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> If I identify with the anger, if I think it’s me – ‘I’m angry’ – I’m very likely to pursue, and act on, the angry thought and feeling. After all, I’m just me

> If I identify with the anger, if I think it’s me – ‘I’m angry’ – I’m very likely to pursue, and act on, the angry thought and feeling. After all, I’m just me being me. But because I’m actually the observer of my thoughts and feelings – because I’m separate – I can think: ‘There’s anger in me.’ Ah, mis-step here. You just said that thoughts and feelings are things one cannot have, but merely observe. You cannot think, "There's anger in me." Without a consciousness that independently generates thoughts, which violates the thesis statement: > I know that ‘I am’ because I am aware of thoughts, emotions, external objects, not because I think. Can't have it both ways I'm afraid. I'm a bigger fan of framings that allow for different abstraction levels or lenses of thought, all of them belonging to the same consciousness. "Emotionally I feel this, but logically I think this, and instinctually I believe this."

FrustratedMonky 3y ago
You can break it down even further than "I feel this", "I logically think this". Even thinking there is 'logic' is already missing that there has to be a place where the logic 'comes from' or 'arises'. This article did play fast and loose with terminology. I'd suggest reading up on Schopenhauer and Phenomenology, for historical background, and then for modern neuroscience, "Being You" by Anil Seth. They try to get at same thing, our 'subjective' experience is just how our brain interpret inputs, and with meditation you can grow the ability to observer how the brain reacts. But in the end the reactions happen from somewhere, even a 'logical thinking' comes from somewhere before the 'thinking' can take place. You can think what you will, but how do you decide to think about what you want to think about. Actually, forget it. I'm trying to explain this article, but I thought it was a bit confused to begin with. Guess its basically long and winding way to say 'be in the present movement'. But that's pretty generic.
- nickelpro 3y ago
  I don't think it's so complex a point. The article's (and other framings') "observer" is a mechanism of self-reflective meta-thought. My point is that this meta-thought is itself a thought, it arises from the same place as all other thoughts. The observer is not a separate, passive system from the thinker. It is the thinker, or an element of it, a feedback loop inside the mechanism of the thinker, allowing the thinker to think about the ideas it is contemplating and the process of contemplation itself ("think about thinking"). It allows the thinker to observe in completeness its own contemplative state, and if desired, modify it. In this simplified framework the system is not significantly different from say, industrial control theory.
Kamq 3y ago
> Can't have it both ways I'm afraid. Why? I mean, it's logically inconsistent, but human beings are pretty good at that. The irrational is entirely within our capabilities. You can argue that we shouldn't, but if it's an argument against something designed to produce better outcomes, you've already thrown out basically all of utilitarianism and consequentialism. You can bring in schools of deontology, but they're ultimately irrational at their core as well.
- nickelpro 3y ago
  > Why? I mean, it's logically inconsistent That's pretty much it. If you say 2+2=4 and then in the following sentence say 2+2=5 without any change in definitions or axioms, something is fucky with your theory. It's got nothing to do with efficiency or utilitarianism. You can define a horribly inefficient system which has an explanation that makes some sort of sense. I can accept "the sky is red," and I can accept "the sky is blue," but if you tell me the sky is blue and then in the next sentence tell me the sky is red with no intervening information you probably made a mistake somewhere.
  - Kamq 3y ago
    > If you say 2+2=4 and then in the following sentence say 2+2=5 without any change in definitions or axioms, something is fucky with your theory. Sure, but assuming 2+2=5 has some really bad external outcomes you can point to. For example, if you try to build a plane assuming that 2+2=5, it will almost certainly fall out of the sky. > I can accept "the sky is red," and I can accept "the sky is blue," but if you tell me the sky is blue and then in the next sentence tell me the sky is red with no intervening information you probably made a mistake somewhere. Alright, but what if I told you that "this random number generator returned 4" and then "this random number generator returned 5" with no intervening information? Your line of thinking works quite well for external, verifiable phenomena, but it does not automatically follow that it can be applied to internal non-verifiable processes, and I've yet to hear you make a case that it is proper to do so.
    - nickelpro 3y ago
ttonkytonk 3y ago
I believe the author's point is not that you can't have thoughts (how can you not?), but that they're not identical with identity, and that awareness is more fundamental to identity, a great insight of Eastern philosophy. I have wondered if Socrates had this insight. Judging from Plato and Xenophon's writings about him he may have not had such a clear view of it, but he does speak of his bodily feelings as being separate from himself (e.g. in Plato's Phaedo, while sitting in prison he remarks that if it was up to his legs he would be in earnest flight from Athens.) I think the author is pretty close to the truth of things; however, things like anger and "addiction to thinking" are not so easily overcome (at least in my experience), but awareness of them seems like a necessary first step.
erulabs 3y ago
> I'm a bigger fan of framings that allow for different abstraction levels or lenses of thought, all of them belonging to the same consciousness. "Emotionally I feel this, but logically I think this, and instinctually I believe this." Any sufficiently advanced robotics project becomes essential a “sensor fusion” problem. It makes complete sense to me at least that consciousness is the internal mechanism of sensor fusion coupled with an unprecedented (in the animal kingdom) amount of raw compute. We have emotional sensors and electromagnetic sensors and audio-visual sensors (and feedback loops for all of those) and all consciousness is is the picking and choosing and weighting and considering of those sensors. Anyways, I agree!

FrustratedMonky 3y ago

You can break it down even further than "I feel this", "I logically think this". Even thinking there is 'logic' is already missing that there has to be a place where the logic 'comes from' or 'arises'. This article did play fast and loose with terminology. I'd suggest reading up on Schopenhauer and Phenomenology, for historical background, and then for modern neuroscience, "Being You" by Anil Seth. They try to get at same thing, our 'subjective' experience is just how our brain interpret inputs, and with meditation you can grow the ability to observer how the brain reacts. But in the end the reactions happen from somewhere, even a 'logical thinking' comes from somewhere before the 'thinking' can take place. You can think what you will, but how do you decide to think about what you want to think about. Actually, forget it. I'm trying to explain this article, but I thought it was a bit confused to begin with. Guess its basically long and winding way to say 'be in the present movement'. But that's pretty generic.

nickelpro 3y ago
I don't think it's so complex a point. The article's (and other framings') "observer" is a mechanism of self-reflective meta-thought. My point is that this meta-thought is itself a thought, it arises from the same place as all other thoughts. The observer is not a separate, passive system from the thinker. It is the thinker, or an element of it, a feedback loop inside the mechanism of the thinker, allowing the thinker to think about the ideas it is contemplating and the process of contemplation itself ("think about thinking"). It allows the thinker to observe in completeness its own contemplative state, and if desired, modify it. In this simplified framework the system is not significantly different from say, industrial control theory.

Kamq 3y ago

> Can't have it both ways I'm afraid. Why? I mean, it's logically inconsistent, but human beings are pretty good at that. The irrational is entirely within our capabilities. You can argue that we shouldn't, but if it's an argument against something designed to produce better outcomes, you've already thrown out basically all of utilitarianism and consequentialism. You can bring in schools of deontology, but they're ultimately irrational at their core as well.

nickelpro 3y ago
> Why? I mean, it's logically inconsistent That's pretty much it. If you say 2+2=4 and then in the following sentence say 2+2=5 without any change in definitions or axioms, something is fucky with your theory. It's got nothing to do with efficiency or utilitarianism. You can define a horribly inefficient system which has an explanation that makes some sort of sense. I can accept "the sky is red," and I can accept "the sky is blue," but if you tell me the sky is blue and then in the next sentence tell me the sky is red with no intervening information you probably made a mistake somewhere.
- Kamq 3y ago
  > If you say 2+2=4 and then in the following sentence say 2+2=5 without any change in definitions or axioms, something is fucky with your theory. Sure, but assuming 2+2=5 has some really bad external outcomes you can point to. For example, if you try to build a plane assuming that 2+2=5, it will almost certainly fall out of the sky. > I can accept "the sky is red," and I can accept "the sky is blue," but if you tell me the sky is blue and then in the next sentence tell me the sky is red with no intervening information you probably made a mistake somewhere. Alright, but what if I told you that "this random number generator returned 4" and then "this random number generator returned 5" with no intervening information? Your line of thinking works quite well for external, verifiable phenomena, but it does not automatically follow that it can be applied to internal non-verifiable processes, and I've yet to hear you make a case that it is proper to do so.
  - nickelpro 3y ago

ttonkytonk 3y ago

I believe the author's point is not that you can't have thoughts (how can you not?), but that they're not identical with identity, and that awareness is more fundamental to identity, a great insight of Eastern philosophy. I have wondered if Socrates had this insight. Judging from Plato and Xenophon's writings about him he may have not had such a clear view of it, but he does speak of his bodily feelings as being separate from himself (e.g. in Plato's Phaedo, while sitting in prison he remarks that if it was up to his legs he would be in earnest flight from Athens.) I think the author is pretty close to the truth of things; however, things like anger and "addiction to thinking" are not so easily overcome (at least in my experience), but awareness of them seems like a necessary first step.

erulabs 3y ago

> I'm a bigger fan of framings that allow for different abstraction levels or lenses of thought, all of them belonging to the same consciousness. "Emotionally I feel this, but logically I think this, and instinctually I believe this." Any sufficiently advanced robotics project becomes essential a “sensor fusion” problem. It makes complete sense to me at least that consciousness is the internal mechanism of sensor fusion coupled with an unprecedented (in the animal kingdom) amount of raw compute. We have emotional sensors and electromagnetic sensors and audio-visual sensors (and feedback loops for all of those) and all consciousness is is the picking and choosing and weighting and considering of those sensors. Anyways, I agree!