Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 10

[smcder]

This Solitude of Cataracts

He never felt twice the same about the flecked river,
Which kept flowing and never the same way twice, flowing

Through many places, as if it stood still in one,
Fixed like a lake on which the wild ducks fluttered,

Ruffling its common reflections, thought-like Monadnocks.
There seemed to be an apostrophe that was not spoken.

There was so much that was real that was not real at all.
He wanted to feel the same way over and over.

He wanted the river to go on flowing the same way,
To keep on flowing. He wanted to walk beside it,

Under the buttonwoods, beneath a moon nailed fast.
He wanted his heart to stop beating and his mind to rest

In a permanent realization, without any wild ducks
Or mountains that were not mountains, just to know how it would be,

Just to know how it would feel, released from destruction,
To be a bronze man breathing under archaic lapis,

Without the oscillations of planetary pass-pass,
Breathing his bronzen breath at the azury center of time.

--Wallace Stevens

I'm playing around with translating this into Spanish -

He never felt twice the same about the flecked river,
Which kept flowing and never the same way twice, flowing

Through many places, as if it stood still in one,
Fixed like a lake on which the wild ducks fluttered,

...as if it stood still in one,

You can read that "stood still" as it's still that way, continuing to be that way or "stood still" as stood quietly

He was still still. Still, he was still.

You even have to listen to the poem, I remember you saying Stephens would walk and re-trace his steps to get the rhythms right ... to see which it might be or if it's a play on both. To be absolutely safe you'd want to preserve the possible word play, but I'm not sure you can make the play in Spanish. Learning languages you see how replete (at least English) languages are with ambiguity.

And here:

Ruffling its common reflections, thought-like Monadnocks.
There seemed to be an apostrophe that was not spoken.

"common" can mean in common, or ordinary, both applicable here - but also can have a connotation of a "common" person as a bit vulgar, it's a bit of a put-down, which doesn't seem as applicable, but you want to make sure - so you look at Monadnock

an isolated hill or ridge or erosion-resistant rock rising above a peneplain (the end point of a low-inclination landform) - Stephens is great for stretching the vocabulary!

And to be sure in any case, or more sure, of what is meant - you'd need to read as much of Stephens and about Stephens to know if he would use any given connotation in a particular place ... exegesis ... eisegesis and hermeneutics! oh my!

 

[smcder]

several key points in these two paragraphs that clarify "presentational" and in what sense consciousness is irreducible - this is a paradigm example of why I say go ahead and read the whole paper and try to get a grasp on the mechanics of the argument and then the particulars may come clear -

"This irreducibility of conscious presentation to “extensional” description may be seen as having important consequences for arguments about explanation, supervenience, and reduction. Familiarly, for objects which have their modes of presentation contingently, the (apparent) conceivability of cases in which those modes of presentation come apart from one another does not imply that there is actually a \failure of metaphysical identity or supervenience in this case, but just that the case has been incorrectly described. For instance, the initial apparent conceivability of the case in which water – in the primary-intensional sense of “liquid stuff in our environment” -- fails to be H20 does not establish that water is not identical with H2O, but only that this case is misdescribed: it is really one in which something else fills the role of the “liquid stuff in our environment”. Similarly, the right explanation for the apparent conceivability of the case is not that water might not have been H2O, but only that something else could have turned out, on inquiry, to fulfill this initially presenting role. However, if there are any phenomena which have their mode of presentation necessarily – that is, they are presented, whenever they are, by means of just those modes of presentation – then it is plausible that the conceivability of these sorts of judgments do support actual (metaphysical) non-identity or nonsupervenience. The reason for this is that here there is no room to “explain away” the judgment of non-identity by reference to contingently differing modes of presentation, or to something else being (contingently) presented by means of the same mode (or as another possible occupant of the same initially presenting role). As we shall see in the next section, this is plausibly the case with respect to the phenomena of consciousness: that is, that they are exhausted by their own modes of presentation, which they possess necessarily in a strong sense. If this is correct, it may be used as the key premise in an argument from conceivability to (actual metaphysical) possibility which has as a consequence the non-supervenience of consciousness on the totality of physical facts.

However, if the reasoning in this section is correct,

• the actual ground for this is not to be found in the metaphysically special character of consciousness itself but rather in its irreducibly presentational charcter:

in the (meta-)logical structure, in other words, that qualifies conscious states, just as such, to operate as “their own” modes of presentation and thus to be defined and exhausted by this presentational character. It follows, on the one hand, that the argument for the nonsupervenience of consciousness can be cast in a much broader form than is typical: not only in terms of the irreducibility of consciousness to the physical, but in terms of the irreducibility of consciousness to any set of facts about objects or phenomena in the world that can be written down in natural-language sentences and preserve their truth-value when so written. On the other, this irreducibility is then not to be accorded in the first instance to any supposed difference in metaphysical composition or substance between the physical and the phenomenal, or between matter and mind,**** but rather to the “transcendental” difference between the facts of the world, on the one hand, and the perspective from which it is possible to present these facts in general."******

 

[Soupie]

On the other, this irreducibility is then not to be accorded in the first instance to any supposed difference in metaphysical composition or substance between the physical and the phenomenal, or between matter and mind,**** but rather to the “transcendental” difference between the facts of the world, on the one hand, and the perspective from which it is possible to present these facts in general."******

Yes. I believe I do follow this argument. It is not unlike the argument @Michael Allen has been making and the "perspectival" argument I have been exploring.

 

[Constance]

Electrified Droplets Create Mini Saturn Planets

 

[Constance]

The Surprisingly Strange Physics of Water

The Surprisingly Strange Physics of Water

 

[Constance]

ON THE ROAD HOME

It was when I said,
"There is no such thing as the truth,"
That the grapes seemed fatter.
The fox ran out of his hole.

You . . . You said,
"There are many truths,
But they are not parts of a truth."
Then the tree, at night, began to change,

Smoking through green and smoking blue.
We were two figures in a wood.
We said we stood alone.

It was when I said,
"Words are not forms of a single word.
In the sum of the parts, there are only the parts.
The world must be measured by eye."

It was when you said,
"The idols have seen lots of poverty,
Snakes and gold and lice,
But not the truth";

It was at that time, that the silence was largest,
And longest, the night was roundest.
The fragrance of the autumn warmest,
Closest, and strongest.

Wallace Stevens

 

[Constance]

several key points in these two paragraphs that clarify "presentational" and in what sense consciousness is irreducible - this is a paradigm example of why I say go ahead and read the whole paper and try to get a grasp on the mechanics of the argument and then the particulars may come clear - ...

Steve's post continues, quoting Livingston:

"This irreducibility of conscious presentation to “extensional” description may be seen as having important consequences for arguments about explanation, supervenience, and reduction. Familiarly, for objects which have their modes of presentation contingently, the (apparent) conceivability of cases in which those modes of presentation come apart from one another does not imply that there is actually a \failure of metaphysical identity or supervenience in this case, but just that the case has been incorrectly described. For instance, the initial apparent conceivability of the case in which water – in the primary-intensional sense of “liquid stuff in our environment” -- fails to be H20 does not establish that water is not identical with H2O, but only that this case is misdescribed: it is really one in which something else fills the role of the “liquid stuff in our environment”. Similarly, the right explanation for the apparent conceivability of the case is not that water might not have been H2O, but only that something else could have turned out, on inquiry, to fulfill this initially presenting role. However, if there are any phenomena which have their mode of presentation necessarily – that is, they are presented, whenever they are, by means of just those modes of presentation – then it is plausible that the conceivability of these sorts of judgments do support actual (metaphysical) non-identity or nonsupervenience. The reason for this is that here there is no room to “explain away” the judgment of non-identity by reference to contingently differing modes of presentation, or to something else being (contingently) presented by means of the same mode (or as another possible occupant of the same initially presenting role).

As we shall see in the next section, this is plausibly the case with respect to the phenomena of consciousness: that is, that they are exhausted by their own modes of presentation, which they possess necessarily in a strong sense. If this is correct, it may be used as the key premise in an argument from conceivability to (actual metaphysical) possibility which has as a consequence the non-supervenience of consciousness on the totality of physical facts.

However, if the reasoning in this section is correct,

• the actual ground for this is not to be found in the metaphysically special character of consciousness itself but rather in its irreducibly presentational charcter:

in the (meta-)logical structure, in other words, that qualifies conscious states, just as such, to operate as “their own” modes of presentation and thus to be defined and exhausted by this presentational character.

{I am still trying to get my mind around Livingston's 'meta-logical'/'modal' reasoning. At this point I want to question his claim that "modes of presentation" in conscious experience -- the "presentational character of conscious experience -- defines and exhausts the capabilities of consciousness. For as we know from our own experience, and the written history of our species' wide-ranging philosophical and scientific projects, we also consciously pursue the investigation of objective phenomena as we encounter them in the world. The long history of the Mind-Body Problem (aka the subject-object problem} in human philosophy demonstrates that for us the direct presentation of the being of phenomena in our being-in-the-world does not persuade us that actual things, objects, physical systems and processes, and others do not exist behind those phenomal appearances and call upon our intelligence to attempt to understand them. Human consciousness stands apart ontologically from the objective physicality of the world in which we find ourselves existing, but it is not a stranger to this physicality; it is acquainted with it and seeks to work out its own relationship to and with it}.

It follows, on the one hand, that the argument for the nonsupervenience of consciousness can be cast in a much broader form than is typical: not only in terms of the irreducibility of consciousness to the physical, but in terms of the irreducibility of consciousness to any set of facts about objects or phenomena in the world that can be written down in natural-language sentences and preserve their truth-value when so written.

{The problem, it seems to me, is with the limitations inherent in language and linguistic systems and the constraints these place on what we can express concerning our multiple senses of what-is and what might be beyond the horizons of visibility within which we exist. Our conceptions of both ranges of potential meaning relative to our temporal being expand every day, but our languages fail to keep up with the complex of ideas and concepts we can now entertain.}

On the other, this irreducibility is then not to be accorded in the first instance to any supposed difference in metaphysical composition or substance between the physical and the phenomenal, or between matter and mind,**** but rather to the “transcendental” difference between the facts of the world, on the one hand, and the perspective from which it is possible to present these facts in general."******[/QUOTE]

Steve, can you point me to the part of this paper in which Livingston explicates what he means by "the transcendental difference"? In phenomenological philosophy, consciousness (subjectivity) transcends what is 'given' in the objectively actual presence of things in the encountered earthworld, but things also transcend consciousness. Maybe modal logic and multiple worlds conjectures capture the whole of what we experience and contemplate here, but maybe they don't.

 

[Michael Allen]

"the nonsupervenience of consciousness can be cast in a much broader form than is typical: not only in terms of the irreducibility of consciousness [MA: according to consciousness] to the physical, but in terms of the irreducibility of consciousness [MA:again, according to consciousness] to any set of facts [articulated only in a framework that includes both "consciousness" and its embedded relatedness to the other] about objects or phenomena in the world that can be written down in natural-language sentences and preserve their truth-value when so written."

Of course, but then again this "irreducibility" is consciousness falling (colliding) into itself through the world.

Modal logic is only going to add "necessity" and "possibility" as operators to an already decrepit family of symbols and noises emitted by the very same creatures that attempt to formulate a complete story (a complete foundation) to express their own existence. We're going to need a lot more operators--and the most important operators may be incomprehensible (to consciousness).

 

[smcder]

Modal Logic (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Modal logic is, strictly speaking, the study of the deductive behavior of the expressions ‘it is necessary that’ and ‘it is possible that’. However, the term ‘modal logic’ may be used more broadly for a family of related systems. These include logics for belief, for tense and other temporal expressions, for the deontic (moral) expressions such as ‘it is obligatory that’ and ‘it is permitted that’, and many others. An understanding of modal logic is particularly valuable in the formal analysis of philosophical argument, where expressions from the modal family are both common and confusing. Modal logic also has important applications in computer science.

 

[smcder]

Steve's post continues, quoting Livingston:

"This irreducibility of conscious presentation to “extensional” description may be seen as having important consequences for arguments about explanation, supervenience, and reduction. Familiarly, for objects which have their modes of presentation contingently, the (apparent) conceivability of cases in which those modes of presentation come apart from one another does not imply that there is actually a \failure of metaphysical identity or supervenience in this case, but just that the case has been incorrectly described. For instance, the initial apparent conceivability of the case in which water – in the primary-intensional sense of “liquid stuff in our environment” -- fails to be H20 does not establish that water is not identical with H2O, but only that this case is misdescribed: it is really one in which something else fills the role of the “liquid stuff in our environment”. Similarly, the right explanation for the apparent conceivability of the case is not that water might not have been H2O, but only that something else could have turned out, on inquiry, to fulfill this initially presenting role. However, if there are any phenomena which have their mode of presentation necessarily – that is, they are presented, whenever they are, by means of just those modes of presentation – then it is plausible that the conceivability of these sorts of judgments do support actual (metaphysical) non-identity or nonsupervenience. The reason for this is that here there is no room to “explain away” the judgment of non-identity by reference to contingently differing modes of presentation, or to something else being (contingently) presented by means of the same mode (or as another possible occupant of the same initially presenting role).

As we shall see in the next section, this is plausibly the case with respect to the phenomena of consciousness: that is, that they are exhausted by their own modes of presentation, which they possess necessarily in a strong sense. If this is correct, it may be used as the key premise in an argument from conceivability to (actual metaphysical) possibility which has as a consequence the non-supervenience of consciousness on the totality of physical facts.

However, if the reasoning in this section is correct,

• the actual ground for this is not to be found in the metaphysically special character of consciousness itself but rather in its irreducibly presentational charcter:

in the (meta-)logical structure, in other words, that qualifies conscious states, just as such, to operate as “their own” modes of presentation and thus to be defined and exhausted by this presentational character.

{I am still trying to get my mind around Livingston's 'meta-logical'/'modal' reasoning. At this point I want to question his claim that "modes of presentation" in conscious experience -- the "presentational character of conscious experience -- defines and exhausts the capabilities of consciousness. For as we know from our own experience, and the written history of our species' wide-ranging philosophical and scientific projects, we also consciously pursue the investigation of objective phenomena as we encounter them in the world. The long history of the Mind-Body Problem (aka the subject-object problem} in human philosophy demonstrates that for us the direct presentation of the being of phenomena in our being-in-the-world does not persuade us that actual things, objects, physical systems and processes, and others do not exist behind those phenomal appearances and call upon our intelligence to attempt to understand them. Human consciousness stands apart ontologically from the objective physicality of the world in which we find ourselves existing, but it is not a stranger to this physicality; it is acquainted with it and seeks to work out its own relationship to and with it}.

It follows, on the one hand, that the argument for the nonsupervenience of consciousness can be cast in a much broader form than is typical: not only in terms of the irreducibility of consciousness to the physical, but in terms of the irreducibility of consciousness to any set of facts about objects or phenomena in the world that can be written down in natural-language sentences and preserve their truth-value when so written.

{The problem, it seems to me, is with the limitations inherent in language and linguistic systems and the constraints these place on what we can express concerning our multiple senses of what-is and what might be beyond the horizons of visibility within which we exist. Our conceptions of both ranges of potential meaning relative to our temporal being expand every day, but our languages fail to keep up with the complex of ideas and concepts we can now entertain.}

On the other, this irreducibility is then not to be accorded in the first instance to any supposed difference in metaphysical composition or substance between the physical and the phenomenal, or between matter and mind,**** but rather to the “transcendental” difference between the facts of the world, on the one hand, and the perspective from which it is possible to present these facts in general."******

Steve, can you point me to the part of this paper in which Livingston explicates what he means by "the transcendental difference"? In phenomenological philosophy, consciousness (subjectivity) transcends what is 'given' in the objectively actual presence of things in the encountered earthworld, but things also transcend consciousness. Maybe modal logic and multiple worlds conjectures capture the whole of what we experience and contemplate here, but maybe they don't. [/QUOTE]

I'm reading some more of Livingston's work and may soon be better able to answer your concerns but I don't think he is trying to capture or exhaust our experiences. I also think his conclusions may be congenial to MAs concerns.

 

[smcder]

"the nonsupervenience of consciousness can be cast in a much broader form than is typical: not only in terms of the irreducibility of consciousness [MA: according to consciousness] to the physical, but in terms of the irreducibility of consciousness [MA:again, according to consciousness] to any set of facts [articulated only in a framework that includes both "consciousness" and its embedded relatedness to the other] about objects or phenomena in the world that can be written down in natural-language sentences and preserve their truth-value when so written."

Of course, but then again this "irreducibility" is consciousness falling (colliding) into itself through the world.

Modal logic is only going to add "necessity" and "possibility" as operators to an already decrepit family of symbols and noises emitted by the very same creatures that attempt to formulate a complete story (a complete foundation) to express their own existence. We're going to need a lot more operators--and the most important operators may be incomprehensible (to consciousness).

We're going to need a lot more operators ... for what? To attempt to formulate a complete story (a complete foundation) to express their own existence?

I'm not sure that's my goal - my sense of it is that the others here are in fair agreement with the points in your last few posts. (details are always arguable ;-)

Do you have any suggestions for what other operators we may need? Can you point in any way to "the incomprehensible" (if not to consciousness, to what else could they be comprehensible?) operators? Or are you just being rhetorical?

 

[smcder]

Steve's post continues, quoting Livingston:

"This irreducibility of conscious presentation to “extensional” description may be seen as having important consequences for arguments about explanation, supervenience, and reduction. Familiarly, for objects which have their modes of presentation contingently, the (apparent) conceivability of cases in which those modes of presentation come apart from one another does not imply that there is actually a \failure of metaphysical identity or supervenience in this case, but just that the case has been incorrectly described. For instance, the initial apparent conceivability of the case in which water – in the primary-intensional sense of “liquid stuff in our environment” -- fails to be H20 does not establish that water is not identical with H2O, but only that this case is misdescribed: it is really one in which something else fills the role of the “liquid stuff in our environment”. Similarly, the right explanation for the apparent conceivability of the case is not that water might not have been H2O, but only that something else could have turned out, on inquiry, to fulfill this initially presenting role. However, if there are any phenomena which have their mode of presentation necessarily – that is, they are presented, whenever they are, by means of just those modes of presentation – then it is plausible that the conceivability of these sorts of judgments do support actual (metaphysical) non-identity or nonsupervenience. The reason for this is that here there is no room to “explain away” the judgment of non-identity by reference to contingently differing modes of presentation, or to something else being (contingently) presented by means of the same mode (or as another possible occupant of the same initially presenting role).

As we shall see in the next section, this is plausibly the case with respect to the phenomena of consciousness: that is, that they are exhausted by their own modes of presentation, which they possess necessarily in a strong sense. If this is correct, it may be used as the key premise in an argument from conceivability to (actual metaphysical) possibility which has as a consequence the non-supervenience of consciousness on the totality of physical facts.

However, if the reasoning in this section is correct,

• the actual ground for this is not to be found in the metaphysically special character of consciousness itself but rather in its irreducibly presentational charcter:

in the (meta-)logical structure, in other words, that qualifies conscious states, just as such, to operate as “their own” modes of presentation and thus to be defined and exhausted by this presentational character.

{I am still trying to get my mind around Livingston's 'meta-logical'/'modal' reasoning. At this point I want to question his claim that "modes of presentation" in conscious experience -- the "presentational character of conscious experience -- defines and exhausts the capabilities of consciousness. For as we know from our own experience, and the written history of our species' wide-ranging philosophical and scientific projects, we also consciously pursue the investigation of objective phenomena as we encounter them in the world. The long history of the Mind-Body Problem (aka the subject-object problem} in human philosophy demonstrates that for us the direct presentation of the being of phenomena in our being-in-the-world does not persuade us that actual things, objects, physical systems and processes, and others do not exist behind those phenomal appearances and call upon our intelligence to attempt to understand them. Human consciousness stands apart ontologically from the objective physicality of the world in which we find ourselves existing, but it is not a stranger to this physicality; it is acquainted with it and seeks to work out its own relationship to and with it}.

It follows, on the one hand, that the argument for the nonsupervenience of consciousness can be cast in a much broader form than is typical: not only in terms of the irreducibility of consciousness to the physical, but in terms of the irreducibility of consciousness to any set of facts about objects or phenomena in the world that can be written down in natural-language sentences and preserve their truth-value when so written.

{The problem, it seems to me, is with the limitations inherent in language and linguistic systems and the constraints these place on what we can express concerning our multiple senses of what-is and what might be beyond the horizons of visibility within which we exist. Our conceptions of both ranges of potential meaning relative to our temporal being expand every day, but our languages fail to keep up with the complex of ideas and concepts we can now entertain.}

On the other, this irreducibility is then not to be accorded in the first instance to any supposed difference in metaphysical composition or substance between the physical and the phenomenal, or between matter and mind,**** but rather to the “transcendental” difference between the facts of the world, on the one hand, and the perspective from which it is possible to present these facts in general."******

Steve, can you point me to the part of this paper in which Livingston explicates what he means by "the transcendental difference"? In phenomenological philosophy, consciousness (subjectivity) transcends what is 'given' in the objectively actual presence of things in the encountered earthworld, but things also transcend consciousness. Maybe modal logic and multiple worlds conjectures capture the whole of what we experience and contemplate here, but maybe they don't. [/QUOTE]

As we shall see in the next section, this is plausibly the case with respect to the phenomena of consciousness: that is, that they are exhausted by their own modes of presentation, which they possess necessarily in a strong sense.

I think here he means their role in the argument/analysis is "exhausted" by their own modes of presentation - not that experience itself is exhausted ... but their is also what Livingston writes about qualia in this paper to be considered:

Paul M. Livingston, Experience and structure: Philosophical history and the problem of consciousness - PhilPapers

the first like should connect you to the paper. I've not finished it but so far it seems to throw a little more light on your question.

 

[smcder]

@Constance

See if Livingston's concluding paragraphs shed some light on your questions about his view (best of course to read the whole paper, but this may give you enough to decide if you want to spend the time to do so - note: the paper is from 2002, so I will also check against more current papers) ...

Paul M. Livingston, Experience and structure: Philosophical history and the problem of consciousness - PhilPapers

"Although the endurance of the content/structure distinction that theorists like Lewis and Carnap inaugurated suggests that it still may be the best way of discussing the relationship of subjectivity to objectivity, the contemporary discussion of consciousness does not often recognize the underlying distinction on the philosophical level of the arguments originally made for and against it. If innovations in philosophy of mind have indeed been driven by this distinction, then discussions of the special properties of consciousness as an empirically described phenomenon among others may be less helpful than a more explicit discussion of the logical and semantic implications of its subjectivity and first-person character. And if the recurrent paradigm of ‘explanation’ in philosophy of mind has largely been determined by a particular view of the formal nature of objective meaning, then an explicit discussion of this view might prove more helpful than its mere presupposition."

(Livingston's brief discussion of the structural/functional explanation, what Kim calls the "layered model of the world" (p. 22) I think is very useful)

"Historical analysis of the concepts of ‘consciousness’, ‘explanation’, and the physical therefore recommends both an expansion of the current debate about the explainability of consciousness to include the explicit, semantically informed discussion of the subject/object distinction and a rereading of the history of the debate in terms of the problems of this distinction. Many of the underlying conceptual sources for the intuition that consciousness resists physicalist explanation, the historical analysis suggests, can be made perspicuous as problems concerning the relationship of subjective, immediate experience to objective meaning. These problems, because they have repeatedly determined the form of the philosophical discussion of consciousness, have seldom been able to appear within that discussion as explicit objects of theoretical concern. But their explicit rediscovery could confer upon the current debate a new richness of scope and depth of relevance, allowing its guiding intuitions and conceptual innovations to emerge as contributors to our ongoing self-reflexive investigation of the place of consciousness and subjectivity in the objective world revealed by our best theoretical descriptions of nature."

 

[smcder]

Some fascinating titles:

Paul Livingston

 

[smcder]

http://www07.homepage.villanova.edu/paul.livingston/Thinking and Being.pdf

Heidegger’s treatment of ‘machination’ in the Beitra¨ge zur Philosophie begins the critique of technological thinking that would centrally characterize his later work. Unlike later discussions of technology, the critique of machination in Beitra¨ge connects its arising to the predominance of ‘lived-experience’ (Erlebnis) as the concealed basis for the possibility of a pre-delineated, rule-based metaphysical understanding of the world. In this essay I explore this connection. The unity of machination and lived-experience becomes intelligible when both are traced to their common root in the primordial Greek attitude of techne, originally a basic attitude of wondering knowledge of nature. But with this common root revealed, the basic connection between machination and lived-experience also emerges as an important development of one of the deepest guiding thoughts of the Western philosophical tradition: the Parmenidean assertion of the sameness of being and thinking. In the Beitra¨ge’s analysis of machination and lived-experience, Heidegger hopes to discover a way of thinking that avoids the Western tradition’s constant basic assumption of self-identity, an assumption which culminates in the modern picture of the autonomous, self-identical subject aggressively set over against a pre-delineated world of objects in a relationship of mutual confrontation. In the final section, I investigate an important and illuminating parallel to Heidegger’s result: the consideration of the relationship between experience and technological ways of thinking that forms the basis of the late Wittgenstein’s famous rule-following considerations.

 

[smcder]

This should have been in the abstract just above:

http://www07.homepage.villanova.edu/paul.livingston/Thinking and Being.pdf

In the singular, complex, and mysterious Beitra¨ge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), written between 1936 and 1938, Heidegger begins to articulate the critique of the technological character of the modern world – a critique that would become a guiding thread of his later thought. As is well known, beginning in the 1940s Heidegger would consistently identify the character of modern times as determined by technological ways of thinking and behaving, ways that, according to Heidegger, manifest the most developed and injurious forms of an abiding forgetfulness or loss that traces almost to the beginning of the Western tradition. The discovery and unveiling of the hidden bases of the technological character of modern thinking and acting thus became an essential and familiar part of Heidegger’s narrative interpretation of the history of Western thought from its first beginning with the Greeks to its anticipated, if wholly unforeseeable, future. But in Beitra¨ge itself, the Heideggerian critique of technology develops alongside what may be a surprising result even to those familiar with late Heidegger: that the modern dominance of technology and a technological way of thinking and relating to things – what Heidegger calls, in the Beitra¨ge, ‘machination’ (Machenschaft) – is possible only through the conjoint emergence and growth of something that seems at first completely opposed to technology, namely individual, subjective ‘lived-experience’ or Erlebnis.

 

[Constance]

Steve, can you point me to the part of this paper in which Livingston explicates what he means by "the transcendental difference"? In phenomenological philosophy, consciousness (subjectivity) transcends what is 'given' in the objectively actual presence of things in the encountered earthworld, but things also transcend consciousness. Maybe modal logic and multiple worlds conjectures capture the whole of what we experience and contemplate here, but maybe they don't.

I'm reading some more of Livingston's work and may soon be better able to answer your concerns but I don't think he is trying to capture or exhaust our experiences. I also think his conclusions may be congenial to MAs concerns.[/QUOTE]

I don't think that L is trying to "capture or exhaust our experiences" either. I don't yet follow what L's conclusions are in this paper, nor do I understand what MA writes.

 

[Constance]

Steve, can you point me to the part of this paper in which Livingston explicates what he means by "the transcendental difference"?

As we shall see in the next section, this is plausibly the case with respect to the phenomena of consciousness: that is, that they are exhausted by their own modes of presentation, which they possess necessarily in a strong sense.

Steve continues:

"I think here he means their role in the argument/analysis is "exhausted" by their own modes of presentation - not that experience itself is exhausted ..."

Their role in what argument/analysis?

"but there is also what Livingston writes about qualia in this paper to be considered:

Paul M. Livingston, Experience and structure: Philosophical history and the problem of consciousness - PhilPapers

the first link should connect you to the paper. I've not finished it but so far it seems to throw a little more light on your question."

Thank you for that link. I'll read that paper today.

 

[Constance]

Some fascinating titles:

Paul Livingston

Thanks for that link too. I think we would probably have to read a great deal of what L has written in order to absorb his own philosophy.

 

[Constance]

@Constance

See if Livingston's concluding paragraphs shed some light on your questions about his view (best of course to read the whole paper, but this may give you enough to decide if you want to spend the time to do so - note: the paper is from 2002, so I will also check against more current papers) ...

Paul M. Livingston, Experience and structure: Philosophical history and the problem of consciousness - PhilPapers

"Although the endurance of the content/structure distinction that theorists like Lewis and Carnap inaugurated suggests that it still may be the best way of discussing the relationship of subjectivity to objectivity, the contemporary discussion of consciousness does not often recognize the underlying distinction on the philosophical level of the arguments originally made for and against it. If innovations in philosophy of mind have indeed been driven by this distinction, then discussions of the special properties of consciousness as an empirically described phenomenon among others may be less helpful than a more explicit discussion of the logical and semantic implications of its subjectivity and first-person character. And if the recurrent paradigm of ‘explanation’ in philosophy of mind has largely been determined by a particular view of the formal nature of objective meaning, then an explicit discussion of this view might prove more helpful than its mere presupposition."

(Livingston's brief discussion of the structural/functional explanation, what Kim calls the "layered model of the world" (p. 22) I think is very useful)

"Historical analysis of the concepts of ‘consciousness’, ‘explanation’, and the physical therefore recommends both an expansion of the current debate about the explainability of consciousness to include the explicit, semantically informed discussion of the subject/object distinction and a rereading of the history of the debate in terms of the problems of this distinction. Many of the underlying conceptual sources for the intuition that consciousness resists physicalist explanation, the historical analysis suggests, can be made perspicuous as problems concerning the relationship of subjective, immediate experience to objective meaning. These problems, because they have repeatedly determined the form of the philosophical discussion of consciousness, have seldom been able to appear within that discussion as explicit objects of theoretical concern. But their explicit rediscovery could confer upon the current debate a new richness of scope and depth of relevance, allowing its guiding intuitions and conceptual innovations to emerge as contributors to our ongoing self-reflexive investigation of the place of consciousness and subjectivity in the objective world revealed by our best theoretical descriptions of nature."

This paper does indeed appear to provide a helpful preface to the paper we've been discussing. I'll read all of it.