Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 10

[smcder]

@Constance looking at the articles you posted on Wittgenstein, I kept coming across Peter Hacker:

Peter Hacker - Wikipedia

He is known for his detailed exegesis of the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, and his outspoken conceptual critique of cognitive neuroscience.

Here is a review of Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience

Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience // Reviews // Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews // University of Notre Dame

"Bennett - a distinguished neuroscientist - and Hacker - the preeminent scholar of Wittgenstein's thought - have teamed up to produce a withering attack on the conception of the mental that lies at the heart of contemporary neuroscience. Although neuroscientists are committed materialists, and adamantly insist on this aspect of their anti-Cartesianism, they have, Bennett and Hacker argue, merely jettisoned the dual substance doctrine of Cartesianism, but retained its faulty structure with respect to the relation of mind and behavior."

and this article:

http://info.sjc.ox.ac.uk/scr/hacker/docs/ConsciousnessAChallenge.pdf

"To us, this may seem extraordinary. How could the ancients and mediaevals manage to make sense of human nature and of the nature of the human mind without an explicit concept of consciousness? After all, is not consciousness the mark of the mental? Is it not consciousness that distinguishes us from mindless nature? Is it not precisely because we are conscious that there is something it is like to be us, and that there is not something it is like to be an automaton? This response is too swift. It presupposes the cogency of the early modern and contemporary philosophical conceptions of consciousness. If we attend carefully, we may well hear the ancients in the Elysian fields laughing at us moderns, wondering how we can possibly hope to make sense of human nature and of the nature of the human mind with the knotted tangle of misconceptions that we have woven into reflections on consciousness. For consciousness, as conceived by early modern and, rather differently, by contemporary, philosophers, is a mark, not of the mental, but of subtle and ramifying confusion. Of course, the laughter of the ancients may be a little wry – for they would have to admit that they had sowed the seeds of confusion. They had done so by their deeply misleading question: ‘How do we know our own perceptions?’ And they had made things worse by their confused answer, namely: that we do so by means of a ‘common, or general, sense’ (koinê aisthêsis (Aristotle), subsequently translated into Latin as sensus communis) or ‘an internal sense’ (sensus interior (Augustine))."

... bracing stuff this

 

[smcder]

Peter Hacker's Challenge to Neuroscientists: Make Sense!

Peter Hacker is an eminent English philosopher, an expert on Wittgenstein, and an outspoken critic of neuroscience as it's practiced and talked about today. In this accessible and entertaining interview in James Garvey's excellent The Philosophers' Magazine, Hacker explains his point of view: that neuroscience, and the philosophy that's based on it, has "stepped over the bounds of sense." As he explains to Garvey,

On the current neuroscientist’s view, it’s the brain that thinks and reasons and calculates and believes and fears and hopes. In fact, it’s human beings who do all these things, not their brains and not their minds. I don’t think it makes any sense to talk about the brain engaging in psychological or mental operations

 

[smcder]

A tonic for the tonic by the reliable Conscious Entitites blog:

Conscious Entities » Peter Hacker

 

[smcder]

Wittgenstein on Consciousness

Abstract
In this paper the authors present (1) Wittgenstein's understanding of the problem of consciousness, (2) his objections to Cartesian and behaviourist theories, (3) and his solution in terms of his “theory” or “overview” of human nature, sentient beings, and life. Central texts used are taken from PI and Z.

Wittgenstein on consciousness in “Philosophical Investigations” | Krkač | From the ALWS archives: A selection of papers from the International Wittgenstein Symposia in Kirchberg am Wechsel

(1.5) If what is previously said (1.1 – 1.4) is correct, then there is no “unbridgeable gulf between consciousness and brain process” and there is not a such thing as a “metaphysical mystery of consciousness” (PI 412). This is Wittgenstein’s treatment of the Cartesian picture of consciousness and it is a part of his more general criticism of the inner/outer distinction (Glock 1997:174-179).

 

[smcder]

Panpsychism vindicated?

"Actually, so far as I can see no-one is actually suggesting the Universe as a whole, as an entity, is conscious. Instead this highly original paper by Gregory L. Matloff starts with panpsychism, a belief that there is some sort of universal field of proto-consciousness permeating the cosmos.

That is a not unpopular outlook these days. What’s startling is Matloff’s suggestion that some stars might be able to do roughly what our brains are supposed by panpsychists to do; recruit the field and use it to generate their own consciousness, exerting some degree of voluntary control over their own movements."

...


"I think it would be true to claim that most panpsychists think the kind of awareness that suffuses the world is of the latter kind; it is a dim general awareness, not a capacity to make snappy decisions. It is, in my view, one of the big disadvantages of panpsychism that it does not help much with explaining the practical, working kind of consciousness and in fact arguably leaves us with more to account for than we had on our plate to start with."

!@Soupie

 

[smcder]

And this one ...

It's all theology.

This I have been saying ...

"Another line of argument that would tend to support Burton is the one that says worries about consciousness are largely confined to modern Western culture. I don’t know enough for my own opinion to be worth anything, but I’ve been told that in classical Indian and Chinese thought the issue of consciousness just never really arises, although both traditions have long and complex philosophical traditions. Indeed, much the same could be said about Ancient Greek philosophy, I think; there’s a good deal of philosophy of mind, but consciousness as we know it just doesn’t really present itself as a puzzle. Socrates never professed ignorance about what consciousness was."

smcder dualism rooted historically in theology

"A common view would be that it’s only after Descartes that the issue as we know it starts to take shape, because of his dualism; a distinction between body and spirit that certainly has its roots in the theological (and philosophical) traditions of Western Christianity. I myself would argue that the modern topic of consciousness didn’t really take shape until Turing raised the real possibility of digital computers; consciousness was recruited to play the role of the thing computers haven’t got, and our views on it have been shaped by that perspective over the last fifty years in particular. I’ve argued before that although Locke gives what might be the first recognisable version of the Hard Problem, with an inverted spectrum thought experiment, he actually doesn’t care about it much and only mentions it as a secondary argument about matters that to him, seemed more important.

I think it is true in some respects that as William James said, consciousness is the last remnant of the vanishing soul. Certainly, when people deny the reality of the self, it often seems to me that their main purpose is to deny the reality of the soul. But I still believe that Burton’s view cedes too much to relativism – as I think Fodor once said, I hate relativism. We got into this business – even the theologians – because we wanted the truth, and we’re not going to be fobbed off with that stuff! Scientists may become impatient when no agreed answer is forthcoming after a couple of centuries, but I cling to the idea that there is a truth if the matter about personhood, freedom, and consciousness. I recognise that there is in this, ironically, a tinge of an act of faith, but I don’t care.

Unfortunately, as always things are probably more complicated than that. Could freedom of the will, say, be a culturally relative matter? All my instincts say no, but if people don’t believe themselves to be free, doesn’t that in fact impose some limits on how free they really are? If I absolutely do not believe I’m able to touch the sacred statue, then although the inability may be purely psychological, couldn’t it be real? It seems there are at least some fuzzy edges. Could I abolish myself by ceasing to believe in my own existence? In a way you could say that is in caricature form what Buddhists believe (though they think that correctly understood, my existence was a delusion anyway). That’s too much for me, and not only because of the sort of circularity mentioned above; I think it’s much too pessimistic to give up on a good objective accounts of agency and selfhood."

 

[smcder]

@smcder @Constance

I agree with both of you that the concept of "non-subjective experience" is oxymoronic (and some might just go with moronic).

Trying to separate subjective and experience is a bad idea. However keep in mind that I'm still stumbling for the best wording, and there are so many meanings for consciousness that confusion is inevitable.

I think the terms I like best are noumenal and phenomenal. I hesitate to use them because they are Kants terms and I believe they already have multiple meanings, so me using them would just create more confusion. Having said that, I do think they are the easiest to grok.

Let's try it.

Noumenal = mind-independent, consciousness (feeling) as substrate

Phenomenal = phenomenal consciousness; subjective experience; conscious mental states; etc.

Finally, I want to circle back around to experience and subjective experience:

I love the autopoeitic model. It is the best and most elegant model I know of (not saying much) to explain how subjectivity could (weakly) emerge within physical, 3rd person reality.

However, the model cannot and does not provide a mechanistic explanation, nor a functional role, for consciousness (feeling).

However, we assume that subjectity involves experience, subjective experience. So whence the experience? To me, this is an indication that consciousness (feeling) precedes the emergence of subjectivity.

Again, I agree that "non-subjective experience" is a clunky, confusing concept, but by using it, I was trying to capture the concept that consciousness (feeling) must precede the emergence of subjectivity.

I was trying to capture the concept that consciousness (feeling) must precede the emergence of subjectivity.

I'm not sure why it couldn't evolve with subejctivity? Can I compare your must to questions about the evolution of the eye - does seeing have to precede the physical evolution of the eye? As the eye evolved, seeing evolved.

The second persistent naggy thing is that you seem to want to make stuff of the immaterial consciousness - nouning the verb - this differs from Russell in that his is a dual-aspect substrate, the structure is the physical the intrinsic nature of which is the mental.

 

[Constance]

Unfortunately, as always things are probably more complicated than that. Could freedom of the will, say, be a culturally relative matter? All my instincts say no, but if people don’t believe themselves to be free, doesn’t that in fact impose some limits on how free they really are? If I absolutely do not believe I’m able to touch the sacred statue, then although the inability may be purely psychological, couldn’t it be real? It seems there are at least some fuzzy edges. Could I abolish myself by ceasing to believe in my own existence? In a way you could say that is in caricature form what Buddhists believe (though they think that correctly understood, my existence was a delusion anyway). That’s too much for me, and not only because of the sort of circularity mentioned above; I think it’s much too pessimistic to give up on a good objective accounts of agency and selfhood."

This train of thought suggests to me at the moment that perhaps consciousness is the means by which we can discover that we are both part of the physical world and not part of it by virtue of the inescapability of the transcendental capabilities of our own consciousnesses even while embodied, embedded, in physical nature. Can Buddhists escape the real world of suffering -- in the individual's own being and in the dreadful and undeniable spectacle of the suffering of others -- for more than the space of time in which one enters a deep meditative state in which the reality of experience in and of the physical world temporarily drops away? Obviously not.

So if the sense of duality experienced by embodied conscious beings-in-the-<physical> world such as ourselves is inescapable -- as it indeed seems to be -- it is duality that we must, are compelled to, investigate. We can try [our species has tried for millenia] to think our way out of this situation by a manifest array of conceptual manipulations, but none of them resolves the ambiguity of our experientially lived reality.

The remaining questions are: 1) do all entities in the physical world share our condition as transcendental consciousnesses?; and 2) to the extent that we as conscious beings are distinct from other entities in the physical world, how did we become, in the evolution of life, of living beings, the ambiguous and vexed entities that we are, undefinable in purely physical terms? If, as Stevens speculated*, "the spirit grows from the body of the world," which 'world' is the source: the physically constraining world we exist in here and now? or a larger, yet invisible World, in which our local world has appeared, developed, taken shape?

One of the ways we can approach an at least provisional answer to that question is through studying the 'paranormal' experiences and capabilities that have historically occured for beings of our kind, which include telepathy (mind to mind communications), precognition, and various forms of psychokinesis.

If the above train of thought makes sense in our interacting company, this might be a good time for us to finally turn to the accumulated evidence of paranormal experiences in which members of our species have participated.

 

[Constance]

Here is an interesting response to the Consciousness Entities essay that Steve linked, at

It's all theology.

"4. Jochen says:

Well, I’m coming round to believing that the Buddhists might not be that far off: the context that forces the question upon us also makes its answer impossible; and if we could leave that context (the discursive, model-based thinking about the world), the question simply wouldn’t make sense any more.

Ripping out a page from Scott Bakker’s playbook (sorry), we might imagine a race of beings, the Horlogians, who employ for explanation a special faculty, the horlogos. Essentially, a horlogical explanation of some phenomenon consists in building a clockwork model of it: thus, they consider themselves to have understood the movement of planets upon building a sufficiently detailed orrery.

Let’s furthermore assume that their clockwork-building abilities eventually become so refined that they can find a horlogical explanation for just about any natural phenomenon. It’s not out of the question that they might succumb to the temptation of a certain kind of ontological arrogance: because their clockwork models seem to capture reality so accurately, they reason that it must be the case that underneath it all, the world itself must be just one huge, complicated clockwork (call that the Horlogical Universe Hypothesis, or HUH for short). (Although some might be puzzled by the aptness of their models, writing articles musing about the unreasonable effectiveness of horlogic in the natural sciences, and the like.)

So far, so good. But eventually, they’re bound to notice that there’s a property to all of their models that becomes really hard to explain, if there’s nothing but clockworks that make up the universe: clockworks, in order to do their work, need to be wound up. So, who or what wound up the universe? It’s easy to see that you can’t just use another clockwork for that purpose—you just end up with a (hopefully very familiar) regress, because who or what wound that one up?

(Although there will be those among the Horlogians who will keep up hope—perhaps a really really complicated set of clockworks, interlocking and mutually winding and unwinding, won’t need to be wound up. Sure, for all of the clockworks we can actually envision, we find we need to wind them up—but of course, those are basically just really simple ones. Who’s to say that more of the same won’t yield something different, if there’s just enough of it?)

Of course, the answer to their question cannot be found by means of horlogy: it’s because of their clockwork modeling that the question comes up in the first place; rejecting clockwork models entails that the question becomes insensible, because it’s only the mistaken idea that their ability to model things in a certain way has implications for the things thus modeled that makes the question arise. The real answer is, the world isn’t a clockwork, and thus, doesn’t need to be wound up. (It’s here that the analogy becomes somewhat imperfect, since there still is a question about the ‘first mover’ within any sort of model of the universe—but that question still only pertains to the model, not to the universe.)

I think we’re in the same situation. Our ability to model the world and thus, reason about it, is intrinsically computational—computation being effectively nothing but modeling a system in a certain way (or using a certain system as a model of something else, another system in a simulation, or a more abstract formal structure in more ordinary computational practice). Hence, we see the world as computational, because we see it through our models of it; but the world itself isn’t computational, it’s just that we have no access to the world as it is.

Thus, questions arise that can’t be solved within the only way we have to grasp the world; but they’re not problems of the world, but of our way of grasping it. So we’re deadlocked: we can’t answer the question, because our very means of answering questions is the only reason the question appears in the first place.
June 21, 2017, 4:40 pm"


If it's not already obvious by now, I'll add again that the phenomenological turn in philosophy and its applied methodologies in multiple disciplines have demonstrated -- by describing a fuller spectrum of what we experience, feel, and think -- that we indeed have more than 'one way of grasping the world' and developing an increasing understanding of the nature of our 'grasp' on it and on ourselves -- i.e., the work at stake in interdisciplinary consciousness studies.

ps: it's not "all theology," but it does indicate that we have one foot each in two worlds, or in two parts of 'the World'.

 

[Constance]

Regarding the confusions concerning subjectivity, consciousness, and 'self-hood'/'self-sense', we likely can't do better than to take advantage of Zahavi's thought as expressed in this book of his available as a whole online:

http://people.exeter.ac.uk/sp344/Zahavi, Dan - Subjectivity and Selfhood - Investigating the First-Person Perspective.pdf

Extract from the introduction:

". . . Much consciousness research is still aimed at locating and identifying particular neural correlates of consciousness. Yet there is also a growing realization that we will not get very far in giving an account of the relationship between consciousness and the brain unless we have a clear conception of what it is that we are trying to relate. To put it another way, any assessment of the possibility of reducing consciousness to neuronal structures and any appraisal of whether a naturalization of consciousness is possible will require a detailed analysis and description of the experiential aspects of consciousness. As Nagel once pointed out, a necessary requirement for any coherent reductionism is that the entity to be reduced is properly understood (Nagel 1974, 437).

Given the recent interest in the subjective or phenomenal dimension of consciousness, it is no wonder that many analytical philosophers have started to emphasize the importance of phenomenology. An example is Owen Flanagan, who in his 1992 book Consciousness Reconsidered argues for what he calls the natural method. If we wish to undertake a serious investigation of consciousness we cannot make do with neuroscientific or psychological (i.e., functional) analyses alone; we also need to give phenomenology its due (Flanagan 1992, 11). Thus, when studying consciousness rather than, say, deep-sea ecology, we must take phenomenological considerations into account since an important and nonnegligible feature of consciousness is the way in which it is experienced by the subject. Similar claims can be found in the recent work of Searle, Block, McGinn, Chalmers, Strawson, and Baars, among many others.

At first glance, this might indeed seem to indicate that there has been a change of attitude, that the customary hostility is a thing of the past, and that analytical philosophers and cognitive scientists are currently appreciative of the philosophical resources found in phenomenology. Things are not that simple, however. Although a small number of prominent figures in consciousness research have recently started to take philosophical phenomenology seriously, the vast majority of (Anglophone) philosophers and cognitive scientists are not using the term in its technical sense when they talk of phenomenology, but are still simply referring to a first-person description of what the “what it is like” of experience is really like. In fact, there has been a widespread tendency to identify phenomenology with some kind of introspectionism. Phenomenology is not, however, just another name for a kind of psychological self-observation; rather it is the name of a philosophical approach specifically interested in consciousness and experience inaugurated by Husserl and further developed and transformed by, among many others, Scheler, Heidegger, Gurwitsch, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Lévinas, Henry, and Ricoeur. . . . ."

 

[Soupie]

I was trying to capture the concept that consciousness (feeling) must precede the emergence of subjectivity.

I'm not sure why it couldn't evolve with subejctivity? Can I compare your must to questions about the evolution of the eye - does seeing have to precede the physical evolution of the eye? As the eye evolved, seeing evolved.

The second persistent naggy thing is that you seem to want to make stuff of the immaterial consciousness - nouning the verb - this differs from Russell in that his is a dual-aspect substrate, the structure is the physical the intrinsic nature of which is the mental.

I agree w/ the above commentary that saying the brain makes decisions, the brain thinks, etc is mistaken. Again the confusion that is consciousness.

Thinking, decision making, seeing, listening, etc. these are personal-level concepts and thus exist at the level of the whole person. Not just the brain.

On the other hand, it's clear imo that subjective experience arises at the level of the brain.

And, I think, consciousness (feeling) arises at a level even finer grained than brains.

Thus, as to me nouning consciousness: I don't think consciousness (feeling) is a static object (but of course nothing really is); I think it's an ongoing process and it is this process which I refer to as a substrate.

Sure. Consciousness (feeling) could emerge strongly emerge when autopoeitic cells weakly emerge. And I gather that there are those (present company included) who my have an affinity for such a model/theory.

However, I think there are others lines of argument for speculating that consciousness (feeling) precedes subjectivity—and moreover that subjectivity evolves within a substrate of consciousness (feeling)—rather than consciousness (feeling) strongly emerging from a non-conscious, physical substrate.

I need to form a better understanding of Russel's theory, especially the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction.

One of the things that I have gotten away from for a while now is thinking of this noumenal substrate in digital form. A field is probably the best concept we have for such an analog substrate. So how intrinsic and extrinsic properties would apply to a field I'm not sure. It's different from conceptualizing an infinite background of particles.

 

[smcder]

I agree w/ the above commentary that saying the brain makes decisions, the brain thinks, etc is mistaken. Again the confusion that is consciousness.

Thinking, decision making, seeing, listening, etc. these are personal-level concepts and thus exist at the level of the whole person. Not just the brain.

On the other hand, it's clear imo that subjective experience arises at the level of the brain.

And, I think, consciousness (feeling) arises at a level even finer grained than brains.

Thus, as to me nouning consciousness: I don't think consciousness (feeling) is a static object (but of course nothing really is); I think it's an ongoing process and it is this process which I refer to as a substrate.

Sure. Consciousness (feeling) could emerge strongly emerge when autopoeitic cells weakly emerge. And I gather that there are those (present company included) who my have an affinity for such a model/theory.

However, I think there are others lines of argument for speculating that consciousness (feeling) precedes subjectivity—and moreover that subjectivity evolves within a substrate of consciousness (feeling)—rather than consciousness (feeling) strongly emerging from a non-conscious, physical substrate.

I need to form a better understanding of Russel's theory, especially the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction.

One of the things that I have gotten away from for a while now is thinking of this noumenal substrate in digital form. A field is probably the best concept we have for such an analog substrate. So how intrinsic and extrinsic properties would apply to a field I'm not sure. It's different from conceptualizing an infinite background of particles.

However, I think there are others lines of argument for speculating that consciousness (feeling) precedes subjectivity—and moreover that subjectivity evolves within a substrate of consciousness (feeling)—rather than consciousness (feeling) strongly emerging from a non-conscious, physical substrate.

Again, can you define consciousness without subjectivity?

 

[smcder]

Regarding the confusions concerning subjectivity, consciousness, and 'self-hood'/'self-sense', we likely can't do better than to take advantage of Zahavi's thought as expressed in this book of his available as a whole online:

http://people.exeter.ac.uk/sp344/Zahavi, Dan - Subjectivity and Selfhood - Investigating the First-Person Perspective.pdf

Extract from the introduction:

". . . Much consciousness research is still aimed at locating and identifying particular neural correlates of consciousness. Yet there is also a growing realization that we will not get very far in giving an account of the relationship between consciousness and the brain unless we have a clear conception of what it is that we are trying to relate. To put it another way, any assessment of the possibility of reducing consciousness to neuronal structures and any appraisal of whether a naturalization of consciousness is possible will require a detailed analysis and description of the experiential aspects of consciousness. As Nagel once pointed out, a necessary requirement for any coherent reductionism is that the entity to be reduced is properly understood (Nagel 1974, 437).

Given the recent interest in the subjective or phenomenal dimension of consciousness, it is no wonder that many analytical philosophers have started to emphasize the importance of phenomenology. An example is Owen Flanagan, who in his 1992 book Consciousness Reconsidered argues for what he calls the natural method. If we wish to undertake a serious investigation of consciousness we cannot make do with neuroscientific or psychological (i.e., functional) analyses alone; we also need to give phenomenology its due (Flanagan 1992, 11). Thus, when studying consciousness rather than, say, deep-sea ecology, we must take phenomenological considerations into account since an important and nonnegligible feature of consciousness is the way in which it is experienced by the subject. Similar claims can be found in the recent work of Searle, Block, McGinn, Chalmers, Strawson, and Baars, among many others.

At first glance, this might indeed seem to indicate that there has been a change of attitude, that the customary hostility is a thing of the past, and that analytical philosophers and cognitive scientists are currently appreciative of the philosophical resources found in phenomenology. Things are not that simple, however. Although a small number of prominent figures in consciousness research have recently started to take philosophical phenomenology seriously, the vast majority of (Anglophone) philosophers and cognitive scientists are not using the term in its technical sense when they talk of phenomenology, but are still simply referring to a first-person description of what the “what it is like” of experience is really like. In fact, there has been a widespread tendency to identify phenomenology with some kind of introspectionism. Phenomenology is not, however, just another name for a kind of psychological self-observation; rather it is the name of a philosophical approach specifically interested in consciousness and experience inaugurated by Husserl and further developed and transformed by, among many others, Scheler, Heidegger, Gurwitsch, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Lévinas, Henry, and Ricoeur. . . . ."

One should not overestimate the homogeneity of the phenomenological tradition; like any other tradition, it spans many differences. Although phenomenologists might disagree on important questions concerning method and focus, and even about the status and existence of self, they are in nearly unanimous agreement when it comes to the relation between consciousness and self-consciousness. Literally all the major figures in phenomenology defend the view that the experiential dimension is characterized by a tacit self-consciousness.

In Erste Philosophie II, for instance, Husserl wrote that the experiential stream is characterized by a “Für-sich-selbst-erscheinens,” that is, by a self-appearance or self-manifestation (Hua 8/189, 412).1 Throughout his writings, he argued that self-consciousness, rather than being something that occurs only during exceptional circumstances, namely whenever we pay attention to our conscious life, is a feature characterizing subjectivity as such, no matter what worldly entities it might otherwise be conscious of and occupied with. As he put it in Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität II, “To be a subject is to be in the mode of being aware of oneself” (Hua 14/151). We find similar ideas in Heidegger. Heidegger argued that the self is present and implicated in all of its intentional comportments. Thus, the intentional directedness toward worldly entities is not to be understood as an intentional experience that gains a reference to the self only afterward, as if it would first have to turn its attention back upon itself with the help of a subsequent (reflective) experience. Rather, the co-disclosure of the self belongs to intentionality as such (Heidegger GA 24: 225; GA 27: 208).2 Heidegger also wrote that every worldly experiencing involves a certain component of self-acquaintance and self-familiarity, and that every experiencing is characterized by the fact that “I am always somehow acquainted with myself”

Yes!

@Soupie

Can we take the above that applies to human being and say something more generally about sentience? The desire to avoid "hard emergence" might lead us (and by "us" I mean "you") to absurdities - (like "what is it like to be a Quark?" - the intrinsic nature of a Quark might be attractions and repulsions but can we sensibly say that in this intrinsic nature there is what-it-is-likedness? The ingredients of sentience perhaps, though.)

The same with autopoesis, in that autopoesis could show up very early but have to get a good deal further along before it "leads to" or provides some part of the grounds for consciousness - (there could be many things, Horatio, required for consciousness, than are dreamt of in your philosophie) and could do so without "hard emergence" because the offending aspect of "hard emergence" seems to be the appearance of something novel (consciousness!) ... but we can also say something is intrinsic if there is the possibility of its appearance in time rather than being there from the "get-go" - so a lot of things, if I understand it, were not present at the Big Bang, but what came after wasn't necessarily "novel" in an absolute sense - "what quarks? electro-magnetic fields!? quelle surprise gets you the dunce cap in Time Lords kindergarten - should we make a distinction as to the emergence of consciousness as "strong" or see it too as a natural development? Who knows, but there doesn't seem to be a logical reason to draw that line - to say that consciousness is nothing like matter/energy/time/space.

Similarly, we're probably not acquainted with everything there is or could possibly be - or even have imagined it - or could even perceive it if it were there - so that matter and energy and consciousness might not be a complete inventory of Reality - either at this time or at some other time - maybe there was something else, neither matter, energy, time, space, animal, mineral or vegetable, nor consciousness for a few millionths of a second after the Big Bang or for some other time period - or perhaps there will be something "novel" - or perhaps there are now these things - the point of that exercise in "could be" is to re-calibrate the weirdness scale for consciousness - what it is like to eat a ham sandwich we think is very different than the ham sandwich itself - but maybe that's only because we have a spectrum that goes only from matter to consciousness ... but then we discover glarghhhzhx (pronounced "glarghhhzhx") one day and then we think "you know, ham sandwiches and what it's like to eat a ham sandwich are pretty much the same thing compared to this glarghhhzhx!".

weirdness scale for the human mind:

matter/energy/space/time ------ consciousness ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------glarghhhzhx

Q.E.D.

 

[smcder]

You can now play a Pictionary-style game called Quick Draw against Google's AI

"By playing the games Google has created and published, the machine learning powering them is able to become more intelligent. So far, Google has published eight experiments: a Giorgio Cam, drawing, an infinite drum machine, translator, bird sounds, an AI duet, a high-dimensional space visualiser and an example of what neural networks can see."

A.I. Experiments

Should we help them?

 

[Soupie]

Again, can you define consciousness without subjectivity?

Only by analogy: consciousness (feeling) is to subjectivity as pond is to whirlpool.

Since we are subjects, we can't experience non-subjectivity, as we discussed.

Also as noted, since conceptually so many people equate consciousness w/ subjectivity/subjective experience, it may be better to refer to this consciousness (feeling) as substrate as proto-consciousness or simply the noumenal.

One should not overestimate the homogeneity of the phenomenological tradition; like any other tradition, it spans many differences. Although phenomenologists might disagree on important questions concerning method and focus, and even about the status and existence of self, they are in nearly unanimous agreement when it comes to the relation between consciousness and self-consciousness. Literally all the major figures in phenomenology defend the view that the experiential dimension is characterized by a tacit self-consciousness.

In Erste Philosophie II, for instance, Husserl wrote that the experiential stream is characterized by a “Für-sich-selbst-erscheinens,” that is, by a self-appearance or self-manifestation (Hua 8/189, 412).1 Throughout his writings, he argued that self-consciousness, rather than being something that occurs only during exceptional circumstances, namely whenever we pay attention to our conscious life, is a feature characterizing subjectivity as such, no matter what worldly entities it might otherwise be conscious of and occupied with. As he put it in Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität II, “To be a subject is to be in the mode of being aware of oneself” (Hua 14/151). We find similar ideas in Heidegger. Heidegger argued that the self is present and implicated in all of its intentional comportments. Thus, the intentional directedness toward worldly entities is not to be understood as an intentional experience that gains a reference to the self only afterward, as if it would first have to turn its attention back upon itself with the help of a subsequent (reflective) experience. Rather, the co-disclosure of the self belongs to intentionality as such (Heidegger GA 24: 225; GA 27: 208).2 Heidegger also wrote that every worldly experiencing involves a certain component of self-acquaintance and self-familiarity, and that every experiencing is characterized by the fact that “I am always somehow acquainted with myself”

Yes!

@Soupie

Can we take the above that applies to human being and say something more generally about sentience? The desire to avoid "hard emergence" might lead us (and by "us" I mean "you") to absurdities - (like "what is it like to be a Quark?" - the intrinsic nature of a Quark might be attractions and repulsions but can we sensibly say that in this intrinsic nature there is what-it-is-likedness? The ingredients of sentience perhaps, though.)

The same with autopoesis, in that autopoesis could show up very early but have to get a good deal further along before it "leads to" or provides some part of the grounds for consciousness - (there could be many things, Horatio, required for consciousness, than are dreamt of in your philosophie) and could do so without "hard emergence" because the offending aspect of "hard emergence" seems to be the appearance of something novel (consciousness!) ... but we can also say something is intrinsic if there is the possibility of its appearance in time rather than being there from the "get-go" - so a lot of things, if I understand it, were not present at the Big Bang, but what came after wasn't necessarily "novel" in an absolute sense - "what quarks? electro-magnetic fields!? quelle surprise gets you the dunce cap in Time Lords kindergarten - should we make a distinction as to the emergence of consciousness as "strong" or see it too as a natural development? Who knows, but there doesn't seem to be a logical reason to draw that line - to say that consciousness is nothing like matter/energy/time/space.

Similarly, we're probably not acquainted with everything there is or could possibly be - or even have imagined it - or could even perceive it if it were there - so that matter and energy and consciousness might not be a complete inventory of Reality - either at this time or at some other time - maybe there was something else, neither matter, energy, time, space, animal, mineral or vegetable, nor consciousness for a few millionths of a second after the Big Bang or for some other time period - or perhaps there will be something "novel" - or perhaps there are now these things - the point of that exercise in "could be" is to re-calibrate the weirdness scale for consciousness - what it is like to eat a ham sandwich we think is very different than the ham sandwich itself - but maybe that's only because we have a spectrum that goes only from matter to consciousness ... but then we discover glarghhhzhx (pronounced "glarghhhzhx") one day and then we think "you know, ham sandwiches and what it's like to eat a ham sandwich are pretty much the same thing compared to this glarghhhzhx!".

weirdness scale for the human mind:

matter/energy/space/time ------ consciousness ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------glarghhhzhx

Q.E.D.

Again, as noted, sure, phenomenal consciousness could strongly emerge from non-phenomenally conscious, physical processes.

However, I doubt it, and the main reason I do is because what we consider physical reality is our perception of noumenal reality.

So all the things you say above could certainly be true, but the relationship between physical reality and noumenal reality remains. Using the product of the perceptual and conceptual processes to get at the source of the perceptual and conceptual processes is a problem we haven't begun to solve. The problem of the observer is only just barely being explored in physics today.

 

[smcder]

Only by analogy: consciousness (feeling) is to subjectivity as pond is to whirlpool.

Since we are subjects, we can't experience non-subjectivity, as we discussed.

Also as noted, since conceptually so many people equate consciousness w/ subjectivity/subjective experience, it may be better to refer to this consciousness (feeling) as substrate as proto-consciousness or simply the noumenal.


Again, as noted, sure, phenomenal consciousness could strongly emerge from non-phenomenally conscious, physical processes.

However, I doubt it, and the main reason I do is because what we consider physical reality is our perception of noumenal reality.

So all the things you say above could certainly be true, but the relationship between physical reality and noumenal reality remains. Using the product of the perceptual and conceptual processes to get at the source of the perceptual and conceptual processes is a problem we haven't begun to solve. The problem of the observer is only just barely being explored in physics today.

I don't think you understand what I am asking you ... I want you to say how it is possible to have consciousness(feeling) without a subject of that consciousness(feeling)?

HINT: the "ing" is very important here.

A gerund is a noun made from a verb by adding "-ing." The gerund form of the verb "read" is "reading." You can use a gerund as the subject, the complement, or the object of a sentence."

Do we have readerless readings? Runnerless runnings? Feelerless feelings? We do not. We shall not! Else we make a mockery of our language. (by the way you might want to look into whether you have re-invented the Platonic forms ...)

Consciousness is that which a subject has - when you define subject, you define consciousness and vice-versa.

Also as noted, since conceptually so many people equate consciousness w/ subjectivity/subjective experience, it may be better to refer to this consciousness (feeling) as substrate as proto-consciousness or simply the noumenal.

It's not that so many people equate it ... it's defined that way! so it's non-sense to talk about consciousness without reference to something that is conscious - you have to pick a different word, which is what you try to do here:

It may be better to refer to this consciousness (feeling) as substrate as proto-consciousness or simply the noumenal.

If you do that, then it isn't consciousness, it's proto-consciousness (can you define proto-consciousness?) "proto" means original or primitive - but primitive consciousness is still consciousness. (go back to the front of this sentence and start again) If you mean what comes right before consciousness or that which enables consciousness to be - then you need to say exactly what that is and you can't.

The problem is that you've put some words adjacent to one another, because you don't see where else to put them and mistaken that for an actual concept ...

I hope this casts a non-illuminating light on the subject!

;-)

 

[smcder]

Only by analogy: consciousness (feeling) is to subjectivity as pond is to whirlpool.

Since we are subjects, we can't experience non-subjectivity, as we discussed.

Also as noted, since conceptually so many people equate consciousness w/ subjectivity/subjective experience, it may be better to refer to this consciousness (feeling) as substrate as proto-consciousness or simply the noumenal.


Again, as noted, sure, phenomenal consciousness could strongly emerge from non-phenomenally conscious, physical processes.

However, I doubt it, and the main reason I do is because what we consider physical reality is our perception of noumenal reality.

So all the things you say above could certainly be true, but the relationship between physical reality and noumenal reality remains. Using the product of the perceptual and conceptual processes to get at the source of the perceptual and conceptual processes is a problem we haven't begun to solve. The problem of the observer is only just barely being explored in physics today.

1. Again, as noted, sure, phenomenal consciousness could strongly emerge from non-phenomenally conscious, physical processes.

2. However, I doubt it, and the main reason I do is because what we consider physical reality is our perception of noumenal reality.

Substituting the assertion you make in 2. back into 1. we have:

1. Again, as noted, sure, phenomenal consciousness could strongly emerge from our perception of noumenal reality.

In other words, you'll consider consciousness as a physical reality, sure, because physical reality is neither physical, nor reality!

 

[smcder]

Regarding the confusions concerning subjectivity, consciousness, and 'self-hood'/'self-sense', we likely can't do better than to take advantage of Zahavi's thought as expressed in this book of his available as a whole online:

http://people.exeter.ac.uk/sp344/Zahavi, Dan - Subjectivity and Selfhood - Investigating the First-Person Perspective.pdf

Extract from the introduction:

". . . Much consciousness research is still aimed at locating and identifying particular neural correlates of consciousness. Yet there is also a growing realization that we will not get very far in giving an account of the relationship between consciousness and the brain unless we have a clear conception of what it is that we are trying to relate. To put it another way, any assessment of the possibility of reducing consciousness to neuronal structures and any appraisal of whether a naturalization of consciousness is possible will require a detailed analysis and description of the experiential aspects of consciousness. As Nagel once pointed out, a necessary requirement for any coherent reductionism is that the entity to be reduced is properly understood (Nagel 1974, 437).

Given the recent interest in the subjective or phenomenal dimension of consciousness, it is no wonder that many analytical philosophers have started to emphasize the importance of phenomenology. An example is Owen Flanagan, who in his 1992 book Consciousness Reconsidered argues for what he calls the natural method. If we wish to undertake a serious investigation of consciousness we cannot make do with neuroscientific or psychological (i.e., functional) analyses alone; we also need to give phenomenology its due (Flanagan 1992, 11). Thus, when studying consciousness rather than, say, deep-sea ecology, we must take phenomenological considerations into account since an important and nonnegligible feature of consciousness is the way in which it is experienced by the subject. Similar claims can be found in the recent work of Searle, Block, McGinn, Chalmers, Strawson, and Baars, among many others.

At first glance, this might indeed seem to indicate that there has been a change of attitude, that the customary hostility is a thing of the past, and that analytical philosophers and cognitive scientists are currently appreciative of the philosophical resources found in phenomenology. Things are not that simple, however. Although a small number of prominent figures in consciousness research have recently started to take philosophical phenomenology seriously, the vast majority of (Anglophone) philosophers and cognitive scientists are not using the term in its technical sense when they talk of phenomenology, but are still simply referring to a first-person description of what the “what it is like” of experience is really like. In fact, there has been a widespread tendency to identify phenomenology with some kind of introspectionism. Phenomenology is not, however, just another name for a kind of psychological self-observation; rather it is the name of a philosophical approach specifically interested in consciousness and experience inaugurated by Husserl and further developed and transformed by, among many others, Scheler, Heidegger, Gurwitsch, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Lévinas, Henry, and Ricoeur. . . . ."

Zahavi is a pleasure to read. Well organized and clear, thank you for sharing this.

 

[smcder]

I read the abstract at your link just after reading the paper on Wittgenstein's ideas concerning "aspect seeing" that I link below. These papers seem to address the same issues concerning the contingency and relativity of what we see and of what we think. You will be capable of understanding much more than I can in this following paper, and I look forward to hearing what you have to say about it:

On Being Surprised: Wittgenstein on Aspect-Perception, Logic, and Mathematics
Juliet Floyd

Extracts

". . . By 1929 Wittgenstein had surrendered this aspiration to completeness. Although the notation of truth-tables was all right in its place, it worked for only a fragment or one aspect of language, not the whole: one could not see in the general propositional form the logic of language. The Tractatus’s recursive specification of the general propositional form, and of the grammar of number words, was too “nebulous” ( PR 131 [§109]). As Russell pointed out in his introduction to the Tractatus, the mathematics of the higher infinite had not been diagrammed, but only gestured at, in Wittgenstein’s remarks on mathematics. As Ramsey emphasized, the method of truth-tables could not help with the more fine-grained needs of mathematical logicians. Ordinary statements of color, measurement, degree, and continuity could not be seen in the method of truth-table diagramming either. And the idea that the needs of natural science, perhaps of cosmology, would be decisive in determining the particular choice of notational system came to seem to Wittgenstein a cop out. It was both too much of a concession to promissory scientism, and too little engaged with the task of seeing aspects of grammar and notation in the small. It also held philosophy hostage to the deliverances of the empirical as it would be understood in physics."

"Wittgenstein replaced his reliance on the idea of the independence of the elementary propositions, as well as the primacy of the truth-table notation as part of a specification of a complete general form of proposition, with an image of Satzsysteme, systems of propositions exhibiting grammatical variety, autonomy, and distinctive internal character or physiognomy. While he continued to emphasize the importance of the calculational aspect of mathematical activity, everywhere we see aspect-perception and the dawning of new ways of seeing systems lifting his account beyond the limits of this way of seeing logic. Like Peirce, he seems to have regarded our ability to shift our way of seeing a given diagram, projecting it into a new dimension, as a mark of what makes human mathematical reasoning distinct from anything codifiable in deductive formal logic alone, or solvable by mechanical means. 26

In leaving behind part of his perspective, Wittgenstein did not surrender his reliance on aspect-perception; he instead increased and intensified it, precisely so as to retain the underlying idea that in philosophy there are no (deeper than aspectual) surprises (necessities, possibilities). He extended and refined his appeals to the seeing (and failing to see) of one system in another, applying them to a wide range of mathematical and logical examples – including the Sheffer Stroke itself (BT 477–78). Aspect-perception lay behind not only his idea that proofs by induction in arithmetic are schematic pictures, rather than proofs consisting of sequences of sentences with sense, but also his idea that consistency and impossibility proofs for systems are similarly a matter of embedding one system inside another, as well as his idea that because proofs of elementary sums written out in the prose of Principia Mathematica would require us to apply arithmetic to the formalism – counting variables to check the proofs – the claim that Russell’s foundation of arithmetic provided a substantial epistemic foundation is like the claim that the painted rock is the foundation of the painted tower (again, an analogy with aspects of puzzle-pictures; cf. RFM VII, §16). This allowed Wittgenstein to retain and deepen his earlier idea that in logic and mathematics there are no surprises – no discovery of facts or of possibilities construed on the model of properties or facts – but instead activities, trains of thought and arrangements of grammar that strike us.

The grammars of different “systems” can cross and so change our ways of looking at each of them. This forms a nascent but significant element in articulating what was to become a crucial theme in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy: namely, his critique of the idea that human thought and language is everywhere governed by grammatical rules in the same way, his insistence that the evolution of language, in general, and of mathematics and logic in particular, is both open-ended and unforeseeable in general. This makes itself felt in the fact that Wittgenstein’s discussions of figurative or “secondary” meaning, as Cavell puts it so well in The Claim of Reason, takes place in regions where “there is no antecedent agreement on criteria” and that “this is itself a grammatical remark.”27 Surprises are ineradicable in mathematics, in logic, and in philosophy. Part of what it is to command language is to incorporate into it, case by case, the unforeseen and the interesting. That is the beauty and the importance of looking at how to arrange it. 28"

http://www.bu.edu/philo/files/2011/01/KrebsDay.pdf

interesting ... we give up as much as we gain when we apply any method, when we train our thinking, when we step out of or into any loop ... the transcendent aspect of intelligence and what Descartes means when he says in Discourse on Method that the "reason" is the same for any man ... or what Johnny Wattling meant by the logic of ordinary human intelligence - that's what Chomsky refers to as the event in human evolution that occured about 50,000 years ago.

 

[Soupie]

I don't think you understand what I am asking you ... I want you to say how it is possible to have consciousness(feeling) without a subject of that consciousness(feeling)?

HINT: the "ing" is very important here.

A gerund is a noun made from a verb by adding "-ing." The gerund form of the verb "read" is "reading." You can use a gerund as the subject, the complement, or the object of a sentence."

Do we have readerless readings? Runnerless runnings? Feelerless feelings? We do not. We shall not! Else we make a mockery of our language. (by the way you might want to look into whether you have re-invented the Platonic forms ...)

Consciousness is that which a subject has - when you define subject, you define consciousness and vice-versa.

Also as noted, since conceptually so many people equate consciousness w/ subjectivity/subjective experience, it may be better to refer to this consciousness (feeling) as substrate as proto-consciousness or simply the noumenal.

It's not that so many people equate it ... it's defined that way! so it's non-sense to talk about consciousness without reference to something that is conscious - you have to pick a different word, which is what you try to do here:

It may be better to refer to this consciousness (feeling) as substrate as proto-consciousness or simply the noumenal.

If you do that, then it isn't consciousness, it's proto-consciousness (can you define proto-consciousness?) "proto" means original or primitive - but primitive consciousness is still consciousness. (go back to the front of this sentence and start again) If you mean what comes right before consciousness or that which enables consciousness to be - then you need to say exactly what that is and you can't.

The problem is that you've put some words adjacent to one another, because you don't see where else to put them and mistaken that for an actual concept ...

I hope this casts a non-illuminating light on the subject!

;-)

The "feeling" is simply to indicate that it is phenomenal consciousness that we're after. It has nothing to do with feelings like angry, happy, sad, itchy, etc.