From: Scott Roberts (jse885@earthlink.net)
Date: Wed Sep 15 2004 - 03:08:42 BST
Mel,
> mel:
> From and ontological POV, I wasn't there and can't say, obviously,
> but from an "Information Universe" POV, consciousness is simply
> the demonstrated effect of anything/everything else on a point-
> of-view-now. In a particle struck by another particle, it is the new
> direction and resultant vector, in a human it is a more complex
> set of effects and an emergent-emergent system of vastly greater
> possibilities and memory than the particle.
[Scott:] So a particle is conscious? Then, since a particle is also value,
then we've got intellect/language from the beginning. Value is only value
if it is appreciated, and that means appreciating that things could be
other than they are. Hence, there are generals/universals, that is, what
is, in the context of what could be, and the connection between the two.
Actually, I wouldn't say that a particle has a point-of-view/consciousness,
but that it is all that we can detect of a more complex, value- and
intellect- laden situation -- the particle operating within laws of nature,
which are ideas.
> > > What is the origin of language?
> > > Awareness precedes language, which is merely an accretive
> > > specialized example of abstracted currency.
> >
> Scott> This is nominalism, which I reject. Where did the ability to
abstract
> come
> > from? It is irreducible, and presupposes universals. So language is
> > aboriginal.
>
> mel:
> Abstraction is simply the mind modeling experience to try and
> "test" the apprehension of functional meaning, mostly, sometimes
> other meaning, attributes, or qualities is sought for...language is simply
> one technology developed to share the results, of this modeling.
> Other techniques include "showing" "artistic expression"...
[Scott:]There is no "simply" about it. "[T]he mind modeling" presupposes
intellect, the movement between particulars and universals and so on. To
"test" ditto. Or rather, the only way one can say these things are simple
is if reality starts with them. (And, yes, there are many varieties of
language, including art, nature, etc.)
>
> mel: Whom? You and who knows what else participating...a god
> wouldn't need intellect, assuming omniscence, because intellect
> is for "figuring it out".
[Scott:]That's one, perhaps less interesting aspect of intellect. It also
includes imagination. Remember the Poincare business in ZAMM? That is also
intellect.
And I don't assume omniscience in divine realms.
> Scott> You can do the same thing with a lobotomy. Pure consciousness is of
> no use
> > except for a bit of blissfulness. See Franklin Merrell-Wolff as an
example
> > of a mystic who went beyond it, and reports all of existence as being
> > fundamentally noetic.
>
>
> mel: Lobotomy is a trivial example and not quite right as it
> only cuts one way, so to speak. The "L'd" cannot choose to
> act and take up the set of rules at will. The perfect swing at
> the pitch, the hole-in-one shot, the exact pass threaded
> between defendersetc, are often examples of laying down
> the baggage momentarily.
[Scott:]True, and I don't personally recommend it :-) But the whole reason
for my going on about all this is that in my view, the
religious/transformative/whatever practice that comes out of a philosophy
is the reason for philosophizing in the first place. Pirsig thinks of Zen
practice as a matter of putting the intellect to sleep. I see it as
training the intellect to purify it, and so reconnect to Intellect.
> mel: Sorry, "Nope!" is mind-brain not being equal.
> The brackets simply express that for humans, as humans in
> any meaningfully human way we need brains to be human.
> A physical, high functioning brain is needed to model the
> remembered experience, communicate symbolically, and
> laugh, which is part of the processes giving rise to what we
> perceive as mind.
[Scott:]I disagree on what the function of the brain is. I think it is a
multi-dimensional metronome, to keep all our senses, feelings, and physical
actions in spatio-temporal synch. Modelling, symbolic manipulation, holding
memories, etc. are not things that neurons can do, no matter how many there
are, or how well-connected. But I'm just speculating.
- Scott
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