17 Matching Annotations
  1. Nov 2023
    1. Without consciousness the mind-body problem would be muchless interesting. With consciousness it seems hopeless
      • for: quote - consciousness, quote - mind body problem, quote - hard problem of consciousness, quote - Thomas Nagel

      • quote

        • Without consciousness the mind-body problem would be much less interesting. With consciousness it seems hopeless.
      • comment

        • consciousness is primordial and
        • stable, observable patterns that emerge in our field of consciousness is also primordial
        • the primordiality of these two, awareness and stability of observable patterns WITHIN awareness itself, are the two pillars that constitute the mind-body problem
        • in particular, the pattern of "other consciousnesses" is also another pattern that arises from within consciousness itself
        • The brain is a construction, a synthesized idea that emerges out of a dynamic amalgamation of countless accumulated patterns
        • In this respect, it is no different in quality than other complex constructed ideas we humans create, it only differs by degree and by kind
        • Were we to purely sense a human brain, for instance when a surgeon opens the skull in an operation, without the vast associative network of ideas associated with it, could we even consider how brain and mind are connected except in the most naive way?
        • Language is deeply encoded in every culturally conditioned modern human. Then advanced education in a specific field of knowledge encodes even more esoteric and deeper types of language conditioning.
        • Husserl's idea of phenomenological reduction, or epoche taken to its logical conclusion results in an impossible task, for we cannot severe the deeply entangled nature of meaning that our entire lives of cultural conditioning has enculturated into us.
        • The symbolosphere is now a part of us. We cannot undo such deep conditioning easily. You cannot simply dissociate meaning from the letters and words of your native and learned languages. Indeed, it is this deep symbolic conditioning that spans the decades of our childhood and adolescence that allows us to observe a symbol and effortlessly associate meaning to it.
        • Epoche, no matter how carefully crafted cannot uncondition such deep conditioning
        • It can, however, give us insight of the unconditioned from the perspective of the conditioned consciousness
        • We cannot become feral people even if we wanted to, nor, I suspect, would we want to experience reality permanently in that state
        • This brings up the question of what the process of spiritual enlightenment is designed to achieve
        • Is it a temporary suspension, an incomplete epoche that provides us with sufficient insight to lead to some kind of permanent shift where the insight stays with us and affects our lives in a beneficial way?

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  2. Sep 2023
    1. Just as gut bacteria affect the brain, the brain can also exert profound influences on the gut microbiome—with feedback effects on behavior. Numerous studies, for example, have shown that psychological stress suppresses beneficial bacteria.

      Mind effecting gut health

  3. Jan 2023
    1. what i want you to do is to now imagine somebody whose body you would like to have 00:28:23 as your own either for a few minutes or maybe long term i'm not going to ask you why you want that body i don't want to get that deep into your psyche and that might be very personal um 00:28:35 but i'll tell you whose body i'd like to have and for how long just to give you a warm-up feel for this i really would like to have usain bolt's body of a few years ago for 9.6 seconds 00:28:47 because i would love to know what it feels like to run 100 meters that fast now when i form that does i think it's a coherent desire how do i why do i think that because i really do desire it i would love it i'd pay a lot of money to 00:28:59 do that um but what i don't want is to be usain bolt because usain bolt is already the same bolt and that doesn't do me any good um what i want is to be me 00:29:12 j with usain bolt's body so i can know what it feels like to run really really fast now i'm not claiming that this is a coherent desire i'm not claiming that it's 00:29:24 possible for me to remain jay and have usain bolt's body but i am claiming that i can desire it and if you are anything like me for some body or other you can desire to 00:29:36 have it for some time or other if you can form that desire then you in deep in your gut don't believe that you are your body you believe that you have a body and that 00:29:48 you might have a different body just like you might have a different hat or a different cat and if you believe that then you really do believe that whatever you are you are not your body 00:30:01 now you might think well that's obviously true i've never thought i was my body um but maybe on my mind i don't think you really believe that either and i want to do the same thought 00:30:13 experiment to convince you of that now i want you to think about somebody's mind that you'd really like to have maybe not for a long time maybe only for a few minutes um i'll tell you mine again i'm really 00:30:25 big and divulging you know hyper sharing over sharing personal secrets um i would really love to have stephen hawking's mind when he was still alive of course not now um and i'd like to have it only for about five or ten 00:30:36 minutes because what i would really like is to be able to really understand quantum gravity and i can't really understand it but if i had stephen hawking's mind for a few minutes then i could understand it now i obviously 00:30:48 don't want to be stephen hawking for one thing he's dead for another thing he was already stephen hawking and it didn't do me a damn bit of good what i want is to be me jay with his mind so that i can 00:31:00 use it to understand quantum gravity um i think that'd be really cool again i'm not claiming this is coherent i'm not claiming that it's possible but i am claiming that it's a 00:31:11 psychologically possible state to be in to crave somebody else's mind and if you like me can form that desire then you like me deep in your gut do not believe that you are your mind 00:31:25 you believe that you're something that has a mind just like you have a body um and that you possessed that mind and you could still be you with another mind and another body i mean just imagine having 00:31:37 the same bolts body in stephen hawking's mind that would be totally cool then i could understand quantum gravity while setting a new record for the 100 meter sprint um but that's not going to happen alas 00:31:50 um the moral of these experiments um takes us right back to chandragiri serpent i think the moral of these experiments is that deep down at an atavistic gut 00:32:02 level we believe that we are something that stands behind our minds and our bodies that thing is the self the thing that is not the mind in the body but possesses the mind in the body that's the thing 00:32:14 that sean decurity identifies as the serpent in the wall our arguments are going to be aimed at that not at our bodies not as our minds not as our personal identities they're 00:32:27 going to be aimed at that self that we really atavistically believe stands behind all of those that's the illusion that's the thing that causes us to be incompetent morally that causes us to be 00:32:41 confused about our own identities and to be confused about our role and our place in the world

      !- BEing journey Gedanken : imagine yourself to have different body, different mind - if you can imagine this, then you believe you ARE NOT the body or mind, but the SELF that HAS the body or mind - examples of imagining having another mind or body: what would it be like to be there mind of wife? My husband? My child? My friend? My enemy? My dog? My cat? A bat ( Thomas Hagel)? Isn't this imagination salient for empathising? To imagine being another person, don't we need to imagine being in their mind and body to imagined experiencing like they do?

  4. Sep 2022
    1. Can You Warm Yourself with Your Mind?The human body generates its own heat. Some people can adjust the thermostat.

      !- for : mind-body relationship

  5. Jul 2022
    1. If this notion of human existence as a unity of participation in both perishing and non-perishing reality sounds odd to modern ears, it is mainly because philosophical and scientific–and consequently popular–thought during the last few centuries has been busy constructing a very different image of the human person. The image of participation has been changed and simplified into an image of two entities: a body, and a mind inside the body that has intelligence and ideas. This is the image that eventually came out of Descartes and Hobbes and other early modem thinkers, and wound up as a portrayal of human beings as mental entities encased in physical entities: a mind-thing imprisoned in a body–thing. Now a mind-thing imprisoned in a body-thing cannot experience participation in the ground of reality. Why not? Because it is imprisoned, isolated in the head. It can only have ideas about it and “project” them out onto reality. What becomes, then of the non-perishing dimension of meaning? Accepting the modem image, we could have faith that we have a relation to non-perishing reality only through first conceiving of a non-perishing reality–let us call it “God”–in the isolation of our bodily-encased minds, and then projecting that conception onto a “beyond” of things, and finally engaging in the desperate procedure of believing that it is real and that we have a connection with it in spite of not knowing anything of the kind. In other words, as long as self-understanding is dominated by this modem image, human consciousness cannot make sense of its own experience of immediate participation in a non-perishing ground of reality. And therefore, it cannot really make sense of its moral striving–since what is the point of the struggle for goodness if goodness is nothing more than temporary private opinion? Thus the modem image of human nature short-circuits the Socratic and Kierkegaardian understanding of existence, and leaves us with the familiar contemporary mess of radical moral relativism. This modern image of human existence is tenacious, though–partly because it is so closely connected to the modem view of what real knowing is, a view that enjoys an almost unassailable status. It might be summarized with extreme brevity as follows. If the mind is a thing encased in the physical body that only knows reality through the mediation, through the channeling, of the physical senses, any valid knowing has to validate itself through the presence of the relevant sense data. And this means that all true knowing is the type of knowing involved in the natural sciences, where empirical verification must take place through quantifiable data. Data that cannot be mathematically measured, such as the data consciousness discovers in its own activity and awareness–for example moral insight–can never be a matter of knowing, merely of opinion. How could the Socratic experience of discovering that the moral autonomy of the soul involves a non-perishing dimension of meaning ever be verified, if the data of sense, quantifiable data, are the only relevant data for affirming truth? The life of Socrates–an exemplary model for over two millennia of the moral liberation of the soul through the catharsis of practicing death–is, in this view, a life based on nothing more substantial than a private irrational belief. So to sum up: what has happened is that the enthronement by modem philosophy and science of an image of human nature as a thingly mind entrapped in a thingly body, has made all symbolizations of a non-perishing dimension of reality non-credible to many people–particularly to the intelligentsia, who emphasize their modem credentials by presenting themselves as the cultured despisers of religion. And, of course, one of the reasons why this modem image is so popular and so resistant to critique is what it appears to promise. If we go back to the founding texts of modernity, to the writings of Descartes, of Bacon, of Hobbes, we find a great optimism. If there is no participation in a mysterious origin of non-perishing meaning, there is no mystery essential to human existence. If there is no such participation, then all knowledge originates only in human consciousness itself. And if there is no primal mystery, and if all meaning is of human creation, we can hope one day to bring nature, human society, and history fully under human control. In his last book, Escape from Evil, Becker wrote: “Hubris means forgetting where the real source of power lies and imagining that it is in oneself (37).” I would suggest that imagining that notions of a non-perishing dimension of meaning are the pure creations of an isolated human consciousness, entails a forgetting of where the real source of consciousness lies: in the experienced mysterious ground of consciousness, which grants us the quite rational opportunity of a free and loving commitment to an enduring dimension of meaning. Of course, in some sense, human awareness of the non-perishing mystery in which it participates remains alive and well, because people keep striving to be moral, and they keep asking questions about that experience. Human questioning will always keep uncovering the eternal dimension of meaning, keep introducing people to the Socratic catharsis, and keep leading people to what Becker called a life of courageous self-realization. But they can be helped to do so by promoting insights like those of Becker on the choice between denying death or facing up to mortality. Like Becker in his chapter on Kierkegaard in The Denial Of Death, what I’ve tried to show is that the problem does not lie in the notion of human participation in imperishable reality. Rather, where the problem lies is in the self-comforting delusion that one possesses eternal meaning, and especially in the measures people take to defend their feeling of righteous invulnerability, especially through aggression. Authentic faith, by contrast, affirms enduring meaning in the context of an open if anxious acceptance of mortality. And so one must conclude that there are two opposites to authentic faith. One is the dogmatic clinging to an immortality project; and the other is the equally dogmatic insistence that enduring meaning is an illusion. Both of these are denials of our real human situation, making up two sides of the same counterfeit coin.

      The essay closes with a critique of the subject / object mind / body framework that now dominates modernity. Socrates, Kierkigaard and Becker's claims, when seen through the lens of Cartesian modernity, are relegated to the margins. materialism denies any legitimacy to such claims. Recent 4E cognition is an attempt to push back on this. Hughes notes that:

      "In his last book, Escape from Evil, Becker wrote: “Hubris means forgetting where the real source of power lies and imagining that it is in oneself (37).” "

  6. Nov 2019
  7. Apr 2019
    1. “We have learned that trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on mind, brain, and body. This imprint has ongoing consequences for how the human organism manages to survive in the present. Trauma results in a fundamental reorganization of the way mind and brain manage perceptions. It changes not only how we think and what we think about, but also our very capacity to think.”
    2. Trauma victims cannot recover until they become familiar with and befriend the sensations in their bodies. Being frightened means that you live in a body that is always on guard. Angry people live in angry bodies. The bodies of child-abuse victims are tense and defensive until they find a way to relax and feel safe. In order to change, people need to become aware of their sensations and the way that their bodies interact with the world around them. Physical self-awareness is the first step in releasing the tyranny of the past.
    3. “As long as you keep secrets and suppress information, you are fundamentally at war with yourself…The critical issue is allowing yourself to know what you know. That takes an enormous amount of courage.”
    1. Nobody can “treat” a war, or abuse, rape, molestation, or any other horrendous event, for that matter; what has happened cannot be undone. But what can be dealt with are the imprints of the trauma on body, mind, and soul: the crushing sensations in your chest that you may label as anxiety or depression; the fear of losing control; always being on alert for danger or rejection; the self-loathing; the nightmares and flashbacks; the fog that keeps you from staying on task and from engaging fully in what you are doing; being unable to fully open your heart to another human being.
    2. Agency starts with what scientists call interoception, our awareness of our subtle sensory, body-based feelings: the greater that awareness, the greater our potential to control our lives. Knowing what we feel is the first step to knowing why we feel that way. If we are aware of the constant changes in our inner and outer environment, we can mobilize to manage them.
    3. The body keeps the score: If the memory of trauma is encoded in the viscera, in heartbreaking and gut-wrenching emotions, in autoimmune disorders and skeletal/muscular problems, and if mind/brain/visceral communication is the royal road to emotion regulation, this demands a radical shift in our therapeutic assumptions.
  8. Feb 2019
    1. Na11tral therefore means "not mechanical," rather than "springing from human na­ture."

      So...not Borg? (cf. mholder on Astell)

      I'm a little puzzled by this. I understand the part clarifying that natural doesn't mean inherent to human nature, but what do they mean by "not mechanical"? If gestures are attached to ideas, does that make them a physical extension of thought (and thereby not solely bodily)? Is that (mechanical/bodily) what they are getting at? If so, the separation of language and thought and/or body and mind gets a bit blurry.

  9. Feb 2017
    1. In contemplating a human creature, the most nat-ural division of the subject is the common divi-sion into soul and body

      Here's that dualism Nathaniel forewarned us about . . .

  10. Jan 2017
    1. The great resemblance between mental and bodily taste will easily teach us to apply this story.

      The mind and body rejoined: Cartesian dualism bypassed?

  11. Jan 2016
  12. christmind.info christmind.info
    1. It is absolutely correct that you are going to have to learn to be out from your Center with your eyes open. At this point, I wish to make it very clear that in spite of your experience with the bio-feedback equipment—which seemed to make it obvious that visual experience is of such a stimulating nature that it interferes with one’s being able to come out from a theta or delta frequency—the key is where you are placing your attention. The key is whether you are placing your attention at the threshold of Centeredness or at what I will call the “threshold of stimulation.” Mind you, that “threshold of stimulation” only seems to have meaning relative to a body which, in itself, has the capacity to be sensitive, the capacity to be aware—something which the body does not have, simply because it is the visibility and the tangibility of the expression of Meaning which is being experienced as a result of Knowing.

      "It is absolutely correct that you are going to have to learn to be out from your Center with your eyes open." I find this very interesting...

      Raj speaks again of the importance of where ones attention is focussed."The key is whether you are placing your attention at the threshold of Centeredness or at what I will call the “threshold of stimulation.”

      Raj goes on to say Mind you, that “threshold of stimulation” only seems to have meaning relative to a body which, in itself, has the capacity to be sensitive, the capacity to be aware—something which the body does not have, simply because it is the visibility and the tangibility of the expression of Meaning which is being experienced as a result of Knowing."

      So the importance of being consciously aware....the form, the body is only an 'expression of Meaning' of that which is know consciously.