irrelevant to that.

“normal rational” people:
People you can have a rational discussion with.
Even when you disagree,
They listen to what you say,
They respond with related responses and ideas,
Then we Do-si-do,
and so on.

Facts matter, learning something new matters, evidence matters, mutual respect matters, kindness matters, concern for others matter.

Better understanding being more important that ego and projecting facade.

Saying what you mean, and meaning what you say.

More or less respecting the Golden Rule: “Do onto other, as you would have them do onto you.”

Dysfunctional thinking would be that other Golden Rule: “He who has the gold, makes the rules.”

and so on.

Oh and there’s that other darker marker of rational thinking:
“We need to save ourselves, no one else can do it for you.”