A3

Hi Excreationist
Am I right in thinking that you have made the choice to only support what science finds out? Only to accept things if they can be measured, quantified and/or sensed? In fact it seems as if you view a human being as no more than a very sophisticated computer. Also, as promised, I read your earlier posts on page 2 and also your description what consciousness would look like to you if you could observe it:
This seems very, very bleak to me because it seems so far removed from life. It also completely ignores all mental phenomena that have (wrongly interpreted) caused a worldwide believe in reincarnation.

quote:
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I think love is abstract, but I would not classify it as any kind of an entity. S. defines it as a spiritual substance. My wife says it is a state of insanity.
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You started of by responding to the letters, most people would not do that, I think. Another language another word. Maybe it is the typical computer approach. Just thought that was funny.

[quote]So what does Swedenborg mean when he says love is a "spiritual substance"? Does he believe in God and souls as well? Well the "Origin of the Species" was only published in 1859 so I guess he did.[/qoute]
To start with the big picture. We think God is the only reality and source and only substance. He is spirit, infinite and all the other big words. There is an analogy that God is the bulb in the projector, the slide is the spiritual world and we are the projection on the wall. This approach recognizes spiritual substance as the only real substance. BTW this also makes our minds more important than our bodies (and why only the top of the food chain has one and why even ugly people can get married
Spiritual substances have their own characteristics or laws of behavior just like natural substances. Water flows down to the lowest spot, freezes etc. Love also has certain characteristics: to love others, accompanied with the desire to be one with them and also to make them happy for their sake.

So yes we believe in God too, after all His spiritual essence is love (which created us following its own spiritual characteristics) and we have been created in His image and likeness and so are forms of love as well. Absolutely everything we do is motivated by some love (food, sex, sport, neighbor, money, prestige...) in our will. And yes, we also believe we have souls. That’s where God ‘plugs in’ and we get our life trough. Life is not our own, we are receptacles of life. In short we live because God is. We also believe that the mind, in a way, is ‘between’ the soul and the body.
One more point I would like to make is that there is no direct connection between the mind and the body. They are seperated because they are distinct (discrete) degrees of life. The mind (the higher life form) can influence the body but not the body the mind. If we become blind the mind can still see from memory and imagination. It has been recorded that blind people who had a near death experience could see what went on in the operating room.

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Hi John
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Ok each his own. I thought it was close to NailScorva’s reflection on “why ask the question in the first place.”

[quote]More relevant was your observation on abstract - which I guess I'm trying to de-mistify.[/qoute]
Why make things unduly difficult?????? With the universe being held together by God, from atoms to galaxies, everything else could be regarded as illusionary if you really wanted to. As illusionary as that virtual or holographic deck on the Enterprise. That is until you hit this concrete bucket with your brand new car, or your wive says she is leaving you.

LOVE
Sounds fine to me, however, I would say spiritual is better.
Yes and no. The expression “abstraction levels” sounds great but what is being represented is, in my mind, always higher than what does the representing. To put it in perspective everybody can understand, I like it when someone sends me a $1,000.00 check but I would prefer the money it represents.
Regards
Adriaan

A3

Just remembered, Swedenborg did write a book "the Intercourse of the Soul and Body" (in 1769) but I don't know if it is still in print.
BTW it is not about sex

Adriaan

excreationist

A3:
Am I right in thinking that you have made the choice to only support what science finds out?
No... many times here I have been talking about my theory that we have a generalized desire to seek connectedness/coherence/resonance/convergence. This is where our memories and experiences converge and could motivate things like habits, religion, wanting to "belong", environmentalism, etc. As far as I know it isn't incompatible with science although I'm not aware of any scientific research in journals, etc, that talk about this idea.

Yeah... but remember that I can sense emotions such as the urge to avoid things (pain) and repeat things (pleasure), etc. And I can sense things like forgetfulness and frustration. So do you think it is better to use mystical techniques to arrive at "Truth"? On the other hand many ancient mystics disagree with modern science and also with each other.

In fact it seems as if you view a human being as no more than a very sophisticated computer.
More like a self-motivated artificial neural network that seeks generalized goals. Neural networks work in parallel and can infer things,
"degrade gracefully" (rather than crash if there's one minor error) and handle noise.
Computers (except neural computers) just have things like a CPU which just goes really fast. Neurons fire at about 40 times per second - but many can fire simultaneously. I think I agree with Crick/Koch(?) and maybe Daniel Dennett say about consciousness even though I haven't read their books.

...it would just be some neurons that fire a lot - perhaps thousands or billions of them.
This seems very, very bleak to me because it seems so far removed from life. It also completely ignores all mental phenomena that have (wrongly interpreted) caused a worldwide believe in reincarnation.
This was in response to the question "If we could 'see' consciousness ["the observer"], I wonder what it would comprise?" - neurons is all that we would see if we were wanting to "see" consciousness. I think the things involved with awareness/consciousness are neurons. The person wasn't asking what we are conscious *of* - just what is the "observer" itself like... I guess you'd say that it is some kind of soul. As far as reincarnation beliefs go, it could be to do with misinterpreted dreams (I think dreams just involve finding large-scale patterns in possibly random ways - this can take the shape of a narrative - a common largescale pattern in life) - or maybe it is based on wishful thinking. About the "bleak" comment... if something appears to be bleak, does it mean that it has therefore been proven to be false? You need other evidence besides it being "bleak". Maybe it comes from people being raised to think that people are special and far superior to dead matter. Rather than both being seen as dead, both people and other matter could be seen as special. (That's pantheism when taken to the extreme) But anyway, I agree that it sounds bleak at first... when I lost my believe in God life seemed very bleak - all I had was what was around me, and I was an animal-like thing. I had been expecting to go to paradise after a temporary stay on earth while Jesus held my hand. I think books by Ken Keyes are very good for thinking about life in a way that makes you feel very content about things. Though his earlier books involve pantheism and are a bit too utopian, I didn't have much trouble accomodating his ideas in my purely materialistic view of life. Basically we might just be neurons and physical things like that... but we can be amazed at it... like how scientists or mathematicians can be amazed or find beauty in they see - from their perspective. To many people, things like science and maths are incredibly dull.

You started of by responding to the letters, most people would not do that, I think. Another language another word. Maybe it is the typical computer approach. Just thought that was funny.
But that's what it is, in a precise sense I think. Then there is the common way... what love is about. (what we associate it with - poetic words, etc)

...Life is not our own, we are receptacles of life. In short we live because God is...
What's the difference between saying that we depend purely on physical processes, and we exist because neurons and the universe exists. The only difference I think is a lack of an afterlife. But that could be an advantage if your God is the one who punishes non-believers eternally.

One more point I would like to make is that there is no direct connection between the mind and the body. They are seperated because they are distinct (discrete) degrees of life. The mind (the higher life form) can influence the body but not the body the mind. If we become blind the mind can still see from memory and imagination.
On a show I heard about a person who progressively "unlearnt" things... so he wouldn't be able to say that a cat picture is a cat, etc. So where are his memories? In his brain or in his soul? And there is also a person who had some brain damage and they can't recognize faces. He can describe components of faces, but not see the entire face and associate a name with it. Is this mechanism in the brain or the mind?

It has been recorded that blind people who had a near death experience could see what went on in the operating room.
This could involve memory and imagination based on what they might be hearing. BTW, apparently many operating theatres put words up in high places to see if people who have OBE's can read them.

owleye

"Ah! No, that's not what I believe at all. To be countable by the process of the mind, the two "whatevers" must exist in the mind."

Does this mean that the planets in our solar system cannot be counted? Surely this is not what you mean. Perhaps you could rephrase it.

"(Magnitude == Quantity BTW for your Kant comparison)."

I don't know the significance of '==' here, but, for Kant, quantity is a basic category of the understanding (and therefore undefined) and magnitude represents how it is translated when it applies itself to intuitions in experience. Thus, all intuitions (representing the form of experience) are extensive magnitudes, while all sensations (representing the matter of experience) are intensive magnitudes. A mere magnitude (i.e., a number -- e.g., the sqrt(2)) is a magnitude in general.

"Consider the "whatevers" as processed images (from external reality) that are detected by the mind to be similar enough to fall in the the same set (i.e. category "whatever")."

This seems like so much nonsense. It is rather sufficient to say that counting applies only to homogeneous units.

"In short, there's nothing "out there" with a name tag on it."

I don't see the connection between this statement and what it is allegedly "short" for.

"Its undifferentiated stuff."

This seems like nonsense as well.

"Our mind learns to differentiate this stuff, as represented though the senses, apart from itself. The mind applies labels (tags, tokens, identities or whatever you want to call them) and descriptions to things and instances of things."

This may be true, but are you thinking that what we perceive is not what exists? For example, do cats exist? Do you exist? Do stars exist? Isn't it the case that our ability to learn and apply names to things represents our way of categorizing reality? Is this categorization completely arbitrary, having no basis at all in reality?

"The descriptions, however, are also things in the mind - templates, or axiomatic concepts as I like to call them."

I think I remember your 'axiomatic concept' from before. It was another one of your appropriations that is likely to contribute to the 'house of cards' you are constructing. 'Template' is interesting. In ancient times the term 'logos' was used for the same purpose, and has been variously translated. The best translation of Heraclitus' use of it, I think, is 'pattern' (from Raven). However, it has also been translated as 'law', though I believe 'nomos' would be the more likely reference. Plato can be said to be the originator of what is now referred to as 'concept' in so far as it represents a whole (holon). Aristotle, of course, gave it an empirical flavor through the term 'category', which he invented.

In any case, the term 'concept' should be sufficient to represent what you are driving at. That you associate it with a 'template' however, I'm suspicious that you know what you are talking about. Are you thinking of a template as a kind of image, or would it be a set of rules? If it is the former, I think you will have difficulty with this. So that I can have something to work with, what represents the template for a triangle?

"Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that most of what we talk about in philosophy is in the mind. Abstract."

I would agree that the method of philosophy requires delving into concepts, which in some sense are abstractions. However, in no way does this imply that the mind is abstract or that the mind cannot deal with the concrete. Moreover, the notion of being "in the mind" needs to be fleshed out. What does this mean? Notice that up to now you had not indicated that philosophy was the topic under consideration. Presumably the (philosophical) topic that you introduced is directed to the "border" between the mind and the body. I confess I've not seen anything from you that is particularly insightful with respect to this question or indeed I don't find anything from you that justifies that the question has merit in the first place.

"This is precisely why I had an example observing the physical effect from a third party perspective."

How does a "third party" make something physical? Isn't the third party an idea of the mind?

"All I'm claiming is a common external reality through common experience - same stone, different foot if you will."

Claim it all you wish. It remains unjustified.

"How do I differentiate physical laws from mental laws to know what is physical?"

I don't understand your point. What is a mental law?

"I agree we cannot consciously know physical entities directly, only through our senses and all the other manipulations that our mind/brain performs."

"I took your repsonse to say we cannot know physical entities directly - please let me know if I'm wrong and have misunderstood your empirical realism."

Empirical realism is the notion that the content of our sense experience refers to reality. What sense experience refers to is physical. Therefore physical entities are experienced directly. There is no need to refer to "external reality" (presumably opposed to "internal reality"). There is only one reality, though it can be divided into outer reality and inner reality, to indicate that there are two kinds of experience (outer and inner), in which psychology could conceivably be in a position to study the latter (desires and fears, e.g).

owleye

excreationist

*OWLEYE*:
I was wondering if you could respond. I have been asking for responses since I wrote on <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=56&t=000212&p=4" target="_blank">page 4</a> "owleye, just some comments and questions:" (i.e. things for you to answer back to)
You did acknowledge my existence earlier on page 4 though in your reply to John Page - "I have no idea what excreationist is talking about as I have not been following his discussion."
Is there a reason why you are ignoring me?

Just a comment about your latest post to John Page
John Page would mean that things like planets would be represented in the mind as signals - the planets aren't inside our brain! This is similar to how I said that "concrete" things that we think about are just represented in our head as signals as well - there are no concrete cats or dogs, etc, literally living inside our heads.

[ June 16, 2002: Message edited by: excreationist ]</p>

A3

Hi excreationist

I meant bleak in the way of ‘nothing more?’ But Swedenborg does say that there are two worlds. On our side of the ‘great divide’ all physical matter is indeed dead. Only God infuses life which makes someting special. Because it can love.

None at all if that’s all there is, but I didn’t say “we depend purely on physical processes.” We, as spirits, use physical processes to interact and grow and develop our mind in this world. Babies that die miss this opportunity but still develop in the afterlife in a heavenly state.
No, “my” God does not do that. Through the ages the human race has grossly misinterpreted revelation. On page 2 you so nicely categorized the development of a human being. I see, as a very close parallel the development of the human race. The way I interpret it, it seems that the Israel period (disregarding everything before it) is that of a child and the obedience period. The parent says: do as I say and you will do very well and not get hurt, etc. If you disobey I will be very angry. The Old Testament is this scenario, written from a child’s perspective.
A God who is pure love cannot hate or even punish. Those that love to hate and take revenge can do so in hell. They don’t want to be anywhere else. The burning is the burning of hate.
(This is better dealt with in the file I sent to John) As I understand it we have two memories in our mind. An external and internal. Everything comes in the external memory first and is only moved to the internal memory if certain conditions are met. But nothing of this is used (comes through) if there is a malfunction in the brain. As an almost perfect analogy I see a driver in a car. The driver is fine, decides where to go and by what route; but parts of the older car stop working like the horn or indicators or wipers (vision goes) which makes communication with the outside world difficult or impossible. But it is the driver who has all the human faculties.
The thing is they could describe clothing and gestures and who did what.
Regards
Adriaan

John Page

No, it doesn't mean that!! Excreationsist's comment (the planets are not in our minds) is entirely appropriate.

A model perhaps, might help. The notion of what a planet "is" is stored in our minds. We perceive, using our senses, a number of instances of things matching that notion. We count the number of instances we perceive. Proof that the notion of a planet exists in the mind is our ability to imagine and draw a scene depicting planets. Proof that perception can be deceiving is an optical illusion so that a telescope viewer will perceive there are, say, four planets in view but in reality one of them is a fake image. This latter point is especially relevant to the your idealist empiricist viewpoint.

I am proposing that what the mind actually does is to compare the notion of quantity to the set of planets percieved in the mind to determine how many there are. If this was not so, how could different minds come up with different answers?

Well, with this interpretation I definitely part ways with Kant and I not sure this is exactly what he was thinking. By == I mean equivalent to (hangover from the 'C' language where = is an assignment operator and == is a test for equivalence.
You say nonsense - your opinion. What I'm trying to achieve is a systematic explanation of what happens, not a succinct but impenetrable english language description. With your sentence, we're left wondering What's a homogenous unit?, how did it get there? what does the process of counting actually do? My goal is to understand the mind from an engineering perspective, not to indulge in philosophical tautologies.
It was a summary of the preceeding explanation!!
Again, opinion. What I'm trying to do is paint a picture of what is outside the mind. It is only inside the mind that external reality is perceived and typed and called names - otherwise you need to explain a whole host of mis-perceptions, not the least of which is differing opinions, some other way. Our minds provide a subjective view of the outside world, do you agree?

Our senses and perceptions are not perfect and can be deceived. Our senses can tell us cats exist in external reality but they may be wrong from time to time. Who said our minds' categorizations of reality was arbitrary? Not me. Just imperfect.

You are seeking an answer I do not precisely have, and to which there may be a number of answers. Information can be stored in many ways ranging from a literal data image to a comparative image to a set of rules or a process that encodes data. All I'm proposing with the axiomatic concept is that the mind contains 'ideals' which it compares with the subject in question. The exact mechanism is likely to vary, for example, between comparing with soundwaves logitudinally or comparing with information from the eyes.

What leads you state I'm constructing a house of cards?

A triangle may seem a simple object but I think the axiomatic concept it is a compound template comprising number of points and straight lines - but reality is more complex, how do we know it is a 2d representation? for example. Again, I don't know what the representation is in the mind but argue that it must exist in order for us to understand and communicate the concept. This overall approach is supported by the existence of purely imaginary entities (e.g. Gryphon) constructed within the mind as a combination of concepts learned from external reality (cats, lions, dragins etc.)

I have my views. I'm seeking the views of others in better defining the border between the mind and the body.

Now, to the topic. You say the mind is not abstract. Then show me one. Nail it up to the door and draw me a diagram. Can't do that? Conclusion, its either a meaningless/illusory term or abstract. BTW I consider abstract entites are part of reality see <a href="http://www.reconciliationism.org/reality.htm" target="_blank">diagram and explanation</a>.

It doesn's make it physical but provides an objective view as to its physicality. Agreed, third party is an idea of the mind. Are you arguing solipsism? If not then there are two minds at least (yours and mine). We can observe things, some of them we call physical. Please note in one of my earlier posts I did challenge readers to define physicality - there's the concrete sense where things cannot pass through each other and then the neutrino particle in physics that can. (Thus I'm more comfortable with physical than concrete to describe non-abstract things)

By "triangulation" I refer to your mind + my mind + common observations of what's in between. The third party effect can be observed in scientific experiments.

If there is no common reality external to the mind, what is your conception of reality - that we all exist within one single mind? Are you denying that independent of us there is a country called Canada that we can both visit and jump up and down on?
I'm asking about your "model" of reality. If you maintain there is no physcial element to reality where does that leave the laws of physics and how do they affect the workings of the mind? A mental law is a law that controls the operation of the mind.

I see this as very simplistic. For example, do we experience the sun directly - no, we'd frazzle. We experience its effects at a distance and sometimes through a number of medium (e.g. reflection of light, shock waves). Furthermore, if I were to take your statement literally we would only know of things a molecule away from our sense organs - but the sun is a long way away. I could elaborate but that we have scientific knowledge of distance rather eliminates your version of empirical realism as being, well, unrealistic.

I agree there is a totality of reality and divide this into external reality (external to the mind) in internal reality (inside the mind). However, these are not kinds of experience but actual things that we know through experience.

Cheers, John

John Page

Adriaan Please provide a study from a recognized scientific journal that supports this.

Anticipating a question about how I justify my "faith" in science and my response is look at the track record in discovering sustainable truths. We can follow up in the existence of go forum if you wish.

Cheers, John

A3

Hi John,
Can you produce a similar study outlining the mind (not the brain)? Do you really expect scientific proof of the afterlife?
During this discussion you seem to except the existence of a mind because you are talking about its border. You seem, however, no closer to what the mind really is than when you started. Maybe there are no “mind experts” here who can gain your trust. If you discount the existence of a mystical mind consisting of spiritual substance than all you are doing is looking at the brain and its seeming activity and nothing else. I assume that you are confident that science some day will find out how electrical/chemical impulses become ideas and concepts. How thought becomes speech.
For our protection “proof” of a spiritual mind will always be circumstantial and indirectly (through behavioral patterns). Human nature is such that if we were able to scientifically approach the mind we would use it for good but also for evil like we did everything else in this physical world. This ‘not knowing’ also protects our spiritual freedom and thus to be human.
What makes me believe there is a spiritual world are the countless number of indications in print (including the Bible and Swedenborg’s explanations) and through all sort of experiences like the millions of near death experiences. Also what happens during hypnotism and finally common sense. (Upbringing, heredity??)
BTW a book “The Tabernacle of Israel” describes in detail every correspondence between the three zones, their furniture and its placement, materials and colors of this structure and the human mind. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Yes, a track record of finding natural truths or laws. I keep saying that this is as far as we will go with science, to go further you need revelation. Science can only give meaning to the life of scientists, religion can give meaning to everyone’s life. I also strongly believe that they both come from the same Source so where the two overlap they should agree.
I don’t understand your last sentence.

Regards
Adriaan

owleye

excreationist...

My apologies. I didn't see your post.

"Back then not much was known about the brain and even less was known about artificial intelligence:"

I suspect that cognitive science makes considerable use of Husserl (and Kant), though I also understand that Hume is one of their heroes as well. In any case, what does the study of the brain tell you about the mind?

"But people would probably benefit more from learning about more recent things, such as neurophenomenology, which takes into account the latest brain research rather than relying on the intuitions of old-fashioned philosophers."

This might be true. Perhaps you could cite some article I should be reading or some author who has some particularly important insights in this area.

I couldn't make out the objection you had to my criticism of John's notion of abstract entities representing something else. What was that objection? Did you understand John as saying that numbers are meaningless, or only that numbers are meaningless if they don't represent something? Because you used "refer" rather than "represent", am I to assume that these two terms mean the same thing?

I took John to mean that numbers are meaningless in the sense that they are "mere magnitudes" or magnitudes in general. This would make them abstract. From John's later post, however, he disputes this interpretation. I'll have to study this a bit more. I suspect he is digging himself deeper into a quagmire. For Kant, pure mathematics deals with objects in pure intuition (i.e., that which can be considered abstracted from empirical intuition). Because of this relationship, what is true of mathematics is true of phenomena in general. This idea has been, unfortunately for Kant, refuted by the subsequent treatment of geometry and the different notion of what pure mathematics is. Husserl improved on this, though I can't say as I've read a great deal about him. A split grew between the continent and the British tradition about this time and followers of Frege came to be known as analytic philosophers, while Husserlian followers came to be known as phenomenologists.

Are you suggesting that the meaninglessness of numbers (in their general sense) is meaningless in the same way that your invented word is meaningless (or are you reading John to say that numbers are meaningful because they refer to something)?

"I think we only see an approximation of the physical world, and this approximation can be corrupted... (and be totally wrong) would you agree?"

Again, my position is not in consideration here. With respect to your "seeing an approximation of the physical world" and that such seeing could be "totally wrong" I see it as rather combining two ideas that are in conflict with each other. How do you resolve this?

owleye