Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Obvious Leo]

However I truly do hope but am not sure that you do see the ( undesirable ) alternative that determinism implies that the human mind is not infinitely deep. I don't mean deep as in devious I mean deep as in ontically unfathomable.

Whether it's desirable or not is a separate question but I did make clear in the OP, or shortly thereafter, that the capability of the human mind must be finite. I wouldn't like to estimate how many orders of magnitude more capable it can evolve to but infinity is merely a mathematical entity, not a physical one. I'm not quite sure what you mean by ontically unfathomable. Are we still talking about the "hard problem"? In which case I very much like this from Q.

Yājñavalkya wrote:An object outside the seer can be beheld by the seer. How can the seer see himself? How is it possible? You cannot see the seer of seeing. You cannot hear the hearer of hearing. You cannot think the Thinker of thinking. You cannot understand the Understander of understanding.

Regarda Leo

[Belinda]

Obvious Leo wrote:

I did make clear in the OP, or shortly thereafter, that the capability of the human mind must be finite. I wouldn't like to estimate how many orders of magnitude more capable it can evolve to but infinity is merely a mathematical entity, not a physical one. I'm not quite sure what you mean by ontically unfathomable. Are we still talking about the "hard problem"? .

Thanks for reminding me.

"Ontically unfathomable" is a faith stance. Because I cannot view the total terrain of my own mind I don't really know whether it's unfathomable or devious but finite,* only because nobody can view the totality of any human mind. It may be called the hard problem but it does not worry me personally because I have sorted it to my own satisfaction for the time being.

My faith stance that human minds are unfathomable is suited to my preferred ethic that we can be free within the bounds of perceived or actual facts. This is no way contends with hard determinism and is not compatibilism but is a practical and hopeful theory of freedom which I got from Spinoza.

*" devious but finite" is what sets of kaleidoscopic images are , and kaleidoscopes are an uncomfortable image of human brain power.

[Obvious Leo]

My faith stance that human minds are unfathomable is suited to my preferred ethic that we can be free within the bounds of perceived or actual facts. This is no way contends with hard determinism and is not compatibilism but is a practical and hopeful theory of freedom which I got from Spinoza.

A position which resonates reasonably well with my own. I find the "free" will arguments which center around compatibilism to be completely unnecessary in the systems paradigm, with its circular top-down and bottom-up causality. Practical and hopeful is a good way to think of freedom and as you can see there is much of Spinoza in my self-causal universe. Interestingly Einstein read almost no philosophy in his earlier years and arrived at a very Spinozan world-view knowing almost nothing of the bloke. His intuitions were truly remarkable because it wasn't until some years after the publication of GR that it was realised that his model pointed to the big bang. How he could arrive at a self-causal universe without it remains a mystery, but many of Einstein's intuitions were beyond his own explanatory capability. He seemed to be able to "feel" what seemed right and it nearly always was. Only Michael Faraday from an earlier generation seemed to be able to do science in this way. This doesn't strike me as quite as odd as it used to because fractal pattern-recognition seems to be fundamental to the way our minds organise themselves in early childhood learning. Almost everybody that knew Einstein well commented that in many ways he had the mind of a child. In my philosophy this idea fits very well because small kids are able to use fantasy as a learning tool but have no trouble distinguishing it from reality. Self-deception must be learned, it seems.

Regards Leo

[Logic_ill]

Another important field is evolutionary biology, especially when it pertains to humans. I also speculate, whether any of our primate ancestors actually had mind (in the form we have it today) or whether it was a slow gradual process? I´m not sure even those we consider homo sapiens sapiens had the same kind of mind we have today. All I could do is speculate...

I hope you'll understand that in biology the notion of "the same mind as" is an oxymoron, whether we are talking about two organisms of the same species or two of different species. It is fair to say that two organisms of the same species have the same kind of brain structure, but they can't possibly construct the same kind of mind out of it. I brief tour around this forum should suffice as proof.

To be honest with you I halfway understand that "the notion of the same mind¨" is an oxymoron in biology. I believe so, because the human mind (in my view) does not vary much, one from the other. Mind, imo, involves memory (time), awareness of, language, images, imagination, perhaps will, emotions, learning,etc which we all have in common. The differences may be a direct consequence of our particular natures, which do not vary much either, and our experiences, which help shape personality...

Quotidian, I agree with you, but I still have more "faith" in the sciences than other approaches because they seek to support their claims with observations, experience, evidence, data, testing, retesting, and other mechanisms. It doesn´t mean that scientists are always right, but at least their methods seem more trustworthy to me. And the sciences are also open to change in the light of new information (knowledge).

Regarding the sciences or scientists replacing ethics or morality, that´s a different story. It´s not like we will all be subject to the morals and principles set out by scientists. It doesn´t mean that we cannot speculate on other phenomenon, even though we may not have the ability to prove them scientifically. No, the sciences are not religions in that sense becasue they do not attempt to provide a moral-ethical system for us to follow. We all do that, not the scientific fields.

[Quotidian]

Quotidian, I agree with you, but I still have more "faith" in the sciences than other approaches because they seek to support their claims with observations, experience, evidence, data, testing, retesting, and other mechanisms. It doesn´t mean that scientists are always right, but at least their methods seem more trustworthy to me. And the sciences are also open to change in the light of new information (knowledge).

Of course! As I have said, when it comes to matters of fact, scientific method reigns supreme. But in topics such as this - which I interpret as being about the 'brain-mind' controversy - the central issues are not matters of fact, but of interpretation. There is a kind of sleight-of-hand at work in scientific reductionism, whereby deliberations about 'what things mean' are said to be subjective or personal - not 'objective', anyway - because the material universe is said to be devoid of meaning or objective value. It's just all meaningless stuff that happens to configure itself into various phenomena, including people. But, I maintain, that in itself is an interpretation. It rests on an attitude which decides what kind of facts ought to be considered - typically, those which are physically measurable, which can be registered by scientific instruments - and which to leave out.

Relevant quote about history of science:

for Galileo, Kepler, Boyle and Newton, “God-did-it” did not function as a “science stopper” but a “science starter”! Theistic belief alone could not tell them the exact form of the universe’s structure; it could not reveal how God had ordered the world. Observation, measurement and experiment were necessary for a thorough understanding of His creation. Yet it follows that the discovery of new laws and physical mechanisms did not explain God away; Descartes, Boyle or Kepler would have found this idea ludicrous. They expected to discover laws and mechanisms precisely because they were theists! Science alone could not give a full, complete explanation of the universe.

Physics requires laws to make predictions. Some laws (Kepler’s) will be explained by other laws (Newton’s). But sooner or later we’ll reach a set of laws that are just foundational to science. They can’t be explained by any other law. At this point scientific explanation breaks down. So science cannot, by its very nature, explain why there are laws of nature. Why can we use mathematics to describe the universe? And why is there anything – particles or relativistic quantum fields – for these laws to describe? Why is there intricate complex beautiful order when there are so many more ways for the universe to be chaotic? Science just can’t answer these questions because it needs the laws of nature before it can give explanations.¹.

I would rather put it 'at this point, scientific explanation goes no further'. It's not so much 'breaking down' as reaching its limits. But I think overall this passage makes a critical point.

[Obvious Leo]

Logic. I think we're safe to assume that human minds are more alike to other human minds than they are alike to the minds of other species. But the extent to which the mind self-organises from infancy is exclusively determined by the selection factors to which its has been exposed, and I use this biological term quite deliberately. To regard our mind as evolving in the same way as we think of living systems evolving is perfectly accurate. If we are rewarded for thinking in a particular way we'll keep doing it and if the consequences are adverse we''ll try something different. This then defines our consciousness as a continuous dynamic process of trial and error, 99% of which we would be completely unaware of. Whichever way we choose to define our own minds we deceive ourselves if we don't accept the fact that whatever it is it's always in the process of becoming something else. Can you say with any certainty that when you see the colour red you're seeing the same colour that you would have seen a year ago, a week ago, a minute ago? I would certainly make no such assumption in my own case and it causes me no angst whatsoever. I might be a tad concerned if I got up one morning to discover that what I called red is now being called blue by everybody else. Logic would require me to assume that something funny has gone awry in my brain. Such very strange things do occur, although very rarely, such as the bloke who mistook his wife for a hat. I sometimes mistake mine for a logical human being but this seems to be commonplace.

I don't reckon science and philosophy can be used to define human morality and ethics. These are tools for the acquisition of knowledge only, and the better we use them the better our knowledge will be. It is then this knowledge that we use to define our personal and social values and trust that over time we are making the world a better place as a consequence of better knowledge. In my opinion the evidence shows that it's working.

Regards Leo

[Atreyu]

To regard our mind as evolving in the same way as we think of living systems evolving is perfectly accurate. If we are rewarded for thinking in a particular way we'll keep doing it and if the consequences are adverse we''ll try something different. This then defines our consciousness as a continuous dynamic process of trial and error, 99% of which we would be completely unaware of.

That position is contradictory. If 99% of the process is unconscious then how can we "try something different"? By "we'll" did you mean "our minds", and in particular "our unconscious minds"? And if so, is it really appropriate to say "I" or "we" when referring to something that is not under our control? Wouldn't "it" be a more appropriate term? As in, "it will try something different" ?

[Obvious Leo]

I make a distinction between consciousness and awareness, that's all, awareness being that aspect of consciousness which we attend to. Only a minuscule fraction of our conscious mental activity is attended to by our executive function but it still affects the process of learning. Whether we call it the subconscious or the dream state or the trance state or the meditative state doesn't matter. The only time our brain activity ceases to inform itself is when under general anaesthetic. Bohm2 may have more detailed insights on this than me, but that is what neuroscience tells us.

Regards Leo

-- Updated August 12th, 2014, 7:27 pm to add the following --

If you've ever tried to teach a small child to ride a bicycle you'll know what I mean. The hardest thing is to try to get them to stop thinking about what they're doing.

[Bohm2]

Bohm2 may have more detailed insights on this than me, but that is what neuroscience tells us.

Yes, there is quite a bit of research suggesting that a lot of our behaviour occurs at an unconscious level. Stuff like prosopagnosia, blindsight, “split-brain” syndrome, etc. supports the idea that unconsciously processed stimuli can activate high-level cortical regions. Mind you, I had trouble convincing a lot of people on this forum. I didn't think it was so controversial.

A vast amount of data supports the proposition that much of mental life, including thoughts, feelings, and motives, is unconscious.

The Neural Basis of the Dynamic Unconscious
http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/facu ... atment.pdf

[Obvious Leo]

Thank you, Bohm2. The use of the word "dynamic" in the title of this paper is pertinent. The modern developments in cognition science and learning science are increasingly being modelled on non-linear dynamic systems theory. This should appeal to Quotidian, because this was the teaching of the Buddha. The Buddha taught that all fixed forms, like objects, people or ideas, are nothing but "maya" (a polite Vedic word for ********). In our ignorance (avidya) we perceive our world as fixed and permanent but this is not truth. Our world is definable only in terms of its changes and the Self more so than anything else. On the path to enlightenment which the Buddha taught, the key step was to rid ourselves of this notion of a separate and permanent Self and replace it with a Self ever-changing and transient. The separate and unchanging self leads to pain and suffering (duhkha), so Buddha and Descartes would have found little to chat about. Buddha would also have described the "hard problem" as an obvious example of seeking maya.

An interesting aside about general anaesthesia, which I've undergone quite a few times with my impermanent carcass. Those who have shared this experience will know what I'm talking about. It's the only time in your life when time stands still. One moment a pretty nurse is smiling at you as you count backwards and the next moment a different pretty nurse is smiling at you asking if you'd like a cup of tea. It is an utterly different experience from being asleep because of this complete suspension of time. Our sub-aware consciousness is always aware of time's passing and furthermore very accurately so. Many people, including me, never need an alarm clock and are able to wake themselves up at a predetermined time of their own choosing. My mother taught me how to do this in childhood. Almost all people who rely on alarm clocks to get themselves up in the morning routinely wake up a few minutes before the alarm goes off. Our minds never stop.

Regards Leo

[Quotidian]

The Buddha taught that all fixed forms, like objects, people or ideas, are nothing but "maya".... In our ignorance (avidya) we perceive our world as fixed and permanent but this is not truth. Our world is definable only in terms of its changes and the Self more so than anything else. On the path to enlightenment which the Buddha taught, the key step was to rid ourselves of this notion of a separate and permanent Self and replace it with a Self ever-changing and transient. The separate and unchanging self leads to pain and suffering (duhkha), so Buddha and Descartes would have found little to chat about. Buddha would also have described the "hard problem" as an obvious example of seeking maya.

The Buddhist term is not 'maya' - which is from the Hindu Vedanta - but 'samsara', which means 'subject to continual birth and death' (although the two concepts are obviously similar.) According to Buddhism, beings are involuntarily trapped in the samsara of birth and death, to all intents forever, unless they are fortunate enough to encounter the Buddha's teaching and understand how to liberate themselves.

It is true that Buddhism is not 'substantialist', i.e. teaches that there is nothing fixed, permanent or eternal. However this is a very subtle idea and prone to misinterpretation - there are endless debates on Dharma forums about it.

According to Buddhism, were many different errors of this kind, which fell under two main headings: nihilism and 'eternalism'. Nihilism is fairly straightforward: it is simply the view that the human is the physical body and that on death, there is no rebirth or any further karma. (It is the view of probably the majority of the non-religious and certainly of all materialists ¹.) The 'eternalist' error is much harder to understand, but it is the idea that the self or soul is a permanently existing entity that will migrate from life to life forever. Recall that these debates were conducted in a culture where the notion of transmigration had been established for millenia already; the scriptural discussions of these ideas are often preceeded by the phrase about a 'recluse or brahmin who recalls one, or many, or thousands of previous lives'.

So the 'middle path' of Buddhism avoids both these extremes of 'nihilism and eternalism'. However in my experience, it is extremely easy for Buddhism to be interpreted (or mis-interpreted) nihilisticaly, i.e. 'there is no self and nothing permanent' is taken formulaically and not really understood (even by many with life-long commitment to the Buddhist path. It is a fact that the Hindu opponents of the Buddha, and indeed many of the European scholars who first translated Buddhist texts, saw Buddhism as an essentially nihilist philosophy.)

In any case, my interpretation is that 'insight into impermanence' is really a matter of what Aristotle would call 'practical wisdom'. In effect it means that everything you (or 'the world') treasures, like possessions, appointments, status, relationships, and so on, are empty and ultimately insubstantial. We must learn to be happy, depending on nothing.

As regards the remark on the Buddha and Descartes, in fact Tibetan philosophy of mind often appears quite Cartesian, in effect. The following is an excerpt from the Dalai Lama on the topic of reincarnation where he argues that there is a clear ontological distinction between mind and matter. This is given in the context of discussing the basis for reincarnation:

There are many different logical arguments given in the words of the Buddha and subsequent commentaries to prove the existence of past and future lives. In brief, they come down to four points: the logic that things are preceded by things of a similar type, the logic that things are preceded by a substantial cause, the logic that the mind has gained familiarity with things in the past, and the logic of having gained experience of things in the past.



Ultimately all these arguments are based on the idea that the nature of the mind, its clarity and awareness, must have clarity and awareness as its substantial cause. It cannot have any other entity such as an inanimate object as its substantial cause. This is self-evident. Through logical analysis we infer that a new stream of clarity and awareness cannot come about without causes or from unrelated causes. While we observe that mind cannot be produced in a laboratory, we also infer that nothing can eliminate the continuity of subtle clarity and awareness.



As far as I know, no modern psychologist, physicist, or neuroscientist has been able to observe or predict the production of mind either from matter or without cause. ².



This is an extension of the idea that 'nothing happens without a cause', but goes further in saying that 'like effects require like causes', i.e. mind does not arise from material causation; mind is a continuum, or, in the traditional sense, 'a substance', that is, something that is not dependent on or reducible to other things.

--------------------------------------------------------

1. The view that humans life is the result of 'fortuitous causes' is also rejected by the Buddha, a view that translator Bikkhu Bodhi notes 'has become the dominant outlook of the present-day materialist, which he takes to be the dictum conclusively proven by modern science'. In the Buddhist view, the dominant (but not only) factor determining human existence is karma.

[Obvious Leo]

The Buddhist term is not 'maya' - which is from the Hindu Vedanta - but 'samsara'

I stand corrected. It's been many years since I read these philosophies and my memory is fallible, as you can see. Unlike a linear computer memory, which cannot fail, a non-linear human memory has to reconstruct itself every time in the process of recall. Over time this means it can pick up stray synaptic impulses from similar but different sources. This is actually why a machine mind can't be built but in humans it comes at the cost of imprecision.

It is true that Buddhism is not 'substantialist', i.e. teaches that there is nothing fixed, permanent or eternal. However this is a very subtle idea and prone to misinterpretation - there are endless debates on Dharma forums about it.

It is no coincidence that Francisco Varela, one of the founders of non-linear dynamic systems theory, saw a very strong correlation between this entirely new way of thinking the world and Buddhist philosophy. Plato reeks of it also, as do all the Persian philosophies. In fact the Newtonian world didn't really originate with Newton at all. It was primarily a natural morphology of the Aristotelian framework of the early Roman church which was kicked into full throttle by Copernicus. Galileo was an exception, however. Galileo was unquestionably a relativist.

'there is no self and nothing permanent' is taken formulaically and not really understood (even by many with life-long commitment to the Buddhist path. It is a fact that the Hindu opponents of the Buddha, and indeed many of the European scholars who first translated Buddhist texts, saw Buddhism as an essentially nihilist philosophy.)

I don't think I can be accused of committing this error or of misunderstanding the Buddha's meaning. The way I read it is that the self is continuously "becoming" which is also what the Persians said. The Persians were able to expand this understanding of the self into a philosophy of knowledge which has never penetrated western culture, even to this day. They reckoned knowledge could be learned but it could not be taught. This has always been my view and will remain so until my dying breath. Nobody could construe this as nihilism.

We must learn to be happy, depending on nothing.

This is at least something we won't need to argue about,Q.

Although I admire the Dalai Lama, I see him more as a political figure and an inspiring beacon for social change than as a philosopher relevant to the modern world. You may take a different view but it's hardly worth arguing about.

Regards Leo

[Bohm2]

The following is an excerpt from the Dalai Lama on the topic of reincarnation where he argues that there is a clear ontological distinction between mind and matter. ..

I don't see how anyone can claim that the distinction is clearly ontological. I think it's just as likely that the gap is epistemic as argued in this PhD. thesis paper, that I found quite well argued:

What this means is that both apparent gaps are manifestations of the within/without epistemic duality. If only we had access to the inside of external objects – their intrinsic nature – the qualitative character of conscious states would not seem inexplicable. If only we accessed our subjective awareness from the outside – through its causal profile – its instantiation would not seem to require anything more than the performance of an appropriate causal role by objective properties. Put another way, the receptive nature of our knowledge of the physical world makes qualitative character appear physically inexplicable, and the distinctively non-receptive nature of phenomenal self-knowledge makes subjectivity appear physically inexplicable. On this view, the assumption that our epistemic access to things discloses their full nature is responsible for both apparent gaps. The assumption that the causal powers of external objects exhausts their nature, when in fact they have an absolutely intrinsic aspect, is what generates the apparent –trinsicality gap. The assumption that our direct access to our subjective awareness reveals its full nature, when in fact it is constituted by the performance of an appropriate vehicular role, is what generates the –tivity gap. Our failure to recognise that both modes of epistemic access are limited, each revealing just one aspect of reality, is the single source of the appearance of an epistemic gap between the physical and the phenomenal.

Self-representationalism and the Russellian ignorance hypothesis: a hybrid response to the problem of consciousness
https://www.academia.edu/3522302/DOCTOR ... sciousness

[Quotidian]

Might it not be that 'epistemic' and 'ontological' amount to two sides of a coin?

If only we had access to the inside of external objects – their intrinsic nature – the qualitative character of conscious states would not seem inexplicable.

You see, that is saying 'if only we could know', but what it is, that is not known by us, is 'intrinsic nature' as opposed to 'what appears' - which is an ontological distinction - in fact, I would suggest, the primary ontological distinction of phenomenal:noumenal.

You do know, Leo, that Varela was a student of Chogyam Trungpa?

Which 'Persians' are you referring to? The Zoroastrians?

-- Updated August 13th, 2014, 1:14 pm to add the following --

Good account of Varela's Buddhist philosophical thinking in the Shambhala Sun.

-- Updated August 13th, 2014, 1:19 pm to add the following --


Monk teaching mediation to scientists. (You have to learn to 'speak their language'.)

[Obvious Leo]

You do know, Leo, that Varela was a student of Chogyam Trungpa?

I had read of it but attach no particular significance to the fact. My interest in Varela is primarily in his work as an empirical scientist, for which he has always been held in the highest esteem by both his colleagues and detractors alike. His methods were never called into question, although his conclusions occasionally were, especially by Bateson. Undoubtedly Varela's best work was done in conjunction with Humberto Maturana, an early pioneer in the field of cybernetics, which they together ultimately transformed into the entirely new model of autopoiesis. They were both heavily influenced by the earlier work of Ilya Prigogine, who introduced to science the notion of self-organising dissipative structures, for which he received a Nobel prize. After Varela and Maturana went their separate ways Francisco began to pursue his more mystical instincts but his overall contribution to science will never be forgotten.

Which 'Persians' are you referring to? The Zoroastrians?

Emphatically not. Zoroastrianism is a religious philosophy which predates Christianity by many centuries. They practically disappeared after Mohammed. The Persian philosophers I refer to were the ones that flourished under early Islam. The only one to become known to later western cultures became known as Omar Khayyam, after Fitzgerald's translation of his Rubaiyat. Islam was an astonishingly secular movement in Persia and scholars under Islam were awarded an academic freedom unheard of in the west. The Persians had universities full of scholars studying mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, ethics, sociology, and every imaginable science. They were completely free of any influence from the religious faction of the Islamic world. During this time Europe was many centuries away from its first university and the closest thing to it were monasteries, where the monks were kept busy laboriously copying religious texts by hand. It was beautiful art but could not be called knowledge. The academic tolerance of the Persians gradually unravelled after the Crusades but their mathematical tools eventually found their way into Europe via the Moors in Spain.

Regards Leo