There is no choice: We See Only The Past (Stephen Wolinsky)

"To understand that the perceiver, and hence, its perception, appear only after the experience has already occurred, not only boggles the mind, but also changes our entire understanding of choice and free will. Let us explain it this way: First we have NOTHING-EVERYTHING (THE SUBSTANCE), which contracts or condenses to form consciousness. Then the process-event (movement) level forms the physics level of energy, space, mass, time, gravity, light, sound'”in short, the physics dimensions and forces. Further condensation forms the microscopic level of atoms, electrons, etc. Through this condensation we get the body and chemicals (which have no I), but produces the fluids, the concept of I AM (first at a non-verbal level, then later at verbal levels). From there, the label level, for example, there is a 'book'; the descriptive level, 'I am reading the book'; then Inference-1: 'I am choosing to read the book'; then Inference-2: 'I am choosing to read the book to get understanding.' With each abstraction the illusion of choice appears. However, the 'I' that views the world is produced by the nervous system after the experience and action have already occurred, then the 'I' declares doership, choosership, ownership, and volition, imagining that it is, was, will be, has a purpose, mission, etc. In this way, not only is all perception and what is perceived in the past, but so all experiences and concepts of choice have already occurred by the time the nervous system produces, perceives, thinks, posits, experiences, or, in a word, appears an 'I,' which formulates
'I chose this.' "

---From "You are Not"

Thoughts?

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.

T.S. Eliot.

Hmm, Mu. Sounds like materialist nihilism I suppose for someone who agrees with the materialist premise that all experience follows temporally from a neurological event and never the reverse, then this sort of metaphysics might make sense as a pointer. However, from what I understand of the research, experiential events precede and condition neural events and neural events precede and condition experiential events.
Projecting a permanent entity, responsible for each volition, onto these processes, which would be solid, continuous through all these events, separate from this chain of events or else immanent in this chain of events, and so on, is itself a momentary experiential event which arises mutually with discrete neurological events. Furthermore, the "belief" in this projection of permanent self or world-substance underlying the changes is also an experience which arises dependantly with neuro-events.
Each time we invest an experience with "belief"-- i.e., grasp it-- we reinforce the neuro-correllates of belief, thereby making it likely that next time "this" arises we will believe it too. Likewise, each time we experience selfing (or no-self) as merely provisional, impermanent, open, momentary, we condition the neural architecture of "open" experience, non-grasping, making it more likely that the next time this experience arises it will be dis-invested with belief, left in its own dimension by naked awareness.
That each discrete moment of experiential presence has its own volitional reality in terms of choosing to re-inforce grasping or re-inforce openness seems unworth arguing. Attributing these momentary choices to a permanent, separate, continuous self-- or permanant, separate, monistic, self-less world-substance-- is precisely what we can choose to open up or grasp on to in each moment. Yes?

It's from the book You Are Not which is based on Nisargadatta Maharaj's teachings.

I don't think it's materialistic nihilism. It's just that I "MuMuWu" am a belief structure in this nervous system and I attribute these actions to myself based on inference after the fact. Like "I just typed something to you." The typing happened before I perceived it, and the choice to type happened before I perceived it and inferred that I made the choice.

The only thing capable of attributing anything to anything is this brain/nervous system. Regardless of if you attribute your choice to a soul or to God, it involves a brain making that attribution and is imaginary.

Another quote:
"Here, we recall the noted philosopher, George Berkeley's
statement, 'Nobody has ever seen matter.' A nervous system,
which occurs after the fact, responds to imagined external
and internal processes to promote survival of the imagined
person.
This is an excellent point of departure. For what Einstein
calls 'a condensation of Emptiness,' or what Buddha says,
'Form is none other than Emptiness; Emptiness is none
other than Form' (Heart Sutra), or what the Yoga Sutras call
a contraction of consciousness'”all of these are abstractions
from THE SUBSTANCE to consciousness on 'downward.'
Hence, there is NO-I prior to, and moreover, at the object
level, what we call an object or 'I' is merely an abstraction, a
representation of the nervous system on one level, a coming
together of emptiness on one level, and a coming together
of atoms on another."

You can get the book from here if you want to look into it more.
-http://stephenhwolinskyphdlibrary.com/downloads/You%20Are%20Not.pdf

What I don't like about the initial quote is the linear description of causality. I don't think that mechanistic descriptions of consciousness and/or cognition are all that valid.

I think the point is that from the level of the thinker it is pretty much mechanistic. It doesn't say much about the underlying suchness and what it is doing. It is talking about inferences and the perception of choice at the level of the thinker. So you find youself putting the fork in your food and then chewing it and something says "I am eating." The inference piece is mechanistic.

I don't see any description of causality there, just how attribution is happening at the level of abstraction and the thinker is attributing doership to itself.

again -
"However, the 'I' that views the world is produced by the nervous system after the experience and action have already occurred, then the 'I' declares doership, choosership, ownership, and volition, imagining that it is, was, will be, has a purpose, mission, etc. In this way, not only is all perception and what is perceived in the past, but so all experiences and concepts of choice have already occurred by the time the nervous system produces, perceives, thinks, posits, experiences, or, in a word, appears an 'I,' which formulates
'I chose this.' "

When we talk about one thing producing another, we're talking about causality. Perhaps it is a linear process. It's just hard to know what is happening in the brain behind the scenes, prior to the current processes we are able to observe. There very well could be choice before action, even if we can't measure it yet. Do we consider the unconscious mind to be "me/us", or just the conscious mind? Tricky stuff to measure.

I guess I just like to leave a lot of the biological stuff out of the picture. It's interesting, but it hasn't ever really done much for my practice. In that way, I'm presenting a great deal of bias, and I'm aware of that. Ultimately, I will use reason to undermine anything I don't like. A nasty human habit, wouldn't you say?

I know I'm full of crap most of the time, if not all of the time. It's fun, though.

I hear what you're saying, Mu. Of course what is being pointed to, in terms of the "self" which is a character in a higher-order abstraction, is always late to the party. You can brush your teeth, drive your car, make love, drink coffee, and presumably go through a masters program and have a long career and retire and die without ever having such a description arise after any of those facts saying "I brushed my teeth! oh look, now I'm driving a car..." and so on, or at least without *believing* that the term "I" refers to some solid, separate and continuous self responsible for all that activity.

I guess I find statements that totally ignore momentary responsibility (as differentiated from the fictional responsibility of an imaginary continuous self) to be nihilistic, if they are presented as more than pointers with contextually defined instrumental value. So I don't mean to imply that this quote couldn't be highly significant for the right yogi at the right time. But I do notice that sometimes a spiritual discourse arises or concretizes around the negation of choice; and then the possibly valid pointer becomes a reified philosophical extreme, in this case a nihilistic one. And yes, I think advaita or at least neo-advaita is often understood by westerners at least in a nihilistic sense, whether materialist or idealist.

So, there is driving the car, and then there is the description "I am driving the car" which clearly by definition can *only* arise after driving the car has appeared, unless I'm delusional and it arises while washing the dishes . And there are all the little choices made while driving the car, each of which could also be followed be such a description such as "I chose to change lanes". Yet there is still the appearance of driving the car, and all the little choices.... And there will be the appearance of the consequences, too, so choose wisely.

You think you are a homunculus
Book proves homunculus not real
Therefore, 'you are not'

= bad logic.

You think you make choices conciously
But the after the fact inferred representation of the choice you just made isn't the same as the choice you just made
Therefore, you don't make choices

= bad logic

You think you have free will as an autonomous unitary agent (whatever that could mean)
There is no autonomous unitary agent
Therefore, the autonomous unitary agent doesn't have free will.

= no comment

All perception is representational
Therefore 'all perception and what is perceived [is] in the past'

= I give up

Wolinski is using a metaphor in his writing and trying thus to connect quantum physics to psychology and the mind. No one knows how apt or accurate that is as a way to interpret the universe and how the mind actually works, so I'd be very careful with that part of what he says. He's making assumptions that might be true. might not. Who knows?

JMHO

You think you have free will as an autonomous unitary agent (whatever that could mean)
There is no autonomous unitary agent
Therefore, the autonomous unitary agent doesn't have free will.

= no comment

hahahahaha oh my god, I almost fell over. I couldn't help myself, Tazmic, your post really says it all for me. Again, as a pointer, this material may or may not have value for a given yogi at the right juncture. But so can being hit with a stick, so they say. And as for the mishmash of western materialist metaphysics with eastern monistic nihilistic traditions like advaita.... buyer beware. I'm pretty sure this stuff appeals to us most when we are experienceing some cognitive dissonance between our materialist scientistic programming and our experiences in meditation and attraction to less restrictive eastern metaphysics.
Speaking for myself this was the case anyway. There's a lot of weird cultural baggage we pick up in the west around materialism and the authority of sciencey language, unless we were heavily socialized with reactionary christian fundamentalism or something like that. Truth be told, we pretty much get exposed to both those worldviews growing up in our culture, which makes for a lot of cognitive dissonance even before you throw in the eastern stuff.

And if we're to be fair and accurate about it, quantum physics includes phenomena (at least in the quantum realm of the very, very small) that violate temporality and causality, so if the mind is at all quantum in its operation, as Wolinski seems to infer, then it may that the mind could very well make a decision about an action before the action takes place.

Ha!

Ha HA

"....then it may be that the mind could very well make a decision about an action before the action takes place.
"

Nice

One thing that bothers me about the increaingly popular 'quantum weirdness is very weird implies some new age variant of buddhism is TRUE and therefore the universe and we are all one divine pervasive conscious mind' is that I don't see how then there could be any none collapsed wave functions.... Unless the divine is apt to not paying attention ( is God ADHD?).

Does quantum theory posit a divine entity?

yes all this quantum spirituality is a bit.... stretched in some ways.

"Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.

T.S. Eliot. "

Cool-- another member of the TS Eliot esoteric poetry cult! But I bet I was here first, 'cuz I'm older than you. In my life, before there was John of the Cross, there was Eliot's brilliant appropriation:.
..."the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing--
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love for the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought;"

I think Wolinsky's pretty much got it. But in a way it doesn't really matter. It's neither here nor there. (haha figuratively and literally).

Because the closer you get to an 'accurate' portrayal of reality. the more irrelevant becomes the conventional self-sense. That's a point that is often left out because it''s so ever-shifting and hard to describe.

The assumption is that since 'I' am reading this philosophical statement, then 'I' must be the subect to which it refers. But that's basically not true. The conventional 'you/I' is not the subject of that objective account of reality. So in a way, it's none of 'my' business.

But ideas and observations like Wolinsky's can be good for contextualizing practice. For taking the piss out of the whole thing and making it clear that practice is really one of the most reasonable ways to proceed in this kind of situation.

"
Does quantum theory posit a divine entity?

"

No. But many who are taking "quantum weirdness is very weird implies some new age variant of buddhism" do. But I'm too distracted to explain, as in looking something up for you I just discovered that Deepak Chopra isn't a physicist! (I'm so gullible...) Haha. And worse "Chopra also participated in the Channel 4 (UK) documentary The Enemies of Reason, where he when interviewed by scientist Richard Dawkins admitted that the term "quantum theory" was being used as a mere metaphor and that it has nothing to do with actual quantum theory in physics." (wiki) ) Oh dear.

"Because the closer you get to an 'accurate' portrayal of reality. the more irrelevant becomes the conventional self-sense. That's a point that is often left out because it''s so ever-shifting and hard to describe.

The assumption is that since 'I' am reading this philosophical statement, then 'I' must be the subject to which it refers. But that's basically not true. The conventional 'you/I' is not the subject of that objective account of reality. So in a way, it's none of 'my' business. " ~Nigel

Wonderful!

My main problem with reductionism is philosophical in nature. As some of us have been saying in this thread (if I am reading it properly), describing the behavior of phenomena at a super-micro level does not truly explain the behavior of the compound-phenomena of which the smaller parts make up the larger (forgive my lack of precise language, here). Ken Wilber's talk of "holons" becomes particularly relevant. Every holon is composed of other holons - yes. But each holon transcends and includes the holons which compose it. The human experience is not just the combined experience of cells. It transcends them, in a very easy to understand way.

And that's why the initial quote in this thread bothers me. It's not that it's saying anything untrue about the level to which he is explaining, or whatever. It's that the conclusions are being brought up to the level of human subjective experience and used to explain it. That to me is a translation error. For a theory to be valid, it has to apply to the appropriate domain. And don't think that's happening in Wolinsky's quote.

But, as always, I don't really know what I'm talking about. I am just as likely wrong as I am right.

~Jackson

It has been tempting for certain folks, and this is going on years now, to take the new physics and make it real for psychology and the mind. All the way back to Gary Zukav's "Dancing Wu Li Masters." It's a nice metaphor and there are similarities between awakening and the physics of the very, very small, or of relativity. But who knows how accurate the metaphor truly is? My impression has always been tat it's very stretched. Both awakening and physics are plenty interesting all on their own. No need to complicate them, or obfuscate them, with fuzzy cross-pollenization.

I think he's sort of saying 'The conventional self-sense arises out of the activities of the nervous system. As such, the relationship of subjective, sensory experience to 'actual reality' is not as straightforward as it might seem.'

The conclusion is the same.

"So go practice."

This paragraph could be very helpful for someone with a positivistic orientation. It could get them curious. Probably help them to practice.

As for conclusive statements about consciousness and mind. Science, quantum or not, still seems to have alot more to learn about it. ??

Yeah Nigel, I'd say this sort of material can be a motivator or pointer for people who believe in materialism and need to be met within that conceptual framework, just like some people need to be met with descriptions of the universe and the illusory nature of ego in christian, tantric, zen, or any other language. Materialism is a religion too, in other words; a belief structure we use to patch the gaps in what "we know" which slides into becoming an undifferentiated part of what "we know" which is what's so tricky about all that "we know".
And this is why conceptual views are themselves methods, methods to get people to use the practice methods that will lead them to discover an un-contrived non-conceptual view which isn't based on the subject-knowing(or not knowing)-object structure, but is just the self-clarity of some aspect of reality such as empty impermanence or clear light or what have you.

"
It has been tempting for certain folks, and this is going on years now, to take the new physics and make it real for psychology and the mind. All the way back to Gary Zukav's "Dancing Wu Li Masters." It's a nice metaphor and there are similarities between awakening and the physics of the very, very small, or of relativity. But who knows how accurate the metaphor truly is? My impression has always been tat it's very stretched. Both awakening and physics are plenty interesting all on their own. No need to complicate them, or obfuscate them, with fuzzy cross-pollenization.

"

Hi,

Physicis is the study of natural science. If quantum mechaincs really does describe our reality then there is no reason why psychology does not conform also to these same principals similar for chemistry, economics etc. There is reason for study in these areas, interesting where science is going

Found a link to on of stephens books if interested

stephenhwolinskyphdlibrary.com/downloads...%20Quantum%20Psy.pdf

Thanks
Jeff

" If quantum mechaincs really does describe our reality then there is no reason why psychology does not conform also to these same principals similar for chemistry, economics etc."

Jeff, Wolinski is using physics as a metaphor. While quantum effects do rule at the sub-atomic level how that translates in the everyday macro world of the human brain and mind is completely unspecified and speculative. Or metaphor