Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 10

[Michael Allen]

What's your point?

Questions for both Steve and @Michael Allen regarding these posts . . .

Steve wrote in response to MA:

"As always, the caveat that the meaning I take from your writing is likely not the meaning you mean it to mean. In any case, the apparent fundamental inability of the questioner to ask relevant questions regarding the nature of its ability to question is not unlike, I think, the problem I've been articulating of the perceiver attempting to accurately perceive the nature of its perceptual apparatus."

Would you [and also MA] explain the basis for this claim: "the apparent fundamental inability of the questioner to ask relevant questions regarding the nature of its ability to question"?

which you go on to liken to: "the problem I've been articulating of the perceiver attempting to accurately perceive the nature of its perceptual apparatus."

Re the first claim, I think we have, over much of the history of human philosophy, asked "relevant questions regarding the nature of [our] ability to question," and that we are still attempting to ground adequate answers to those questions in both analytic and phenomenological philosophy. The plain fact is that our species has been moved to think beyond what we experience in the world to the question of the relation of our experience to the nature of the world/World in which we find ourselves existing.

Re the second problem you (Steve) see concerning our "ability to accurately perceive the nature of [our] perceptual apparatus," I'm supposing from the word 'apparatus' that you are referring to some contemporary postulations concerning human perception derived from information theory, computational theories of mind, and the resulting matrix meme. Might these objectifying and remote theories concerning the nature of human perception turn out to be valid? Maybe, but we have to ignore the entire nature of perception as analyzed and explicated in phenomenological philosophy in order to think so. My usual complaint: one cannot reasonably set aside phenomenological insights into the nature of human perception before understanding what they are in detail, as expressed in the major texts of phenomenology.

You continued to MA:

"I'd still like you to attempt to articulate why you insist that misunderstanding is a necessary condition of being and/or consciousness. I have my own ideas of why this might be, but they're likely worlds away from your conception. I think of it in terms of singularity versus differentiation."

I too would like to hear MA's articulation of the grounds on which he "insist that misunderstanding is a necessary condition of being and/or consciousness." And also what you mean by construing the same misunderstanding in terms of "singularity versus differentiation."

ETA: I don't know why the strike-throughs showed in the last few lines above, nor how to fix it.

No worries, I recognize my own thoughts.

Firstly, I do not equate our ability to be satisfied according to our own thought framework regarding the "story" we recite to ourselves to help us stop questioning.
... (edit: equate with what might be ultimate reality...whatever that may be. Just completing the thought here)
To put it bluntly (and crudely), there is no "consciouness" without questioning. To resolve all questions may dissolve everything that makes us conscious.

That's all I have for now--I need to take time to absorb and reflect on your other points.

 

[smcder]

Questions for both Steve and @Michael Allen regarding these posts . . .

Steve wrote in response to MA:

"As always, the caveat that the meaning I take from your writing is likely not the meaning you mean it to mean. In any case, the apparent fundamental inability of the questioner to ask relevant questions regarding the nature of its ability to question is not unlike, I think, the problem I've been articulating of the perceiver attempting to accurately perceive the nature of its perceptual apparatus."

Would you [and also MA] explain the basis for this claim: "the apparent fundamental inability of the questioner to ask relevant questions regarding the nature of its ability to question"?

which you go on to liken to: "the problem I've been articulating of the perceiver attempting to accurately perceive the nature of its perceptual apparatus."

Re the first claim, I think we have, over much of the history of human philosophy, asked "relevant questions regarding the nature of [our] ability to question," and that we are still attempting to ground adequate answers to those questions in both analytic and phenomenological philosophy. The plain fact is that our species has been moved to think beyond what we experience in the world to the question of the relation of our experience to the nature of the world/World in which we find ourselves existing.

Re the second problem you (Steve) see concerning our "ability to accurately perceive the nature of [our] perceptual apparatus," I'm supposing from the word 'apparatus' that you are referring to some contemporary postulations concerning human perception derived from information theory, computational theories of mind, and the resulting matrix meme. Might these objectifying and remote theories concerning the nature of human perception turn out to be valid? Maybe, but we have to ignore the entire nature of perception as analyzed and explicated in phenomenological philosophy in order to think so. My usual complaint: one cannot reasonably set aside phenomenological insights into the nature of human perception before understanding what they are in detail, as expressed in the major texts of phenomenology.

You continued to MA:

"I'd still like you to attempt to articulate why you insist that misunderstanding is a necessary condition of being and/or consciousness. I have my own ideas of why this might be, but they're likely worlds away from your conception. I think of it in terms of singularity versus differentiation."

I too would like to hear MA's articulation of the grounds on which he "insist that misunderstanding is a necessary condition of being and/or consciousness." And also what you mean by construing the same misunderstanding in terms of "singularity versus differentiation."

ETA: I don't know why the strike-throughs showed in the last few lines above, nor how to fix it.

The above text is from @Soupie's post found here:

Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 10

"As always, the caveat that the meaning I take from your writing is likely not the meaning you mean it to mean. In any case, the apparent fundamental inability of the questioner to ask relevant questions regarding the nature of its ability to question is not unlike, I think, the problem I've been articulating of the perceiver attempting to accurately perceive the nature of its perceptual apparatus."

Would you [and also MA] explain the basis for this claim: "the apparent fundamental inability of the questioner to ask relevant questions regarding the nature of its ability to question"?

which you go on to liken to: "the problem I've been articulating of the perceiver attempting to accurately perceive the nature of its perceptual apparatus."

 

[Constance]

The above text is from @Soupie's post found here:

Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 10

"As always, the caveat that the meaning I take from your writing is likely not the meaning you mean it to mean. In any case, the apparent fundamental inability of the questioner to ask relevant questions regarding the nature of its ability to question is not unlike, I think, the problem I've been articulating of the perceiver attempting to accurately perceive the nature of its perceptual apparatus.

Steve, sorry about misidentifying that post as yours.

So then, would you @Soupie respond to the following questions:

Would you [and also MA] explain the basis for this claim: "the apparent fundamental inability of the questioner to ask relevant questions regarding the nature of its ability to question"?

which you go on to liken to: "the problem I've been articulating of the perceiver attempting to accurately perceive the nature of its perceptual apparatus."

Thanks.

 

[Michael Allen]

Steve, sorry about misidentifying that post as yours.

So then, would you @Soupie respond to the following questions:

Would you [and also MA] explain the basis for this claim: "the apparent fundamental inability of the questioner to ask relevant questions regarding the nature of its ability to question"?

which you go on to liken to: "the problem I've been articulating of the perceiver attempting to accurately perceive the nature of its perceptual apparatus."

Thanks.

Its like an eye seeing it's own mechanism while it forms the experience with respect to the rest of its own neurophysiology. The apparatus responsible for establishing these "felt" experiences, qualia, etc is itself involved in a world of relations to outside the picture or model created by the same apparatus to represent itself in its world. It would be like a sentient set of pixels in a digital world of information trying to ascertain the fundamentals of the hardware that presents its own world. This is where the weirdness of quantum reality makes the most sense--a world where a being of pure information rises to the occasion and attempts to ascertain the smallest components of its own reality--a pixel.

But even this former illustration/analogy is hypocritical, as it fails to make a "real" world--only one based on a current paradigm in human understanding: machine consciousness.

 

[smcder]

I'm hoping to read responses to Bataille's ideas from all of you. I have a feeling that @Michael Allen might be able to identify with much of Bataille's thinking except perhaps Bataille's primary drive toward the disclosure and understanding of immanence as our escape from the vexations of dualistic habits of thought.

Here is a collection of Bataille's writings with a short introduction ...

Georges Bataille Electronic Library

 

[smcder]

http://www07.homepage.villanova.edu/paul.livingston/Husserl%20and%20Schlick.pdf

*SPOILER ALERT*

This is the last paragraph of the paper - so if you don't want to know how it comes out, stop reading now.

;-)

"In the perspective of historical analysis, then, the disagreement between Husserl and Schlick about the synthetic a priori can be seen to arise from the divergence in the response of their methodologically distinct analytical programs to a common problem, the problem of the representability of the logical structure of experience. Both projects require an account of the logical structure of experience, but problems arise for both precisely when they attempt to describe the metaphysical and epistemological status of this structure. Whereas Husserl’s substantive account of the epistemology and metaphysics of the structure of experience ties him to an implausibly strong doctrine of imagination, Schlick’s sparer linguistic and nominalist account lacks the explanatory resources to make sense of the nontautological but nevertheless a priori status of propositions about the structure of experience. The similar origin of these difficulties in the two main traditions of twentieth-century philosophy suggests the presence of an underlying problem of substantial comprehensiveness and intractability with the description of the structure of experience, one whose consequences for explanatory projects in epistemology and philosophy of mind may still not be fully understood."

 

[Constance]

Its like an eye seeing it's own mechanism while it forms the experience with respect to the rest of its own neurophysiology. The apparatus responsible for establishing these "felt" experiences, qualia, etc is itself involved in a world of relations to outside the picture or model created by the same apparatus to represent itself in its world. It would be like a sentient set of pixels in a digital world of information trying to ascertain the fundamentals of the hardware that presents its own world. This is where the weirdness of quantum reality makes the most sense--a world where a being of pure information rises to the occasion and attempts to ascertain the smallest components of its own reality--a pixel.

But even this former illustration/analogy is hypocritical, as it fails to make a "real" world--only one based on a current paradigm in human understanding: machine consciousness.

So you're saying, in apparent response to my second question, that our inability -- in your view -- to understand how we see what we see {and otherwise sense} is somehow a result of our inability to take an outside perspective on the whole of the being of the universe/multiverse in which we exist? In fact, you seem to make the case for the physical limits of the phenomenological-existential description of the conditions in which we do see and otherwise sense our own situated being and then reflect on the nature of our being-in-the/a-world [though you are unable to find satisfaction in this description of our ontological situation].

As I recall from many years ago in reading Emerson, he thought through this situated nature of what we can see in/of our local situated being in terms of a 'transparent eyeball', by which it now seems to me he might have been referring to the self-reflexivity of our experiences in the world -- beyond simply seeing what is phenomenally presented through our capacities for vision to understanding what conscious seeing reveals about the transparence of our own conscious presence in the seeing of what we see. I need to look back over decades to read that essay again to see if that's what he intended to convey.

To repeat my other question:

"I'd still like you to attempt to articulate why you insist that misunderstanding is a necessary condition of being and/or consciousness."

If the nature of what we can and do experience of the intersection of our own being and the being of things, gestalts, and other consciousnesses in our actual environing world is indeed the place from which our thinking becomes possible, how is that all our thinking amounts, for you, to asking the "wrong questions" about the being of our experience? I think you might be making a category error in supposing that unless we understand everything about the World/universe/multiverse/Whatever-It-Is within which we become aware of our own existence, we can never ask the 'right' questions about what it is that we experience through our embodied [and always situated] consciousnesses in our actual local, temporal, 'reality'. I think Heidegger and all the other phenomenological thinkers would agree with what I'm saying. We live where and when and as we live, capable by virtue of the natural affordances that enable our sensing of our own presence and the presence of others and other things to subsequently reflect on and think about both the ontic and ontological questions our experiences provoke.

Coming back to the statement I've underscored in your above post:

"The apparatus responsible for establishing these "felt" experiences, qualia, etc is itself involved in a world of relations to outside the picture or model created by the same apparatus to represent itself in its world."

No doubt all human theories of consciousness and mind fall short, in their 'models' of what we experience and think, of also capturing the nature of Being as a whole or in-itself. That's something we have to accept, but it does not mean that we are unable to both experience and interrogate the nature of our own being-in-the-world {the local world within the horizons of visiblity for us} and speculate on the nature of what lies beyond or beneath these horizons of the visible and the thinkable.

I don't personally see this situation as either 'absurd' or as a cause for despair. We can learn and know a great deal about the conditions of our own existence/be-ing and on that basis build rational, just, and sustainable societies and cultures. As 'thrown' into worldly existence (in Heidegger's meaning, and in Sartre's, Merleau-Ponty's, Gadamer's, Levinas's, etc.), we do know that we must create our own values in this world, and we are capable of doing so (thus obligated to do so -- the meaning of Heidegger's concept of 'Appropriation').

 

[smcder]

Transparent eyeball - Wikipedia

Sent from my LGLS991 using Tapatalk

 

[Constance]

"...Whereas Husserl’s substantive account of the epistemology and metaphysics of the structure of experience ties him to an implausibly strong doctrine of imagination, Schlick’s sparer linguistic and nominalist account lacks the explanatory resources to make sense of the nontautological but nevertheless a priori status of propositions about the structure of experience."

How 'implausible' is Husserl's recognition of imagination in human perception? We'd need to consult Zahavi, and probably others, if not to read Husserl's later works in order to judge the 'implausibility' averred. MP wrote that "Imagination is present in the first human perception," and we can understand what he was describing by reading the Phenomenology of Perception. Gadamer's hermeneutic phenomenology and Mikel Dufrenne's phenomenological aesthetics are also pertinent. Sartre's The Imagination is another key text. And of course we need to follow the relevant developments in Kant. I'm glad you posted this extract, Steve, because I now will read the whole of that paper by Livingston. {so much to read; so little time}

There's another specialist in the aesthetics branch of philosophy, an American whose name I'm forgetting but will seek out. His work enables us to go beyond the inadequate notion of 'aesthetics' as referring to our experience of works of art to recognizing the aesthetic aspects of our embodied experience in the encountered world.

 

[Constance]

Transparent eyeball - Wikipedia

Sent from my LGLS991 using Tapatalk

Thanks. That's a pretty good summary of Emerson's viewpoint in the essay "Nature.'

Extract: "The ‘all’ that Emerson seeks [to] access is not simply harmony with nature or even knowledge, but perception of a deep unity between the human spirit and the natural world."

This recalls Bataille's insight into animal being as being "like water in water," a condition embedded in our own evolution (and perhaps recalled subconsciously or in prereflective experience) but lost in much of human abstract thinking about the nature of our being [particularly in positivism and its extension into analytical philosophy of mind].

 

[Constance]

Turned up in my Word docs:

Visual cognition

Patrick Cavanagh1,2

“Before reviewing the research itself, one question stands out that we should consider: cognition, doesn’t the brain already do that? Elsewhere? How can there be a separate visual cognition? As Zenon Pylyshyn (1999) has detailed, yes, vision can have an independent existence with extraordinarily sophisticated inferences that are totally separate from standard, everyday, reportable cognition. Knowing, for example, that the two lines in the Muller-Lyer illusion are identical in length does not make them look so. Pylyshyn calls this cognitive impenetrability, but we might see it as cognitive independence: having an independent, intelligent agent – vision – with its own inference mechanisms. Given that the brain devotes 30% to 40% of its prime cortical real estate to vision we can certainly imagine that the “visual brain” is a smart one, even if (or perhaps because) it does not give in to coercion from the rest of the brain. What is appealing about this separate visual intelligence is that its mechanisms of inference may be easier to study, unencumbered as they are with the eager-to-please variability of ordinary cognition as measured in laboratory settings. So when we look at what has been uncovered about visual cognition, we of course believe that these processes may be duplicated in the far murkier reaches of the prefrontal cortex for decision and conflict resolution at a broader conscious level of cognition. Visual cognition is a sort of in vivo lab preparation for studying the ineffable processes of all of cognition.”

Vision Res. 2011 Jul 1; 51(13): 1538–1551.

Published online 2011 Feb 15. doi: 10.1016/j.visres.2011.01.015 AT Visual cognition

 

[smcder]

How 'implausible' is Husserl's recognition of imagination in human perception? We'd need to consult Zahavi, and probably others, if not to read Husserl's later works in order to judge the 'implausibility' averred. MP wrote that "Imagination is present in the first human perception," and we can understand what he was describing by reading the Phenomenology of Perception. Gadamer's hermeneutic phenomenology and Mikel Dufrenne's phenomenological aesthetics are also pertinent. Sartre's The Imagination is another key text. And of course we need to follow the relevant developments in Kant. I'm glad you posted this extract, Steve, because I now will read the whole of that paper by Livingston. {so much to read; so little time}

There's another specialist in the aesthetics branch of philosophy, an American whose name I'm forgetting but will seek out. His work enables us to go beyond the inadequate notion of 'aesthetics' as referring to our experience of works of art to recognizing the aesthetic aspects of our embodied experience in the encountered world.

Mark Johnson?

 

[smcder]

Turned up in my Word docs:

Visual cognition

Patrick Cavanagh1,2

“Before reviewing the research itself, one question stands out that we should consider: cognition, doesn’t the brain already do that? Elsewhere? How can there be a separate visual cognition? As Zenon Pylyshyn (1999) has detailed, yes, vision can have an independent existence with extraordinarily sophisticated inferences that are totally separate from standard, everyday, reportable cognition. Knowing, for example, that the two lines in the Muller-Lyer illusion are identical in length does not make them look so. Pylyshyn calls this cognitive impenetrability, but we might see it as cognitive independence: having an independent, intelligent agent – vision – with its own inference mechanisms. Given that the brain devotes 30% to 40% of its prime cortical real estate to vision we can certainly imagine that the “visual brain” is a smart one, even if (or perhaps because) it does not give in to coercion from the rest of the brain. What is appealing about this separate visual intelligence is that its mechanisms of inference may be easier to study, unencumbered as they are with the eager-to-please variability of ordinary cognition as measured in laboratory settings. So when we look at what has been uncovered about visual cognition, we of course believe that these processes may be duplicated in the far murkier reaches of the prefrontal cortex for decision and conflict resolution at a broader conscious level of cognition. Visual cognition is a sort of in vivo lab preparation for studying the ineffable processes of all of cognition.”

Vision Res. 2011 Jul 1; 51(13): 1538–1551.

Published online 2011 Feb 15. doi: 10.1016/j.visres.2011.01.015 AT Visual cognition

yes yes yes!

I've seen something similar in discussions of various "illusions" - reverse-engineered (by intelligent minds!) of course with knowledge of the brain's blind spots in mind ... but this is a nice phrasing ... "cognitive independence" - the discussion of "prime cortical real estate" reminds me of the (speculative) suggestion that, in pro athletes, the visual cortex may
"cannibalize" 0ther areas of the brain - for example those involved in giving an intelligent post game summary of their actions ;-) explaining simultaneously the perceived effortless of their virtuoso physical capabilities and their inadequate verbal reporting thereof: "well, you know, I reached out and the ball uh, you know, was just kind of there ..." - the speculation had as its subject a particular quarterback who could coordinate the analysis of a complex field of large moving men with the trajectory of a small, awkwardly shaped inflated pigskin.

 

[Constance]

Glad you appreciate what that paper has to offer. Another extract:

"The descriptions of surfaces, objects, and events computed by mid- and high-level processes are not solely for consumption in the visual system but live at a level that is appropriate for passing onto other brain centers. Clearly, the description of [the] visual scene cannot be sent in its entirety, like a picture or movie, to other centers as that would require that each of them have their own visual system to decode the description. Some very compressed, annotated, or labeled version must be constructed that can be passed on in a format and that other centers – memory, language, planning – can understand. This idea of a common space and a common format for exchange between brain centers (see Fig. 1) has been proposed by Baars (1988) and Dehaene and Naccache (2001) and others as a central bulletin board or chat room where the different centers post current descriptions and receive requests from each other like perhaps “Vision: Are there any red things just above the upcoming road intersection?” The nature of this high-level, visual description that can be exported to and understood by other centers is as yet, completely unknown. We can imagine that it might embody the content that we label as conscious vision if only because consciousness undoubtedly requires activity in many areas of the brain so visual representations that become conscious are probably those shared outside strictly visual centers. The components of high-level visual representation may therefore be those that we can report as conscious visual percepts. That is not saying much, but at least, if this is the case, high-level vision would not be trafficking in some obscure hidden code and eventually we may be able to extract the grammar, the syntax and semantics of conscious vision, and so of high-level visual representation.

Saying that the components of high-level vision are the contents of our visual awareness does not mean that these mental states are computed consciously. It only means that the end point, the product of a whole lot of pre-conscious visual computation is an awareness of the object or intention or connectedness. In fact, what interests us here is specifically the unconscious computation underlying these products, and not the further goal-related activities that are based on them. . . . We are interested in the rapid, unconscious visual processes that choose among many possible representations to come up the one that we experience as a conscious percept. Attention and awareness may limit how much unconscious inference we can manage and what it will be focused on but it is the unconscious decision processes that are the wheelhouse of visual cognition."

 

[Constance]

Mark Johnson?

Looking up Mark Johnson.

 

[Constance]

And another pertinent extract from the Visual Cognition paper:

"Research on the receptive fields forms the solid foundation of vision research. To date, the most influential discoveries in vision and the major part of current work can be described as characterizing this measurement component of vision. It is accessible with single cell recordings, animal research, and human behavior. It is understandable that this accessibility has led to impressive discoveries and successful research programs.

However, this is only the first step in seeing as the visual system must infer (see Figs. 2, 3) from these measurements a final percept that we experience. We do not get a sense of the world that is a raw and sketchy measurement but a solid visual experience with little or no evidence of the inferences that lie behind it. Note that an inference is not a guess. It is a rule-based extension from partial data to the most appropriate solution. It is constraint satisfaction like real-world Sudoku or playing 20 questions with nature (Kosslyn, 2006; Newell, 1973). Guessing, even optimal guessing as specified by Bayes, is not a mechanism but only sets limits for any mechanistic approach. It is covered in a separate paper of this issue (Geisler, 2011). Deconstructing the mechanisms of inference is difficult and not yet very rewarding. There are too many plausible alternatives and too many flinty-eyed reviewers who can see the obvious shortcomings. So one goal of this review is to underline the difficulty of research in high-level vision as well as its importance. It did have a run of intense activity in the 1970s and 1980s during the days of classical, big picture, biological and computer vision. This synergy between physiology, biological and computation research peaked with the publication of David Marr’s book in 1982 and Irv Biederman’s Recognition-by-Components paper in 1987. Since then, there have been a few hardy and adventuresome contributors, whose work I will feature where possible. However, it became clear that many models were premature and underconstrained by data. Rather than risk the gauntlet of justifiable skepticism, most vision research turned to the more solid ground of how vision measures the world, putting off to the future the harder question of how it draws inferences. . . . ."

 

[Constance]

Further concerning visual cognition:

Cognition. 1998 Jan;65(2-3):231-62.

Reuniting perception and conception.
Goldstone RL1, Barsalou LW.

Author information
Abstract
Work in philosophy and psychology has argued for a dissociation between perceptually-based similarity and higher-level rules in conceptual thought. Although such a dissociation may be justified at times, our goal is to illustrate ways in which conceptual processing is grounded in perception, both for perceptual similarity and abstract rules. We discuss the advantages, power and influences of perceptually-based representations. First, many of the properties associated with amodal symbol systems can be achieved with perceptually-based systems as well (e.g. productivity). Second, relatively raw perceptual representations are powerful because they can implicitly represent properties in an analog fashion. Third, perception naturally provides impressions of overall similarity, exactly the type of similarity useful for establishing many common categories. Fourth, perceptual similarity is not static but becomes tuned over time to conceptual demands. Fifth, the original motivation or basis for sophisticated cognition is often less sophisticated perceptual similarity. Sixth, perceptual simulation occurs even in conceptual tasks that have no explicit perceptual demands. Parallels between perceptual and conceptual processes suggest that many mechanisms typically associated with abstract thought are also present in perception, and that perceptual processes provide useful mechanisms that may be co-opted by abstract thought.

Reuniting perception and conception. - PubMed - NCBI

 

[Constance]

For the heck of it, this comment to myself in the Word doc in which I linked a number of papers on visual cognition a few years ago:

{My 2 cents: the networks of the brain form and develop in response to need – to what evolving living beings need in order to comprehend their situated being. Standard cognitive neuroscience has continued to hypothesize perception in terms of neural networks, modules, etc., that facilitate thought and meaningfulness, but for the most part that discipline does not yet realize that meaning does not originate in brains alone but in the tangible, broadly sensible, encountered worlds in which the brains of living organisms evolve and develop.}

 

[Constance]

Looking up Mark Johnson.

Ah, this Mark Johnson.

"My co-authored book with George Lakoff entitled Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought (Basic Books, 1999) investigated the changes in our conception of philosophy that come from taking seriously the way meaning, concepts, thought, and language are tied to bodily experience. What I find particularly interesting are the ways in which patterns of our sensory-motor experience play a crucial role in what we can think, how we think, and the nature of our symbolic expression and communication. In my latest book, The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding (Chicago, 2007) I tried to delve even more deeply into aspects of embodied meaning and cognition that have traditionally been ignored or under-valued in mainstream philosophy. I’m thinking here of qualities, feelings, emotions, and temporal processes. This attempt to go further into the ways our bodily engagement with our environment makes thought possible has led me to pay special attention to what have traditionally been called the "aesthetic" dimensions of experience, meaning, and action. I have been led in this book to a Deweyan view that aesthetics concerns every dimension of our experience and understanding that gives form, significance, and value to our lives. Currently, working from an embodiment perspective, I am returning to my earlier interest in a non-reductivist naturalistic understanding of human values. Part of this project is an attempt to critically assess the recent upsurge of attention to empirically-based naturalistic conceptions of moral deliberation, judgment, and valuing. It seems to me that, in spite of much exciting work in this area, we still do not have a fully adequate and existentially satisfying overall view of what morality is, where it comes from, and how it changes over time.

Mark Johnson | Department of Philosophy

What a bibliography he has. He's not the aesthetician whose name I've forgotten, but probably more significant for our study of consciousness.

 

[smcder]

For the heck of it, this comment to myself in the Word doc in which I linked a number of papers on visual cognition a few years ago:

{My 2 cents: the networks of the brain form and develop in response to need – to what evolving living beings need in order to comprehend their situated being. Standard cognitive neuroscience has continued to hypothesize perception in terms of neural networks, modules, etc., that facilitate thought and meaningfulness, but for the most part that discipline does not yet realize that meaning does not originate in brains alone but in the tangible, broadly sensible, encountered worlds in which the brains of living organisms evolve and develop.}

This is a short piece that I think goes along with your recent posts and your notes here in particular:

Thomas Nagel: Thoughts Are Real