Time directionality and the evolution of suffering
We know:
Time directionality is arbitary and based on our experience; e.g., Feynman diagrams treat positrons as electrons moving "backwards" in time.
I once found notes in a book on information theory where someone wrote "Life = negative entropy....Consciousness = negative information entropy." I love it, but it's probably largely unhelpful.
This happened at my dearly beloved hippie frat (for lack of a better description). The same place where one chemically altered brain excitedly felt like it was what A___ called "the mind of God that continually dreams it is not God."
Some delusions are more destructive than others.
I feel guilty this does not relate to political mechanisms that produce suffering.
I find Brad Warner annoying. This may mean he's on to something.
We don't know:
What consciousness is. Wittgenstein says mind-body questions only seem 'special' because of language (or something like that), but that would beg some big questions if that's what he really said. I can design a machine that acts like it feels something, but like Dorothy Parker's cultured whore I can't make it think. Or know that it thinks. I don't sound any more ridiculous than the brightest lights of so-called Philosophy of Mind.
Similarly, even if we knew everything there is to know about the evolution of the brain, we may not be any closer to understanding the sentient "me." Zazen doesn't help much either.
I wildly assert:
No one knows what the word "I" means outside a social context.
We suffer therefore we are. Or have fun therefore we are? Psycho/spiritual idea-makers have brain-farted all over the connections between identity, deity, biology and delusion. Again, the "who" involved here remains problematic.
An untestable hypothesis: consciousness just is. It has been hijacked (seduced?) by biology and forced to move in one direction for evolutionary purposes. These purposes are neither good nor bad from an original mind perspective. Perhaps they are nonetheless wondrous and like totally awesome.
Related unsupportable conclusion:
Time directionality is arbitary and based on our experience; e.g., Feynman diagrams treat positrons as electrons moving "backwards" in time.
I once found notes in a book on information theory where someone wrote "Life = negative entropy....Consciousness = negative information entropy." I love it, but it's probably largely unhelpful.
This happened at my dearly beloved hippie frat (for lack of a better description). The same place where one chemically altered brain excitedly felt like it was what A___ called "the mind of God that continually dreams it is not God."
Some delusions are more destructive than others.
I feel guilty this does not relate to political mechanisms that produce suffering.
I find Brad Warner annoying. This may mean he's on to something.
We don't know:
What consciousness is. Wittgenstein says mind-body questions only seem 'special' because of language (or something like that), but that would beg some big questions if that's what he really said. I can design a machine that acts like it feels something, but like Dorothy Parker's cultured whore I can't make it think. Or know that it thinks. I don't sound any more ridiculous than the brightest lights of so-called Philosophy of Mind.
Similarly, even if we knew everything there is to know about the evolution of the brain, we may not be any closer to understanding the sentient "me." Zazen doesn't help much either.
I wildly assert:
No one knows what the word "I" means outside a social context.
We suffer therefore we are. Or have fun therefore we are? Psycho/spiritual idea-makers have brain-farted all over the connections between identity, deity, biology and delusion. Again, the "who" involved here remains problematic.
An untestable hypothesis: consciousness just is. It has been hijacked (seduced?) by biology and forced to move in one direction for evolutionary purposes. These purposes are neither good nor bad from an original mind perspective. Perhaps they are nonetheless wondrous and like totally awesome.
Related unsupportable conclusion:
Labels: Buddhism, Mind, Philosophy
posted by Billf at 6:45 AM
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