Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 10

[Pharoah]

And I say a dramatic alteration of how the world is interpreted must lead to an alternative. Have you read Lightman's Einstein's Dreams ...

See section 6 in the SEP article above ... this is a bit along the lines of my objection to how much the scientists can derive from eDNA:

"Second, DST theorists have often endorsed a “parity thesis”: genes play an indispensable role in development, but so do other causal factors, and there is no reason to privilege gene’s contribution to development. This claim is often buttressed by reference to Richard Lewontin’s arguments for the complexity and context sensitivity of developmental interaction, and his consequent arguments that we cannot normally partition the causal responsibility of the genetic and the environmental contributions to specific phenotypic outcomes (Lewontin 1974, 2000). DST theorists think that informational models of genes and gene action make it very tempting to neglect parity, and to attribute a kind of causal primacy to these factors, even though they are just one of a set of essential contributors to the process in question. Once one factor in a complex system is seen in informational terms, the other factors tend to be treated as mere background, as supports rather than bona fide causal actors. It becomes natural to think that the genes direct, control, or organise development; other factors provide essential resources. But, the argument goes, in biological systems the causal role of genes is in fact tightly interconnected with the roles of many other factors (often loosely lumped together as “environmental”). Sometimes a gene will have a reliable effect against a wide range of environmental backgrounds; sometimes an environmental factor will have a reliable effect against a wide range of genetic backgrounds. Sometimes both genetic and environmental causes are highly context-sensitive in their operation. Paul Griffiths has emphasised this issue, arguing that the informational mode of describing genes can foster the appearance of context-independence:

etc. etc. et al ad lib ad hominem

Q.E.D.

yes. the eDNA scientists have a full understanding of eDNA/environment interaction and their influences on physiological development. Is this conceivable and does it answer the objection?

 

[Constance]

. . . DST theorists think that informational models of genes and gene action make it very tempting to neglect parity, and to attribute a kind of causal primacy to these factors, even though they are just one of a set of essential contributors to the process in question. Once one factor in a complex system is seen in informational terms, the other factors tend to be treated as mere background, as supports rather than bona fide causal actors. It becomes natural to think that the genes direct, control, or organise development; other factors provide essential resources. But, the argument goes, in biological systems the causal role of genes is in fact tightly interconnected with the roles of many other factors (often loosely lumped together as “environmental”). Sometimes a gene will have a reliable effect against a wide range of environmental backgrounds; sometimes an environmental factor will have a reliable effect against a wide range of genetic backgrounds. Sometimes both genetic and environmental causes are highly context-sensitive in their operation. Paul Griffiths has emphasised this issue, arguing that the informational mode of describing genes can foster the appearance of context-independence.

Re 'information' in Rovelli's most recent paper:

". . .A. Information

Equation (3) can be expressed by saying that (P1) The amount of information that can be extracted from a finite region of phase space is finite. “Information” means here nothing else than “number of possible distinct alternatives”. The step from ρ to ρ0 determined by an actualisation modifies the predictions of the theory. In particular, the value of a, previously spread, is then predicted to be sharper. This can be expressed in information theoretical theorems by saying that (P2) An interaction allows new information about a system to be acquired.

There is an apparent tension between the two statements (P1) and (P2). If there is a finite amount of information, how can we keep gathering novel one? The tension is only apparent, because here ‘information’ quantifies the data relevant for predicting the value of variables. In the course of an interaction, part of the previously relevant information becomes irrelevant. In this way, information is acquired, but the total amount of information available remains finite.2

It is the combination of (P1) and (P2) that largely characterises quantum theory. These two statements were proposed as the basic “postulates” of quantum mechanics in [12]. (The apparent contradiction between the two capturing the counterintuitive character of QM in the same sense in which the apparent contradiction between the two Einstein’s postulate for Special Relativity captures the counterintuitive character of relativistic spacetime geometry.) Very similar ideas were independently introduced by Zeilinger and Brukner [26, 27]. An attempt to reconstruct the full formalism of quantum theory starting from these two information-theoretic postulated was initiated in [12]. For the present state of these attempts see [28, 29] and references therein.

The role of information at the basis of quantum theory is a controversial topic. The term ‘information’ is ambiguous, with a wide spectrum of meanings ranging from epistemic states of conscious observers all the way to simply counting alternatives, `a la Shannon. As pointed out for instance by Dorato, even in its weakest sense information cannot be taken as a primary notion from which all others can be derived, since it is always information about something. Nevertheless, information can be a powerful organisational principle in the sense of Einstein’s distinction between ‘principle theories’ (like thermodynamics) versus ‘constructive theories’ (like electromagnetism).3 The role of the general theory of mechanics is not to list the ingredients of the world —this is done by the individual mechanical theories, like the standard model, general relativity, of the harmonic oscillator. The role of the general theory of mechanics (like classical mechanics or quantum mechanics) is to provide a general framework within which specific constructive theories are realized. From this perspective, the notion of information as number of possible alternatives may play a very useful role.

It is in this sense that the two postulates can be understood. They are limitations on the structure of the values that variables can take. The list of relevant variables, which define a physical system, and their algebraic relations, are provided by specific quantum theories. There are several objections that come naturally to mind when one first encounters relational QM, which seem to render it inconsistent. These have been long discussed and have all been convincingly answered, see in particular the detailed arguments in van Fraassen [17] and Dorato [19] and the original paper [12]; I will not re-discuss them here. Relational QM is a consistent interpretation of quantum theory.

But, like all other consistent interpretations, it comes at a price.

IV. PHILOSOPHICAL IMPLICATIONS . . . . ."

 

[Constance]

Empathy in birds:

Related Articles by Review for PubMed (Select 26407661) - PubMed - NCBI

Distressed Ravens Show That Empathy Is For The Birds, Too

Bird Brains and Cross-Species Empathy

 

[Constance]

Here is a link to the whole of Wm. James's A Pluralistic Universe, beautifully (readably) reproduced online:

https://jennymackness.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/james-william-a-pluralistic-universe.pdf


A summary of this important late work of James:

"In his famous lectures at Oxford University in 1908 and 1909, William James made a sustained and eloquent case against absolute idealism and intellectualism in philosophy. Ever since Socrates and Plato, the philosophy of the absolute had held sway—the emphasis on essence at the expense of concrete appearance, the insistence on a coherent universe, abstract, timeless, finished, enclosed in its totality. James’s own thinking led him to renounce monistic idealism and the intellectualization of all “truth.”

Going against the grain of entrenched philosophy, James argues in A Pluralistic Universe that the world is not a uni-verse but a multi-verse. He honors the human experience of manyness and disconnection (and various kinds of unity) in the world of flux and sensation, a world that is discounted scornfully by the monists. “Pluralistic empiricism,” as James called it, permits intellectual freedom, while the artificial concepts of monism do not. It approaches the only reality that has any meaning, one that follows the pattern of daily experience. A Pluralistic Universe, like Some Problems in Philosophy and Essays in Radical Empiricism (also available as Bison Books), is basic to an understanding of James’s thought."

http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9780803275911/

 

[smcder]

gulp!
I am not happy with section 2. I continue to work on it... I wade through it like its treacle myself. Will email you the latest

from Section 2 and into section 3 is helpful too

 

[smcder]

yes. the eDNA scientists have a full understanding of eDNA/environment interaction and their influences on physiological development. Is this conceivable and does it answer the objection?

Well ... the objection is that even a full understanding might not tell the the scientists all the things you listed (seeds distributed by hairy animals ... etc) and I can argue that, but I don't think that's essential to your argument, it's enough to say the scientists could learn a lot about EDNA just from the eDNA ... (but see also the SEP sections I just posted).

 

[smcder]

'informational concepts'? yes as a placeholder... the concepts have a very significant role. Still flawed but the best we've got. It is very difficult to unpick and present a coherent alternative. The alternative must lead to a dramatic alteration of how the world is interpreted. I have got as far as considering what it means to 'causation' (and therefore emergentism) and to the concept of 'number' and of course, representation

Is the discussion in section 2 and 3 of the SEP above relevant to the claim of HCT?

• namely, that information is qualified and quantified wholly by the very nature of the construction of an OASE.

It seems to me an external view of information is more than a placeholder - there is an external world that is relevant in itself ... only certain environments will foster life, so that puts brackets around the concept ... not sure how to put this ... you might only call it information when it is quantified and qualified by the OASE ... but that's an argument by definition ... maybe I'll come up with a better way to put it

 

[Constance]

Hebbian learning ... synapses that fire together ... wire together ...

Consciousness, Plasticity, and Connectomics: The Role of Intersubjectivity in Human Cognition
Micah Allen1,* and Gary Williams2

Extract:

"A constant theme in cognitive science is to define the explanandum of consciousness in terms of qualia or “phenomenal feels,” i.e., some ineffable, subjective “what-it-is-like” to experience the world. Moreover, it is often argued that consciousness requires either some kind of higher-order metarepresentation of first-order states (Gennaro, 2004) or that consciousness is itself localized to the pure phenomenal feels or “what-it-is-like” (Dretske, 1993). We contend that the prevailing theoretical spectrum begins from the incorrect assumption that both phenomenal feels and higher-order representations can be collapsed into a single phenomenon. In contrast, we argue that the qualities of phenomenal experience and a subject's higher-order representations of those qualities are separate explananda, while still contending that higher-order representations significantly change the “what-it-is-like” of human experience. This is in accordance with our thesis that reflective consciousness is something that develops in ontogeny and depends upon the plastic individual development of the sensorimotor system in interaction with the default mode network (DMN). Moreover, we contend that both phenomena are highly complex, reciprocally interact, and depend upon the organisms phylogenetic and ontogenetic history of structural coupling between body, brain, and culture.

What drives us to this conclusion? First, the phenomenological tradition, as exemplified by the work of Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, emphasizes that our experience of the world is primarily prereflective in nature. Accordingly, we would like to construct an account of mental life grounded by the basic insight that cognition is primarily embodied and embedded within an organized environment and social field rather than detached and spectatorial (Stern, 2009). Second, in light of recent evidence of the brain's radical, multisensory plasticity, we will argue that this profound adaptivity at the molecular, network, and systems levels underlies the development and intersubjective function of human consciousness. We will thus argue that both the long-term plasticity underlying skill development and cultural learning and “fast” sensory–motor plasticity underpin our conscious experience of the world and ourselves. Indeed, there are physiological reasons to suspect that both “primary” prereflective processing1 and “secondary” reflective processing are both dynamic and flexible in nature, grounded in the actual history of the system's encounter with the environment. Whether we are discussing neuron recycling underlying memory consolidation, synaptic reorganization following limb amputation, or alterations in the particular communicative balance between macroscopic neural networks, the old tropes of radical modularism and localization of function are no longer tenable. . . ."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3110420/

 

[Constance]

Looking for and not finding this paper online: Stern D. (2009). Pre-reflexive experience and its passage to reflexive experience: a developmental view. J. Conscious. Stud. 16, 307–331

 

[Constance]

Is the discussion in section 2 and 3 of the SEP above relevant to the claim of HCT?

• namely, that information is qualified and quantified wholly by the very nature of the construction of an OASE.

That claim makes sense to me. {Steve, would you repost the link to the SEP article you're referring to? I'm having trouble finding it. Thanks.}

It seems to me an external view of information is more than a placeholder - there is an external world that is relevant in itself ... only certain environments will foster life, so that puts brackets around the concept ... not sure how to put this ... you might only call it information when it is quantified and qualified by the OASE ... but that's an argument by definition ... maybe I'll come up with a better way to put it

Yes, there is an 'external world' [cosmos/universe/multiverse] within which all physical forces and fields, things/objects, and living creatures exist, but it seems to me that the totality of 'information' expressed in this 'world in its entirety' -- and even only 'information' particular to/available in various natural environments fostering life -- would not/could not all be relevant to and thus taken up by all varieties and variations of living species evolving in those environments. Wouldn't openness to ALL 'external' information in the universe overwhelm the capacities of any organism/animal to adapt and learn, to survive and thrive?

What informs the creature about how to live in its local environment consists in what J.J. Gibson referred to as natural affordances enabling each species to function, survive, and thrive in its environment. Or, as a professor of American Culture and Criticism at the University of Iowa repeated in several lectures I attended: "that which a creature is made [evolved] to bear it is not made [evolved] to bear the want of." The creature with a native/innate will -- an inborn desire -- to live attends to and learns that which it needs to understand in order to live, and it is organic nature itself that provides the opportunities and drives necessary for that learning.

Or so it seems to me.

(Maybe a workable metaphor for this relationship would characterize 'information' relevant for a living species/animal as bearing a key fitting and opening the lock to that species'/animal's gates of perception?)

 

[smcder]

That claim makes sense to me. {Would you repost the link to the SEP article you're referring to? Thanks.}


Yes, there is an 'external world' [cosmos/universe/multiverse] within which all physical forces and fields, things/objects, and living creatures exist, but it seems to me that the totality of 'information' expressed in this 'world in its entirety' -- and even only 'information' particular to/available in various natural environments fostering life -- would not/could not all be relevant to and thus taken up by all varieties and variations of living species evolving in those environments. Wouldn't openness to ALL 'external' information in the universe overwhelm the capacities of any organism/animal to adapt and learn, to survive and thrive?

What informs the creature about how to live in its local environment consists in what J.J. Gibson referred to as natural affordances enabling each species to function, survive, and thrive in its environment. Or, as a professor of American Culture and Criticism at the University of Iowa repeated in several lectures I attended: "that which a creature is made [evolved] to bear it is not made [evolved] to bear the want of." The creature with a native/innate will -- an inborn desire -- to live attends to and learns that which it needs to understand in order to live, and it is organic nature itself that provides for that learning.

Or so it seems to me.

This is the SEP article.

Biological Information (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

This:

• namely, that information is qualified and quantified wholly by the very nature of the construction of an OASE.

Is @Pharoah 's statement.

I think that what is qualitatively relevant is not determined wholly by what pharoah calls "the very nature of the construction of an OASE" nor wholly by the environment. And that it may be useful to be able to look at "information" in both ways.

 

[Constance]

This is the SEP article.

Biological Information (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Thanks.

This:

• namely, that information is qualified and quantified wholly by the very nature of the construction of an OASE.

Is @Pharoah 's statement.

Yes. I think the main thrust of it is valid and important.

I think that what is qualitatively relevant is not determined wholly by what pharoah calls "the very nature of the construction of an OASE" nor wholly by the environment.

"Wholly" is one of those words we should all probably avoid. I see your point: interrelation and interaction are at the heart of evolving physical processes and beings. In interacting physical fields and forces, the result is at first destabilization and chaos, but eventually balance and integration are achieved. This is no doubt also the case with radical changes in the environments of living beings, at least with those that are able to adapt to environmental changes and thus survive.

Organisms and animals also exchange information with one another, but the difference is that they feel these exchanges, sense their meaning, and carry forward 'knowledge' of them, learning to avoid some interactions and to seek others. But I think it's more than likely true that no matter what 'information' is available to a living organism or animal in its environment, the 'message' will not be received unless the organism or animal is 'ready' (prepared through evolution) to receive it.

And that it may be useful to be able to look at "information" in both ways.

It probably is necessary to look at 'information' in different ways, especially at the stage of hypothesis and theory formation we're presently in, and particularly regarding the nature of self-organizing, dissipative, living systems.

 

[Constance]

Another paper by Dorothée Legrand:

Naturalizing the Acting Self:
Subjective vs. Anonymous Agency.

Acknowledgements to Michel Cermolacce, Franck Grammont, Brian L. Keeley, Axel Kohler
and two reviewers for the constructive aspects of their comments.
Address for correspondence: CREA, Centre de Recherche en Epistémologie Appliquée,
1 rue Descartes, 75005 Paris. France.
Email: legrand@shs.polytechnique.fr

ABSTRACT

This paper considers critically the enterprise of naturalizing the subjective experience of acting
intentionally. I specifically expose the limits of the model that conceives of agency as composed
of two stages. The first stage consists in experiencing an anonymous intention without being
conscious of it as anybody’s in particular. The second stage disambiguates this anonymous
experience thanks to a mechanism of identification and attribution answering the question: "who
is intending to act?" On the basis of phenomenological, clinical, methodological and empirical
considerations, I contrast the two-stage Anonymity-Attribution model of agency with an
alternative view that intends to bypass these problems by defining agency as intrinsically
subjective at the pre-reflective level.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/0635/77d5cf33c3add966be255eaa84a44a721cde.pdf

 

[Soupie]

Hebbian learning ... synapses that fire together ... wire together ...

But this isn't problematic from the monist, perspectival approach to the MBP.

The physical (mechanical) and intentional stances are simply two powerful ways of describing what amounts to the same thing.

 

[smcder]

But this isn't problematic from the monist, perspectival approach to the MBP.

The physical (mechanical) and intentional stances are simply two powerful ways of describing what amounts to the same thing.

right ... I'm just saying that's the term for it ... (sort of) and how you would get a robot to do this (sort of) ... Hebb's rule was one of the first "learning" rules used in AI - it's a kind of coincidence detector and a way of storing memories.

 

[smcder]

 

[smcder]

@Pharoah

This is the first fork in the road, if the reader takes it, he may be off the path for good ...

three statements made in the paper:

1. I argue instead (part 2) that information is qualified and quantified wholly by the very nature of the construction of an OASE.
2. The OASE-dependent stance is the view that information is contingent, in absolutist terms(?), on the nature of an OASE’s interacting dynamic construct itself rather than on any informational property of environment.
3. In other words, the claim I make is that an OASE’s dynamic construct is what qualifies the informational nature of the environment qua (?) information does not exist ‘out there’ independently.

ambiguity

1. qualified and quantified wholly to me means that information is only in the OASE, not out there at all
2. here, information is contingent (what does absolutist terms mean? absolutely contingent? or "contingent only on"? - again information is only dependent on the OASE ... but with the word contingent and in absolutist terms ... I am not so sure ... absolutely contingent is a little, oxymoronic?
3. but three says information does not exist out there independently ... so the statements sort of weaken as they go - better I think to make exactly the same statement in all three places.

The examples in part 2 do help clarify a bit, but it would be stronger to have a crisp statement you can repeat throughout the paper - again, blah blah blah to reinforce the argument

 

[smcder]

I kind of think you go down the garden path with Dennett ... and into the tall grass. On the one hand it shows the mix of views he has and that's instructive, but it takes you away from the point which is the orthodox vs OASE dependent views ... it starts to read a bit like you are singling him out ... hmmm

However, even if one grants his proposed emergent dispositional states, which in this instance render light reflecting information as colour, there remains a problem with his position: from where does the ‘value’ of said variables originate in the first place—that is, where does the value attribution originate that grants comparative evaluation?

smcder Wouldn’t Dennett just say the organism evolved to notice or value what is relevant to survival and reproduction?

 

[smcder]

the great representation bug-a-boo of 2017

@Pharoah writes:

"Bateson’s (1970) stance, that information out there can be equated to differences that make a difference, provokes an equivalent inquiry. By what power or authority does any complex mechanism of physics qualify what a difference actually is? Alternatively, what physical process enables the identification and comparable measurement of differences and thereby determine the transformation of unqualified differences into something that is meaningfully differentiated and consequently informing? To measure a difference is surely to qualify something as meaningfully differentiated. Smcder this is a bit tricky as it slips in your usage of “meaningful” - may need to build the argument a bit ... What this stance is advocating contentiously This stance contends that an OASE—in compliance with physical laws—has the means of fixing (or storing) various ‘informational properties’ quantitatively, qualitatively and temporally such that it can relate one information bit to another and thereby assimilate their comparable relationship and determine a relative value of one to another. I contend this is the unjustified faith in the notion that there exists an elemental physical process that measures difference comparatively and therefore potentially meaningfully.

To my mind representationist theories in all their current guises, and the language of representationalism generally, start from the dubious premise that there is such a thing, a priori, as a physical entity that possesses the “know-how” to qualify and measure difference. The other issue is that representationalism is fully committed to the concept of information as an OASE-independent measurable commodity that objectively exists. From this stance, the concept of information is one that functions very much like the now debunked, yet once widely supported idea, of an all-pervasive ‘aether’ which filled space and facilitated the propagation of electromagnetic and gravitational forces: equivalently, information serves as a universal and all pervasive medium or commodity that somehow enables the transmission, storage and comparative evaluation of value attribution. Consequently, in many contexts, the term ‘system’ has become the term that refers to the complex mechanism, function and/or process that does the reading and that does the manipulating of ‘the information-aether’. It is ‘The System’ that conveniently enables the attribution of a natural or intrinsic self-governance and directedness. In this manner, in the lexicon of academia, the term ‘system’ stands in as the information-meaning-maker par excellence: "

smcder in brief, this stance asks: "why do we need consciousness, when we have information?" (this strikes me as analogous to a presentation at Google on energy limitations - the Googlers asked "why do we need energy, when we have technology?")

...

@Pharoah quote by Dennett, I believe:

Now, everybody in computer science, with few exceptions, they understand this because they understand how computers work, and they realise that the understanding isn’t in the CPU, it’s in the system. . . that’s where all the competence, all the understanding lies. . . [09:14]

That and the following paragraph (just below) really get down to it:

Pharoah "In relation to mentality then, the conceptual basis underpinning the term system, which has become central to the predominant expository language, facilitates the equivocation between a syntactic–semantic dichotomy. This dichotomy must exist because the concept ‘system’ assumes the role of a facilitator through which external syntactical information-aether gets re-presented as content that is meaningful. It is a convenient bridging concept that plugs the syntactic–semantic gap created by the idea that information is a commodity that exists out there in the environment." (except there are "simply too many words!") ;-)



It may be you could make that point earlier (and often).

 

[smcder]

Pharoah writes "Searle [1983], on the other hand, is dismissive of the view that intentionality is quantitative arguing instead that there is a category of systems with real intrinsic intentionality (humans included) that is distinct from systems to which one might attribute intentionality, and thereby treat ‘as if’ they possess intentionality, but for whom intentionality is absent (such as might be the case with a robot). Instead of a greyscale, Searle might be said to be advocating an ontological distinction between those with and those without intentionality.

Which is very helpful, but then you kind of get off in the woods again ... but then you come to a bright clearing:

pharoah "To clarify, the false ‘as if’ attribution of information states that information exists out there independently and that it is collated by OASEs to a degree that depends on their information-processing complexity. The alternative, which I am defending in this paper, states that the existence of information is entirely dependent on the nature of the construction of any given OASE. In part 3, I will endeavour to explain why we should abandon the idea of a complexity information-processing greyscale and instead arrive at an understanding that supports those who gravitate intuitively to Searle’s position."

And we are almost there ... because it is not clear what "the nature of the construction of any given OASE" means. This does answer all the above ambiguities - information is entirely on the OASE side of things - we just need to clear that language up a bit (for my tastes, when I make a "we need to" or "you should" statement - it is just my editorial POV.

There's a nice bit on why we view the world the way we do, but I think it needs to be noted that this is partially a modern view, not just an effect of the human subjective POV - you write

Pharoah "in a way, this rationale digitizes the individual’s frame of reference with the world. Subsequently, humans come to interpret the world as consisting of identifiable qualitative and quantitative bits somehow collated into mental content. From this perspective, humans then look at this now digitized world-view of informaitonal-bits to attempt to explain the phenomenon of conscious experience itself. It is no surprise that humans conclude falsely that the meaning they accrue about the world either has a direct correlation or representational correspondence with a world of informational properties."

Silly humans.