Sorry examiner, your quotation is cropped and does not convey the meaning it had:
So he replied in the best way, while from your incomplete quote it seems that “he never replied”, which is not true.
Sorry examiner, your quotation is cropped and does not convey the meaning it had:
So he replied in the best way, while from your incomplete quote it seems that “he never replied”, which is not true.
But we are mostly unaware of ourselves . We are mostly busy with some project.
Right. The ‘awareness’ is as James pointed out, not valued, the “project” takes our attention.
Yes, we are so quick in reacting but so slow in being aware.
I don’t know if this can be interesting or of any value to you, but due to my job, I “worked” for years with body awareness, or more precisely, sensor-motory awareness. You can’t imagine what came out!
People can do the most absurd things while thinking to do or move in a certain way. So one main factor was evident: the moment one think to be aware, one is not!
Expectations come from anger and frustration. The fact is that we are angry people. One can deal with the fact of anger but one can not deal with any idea of what should be . So when you say that he should have answered the question instead of going off into some other topic there’s nothing we can do about it.
Sorry Examiner,
but you have completely misunderstood my sentence, perhaps I din’t express myself clearly?
I was talking with Erik about two different approaches to find the solution to a problem. One approach, the most common, is to look for the solution within the context of the question. For instance one has to find out the causes of some historical event: the solution is searched for in the field of history, consulting historians, etc. the other approach is to look for the solution outside the context of the question, i.e. one may investigate the causes of an historical event consulting biologists, geologists or meteorologists, which apparently have nothing to do with history but actually can solve the problem which was due to biological factiors, etc.
So I took K as an example of the second approach to answer a question. He rarely answered to a question sticking to what the questioner had in mind (which was too narrow), but he broadened the search to include more holistic and crucial factors.
I hope it’s clear now.
Thanks for clarification. It is easy to misunderstand … you were saying something else. I will try to read more carefully and try not to pick on one sentence
Dear James, I completely agree. It is all about awareness and only awareness. But we might be aware for the split of the second, and many people are, and immediately whatever happened there is taken over by thinking and made into memories. That is a fact, that happens. We all might have had those experiences and still we share conclusions here in the forum. And as you very well worked out this conclusions or ideas are only thinking. There is no awareness in them. So what meaning than has an experience, e.g. something Voyager has shared, if it is just the past and in the now we share conclusions in which we do not meet? And as you said too it is the now in which life takes place.
It is absolutely fascinating. Too me too. Thinking cannot never catch up with awareness. It is always a step too late. But it immediately takes over and as you said before if thinking dominates there is not awareness. There is just the past. So to be aware means to leave thinking behind, leave the past behind to which we cling. To leav K and his words behind to which we cling, because in the now they do not matter. Then it is only awareness that matters and once we are aware there is no which to be aware. We even are not asking about it because we are it, we are aware. I would not call it a cathing up of awareness with itself because that implies a separation. It is just awareness. Awareness of what is, of life of which we are a part. It is a sensitivity, a vulnerability for what is. As long as we ask about it, thinking is operating.
Yes. I think I am open to this. I occasionally have the sense that everything - living and even non-living - is somehow part of the field of awareness. One has a sense of this especially when in nature of course.
I was sitting outside recently looking up at the sky and began watching an aeroplane pass overhead in the distance - it must have been several miles away. And I began to be aware of the depth perception - the spatial distance - between myself and the aeroplane. It’s quite interesting when this happens - as I’m sure other people would agree. And I had the sense that the distance between myself and the plane (i.e. the spatial depth) and the awareness itself of the space, was a unitary phenomenon.
This isn’t proof of course that physical space and our awareness of space are the same thing - I don’t know how one could prove such a thing! - but it is interesting.
Yes, I see your point. Hopefully Inquiry will find time to respond to this and say of it makes sense to him or not.
We all have a tendency to get stuck in different habits of communication, so our relationship with each other (here on the forum, for instance) is an opportunity to look at these relational habits again - as though for the first time - to see if they have outlived their usefulness or not.
Interesting. It probably revealed the extent to which there is a kind of separation (or even divorce!) between our conscious ‘self’ (our thinking, our goals, mental habits, our ideas about ourselves, etc) and the body’s own intelligence. When we live for decades in such a state of separation (between our minds and our bodies) it must lead to all kinds of weird psycho-physical kinks and oddities!
This is a sense I’d say of what attention is: the sense of the body and the world being one. Living with that reality, it is understandable how one could say what is seemingly impossible: “I don’t mind what happens.”
Yes. With regards to a present perception, our thinking (labelling, judging, etc) is only ever an echo of it that comes afterwards.
But it’s interesting to me that the reverse is also true: our thinking is also happening before we become aware of it!
Sometimes it’s just going on, like a tap leaking; and we suddenly become aware of it (as we would a leaking tap).
I don’t think this is a paradox - we are simply talking about two different aspects of what goes on when we are aware (the former in relation to present perceptions, the latter in relation to the content of our minds in a given moment).
Yes. I think this is the main thing.
Quite so. For instance I have observed that this separation is greater in people who are highly educated and do intellectual kinds of jobs, while people who have to use their body for earning a living have a more body awareness. But of course there are exceptions.
Thought can actually work quite ‘brilliantly’ without awareness (being aware of itself?). What is the difference then between ‘unaware’ thinking and AI? Is thought’s awareness of its movement the factor that can keep it on the ‘right’ track? The right track being the understanding that there is no ‘thinker’
Yes. Strangely enough, this reminds me of a passage in Tolstoy’s War and Peace (maybe you have read it or seen a television adaptation?) where Prince Andrei lies wounded and almost dying following a bloody battle, and notices for the first time in his life the infinitude and majesty of the sky and the clouds. Even when his hero Napoleon happens to walk near him, he remains amazed by the magnificence of the sky, in relation to which everything else is small and trivial!
Prince Andrei Bolkónski lay bleeding profusely and unconsciously uttering a gentle, piteous, and childlike moan.
Toward evening he ceased moaning and became quite still. He did not know how long his unconsciousness lasted. Suddenly he again felt that he was alive and suffering from a burning, lacerating pain in his head.
“Where is it, that lofty sky that I did not know till now, but saw today?” was his first thought. “And I did not know this suffering either,” he thought. “Yes, I did not know anything, anything at all till now. But where am I?”
He listened and heard the sound of approaching horses, and voices speaking French. He opened his eyes. Above him again was the same lofty sky with clouds that had risen and were floating still higher, and between them gleamed blue infinity. He did not turn his head and did not see those who, judging by the sound of hoofs and voices, had ridden up and stopped near him.
It was Napoleon accompanied by two aides-de-camp. Bonaparte riding over the battlefield had given final orders to strengthen the batteries firing at the Augesd Dam and was looking at the killed and wounded left on the field.
“Fine men!” remarked Napoleon, looking at a dead Russian grenadier, who, with his face buried in the ground and a blackened nape, lay on his stomach with an already stiffened arm flung wide.
And, having gone on a few steps, he stopped before Prince Andrei, who lay on his back with the flagstaff that had been dropped beside him.
“That’s a fine death!” said Napoleon as he gazed at Bolkónski.
Prince Andrei understood that this was said of him and that it was Napoleon who said it. He heard the speaker addressed as Sire. But he heard the words as he might have heard the buzzing of a fly. Not only did they not interest him, but he took no notice of them and at once forgot them. His head was burning, he felt himself bleeding to death, and he saw above him the remote, lofty, and everlasting sky. He knew it was Napoleon—his hero—but at that moment Napoleon seemed to him such a small, insignificant creature compared with what was passing now between himself and that lofty infinite sky with the clouds flying over it.
Of-course this would be desirable… I know I’m biased against Inquiry but I gave him several times, in the past and yesterday too, the chance to change “these relational habits” accepting the discussion with him in a more decent and friendly way. Unfortunately he tried his best to reinforce my bias
The problem, which makes impossible to estabilish that more desirable way of relating, is that almost all the replies of Inquiry show an evident bad faith. I’m ready to reconsider this point if he will accept to talk about it.
I also think it is not a paradox. I see it though a little bit different. But maybe you would agree with it. Our conditiong is the creation of the self which means that we constantly think about ourselves, consciously and unconsciously. Once the self is created we have to think because the self is all about thinking and in it we seek security. So this process is always active, dominating our being, even if we have moments of awareness, which we all have. But immediately thinking takes over because the conditioning is so strong. Then, at least for me, it is logically that when we become aware of thinking it is already there, because that process is all the time active in the sense that it wants to take over every moment. Awareness breaks this stream for a moment. But this break will only have an impact if we really see what thinking and with it the self is. If we see what thinking is, this stream of thinking, really see it, we cannot fall into its trap again. But if we see it, we cannot identify anymore with anything. What do you think?
Probably just a matter of mechanics. As far as I understand it, AI - which is basically computational intelligence - works by detecting associations and patterns that it has been “told” (by a human programmer) to look for.
Human “intelligence” (by which I mean the traditional IQ kind of intelligence which relies on computational efficiency and memory) also looks for patterns based on what we have been told by others, through our knowledge.
Computers of course can accomplish this kind of task much more efficiently than human brains can - which is why they are so good at facial recognition, solving maths problems, etc.
Sentience or awareness, on the other hand, gives human beings two capabilities that are off-limits (at least for now!) to the machines: the capacity to feel pleasure and pain (as well as joy, love and beauty); and the capacity to be aware of what it is experiencing. These two capacities really stem essentially from the same capacity for awareness, and are not reducible to mere computation.