Specifically the book Zen Mind Beginner's Mind. This is a Sōtō Zen text which stresses the 'ordinary mind' practice. Ordinary mind teachings suggest that enlightenment is not a distant, supernatural state to be achieved in a future life, but is found in the natural, unconditioned state of one’s own mind during everyday activities. — Wayfarer

"If you continue this simple practice every day, you will obtain some wonderful power. Before you attain it, it is something wonderful, but after you attain it, it is nothing special."

Where is the quote about before you attain enlightenment, you put on your robe and eat your rice. But after you obtain enlightenment, you put on your robe and eat your rice.

Edit:. I might be thinking the same book.
"To have some deep feeling about Buddhism is not the point; we just do what we should do, like eating supper and going to bed. This is Buddhism."

But at the same time, this "ordinary" mind is not the habitual, reactive mind filled with habitual tendencies, judgment and grasping, but rather a state of "no-doing" or wu wei. — Wayfarer

Yet nothing is left undone.

The idea would be more that energy is fundamentally intelligent, directed. — Janus

Can you say anything else about this? Any idea how energy is intelligent? (I agree that it is not the same as consciousness.) What is the intelligence directed towards, and how is the intelligence accomplished?

This is what I think I understand: the mind is not a detached observer, and the body is not merely a machine. They exist together, intertwined within a single field of lived experience. From this perspective, the traditional problem of interaction or dualism might be said to dissolve. Phenomenology does not assume that mind and body are two independent entities that must somehow be connected. Instead, it understands them as co-emerging, inseparable aspects of the way we inhabit and experience the world. Yet it seems to me we can ask whether this really addresses the heart of the mind–body problem, or simply reframes it in a more elegant way, substituting abstract categories like “lived experience” for concrete questions about causality, consciousness, and physical reality that first give rise to the apparent problem. — Tom Storm

Indeed. certainly, mind and body are one, and inseparable. But, for those interested in such things, we still need an explanation.

On this view it would be energy which would be understood to be fundamental and consciousness (or mind, instinct or intelligence) would be included as being an ineliminable aspect of energy insofar as it behaves in a lawlike manner and constitutes the structures and processes we call "things" in an intelligent and intelligible manner. Any quality I can think of seems to be unintelligible if thought of as lacking energy. — Janus

I'm not sure what the idea is here. If consciousness is an aspect of the energy, what other aspects does this energy have? What does it do? Do you mean the energy is electromagnetism, and consciousness is an aspect of that? Or some other form of energy?

But once consciousness is treated as a property alongside physical properties, it immediately raises the question: why do certain physical configurations instantiate this additional property at all — Joshs

All physical configurations, or at least all particles, instantiate the property. Here's my position...

This property is what gives everything the ability to subjectively experience. Subjective experience, however, does not mean thinking, awareness, self awareness, emotion, and various other things that are generally labeled as "human consciousness". What we are conscious of is not what consciousness is. self-awareness is not consciousness. Self-awareness is our subjective experience of information processing and feedback loops. Emotions aren't consciousness. Emotions are our subjective experience of things likeneurotransmitters. Memory isn't consciousness. Memory is our subjective experience of stored information being referenced.

The subjective experience of a particle is very different from, and I would say very much less than, the subjective experience of people. Particles do not have any information processing, neurotransmitters or other chemicals, information storage, etc. They do not have sensory apparatus to give them input from the outside world or from within. There is, in fact, no within for a particle. So it's consciousness is of very little. Simple existence.

We still have a world described completely in third-person terms, to which experiential properties are added as something extra. — Joshs

Not "added as something extra." No more than mass is added as something extra to charge. All properties are there all the time, all doing what they do. The fact there we describe the world in third-person terms in order to understand certain things, and use them to our advantage, is not there world's fault. It is what it is. We might want to think of it, and our place in it, differently.

For Husserl and Heidegger, the mistake lies in taking “the physical world” as something already fully constituted as neutral, objective, and affectless, and then asking how consciousness gets added to it. That picture is a theoretical abstraction derived from scientific practice, not a description of the world as it is originally given. The world is first encountered as meaningful, relevant, and affectively structured. Neutral objectivity is a derivative achievement, produced by bracketing relevance, concern, and involvement, not the metaphysical ground floor. — Joshs

That all sounds good to me!

Property dualism remains wedded to the hard problem of it accepts a conception of the physical as fully intelligible without reference to the qualitative intelligibility dimension of experience. — Joshs

How can anything be intelligible without an intelligencer experiencing it?

The question “Why is there something it is like?” remains unavoidable. — Joshs

The answer is, because it is a property of the universe.


It seems to me that you insist it all must be viewed in a certain way. I disagree. I think it is all one; the universe experiencing itself all the time. Each part experiencing according its nature.

Hi. Sorry, I'm crazy busy at work, and can't even read all that you wrote, much less respond to it. But I wanted to just say this...

On the surface your account sounds as if you are rejecting the inner/outer split, but property dualism usually preserves and stabilizes the hard problem rather than dissolving it. — Joshs

If the hard problem is how physical things and processes can build/create non-physical consciousness, then those doors not preserve the hp. Consciousness does not arise from the physical. It's there with the physical all along.

But this makes it sound as though there is more than one real world; that physics effectively captures the reality of an aspect of it (the physical) and we need another explanation alongside of it for something like consciousness. This is dualism, a reification of the hard problem. If instead we claim that the phrase ‘physical world’ is not describing a world that is real in the sense of being real independent of our conscious interaction with it, then we are doing phenomenology. This dissolves the dualism of the hard problem by showing there to be a single underlying process of experiencing accounting for the historical decision to bifurcate the world into concepts like ‘physically real’ and ‘real in other ways’. — Joshs

I claim that the phrase ‘physical world’ is not describing a world that is real in the sense of being real independent of our conscious interaction with it. I believe our consciousness and the physical world cannot be separated. That's what property dualism means. We can't remove the experiential property from particles any more than we can remove mass or charge from them. The bifurcation doesn't exist. But we ignore some properties at times. We don't concern ourselves with charge or consciousness when we calculate the path of a baseball after it leaves the bat. If we want to know why the ball bounces off the bat, we'll have to talk about the negative charge of the election shells. We don't talk about mass or charge when we discuss consciousness.

The idea that everything is physical does not entail that everything can be explained in terms of physics. The apprehension of the meaning of a poem might be a neural, that is physical, process, but the meaning apprehended cannot be explained in terms of physics. — Janus

I've been arguing this very thing for the few years I've been here.

Even the activities of cells cannot be understood without introducing the idea of signs (biosemiotics). — Janus

Ah. Yeah. How is it that codons mean amino acids, and strings of codons mean proteins. Sure, everything about them and the whole process of protein synthesis is physics. But that doesn't solve the mystery.

Biology cannot adequately be explained in terms of physics. — Janus

How do you mean? Any particular aspects of biology?

The internal combustion engine is well understood. The understanding of its workings were not the kind of thing I had in mind when I spoke of scientific theories. — Janus

You said "certainty is never obtained in the hard sciences." I would think that includes everything involved in the internal combustion engine. And it's true. Just because gravity works the way it does, and has every moment we are aware of, doesn't mean we have scientific proof that it will work that way tomorrow.

I think it is undeniably true that most of human life cannot be explained in terms of physics. On the other hand physics certainly seems to be the basis of chemistry and chemistry the basis of life and life the basis of consciousness, and even if this is so it still doesn't follow that emergent systems can necessarily be understood comprehensively in terms of the systems they emerge from. Try understanding poetry, art or music in terms of physics, or even biology, and see how far you get. — Janus

That's because those things, and most of human life, only exist because of consciousness. What emergent system that doesn't involve consciousness can't be explained in terms of physics?

The irony is that certainty is never obtained in the hard sciences. No scientific theory can ever be proven to be true. While many people fail to understand this fact, it may be that many, or even most, scientists do not fail to understand it. — Janus

Sure. But we don't say, "Well, we can't prove the combustion engine works the way we think it does for the reasons we think it does, so there's no point in making any. After all, what reason do we have to think the next one we make will work?

On the other hand it is possible, although it can never be proven, that the former exist only because of the latter. — Janus

We certainly are not aware of the existence of the former without the latter.

What the 'explanatory gap' and 'hard problem' arguments are aimed at, is precisely that claim. That everything is reducible to or explainable in terms of the physical. That is the point at issue! — Wayfarer

They make clear that everything is not reducible to or explainable in terms of the physical.

“We want to know not only that such-and-such is the case, but also why it is the case. If nature is one large, lawful, orderly system, as the materialist (or the naturalist) insists, then it should be possible to explain the occurrence of any part of that system in terms of basic principles that govern nature as a whole.” — Levine

Of course. The problem is assuming the things we know from our physical sciences are a complete list of the basic principles that govern nature.

Of course it is. That's the entire topic of this conversation. How does consciousness come about?

Well, here is a link to the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale DASS-42 test to see how you're feeling — Questioner

Ah. Self-reporting. I thought you meant some kind of measuring device.

You've never heard of megahurts? — wonderer1

Is that something that hurts an awful lot? Like "I'm gonna put you in a world of pain!" :grin:

Assuming you mean megahertz, yes, I've heard of it. I was not listing every unit of measurement. I was only giving a few examples.


Edit: Or did you mean emotions are measured in megahertz?

Are you suggesting there are not ways to determine how a person feels? — Questioner

Any time someone says they measured something, they give the measurement in units. 83 decibels. 25 cm. 100 mps. -30 inHg. That kind of thing. I would like to hear about the measurements of emotion, from any one of the "whole battery of tests."

Neuroscientific investigation has a whole battery of tests to measure emotion.
— Questioner

I would say neuroscience studies the physical processes and correlates associated with emotional states. — RogueAI

Indeed. What's a unit of emotion? What's the highest level of emotion ever measured with these tests?

It does at least suggest that sentient beings came into existence, i.e. there is a first point of their coming to be. And it clearly suggests that the existence of each one of the sentient beings in this world isn't a necessary fact. — boundless

Agreed.

I do accept both things. However, this doesn't exclude the possibility that some form of consciousness is fundamental as it is suggested by the second 'horn' of the dilemma. — boundless

No, it doesn't exclude that possibility.

The discussion was the emergence of consciousness as the 'self-other' distinction basic to the emergence of organic life. It is also a basic theme in phenomenology. — Wayfarer

It seemed that you were trying to use the fact that people have been thinking along certain lines for millennia to support the idea that there is no self and other. If that's not what you meant, I apologize. I don't know what you meant.

I've posted this before. In Until the End of Time, Brian Greene writes:

I don’t know what mass is. I don’t know what electric charge is. What I do know is that mass produces and responds to a gravitational force, and electric charge produces and responds to an electromagnetic force. So while I can’t tell you what these features of particles are, I can tell you what these features do. — Brian Greene

He emphasizes the "I don't know" in the audio book. If he doesn't know what charge is, I certainly don't. Plus, I'm the one saying particles have subjective experience. So I'm in no position to rule out too many ideas. :grin:

I will say, though, that I'm skeptical of something pulling "double duty" like that. Charge does an awful lot in the physical realm. It's a major factor in how particles interact. It's why we have solids, liquids, and gases. It's why one solid, liquid, or gas is different from another. It's why flight is possible. It's why we have DNA, the electron transport chain, ATP, blood cells carrying oxygen. It's why oil is a good source of energy. It's why everything.

I would be surprised if charge was also the root of consciousness. Doing double duty in the two realms seems like a lot to ask. Fine that an engine to run a car also produces heat. It wasn't the goal, but it's easy enough to see how it happens. Do you have thoughts on how consciousness is either (what I guess, for lack of a better phrase, I'll call) a primary function of charge, as causing particles to interact and combine to form solids, liquids, and gases is, or an unintended side effect, the way heat from an engine is?

Do you think there is ever going to be a paradigm that does not have self and other? What does it mean to not have self-other? Will all minds and consciousnesses merge into one?
— Patterner

I can only say that 'transcending the self-other distinction' is a recurring motif in mysticism and the perennial philosophies, generally. That is why 'Nirvāṇa without remainder' is said to be only possible on the far side of death. — Wayfarer

For millennia, various traditions have been trying to accomplish this. But the practitioners still answer to their individual names, and it's said the goal can't be achieved while alive.

What is your vision off the future? Will we no longer use the sciences that developed by ignoring consciousness? Will we not live in houses, not use electricity, not use propulsion systems and math to launch ships to Mars and beyond?
— Patterner

I don't believe interstellar travel is at all feasible for terrestrial creatures such as ourselves. We might be able to send ultrasmall computers via laser energy, but we'll never send large metal and composite material vessels with living organisms in them. Mars is a possibility, but the idea of colonizing Mars is a Musk fever dream. (I'm writing a 'psi-phi' novel on this very theme at the moment, although constantly sidetracking myself with forum posts.) — Wayfarer

Fine, let's use another example. Will doing away with the subject–object paradigm mean we will no longer use our current sciences to try to find or develop better energy sources?

Although I really don't have any idea what your position is, I know that we both think consciousness is a bigger, and/or more ubiquitous, part of the universe than many people posting here do. That doesn't mean we will, or should, discard physical sciences. There probably are times when one aspect of reality is not needed for, and possibly interferes with, our pursuits in one area or another. There will probably always be people wasting their time trying to prove that things like sodium ions passing through the membranes of neurons produce consciousness. But it might be equally foolish to insist that we cannot find way to produce lighter, stronger metals without first figuring out how to add consciousnes as an ingredient.

which is radically different from the conventional dualistic view of it implied by panpsychisms (that for a material thing to have consciousness is to be aware of itself). — Joshs

Subjective experience doesn't mean self-awareness.

This form of panpsychism still retains the self–other, subject–object paradigm that underlies naturalism; — Wayfarer

Do you think there is ever going to be a paradigm that does not have self and other? What does it mean to not have self-other? Will all minds and consciousnesses merge into one? What is your vision off the future? Will we no longer use the sciences that developed by ignoring consciousness? Will we not live in houses, not use electricity, not use propulsion systems and math to launch ships to Mars and beyond?

I mean, in truth, it was. There was once a time when consciousness didn't exist. Time passed. At some point, reality started perceiving itself. If "added" is not the right term (after all, who or what added it?), consciousness at least arose from an unconscious world.

And so, if consciousness arose from unconscious processes, we can in principle describe how this happened. — hypericin

Unless there wasn't a time when consciousness didn't exist. If it is fundamental, a property of things, as, for example, mass and charge are, then it was always there. There was always experiencing. Yes, reality started perceiving itself when structures of perception evolved. At which point, there was the experience of perception.

Rubber bands and rocks — bert1

I like to stretch rubber bands until they snap. You can hear them scream! :halo:

If consciousness is not there from the beginning
— Patterner

The problem is that 'there' is implicitly objectifying. It is locative. You're already orienting the discussion in terms of space-time by using it. — Wayfarer

Using boundless' words, I do not think consciousnesses arose in time via an evolutionary process. I believe it was always a part of the evolutionary process. I find no logic in the idea that physical considerations caused a particular physical arrangement to come into being, and this physical arrangement just happens to produce consciousness. If consciousness is not a factor in the evolution of the physical arrangements, and it is not a goal of evolution, then there is no reason it would suddenly appear.

I may as well be building a mountain scene with tunnels on a big table in the garage for my train set, and the whole thing suddenly takes flight. Well, I put that motorized spinning thing in the front to create wind to blow the miniature trees and wheat fields. And those two long thin projections going to either side were supposed to be fishing piers. And the...

Oh fer crissakes! It does look like an airplane, now that I think about it!

Of course, the analogy doesn't work, because there's no explanation of how the physical arrangements and activities of the brain can produce consciousness, unlike the physical arrangements and activities of things like wings and a propellor can make something fly.

Right. One is structure, one is function.
------
Good example of structure and function. — Questioner

Neither is an explanation for consciousness. We can describe the structure of a windmill. It's height. The blades extending out at the top, position to certain way in relation to the tower and to the ground.

We can describe the function of the windmill, also. whether an old one with the mechanism inside the ground wheat, or modern one that produces electricity.

The brain's structure and function turn not explain the presence of consciousness. Any activity noted is function, such as discriminating wavelengths of visible light. there is no explanation for why we subjectively experience color when those physical events, and the discrimination of wavelengths, take place.

Where else is consciousness found? — Questioner

Any living thing.

1) The analysis of the empirical world (and here I include the inner experience of sentient beings) strongly suggests that the consciousness of individual sentient beings is not fundamental. It even suggests that these individual consciousnesses arose in time via an evolutionary process. — boundless

I don't agree that it suggests those things. If consciousness is not there from the beginning, then physical arrangements are evolving for purely physical reasons. If physical arrangements were evolving for purely physical reasons, then it seems rather bizarre that they one day found themselves in just the right configuration to produce consciousness. I mean, holy cow! :gasp:

And there’s extensive clinical and experimental data to support the correlation of structure (brain) and function (mind/consciousness). We may not understand exactly how consciousness is generated, but it’s an “incontrovertible premise that consciousness comes about from the action of the brain.” — Questioner

It isn't an incontrovertible premise. Thinking the things a brain thinks comes from the action of the brain. Brains also do things that don't involve thinking, like making the heart beat.

Consciousness is another matter. The descriptions of the physical events that explain thinking and autonomic functions are not describing subjective experiences. For example, you can list any and all steps that begin with photons hitting the retina, including molecules of retinal changing shape, ion channels, sodium ions, axons and dendrites and neurotransmitters, and everything else, and you will never tell us where red is found. We'll understand how the system can discriminate different wavelengths of the spectrum, which some mechanical/electronic devices can do. But how our experience of colors also happens will not be revealed.

Also, if there is consciousness in things without brains, then, obviously, it doesn't come about from the action of the brain.

I do not think consciousness arises from neurological processes, regardless of what species were talking about.

In humans, we are conscious of - we experience - neurological processes. Things without neurons experience other things. They experience their own beings.

And does not that consciousness emerge as the function of neurological processes? — Questioner

I'm in the No camp.

I've never read Whitehead. I just googled, and the AI's summation seems nearly exactly my position. I guess I should get to know him.

But from this apparent epistemic barrier it cannot be concluded that consciousness has no naturalistic explanation. — hypericin

Nothing in this reality can have a non-naturalistic explanation. Consciousness cannot be non-natural. Things that would not exist if consciousness did not bring them about cannot be non-natural.

Right, consciousness is determined by material conditions, and without material conditions there would be nothing to be conscious of. On the other hand without consciousness there would be no one to be aware of material conditions. So, a conclusion might be that neither is primary, and that they co-arise. On the other hand we can certainly imagine that material conditions were present prior to the advent of consciousness or least prior to consciousness as we understand it. All our scientific evidence points to that conclusion. — Janus

Yes, I think they co-arise. Just as mass and charge co-arise. We don't think one came before the other. It's all there from the beginning.

I would rephrase "[at] least prior to consciousness as we understand it" as something along the lines of "at least prior to intelligence capable of contemplating and discussing it". Because I think there are things that are conscious that do not have that kind of intelligence. I don't draw any line at all, which I know you disagree wirh. But do you draw a line? I don't imagine dolphins contemplate and discuss consciousness, but are they conscious? If so, how about bats? Bees? Worms? Paramecia? Archaea?

:rofl: Excellent!

a horse has four legs, but no horse has five legs.
— Patterner

This is wrong. It’s my understanding that no horse has 10 legs. — T Clark

So then what has more legs, no horse or no horse?

Q: Which has more legs, a horse or no horse?
A: No horse, because a horse has four legs, but no horse has five legs.

The problem with 'information' is that, as a general term, it doesn't mean anything. It has to specify something or be about something to be a meaningful expression. — Wayfarer

The is what it means. Information means something that specifies or is about something else. One thing means another thing. Is there any example of information that that does not apply to?

My dear other has made it clear that festive time is not ideally spent arguing with my invisible friends. — Wayfarer

An outrage!!! If I wasn't but a figment of your imagination, I'd be horribly insulted!!!

it is not incredulous to think that bases other than ten can work, and our comfort with it is 100% due to our exposure with it. — QuixoticAgnostic

I think this sums it up nicely.