The Semiotic Nature of the Brain

a reply to: Astrocyte



So how do you think you would react to, from one day to the next. Going from the life you have to the life of say a professional member of Organized Crime?

In other words a real person like that and of course a person involved in something like that despite race, creed or color.

a reply to: Kashai

So how do you think you would react to, from one day to the next. Going from the life you have to the life of say a professional member of Organized Crime?

I'm not sure what you're asking here.

You know, when it comes to the "Godhead", I wonder whether dark-matter might be implicated here.

The general point, I think, is that there is a "top" (Godhead) and a bottom (quark-gluons) to the human structure. If a person touches the top, yet has evolved-in-a-context where his neural structure embodied negative relational meanings, the result will a dualistic metaphysics that, despite calling itself "non-dual", sort of relativizes the significance and meaning of the things around us. I think the whole negative response that has emerged in humans - to no fault of their own (this is an context induced process after all) - is because of an ignorance of what the body is. The belief that a "physical world" exists against and apart from a spiritual world, I think, may be the core and crux of the problem.

No. Both "worlds" are dynamical one. The levitation that occurs, for instance, during a state of intense nonduality, can be and should be explained according to what is known about the material universe, as well as whatever/wherever this Godhead influence "emanates" from.

The future of science should be interesting - so long as the apes in power don't complete destroy the one world we have.

a reply to: Astrocyte

Hypothetically speaking tomorrow you wake up and you are the most powerful "Crime Lord" in the Continent you reside in.

How would you manage your responses to problems in relation to your temperament?

a reply to: Astrocyte

'day Astrocyte,

I have very little understanding of what you write about i.e. the astral realm.

Same here with the science jargon, but I can follow enough to say what you describe as in many ways being correct. I can observe it.

But there is a major twist here: if everything is ideational, why is everything so ordered, so consistent, so banal? Because all things evolve through habit (CS Peirce). Habit is how all things work. Habit is nature, and it the nature of reality to repeat structure-itself in the same old ways we normally experience it.

Yep, I can quite agree that we are products of our experience, habits, traumas, etc..

After all we all start of as little blank critters soaking up everything around us from the moment we can sense it.

I've followed your recent threads, and observing"cause and effect" says to me that what your writing is correct. I say that because by looking at how a person is imprinted by trauma has given me an insight that I can work with and hopefully make progress.

Life as a human being in this world of experience as science studies it (psychology is another matter) has a profound effect on who we are afterwards. The impact of living is huge. That's from observation. My best guess is that 99+% of a human being after a full life should be credited to the time on earth.

So really, I hope you get an idea that I appreciate what you write about Astrocyte. It gives me insights into why humans are what they are, in life and death.

On science figuring what we are after death, well I bet they do. It's a lot simpler then the religious, occult and spiritual texts portray. It's also a lot more complex in places then it needs to be. Peoplein both worlds love making simple things convoluted and un-undeerstandable, but that is just human nature at work I spose.

Keep writing Astro

a reply to: jclmavg

I dunno why no one helps from "upstairs", they are a complicated bunch.

I have a few opinions of why, just my thoughts mind.

All the teachings say "stay away", "aim for the highest", "transcend to a higher plane", "it's all illusion" and my favourite; "Forbidden!".

Perhaps they are too scared to?

Perhaps there are secrets they don't want known (plenty of dirty laundry in the lower realms (grin))?

But my favourite opinion is this: Spirituality would probably become redundant if people knew about the afterlife.

a reply to: Kashai

That is a meaningless situation. You watch too much sci-fi if you think that is a meaningful thing to say.

You develop in contexts. If I were to wake up as someone else, I would BE THEM. I cannot have my brain-mind in their brain-mind, because we have DIFFEENT architectures.

At birth, the human brain has an excess number of neurons, so what happens when the process of life begins is the "initial programming". Culling and shaping into particular structures makes your brain and my brain fundamentally different, ergo, I could never become you and you could never become me without my brain replacing yours and vice-versa.

I know, at a coarse level, human brains seem to look the same, but they aren't. Structural analyses using fMRI PET and EEG show differential structuring in each brain: just as peoples faces are different, so too are their brains.

Was this the situation in ancient times? Since brains are sculptures of interactional dynamics, people who live in a relaxed, easy going, loving, and caring environment will probably have similar brains i.e. similar structuring dynamics. But if you set people in all sorts of different living contexts, their brains will be different because their experiences are different. The level of uncertainty will be high, and so the person will come to perpetually experience themselves in a state of alertness vis-à-vis their environments. This is because expectation for what the other - usually a stranger - will act, is unknown; and in being unknown, the amygdala will take pride-of-place in determining how the human responds.

Now, from the vantage point of our brains, it may seem ugly and evil that humans living in the same context come to think and feel in the same ways. You may think individuality would be completely lost, and, in being selves with egos, we understandably fear such a situation. I fear it when I think about that - what symmetry theory, affective neuroscience, interpersonal neurobiology, enactive cognitive science, relational psychoanalysis and ecological anthropology show is that human beings probably felt and thought in very different ways from todays humans; indeed, they probably thought very little about themselves, and constantly about the others they lived with. Keeping time, etc, would have been pointless, because no one would have felt the need to even consider the value of it. People would have been highly aware of themselves, and so, mindful as to how the other felt, and so, what they would perceive if they acted in such and such a way.

My thinking is this: don't think from your present vantage point if there is damage that cannot be removed. Trust that future incarnations will be far less fearful, more joyful, and ever so sweet.

Thus, live in the now, hold yourself, take care of yourself, because you need to know yourself if your going feel happy and normal. Primarily, being with others, and getting the point that were in-it-together i.e. deep, like family - thinking this way is simply pleasurable. Its even nicer to know that science says just this.

a reply to: Astrocyte


So if it is as you see it is, impossible for you to engage in such a role. Then why are you assuming that you can relate what it is like to be such a person?

The hypothetical was not about you becoming another person but rather you overnight becoming such a person.

No other experience's, knowledge or advice and if you mess up

a reply to: Whatsthisthen

Forgive me, but from my vantage point, as a human being who identifies as the person he grew up as, even if I am consciously accepting of "worlds above me", this sounds so weird.

Do you still, in a sense, identify as the person you grew up as? Your parents? Friends? This kind of speech, understandably, is "very high" - strange, unnerving, yet interesting.

I don't know what the hope of "organized innocence" (William Blakes fanciful term) is about, but it probably aint gonna happen. What's far more likely, in my opinion, is a complete devastation of civilization, and if any humans survive, an evolutionary movement back to those normal symmetry-dynamics.

Its a shame, as I find the prospect of exploring space so interesting - and this requires continued technological progress. Of course, "inner-space" still exists, but there's no reason why it should render irrelevant exploration of outer space. The universe is wide in more than one domain.

a reply to: Kashai

Then why are you assuming that you can relate what it is like to be such a person?

If you want a more nuanced understanding of what references I'm working with, read Origin of Mind.

Symmetry theory is essentially reality. So what's symmetry in humans? Self-other correlations in relation, or in simpler terms, following the golden rule: do not act towards others in ways you wouldn't want others to act towards you. That's a neurologically embodied fact: mirror neurons coordinate how it is we cognize through mapping how others in our environments are acting. Since this is fundamentally an "object-relational" process, by simply looking at others in action, our brains facilitate the emergence of a mental event.

Thus, if I know a persons history, know what happened to them, I am quite able to imagine, and so empathize, with how they've been forced to live. This is a simple fact - we are predictable creatures, and to say I can't have an accurate sense of how something effected you is simply delusional; of course we can sense one another's meanings. At the level of consciousness, its completely demonstratable that self-awareness allows us to understand others better.

But what I'm really trying to help you appreciate, is that the mind sciences produce regular phenomena: its called systems theory, and, for instance, in human beings, attachment theory (a field of developmental psychology) has discovered four basic "attractors" for how humans develop: secure, insecure ambivalent, insecure avoidant, or disorganized. People in the latter group have been heavily traumatized, and so develop very dissociative mental structures i.e. they do not relate to one another (or consciousness has blocked access when one state conflicts with another). People who are avoidant have detached parents who aren't very emotionally invested in the child; ergo, the child develops in the same way, having its brain structured to filter out their own interoceptive (visceral feelings) and so, a sense of profound enlivenment. Such people grew to become that way because people in their environment showed them. Insecure ambivalent, a category I myself grew within, is when you have a borderline personality parent, or a parent with anxiety disorders, i.e. people preoccupied with their own feelings and so never paying attention to the way they form their own child's mind. Again - ambivalent parents (or preoccupied parents) give rise to ambivalent children an preoccupied adults.

I know you're trying to characterize me as lacking compassion, but its not that. You aren't comfortable with what I'm writing - it bothers you - so your nitpicking on what I'm writing. Not cool

a reply to: Astrocyte



Ok so why interject the issue of Mexican Drug Overlords as an example of what is wrong with the world?


I mean if you want to bring up drugs? Then I think what is wrong with the world in that regard.....

Is that in relation to every race creed an color there are people selling drugs.

There are people just like you selling drugs and that is how people like you gain access to drugs.

Its not a matter of compassion upon your part that I would imply as a personal attack.

Its a behavior common to the like minded or those in Mutual Admiration that pertains to a tendency to blame those outside such a group for any problems.

Any thoughts?

a reply to: Astrocyte


As far as predictability in humans????

Have you ever heard of the Stanford Prison Experiment?

www.prisonexp.org...

To what extent does the normal range of predictability in behavior relate to survival under life and death conditions?

a reply to: Kashai

I'm not sure what you're trying to prove here.

Yes, I'm aware of this experiment, and it goes to prove my point: context changes peoples behavior. Give people certain amounts of power over other people (a context) and some people, given their histories, are very liable to get carried away with it i.e. become abusive.

a reply to: Astrocyte


www.youtube.com...


People who are 9 years old get involved because.....


You really have no idea.

Apparently, I do not.

a reply to: Astrocyte



Have to be up early tomorrow so let me wish a good night and to be clear I enjoyed the conversation.

Have a good night.

a reply to: Astrocyte

Forgive me, but from my vantage point, as a human being who identifies as the person he grew up as, even if I am consciously accepting of "worlds above me", this sounds so weird

(Grin) I bet it does. . . .

Do you still, in a sense, identify as the person you grew up as? Your parents? Friends? This kind of speech, understandably, is "very high" - strange, unnerving, yet interesting.

Yeah, still the the same ol' me. A lot wiser and in my opinion anyway, far more down to earth then when younger. Although I am probably the only one who thinks that

I don't know what the hope of "organized innocence" (William Blakes fanciful term) is about, but it probably aint gonna happen. What's far more likely, in my opinion, is a complete devastation of civilization, and if any humans survive, an evolutionary movement back to those normal symmetry-dynamics.

If your refering to the sentiment expressed below:

An individual would start out their life in naive innocence. As they lived, they would assimilate experience in order to experience the opposites of life. The result would be Organized Innocence. Organized Innocence transcended naive innocence or experience on their own, and it occurred when an individual experienced the contraries of life and was able to recreate the semblance of innocence while tempering it with the wisdom of experience.

Source: GGCA English

I have not read Blake before but I think it is a wonderful sentiment/concept which I feel fits humanity so very well.

Though there are horrors out there that the innocent should never face. Humanity as a whole and individuals for that matter, need a seasoned vanguard to take those horrors head on to absorb the impact and protect the innocent. We have that in the parents who protect children. In society it still needs work and a lot of improvement.

Which brings me to something very important. A certain young lady desires for me to pass on her heartfelt thanks to you Astrocyte.

With help of friends, we freed her today from her traumas. It has been nearly ten years of searching for an answer for me. I know what to do now in that other world.

So my heartfelt thanks to you too Astrocyte.

Anyway, have faith in humanity. The stars may not be as far away as one might think

And the other inner worlds? Well, I reckon that, like death and taxes, finding out about those worlds is something everyone will do. Best done after we explore this material world of wonders.

Have faith in humanity

a reply to: Astrocyte

You know, matter is what we mean by the physical world, but if, as astrophysicists say, most of the known universe is dark matter/energy, there is plenty of space for mind to be found.

Maybe, but you'll probably cop a lot of flak from the experts for using the terms "dark matter" and "mind" in the same sentence

But untill someone actual finds out for themselves we won't know for sure what something is. Good observation gives answers and "nope, not it" tells us we can cross a suspect of the list.

I'm going to get in trouble for saying this, however I will.

"The world we live in;
our family and society,
our joys and sorrows,
our failures and success,
This world really is our Maker."

a reply to: GBP/JPY

'day GPB/JPY

No, now that's quite it.....

The brain can be gone almost and still have an above average high school student....as in the ninety....

The brain forms daily and does it differently when thinking on Scriptural readings. That's actually science, as seen on a thread here at ATS

Your quite right there GBP/JPY. There is also more at work then just a brain. How much more I don't know. But I have neglected the physical aspect of a person by assuming that after death the physical body no longer is a consideration in healing.

The physical may be gone but the legacy of life remains in a big way. I could only see the emotions we call trauma and it's debilitating effects. I didn't realise the events were still there and it was the events I had to deal with.

When I have done this a hundred times, I'll know more.

originally posted by: Astrocyte
a reply to: Whatsthisthen

Right now, the emerging idea in the sciences is that the whole matter-mental distinction is wrong, and that we better think of everything as semiotic i.e. as ideational - or mental;

This has been stated by various philosophers for centuries, if not longer. Looks like your science is a little slow on the uptake, as always.