--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Duveyoung <no_reply@...> wrote: > > Xeno, > > I was expecting to be blown away by "discovered complexity I knew not of," > but strangely, the talk was "lite," and I, well, sue me, but I kinda felt > smugly sorry for Searle. As wonderful as his "sermon" was, it seemed > strangely hollow -- not shallow -- but hollow. It seemed absent the > "heartwood" core axioms of spirituality that can be found across cultures > throughout time. I wanted to grab him by the shirt collar and say, "You need > to read some Advaita books." And if he'd done so, THEN READ THEM AGAIN until > he grew the nervous system that could grok it. > > The talk's heft was that it was "positively impacting on almost any > audience," but it lacked hard science examples that I thought would be coming > at me like Gatling bullets. But nope. > > The one thing he tried to ram home was that consciousness was purely a > physical phenomenon without any unexplainable or scientifically > non-approachable ugga-bugga. And that definition of "consciousness" I AGREE > WITH FULLY. > > The biggest failure of the talk was that the concept of "the Witness" of > consciousness was not mentioned -- although perhaps alluded to briefly as he > batted aside the traditional POVs on consciousness. > > Advaita would definitely give him the intellectual tools with which to see if > "the Witness" could also be delineated such that it, too, might be sought in > experiments. I think it could. > > But, of course, I'd want to WARN Searle that understanding Advaita was merely > and only a secondary goal -- like knowing a map -- and that "realization" > would come to him only if and when his ADDICTION to conceptual experiences > were ended -- and THEN the territory of that map would be revealed as the > only actuality beyond BOTH existence and non-existence. > > And that requires building a nervous system that knows how to dwell in "a > close to silence" state of biology - a state that is so non-stimulating of > consciousness' "thought production clockworks" that identity could slip off > of it and be realized as, IDENTITY, the source of every form of > identification seen in the actions of consciousness. > > And, yeah, I'd like to chide him a bit about being a scientist and prideful > that all of "THIS" can be grasped. I guess he needs to read some Godel, too, > if only to show the limitations of logic. > > To me, "the Witness" is to be but halfly measured when it's targeted as part > of the grand illusion, but in order to talk about it, one finds that > language, as if, forces the word to seem to refer to a full manifestation > instead of the now-you-see-it-now-you-don't hyperbolic entity that is but > "half" observed -- not unlike as today's science now looks an electron with > its two states -- wave/particle. > > I call the observable part of "the Witness," ego. The unmanifest "part" I > call awareness, absolute, sentience, identity -- recognizing that all those > words are qualities and therefore, hee hee, an especial kind of ersatz > non-thing-a-ma-jigger > > Science needs to humble itself and admit that the embodiment of "the Witness" > in materiality is one in which "the Witness" pokes its head above the "ritam > line" as much as "it" dwells below that line and "is" then beyond any of > science's instrumentality's metrics. Good luck on that happening. > I posted this link to the Searle video mainly because a friend of mine sent it to me. He knows I am interested in consciousness, but this friend is completely uninterested in it himself and is unable to understand spirituality at all. As for me Searle's talk was as you say kind of light. For me the problem of consciousness does not really exist as experience, but on the level of the mind, it seems to be impossible to describe qualities that are different and have them, at the same time, be the same. As long as one thinks about consciousness, there will be no solution. If that makes no sense, that is about as far as I can get.
What is interesting is the number of neuroscientists and philosophers today that are intent on trying to find a solution to the conundrum, so at least there will be a lot of intelligent shots in the direction of finding a resolution, even if they fail. Here is a video of Dennett attempting to explain or explain away consciousness. http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_on_our_consciousness.html Dennett takes in a lot of current scientific information into his philosophy, but he seems to miss the crux of what most people are thinking about when they discuss consciousness. > And, by the way, thanks for all your posts. I always scan to see what you're > writing about, and have read your posts enough to know that if I do enter a > thread, your stuff is the get-to-the-heart-of-it stuff, so good on ya. > > Edg > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Xenophaneros Anartaxius" <anartaxius@> > wrote: > > > > John Searle at CERN (TEDxTalks) > > > > http://youtu.be/j_OPQgPIdKg > > > > > > [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=j_OPQgPIdKg ] > > >
