Wednesday, August 5, 2020

"Mindscape" it's a psychological thing.

I need to correct some unfortunate misunderstanding regarding my use of the term "Mindscape" and why it matters.  This is a continuation of the discussion at Center for Inquiry's forum and I appreciate the opportunity to reconsider and restate something that's important to me.

Lausten:  August 4, 2020 at 4:19 pm - at CFI

Not too clear to me either Tim. I see “opposed to” and take it as something separate from, something “not”. 

I agree there is a lot we don’t know, and you could say that is conceptual or theoretical, or I would say that, but anyway, but I don’t really draw a line at “human desires”. 

Human desires arise from the physical, so there is no separation. 

It’s almost like CC thinks you are making a case that human thoughts cause things to occur in the physical world. I think you would say that but only in the most circular way, that is, thoughts are created by physical particles interacting, and physical particles act on each other.

Or am I getting too far out there?

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Okay please give me the benefit of the doubt, lets backtrack on all this and start at home base again.

Forget about the organism of our brain and our little gray cells and all the marvelous things they do that (together with the environment it’s dealing with) produces the mind, thought, consciousness, sentience, memory, mindscape. 

First step,

It’s about me and the way I look at the world.  There’s my body and then there’s that “sense of self” that is constantly thinking and talking, ‘me’ – where does it reside?  All my learning happens through it, heck seems like all I am radiates out from there.  And all the world must enter through my senses and get translated into something my “sense of self” can do something with.

My “sense of self” (mindscape) reinhabits my body when I wake in the morning.  I then through my body proceed to deal with all the environmental requirements of my day to days.  Where do I get my sense of self from?  First I think of my sight that takes in the world and my other senses smell, taste, sound, touch filtering the world that arrives in my consciousness.

I’m told all is determinist, yet every moment is a dance of survival, every action has consequences and every moment demands that decisions be made – I make decisions, I proceed and live with their cascading consequences, (including a job well done and pay check earned, or not, and all the rest, consequences good, bad, indifferent, and the entire spectrum in between.) - On one level each moment is determined, but moments can be weighted, I imagine, I have 'will' but it only goes so far.  

So that is me, myself and I.  Seems to me, I’m like everyone else who has a "sense of self" out there.  The mindscape isn’t about anything in the brain, it’s about our sense of self, the world we exist within and the filters through which everyone of us views the unique world around us.  The personality, the id, the archetypes, and all that fancy jazz others have written about, with our individual experiences piled on.

Physical Reality is the world we exist within, that we are embedded within, yes “Mindscape” exists within that world of Physical Reality, it's certainly not a metaphysical space.  If anything, it's a reflection.

How’s this sound: 

“Mindscape" is our psychological reflection of reality against the retina of our brains. 

The profundity is recognizing that our individual sense of self, is something totally unique, and, and, and, while not separate from reality, still . . . . . . .  

On the outside looking in.

The human brain/body is incapable of perceiving “physical reality” directly, all get’s filtered through who we are and how we sense and think about the world – the world that’s constantly changing.  

For me the Mindscape is simply the sum total of all my awarenesses.  Everyone else that I know has their own world view, with their own history of information absorption depending on the opportunities (environment~organism) life provided them.  Their own Mindscape.  

Human history has been a history of recording the deeds of others, remembering, utilizing information to build bigger and better.  That intellectual heritage I would refer to as our collective mindscape. 

Is any of that making any sense?

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