> [Krimel] > Here I am merely parroting what Bolte-Taylor meant when she > said that we are energy beings exchanging energy with the > environment. But what I have said > is that experience BEGINS with transduction of energy into > neural impulses. > I never ever said that is what experience IS.
gav: think what this means krimel. 'energy beings exchanging energy with the (energy of the) environment' now take it back a step. remove the subject and object and there is just movement of energy: 'the environment' and 'the being' are not yet abstracted from this moving energy. [Krimel] To talk about any thing is to take a step back from it. Language reduces experience to symbols. The question isn't: if you are stepping back, it is where are you stepping? I just want to make sure we are perfectly clear on one point here. In virtue of the fact that we are talking at all, we are using concepts to talk about concepts. We are not and can not "talk" about "what is". We can only exchange conceptualizations of experience. Further more, we are both just making probability statements about this concept or that concept. I think this conceptual schema matches my perceptions more often than that one. You have a higher probability of perceptual correspondence with another set of concepts. [gav] experience cannot begin with 'transduction of energy into neural impulses', because 'transduction of energy into neural impulses' is a concept *derived from experience* as all concepts necessarily are (this point is ironclad logic). 'transduction of energy into neural impulses' is an *analogue* - a biochemical neurophysiological analogue of 'experiencing' - [Krimel] Look it is not as though we are the only "energy beings exchanging energy with the environment." I would say that a pattern of energy exchange in the environment actually IS a form of being; like lightning, fire, solar flares, jet streams, aurora borealis, dust devils. Organic being is a subset of this kind of "being." [gav] it correlates with the phenomenological 'felt quality' of experience. there is no causation here. the neurophysiology does not cause the experience; neither does the experience cause the neurophysiology. the neurophysiology is a creation, that mirrors, analogises, gives a particular perspective on experience. [Krimel] When you say "there is no causation here" what do you mean? When a 3 feet steel bar took out one of Phineas Gage's eyes and a big chuck of neo-cortex he recovered from the injury. But his family and friends claimed he had become a different person. Was this change in personality simply correlated with the spike through the head? [gav] when buddhist monks are meditating well they feel no sense of separate self, they are entrenched in the immediate present. likewise during such states their brain is active in the places that correspond to this sensation of egolessness and dormant in the places associated with self-consciousness. the meditation *doesn't cause* the brain to show that particular logically corresponding pattern of activity; the brain *doesn't cause* the meditation. the experience and the patterns of brain activity occur *simultaneously*: the brainwaves can be measured and observed as the monk meditates. [Krimel] >From a causal standpoint the correspondence between brain activity when a monk is said to be meditating is no different from the correspondence between a tennis players serving and the brain activity produced during the process. What causes what, is a very interesting question in search of a very interesting answer. Damasio's gambling experiment and Benjamin Libet's work on the function of time in perception and decision making do provide some fascinating insights. But look let me tell you a story that might help you see what I keep going on about. Case plays the guitar. He has been playing a very long time and he really sucks at it. He doesn't play "songs" because basically all that involves is repeating the same three minute tune over and over and then what? He has a hard time remembering chord progressions so he don't really remember how to play a tune once he has learned it anyway. What he likes about playing guitar is just sitting there banging on the strings and moving his hands until he hears something he likes then he just plays. He has lots of things that he does over and over and has been doing over and over for years but he never play them the same way. He always makes mistakes and if he bothered to record it, I for one, would not enjoy listening. But he likes the feeling of playing and hearing the notes. It is a kind of meditation for him. He has never taken a lesson, He doesn't read music and he knows buttkiss about music theory. Over the years I have tried to get him to study music or take some lessons. I am quite sure that if he did those things he would "understand" music better. He would become more technically proficient. But he has this nagging feeling that to break up the experience of playing into formal steps would be, as you Aw Gi folks say, "to kill it through dissection." It would somehow alter the experience that he enjoys in some indefinable way that would lessen the experience. He "knows" this isn't true. Whatever study of music he has made has not hindered his enjoyment. Maybe he is just too lazy to formally study music. He understands intellectually the benefits but he has the "feeling" of dread or incompetence or something he knows not what that stops him from delving into the formal structure of music. But he doesn't go around claiming that formal musicians who spend their lives studying the mathematics and theory and technique of music are wrong to do so. He would not argue that they are killing the beauty of their art by dissecting it. They need to zoom in on the details of their craft. They need a higher resolution of focus on the specifics to accomplish much more detailed and intricate and diverse expressions of sound than Case does. I have a cellist friend who has performed in Carnegie Hall. Case doesn't go around telling him that he is approaching his instrument from the wrong point of view. Case fingerpaints with sound in broad stokes at low resolution and low fidelity. He is zoomed out and his focus is soft. This level of focus and resolution suits his needs pretty well. But at the same time he is cutting himself off from a vast portion of the intellectual level where the intricate details of music and sound have been explored for centuries. I think Case is, in fact cutting off his nose to spite his face. I think he is being stubborn and frivolous. But I don't play guitar or study music theory so he never listens to me. 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/
