I have always felt, since ai became an option, that the lack of somatic experience would keep ai from ever being truly conscious. Your expression “having skin in the game” might also be applied to G’s suggestion that His Endlessness was forced to create all and everything in order not to risk Its own literal existence. Always strange to think of our Source that way. I’m very impressed by your take on ai and gaming, and pretty much can’t find anything to question.
But I do have some questions about emotions. Since back in the eighties when I discovered Candice Pert’s Molecules of Emotion, I’ve questioned how this scientific knowledge fits into the Gurdjieff teachings. You seem to be saying the body creates emotion by way of the sensations it experiences, or perhaps doesn’t even consciously experience. Quoting your comment: “The emotional mind is completely distributed…. What we experience as an “emotion” is the high-bandwidth, compressed summary of all those trillions of micro-signals colliding at once.” You reference heart, gut, immune system, endocrine….are you agreeing with Pert, or do you mean something different?
What does this say about G’s distinction between sensation and emotion as two different functions. Why does he place emotions as the gateway to awakening if it is of the physical body? Is my experience of an emotion the result of the body’s experience? If G is correct that emotions are faster than sensations how could the slower function create the faster experience? Having given much thought and observation to this issue, I currently think that emotions and sensations are two different kinds of experiences that may happen together or may motivate one another in close proximity. Because both are internal and non-copyable experiences they have to pass through the intellect to be acknowledged or shared and may be distorted by formulation.
What I understand for myself currently is that we are not just a physical body but also a field that interpenetrates and extends beyond the physical body. Again cause enters the question. Does this field generate sensations or emotions and/or is it affected and/or changed by the sensations or emotions?
If we are to believe the NDE and OBE experiencers, we have much deeper emotions after we leave the physical body than any here in this earthly realm? Also an OBE can report what it sees and hears while it hovers above its own body on the operating table, etc. We seem to have experiences of color, image and sound after death, something we connect directly to the physical senses. What is the role of the human field in the senses and emotions? Is this same field the same subtle body that survives death?
I see what you’re saying about turning emotions into stories so we can make sense of them. Maybe related to Harari? I also am working on a long, still-cooking commentary on the use of the word “feelings” which I find impossible to understand. In the Work School I was in, feelings meant emotions and we began to use sensations to refer to experience of the body.hen spoken by scientists, philosophers and spiritual teachers, it is used to mean both a sensation and an emotion, and there is often no way to discern from context what they mean. And then there is the quizzical “felt sense.” What?
I am not expecting you to answer my questions, (I fear there will just be more) but if you have also explored this, I would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks for your insight. V
Very good question and it can be very tricky to understand logically, all the labels can be helpful and at the same time they can hide the truth as well by making you think you have understood it.
I think Gurdjieff did the best he could with the knowledge he had but the system is only an approximation not a full explanation of all the different sources of qualia.
That said here’s how I think of it. Emotions and senses are roughly the same in the process of learning to unlearn the minds stories about them and learning to interpret the true meaning they are telling you. However there are definite differences in each of the senses, I like to take each sense (taste, sight, touch, etc) as having its own center of intelligence, memory, attention. Senses are mostly attuned to the outside world. Emotions are more in tune with the cells, organs, internal while also there is of course emotions which are concerned with the outside world, I think that emotions are likely in tune with the bioelectricity fields in the body and between other people which is why they are a pathway to awakening.
That’s also why the higher emotional center is the one in touch with intuition, I think it can download information from the field if your individual field is harmonized with the cosmic field. That said, emotions still happen in certain places in the body, I remember a quote from ar orage I read recently telling students to notice in the body where certain negative emotions occur. It’s might be because certain parts of the body are like receptors for different emotions.
I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that we are the field and the body is just a sort of mirage created in spacetime that our mind creates to make sense of experience
You’ve done it again! Excellent work. Again I offer the schizophrenic as the master of the house as the hero of the future. If not infact then in essence. Glad to see Sara Conner at the end of the article because to trigger the terminator wars was a simple goal achieving exercise by AI of course.
I have always felt, since ai became an option, that the lack of somatic experience would keep ai from ever being truly conscious. Your expression “having skin in the game” might also be applied to G’s suggestion that His Endlessness was forced to create all and everything in order not to risk Its own literal existence. Always strange to think of our Source that way. I’m very impressed by your take on ai and gaming, and pretty much can’t find anything to question.
But I do have some questions about emotions. Since back in the eighties when I discovered Candice Pert’s Molecules of Emotion, I’ve questioned how this scientific knowledge fits into the Gurdjieff teachings. You seem to be saying the body creates emotion by way of the sensations it experiences, or perhaps doesn’t even consciously experience. Quoting your comment: “The emotional mind is completely distributed…. What we experience as an “emotion” is the high-bandwidth, compressed summary of all those trillions of micro-signals colliding at once.” You reference heart, gut, immune system, endocrine….are you agreeing with Pert, or do you mean something different?
What does this say about G’s distinction between sensation and emotion as two different functions. Why does he place emotions as the gateway to awakening if it is of the physical body? Is my experience of an emotion the result of the body’s experience? If G is correct that emotions are faster than sensations how could the slower function create the faster experience? Having given much thought and observation to this issue, I currently think that emotions and sensations are two different kinds of experiences that may happen together or may motivate one another in close proximity. Because both are internal and non-copyable experiences they have to pass through the intellect to be acknowledged or shared and may be distorted by formulation.
What I understand for myself currently is that we are not just a physical body but also a field that interpenetrates and extends beyond the physical body. Again cause enters the question. Does this field generate sensations or emotions and/or is it affected and/or changed by the sensations or emotions?
If we are to believe the NDE and OBE experiencers, we have much deeper emotions after we leave the physical body than any here in this earthly realm? Also an OBE can report what it sees and hears while it hovers above its own body on the operating table, etc. We seem to have experiences of color, image and sound after death, something we connect directly to the physical senses. What is the role of the human field in the senses and emotions? Is this same field the same subtle body that survives death?
I see what you’re saying about turning emotions into stories so we can make sense of them. Maybe related to Harari? I also am working on a long, still-cooking commentary on the use of the word “feelings” which I find impossible to understand. In the Work School I was in, feelings meant emotions and we began to use sensations to refer to experience of the body.hen spoken by scientists, philosophers and spiritual teachers, it is used to mean both a sensation and an emotion, and there is often no way to discern from context what they mean. And then there is the quizzical “felt sense.” What?
I am not expecting you to answer my questions, (I fear there will just be more) but if you have also explored this, I would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks for your insight. V
Very good question and it can be very tricky to understand logically, all the labels can be helpful and at the same time they can hide the truth as well by making you think you have understood it.
I think Gurdjieff did the best he could with the knowledge he had but the system is only an approximation not a full explanation of all the different sources of qualia.
That said here’s how I think of it. Emotions and senses are roughly the same in the process of learning to unlearn the minds stories about them and learning to interpret the true meaning they are telling you. However there are definite differences in each of the senses, I like to take each sense (taste, sight, touch, etc) as having its own center of intelligence, memory, attention. Senses are mostly attuned to the outside world. Emotions are more in tune with the cells, organs, internal while also there is of course emotions which are concerned with the outside world, I think that emotions are likely in tune with the bioelectricity fields in the body and between other people which is why they are a pathway to awakening.
That’s also why the higher emotional center is the one in touch with intuition, I think it can download information from the field if your individual field is harmonized with the cosmic field. That said, emotions still happen in certain places in the body, I remember a quote from ar orage I read recently telling students to notice in the body where certain negative emotions occur. It’s might be because certain parts of the body are like receptors for different emotions.
I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that we are the field and the body is just a sort of mirage created in spacetime that our mind creates to make sense of experience
You’ve done it again! Excellent work. Again I offer the schizophrenic as the master of the house as the hero of the future. If not infact then in essence. Glad to see Sara Conner at the end of the article because to trigger the terminator wars was a simple goal achieving exercise by AI of course.
The best article I have read so far on AI, consciousness, and wisdom. Thank you for putting my intuitions into a wider philosophical context. :)