I feel that this is an area where engaging in some ameteur phenomenology may help clarify what you mean, or at least provide insight into what you don’t mean.
So, as a very rough and off-the-cuff attempt to clarify the kinds of mental operations, we have the following:
Beliefs—Here I’m only referring to the cognitive component, not to aliefs or the emotional component. I’m including the cognitive component of doubts or fears here as well, including the cognitive component of beliefs that people are in denial about.
Qualia—This includes any emotions or sensations, including aliefs and motivation, including blocking out qualia.
Focusing—This includes not only what you pay attention to, but what you don’t pay attention to and things that you hold in your mind.
Thought Generation—This includes all kinds of creativity, from music and art to maths and ideas about what you might have for lunch and whether conscious or unconscious.
I could also include physical actions or memory operations and even more if I wanted to spend the time, but I suspect that the four above are most relevant.
Now the first thing that we will note is that they are all linked. Beliefs affect your emotions, what facts seem most salient and the thoughts you generate. Qualia strongly directs your attention in particular directions and also what thoughts are generated. And you’re more likely to generate thoughts related to the ones that you are holding in your mind.
So it might help to clarify which of those categories enlightenment falls into. From the accounts that I’ve heard, if they are true, it certainly seems to have a qualia component, related to calmness or equinamity and possibly even towards blocking certain emotions ect. I think it is also clear from your post that it doesn’t seem to affect your beliefs directly, except for you beliefs about Enlightenment. Here, I mean in the sense that awareness of a new mathematically thereom would. This provides an interesting theory of why it might be so hard to explain: the qualia component is the easiest component to be put into words, which is why it is always mentioned and people also claim that it improves their beliefs, but not directly, so the whole story ends up sounding suspicious.
But what if it affected the focusing or thought generation operations? Or maybe even the aliefs? I think that it is pretty clear that if you read through an argument and focus first on the reasons why it might be true and second on the reasons why it might not be true, then you’ll probably generate different ideas in each pass. Secondly, I know that I’m much better at generating thoughts when I have a clear head, than when I’m distracted by worry.
This last possibility, I want to give a bit more detail. Let’s suppose you experience compassion, having never experienced this before. I mean, everyone has to experience things for a first time. You now have that experience and it feels like it is knowlege—I mean, it’s widely accepted that experiencing things yourself gives you insight, even though it seems totally unlike any factual information. Part of it is that you can focus on that experience and make certain predictions—for example how other people might react to a situation and the kinds of thoughts or emotions they might have. If someone makes an argument and it is not well presented, but you have compassion for the group, then you are more likely to be able to generate a reasonable thought patten, ie. fill in that gaps. So experiencing compassion will shape your thoughts, but not directly.
Similarly, thinking of a pleasant memory would seem to be a good way to improve your ability to generate solutions to a problem without involving conflict. Looking at your reply to Ben Pace, it sounds like enlightenment involves certain ideas becoming more salient. What’s not clear is whether this is because it fits into one of the models above. Maybe I’m still failing to look up from the phone, but I think this could help you clarify your claim.
To me the terms you use don’t seem to be helpful. Not everything we pay attention to is in focus. It makes sense to separate attentionality and intentionality and the word focusing seems to me to apply only to the intentional part. It’s possible to shift the object of your intentionality by trying. It’s not possible to do the same thing with attentionality.
That’s where the Joda saying “Do. Or do not. There is no try” and related thought comes from. There are many things you can achieve via intentionality but the common idea is that you can’t achieve enlightenment that way but things come via attentionality.
Saying that aliefs are the same thing as qualia’s feels wrong to me. My own model would say that an alief causes certain qualia to appear under certain circumstances. Modeling aliefs as only being there when they come to the surface and produce qualias seems misguided t me.
As far as “blocking emotions” goes, that term seems like a misnormer to me. If you take a Buddhist monk with a lot of experience can make a loud noise next to them while they are present in their meditation there isn’t a startle response. Given my own experience the related Qualia feels like letting an emotion flow through yourself. If you put up any kind of block than there’s resistence when the stimulas hits the block and you will have a startle response.
It would be interesting to know whether Val has this ability to show no startle response. Being able to not show a startle response isn’t a useful skill but it’s a lot easier to measure than more complex interactions with emotions.
I feel that this is an area where engaging in some ameteur phenomenology may help clarify what you mean, or at least provide insight into what you don’t mean.
So, as a very rough and off-the-cuff attempt to clarify the kinds of mental operations, we have the following:
Beliefs—Here I’m only referring to the cognitive component, not to aliefs or the emotional component. I’m including the cognitive component of doubts or fears here as well, including the cognitive component of beliefs that people are in denial about.
Qualia—This includes any emotions or sensations, including aliefs and motivation, including blocking out qualia.
Focusing—This includes not only what you pay attention to, but what you don’t pay attention to and things that you hold in your mind.
Thought Generation—This includes all kinds of creativity, from music and art to maths and ideas about what you might have for lunch and whether conscious or unconscious.
I could also include physical actions or memory operations and even more if I wanted to spend the time, but I suspect that the four above are most relevant.
Now the first thing that we will note is that they are all linked. Beliefs affect your emotions, what facts seem most salient and the thoughts you generate. Qualia strongly directs your attention in particular directions and also what thoughts are generated. And you’re more likely to generate thoughts related to the ones that you are holding in your mind.
So it might help to clarify which of those categories enlightenment falls into. From the accounts that I’ve heard, if they are true, it certainly seems to have a qualia component, related to calmness or equinamity and possibly even towards blocking certain emotions ect. I think it is also clear from your post that it doesn’t seem to affect your beliefs directly, except for you beliefs about Enlightenment. Here, I mean in the sense that awareness of a new mathematically thereom would. This provides an interesting theory of why it might be so hard to explain: the qualia component is the easiest component to be put into words, which is why it is always mentioned and people also claim that it improves their beliefs, but not directly, so the whole story ends up sounding suspicious.
But what if it affected the focusing or thought generation operations? Or maybe even the aliefs? I think that it is pretty clear that if you read through an argument and focus first on the reasons why it might be true and second on the reasons why it might not be true, then you’ll probably generate different ideas in each pass. Secondly, I know that I’m much better at generating thoughts when I have a clear head, than when I’m distracted by worry.
This last possibility, I want to give a bit more detail. Let’s suppose you experience compassion, having never experienced this before. I mean, everyone has to experience things for a first time. You now have that experience and it feels like it is knowlege—I mean, it’s widely accepted that experiencing things yourself gives you insight, even though it seems totally unlike any factual information. Part of it is that you can focus on that experience and make certain predictions—for example how other people might react to a situation and the kinds of thoughts or emotions they might have. If someone makes an argument and it is not well presented, but you have compassion for the group, then you are more likely to be able to generate a reasonable thought patten, ie. fill in that gaps. So experiencing compassion will shape your thoughts, but not directly.
Similarly, thinking of a pleasant memory would seem to be a good way to improve your ability to generate solutions to a problem without involving conflict. Looking at your reply to Ben Pace, it sounds like enlightenment involves certain ideas becoming more salient. What’s not clear is whether this is because it fits into one of the models above. Maybe I’m still failing to look up from the phone, but I think this could help you clarify your claim.
To me the terms you use don’t seem to be helpful. Not everything we pay attention to is in focus. It makes sense to separate attentionality and intentionality and the word focusing seems to me to apply only to the intentional part. It’s possible to shift the object of your intentionality by trying. It’s not possible to do the same thing with attentionality.
That’s where the Joda saying “Do. Or do not. There is no try” and related thought comes from. There are many things you can achieve via intentionality but the common idea is that you can’t achieve enlightenment that way but things come via attentionality.
Saying that aliefs are the same thing as qualia’s feels wrong to me. My own model would say that an alief causes certain qualia to appear under certain circumstances. Modeling aliefs as only being there when they come to the surface and produce qualias seems misguided t me.
As far as “blocking emotions” goes, that term seems like a misnormer to me. If you take a Buddhist monk with a lot of experience can make a loud noise next to them while they are present in their meditation there isn’t a startle response. Given my own experience the related Qualia feels like letting an emotion flow through yourself. If you put up any kind of block than there’s resistence when the stimulas hits the block and you will have a startle response.
It would be interesting to know whether Val has this ability to show no startle response. Being able to not show a startle response isn’t a useful skill but it’s a lot easier to measure than more complex interactions with emotions.