geordief

https://youtube/eP3RqnJMu4E 1968

Wondering what anyone makes of this 1973 recording by the late John Fahey. Obviously an accomplished acoustic guitar player,he did though in his latter years repudiate the music he made along these lines To my mind this music is very easy to follow and you can see how he allows the various themes to develop and kind of collapse in themselves and then pick themselves up as a new idea takes over the discord that that was setting in. This seems to me to keep repeating itself as a pattern - a series of hopeful developments that end in disappointment only for a germ of hope to break through for a period Is that nice to listen to ? Some of his better known pieces are more straightforward and can be fairly optimistic but this seems to alternate all the time Is that how others hear this music?

seems geordief has been outGurdjieffed http://theslenderthread.org/art-and-consciousness/

Can I ask whether we would have to invent art if it did not exist? Is it possible to live without a connection to art in one's own interior life? Or us it take it or leave it?

Not sure what the capital A would stand for but can "society " have propreital rights on what might be considered "art"? I mean ,look at Prince Andrew.He was considered.by some (never by me ) to exemplify virtues in British Society,until his true character was held up to the light. Not the same with Art in the museums?Not just a case of the Emperor wearing transparent clothes? Can we make a distinction between art that is a function of living an expressive life and art that is a merchandise with all the attendant trappings? Or are they the same thing?

Is that just meant to be cynical? "Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues" Was Shakespeare an artist in the medium of language then?

Has anyone a succinct definition for what is called Art? I have been wondering whether art is an attempt to express ones observations and feelings about one's social environment in as unfiltered a way as possible -using whatever medium comes to hand. Has anyone any other ideas? (is mine too obvious and catch all?) (Is it even possible to be succinct about the subject ?)

It is hard enough to understand the culture we are born into without shouldering the responsibility of understanding the train wreck that is the Russo Soviet counterpart. It is hard to imagine they have had much of a free choice up to now Maybe they would like to share their misery around.

I am not even sure it would be that tempting an option even if it was feasible (though Castro apparently was targeted several times by the CIA) I mean ,had Hitler been taken out of the equation in the failed attempt to kill him by German officers it is maybe very arguable that the Wehmakt might have fought more intelligently without his unhinged interference in an area he was not an expert in. After all ,towards the end he apparently accused the German people of being unworthy of his ambitions Some leader ,an asset to his supposed enemies.

So I was quite wrong in my post just 3 places above? https://www.scienceforums.net/topic/126218-war-games-russia-takes-ukraine-china-takes-taiwan-us-response/?do=findComment&comment=1206165 Eg Targeting Hitler personally would have been very inadvisable (and illegal) even though we were then at war with Germany and he was their commander in chief?

We are not at war with Russia.If we were , the assassination of its leader would not as far as I know be a war crime or similar. We were at war with Germany and so the assassination of Hitler would have just been part of the war. As we are not at war with Russia an assassination attempt by a Nato country would be both stupid and also very probably used as a casus belli (just what we all need)

I wonder what his list of potential assassin sponsors looks like. It might not just be Ukrainians. They may feel that this is his moment of weakness. It would be folly for Nato countries to touch the idea with a barge pole, although the intelligence services must need to communicate with those so inclined as they may provide human intelligence.

When it saw itself reflected back in the "mind" of a companion creature? Mind is a measure of sociability? (or rather , sociality?) The mirror test is only a first step to the test of inclusion in a social group? (Which would make minds the norm amongst animals)

Yes,I remember but I had to go back and refresh my memory. I am not sure the analogy it is as clear as it was with the free will scenario. Consciousness is even more fundamental than free will. But ,if you think the analogy still applies then maybe that shows that the sensations of freewill and of being conscious (of one's existence) are practically "joined at the hip" Someone has said that we ,as human observers and explorers perform the role of the universe looking at itself. Maybe to rephrase that dramatically we are the Consciousness of the Universe("the Universe" being a term that no longer seems easily defined-as it once seemed to in the not too distant past)

I just had in mind the determination an observer might make as to whether a second organism (or machine) exhibited behaviour that could be called "conscious " Perhaps a bit trivial,but it might serve as a contrast to the subjective consciousness we are all so frustratingly familiar with But I think you are right because I cannot actually come up with any criterion that would allow any such behaviour in another person or system as "conscious "as any behaviour might be just as easily interpreted in a purely reductionist way without recourse to any notion of consciousness at all. "

Yes perhaps we could coin the phrases "objective consciousness " and "subjective consciousness " (if they are not already in use)? The latter is as slippery a concept as you could wish for whilst the former would be a worthwhile and rigorous subject for scientific exploration. Unless it's a trap 🤔

Maybe so .That had always been my prefered stance but I thought I had become less enthusiastic about it. Are there any articles attempting to reject that viewpoint or is this a kind of "take it or leave it" idea that holds no real consequences whether it is valid or not?

Actually , -I think that has been my take for the past while.That consciousness is built into stuff and becomes more or less complex as physical systems evolve. The connectome,(which I have only just learned of from @Prometheus in this thread doesn't seem at first glance to contradict this idea.) .

I think others here have noted possible observations that would show if a subject was conscious or not. I initially had in mind to drill down into more basic and fundamental reactions of the subject with its environment that would show up the fundamental concept. But I have given up on that idea because I find the subject so difficult and ,perhaps defuse. I do like the idea of the connectome as mentioned by @Prometheus but note the apparently enormous practical difficulties in studying that concept. But perhaps my test might boil down to whether the subject interacts with its environment in an"interesting" way(as Peterkin has said we as the experimenters seem to have a priori defined a conscious system as "something like us" and so "interesting" may be the most we can or should hope for)

I see.Perhaps we might even devise a test to determine whether another person had a qualitatively higher level of self awareness than oneself? I am not being serious .I must admit the subject is a lot more difficult than I had imagined. The answers I got to the OP have been helpful and informative. It seems there has been a fair bit of research into the subject.....

Posting this in General Philosophy if that fits. My question is this: "Is there any kind of a test (perhaps along the lines of the Turing test) that we could administer to a sentient creature (or a machine) that would allow us to define or determine whether or not the said subject was actually conscious? I don't know,but it seems a central feature of my existence that I tell myself that I do possess consciousness but I cannot see a way to verify this other than to take it as a matter of a priori belief. Could there be any possible tests or is it just the Turing test that might be applicable? Apologies if this question has been asked before(said sarcastically as there is apparently no emoji for that)

Was that 1941 parade directly targeted in the way it has been suggested that the upcoming May parade might be? How are the two parades comparable? Personally I feel that such an attack might play into the hands of the Russian Disinformation Services(though their dirty work has mostly been done by now,I'd say) It could present a pretext for threats of nuclear attacks and so could conceivably even be staged for that purpose.

Well that is what immediately came to my mind when I noticed this. It felt just like when you are in the train station and there is a train alongside the one you are seated in Then you notice that the other train is moving,but there is no way of knowing whether it is really the train you are in that is moving or the train alongside (unless your train accelerates strongly or jerkily enough for you to notice that and so make a determination) In the case of looking through the windscreen of the car with a stream of water (ie the rain) running downwards the effect was to make an illusion of the scene the other side of the windscreen run upwards. But I, as the viewer was motionless, so it was not quite the same scenario as with the train -and also it was the first time I had ever noticed it.

I was looking through the car windscreen today as the rain came down (parked with the wipers off) Through the windscreen I was looking at a roughly painted white wall (a rendered finish which appeared as a collection of small pebbles-I think it may be called "pebbledash,actually) Anyway the visual effect was that ,as the rainwater ran down the 45° angled windscreen the "pebbles" seemed to move up the wall in an odd kind of opposing direction. Anyone noticed this ,or similar before?

Would you say that this "self coupling" of the gravitational fields demonstrates the very essence of relativity? Is it a very central property?( might sound a bit ironic ,put that way when the absence of centres is what I think I am trying to describe)