A question is born out of the answers that you already know.
You want to know what that state is (where self identity or knowledge has come to an end) and make it part of knowledge, your knowledge, but knowledge must come to an end. Your wanting to know only adds momentum to your knowledge. It is not possible to know what that state is, because knowledge is still there and is gathering momentum. The continuity of knowledge is all you are interested in.
How does the observer come into being. How does it formulate? You’re implying that, without the observer, there would be nothing there to tell you anything. You see, there is, on one side, an ‘I’ … and on the other, another ‘I’ (the nature of which is not known unless an observer comes into existence)
So in your statement, ‘My observations tell me I have myself’ … what was there in the beginning? My or myself?
We are all actually talking of thought. It is the constant use of thought that maintains the sense of self. Is it possible for you to look at thought? No, there is another thought which is looking – that is the tricky part, you see - it divides itself into two – otherwise you can’t look at thought. When one thought looks at another thought, there are not two thoughts, but one thought. It gives you the impression that there are two thoughts, but actually there is only one movement. So, what creates the division? The division is created by thought – that is the beginning of your thinking. It is a very tricky business. It is one movement, and what is looking at what you call ‘thought’ is all the definitions you have of thought.
“What is thought?” – you pose that question to yourself. So, how can you look at that? The question is thought, you see. “What is thought?” – there’s no answer to that; any answer you give is only a definition. You can say “Thought is time; thought is space; thought is matter… thought is this; thought is that” – you know, that’s all you can say.
But if you want to directly look at thought and find out for yourself, you have no way of looking at it. You have no way of finding out what thought is for yourself, because you cannot experience thought; you can experience thought only through the knowledge you have about thought. What happens when you do not accept the answers given by others? Something has got to happen to that question “What is thought?” The question burns itself out, because it has no answer except the answer we know. That question burns itself out, and what you have in place of the question is the answer: energy. This question, thought, is matter. When thought burns itself out, what is there is energy, which is the manifestation of life. In other words, ‘life’ and ‘energy’ are synonymous terms.
I don’t think thought and mind are the same, thought [weather its informational, emotional or visual etc] occurs in mind ~ or is where other things sensory or informational touch the mind.
It may be plausible that there is no self even when there is mind, we could see a universe of ‘things touching mind’! that to us they appear to be local is an illusion of perspective.
That’s an explanation or the establishment of the meaning or significance of ‘mind’ in relation to that which brings it into being in the first place. To interpret is all you can do by means of thinking. There is no ‘mind’ to you until it appears in thought and thought will tell you what it is you want to know as well as establishing you as the ‘knower.’
The fact that you even mention qualities of the mind means that there is a self there and the self comes into being from the knowledge/thoughts you have of the mind.
It’s not fair to say, ‘we could see,’ and not realize that the seeing is the self and that the self is the illusion.
Genes leap from body to body down the generations, manipulating body after body in its own way and for its own ends. We are merely their survival machines and when we have served our purpose we are cast aside. But the genes are occupants of geological time forever.
What then is mind in the systematic arrangement of genes? Is it just another technique, another ‘machine’ used by the gene for its own survival? There are only thoughts being passed down through replication into what can be considered as a thought sphere.
If the body is the survival machine of the gene, the mind (memory) is the survival machine of the thought mechanism. Unlike genes, thoughts are not physically located, yet they are structures of experience.
With the onset of self consciousness and once the self-copying thoughts had arisen, their own evolution took off. And they seem to have taken over the genes and start a new, independent kind of evolution of their own.
There are different kinds of thought complexes such as fashions , ceremonies and customs, art and architecture, engineering and technology, music, ideas and concepts—all of which evolved in time in a way that looks like highly speeded up genetic evolution, but has really nothing to do with genetic evolution. In other words, these new replicators, like selfish genes, perpetuate themselves simply because it is advantageous to them. They plant themselves on the brain, turning it into a vehicle for the propagation of thought structure.
We copy each other all the time and with great ease. We imitate and learn through imitation. When we imitate an idea, an instruction, a behaviour, even a gesture, something is passed on again and again and from generation to generation, which takes on a life of its own. It becomes independent and autonomous, for instance, like the world of ideas, language and stories, works of art and technology, mathematics and science. This is the thought complex: the second replicator (after the gene). They are stored inhuman brains or in books and computers and passed on endlessly. They spread for their own benefit, without regard to whether they are useful, neutral or harmful. As examples, the idea of revolution, or a particular invention, spread irrespective of whether they are useful or not. Some thought structures are useful and creative, some harmful and even dangerous. But they don’t care, they just want to spread and perpetuate themselves. There is no master plan, no end point, and no designer. What we call new creative or original ideas are only variation and combination of old ideas. Thoughts have uncanny ways of perpetuating themselves. But not all thoughts are passed on; not our immediate perceptions and emotions, which are ours alone. However, once we express them or speak about them to others, be it our feelings or our ideas, they are passed on and may continue in the thought sphere.
Our minds and selves are created by the interplay of the thought complexes. For that matter, human consciousness itself is a product of them.
Unless of course it is possible for the neurons to be organised in a manner that produces free will. And if it were possible then it should be possible to produce a computer that acts outside of its own programming. So, can an algorithm be developed that gives free will? I think Turing was trying to do this.
Isn’t the “I” the thinking being, as in Descartes? To deny the existence of the “I” or “we” is to deny the existence of the denier, which seems absurd.
If a “machine” analogy works at all, and I think it can in a limited way, then we are far more complex machines than any of us (or at least most of us) can even imagine. That Libet’s experiments are used as evidence of pure determinism is telling in this sense - people mostly don’t seem to understand that decision-making is not a simple process with immediate results. We are not engaged in a continuous process of making decisions that produce discernable effects, only to be slowed down by a variety of adverse circumstances. We are not separate from “the world”, and our internal cognitive processes themselves constitute worlds. I’ve said it before - we’re like supertankers in a sense. Steering the ship isn’t like turning left at the traffic light. Nonetheless, the ship can be steered.
Of course we are completely dependent on sensory input. How could we exist without a context? I’m not sure what you’re asking.
The thinking being? Yes. As in Descartes? I don’t think so.
The input of knowledge is behind it. Knowledge is the structure of thought.
If there is no stimulation, you have no way of sensing anything. When stimulation activates the appropriate nerves, it in turn activates the memory cells. When the memory cells are activated, all the knowledge you have about that object comes into cooperation. It is that process which is happening there that has created the subject. And the subject is the knowledge you have about it. When you reduce it to that you feel the absurdity of talking about the self. You can build up philosophical theories, but there is no subject there at all at any time. There is no subject creating the object.
So, not only the “I” but all the physical sensations are involved in this. The operation of any one of the sensations necessarily creates the subject. It’s not one continuous subject which is gathering all these experiences, piling them up together, and then saying “this is me,” but everything is discontinuous and disconnected. The sound is one, the physical seeing is one, the smelling is one and so on.
So, the sense of touch means a vibration which creates the subject there. So it comes and goes, comes and goes, comes and goes. There is no permanent entity there at all. What is there (what you call “I”) is only a first person singular pronoun. Nothing else. If you don’t want to use that word “I” to prove that you are a man without “I”, it is your privilege. That’s all that is there. There is no permanent entity there at all.
While you are living, the knowledge that is there does not belong to you. So, why are you concerned as to what will happen after what you call “you” is gone? The physical body is functioning from moment to moment because that is the way the sensory perceptions are. To talk of living from moment to moment, by creating a thought induced state of mind, has no meaning to me except in terms of the physical functioning of the body.
When thought is not there all the time, what is there is living from moment to moment. It’s all frames, millions and millions and millions of frames. There is no continuity there, there is no movement there. Thought can never, never capture the movement. It is only when you invest a thought with motion, you try to capture the movement; but actually thought can never capture any movement that is there around you.
The movement of life is the movement of life out there and here. They are together always.
So, thought is essential only for the survival of this living organism. When it is necessary, it is there. When it is not necessary, the question of whether it is there or not is of no importance at all.
How is mind brought into being? I can see information deriving from the material, but there is something there in reception of it [mind], when you think you don’t get info then think about it, it is all done in a smooth transaction. Equally in meditation you can ‘not think’, just let info pass straight through your mind without attatchment, when you have achieved this ability grasshopper you will see mind generally acting like this.
We can do more than interpret, we can change the information ~ make a decision, or even change it in a non knowledgeable manner [dreams or babble etc].
Imagine mind as like a sheet of paper, then that there are billions of drawings upon it and some of them are localised to self. Even then much of our experience is shared, our perspective simply makes it appear as local to us. We could imagine that ‘self’ is merely the utility of universal features of mind e.g. that mind has the ability to make perspective based observations, and it does this in respect to events occurring in the world. We are that same universal think perceiving locally, and we don’t see all the other stuff mind is seeing on the universal level.
On the other hand you could be right, and ‘mind’ may occur according to certain conditions, hence is local. To me that means there remains something [other than mind but that can be it]] universal that can and does become mind in the particular.
Anon
interesting stuff 
I do think it is possible to ‘produce a computer that acts outside of its own programming’ I.e. is adaptive, but I don’t think that is free will. A quantum computer [well beyond Turing but I admire him anyways] could be like that because it would probably be trinary based rather than binary, so instead of on/off = yes/no [binary] you get a maybe or other than. Then from this the programming it can go off on a tangent reading from different areas of its database much as the brain does.
The difference I think is that in our minds there is something collecting and reading the info that the brain goes and gets.
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I imagine the human machine as like a car that can drive itself, it makes sense that the vehicle can do all the things we do with it right, so it also makes sense that that same self driving car can be driven from an exterior source! You have party a [‘self’] and party c [an external source e.g. an experiment] which can operate the vehicle, and party b [the vehicle itself] which too can. I don’t see how experiments can show us any more than that if you sit someone on a fair ride they will be taken along by it.
What we do know is what we observe in our minds, that even if being taken on a ride there remains a mind that receives information and changes it, that information does not physically exist and hence a purely mechanistic thing cannot truly do that. …but it can appear to, because the machine does the same things weather it is party a or c making it do those things.
I think therefore I am, though I am even when I don’t think e.g. those moments between thoughts, or thought as general rather than particular [not the thinker as in the collection of thoughts]. The denier may here be an abstract concept, a program that says it is nought more than a mechanism and therefore does not exist as an ‘I’ or a we.
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Hey Quetz, that first quote in your post should be attributed to Allanquartz, not to me.
ok thanks. changed.
I want to assure you that there is no problem whatsoever with functionally implementing the stochastic “maybe” or the “quantum perhaps” using binary logic and a random number generator. It all pales into complete insignificance when compared to the original problem you had revealed within yourself, how at a certain point, the truth attacks morality and morality the truth. De-selfing yourself you seem to become more and more truthful, but less and less moral. And vice versa, the more moral, the less truthful! But I tell you, here all the distinctions become considerably more complicated, to wit, we have made the leap from first to second grade. The words and meanings should be reviewed with care. The words no longer mean what we took them to mean, and who can say where this will lead, now that words have changed their meanings and meanings their words?
-WL
I guess, on consideration, even a computer or brain that was wired for free will wouldn’t be acting outside of its programming either. The point I’m trying to make is one way to prove that a deterministic free will could exist would be an algorithm or mechanism that could act independent of causes. The flip-flop mechanism in RAM is a good example of a mechanism simulating the function that was once considered part of the mind. Without knowing where in the brain memory is stored or how it is stored, we know that it is possible.
Ok, I’m confused. Descartes came up with the “I think, therefore I am” which to me is fundamental. I have not been able to find an argument against it. The reality of my own existence is irrefutable. I may not be able to fully place it or describe it but I’m absolutely certain I’m there. Not sure about the rest of Descartes though, all got a bit muddled and foggy.
Ok.
We impose on a child right from its birth a series of information (language, behavior, a framework of morals, etc.). All this can be described as the superstructure. Thus the developing child is subjected to a series of conditioned responses that finally form part of his thought system called knowledge. Such knowledge is stored in us as memory. The ‘self’ has been perpetuated throughout generations by man made structures of thinking. Mankind has been submitted to millennia of these conditioned responses, thus fixing the frame of the human mind. The fixations of mind are the distortions of mankind.
The ‘something’ receiving the information starts as in a container (the part of the brain where memory is stored). When there occurs the translation of sensory input, you could then say that ‘something’ is more there because it tells information about what is being detected by the senses. The senses alone (eye, ear, etc) cannot describe or tell information when understood as points of stimulation only… when senses are stimulated, signals are sent to the brain so memory cells can be activated and if there is some past experience in memory, then the ’something there in reception’ is reconfirmed.
But an understandable translation cannot occur unless an experiencing structure has been set up. Knowledge creates the experience of the ‘something’ you’re referring to. Knowledge is the structure, the information that creates permanence in thought. And when thought recalls experiences (creating the illusion of a self there that is experiencing the memory) the knowledge is reinforced.
That ‘something’, as an entity that is receiving, is the illusion brought on by the use of thought. When thought is not there, the ’something’ is not there: nothing using thought = nothing there receiving.
Man is memory and what memory comprises is derived from something outside given to it. Mind is outside. Mind is something that is put into ‘you.’ Before that, apart from that, there was no ‘self’ … no ‘mind.’ Alzheimer’s patients are said to have lost there minds because there is nothing there, no self. How can mind be there if there is no self to hold it?
Interpretation is a prerequisite to modification or permutation. Once comprehension (knowledge, information) of what it is you are sensing is there, then ‘you’ are there. The act of projecting knowledge (interpretation) onto what you are sensing creates the experience of ‘you’ the subject.
allanquartz
Maybe that makes determinism more multifaceted rather than providing free will, something is still deciding to flip-flop or go on tangents according to a preset course. One could make a computer AI that searches its libraries in a seemingly no linear fashion, for example with visual recognition software a robot could walk around an art gallery and ‘know’ what all the paintings are without being told what they are with info. There may be other holistic ways in which complex AI’s search databases much as our brains do, in fact I don’t see why we couldn’t make something which works just like the brain does.
All we know or think we know, is that in our observations ‘we’ are involved in the information retrieval and indeed can think without it necessarily being an intellectual process.
Finishedman
Alzheimer’s patients are still there though, they still have minds just as any other damaged people do. The memory is fundamental but it couldn’t work without information/knowledge, and for that there has to be a knower ~ a person there. Weather or not we are selves is quite another thing.
Q
There’s probably a subtle difference in how we understand the meaning of mind. You say it exists even without a self there to know it. That is what I would describe consciousness as being or awareness as being.
Whereas you may be saying that self has a place within mind, I would say mind has a place within consciousness. There can be various minds which contain differing thoughts, knowledge and so on. The self in turn derives from mind.