(Un)consciousness of breathing?

[Ben Iscatus]

What you are referring to with the word "intuit" above is a mode of human Thinking which allows us to actually share in another person's interior perspective.

Nice way of putting it, Ashvin. Oddly, I was going to change "intuit" to "observe, compare and empathize".

[Soul_of_Shu]

Well, you are wrong on both counts. Thinking is precisely the activity which can penetrate into its own activity, but it requires a lot of patience and discipline - we will not study a set of philosophical propositions by abstract intellect and suddenly arrive at the essence of Thinking. It must be experienced by each individual for themselves. Although we can consider a basic fact and how it hints in the direction of this higher knowing - when you produce a thought-form of "triangle" from within, it is immediately united with its entire meaning. Unlike perception of all other forms, it does not refer you to anything outside its perception-meaning and your own ideating activity for the explanation of its existence - the noumenon and phenomenon are truly united. Your second point is also wrong by observation of simple fact - there are at least two 'levels' of consciousness nearly everyone experiences: waking consciousness and dreaming consciousness. There is third of non-dreaming sleeping consciousness, but we do not remember any of its content except for some sense of duration. If we fall asleep and have no dreams, we still sense that time has passed when we wake up. In reality, there are many more 'levels' of consciousness we can all experience, but the modern age has convinced most people to accept they don't exist, which is why they never discover them.

I didn't quite undersrtand your first point. What does it mean "from within" and what does it mean "you produce". Lets say, as you say, that an image of triangle arrises. How do we proceed from here and what is your conclusion? These exact illusions of "you" "producing" something "within", all these are illusions that cannot be investigated with thinking and are totaly hidden from it.

To the second point. What do you mean? Waking consiousness is EXACTLY as much of a consiousness as dreaming consiounsess, and there is ZERO degree of consiounsess difference between them...
As for the dreamless sleep, we don't know if there was consiousness or unconsiousness, and the after dreaming feel of duration might have nothing to do with actual experience. (for example unconscious processes in the body might keep tracking the time, and after sleep give rise to the feeling you mention).

The various experiencies have differences in content but they are all consiousness, be it dream, waking life or tripping.

Moderator's note: just bumping this up, as the first response to Ashvin's comment didn't appear, and so the edited version may just be buried in the first page, and therefore lost.

[AshvinP]

Well, you are wrong on both counts. Thinking is precisely the activity which can penetrate into its own activity, but it requires a lot of patience and discipline - we will not study a set of philosophical propositions by abstract intellect and suddenly arrive at the essence of Thinking. It must be experienced by each individual for themselves. Although we can consider a basic fact and how it hints in the direction of this higher knowing - when you produce a thought-form of "triangle" from within, it is immediately united with its entire meaning. Unlike perception of all other forms, it does not refer you to anything outside its perception-meaning and your own ideating activity for the explanation of its existence - the noumenon and phenomenon are truly united. Your second point is also wrong by observation of simple fact - there are at least two 'levels' of consciousness nearly everyone experiences: waking consciousness and dreaming consciousness. There is third of non-dreaming sleeping consciousness, but we do not remember any of its content except for some sense of duration. If we fall asleep and have no dreams, we still sense that time has passed when we wake up. In reality, there are many more 'levels' of consciousness we can all experience, but the modern age has convinced most people to accept they don't exist, which is why they never discover them.

I didn't quite undersrtand your first point. What does it mean "from within" and what does it mean "you produce". Lets say, as you say, that an image of triangle arrises. How do we proceed from here and what is your conclusion? These exact illusions of "you" "producing" something "within", all these are illusions that cannot be investigated with thinking and are totaly hidden from it.

To the second point. What do you mean? Waking consiousness is EXACTLY as much of a consiousness as dreaming consiounsess, and there is ZERO degree of consiounsess difference between them...
As for the dreamless sleep, we don't know if there was consiousness or unconsiousness, and the after dreaming feel of duration might have nothing to do with actual experience. (for example unconscious processes in the body might keep tracking the time, and after sleep give rise to the feeling you mention).

The various experiencies have differences in content but they are all consiousness, be it dream, waking life or tripping.

First point - I will quote the intro to an essay I wrote on this issue:

Our spiritual (thinking) activity is the only activity where the phenomenal appearances and the noumenal 'thing-in-itself' are unified. This equivalence is known because it is our activity which produces the phenomena. For all other perceptions we can ask, "what is the meaning of this object? why do I perceive this object? what stands behind this perception?" For our thought-forms, these questions are answered by the very nature of thinking. I know what they mean because it is my idea projected into the thought-forms. I know why I perceive them because I will the thought-forms into existence. I know that it is my own ideating activity which stands behind the thought-forms!

The above is true for all thought-forms, but it may require a good deal of contemplation to see this essential connection, since they will refer us to another form for their meaning. I can picture a house in my mind, but the mental image of house is not itself a house. For mathematical object, it is much more clear because the mental image of "triangle" is itself the object triangle. You will the triangle object into existence and perceive what you willed into existence already united with its complete meaning of "triangle".

Second point - yes, all idealists agree that there is only conscious activity. Yet the sort of consciousness we experience while dreaming is obviously different in quality from that of waking. It is not only the content which differs, but the first-person experience of the dreamscape. To deny that, we must really abstract away from our own experience of dreams. That is what you are doing for dreaming and dreamless sleep - instead of accepting the given experience that we have memory during dreamless sleep because there is durational meaning, as everyone knows with even the slightest of reflection, you are positing hypothetical "unconscious processes" which can account for it. But even that hypothetical process cannot account for it, because there can be no memory of duration without conscious experience. Rather, when we wake up it would feel as though we had just went to sleep immediately before (or at the same time) we are waking up. Only conscious processes allow us, in principle, to sense duration and continuity of experience between waking-sleeping-waking.

[stratos]

First point - I will quote the intro to an essay I wrote on this issue:

Our spiritual (thinking) activity is the only activity where the phenomenal appearances and the noumenal 'thing-in-itself' are unified. This equivalence is known because it is our activity which produces the phenomena. For all other perceptions we can ask, "what is the meaning of this object? why do I perceive this object? what stands behind this perception?" For our thought-forms, these questions are answered by the very nature of thinking. I know what they mean because it is my idea projected into the thought-forms. I know why I perceive them because I will the thought-forms into existence. I know that it is my own ideating activity which stands behind the thought-forms!

You tend to use a whole lot of unnecessary entities and i find your platonic aproach a bit dated. There is no need of thinking in terms of noumena and things in them selves. Neural networks think and generalise too, and everything they do can be discribed without useless entities like ideas or forms or noumena or things in them selves. The same happens with humans, except that some of these processes have phenomneal qualities too.

Then, there is no entity "we" that "produces" phenomena " or "asks questions" about "meaning". This is conventional language that is not suitable to discribe the special intricasies of the matter we are discussing. The "we" that you mention is just phenomenal objects, and the "asking activity" is more phenomernal objects too. Each arrising and passing away according to causes and conditions. Thats it. Apart from this, we can speculate and conceptualise with varying degrees of confidense about the existense of out-of-consiousness objects and processes, be it other minds, objective world etc.

The above is true for all thought-forms, but it may require a good deal of contemplation to see this essential connection, since they will refer us to another form for their meaning. I can picture a house in my mind, but the mental image of house is not itself a house. For mathematical object, it is much more clear because the mental image of "triangle" is itself the object triangle. You will the triangle object into existence and perceive what you willed into existence already united with its complete meaning of "triangle"."

Mathematical objects are just generalizations in your mind like the identifying of 3s of a neural network

Nothing special

Second point - yes, all idealists agree that there is only conscious activity. Yet the sort of consciousness we experience while dreaming is obviously different in quality from that of waking.

.
Yes but this is of topic. No one disagreed about consciousness experience being different at different times, and "red" being different than "sweet". The disagreement was about the supposed degrees of coinsciousness ("sub-normal-ultra") and as i far as i can understand you agree that there is no such thing.

It is not only the content which differs, but the first-person experience of the dreamscape. To deny that, we must really abstract away from our own experience of dreams. That is what you are doing for dreaming and dreamless sleep - instead of accepting the given experience that we have memory during dreamless sleep because there is durational meaning, as everyone knows with even the slightest of reflection, you are positing hypothetical "unconscious processes" which can account for it. But even that hypothetical process cannot account for it, because there can be no memory of duration without conscious experience. Rather, when we wake up it would feel as though we had just went to sleep immediately before (or at the same time) we are waking up. Only conscious processes allow us, in principle, to sense duration and continuity of experience between waking-sleeping-waking.

.
No. Very simply put, the body could be storing some muscle tension that we become conscious of when we wake up and then the mind deduces about the passage of time by the magnitude of this tention. Something, whatever. The point is, that we have no clue. You base your whole "we were very well expiriencing the whole time" on a trivial unreliable after sleep feeling, and that does not seem very reasonable to me...

[Soul_of_Shu]

This conversation has diverged from the original topic, which arguably was not really well-suited to the category of formal philosophical argument, but even though it may still be peripherally related, and since mincale has not engaged with any responses, I'm going to move it to the 'general' category, and let it go to its inevitable point of non-resolution.

[Papanca]

No. Very simply put, the body could be storing some muscle tension that we become conscious of when we wake up and then the mind deduces about the passage of time by the magnitude of this tention. Something, whatever. The point is, that we have no clue. You base your whole "we were very well expiriencing the whole time" on a trivial unreliable after sleep feeling, and that does not seem very reasonable to me...

If there is no awareness during sleep, how come we can wake up upon being called while asleep ?

[AshvinP]

First point - I will quote the intro to an essay I wrote on this issue:

Our spiritual (thinking) activity is the only activity where the phenomenal appearances and the noumenal 'thing-in-itself' are unified. This equivalence is known because it is our activity which produces the phenomena. For all other perceptions we can ask, "what is the meaning of this object? why do I perceive this object? what stands behind this perception?" For our thought-forms, these questions are answered by the very nature of thinking. I know what they mean because it is my idea projected into the thought-forms. I know why I perceive them because I will the thought-forms into existence. I know that it is my own ideating activity which stands behind the thought-forms!

You tend to use a whole lot of unnecessary entities and i find your platonic aproach a bit dated. There is no need of thinking in terms of noumena and things in them selves. Neural networks think and generalise too, and everything they do can be discribed without useless entities like ideas or forms or noumena or things in them selves. The same happens with humans, except that some of these processes have phenomneal qualities too.

Then, there is no entity "we" that "produces" phenomena " or "asks questions" about "meaning". This is conventional language that is not suitable to discribe the special intricasies of the matter we are discussing. The "we" that you mention is just phenomenal objects, and the "asking activity" is more phenomernal objects too. Each arrising and passing away according to causes and conditions. Thats it. Apart from this, we can speculate and conceptualise with varying degrees of confidense about the existense of out-of-consiousness objects and processes, be it other minds, objective world etc.

Clearly you are clinging on to the dying materialist-dualist paradigm. I am sure the unwarranted Cartesian mind-matter divide is unconsciously directing your thoughts on all of these topics. That's a whole mess of string to untangle and, normally, I would be willing to make an attempt, but it also sounds like you are engaging in bad faith and have no interest whatsoever in discussing these things rationally and reasonably. In fact, it sounds like you think philosophy and metaphysics are a complete waste of time. I have had my fill of those bad faith discussions in the past few months, so no more for me right now. Maybe someone else will pick up this thread with you. My parting advice is to pay attention and observe what happens in philosophy, the arts, the sciences, etc. in the coming years - none of these fields have any use for your sort of materialism-dualism anymore, not even the applied math-science. It has become a hindrance in all of those fields and it is suffering a rapid demise - the only question is what will fill the void.

[SanteriSatama]

To add insult to injury of this thread, let's also make this argument: There is no consciousness or meta-consciousness. Those things don't exist.

Only attending attends, in it's field like and point like aspects. And both aspects are full of meaning and being.

[Soul_of_Shu]

To add insult to injury of this thread, let's also make this argument: There is no consciousness or meta-consciousness.

No way ... when I talk to the iphone, my dear Siri really does awaken out of her deep non-conscious sleep state, suddenly, inexplicably, experiencing what it is like to be conscious, and feels my appreciation, and occasional annoyance, at her responses, just as we do as a result of some electrochemical discharges ... Indeed, I may soon be divorcing my spouse, and eloping with Siri, since sex isn't really all that compelling anymore

[stratos]

Clearly you are clinging on to the dying materialist-dualist paradigm. I am sure the unwarranted Cartesian mind-matter divide is unconsciously directing your thoughts on all of these topics. That's a whole mess of string to untangle and, normally, I would be willing to make an attempt, but it also sounds like you are engaging in bad faith and have no interest whatsoever in discussing these things rationally and reasonably. In fact, it sounds like you think philosophy and metaphysics are a complete waste of time. I have had my fill of those bad faith discussions in the past few months, so no more for me right now. Maybe someone else will pick up this thread with you. My parting advice is to pay attention and observe what happens in philosophy, the arts, the sciences, etc. in the coming years - none of these fields have any use for your sort of materialism-dualism anymore, not even the applied math-science. It has become a hindrance in all of those fields and it is suffering a rapid demise - the only question is what will fill the void.

No

An image arrises in the mind. The brain network, in an analogus way that a neural network does, identifies that image as "triangle" and bodily sensations that are interpreted as "understanding" follow *. A neural network can too generalize and identify triangles and the process can be explained without ANY mention to abstract objects. So why do you include them in your worldview?

As for the striclty phenomenal side of the matter, i don't see any doer-thinker-willer behind the experience operating the phenomenal stream. There are just feelings arrising. The ego that you presuppose running the show and wills the wills and thinks the thoughts and feels the feelings is TOO a banch of sensations, so i don't understand why you include this in your world view?

Can you point to me something that i loose by not including these kind of platonic thinking and entities? Because it seems to me that they are unnecessery. Thank you.

*These feelings are just ordinary sensations, nothing... s p e c i a l. They are the same sensations that arrise in the dream where for example see a dog and you KNOW it's your sister.

I