My Family and other Animals

[Mikal]

The brain is extended substance, the mind thinking intangible substance. It can be looked at like the man who sits in a rowboat, he is in the boat but he is not the boat. When you reduce mind to brain you exclude mind and the mental from consideration, then only seeing us as brain processes and activities.
The intellectual activity of the mind in conceptual thought does not need the sensory/perceptual system of brain and physical organs. The intellect is the immaterial factory in addition to the brain, for the occurrence in the human mind of conceptual thought.
I can see a tree with my physical eye because that tree is embodied in matter, but to conceptualize that tree my mind goes into universal concepts of meaning which have never taken embodiment in matter for they do not require physical presence before my eye. So you see concepts are not acts of a bodily organ such as the brain or they would exist in matter. Conceptual thought is an immaterial power which we use to form concepts of meaning, utilizing that power does not require any physical sense or organs.

Animals have brains and function instinctively therefore meeting their needs immediately and in public. They evidently have no access to concepts such as privacy and modesty which are concepts of meaning grasped through higher intellectual activity within the mind.


Regards Mikal

[Meem]

This is your brain.


Sorry
but
I have
to
do
something
to
give
it
a
bit of
space
for
the
effect

This is your brain on drugs.


This is your brain on everything.


This everything on your brain.

Any Questions?

[Meem]

Jaludin Rumi (30 September 1207 – 17 December 1273), Sufi

• Originally, you were clay. From being mineral, you became vegetable. From vegetable, you became animal, and from animal, man. During these periods man did not know where he was going, but he was on a long journey nonetheless. And you have to go through a hundred different worlds yet.

My interpretation of this, a personal one, is to delete the word 'man', and accept that Rumi is addressing life, not man(In the scientific method, Occam's razor is not considered an irrefutable principle of logic, and certainly not a scientific result)

Sufi Logic and the logic of natural selection share a common qualia ... so that without having to believe in one, it can still be used to explain the other ?

cool bananas ... greg

"Come… dry your eyes, for you are Life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly. "

[labelwench]

Originally Posted by labelwench
Still, I tend to wonder why all species of my experience offer a great struggle to survive, when the alternative of doing nothing is by far the easier choice?

No I don't agree ... its not the easier choice ... those that mutate towards it .. go extinct.
Originally posted by Graybeard

Energy is neither created nor destroyed.

When one species becomes extinct, another, or others will soon arise to fill the niche.

Life seems to persist for it's own sake, is the point that I was attempting to make. Even, or particularly when, the circumstances surrounding life offer little of encouragement.

'Where there is life, there is hope', is a quote often heard. Hope for what, may I ask, beyond the continuation of the existing state of being?

An existing state of being........for what purpose?

And if it serves no purpose,.......damn........why then are we knocking ourselves out?

Illogical. Entertaining, but illogical.

Sorry if I am way off topic. Have not had opportunity to catch up on the windings of the thread, but......that's life......

[melanie]

I can imagine someone who doesn't know him, or understand what he is saying ...
saying that. ... Austin knows what he is talking about ... you just can't hear him.


cool bananas ... greg

Austin may 'think' he knows what he is talking about, as do we all, but there is human error in his and our TOE's
- in that Austin always attempts to 'explain' it, rather than 'describe' it...big margin for error here.


In order for some'thing' to see itself, there would have to be two or more of it -one to see-one to be seen.
.....and another to process the information.

The conceptual mind attempts to freeze reality in the naming of it.

It envisions a world of separate, distinct things in which.....it includes itself.

Natural-reality is a vast interconnected flowingness with no separate things.
It lies forever just beyond the self that emerges within the naming gestalt.

[Mikal]

What happens in the mind cannot be fully explained by what happens in the brain because they are distinct from one another and the mind can function independent of the brain. They are alike but each occupies a different space. The two words Mind and brain are not strict synonyms.

Mind and brain may be existentially inseparable and suspected as one and the same thing, yet the mental and the physical seem analytically distinct aspects of it. It’s like butter and a bun on the same plate, they have separate existences which are capable of having a relationship with each other thereby becoming inseparable but even as you eat it, there is a distinction you notice between what is the butter and what is the bun.

The senses/brain is one cognitive power system and the mind/ intellect is another cognitive power system. They can function independently of one another yet need one another.

Both man and animal have a brain; this is similarity in physical constitution however we differ because the brain is not the sufficient condition for intellectual activity and conceptual thought, the mind is, so we see superficial similarity and if we examine behavior we see radical differences because the intellect is a part of the human mind and is not a part of the animal.

The intellect is immaterial; its power is immaterial so you see the intellect/mind/cognitive system is an additional system from the brain/sensory/perceptual system. The brain, cognitive sensory system cannot apprehend meanings which are universal, their cognitive reach does not go beyond particulars for this is the purpose of the lower system, and hence we have a quite distinct cognitive, mind/intellectual power system which purpose is to allow us to apprehend universal meanings not in existence in matter but fully in existence in the immaterial.

Regards Mikal

[austintorn@aol.com]

A few days ago there were 50-foot waves on the North Shore of Oahu. Some ants looking like people surfed on them or at least the wave remnants, enjoying the ecstasy, and then were ground up into the sand—the agony. A guy in a rowboat fished them out.

I can see a tree with my physical eye because that tree is embodied in matter, but to conceptualize that tree my mind goes into universal concepts of meaning which have never taken embodiment in matter for they do not require physical presence before my eye. So you see concepts are not acts of a bodily organ such as the brain or they would exist in matter. Conceptual thought is an immaterial power which we use to form concepts of meaning, utilizing that power does not require any physical sense or organs.

Judge: Immaterial, since the brain is an organ.


Theistic Evolution case:

Attorney: I’d like to address the tree.

Judge: Proceed.

Attorney: Hello tree.

Judge: Ha-ha.

Attorney: The tree, as out there, is a bunch of waves, the photons carrying the ‘visuals’, the air-vibrations passing on the ‘sounds’, the molecules transmitting ‘odour’ by their shapes, etc. I use quotes to show that these transformations are fully made later on by the brain. If there is no brain around, then there are just the waves emanating.

While our senses are absolutely in direct contact with the waves/particles that are out there, we don’t have awareness at this level, plus, the direct jumble of waves all interfering with each other might not reveal much right off the bat.

So, the brain proceeds to process the information with its many modules and subsystems through higher and higher levels, finding edges, intensity, color and distance for vision, detecting molecules shapes for smell, interpreting air waves as sound, etc., as often much more detailed elsewhere, until the tree is seen, smelled, heard and so forth as the final perception of the tree with its qualities within the head. There is no dividing line where the brain says “I can do no more” and hands it off to some nonphysical realm, for it has already done it all. This includes the brain’s memory coming along and knowing what a tree is as a whole and its parts, associations arising such as the old tree house or that leaves have chlorophyll and fall in the autumn, etc., and then more associations upon those associations.

The brain is the lifeboat navigating and re-cognizing the waves of reality, painting a useful face upon the waters.

All is ever in the brain as a representation, the tree never being directly known as matter, not even in the first place. (Hope Mel doesn’t say this comes from a Dreamer Guy.)

Judge: Back to evolution testimony:

Immense suffering, like wasteful "trial and error," is not incidental, but is inherent to the process of evolution. And it does not sit well with the notion that evolution has been set up or directed by a loving God. The theistic retort that "God moves in mysterious ways" goes well beyond the evidence from evolutionary biology, not to mention that it is a kind of excuse for very poor, sometimes seemingly near insane, ways of accomplishing things.

There is a far simpler and elegant explanation for that evidence: there is no divine will to grope at in the dark, just the indifferent, pitiless, and naturalistic forces of evolution.

Since evolution is a slow, wasteful, and brutal process, prima facie it is not the way in which a goal-oriented, omnipotent, omniscient, and loving God would choose to create the world. Thus a naturalistic explanation for the origin of all species, including Homo sapiens, is more plausible than a theistic one.

Judge: Nap time.

[Mikal]

Your Honor and esteemed lawyers...here if the lower court does not function properly, we take the issue to the Supreme Court of Canada...the higher court....smiles...

Regards Mikal

[austintorn@aol.com]

Science is the highest court; the lowest court is one in which things are just said, pronounced, and defined, with no fact. The ball is in your court to show fact, means and so on without merely just declaring them.

"Order in the court!"

"I'll have a cheeseburger."

[melanie]

All is ever in the brain as a representation, the tree never being directly known as matter, not even in the first place. (Hope Mel doesn’t say this comes from a Dreamer Guy.)

Although the idea that there is a brain is just a concept, a label, it is really no-thing-
no 'thing' in itself can be explained or captured can it?

but unless the 'thing' is named 'what' is it? it is nothing right?

Brains do not exist, consciousness does, the brain is just an idea known in and by consciousness,
Brains know nothing at all, consciousness does, consciousness is not in the brain, it is the brain, the brain is in consciousness.

What is a brain or any other organ, but what we name it? all 'things' emerge in consciousness, and disappear in consciousness,
and where is consciousness? Everywhere and Nowhere.


All 'things' exist only in the knowing of them, they have no substance, they are pure concept
you are the 5 senses, the senses are no-thing -the word 'seeing' is understood only in the act of seeing.

It is clear that all 'things' are known - that they exist only in the knowing of them, though the nature of this knowing cannot be conceived
the depth of this knowing is inconceivable As it is the very conceiving..

All is dreamscape ... in one mind - Austin, It's all a dream, and the dreamer is you, and you are no-thing other that consciousness

And yes the dream is real apparently!