Posted by alexandra_k on May 25, 2020, at 20:10:33
In reply to Re: Are you scared of death?, posted by alexandra_k on May 25, 2020, at 19:51:29
experiences come in from outside. from our senses. touch. taste. smell. visual. auditory. you get the idea.
we can remember our experiences. vivid memories of intense experiences.
and then there is thinking.
most people think there is an empirical aspect to thinking. where you have an experience (visual or auditory) and then you can remember it -- sort of have it at the forefront of the stage of consciousness or on your workign memory workbench or however you want to understand that for yourself.
and some people think visuo-spatially. they can remember things like maps and they can do things like rotate them or invert them or whatever in their 'minds eye'. there are tasks you can ask those kinds of minds to get at whether they have that capacity... whether they are doing that or not. i imagine that it is a skill that you can develop -- with practice. my mind is not naturally like this. but i have enjoyed developing that capacity. some people's minds are like this. it amazes me. i'm astounded at how well some people can orient and navigate in computer games with map mazes. or driving on roads. or doing supid little object rotation tasks in those kinds of exams.
temple grandin used to say that she thought like that, primarily. visuo-spatial.
i'm fairly verbal. but that doesn't mean i'm good at memorising word lists. i am good at memorising a word list when the word list makes meaningful sense. i don't mean an aribitrary story made up for the purpose of making the word list easier to memorise. i mean a true progressive understanding. i encode for meaning rather than surface form. that means i'm great at 'repeat back what i just said using your own words'. in more recent stuff (that is political) i certain give my own 'slant' (shall we say) -- that is intended to be provokative or a bit tongue in check... that is intended to extend the meaning in a direction that encourages the message giver to backtrack or to pivot...
but it is important not to mistake the above for a failure of reading comprehension.
it is important not to mistake the display of a higher level skill for the failure of a lower level skill.
i thought accomplishment. attainment. of lower levels skills was given. assumed. upon successful completion of undergraduate degree.
but things are very de-evolved...
i think becuase the people in charge / with power have not been progressing tehmselves. joke about how you get tenure then eat your brain. get tenure then never publish anything again. get tenure and all productivity ceases.
people remember stories. another form of remembering. narrative. oral.
it isn't sensory because there's a symbol. a higher level representation. a meaning. that can be expressed with different words. like the formation of a mental map, i guess. where people haven't memorised their 'way around' the map on the basis of landmark 'turn left at the light post' but rather they have a mental map they are using to navigate from.
top down driven by the representations that were formed wehre teh representations are manipulations or abstractions or whatever from the sensory data component of their formation.
ah... philosophy of mind... psychology...
i do understand (and think there is sense to) the idea of a disembodied consicousness.
what would it be like to be me without a body?
i wouldnt be able to see anything -- no eyes. i wouldn't be able to hear anything -- no ears.
i would have my memories of experiences. i would have my mental representations. meanings. maps. i would be able to continue to manipulate those (think about them). that would be my life. it wouldn't be too hot or cold. it wouldn' tbe pleasant or unpleasant. there wouldn't be intensity of emotion (where physiological arousal is an intrinsic component of the stronger emotions). peaceful. i guess. anxiety would be limited by the lack of arousal. pain. unpleasant would be limited. peace.
i guess it could be like that.
in other words: what form of experience *could possibly* live through the death of the body?
it would have to be like that.
unless it could become attached or associated with / to another body.
i don't know that i've seen anybody say anything sensible at all about why i got to be associated with this one. rather than your one. why we don't swap tomorrow. why i don't find myself born as a bug or a bee.
or a rock.
what's it like to be a rock? no sensory experiences (no nervous system).
no sensory data input. i can't imagine that it is like anything at all.
can it do higher math?
i don't see how...
poster:alexandra_k
thread:1110297
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20200325/msgs/1110333.html