On Tuesday 16 June 2007 7:50 AM Krimel writes to Gav: <snip>
> 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. Hi Krimel, gav, and all, I have empathy with Case playing the guitar! Many years ago my sister was learning to play the piano and one of the practice pieces was: Looking For The Lost Chord: Seated One day at the organ, I was sad and ill at ease, And my fingers wandered idly Over the noisy keys. I knew not what I was playing. Or what I was dreaming. Then! I struck a chord of music that sounded like a great Amen! Also I am reminded of this: ³When people no longer believe in Greater Mind and the existence of any form of knowledge and truth higher than materialism and what is evident to the senses, they are mentally shut. One characteristic of a shut mind is the absence of Magnetic Center. In that case, no influences, apart from those of the life of the world, can be received, because then the first necessary receptive apparatus is missing. The mentally defective person, in this sense, cannot either let a ray of light into his inner darkness or ever change the relationship between Personality and Essence. Life must remain his Neutralizing Force. That is, no reversal within him can take place. He remains, to use a phrase of the Work, an unfinished house.² Maurice Nicoll (a student of Jung, Ouspensky, Gurdjieff): PSYCHOLOGICAL COMMENTARIES volume 3 page 1019: Joe On 6/16/09 7:50 AM, "Krimel" <[email protected]> wrote: >> [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. > > 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/ 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/
