William J Murray @160:
How did Gpuccio answer your question?jawa
September 1, 2019
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Further to my #157, in an earlier post, I had mentioned that a rabbi had asserted in the Talmud that when a person dies, a whole world dies with him. Anyway, in another thread KF has just supplied the references to the rabbi's dictum.
'Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.'
Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrin 4:1 (22a)'
And I suspect that the rabbi's words anticipated QM by many years.Axel
January 7, 2019
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Jawa asks @151:
Is each of those minds independent from the others?
Answering this question in order that it is understood properly is not a matter of the reader's intelligence, but rather how versed they are with the necessary contextual language, models, ideas, etc. But, to give it a go, there are no "independent minds"; there is only mind. We all share that realm. Individuals might be characterized as particular arrangements of information through which consciousness operates and acts as individuals simultaneously, which hearkens back to a question I asked Gpuccio: "Do you ever wonder if the other characters in your dreams are seeing things in the dream from their perspective?"William J Murray
January 6, 2019
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Jawa @154:
I have no idea how your question pertains to the discussion. I'm not a neurologist nor a psychologist. How the heck would I know?William J Murray
January 6, 2019
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PaoloV @145 asks:
In your opinion, how much progress have we (humans) had in understanding the mind?
Some, usually referred to as "mystics" or the equivalent, have spent (accumulatively) hundreds or thousands of years exploring and organizing categories of mental experience. Most others - such as the scientific endeavors in the western world - are entirely focused on one particular mental experience/location - what we refer to as the external, consensual physical world. So, it just depends on the group of humans you're talking about.
What is missing in our understanding of the mind?
If your talking about most people who aren't "mystics" who spend their lives devoted to such exploration and understanding, we're missing pretty much everything. IOW, we don't even have a kindergarten-level understanding. We don't even understand the basics.
How long do you think it could take to understand it?
IMO, the basic rule of mind is incredibly simple. Understanding it is incredibly simple. Accepting it is the hard part.
How could we reach that goal faster?
Well, if that's one's goal, I'd say a relentless use of logic can get anyone there pretty quickly, if they are willing to accept what the logic dictates.
How could we know that we’re on the right track?
IMO the only available intellectual guidance is logic, and the only emotional guidance is following a heart unimpeded by fear.
Any suggestions?
Mind is an infinite resource of information. Point your intention in a direction and let the information in. That last part is the tricky and difficult part, because our local identity construct will do just about anything to reject anything it considers substantively threatening to the status quo.William J Murray
January 6, 2019
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Hazel @ #8
'Software is not immaterial. It is just bits embedded in something physical. Of course, the logic of the arrangement of those bits was designed by a person, but the software itself is material. I don’t think this is a reasonable analogy at all.'
Does not the constancy of the speed of light hitting objects moving at different constant speeds, predicate a non-human mind/agency, always conscious of the existence and movements of all human beings - or how could the agency propellng light commensurately adjust the latter's speed. So, the truth has to be personal and theistic. This agency behind light's personal interest in each one of us, seems to have been left out of all calculations by atheists. It exposes their twaddle for what it is.
It seems, moreover, to beconsistent with my postulation that we each live in a little world of our own, integrated and coordinated by an omniscient, omnipotent God.
However, I think you boffiins have let the atheist dim-wits get away with murder with their evocation of 'counter-intuitiveness' in cases wwhere the issue has nothing whatsoever to do with intuitiion, but entirely to do with logic.
They cannot accept genuine paradoxes, ostensibly, absolutely contradictory - repugnant to reason, and hence the ingenuous, facile insult they deliver to their own intelligence. As if, at the classical level at which logic operates, it requires a flash of intuition to recognise that a wave and and a particle cannot be both at the same time.Axel
January 6, 2019
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to Gpuccio at 150: it's interesting how we have to rely on metaphors so much to discuss these things about that mind. I think of personalities as large frameworks within which the daily activities of our mind take place. They are solid, stable, and in general only change slowly. I wouldn't use the word "frozen", but I think, once again we are saying somewhat the same things (but not exactly) but have to resort to metaphors to try to describe the slippery ideas we have about our conscious understanding of how we work.
I believe that some of the Eastern traditions point out a central dilemma of this process: the self we are trying to describe is the same self that is doing the describing, so it's sort of like trying to see your own eyes (another metaphor). Trying to describe our experience of our self involves using the every qualities we are trying to describe, and thus colors our efforts. Thus the difficulty, and the reliance on metaphors rather than direct description of experience.hazel
January 6, 2019
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Jawa, you quoted this line at 151:"“The universal mind manifests as multiple instantiated minds as multiple personalities.”
This is a line from the article I linked to. The whole philosophy discussed at the end of the article, including the line you quoted, isn't something I personally believe is true.hazel
January 6, 2019
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Hazel, WJM, gpuccio:
This is copied from Wikipedia:
“Deprivation from social and emotional care causes severe delays in brain and cognitive development. Studies with children growing up Romanian orphanages during Nicolae Ceau?escu's regime reveal profound effects of social deprivation and language deprivation on the developing brain. These effects are time dependent. The longer children stayed in negligent institutional care, the greater the consequences. By contrast, adoption at an early age mitigated some of the effects of earlier institutionalization (abnormal psychology).”
How does “deprivation from social and emotional care” affect brain and cognitive development?
thanksjawa
January 6, 2019
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gpuccio,
How would you answer the question @151?
Thanks.jawa
January 6, 2019
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gpuccio, do you agree with Hazel @138 and WJM @ 142?
Thanks.jawa
January 6, 2019
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WJM @139:
Hazel @134:
“The universal mind manifests as multiple instantiated minds as multiple personalities.”
That’s very interesting.
Is each of those minds independent from the others?
Thanks.jawa
January 6, 2019
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Hazel at #146:
Well, I agree of course.
Personalities have different levels of "depth". In general, I would consider them as "frozen mental structures". And of course, many of those mental traits may depend more or less on information stored physically in the brain. But not only. As you say, in the human condition there is always some mirroring of the mental and the physical, in both directions.
Being mental structures, personality traits can change. But the deeper they are, the more "frozen" they are, the more difficult it is to change them.
One of the main tasks for our free will is to react constructively to, and when possible change, our personality traits.
In a sense, a dissonant personality trait is like a drug addiction: a habit of the mind, more or less rooted in what we are at present. Free will can act on those traits (but it can be a very difficult tassk, if the trait is deeply "frozen"). Or, if badly used, let them get stronger.
On the other hand, constructive personality traits are like good instruments. Free will can use them well, and help their development. Or, if badly used, let them fade away.gpuccio
January 6, 2019
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Hazel,
Ok, thanks.jawa
January 6, 2019
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A biology professor named Hazel? I googled and found Hazel Sive, who is probably who you mean.
However Hazel is just a nom de internet, so this doesn't mean much.hazel
January 5, 2019
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Hazel,
Have you heard of your namesake biology professor at MIT?jawa
January 5, 2019
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re my discussion with Gpuccio: the article on multiple personalities has stimulated me to add another remark about the subject of consciousness from an experiential perspective, and particularly about the self:
Personality
We all have a personality: a global, overriding set of characteristics: the intonation and pattern of our speech; the way we move our bodies, and especially our facial expressions; our basic attitude, such as cheerful, somber, witty, introverted or extroverted, etc; and so on.
For most of us,our personalities are just there: they seem to function fairly independently of conscious control. Our personality is an overarching structure in which our immediate consciousness’s activities and our actions, consciously taken or otherwise, take place.
Also, our personalities can, and do, shift somewhat in different environments. I can put on my business persona, or my party persona (which is fairly subdued), or my teacher persona, but all of them still largely present as “me”. I don’t have multiple personalities, but I do have multiple sub-personalities, if you will.
Most of us can’t control our overall personality, although we have some control over our personas. I would have a very difficult being anyone but me. However some people, including those who become professional actors, seem to be able to take on more dramatic personality changes: they don’t “just act” but rather “inhabit” a character. They seem to have more control over having “multiple personalities.”
And then there are the cases such as the people mentioned in the article that have “dissociative identity disorder” where there is significant separation and lack of common characteristics between the personalities. There also the remarkable stories of people from, say, Texas getting hit on the head and waking up speaking with an English accent.
So personality is an important aspect of our being that seem to exist in a more “spreadout” fashion in our subconscious and forms the background of our immediate conscious experience and the manifestation of that conscious in our actions, and that can be in certain situations dramatically restructured to various, and sometimes large, degrees.
Just food for thought to add to our summary of what consciousness is like from an experiential perspective.hazel
January 5, 2019
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WJM,
In your opinion, how much progress have we (humans) had in understanding the mind? What is missing in our understanding of the mind? How long do you think it could take to understand it? How could we reach that goal faster? How could we know that we’re on the right track? Any suggestions?
Thanks.PaoloV
January 5, 2019
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WJM,
Thanks for your comment.PaoloV
January 5, 2019
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Hazel,
Thanks for your comment.PaoloV
January 5, 2019
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PaoloV,
Hazel @138 expressed my sentiments concerning your questions and Gpuccio's responses quite eloquently.
To elaborate some (as hazel said, each question/response would require a full discussion), let's look at the term you use that imply categorical distinctions: "scientific investigation" vs "philosophy".
Scientific methodology is intrinsically rooted in philosophy. In fact, it's necessarily a subset of philosophy. Experiential data doesn't categorized itself; it doesn't interpret itself; it doesn't create models to describe it. What experiential data means is necessarily ordered around a philosophical model, whether it is material monism, some form of dualism, or mental monism. The terminology utilized and what that terminology means is entirely rooted in the philosophical metaphysics of those involved in the enterprise.
Now, let's look at the term you use that ties all those questions and responses together: facts.
Let's take an example of a situation where we can express a fairly non-controversial "fact". Let's say we're all standing in front of a brick wall. We all agree that we are experiencing a brick wall, both to the feel of it and the sight of it. Is it a "fact" to say: this brick wall exists?
Well, what does "exist" mean? If one's metaphysical stance is that there is an actual, exterior (to mind) physical world, that "fact", as stated means something in particular - there is an entire metaphysical context to stating even a simple, non-controversial "fact." One might say it is a "scientific fact" that an external brick wall actually exists.
But, is that statement of "fact", in that metaphysical framework, a true statement? Well, it might be true - an actual, physically external of mind wall might exist, but that is something we cannot ever possible know. All we can know is that we all agree that we are experiencing in our minds what appears to be a physical, consensual brick wall.
Statements of facts can only be about mental experience. Yet, in science, they are not phrased in any such way, nor do they carry such meaning. Statements about a hypothetical external (to mind) world can never be known to be factual statements. They might be, but that would only be by chance.
Here's something else to consider: all investigation into any aspect of our existence begins in mind, is carried out in mind, is organized, categorized and interpreted in mind, and ultimately is modeled in mind. How on Earth do we expect to do any of that properly without first developing a proper theory of mind?
What would the development of a proper theory of mind be a part of? Philosophy. Philosophy precedes concepts of facts and scientific methodologies. And all we really have now as far as a proper theory of mind is concerned is a vague mash-up of poorly-defined terms and concepts largely ignored as relatively unimportant to scientific research. This is why I consider Gpuccio's idea that scientific research can be based on raw data and "facts" a ill-considered position. Of course it matters what your metaphysical perspective is.
The idea that anyone can conduct objective or neutral science regardless of the metaphysical philosophy is a non-starter, because that philosophy determines what something so basic as a "fact" means and how it is innately characterized.
IMO, "good" science and philosophy cannot even begin until we first admit the primary, inescapable, logically-necessary, absolute fact that precedes everything else: all experience is in mind. Until we understand (at least to some degree) what that means and the implications, we're just apes groping around in the dark with a bunch of nonsensical supposition in our heads about the nature of our existence.William J Murray
January 5, 2019
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re 139. Thanks, wjm. To be honest, I just bumped into the article due to my interest in abnormal psychology, and then noticed the philosophy at the end. (FWIW, I taught high school psych for a few years long ago, and remember showing a film about a person with multiple personality disorder, as it was called then, in which one of the personalities was allergic to orange juice, and the other not.)hazel
January 5, 2019
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William J Murray at #139:
I believe that a serious and sincere discussion is always a source of inspiration to all involved. Whatever the individual positions.gpuccio
January 5, 2019
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Hazel @134:
This reminded me of wjm’s thoughts: The universal mind manifests as multiple instantiated minds as multiple personalities.
Well, that is an unexpected and pleasant surprise. I enjoy it greatly when that happens. I appreciate that you not only took the time and mental energy to try to understand what I've been saying, but to also think about the implications and come up with the resource concerning universal mind. Well done!William J Murray
January 5, 2019
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re 137. Gpuccio made reasonable comments in 133. However, since they are just short statements that could include a variety of different details and interpretations to different people, I couldn't say I "fully agree". Every one of those sentences could lead to a substantial discussion, I think.hazel
January 5, 2019
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Hazel,
Do you fully agree with everything gpuccio wrote in #133?
Thanks.PaoloV
January 5, 2019
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William J Murray,
Do you fully agree with everything gpuccio wrote in #133?
Thanks.PaoloV
January 5, 2019
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gpuccio,
thanks for answering my questions.
I really appreciate it.PaoloV
In 2015, doctors in Germany reported the extraordinary case of a woman who suffered from what has traditionally been called “multiple personality disorder” and today is known as “dissociative identity disorder” (DID). The woman exhibited a variety of dissociated personalities (“alters”), some of which claimed to be blind. Using EEGs, the doctors were able to ascertain that the brain activity normally associated with sight wasn’t present while a blind alter was in control of the woman’s body, even though her eyes were open. Remarkably, when a sighted alter assumed control, the usual brain activity returned.
Second, a philosophical speculation
Therefore, if something analogous to DID happens at a universal level, the one universal consciousness could, as a result, give rise to many alters with private inner lives like yours and ours. As such, we may all be alters—dissociated personalities—of universal consciousness.
Moreover, as we’ve seen earlier, there is something dissociative processes look like in the brain of a patient with DID. So, if some form of universal-level DID happens, the alters of universal consciousness must also have an extrinsic appearance. We posit that this appearance is life itself: metabolizing organisms are simply what universal-level dissociative processes look like.
Idealism is a tantalizing view of the nature of reality, in that it elegantly circumvents two arguably insoluble problems: the hard problem of consciousness and the combination problem. Insofar as dissociation offers a path to explaining how, under idealism, one universal consciousness can become many individual minds, we may now have at our disposal an unprecedentedly coherent and empirically grounded way of making sense of life, the universe and everything.
This reminded me of wjm’s thoughts: The universal mind manifests as multiple instantiated minds as multiple personalities.
Anyway, it's an interesting article.hazel
January 5, 2019
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PaoloV at #131:
Should all scientific discussions be based mainly on observed facts?
Yes.
How about philosophical discussions?
No, philosophical discussions have a wider range. Of course they must consider known facts, but they also try to provide wider frameworks, and are less depednent on observable facts. But it is always a good principle to avoid contradicting known facts! :)
Should serious scientists refrain from making the observed facts mean more than what they really mean?
They can certainly do that, at a philosophic level. A scientist has all the rights to make philosophy too, like anybody else. But they should never present their philosophical ideas as scientific theories.
How about serious philosophers?
Serious philosophers can certainly help scientists make good science, by making good philosophy of science.
Do these questions somehow relate to what you have stated lately in this discussion?