The following review of the Thompson book is more comprehensive:
http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/articles/10/2/267.solomonova.pdf
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Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 10
- Thread starter Gene Steinberg
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The following review of the Thompson book is more comprehensive:
http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/articles/10/2/267.solomonova.pdf
smcder
Paranormal Adept
smcder
Paranormal Adept
"While neuroscience and much of Western philosophy have developed a number of approaches for examining consciousness, they almost never take into consideration rich and detailed systems for taxonomies and maps of the mind developed in the Upanishads, the Abhidharma, the Yogacara or dzogchen traditions. Thompson aims at closing the gap between “Western” and “Eastern” ontologies, finding common ground through resonances in the variety of subjective states, through recognition of shared lived experiences and through common goals of describing, understanding and training the mind. Indeed, parallels have been noted between practices of epoché (Husserl 1982), or “bracketing,” and contemplative practices. For example, during the Mind and Life Summer Research Institute the silent day of meditation is often colloquially referred to as “phenomenology on the cushion.” "
Excellent review!
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
Holy crap that is a good piece of writing. Helpful.
I do plan to put my "theory" into long form and will disengage to do that. I dont think its shady for me to say that the unobservable nature of phenomenal consciousness makes formulating empirically measurable predictions difficult to say the least.
Two thoughts that come to mind (heh) on my theory are, tentatively, (1) mind would be substrate independent and all minds would be phenomenally conscious. (But how to test this? Even if a man-made machine or organism were to claim to possess phenomenal consciousness, how might we emprically confirm that?)
(2) Mind requires a body. This is not really a predication (or is it?), and it requires a qualification. Because bodies (as perceived) on my theory are subjective perceptions of minds, minds > bodies. That is, a perception of a body will not fully capture all aspects of a mind. Therefore, there will be aspects of mind that are not captured via perception. Meaning there will never be a true isomorphism between a mind and a perception of the same mind, simply because a perception of a mind cannot capture all aspects of a mind.
Thus, there will be special cases in which the normal isomorphism between the body (as perceived) and mind perspectivally appears to break down. (And I know the contention that there even is an isomorphism between the body and mind is not proven.)
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smcder
Paranormal Adept
(1) mind would be substrate independent and all minds would be phenomenally conscious.
"Can you explain how this is a challenge to my "perspectival" approach to the mind-body problem upon which consciousness is not something that emerges from non-physical processes but is instead the substrate within which mind and life form, giving rise to subjective experience and all it entails: emotions, affects, perceptions, and conceptions, etc."
mind is substrate independent but consciousness is the substrate within which mind and life form? "substrate independence" is used to mean that consciousness is about structure - so a mind formed from tinkertoys or any other substrate that can be formed into the proper structure will be conscious
I've also previously understood you to say that phenomenal consciousness is the substrate - but above you say mind forms within the substrate of consciousness and this gives rise to subjective experience ... ?
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
(1) Substrate in the physical sense, not metaphysical sense. Ie, brains made out of carbon, silicone, or electrons could in principle be minds.
(2) Yes, I make a very important distinction between subjective experience and phenomenal consciousness (consciousness as substrate). All subjective experience will be phenomenal, but not all phenomenal consciousness will be subjective experience.
This theory treads on dangerous ground because it challenges presumptions of both materialist and dualist thinking. It challenges materialists by saying that phenomenal consciousness is not something that emerges from brains, and it challenges dualists by saying that mind and body are one. So materialists reject the former but accept the latter, and dualists support the former but reject the latter.
What I am saying is that the substrate that the layman perceives and that physicists study just is phenomenal consciousness, which is to say that it just is Being.
smcder
Paranormal Adept
"Yes, I make a very important distinction between subjective experience and phenomenal consciousness (consciousness as substrate)."
All subjective experience will be phenomenal, but not all phenomenal consciousness will be subjective experience.
Definitions of Terms Used in the Study of Consciousness
Phenomenal consciousness
The subjective, feeling part of any conscious sensation or quale.
Phenomenal and Access Conciousness
Phenomenal consciousness. According to Block, phenomenal consciousness results from sensory experiences such as hearing, smelling, tasting, and having pains. Block groups together as phenomenal consciousness the experiences of sensations, feelings, perceptions, thoughts, wants and emotions.
SOE
Phenomenal states. Such qualia are sometimes referred to as phenomenal properties and the associated sort of consciousness as phenomenal consciousness, but the latter term is perhaps more properly applied to the overall structure of experience and involves far more than sensory qualia.
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Soupie
Paranormal Adept
Weve already been over this before. It cant be done. We only know of phenomenal consciousness because of subjective experience, but I am making the radical claim that phenomenal consciousness and subjective experience are distinct.
Phenomenal consciousness—in this case, consciousness as substrate—is the substrate within which subjective experience arises.
From the perspective of subjective experiencing it seems that phenomenal consciousness ceases when subjective experience ceases, or that phenomenal consciousness arises when subjective experience arises; I'm arguing that it does not.
Phenomenal consciousness just is "the simple substance, and not ... the composite or ... the machine."
smcder
Paranormal Adept
its not a radical claim - its non-sensical because the terms and concepts are defined in terms of one another.
So what is you are you claiming?
"From the perspective of subjective experiencing it seems that phenomenal consciousness ceases when subjective experience ceases, or that phenomenal consciousness arises when subjective experience arises; I'm arguing that it does not."
phenomenal consciousness does cease when subjective experience ceases because PE is defined in terms of SE. So what is it that does not cease when SE ceases?
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Soupie
Paranormal Adept
Being
smcder
Paranormal Adept
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
The substrate that the layman perceives and that physicists study.
Who are you quoting here? Can you link us to the source? Thanks.
You will, it seems, have to work through and with Heidegger to justify what seems to be your casual use of the terms 'being' and 'Being'.
smcder
Paranormal Adept
If the substrate is phenomenal consciousness then there is subjective experience and therefore a subject - so if we have a subject with phenomenal consciousness having subjective experience, then we have a mind. The substrate is mind.
However that conflicts with what you have said about minds arising from (a la "whirlpools") the substrate - but it would fit with some forms of Idealism in which individual minds (little minds) form from Mind (big mind) and then are absorbed back into it. It's not clear what experience(s) is available and not available to Big and little mind (you've said this is a challenge to your view - why all of mind is not accessible - but just there you should look to the evidence for non-local mind ... )
There is also a conflict as you have referred to "subjectless experience" but denied experience without a subject.
Whatever the case, phenomenal consciousness and subjective experience can't be pried apart because they are different ways of speaking about the same things - phenomenal consciousness is a container for subjective experience(s), subjective experiences are what phenomenal consciousness allows a subject to have.
Phenomenal consciousness doesn't "hang in the air" absent "subjective experiences" any more than "running" hangs in the air absent "physical abilities" - there is no running without an instantiation of running - i.e. a runner and physical abilities are what allows one to run.
http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/articles/10/2/267.solomonova.pdf
“Since consciousness by nature is experiential, and experience is primary and ineliminable,
consciousness cannot be reductively explained in terms of what is fundamentally or essentially non-experiential.”
that said, all that said:
"... Thompson directs the reader’s attention to an alternative: in Indian tradition, consciousness is separated into gross and subtle consciousness. The gross or coarse consciousness is understood in the sense of general attention and awareness of the self and the environment, whereas the subtle consciousness is a substrate energy, a source of gross consciousness. According to yogic and Buddhist meditative traditions, one can become aware of subtle consciousness in some dream experiences, at the moment of death, and following rigorous meditative training. This perspective opens avenues for new kinds of questions for the science of the mind. Can one train oneself to appreciate the qualities of subtle consciousness? Adepts of dream yoga would say so. What kind of electrophysiological activity would reflect the state of awareness of subtle consciousness? And finally, what kind of world opens up in the state of awareness of the subtle consciousness? In other words, is awareness without object possible? These and other questions are common to contemplative traditions, and are now making their way into contemporary neuroscience."
But, as I recall, you (at one point) objected to "awareness without object".
And I posted an article (by Thompson, no that other guy) about continuity of consciousness a la dreamless sleep as a state of consciousness.
So there are avenues to explore.
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smcder
Paranormal Adept
@Constance writes:
Meanwhile, I find I'm unable to reach the Cahen and Tacca paper. Can you reset the link? Thanks.
Linking perception and cognition
sorry ... it's been hectic lately ... see if this works!
smcder
Paranormal Adept
This is the conclusion of Livingston's essay (pp 19-41):
"Recognition of the substantial continuity between functionalism and earlier projects of logical, phenomenological and conceptual analysis allows the underlying problem with the explanation of consciousness to emerge in its full generality. In the light of historical interpretation, the complaint that consciousness resists functionalist explanation emerges as one instance of a more general and perennial phenomenon: the resistance of subjective experience to broadly structuralist practices of conceptual and logical analysis. Consistently throughout the history of twentieth-century attempts to theorize the mind, the structural form of conceptual or logical analyses of our concepts of experience has seemed to run counter to the demands of accounting for the immediacy of experience itself. This tension, the present investigation suggests, points to a deep and unresolved problem about the relationship of conceptual structure to the immediate matter or content of subjective experience, a problem that vexes every systematic attempt to define or characterize experience in formal or structural terms. Phenomenology’s ‘ideal laws of essence’ are themselves defined structurally by attending to the logical connections among our concepts of experience; in this respect, the form and method of the analytic tradition’s logical analyses of our psychological concepts incur, despite phenomenology’s central appeal to subjective experience, much the same tension. Against the backdrop of the deep tension, revealed by the historical analysis, between experience and structural and conceptual forms of explanation, the characteristic Husserlian appeal to an abstractive foundation of our concepts in immediate, unconceptualized experience emerges as deeply problematic.
In this way, the historical investigation of the development of functionalism clarifies one kind of parallel between the characteristic methods of analytic philosophy and one of the chief projects of the continental tradition. The parallel suggests that the problems about the nature and adequacy of our concepts of experience that led to the development of functionalism are substantially continuous with the problems that led Husserl increasingly to distance himself, in his last work, from any foundational appeal to conscious experience, preferring to speak of the foundation of theoretical practice in the untheorized everyday ‘life-world’.³⁵ Much the same set of problems, moreover, presumably underwrote the tendency of Husserl’s phenomenological successors, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Martin Heidegger, to move away from Husserl’s characteristic appeal to immediate experience and subjectivity as the foundation for all abstract conceptualization, and toward versions of the phenomenological project that no longer rely on individual experience or subjectivity as a theoretical basis. More generally, identifying the real underlying form of the problem of explaining consciousness allows us to perceive the problem’s true significance for our ongoing attempts to understand our own nature.
For the recurrent problem with the explanation of consciousness is an enduring problem about the relationship of subjective experience to forms of explanation and analysis that are otherwise comprehensive. Viewed in the general light that the historical investigation makes possible, the problem with consciousness that both led to the development of functionalism and continues to trouble it is just the problem of our own relationship to structural forms of formal and scientific explanation.
These forms of explanation—logical, structural, and causal—subsume a great amount of knowledge within a single, unified framework of objectivity. The protest against the functionalization of consciousness manifests the underlying thought that subjectivity itself cannot be captured within this structure, that our immediate experience systematically resists inclusion in its web. With this clarified, the complaint of contemporary philosophers who hold that consciousness resists functional explanation can emerge as the protest that it is: a protest, in the name of the distinctiveness of our own inmost nature, against the inclusion of this nature within an abstracted, total picture of the world in terms of its logical, conceptual, or causal structure. Against this totalizing picture, the complaint gestures toward the immediacy and irreducibility of subjective experience; but the historical investigation provides the beginning of the conceptual resources needed to identify the complaint’s genuine ground, rather, as the logical nature of the subject, a nature whose logical peculiarity will constantly tempt us to describe it, even as it continues to resist any such description."
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Soupie
Paranormal Adept
The ocean of consciousness, or proto-consciousness, Stuart Hameroff | Science and Nonduality
As I've noted in the past, protoconsciousness may be the best term to capture the concept I have in mind.
Re "awareness without object" I do shy away from this phrasing because the term awareness to me implies subjective experience (mind) which is not how I conceive of consciousness as substrate (proto-consciousness).
I love Hameroff's metaphor of proto-consciousness being an ocean (my "pond") and consciousness (my "subjective experience") being discreet waves (my "whirlpools").
(And synchronistically enough, this *may* be of interest to @Usual Suspect given his recent musings about the analog vs discreet nature of reality and what it may mean for consciousness.)
As I've noted in the past, protoconsciousness may be the best term to capture the concept I have in mind.
Re "awareness without object" I do shy away from this phrasing because the term awareness to me implies subjective experience (mind) which is not how I conceive of consciousness as substrate (proto-consciousness).
I love Hameroff's metaphor of proto-consciousness being an ocean (my "pond") and consciousness (my "subjective experience") being discreet waves (my "whirlpools").
(And synchronistically enough, this *may* be of interest to @Usual Suspect given his recent musings about the analog vs discreet nature of reality and what it may mean for consciousness.)
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