/Man is tamed by his simple alphabets.
I think it's important to clarify that
most of the species is tamed by their alphabet. Some men make new alphabets.
/The mind rearranged itself to receive him brand new. Mentality now became imperial. See?
But you're talking about social phenomenon. People associate a concept of godliness due to the fact that the other people were doing the same thing. The communicated what they were doing via language.
Of course language is the medium and allows transferance of absracts from mind to mind, but it in and of itself is not
responsible as it is:
- not a being (so it cannot assume reponsibility)
- descriptive of the propensity of minds to contrast and define
So I'm saying that language is an implicit facet of mind, or language wouldn't exist. So I see no reason to credit language itself as it is an interesting by-product of mind. I just credit mind and what happens when they get together.
Bah. Maybe I'm responding to threads long since past instead of what you're saying here. I can't tell at the moment.
/You could say they’re all variants of displacement, but whether it is or not is not what eats me or care about. They’re all the same miscaculations in this invention of ours (language) but for clearance (this is where you put the put the fries down and concentrate):
I disagree that they are miscalculations and defer to Blue's argument that in order to decribe things that have yet to happen, you pay an opportunity cost of describing things that
couldn't happen, or didn't, or won't, etc. The intent of this thread was to ponder if we could devise a language that minimized the propensity for this kind of error. I was thinking earlier that we need to blend mathematics and actual language more smoothly, but I dunno. I can say anything mathematical in english, it just might take a long time to say. *ponders thousands of pages in books of calculus*. Hmmm. Meh. Just thinking 'out loud'.
I always think back to survival. In those terms, I'd think it more important to be able to discuss potential future events than it is to maintain logical consistency. I mean, if you see a rock teetering on a cliff face along the pass you're walking along, it's nice to be able to determine it might fall and warn your offspring that they should avoid the aread beneath it. From that perspective, I suppose logical consistency is a luxury excepting the cases where it negatively impacts ones ability to continue living or reproduce.
/
Displacement- it allows you to
talk about things that are not
there, or never been or going to
be there. Either way it allows for things that both are and aren't. Ever seen a fairy?
Well yes I have, but not IRL. I understand what you mean by this but as I argue above, I don't think it's necessarily a misconception or wrong or whatever until abused to gain false advantage in human interactions.
/Its also interesting to see that this feature is common among the superstitious- they displace where control *is*. And so these backwoods know-nothings place their control no longer in them but in lucky rabbit feet, clovers, and crosses.
Can you blame them? Fundy question (or quesitons that people
make fundy) cannot be ignored by a psyche. They need resolution. People answer them however they can such that they can focus on more direct problems (survival). They are as such abstractly supported by whatever ridiculous assumptions they make regarding the fundys, as those fundys are the foundations of their conceptual stuctures - meaning that yeah, if you believe in x such that you can focus on y, you probably credit (or blame, or whatever) x for allowing you to do y ya know?
/
Vicariousness- it allows you to be somehwere, do something or live via something outside of yourself.
Which is in essence the same thing as displacement. I would summarize all three as 'projection' which is basically the same as displacement.
/
Recursion- which allows for introspection, insight, reason and ego.
Same, and really this borders on talking about consciousness itself.
/All this being allowed to go around playing with things that
are not is the surest means to see patterns where none are and lose track of reality somewhere in the middle of playing so hard.
I don't think you're maintaining objectivity. To me you have just projected a negative perspective of humanity onto itself. You have every right to do so, but I think it taints your ability to analyze the problem.
So I think you have a lot of insight/talent, but your personal distaste for whatever throws you off track a bit. Of course you probably feel similarly about me. (except for the insight/talent part
)
/Which brings me to none other than
Bigblue.
He said:
"When you look at a featureless surface for a long time, you will begin to see patterns. These patterns are not actually there; you can even influence them to some extent and make yourself see things that aren't there, in a limited way."
This is the nature of mind that
led to language. Can you see it? At least that's the way it seems to me. It's this propensity for contrast, this NEED to find patterns that DO EXIST that led to language in the first place.
/Patterns not there.....
Ah, the patterns are there if you put them there. It's more pertinent to me to ask "are the patterns i perceive representative of something which helps me understand my situation/environment?".
/Those puzzle books with the cubes, dots and parallel lines I fried my brains with in grade school. Which was which? Convex or concave, red or blue, up or down and
were those lines truly parallel or were the scratch lines throwing me off?
Hehe. They weren't parallel! Okay maybe they were. Hey I wasn't even there get off me.
/Is there really a spiritual side to man? I ~debated~ with Wes a long time ago about my ideas of homo duplex (ego) being a myth but he would not bite
because he was so real to himself.
The answer to "am I real" is wholly inconsequential to me if I cannot tell that I am not.
/I asked myself then why it is that he's so real to him and I could come up with nothing else but that his mental voice, his "elan vital", sense for reality, feel for life- of things
happening- were convincing him of something transcendental- something more.
It's the awareness. Time rolled up onto itself as seen from a consciousness.
I still hold that the spirituality of man is a reverence for the unknown. Often the unknown is indoctrinated as "known", in an attempt to integrate it such that we don't have to spend time on it. I mean, in terms of survival, spending our lives sitting and talking shit like this does not directly put food on the table. I suppose it can though if you can get together a pile of prolific shit and present it in a marketable fashion.
Well, that and uhm.. people perform their function. It is our function to do this, theirs to do that. We will clash amongst ourselves and amongst functions, as some are mutually exclusive to others.
/Organisms I've said have a sense of time and things happening of course- proof you'll find in reprodution, movement, synthesis and I'm not as cruel to rob them of choice.
As if you could!
/But Wes here being the human that he is has an extra sense of things that
have happened,
are happening and
wil happen and they all travel with him wherever he goes. He projects into the future and creates possibilities with imagination.
/Now why is that? What's made this possible?
The human brain, it's ability to remember itself, and the propensity for it to contrast and find patterns in things (which allows it to survive).
/My answer was language.
Which IMO, is sort of correct.
/Conscience alone won't do it.
But give it a brain to store stuff.. and the propensity to find patterns and such.. voila... language. Now you have a repository for all local (able to access the info) concepts.
I have let out emotions and the urge to reproduce, and I think they play into the propensities as mentioned above. I'll save it for later though, just wanted to mention it.
/Something making the
insight possible for him to define himself apart from reality in terms of two things is needed and that's what is doing it.
Yes of course, I think I described it above.
/
Wes not just
knowing, but another self
knowing that he knows for him.
Exactly. Can you see it in terms of the description I've given? Are we just in concept clash here? Hmmm.
/What can do that other than than the voice he thinks with? And what does it think with when he's thinking of himself? Language.
Like I said...
/This gives him identity.
I only sort of agree, partially disagree. I think his "memory" or ability to know more of himself than the moment (which I don't think requires language) is what provides the fundamental sense of identity.
/And identity, to me, is the pattern language has made for its speaker, chopping up lines and groups of squares........... patterns where, and I quote you directly BigBlue, "there is no actual division depicted in the picture of repeated squares"
I think my "more pertinent question" from way above fits perfectly here. "are the patterns representative of something which helps me understand my situation/environment?". If you think there are lines and the result doesn't play into your ability to survive or reproduce, then the reality of those lines being there is technically inconsequential except regarding a particular understanding about perception and trickery. It might be wise to know that if it could affect your ability to survive or reproduce, but otherwise, well... it's a piece in puzzle.
/Machines fake "consciousness" by making choices between parameters, but no neural network will ever show the insight to grasp its life with sudden understanding.
That's because they can't conceptualize and have no 'persistence in time' so to speak. The lack of self awareness is a show stopper there.
/Bigblue, you little, little, godsend....
Bigblue? Little? Man you do what you know most men do to smart women as a pre-emptive strike eh? Some of us don't think you are stupid because you're a girl goddamnit! Bastard. Blue is big, calling him little is contradictory and derogatory!
Hehe.
