Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 10

[Constance]

These paragraphs are from the paper linked below.

"Object observation, even within a behavioural context not specifically requiring an active interaction on the side of the observer, determines the activation of the motor program that would be required were the observer actively interacting with the object. To observe objects is therefore equivalent to automatically evoking the most suitable motor program required to interact with them. Looking at objects means to unconsciously ‘simulate’ a potential action. In other words, the object-representation is transiently integrated with the action-simulation (the ongoing simulation of the potential action).9

If this interpretation is correct, objects are not merely identified and recognized by virtue of their physical ‘appearance’, but in relation to the effects of the interaction with an agent. In such a context, the object acquires a meaningful value by means of its dynamic relation with the agent of this relation. This dynamic relation is multiple, as multiple [as] are the ways in which we can interact with the world by acting within it. The object-representation ceases to exist by itself. The object phenomenally exists to the extent it represents the target of an action.

The ecological approach to perception, influentially heralded by Gibson (1979) has contributed to a great extent to corroborate a notion of the subject ever less other with respect to the ‘outside world’. The subject — an acting subject — is defined by her/his reciprocal dynamic relation with the world, that world whose unstable and changeable borders are unceasingly set by acting on it.

With respect to Gibson, however, who assigns to active but also to passive movement a purely instrumental role in defining the invariant features already present in sensory data, I think we should stress the positive role of action in providing meaning to the overall world-model or the world as represented. Objects’ invariance shouldn’t be considered an intrinsic feature of the physical world, but rather the result of the peculiar interactions with the acting organism (see also Merleau-Ponty, 1962)."

http://old.unipr.it/arpa/mirror/pubs/pdffiles/Gallese/Gallese 2000.pdf

 

[smcder]

No, again, I think that the phenomenal sense of being a self/subject is a content of consciousness; a rather advanced one at that. Furthermore, I think that contents of (the ocean of) consciousness can exist in the absence of a sense of being a subject as I tried to illustrate with my example of a simple organism.

One could argue that there is something it is like to be Itay's ocean of consciousness.

Being a subject of experience / having a sense of being a subject may not be the same thing ... so that "subjectless experience" could mean:

1. experience with no subject of experience - which doesn't seem to make sense
2. a subject has experience, but no sense of being a self/subject

2. needs to be looked at

If being a subject/having a sense of being a subject are separable, then you have to show how to go from one to another.

 

[William Strathmann]

<walloftext>
Hi all. I appreciate the varied ideas related to consciousness being floated here, even though much of the nuanced language remains a little out of my grasp. Still, recent ideas have inspired a few "what if?" questions.

Panpsychism is an interesting concept, though I admit it doesn't completely ring my bell. But I do think it's possible that various "nested hierarchies" of matter / energy structures, beyond what have yet been discovered in Standard Model physics, could have a role in consciousness. The particle zoo of the Standard Model is well established. Thus, all the organs of our bodies, including our brain and nervous system, are made of materials derived from the particle zoo. Still, the CERN website leaves questions open:

[A]lthough the Standard Model accurately describes the phenomena within its domain, it is still incomplete. Perhaps it is only a part of a bigger picture that includes new physics hidden deep in the subatomic world or in the dark recesses of the universe. New information from experiments at the LHC will help us to find more of these missing pieces.​

Nevertheless, physicists agree that there is a "vacuum" from which the virtual and real particles of the particle zoo originate. In other words, the particles of which we are made originate from the vacuum. We are, therefore, dependent on the vacuum in a major way, even though we know very little about it.

This leads me to ask: What if the structure of the vacuum itself is composed of its very own particle zoo? What if the vacuum is a major domain of reality on its own terms and has its own nested hierarchies of v.structure (vacuum structure) with v.physics, v.chemistry and v.biology that are based on particles orders of magnitude below the Planck length of our Standard Model domain. We don't know about v.material simply because we have no way to investigate that level of reality. Yet. But what if v.material is actually directly associated with the Standard Model material of our brains?

What if v.material is actually a crucial component of our consciousness?

If this scenario be entertained, then v.material is a real material, it is co-located with the brain's Standard Model material, and it participates in consciousness. If this is possibly so, then from a certain angle "materialism" and brain=mind are confirmed, but not because current conceptions have the complete picture.

Even so, I question whether any configuration of finite material can lead to conscious awareness of the infinitesimal <‑> infinite. If computer hardware is taken as a meager analogy, then there seems to be no way for a finite-sized chip made of a finite number of atoms to ever truly engage, manipulate, or deploy the concept of infinity. But humans have been contemplating the infinitesimal <‑> infinite for a long time, and Newton and Leibniz even devised a conceptual-mathematical tool, calculus, that is based on the concept.

But according to today's atomic views, Newton and Leibniz were, at the time of their calculus contemplations, composed of a finite number of atoms, making up a finite "physical" body. They only existed a finite number of seconds in the physical world. They only exerted a finite number of time-sequenced thoughts during their contemplation of the infinitesimal <‑> infinite. Yet somehow, they managed to devise a way to manipulate and deploy the concept of infinity. And even a teen-twenty-something can grasp and use calculus. So, we humans, supposed finite-entrenched beings, somehow can contemplate the infinitesimal <‑> infinite. This seems to be a compelling indication that we also contain some literal aspect of the infinite that is directly accessible by our consciousness.

So, in a huge leap of conjecture, what if there is a third major domain of reality, beyond the Standard Model, and beyond the vacuum, that consists of a literal, non-atomistic material of infinitesimal undivided continuity, and that is the source of consciousness? Assuming that there are such things as "nested hierarchies" of structure in this non-finite material, then they could provide the basis for each of our individual human consciousnesses, as though each of us has a unique "particle" of this non-finite, conscious substance. This would be my tentative alternative to panpsychism. Instead of all atomistic material having a measure innate consciousness, there is instead a separate material, a basement non-finite material that well-coheres with non-conscious v.material, and with non-conscious Standard Model material. All three of these major-domain materials in all their varied nested-hierarchical structures would be involved in our conscious awareness, as well as perception and personality traits associated with it.

Beyond consciousness, this view could also help make sense of the paranormal world. Perhaps there are non-human intelligences who are, like us, also composed of this non-finite material of the third major domain. That would make them more or less relatable to us. Such beings' physical makeup might be tied foundationally to the vacuum's domain, thus remaining beyond our detection almost all of the time. On the other hand, since the vacuum supports our Standard Model particle zoo, then they might be able to jump into our Standard Model domain and do "paranormal stuff" at their whim.

Perhaps a different v.physics and v.biology of the vacuum domain would explain the mind-boggling performance of some UFO reports. Maybe the vacuum's physical speed limit is far, far higher than the light-speed limit in our Standard Model world. Perhaps these domain differences would help explain why paranormal events often seem to includes telepathy and lots of other weird mental stuff, but can also be objectively real as well, sometimes leaving physical traces. This approach also seems consistent with my personal theistic experiences as well.

The progress of science in the last 150 years has revealed many nested hierarchies of structure that are based on the Standard Model particle zoo:

In 1869 Mendeleev published the most successful chemical-level periodic table to date, before chemists even knew about atomic nuclei and electron orbitals. Maxwell published his classic scientific opus, Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, in 1873.

In 1900, Planck's black-body radiation observations broke ice for a quantum substructure of classical physics. Rutherford's alpha particle–gold foil experiment in 1911 overturned J. J. Thomson's "plum pudding" model of the "atom" which led in 1913 to the Bohr model, which is the forerunner of what we are familiar with today.

On the other hand, in 1917, only 100 years ago, Einstein published his General Relativity, but like many others, he thought that the macro universe was eternal and steady state and consisted of the Milky Way galaxy, and not much else. Edwin Hubble earned his PhD in 1917 and would start studying nebulae, and in following years would make his discoveries about the immensity of the universe and red-shift.

Quantum formulation hit a peak in 1925, long anticipated by the aphorism:

"Hang off/on, thou cat!"

And in more formal arrangement:

"To be, and not to be! That is the superposition."

Shakespeare's cat of the Stratford-on-Avon school.

The Manhattan project of the '40's dumped gazillions into physics and showed the world that many kilotons-worth of energy bind the atomic nuclei of uranium and plutonium bocce balls (and that was just for nuclear fission).

In the '70's, yiddisher soccer mom & university astronomer, Vera Rubin, observed flat rotation curves in galaxies, forcing astrophysicists to face a massive gravitational surplus in galaxies. The most well-known proposed solution says the "visible" universe is only about four percent of the total "matter-energy" universe, there being almost seven times more "material" in the universe than thought before the '70's. No one knows anything about that dark material. But a serious gravitational effect must be accounted for somehow. Hummmmm.

The take-home point is that within the last century major upheavals have shaken our understanding of the physical foundations of reality, much having to do with hierarchical nestings of structure in reality. Maybe the mind is also dependent on various nestings of structure, far, far beyond Hameroff's micro-tubules.
</walloftext>

 

[Soupie]

This would be my tentative alternative to panpsychism. Instead of all atomistic material having a measure innate consciousness, there is instead a separate material, a basement non-finite material that well-coheres with non-conscious v.material

Thats what Cosmopsychism is.

From the paper you recently posted:

"Fourthly, the model assumes that the absolute can be likened to a vast, dynamically fluctuating, ocean (or field). In accordance with the lateral duality principle, this ocean has two complementary sides: concealed, and revealed. Since there is nothing outside the absolute, its revealed side must be thought of as revealed to observers constructed and situated within the ocean (cf. Mathews 2011). To such observers, it appears as a spatially extended medium, evolving in time, and differentially structured into various phases and configurations. In short, it appears as what, in common parlance, we identify as physical nature."

Ie the perceived atomistic nature of physical nature is a (necessary) perspectival byproduct of emergent perceivers within the ocean.

 

[Soupie]

We've discussed this before, I believe but found it helpful considering the present discussion of the nature of subjects of experience.

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

Nagel's conclusion:

"‘Philosophy, like science,’ says Strawson, ‘aims to say how things are in reality, and conflict with ordinary thought and language is no more an objection to a philosophical theory than a scientific one.’ Yet his conclusions depart so far from the idea most people have of themselves that it seems natural to describe him as offering not a theory of the self, but rather the view that there is no such thing as the self, distinct from the human being. If he is right, there are only human beings, who persist in time, and who undergo a constantly changing sequence of experiences, each having the irreducible character of subjectivity. He asks us to give up the powerful conviction that the I who is the subject of my present experience has existed for a long time, that it was also the subject of the experiences I remember from the past, and that it will be the subject of the experiences that the human being who I am will undergo in the future. At the very least, we are convinced that this could be the case, so that it must make sense.

To sustain this conviction calls for a different metaphysics of the self, though I do not have one to offer. Philosophers have not been very successful in devising credible accounts of the identity of the self over time, and Strawson’s arguments help us to see why this is so. It seems to require that a single mental subject should be capable of existing without any consciousness and through vast changes of experiential content, but it is not clear that the mere physical existence of the brain is sufficient for this, and an immaterial substance may be no better.

Strawson is convincing as to the inadequacy of the deflationary strategy of arguing that the reference of ‘I’ is entirely parasitic on the public, third-person criteria of identity for human beings. I do not think we can resist his basic point that there are two uses of ‘I’, and that one of them refers to the inner subject. He illustrates it with a passage from A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes, in which a ten-year-old girl suddenly realises that she is she, ‘this Emily, born in such-and-such a year out of all the years in Time, and encased in this particular rather pleasing little casket of flesh’ – and again with a poem by Elizabeth Bishop about a similar experience just before her seventh birthday. I suspect that many children have experienced with amazement the realisation that the self with which they are so familiar inhabits a particular public human being.

The book is packed with valuable commentary on philosophers whose writings on this subject Strawson admires, and in whom he finds allies: Descartes, Kant, Hume and William James in particular. It is also peppered with frequent interruptions from an interlocutor – set off in different type – who makes most of the objections that will occur to a careful reader. This is extremely helpful in following what is often an exhaustingly lengthy line of argument, replete with stacks of numbered propositions, terminological abbreviations, and numerical cross-references; sometimes the book is like an obstacle course, though Strawson obligingly suggests from time to time what you might want to skip.

Selves is a work of profound philosophical reflection by a philosopher of intellectual power and exemplary integrity, qualities that are liable to take you far off the beaten track. The result displays the imagination and audacity we have come to expect of Strawson."

So the question, given this, seems to be whether there can be experiences (qualitive feels) that lack the "character of subjectivity." I say yes. However, whether humans can have phenomenal access to such phenomenal states is an open question. However, there of course is a body of literature arguing that humans can attain such mental states.

 

[smcder]

We've discussed this before, I believe but found it helpful considering the present discussion of the nature of subjects of experience.

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

Nagel's conclusion:

"‘Philosophy, like science,’ says Strawson, ‘aims to say how things are in reality, and conflict with ordinary thought and language is no more an objection to a philosophical theory than a scientific one.’ Yet his conclusions depart so far from the idea most people have of themselves that it seems natural to describe him as offering not a theory of the self, but rather the view that there is no such thing as the self, distinct from the human being. If he is right, there are only human beings, who persist in time, and who undergo a constantly changing sequence of experiences, each having the irreducible character of subjectivity. He asks us to give up the powerful conviction that the I who is the subject of my present experience has existed for a long time, that it was also the subject of the experiences I remember from the past, and that it will be the subject of the experiences that the human being who I am will undergo in the future. At the very least, we are convinced that this could be the case, so that it must make sense.

To sustain this conviction calls for a different metaphysics of the self, though I do not have one to offer. Philosophers have not been very successful in devising credible accounts of the identity of the self over time, and Strawson’s arguments help us to see why this is so. It seems to require that a single mental subject should be capable of existing without any consciousness and through vast changes of experiential content, but it is not clear that the mere physical existence of the brain is sufficient for this, and an immaterial substance may be no better.

Strawson is convincing as to the inadequacy of the deflationary strategy of arguing that the reference of ‘I’ is entirely parasitic on the public, third-person criteria of identity for human beings. I do not think we can resist his basic point that there are two uses of ‘I’, and that one of them refers to the inner subject. He illustrates it with a passage from A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes, in which a ten-year-old girl suddenly realises that she is she, ‘this Emily, born in such-and-such a year out of all the years in Time, and encased in this particular rather pleasing little casket of flesh’ – and again with a poem by Elizabeth Bishop about a similar experience just before her seventh birthday. I suspect that many children have experienced with amazement the realisation that the self with which they are so familiar inhabits a particular public human being.

The book is packed with valuable commentary on philosophers whose writings on this subject Strawson admires, and in whom he finds allies: Descartes, Kant, Hume and William James in particular. It is also peppered with frequent interruptions from an interlocutor – set off in different type – who makes most of the objections that will occur to a careful reader. This is extremely helpful in following what is often an exhaustingly lengthy line of argument, replete with stacks of numbered propositions, terminological abbreviations, and numerical cross-references; sometimes the book is like an obstacle course, though Strawson obligingly suggests from time to time what you might want to skip.

Selves is a work of profound philosophical reflection by a philosopher of intellectual power and exemplary integrity, qualities that are liable to take you far off the beaten track. The result displays the imagination and audacity we have come to expect of Strawson."

So the question, given this, seems to be whether there can be experiences (qualitive feels) that lack the "character of subjectivity." I say yes. However, whether humans can have phenomenal access to such phenomenal states is an open question. However, there of course is a body of literature arguing that humans can attain such mental states.

What is the relation between an experience, its subject, and its content

 

[smcder]

We've discussed this before, I believe but found it helpful considering the present discussion of the nature of subjects of experience.

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

Nagel's conclusion:

"‘Philosophy, like science,’ says Strawson, ‘aims to say how things are in reality, and conflict with ordinary thought and language is no more an objection to a philosophical theory than a scientific one.’ Yet his conclusions depart so far from the idea most people have of themselves that it seems natural to describe him as offering not a theory of the self, but rather the view that there is no such thing as the self, distinct from the human being. If he is right, there are only human beings, who persist in time, and who undergo a constantly changing sequence of experiences, each having the irreducible character of subjectivity. He asks us to give up the powerful conviction that the I who is the subject of my present experience has existed for a long time, that it was also the subject of the experiences I remember from the past, and that it will be the subject of the experiences that the human being who I am will undergo in the future. At the very least, we are convinced that this could be the case, so that it must make sense.

To sustain this conviction calls for a different metaphysics of the self, though I do not have one to offer. Philosophers have not been very successful in devising credible accounts of the identity of the self over time, and Strawson’s arguments help us to see why this is so. It seems to require that a single mental subject should be capable of existing without any consciousness and through vast changes of experiential content, but it is not clear that the mere physical existence of the brain is sufficient for this, and an immaterial substance may be no better.

Strawson is convincing as to the inadequacy of the deflationary strategy of arguing that the reference of ‘I’ is entirely parasitic on the public, third-person criteria of identity for human beings. I do not think we can resist his basic point that there are two uses of ‘I’, and that one of them refers to the inner subject. He illustrates it with a passage from A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes, in which a ten-year-old girl suddenly realises that she is she, ‘this Emily, born in such-and-such a year out of all the years in Time, and encased in this particular rather pleasing little casket of flesh’ – and again with a poem by Elizabeth Bishop about a similar experience just before her seventh birthday. I suspect that many children have experienced with amazement the realisation that the self with which they are so familiar inhabits a particular public human being.

The book is packed with valuable commentary on philosophers whose writings on this subject Strawson admires, and in whom he finds allies: Descartes, Kant, Hume and William James in particular. It is also peppered with frequent interruptions from an interlocutor – set off in different type – who makes most of the objections that will occur to a careful reader. This is extremely helpful in following what is often an exhaustingly lengthy line of argument, replete with stacks of numbered propositions, terminological abbreviations, and numerical cross-references; sometimes the book is like an obstacle course, though Strawson obligingly suggests from time to time what you might want to skip.

Selves is a work of profound philosophical reflection by a philosopher of intellectual power and exemplary integrity, qualities that are liable to take you far off the beaten track. The result displays the imagination and audacity we have come to expect of Strawson."

So the question, given this, seems to be whether there can be experiences (qualitive feels) that lack the "character of subjectivity." I say yes. However, whether humans can have phenomenal access to such phenomenal states is an open question. However, there of course is a body of literature arguing that humans can attain such mental states.

an experience is impossible without an experiencer -

"Some have said—they have appeared to say—that there can be an experience without a subject of experience; they have appeared to doubt (2), which I will call the Subject thesis. But this view is crazy, on its most natural reading, for ‘an experience is impossible without an experiencer’.[1] It is ‘an obvious conceptual truth that an experiencing is necessarily an experiencing by a subject of experience, and involves that subject as intimately as a branch-bending involves a branch’.[2] This is not a ‘grammatical illusion’, as some have proposed, but an evident—inconcussible—metaphysical truth. There cannot be experience without a subject of experience because experience is necessarily experience for—for someone-or-something. Experience necessarily involves experiential ‘what-it-is-likeness’, and experiential what-it-is-likeness is necessarily what-it-is-likeness for someone-or-something. Whatever the full story about the substantial nature of this experiencing something, its existence cannot be denied."

 

[Soupie]

@smcder

So the question, given this, seems to be whether there can be experiences (qualitive feels) that lack the "character of subjectivity." I say yes. However, whether humans can have phenomenal access to such phenomenal states is an open question. However, there of course is a body of literature arguing that humans can attain such mental states.

 

[smcder]

@smcder

So there are experiences that no one can have access to ...

 

[Soupie]

So there are experiences that no one can have access to ...

Absolutely. Prereflective consciousness.

 

[smcder]

@smcder

What you are saying is what we call losing yourself ... in a crowd, at a ballgame ... or the various absorptions in meditation ... but there is still a subject, someone (in other kinds of experiences, some thing ... a bat?) for whom it is like to have that experience.

 

[smcder]

Absolutely. Prereflective consciousness.

There is still a subject. You're confusing self/sense of self and subject. See Strawson's thin subjects.

 

[Soupie]

There is still a subject. You're confusing self/sense of self and subject. See Strawson's thin subjects.

According to Strawson—and to which Nagel had no retort—the enduring subject is the physical body. The phenomenal subject is itself a phenomenal experience.

What I argue is that there can be physical bodies (whirlpools in the ocean) that are so primitive that a phenomenal sense of self is absent.

There is no strong argument, it seems, for an enduring phenomenal self, which seems to be your argument, no?

Because if not, what are we arguing about?

 

[Constance]

Thats what Cosmopsychism is.

From the paper you recently posted: . . . . .

I must have missed the post linking this paper. Would you or William re-post the link? Thanks.

 

[Soupie]

I must have missed the post linking this paper. Would you or William re-post the link? Thanks.

Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 10

 

[Constance]

Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 10

Thanks. I remember the paper now and read it when @william posted it.

 

[Constance]

<walloftext>
Hi all. I appreciate the varied ideas related to consciousness being floated here, even though much of the nuanced language remains a little out of my grasp. Still, recent ideas have inspired a few "what if?" questions.

Panpsychism is an interesting concept, though I admit it doesn't completely ring my bell. But I do think it's possible that various "nested hierarchies" of matter / energy structures, beyond what have yet been discovered in Standard Model physics, could have a role in consciousness. The particle zoo of the Standard Model is well established. Thus, all the organs of our bodies, including our brain and nervous system, are made of materials derived from the particle zoo. Still, the CERN website leaves questions open:

[A]lthough the Standard Model accurately describes the phenomena within its domain, it is still incomplete. Perhaps it is only a part of a bigger picture that includes new physics hidden deep in the subatomic world or in the dark recesses of the universe. New information from experiments at the LHC will help us to find more of these missing pieces.​

Nevertheless, physicists agree that there is a "vacuum" from which the virtual and real particles of the particle zoo originate. In other words, the particles of which we are made originate from the vacuum. We are, therefore, dependent on the vacuum in a major way, even though we know very little about it.

This leads me to ask: What if the structure of the vacuum itself is composed of its very own particle zoo? What if the vacuum is a major domain of reality on its own terms and has its own nested hierarchies of v.structure (vacuum structure) with v.physics, v.chemistry and v.biology that are based on particles orders of magnitude below the Planck length of our Standard Model domain. We don't know about v.material simply because we have no way to investigate that level of reality. Yet. But what if v.material is actually directly associated with the Standard Model material of our brains?

What if v.material is actually a crucial component of our consciousness?

If this scenario be entertained, then v.material is a real material, it is co-located with the brain's Standard Model material, and it participates in consciousness. If this is possibly so, then from a certain angle "materialism" and brain=mind are confirmed, but not because current conceptions have the complete picture.

Even so, I question whether any configuration of finite material can lead to conscious awareness of the infinitesimal <‑> infinite. If computer hardware is taken as a meager analogy, then there seems to be no way for a finite-sized chip made of a finite number of atoms to ever truly engage, manipulate, or deploy the concept of infinity. But humans have been contemplating the infinitesimal <‑> infinite for a long time, and Newton and Leibniz even devised a conceptual-mathematical tool, calculus, that is based on the concept.

But according to today's atomic views, Newton and Leibniz were, at the time of their calculus contemplations, composed of a finite number of atoms, making up a finite "physical" body. They only existed a finite number of seconds in the physical world. They only exerted a finite number of time-sequenced thoughts during their contemplation of the infinitesimal <‑> infinite. Yet somehow, they managed to devise a way to manipulate and deploy the concept of infinity. And even a teen-twenty-something can grasp and use calculus. So, we humans, supposed finite-entrenched beings, somehow can contemplate the infinitesimal <‑> infinite. This seems to be a compelling indication that we also contain some literal aspect of the infinite that is directly accessible by our consciousness.

So, in a huge leap of conjecture, what if there is a third major domain of reality, beyond the Standard Model, and beyond the vacuum, that consists of a literal, non-atomistic material of infinitesimal undivided continuity, and that is the source of consciousness? Assuming that there are such things as "nested hierarchies" of structure in this non-finite material, then they could provide the basis for each of our individual human consciousnesses, as though each of us has a unique "particle" of this non-finite, conscious substance. This would be my tentative alternative to panpsychism. Instead of all atomistic material having a measure innate consciousness, there is instead a separate material, a basement non-finite material that well-coheres with non-conscious v.material, and with non-conscious Standard Model material. All three of these major-domain materials in all their varied nested-hierarchical structures would be involved in our conscious awareness, as well as perception and personality traits associated with it.

Beyond consciousness, this view could also help make sense of the paranormal world. Perhaps there are non-human intelligences who are, like us, also composed of this non-finite material of the third major domain. That would make them more or less relatable to us. Such beings' physical makeup might be tied foundationally to the vacuum's domain, thus remaining beyond our detection almost all of the time. On the other hand, since the vacuum supports our Standard Model particle zoo, then they might be able to jump into our Standard Model domain and do "paranormal stuff" at their whim.

Perhaps a different v.physics and v.biology of the vacuum domain would explain the mind-boggling performance of some UFO reports. Maybe the vacuum's physical speed limit is far, far higher than the light-speed limit in our Standard Model world. Perhaps these domain differences would help explain why paranormal events often seem to includes telepathy and lots of other weird mental stuff, but can also be objectively real as well, sometimes leaving physical traces. This approach also seems consistent with my personal theistic experiences as well.

The progress of science in the last 150 years has revealed many nested hierarchies of structure that are based on the Standard Model particle zoo:

In 1869 Mendeleev published the most successful chemical-level periodic table to date, before chemists even knew about atomic nuclei and electron orbitals. Maxwell published his classic scientific opus, Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, in 1873.

In 1900, Planck's black-body radiation observations broke ice for a quantum substructure of classical physics. Rutherford's alpha particle–gold foil experiment in 1911 overturned J. J. Thomson's "plum pudding" model of the "atom" which led in 1913 to the Bohr model, which is the forerunner of what we are familiar with today.

On the other hand, in 1917, only 100 years ago, Einstein published his General Relativity, but like many others, he thought that the macro universe was eternal and steady state and consisted of the Milky Way galaxy, and not much else. Edwin Hubble earned his PhD in 1917 and would start studying nebulae, and in following years would make his discoveries about the immensity of the universe and red-shift.

Quantum formulation hit a peak in 1925, long anticipated by the aphorism:

"Hang off/on, thou cat!"

And in more formal arrangement:

"To be, and not to be! That is the superposition."

Shakespeare's cat of the Stratford-on-Avon school.

The Manhattan project of the '40's dumped gazillions into physics and showed the world that many kilotons-worth of energy bind the atomic nuclei of uranium and plutonium bocce balls (and that was just for nuclear fission).

In the '70's, yiddisher soccer mom & university astronomer, Vera Rubin, observed flat rotation curves in galaxies, forcing astrophysicists to face a massive gravitational surplus in galaxies. The most well-known proposed solution says the "visible" universe is only about four percent of the total "matter-energy" universe, there being almost seven times more "material" in the universe than thought before the '70's. No one knows anything about that dark material. But a serious gravitational effect must be accounted for somehow. Hummmmm.

The take-home point is that within the last century major upheavals have shaken our understanding of the physical foundations of reality, much having to do with hierarchical nestings of structure in reality. Maybe the mind is also dependent on various nestings of structure, far, far beyond Hameroff's micro-tubules.
</walloftext>

Thank you for this excellent wall of text, @william. With only 4 percent of what we take to be the 'visible' universe perceptible by us, here, in this point in spacetime, there is vast room for creative thinking about what exists in the other 96 percent, and I find your speculations both fascinating and informed in regard to current human scientific theories. The world beyond what we can see is as mysterious as consciousness, and its inherent structure(s) might well be connected to the limits of what we can understand about the nature of our experienced consciousness. That suggests to me, as it does to you, that we need to explore by all means possible the paranormal, psychic, and spiritual experiences reported by humans in the recorded past and in the present.

I'd be most interested in reading what you might be willing to describe of your own spiritual and theistic experiences, and I think that in general we ought finally in this thread to turn to lengthy discussions of the nature of these kinds of experiences. The most interesting aspect of quantum mechanics and theory for me has long been the general entanglement of q particles (and I'm guessing a similar entanglement of q fields). The deeper substrate you reason to exist in the vacuum would logically, it seems to me, interact with, further integrate, and indeed possibly guide {as in Bohm's thought} the measureable processes and structures we've discovered in the q substrate and in the classically described macro 'world' we exist in and have been able to make some sense of. Since we cannot achieve a point of view on all that exists, a view from everywhere, I think we need to proceed from the basis of phenomenological description of the range of what we experience, territory that materialist science has blocked from inquiry for more than two hundred years now. Many thanks for the doors opened in your thoughtful and carefully written post.

 

[Constance]

According to Strawson—and to which Nagel had no retort—the enduring subject is the physical body. The phenomenal subject is itself a phenomenal experience.

Again I have to question the value of Strawson's thesis for consciousness studies. I think he confuses waking consciousness [which he limits to three-second maximums in endurance] with the complex character of consciousness as involving preconscious, prereflective, subconscious, and unconscious levels of experience involved in, influencing, and informing what we take to be our 'normal' waking states of consciousness. I think it's absurd to suppose that the latter 'waking' states exist only momentarily.

What I argue is that there can be physical bodies (whirlpools in the ocean) that are so primitive that a phenomenal sense of self is absent.
There is no strong argument, it seems, for an enduring phenomenal self, which seems to be your argument, no?

If you mean a 'strong physicalist argument' for a continuous [if not continual] sense of an enduring 'self' possessing a personal sense of "being-in"/being-situated-in a temporally unfolding local world, no, you won't find one. Yet that is indeed the way in which most humans experience their own existence in an existential world -- a world passing historically out of previously construed worlds into an unknown future. Lived worlds are as radically temporal as we are in our temporally conditioned lives. Nevertheless, our species has long thought beyond the immediate situations in which we, like our forebears, exist, and pursued through our reflections on what we have experienced the possible nature and extent of the holistic World in which our world has taken place. Ontological thinking extends far back in our species history. That in itself points to the nature of human consciousness as a complex consciousness based in preconscious, subconscious, and even collectively unconscious experience carried forward in what we experience and what we can think about the nature of Being and the nature of our own being.

Because if not, what are we arguing about?

I think we're arguing (but mostly unemotionally, as befits our subject) about how meaning arises for us in a world whose origins and nature we only partially comprehend.

 

[smcder]

According to Strawson—and to which Nagel had no retort—the enduring subject is the physical body. The phenomenal subject is itself a phenomenal experience.

What I argue is that there can be physical bodies (whirlpools in the ocean) that are so primitive that a phenomenal sense of self is absent.

There is no strong argument, it seems, for an enduring phenomenal self, which seems to be your argument, no?

Because if not, what are we arguing about?

I did not know we were arguing.

 

[smcder]

@William Strathmann

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lol ... good to see a sense of humor! ;-)