If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it,

[Wowbagger]

Of course it falls, and of course it makes a sound. I seriously don't get why people would think anything else.

[Belinda]

Tfindlay , about your first comment, how can things and events be discrete things and events without consciousness?Isn't it only by relating a **** to a (not a ***) that we can identify any thing or event?

I see what you mean now. Yes, consciousness abstracts things and events out of the whole and there are no pre-existing independently existing things or events. However, IMO, for consciousness to be able to abstract things and events from the whole there needs to be organization (regularities) within a dynamic whole. Consciousness perceives patterns of dynamic organization existing within the whole. Consciousness does not create these patterns but is structured in such a way as to perceive them as things and events.

there is no what I call ' pre-existing cosmos' but that cosmos, to exist at all, requires consciousness.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean here. Do you mean that consciousness pre-exists and creates the cosmos or that consciousness creates concepts and ideas about the cosmos? My own position is that consciousness requires a nervous system.

Tfindley I find both your comments to be very valuable for me. This is because they seem to be saying what Spinoza summed as 'The mind is the idea of the body'. That is to say the neurons, brain etc, are not pre-existent cause of mind, nor that mind(what I have been calling consciousness)is not the pre-existent cause of neurons, brain etc. but that mind and brain are twin aspects of the same reality.

[Rajaroux]

mind and brain are twin aspects of the same reality.

Yes, Brain is matter, Mind is that matter in process. So the mind is matter and energy and a phenomenon made of and included in, cosmos. The trouble is we don’t generally relate to the mind that way, but engage in the story of the mind, the interpretations and projections made by the body mind. The story of the mind is the illusion, the compartmentalisation, categorisation and separation into distinct, even named, objects and events.

Analogy; A fiction novel tells a story, a fabricated fantasy, fabricated from language and common experience. When we talk about the book, we are usually talking about the story and our emotional attachment to it, “Have you read Cinderella, it’s brilliant!” But the truth is the book (brain) is only real as a door stop. The mind is the process of the words being read, the story being told and interpreted, the book in action. The interpretation, thought conclusion, is the illusion.

The question, did the tree make a sound, asks that we discover reality through this illusion. If we are simply in, believing in, the illusion, we will answer, yes, because our mind produces images of what trees do. Cinderella is beautiful and wears glass slippers and makes us aspire to magic and denigrate ugliness. If we are in the illusion but realise it is an illusion, we will answer, no, because all that is the content of the mind is illusion. Cinderella is just a story, I fancy pumpkin tonight. If we can accept the illusion, disengage from thought reactions and conclusions, and move our identity behind mind and into consciousness, be the process, be energy and matter. If we are matter in process and there is no mind created separation, we fall with trees and vibrate in air. OK, that last bit may be ‘out there’, a bit Cinderella for some and just another case of revealing reality through illusion, but there’s no way to say it. Meditate and realize.

Consciousness perceives patterns of dynamic organization existing within the whole. Consciousness does not create these patterns but is structured in such a way as to perceive them as things and events.

What you call consciousness here is the mind. Consciousness only perceives. Awareness. Patterns are conclusions of the mind. Consciousness perceives the structured mind making pattern associations, things and events. Consciousness is unstructured. Consciousness is, one with being itself. Not consciousness is something, or consciousness does something. Consciousness does not create, as you say, but creativity arises naturally in determinism and is, as consciousness is. To engage in consciousness is to perceive natural creativity continuously. To remain in awareness is to receive natural creativity continuously.

[Tfindlay]

What you call consciousness here is the mind. Consciousness only perceives. Awareness. Patterns are conclusions of the mind. Consciousness perceives the structured mind making pattern associations, things and events. Consciousness is unstructured. Consciousness is, one with being itself. Not consciousness is something, or consciousness does something. Consciousness does not create, as you say, but creativity arises naturally in determinism and is, as consciousness is. To engage in consciousness is to perceive natural creativity continuously. To remain in awareness is to receive natural creativity continuously.

I prefer not to use "consciousness" and "awareness" interchangeably. To me consciousness means brain processing.

[Rajaroux]

What you call consciousness here is the mind. Consciousness only perceives. Awareness. Patterns are conclusions of the mind. Consciousness perceives the structured mind making pattern associations, things and events. Consciousness is unstructured. Consciousness is, one with being itself. Not consciousness is something, or consciousness does something. Consciousness does not create, as you say, but creativity arises naturally in determinism and is, as consciousness is. To engage in consciousness is to perceive natural creativity continuously. To remain in awareness is to receive natural creativity continuously.

I prefer not to use "consciousness" and "awareness" interchangeably. To me consciousness means brain processing.

I can understand that. You use consciousness in the way medicine and psychology use it, objectively measurable degrees of wakefulness. But, by that definition, I am referring to the highest degree of wakefulness, unclouded by any impairment, including the illusions of brain processing, which we call thinking. Consciousness can only be implied, not measured. The measuring observes the activity of the mind or neural activity in the body, we have names for that already, so I prefer not to use mind and consciousness interchangeably. Awareness, in my world, is too often used in relation to object, awareness of something, and is not a good substitute for the state of wakefulness I am eluding to. Even though I used it interchangeably with object removed, I should not have.

[Tfindlay]

I am referring to the highest degree of wakefulness, unclouded by any impairment, including the illusions of brain processing, which we call thinking. Consciousness can only be implied, not measured.

I see what you are saying now. However, I think it is confusing to take a word like "consciousness" which already has a widely accepted definition and use it to mean something else. I agree that "awareness" has the same problem in that it is understood to mean the detection of stimuli. We need a better word for the state of being awakened.

[Whoknows44]

Only way I'll accept any of your answers is if you can do it with your first face, without thinking of good or evil, before your mother and father were born!
Then you will need to tell me the sound of one hand clapping! Chicken or egg?

[Tfindlay]

Only way I'll accept any of your answers is if you can do it with your first face, without thinking of good or evil, before your mother and father were born!

There is no before.

Then you will need to tell me the sound of one hand clapping!

Me slapping your face.

Chicken or egg?

Egg

[Whoknows44]

Only way I'll accept any of your answers is if you can do it with your first face, without thinking of good or evil, before your mother and father were born!

There is no before.

Then you will need to tell me the sound of one hand clapping!

Me slapping your face.

Chicken or egg?

Egg

1Exactly why its important to remember that before answering!
2. Genius! Slapping = Clapping, your a math wizard!
3Never thought of that! Insightful!

[Belinda]

Rajaroux #32

Yes, Brain is matter, Mind is that matter in process. So the mind is matter and energy and a phenomenon made of and included in, cosmos.

I understand this, and I understand most of what Spinoza wrote. But I do wonder still if on the one hand there is Tao, the indescribable (perhaps chaotic) precedent to both mind and physical energy, or on the other hand, if cosmos is an already ordered physical twin of ordered mind.

Spinoza's vision is more like the former, the Taoist idea, as Spinoza's idea of truth is of consensus, not correspondence between idea and reality.

If what is the case is that physical cosmos and its twin, mind, are ordered by their very nature, then I think I'd have to posit a creating deity for the imposition of that order.Therefore, I cannot see any third alternative to pre-existing harmony(theism and deism) on the one hand , and non-conscious and indescribable Tao on the other hand.

If I could make diagrams for posting I could express this better, but I dont know how to post diagrams so I do hope I make myself clear with words.

[Tfindlay]

If what is the case is that physical cosmos and its twin, mind, are ordered by their very nature, then I think I'd have to posit a creating deity for the imposition of that order.Therefore, I cannot see any third alternative to pre-existing harmony(theism and deism) on the one hand , and non-conscious and indescribable Tao on the other hand.

I don't see any reason to speak of mind as separate or distinguishable from the physical cosmos.

Concerning the issue of order there are many examples in nature of self-organization. It is possible that organization, even at the most fundamental level of the physical cosmos appears autonomously, without any external element/agent imposing it. One theory suggests that, after the Big Bang, the resulting energy was unevenly distributed which resulted in mutually affecting interactions between regions of relatively concentrated energy. Persistent patterns of interactions may have constituted the first emergence of organization in the early cosmos.

[Belinda]

Tfindlay wrote

I don't see any reason to speak of mind as separate or distinguishable from the physical cosmos.

Here are a few:

You look out of your window and what you see of the world outside is not the perspective the person in the street outside sees of the physical world, although the physical world exists, many of us presume, as an orderly system.The perspectives are mind things: the street is a physical thing(what Descartes called 'extended' matter.

Some people don't believe there is a street outside of the sum of perspectives, and these people are classic idealists, or as they are sometimes called immaterialists.

The remainder of this post of Tfindlay's from which I quoted makes me think that I have failed adequately to explain my idea about the furthest reaches of ontology in which God may or may not dwell.

[Tfindlay]

You look out of your window and what you see of the world outside is not the perspective the person in the street outside sees of the physical world, although the physical world exists, many of us presume, as an orderly system

Because we have different points of view does not mean we have minds that are independent of the physical cosmos. Our individuality (knowledge, beliefs, habits, etc.) is physically stored in our brains. It is this individuality that accounts for our unique perspectives.

[Onesimus]

it makes sound;the sound of a tree is real independent of someone hearing it

[Belinda]

Tfindlay wrote

Because we have different points of view does not mean we have minds that are independent of the physical cosmos.

I dont think I ever said that minds are independent of matter.

True,

Our individuality (knowledge, beliefs, habits, etc.) is physically stored in our brains. It is this individuality that accounts for our unique perspectives

But minds are subjective perspectives and those are not identical to arrangements of neurons, synapses, electrons, and other phenomena of physical energy that occupy space and time.For instance a memory of an apple that I have ate a moment ago is not identical to the physical apple that used to be, even although my memory as (subjective mind) of the apple cannot exist without either the physical apple or at least some physical changes in my physical brain.