Welcome to FUN with YOUR EYEBALLS!
Where we will have FUN…

with YOUR EYEBALLS…

All eyeballs are welcome, including singles and alternative.

Introduction

This thread was created as a side tangent to other threads where the 3-floor scheme was discussed. It focuses on issues of perception mainly, but zags around too.

The silly terminology is used throughout. This probably isn’t a primer. It is where I will post short pieces on perception and invite any comment or criticism it may inspire to be posted here. A glossery is attempted on page two.

The first episode takes up from another thread where burt has mentioned Mr. Devlin’s multi-level scheme and I start by stacking my multi-level scheme next to it. burt plays Devlin’s advocate…

mr. burt:
The mathematician Keith Devlin wrote a book called The Math Gene.  In it, he developed a four level scale of this sort of cognitive projective ability. 

I love messing with other people’s level schemes!

The first level was being able to anticipate immediate actions, as in a cat chasing a mouse, needing to project where the mouse will be a second in the future.

 
The first floor, is where Mr. Hippo can perceive now and next.
The mouse chase is a good example. Mouse tracking is primarily a sub-cinema first floor visual ability.

The second level was the ability to imagine items when they are out of sight, as in a chimp knowing that there is a banana in a basket because he saw it put there.

The second floor, where Mr. Now can also retain last and perceive it with now and next. Visually, Mr. Now takes in the whole cinematic presentation (but very briefly waits for it) and can perceive things in its field of view that require one or two steps of intelligence to identify. These things are beyond Mr. Hippo’s perception but Mr. Now can direct Hippo’s attention toward something until Hippo’s abilities can resume command.

In the third we are able to abstract qualities from things and carry out combinatorial play with the qualities. 

Still the second floor in the vast ocean of nyeep-land. Even abstractly, we’re still talking about perceiving things. The role of visualization is obvious but lots of nyeeps aren’t visions and weren’t formed from visual (or any other) input. They aren’t physical impulses or chemical reactions, they are thoughts. Or, they were… when you thought them. Now they are thought memories. They are hard to picture. That’s the point. They aren’t pictures. They are non-sensual nyeeps.

Non-sensual (or abstract) nyeeps are of the same substance and file-type as visual nyeeps or any other kind of nyeep. More to the point, they all pass through the same machinery. All of our talents for dazzling, intellectual abstract nyeep processing are based on our sensual (primarily visual) perceptual abilities. They are our perceptual abilities running a different kind of file. We might think of a visual memory as a full blown cinema file but there are sub-cinema visual memories and memories that have no sensual tag of any kind.

In short, all our abilities to be intelligent about ideas are exactly the same as our abilities to be intelligent about what we’re looking at, or listening to, or etc. It is the same machinery at work.

Then we hit the Primate Chunk Limit. Three nyeeps, maybe four. On the second floor, you can be brilliant but only in three beats.

the fourth level is the ability to manipulate totally abstract symbolic representations. 

Manipulate? There’s a dodgy word. How about sequence? That’s Mr. Flashlight’s job on the third floor where his elevated view of the passing nyeep parade below has a temporal limitation but an interesting way around it.

Picture Mr. Flashlight on a bridge over a flowing river of thoughts. He is standing in the middle and against the side rail facing out where he can see the flow of nyeeps emerge from under the bridge. He cannot look behind him, so he doesn’t see the nyeep flow approach the bridge or where it comes from. Nor can Mr. Flashlight look down or back and see the bridge itself though he knows it must be there. He thinks the bridge is really narrow… no wider than himself. He’s sure that the nyeeps pass under the bridge in no time at all. What he doesn’t know is that the bridge under him is really wide and the closer he peers at the nyeep-flow, the wider the bridge becomes. Until it takes nearly ¾ of a second for a nyeep to pass under it.

Mr. Flashlight is also convinced that Right Now, as in, the actual moment of reality around him, is directly below where he is peering, but it is not. Real Right Now is at the entry of the bridge.

If this were the entirety of Mr. Flashlight’s situation, he would have no role whatsoever in our lives.
He would watch the passing thoughts and perceptions of Mr. Now and the ongoing impulses and sub-perceptions of Mr. Hippo helplessly if not for one amazing talent. He has a net on a long pole. He can scoop up nyeeps with it as they pass below and hold them (they’re just little things). He can keep scooping them up until he is holding five, six, even a dozen of them. And then, after he raises them all together way up high where all of nyeep-land can see them together, he hollers, “Next!”

That is how human’s beat the Primate Chunk Limit and we do it while standing on the Benjamin Libet Bridge.

Language only comes in at the third level.  But, for a non-linguistic action we go down levels. 

What are you calling language? What is your Linguistic Threshold?

Mr. Hippo can understand a couple of words in a row. Mr. Now can do four or five beats like a slogan on a sign or a near-sentence. Is that language?
Mr. Flashlight can talk like burt and Ecurb. That’s real linguinerility!

Wouldn’t it be ironic if the Linguistic Threshold and the Primate Chunk Limit were exactly the same?

Think of a baseball player, for example, running to catch a fly ball.  Stopping to think or put words on it is a sure way to insure it won’t be caught.

Oh what a give away… burt hits a high fly to center… an easy catch.
“Stopping” exactly….. what?

While burt strokes his eyelids, let’s have FUN with YOUR EYEBALLS:
Who is steering my eyeballs?

This one should only take a second. Look up at your surroundings. Spot and identify the three brightest objects in your field of view. Well done, give Mr. Hippo a Milkbone.

Now, find two objects in your field of view that are very different in size but, from your angle of perspective, are the same in height. Then say hello to Mr. Now.

Lastly,
Read this sentence all the way through from its beginning and keep reading it through the whole stretch of its middle (Hi There, Mr. Flashlight!) and finally, without interruption or exhaustion, to its final completion.

END of Part ONE.

More REAL FUN with YOUR EYEBALLS

In Part TWO, when typing resumes.

Nhoj Morley - 09 June 2011 06:27 PM

Picture Mr. Flashlight on a bridge over a flowing river of thoughts. He is standing in the middle and against the side rail facing out where he can see the flow of nyeeps emerge from under the bridge. He cannot look behind him, so he doesn’t see the nyeep flow approach the bridge or where it comes from. Nor can Mr. Flashlight look down or back and see the bridge itself though he knows it must be there. He thinks the bridge is really narrow… no wider than himself. He’s sure that the nyeeps pass under the bridge in no time at all. What he doesn’t know is that the bridge under him is really wide and the closer he peers at the nyeep-flow, the wider the bridge becomes. Until it takes nearly ¾ of a second for a nyeep to pass under it.

Mr. Flashlight is also convinced that Right Now, as in, the actual moment of reality around him, is directly below where he is peering, but it is not. Real Right Now is at the entry of the bridge.

If this were the entirety of Mr. Flashlight’s situation, he would have no role whatsoever in our lives.
He would watch the passing thoughts and perceptions of Mr. Now and the ongoing impulses and sub-perceptions of Mr. Hippo helplessly if not for one amazing talent. He has a net on a long pole. He can scoop up nyeeps with it as they pass below and hold them (they’re just little things). He can keep scooping them up until he is holding five, six, even a dozen of them. And then, after he raises them all together way up high where all of nyeep-land can see them together, he hollers, “Next!”

That is how human’s beat the Primate Chunk Limit and we do it while standing on the Benjamin Libet Bridge.

Phenomenal. What’s the old video game where all the rectangles/shapes are falling and you have to put them in the right column?  Tetris? Mr. Flashlight is juggling whatever balls are thrown his way (who’s throwing them?) and turning them into something that makes rhythmic sense. Trying to make sense of events. Trying to make a story out of random rectangles of reality. Seeking coherence. Why do we seek coherence? What orchestra do we think we are conducting? Everyone is writing their own novel, their own symphony.

Nhoj Morley - 09 June 2011 06:27 PM

Think of a baseball player, for example, running to catch a fly ball.  Stopping to think or put words on it is a sure way to insure it won’t be caught.

Oh what a give away… burt hits a high fly to center… an easy catch.
“Stopping” exactly….. what?

If there is thought, it slows the action.  The guy doesn’t think something like “catch the ball” while he is running to catch it, he keeps his mind on the driving, his hands on the wheel, and his snoopy eyes on the road ahead and simply catches it, turns and throws out the runner heading for home. 

Nhoj Morley - 09 June 2011 06:27 PM

While burt strokes his eyelids, let’s have FUN with YOUR EYEBALLS:
Who is steering my eyeballs?

Many years ago I became conscious of external and conditioned influences that exerted a control on my eye muscles.  The external influences were breasts, which drew my eyes like magnets.  The conditioned influences were resistances to gazing at a woman’s tits (since I’d been taught it was naughty and impolite) which manifested as stresses in my eye muscles when they tended (as they often did) to wander.  By engaging in a variety of eye-rolling exercises I relaxed those conditioned and habituated responses.

Nhoj Morley - 09 June 2011 06:27 PM

the fourth level is the ability to manipulate totally abstract symbolic representations. 

Manipulate? There’s a dodgy word. How about sequence? That’s Mr. Flashlight’s job on the third floor where his elevated view of the passing nyeep parade below has a temporal limitation but an interesting way around it.

Sequencing only comes after the manipulation.  Devlin was taking this level as the level of abstract math and language, without any definite sensory content.  Lots of manipulation goes on before things get set down in a linear form.

Nhoj Morley - 09 June 2011 06:27 PM

Think of a baseball player, for example, running to catch a fly ball.  Stopping to think or put words on it is a sure way to insure it won’t be caught.

This points up the difference between practice mode and performance mode. While we practice the things that are too difficult to be able to do reliably without prior practice, we talk to ourselves and others about what to be careful about. What do I need to be alert to? It’s like you’ve got Steve Langford in your pocket drilling you about the details, many of which you can do nothing about. Then the pre-season games arrive (or, dress rehearsal if you’re a stage performer), and you need to quickly wean yourself off these discussions, if you haven’t already done so. If you fail to stop, you will surely fail somewhere else.

burt - 09 June 2011 11:05 PM

Many years ago I became conscious of external and conditioned influences that exerted a control on my eye muscles.  The external influences were breasts, which drew my eyes like magnets.  The conditioned influences were resistances to gazing at a woman’s tits (since I’d been taught it was naughty and impolite) which manifested as stresses in my eye muscles when they tended (as they often did) to wander.  By engaging in a variety of eye-rolling exercises I relaxed those conditioned and habituated responses.

That sounds like proof of free will, Burt.

nonverbal - 10 June 2011 05:01 AM

Nhoj Morley - 09 June 2011 06:27 PM

Think of a baseball player, for example, running to catch a fly ball.  Stopping to think or put words on it is a sure way to insure it won’t be caught.

This points up the difference between practice mode and performance mode. While we practice the things that are too difficult to be able to do reliably without prior practice, we talk to ourselves and others about what to be careful about. What do I need to be alert to? It’s like you’ve got Steve Langford in your pocket drilling you about the details, many of which you can do nothing about. Then the pre-season games arrive (or, dress rehearsal if you’re a stage performer), and you need to quickly wean yourself off these discussions, if you haven’t already done so. If you fail to stop, you will surely fail somewhere else.

burt - 09 June 2011 11:05 PM

Many years ago I became conscious of external and conditioned influences that exerted a control on my eye muscles.  The external influences were breasts, which drew my eyes like magnets.  The conditioned influences were resistances to gazing at a woman’s tits (since I’d been taught it was naughty and impolite) which manifested as stresses in my eye muscles when they tended (as they often did) to wander.  By engaging in a variety of eye-rolling exercises I relaxed those conditioned and habituated responses.

That sounds like proof of free will, Burt.

When we become conscious of the conditioning impact of external or internal events there is the possibility of avoiding being conditioned by them.  The Stoics were total materialists believing that even the soul was material, receiving material impacts from sensations.  The only freedom was to “grant or withhold assent” to the impact.  So the trick for them was to only accept the influence of impacts that would provide true knowledge and assist them in the cultivation of virtue (these were called phantasia kataleptike, or catalyptic impressions).  So, free will for them only meant the ability, if developed through right living and various exercises, to avoid error by recognizing which impressions to grant assent to, and choosing to act ethically on the basis of those impressions.

Once again, mr. burt has used his extensive collection of mammary memories to divert attention from the real issue.
Because the point is that, like a nice pair of whammy smackers, you must look downward to see abstract reasoning. Mr. Devlin will find neither if he stares upward looking for some imaginary level four. As with the hooty magnets, the magic number is two.

But really, boys… is it the orbs themselves, or the cleavage between them?
And that’s a fine place for the FUN to start. Which came first… two of them, or two EYEBALLS?

This will involve yanking Mr. Hippo’s chain by confusing Mr. Now. You won’t even need Mr. Flashlight for this. Mine set it up already. Besides, Flashlights doesn’t care about such things.

Boys, with this next-nyeep cue, I call up… your entire mammary imagery visual-nyeep folder! I know… you’re going to need a dolly.

Let’s quickly divide it into two categories: Singles and Doubles. As in, how many are in the picture? Next, put the Singles file away because Hippo is already prepared for them. Now, take all the doubles and bisect them. Shuffle the results around, and then reassemble them randomly. After a thorough review, were they, as you would expect, 50% as effective? Or was it more like 33%? 

This may only prove that bilateralism is sexy. But is it why we have two EYEBALLS?

Plants don’t have eyes. And they’re not bilateral. All us animals are bilateral in one dimension. That is the main way you can tell us apart. Imagine if all plants were bilateral in one dimension. For some, that might be kind of sexy…  to us animals, at least, but only because we have eyes.

Imagine a world where women are not bilateral. No cleavage.

I gave up trying to open Skippy’s picture in Photoshop. Not monkey flippers, but a functional equivalent. I intended to insert an object… excuse me, overlay a foreground image that bisected the poor waif. (…a copy of TML).
The first impulse would be in your neck, to look around the book. Then, have another peek at Skippy’s thread with one EYEBALL covered, and then again with the other covered.

I think you will agree, two eyeballs is not the point. Double-eyeballedness is a mere side effect of bilateralism itself.

Lastly, why aren’t we bilateral in two dimensions… like our EYEBALLS?

Nhoj Morley - 10 June 2011 09:44 AM

Once again, mr. burt has used his extensive collection of mammary memories to divert attention from the real issue.
Because the point is that, like a nice pair of whammy smackers, you must look downward to see abstract reasoning. Mr. Devlin will find neither if he stares upward looking for some imaginary level four. As with the hooty magnets, the magic number is two.

Obviously Nhoj is not a mathematician.  Level 4 is the ability (arising very recently in human evolution) to divorce thought from sensation, to “withdraw the mind from the senses” as it were, and contemplate abstract entities such as infinite sets.  To operate without relying on sensory imagery.  In Nhoj’s house, it might be thought of as a small closet at the end of a corridor on the third floor.  (Is that what Jesus meant when he said go into your closet to pray?)  Many people don’t even know the closet is there, even though brilliant translucent light leaks out from under the door. 

Nhoj Morley - 10 June 2011 09:44 AM

This may only prove that bilateralism is sexy. But is it why we have two EYEBALLS?

Plants don’t have eyes. And they’re not bilateral. All us animals are bilateral in one dimension. That is the main way you can tell us apart. Imagine if all plants were bilateral in one dimension. For some, that might be kind of sexy…  to us animals, at least, but only because we have eyes.

I think you will agree, two eyeballs is not the point. Double-eyeballedness is a mere side effect of bilateralism itself.

Lastly, why aren’t we bilateral in two dimensions… like our EYEBALLS?

Well, with two eyeballs we get binocular vision which allows us to see in three dimensions, a very useful thing indeed.  And gravity breaks the up/down symmetry, although we might have evolved eyes in the back of our head.  Guess it was evolutionarily easier for us to just turn around.  “Turn, turn, turn” like the Byrds in the Sky.

Frequently asked EYEBALL questions:

Burt:
If there is thought, it slows the action.  The guy doesn’t think something like “catch the ball” while he is running to catch it, he keeps his mind on the driving, his hands on the wheel, and his snoopy eyes on the road ahead and simply catches it, turns and throws out the runner heading for home.

As a science guy, I’m sure you know that the speed of the action does not change. The speed at which Mr. Ballplayer can respond and coordinate his actions depends on whether he is the guy on the bridge, or is actually in the nyeep pool himself. And yes, at Two Golden Beats, “catch the ball” will be internally shouted at Mr. Hippo who would otherwise just stand there. Nature and evolution has given him no reason to go chase a fucking ball.

If Mr. Ballplayer decided to create a narration about catching the ball, he would have to stop directly experiencing the nyeep flow and become the guy on the bridge watching the nyeep flow. If he tries to steer his eyeballs from the bridge, he will be ½ second uncoordinated.

Obviously Nhoj is not a mathematician.  Level 4 is the ability (arising very recently in human evolution) to divorce thought from sensation, to “withdraw the mind from the senses” as it were, and contemplate abstract entities such as infinite sets.  To operate without relying on sensory imagery.  In Nhoj’s house, it might be thought of as a small closet at the end of a corridor on the third floor.  (Is that what Jesus meant when he said go into your closet to pray?)  Many people don’t even know the closet is there, even though brilliant translucent light leaks out from under the door.

This suggests a further question to add the one about a linguistic threshold. What’s the mathematician threshold?
How many non-sensory metaphors must one be able to juggle to qualify?

Why isn’t the second floor and its non-sensual nyeeps a good enough explanation for you and Mr. Devlin? Under the next-nyeep steering of the third floor, the nyeep-pool is stirred and blended far beyond any sense-based input by entirely internal processes. The third floor is the recent arrival, and has magnified the talents of second. That’s where all the light is coming from.

Why do you want it to be more than that? Does it need to be?
To think that eyeball perception led to the perception of things you can’t see with your eyeballs is already pretty cool.

Sequencing only comes after the manipulation.  Devlin was taking this level as the level of abstract math and language, without any definite sensory content.  Lots of manipulation goes on before things get set down in a linear form.

I think Devlin is looking at this two-manipulation process: Nyeeps get sequenced, which makes new nyeeps in the pool, which are processed fast and invisibly on the second floor and then flow under the bridge, where Mr. Flashlight makes new sequences, which make new nyeeps, and on and on until something magnificent is created (or in the case of math, re-created). All this can be done with EYEBALLS closed and corks in your ears.

Far back in their internal two-stroke manipulation, all the nyeeps were probably once sensory data.

Then, Mr. Balvernon says:

When we become conscious of the conditioning impact of external or internal events there is the possibility of avoiding being conditioned by them.  The Stoics were total materialists believing that even the soul was material, receiving material impacts from sensations.  The only freedom was to “grant or withhold assent” to the impact.  So the trick for them was to only accept the influence of impacts that would provide true knowledge and assist them in the cultivation of virtue (these were called phantasia kataleptike, or catalyptic impressions).  So, free will for them only meant the ability, if developed through right living and various exercises, to avoid error by recognizing which impressions to grant assent to, and choosing to act ethically on the basis of those impressions.

Doesn’t this sound like the guy on the bridge?
Why have a discipline unless you thought it would lead to something? Why would you think it might unless that discipline came in the form of a narrative, or katalewhatitz?

How would know how disciplined you were unless you kept a narrative of your disciplinative development?

Look how far we have come on the subject of EYEBALLS…

A thorough and exhaustive examination of cleavage has revealed that bilateralism probably preceded and provided an adaptive opportunity for stereoscopic sight.

We have read in unsolicited testimonials of how Misters Hippo, Now and Flashlight often fight over who gets to DRIVE THE EYEBALLS.

And now, EYELIDS! Who’s are they and exactly what are they for?
It is shocking how little we think about something we spend so much time looking at. Have you noticed how, if you slow down a film of someone’s face, they are constantly peeking at their eyelids? Is it curiosity? Are they worried about them? Or are our EYELIDS more pleasing to look at then the real world?

Actually, that distracting twitching is a squeegee action that not only keeps your EYEBALLS squeaky clean, but also maintains an optically pure thickness of EYEBALL FLUID and helps regulate EYEBALL TEMPERATURE. This is merely a façade. It has more functions than you can poke a stick at.

Protecting you from poking sticks isn’t one of them. Your EYELIDS helplessly wrinkle as your face muscles bunch up around your EYE SOCKET. And if they really were an EYEBALL curtain for sleepytime, wouldn’t they be a better one?

EYELIDS have been co-opted into our repertoire of facial expression and facial recognition and have become communication devices. Buster Keaton made whole films with only his EYELIDS.

We would not be posting today if not the role EYELIDS play in abstract reasoning.
If you are in a reasonably well-lit room, try this…

Shut your eyes (after you read this) and look around. Is anything getting through your lids? Don’t look for a picture.
Are we sure there aren’t some basic sub-cinema visual signals coming in? Can Mr. Hippo slightly see with lids closed? All these “lids” do is block Mr. Now’s cinematic view on the second floor. Why would we want to do that?

Without visual input, our visual processing centers would start processing non-visual input. Previous visions, in the form of visual nyeeps, would start to process into less and less strictly visual information and become information about what was seen. Eventually, the nyeep flow cycle would create nyeeps so divorced from their original sensual origins that they could only be called, “abstract”.

If there are any mathematicians out there, they should thank their EYELIDS.

Nhoj Morley - 11 June 2011 07:30 AM

Frequently asked EYEBALL questions:

Burt:
If there is thought, it slows the action.  The guy doesn’t think something like “catch the ball” while he is running to catch it, he keeps his mind on the driving, his hands on the wheel, and his snoopy eyes on the road ahead and simply catches it, turns and throws out the runner heading for home.

As a science guy, I’m sure you know that the speed of the action does not change. The speed at which Mr. Ballplayer can respond and coordinate his actions depends on whether he is the guy on the bridge, or is actually in the nyeep pool himself. And yes, at Two Golden Beats, “catch the ball” will be internally shouted at Mr. Hippo who would otherwise just stand there. Nature and evolution has given him no reason to go chase a fucking ball.

If Mr. Ballplayer decided to create a narration about catching the ball, he would have to stop directly experiencing the nyeep flow and become the guy on the bridge watching the nyeep flow. If he tries to steer his eyeballs from the bridge, he will be ½ second uncoordinated.

Don’t agree about the internal shout of “catch the ball.”  It isn’t necessary, there are already conditioned automatic response patterns.  More like: “Crack!” ball arches into air, run and catch, bounce off wall, all as seamless action.  All stimulus and response, automated.  After all, we’re talking expert performance here.  The immediate situation evokes an immediate reaction.  The algorithm for catching the ball is trivial: if I recall correctly, something like run so that the angle the ball makes with your line of sight remains constant.

Nhoj Morley - 11 June 2011 07:30 AM

Obviously Nhoj is not a mathematician.  Level 4 is the ability (arising very recently in human evolution) to divorce thought from sensation, to “withdraw the mind from the senses” as it were, and contemplate abstract entities such as infinite sets.  To operate without relying on sensory imagery.  In Nhoj’s house, it might be thought of as a small closet at the end of a corridor on the third floor.  (Is that what Jesus meant when he said go into your closet to pray?)  Many people don’t even know the closet is there, even though brilliant translucent light leaks out from under the door.

This suggests a further question to add the one about a linguistic threshold. What’s the mathematician threshold?
How many non-sensory metaphors must one be able to juggle to qualify?

Why isn’t the second floor and its non-sensual nyeeps a good enough explanation for you and Mr. Devlin? Under the next-nyeep steering of the third floor, the nyeep-pool is stirred and blended far beyond any sense-based input by entirely internal processes. The third floor is the recent arrival, and has magnified the talents of second. That’s where all the light is coming from.

I am coming to think that the 3 and the 4 are orthogonal, the latter referring to developed capacities for operating abstract thought and the former referring to sitting on a bridge fishing for nutrition.  That, of course, brings up the question of what sort of rod and reel are used, fly fishing or trying to spear fish, nets or no, and so on.  Also, what one is drinking or smoking while sitting on the bridge.  Or perhaps one is in a perfect Zen state of no fish-no pole-no goal (and, on the internet, of course, no troll).  Devlin described his subjective experience of doing math as something like moving into a mental house and rearranging the furniture until it became comfortable and familiar, then simply living in it.  That’s not my experience, which is more like juggling possibilities until a pattern pops out, then having to get into the nitty gritty of how to give a linear description of the pattern with the tools available, which are usually found inadequate or in need of repair. 

To sidetrack, here’s a quote from another of Devlin’s books (Goodbye, Descartes): “Along with a significant and steadily growing number of individuals in the traditional sciences and mathematics, I have gradually come to realize that, tradition aside, in trying to develop an understanding of mind and language, we have probably come up against the limits of the traditional framework.  I don’t think this necessarily means that there cannot be sciences of the mind and language, nor does it mean that there will be no role in such sciences for mathematical and other traditional scientific methods.  But it does mean that the new sciences will almost certainly have a different look and feel to them.”

burt - 10 June 2011 08:15 AM

When we become conscious of the conditioning impact of external or internal events there is the possibility of avoiding being conditioned by them.  The Stoics were total materialists believing that even the soul was material, receiving material impacts from sensations.  The only freedom was to “grant or withhold assent” to the impact.  So the trick for them was to only accept the influence of impacts that would provide true knowledge and assist them in the cultivation of virtue (these were called phantasia kataleptike, or catalyptic impressions).  So, free will for them only meant the ability, if developed through right living and various exercises, to avoid error by recognizing which impressions to grant assent to, and choosing to act ethically on the basis of those impressions.

This all sounds to me like a classical case of “free won’t” - even though you responded to nonverbal stating that your “eye magnets” explication of breasts was “a proof of free will.” It stands to reason that the eyes’ attraction to the mammaries is a primitive, sensorial expression, not something that the normal sense of “will” attaches to. But your indication that through intention and concentrated effort the eyes can be drawn or forced off the breasts shows very clearly the force of the won’t in action.

Bob and Burt—you guys are too smart. I was only making a little (very little) joke, as I thought I was implying that Burt had sinned. I guess you had to be there . . . in Sister Angelica’s 3rd-grade classroom. (Yes, sexual temptation was already on her agenda, believe it or not.)

can zen - 11 June 2011 02:22 PM

burt - 10 June 2011 08:15 AM

When we become conscious of the conditioning impact of external or internal events there is the possibility of avoiding being conditioned by them.  The Stoics were total materialists believing that even the soul was material, receiving material impacts from sensations.  The only freedom was to “grant or withhold assent” to the impact.  So the trick for them was to only accept the influence of impacts that would provide true knowledge and assist them in the cultivation of virtue (these were called phantasia kataleptike, or catalyptic impressions).  So, free will for them only meant the ability, if developed through right living and various exercises, to avoid error by recognizing which impressions to grant assent to, and choosing to act ethically on the basis of those impressions.

This all sounds to me like a classical case of “free won’t” - even though you responded to nonverbal stating that your “eye magnets” explication of breasts was “a proof of free will.” It stands to reason that the eyes’ attraction to the mammaries is a primitive, sensorial expression, not something that the normal sense of “will” attaches to. But your indication that through intention and concentrated effort the eyes can be drawn or forced off the breasts shows very clearly the force of the won’t in action.

You misread a bit, it was nonverbal who suggested that this was a proof of free will.  And it wasn’t through intention and effort that my eyes were forced away from breasts, that was childhood and teen conditioning from parents and elders which manifest as resistance to looking at said items of desire in my eye muscles.  That was the conditioning that was dissolved through intention and effort.  Now I can look all I want, but can also not look as occasions require.  So yes, free won’t.

nonverbal - 11 June 2011 05:51 PM

Bob and Burt—you guys are too smart. I was only making a little (very little) joke, as I thought I was implying that Burt had sinned. I guess you had to be there . . . in Sister Angelica’s 3rd-grade classroom. (Yes, sexual temptation was already on her agenda, believe it or not.)

I started deconditioning while failing university freshman French.  The TA was a hot French babe who wore low cut blouses with no bra, and often bent over.  I dreamed of conjugating those luscious globes rather than verbs, although a number of verbs came to mind as I ogled.

So, what happened in Chicago? Did you all have fun with your EYEBALLS or other parts?

This episode of FwYE comes from Mr. Skin’s thread in the Atheism forum. No need to derail that thread.

Mr. Skin:
… would you agree reasoning is dependent upon reason itself being a genuine insight into realities beyond our own eyeballs and hence beyond our own minds?

I don’t think that is a reasonable presumption. We are too helpless to be presuming that our reasoning is “reason itself”.

If we are as reasonable as we can be about something, can we be sure that is totally reasonable? Could we be more reasonable? How could we reasonably know if we were?

“...a genuine insight into realities beyond our own eyeballs” is commonly called “seeing”. It is not easy to “see” it that way because our vision is so compelling. But there is no vision “out there”. Cones of photons are streaming into your EYEBALLS, lids willing, and then everything else that happens inside your head is a result of being reasonable. Our apparent experience of a single cinematic view is an illusion that our survival depends on. Some visual cues can be seen and reacted to by some (first floor) departments of the brain before the cinematic experience occurs (on the second floor).

Visual Reasoning has been around for a long time. Our ancestors were using inductive and deductive reasoning and rationing information to hide, hunt, mate and such many generations before primates put on togas and barked about logic. So, in that sense, one could say that reason is already established as a process that we all participate in.

Non-visual or Abstract Reasoning may have been around a while, too. I think it is reasonable to presume that any member of the Animal Kingdom that can close its EYES, thinks. I don’t mean narrate like we do, but I’m sure were not first critters to think abstractly. My cat can abstract. We are the first to beat our Chunk Limit. We can narrate. All the others are trapped in thinking in four beats or much less.

…is the feeling of certainty which we express by words like must be and therefore and since merely a feeling in our own minds - a mere representation of the way our minds happen to work?

There is a level of satisfaction that we seek in our reasonable-ness that comes from wanting, moment by moment, to be certain about what we are looking at. Or sure enough to gamble our survival on what we think we are seeing.

Reasoning is the process of taking our raw sensory input and virtually re-mapping a useful model of our environment. This skill has found further applications of learning by recalling and recycling previous sensory input to further define the model. This creates abstractions about our environment that can also be recalled and recycled until we have reasoned our way into seeing beyond seeing.

Imagine a universe with no humans. Okay, one human, you, imagining a universe without any other humans.
Looking around, can you find any examples of unreasonable-ness? Is there anywhere at all in said universe where even the opportunity for unreasonable-ness exists? Other than YOUR BRAIN?