Mind Over Matter, Matter Over Mind?

sean69

Star
BGOL Investor
OK. So, the age old debate of "mind-matter problem" ...

My breakdown of the 3 broad philosophical positions addressing this issue:


Realism
nature is fundamentaly composed of "real physical" objects whose characteristics are independent of our conciousness/mind.

Idealism
the stuff nature is fundamentaly made of is defined by our conciousness/mind.

Dualism
nature is fundamentaly irreducibly composed of stuff defined by our conciousness and physical material objects.

*edit*

and

Monism
nature is fundamentally reducibly composed of the mental and physical.


Now I know there's mad derivatives of each of these but just keeping it simple within this context ...

What's your philosophical position?

Why?


Discuss. :)



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Put me in the Dualism camp. Our consciousness does affect our reality. I would go so far as to say that humans have learned how to shape whats around us to what we believe it should be, completely usurping the natural selection of nature.


Why??.....Humans possess the ability to see a landscape and then imagine or dream what could be. Once humans cracked the atom the ability to build what is needed to see that imagination or dream to reality became possible.
 
I am, same as GOD. but take this into account. the mind tricks the body, body thinks the mind is crazy
 
Put me in the Dualism camp. Our consciousness does affect our reality. I would go so far as to say that humans have learned how to shape whats around us to what we believe it should be, completely usurping the natural selection of nature.


Why??.....Humans possess the ability to see a landscape and then imagine or dream what could be. Once humans cracked the atom the ability to build what is needed to see that imagination or dream to reality became possible.

Actually a dualist philosophy sees the relationship between mind and matter as being irriducible and ontologically separate in terms of ones influence over the other.

I forgot to include the philosophical position of Monism, which is what you appear suscribe to.

A form of monism, neutral monism contends that the mental and the physical are reducible to some unit entity, energy, force, whatever.


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Actually a dualist philosophy sees the relationship between mind and matter as being irriducible and ontologically separate in terms of ones influence over the other.

I forgot to include the philosophical position of Monism, which is what you appear suscribe to.

A form of monism, neutral monism contends that the mental and the physical are reducible to some unit entity, energy, force, whatever

those damn derivatives found a way in somehow. My bad bro, expect more of it your going into the deep water with this one.

carry on
btw you're right. I see you were one of the few paying attention in class.
 
OK. So, the age old debate of "mind-matter problem" ...

My breakdown of the 3 broad philosophical positions addressing this issue:


Realism
nature is fundamentaly composed of "real physical" objects whose characteristics are independent of our conciousness/mind.

Idealism
the stuff nature is fundamentaly made of is defined by our conciousness/mind.

Dualism
nature is fundamentaly irreducibly composed of stuff defined by our conciousness and physical material objects.

*edit*

and

Monism
nature is fundamentally reducibly composed of the mental and physical.


Now I know there's mad derivatives of each of these but just keeping it simple within this context ...

What's your philosophical position?

Why?


Discuss. :)



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P1013014-1.jpg

Peace Sean,

The "NON-DONATORS" get deep up in here! I can catch the thread later today, kind of tired but great stuff.

This should develop into a fantastic thread.
 
position is kind of you cant take a position? you cant decide(only because you cant know, or at least cant see at the moment). words have multiple meanings in multiple languages, waht if there are no words for what you talkin bout? my position is:dunno::wepraise::dance::itsawrap:
 
those damn derivatives found a way in somehow. My bad bro, expect more of it your going into the deep water with this one.

carry on
btw you're right. I see you were one of the few paying attention in class.

Yeah, I expeect this thread to go in. If it gets any life. LOL. I probably should've made the title "Mind over Matter - Refugees vs. BGOL" or some shit. :lol:

Anyway, I think monism completes the four fundamental philosophies.

Positions like substance or property dualism, phenominalism (idealism), physicalism or materialsim (realism), holism (monism) etc would be derivatives.

At least I think so :dunno:

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Although i might be envious of Spinoza's ability to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich recipe sound like nuclear fission, monoism would have to be the closest "label" for my ontology.

I believe that all(that means everything -- all energy, kinetic or potential) is "thought", or something akin to the "stuff that dreams are made of."
 
I lean towards dualism...The measurement problem in Quantum physics makes me consider Idealism very heavily though
 
For me...Monism.

But the others are valid perspectives too.

Not sure bout idealism tho.....Is that like saying reality would not exist if there were no conscious minds to perceive/interpret it?
 
position is kind of you cant take a position? you cant decide(only because you cant know, or at least cant see at the moment). words have multiple meanings in multiple languages, waht if there are no words for what you talkin bout? my position is:dunno::wepraise::dance::itsawrap:


I dunno for sure but it seems like an advocate for nihilism i.e. nothing exists.
 
Peace Sean,

The "NON-DONATORS" get deep up in here! I can catch the thread later today, kind of tired but great stuff.

This should develop into a fantastic thread.

No doubt.




Although i might be envious of Spinoza's ability to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich recipe sound like nuclear fission, monoism would have to be the closest "label" for my ontology.

I believe that all(that means everything -- all energy, kinetic or potential) is "thought", or something akin to the "stuff that dreams are made of."

Now dreams. There's a pretty intriguing phenmenon that, IMO, has been generally not taken seriously by the mainstream cognitive sciences.
They say it occurs during REM sleep, but when we dream do we exist (depending on which philosophy you suscribe to) in some transient parallel reality?
Could the life we exist in right now be the dream and our dreams our reality? :dunno: ... kind of like what Schopenhauer said about dreams and psychosis.

I know that when we dream our neurotransmitor chemistry and brain states change which imply that there's an obvious mental-physical correlation. For instance i've always thought it was interesting that the same theta-wave patterns that are recorded during REM sleep (dreams) occur when we're wide awake and very active.

There's also the psychosomatic theory of sleep that talks about dreams elevating factors and enzymes then stimulate cell repair and growth and development. Mind over matter?





I lean towards dualism...The measurement problem in Quantum physics makes me consider Idealism very heavily though

Is this your inclination towards idealism along the lines of the "consciousness causes collapse" argument?

Or do you have some other reasoning?


That being said, why do you lean towards dualism?




For me...Monism.

But the others are valid perspectives too.

When you say valid, in what sense?


Not sure bout idealism tho.....Is that like saying reality would not exist if there were no conscious minds to perceive/interpret it?

Essentially, yes.



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I dunno for sure but it seems like an advocate for nihilism i.e. nothing exists.

Perhaps. But he does say that "words have multiple meaning". Which by the way I don't understand what this means.:confused: Different contextual meanings or like the same contexts but still different meaning? :confused:

I don't think a true nihilist believes anything has purpose or meaning.



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Now dreams. There's a pretty intriguing phenmenon that, IMO, has been generally not taken seriously by the mainstream cognitive sciences.
They say it occurs during REM sleep, but when we dream do we exist (depending on which philosophy you suscribe to) in some transient parallel reality?
Could the life we exist in right now be the dream and our dreams our reality? :dunno: ... kind of like what Schopenhauer said about dreams and psychosis.

I know that when we dream our neurotransmitor chemistry and brain states change which imply that there's an obvious mental-physical correlation. For instance i've always thought it was interesting that the same theta-wave patterns that are recorded during REM sleep (dreams) occur when we're wide awake and very active.

There's also the psychosomatic theory of sleep that talks about dreams elevating factors and enzymes then stimulate cell repair and growth and development. Mind over matter?


beware of this if you want to keep it simple

Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate
 

beware of this if you want to keep it simple

Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate

Haha. Occam's Razor.

Don't believe i'm in violation of this precept. I does seem that I digressed a bit but if you read into it, not really. There's relevance to the OP.

You might be underestimating the intellectual capacity of posters on this forum, just a tad bit. ;)

Thanks for the heads up though.

I actually want this discussion to go in. :yes:

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okay lets go in


in the dualist philosophy it is contended that the "mind" and the 'brain' are 2 different entities. where does the "mind" reside and does intelligence reside within the "mind" or the "brain"?
 
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okay lets go in


in the dualist philosophy it is contended that the "mind" and the 'brain' are 2 different entities. where does the "mind" reside and does intelligence reside within the "mind" or the "brain"?

In the context of dualism.

I can't answer because I don't c/s this philosophy.

I suscribe to a monist philosophy.

C/S the Bohmian holonomic model of the brain, holistic model of the universe and the wave-structure of matter and the dynamic unity of reality.


Short answer. Intelligence "resides" in and is "one with" the Mind.

I'll give a less short explanation to my answer with definition of the terms (intelligence, reside and mind etc) if you want.

But later cuz I gotta futbol game at 6:30.



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Eh...and now I get to finally secure my SSI("crazy check")...

...because when sunlight crystallizes everybody wants to chopped off hands and shoot the next man for stepping on his toes on the dope set...or get scared and try to divide all the melanin rich people into lower classes permanently...


Every thought you think leaves a physical connection in your physical brain. Every thought forms a connection to every other thought you have ever thought(say that five times fast...faster!).

The more intense the belief behind the thought...the more physical the connection...so, there must be something to vibratory physics, that thought can grow dense enough to materialize, maybe not exactly the same way as water, the liquid, turns into ice the solid, or steam...or carbon...like melanin....but similar enough to be analogous on some level...

In music theory, we are taught that the lower the frequency of a sound, the more physical it is...everlasting bass, anyone?

Wet dreams cause actual ejaculation without having to have the normal physical process of well, I think you can figure that one out...

People using their mind to heal themselves of ailments through the usage of panaceas....

The brain can function without the "ego", or a conscious "I" agent...(blackouts, sleep walking, hallucinations...)

The whole concept of 'psychosomatic' implies mind over matter, but more importantly, like all things in life are only compartments of the "higher order" being they are apart of(like cells, organs, systems, bodies...).The body will shut the "ego" or "I", or "YOU" agent out, but the mind and the body are working still. A drunk can still physically defend himself while in an inebriated state of unconscious...(don't ask me where I did the research...*smiles*)...if a person is so determined, marijuana is enough a panacea for them to become totally unconscious of the world around them, and to enter what most would refer to as a hallucination that seems real to them, while their body operates without that "ego" level of consciousness...(*smiles...man, the nineties where the tihs!!...*)...

Bringing it home, the basis of most eastern philosophies is the removal of the "ego", the conduit of intelligence that believes itself to BE, when in reality it just IS. Selfishness and ego-centered behavior, remember the europeans once thought that the earth was the center of the known universe, create a sense of multiplicity in situations where their is really only oneness. Sort of like racism, sexism, nationalism, ageism, classism, any form of exclusive thought reflects a diseased mind and society. The Universe has to readjust itself every time a leave falls from a tree.
 
Eh...and now I get to finally secure my SSI("crazy check")...

...because when sunlight crystallizes everybody wants to chopped off hands and shoot the next man for stepping on his toes on the dope set...or get scared and try to divide all the melanin rich people into lower classes permanently...

Every thought you think leaves a physical connection in your physical brain. Every thought forms a connection to every other thought you have ever thought(say that five times fast...faster!).

What do you mean by "leaves a physical connection?

What do yo mean by "forms a connection"?

What's the nature of this connection?

And when you say "every thought you have ever thought" are you trying to say that EVERY present thought is connected to EVERY memory?




The more intense the belief behind the thought...the more physical the connection...so, there must be something to vibratory physics, that thought can grow dense enough to materialize, maybe not exactly the same way as water, the liquid, turns into ice the solid, or steam...or carbon...like melanin....but similar enough to be analogous on some level...

Is this an assertion or a question?

Are you just trying to say that you can modulate the laws of physics with your mind if you think or focus hard enough?




In music theory, we are taught that the lower the frequency of a sound, the more physical it is...everlasting bass, anyone?

Please explain.

I don't think I understand what you mean by "the more physical it is"

I know there's a direct relationship between energy and frequency.

Yeah. Please explain.




Wet dreams cause actual ejaculation without having to have the normal physical process of well, I think you can figure that one out...

Of... masterbation?

Is that somehow unbelievable or are you getting at something else?




People using their mind to heal themselves of ailments through the usage of panaceas....
The brain can function without the "ego", or a conscious "I" agent...(blackouts, sleep walking, hallucinations...)

The ego is an abstraction derived from a model of how Freud thought the mind worked.
Of course the brain functions regardless of whatever psychoanalytical theories we come up with.
Don't get what your point is here.



The whole concept of 'psychosomatic' implies mind over matter, but more importantly, like all things in life are only compartments of the "higher order" being they are apart of(like cells, organs, systems, bodies...).The body will shut the "ego" or "I", or "YOU" agent out, but the mind and the body are working still.

The body act on the ego?

How?




A drunk can still physically defend himself while in an inebriated state of unconscious...(don't ask me where I did the research...*smiles*)...if a person is so determined, marijuana is enough a panacea for them to become totally unconscious of the world around them, and to enter what most would refer to as a hallucination that seems real to them, while their body operates without that "ego" level of consciousness...(*smiles...man, the nineties where the tihs!!...*)...

When you're drunk, you're not unconscious. You're senses are just impaired temporarily. Unless you pass the fuck out.


Bringing it home, the basis of most eastern philosophies is the removal of the "ego", the conduit of intelligence that believes itself to BE, when in reality it just IS. Selfishness and ego-centered behavior, remember the europeans once thought that the earth was the center of the known universe, create a sense of multiplicity in situations where their is really only oneness. Sort of like racism, sexism, nationalism, ageism, classism, any form of exclusive thought reflects a diseased mind and society. The Universe has to readjust itself every time a leave falls from a tree.

Nice.

Sorry about the cmments inbetween your post, I was posting them as i\I read through.
:)



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My apologies for not making myself more clear. Of course, you could be the devil's advocate, or Socrates' method...

As we see in the studies of neuroscience, particular thoughts can be mapped to particular areas of the brain. This means that certain neurons are triggered, I like the metaphor that Goleman uses, that these neurons are having a discussion with one another. However, these discussions, these thoughts that are being passed back and forth across the synaptic connections of the brain, are electric. Thus they have a physical form, as opposed to whatever imaginary abstract form one might be mislead to believe a thought consist of. That shows that there is a direct connection from the vibration or spectrum of existence of "mind" to "body".
I would say that during the "wet dream", these neurons begin to get excited and create electrochemical "substances"(excuse my ignorance here), what we call hormones, that "talk" to the neural receptors that connect to the sexual organ and create a release. This shows that the body and mind, the physical and not so-physical(that "substance") consistently work in unison, and the element or attribute, as Spinoza might say it, of "mind" can cause a physical act without the usually manual agents.

What Jung might refer to as the unconscious can cause you to ejaculate without you or your woman having to touch you, and will even give you a "theater" to envelope you in, emotionally(dimensionally?) placing your ego(um, self-recognizing attribute, psychological component) in a controlled psychic space of your own defined pleasures: the dream.

I don't want to get too far away from credible scientific assertions, especially knowing we are about to delve deeper into the metaphysical, but it is telling. There is obviously a way to mentally force the body to do things, in the same way that the body, through emotion or pain, can force certain thoughts directly to the amygdala, allowing it to intercept a choice from the neocortex.

Okay, here I'm going to use Freud's ego in a similar vein to Jung's conscious. I'm simply refering to the component of our compartmentalized individual self, that recognizes it self as being aware. When I say 'unconscious', unless stated, I will be referring to the infinite "library" of intelligent awareness, that our ego/conscious self is attatched to but not always aware of it's decision making. In the same sense that my heart is apart of me, and is me, and yet it is my heart, an entity of its own, yet without which the entity that is "me" finds it difficult to exist, the conscious that we recognize ourselves as having is only a small portion of the "consciousness" that our consciousness is connected to, thus we call it the unconscious, the part of consciousness that we know exist, or have concluded exist, and yet we only know it by its actions.

When a person "blacks"out, when a person is hallucinating, or in some sort of state of removed consciousness, the body and I would say mind, apparently some decision making goes on during these periods, are functioning without the aware component of the psyche, what Freud called 'ego'.

When that person comes out, or wakes up, when the self-aware, or the self-identifying part begins to go about the routine of living, they may notice a scratch here or there, their friends laugh at them or applaud them, depending what happened, how that autopilot, so to speak, worked for them. My point in this is that mind and body have stepped in and worked it out. This is because they are designed to. The ego is a farce, the god-head must eventually dissolve into the absolute in which it arrived from.

People go into comas, vegetable like states of "physical existence" due to certain physical traumas.

People faint at a sight that might cause them a psychological trauma if exposed too long.

People "black out" when the body is undergoing too heavy of a pain to bear "consciously."

There is some element, substance, whatever that knows all this, and it is apart of us, and we are apart of it.


And the human being seems to be the neuron of the universe, well, OUR known universe.

Why can't you feel the weight of the atmosphere until you start to rise or descend from the level you are currently on(think elevators)? What's removing the experience of one from the other, an ancient memory that didn't get the memo about tabula rasa?


 
My apologies for not making myself more clear. Of course, you could be the devil's advocate, or Socrates' method...

As we see in the studies of neuroscience, particular thoughts can be mapped to particular areas of the brain. This means that certain neurons are triggered, I like the metaphor that Goleman uses, that these neurons are having a discussion with one another. However, these discussions, these thoughts that are being passed back and forth across the synaptic connections of the brain, are electric. Thus they have a physical form, as opposed to whatever imaginary abstract form one might be mislead to believe a thought consist of. That shows that there is a direct connection from the vibration or spectrum of existence of "mind" to "body".

I would say that during the "wet dream", these neurons begin to get excited and create electrochemical "substances"(excuse my ignorance here), what we call hormones, that "talk" to the neural receptors that connect to the sexual organ and create a release. This shows that the body and mind, the physical and not so-physical(that "substance") consistently work in unison, and the element or attribute, as Spinoza might say it, of "mind" can cause a physical act without the usually manual agents


OK.

Makes sense under the current paradigm that describes electrons (the building blocks) atoms and molecules as physical things.

We can address the bolded later ...





What Jung might refer to as the unconscious can cause you to ejaculate without you or your woman having to touch you, and will even give you a "theater" to envelope you in, emotionally(dimensionally?) placing your ego(um, self-recognizing attribute, psychological component) in a controlled psychic space of your own defined pleasures: the dream.

I don't want to get too far away from credible scientific assertions, especially knowing we are about to delve deeper into the metaphysical, but it is telling. There is obviously a way to mentally force the body to do things, in the same way that the body, through emotion or pain, can force certain thoughts directly to the amygdala, allowing it to intercept a choice from the neocortex.

OK. Agree with you again.

"Physical" mental processes (thinking) can elicit physical responses including autonomal nervous system processes as well.

Don't think there's any debate here.




Okay, here I'm going to use Freud's ego in a similar vein to Jung's conscious. I'm simply refering to the component of our compartmentalized individual self, that recognizes it self as being aware. When I say 'unconscious', unless stated, I will be referring to the infinite "library" of intelligent awareness, that our ego/conscious self is attatched to but not always aware of it's decision making.

In other words, colloquially, the subconscious.
I know Freud was'nt a big fan of this "ambiguous" term, instead theorized the id and super-ego. Which is waht I think you're talking about

Yeah. I think so.

OK ...





In the same sense that my heart is apart of me, and is me, and yet it is my heart, an entity of its own, yet without which the entity that is "me" finds it difficult to exist, the conscious that we recognize ourselves as having is only a small portion of the "consciousness" that our consciousness is connected to, thus we call it the unconscious, the part of consciousness that we know exist, or have concluded exist, and yet we only know it by its actions.

Again. Id and super-ego.

Ok ...




When a person "blacks"out, when a person is hallucinating, or in some sort of state of removed consciousness, the body and I would say mind, apparently some decision making goes on during these periods, are functioning without the aware component of the psyche, what Freud called 'ego'.

When that person comes out, or wakes up, when the self-aware, or the self-identifying part begins to go about the routine of living, they may notice a scratch here or there, their friends laugh at them or applaud them, depending what happened, how that autopilot, so to speak, worked for them. My point in this is that mind and body have stepped in and worked it out. This is because they are designed to. The ego is a farce, the god-head must eventually dissolve into the absolute in which it arrived from.

I don't understand the bolded.

I thought you were explaining the mind-body inter-connectedness in the context of the ego. Now you're saying it's a farce? :confused:

I can't understand this.

Please explain.





People go into comas, vegetable like states of "physical existence" due to certain physical traumas.

People faint at a sight that might cause them a psychological trauma if exposed too long.

People "black out" when the body is undergoing too heavy of a pain to bear "consciously."

There is some element, substance, whatever that knows all this, and it is apart of us, and we are apart of it.

And the human being seems to be the neuron of the universe, well, OUR known universe.

Why can't you feel the weight of the atmosphere until you start to rise or descend from the level you are currently on(think elevators)? What's removing the experience of one from the other, an ancient memory that didn't get the memo about tabula rasa?


Man, you completely lost me here. :(

The weight of the atmosphere?
You mean gravity?
Why a body experiences a perturbation in the force of gravity that acts on it when it moves?
Weightlessness?
There's a simple physics explanation for this.
Or am I missing the point and this is a metaphor of some kind?


Ok. Whatever the case, what I get you're saying from all this is that:

-- The mind is modulated by physical brain states and nervous system processes.

-- Mind can affect the body through these processes.

-- Body can affect the mind through similar processes.

??


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*Damn, a beer would go good with some waffles right about now...*

The confused part.

I'm trying, apparently failing, to say that the "subconscious", using your terms, intentionally blocks certain information from the "ego".

Why? I don't know, maybe it can't handle the truth.

The body responds as if it knows, and sometimes I wonder if we, as psychic energies, are just along for the ride. There is no divide between the two forces, mental and physical. The "subconscious" will take your body out for a spin when you think you are dreaming.

Case in point. I know this guy, and he fights in his sleep. He has been wakened by the pain of his knuckles as they were bashed into cement walls. I know this might conjure up images of Bushwick Bill, and one might humorously say that this guy's mind is playing tricks on him, but I believe not. The guy had spent a considerable amount of time incarcerated, and his body seemed to understand the need to be prepared a little more than he. Unfortunately, that psychosomatic training didn't get paroled when he did, and his significant other reports that he fights in sleep, and she is afraid to wake him up during those periods. His interpretation of certain "real world" experiences, have caused his mind and body to make his dream state just as physical.

On the Absorption thing...I was unsuccessfully comparing through analogy the "ego" to the "personality of god" or "personal god", the god-head. In saying that the God-Head, let's just use ego for this discussion, in saying that the ego must be absorbed into or lost in the overall you, is just saying that a person needs to give up the idea of singularity and realize that they are apart of an ecosystem, that their thoughts give as much life to their planet as the light shining on a blade of grass, nurturing that blade of grass.

The ego can only play the part of label, ie "This is me. I am a 'this type personality'. I like to do this, this and this. My name is...." for so long. Once the rest of existence figures out what you are useful for, and once you accept that role, the titles are just there to get others like you to follow suit, without having to go through all the song and dance we went through trying to figure you out.

We is a singular plural. Body is a singular plural. Life is a singular plural. But we get selfish. EGOtistical. I have to lose my SELF, MY self, it was given to me first, I know it better than all of you, but you may have better usage for it than me...so I have to lose it in the whole, the Absolute, that which just is...


*I need a damn Absolut...*
 
*Damn, a beer would go good with some waffles right about now...*

The confused part.

I'm trying, apparently failing, to say that the "subconscious", using your terms, intentionally blocks certain information from the "ego".

Why? I don't know, maybe it can't handle the truth.

The body responds as if it knows, and sometimes I wonder if we, as psychic energies, are just along for the ride. There is no divide between the two forces, mental and physical. The "subconscious" will take your body out for a spin when you think you are dreaming.

Case in point. I know this guy, and he fights in his sleep. He has been wakened by the pain of his knuckles as they were bashed into cement walls. I know this might conjure up images of Bushwick Bill, and one might humorously say that this guy's mind is playing tricks on him, but I believe not. The guy had spent a considerable amount of time incarcerated, and his body seemed to understand the need to be prepared a little more than he. Unfortunately, that psychosomatic training didn't get paroled when he did, and his significant other reports that he fights in sleep, and she is afraid to wake him up during those periods. His interpretation of certain "real world" experiences, have caused his mind and body to make his dream state just as physical.

On the Absorption thing...I was unsuccessfully comparing through analogy the "ego" to the "personality of god" or "personal god", the god-head. In saying that the God-Head, let's just use ego for this discussion, in saying that the ego must be absorbed into or lost in the overall you, is just saying that a person needs to give up the idea of singularity and realize that they are apart of an ecosystem, that their thoughts give as much life to their planet as the light shining on a blade of grass, nurturing that blade of grass.

The ego can only play the part of label, ie "This is me. I am a 'this type personality'. I like to do this, this and this. My name is...." for so long. Once the rest of existence figures out what you are useful for, and once you accept that role, the titles are just there to get others like you to follow suit, without having to go through all the song and dance we went through trying to figure you out.

We is a singular plural. Body is a singular plural. Life is a singular plural. But we get selfish. EGOtistical. I have to lose my SELF, MY self, it was given to me first, I know it better than all of you, but you may have better usage for it than me...so I have to lose it in the whole, the Absolute, that which just is...


*I need a damn Absolut...*

Ah ha!


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I'm still puzzling over this. Get back to you Sean, though I'm leaning towards monism.
 
I got to read through this more but off top when asked this question I am a realist.

Realism to me is a little beyond physical. Everything is physical. The fact that we even have thoughts and visions is based in realism. We don't dream about anything that is not physical. We don't create new colors or spectrums within our mind. It's all related to what we can physically touch and see.

Inventive people only see ways to make what is REAL into something more useful or more condusive to their liking. Nothing more. So Idealism is nothing but dreamed realism to me. That cancels out the whold Dualism thing to me. Cause those ideas are based in reality so why not use reality to accomplish Idealism.

Hope I'm not confusing anyone but all of these concepts build off of realism so that's where I keep it grounded. If you wanted to go deeper and put it into personal relationships I build the same way. On realism. What you have shown me is all I can move on. If you idealize someone doing better then you are setting up to fail. You see potential but only in the real sense.

If you don't ground yourself and move off of what is real you will find yourself standing on dreams and aspirations destined to fail.

Realism.
 
beer, waffles and absolute

I'll take waffles with a double shot of Absolute, lemon and Lime wedges and oh, king syrup please.....thank you

Yo Sean,let me throw something else in the mix, in particular Bertrand Russell, a neutral monist I believe, and his Analysis of Mind. I've been trying to interpret this for awhile.What the frack is he saying????:confused:....I want to slice it up with Occams razor but what do you think?

The American Realists are partly right, though not wholly, in considering that both mind and matter are composed of a neutral-stuff which, in isolation, is neither mental nor material. I should admit this view as regards sensations: what is heard or seen belongs equally to psychology and to physics. But I should say that images belong only to the mental world, while those occurrences (if any) which do not form part of any “experience” belong only to the physical world. There are, it seems to me, prima facie different kinds of causal laws, one belonging to physics and the other to psychology. The law of gravitation, for example, is a physical law, while the law of association is a psychological law. Sensations are subject to both kinds of laws, and are therefore truly “neutral” in Holt's sense. But entities subject only to physical laws, or only to psychological laws, are not neutral, and may be called respectively purely material and purely mental.

I think what dude trying to say is everything is one or the other physical or mental until the mental experience's the sensations of the physical or the physical experiences the sensations of the mental then it belongs to both.
 
Glad to see the the thread is picking up.

On a side not. There are those who think having discussions like this regarding philosophy is an ultimate fruitless endeavour.

I disagree.

Individuals can have personal philosophies and/or suscribe to philosophies of others that best fit their persona.
There's no wrong or right here.
I do however think there's still room for discussions (even arguments) about the relationship and consistency of ones personal philosophies with epistemological paradigms, other personal positions or inclinations be it morals, values or whatever.

When conducted without prejudice and with an open mind I think it's as fruitful and intellectually stimulating as talking about science.




I got to read through this more but off top when asked this question I am a realist.

Realism to me is a little beyond physical. Everything is physical. The fact that we even have thoughts and visions is based in realism. We don't dream about anything that is not physical. We don't create new colors or spectrums within our mind. It's all related to what we can physically touch and see.


Ok, so you define physical things as things that elicit a physiological responses to stimuli to us.

If so, I have to disagree with what you've said here.

As humans we possess certain abilities that allow us to act outside basic instinctual response to stimuli (memory, fight-or-flight, etc). Like volition (free will), introspection, abstraction (imagination) and other emergent behaviours envoked by emotion.

Paradigms - (social, scientific, moral etc) set and define the "nature" of things to us. Our imagination, our ability of abstraction allows us to conceptualize information from observable phenomena outside of the prevailing paradigm. Formulations in abstract mathematics is a good example.

You say we can't create new colors. A person with grapheme synesthesia (a neurological disorder where a rewiring in the brain makes visualize color in resonse to different stimuli ...like, "lasagna tastes like cyan") will disagree. Some people with this disorder have reported experiencing abstract colors that they can't relate to any color or combination of red,green and blue in the spectrum of visible light.

The advent of quantum mechanics was a major paradigm shift in science. Although scientists are still grappling with trying to understand it's "wierdness" they're still able to use mathematics to proove its validity as a fundamental theory.

What really goes on when you "physically touch" something? What exactly are you touching?

Molecules? Atoms? Electrons? Quarks?

The computer you're looking at right now, that you can touch, is about 99.9999999999% empty space.

How physical is that?





I'm still puzzling over this. Get back to you Sean, though I'm leaning towards monism.

Ok Izzy. :)




beer, waffles and absolute

I'll take waffles with a double shot of Absolute, lemon and Lime wedges and oh, king syrup please.....thank you

Yo Sean,let me throw something else in the mix, in particular Bertrand Russell, a neutral monist I believe, and his Analysis of Mind. I've been trying to interpret this for awhile.What the frack is he saying????:confused:....I want to slice it up with Occams razor but what do you think?

Not familiar with Bertand Russells thesis. Sorry.

If you can break-down or summarize what you think it is maybe I can give it a shot.





The American Realists are partly right, though not wholly, in considering that both mind and matter are composed of a neutral-stuff which, in isolation, is neither mental nor material. I should admit this view as regards sensations: what is heard or seen belongs equally to psychology and to physics. But I should say that images belong only to the mental world, while those occurrences (if any) which do not form part of any “experience” belong only to the physical world.

What do you mean by do not form part of any “experience”?

Are you talking about stuff that happen outside of our field of observation or interaction and stimuli we can't respond to for whatever neurological impediment?





There are, it seems to me, prima facie different kinds of causal laws, one belonging to physics and the other to psychology. The law of gravitation, for example, is a physical law, while the law of association is a psychological law.Sensations are subject to both kinds of laws, and are therefore truly “neutral” in Holt's sense. But entities subject only to physical laws, or only to psychological laws, are not neutral, and may be called respectively purely material and purely mental.

I think what dude trying to say is everything is one or the other physical or mental until the mental experience's the sensations of the physical or the physical experiences the sensations of the mental then it belongs to both.

What's the law of association?

You talking about dual aspect monism here?

Your last sentence is pretty interesting because it's suggestive ... in a way, but not really ... of what's known in quantum mechanics and "decoherence" or "wave function collapse".

This duality of physical and mental states that's reconciled by observation or experience (in either direction) ... an exchange of information through whatever medium (or not) ... results in that thing being both physical and mental?

As an analogy:

Say a ball is either blue or red.
When someone experiences the ball (looks at it) OR the physical color of the ball (the molecular pigments in it that give it color) somehow envokes a sensation in the person ... then at that point, the ball becomes ... both red AND blue? Purple?
:confused: :dunno:



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What do you mean by do not form part of any “experience”?

Are you talking about stuff that happen outside of our field of observation or interaction and stimuli we can't respond to for whatever neurological impediment?




My bad Sean I didn't cite the passage properly. The paragraph starting with the "American Realist" and ending with "purely mental" is from Analysis of Mind by Bertrand Russell. The last sentence was how I interpreted the preceding paragraph by Russell. i'll post up his entire paper later.




Associationism is the theory that the mind is composed of elements -- usually referred to as sensations and ideas -- which are organized by means of various associations. Although the original idea can be found in Plato, it is Aristotle who gets the credit for elaborating on it. Aristotle counted four laws of association when he examined the processes of remembrance and recall:

1. The law of contiguity. Things or events that occur close to each other in space or time tend to get linked together in the mind. If you think of a cup, you may think of a saucer; if you think of making coffee, you may then think of drinking that coffee.

2. The law of frequency. The more often two things or events are linked, the more powerful will be that association. If you have an eclair with your coffee every day, and have done so for the last twenty years, the association will be strong indeed -- and you will be fat.

3. The law of similarity. If two things are similar, the thought of one will tend to trigger the thought of the other. If you think of one twin, it is hard not to think of the other. If you recollect one birthday, you may find yourself thinking about others as well.

4. The law of contrast. On the other hand, seeing or recalling something may also trigger the recollection of something completely opposite. If you think of the tallest person you know, you may suddenly recall the shortest one as well. If you are thinking about birthdays, the one that was totally different from all the rest is quite likely to come up.

Association, according to Aristotle, took place in the "common sense." It was in the common sense that the look, the feel, the smell, the taste of an apple, for example, came together to become the idea of an apple.
 
Aight Sean I think you are missing what I am saying. I'll try to break it down on one or two things...

This world is finite. The world is... There is nothing you can do to change what this world is one way or the other. Everything created is of this earth. It will be here when you are gone and was here before you. I think we on the same page there. You can destroy things of this world but it will only return to where? The earth. And thus the cycle continues so everything is of this earth. Even shit floating in space came from this earth.

So there for any color you can idealize is of this earth. You can find it on this earth. I don't care what shade of blue, red or green you come up with it is still a variation of blue, red or green. Get me? These colors that we see are defined by THIS world. This existence. Feel me? There are no out of this world colors or concepts understand? Every color under the rainbow is FIXED in THIS world.

Every thing that is made, touched, realized and actualized was built from the physical world that we live in. We are mutants with mutative minds. So as we mutate and adapt our senses and understanding of this world becomes more and more curious and realized.

In other words the world has all of the answers of this world contained within it. Just because man has not figured it out does not make it an idea. It is a FACT because this world knows the secret to it. We have to adapt to a plain where WE can understand it.

So we form ideas. I wonder if this is possible. I wonder if that is possible. The answer to if it is or if it isn't is not in the hands of man but in the hands of the world and nature. It takes our ideas to come up with solutions to problems the earth already knows the answer to.

Cars run on gas. Maybe in the future it can run on water or even run on the air we live and breath. People may have ideas about how to make that happen but only the earth knows if it will happen. Cause everything we do and realize is provided by the earth.

Hope I'm not losing you.
 
My bad Sean I didn't cite the passage properly. The paragraph starting with the "American Realist" and ending with "purely mental" is from Analysis of Mind by Bertrand Russell. The last sentence was how I interpreted the preceding paragraph by Russell. i'll post up his entire paper later.




Associationism is the theory that the mind is composed of elements -- usually referred to as sensations and ideas -- which are organized by means of various associations. Although the original idea can be found in Plato, it is Aristotle who gets the credit for elaborating on it. Aristotle counted four laws of association when he examined the processes of remembrance and recall:

1. The law of contiguity. Things or events that occur close to each other in space or time tend to get linked together in the mind. If you think of a cup, you may think of a saucer; if you think of making coffee, you may then think of drinking that coffee.

2. The law of frequency. The more often two things or events are linked, the more powerful will be that association. If you have an eclair with your coffee every day, and have done so for the last twenty years, the association will be strong indeed -- and you will be fat.

3. The law of similarity. If two things are similar, the thought of one will tend to trigger the thought of the other. If you think of one twin, it is hard not to think of the other. If you recollect one birthday, you may find yourself thinking about others as well.

4. The law of contrast. On the other hand, seeing or recalling something may also trigger the recollection of something completely opposite. If you think of the tallest person you know, you may suddenly recall the shortest one as well. If you are thinking about birthdays, the one that was totally different from all the rest is quite likely to come up.

Association, according to Aristotle, took place in the "common sense." It was in the common sense that the look, the feel, the smell, the taste of an apple, for example, came together to become the idea of an apple.


Unc. Oh, that was an excerpt from Russell.

So, your reference of associationism ... were you answering my question about what HE meant by occurences that don't form part of our "experiences" belonging to the physical world?


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P1013014-1.jpg
 
Unc. Oh, that was an excerpt from Russell.

So, your reference of associationism ... were you answering my question about what HE meant by occurences that don't form part of our "experiences" belonging to the physical world?


Yes
 
Aight Sean I think you are missing what I am saying. I'll try to break it down on one or two things...

This world is finite.

By "world" I'm gonna assume you mean universe or observable universe.

Finite in what sense?




The world is... There is nothing you can do to change what this world is one way or the other. Everything created is of this earth. It will be here when you are gone and was here before you. I think we on the same page there.

Again, here i'm gonna assume you mean universe? ... or this doesn't make sense to me.

If you do mean universe ... then we're not really on the same page regarding this ...with respect to what my notion of what the universe is and our relationship to it.




You can destroy things of this world but it will only return to where? The earth. And thus the cycle continues so everything is of this earth. Even shit floating in space came from this earth.

OK. Yeah. I'm definitely NOT on the same page with you here)"].


So there for any color you can idealize is of this earth. You can find it on this earth. I don't care what shade of blue, red or green you come up with it is still a variation of blue, red or green. Get me? These colors that we see are defined by THIS world. This existence. Feel me? There are no out of this world colors or concepts understand? Every color under the rainbow is FIXED in THIS world.

Nope.
This might be your OPINION and I respect that. But I believe it to be wrong.

The concept of color is PERCEPTUAL. Humans PERCEIVE color aesthetically.

Even though the visual receptors in your eye have evolved to discriminate different wave lengths of light - in other words color (basically the only reason we're able to see in color and not black and white is because of this) and intensity - in other words, hue - and the nervous system wirings to you brain process these signals electrochemically ... the output (what your mind "sees") doesn't not necessarily have to be objective. It can be abstract.
This isn't just my lose conjecture or personal opinion. There's scientific foundation.

You just chose to ignore what I said about grapheme synethesia? :dunno::confused:

And since you brought up the notion of finitude, I hope you're aware that the distinct colors that make up the spectrum are essentially infinite. Let's even assume that our brains process information algorithmically (like a computer) then I'd imagine the math involved here with an infinite set of vectors would involve some serious abstraction in some Hilbert space.

I'm no Jon Von Neuman but shit doesn't seem as simple as ROYGBIV to me.




Every thing that is made, touched, realized and actualized was built from the physical world that we live in. We are mutants with mutative minds. So as we mutate and adapt our senses and understanding of this world becomes more and more curious and realized.

In other words the world has all of the answers of this world contained within it. Just because man has not figured it out does not make it an idea. It is a FACT because this world knows the secret to it. We have to adapt to a plain where WE can understand it.

So we form ideas. I wonder if this is possible. I wonder if that is possible. The answer to if it is or if it isn't is not in the hands of man but in the hands of the world and nature. It takes our ideas to come up with solutions to problems the earth already knows the answer to.

Cars run on gas. Maybe in the future it can run on water or even run on the air we live and breath. People may have ideas about how to make that happen but only the earth knows if it will happen. Cause everything we do and realize is provided by the earth.

Hope I'm not losing you.

You kind of lost me there for a second but then I reset the GPS navigation and got back on track ... I think. LOL.

OK. So it seems to me that you view the world (do you mean universe?) as a purely physical entity that has lots of information in it and that's inhabitantated by curious humans.

And the only way we can interact with it is physically based ONLY on what we know at the moment?

If so, it appears that you suscribe to more to a hard form of realism ... like physicalism. Talking about everything is physical. Nothing is mental, metaphysical or outside of the physiological stimuli we respond to.

Am I right?

OK, remember the question I asked you about how physical is your computer being that it's 99.999999999% empty space?

Whould that be 0.000000001% ?



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