No self?

I'm loving this conversation, everyone. Tom, thanks again for sharing the video!

One thing I'm curious about is how well this 6-second predictability delay would apply in more complex contexts. This experiment is (as all really good, clean, tight, conclusive experiments are) highly controlled. The context is specific. The choice is straightforward and simple. There are no competing choices.

One thing that might be worth knowing is that this experiment attempts to measure a deliberate, non-reactive decision. But, what about those reactive decisions we have to make? If I was walking with my wife across the street, and noticed a bus headed our direction, would it take six seconds for me to "decided" to grab her and run, or even just to push her out of the way? I don't think so.

In other words, the deterministic nature of this process doesn't really seem to hold up. What if during the experiment, during the 6-second gap, a spider was to drop down from the fMRI machine and land on my face? Would I still follow through with tapping the button on schedule? Probably not.

So, our explicit decisions tend to be decided in our brains prior to our acting in the world. But our implicit reactions must be much faster. It's hard to say that one is a choice and the other is not, since both include a sense of intention and action. The explicit, deliberate choice is surely a human developmental/evolutionary process/event that occurred later on the scene than the more responsive/reactive type, which is probably why it takes longer.

All this to say that the rational-ego is a construct that, due to its own fallibility, misinterprets - and thus, misrepresents - its own particular (dare I say peculiar) role in the greater Reality.

And so, if I were to posit who I REALLY am, I would have to include these implicit processes that occur outside of awareness, which would expand my identity to being both that which consciously AND unconsciously intends. One problem here is that it's much easier to comprehend being responsible with regard to the former than it is the latter. How can I be held responsible for that which happens prior to my conscious intention to act? (A whole new can of worms!)

And I was hoping to elicit another group hug from ona, which I missed out on last time!


-tomo

Oh, okay! {{{{{Group hug}}}}}} Better?

Or what.

One of the amusing features of the hall-of-mirrors, endlessly retreating fractal of reflexive self-awareness...

Wow, is that anal retentive or what???
[image]


-cmarti

tee hee. overthink things much? but it is interesting. before you posted that, I had been thinking some stuff we do is so innate - I mean even a mosquito dodges a blow aimed at it. that doesn't take thinking or planning - it's just basic body survival. there was some toddler abandoned in an apartment in the news once, who survived for days by breaking into a bottle of ketchup in the cabinet. he was not old enough to make plans - but the body knows the basics of locating and consuming food and water, moving towards or away from heat or cold to regulate temperature, avoiding collisions, and so on. even a cockroach does that stuff.

then there's stuff we train until it's done without thinking - like learning to ride a bike or type or dance or play an instrument.

with the decision making, I think i posted this before, but a zen teacher on a podcast once pointed out that we may think "I am going to sweep the kitchen floor now" - but there are so many factors leading to the arising of that moment that it can hardly be called a decision. brooms exist - built from trees and grasses, we have hands to hold them with and arms to move them with and eyes to see dirt with, we learned from our mothers what dirt is and that sweeping the floor is something one does to remove it and how often, and she learned it from her mother, and hers, and hers, and hers... and on and on. there's like this endless tree of conditions leading to the moment when you stand up, take the broom, and begin sweeping.

true true

How it seems to me so far: both 'mind and body' and 'brain and body' are falsely contrasted; neither expression differentiates between two separate things. Brain and body are totally integrated aspects of our physical being. 'Mind' describes an aspect of our functioning as integral beings. 'Mind' doesn't map neatly onto 'brain' or even 'nervous system as a whole.'

And the problems with using mechanical objects as analogies for these 'wonderfully and fearfully made' bodies... are legion.

Brain and body are totally integrated aspects of our physical being. 'Mind' describes an aspect of our functioning as integral beings. 'Mind' doesn't map neatly onto 'brain' or even 'nervous system as a whole.'

-kategowen

I think I ought to have said "consciousness", as opposed to "mind" -- a specifically functional feature of the organism complex that includes brain and body. Does that make it better?

-tomo

I really like both of these remarks, folks (as well as everything in this thread. So much fun!).

What Kate terms "mind" and what Tom terms "consciousness" are the same thing, I think. Mind/Consciousness is indeed (in one sense) a functional aspect/feature which describes an organisms wakeful participation with the environment in which it is embedded. Environment, of course, includes both public and private objects/events (thoughts, images, and feelings "in here"; objects and communal relationships "out there"). In that sense, it's absurd to think of consciousness as being itself the brain, or even as an emergent property of the brain. And yet, human consciousness (or the many qualitatively distinct levels of it) would not be possible without the human brain.

Kate's use of the word integral is well suited for this discussion. (Integrated works too, for those who aren't keen on the whole Integral movement associated with Wilber... but I digress.) For, it would seem that the consciousness of an organism can both be viewed both as a whole and as a conditioned arising (dependent on lesser wholes). And here we have both relative and universal truths apparent in a single example, which appears to go beyond the whole self/not-self dichotomy.

On the topic of "consciousness"; Alva Noe, Professor of Philosophy at UC Berkeley, was the guest on a Tech Nation podcast episode after the release of his book, Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness . I haven't read the book, but the I love this talk.

http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail4056.html

I was thinking about it a little bit more, and wondering if 'mind' doesn't include some things that 'consciousness' doesn't -- a 'will' and/or 'intention' component that adds a more active sense to the receptive/passive of awareness/consciousness.

Arrgghh! A word person like me can get totally stalled out recognizing the nuances that mean that no word is totally synonymous with any other-- that must be why we need so many! [Well, this sort of thing is what word people do for fun.]

this thread has too many words for poor me...

http://www.wimp.com/discussesnothing/

But Alan Watts is the master of words...

Then, just for you, let me share another recommendation: Anathem, by Neal Stephenson. You absolutely MUST read it -- high geek factor, but also directly relevant to this issue.
I presume it is because I am just more tuned into it, but it is freaking me out a little how much dharma pervades the stuff I am randomly picking up and reading right now.


-tomo

HA! Finally someone else who's read that book! That's like my current all time favorite literary sci-fi awesomeness. Totally brilliant book!

Hahaha! I was just reading about language development in a textbook before finishing this thread Great conversation. I really resonate with starting from wholeness (of everything we experience) and then tracing out to various descriptions of specific phenomenal domains like body, brain, inner, outer, vision, hearing, thinking, feeling and so on.

This is wise since it seems to me that we either start from a sense of the whole and then generate ever-provisional descriptions creatively within the space that the prior recognition of wholeness opens up, or else we start from a description of some aspect (mind, body, brain) and then hope one day to totalize our description, somehow wrapping it around the boundless whole of life, which never actually occurs.

(The boundless whole we all know as it's the most consistent thing about experience. But just as with the various things that arise as part of this ongoing whole-of-life in any moment become gradually ignored the longer they persist, so much more so with this wholeness of life, huh?

This is called the habituation response, I think, in neuroscience, and describes the way brains will "turn down the volume" on consistently repeating stimuli such as a clock ticking. Connecting this notion with the way that the wholeness-of-experience or the natural state is the most consistent "experience" like wetness is the most consistent fact of all varied waves, I wonder if this habituation response in the brain helps to give rise to the illusory loss of the natural state? Zen adepts hooked up to brain-reading equipment reveal brains which "hear" each clock tick freshly, as if for the first time... which it always is, huh?).

Oh, and "integral" is a broad movement, so I think those with critiques of Wilber should consider the word itself as generic, not as a specifically Wilberian brand. After all, two of Wilber's key sources were Jean Gebser, who coined the phrase in the context of his views of historical development of world-views as a post-rational world-view, and Sri Aurobindo whose Integral Yoga referred to a holistic integration of the traditional yogas of knowledge, devotion, works, meditation, kundalini, and etc. with modern approaches like physical science, psychology, sociology, economics, politics, and so on.