[FRIAM] Man Probes Consciousness: Consciousness Probes Back (was Re: Does Dusty Love Dave, and VV)

Mon Jul 22 12:10:12 EDT 2024

El yo, existe.

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Mon, Jul 22, 2024, 9:56 AM Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm> wrote:

> We seem to have changed thread titles, but continuing the discussion ...
>
> Nick said:* "I’m not so clear concerning what our common understanding of
> self-consciousness is. Might need some more anecdotes to flesh that out."*
> In that vein, some additional anecdotes.
>
> *I, is!*
> As a native speaker of English, I read, speak, write, and think as if this
> assertion is inescapably true. Weak attempts to learn other languages have
> not resulted in much difference, although Arabic created a wisp of an
> impression that the assertion might be escaped, and Japanese (the Kanji,
> not Hirigana or Katakana) definitely created a deep suspicion. But I was
> never fluent enough to 'think' in either language, so I do not know."
>
> *I. Illusion.*
> Decades ago, I practiced the Zen Koan meditation, 'what am I'. Any answer
> posed to the question is wrong and eliminated; as each answer is an
> attribute of a physical organism or some kind of mental/social construct.
> Eventually, *"I" *diminishes to *"i" *and ultimately to *"Is."* The last,
> however is a property of existence/Reality not something 'apart from' or
> 'part of'.  Very difficult to put into words obviously as the experience is
> an absence of something, not a thing itself.
>
> *Non-sensationalism*
> While a student at Macalester, some of us went over to the U of M to
> experience the absence of sensations in a deprivation tank. Can the "I"
> experiencing sensations be separated and directly apprehended? In my
> experience, and via reports from others involved in the experiment, NO.
> Although greatly diminished, sensations were still present. Perhaps nerve
> endings firing at random, perhaps a passing neutrino triggering the release
> of a single photon. Something, some vestige of "I-ness" was still there,
> still interpreting (poorly) the paucity of stimuli. Time distortion, "I
> have been in here for hours, did someone forget to let me out?"  Emotions,
> primarily fear and panic. No glimpse of* 'me',* however.
>
> *Non-sensationalism on acid*
> *Wow!* Jung was correct; there is a vast and rich collective unconscious.
> "I" am a growing body of all that "I have been." Both the collective and
> the idiosyncratic is a joy to wander about, marvel at, and (re)experience."
>
> *Seeking Self Consciousness*
> On several occasions I have ingested 4-6 Hoffmans [a Hoffman is 150
> microgams, the amount he took on Bicycle Day] of acid, with preparation
> akin to that of practitioners of lucid dreaming, i.e., preparing the mind
> to have a directed experience. Specifically, to "see," directly apprehend
> and experience, one's Self. The journey begins with the same kind of 'tour'
> of idio-self and collective-self as the previous story. Diving into one's
> self, trying to find its locus, to situate it in relation to
> everything/anything else becomes impossible. The dimensionless point being
> sought constantly expands until it encompasses absolutely everything. A
> feeling of omniscience, of ABSOLUTE AWARENESS, is there. But no "self."
>
>   *  *  *  *
> These are some of my anecdotes. From them, it might be concluded that I
> have no experiences of self-consciousness and therefore may not be able to
> participate in any effort to establish a "common understanding" of same.
>
> davew
>
> On Sat, Jul 20, 2024, at 8:28 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
>
> David, and all,
>
> I appreciate the work you have gone to to lay out our program in your two
> messages. I feel like we have developed some understandings that I can lean
> on in the future. I’m not so clear concerning what our common understanding
> of self-consciousness is. Might need some more anecdotes to flesh that out.
> Not obvious to me that love, entails, self-consciousness, in our sense,
>
> As for dragons, the one thing an experience monist cannot do is disqualify
> your experience of dragons. We can use your experiences with dragons to
> flesh out the space of consciousness-experiences, just as confidently as we
> can use your experience of your dog or of me.
> Sent from my Dumb Phone
>
> On Jul 20, 2024, at 1:13 PM, Edward Angel <angel at cs.unm.edu> wrote:
> The original plan for the IAIA dome was to record stories.
>
> Ed
> _______________________
>
> Ed Angel
> Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory
> (ARTS Lab)
> Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico
>
> 1017 Sierra Pinon
> Santa Fe, NM 87501
> 505-984-0136 (home)   angel at cs.unm.edu
> 505-453-4944 (cell)  http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel
>
> On Jul 20, 2024, at 10:56 AM, Stephen Guerin <stephen.guerin at simtable.com>
> wrote:
>
>
> I would pay to watch this film! Student production on the dome (digital
> Kiva) at IAIA, Ben Shedd? Just a rough cut as students then present their
> own experiences.
> __
>
> On Sat, Jul 20, 2024, 9:57 AM Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm>
> wrote:
>
>
> dragon stories:
>
> *my very first experience with peyote, I was 12-13 and living on the Hopi
> reservation with my aunt and uncle. A group of boys were given the peyote
> as a reward for gathering cottonwood buds for use in a Hopi ceremonial
> dance. Of the five of us only one other wanted to try the drug, so I
> consumed roughly for doses. A massive thunderstorm was in progress. At some
> point, a dragon coalesced from the lightning, thunder, filtered sunlight
> and began speaking to me.*
>
> [important interjection: my brain was "making sense' of an overwhelming
> number of sensations, some detected by nerve endings, others generated by
> frantic neuron firings. Assumed/assuming this is the same kind of thing
> that happens when the brain 'makes sense' of the bombardment of
> sensations/neural firings that create the "illusion" of an external world.]
>
> *we engaged in an apparently long lasting conversation about my recent
> experiences in Hopi-land, the various Hopi stories I had been told that
> summer and how to interpret them. At some point the dragon used the phrase,
> "alarums and excursions;" an idiom I had first encountered some 8 years
> prior (pre-grade school) in a book called **David and the Phoenix**.*
>
> [interjection: till this point my interactions with the dragon were, as
> far as I could tell, pretty much identical to the interactions I might have
> had with another human being in the 'waking world'. This includes the
> implicit assumption that I was interacting with a sentient, conscious, and
> self-conscious being.]
>
> Second story:
>
> *I was exploring the use of pain as a means of inducing an altered state
> of consciousness. Four hours of enduring intense and varied pain
> administered by a sadistic dominatrix in Salt Lake City, made me very
> self-aware with a raspy voice. I began the 9 hour drive to Santa Fe to
> attend FRIAM. Along the way my body went into shock and I dealt with that
> using meditative techniques. I also was playing a CD of meditative Buddhist
> chants that I began to hum out loud with my raspy voice. The result was the
> altered state I had been seeking.*
>
> *Somewhere in Arches National Park, I stopped, stripped naked and walked
> down a dry wash where I 'encountered' a campfire and sat down. Brigham
> Young was sitting at the periphery of the campfire and we began a long
> conversation about Mormon theology and metaphysics, why blacks lost the
> right to the priesthood (there were blacks in the priesthood in Nauvoo
> while Joseph Smith was alive and that is one of the reasons the Mormons
> were persecuted by Missourians), why religions like Christianity, Islam and
> Mormonism changed from Feminism to misogyny, education, eternal
> progression, and a host of other topics.  The conversation ended when I
> realized I would be late for FRIAM unless I stopped and resumed my journey.*
>
> [interjection: both the dragon and Brigham Young were 'illusions'
> constructed "by the brain" just as the 'illusion' of ordinary reality.
> While interacting with them, they were, to me, sentient, aware, and
> conscious entities. I attributed sentience, intelligence, consciousness to
> them precisely because of the perceived interactions- the verbal (in my
> case) and the 'auditorialized' (neuron firings interpreted as sound) voices
> (of dragon and Brigham).]
>
> After the fact self analysis of the incidents conclude that in both cases,
> the "conversation" was between 'my self' and 'my memories': of the David in
> the book and his conversations with the Phoenix in the book; all of the
> writings of Brigham Young I had read years before.
>
> These stories do not, technically bear on where or not dragons are
> conscious, but they most definitely bear on whether or not domestic animals
> and Nick are conscious—by virtue of the fact that the 'data' and the
> 'interpretation of the data' are, evidently, the same.
>
> You might make an argument for 'faulty machinery' in my two stories, but
> what is gained vis-a-vis our common understanding.
>
> davew
>
> <file-4ouNzdNFY0tOaOhnLq9Dt8Jm.webp>-. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / --
> --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe   /   Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom
> https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
> to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
> archives:  5/2017 thru present
> https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
>  1/2003 thru 6/2021  http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
>
>
> -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe   /   Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom
> https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
> to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
> archives:  5/2017 thru present
> https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
>  1/2003 thru 6/2021  http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
> -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe   /   Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom
> https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
> to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
> archives:  5/2017 thru present
> https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
>   1/2003 thru 6/2021  http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
>
>
> -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe   /   Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom
> https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
> to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
> archives:  5/2017 thru present
> https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
>   1/2003 thru 6/2021  http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20240722/670c21b5/attachment.html>