The Mind Is A Secondary Organ

@Rasputini,

Rasputini wrote:

Neat!

By the way, can someone actually define what the soul is? My take on it is that its just a spiritual word for consciousness. But when I use it like that, I'm usually told "no no no." hahaha

Rasputin,

:)The soul has remained undefined for over two thousand years, that is what gives it it's power in the hands of the three religions of the middle east.:eek: Can't trust them nomads!!!

@boagie,

AHAHAH true true... well then... LETS DEFINE IT NOW! haha

@boagie,

I think I understand what you are saying about human reaction, but there is more than habit to our anticipating effects from causes. We look for causes of the effects we see working backwards and learn to predict based upon observation. Its how astonomy can tell us about when the next eclipse will happen or when Halleys comet will be back. I have heard time described as an illusion caused by successive states of consciousness. Its fits with cause and effect as an illusion, but its hard to wrap my head around.

@boagie,

Quote:

We anticipate effect from a given cause only through habit. I think that force is not understood because in part the resultant effect or point of focus is not do to cause, there is no such thing as cause, there are but relations between objects and conditions as effect/ reaction/response.

Cause and effect is a necessary component of our experience. Without it, we cannot understand or arrange the events that occur around us. There is a fundamental problem with Hume's philosophy, and that is his assumption that we are passive receivers of experience and not that our mind plays an active role in our knowledge of experience.

If we accept Hume's assumption, then he is no doubt correct. If we, on the other hand, turn his assumption around and say that we are not passive receivers of our experience and that our mind plays an active role in shaping the world, there has to be certain 'rules' that govern how our mind shapes the world (if there were not, we could not have a common experience). One of these 'rules' of experience is that we experience objects in space/time. Another one of the 'rules' is that we experience the cause and effect relationship between objects. These rules are evidenced by the fact that we cannot appeal to any human experience that does not conform to these rules, experience above and beyond are simply unknowable.

Since these rules are necessary for us to gain knowledge through experience, we cannot learn them from experience. They must come to us another way, a priori.

One of the best examples I like to use regarding our mind playing an active role in shaping the world around us is hallucinogenic drugs. After taking said drugs, space and time are both distorted. Walls may seem to breathe, shapes on a bed spread may start to dance. By taking these drugs we do not alter the world, we alter the way we perceive the world. How can one explain these effects while holding the position that we are passive receivers of experience?

Smile

-- The smiley face is just for you boagie!

@de Silentio,

The most obvious examples of our mind being active during perception are the numerous distortions and deviations it manifests in the process of turning reality into sensory perceptions. So even if we are not hallucinating we are still highly active when we turn reality into mental stimulation.

I'd say that the shaping of reality in the mind is most evident in dreams; sometimes we will dream about circumstances very close to reality, other times we might even mistake dreams for reality when remembering the night before or an old childhood memory. Dreams are the manifestation of perception excluding any concurrent stimulus, instead achieving perception through memory and imagination, following patterns and formula that we recognize as aspects of reality, yet translating them into an ideal or fantastical dream - so we see people, or fly planes underwater, things that we have perceived but which are modified and reinvented by our subconscious/conscious mind.

It is quite clear that everything we perceive has undergone a massive psychological journey through subconscious and conscious regions of the mind before becoming what we consciously sense in the moment; if that isn't evidence of active perception, then I don't know.

@boagie,

Quote:

numerous distortions and deviations it manifests in the process of turning reality into sensory perceptions

I would argue that most of what we experience is very similar to what other experience. The chair in front of me will more than likely look the same to the majority of the people looking at it.

I am curious what you mean by 'distortions and deviations'.

@Rasputini,

Rasputini wrote:

AHAHAH true true... well then... LETS DEFINE IT NOW! haha

This is one of my favorite quotes. Its by Robert Browning. It shows the different levels of consciousness, which is seen by many as synonymous with Soul.

Death in the
Dessert..

"Three souls which make up one soul; first, to wit,
A soul of each and all the bodily parts,
Seated therein, which works, and is what Does,
And has the use of earth, and ends the man
Downward: but, tending upward for advice,
Grows into, and again is grown into
By the next soul, which, seated in the brain,
Useth the first with its collected use,
And feeleth, thinketh, willeth, -- is what Knows
Which, duly tending upward in its turn,
Grows into, and again is grown into
By the last soul, that uses both the first,
Subsisting whether they assist or no,
And, constituting man's self, is what Is -
And leans upon the former, makes it play,
As that played off the first, and, tending up,
Holds, is upheld by, God, and ends the man
Upward in that dread point of intercourse,
Nor needs a place, for it returns to Him.

What Does, what Knows, what Is; three souls, one man."

What "Does" - the human personality or animal soul.
What "Knows" - the reincarnating Ego or human soul.
What "Is" - That gets complicated... It is the Monad clothed as the Solar Angel or Spiritual Triad. This is the fragment of Moses's all consuming fire.

@de Silentio,

de Silentio wrote:

Cause and effect is a necessary component of our experience. Without it, we cannot understand or arrange the events that occur around us. There is a fundamental problem with Hume's philosophy, and that is his assumption that we are passive receivers of experience and not that our mind plays an active role in our knowledge of experience.

If we accept Hume's assumption, then he is no doubt correct. If we, on the other hand, turn his assumption around and say that we are not passive receivers of our experience and that our mind plays an active role in shaping the world, there has to be certain 'rules' that govern how our mind shapes the world (if there were not, we could not have a common experience). One of these 'rules' of experience is that we experience objects in space/time. Another one of the 'rules' is that we experience the cause and effect relationship between objects. These rules are evidenced by the fact that we cannot appeal to any human experience that does not conform to these rules, experience above and beyond are simply unknowable.

Since these rules are necessary for us to gain knowledge through experience, we cannot learn them from experience. They must come to us another way, a priori.

One of the best examples I like to use regarding our mind playing an active role in shaping the world around us is hallucinogenic drugs. After taking said drugs, space and time are both distorted. Walls may seem to breathe, shapes on a bed spread may start to dance. By taking these drugs we do not alter the world, we alter the way we perceive the world. How can one explain these effects while holding the position that we are passive receivers of experience?

-- The smiley face is just for you boagie!

Silentio,

:)If we all acknowledge that, whether we are on drugs or are quite straight, we of necessity have conditioned that said stimulus which is the world. Hume's point I think was that we do not know the nature of that force/power which is said to be cause. I remember a statement from Bertrand Russell when he was asked, what is electricity. Bertie responded with, electricity is the way in which things act----------not wrong is it?

Personally I am begining to think that there is no such thing as cause, if the nature of reality is that it is relational, then there is only reaction, and in relation, reaction goes in both direction, thus is explained as well, "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.":confused: Don't forget the source of our origin is an explosion----big bang! Schopenhauer's saying is so true, subject and object stand or falls together.

This seems enstranged from the intent of the thread, or is this just a round about way of getting to, "The Mind Is A Secondary Organ.":eek:

@de Silentio,

de Silentio wrote:

I would argue that most of what we experience is very similar to what other experience. The chair in front of me will more than likely look the same to the majority of the people looking at it.

I am curious what you mean by 'distortions and deviations'.

We are all very similar beings, we tend to behave similarly under similar circumstances - put somebody in danger and the liklihood is that they will freeze and then run/fight.

Distortions such as an image being flipped upside down inside the eye prior to being translated into an electrical impulse. Or like sound reverberating around the ear canal and the outer ear, it is sure to distort somewhat. Other examples of distortion occur inside the mind, almost at will; optical illusions such as staring at black boxes on a white background will produce grey fuzzy spheres at between the corners of the boxes, or straight lines drawn onto psychedelic curved lines will produce illusions of bending or moving. Tinitus might be another example of distortions of perception, but is probably a bodily function and not something of the mind.

Deviations tend to occur during the translation of light our sound into the electrical impulses which cause or brains to manifest the illusion of perception. Another instance of deviation is perhaps the projection of images or sounds in certain places; I'm sure you will have heard a mobile phone ringing and not been able to tell where it is, that is maybe a product of deviations in the perception caused by a sound that is of a wavelength not found in natural circumstance, one which appears as a sheet of sound to the ear, and does not seem to possess much timbre. I'm not quite sure why sine waves produce such a deafening disorientating effect, but they seem to do so...

@Doobah47,

Doobah,

Then apparent reality is realtive to our distorted perception of it----no? How could one know it is distorted? Wink

@boagie,

boagie wrote:

Hi Y'all!,

do you imagine it would re-structure society,what changes in laws,morality and values would occur

Expect not the slightest difference. Some physicists who play at philosophy claim all this would be in question, but obviously what we think about such things does not matter even though it encourages ill-advised and often short-lived political experiments now and then.

@Fairbanks,

Fairbanks, Smile

Just for ones own approach to life, is it reasonable to think the mind created the body instead of the body creating a mind in its service? A simple example would be, the circadian biological rhythms which often are ignored due to ignorance or out of the necessity to earn a living, would it not be much saner, and healthier to acknowledge these earthly rhythms. Indeed it has just been annouced that ones constitution, thought to be preprogramed by our genes from birth, are in fact rewritten on a daily bases by our perceptions of the environment, beliefs about our environment often inaccurate if not false is the lens though which we experience the world, and thus we modify the structure of our own physiology. As was the topic of another thread of mine which indicates, man is not an acting organism, but a reacting organism, and perception plays a major role in the reacting both inwardly and outwardly, the mind is a secondary organ in service to the body, to ignore this is to work against the grain of the wood so to speak. To behave in reference to this reality is to not violate our own nature.

"When fascism comes to America it will come wrapped in a flag, and carrying a cross." StClair Lewis. Think Bush!!

@boagie,

boagie wrote:

Fairbanks,

ones constitution, thought to be preprogramed by our genes from birth, are in fact rewritten on a daily bases

That might be so. For example, the DNA does not contain enough code, not by a long shot, to specify the complexity of the neurons in the brain. Something else, therefore, is involved in programming the brain, and the body. In fact, another observation is that cells can get along without DNA; the red blood cells can live for some time without their nucleus and its DNA and actually don't begn their apparently intended function until they expel the DNA. Decoding the genome has been very interesting, but may have attracted unwarranted attention to the DNA as the brains of the outfit. Whether the environment drives the rewriting, which might be happening to a small degree, should be questioned since the will might be more active than passive.

@Fairbanks,

Fairbanks, Smile

:)This is a source of my information, a lecture reguarding the reprograming of the genes, I think you will find it quite delightful.

Where Mind and Matter Meet

"When fascism comes to America it will come wrapped in a flag, and carrying a cross." StClair Lewis. Think Bush!!

@boagie,

Isn't the body the environment of the mind anyways, and the cognitive processes(including emotion) control the DNA changes.

Also, isn't most of the gene useless code, or at least code that has no found meaning yet? It has a random nature of something?

Thats what I find interesting. Could it be like memory files of generations from long ago and experiences of ancestors stored as potential for adaptation and change? I don't know much about this.

@boagie,

boagie wrote:

a lecture reguarding the reprograming of the genes

:a-ok:

Bruce Lipton is The One and should be opening some eyes, but perhaps the glare from the genome project is still blinding for most.

@Holiday20310401,

Hoilday,

Well, certainly a lot of our evolutionary history is still encoded within our DNA or perhaps directly in our genes, one thing to remember is, any living thing on the planet today, has an equally long genetic evolutionary history, a primal scream in the darkness might take you back to the caves or perhaps further back. I think of most things now as information, I suppose the functional aspect of interpreting information, is information constituted from information to relate information. At anyrate that link in my previous post, is a breakthrough in biology, genes do not as has been believed predetermine our physcial constitution, the rewriting of genes occurs everyday, as a response to the individual perception of reality, the individuals beliefs about the quality of the environment turns the genes on and off, and it is through this process that one rewrites ones own physiology. Check it out, it is well worth the trouble.

"When fascism comes to America it will come wrapped in a flag, and carrying a cross." StClair Lewis. Think Bush!!

@boagie,

So information allows for causality? It seems that information is necessary for consciousness, and then reality. And information in respect to time is only epistemic as the past.

Information allows for relative instances, rather then the future, which holds no knowledge.

So we are a lot like machines in that we implement actions through information. Our information is cognated through relation to the past.

Perhaps our ability to be conscious is dependent on the basis of relative instances as the nature of experiences that depend on the forces of the environment.
A machine will use information to make an input based purely on the present input and artificial forces/rules/commands; those that are not underlyingly mutual with the environment.

For example, all our experiences; emotions, thoughts, perception, etc.. are allowed by the underlying potential of the environment's single, natural essence/actuality. And thus our reality becomes a workable translation, giving the environment potential.

But a machine will experience inputs that are implemented based on a potential that isn't parallel to the underlying essence of the actual environment, but rather humanity. We program machines, and the artificialness negates some kind of intertwining with the environment for consciousness to happen.

So consciousness is mutual to reality. I believe that although I have doubts about the stuff I wrote above. Still, I wonder if somebody else has thought up a theory similar; though I've heard on here many times about consciousness being mutual many times.

@Holiday20310401,

Boagie, spirituality, medical marvels, deformities. In the scope of your presentation are these some of the nerve endings that you are reffering too.

@urangutan,

urangutan, Smile

I not really sure to what you refer by the above, I don't think I meantioned spirituality, deformites, nerve endings in relation to the concept of the mind is a secondary organ. The medical mavel I spoke of was indeed a breakthrough in biology, the long believed deteminism of an inherited constitution, is shown to be not determined, that the genes are rewritten in reation to a subject perception of his environment, his beliefs about the world in general being the lens through which he rewrites his own physiology.The brain is if you like the main processing centre of the stimulus recieved for the formaton of perception and belief. I do not think there is any scientific evidence that would infer that this premise is mistaken about the mind being a secondary organ, the brains history is there to observe as it evolved from the inside out, from ganglia to its present complexity, or have I misunderstood you entirely?

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