Specifically, I like the notion of mental shape because shapes have specific properties, and our properties or abilities 'fit' with what I've described as environmental gradients — Pantagruel
The example is Searle's, from the book Rediscovery of Mind.John Searle talks about intentionality rising to the level of background abilities. In other words, your mind steers at the level of its expertise (which is a function of experience and skill). A beginning skier focuses on 'shifting weight onto the downhill ski' in each corner, while an expert skier just 'picks a path' down a slope. — Pantagruel
stick can be used to bash over the head, or it can be used as a lever to roll a giant rock down a hill. Or it can be used to scratch symbols in the sand. The same basic physical form can have radically different functionalities. Therefore radically different abilities. So even if beings have the same physical form, they can have radically different 'shapes' with respect to their environments. And hence different properties as reflections of their 'shapes.' Which are different abilities.
If as a result of a purely mental operation otherwise identical physical things can acquire different properties, then these properties are instantiations of the mental. And if these properties enhance survival then they result in progressive physical modifications. So the 'shape' of the mind in the world is a product of its own mental operations (in a physical context) and not merely a physical product. — Pantagruel
pecifically, I like the notion of mental shape because shapes have specific properties, and our properties or abilities 'fit' with what I've described as environmental gradients. — Pantagruel
The problem with this perspective is that our capacities always extend beyond our properties. — Metaphysician Undercover
If you use "properties" in that way, referring to the function of a thing, then you must respect that functions which the object does not currently have, though the object has the capacity to be used that way if approached by the right mind, are not actually properties of the thing, because it is not being used that way. Otherwise the thing has all sorts of different properties at the very same time, in violation of the law of non-contradiction. — Metaphysician Undercover
↪Pantagruel Do you have a page reference please? — Daemon
If I have a new experience, then my state of being is different subsequent to that experience and prior. It seems reasonable to view this as an additive change. One doesn't have to quantify absolutely to recognize a relative difference.Consciousness is a state of being. It cannot be quantified. It is. — MondoR
It seems reasonable to view this as an additive change. — Pantagruel
Interestingly, you used the term creative. I think creation implies novelty, hence something being added.Experience is a strange little breast. Experience does create change (a creative action), but is it additive? I would say it is transformative. — MondoR
This is a Mahayana/Vajrayrana view. Other Buddhist schools would point out that by killing, one accrues "bad karma" for oneself. A Buddhist might also argue that killing is wrong because it doesn't solve the problem of suffering, even though one engages in kiling for the purpose of solving the problem of suffering.The first precept against killing, since all life is sacred. And all living things partake of Buddha nature. — Pantagruel
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