Showing posts with label Over the End of Tao. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Over the End of Tao. Show all posts

Monday, March 24, 2014

liberTaoTango

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Cementerio Jardín de Paz, Buenos Aires, Capital Federal, Argentina

Thursday, March 13, 2014

meta-Tao gradients

The next metapattern discussed by Tyler Volk and Jeff Bloom are gradients, conceived as continuous variation of variables - both scalar or vectors - opposed to rigid binaries variables "true" or "false":

Background

Gradients refer to continuums and shades of gray rather than rigid binaries of black and white. Both hierarchies and holarchies can be described as clearly defined and fuzzy demarcations along a continuum. Size, color, light, temperature, speed, quantity, amounts, elevations, distances, etc. refer to continuums. Most choices for humans and other animals do not manifest as a clear binary, but as a multiplicity along a continuum with no clear “right” or “wrong.”
Gradient of the 2-d function f(x,y) = xe-x2-y2 is plotted as blue arrows over the pseudocolor plot of the function.

Examples

  • In science: speed; acceleration; temperature gradients; slopes; density; solubility; salinity; statistical degrees of freedom; levels of hurricanes, tornado, earthquakes; etc.
  • In architecture and design: walkway design; handicap ramps; elevators; lighting of spaces; plumbing design; landscape drainage; golf course design; etc.
  • In the arts: use of color, light, and shading; pace of action in dance and drama; curvatures in sculpture; tempo in music; etc.
  • In social sciences: population densities, public opinion, intelligence (whatever it is), economic trends, from traditional to modern allegiances in tribal and cultural groups, intensity of emotions, etc.
  • In other senses: “mixed emotions,” degrees of friendship, “closeness” of families, types of lies, etc.

Metapatterns

The Pattern Underground

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

recursive Tao

M.C. Escher, Reptiles, 1943
M. C. Escher, Drawing Hands, (lithograph, 1948)
Abstract diagram of M. C. Escher's Drawing Hands. On top, a seeming paradox. Below, its resolution.
Douglas Hofstadter
Twelve self-engulfing TV screens. I would have included one more, had 13 not been prime.
Douglas Hofstadter
Sierpinski triangle
Alexandre Duret-Lutz, Recursive Blanket Flower

Monday, March 10, 2014

Tao identity states

Igor Morski
Following the description of the observation of internal states of the consciousness system, Charles T. Tart discusses the description and properties of the self-observation of identity states, created by the sense of identity subsystem of consciousness:

Identity States

Self-observation, observation of others, and psychoanalytic data indicate that various stimuli can produce marked reorganizations of ego functioning very rapidly, even though these all remain within the consensus reality definitions of "normal" consciousness. These identity states are much like d-SoCs and can be studied in the systems approach framework. They are hard to observe in ordinary life because of the ease and rapidity of transition, their emotional charge, and other reasons. The isolation of knowledge and experience in various identity states is responsible for much of the psychopathology of everyday life.

Definition of Identity States

The concept of d-SoCs comes to us in commonsense form, as well as in terms of my initial research interests, from people's experiences of radically altered states of consciousness—states like drunkenness, dreaming, marijuana intoxication, certain meditative states. These represent such radical shifts in the patterning, the system properties of consciousness, that most people experiencing them are forced to notice that the state of their consciousness is quite different, even if they are poor observers. A person need not have developed an Observer in order to notice such a change in his state of consciousness: so many things are so clearly different that the observation is forced on him.
Although this is the origin and the main focus of the concept of d-SoCs, the systems approach is applicable to important variations occurring within the overall pattern we call the ordinary d-SoC, variations that can be termed identity states. My own self-observation and much scattered psychological data, particularly data gathered in the course of psychoanalytic investigations, indicate that as different situations impinge on a person and activate different emotional drives, distinct changes in the organization of his ego can take place. Certain drives become inhibited or activated, and the whole constellation of psychological functioning alters its configuration around them.
The most cogent formulation of these data into a comprehensive picture is that of the Armenian philosopher and spiritual teacher, George Gurdjieff. The following selection from Ouspensky's report of Gurdjieff's early lectures expresses Gurdjieff's idea that we have many "I's," many little egos:


























"One of man's important mistakes," he said, "one which must be remembered, is his illusion in regard to his I."
"Man such as we know him, the 'man machine,' the man who cannot 'do,' and with whom and through whom everything 'happens,' cannot have a permanent and single I. His I changes as quickly as his thoughts, feelings, and moods, and he makes a profound mistake in considering himself always one and the same person; in reality he is always a different person, not the one he was a moment ago. "Man has no permanent and unchangeable I. Every thought, every mood, every desire, every sensation, says 'I.' And in each case it seems to be taken for granted that this I belongs o the Whole, to the whole man, and that a thought, a desire, or an aversion is expressed by this Whole. In actual fact there is no foundation whatever for this assumption. Man's every thought and desire appears and lives quite separately and independently of the Whole. And the Whole never expresses itself, for the simple reason that it exists, as such, only physically as a thing, and in the abstract as a concept. Man has no individual I. But there are, instead, hundreds and thousands of separate small I's, very often entirely unknown to one another, never coming into contact, or, on the contrary, hostile to each other, mutually exclusive and incompatible. Each minute, each moment, man is saying or thinking 'I.' And each time his I is different. Just now it was a thought, now it is a desire, now a sensation, now another thought, and so on, endlessly. Man is a plurality. Man's name is legion."
"The alternation of I's, their continual obvious struggle for supremacy, is controlled by accidental external influences. Warmth, sunshine, fine weather, immediately call up a whole group of I's. Cold, fog, rain, call up another group of I's, other associations, other feelings, other actions. There is nothing in man able to control this change of I's, chiefly because man does not notice, or know of it; he lives always in the last I. Some I's, of course, are stronger than others. But it is not their own conscious strength; they have been created by the strength of accidents or mechanical external stimuli. Education, imitation, reading, the hypnotism of religion, caste, and traditions, or the glamour of new slogans, create very strong I's in man's personality, which dominate whole series of other, weaker, I's. But their strength is the strength of the 'rolls' in the centers. "And all I's making up a man's personality have the same origin as these 'rolls'; they are the results of external influences; and both are set in motion and controlled by fresh external influences."
"Man has no individuality. He has no single, big I. Man is divided into a multiplicity of small I's."
"And each separate small I is able to call itself by the name of the Whole, to act in the name of the Whole, to agree or disagree, to give promises, to make decisions, with which another I or the Whole will have to deal. This explains why people so often make decisions and so seldom carry them out. A man decides to get up early beginning from the following day. One I, or a group of I's, decide this. but getting up is the business of another I who entirely disagrees with the decision and may even know absolutely nothing about it. Of course the man will again go on sleeping in the morning and in the evening he will again decide to get up early. In some cases this may assume very unpleasant consequences for a man. A small accidental I may promise something, not to itself, but to someone else at a certain moment simply out of vanity or for amusement. Then it disappears, but the man, that is, the whole combination of other I's who are quite innocent of this, may have to pay for it all his life. It is the tragedy of the human being that any small I has the right to sign checks and promissory notes and the man, that is, the Whole, has to meet them.
People's whole lives often consist in paying off the promissory notes of small accidental I's."

Gurdjieff's concept of these rapidly alternating I's is similar to the systems approach concept of d-SoCs. If we call each I an identity state, then each (1) has an overall pattern of functioning, a gestalt, which gives it a system identity and distinguishes it from other identity states; (2) is composed of structures/subsystems, psychological functions, skills, memories; (3) possesses unique properties not present in other identity states; (4) presumably has some stabilizing processes, although apparently fewer than the ordinary d-SoC as a whole, since identity states can change so rapidly; (5) functions as a tool for coping with the world, with varying degrees of effectiveness; and (6) requires an induction process to transit from one identity state to another, a requisite stimulus to bring on a new identity state.
These alterations in functioning that I call identity states can thus be usefully studied with the systems approach to consciousness. Yet they are almost never identified as d-SoCs in ordinary people, for several reasons.
First, each person has a large repertoire of these identity states and transits between one and another of them extremely readily, practically instantly. Thus, no obvious lapses or transitional phenomena occur that would make him likely to notice the transitions.
Second, all these identity states share much psychological functioning in common, such as speaking English, responding to the same proper name, wearing the same sets of clothes. These many common properties make differences difficult to notice.
Third, all a person's ordinarily used identity states share in his culturally defined consensus reality. Although certain aspects of reality are emphasized by particular identity states, the culture as a whole implicitly allows a wide variety of identity states in its definitions of "normal" consciousness and consensus reality. Within the cultural consensus reality, for example, there are well-understood concepts, perceptions, and allowed behaviors associated with being angry, being sad, feeling sexual desire, being afraid.
Fourth, a person's identification is ordinarily very high, complete, with each of these identity states. He projects the feeling of "I" onto it (the Sense of Identity subsystem function discussed in Chapter 8). This, coupled with the culturally instilled need to believe that he is a single personality, causes him to gloss over distinctions. Thus he says, "I am angry," "I am sad," rather than, "A state of sadness has organized mental functioning differently from a state of anger." The culture also reinforces a person for behaving as if he were a unity.
Fifth, identity states are driven by needs, fears, attachments, defensive, maneuvers, coping mechanisms, and this highly charged quality of an identity state makes it unlikely that the person involved will be engaged in self-observation.
Sixth, many identity states have, as a central focus, emotional needs and drives that are socially unacceptable or only partially acceptable. Given the fact that people need to feel accepted, an individual may have many important reasons for not noticing that he has discrete identity states. Thus, when he is in a socially "normal" identity state, being a good person, he may be unable to be aware of a different identity state that sometimes occurs in which he hates his best friend. The two states are incompatible, so automatized defense mechanisms (Gurdjieff calls them buffers) prevent him from being aware of the one identity state while in the other. This is, in systems approach terminology, state-specific knowledge. Ordinarily, special psychotherapists techniques are required to make a person aware of these contradictory feelings and identity states within himself. Meditative practices designed to create the Observer also facilitate this sort of knowledge.
The development of an Observer can allow a person considerable access to observing different identity states. An outside observer can often clearly infer different identity states, but a person who has not developed the Observer function well may never notice his many transitions from one identity state to another. Thus ordinary consciousness, or what society values as "normal" consciousness, may actually consist of a large number of d-SoCs, identity states. But the overall similarities between these identity states and the difficulty of observing them, for the reasons discussed above, lead us to think of ordinary consciousness as relatively unitary state.
Gurdjieff sees the rapid, unnoticed transitions between identity states, and their relative isolation from one another, as the major cause of the psychopathology of everyday life. I agree with him, and believe this topic deserves intensive psychological research.

Functions of Identity States

 
An identity state, like a d-SoC, has coping functions. The culture a person is born into actively inhibits some of his human potentials, as well as developing some. Thus, even in the most smoothly functioning cultures, there is bound to be some disharmony, some conflict between a person's emerging and potential self and he demands placed on him to which he must conform in one way or another if he is to survive in that social environment. The psychopathology of everyday life is abundantly obvious and has been amply documented by psychological studies.
At the fringes of consciousness, then, there is a vast unknown, not simply of relatively neutral potentials that never developed, but of emotionally and cognitively frightening things, conflicts that were never resolved, experiences that did not fit consensus reality, feelings that were never expressed, problems that were never faced. Immersion is consensus reality in the ordinary d-SoC is a protection from this potentially frightening and overwhelming unknown; it is the safe, cultivated clearing in the dark, unexplored forest of the mind.
An identity state is a specialized version of the ordinary d-SoC, a structure acceptable to consensus reality (ignoring obviously pathological identity states). The extrainformational "This is me" quality from the Sense of Identity subsystem added to certain contents/structures constellates the energies of consciousness around them and produces an identity, a role that a person partially or completely identified with for the time. The identity "eats energy."
A particular identity state thus acts as loading stabilization for the ordinary d-SoC; it absorbs much available energy that might otherwise activate unknown and perhaps implicitly feared contents that are not acceptable. When you "know" who are, when you take on an identity state, then you immediately have criteria for dealing with various situations. If I am a "father" in this moment I know that certain things are expected and desired of me and I can cope well within that framework with situations involving my children. If the situation changes and I now become a "professor," then I have a new set of rules on how to cope with situations involving people who have identified with the roles of "students."
Some of a person's most important problems arise when his is in an identity state that is not really suited to the situation: my children are unhappy when I am a professor when they want a father, and I am not comfortable when my students want me to be like a father when I think the role of professor is more appropriate.
Being caught in a situation in which one has no ready role to use and identify with is unusual. For most people such situations can be lightly confusing or frightening, since they do not know how to think or act. They can become susceptible to any authority who offers ready-made roles/solutions in such situations. If the country is "going to hell" and nobody seems to have any answer, it may feel much better to be a "patriot" and blame "traitors" than to live with your confusion.
On the other hand, lack of an immediately available role can offer a unique opportunity to temporarily escape from the tyranny of roles.
Once a person has identified with a role, the resulting identity state stabilizes his d-SoC not only through loading stabilization, but through the other three stabilization processes discussed... When he is coping successfully and thus feeling good in a particular identity state, this constitutes positive feedback stabilization; he tends to engage in more thoughts and actions that expand and strengthen the identity state. If the fear of having no identity is strong and/or the rewards from a particular identity state are high, this can hinder escape from that identity state. Consider how many successful businessmen work themselves to death, not knowing how to stop being businessmen for even short periods, or how many men die within a few years of retiring, not having their work identity to sustain them.
Success from being in a particular identity state encourages a person to avoid or suppress thoughts and actions that tends to disrupt that state: this is negative feedback stabilization. A "good soldier" is obtaining valuable information about enemy troop movements—information that may save the lives of his buddies—by torturing a native child: he actively suppresses his own identity state of a "father" is order to function effectively in his "soldier' identity.
Being in a particular identity state also functions as limiting stabilization. The identity leads to selective perception to make perceptions congruent with the reigning identity state. Certain kinds of perceptions that might activate other identity states are repressed. The tortured child is perceived as an "enemy agent," not as a "child." This keeps emotional and attention/awareness energy out of empathic processes that, if activated, would undermine and disrupt the "soldier" identity.
Identity states, then, are both tools for coping with the environment and ways of avoiding the unknown. The degree to which they serve mainly one or the other function probably varies tremendously form individual to individual and identity to identity. Some people are terribly afraid of anything outside the few narrow identities they always function in: by staying in one of the other of those identity states constantly, they never feel the fear of the unknown. Others have less fear of the unknown, but find the rewards from functioning in a few identity states are so high that they have no real need or interest to go outside them. The latter type probably characterizes a stable, well-integrated society, with most citizens quite content in a socially accepted identity states.
For discussion of radically altered discrete states like hypnosis or drunkenness, the concept of the ordinary d-SoC as relatively unitary is useful. As the systems approach becomes more articulated, however, we shall have to deal with these identity states that exist within the boundaries of the ordinary d-SoC and that probably also function within the boundaries of various d-ASCs.
In this book, I continue to use the terms discrete state of consciousness and discrete altered state of consciousness to refer to the rather radical alterations like hypnosis or drunkenness that gave rise to the concept in the first place. I use the phrase identity state to indicate the more subtle division.

who knows where the Tao goes?



Across the evening sky all the birds are leaving
But how can they know it's time for them to go?
Before the winter fire, I will still be dreaming
I have no thought of time

For who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?

Sad deserted shore, your fickle friends are leaving
Ah, but then you know it's time for them to go
But I will still be here, I have no thought of leaving
I do not count the time

For who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?

And I am not alone while my love is near me
I know it will be so until it's time to go
So come the storms of winter and then the birds in spring again
I have no fear of time

For who knows how my love grows?
And who knows where the time goes?

Putney Vale Cemetery and Crematorium, Wimbledon, Greater London, England

Friday, February 28, 2014

a legacy for Tao - VII


Angels Fear Revisited:
Gregory Bateson’s Cybernetic Theory of Mind
Applied to Religion-Science Debates

Mary Catherine Bateson

The Fundamentalist Error Today
It is probably no coincidence that at the same time that these old epistemological debates resurface, we are seeing a renewal of apparently religiously inspired warfare all over the planet, and we are seeing a resurgence of the kind of understanding of faith that was expressed by my fundamentalist student who believed in the literal truth-value of religious texts. We are seeing not only Islamic fundamentalism, not only Christian fundamentalism, but also Jewish fundamentalism, Hindu fundamentalism, and patches of Buddhist fundamentalism (although Buddhism has some built in protections). Fundamentalism is not limited to “religions” however – it arises in Marxism and psychoanalysis, and, most seriously in America today, in free market economic fundamentalism and the strict construction of the Constitution, constitutional fundamentalism.
So a pattern of thinking – this style of taking things literally rather than regarding any text as having multiple levels of meaning with the interpretation changing over time, always depending on the context – is becoming a widespread epidemic. Both Christians and Muslims are increasing in numbers, and in many places, especially Africa, the forms of Christianity and Islam that are spreading are the most literal and the most supernaturally oriented, without the polite reinterpretation of texts as myth or metaphor that is fairly common among believers in the West.
Much of this has developed since Gregory’s death, but I remember arguing with  him in the 1970s that fundamentalism is by definition a modern pathology. Certainly the ancients took the creation story as true. But, without the modern concept of scientific knowledge as a particular kind of knowledge that is established and modified in specific ways, truth had a different, more ambiguous meaning. Fundamentalism attempts to give to non-scientific ways of knowing the status that is given to science, but it omits the openness of science to new evidence that is essential to that status.
Although what is happening in the United States these days looks fairly strange from the vantage point of Europe, what is equally worrying is that so many educated people throughout the industrialized world have simply become deaf to religious language, and have no access to thinking about the meaning of religion in people’s lives and motivations. Fundamentalists think their beliefs are “true” in a simplistic way, while others think they are “false” in a simplistic way. Scientifically educated people have not only ceased to believe particular doctrines but they have lost the capacity to empathize with those who do, transforming methodologies and useful heuristics, like reductionism, into ontologies. We need to be equally on guard against multiple kinds of illiteracy, for aesthetic and spiritual illiteracy may be as dangerous as scientific illiteracy.
Some of the pathologies of contemporary life may be due to the loss of kinds of knowledge that are now unacceptable because of the way they are coded and mixed with muddle-headedness. The rise of fundamentalism in a secularizing world is reminiscent of the Gospel story,

44 Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished.
45 Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation.
(Matthew xii:44–45)

44 Allora dice: Ritornerò nella mia casa donde sono uscito; e giuntovi, la trova vuota, spazzata e adorna.
45 Allora va e prende seco altri sette spiriti peggiori di lui, i quali, entrati, prendon quivi dimora; e l’ultima condizione di cotest’uomo divien peggiore della prima. Così avverrà anche a questa malvagia generazione.
(Matteo, 12:44-45)
where a man is cleansed of an unclean spirit who then comes back with seven others more evil than himself and, finding the man’s soul swept and garnished, moves back in with his companions. Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. I think that the only defense against what I take to be a dangerous and erroneous set of attitudes towards religion is a much more flexible understanding of the possible meanings of faith, as contrasted with belief, in people’s lives, and in the lives of scientists. There is an apparent symmetry of mutual blindness.
There is still however a need for an integrative level of scientific description such as Gregory found in cybernetics. Perhaps our view is necessarily dependent on multiple alternative descriptions – we may even need a little help from some of the nine and sixty tribal ways to understand the world. It has been a mission of anthropology to collect and make available these multiple visions. What we ask of science is first of all, that it always include a degree of tentativeness and openness – and second, not that it be true but that it fit the evidence, which is very different. One could ask the same kind of questions of mythologies of many sorts. Do they fit? Do they offer an interpretative frame for the adaptation of a cluster of human beings in a particular environment?
Much of Gregory’s portion of Angels Fear was written at the Esalen Institute, in California, where Gregory went to live after his cancer, in the year before his death. In one essay written there, titled “Neither Supernatural nor Mechanical”, Gregory says he is horrified both by conventional scientific and technological views of the world and by the supernaturalism of Esalen. “The problem is not, however, entirely symmetrical,” he wrote, “I have, after all, chosen to live at Esalen, in the midst of the counterculture, with its incantations, its astrological searching for truth, its divination … My friends here love me and I love them … The beliefs of the counterculture and of the human potential movement may be superstitious and irrational, but their reason for being … was a good reason. It was to [generate that buffer of diversity that will] protect the human being against obsolescence”. The bracketing of a portion of the previous sentence indicates an insertion that I made in editing, for one of the strangely attractive features of Esalen is the comfort with which a huge miscellany of beliefs manage to co-exist. No zero sum truth there. Gregory feels sure that his counterculture friends are talking nonsense, but perhaps the nonsense is connected to something worth knowing, which might promote a degree of sensitivity or empathy with other organisms and a degree of perception and response to the pattern which connects.


Tao bird


Lincoln Cemetery, Kansas City, Jackson County, Missouri, USA

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

the two Truths of Tao


The search for the Self and Consciousness in the enaction perspective with consciousness and experience worlds without ground analyzed according to the Abhidharma contains within it a radical distinction between the ordinary, experienced and conventional truth and the ultimate truth, like the distinction between the expression of the Tao, the Te or The, and the ultimate  indescribable truth of Tao, a distinction between mundane and transcendental similar in many traditions, like the Ātman/Brahman duality in Hinduism and the Tonal/Nagual in Castaneda's reports:

WORLDS WITHOUT GROUND

The Middle Way

The Two Truths


The Abhidharma analysis of the mind into basic elements and mental factors already contained within it the distinction between two kinds of truth: ultimate truth, which consisted of the basic elements of existence into which experience could be analyzed, and relative or conventional truth, which was our ordinary, compounded (out of basic elements) experience. Nagarjuna invoked this distinction, gave it new meaning, and insisted on its importance.
The teaching of the doctrine by the Buddha is based upon two truths: the truth of worldly convention (samvrti) and the ultimate, supreme truth (paramartha).
Those who do not discern the distinction between these two truths, do not understand the profound nature of the Buddha's teaching.
Relative truth (samvrti, which literally means covered or concealed) is the phenomenal world just as it appears-with chairs, people, species, and the coherence of those through time. Ultimate truth (paramartha) is the emptiness of that very same phenomenal world. The Tibetan term for relative truth, kundzop, captures the relation between the two imagistically; kundzop means aU dressed up, outfitted, or costumed-that is, relative truth is sunyata (absolute truth) costumed in the brilliant colors of the phenomenal world.
By now it should be obvious that the distinction between the two truths, like the analysis of the Abhidharma, was not intended as a metaphysical theory of truth. It is a description of the experience of the practitioner who experiences his mind, its objects, and their relation as codependently originated and thus as empty of any actual, independent, or abiding existence. Like the Abhidharma categories, the description also functions as a recommendation and contemplative aid. This can be seen very clearly in the discourse of Buddhist communities. For example, many of the forms that Westerners take as poetry or irrationality in Zen are actually contemplative exercises directing the mind toward codependent emptiness.
The term for relative truth, samvrti, is also often translated as "convention" (within Buddhism as well as by academic scholars), which gives rise to much interpretative confusion. It is important to understand in what sense convention is meant. "Relative" or "conventional" should not be taken in a superficial sense. Convention does not mean subjective, arbitrary, or unlawful. And relative does not mean culturally relative. The relative phenomenal world was always taken to operate by very clear laws regardless of the conventions of any individual or society, such as the laws of karmic cause and effect.
Furthermore, it is very important to understand that the use of convention here is not an invitation to decenter the self and/or world into language as is so popular at present in the humanities. As the founder of the Gelugpa lineage in Tibetan Buddhism puts it, "... since nominally designated things are artificial, that is, established as existent in conventional terms, there is no referent to which names are attached which (itself) is not established as merely conventionally existent. And since that is not to say that in general there is no phenomenal basis for using names, the statement of the existence of that (conventional referent) and the statement that (all things) are mere nominal designations are not contradictory." Thus in Buddhism one can perfectly well make distinctions in the relative world between true statements and false ones, and it is recommended that one make true ones.
The sense in which the things designated, as well as the designations, are only conventional may be explained by an example: when I call someone John, I have the deep assumption that there is some abiding independent thing that I am designating, but Madhyamika analysis shows there to be no such truly existing thing. John, however, continues to act just the way a perfectly good designatum is supposed to, so in relative or conventional truth he is indeed John. This claim may remind the reader of our discussion of color. Although the experience of color can be shown to have no absolute ground either in the physical world or the visual observer, color is nonetheless a perfectly commensurable designable. Thus such scientific analysis can perfectly well be joined by the far more radical presentation of groundlessness in the Madhyamika.
Because this relative, conventional, codependently originated world is lawful, science is possible-just as possible as daily life. In fact, perfectly functional pragmatic science and engineering are possible even when they are based on theories that make unjustifiable metaphysical assumptions-just as daily life continues coherently even when one believes in the actual reality of oneself. We offer the vision of enactive cognitive science and of evolution as natural drift neither as a claim that this is the only way science can be done nor as a claim that this is the very same thing as Madhyamika. Concepts such as embodiment or structural coupling are concepts and as such are always historical. They do not convey that at this very moment - personally - one has no independently existing mind and no independently existing world.
This is a crucially important point. There is a powerful reason why some Madhyamika schools only refute the arguments of others and refuse to make assertions. Any conceptual position can become a ground (a resting point, a nest), which vitiates the force of the Madhyamika. In particular, the view of cognition as embodied action (enaction), although it stresses the interdependence of mind and world, tends to treat the relationship between those (the interaction, the action, the enaction) as though it had some form of independent actual existence. As one's mind grasps the concept of enaction as something real and solid, it automatically generates a sense of the other two terms of the argument, the subject and object of the embodied action. (As we shall discuss, this is why pragmatism is also not the same as thing as the middle way of Madhyamika.) We would be doing ii great disservice to everyone concerned - mindfulness/awareness practitioners, scientists, scholars, and any other interested persons - were we to lead anyone to believe that making assertions about enactive cognitive science was the same thing as allowing one's mind to be experientially processed by the Madhyamika dialectic, particularly when this is combined with mindfulness/awareness training. But just as the Madhyamika dialectic, a provisional and conventional activity of the relative world, points beyond itself, so we might hope that our concept of enaction could, at least for some cognitive scientists and perhaps even for the more general milieu of scientific thought, point beyond itself to a truer understanding of groundlessness.

Tao from the sky

This view of the twilight sky and Martian horizon taken by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover includes Earth as the brightest point of light in the night sky at a distance of 160 million kilometers.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/TAMU

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/

Friday, February 14, 2014

meta-Tao rigidity and flexibility

Jos Leys, Kaleido 4D
The next metapattern discussed by Tyler Volk and Jeff Bloom is the binary complementarity of rigidity/flexibility, in time, space and relationship:
Alexandre Arrechea, No Limit

Background

Rigidity and flexibility can be binaries of space, time, and relationship. Rigidity implies strength and impenetrability, while flexibility implies adaptability and change. In a spatial sense, a tube, sphere, sheet, border, or layer can be rigid or flexible. Boundaries of time can be rigid sequences of steps or stages or can delimit actions and activities. Binary relationships can be rigidly established or provide for flexibility. Both flexibility and rigidity can serve to protect.

Examples

  • In science: Adaptation, acclimatization, organism tolerance to environmental change and variation, cell walls vs. cell membranes, "class of atoms that are inert", etc.
  • In architecture and design: flexibility in skyscrapers, rigid vs. flexible interior designs, car crumple zones and uni-body construction, springs, etc.
  • In the arts: rigid and flexible representations in dance and theater, malleable vs. static sculpture, etc.
  • In social sciences: rules, mores, cultural borders, national borders, social layering, personality typologies, institutional and organization, etc.
  • In other senses: athletic protective wear, yoga, martial arts, “letter of the law” vs. “spirit of the law”, rigid vs. flexible writing styles, flexible scheduling, open-mindedness vs. close-mindedness and dogma, etc.

Metapatterns

The Pattern Underground

continuum Tao

Zentralfriedhof, Wien

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

observation of internal Taos

Vladimir Kush, Earth Well
After the description of the subsystems of the consciousness system, Charles T. Tart continues with the discussion about self-observation of its own consciousness internal states, a topic which  deeply involves the concept of "observer":

Observation of Internal States

Observation of internal events is often unreliable and difficult. Focusing on external behavior or physiological changes in useful, but experiential data are primary in d-SoCs. We must develop a more precise language for communicating about such data.
Observing oneself means that the overall system must observe itself. Thus, in the conservative view of the mind self-observation is inherently limited, for the part cannot comprehend the whole and the characteristics of the parts affect their observation. In the radical view, however, in which awareness is partially or wholly independent of brain structure, the possibility exists of an Observer much more independent of the structure.
Introspection, the observation of one's own mental processes, and the subsequent communication of these observations to others have long been major problems in psychology. To build a general scientific understanding requires starting from a general agreement on what are the facts, what are the basic observations across individuals on which the science can be founded. Individuals have published interesting and often beautiful accounts of their own mental processes in the physiological literature, but analysis of these accounts demonstrates little agreement among them and little agreement among the analyzers that the accounts are precise descriptions of observable mental processes. Striving for precise understanding is an important goal of science.
One reaction to this has been behaviorism, which ignores mental processes and declares that external behavior, which can be observed more easily and reliably, is the subject matter of psychology. Many psychologists still accept the behavioristic position and define psychology as the study of behavior rather than the study of the mind. That way is certainly easier. One hundred percent agreement among observers is possible, at least for simple behaviors. For example, in testing for susceptibility to hypnosis with the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale, the examiner suggests to the subject that his arm is feeling heavier and heavier and will drop because of the increased weight. The hypnotists and observers present can easily agree on whether the subject's arm moves down at least twelve inches within thirty seconds after the end of the suggestion.
Behaviorism is an extremely valuable tool for studying simple behaviors, determining what affects them, and learning how to control them. But it has not been able to deal well with complex and important human experiences, such as happiness, love, religious feelings, purposes. The behavioristic approach is of particularly limited value in dealing with d-ASCs because almost all the interesting and important d-ASC phenomena are completely internal. A behavioristic approach to the study of a major psychedelic drug like LSD, for example, would lead to the conclusion that LSD is a sedative or tranquilizer, since the behavior frequently produced is sitting still and doing nothing!
If we are to understand d-SoCs, introspection must become an important technique in psychology in spite of the difficulties of its application. I have primarily used peoples' reports of their internal experiences in developing the systems approach, even though these reports are undoubtedly affected by a variety of biases, limitations, and inadequacies, for such reports are the most relevant data for studying d-SoCs.
I believe psychology's historical rejection of introspection was premature: in the search for general laws of the mind, too much was attempted too soon. Mental phenomena are the most complex phenomena of all. The physical sciences, by comparison, deal with easy subject matter. We can be encouraged by the fact that many spiritual psychologies have developed elaborate vocabularies for describing internal experiences. I do not understand these psychologies well enough to evaluate the validity of these vocabularies, but it is encouraging that others, working over long periods, have at least developed such vocabularies. The English language is well suited for making reliable discriminations among everyday external objects, but it is not a good language for precise work with physical reality. The physical sciences have developed specialized mathematical languages for such work that are esoteric indeed to the man in the street. Sanskrit, on the other hand, has many presumably precise words for internal events and states that do not translate well into English. There are over twenty words in Sanskrit, for example, which carry different shades of meaning in the original. Development of a more precise vocabulary is essential to progress in understanding consciousness and d-SoCs. If you say you feel "vibrations" in a d-ASC, what precisely do you mean?


In science the word observation usually refers to scrutiny of the external environment, and the observer is taken for granted. If the observer is recognized as possessing inherent characteristics that limit his adequacy to observe, these specific characteristics are compensated for, as by instrumentally aiding the senses or adding some constant to the observation; again the observer is taken for granted. In dealing with the microworld, the particle level in physics, the observer cannot be taken for granted, for the process of observation alters the phenomena being observed. Similarly, when experiential data are used to understand states of consciousness, the observation process cannot be taken for granted.
For the system to observe itself, attention/awareness must activate structures that are capable of observing processes going on in other structures. Two ways of doing this seem possible, which we shall discuss as pure cases, even though they may actually be mixed. The first way is to see the system breaking down into two semi-independent systems, one of which constitutes the observer and the other the system to be observed. I notice, for example, that I am rubbing my left foot as I write and that this action seems irrelevant to the points I want to make. A moment ago I was absorbed in the thinking involved in the writing and in rubbing my foot, but some part of me then stepped back for a moment, under the impetus to find an example to illustrate the current point, and noticed that I was rubbing my foot. The "I" who observed that I was rubbing my foot is my ordinary self, my personality, my ordinary d-SoC. The major part of my system held together, but temporarily singled out a small, connected part of itself to be observed. Since I am still my ordinary self, all my characteristics enter into the observation. There is no objectivity to my own observation of myself. My ordinary self, for example, is always concerned with whether what I am doing is useful toward attaining my short-term and long-term goals; thus the judgment was automatically made that the rubbing of the foot was a useless waste of energy. Having immediately classified foot-rubbing as useless, I had no further interesting in observing it more clearly, seeing what it was like. The observation is mixed with evaluation; most ordinary observation is of this nature.
By contrast, many meditative disciplines take the view that attention/awareness can achieve a high degree or even complete independence from the structures that constitute a person's ordinary d-SoC and personality, that a person possesses (or can develop) an Observer that is highly objective with respect to the ordinary personality because it is an Observer that is essentially pure attention/awareness, that has no judgmental characteristics of its own. If the Observer had been active, I might have observed that I was rubbing my foot, but there would have been no structure immediately activated that passed judgment on this action. Judgment, after all, means relatively permanent characteristics coded in structure to make comparisons against. The Observer would simply have noted whatever was happening without judging it.
The existence of the Observer or Witness is a reality to many people, especially those who have attempted to develop such an Observer by practicing meditative disciplines, and I shall treat it as an experiential reality.
The question of its ultimate reality is difficult. If one starts from the conservative view of the mind, where awareness is no more than a product of the nervous system and brain, the degree of independence or objectivity of the Observer can only be relative. The Observer may be a semi-independent system with fewer characteristics than the overall system of consciousness as a whole, but it is dependent on the operation of neurologically based structures and so is ultimately limited and shaped by them; it is also programmed to some extent in the enculturation process. Hilgard has found the concept of such a partially dissociated Observer useful in understanding hypnotic analgesia.
In the radical view of the mind, awareness is (or can become) different from the brain and nervous system. Here partial to total independence of, and objectivity with respect to, the mind/brain can be attained by the Observer. The ultimate degree of this objectivity then depends on whether awareness per se, whatever its ultimate nature is, has properties that limit it.
It is not always easy to make this clear distinction between the observer and the Observer. Many times, for example, when I am attempting to function as a Observer, I Observe myself doing certain things, but this Observation immediately activates some aspect of the structure of my ordinary personality, which then acts as an observer connected with various value judgment that are immediately activated. I pass from the function of Observing from outside the system to observing from inside the system, from what feels like relatively objective Observation to judgmental observation by my conscience or superego.
Some meditative disciplines, as in the vipassana meditation discussed earlier, strive to enable their practitioners to maintain the Observer for long periods, possibly permanently. The matter becomes rather complex, however, because a major job for the Observer is to Observe the actions of the observer: having Observed yourself doing some action, you then Observe your conscience become activated, rather than becoming completely caught up in the conscience observation and losing the Observer function. Such self-observation provides much data for understanding the structure of one's own consciousness.

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

trip the Tao



What a day
I can barely keep my eyes wide open
I don't wanna see straight
What a day
Feels like my breath is heavy again
And I'm totally faded
Come to me
Come to me
I am waiting for you
Come to me
I can't wait
Follow me, follow me
As I trip the darkness
One more time
Follow me, follow me
I awake from madness
Just in time
What a day
Seconds, minutes and hours spill over
There's no time here in space
What a day
I see beauty in everything
But the world is still fading away
What a day
I can barely keep my eyes wide open
I don't wanna see straight
What a day
Seconds, minutes and hours spill over
There's no time here in space
Come to me come to me
Come to me come to me
Come to me come to me
I am waiting for you

http://www.lacunacoil.it/

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Tao Paradoxico-Philosophicus 11-13



    Un dieu donne le feu     
     Pour faire l'enfer;      
      Un diable, le miel     
       Pour faire le ciel.  
   



TRACTATUS PARADOXICO-PHILOSOPHICUS

11 Complex: consider paradoxical observers interacting with self-organizing, unpredictable, paradoxical, non-trivial environments that include the observers, thus eluding trivialization.
11.01 Interaction: any limit between the “distinguished” and its “background” vanishes for one or more of these observers interacting with themselves or socially.
11.1 Simple: consider logical observers distinguishing non-self-organizing, predictable, logical, trivial environments that exclude the observers, thus embracing trivialization.
11.11 Distinction: a clear limit between the “distinguished” and its “background”s in social intercourse.
11.2 Observers cannot trivialize organizationally closed unities.
11.21 Any attempt to trivialize them will either fail or destroy (loss of organizational closure) the organizationally closed unities (also a failure).
11.3 Observers cannot trivialize a complex environment without destruction.



12 Mind: consider the activity of the nervous system that encompasses thinking, perceiving, emotions and feelings.
12.1 Consider emotions and feelings as the paradoxical activities of closed organizations (that cross and include the sensory and effector surfaces) inside and outside the nervous system of a paradoxical observer.
12.11 Therefore, emotions and feelings thoroughly escape the logical observer since the logical observer contemplates only inside or outside the nervous system.
12.2 Just as in the network of oscillators discussed in the Introduction, where external stimuli may drastically reduce the possibilities (number of choices available), so may suitable stimuli applied to the nervous system stunt, in different degrees, its potential for emotional, physical and intellectual expressions.
12.21 The resulting damage, temporary or permanent, often not obvious and sometimes desirable as in a hierarchical environment, where moderate or no thinking at all constitutes a requisite for membership.



13 Language-games: imagine predictable and unpredictable games that observers play, logically, inside or outside and, paradoxically, inside and outside their nervous systems, thus defining their forms of life.
13.1 Meaning: consider the uses that observers give to words in language-games.
13.11 If the language-games change or vanish, so do the meanings of words used by observers.
13.2 Language: consider the language-games trivialized (made predictable) by logical observers, where the meanings of words soon evaporate.
13.3 Explanation: consider the attempts to trivialize a language, e.g., using it only to follow rules while striving for a “logically perfect language”.
13.4 Communication: consider any attempt to use a trivialized language among observers.
13.5 Thinking: consider the activities involving the nervous system of a paradoxical observer, including emotions and feelings, and thus offering new language-games to the observer.
13.6 Conversation: consider the activities involving the thinking of one or more paradoxical observers, thus offering new language-games to these and other observers.

Tractatus Paradoxico-Philosophicus

A Philosophical Approach to Education
Un Acercamiento Filosófico a la Educación
Une Approche Philosophique à l'Education
Eine Philosophische Annäherung an Bildung

Ricardo B. Uribe

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Tao Paradoxico-Philosophicus 9-10