Patterns within thought

[Marcel Gordon]

This message was originally posted by Gordon Shippey under a different topic. I've moved it to its own topic.

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working with people with Sensory loss and sight people with CP I have noticed their love for Patterns.
some of those with C.P. who are sighted need order in their life also within pictures seem to crave ordered patterns.
also those with Deaf blind from birth later in life form pattern through art which seem to come from thought.

This has me wondering if there are patterns within thought?

Gordon.

[GSHIPPEYQ]

Most believe that the idea of thought just being within the brain is RATIONAL IDEA,however this seem to when argued over come from not an fact outside ourselves but instaed
from what the word aready set up or imples for us thought conjuers up instead a personal belief of the self and thought within.

We need to carfully look at our words and see if we are saying what we mean or are we being lead by words?


We seem to have been lead down this path before science discover the brain and it function,Now I am not saying I know where mind is but what I am saying is that our idea of mind is one sided and
subjective itself hence at the moment does not fit in with the rest of idea within Science?

1.It wrong

2.There is no mind,but something else

3.It on the right track

I personally believe the second one

Gordon.

[emile]

i agree with you, gordon, that our notion of 'mind' is too limited since our impressions of reality seem to be 'co-created' even if we are 'alone in the forest' (a phrase that betrays our anthropocentrism). 'thinking' in the sense of forming our impression of the enveloping reality seems to be a 'community process' that is both interferential and nonlinear and thus the notion of a 'mind' emanating from the 'bottom-up' functioning of a 'brain' seems to be innately too small a notion.

in this regard, the oral tradition of humans seeks to extend the horizons of individual experience and deepen the meaning perceived by the individual. if the individual, in a local community sharing circle, brings into connection the multiple time-slices of reality as perceived by various others, while this 'vision' forms in the individual's mind, it is not an individual mind-vision and the 'mind' is simply a 'device' for rendering this vision that transends it, ... like the television set that is being videotaped and, at the same time, displaying the video signal so that its rendered imagery includes itself within a larger enveloping context. thus, it would trivialize the interferential vision of the community sharing circle by thinking of it in terms of an objective 'data construct' since, within a local community, it serves to illuminate, for the included observer, the dynamical community gestalt that envelopes the dynamics of the individual mind and puts them in larger context. the mind that can see itself within its 'own' vision has the capacity to view things 'relativistically'. that is, the mind of the earth observer cannot simply accept the physical vision based motion of mars as it appears to him, ... because both the earth and mars are caught up in a community-constituent codynamic that is 'bigger than' them, ... that 'includes' them and that they are simultaneously helping to co-produce. so whatever is doing our 'thinking for us', must transcend our 'mind' in the context of an 'individual looking outwards from the center of him self' and be able to 'become the mind' of the enveloping dynamic that emerges from the relative interference of multiple individuals' dynamics. to call this an access to the 'collective mind' doesn't sound quite right, either, since the complex interferential dynamic that this over-enveloping mind-vision 'is coming from' is not deducible from the dynamics of the individual constituents.

a few years ago, i was invited to participate in a native youth council meeting in montréal where this 'geometry of the mind' issue chanced to come up. the native youth council meeting was in two parts, ...first the sharing circle where the talking stick was passed to give everyone a chance to express whatever their time-slice of reality was feeling-and-looking-like for them at this time, to build the 'holographic' view of the community dynamic by bringing multiple time-slices of reality occurring in different but connecting space regions into coherent dynamical imagery, ... and a second phase to discuss agenda items. it happened that one of the agenda items was to decide whether to participate in 'forum jeunesse', the consolidated youth movement in québec, and while the ethic of the participants in this native youth council was one of appreciation of diversity, they deferred for the present from participating, due to the very different notion of 'communications' that was embraced by the forum jeunesse; i.e. while the native youth put their values in 'hearing out' each participant and trying to bring all these 'spoken-from-the-heart' views into holographic connection, ... it was noted that the communications ethic of the forum jeunesse was to 'communicate clearly' and from the discussions, select the 'best view of reality' (or perhaps 'the best articulation of a view') and develop plans on this basis.

to the native youth council, ... this was akin to inviting all of the planets in the solar system community to present their 'objective' self-centered views on the solar system dynamic (i.e. self-centered views such as, in the case of the earth, the 'geocentric' view that sees the orbit of mars as 'pretzel-shaped', as kepler described it)and selecting the view of the most articulate and persuasive of the participants. since all of the self-centered views are innately incomplete, this is a recipe for disaster. that is, the view that one wants to get to is the view of the over-enveloping community dynamic that the individual constituents are caught up in and simultaneously helping to co-produce (but not 'co-determine' since the interactions are nonlinear).

without an effective awareness on the part of included observer-participants, of the interdependency between his individual actions and the enveloping community dynamic he is 'pushing off from' and simultaneously helping to co-produce, ..the constituents will never be able to co-creatively sustain community harmony.

to bring this back to the relationship between 'thought' and 'language', space-time RELATIONAL thought transcends, in informational content, bottom-up (linear) word constructs since our words are limited to 'single issue at a time' and are thus unable to capture what wittgenstein/schopenhauer refer to as 'the synoptic view' (the over-encompassing relational view that includes the observers). this shortfall in language based on bottom-up constructs led darius, when he conquered egypt, to try to educate persians in hieroglyphics in addition to persian, since hieroglyphics not only had phonetic capability (22 sounds) that enabled bottom-up constructs but encapsulated these linear constructs within the space-time relational ideographic clusters (ideograms like native glyphs and their closely related sign language). darius lost out to the tremendous success of phonetic greek in trade an commerce, ... a success that over-rode questions of cultural, philosophical and aesthetic considerations.

in the west, we seem to constrain our notions of thought and language, mind and communication in a bottom-up linear construct manner as in the example of the 'forum jeunesse'. we come into meetings 'pushing our own 'geocentric' view' and critiqueing the jupiter-centric or venus-centric views and finally settling on some patchwork quilt combination view perhaps through 'political' alliance between earth, mars and saturn based on linear compromise, ... ignoring that if we had 'let go' of our self-centered framing of reality, we would have opened the door for the emergence of a observing-self-including vision of the enveloping community dynamic in which we are included and helping to co-produce.

while our 'mind' could be thought of as the television screen that plays-back thoughts, ... the video-camera-sensory device that is putting imagery on it seems to capture the space-time confluence dynamic implied by the multiple self-centered 'views' of the constituents of community (n.b: the view of a 'tree' can be implied by its responses as can the view of a mute human, thus 'views' do not have to be language-dependent).

[GSHIPPEYQ]

Yes that would be more like what I was looking for, however does this not through into dout the idea of the self
as well so that the Multi-self is more like a Moment form some other process.

Instead of many little or sides to a self as such, what do you think?

Gordon.

[GSHIPPEYQ]

It would seem that the most who has thoughts about wholeness, seem to me anyway to be wrong headed.

What they first see is that there are many parts which network a whole, and that thses parts are the
totality of Reality. Bohm and Hegel have somthing very different from this first you star with a Wholeness which does not assume
to be Totality, and the part emerge from this whole, also process going on within this whole which we are only partly aware of?

To me the Bohm Hegel idea gets over the problems face by this old idea of Wholeness?

Gordon.

[GSHIPPEYQ]

Recently Blind people who have been operated on to given them sight, have been studied mainly to see how we form perception in the brain this would help us understand how a
3 year olds bulids up the world around them.

One thing it does show is that Motion part of sight forms first as they cannot make out detail fully yet, but thing that move they track first static objects they cant see.

When they do some objects that they see clearly but dont know what they are, that is untill they touch them and move themwith there hands, then suddenly they say it become totality clear to them what the object is
also they must learn figure and ground as some will reach for a picture of an apple believeing it is a real 3D thing.

Also not being able to tell between male and female faces, and the concepts of mirrors or glass

The first person to get this operation back in 1959 died two years later as he lost his sense of meaning in this new world?

Those who dismiss Piaget's work I think should look again at the work done on newly Sighted and the patterns of thoughts formed with Motion and operation!

The good thing is that since then we have learned to work with these people to help them understand better, this may not work over time but we have learned alot about Perception in the meantime!

Gordon Shippey

[Yvonne Aburrow]

Gordon, this is really interesting. I quoted it to a friend who is an ESL (English as a 2nd language) teacher. She said she once met a guy from an Indigenous African culture who couldn't connect 2D diagrams to 3D engines. He could do engine maintenance perfectly well but to work in Britain he needed a qualification for it and she was providing language support. He looked at the diagram in the book and didn't realise it was meant to be a representation of the engine (or perhaps just a part of it). He got it eventually of course but it was the assumption that you can represent a 3D thing with a 2D thing that was the missing connection here. (Luckily my friend was fascinated by this instead of just assuming he was stupid.)

Another example we thought of in this context was our strangely topological Underground map (see http://www.knightsbridge.net/underground-map.html if you're not familiar with it) which bears very little relation to the actual spatial distances involved. Most people naively assume that it is a reasonably accurate representation of the distances (I've fallen for this myself). Compare it with the 1930s version and you'll see what I mean - http://homepage.ntlworld.com/clive.billson/1930.jpg
Even that is highly stylised of course because the Underground exists in 3 dimensions underground of course, with some lines deeper in the earth than others.

So the way we represent the world affects the way we perceive it - and just as our language traps us in specific modes of thought, so do our pictures & diagrams.

Yvonne

[GSHIPPEYQ]

Yes thats it.
When I was studying electronic some years ago I remeber the diagrams having the circuit lines and some that crossed in 2D
yet to in order to show that they did not Physical meet in 3D they had little Humps as if jumping over the ohter line.

Now this confused most of the class because we did not see this in reality?And the teacher at the time forgot to inform us and made the assumption we must have known?


Now the other point to make is even more intesting and links up with what some Psychologist have been saying for some time yet Society dismisses
that of the socalled I.Q. Tests, in which if you are not White Middles class Male from a western Country then you seem to fail?

Now this imples for the W.M.C.M. that everyone who fail is stupid(which is Rubbish)? Well I think if we turn this round and see that most I.Q. tests are made by W.M.C.M.
for W.M.C.M. hence it stack in there favour. I would like to see these socalled smart people(me being one of them) to live in a totality different enviroment and live as well as they are now or do jobs that are totality different from what is need for IQ
and see how they live?

I can tell you as being one myself I would not cope I may be good in one system but that dont me I am smarter than those of another system, now if they set up their own I.Q. test would find my kind 100% dumb
This show that I.Q. test are not a real test of anything just a way of flitering the system to find certian types that fit a model of our society that all. Sad really?

People with sensory loss for one have a different system than from me and I would not say we are smarter or dumber, just different?

Warm Regards
Gordon.

[Yvonne Aburrow]

Exactly! I was talking to someone the other day who completely dismissed Aborigines because they didn't invent technology etc. Well after I'd calmed down, I pointed out a few things, like people having different priorities, world-views etc. If you put that guy in the middle of the outback and told him to find food, he'd starve. Or if I tried to understand the message conveyed by Aborigine song, I'd be hampered by my lack of knowledge of the complex situation represented in it, though at least I'd know that it does contain such a message. I expect I'd starve in the outback too, unless I had an expert teacher!

As someone who is trying to recover "indigenous vision" (as part of a collective process), I often find myself coming at things from a completely different perspective than others (hopefully a more holistic one, certainly looking at things on more than one level and from more than one angle), or as emile would say, in an emergent social continuum or enveloping space.

I once heard that Europeans are incapable of drawing a circle properly, whereas Africans can't draw a straight line. Well I'd rather be able to draw a circle!

I've also noticed with computers that people don't see Windows as being a flat representation of a 3D world, they see a flat thing with only one layer - so perhaps we [b]all[/b] have to learn that a 2D thing represents a 3D thing, i.e. it must acquired rather than hard-wired (like most things).

I've never held with IQ tests - Stephen Jay Gould's book "The Mismeasure of Man" is very good on this subject. I'm glad that "natural intelligence" (the ability to survive in nature, understand nature, etc.) has now been added to the list of multiple intelligences developed by Gardner (1983).

cheers

Yvonne

[GSHIPPEYQ]

I did not know that about Gould's books, I will have to read this thanks.

Aborigines sadly have lost there meaning and most now are taking to drink or drugs, which inturn feedbacks to the singleminded western culture and they place there own sense of value based on
hidden assumptions from their culture and inturn project it back on to the Aborigines
imlying that they are lower life forms or just plain dumb and worthless which is not the case
My freind spent some time over there as a Dr It's a shame they cant reclaim something or perhaps form new culture?

The Good thing is that like the Deaf culture was classed as Dumb, now after 100 yrs are now seen as Just Deaf, so there may be hope for other cultures yet?

Recently I have been thinking about 3D AND 2D and how it mirrors reality and how much abstraction?

Now In physical theories we use Dimension as a decriptive tool however some seem to take this to far beyond it limits.
And forget to question the house of card assumptions they are based on.

Now I am not dismissing the Relation of Co existsence or Succession and Spacetime, or the use of abstraction to deal with these maps, however some who would assume that the
Number 3 is the Classical world we see and 2 is lower then goes on to build his house of card to socalled Higher D's.

Now you may thing well what the problem with that, one Physics student said that also?

I said Ok show me a 2D object?

He drew a square

I said well what the square made of Ink and that ink has a structure that we would not call 2D and the paper is not 2D and how you know it there is over time and space and the process in your mind which formed it?

He is still look for a 2D Object?

Esher the artist also puzzled over this with his Dragon picture that is a 3D object yet call a 2D picture yet it still 3D???

and the process in which we form a socalled 3D OR 2D WOULD BE 4D?

This is simply because he takes D beyond it's proper context, and from ther Higher D idea fall apart,this dont mean that there is nothing beyond spacetiem relation just that it
will be very different from what we think now and perhaps nothing like Higher D's that some string theories or other Physical theories talk about?

Cheers and Best to you!

Gordon.

[Christian B]

[quote author=GSHIPPEYQ link=board=1;threadid=13;start=0#36 date=1019589948]
...
We seem to have been lead down this path before science discover the brain and it function,Now I am not saying I know where mind is but what I am saying is that our idea of mind is one sided and
subjective itself hence at the moment does not fit in with the rest of idea within Science?
...
2.There is no mind,but something else
...
[/quote]



The mind is perceived as an active force. As such it cannot be said that it is not there. What it can be argued is what the nature of the mind is.

The fact that the mind and consciousness do not easily fit into mechanistic materialism does not mean that the mind should not exist as a truly conscious entity but rather that mechanistic materialism is an inadequate theory of reality. Science is not mechanistic materialism. Science is an application of the scientific method, which in turn, by definition, has no ideological or ontological a priori preference.

The problem with the conceptual entities of mechanistic materialism is that they are declared dead or inanimate – without ability of intention and self-reflection. But the presence of intentionality and self-reflectivity in the life forms creates an ontological absurd where intentionality comes out of non-intentionality and consciousness out of non-conscious. The words "intentionality" and "consciousness" are not misleading us; they are names or labels of the phenomena we perceive. The phenomenon of consciousness exists. Avoiding using word “mind” has nothing to do with being closer to the truth of what the consciousness is. To say that the mind is only a process automatically ascribes all quality of the mind to the process. The word “process” is a concept created by the mind. If a process is capable to conceptualise itself then it can be justly called a mind. But according to the conceptual entities of mechanistic materialism, no function or process is capable of self-reflection; therefore no process can be deceived and fall into an illusion of having consciousness which cannot exist on the first place within the same paradigm.

In order to be ontologically or logically coherent, one has to conclude that matter must have quality of self-reflectiveness and intentionality in order to manifest it more clearly or potently through complex systems called biological organisms.

The wholeness was here before the part. To deny this would be to go against the fundamental theoretical basis of science which is materialistic monism. There is one reality underlining the whole of the existence. Einstein’s Special and General Theory of Relativity are direct confirmation of this. Nothing in the Universe can stand entirely separated, coming from nowhere, not even time and space. If the mind is here, present today on this planet, then it has been here from the very beginning in explicit or implicit form.

Christian

[GSHIPPEYQ]

Oh I agree and this Mach Einstien is a view I follow in the Hegel/Bohm form too beyond Classical assumptions.

However saying I know what this is andall you need is wholeness and Mind and that all, is just not a good explaination.

In Hegel/Bohm view what ever you are point out in in Language or Physically to or a thing process or term always implies not
only other things in relation to it but also something Beyond itself, and this Includes the Universe and what may lay Beyond it's relative Classical type truth.
Also terms defined within a certian Context are then taken by some beyond there limited context and assumed to hold even if this is not proven or show to be true.
When it reality they may have little or no meaning or even perhaps have a total change of meaning from something we can only dimily percieve such as the Mind?

This is what I meant by my statement that Mind could be somthing beyond what we hold so far?

You are right of what we know so far but the quest is it far from over?who knows what other terms and condition may change or disolve beyond there limited context
I wish I knew whats next?

Anyway Perhaps I was not clear sorry about that.

Warm Regards
Gordon.

[Christian B]

Hello Gordon,

I’ve had an impression that you have been proposing ideas of eliminative materialism, where the mind is taken to be only a linguistic construct or entity and in ‘real’ or ‘objective’ world we can only have neurological functions. But I see now what are you getting at.

Yes our linear mind might be inadequate to embrace and explain the whole existence. We can follow the philosophical implication of Godel’s Incompletes Theorem and say that an individual mind, like human mind, because it is a limited part within the whole cannot possibly understand that which is greater then itself without exceeding or constantly transcending itself.

So it seems like we will forever, for all eternity, try to figure out what the whole is; also what the mind as a part of that whole could be. Nevertheless, maybe that is what the cosmic game is about: trying to express unexpressible, trying to put infinity into a limited form. Just as in art when we watch Picasso’s paintings and feel there is something much, much more there than just technical relationship of shapes and colours.

As a philosopher and mystic I believe that the whole, the Universe itself, is not certain to itself what it is. The Universe is asking itself the great question: Who am I? This is the cosmic eternal quest of which we are the essential part, for we ask ourselves the same question.

Is it possible to explain everything without going into metaphysics?

If we think about all great ontology like materialistic monism, idealism, theological ontology and so on, we can see that they are self-referential. They are all a hierarchy of concepts where the fundamental concept is and has to be self-referential. I think that is important that we have a more creative, lively perception of our concepts rather than dead and dry. Concepts are product of intuition after all and somehow enthusiasm and passion play a part in this.


Regards,
Christian

[GSHIPPEYQ]

Who am I? yes that's it, however it's much more than this but how our Language as a forms handles it is well with the 'I' term placed there within.

This would imply the Self, somthing which I believe is just an abstraction that is formed in relation to the explicate world around us and that the true (what ever that means)
is some different what I am not sure?

I have recently read some of the site you are on interesting,you quoted Paul Davis on the Manyworld idea and
it's relation to Occams razor.

Well I think that Davis has misunderstood Occam in that in Many worlds and Bohm /Hiley QP although differ both drop assumptions
that other Interpretations add, it's the assumptions that are added that's the problem with other interpretations and not many Univereses.
D.Deutsch also make this same argument remark

Bohm theory has also been misunderstood this way also in that they assume that Bohm added a Q field etc...when in fact Bohm theory just simpley comes from
the SWE directly and with an Ontological context.

Now when exploring Bohm realm of thought on a deeper level (Implicate) people then say that Bohm has added more and going Beyond Occam.

Well not really it depends on what your world view is before hand, Bohm already had Infinite Levels anyway within his view
so like the Manyworlds it only assumptions which are added that are not already within this context of thought that the problem
but since in Bohm case there is no bottom level hence no problem!

In MWI case it within the context of standard QM and Macro realm, so again nothing added like Mind etc.....

Nonlocality?
As for NonLocal stuff in Bohms theory is also only with the context of spacetime beyond this terms like Nonlocal and Local may mean
some different perhaps A local???

MWI and not NonLocal???
Deutsch would have it that Nonlocal is not this but instead compressed information that we cant access, until it link with the whole system?
this to me sound like a Mech version of Bohm Unfolding order and I am not sure whether it is all that sound???

What do you think?

Best wishes
Gordon

[Christian B]

Hello Gordon ,

You are regularly bringing up the point that language might deceive us, or create structures and entities that are not really there. Like words ‘Self’ or ‘I’ might be only a linguistic construct.

The first logical problem with every scepticism as well as relativism is that is self-refuting. This means that the same argument can be used against every your proposition and even for questioning every of your denials. In the case of your statement that the word ‘Self’ is “just an abstraction” we can bring up the same argument of linguistic uncertainty (‘we should be careful how we use words’) and say that due to the illusion of words and linguistic constructs you are able to relate to the Self as an object even though in reality the Self is not an object. When you fall in the illusion of language you can deny any idea or term to be real – it is only a matter of syntax. For example you can say “I do not exist”. Can this statement ever be true? A computer can say “I, a computer, do not exist”. If the computer says (displays) this message by itself (out of its program) then this statement is not true. If the computer says “I am conscious, I have the Self” then we can take this statement as true only if the computer has chosen the word ‘Self’ because it finds it corresponding to its experience of itself.

So here we notice an ability of consciousness which we can call ‘self-reflectiveness’. Self-reflectiveness in human beings means we are conscious of our own existence. Considering that we define matter as ‘inanimate’, then, ontologically, self-reflectiveness cannot arise from matter defined as such. Belief that consciousness is an emergent property out of complexity of human brain is inconsistent with the definition of matter. This is because no complexity can produce a property or quality which was not already there; this is a direct logical consequence of materialistic monism. Out of this dichotomy, I claim that mechanistic materialism is an inadequate theory of reality. Our, conscious, human existence is the direct proof of that.

In simple terms: when you say the self is “just an abstraction” we can ask an abstraction of whom? How come you are aware that you are abstracting? Awareness (Self) isn’t an abstraction but a container of abstraction - one is aware of one's existence even when not thinking. [b]I am aware; therefore I am.[/b]


David Bohm was fully aware of this when he said that everything in existence was an unbroken part of the wholeness, a part of ‘holomovement’. In the ‘undivided wholeness’ nothing can stand separated – mind and consciousness are a part of the unfoldment of the same process which we call the world. Just to mention that physicists have started to consider a theory of everything which is based on a principle called “top down universe” (New Scientist 10 Aug 2002 “When subatomic particles are in thrall to distant galaxies, you know someone has just rewritten all the rules. JR Minkel explores a weird new world.”)

I propose that the Self is a part of us which represents the wholeness.


I am not sure how multiple world interpretation can explain non-locality. Parallel universes seem to somehow talk to each other. I think that non-locality implies the existence of subtle realms which do not obey relativistic rules (e.g. speed of light being the fastest). Scientists and engineers are already playing with so-called EPR channels, even thought they might not think about philosophical implications of non-locality in relation to the nature of reality.

Best,
Christian Bodhi