fatpaul
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Post by fatpaul on Apr 12, 2017 10:16:50 GMT
Hilary Putnam's multiple instantiation argument has questioned the idea of reductionism(deduction plus definition from higher theory to lower theory) in regards to theories of the mind to the point of being impossible to deduce, and so questioned our ontological categories, particularly what is abstract (not occupying time and space) as opposed to concrete (occupying time and space). A materialist may see the abstract depending on the concrete so the abstract not being intrinsically real.
One school of thought is that many things happen simultaneously in the brain; a simultaneous binding that occupies time but not space. If we take this seriously then it seems that there could be another ontological category between the concrete and abstract that lays half a claim to what is intrinsically real. However, time itself may be dependent on space so it may just be that this simultaneous binding gives the illusion of an ethereal temporal dimension, a.k.a consciousness. It is not known, however, what causes this binding, only that this binding may be consciousness.
I don't know what consciousness is but I suspect it is dependent on the brain because the more I think about what consciousness is, the more it literally physically hurts my brain.
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Post by Times Up on Apr 12, 2017 16:13:40 GMT
It always bugged me that Spielberg essentially inverted Dick's point with the story.
Dick's story is a study in determinism and its compatibility with justice. He leaves the reader to consider his/her own view whether Pre-Crime is good.
Dick's story is one of the cleverest sci-fi stories I've ever come across, perfectly constructed. Speilberg's story is generic dystopic blah.
Your mileage may vary of course!
Having only watched the movie, I rather liked it, even though I though there was something muddled about how the story's split concern with the justice of Pre-Crime and the plight of the Pre-Cogs. Spielberg does have an annoying tendency to spoon feed his audience, as he did in A.I. Artificial Intelligence (too bad we'll never get to see Kubrick's imagining of that film). I'll have to check out the short story. On that note, too bad we never got Verhoeven's Minority Report AKA Total Recall 2.
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Post by Times Up on Apr 13, 2017 14:00:14 GMT
Intuition is a helpful tool, if more people were present, mindful and in the moment, then there would be more lucid actions and behaviors bringing about more positive and pro-active mental health and spiritual growth. Knowing something without knowing how one got there is not worth pondering over, it is just the knowing at that moment that is important and relevant. It doesn't need to be intellectualized. It is all a dream within a dream and when we wake up, the illusion, or delusion as we live by, will be oblivion. All that is left is clarity and consciousness awareness, without the hindrance of the mind body experience as humans. Matter did not come first, consciousness awareness has always been at the forefront of our being and what is more real and transcendent than any other aspect of our physical human lives. Toastedcheese, how thought provoking.
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Post by general313 on Apr 13, 2017 15:32:08 GMT
Intuition is a helpful tool, if more people were present, mindful and in the moment, then there would be more lucid actions and behaviors bringing about more positive and pro-active mental health and spiritual growth. Knowing something without knowing how one got there is not worth pondering over, it is just the knowing at that moment that is important and relevant. It doesn't need to be intellectualized. It is all a dream within a dream and when we wake up, the illusion, or delusion as we live by, will be oblivion. All that is left is clarity and consciousness awareness, without the hindrance of the mind body experience as humans. Matter did not come first, consciousness awareness has always been at the forefront of our being and what is more real and transcendent than any other aspect of our physical human lives. So what was consciousness/awareness like before brains evolved?
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Post by Eva Yojimbo on Apr 13, 2017 17:18:13 GMT
IMO because it can to lead to preemptive detainment and indeterminate sentences. If we believe that someone has literally no choosing in his actions, it flows naturally that we should abort such "symptoms" before serious crimes can happen (like civil commitment for minor offences normally requiring a fine) or that they should be treated away before the prisoner is released (post sentence commitment for sex crimes for example)... I don't see how it can lead to preemptive detainment unless we develop some way in which to predict the future ala Minority Report (which I would honestly support if it happened). Even when it comes to psychopaths I suspect that there are far more out there that never actually commit crimes despite being cognitively/mentally similar to those that do, even if it's just out of fear of punishment. Last I checked, being antisocial isn't a crime either (I'm pretty anti-social, but don't commit crimes and have no desire to).
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Post by Eva Yojimbo on Apr 13, 2017 17:28:43 GMT
So saying that two people's beliefs reduce to a similar brain state would be like saying that there are two different robins in which certain aspects of their biology are the same in order to allow for the classification. Still, not enough would be similar to qualify as true reductionism. You are probably aware that using brains scans, we can tell which of several choices a person is going to make as long as ten seconds before they are aware of having made it. Or that we can tell what kinds of things you are thinking about in a very rough, abstract way. What the breathless news sources which report these advances DON’T tell you is that these achievements are only possible after multiple trials so that the unique properties of the subject’s brains can be identified and calibrated. Or that in a weeks’ time, the subjects brains have changed so much that the calibration processes has to start all over. If mental states reduced, there would be no need for calibration in the first place. There would be lawlike relationships between mental states and brain states such that every subject’s brain would exhibit that same, instantly identifiable processes in these experiments. Just because our current technology is not capable of fully reducing brain states in order to predict such things deterministically without calibration doesn't mean that such a thing isn't possible. The complexity of brains and the role it plays in mind-states is obviously complex and I don't think anyone would assert we're anywhere near close to having modeled it all and/or fully reduced it. AFAICT, all the above proved is that we haven't reduced it yet, not that it's irreducible. I really don't think it is. Carroll does not assert that everything that makes up a game of baseball can't be reduced to the positioning of particles or that said particles can't exist independently of their current arrangement or that the makeup that we call "baseball" asserts any kind of emergent, top-down causality that only occurs because of its macro arrangement. To me, it's those kinds of assertions that are holistic, anti-materialistic statements, and Carroll has been pretty clear in not believing in, eg, top-down causality (falconia offered one link; here's another: www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2011/08/01/downward-causation/ ) Essentially what I was saying is that science's ability to speak about free will entirely depends on what definition and/or aspect of free will we're talking about. Conjecture about its physical nature is different than discussions about its lawful/social relevance, eg.
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Post by Terrapin Station on Apr 13, 2017 17:31:08 GMT
Completely stupid idea. The "illusion" would be consciousness in that case. Meaning that it wouldn't be an illusion after all.
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Post by Eva Yojimbo on Apr 13, 2017 17:40:33 GMT
It always bugged me that Spielberg essentially inverted Dick's point with the story.
Dick's story is a study in determinism and its compatibility with justice. He leaves the reader to consider his/her own view whether Pre-Crime is good.
Dick's story is one of the cleverest sci-fi stories I've ever come across, perfectly constructed. Speilberg's story is generic dystopic blah.
Your mileage may vary of course!
Having only watched the movie, I rather liked it, even though I though there was something muddled about how the story's split concern with the justice of Pre-Crime and the plight of the Pre-Cogs. Spielberg does have an annoying tendency to spoon feed his audience, as he did in A.I. Artificial Intelligence (too bad we'll never get to see Kubrick's imagining of that film). Whatever spoon-feeding is in AI is in stark contrast to plot. In fact, that film is really a masterclass on how narration manipulates our perspective on plot. From what I've read, Spielberg was pretty faithful to Kubrick's screenplay, and he's said that every accusation he's read about elements he inserted was in the screenplay. Rather than Spielberg changing or spoon-feeding anything, I think it's all a matter of how differently he crafts a narrative compared to Kubrick: Kubrick is outside-in--distant, detached, observant, objective--while Spielberg is inside-out--intimate, attached, invested, subjective. With a film like AI, which was written from the former perspective but directed from the latter, I actually think the combination creates a much richer experience. Jonathan Rosenbaum--a long time harsh critic of Spielberg--has written quite eloquently and insightfully about AI, even declaring it a masterpiece (and I'm inclined to agree with him). Here's his two articles: www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2001/07/the-best-of-both-worlds/ and www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2011/01/a-matter-of-life-and-death-ai-artificial-intelligence-tk/The crux of that film is really about the innate appeal of illusions and artificiality. David has essentially been "programmed" to love and act human, so much so that he fools humans into thinking he's human. This is, in a sense, an allegory for both film and life: the former in how we're similarly "fooled" by the artificial, "programmed" world of film; the latter in how we anthropomorphically project ourselves onto reality and end up believing our illusions and delusions are reality, often following them to our own demise. The plot is essentially written from the perspective that recognizes these illusions and delusions for what they are; but Spielberg directs it as someone who, like the audience, is innately programmed to sympathize with David and legitimize his feelings as being humanistic. I don't know if Kubrick was brilliant enough to understand how Spielberg's perspective would complement the themes the screenplay addressed, but I wouldn't have put it past him.
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Post by general313 on Apr 13, 2017 23:56:58 GMT
Having only watched the movie, I rather liked it, even though I though there was something muddled about how the story's split concern with the justice of Pre-Crime and the plight of the Pre-Cogs. Spielberg does have an annoying tendency to spoon feed his audience, as he did in A.I. Artificial Intelligence (too bad we'll never get to see Kubrick's imagining of that film). Whatever spoon-feeding is in AI is in stark contrast to plot. In fact, that film is really a masterclass on how narration manipulates our perspective on plot. From what I've read, Spielberg was pretty faithful to Kubrick's screenplay, and he's said that every accusation he's read about elements he inserted was in the screenplay. Rather than Spielberg changing or spoon-feeding anything, I think it's all a matter of how differently he crafts a narrative compared to Kubrick: Kubrick is outside-in--distant, detached, observant, objective--while Spielberg is inside-out--intimate, attached, invested, subjective. With a film like AI, which was written from the former perspective but directed from the latter, I actually think the combination creates a much richer experience. Jonathan Rosenbaum--a long time harsh critic of Spielberg--has written quite eloquently and insightfully about AI, even declaring it a masterpiece (and I'm inclined to agree with him). Here's his two articles: www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2001/07/the-best-of-both-worlds/ and www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2011/01/a-matter-of-life-and-death-ai-artificial-intelligence-tk/The crux of that film is really about the innate appeal of illusions and artificiality. David has essentially been "programmed" to love and act human, so much so that he fools humans into thinking he's human. This is, in a sense, an allegory for both film and life: the former in how we're similarly "fooled" by the artificial, "programmed" world of film; the latter in how we anthropomorphically project ourselves onto reality and end up believing our illusions and delusions are reality, often following them to our own demise. The plot is essentially written from the perspective that recognizes these illusions and delusions for what they are; but Spielberg directs it as someone who, like the audience, is innately programmed to sympathize with David and legitimize his feelings as being humanistic. I don't know if Kubrick was brilliant enough to understand how Spielberg's perspective would complement the themes the screenplay addressed, but I wouldn't have put it past him. Interesting, I didn't know that Kubrick considered Spielberg to direct AI. I thought Spielberg simply took over after Kubrick's untimely death. Rosenbaum provides some interesting information on how Kubrick regarded Spielberg. Maybe "spoon feeding" is stating it too strongly, but especially in comparison to how Kubrick directed and edited his films, the Spielberg films seem that way to me. I agree with others who have speculated that Kubrick would have eliminated the final sequence, or at least removed the narration, like he did with 2001: A Space Odyssey, and that would have made the film stronger. It is true though that in Spielberg's hands, you really feel for David, and have little doubt that he is a conscious entity. With Kubrick, it might have been more ambiguous and mysterious, as with HAL in 2001. On that, I'm not sure which would have been better.
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Post by Eva Yojimbo on Apr 14, 2017 0:41:21 GMT
Whatever spoon-feeding is in AI is in stark contrast to plot. In fact, that film is really a masterclass on how narration manipulates our perspective on plot. From what I've read, Spielberg was pretty faithful to Kubrick's screenplay, and he's said that every accusation he's read about elements he inserted was in the screenplay. Rather than Spielberg changing or spoon-feeding anything, I think it's all a matter of how differently he crafts a narrative compared to Kubrick: Kubrick is outside-in--distant, detached, observant, objective--while Spielberg is inside-out--intimate, attached, invested, subjective. With a film like AI, which was written from the former perspective but directed from the latter, I actually think the combination creates a much richer experience. Jonathan Rosenbaum--a long time harsh critic of Spielberg--has written quite eloquently and insightfully about AI, even declaring it a masterpiece (and I'm inclined to agree with him). Here's his two articles: www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2001/07/the-best-of-both-worlds/ and www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2011/01/a-matter-of-life-and-death-ai-artificial-intelligence-tk/The crux of that film is really about the innate appeal of illusions and artificiality. David has essentially been "programmed" to love and act human, so much so that he fools humans into thinking he's human. This is, in a sense, an allegory for both film and life: the former in how we're similarly "fooled" by the artificial, "programmed" world of film; the latter in how we anthropomorphically project ourselves onto reality and end up believing our illusions and delusions are reality, often following them to our own demise. The plot is essentially written from the perspective that recognizes these illusions and delusions for what they are; but Spielberg directs it as someone who, like the audience, is innately programmed to sympathize with David and legitimize his feelings as being humanistic. I don't know if Kubrick was brilliant enough to understand how Spielberg's perspective would complement the themes the screenplay addressed, but I wouldn't have put it past him. Interesting, I didn't know that Kubrick considered Spielberg to direct AI. I thought Spielberg simply took over after Kubrick's untimely death. Rosenbaum provides some interesting information on how Kubrick regarded Spielberg. Maybe "spoon feeding" is stating it too strongly, but especially in comparison to how Kubrick directed and edited his films, the Spielberg films seem that way to me. I agree with others who have speculated that Kubrick would have eliminated the final sequence, or at least removed the narration, like he did with 2001: A Space Odyssey, and that would have made the film stronger. It is true though that in Spielberg's hands, you really feel for David, and have little doubt that he is a conscious entity. With Kubrick, it might have been more ambiguous and mysterious, as with HAL in 2001. On that, I'm not sure which would have been better. They were mutual admirers of each other, which is something a lot of Kubrick fanboys who hate Spielberg often try to downplay, excuse, or even outright ignore--in part because many of them consider Kubrick the poster child for various academic theories that they often use to whip Spielberg with. It seems outrageous to them that the two could admire the other given the ideological polarization they think each represents. I do get what you mean, and I do think Spielberg tries to spoon-feed in AI, merely that his perspective is in innate conflict with what actually happens in the film. It acts as a kind of counterpoint (the way, say, you might put happy music over a sad scene) rather than the dominant way the film must be viewed. I do agree I could've done without the narration in the ending, but, OTOH, I find that ending in general overwhelmingly bleak, despite how superficially beautiful it is and how much Spielberg aims for emotional catharsis. RE David's Consciousness, I think it's made pretty clear he's not conscious in that, at all times, he's just following his programming. This is what I think works well with Spielberg's perspective because despite knowing this we STILL sympathize with him. It just goes to show the power of our own programming that we can deny reality in favor of our anthropomorphic biases. If you pay careful attention, the film in general loves playing with this real/illusion dichotomy (think, for instance, how in one scene the full moon transforms into the hot-air balloon. The film flaunts its ability to manipulate our perspective in scenes like that. The Flesh Fair scene really hammers this home).
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Post by general313 on Apr 14, 2017 0:41:50 GMT
So what was consciousness/awareness like before brains evolved? Evolved into what? Brains. Was there consciousness before animal life appeared on the earth?
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hayjaley
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Post by hayjaley on Apr 14, 2017 18:16:04 GMT
The point I tried to make in the next post that such detainment all ready exists, they are called civil commitment and the insanity defense. That is how Mcmurphy got booby hatched in Cuckoos nest and why Hincley is (now apparently cured) a patient instead of a prisoner, and why sex offenders are committed after their sentences are served. The terrorist who ran over people in Stockholm is most likely undergoing a psychiatric evaluation of his mental state as we speak. A client of mine got herself committed because of throwing a chair in the wall last week. Although that is not a usually a crime (or when done in a public place/someone elses property it amounts to a fine or a ban), the virtue of the act of being a symptom of her disease she has now been detained for over 10 days. That is not PKD's minority report, it is the Scandinavian health care system.
Being anti-social is not a crime yes, but it is a diagnosis useful for social control. The case histories in Cleckley's original bible of psychopathy the Mask of Sanity are rather revealing: I think all of the persons are ultimately restrained via madhouse rather than prison, since the offences the usually commit are rather minor. However since they are technically "sane" (ironically meaning they posses free will) they are released quite soon. When Karl Menninger said that an antisocial man ought to be in prison for the rest of his life without necessarily committing murder, he meant it. Who knows how many defendants were sentenced with such ideas? In the Patuxent institution, a Clock Work Orange prison he admired, every "patient" was to an indeterminate sentence to assure therapy.
You, Keira and Faustus are probably the most intelligent posters we have here. But I think discussing whether somebody has free will is not purely a scientific issue, like the problems of QM. Claims that there exists many worlds are not in the same class of saying X is psychotic or a witch however true/scientific such claims may seem.The idea that certain persons are not free is ancient, and it has been rather a successful rhetoric for theologic or therapeutic procedures. The issue is not intellectual, whether Jones is really possessed or psychotic, but rather strategic ; what happens after we identify him as such. I maintain that the most of the diagnoses/attributions made to psychiatric patients/criminal defendants fall into this strategic class: either we need to restrain the offender longer than the criminal law permits (or does not permit at all, like saying you want to kill yourself or the Noah's Ark is buried in one's basement)or or we want to excuse them, like saying Dan White had diminished capacity.
This is what I would like for you and the others smart posters to reconsider; that having free will(whatever that means) is not like possessing functioning eyes or having cancer, but that it is rather a social/moral/forensic concept. Theories of mathematics or biology do not have powers to control people. Most of theories of lack of free will, whether older (demonic, freudian, behaviorist) or newer(chemical imbalances) have opposite mindset.If a person has a demon, complex or a mental disease he usually must be cured regardless of opposition. Now whether the language of diseases,posssesion or complexes are explanations for deviance or rather forms of rhetoric that justify labeling such persons unfree to control them, is a serious question. Most of the philosophers of this the subject do not address the the actual paradigmatic procedures of the result (commitment to a nuthouse/insanity plea)
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Post by faustus5 on Apr 15, 2017 12:32:57 GMT
Just because our current technology is not capable of fully reducing brain states in order to predict such things deterministically without calibration doesn't mean that such a thing isn't possible. The complexity of brains and the role it plays in mind-states is obviously complex and I don't think anyone would assert we're anywhere near close to having modeled it all and/or fully reduced it. AFAICT, all the above proved is that we haven't reduced it yet, not that it's irreducible. The issue isn't technology. The issue is the relationship between conversational vocabularies and scientific vocabularies. The thesis is rather that the mental is nomologically irreducible: there may be true general statements relating the mental and the physical, statements that have the logical form of a law, but they are not lawlike (in the strong sense to be described).--Donald Davidson, “Mental Events” The implicit assumption about reduction in the argument is one that is widely shared: reduction of one theory to another requires the derivation of the laws of the reduced theory from those of the reducer, and for this to be possible, terms of the first theory must be appropriately connected via “bridge principles”, with those of the second. And the bridge principles must be either conceptually underwritten as definitions, or else express empirical lawlike correlations (“bridge laws” or “theoretical identities”).--Jaegwon Kim, “The Myth of Nonreductive Materialism” The issue becomes a matter of how the ontology of one theory (folk psychology) is, or is not, going to be related to the ontology of another theory (completed neuroscience). . .The functionalist also expects that [folk psychology] will prove irreducible, but on the quite different grounds that the internal economy characterized by folk psychology is not, in the last analysis, a law-governed economy of natural states, but an abstract organization of functional states, an organization instantiable in a variety of quite different material substrates. It is therefore irreducible to the principles peculiar to any of them.--Paul Churchland, “Eliminative Materialism” The upshot of the remarks so far is that the reduction of a science requires that any formula which appears as the antecedent or consequent of one of its proper laws must appear as the reduced formula in some bridge law or other. . .it is usually assumed that the reduction of some of the special sciences proceeds via bridge laws which connect their predicates with those of intermediate reducing theories.--Jerry Fodor, “Special Sciences” These illustrative parallels are all cases of successful intertheoretic reduction. That is, they are all cases where a new and very powerful theory turns out to entail a set of propositions and principles that mirror perfectly (or almost perfectly) the propositions and principles of some older theory or conceptual framework. The relevant principles entailed by the new theory have the same structure as the corresponding principles of the old framework, and they apply in exactly the same cases. . .
. . .There would be nothing particularly surprising about a reduction of our familiar introspectable mental states to physical states of the brain. All that would be required would be that an explanatory successful neuroscience develop to the point where it entails a suitable ‘mirror image’ of the assumptions and principles that constitute our common-sense conceptual framework for mental states, an image where brain-state terms occupy the positions held by mental-state terms in the assumptions and principles of common sense. If this (rather demanding) condition were indeed met, then, as in the historical cases cited, we would be justified in announcing a reduction and in asserting the identity of mental states with brain states.--Paul Churchland, Matter and Consciousness, pp. 26-27 The classic formulation of reduction requires that there are ‘bridge laws’ that show how entities, stuffs, or properties in one theory are in fact the very same as some set of entities, stuffs, or properties in the other. . .it turns out that once these bridge laws have been established, we can go on to derive the laws of the less basic theory. . .from the laws of the more basic theory.
For the most committed reductionist, all good scientific theories can ultimately be reduced to physics. If they cannot, this shows that either the theory needs more work, or that it should be eliminated, that is, discarded in favour of a theory that will meet the test of reduction.--Matthew Elton, Daniel Dennett: Reconciling Science and Our Self-Conception, p. 59 The following passage occurs in a chapter entitled “Against Reductionism”, the author doesn’t mention Daniel Dennett even once, yet his conclusion appears to be the same one Dennett reaches regarded intentionality, showing how reasonable persons, using the concept of reductionism that philosophers do, can reject reductionism and treat mental state vocabulary as essential and autonomous, without lapsing into either dualism or eliminativism: Since I might be misinterpreted, let me make it clear that I am not arguing for the introduction of a new principle to take over where physics or chemistry fail to deliver the goods. What I am saying is that the only explanation that we are ever likely to have for people’s behavior is in terms of motivations, thoughts, preconceptions, love, hatred, etc. The idea that there is a deeper analysis in terms of the motions of the atoms and electric fields in peoples brains and everywhere else in their surroundings cannot be used to predict the actions of individuals. The relevant computations would involve so many internal and external factors that they could not possibly be implemented in practice. The existence of an intermediate level of explanation, involving neural networks and brain biochemistry. . .is unlikely to change the way in which we describe people’s behavior in everyday life.--E. Brian Davies, Science in the Looking Glass: What Do Scientists Really Know?, p. 240 The people I've quoted above do not all agree with Dennett or even each other. But they are united in what "reductionism" in its precise technical definition in philosophy really means. If you think about what is required by this strict definition and how our conversational use of mental state terms could possibly relate to the terms of cognitive neuroscience, it is pretty clear that reductionism is not possible here. You are mixing up "holism" as it is used by New Age fruitcakes with "holism" as it is used by anti-reductionist philosophers who are also materialists, like Dennett and Richard Rorty.
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Post by Times Up on Apr 17, 2017 16:15:25 GMT
Well what about Shadow people honey? I mean aren't they illusions too? I mean, don't you know anything about Shadow people how like there have been tons of sightings.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 17, 2017 19:27:51 GMT
Intuition is a helpful tool, if more people were present, mindful and in the moment, then there would be more lucid actions and behaviors bringing about more positive and pro-active mental health and spiritual growth. Knowing something without knowing how one got there is not worth pondering over, it is just the knowing at that moment that is important and relevant. It doesn't need to be intellectualized. It is all a dream within a dream and when we wake up, the illusion, or delusion as we live by, will be oblivion. All that is left is clarity and consciousness awareness, without the hindrance of the mind body experience as humans. Matter did not come first, consciousness awareness has always been at the forefront of our being and what is more real and transcendent than any other aspect of our physical human lives. If matter did not come first and "consciousness awareness has always been at the forefront", then, are you saying I was consciously aware of my being before I was born? Or do you mean that some other thing or being was consciously aware of me before I was born?
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Post by FilmFlaneur on Apr 18, 2017 11:37:47 GMT
I do agree I could've done without the narration in the ending, but, OTOH, I find that ending in general overwhelmingly bleak, despite how superficially beautiful it is and how much Spielberg aims for emotional catharsis. Every time I see AI, I think it would have best ended with the discovery of the figure underwater, a real moment of catharsis (i.e. without the coda).
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Post by general313 on Apr 18, 2017 15:04:24 GMT
If matter did not come first and "consciousness awareness has always been at the forefront", then, are you saying I was consciously aware of my being before I was born? Or do you mean that some other thing or being was consciously aware of me before I was born? You are a conscious aware being, with or without your body. It is the attachment to the physical matter, and the ego monkey mind that can hold us back from not remembering. That is why we are here and we may have many many lifetimes before we transcend. I go by the notion of oneness, connectedness, wholeness and completeness. That then dispels the dualistic notion of God or a supreme being that brings forth the notion of separateness from God and creates more conflict in our external lives. This may be challenging or controversial for many to hear, but what if you are God, the master of your own universe? If consciousness doesn't depend on your body, why do Alzheimer's patients, victims of stroke, and other brain maladies suffer a partial or complete loss of consiousness? Occam's Razor favors a materialist explanation of how brains work and what their purpose is.
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Post by Terrapin Station on Apr 18, 2017 17:39:53 GMT
You are a conscious aware being, with or without your body. It is the attachment to the physical matter, and the ego monkey mind that can hold us back from not remembering. That is why we are here and we may have many many lifetimes before we transcend. I go by the notion of oneness, connectedness, wholeness and completeness. That then dispels the dualistic notion of God or a supreme being that brings forth the notion of separateness from God and creates more conflict in our external lives. This may be challenging or controversial for many to hear, but what if you are God, the master of your own universe? If consciousness doesn't depend on your body, why do Alzheimer's patients, victims of stroke, and other brain maladies suffer a partial or complete loss of consiousness? Occam's Razor favors a materialist explanation of how brains work and what their purpose is. I'm a physicalist, so this isn't my view, but presumably, their explanation would be that Alzheimer's is a receiver problem (with the specific problems of the receiver being those structural brain changes), not a source or signal problem.
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Post by general313 on Apr 18, 2017 19:19:08 GMT
If consciousness doesn't depend on your body, why do Alzheimer's patients, victims of stroke, and other brain maladies suffer a partial or complete loss of consiousness? Occam's Razor favors a materialist explanation of how brains work and what their purpose is. I'm a physicalist, so this isn't my view, but presumably, their explanation would be that Alzheimer's is a receiver problem (with the specific problems of the receiver being those structural brain changes), not a source or signal problem. To which I would ask them why the brain seems to be so much more than a receiver, for example it has a memory system for remembering things in numerous categories. Localized brain injuries can lead to loss of memories in specific categories, leaving others intact. Damage to the hippocampus can disable forming new memories but retain the ability to recall old memories. Does a receiver need a separate organ ("antenna") for each category? And how can one explain the hippocampus in a brain-as-receiver model? Again, Occam's Razor makes that seem very unlikely.
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Post by Terrapin Station on Apr 18, 2017 19:44:48 GMT
I'm a physicalist, so this isn't my view, but presumably, their explanation would be that Alzheimer's is a receiver problem (with the specific problems of the receiver being those structural brain changes), not a source or signal problem. To which I would ask them why the brain seems to be so much more than a receiver, for example it has a memory system for remembering things in numerous categories. Localized brain injuries can lead to loss of memories in specific categories, leaving others intact. Damage to the hippocampus can disable forming new memories but retain the ability to recall old memories. Does a receiver need a separate organ ("antenna") for each category? And how can one explain the hippocampus in a brain-as-receiver model? Again, Occam's Razor makes that seem very unlikely. They can just say that damaging the receiver in different ways has different effects. My approach to their view is rather to just question what reasons there are to believe that mind is something separate from brain so that brains are just receivers. The possibility of it, the desire to believe it, etc., are not sufficient.
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