Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 10

[Constance]

This next section is suggestive and intriguing:

"Badiou and Wittgenstein have come up several times. Tell us about your new book.

I’ve argued in The Politics of Logic that if we look at things this way, it becomes possible to envision a kind of continuance of classic critical theory that remains, in a very direct sense, grounded in the Kantian critique of reason, but on the other hand reckons with the fact that the only conceptions of reason that are effectively available to us today are ones that are instrumental, systematic, and structural. So from this perspective it becomes important to pursue the question of the effectiveness of forms and the consequences of formalization also internally, in part as itself being a formal question, one to which the results of metalogic, formal semantics, and computational theory are relevant. This is, broadly, a question of limits, so it’s a critical question, but not one that seeks to protect some kind of inherently non-formal or unstructured foundational ground. Rather, it’s trying to understand the dynamics of structural limits at the point of their possible rupture or transformation. This is where Badiou’s formally based thought of the event becomes relevant; on the other hand, as I argue in the book, there are other formal options here that understand the moment of rupture much more as one of paradox and structurally inherent contradiction.

Well, I’m exhausted just thinking of the scope of that book and the work it must have taken to produce it! But it’s in the bookstores now, so what else is in the works?

I’ve been working for several years now on a Heidegger book, largely about the sense of logos and its relation to language and the history of being. I take it there’s a sense in which something might need to be said to justify the appearance of another Heidegger book, given that there are already so many, and some of them pretty good.

Here’s your chance!

What I'm trying for in the book is really something I haven’t seen much, namely to engage critically with Heidegger in a way that is broadly sympathetic to the overall contours of his project but much at variance with respect to some of the major claims of it as well. For instance, I’ll argue that in order to really grasp what Heidegger has thought under the heading of the “being-historical” project, we actually have to sacrifice something else that is ostensibly just as central to the project as he presents it, namely the conception of truth as aletheia and the correlative prejudice against propositional and linguistic conceptions of logic. Doing things this way also has the nice effect, I think, of making key parts of the analytic inquiry into language into something like contributions to the Heideggerian project of thinking the history of being.

That’s an interpretation not lacking in a certain violence, but hey, if Heidegger could do that to other thinkers, why not do it to Heidegger?

At this stage, though Heidegger has in certain ways already been received, I think it’s important to look forward to a future reception that isn’t an instance of either, on one hand, a self-enclosed, hermeneutic piety, grounded in the texts but unintelligible in a broader sense, or, on the other, Dreyfus-style social pragmatism, which has little warrant in the texts or in its own right. Really it’s just a question of understanding the history of being project in a “realist” way, that is, a way that doesn’t at all fall into historicism, or history in the sense of Historie, which Heidegger scrupulously avoided but which his interpreters have generally not.

What do we see then in your approach that’s been overlooked by others?

A part of this, as well, is to insist on a set of problematics about forms and structures in Heidegger (as well as elsewhere in 20th century philosophy) that can properly be called “Platonic,” and not simply in the sense of underwriting a post-metaphysical “overcoming” of Plato or “overturning” of Platonism. In fact, agreeing with Heidegger that what is most thought-provoking for us today is that we are still not thinking, I’d venture to suggest that part of what is unthought that is today most thought-provoking is a kind of Platonism, one that will have structured or even covertly programmed much of twentieth-century philosophy, even (or especially) at the moments most ostensibly dedicated to overcoming it.

I can hear the howls of complaint already over “covertly programmed”!

Well, of course, I can’t begin to demonstrate any of this here. I’m just suggesting that we reread the history of the twentieth century in a way that takes seriously the problems that gripped Plato himself. And then it would become a task for, again, a twenty-first century critical inheritance, or deconstruction, of this history to discern the ongoing consequences of this Platonism in the places where one might, along the lines of the received history, suspect it least, not only in Heidegger and Deleuze but also, for instance, in Tarski, in Davidson, and in Wittgenstein."

I'll write to Livingston and ask when we can anticipate reading this book.

 

[Constance]

With the above extracts from the interview in mind it becomes easier to understand Livingston's thought as developed in later passages of his paper "Presentation and the Ontology of Consciousness" quoted above:

". . . the individuation of entities by means of conscious presentation both cannot be reduced to the (actual or modal) properties of individual real-world entities and, in the most characteristic cases, cross-cuts the individuation of entities in terms of their “metaphysical”profiles, there is no necessity here for the relevant presentational “properties” to be identified with the intrinsic or categorial properties of just those entities. Since it is determined not by the individual properties of (actual-world or metaphysically defined) entities but rather by the individuating functions from worlds to their inhabitants, the relevant dimension of variation operates, so to speak, on the level of worlds as wholes rather than simply on the level of these individual entities themselves. That is, in order to determine the presence or absence of the presentational properties in a world, we cannot simply look at the “intrinsic” properties of that world’s entities and facts – indeed, it must be insufficient to do so -- but instead we have to look at whether and how these entities and facts are presented to inhabitants of that world. To do this, as we have seen, we will typically have to consider how this presentation individuates entities in ways that cross-classify individuals, across possible worlds, with respect to their “metaphysical” identities.

But it is just here that the close connection we have seen between primary intensions – in the sense of what is primarily presented in consciousness – and the metaphysics of phenomenal consciousness itself, as plausibly constituted by just that presentation, comes directly to bear. Whereas this bearing is obscure on Type-F monism itself – which requires that we posit otherwise unknown categorial bases for the familiar structural and relational properties of physical matter, and then stipulate their identity (in our world) with phenomenal properties – on the kind of position recommended here, it is immediately and readily accounted for on simultaneously logical, metaphysical, and phenomenological grounds. We can illustrate this position more vividly by means of a line of argument that Chalmers develops in “The Two-Dimensional Argument Against Physicalism.” As he argues there, it is not in fact necessary,in order to establish the conclusion of the general 2-dimensional argument, to assume that primary and secondary intensions must coincide with respect to Q. It is sufficient to add a “that’s all” clause or fact to P: a fact saying that P includes all the facts true at the world under consideration. Then we can readily argue (from the conceivability of P & ~Q) that there is a minimal world – a world which includes all the positive facts in P, and nothing else – that (at least) verifies P but in which the primary intension of Q is false. Then, if P’s primary and secondary intensions coincide, there is a minimal P-world (a minimal world satisfying P) in which Q is false, and thus physicalism is false about our world (where Q is true).

As Chalmers says, on this alternative, it is possible that P necessitates Q, so that physicalism is actually true of the facts in Q, but given the existence of a minimal P world which fails to verify Q, physicalism is then (at any rate) false about the modes of presentation of these facts. Alternatively, if the primary and secondary intensions of P fail to coincide (as on the Type-F monist position), then the existence of a minimal world which verifies P but not Q leaves open the possibility that P necessitates Q, but this necessitation depends on both the structural and non-structural (Chalmers says ‘intrinsic’) profiles of P. In this case, as Chalmers says, we have a variety of monism in which the non-structural aspects of physical facts “are crucial for constituting the properties associated with the modes of presentation of consciousness.” Chalmers characterizes these non-structural aspects as the “intrinsic properties” of physics; but with these considerations in place, it is clear that the reference to “intrinsic properties” is largely vestigial. What is essential to the case at hand – in which we are essentially considering the epistemic and metaphysical implications of the claim that the physical facts are all the facts (this is the result of adding the “that’s all” claim to P) – is rather just that we cannot thereby make room for some modes of presentation, in particular those that actually present phenomenal facts (in our world). This conclusion is already accessible, as soon as we consider the implications of adding the claim of totality with respect to the physical facts, and thereby considering the question of the position from which this totality can be presented, and it suffices to establish the disjunctive conclusion that dualism or some variety of non-structural monism is true.

If we do take the monist alternative, however, it now becomes particularly clear that what is left out of the physical facts as structurally described is essentially related to – or perhaps identical to – the presentational aspects of consciousness themselves. Despite the essential appeal to presentational aspects which are not inherently aspects of any “physical” or “material” object, this kind of position remains a monism rather than a dualism. Indeed, adopting it provides an important additional kind of motivation for monism, and thus for interpreting the general two-dimensional argument as supporting a monist position rather than any form of dualism. For as we have seen in the course of the discussion of Hintikka’s “individuating” functions, the temptation to assume that these functions introduce ontologically peculiar kinds of entities – for example sense-data, or indeed any kind of non-physical or non-material object – is readily countered by observing that the actual referents of the functions, across possible worlds, are just familiar entities of an ontologically single type. Thus the temptation to “reify” senses or other special intentional objects is shown to be simply an artifact of the way in which presentational individuation cross-cuts otherwise identified objects across possible worlds.

If correctly analyzed, the phenomena of presentation thus suggest no reason, even fully granting the soundness of Chalmers’ two-dimensional argument, to adopt a dualism of substances or entities. It is true that the argument, as it stands, leaves open either dualism or monism; but given the availability of the monist alternative here suggested and the plausibility of the claim that it suffices to account for the presentational properties of consciousness, dualism now has no evident motivation. Something similar apparently holds, as well, with respect to property dualism. Just as there is no need to introduce an ontologically distinct kind of object if the presentational “properties”and “entities” work as suggested, there is also no need to introduce any ontologically exotic types of properties of ordinary entities. The entities referred to in each of the worlds across which the individuating functions are defined, after all, just are the familiar ones, with their ordinary types of properties and relations. This importantly makes it evident that upholding the monist disjunct of Chalmers’ disjunctive conclusion need not in any sense involve a property dualism, or anything resembling such a position on the level of global ontology.

Independently of this, there are other reasons to prefer the kind of presentational monism I am presenting here over type-F or “intrinsic” monism as an answer to the problem posed by absence of consciousness from a total structural and functional description of the world. One is the question that inevitably arises, if type-F monism is adopted, about the “intrinsic” natures themselves. If these“intrinsic” natures do indeed have determinate characteristics, such that their presence or absence could determine the presence or absence of consciousness from the world, then why should these characteristics themselves not be describable within a general objective description of the world? But if they were so describable, then Mary could apparently be given full knowledge of them, even before her release from the room, and we would again face the problem that this provision would apparently not give her knowledge of phenomenal properties.

Conversely, moreover, type-F monism arguably does not help to account for the knowledge she does gain when she leaves the room: why should her visual perception present to her the (hitherto unknown) intrinsic categorial bases of the relevant structural properties, when presenting those structural properties in other ways does not? In both cases, the relevant phenomena are better accounted for by reference to the presence, or absence, of actual presentational properties, or of the actual occurrence or non-occurrence of an actual presentation of the relevant phenomenon. Finally, and for related reasons, type-F monism faces a difficult “combination” problem: how do the “proto-phenomenal” intrinsic properties that (on the view) actually underlie the physical structures “add up” to experienced phenomena? By contrast, the account in terms of presentational aspects does not involve any problem of composition or combination, since the possibility of a (phenomenal) presentation of a phenomenon is already seen as involved in the essential structure of a presentational perspective as such.

For all of these reasons, it appears that attention to the presentational aspects of consciousness motivates the novel kind of monist ontology I have argued for. On this ontology, though there is (as Hintikka emphasizes) only one ontological type of entities, there would nevertheless be a crucial irreducibility of consciousness to the purely extensional description of entities; and this explanatory irreducibility would be seen as producing an actual ontological irreducibility of consciousness, in the sense of presentation, to “physical” (or, indeed, other purely extensionally described) facts. This irreducibility of consciousness would then be seen as an aspect, or ontological reflection, of its inherently first-personal or perspectival character, such that it picks out its referents, as classical phenomenology emphasizes, always from a specific position or point of view. Despite this essential invocation of a perspective or point of view, however, the recommended position is not an idealism; for the claim is not that the mind or subjectivity constitutes or produces the (actual or possible world) phenomena it refers to, or even their sense. With respect to these entities and, indeed, “subjectivity” itself, it involves only the same ontological commitments to which standard possible-world semantics already makes recourse.

In closing, however, it must be admitted that given only these ontological commitments, it is not immediately obvious why consciousness should be irreducible in this sense. I have argued that there is reason to think this irreducibility can be connected to the irreducibility of the perspective from which primary intensions, or presentational individuating functions, are necessarily deployed across possible worlds. But we have not really seen why these functions, understood as such, must be essentially and irreducibly “non-extensional”: what, that is, that essentially prevents them from being cashed out as “functions in extension,” or in other words as (purely extensional) sets of ordered pairs of worlds and entities? After all, they are just functions: why could not any one, or all, of these functions just be given by means of finitely stated rules that are themselves accessible in principle from any point of view?

Though I will not develop these arguments here, however, I do think there are two broad ways in which one can argue for this irreducibility on principled grounds connected to what is plausibly the structure of these functions themselves. The first way would be to argue that because the presentational phenomena are, just as such, “semantic” in the sense first used by Tarski to characterize truth, the functions that characterize them exhibit an essential “meta-logical” irreducibility to (first-order) “syntactic” structures or systems. On this sort of position, just as Tarski demonstrated that truth must be irreducible to the syntax of an extensional language, so, and for essentially similar reasons, the presentational phenomena might actually be seen as irreducible to the extensional description of facts. Monism on the level of these facts themselves could, however, naturally be preserved; and the metalogical implications of “diagonalization” (in the sense in which Tarski’s theorem applies it) would themselves suffice to guarantee the real irreducibility of consciousness as presentation. The analogy considered here – between the irreducibility of the mental to the physical, on the one hand, and the irreducibility of semantics to syntax, on the other – is actually offered by Davidson in his original defense of anomalous monism, in “Mental Events.” But rather than applying it, as Davidson does, to considerations about law and causation, the present considerations appear to suggest its use to establish the actually ontological conclusion of the irreducibility of presentation to the totality of what is presented, while monism is nevertheless preserved.

The second way might be to appeal to broadly “Kripkensteinian” considerations about the application of the “content” of a presentation across cases, including (as we have seen) the variety of possible worlds, considered as actual. If, as Kripke interprets Wittgenstein as arguing, any attempt to capture this application by means of a finitely stated rule leaves open the skeptical possibility of a (purportedly) “non-standard” application in a new case, then the actual pattern of application that is embodied in this content cannot in general be reduced to such a finite statement. This is perhaps why Wittgenstein says that, although any provision of a rule appears to demand another rule for interpreting that one, there is nevertheless a way of “grasping a rule” which is “not an interpretation” but rather turns on “what we” call following or going against the rule as we proceed from case to case. As I have suggested in connection with primary intensions and individuating functions, the collective first-personal “we” here may indeed be essential: it is not possible in general to account comprehensively for what is involved in a conscious presentation – that is, to account exhaustively for what it in fact determines, across possible worlds considered as actual – purely in third-person or indeed in simply extensional terms, and the irreducibility of presentational content as such to these terms would then once more be vindicated. It would be a further and welcome exegetical consequence of this that, far from repudiating or rejecting the idea of the essentiality of “inner” or consciously presented contents of thought, Wittgenstein’s considerations would rather be seen as pointing out, in a profound way, their real ontological character.”


(Livingston seems to be looking for the ontological implications that might become visible through a detailed attempt to take cognizance of the plurality of experiences of -- and concepts about -- historically lived 'worlds' as they have taken shape in our species' known, recorded, expressed history, thus thinking from individually lived, existential, being to the nature of 'Being' on a much broader base of temporal successions of human societies, cultures, and conceptualizations. What a challenge, as yet unmet.)

 

[Constance]

Well, of course, I can’t begin to demonstrate any of this here. I’m just suggesting that we reread the history of the twentieth century in a way that takes seriously the problems that gripped Plato himself. And then it would become a task for, again, a twenty-first century critical inheritance, or deconstruction, of this history to discern the ongoing consequences of this Platonism in the places where one might, along the lines of the received history, suspect it least, not only in Heidegger and Deleuze but also, for instance, in Tarski, in Davidson, and in Wittgenstein."

I'll write to Livingston and ask when we can anticipate reading this book.

And it looks like that book has already been written and will be available from amazon in paperback on or after July 15 [already only three copies in stock, with more to become available]:

The Logic of Being: Realism, Truth, and Time (Paperback) – July 15, 2017
by Paul Livingston (Author)

Description: In The Logic of Being, Paul Livingston examines the relationship of truth and time from a perspective that draws on Martin Heidegger’s thought and twentieth-century analytic philosophy. In his influential earlier work The Politics of Logic, Livingston elaborated an innovative “formal” or “metaformal" realism. Here he extends this concept into a “temporal realism” that accounts for the reality of temporal change and becoming while also preserving realism about logic and truth.

Livingston's formal and phenomenological analysis articulates and defends a realist position about being, time, and their relationship that understands that all of these are structured and constituted in a way that does not depend on the human mind, consciousness, or subjectivity. This approach provides a basis for new logically and phenomenologically based accounts of the structure of linguistic truth in relation to the appearance of objects and of the formal structure of time as given.

Livingston draws on philosophers from Plato and Aristotle to Davidson and Heidegger in this exploration. In it, readers and scholars will discover innovative connections between continental and analytic philosophy."

NOTE, great chunks of this text are accessible for sampling at amazon. The first section of chapter 6, "Sense, Time, and Paradox," concerning Heidegger and Kant is fascinating.


{can't get the paracast software to set a link, but you can find this book and others by Livingston just by searching his name at amazon.}

 

[Randall]

This train of thought suggests to me at the moment that perhaps consciousness is the means by which we can discover that we are both part of the physical world and not part of it by virtue of the inescapability of the transcendental capabilities of our own consciousnesses even while embodied, embedded, in physical nature ...

Something I was musing on recently: I still don't believe life after death is possible in the sense that we normally think of it, but what if the whole system is different than we normally think of it? What if life as we know it, even existence itself as we know it isn't an analog continuum? This would mean that every moment of what we call existence is separated from the last moment of creation. This would mean that we're constantly being erased out of existence and recreated, which essentially means that from moment to moment the person we were before is dead and gone.

If that happens to be the case, and we are living in this sort of illusion of an analog existence, then there's no reason that some sort of transition to another realm isn't possible because we're not really ever "the same person" from one moment of existence to another anyway. This allows for the possibility that consciousness might be seen as a second stage emergent property of the universe brought about by the physical process of reproduction and birth, and that perhaps it is the bridge to the "next level" of existence. All things in nature seem to repeat on higher levels, so maybe afterlives are where our consciousness is born into after maturing to some extent on the material plane.

 

[Constance]

we're not really ever "the same person" from one moment of existence to another anyway

You think you know that? How?

 

[Randall]

You think you know that? How?

It was a thought experiment, not a statement of fact. I don't know if there is any way for us to determine if our existence is rendered in discrete frames. If it is, then relative to the rendering source, our existence could hypothetically be put on pause for thousands of years and we'd never be any wiser. But that's beside the point. The point is that if our existence is drawn and erased from one moment to the next, then logically there is no continuity as we normally think of it. We're just constantly updated copies. Therefore if you're suddenly nuked and your consciousness gets copied into some afterlife in the next moment instead of back into this realm, the argument that an afterlife is impossible because you're only a copy becomes moot ( because we're just copies here too ). Anyway. It's not really all that important. Up until now I had just figured afterlives were impossible. This thought experiment represents a sort of loophole in terms of possibility.

 

[Constance]

Randal, do you think this woman is the same person most of the time? How about the other guys? Does music hold them together, or do they hold all the music they know together? And how does that happen?

 

[Randall]

Randal, do you think this woman is the same person most of the time? How about the other guys? Does music hold them together, or do they hold all the music they know together? And how does that happen?

Nice piece of music. It's also a great example to use an analogy because what we're looking at is a collection of stills drawn so quickly that our mind interprets it in an analog manner. If our existence is drawn in an analogous manner, then each moment of our existence is simply a copy updated to reflect the parameters governed by the rules of the system responsible for generating it, and the previous frame along with who you were at that moment is gone, or perhaps buffered to some vast memory storage system. But either way we're still looking at us being copies that only exist in the moment. It's a convincing illusion. Just like the video is also a convincing illusion. We see and hear musicians. But they're not really there at all.

 

[Soupie]

Zurück zu den Sachen selbst!

... downloaded and reading now

The author immediately makes a distinction between presentation and representation, but it's still not clear to me. I think it's because my understanding of representation is not how it is typically understood. Thus, the distinction the author is making is lost on me.

The author described presentation as something presented as something, which is exactly how I conceive of representation.

Ive looked for resources but havent found anything super helpful. Its important that i fully understand this because as the author says what follows is contingent on this understanding of presentation.

"In further considering the implications of this kind of view of presentation for contemporary discussions, it is important to bear in mind two qualifications that distinguish it from others in the vicinity. The first is that this view of presentation should not be taken as implying representationalism, or the view that (as it is standardly put) all conscious states are or involve ‘internal’ representations. The reason this should not be presupposed is that the kind of presentation that Husserl invokes may be (and in the most interesting cases, is) direct: it may proceed, that is, without requiring the mediation or existence of any kind of symbolic, internal, or cognitive re-presentation. My current perception may simply involve that I am presented with a flowering tree before me; as far as the direct phenomenological reflection of this presentation is concerned, there is no need to assume that this requires any ‘internal’ representation which mediates the presentation to me. Second, it is not necessary, in order to hold the view to be explored and defended here, to maintain either that all or only conscious states have a presentational or intentional content."

Also, i dont understand why the emphasis on the internal aspect of representation, and why this differes from presentation. Why is important to grok that presentations arent internal? What does that mean that they arent internal? Internal in relation the what? The body? The brain? The mind?

 

[smcder]

The author immediately makes a distinction between presentation and representation, but it's still not clear to me. I think it's because my understanding of representation is not how it is typically understood. Thus, the distinction the author is making is lost on me.

The author described presentation as something presented as something, which is exactly how I conceive of representation.

Ive looked for resources but havent found anything super helpful. Its important that i fully understand this because as the author says what follows is contingent on this understanding of presentation.

"In further considering the implications of this kind of view of presentation for contemporary discussions, it is important to bear in mind two qualifications that distinguish it from others in the vicinity. The first is that this view of presentation should not be taken as implying representationalism, or the view that (as it is standardly put) all conscious states are or involve ‘internal’ representations. The reason this should not be presupposed is that the kind of presentation that Husserl invokes may be (and in the most interesting cases, is) direct: it may proceed, that is, without requiring the mediation or existence of any kind of symbolic, internal, or cognitive re-presentation. My current perception may simply involve that I am presented with a flowering tree before me; as far as the direct phenomenological reflection of this presentation is concerned, there is no need to assume that this requires any ‘internal’ representation which mediates the presentation to me. Second, it is not necessary, in order to hold the view to be explored and defended here, to maintain either that all or only conscious states have a presentational or intentional content."

Also, i dont understand why the emphasis on the internal aspect of representation, and why this differes from presentation. Why is important to grok that presentations arent internal? What does that mean that they arent internal? Internal in relation the what? The body? The brain? The mind?

@Constance?

Mental representation - Wikipedia

,Mental representation is the mental imagery of things that are not actually present to the senses."

"Mental representations (or mental imagery) enable representing things that have never been experienced as well as things that do not exist."

According to this article presentation appears to be associated with forms of Direct Realism.

 

[smcder]

Mental Representation (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

First few PPs are helpful.

And:

"Though the term ‘Representational Theory of Mind’ is sometimes used almost interchangeably with ‘Computational Theory of Mind’, I will use it here to refer to any theory that postulates the existence of semantically evaluable mental objects, including philosophy's stock in trade mentalia — thoughts, concepts, percepts, ideas, impressions, notions, rules, schemas, images, phantasms, etc. — as well as the various sorts of “subpersonal” representations postulated by cognitive science. Representational theories may thus be contrasted with theories, such as those of Baker (1995), Collins (1987), Dennett (1987), Gibson (1966, 1979), Reid (1764/1997), Stich (1983) and Thau (2002), which deny the existence of such things."

 

[Constance]

Nice piece of music. It's also a great example to use an analogy because what we're looking at is a collection of stills drawn so quickly that our mind interprets it in an analog manner. If our existence is drawn in an analogous manner, then each moment of our existence is simply a copy updated to reflect the parameters governed by the rules of the system responsible for generating it, and the previous frame along with who you were at that moment is gone, or perhaps buffered to some vast memory storage system. But either way we're still looking at us being copies that only exist in the moment. It's a convincing illusion. Just like the video is also a convincing illusion. We see and hear musicians. But they're not really there at all.

I can't imagine experiencing my existence that way, and I doubt that that this is the way you experience the inherent temporality of your own existence and sense of existence. I think your concept here is the illusion, a work of imagination untethered to the qualities of life as experienced in the actual world. If we were digital (virtual) 'copies' -- of ourselves and the world we live in -- each existing only for a moment, we wouldn't, couldn't, feel the tangibility and temporal open-endedness of our selves and our environing worlds. We wouldn't care, as Heidegger recognized, about ourselves and others or about the changing conditions of the world we live in.

If I really believed that you live in the condition you call 'real' I'd suggest that you might try attending to the connectedness, fluidity, and anticipatory openness of your own experience of be-ing as it is carried along in the protention and retention of your own consciousness (and subconsciousness), or else read Husserl's Phenomenology of Inner Time Consciousness, Bergson's philosophy of Duree, and Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. Or just pay attention to what you're experiencing while actually listening to, attending to, following and enjoying the temporally changing melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic changes and developments in and of music that appeals to you. Just as these aspects of music are integrated with one another, so are the aspects of all else you experience and, indeed, think.

 

[Constance]

The author immediately makes a distinction between presentation and representation, but it's still not clear to me. I think it's because my understanding of representation is not how it is typically understood. Thus, the distinction the author is making is lost on me.

Trying to track back to which author/text you're referring. Probably Livingston, but which text?

 

[Constance]

Mental Representation (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

First few PPs are helpful.

And:

"Though the term ‘Representational Theory of Mind’ is sometimes used almost interchangeably with ‘Computational Theory of Mind’, I will use it here to refer to any theory that postulates the existence of semantically evaluable mental objects, including philosophy's stock in trade mentalia — thoughts, concepts, percepts, ideas, impressions, notions, rules, schemas, images, phantasms, etc. — as well as the various sorts of “subpersonal” representations postulated by cognitive science. Representational theories may thus be contrasted with theories, such as those of Baker (1995), Collins (1987), Dennett (1987), Gibson (1966, 1979), Reid (1764/1997), Stich (1983) and Thau (2002), which deny the existence of such things."

I'll read that SEP article and then try to talk about the difference between presentational experience and representations of things, others, states of affairs, etc., as they take shape in conscious reflection {which occurs after, and on the basis of, our prereflective conscious experience in the world}.

I remember that a few parts back in the thread we spent some time citing and discussing the differences between presentation and representation. Maybe we can track back to those pages.

 

[Randall]

I can't imagine experiencing my existence that way, and I doubt that that this is the way you experience the inherent temporality of your own existence and sense of existence ...

Another nice piece. Very laid back. On the topic; there would be no experience for us that would diminish the "fluidity" of our experience because between frames we simply wouldn't exist to experience the gap. So maybe I'm not really getting the idea across well. Anyway. I suppose we're all free to doubt whatever we want. I just thought you might be interested in a way of looking at existence that could logically facilitate the possibility of some sort of afterlife. If this option is to be discarded, then it seems to me that the situation returns to afterlives as logical impossibilities. That is to reiterate, impossible in the way they are typically imagined to be continuity of personhood into some other realm of existence.

 

[smcder]

@Constance

LRB · Thomas Nagel · The I in Me: I and Me

Nagel's review of Strawson's book - Strawson's "thin (squirrely? ;-) subjectivity" reminds me a bit of @ufology 's gappy theory.

Nagel responds thusly:

"I do not understand what it would be like to live like this, to feel ‘that there simply isn’t any “I” or self that goes on through (let alone beyond) the waking day, even though there’s obviously and vividly an “I” or self at any given time.’ If Strawson experiences guilt or shame for episodes in the past, it must be very different from mine."

 

[Soupie]

@smcder

"The reason this should not be presupposed is that the kind of presentation that Husserl invokes may be (and in the most interesting cases, is) direct: it may proceed, that is, without requiring the mediation or existence of any kind of symbolic, internal, or cognitive re-presentation. My current perception may simply involve that I am presented with a flowering tree before me; as far as the direct phenomenological reflection of this presentation is concerned, there is no need to assume that this requires any ‘internal’ representation which mediates the presentation to me."

I'm unclear who/what is the I/me in this paragraph. I'll assume this is—what I would call—the phenomenal self.

So the phenomenal self—the I/me—is presented with something as something. And that this is then followed by phenomenological relflection.

The claim is there is no internal, cognitive mediation.

Based on things I've picked up from @Constance in the past, I think there is a school of thought in cognitive Phil of mind that all consciousness involves cognition/thought??? Including perception?

So, I think the author is distinguishing this "presentational" view from a "representational" view that says perception always involves "cognitive" mediation???

I'm grasping at straws here. I have Thompson's book Mind and Life so I'm going to see if this distinction is addressed there (I should be) and give that a re-read.

 

[Constance]

@Constance?
Mental representation - Wikipedia
"Mental representation is the mental imagery of things that are not actually present to the senses."
"Mental representations (or mental imagery) enable representing things that have never been experienced as well as things that do not exist."

Another timely and helpful text, Steve. Here's another extract:

"Strawson believes that although experiences are events in the brain, experience cannot be analysed in terms of the physical properties of the material world, so the material world is much more than the world described by physics – at least in the case of brains, and perhaps quite generally.＊This means that the conscious brain has a mental character that is not revealed by the physical sciences, including neurophysiology."

Maybe it is helpful to describe our human type of being in local regions of Being in this way: we are indisputably 'material/biological' organisms who live in our local environing world materially and supra-materially {in the position of being consciously 'ek-stase', as Heidegger referred to the capability of our consciousnesses to stand slightly apart from the world in a self-sensing inwardness that is subjective and also intersubjective -- shared with other embodied consciousnesses}.

We are inseparably part-world and part-thinking-about-the-world, and our thinking evolves from what we have prereflectively/precognitively absorbed {sensed, felt, needed, and desired} in and from the environing world around us before we reach the level of reflective consciousness and mind. We continue thereafter to interface with the world, the mileau in which we live, both prereflectively and reflectively. What philosophy of mind needs to do is to explore, to the extent possible, the evolutionary and historical nature of prereflective consciousness in our own species (and in other species that only very gradually appear to have developed aspects of reflective consciousness). As MP metaphorically characterized the inescapably co-dependent relation of consciousness and world, "the fish in the water, and the water is in the fish."

Think for a moment about what is involved in 'brain washing' and 'psi-ops', attempts by individuals in our time who attempt to manipulate and control the feeling, thinking, and behavior of some humans in order a) to employ them as quasi-mindless agents directed to perform sociopathic acts against others, and b) more broadly to neutralize the individuality and natural impulses of masses of people in order to produce societies of humans who function much like machines, for whom selfhood, critical thought, and protest becomes impossible. An example of the latter is obvious in North Korea today. Aldous Huxley anticipated manipulations of mind such as these -- and the limited extent to which they can fully succeed, in his classic dystopian novel Brave New World.

According to this article presentation appears to be associated with forms of Direct Realism.

Yes.

Nagel's review of Strawson's book - Strawson's "thin (squirrely? ;-) subjectivity" reminds me a bit of @urology 's gappy theory.

Nagel responds thusly:

"I do not understand what it would be like to live like this, to feel ‘that there simply isn’t any “I” or self that goes on through (let alone beyond) the waking day, even though there’s obviously and vividly an “I” or self at any given time.’

Yes.

If Strawson experiences guilt or shame for episodes in the past, it must be very different from mine."

Indeed. Strawson allows his analytical and materialist presuppositions to get in the way of analyzing his own experience and reflecting deeply on the nature of consciousness as temporal, cumulative, personal, interpersonal, and thus ultimately moral, ethical, cognizant of the responsibilities that inhere in becoming fully conscious of what remains ambiguous and that which becomes unambiguous in us and our relations with others.

 

[smcder]

@smcder

"The reason this should not be presupposed is that the kind of presentation that Husserl invokes may be (and in the most interesting cases, is) direct: it may proceed, that is, without requiring the mediation or existence of any kind of symbolic, internal, or cognitive re-presentation. My current perception may simply involve that I am presented with a flowering tree before me; as far as the direct phenomenological reflection of this presentation is concerned, there is no need to assume that this requires any ‘internal’ representation which mediates the presentation to me."

I'm unclear who/what is the I/me in this paragraph. I'll assume this is—what I would call—the phenomenal self.

So the phenomenal self—the I/me—is presented with something as something. And that this is then followed by phenomenological relflection.

The claim is there is no internal, cognitive mediation.

Based on things I've picked up from @Constance in the past, I think there is a school of thought in cognitive Phil of mind that all consciousness involves cognition/thought??? Including perception?

So, I think the author is distinguishing this "presentational" view from a "representational" view that says perception always involves "cognitive" mediation???

I'm grasping at straws here. I have Thompson's book Mind and Life so I'm going to see if this distinction is addressed there (I should be) and give that a re-read.

@Soupie I'm unclear who/what is the I/me in this paragraph. I'll assume this is—what I would call—the phenomenal self.

What is confusing about "I/me"? Hopefully you use "I/me" every day ... or do you say to your co-workers: "How is the phenomenal self today?"

@Soupie So the phenomenal self—the I/me—is presented with something as something. And that this is then followed by phenomenological relflection.

No, just - I am presented with something.

as far as the direct phenomenological reflection of this presentation is concerned, there is no need to assume that this requires any ‘internal’ representation which mediates the presentation to me."

@Soupie The claim is there is no internal, cognitive mediation.

Why do you keep adding words? "... there is no need to assume that this requires any 'internal' representation which mediates the presentation to me"

@Soupie Based on things I've picked up from @Constance in the past, I think there is a school of thought in cognitive Phil of mind that all consciousness involves cognition/thought??? Including perception?

I'll let @Constance respond - but I don't think so ... again why do you add "cognitive" "cognitive Philosophy of Mind" - just say "philosophy of mind" ...


@Soupie So, I think the author is distinguishing this "presentational" view from a "representational" view that says perception always involves "cognitive" mediation???

I may be wrong - but it seems you are making it "cognitively" more difficult ... ;-) just look at the two words:

presentation - direct perception
re-presentation - presented again

the Wikipedia articles talks about the problems with both views ... but what may be helpful in this instance is that "re-presentation" could lead to an infinite regress or at least a finite one.

 

[Constance]

@smcder"The reason this should not be presupposed is that the kind of presentation that Husserl invokes may be (and in the most interesting cases, is) direct: it may proceed, that is, without requiring the mediation or existence of any kind of symbolic, internal, or cognitive re-presentation. My current perception may simply involve that I am presented with a flowering tree before me; as far as the direct phenomenological reflection of this presentation is concerned, there is no need to assume that this requires any ‘internal’ representation which mediates the presentation to me."

"My current perception may simply involve that I am presented with a flowering tree before me; as far as the direct phenomenological reflection of this presentation is concerned, there is no need to assume that this requires any ‘internal’ representation which mediates the presentation to me."

That's good as far as it goes, but the thing we are said to 'perceive' -- say a flowering tree, or a lilac bush in bloom -- is never presented to us in isolation. The phenomenally present blossoming plant is never encountered singly or alone against a blank background; it is perceived within a gestalt appearance, as part of, perhaps the most attractive part of the immediate scene we perceive {most attractive, perhaps, because we see it in color (the shades of blue, purple, lavender, and white of, say, the lilac blossoms in spring) and we sense it in other ways as well: the unique sweetness of the scents of these blossoms, the movement of their delicate bracts in the shifting breezes or strong winds present at the moment, for moments or minutes, or perhaps for hours, for the lilac bush and for us. All these are just partial elements of the gestalt presence, the gestalt experiencem, we have of a segment the world we encounter physically and aesthetically.

This present lilac bush and our infusions from its effusions of colors, shapes, and scents in the movement of the air we share with it, exists for us not for a moment but for a certain duration, and, unless its the first lilac bush we have ever encountered, it is part of a familiar mileau sampled multiple times and in various ways in the personal sense/personal image of the environing world we develop out of our experiences in it. Whenever I think of lilacs I remember a particular night decades ago when I returned to my family's home after an evening seminar and sat at the kitchen table until dawn writing a paper to turn in the next day at the university. It was a wild spring night, six blocks from Lake Michigan, a very windy night when the sounds of the branches up in the elm trees were audible as they knocked against one another and the lilac bushes lining the backyard were blowing about and saturating the air with the scents of their blossoms. I had a window open next to me and what was happening outside and drifting inside -- the sound and movement of the wind, the sounds of the elm trees' branches knocking against one another, and the strong drafts of the lilacs' scents -- were irresistible. I went into the backyard to more fully experience all of it (or those parts of it that were available to my sensorium) and stayed out there for a long, unforgettable, time. I don't think I actually finished the paper.

[quote[I'm unclear who/what is the I/me in this paragraph. I'll assume this is—what I would call—the phenomenal self.

So the phenomenal self—the I/me—is presented with something as something. And that this is then followed by phenomenological relflection.

The claim is there is no internal, cognitive mediation.

I think there always is a form of meditation involved in our experiences in youth and adulthood when they demand our attention for periods of time -- when we can't not abandon whatever we were thinking about or doing a moment ago and move closer to the palpable immediate expressions of our mileau, whether natural or cultural, that impress us and involve us, drawing us to attend fully to what we can perceive in what they presence for us, a part of the world's being that we think of as outside of us, beyond us. Aldous Huxley also wrote in another book about 'the doors of perception' and the essential importance of our opening these doors. Another personal case: I usually do not listen to music like that which I link here while I am trying to read or write. I find that I can't fully listen to this music if I'm also trying to do something else. I linked to that last piece by Holly Hofmann's group because I'd taken a break to link it, meanwhile half-listening to it. Then I got up, clicking to replay it while I went to get a glass of water from the kitchen and check to see if it was raining outdoors (both absent-mindedly), and during those minutes I heard aspects and resonances of that musical performance I'd never heard fully before. I think we're ready to absorb into ourselves multiple aspects of the worldly reality we live in at any moment, but none of us can absorb all of its aspects at once. We will absorb that which we attend to, and while hearing the Hoffman recording while on cognitive autopilot, getting water, looking out the front door, I was inadvertently receptive to far more of that music than I had fully heard at other times. The sounds integrated in this performance resonated differently in various places in my house I moved into, and what I heard forced me to pay closer attention, to sustain closer attention, than I had on earlier 'listenings'. It was a case prereflective awareness/consciousness breaking through into attentive consciousness -- enabling deeper hearing -- and I realized this was the case (a cognitive act) while I was in the middle of this more vivid attunement. I think the world presses in upon us in numberless ways, many or most of which we miss in our generally task-oriented lives. How much are we missing in our own being the farther we get from what the sensible, palpable, world has to offer us when we open the doors of our perceptions, or allow them to be opened to the real mileau in which we live and breathe?

Based on things I've picked up from @Constance in the past, I think there is a school of thought in cognitive Phil of mind that all consciousness involves cognition/thought??? Including perception?

Yes; that notion has been an affliction of analytical philosophy for more than a century.

So, I think the author is distinguishing this "presentational" view from a "representational" view that says perception always involves "cognitive" mediation???

Good question. What all philosophers of mind have to get at is the distinction between what we have first absorbed prereflectively and then reflectively from the residues of phenomenal presence of and to things and others in the world -- between that which 'presences' for us first in experience -- and remains as representations of things, others, and 'world/s' that accrue in our accumulating memories of what we have experienced. As WS says, "we reason of these things with / Later reason."

I'm grasping at straws here. I have Thompson's book Mind and Life so I'm going to see if this distinction is addressed there (I should be) and give that a re-read.

Good resource. Another one, perhaps more satisfactory for your present questions, is this earlier book by Thompson, Varela, and Rosch:

The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience

which I have just discovered (though Google) is available online in its entirety at this link:

The%20Embodied%20Mind_%20Cognitive%20Science%20and%20Human%20Experience-MIT%20Press%20(1993).pdf

The Embodied Mind was first published in 1992 and in subsequent editions in 2011 and 2013 [one or both of those being revised editions], according to Amazon. The pdf above is of the first edition. I remember reading drafts of the chapters of this book online during the 90s.