By the Beard of Zeus!

I have just stumbled upon a most amazing and interesting website on Complexity. Behold...

http://www.prototista.org

Ideas on Consciousness

I saw an interesting news article today on ideas about Consciousness. Chalmers ideas are mentioned, a few others.

CLICK HERE for the article.

Neo-Confucian vs Christian Concepts of the Soul

Below is a link to an article on how Neo-Confucians viewed Christian teachings on the soul. Many thanks to Malcolm Schosha over at the International Stoics Forum for informing me of this.

I read this article and it was incredibly interesting. It seems that the scientific perspective on the human mind has a lot in common with the Neo-Confician model.

In my view, the mind is the function of the brain. Or an "attunement" to use Socrates' analogy to the relationship between music and an instrument (an analogy which he unfortunately discounted).

In this sense, the mind is not physical, and one might therefore even call it metaphysical, but it is not supernatural either. It is more like the word "economy" or "capitalism" or "democracy" or "tyranny". These things are all metaphysical in the sense that they are not physical objects either, but are names of processes. As the article states...

The Sino-Korean term Ricci adopted for the immaterial, muhyeong, meant "without form" and referred in Neo-Confucian texts to either primal ki, before that material force had been directed by li into specific shapes, or to li and other abstractions which subsisted rather than existed and so were not considered concrete beings or actual entities.

The mind subsists rather than exists as a concrete being or entity. A perfect description of the modern biological/scientific view of the brain and mind.

Such an assumption was perplexing to Hudam and other Neo-Confucians who defined the soul more as an activity than as an object.

Here is another good example...

...Attacking the Buddhist doctrine of metempsychosis, Fan argued that:

The body is the substance of the soul; the soul is the functioning of the body....The relationship of the soul to its substance is like that of sharpness to a knife, while the relationship of the body to its functioning is like that of a knife to sharpness. What is called sharpness is not the same as the knife, and what is called the knife is not the same as sharpness. Nevertheless, there can be no knife if the sharpness is discarded, nor sharpness if the knife is discarded. I have never heard of sharpness surviving if the knife is destroyed, so how can it be admitted that the soul can remain if the body is annihilated?

What I found equally interesting was the explanation of how the nature of our language lead to processes being turned conceptually into entities (which presumably leads one to think they can then exist separately)...

The Thomistic philosophy of the Jesuits classified reality into nouns (substances), on the one hand, and adjectives and verbs (attributes) on the other. This metaphysical schema was probably generated by the linguistic pressure in the Indo-European linguistic community toward "entification", the nominalization of verbal concepts.(13) In the European languages which framed Catholic metaphysics in terms of substances and attributes, the noun occupied the center of gravity. Nominalization was commonly used to create abstractions drawn from verbs. To exist turned into existence, live into life, and to think into thought.

But I highly recommend giving it a read:
http://mcel.pacificu.edu/aspac/papers/scholars/baker/baker.html

A Doctor's Take on Vegetarianism

A very interesting article on the myths of vegetarianism. Note the section on spirituality...

http://www.powerhealth.net/selected_articles.htm

Practical Implications of Oneness

I've been realizing something in the last few months regarding my continual efforts to improve my self discipline. The concept of Oneness, I think, has helped.

It used to be that I considered each of the things I should be doing (exercising, eating right, getting my work done, etc) as separate things. I would try to build each habit, one at a time and it was like juggling.

I thought that if I tried to tackle them all at once it would be overwhelming. But I've realized that when I think of all these seemingly unconnected things as one interconnected lifestyle, and I try to do everything right at once, each reinforces the other in some way. It actually becomes easier when I think of all these behaviors as interconnected.

There was another instance of Oneness-thinking that helped me this morning in a somewhat different way. Sometimes, I think depending on what portion of the sleep cycle I'm in when it's time to wake up, I find it very easy to wake up, and other times it is very difficult. This morning was difficult. But, given my new interconnected view, I knew that what I did or didn't do this morning would affect the way I approached my whole day.

Normally when I'm trying to wake up, I'm thinking to myself, "ok, move your legs, you have to get up. Here we go... about to move now..." In other words, I'm thinking of myself as my mind and my body is this thing I'm controlling like a vehicle that won't start. My mind is fully awake and it's trying to get this lumbering body to do something. I'm thinking in terms of separate entities.

But then I started to think of my mind and my body as being one integrated whole. Instead of the whole thought process of convincing myself to move going on in just my mind, I started to imagine that this process should take place simultaneously throughout my body. What I found was that by conceiving of my mind and body as one integrated entity - by thinking of my fingers and arms and legs as "me" too, I was able to have greater control.

This process is somewhat hard to explain but hopefully some will catch my drift. Of course, this worked for me but different methods may or may not work for others.

Xenopsychology

A good fellow named Jim directed me to this page, which discusses Xenopsychology. Here the author speculates on the nature of alien intelligence. Especially interesting is his discussion of "Sentience Quotient" or SQ, which is a rating for sentience. Aparently humans are around a +13, while the maximum possible in our universe (given the nature of atoms and particles and such) would be about +50. An Apple II computer is about +5.

I'm most interested to take a closer look at this, and think about how it might be applied to answering the question of "how sentient is the universe on the whole?"

Xenopsychology:
http://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/Xenopsychology.htm

Too Many Either/Or's

I know that these sentiments are repeated in many places, but I recently thought of this...

Whenever faced with an either/or situation, or one where you feel cornered by two unattractive alternatives, consider the following:

1) Question the definitions being used. It could be that the two alternatives aren't really opposed or limiting if each uses a different sense of the same words.

2) Consider how the either/or's might co-exist or both be true.

3) Could the two alternatives be rooted in a shared principle or motive?

4) Think of how the either/or may be the same thing in some sense.

5) Consider whether there really are just two options - try to think of 'third options'.

Toward a Humanist Vocabulary of Reverence

Many thanks to Jan E. Garrett for bringing this to my attention. This man, Reverend David Bumbaugh, speaks the truth...

http://www.uua.org/news/2003/vocabulary/bumbaugh.html

My Internal Economy... Disturbed.

My wife and I are sitting in the office and our cat Tigger comes in. When he wants attention he pushes his nose into our legs and sometimes nips. We're trying to talk so we push him away, then he employs his usual tactic. He finds a paper, plastic bag, or other noise-making object and paws it to annoy us.

So, I throw him out because he's being bad today, and close the door, returning to my desk. Now it is hot, because the air conditioner blows cool air from the adjoining room into the office. I have forgotten the Oneness of all things - I tried to punish Tigger and have punished myself as well.

I have not achieved perfect Tao :(

The Chuang-Tzu, or Why the Force of Nature Matters

So, I've posted many times now about the "Force of Nature" and how complex systems theory, the Taoist "Li" and the Stoic "Logos" are touching on many of the same concepts. But why and how should any of that affect our behavior or lives?

I just finished reading the Taoist Chuang-Tzu, which explains how the nature of the Tao should guide our lives, and it contained a lot of good points. Actually, that's an understatment, as I found it intensely thoughtful and moving.

I made notes on it, which are about 9 pages (from a document that was over 50 pages) so if you'd like to see what the big deal is, my notes give a glimpse - minus much of the beautiful wording and subtle detail...

Click here to read my notes on the Chuang-Tzu

Thanks :)