Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 10

[Soupie]

I do want to see the growing body ... and we then have to look at the varying interpretations ... evidence for - is data plus interpretation, data can support opposite conclusions on different interpretations.

Consciousness as "something it is like to be" ... so what is it like to be not conscious of the self ... I think Nagel navigates this already in What Is It Like To Be a Bag

Deep sleep and anesthesia (but perhaps not for the entire time tho. Yikes!)

 

[smcder]

I am saying that. (Phenomenal) consciousness is the intrinsic nature of physical reality. When sense and measure the external world, it is consciousness that we are sensing and measuring.

Consciousness is the "stuff" interacting, differentiating, and evolving. From the 3rd person perspective we know it as matter/energy, from the 1st person perspective we know it as consciousness.

This substrate has evolved into (of course conscious) organisms capable of representing the world, others, and themselves.

Sure ... if you assume what you are arguing ... ;-)

If consciousness is the intrinsic nature of physical reality, then it can't go away when we are anesthetized or deeply asleep ... but the question is begging to be asked, if consciousness is the intrinsic nature of physical reality, why are their mind(s) and not mind? Why do we sleep and how could "we" be anesthetized?

You even have to use the word "stuff" to avoid saying substance but that's what consciousness is acting like when we are deeply asleep or anesthetized - stuff that's there when we do wake up.

 

[smcder]

Deep sleep and anesthesia (but perhaps not for the entire time tho. Yikes!)

That's the paradox, consciousness is the basic "stuff" of reality but you say it doesn't go away when we are deeply asleep ... we are un-conscious ... is there an analogous un-physical? In other words if consciousness is basic, you are letting it play two different roles - one is "stuffy" and differentiates and evolves, the other is consciousness including self-consciousness, that's the dualism you aren't seeing in your view.

If it doesn't go away when we are asleep, but we aren't conscious ... what is consciousness when we are deeply asleep or anesthetized? At that point, it is not experiential (or it is experiential in the sense of what it is like to be anesthetized (see next post) and it is still substantial ... playing the role of structure and differentiation - that's dualism.) Consciousness provides both structure, is structure and differentiation (stuff) and it is "consciousness" in all its senses ... if it can do all that, then sure ...

 

[smcder]

Dorothée Legrand, Pre-reflective self-as-subject from experiential and empirical perspectives - PhilPapers

In the first part of this paper I characterize a minimal form of self-consciousness, namely pre-reflective self-consciousness. It is a constant structural feature of conscious experience, and corresponds to the consciousness of the self-as-subject that is not taken as an intentional object. In the second part, I argue that contemporary cognitive neuroscience has by and large missed this fundamental form of self-consciousness in its investigation of various forms of self-experience. In the third part, I exemplify how the notion of pre-reflective self-awareness can be of relevance for empirical research. In particular, I propose to interpret processes of sensorimotor integration in light of the phenomenological approach that allows the definition of pre-reflective self-consciousness

not sure how that relates to what @Soupie says:

"In other words, what goes away during deep sleep or anethesia is not consciousness; consciousness is primary in relation to the body.

Indeed the body continues to consciously experince during deep sleep and anesthesia; what does "go away" during deep sleep and anesthesia is the representation of an experiencing self—which is generated by the body/brain. And there is a growing body of evidence supporting this."

So what do we make of the body continuing to consciously experience (apparently what it consciously experiences is "deep sleep" or "anesthesia" which I am trying to read as "something it is like to be anesthetized" (@Soupie how should I read that? How would a growing body of evidence (on what interpretation) show this?)

I think the next step is to look at the growing body of evidence.

 

[Soupie]

(1) p con is not secondary to matter (Bitbol)

(2) some kind of psychophysical substrate is primary (can't be reduced into one another)

(3) self emerges later in evolution

(4) self emerges later in development

(5) self can "go away". Mental illness, brain damage, brain injury, anesthesia, deep sleep

 

[Soupie]

That's the paradox, consciousness is the basic "stuff" of reality but you say it doesn't go away when we are deeply asleep ... we are un-conscious ... is there an analogous un-physical? In other words if consciousness is basic, you are letting it play two different roles - one is "stuffy" and differentiates and evolves, the other is consciousness including self-consciousness, that's the dualism you aren't seeing in your view.

If it doesn't go away when we are asleep, but we aren't conscious ... what is consciousness when we are deeply asleep or anesthetized? At that point, it is not experiential (or it is experiential in the sense of what it is like to be anesthetized (see next post) and it is still substantial ... playing the role of structure and differentiation - that's dualism.) Consciousness provides both structure, is structure and differentiation (stuff) and it is "consciousness" in all its senses ... if it can do all that, then sure ...

Consciousness doesn't go away. The representation of self goes away.

 

[smcder]

(1) p con is not secondary to matter (Bitbol)

(2) some kind of psychophysical substrate is primary (can't be reduced into one another)

(3) self emerges later in evolution

(4) self emerges later in development

(5) self can "go away". Mental illness, brain damage, brain injury, anesthesia, deep sleep

Let's look at Bitbol - or do you have something from the paper you can post up now to support (1)?

Ok - now you are saying psychophysical

On my view, p consciousness is the substrate of which everything is constituted, including the mind and the mind-independent world.

Is p consciousness "psychophysical"?

 

[smcder]

Consciousness doesn't go away. The representation of self goes away.

P consciousness? And by "representation of self" - do you mean "self consciousness"?

Assuming so - then if p consciousness doesn't go away, does that mean there is something it is like to be anesthetized? What does it mean:

Indeed the body continues to consciously experince during deep sleep and anesthesia

?

And how do you respond to:

In the first part of this paper I characterize a minimal form of self-consciousness, namely pre-reflective self-consciousness.

It is a constant structural feature of conscious experience,

and corresponds to the consciousness of the self-as-subject that is not taken as an intentional object. In the second part, I argue that contemporary cognitive neuroscience has by and large missed this fundamental form of self-consciousness in its investigation of various forms of self-experience. In the third part, I exemplify how the notion of pre-reflective self-awareness can be of relevance for empirical research. In particular, I propose to interpret processes of sensorimotor integration in light of the phenomenological approach that allows the definition of pre-reflective self-consciousness

 

[smcder]

Soupie to do list (so I don't forget)

1. Bitbol
2. growing body of evidence
3. the questions above
4. "psychophysical"

 

[smcder]

(1) p con is not secondary to matter (Bitbol)

(2) some kind of psychophysical substrate is primary (can't be reduced into one another)

(3) self emerges later in evolution

(4) self emerges later in development

(5) self can "go away". Mental illness, brain damage, brain injury, anesthesia, deep sleep

(1) p con is not secondary to matter (Bitbol)

Abstract Six arguments against the view that conscious experience derives from a material basis are reviewed.

These arguments arise from epistemology, phenomenology, neuropsychology, and philosophy of quantum mechanics.

• It turns out that any attempt at proving that conscious experience is ontologically secondary to material objects both fails and brings out its methodological and existential primacy.

No alternative metaphysical view is espoused (not even a variety of Spinoza’s attractive double-aspect theory). Instead, an alternative stance, inspired from F. Varela’s neurophenomenology is advocated. This unfamiliar stance involves (i) a complete redefinition of the boundary between unquestioned assumptions and relevant questions ; (ii) a descent towards the common ground of the statements of phenomenology and objective natural science : a practice motivated by the quest of an expanding circle of intersubjective agreement.

So you get (1) but not (2) from Bitbol -

Conscious experience is not secondary to matter.

Bitbol: Conscious experience is methodologically and existentially primary. Those are limited claims. And Bitbol does not espouse a metaphysical view.

 

[smcder]

Soupie to do list (so I don't forget)

1. Bitbol
2. growing body of evidence
3. the questions above
4. "psychophysical"

Soupie to do list (so I don't forget)

1. Bitbol
2. growing body of evidence
3. the questions above
4. "psychophysical"

 

[smcder]

Levels, Emergence, and Three Versions of Downward Causation
by Claus Emmeche*, Simo Køppe** and Frederik Stjernfelt***

Medium Downward Causation

A wheel running downhill.

what explains the rolling movement?

... the lower levels

• molecules?
• gravity?

... the form of the wheel. The higher level performs a function irreducible to the lower.

If we take a neuropsychological example and try to explain the origin of some state of consciousness from the state of the nervous system, then the only consistent interpretation of Sperry's point of view is that a given state of consciousness is chosen among a series of states of consciousness made possible by the nervous system at a certain moment. The decisive point in this choice of state of consciousness lies on the higher level, in this case the psychical level. It is the previous states of consciousness which determine or select which one of the possible states of consciousness should be realized. Hence the interactionism; the interaction between the manifested states of consciousness decides which possibility is to be realized.

Medium downward causation can be defined as follows: an entity on a higher level comes into being through a realization of one amongst several possible states on the lower level -- with the previous states of the higher level as the factor of selection. This idea can be made more precise with the aid of an interpretation of the concept of "boundary condition."

This concept is primarily used in physics and mathematics. Mathematically, the boundary condition is the set of selection criteria by which one can choose one among several solutions to a set of differential equations describing the dynamics of a system.[12] In classical mechanics, a system's initial conditions are defined as the set of parameters describing the starting point of a system at a certain moment and which -- measured with sufficient precision -- may form the basis for the calculation of an, in principle, unlimited predictionof the system's behaviour. In complex physical phenomena it is supposed that certain changes in initial conditions make central properties in the dynamics change; these are named boundary conditions because they delimit the set of initial conditions within which the properties in questions will be found. In this context the concept does not entail the assumption of levels.

//p. 25/

In relation to level theories, boundary conditions are conceived as the conditions which select and delimit various types of the system's several possible developments. The realization of the system implies that one of these typical developments is selected, and the set of initial conditions yielding the type of possibility chosen are thus a certain type of boundary condition which has been called constraining conditions. They only exist in complex multi-level phenomena on a level higher than the focal level, and are the conditions by which entities on a high level constrain the activity on the lower focal level.[13]

On this basis, medium downward causation can be reformulated as follows: higher level entities are constraining conditions for the emergent activity of lower levels. And -- hence the Sperry example -- in a process, the already realized higher level states are constraining conditions for the coming states.

How are we to understand the nature of this constraint? One interpretation is to say that the higher level is characterised by organizational principles -- lawlike regularities -- that have an effect ("downward," as it were) on the distribution of lower level events and substances.

• Thus, if, for instance, evolution by natural selection is such a lawlike regularity, we can only understand the physical distribution of energy and matter in a ecosystem if we consider the effect of natural selection on frequencies of genotypes, and thus on the phenotypes of the various existing organisms, which themselves influence the cycles of matter and energy in the system. This interpretation of medium DC is close to the view of Campbell (1974).

In contrast to weak downward causation, medium downward causation is characterised by this claim; even if no law-breaking influence top down is admitted, the higher level constrains which higher level phenomenon will result from a given lower level state. Thus, the radical forms of dualism or vitalism of strong downward causation is avoided at the expense of a less radical idea that the same lower level constituents may correspond to a series of different higher level phenomena.

In contrast to strong DC, medium DC does not involve the idea of a strict "efficient" temporal causality from an independent higher level to a lower one, rather, the entities at various levels may enter part-whole relations (e.g., mental phenomena control their component neural and biophysical sub-elements), in which the control of the part by the whole can be seen as a kind of functional (teleological) causation, which is based on efficient, material as well as formal causation in a multinested system of constraints. The kind of determinative relation between part and whole is not quite clear, and the term "interaction" is according //p. 26/ to Sperry (1987) not the best for the kind of relationship envisaged.[14] Thus, "Mind is conceived to move matter in the brain and to govern, rule, and direct neural and chemical events without interacting with the components at the component level, just as an organism may move and govern the time-space course of its atoms and tissues without interacting with them" (Sperry 1987).

We have to differentiate between the following two assumptions. (a) Higher level entities function as criteria for the selection of lower level emergent processes. The higher level entities constrain the development of lower level processes in accordance with the history of the level. (b) One set of entities at a lower level can be the starting point for different entities at the higher level. This is a sort of inverse supervenience. One can, for the sake of the argument, assume that two organisms consist of the same amount of different substance -- but are very different organisms. This conclusion rests on the premise that the levels already exist -- they cannot be used to describe or explain the development of levels.

 

[Soupie]

Ok - now you are saying psychophysical

Yes. We might think of them as the "physical" properties of consciousness. As we've discussed in the past, I think it's hard for us to say which properties are mind-independent and which are mind-dependent.

I've speculated that the mind-independent so-called physical properties are differentiation and interaction.

Properties such as size, position, space, time, color, sound, smell, etc may emerge from sentience, interaction, and differentiation. Not unlike the story told by HCT.

 

[Constance]

Sure ... if you assume what you are arguing ... ;-)

If consciousness is the intrinsic nature of physical reality, then it can't go away when we are anesthetized or deeply asleep ... but the question is begging to be asked, if consciousness is the intrinsic nature of physical reality, why are their mind(s) and not mind? Why do we sleep and how could "we" be anesthetized?

You even have to use the word "stuff" to avoid saying substance but that's what consciousness is acting like when we are deeply asleep or anesthetized - stuff that's there when we do wake up.

Excellent reply, Steve. I want to add that in my experience we do maintain a level of self-related consciousness even under deep anaesthesia and also in dreams. Twenty-five years ago I had a surgery performed on my body during which I became conscious and overheard a discussion going on between the surgeon (on my right side) and a surgical nurse on my left side. I didn't see them, but I knew their locations from the directions from which their dialogue issued. When I added my own comment to their discussion the nurse on the left went silent, and soon the anesthesiologist put me 'under' again. While I was still conscious I heard the surgeon chiding the nurse about her being too fearful. Later on I became conscious again and said "that hurts," referring to the pain I felt at the location in the breast tissue he was cutting away, and he responded to me explaining that he was just creating a margin around the location where the tumor had been to prevent its spreading.

Re dreams, I [the sense of my "I" that has developed during my biographical life to date] have often been present and involved in the diagesis of the narrative being expressed/acted out in the dream. In these cases, it is not as if I am watching a film in which I am not involved. In certain recurring dreams I am the primary actor in the dream, e.g., exploring two different houses unfamiliar to me, following hallways to discover rooms I've never seen. Evan Thompson's book Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy is a book we should read before making claims such as @Soupie is making today. Why don't we?

As Steve writes above: "You even have to use the word "stuff" to avoid saying substance but that's what consciousness is acting like when we are deeply asleep or anesthetized - stuff that's there when we do wake up."

'Stuff' begs the question of whether mind-stuff, the stuff of consciousness, is the stuff of physically material things. I think it's the case that consciousness is suppressed under anaesthesia and always lingering just beneath the sleep-like state anesthesia effects in our bodies [so long as the anesthesia is delivered in adequate amounts]. As the phenomenologists recognize, consciousness as we experience it is always embodied; the body itself is conscious in a semi-latent state in the lived experiences we have, accrue, in the sensible, palpable, world while we and other animals are still only prereflectively conscious.

It's clear from Thompson's research and from my own experience that what we have been prereflectively conscious of during our early experiences in this palpable-world-in-which-we-exist still remains available to us as the setting, the context, of our ordinary existence/our biographical lives when we reach the state of being reflectively conscious. The 'flame' of consciousness is already lit in the prereflective experience of living organisms and animals (including ourselves) and it burns more brightly when we reach the state of reflectivity and thinking [mind]. The elaborating networks of our brains facilitate our capacity to be fully present as ourselves in the ongoing temporality of our experience. Until the brain is anesthetized or dies for lack of oxygen.

NDEs demonstrate that consciousness continues in the absence of the functioning of the brain. The dominant paradigm in physical science says "It can't." Human experience reports that "It can."

It's past time for brain science to admit into its projects that which is experienced by living animals and particularly in our species, to which we have access. Not to do so is to continue in a hopelessly partial and reductive enterprise.

 

[Soupie]

Soupie to do list (so I don't forget)

1. Bitbol
2. growing body of evidence
3. the questions above
4. "psychophysical"

The Emergent Self | Edge.org

F. Varela

"My view of the mind has been influenced by my interest in Buddhist thought. Buddhists are specialists in understanding this notion of a virtual self, or a selfless self, from the inside, as lived experience. This is what fascinates me about that tradition. Dan Dennett, incidentally, has come to the same conclusion in his own way. But while Dan focuses on the cognitive level, my own approach is to think about several biological levels, as I have mentioned, perhaps because I'm influenced by the broad idea of nonrepresentationalist knowledge. In my reality, knowledge coevolves with the knower and not as an outside, objective representation.

I see the mind as an emergent property, and the very important and interesting consequence of this emergent property is our own sense of self. My sense of self exists because it gives me an interface with the world. I'm "me" for interactions, but my "I" doesn't substantially exist, in the sense that it can't be localized anywhere. This view, of course, resonates with the notions of the other biological selves I mentioned, but there are subtle and important differences. An emergent property, which is produced by an underlying network, is a coherent condition that allows the system in which it exists to interface at that level — that is, with other selves or identities of the same kind. You can never say, "This property is here; it's in this component." In the case of autopoiesis, you can't say that life — the condition of being self-produced — is in this molecule, or in the DNA, or in the cellular membrane, or in the protein. Life is in the configuration and in the dynamical pattern, which is what embodies it as an emergent property. ..."

The entire discussion/essay is fascinating of course. And saying mind is emergent is very different from saying p consciousness is emergent.

There are many other sources which outline how "self" is emergent. I'll share them as I come acrosss them. But I thought Varela was a good place to start.

 

[Constance]

The entire discussion/essay is fascinating of course. And saying mind is emergent is very different from saying p consciousness is emergent.

Thanks for the link. I'll read this piece too. Re your sentence above, I doubt that Varela would say that phenomenal consciousness is not a prerequisite for the development of mind, but maybe I'll be surprised.

 

[Soupie]

As the phenomenologists recognize, consciousness as we experience it is always embodied; the body itself is conscious in a semi-latent state in the lived experiences we have, accrue, in the sensible, palpable, world while we and other animals are still only prereflectively conscious.

NDEs demonstrate that consciousness continues in the absence of the functioning of the brain. The dominant paradigm in physical science says "It can't." Human experience reports that "It can."

So you believe the NDE emerge from some other, non-brain bodily functions?

 

[Soupie]

Thanks for the link. I'll read this piece too. Re your sentence above, I doubt that Varela would say that phenomenal consciousness is not a prerequisite for the development of mind, but maybe I'll be surprised.

He probably would. But establishing a model of the weak emergence of p con from physical processes has so far been elusive as we've been discussing.

 

[smcder]

Yes. We might think of them as the "physical" properties of consciousness. As we've discussed in the past, I think it's hard for us to say which properties are mind-independent and which are mind-dependent.

I've speculated that the mind-independent so-called physical properties are differentiation and interaction.

Properties such as size, position, space, time, color, sound, smell, etc may emerge from sentience, interaction, and differentiation. Not unlike the story told by HCT.

I am saying that. (Phenomenal) consciousness is the intrinsic nature of physical reality. When sense and measure the external world, it is consciousness that we are sensing and measuring.

I didn't see this the first time: But what you want to say is that Phenomenal consciousness is the intrinsic nature of what we (perceive/conceptualize/think whatever) as physical reality (that is clearer than saying that P consciousness is the intrinsic nature of physical reality - which is just the mirror of what Strawson is saying) Or just that Phenomenal consciousness is the intrinsic nature of reality.

And then suddenly we have something (P consciousness) that can sense and measure itself as the external world, but it is itself (so to speak) that it is sensing and measuring - you overcome that problem by giving phenomenal consciousness the properties you need to make a world, namely differentiation and interaction ... and that "explains" why there are what appear to be different minds, etc etc. Although you admit why there are mind(s) and not mind and why we don't have access to well, basically everything ... are problems for you, which I think is good. It's good to have problems.

So you define P consciousness as you need it to be. So to avoid confusion, you might write that as

"P consciousness is not what you might think it to be! - it is something (a kind of stuff or something that can be conceived of as stuff) conceived of by what? By minds - what are minds? Minds are what P consciousness has evolved into? How can it do that? Remember,P consciousness - it is not what you think it is - !



It has, did I mention?, the properties of differentiation and interaction (self-interaction)! and we may add a few more later on ...

So how is that different from starting with the physical as the extrinsic nature of reality and pointing out, as Strawson does, that there is nothing about matter that we can't say the intrinsic nature of - is phenomenality?

 

[smcder]

The Emergent Self | Edge.org

F. Varela

"My view of the mind has been influenced by my interest in Buddhist thought. Buddhists are specialists in understanding this notion of a virtual self, or a selfless self, from the inside, as lived experience. This is what fascinates me about that tradition. Dan Dennett, incidentally, has come to the same conclusion in his own way. But while Dan focuses on the cognitive level, my own approach is to think about several biological levels, as I have mentioned, perhaps because I'm influenced by the broad idea of nonrepresentationalist knowledge. In my reality, knowledge coevolves with the knower and not as an outside, objective representation.

I see the mind as an emergent property, and the very important and interesting consequence of this emergent property is our own sense of self. My sense of self exists because it gives me an interface with the world. I'm "me" for interactions, but my "I" doesn't substantially exist, in the sense that it can't be localized anywhere. This view, of course, resonates with the notions of the other biological selves I mentioned, but there are subtle and important differences. An emergent property, which is produced by an underlying network, is a coherent condition that allows the system in which it exists to interface at that level — that is, with other selves or identities of the same kind. You can never say, "This property is here; it's in this component." In the case of autopoiesis, you can't say that life — the condition of being self-produced — is in this molecule, or in the DNA, or in the cellular membrane, or in the protein. Life is in the configuration and in the dynamical pattern, which is what embodies it as an emergent property. ..."

The entire discussion/essay is fascinating of course. And saying mind is emergent is very different from saying p consciousness is emergent.

There are many other sources which outline how "self" is emergent. I'll share them as I come acrosss them. But I thought Varela was a good place to start.

The growing body of evidence refers to this:

In other words, what goes away during deep sleep or anethesia is not consciousness; consciousness is primary in relation to the body.

Indeed the body continues to consciously experince during deep sleep and anesthesia; what does "go away" during deep sleep and anesthesia is the representation of an experiencing self—which is generated by the body/brain. And there is a growing body of evidence supporting this.

Not sure the above is directly on point ... or if it's "evidence" or that it indicates the body is growing! ;-)

I thought you meant you could provide evidence that the body continues to consciously experience during deep sleep and anesthesia (what does it mean the "body" continues to experience - what does it mean for the body to "experience" here?) P consciousness - remember, can't go away, as it is reality - so the above gets hand-wavy on your own terms. To just say the sense of self goes away ok ... but maybe you just don't remember after anesthesia? Have you done a good search on that? Maybe people remember more later? How would you ever show the memories aren't there?