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  • Patroklus
    Banned
    • Feb 2011
    • 1675

    Mental processes

    My original post opened with a dialog I had with a friend. There was some controversial and irrelevant substance in the discussion, so I've chosen to parcel out some important points for the matter of this thread. Page breaks represent major redactions.

    [---]

    3:26pm

    try drawing a picture and making notes. shulgin did I think

    [You]

    3:27pm

    i’ve been keeping a journal actually

    [---]

    3:27pm

    ever read any Jung ?

    [You]

    3:27pm

    no

    [---]

    3:28pm

    he’s big on keeping journals, especially of strange experiences and dreams

    __________________________________________________ __________

    [---]

    4:00pm



    [You]

    4:01pm

    thank you, i’m going to need to study that so that i can catalogue my own thoughts better next time. at any rate, I’m picturing this sort of Id which is a part of the mind that can think to itself without the limits of language on itself. it's difficult to translate and describe this process with language.

    [---]

    4:04pm

    it might be less frustrating for you if you tried to communicate them using other media. pictures etc..

    __________________________________________________ __________

    [You]

    4:26pm

    i’m seeing something very deep behind the concept of god thinking or existing on a plane that we “cannot comprehend”. there’s sort of a frontier that a mind can keep working towards [...] i mean i’m picturing id as a sort of frontier that we can trawl for ideas like we would trawl a physical frontier for gold or oil

    [---]

    4:30pm

    is it personal? or a collective resource?

    [You]

    4:30pm

    i don’t know. “god", “frontier”, etc. is something that we think about in ways that generate new ideas and i think that’s what i was getting at when i mentioned god earlier. but i’m having trouble making the connection - actually, conveying the connection. I have the connection made very clearly in my head. i can think about god, or this id, or any concept, in a way that helps me understand other concepts i mean, there’s things about god or id that don’t make logical sense, right? but in trying to catalogue them you figure something else out.

    [---]

    4:38pm

    we have logos and mythos. two ways of thinking. I think you’re describing mythos

    [You]

    4:38pm

    what is mythos?

    [---]

    4:41pm

    well logos is conscious logical thought. mythos is it’s opposite. when you reach conclusions without having neat steps

    __________________________________________________ __________

    [---]

    4:53pm

    when was the last time you met somebody smarter than you ?
    I’ve met plenty of people more intelligent than me. the tend to come across as thinking with more clarity and precision

    [You]

    5:06pm

    i’m talking about understanding vague concepts here

    [Graham Innocent]

    5:06pm

    I think that’s true within loose bands of intellect, but some concepts are really beyond some people. think about somebody severely learning impaired, IQ of 60 or whatever, imagine trying to get them to understand the concept of ‘political satire’. I think they’d just be unable to understand what was happening and get really bored really quickly

    __________________________________________________ __________

    [You]

    5:08pm

    i didn’t mean to imply that people like that simply haven’t spent enough time pondering concepts to get them. but, say with economics, you and i both have a decent grasp of it as a concept. what i’m wondering is whether or not average people are unable to wrap their minds wholly around it. that is if their mind could never fully understand something or whether it’s that they haven’t put enough time into learning about it

    [---]

    5:10pm

    I think an average person could given sufficient time and enthusiasm

    __________________________________________________ __________

    [---]

    5:11pm

    I think an average person would have to study quite hard and just rote memorise bits before they saw certain things fit together though. but they’d get it if they cared enough
    Last edited by Patroklus; 09-19-2011, 09:35 PM.
  • Patroklus
    Banned
    • Feb 2011
    • 1675

    #2
    Post away.

    Comment

    • Fade to Black
      Senior Member
      • Sep 2008
      • 5340

      #3
      I am thinking there are some aspects of the internal human experience that are best left a bit mysterious and unarticulated. What's the point of laying everything out on the table?
      www.matthewhk.net

      let me show you a few thangs

      Comment

      • Patroklus
        Banned
        • Feb 2011
        • 1675

        #4
        Because I want to do it. What other reason does anyone do anything?

        Comment

        • interest1
          Senior Member
          • Nov 2008
          • 3351

          #5
          .
          ^ well if nothing else, your retort would make for one helluva good sig.

          . .Curious, though, if the 4:26 comment may've come in a bit closer to 4:20.
          . .well, never mind. rhetorical question..
          .
          sain't
          .

          Comment

          • Patroklus
            Banned
            • Feb 2011
            • 1675

            #6
            lol
            It's very difficult to try and tackle the process of the mind and the dichotomy between the mind and brain and it's impossible to do it without sounding like a stoner. Partly because it necessitates weird thought experiments.

            "What happens to the mind if it's moved to a different brain?"
            "that's deep brother. did i pay you for my weed yet?"

            Comment

            • Fade to Black
              Senior Member
              • Sep 2008
              • 5340

              #7
              Originally posted by Patroklus View Post
              Because I want to do it. What other reason does anyone do anything?
              Fair enough. This post might well be the perfect answer to the entire thread...
              www.matthewhk.net

              let me show you a few thangs

              Comment

              • Acéphale
                Senior Member
                • Apr 2010
                • 444

                #8


                ἓν οἶδα ὅτι οὐδὲν οἶδα

                Comment

                • Patroklus
                  Banned
                  • Feb 2011
                  • 1675

                  #9
                  4 parter:

                  the comments are predictably excruciating

                  Comment

                  • tweeds
                    Senior Member
                    • Sep 2006
                    • 246

                    #10
                    Not at his usual level of clarity, but something I came across today. Consciousness as a conjunction of self and qualia:

                    SITE | TWITTER

                    Comment

                    • tweeds
                      Senior Member
                      • Sep 2006
                      • 246

                      #11
                      But this bit is top notch (the entire video is quality, BTW, well worth the hour-long time spent). Rama starts with the phenomenon of synaesthesia, linking it to the cross-activation of neural regions, then linking this cross-activation itself to the cognitive process of metaphorical thinking - and by extension, to the processes of creativity and learning.



                      (Relevant segment is from 35:49 to 44:06 or so.)
                      SITE | TWITTER

                      Comment

                      • DHC
                        Senior Member
                        • Jul 2007
                        • 2155

                        #12
                        Perhaps its sleep deprivation that's crippled my consciousness and leads me to a mental state where I only perceive a disjointing of ideas occurring here. A topic given in a dark room to the sightless who wander about limping with arms flailing and hands groping in desperate attempt to make contact with something that is down the hall.

                        [---]

                        .....Patroklus. Nice parking job in an intersection.......

                        [---]

                        I'd like to see the opening post in its original form. Also would like to see deleted posts.

                        [---]

                        Are all these response video posts an attempt at bathos or am I just seriously in need of some rest?
                        Originally posted by Faust
                        fuck you, i don't have an attitude problem.

                        Sartorialoft

                        "She is very ninja, no?" ~Peter Jevnikar

                        Comment

                        • Patroklus
                          Banned
                          • Feb 2011
                          • 1675

                          #13
                          At first I was going to complain that you were being irreverently silly. Then I realized that I act irrelevantly silly all the time, so really we are just brothers in arms.

                          Anyway, I'm going to take some time later to reproduce a passage from T.E. Lawrence's The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, which deals with the mentality of the Arab/Semite; he uses these terms fairly interchangeably; as a very religiously capable and pious race but entirely unartistic. The only reason I don't reproduce it now is because I'm still wrestling personally with the passage itself. In short, Lawrence perfectly aptly describes the American Evangelist when writing about the Islamic Fundamentalist. That these two are so similar is no surprise, but Lawrence describes this sort of psychosis more accurately than anything else I've ever read.

                          Comment

                          • Patroklus
                            Banned
                            • Feb 2011
                            • 1675

                            #14
                            Originally posted by T.E. Lawrence
                            A first difficulty of the Arab movement was to say who the Arabs were. Being a manufactured people, their name had been changing in sense slowly year by year. Once it meant an Arabian. There was a country called Arabia; but this was nothing to the point. There was a language called Arabic; and in it lay the test. It was the current tongue of Syria and Palestine, of Mesopotomia, and of the great peninsula called Arabia on the map. Before the Moslem conquest, these areas were inhabited by diverse peoples, speaking languages of the Arabic family. We called them Semitic, but (as with most scientific terms) incorrectly. However, Arabic, Assyrian, Babylonian, Phoenician, Hebrew, Aramaic and Syriac were related tongues; and indications of common influences in the past, or even of a common origin, were strengthened by our knowledge that the appearances and customs of the present Arabic-speaking peoples of Asia, while as varied as a field-full of poppies, had an equal and essential likeness. We might with perfect propriety call them cousins - and cousins certainly, if sadly, aware of their own relationship.

                            The Arabic-speaking areas of Asia in this sense were a rough parallelogram. The northern side ran from Alexandretta, on the Mediterranean, across Mesopotamia eastward to the Tigris. The south side wwas the edge of the Indian Ocean, from Aden to Muscat. On the west it was bounded by the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal, and the Red sea to Aden. On the east by the Tigris, and the Persian Gulf to Muscat. This square of land, as large as India, formed the homeland of our Semites, in which no foreign race had kept a permanent footing, though Egyptians, Hittites, Philistines, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Turks and Franks had variously tried. All had in the end been broken, and their scattered elements drowned in the strong characteristics of the Semitic race. Semites had sometimes pushed outside this area, and themselves been drowned in the outer world. Egypt, Algiers, Morocco, Malta, Sicily, Spain, Cilicia, and France absorbed and obliterated Semitic colonies. Only n Tripoli of Africa, and in the everlasting miracle of Jewry, had distant Semites kept some of their identity and force.

                            The origin of these peoples was an academic question' but for the understand of their revolt their present social and political differences were important, and could only be grasped by looking at their geography. This continent of theirs fell into certain great religions, whose gross physical diversities imposed varying habits on the dwellers in them. On the west the parallelogram was framed, from Alexandretta to Aden, by a mountain belt, called (in the north) Syria, and thence progressively southward called Palestine, Midian, Hejaz, and lastly Yemen. It had an average height of perhaps three thousand feet, with peaks of ten to twelve thousand feet. It faced west, was well watered with rain and cloud from the sea, and in general was fully peopled.
                            I'm a little busy today, so I'll have to reproduce the rest of this chapter later.

                            Comment

                            • gavagai
                              Senior Member
                              • May 2010
                              • 468

                              #15
                              I think Jung's confusion regarding the mechanics of the human language makes his theories almost ridiculously dated. If you sit around and try to talk about mental states you have already regressed to the era of Descartes. Might as well sit around and talk about goblins and ghosts (biology and chemistry would be fine as well).

                              Acéphale has posted some excellent videos. I think Searle has some interesting things to say. I personally think Dennett has it all wrong but he has some really long books that may convince you otherwise

                              Comment

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