A challenge to the modern scientific view of the self.

[Walker]

All evidence indicates that
God-knowers see God
In the exact same places
Where dark matter believers
Don’t see dark matter.

[Terrapin Station]

Atheists demand empirical proof of God.

Incorrect assumption about my views again. Empirical claims are not provable.

Since according to mans’ comprehension the existence of the universe is an impossibility

I already explained my take on "dark matter." Didn't you bother reading it? It was part of the post you're replying to.

then the empirical evidence of God is the impossible feat . . .

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. The empirical evidence of something is that it's doing something impossible.

Or in place of that, we can get a little book learnin, call ourselves scientists

I'm a philosopher, and we're posting on a philosophy board. Why post here if you're not very interested in philosophy?

[Walker]

Good grief. Another one.

[Terrapin Station]

This board seems a lot more like the IMDb Politics or Religion, Faith and Spirituality boards than a philosophy board.

[Walker]

It would be an error to allow my limitations to sully the stream of this duty-free venue. Forge ahead with the haste of a terrapin to engage greater minds. Endeavor to persevere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRX6hSGeZs4

[Belinda]

In a reply to Greta I claimed that no thought is immediately felt, but has to be in short term memory before can be reflected upon, that's to say before it can be felt.Thus thinking is unlike a feeling from the body proper which is immediately felt having been 'notified' to the brain by well known nervous feed back mechanism.

Me:

It might be said that I remember hearing a little sound, say a bell ringing. The ringing sensation in present time is transferred to short term memory. The sensation-to-memory of brain-mind events is a sequence in time, whereas the elbow bending is immediately known about in the brain-mind which has a feeling of elbow at exactly the same time as the elbow is bending, or even twitching, and memory doesn't have to be involved in the elbow event.

I am probably speaking out of turn, as I 'm pretty sure that neuroscientists , and I'm not one of those, already know the correct story about all this business of feed-back neuronal mechanisms and their absence among the brain tissues, and related feeling of the presence of self.

It is undoubtedly a bold person who seriously challenges the neuroscientists, and I wonder how any such challenge would be maintained if the challenger needed brain surgery.

Ypc wrote on August 15:

1. Yes i hold to the conclusion that the Body is the possession of the self and not the self. that was basically the point of my lecture which which I admit was too brief to fully explain the point. and i welcome challlenges to the viewpoint.

May be paraphrased as "I am a spirit , and I have a body".

This may be an unusual theory of existence for a Yoga teacher to hold.

The quote from ypc demonstrates that ypc believes that mind is superior to body and that mind and body are two separate ontic substances. This is Cartesian, and is a stance which is declining in popularity, however I am certainly not claiming that a minority belief is less good or true because it's not a majority belief in academia.

[Walker]

In a reply to Greta I claimed that no thought is immediately felt, but has to be in short term memory before can be reflected upon, that's to say before it can be felt.Thus thinking is unlike a feeling from the body proper which is immediately felt having been 'notified' to the brain by well known nervous feed back mechanism.

Me:

It might be said that I remember hearing a little sound, say a bell ringing. The ringing sensation in present time is transferred to short term memory. The sensation-to-memory of brain-mind events is a sequence in time, whereas the elbow bending is immediately known about in the brain-mind which has a feeling of elbow at exactly the same time as the elbow is bending, or even twitching, and memory doesn't have to be involved in the elbow event.

I am probably speaking out of turn, as I 'm pretty sure that neuroscientists , and I'm not one of those, already know the correct story about all this business of feed-back neuronal mechanisms and their absence among the brain tissues, and related feeling of the presence of self.

It is undoubtedly a bold person who seriously challenges the neuroscientists, and I wonder how any such challenge would be maintained if the challenger needed brain surgery.

Ypc wrote on August 15:

1. Yes i hold to the conclusion that the Body is the possession of the self and not the self. that was basically the point of my lecture which which I admit was too brief to fully explain the point. and i welcome challlenges to the viewpoint.

May be paraphrased as "I am a spirit , and I have a body".

This may be an unusual theory of existence for a Yoga teacher to hold.

The quote from ypc demonstrates that ypc believes that mind is superior to body and that mind and body are two separate ontic substances. This is Cartesian, and is a stance which is declining in popularity, however I am certainly not claiming that a minority belief is less good or true because it's not a majority belief in academia.

Hello. Sensory stimulation, memory, awareness, cognition and time are not so sharply separated in daily life though folks habitually seize upon gross distinctions.

There are subtle states of consciousness that go unnoticed by everyone due to other sensory distractions (bright lights and big city). In such states sensory impressions are perceived but not cognized, or more precisely, are noted but instantly forgotten.

As a practice, the mind can be trained to not pursue perception into cognition and then thought. This cannot be the result of force and will, but is the result of non-attachment and release, a state of consciousness when thoughts have nothing to attach to. In yoga this is called pratyahara.

The upshot is that perceptions not cognized can be re-cognized from another state of consciousness as a body memory rather than a memory of concepts that were formed at the moment of sensory stimulation. In subsequent contemplation requiring abstract thought, concepts are spontaneously formed which connect the body memory to a continuity of reality. This is a natural orientation by dualistic mind to maintain the life of the body, it is in the nature of mind to move in this way. For the benefit of the species, and life.

What this means is that one can hear the bell with ears but not mind, and later becomes now when the body experiences the bell before the mind conceptually sequences events into a causal continuity. When the continuity habitually appears then the three times appear upon the one. Question?

[prothero]

Hello. Sensory stimulation, memory, awareness, cognition and time are not so sharply separated in daily life though folks habitually seize upon gross distinctions.

There are subtle states of consciousness that go unnoticed by everyone due to other sensory distractions (bright lights and big city). In such states sensory impressions are perceived but not cognized, or more precisely, are noted but instantly forgotten.

As a practice, the mind can be trained to not pursue perception into cognition and then thought. This cannot be the result of force and will, but is the result of non-attachment and release, a state of consciousness when thoughts have nothing to attach to. In yoga this is called pratyahara.

The upshot is that perceptions not cognized can be re-cognized from another state of consciousness as a body memory rather than a memory of concepts that were formed at the moment of sensory stimulation. In subsequent contemplation requiring abstract thought, concepts are spontaneously formed which connect the body memory to a continuity of reality. This is a natural orientation by dualistic mind to maintain the life of the body, it is in the nature of mind to move in this way. For the benefit of the species, and life.

What this means is that one can hear the bell with ears but not mind, and later becomes now when the body experiences the bell before the mind conceptually sequences events into a causal continuity. When the continuity habitually appears then the three times appear upon the one. Question?

You should perhaps read about and google "unconscious memory"
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/th ... -retrieved

[Belinda]

Walker wrote:

There are subtle states of consciousness that go unnoticed by everyone due to other sensory distractions (bright lights and big city). In such states sensory impressions are perceived but not cognized, or more precisely, are noted but instantly forgotten.

I think that there is one type of artificial anaesthesia which works this way. It's used, I understand for procedures when the surgeon wishes to instruct the patient while the procedure is going on.

Thanks for the information, Walker. You invited questions. I am afraid that whole topic puzzles me. I could not begin to understand unless I was supplied with physicalistic descriptions and explanations of 'mind', 'perception', and 'cognition'.

At this time all that I do understand is that brain tissues don't include the feed-back mechanisms including specific nerve endings , that are found in many tissues in the body proper. Those mechanisms let the brain-mind identify which body part is referred to by the given sensation, and is a mechanism which doesn't exist as structures that are limited to brain. Thus the eye- to -brain channel registers pain because the relevant part of the eye has that sort of nerve ending. Seeing, which is partly caused by the eye ,is commonly located in the eye only because of empirical evidence as to the function of the eye as an organ of special sense and this is because the retina and optic nerve have no feed-back mechanism other than the visual one.

As for the cognition of self, is there any reason to attribute this to anything more profound than conatus?

[prothero]

You might find this article from today's NYTimes regarding the subconscious memory and decision making, and the connection between emotions, reason, consciousness and decisions interesting. It is not too long or too complicated.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/05/opini ... ght-region

A Life of Meaning Reason not Required

[Walker]

Hello. Sensory stimulation, memory, awareness, cognition and time are not so sharply separated in daily life though folks habitually seize upon gross distinctions.

There are subtle states of consciousness that go unnoticed by everyone due to other sensory distractions (bright lights and big city). In such states sensory impressions are perceived but not cognized, or more precisely, are noted but instantly forgotten.

As a practice, the mind can be trained to not pursue perception into cognition and then thought. This cannot be the result of force and will, but is the result of non-attachment and release, a state of consciousness when thoughts have nothing to attach to. In yoga this is called pratyahara.

The upshot is that perceptions not cognized can be re-cognized from another state of consciousness as a body memory rather than a memory of concepts that were formed at the moment of sensory stimulation. In subsequent contemplation requiring abstract thought, concepts are spontaneously formed which connect the body memory to a continuity of reality. This is a natural orientation by dualistic mind to maintain the life of the body, it is in the nature of mind to move in this way. For the benefit of the species, and life.

What this means is that one can hear the bell with ears but not mind, and later becomes now when the body experiences the bell before the mind conceptually sequences events into a causal continuity. When the continuity habitually appears then the three times appear upon the one. Question?

You should perhaps read about and google "unconscious memory"
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/th ... -retrieved

Seems like this side of too much is enough remembering, not that I'm complaining, just describing from memory.

[Walker]

As for the cognition of self, is there any reason to attribute this to anything more profound than conatus?

Life is profound. Everyone is so accustomed to life that the profoundity goes unnoticed in the bright lights and big city. Many facets of life can go unnoticed. When eventually noticed they are called profound, but they were there all along to be discovered by anyone with access to the state of consciousness that notices such things.

[Belinda]

You might find this article from today's NYTimes regarding the subconscious memory and decision making, and the connection between emotions, reason, consciousness and decisions interesting. It is not too long or too complicated.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/05/opini ... ght-region

A Life of Meaning Reason not Required

Thanks Prothero, I did read the article by Prof. Burton in NY Times.

I have some issues with it, mainly that

I would have thought that reason and disgust are mutually inclusive. While accultured and innate feelings of disgust cause how we evaluate, reason is also subject to acculturation and innately biological structures and processes. It's known that certain brain lesions spoil affect mechanisms in the frontal lobe and thereby render the subject ineffectual in reasoning because he is unable to feed in social affect to his evaluations and subsequent behaviour.

Similarly if some person were to lose their sense of disgust their reason would be adversely affected.

[Walker]

Similarly if some person were to lose their sense of disgust their reason would be adversely affected.

Evidence supports the opposite conclusion. One grows accustomed to what first disgusts. Once accustomed, the rational mind is less distracted by disgust. This works for surgeons and garbage collectors and other folks, though surgeons as a rule have a greater access to rationality than garbage collectors, unless the collector is a bright fellow locked into a caste system.

[Belinda]

Similarly if some person were to lose their sense of disgust their reason would be adversely affected.

Evidence supports the opposite conclusion. One grows accustomed to what first disgusts. Once accustomed, the rational mind is less distracted by disgust. This works for surgeons and garbage collectors and other folks, though surgeons as a rule have a greater access to rationality than garbage collectors, unless the collector is a bright fellow locked into a caste system.

Desensitisation is specific though. Doesn't the ability to be disgusted remain in place? I can easily imagine a desensitised garbage collector who is disgusted by the idea of sex between two men.