What Of Your Essence?

I’m gonna cheat. I’m gonna look ahead to your response to Arc. You call it a “stem”. You say that O is not only less than B but integrated into B. So maybe something like: if it’s a dog, then it’s an animal. And if it’s an animal, then it’s a life form.

What? Think of human brains as computers or design computers to not make mistakes or have opinions?

I remember listening to a lecture by John Searle once in which he quoted an ancient greek writer (I forget who): the brain is like a catepolt, he said. Searle’s point is that throughout history, we’ve always compared the brain to the latest, most advanced, technology of the time. Why? Partly because we didn’t understand how the brain works (thus comparing it to something “sophisticated” or “complex”) and partly because in seeking out an explanation (of anything) we look for mechanical cause/effect accounts. We stay away from magic or spontaneous/causeless accounts because that’s more akin to saying “there is no explanation.”

But I think with computers, we’re not just repeating the same pattern. I think there is something to computers that makes them good for comparison to brains–namely, internal information processing. When we design a computer to carry out complex mathematical algorithms, we are modeling the design after what we see going on inside our minds (introspection). Furthermore, like all other tools, we design computers to perform the tasks that we would otherwise have to do ourselves (laborously). We’ve built a machine that can solve really complex mathematical and logical problems so that we don’t have to go through all the trouble of doing it in our heads (and possibly making mistakes). Therefore, of course the brain is like a computer… because we designed computers to be like brains.

Of course, we’ve designed computers to model the brain in specific ways only–doing math, solving logical problems, and even doing things like rendering art and running video games–all things that the human brain can do but much better. This more or less addresses the second part above–why we don’t design computers to make mistakes or have opinions–because at the end of the day, they’re still tools. We design and used them as replacements to our own manual efforts–and not just because we’re lazy, but because we make mistakes. We also leave out the ability of computers to form their own opinions because, as tools, we want to have full control over them. We want them to do exactly what we tell them, like mechanical slaves. Programming them to have their own opinions which might conflict with ours (e.g. Me: I want you to allocate $500,000 to defense spending. Computer: in my opinion, I think that money would be better spent on education) is avoided because that too would make them less tool-like and more of an “equal” (who could use us as tools just as much we can them).

You mean like: please go get [food item X]. ← This matches past patterns of requests to get food items in which the person went to the grocery store to fulfill the request. And thoughts that evolve–epiphanies–is this the brain doing the occasion break from following patterns? Finding whole new patterns? Like: I could go to the grocery store, but if I gut the neighbor’s cow, the meat will be a lot more fresh and no unhealthy additives! ← Or is that more insanity than novel thinking? :laughing:

Wow, that’s interesting. How do they scan the brain in order to identify pattern matching?

Thank you! :smiley:

Hmmm… well, if you can remember the source, I sure would like to know about this. I took a course in statistics for my psyc undergrad, and I remember one of our projects was to look for studies and find at least 5 in which the authors made really blatant mistakes like that. You’d be surprised how many articles out there draw causal conclusions based on a correlation only. It wasn’t hard to find all 5. Other mistakes included “fudging” statistical significance–as in: their study could not prove that their conclusions had a 99% chance of being right so they lowered the standard to a 95% chance of being right. Or increasing the sample size: did you know that you can prove a correlation exists between any two arbitrary variables you want so long as your sample size is large enough? (whether that correlation is positive or negative is another matter).

Anyway, back to QM, if they’re really scrupulous about being scientific, then the way you establish a cause (and not just a correlation) is by setting up the experiment so that you clearly have a dependent variable (the effect) and an independent variable (the cause). The assumption is that the independent variable has its own cause which determines it (you!) leaving no other option than to identify the independent variable as the cause of the dependent variable. Philosophically speaking, you could question this assumption, but it seems reasonable enough to me to justify the identification of a cause. So long as QM experiments are adhering to this design, I’d say they are in the right to identify the independent variable as the cause.

I would not doubt that. Though I would expect many parts of the brain to be involved in processing poetry and metaphor. I’d also point out that the neocortex constitutes a huge portion of the brain, so it’s probably involved in a whole bunch of mental processing (in fact, it’s been proven). How it processes poetry and metaphor is a more interesting question (at least for me) and I’m sure you’re on the right track in your investigations into pattern matching.

Well, that certainly makes sense. :smiley: Makes me wonder: do you think this is typical of people who form their thoughts and opinions “on the fly” so to speak? As opposed to people who draw from long held beliefs and opinions that have remained more or less “solid” over the years. In the latter case, I would expect those people to know exactly what they were talking about even when revisiting old posts after a long period of absence. But if you form your thoughts and opinions more or less “on the fly” then they’re more likely to be ephemeral, and you most likely won’t remember what you were thinking if you came back to the post after a long period of absence.

Well, I’ve come down from my mountain and here’s my initial thoughts:

What does it take to change one’s essence? I think one’s essence is just what one is–at the core–and since I personally believe nothing is permanent, that things are always changing, it only makes sense to talk about one’s essence in the moment. However, it would also be fair to say that the change we undergo may be so gradual that we can get away with talking about our essence over an extended period of time. There is also the fact of recurrence, which I spoke about before, which is the idea that our essence–the core of our being–is not something constant but something that keeps recurring–personal tastes, memories, my image in the mirror, hearing my name–all these go towards my self-concept and my essence because they keep repeating for me, and maybe we can talk about our essence as the general “flavor” that all these recurring experiences or states mix together to become–like the “essence” of a pixel flashing on a screen between red and yellow might be “orange”.

But I always like to argue from a subjectivist point of view–I like to trace the things in our world back to first person experience. If we indeed have an “essence”, I trace that back to concepts–self-concepts, self-identities–how we define ourselves, as I pointed out earlier. I can understand Arc’s point that if we’re talking about self-definitions, we’re talking about something that seems to be on the surface–how we think of ourselves on a conscious level–and one’s true essence must be something deep within the core of our being. But I disagree that thought and the definitions we give to things (including ourselves) is at the surface; I think our minds are the core of our being–including all our thoughts, all our emotions, all our memories, all our desires, all our pains and pleasures. It is the source from which thoughts and the definitions we give to things spring. We imbue things, including ourselves, with whatever definitions we give them, and this for us constitutes their essence. I’m opposed to the idea that the core of a thing, its fundamental identity, is always necessarily hidden. We are our own core, and the proof of this is precisely that we are exposed to ourselves.

But my subjectivist views are not the only views out there. If you’re a strict Platonist, for example, you would say that one’s essence isn’t just reduced to one’s self-definition. An “essence” to a Platonist is just as real, just as objective, and just as independent of human thought as are rocks, shoes, and tin cans–only they don’t subsist as physical bodies, but rather the “metaphysical” or “spiritual” identity of things, the abstract identity of things that we see with our minds, not with our senses. An essence is whatever it is that resides within a thing to give that thing its identity–what makes a chair a chair, what makes a house a house, what makes my phone my phone. This supposedly doesn’t change just by my re-thinking it. My phone doesn’t cease to be my phone just by my redefining it. And so too with the self.

^ I’ve never really been a strong adherent to Platonism, but I can’t really account for where I’m coming from unless I also explain things from opposing points of view. Sometimes a bit of contrast makes the things being contrasted more clear.

gib

Awesome - you have highlighted that I need to write rules for these designer logix.

I have moved some of our conversation over to a new thread called On Computing the Brain and Mind

:smiley:

Reformation . . .

Based on the original logic . . . fuzzy at that, we have new symbols to work with:

O <∫> B <∫> C

<∫> = A stem

The stem is made up of three symbols, the ‘less than’ sign, the ‘Integral’ sign, the ‘greater than’ sign. It just means that what ever is to the left is smaller than that which is to the right but they are integrated. A plant works the opposite way - the stem is larger than the branches - just an analogy.

So O <∫> B <∫> C just means:

C stems from B stems from O

or

O stems to B stems to C.
Everybody is making sense in one way or another . . . and I am starting to wrap my head around this finally.

There are many times when I agree with views that differ from each other. Sometimes the views are similar with slight differences and sometimes views are entirely different and all still make sense. The problem I have with what I just said comes down to contrast.

Now back to my main point . . .

So lets say we have the following definitions of slots:

O = Our Origin - Never Changing
B = Our Biological - Ever Changing
C = Our Conscious - Ever Changing
I still propose that we each have an origin(O) - a lot like the origin on a graph - except that we don’t need any dimensions for the definition of our origin - it is purely a starting point of sorts. I further posit that each of us has a biological(B) which is easy for us to agree on. And lastly we should be able to agree on each of us having a conscious(C).

Our O is never changing and everything after this point changes so we can say that:

O <∫> B <∫> C
In other words; O stems to B stems to C.

Keep in mind that I am only using the ‘~’ symbol as a separator to make it easier to read.

Where does the essence fit into this logic?

Is it ~ O or B or C?

Else ~ Does it fit somewhere between one of these three slots?

Or else ~ Is it a combination of all three?
I still can not get this essence out of my mind. I was thinking that O(Our Origin) was our essence and is ethereal and eternal - allowing for life after death.
Another way to look at it is that Our Origin is like a Seed to be planted into the Garden Of Life - and therefore our essence - in my mind anyway . . .

Then WendyDarling jumps in and adds more factors to the equation:

Agreeing with all this except for one change that your consciousness has an unchanging aspect of O as well that occurs before it’s placed/born in a physical body/shell so an OC, original consciousness, then the biological consciousness would be the BC, the changing aspect which comes after the O and the OC.

Making the enumeration look like the following:

OO = Our Origin - Never Changing
OC = Original Consciousness - Never Changing?
TB = The Brain - Ever Changing
TM = The Mind - Ever Changing
Obviously I have made a few changes to make things clearer. O is now OO, B is now TB and C is now TM

I like WendyDarling’s thoughts but I am still not sure where the essence fits in.

Any more thoughts?

:-k

Encode,

My only thought is something I arrived at while reading your most recent post: you point that O is never changing while B and C are ever changing. While I agree, I asked myself why–what differentiates O from B and C? And the only answer I could come up with is that O is an event in time. All events in time are “fixed” insofar as they are written in the tablet of the past. But B and C are regarded more as objects or entities (C being a more abstract entity), not events. And then I thought: that’s ironic! It’s the objects/entities, normally regarded as fixed or unchanging, which in the end turn out to be ever changing, while the event, normally regarded as necessarily going through change by definition, which in the end turns out to be fixed.

encode_decode,

Well then, we can say that we PERHAPS have two different essences.
One which belongs to the human side of us, universally speaking. Our human essence (as I said in another thread) belong to our origins would include the capacity toward evolution/evolving, the instinct toward survival, struggling, learning, imagining, wondering, et cetera.
All of these are really wonderful when it comes to our human essence. Why are we so eager to discount them to get to what is ethereal and eternal and cannot ever be proven.

I think that in a sense everything which comes about as a result of our human essence, for example, like the belief or intuition that we are eternal and that our consciousness survives after death, comes about as a result of the characteristics of that same human essence which we evolved into - for instance, the instinct for survival, which may possibly give us the will and longing for immortality and to be eternal.
A trick of the mind perhaps. What we believe, we tend to see whether or not it’s real.

Or perhaps that it is human evolution itself which plants the seeds…
But i can also see it your way too – we are the seeds to be planted and human evolution is their gardeners, their caretakers. we must be nourished and nurtured…

So our essence is our DNA!

I think it also has to do with the fact that we can’t imagine death. If you try to imagine yourself on your death bed, and you pass on, how do you imagine the nothingness that ensues? It gives the illusion (or maybe not an illusion) that our experience can never really end.

PS - Arc, what made you choose such a sad avatar? :frowning:

Eureka. I think that this is true though I didn’t think about it along those terms. Human essence would necessarily have to include our DNA among other things which make us physically human.

Or is it all about DNA and genes and how we have so evolved? That is a question for you.

I wonder why it is that we are so quick and so determined to see ourselves MORE about souls/spirits and less about the miracle which human beings have become through evolution.
We look for miracles without seeing the one which we are.

Hmmm :-k You may be partly right about that, gib. I think that it still comes down to the fact that we are so attached to this life, out of fear of losing self, the “I” which we are, fear of the unknown - after all, isn’t the greatest unknown what happens after death? And we do not have the courage to live without knowing. We do not have the wisdom to see how Death can teach us to live the greatest life which we have, to live in the here and now.

Isn’t it such a waste of life and moments to live in a way where we gamble all on the possibility of their being a hereafter?

:laughing: There is just something about it that drew me in. What’s wrong with being sad sometimes and what’s wrong with lying on the wet ground while the rain is coming down? Try it sometimes, it’s relaxing and freeing.
I have had my moments where I cried while walking in the rain. What is wrong with that, gib? Clouds cry so why can’t I?
What’s wrong with sometimes being a cloud? Just as the cloud needs its catharsis, so do we. Just call me nimbus…stratus.

Besides, maybe it’s the poetess in me that likes the drama and passion of it all. :evilfun:

No, I don’t think it’s all about that. In fact, I question whether it’s about DNA at all. As you know, I’m a subjectivist, which means I define and understand things from the point of view of my own subjective experiences. When I ask myself: what is my essence? I mean: who do I feel like I am in this moment? DNA, for me, is not the first thing that comes to mind. I don’t subjectively feel my DNA. All I can come to in regards to the self I feel like I am is that it is a concept I am projecting onto myself.

^ You might help me out with this. What does it feel like to be you? What do you feel in yourself subjectively that you would say constitutes the core of “you”?

I blame Descartes. He’s the one who convinced everyone that we are our souls and not our bodies. But I definitly think there is a spiritual aspect to our being–we’re not just physical–but I agree that there’s no reason to think we’re MORE our spiritual side than our physical side. I guess it’s because our spiritual side is thought to be “within” and therefore closer to our “core”.

Well, it all depends on if the believers are right or not, of course. But I don’t think anyone’s ever come close to proving the existence of an afterlife. Gambling on an unknown can be an incredible waste. Though I don’t think it’s necessarily a waste to believe in an afterlife, just to put all one’s eggs in that basket. The afterlife I envision is a huge unknown. It might be bliss, it might be hell, it might be an inconceivable experience, it might be nothing. I think that without anything to look forward to in the afterlife, one’s focus remains here in this life.

Now, now, Arc, don’t get defensive. :laughing: There’s abolutely nothing wrong with crying in the rain. :wink:

Well, it is raining outside right now. Maybe I’ll go out to the parking lot. Hope no one runs over me.

Ok, Nimbus (or would you prefer Mrs. Stratus?). You’re a cloud and you like to cry sometimes. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. :wink: But one still wonders why someone cries. One wonders: is everything all right?

gib

I have been thinking about this for long enough . . .

Even points in time seem to exert a butterfly effect that would go on forever.

Thoughts?

They do?

The trick to imagining events pinned to time and space is to imagine a map of time and space that’s “static”. I mean, if you’re imagining things moving about on that spacetime map or things changing, you haven’t imagined it right. It should be like a stock market graph–where the vertical axis is the value of the stocks and the horizontal is time. The value of the stocks naturally fluctuate (change) but we don’t see any movement on the graph, just mountains.

So imagining a butterfly effect emanating from an event on a spacetime graph would probably look like more events (perhaps smaller ones) that stretch out from the point in time of the original event into the future, leading to other larger events on the way. Is that how you would imagine it?

Hey gib, I need more time to think before I can give a definitive answer . …

That is how I would imagine it. Fortunately or unfortunately.

To me an event in time is getting further away from us if it is a past event.

I might be confusing myself man . . . either way I am sure we will arrive at some conclusion.

:smiley:

You know, I had a discussion once with someone here on ILP (I think it was Artimus) in which I explained to him a sense of “change” that can happen without time:

We can talk about the landscape changing. From the northern tip of North American to the southern tip, the landscape changes. It goes from snow and ice, to forest, to planes, to desert (sometimes mountains). But this is a change that happens “simultaneously”.

On a static graph, the only difference between a changing landscape and a changing event would be the direction (horizontal or vertical) in which we see the change occurring.

Somehow (I forget how) this lead me to think: to talk about one’s origins, one is talking about an event that is “done”–or “complete” for all intents and purposes–so on a static landscape of time and space, it can be represented as an object, something that spans a bit of time, but is complete, and so we can think of it as an unchanging object. One’s biology and consciousness, on the other hand, are not yet complete. They continue to change as life goes on. So we are not in a position to think of them as “complete” objects. We are compelled to think of them as things which exist in the moment but are going through change. They continue to be with us at every moment, but become different at every moment because of the change they go through. The “object” remains here, in the moment, not stuck to a specific point in space and time. Perhaps in 100 years from now, my great grandchildren may speak of my life as a fixed event in the past, that though I went through change in my life, my life is now a complete story, written in the past, there to remain the same forever.

Are you metaphorically thinking out aloud gib?

:smiley:

I have been hypnotized, and felt the sense that time had stopped but I had no doubt after that the world had continued and time had changed.

:-k

It looks like most agree that triplicity = essence.
All attempts at classifying an universal essence are threefold.

I maintain it is monadic, and that all is the same, life, death - except that life works with subjective time and death with causal time only.

In subjective time there can be the imagination that different things occupy the same space. Subjective time substitutes for space and causes imagination. Death-time merely conveys truth. The light at the ed of the tunnel; being stripped of all illusions, seeing the consequences of ones actions, karma.

Of course it exists. There is no waste of energy only if there there is no compromise of the principle of structural integrity. When life dissolves, what automates life (principle) is consolidated threefold, drawn in from these three dimensions and that compressed piece of self-valuing just enters the atomic spheres (death) to be thrust into subjective time once another opportunity for such a type and degree of integrity to unfold and meet its fate or acquire wings and find destiny.

I say unfold 5-fold.
I say don’t let the obvious catch up with you so easily. Beat nature to the curve. Set it for new generation to slide more easily into form and beauty and good plenty.

Obvious is walking through a wall and it not working. Nothing that works is really obvious.

Jakob, what you have written in your post has given me much cause for thought.

I just wanted to pop in and say thank you.

Deep stuff.

:smiley:

Gib,

Yes, or within it. Our No. 1 essence. lol
On the other side of that coin, of course, would be our spiritual( for lack of a better word) essence.
They are probably both tied in together.

I may be wrong here but is it possible that one of the reasons we cannot imagine death is because some sort of a fail-safe construct has been built into us? I wonder how many would lose their zeal and desire for living if they were actually able to imagine it - albeit since they cannot know, it probably/possibly could not be"real" ~~ just wishful thinking or fantasy.

Insofar as that nothingness which you spoke of, I would imagine that most have felt that at some point in their life - that nothingness, emptiness, seemingly never-ending experience of death or dying while living. I know I have. I think that it might at times be a good thing to imagine our selves as dead, lying in a grave covered with dirt. We might all come to a different version of that but I wonder how it would come to affect our living experience ~~ I mean in a positive way? But I suppose that just might depend on the individual.

See what I mean about the death fantasy? :evilfun: Why would you necessarily equate rain with sadness, gib?
I love the rain. That avatar to me represents joy and rapture. It is a partaking of something so natural and breathtaking. My head is back to invite the rain into myself.

Is it possible that when you said the above words you were feeling a kind of sadness within? Maybe ~~ maybe not. You probably would not even remember now. Possible?

Well, there’s two possibilities: either there’s an afterlife or there isn’t. If there is, then there’s absolutely nothing wrong with imagining our ongoing existence after death. We’d go on experiencing whatever there is to experience. If there isn’t, then it’s a paradox to imagine our ongoing existence. To try it out, one would have to say: well, here I am dead. So this is what it’s like. Which of course couldn’t be the case since death, in this scenario, is equivalent to non-existence, to not feeling anything. You couldn’t imagine “being there”, let alone saying to yourself: this is what it’s like.

If I recall, you had a different avatar when I said that. I remember a girl lying in the dirt while rain poured over her, and it said something like: I lay in the rain because no one can see me cry.

the sun dances on my essence like a spark of light on the crest of a wave.

=D>