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Subjectivity and Science

Stout said:
That..IMHO...is solid gold my friend:)

If I'm understanding your meaning correctly.

Not being a spiritual guy myself, I find it difficult to subscribe to two systems that would/could be at odds with each other however I wouldn't deem it impossible in the slightest. We hear these stories...of palaeontologist's who are also Christians and i wonder how such a person could get up in public and declare something like a fossil to be millions of years old when, in the back of my mind, I'm thinking " what about the whole young Earth theory ? "

I can devise a mechanism where a scientist could "deal with" these two opposing ideas ( about the age of the Earth ) but it would involve putting the mystic "above" the scientific in the mind of the scientist and a real separation of the mystic and scientific in that mind.
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To create the interface I assume with goog reason that there are many ways that our brains process information.

The more popular for science is rational cognitive skills. A very abstracted and logic based system.

There are others we use all the time:

-associative learning which would incluse the 'pattern recognition' paradigm

-emotional reasoning which is a mix of learning, pattern recognition and cognitive framing. This is where many 'rational' people fail in that they don't learn from their emotions.

-intuition - a bizzare crittter mainly pattern recognition and pattern projection, and learning.

-interactive visualization and other means of non-verbal communication with the brain

-the wierd world of reconstructive memory.

All of these skills are hugely involved in what people call 'mysticism' and they can be trained and a way of rationalizing them developed.

The way I phrase it to myself is that i have different channels for communication with myself, in that i process information through multiple routes all the time. The validity of all perceptions should be questioned.

But something i learned as a human and a former social worker is to learn to explaore why you have an 'ookey feeling' about someone or something.
 
69dodge said:
I'm not sure what you mean by asking whether my thoughts are mine. People can't read other people's minds. If I think about something, and you don't know what I'm thinking about, wouldn't it be fair to describe the thought as being mine and not yours?
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I mean can you demonstrate that the thought has possession at all? That it belongs to anyone?

If you examine the experience of having a personal identity objectively, you might say that it arises through an as yet undiscovered brain process, or through mental processing, learned behaviour. If you examine it subjectively you see that it is created by the passage of thoughts, and primarily thoughts of which we are not consciously aware. When you focus on deepening your self-awareness you notice that this experience of having a personal identity begins to dissipate with the reduction in unconscious thinking.

Nick
 
PixyMisa said:
Minds come and go. Objective reality remains.
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Whilst the filter that creates the experience of objectivity remains this is so.

If you examine new born babies you can see that they appear to exhibit little sense of personal identity. As the infant reaches around 9 months age, so the fledgling ego appears to develop, perhaps as a result of learning - people pointing at the baby and getting it to recognise its name; and maybe some developing neurology that allows the infant to conceive of limited selfhood. This is not exact science but it lets you see what is going on here. The egoic self is not permanent and innate, merely a transitory layer.

That has to be one of the most ludicrous statements you've ever made. What is there that we do that does not in some way constitute a test of the limited self?
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You can understand actions through the filter of personal identity. How we respond as though we are threatened, how we move towards what attracts us. But there is nothing in life to actually corroborate that personal identity exists. It is simply an artifact of self-consciousness. This becomes evident when awareness deepens.


The thoughts are happening in your brain. They are yours. The end.
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How do you empirically demonstrate that either the brain or the thoughts actually have possession? It is simply the passage of unconscious thoughts through the brain that creates the assumption of limited selfhood, that these things belong to anyone and specifically that they belong to "you."

What is there in your experience of being alive that allows you to prove that the body surrounding you now actually belongs to anyone? And where is this entity that it supposedly belongs to? The whole thing is utterly nonsensical. Yet as a race we are so limited in our development that even the finest minds invariably simply proceed from the assumption that limited selfhood exists - that these are "my" thoughts, "my" beliefs.

Nick
 
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Dancing David said:
The issue is that is does not invaldate the scientific method.
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It does not invalidate it but it does put it in perspective. Understanding that the experience of having a personal identity, and thus an objective viewpoint, is simply constructed by the mind for a limited period, does place a considerably different value on the fruits of objective insight. It does not invalidate them but it allows you to see that they're really not such a big deal.

Nick
 
Dancing David said:
I can demostrate a meanigful attribution of all human experience being bounded to a body. There is no communication between bodies through non-physical means. It can be demonstrated that the materialist POV provides a reasonable framework for communication.

All subjective experience is bounded by the physical body.
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How do you know what is inside and what is outside? Surely the experience of some things being outside of me, for example this keyboard, arises as a result of the belief that I am the body.

I have nothing against the materialist point of view, though people tell me that quantum physicists have issues with it, due to instant communication or something. If you can experience non-duality, which looks no different from what you see now, you can quickly understand how instant communication could take place across the whole universe. This is because the whole sense of perspective and of distance arises only because of our notion of limited selfhood.

Nick
 
Jimbo07 said:
Please don't abuse quantum physics. What has it ever done to you?

:(
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Nothing really.

I guess I get a bit skeptical of it, and other scientific pronouncements, as the scientists mostly don't examine their assumptions. I would love to hear more of science from anyone who's aware of the assumptions of the objective mindset, but these guys seem a bit few and far between. Mostly they seem happy to just keep focussing outward.

If the results of the experiment cannot be detached from the experiment itself, except through a conceptualisation, what does this really mean?

Nick
 
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Nick227 said:
I guess I get a bit skeptical of it, and other scientific pronouncements, as the scientists mostly don't examine their assumptions.
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What makes you think that? Because they reject useless and foolish ideas, it doesn't mean that they didn't examine them first. Or, do you think you've got something new to add to the world, that no one has ever thought of before?

If so, I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to hear all about it!
 
Nick227 said:
I mean can you demonstrate that the thought has possession at all? That it belongs to anyone?

If you examine the experience of having a personal identity objectively, you might say that it arises through an as yet undiscovered brain process, or through mental processing, learned behaviour. If you examine it subjectively you see that it is created by the passage of thoughts, and primarily thoughts of which we are not consciously aware. When you focus on deepening your self-awareness you notice that this experience of having a personal identity begins to dissipate with the reduction in unconscious thinking.

Nick
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Um, have you experienced someone else's consciousness or just the one associated with your current body?
 
Nick227 said:
Whilst the filter that creates the experience of objectivity remains this is so.

If you examine new born babies you can see that they appear to exhibit little sense of personal identity. As the infant reaches around 9 months age, so the fledgling ego appears to develop, perhaps as a result of learning - people pointing at the baby and getting it to recognise its name; and maybe some developing neurology that allows the infant to conceive of limited selfhood. This is not exact science but it lets you see what is going on here. The egoic self is not permanent and innate, merely a transitory layer.



You can understand actions through the filter of personal identity. How we respond as though we are threatened, how we move towards what attracts us. But there is nothing in life to actually corroborate that personal identity exists. It is simply an artifact of self-consciousness. This becomes evident when awareness deepens.




How do you empirically demonstrate that either the brain or the thoughts actually have possession? It is simply the passage of unconscious thoughts through the brain that creates the assumption of limited selfhood, that these things belong to anyone and specifically that they belong to "you."
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The issue of the possesion is seperate and a total cognitive label. there are the experiences and behaviors of the brain and the rest is just labeling.
What is there in your experience of being alive that allows you to prove that the body surrounding you now actually belongs to anyone?
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it doesn't , it is a social more. What evidence is there that consciousness, such as it is transcends more than one body at a time?
And where is this entity that it supposedly belongs to?
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there is only a body in the world.
The whole thing is utterly nonsensical. Yet as a race we are so limited in our development that even the finest minds invariably simply proceed from the assumption that limited selfhood exists - that these are "my" thoughts, "my" beliefs.

Nick
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there is no evidence that they transcend a single body and it's boundaries, they are not shared.
 
Dancing David said:
Um, have you experienced someone else's consciousness or just the one associated with your current body?
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Hi DD,

I'm saying...no possession. Can you demonstrate that the thoughts passing through the mind have possession? Not that they belong to someone else, but that they have possession at all. The assumption "my thoughts" arises but have you examined it to see if it can be substantiated?

Nick
 
Nick227 said:
It does not invalidate it but it does put it in perspective. Understanding that the experience of having a personal identity, and thus an objective viewpoint, is simply constructed by the mind for a limited period, does place a considerably different value on the fruits of objective insight. It does not invalidate them but it allows you to see that they're really not such a big deal.

Nick
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I agree, all thoughts are equally true and equally false , the objective part if more a matter of isotropy and causal relations. Or the appearance thereof. Objectivity does not involve an actual 'outside' viewpoint.

There is no mind outside of the body and in fact the mind is another one of those labels that is un-needed. There is only the body.
 
Dancing David said:
there is no evidence that they transcend a single body and it's boundaries, they are not shared.
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I am not saying they are shared. I'm asking you to locate where this experience that the thoughts are yours is coming from. Not that they might belong to someone else, rather that they have any possession in the first place. Do you see what I mean?

A brain creates thoughts. Yet why should these thoughts appear to have possession? And is this experience that they do have possession ultimately valid, or merely assumed? This is what I'm asking.

Nick
 
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JoeEllison said:
And nothing you've suggested is useful at all.
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It is not so much use for making toasters, no. But if you want to start to grasp the nature of reality, the nature of truth, it is eminently useful. Of course, to validate this you would need to try it and see. It is subjective investigation.

Nick
 
Nick227 said:
It is not so much use for making toasters, no. But if you want to start to grasp the nature of reality, the nature of truth, it is eminently useful. Of course, to validate this you would need to try it and see. It is subjective investigation.

Nick
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Oh, so it is "subjective"... meaning that you're not going to arrive at any answer about the "nature of reality." You are just going to lie to yourself, and proudly by the looks of it, and pretend that your intellectually bankrupt(and sadly immature) viewpoint makes you smarter and more enlightened than everyone else.

The truth is, reality is either a) exactly what it appears to be, given the assumptions currently accepted by science, or b) currently unknowable... and that includes "unknowable by you," no matter how much navel gazing you engage in.
 
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