> [Krimel] > Memes are reoccurring patterns of brain activity. [KO] they tend to instigate an action, and they register as an experience.
[Krimel] The causal status of memes is the subject of ongoing debate. There is very good evidence that our awareness of our conscious decisions to act are preceded by almost a half a second by preparation to begin acting. That is a decision is made before we are aware of having made the decision. But this certainly remains an open question. [KO] ...i dont really have it clear enough of just what is a belief; do i believe i am going to type some more just now? Off the top of my head i would say that belief gets in the way of learning and so is definitely a factor in that process. [Krimel] Well exactly, we do not have a clear definition of belief. There is a fuzziness about all terms that refer to mental events. It was this fuzziness that lead the behaviorists to just drop them. [KO] Somehow you have this back to front. Learning happens when new experience in the present imprints or overwrites memory of experiences of the past. [Krimel] Right learning is the result of feedback. We do something. There are consequences for our actions and those consequences influence what we do next. The consequences of our acts either increase or decrease the probability of acting similarly in the future. This is called recursion. [KO] Most learning even, is in a manner of speaking unconscious - but the best learning happens when is possible to pay more attention to a good teacher. [Krimel] True enough but you are thinking here of intentional effortful learning which while profound accounts for only a small proportion of what we learn. Most learning is a result of the recursive process I just mention and happens completely outside of our awareness, as you suggest below. [KO] Krimel, please allow me to go in a slightly different direction:- You believe you can get in and out of a chair, right? Yet the way you get in and out of a chair is almost completely habitual. I could almost certainly show you a better way. Likely you were too busy noticing other things when you were first introduced to chairs - those long hours sitting in the school desks, your back collapsed and twisted through tiredness; now your back is visibly distorted and has several weak and painful areas; the way you have used your back over the years has affected the way it functions now. To improve the use of yourself now could only be done by saying 'no' to your habitual way of, for example, getting in and out of a chair and instead giving consent to allow movement in a different way. That's why i say - 'let the neck be free, to let the head go forward and up, to let the back lengthen and widen' [Krimel] If indeed the consequences of my sitting and rising were painful then the sensation of pain would decrease the possibility of my continued habitual method of arising. My beliefs about this, seem to me, to be of little consequence. I would also add that what you say above suggests that in many people their backs retain within them the memory of abusive standing and sitting practices of the past. Perhaps this suggests that the recursive process isn't fool proof and needs a bit of conscious reflection for correction. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
