GENIUS FORUMS

Dan Rowden wrote:Because it's possible to ugly oneself down if circumstances called for it, but it's not so easy to pretty oneself up. Of course, this applies only in the world as it is now where such circumstances might arise.

I recall you saying that you are unwilling to wear ties. Under what circumstances would you "pretty" yourself up? When would you ugly yourself down?
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Ryan Rudolph wrote:Try telling that to a sexually attractive man or woman, they may have an intellectual understanding that there is no difference, but their subtle daily behavior suggests otherwise. They're behavior suggests delusion even though they can parrot intellectual verbatims.

Okay, now that we know about your porn-star fantasy and the judgment that you have of your own appearance, I see that you have confessed that you are just parroting intellectual verbatims. I, on the other hand, actually thought about my position. I will not argue with a parrot.
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Elizabeth wrote:

Okay, now that we know about your porn-star fantasy and the judgment that you have of your own appearance, I see that you have confessed that you are just parroting intellectual verbatims. I, on the other hand, actually thought about my position. I will not argue with a parrot.

Elizabeth, you're reacting emotionally to my post thinking that I'm attacking you personally, stop trying to act superior, step back for a moment. My observations are based on my own insights; my point is that physical appearance is intimately connected with the degree of conditioning that needs to be overcome. And even though one may see very clearly what conditioning needs to be ended, some of it can still remain regardless of how much you ‘think’ about it.

You are mistaken because you actually believe that ‘thinking’ about an ending of conditioning can actually do something significant. I have learnt otherwise. Reasoning can only take you so far, and then you are stuck with your genes/appearance, which dictates much of the subconscious activity that takes place.

Conditioning runs deep, into the very genes, into the very core of the nervous system and neurological structure. Do you think that just because you have thought about something a few times that this leads to a complete ending of your conditioning? I’m afraid not.

Elizabeth Isabelle wrote:

Dan Rowden wrote:Because it's possible to ugly oneself down if circumstances called for it, but it's not so easy to pretty oneself up. Of course, this applies only in the world as it is now where such circumstances might arise.

I recall you saying that you are unwilling to wear ties. Under what circumstances would you "pretty" yourself up? When would you ugly yourself down?

To be honest, I can't actually think of a situation wherein I would do either. But if I had to I'd rather be trying to go from attractive to ugly than the other way simply due to the practical difficulties. And, of course, I would consider the donning of a tie to be an act of making yourself ugly. Why any man needs a phallic symbol, when he's carrying one around all the time anyway, is beyond me.

Then again, come to think of it, if the tie really is a phallic symbol, where does that put the bow tie in the shceme of things?

Ryan Rudolph wrote: Elizabeth, you're reacting emotionally to my post

Again, you are inaccuratly projecting emotion into my post.

Ryan Rudolph wrote:thinking that I'm attacking you personally,

At exactly what point? Although at first I did not think you were attacking me personally, I do think that you are attacking me personally and for my gender for having an opposing viewpoint to yours, as evidenced by your different reaction to me opposing your viewpoint than how you reacted to Dan opposing your viewpoint, even though we both opposed you in a similar way.

I did ask you what you meant by "women posters" but I also asked Dan what he meant by "women" in his post. Dan did not jump to the conclusion that I was taking it as a personal affront. He simply clarified what he meant. You, on the other hand, accused me of taking it as a personal attack, and gave this emotional response:

Ryan Rudolph wrote:Is is possible for you to stop interpreting in a personal way? Why do you keep identifying strongly with your sex, and then defending it?

Emotion depicted by the phrase "Is it possible" and the mal-interpretation that I am strongly identifying with my sex.

Despite my asking you to point out where you are reading emotion in my post, you did not answer that - yet again accused me of an emotional response. Considering your unsubstantiated claims that I am being emotional, the fact that emotion is considered "woman" by this site, and the fact that I do not recall you separating the QRS definition of woman and biological females, I believe you are projecting "woman" onto any female. Although I recognize that I am in a female body, this observation is from a transcendent viewpoint.

I do continually check people on where they are in their separation between QRS "woman" and biological females to fish out false projections and to make the difference clearer to the first-time readers who may read any given post as their introduction to the forum. I do this in the interest of Truth.

Ryan Rudolph wrote: My observations are based on my own insights;

The "insights" you communicated was that attractive people are only parroting.

Ryan Rudolph wrote:my point is that physical appearance is intimately connected with the degree of conditioning that needs to be overcome. And even though one may see very clearly what conditioning needs to be ended, some of it can still remain regardless of how much you ‘think’ about it.

I agree with this.

Ryan Rudolph wrote:You are mistaken because you actually believe that ‘thinking’ about an ending of conditioning can actually do something significant.

You just spit in the face of every philosopher throughout time.

Ryan Rudolph wrote:Reasoning can only take you so far, and then you are stuck with your genes/appearance, which dictates much of the subconscious activity that takes place.

Reasoning can only take you so far, and a particular genetic composition will have an effect on one's reasoning ability, but one with sufficient reasoning skills does not let appearance get in the way of reason. Also, a generally concious person does not have many subconcious activities.

Ryan Rudolph wrote:Conditioning runs deep, into the very genes, into the very core of the nervous system and neurological structure.

I'm not too sure about conditioning running into the genes, although it could. I agree that it can run into the nervous system and neurological structure, but a great deal of that can be re-conditioned into wisdom.

Ryan Rudolph wrote:Do you think that just because you have thought about something a few times that this leads to a complete ending of your conditioning?

No, re-conditioning takes practice, and thinking about something "a few times" does not constitue sufficient mental practice to change a thought pattern. But thinking is always important.
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Also, a generally concious person does not have many subconcious activities.

Jesus, where the hell did you get this idea from?

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Shahrazad wrote:

Also, a generally concious person does not have many subconcious activities.

Jesus, where the hell did you get this idea from?

That quote was not from Jesus, it was from me. ;)

The more concious a person is, the fewer subconcious or unconcious activities a person does. It's almost a definition.
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All right, so does this conscious person command his heart to beat, does all his breathing and digestion consciously as well as the defense against foreign bodies?

Something tells me that you are on the path from the sublime to the ridiculous.

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As I said, the generally concious person does not have many subconcious activities. There will still be some, especially when a person goes to bed and sleeps. As for the heart beating, etc., concious people can have more influence over such activities than a non-concious person. You must have heard or read something on the physiologic control yogis can have on their supposedly unconcious activities? And this one falls moreso under the category of "silly human tricks" but I can flex my irisis. It's most observable the first time because they don't fully relax right after - but hey, since I can do that, I can easily believe that others can gain control over various "unconciously regulated" body parts as well.
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As I said, the generally concious person does not have many subconcious activities.

Now I'm not sure you realize how many subconscious processes there are. Even if you got rid of a few, you'd still have many left.

One of the purposes of subconcious processes is to take care of tasks without the body having to waste that very precious resource: attention. While my heart beats, my mind is free to engage in other activities.

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Sher,

I'm not sure why you are going down this nit-picky road. I'm sure Ryan was not insinuating that unattractive people have an easier time regulating their heartbeats than attractive people. General physiologic activities is one category, but the regulation of each bodily cell is not philosophically measured the same as such activities as choosing teaching over flirting.
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I think we have to be careful about the language with this issue. A fully enlightened Buddha has a multitude of subconscious activities going on at any given moment. He has subconscious activity stimulating even the emergence of certain conscious thoughts. These activities number among the causes of said conscious thoughts. As has been said, it's just body activity that the mind generally doesn't need to pay any attention to. Indeed, it can't precisely because they lie "below" - or are other than - conscious activity (i.e. there's no such thing as a subconscious "thought").

And there's a difference between the terms subconscious and unconscious (for me anyway). Subconscious refers to those things that the mind really cannot be directly aware of - that happen "below" the level of conscious awareness. Unconscious just refers to those mental activities that are not fully within a person's conscious awareness but of which we may establish awareness when we wake up and grow a brain. Unconscious just means we're not aware of the real nature of what we're doing and thinking. It's spontaneity without an introspective dimension.

Elizabeth,

I'm not sure why you are going down this nit-picky road.

I'm not being nit-picky at all. I think you are in great danger of throwing the baby out with the bath water.

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Dan,

(i.e. there's no such thing as a subconscious "thought").

This is where you and I part company. The only way you could make this true is by defining thought as conscious brain activity. There is very complex processing going on at the subconcious level, most of them learned rational processes, and you are dismissing them by redefining them away.

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Shahrazad wrote:Dan,

(i.e. there's no such thing as a subconscious "thought").

This is where you and I part company. The only way you could make this true is by defining thought as conscious brain activity.

Isn't that how "thought" has always been defined?

There is very complex processing going on at the subconcious level, most of them learned rational processes, and you are dismissing them by redefining them away.

They are not rational processes. They are stored data streams. The coding of a piece of software that can instaneously perform complex procedures is not the same thing as rational thought. It's vital, but it's not the same thing, which is why I said at the outset that the language of this issue is very important.

The only way your position would make sense is if you wanted to say that the causes of a conscious thought are part of that thought - even though we're not aware of them. To me, a conscious thought is, by definition, that which we are consciously aware of. Subconscious processes are not thought, however complex or vital they may be to the existence of thought. The definitional distinction here is: - presenting to the conscious mind. For me, thoughts are only thoughts when they meet that condition.

Dan, you are right in your use of the terms under philosophic definitions (Sher- philosophic definitions are a bit different from mundane definitions, and that is how you don't see what Dan means), and I went along with the misnomer to stay focused on the main point being discussed. I did quickly note how sticky it got when I was flopping around from philosophic to mundane terminology. Thank you for anchoring the terminology.
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Dan,

Would you be bothered then by separating thought into subconcious thought and conscious thought?

I have more to say about this, but have to go now. I'll be back later. You aren't going to win this one that easily.

Edit: to make it clear who I'm addressing.

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Shahrazad wrote:Dan,

Would you be bothered then by separating thought into subconcious thought and conscious thought?

That would bother me, yes, since I've said that there's no such thing as subconscious "thought" - it's essentially a contradiction in terms, or an oxymoron, if you like. It's just another example of modernity attempting to make the irrational seem rational (or "non-rational" if you prefer - since that has no negative connotation). Subconscious processes are vital to normal human functioning. They have sufficient value of themselves without trying to make them what they are not.

I have more to say about this, but have to go now. I'll be back later.

No fair brushing up on your Demasio while you're gone!

You aren't going to win this one that easily.

Yes I am, because your position sucks :)

Dan,

No fair brushing up on your Demasio while you're gone!

No help from Damasio here. I am on my own now, even though Damasio did help me develop my views on subconscious processing.

Running a program, which is just a bunch of coded instructions, may not seem rational. But consider that a programmer wrote this code – I don't see how you can call that an irrational process. We are the programmers of many of our own brain processes. The ones that we were born with, some people call instinct.

Let's work with an example. I have the code in my brain for solving calculus problems – differential equations and integrals. This code did not exist when I was a baby – it was not freeware (or instinct). First I had to learn arithmetic, then algebra, then trigonometry, then analytic geometry, and then I was ready for calculus. Next I learned how to do calculus through a conscious learning process. With many hours of practice, this process was coded (through learning) in my memory as a routine that could be executed subconsciously. After that, conscious thought was not needed to solve the equations any more.

Questions from the example above:

(1) Would you say that this calculus routine is non-rational? If so, why?

(2) Would you want to get rid of it so that you can go back to slow conscious processing?

You seriously underestimate the sophistication of subconscious thought, implying that conscious is always better than subconscious.

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Dan,

Sher: You aren't going to win this one that easily.


Dan: Yes I am, because your position sucks :)

If it's that easy, you should be able to answer in a 2-line post. How come 15 hours have elapsed since my last post and you still haven't given an answer?
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Shahrazad wrote:Dan,

Running a program, which is just a bunch of coded instructions, may not seem rational. But consider that a programmer wrote this code – I don't see how you can call that an irrational process.

I see it that way because "rational" denotes awareness. It doesn't make any real sense to me to employ such a term to processes that can't be irrational (this is why I amended my wording to "non-rational"). If a thing has no capacity to be one side of a certain duality we oughtn't apply the other side to it. The duality just isn't applicable.

We are the programmers of many of our own brain processes. The ones that we were born with, some people call instinct.

I think this is a slightly complicated issue. The subconscious processes that get programmed into the brain as a consequence of actual rational thoughts more or less happen because that's how the brain functions rather than being a deliberate process of construction on our part. Sentience is a form of systems management that occurs naturally. I don't consciously force my learning to make neural pathways in my brain, it just does.

Let's work with an example. I have the code in my brain for solving calculus problems – differential equations and integrals.

You have a embedded system set up via the process of learning, yes.

This code did not exist when I was a baby – it was not freeware (or instinct). First I had to learn arithmetic, then algebra, then trigonometry, then analytic geometry, and then I was ready for calculus. Next I learned how to do calculus through a conscious learning process. With many hours of practice, this process was coded (through learning) in my memory as a routine that could be executed subconsciously. After that, conscious thought was not needed to solve the equations any more.

That's not entirely true, but the gist is ok with me. It takes conscious thought to activate such a process - to "call" it - and conscious thought to be aware of the result and how to utilise it. It also takes conscious thought to deal with problems that are not part of the learned subconscious routines.

Questions from the example above:

(1) Would you say that this calculus routine is non-rational? If so, why?

Because rationality explicitly involves awareness. Such routines are not aware. They just run.

(2) Would you want to get rid of it so that you can go back to slow conscious processing?

Hell no. What sort of idiot would advocate that? It's not possible anyway as that is not how the brain functions.

You seriously underestimate the sophistication of subconscious thought, implying that conscious is always better than subconscious.

No, I'm saying that there's no such thing as subconscious "thought". However, for the sake of clarity and understanding, how about I offer you an entirely different lexicon to make my point and we'll see how you feel about that? Let's change the wording of our positions around a bit: let's say we call your subconscious processes "thought" and we call my conscious processes "awareness". So, that means that thoughts formulate below awareness in the subconscious, but that which occurs within our awareness we can call the conscious.

How does that work for you?

Shahrazad wrote:Dan,

Sher: You aren't going to win this one that easily.

Dan: Yes I am, because your position sucks :)

If it's that easy, you should be able to answer in a 2-line post. How come 15 hours have elapsed since my last post and you still haven't given an answer?

It's called time difference induced sleep.

I couldn't resist the obvious reply to Sher's position:

Since she thinks the subconscious is where rational thought can occur, she necessarily believes that understanding and expression need not require conscious thought. The belief is that thoughts can arrive in their logical finished form, like digested food, without any conscious involvement on anyone's part. Hence her question, "How come 15 hours have elapsed since my last post and you still haven't given an answer?"

This is the essence of the problem. The position seems to be that rational thought is a subconscious thing and what we think of as same is simply our becoming aware of it. Or, at least, that's what I'm getting from it. But how do we differentiate that from the thought processes that obviously take place in our awareness? Do we call that meta-thought or something? Or do we just say there's a difference between subconscious and conscious thought? I personally don't like it because for me a thought is something we're aware of. A "thought" is the subjectively emergent result of processes we do not yet fully understand. More than that, a specific neural pathway is no more a "thought" than another neural pathway is "red".

A thought is a concious thought. A subconcious process is a subconcious process. A subconcious process can provide the spark of a thought, but it is not thought, in a philosophic sense of the term.

A meta thought is thinking aobut thinking. What we are doing right now to make the posts for this thread is meta-thinking.

You know this stuff Dan, do you need to go back to bed for an hour?
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