[MD] Consciousness

[Platt Holden]

Hi Mel, 

Great post. Thanks for sharing your ideas. 

> Platt:
> > What are the "tool sets" of intellect besides science and reason?
> 
> mel:
> The "tool sets" are the competencies-one-gains to leverage
> our abilities to "model and transform" the parts of the world
> outside of our brains into meaningful reflections within our 
> minds.
> 
> Just as the hand of an ancestor picked up a stone, a stick, and
> a strip of rawhide and created something new, an axe,  the mind
> combines sense data (patterns), experience, and context to
> create something new.

Your example seems to me to be what is sometimes referred to as "Putting 
two and two together" which could be either intellect at its best and/or a 
human response to DQ betterness. In any case, the singular ancestor who 
invented the axe is to be commended for his individual achievement.  

> Platt:
> > Does one need to understand the physiology of the eardrum or how sound
> > travels through the air in order to lose one's separate self sense in 
> > listening to Rachmaninov's 2nd Piano Concerto? That's the sort of 
> > experience I was driving at. 
> 
> mel:
> It is not that one needs to understand the abstracted physiology,
> but one does need to learn the operational possibilities of hearing
> and appreciate them beyond JUST the experience.
> 
> I grew up in a house without music.  I vividly remember the first time 
> I heard classical music played.  The grade school teacher brought in
> a record player and put on the "Grand Canyon Suite."  I was in the 
> front row, next to the left side speaker and recoiled at the tumbling 
> chaos of noise that errupted in a confusion from the speaker...it was
> horrid, an immediately low quality experience.  
> 
> Jangling, whining, screeching, booming, confusion rained and 
> flooded the room.  I looked around and saw that no one else was 
> sharing this experience and I turned back to the speaker.  
> 
> What was I missing?
> 
> I watched the red label in the center of the disc and the big
> RCA circling 33 times per minute and tried to hear what was
> going on.  Some parts of it were more bearable than others.
> 
> Maybe midway through the first movement something suddenly 
> aligned and I "got it."  There was pattern, regularity, harmony, and
> melody, stuff I had no name for, music and space and flow
> and not just individual sounds.

Coincidentally my first introduction to classical music was also the Grand 
Canyon Suite. But, I was fortunate in having a musical home. So I 'got it" 
immediately. 

> Music "theory" would be a tool.  
> To perform certain "forms of music" they must be
> understood and whether its by formal theory or
> fast, personal aprehension, the musician has to 
> "get it" or there will be no success in performance.

Examples of individuals who "got it" without formal theory are Errol Garner 
and Satchmo Armstrong. At the classical level, I assume some formal 
training is required, not to mention 8 hours a day of practice.

Mel: 
> Complex, fine motor skills are also a heavy modeling
> activity on the CNS.(central nervous system).  Diving 
> is a very complex task and the divier needs to learn
> to express motions of position, time, change, and
> movement, that will cause the outcome.
> 
> Before you dismiss that from intellect, there is one more
> item that makes it intensely interesting as a "tool set"
> of its own.  Divers develop an intense non-verbal language
> by which they can understand each other's movements
> outside of the actual performance of the dive...
> 
> The language is a physical shorthand of small motions
> expressing the reaches, bends, twists, flips, and entries
> that make up their technical repertoir.
> Two divers who do not share the same linguistic 
> background can communicate meaning in the realm of 
> diving, while standing  together outside the pool.
> 
> Martial artists often do the same.  
> 
> In both of these cases the participants "model and transform" 
> parts of the world outside of their brains into meaningful 
> reflections within their minds AND communicate them to
> others.
> 
> Painters, sculptors, anyone in complex technologies, potentially
> can have specialized intellectual "tool sets"
> 
> Science is simply one very specialized and powerful tool
> set.   Reason is not so much a tool as the talent to leverage,
> create, and use the tools we need and derive the meaning.

At least a part of what you describe is muscle training, like learning to 
ride a bicycle. No doubt intellect plays a role in all human activity even 
if no more than talking to oneself.  

> Maybe the most important part of this is that as we are not 
> truly used to looking at the world in terms of MoQ we often 
> forget that anything we do crosses multiple levels of our 
> existence to make things happen in life.
> 
> example:
> The [biological] diver pushes on a [physical] board that is
> a [static construction of intellect expressed on the physical]
> to gain speed and hight for motion [dynamic physicality] to 
> express a form [static intellectual construct] in competition
> [a social function of a diving meet] and other people [in a 
> defined social role] will assign numeric values for various
> attributes, aesthetic and intellectual, upon the result.

Yes. Pirsig's emphasis on the lower levels supporting the higher is well to 
remember. But, I notice in the last line you draw a distinction between the 
aesthetic and intellectual. For me, this distinction is both palpable and 
meaningful, as in example of the Grand Canyon Suite. 

 > So...that is how I see it when I use the tool box analogy.
> 
> Thanks for the oportunity to work this out.

Thanks again.
Platt