[FairfieldLife] Re: Nagel for Salyavin
--- authfriend authfriend@... wrote: The Core of `Mind and Cosmos'By THOMAS NAGEL http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/author/thomas-nagel/ This is a brief statement of positions defended more fully in my book Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False, which was published by Oxford University Press last year. Since then the book has attracted a good deal of critical attention, which is not surprising, given the entrenchment of the world view that it attacks. It seemed useful to offer a short summary of the central argument. Read more:http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/the-core-of-mind-an\ d-cosmos/ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/the-core-of-mind-and-co\ smos/ http://www.ted.com/talks/martin_hanczyc_the_line_between_life_and_not_life.html https://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=oil-droplets-mimic-early-life Darwin's concept is naturalist and not materialist. Maintain that distinction. 'Natural Selection' itself is a form of intelligence. An abstract, rudimentary, mathematical intelligence. Even if Nature has intelligence, (as Maharishi sez), It dosen't contradict Darwin in any way. If Maharishi's infinite self-organising power of nature is a form of intelligence, it only means the earliest life self assembled itself. Again, there is nothing here that contradicts Darwin. There is still no personal god. Subjective first person ontology is not always reliable or accurate. It has to be corroborated with objective scientific data.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Nagel for Salyavin
--- Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartaxius@ wrote: Regarding Nagel, having just read the NYTimes article. snip We are on the threshold of a robotics revolution. Can a robot be conscious? --- authfriend authfriend@... wrote: Is there something it is like to be a robot? Or would a robot that could perfectly mimic a human being (or any other creature) be a zombie, lacking inner first-person experience? It seems to me Nagel is trying to find an alternative to a theological argument without having to admit that it is simply a theological argument. --- authfriend authfriend@... wrote: It's not a theological argument. It's an alternative he says a believer might accept, but as far as he's concerned it can be understood as a naturalistic, but non-materialist, alternative. The problem with any metaphysical argument is it is simply virtual, there is no way to *demonstrate* its truth. A metaphysical argument remains out of the range of direct experience and so remains always a mere belief however vigorously held. --- authfriend authfriend@... wrote: Same with mathematics. Scientific arguments are demonstrable within our experience, but inductive arguments are always logically fallacious, --- authfriend authfriend@... wrote: Explain that, please. I don't believe that's the case. Nagel's thesis, FWIW, is that it is impossible *in principle* for the physical sciences to account for subjective, first- person experience--what it is like to be a particular human being, for example--and he makes that argument in the book (albeit not in his NYTimes article). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FsH7RK1S2E http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-09/mind-reading-tech-reconstructs-videos-brain-images https://sites.google.com/site/gallantlabucb/publications/nishimoto-et-al-2011 Science is fast approaching that capability. We will be able to do it is another 15 years time. Nature doesn't think and design. Nature is more like an Umpire in a game. It throws a wide range of mutations into the envionment and lets the environment decide which survives. The process is wasteful, but works. This is why the casuality rate is so high in evolution. The extinction rate is so high that many evolutioary biologists state that extinction is a natural process of evolution. Only when species become extinct, new species evolve to fill in those ecological niches. 'Golden mean', 'fibonacci sequence', 'balance between order and chaos', 'symmetry', are all essentially mathematical abstracts and still doesn't contradict Darwin in any way. Nature functions more like an Umpire and not as a mother or dictator or santa claus etc.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Nagel for Salyavin
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Jason jedi_spock@... wrote: --- authfriend authfriend@ wrote: The Core of `Mind and Cosmos'By THOMAS NAGEL http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/author/thomas-nagel/ This is a brief statement of positions defended more fully in my book Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False, which was published by Oxford University Press last year. Since then the book has attracted a good deal of critical attention, which is not surprising, given the entrenchment of the world view that it attacks. It seemed useful to offer a short summary of the central argument. Read more:http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/the-core-of-mind-an\ d-cosmos/ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/the-core-of-mind-and-co\ smos/ http://www.ted.com/talks/martin_hanczyc_the_line_between_life_and_not_life.html https://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=oil-droplets-mimic-early-life Probably be a good idea to read at least the article in the NYTimes, Jason. Then you'd realize your assertions don't challenge Nagel's thesis the way you thought they did, because he isn't saying what you thought he was. Darwin's concept is naturalist and not materialist. Maintain that distinction. 'Natural Selection' itself is a form of intelligence. An abstract, rudimentary, mathematical intelligence. Even if Nature has intelligence, (as Maharishi sez), It dosen't contradict Darwin in any way. If Maharishi's infinite self-organising power of nature is a form of intelligence, it only means the earliest life self assembled itself. Again, there is nothing here that contradicts Darwin. There is still no personal god. Subjective first person ontology is not always reliable or accurate. It has to be corroborated with objective scientific data.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Nagel for Salyavin
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend authfriend@... wrote: Thanks for seeking it out. The Core of `Mind and Cosmos'By THOMAS NAGEL http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/author/thomas-nagel/ This is a brief statement of positions defended more fully in my book Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False, which was published by Oxford University Press last year. Since then the book has attracted a good deal of critical attention, which is not surprising, given the entrenchment of the world view that it attacks. It seemed useful to offer a short summary of the central argument. Read more:http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/the-core-of-mind-an\ d-cosmos/ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/the-core-of-mind-and-co\ smos/ So it's *that* old chestnut. I can't imagine what the controversy is about then, this idea has been around for donkey's years. Probably just some bloggers reacting to the term neo-Darwinism being false. Bless 'em. I always thought that if mind was some sort of intrinsic quality of the universe there ought to be a lot more of it about, and maybe of better quality than ours. Fact is, it took millions of years to arise on Earth and it needn't have so I can't imagine what sort of waiting game it was playing. I stick with probability A, there will be a complete neurological explanation but how we translate that into something that satisfies *personally* is up to us. I suspect some sort of feedback mechanism like the brain uses for everything else, the immediacy of consciousness ceases during sleep or general anaesthetic because it is electrical activity and our subjective part, that causes all the hassle, ceases too because it is inextricably bound up with the sensations that is the majority part of experience. There is a part of the brain where our sense of self resides and this is another part of the feedback monitoring system that goes during sleep. Consciousness is us being caught between different brain functions but the bit that we think is us can never be pinned down as it depends on us looking at the rest of what is happening inside to maintain an illusion that there is an us to start with. It's like a hall of mirrors, turn round as fast as you like but you'll never see the original you. Turn the lights off though and you see nothing. It's a machine. But it fools itself into thinking it's something it's not, if it stayed on all the time I'd be a bit more convinced. But it evolved like everything else in the brain and is therefore a bodge-up, maybe one day we'll be able to see our brains working and realise how it's all done. Actually, when I'm meditating I think I get a better glimpse of how it works because a lot of extraneous chatter can get shut down but the sense of the presence of me remains, until I fall asleep. A ghost in a sleepy machine...
[FairfieldLife] Re: Nagel for Salyavin
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, salyavin808 fintlewoodlewix@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend authfriend@ wrote: Thanks for seeking it out. I didn't seek it out, actually. It was in the NYTimes yesterday, which I read daily. The Core of `Mind and Cosmos'By THOMAS NAGEL http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/author/thomas-nagel/ This is a brief statement of positions defended more fully in my book Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False, which was published by Oxford University Press last year. Since then the book has attracted a good deal of critical attention, which is not surprising, given the entrenchment of the world view that it attacks. It seemed useful to offer a short summary of the central argument. Read more:http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/the-core-of-mind-an\ d-cosmos/ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/the-core-of-mind-and-co\ smos/ So it's *that* old chestnut. I can't imagine what the controversy is about then, this idea has been around for donkey's years. Probably just some bloggers reacting to the term neo-Darwinism being false. Bless 'em. No, actually (as I already told you) a bunch of Big Guns in the field of philosophy; their reviews have been published in scholarly journals and important publications like Commonweal, the New Republic, The Nation, and the New York Review of Books, among others. (Some bloggers too, of course.) You make some interesting comments, but I'll have to get back to you later on those. Just wanted to make those two quick points for now. I always thought that if mind was some sort of intrinsic quality of the universe there ought to be a lot more of it about, and maybe of better quality than ours. Fact is, it took millions of years to arise on Earth and it needn't have so I can't imagine what sort of waiting game it was playing. I stick with probability A, there will be a complete neurological explanation but how we translate that into something that satisfies *personally* is up to us. I suspect some sort of feedback mechanism like the brain uses for everything else, the immediacy of consciousness ceases during sleep or general anaesthetic because it is electrical activity and our subjective part, that causes all the hassle, ceases too because it is inextricably bound up with the sensations that is the majority part of experience. There is a part of the brain where our sense of self resides and this is another part of the feedback monitoring system that goes during sleep. Consciousness is us being caught between different brain functions but the bit that we think is us can never be pinned down as it depends on us looking at the rest of what is happening inside to maintain an illusion that there is an us to start with. It's like a hall of mirrors, turn round as fast as you like but you'll never see the original you. Turn the lights off though and you see nothing. It's a machine. But it fools itself into thinking it's something it's not, if it stayed on all the time I'd be a bit more convinced. But it evolved like everything else in the brain and is therefore a bodge-up, maybe one day we'll be able to see our brains working and realise how it's all done. Actually, when I'm meditating I think I get a better glimpse of how it works because a lot of extraneous chatter can get shut down but the sense of the presence of me remains, until I fall asleep. A ghost in a sleepy machine...
[FairfieldLife] Re: Nagel for Salyavin
Regarding Nagel, having just read the NYTimes article. If we look at existence if it is 'objective', perhaps this conundrum exists because we have not determined whether consciousness is a property that exists locally (as in the brain), or non-locally (as equally distributed everywhere). If the former, and the brain is destroyed consciousness vanishes, but the problem is how does the brain create consciousness? If the latter there is then the problem of how a local structure gives form to consciousness or 'activates' it. With this latter a rock could have consciousness, but not likely any different from a dead human body. But how conscious is an insect? Like us, they respond to environmental cues, have memory etc., and have a rudimentary ability to communicate. Even trees communicate in various ways. We are on the threshold of a robotics revolution. Can a robot be conscious? It seems to me Nagel is trying to find an alternative to a theological argument without having to admit that it is simply a theological argument. The problem with any metaphysical argument is it is simply virtual, there is no way to *demonstrate* its truth. A metaphysical argument remains out of the range of direct experience and so remains always a mere belief however vigorously held. Scientific arguments are demonstrable within our experience, but inductive arguments are always logically fallacious, and thus the theory always remains hypothetical, subject to doubt. Tautological arguments are always true, but they are always empty, and thus show nothing about anything. Contradictions are always false. They show us when we are wrong. Thus as the field is so open, we can argue about it forever and never find a solution. To summarise: We either think we know something but do not. Or, we know something, but must always have doubts. Or, what we do know is empty; is just a big nothing. Or, we are just plain wrong. Things are looking up!
[FairfieldLife] Re: Nagel for Salyavin
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartaxius@... wrote: Regarding Nagel, having just read the NYTimes article. snip We are on the threshold of a robotics revolution. Can a robot be conscious? Is there something it is like to be a robot? Or would a robot that could perfectly mimic a human being (or any other creature) be a zombie, lacking inner first-person experience? It seems to me Nagel is trying to find an alternative to a theological argument without having to admit that it is simply a theological argument. It's not a theological argument. It's an alternative he says a believer might accept, but as far as he's concerned it can be understood as a naturalistic, but non-materialist, alternative. The problem with any metaphysical argument is it is simply virtual, there is no way to *demonstrate* its truth. A metaphysical argument remains out of the range of direct experience and so remains always a mere belief however vigorously held. Same with mathematics. Scientific arguments are demonstrable within our experience, but inductive arguments are always logically fallacious, Explain that, please. I don't believe that's the case. Nagel's thesis, FWIW, is that it is impossible *in principle* for the physical sciences to account for subjective, first- person experience--what it is like to be a particular human being, for example--and he makes that argument in the book (albeit not in his NYTimes article).
[FairfieldLife] Re: Nagel for Salyavin
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, salyavin808 fintlewoodlewix@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend authfriend@ wrote: Thanks for seeking it out. The Core of `Mind and Cosmos'By THOMAS NAGEL http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/author/thomas-nagel/ This is a brief statement of positions defended more fully in my book Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False, which was published by Oxford University Press last year. Since then the book has attracted a good deal of critical attention, which is not surprising, given the entrenchment of the world view that it attacks. It seemed useful to offer a short summary of the central argument. Read more:http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/the-core-of-mind-an\ d-cosmos/ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/the-core-of-mind-and-co\ smos/ So it's *that* old chestnut. I can't imagine what the controversy is about then, this idea has been around for donkey's years. Which old chestnut do you have in mind? Probably just some bloggers reacting to the term neo-Darwinism being false. Bless 'em. Corrected in an earlier post... I always thought that if mind was some sort of intrinsic quality of the universe there ought to be a lot more of it about, and maybe of better quality than ours. Fact is, it took millions of years to arise on Earth and it needn't have so I can't imagine what sort of waiting game it was playing. Maybe it *does* take millions of years to arise? Maybe there is more and better mind in the universe that we aren't yet aware of? I stick with probability A, there will be a complete neurological explanation but how we translate that into something that satisfies *personally* is up to us. Will there be a complete neurological explanation for how the complete neurological explanation satisfies each of us personally? I suspect some sort of feedback mechanism like the brain uses for everything else, the immediacy of consciousness ceases during sleep or general anaesthetic because it is electrical activity and our subjective part, that causes all the hassle, ceases too because it is inextricably bound up with the sensations that is the majority part of experience. There is a part of the brain where our sense of self resides and this is another part of the feedback monitoring system that goes during sleep. Consciousness is us being caught between different brain functions but the bit that we think is us can never be pinned down as it depends on us looking at the rest of what is happening inside to maintain an illusion that there is an us to start with. Who is looking? Who is deceived by the illusion? It's like a hall of mirrors, turn round as fast as you like but you'll never see the original you. Turn the lights off though and you see nothing. Who sees (or doesn't see)? It's a machine. But it fools itself into thinking it's something it's not, A machine that fools itself? if it stayed on all the time I'd be a bit more convinced. But it evolved like everything else in the brain and is therefore a bodge-up, maybe one day we'll be able to see our brains working and realise how it's all done. Who will be doing the seeing and the realizing? Actually, when I'm meditating I think I get a better glimpse of how it works because a lot of extraneous chatter can get shut down but the sense of the presence of me remains, until I fall asleep. A ghost in a sleepy machine... 'Tis said that the enlightened continue to experience the pure me throughout dreaming and deep sleep. The hall of mirrors idea is intriguing; it sounds as though it might involve Self-reference. Will neurology be able to explain Self-reference, awareness of awareness?
[FairfieldLife] Re: Nagel for Salyavin
There is a conditioning of the mind that occurs, whereby pure awareness is always there, 24/7, even in the deepest sleep. My personal take on science not being able to resolve some of these questions is that the instrumentation is still very, very, coarse, relative to what they are attempting to measure. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend authfriend@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, salyavin808 fintlewoodlewix@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend authfriend@ wrote: Thanks for seeking it out. The Core of `Mind and Cosmos'By THOMAS NAGEL http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/author/thomas-nagel/ This is a brief statement of positions defended more fully in my book Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False, which was published by Oxford University Press last year. Since then the book has attracted a good deal of critical attention, which is not surprising, given the entrenchment of the world view that it attacks. It seemed useful to offer a short summary of the central argument. Read more:http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/the-core-of-mind-an\ d-cosmos/ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/the-core-of-mind-and-co\ smos/ So it's *that* old chestnut. I can't imagine what the controversy is about then, this idea has been around for donkey's years. Which old chestnut do you have in mind? Probably just some bloggers reacting to the term neo-Darwinism being false. Bless 'em. Corrected in an earlier post... I always thought that if mind was some sort of intrinsic quality of the universe there ought to be a lot more of it about, and maybe of better quality than ours. Fact is, it took millions of years to arise on Earth and it needn't have so I can't imagine what sort of waiting game it was playing. Maybe it *does* take millions of years to arise? Maybe there is more and better mind in the universe that we aren't yet aware of? I stick with probability A, there will be a complete neurological explanation but how we translate that into something that satisfies *personally* is up to us. Will there be a complete neurological explanation for how the complete neurological explanation satisfies each of us personally? I suspect some sort of feedback mechanism like the brain uses for everything else, the immediacy of consciousness ceases during sleep or general anaesthetic because it is electrical activity and our subjective part, that causes all the hassle, ceases too because it is inextricably bound up with the sensations that is the majority part of experience. There is a part of the brain where our sense of self resides and this is another part of the feedback monitoring system that goes during sleep. Consciousness is us being caught between different brain functions but the bit that we think is us can never be pinned down as it depends on us looking at the rest of what is happening inside to maintain an illusion that there is an us to start with. Who is looking? Who is deceived by the illusion? It's like a hall of mirrors, turn round as fast as you like but you'll never see the original you. Turn the lights off though and you see nothing. Who sees (or doesn't see)? It's a machine. But it fools itself into thinking it's something it's not, A machine that fools itself? if it stayed on all the time I'd be a bit more convinced. But it evolved like everything else in the brain and is therefore a bodge-up, maybe one day we'll be able to see our brains working and realise how it's all done. Who will be doing the seeing and the realizing? Actually, when I'm meditating I think I get a better glimpse of how it works because a lot of extraneous chatter can get shut down but the sense of the presence of me remains, until I fall asleep. A ghost in a sleepy machine... 'Tis said that the enlightened continue to experience the pure me throughout dreaming and deep sleep. The hall of mirrors idea is intriguing; it sounds as though it might involve Self-reference. Will neurology be able to explain Self-reference, awareness of awareness?
[FairfieldLife] Re: Nagel for Salyavin
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, doctordumbass@... no_reply@... wrote: There is a conditioning of the mind that occurs, whereby pure awareness is always there, 24/7, even in the deepest sleep. My personal take on science not being able to resolve some of these questions is that the instrumentation is still very, very, coarse, relative to what they are attempting to measure. This is actually irrelevant to the Nagel book; measuring pure awareness is a whole 'nother thing than accounting for the something that it is like to be... feature of consciousness that Nagel is concerned with. He believes it's impossible *in principle* to explain the existence of first-person experience via objective science no matter *how* fine the instrumentation is. It's roughly (very roughly) similar to examining the bits of black ink on a page with a microscope in an attempt to understand Hamlet's motivations. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend authfriend@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, salyavin808 fintlewoodlewix@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend authfriend@ wrote: Thanks for seeking it out. The Core of `Mind and Cosmos'By THOMAS NAGEL http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/author/thomas-nagel/ This is a brief statement of positions defended more fully in my book Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False, which was published by Oxford University Press last year. Since then the book has attracted a good deal of critical attention, which is not surprising, given the entrenchment of the world view that it attacks. It seemed useful to offer a short summary of the central argument. Read more:http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/the-core-of-mind-an\ d-cosmos/ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/the-core-of-mind-and-co\ smos/ So it's *that* old chestnut. I can't imagine what the controversy is about then, this idea has been around for donkey's years. Which old chestnut do you have in mind? Probably just some bloggers reacting to the term neo-Darwinism being false. Bless 'em. Corrected in an earlier post... I always thought that if mind was some sort of intrinsic quality of the universe there ought to be a lot more of it about, and maybe of better quality than ours. Fact is, it took millions of years to arise on Earth and it needn't have so I can't imagine what sort of waiting game it was playing. Maybe it *does* take millions of years to arise? Maybe there is more and better mind in the universe that we aren't yet aware of? I stick with probability A, there will be a complete neurological explanation but how we translate that into something that satisfies *personally* is up to us. Will there be a complete neurological explanation for how the complete neurological explanation satisfies each of us personally? I suspect some sort of feedback mechanism like the brain uses for everything else, the immediacy of consciousness ceases during sleep or general anaesthetic because it is electrical activity and our subjective part, that causes all the hassle, ceases too because it is inextricably bound up with the sensations that is the majority part of experience. There is a part of the brain where our sense of self resides and this is another part of the feedback monitoring system that goes during sleep. Consciousness is us being caught between different brain functions but the bit that we think is us can never be pinned down as it depends on us looking at the rest of what is happening inside to maintain an illusion that there is an us to start with. Who is looking? Who is deceived by the illusion? It's like a hall of mirrors, turn round as fast as you like but you'll never see the original you. Turn the lights off though and you see nothing. Who sees (or doesn't see)? It's a machine. But it fools itself into thinking it's something it's not, A machine that fools itself? if it stayed on all the time I'd be a bit more convinced. But it evolved like everything else in the brain and is therefore a bodge-up, maybe one day we'll be able to see our brains working and realise how it's all done. Who will be doing the seeing and the realizing? Actually, when I'm meditating I think I get a better glimpse of how it works because a lot of extraneous chatter can get shut down but the sense of the presence of me remains, until I fall asleep. A ghost in a sleepy machine... 'Tis said that the enlightened continue to experience the pure me throughout dreaming and deep sleep. The hall of mirrors idea is intriguing; it sounds as though it might involve Self-reference. Will neurology be able to explain
