Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 10

[Constance]

Would you link that paper again? I don't remember reading all of it. Does Strawson persuade you to agree with the speculations he engages in here?

I tracked back and found some bibliographical information about Strawson paper [the thinness/thickness one] when I was searching for it earlier. I posted that information in my post #97, here:

Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 10

I can't connect to it now through either of the two links provided at philpapers, but there was a draft of the paper that you linked earlier that we can probably make do with.

Links at philpapers, not working at the moment:

Galen Strawson, What is the relation between an experience, the subject of the experience, and the content of the experience? - PhilPapers

 

[Soupie]

If you can get past thinking of consciousness (feeling) as subjective experience, then perhaps thinking of noumena or proto-consciousness would be helpful.

What is consciousness(feeling) if not subjective experience? What is experience if not subjective experience? (see my previous post) Calling it proto- or primitive consciousness is not helpful.

Let me ask again: what do you (literally) have in your head when you think about subject-less consciousness?

When I talk about a beam of dark, I can literally see turning on a dark-light and darkness spreading out in the room - that doesn't mean it's possible. I can also imagine non-extended matter - no, I can't, I can simply juxtapose rapidly two opposing thoughts in my head so fast that they seem to be one thing ...

You've rightfully asked me to describe this consciousness (feeling) as substrate; you've asked wiil to be this substrate. The only properties I feel confident saying it has are (1) feeling/proto-feeling, (2) interactivity, (3) differentiation/dynamism.

That's what dual-aspect or Russelian monism claims. The mental aspect is the intrinsic nature, the structure is the extrinsic relationship and Russell is a materialist / physicalist by some definition of the word.

Other than by perhaps brute, strong emergentism, feeling cannot emerge from non-feeling, physical processes.

This may seem a problem until one realizes that what we know to be non-feeling, physical processes are merely intersubjective, human perceptions and conceptions of reality, not reality in-itself (noumenal reality).

Moreover, human minds don't emerge from any substrate ex nihilo. They appear to develop in richness and complexity on the timeline of Life and individual lives. So whence minds?

Thus, I propose the existence of a substrate with qualities capable of giving rise to minds. What those qualities are I can't say.

 

[Constance]

I enjoyed your quoting from the above blog. Here's another paper by Strawson linked at the same site :

Mind and being: the primacy of panpsychism

Here is a comment on this Strawson paper attached at academia.edu:

Marc Champagne
2.0 | January 25, 2016
With this paper, the Logical Positivists’s attempt to push out metaphysics from philosophy comes to a full failure. We are back to an almost pre-Socratic story of what there is. All that remains from the Logical Positivists is the point form statement of theses and use of algebraic letters (with Heideggerian-sounding German to boot!). The resulting account is archaic, armchair -- and, for all we know, true. Things are decently plausible (depending of course on who you are) for the first two tenets. By the third and fourth, however, things get a bit weirder (again depending on who you are). After that... Well, you tell me. Overall, I quite like this newest piece by Galen Strawson. One can disagree with his account yet admire his audacity. I happen to admire his audacity and be in large agreement too. I think, though, that Strawson should dwell a bit on what a “real distinction” means. He attributes this to Descartes, but it actually comes from Duns Scotus. My own work spends a lot of time unpacking the idea of a (“prescissive”) distinction that is less than real yet more than nominal, and I do not think a panpsychist view like the one advocated by Strawson will find many converts until it can supply that. In any event, I do not know why Strawson wants to cling so ardently to monism. Despite all his audacity, he seems spooked by the prospect of countenancing a more-than-one-stuff ontology. Go figure. Also, he rejects the possibility of his monism being “neutral.” I do see what motivates his recoil here. In any event, it seems to me that his rejection of “neutral” monism (pace section 11) is not consistent with his idea that the ultimate stuff is “fungible” (pace claim 25). Of course, I prefer the picture that I have been painting – notably in “A Less Simplistic Metaphysics” – but I genuinely enjoy reading the work that Strawson is putting out there. It is disorganized, but stimulating nonetheless. Read it and have fun."


I haven't read this recent (2016) Strawson paper yet but I think the above commentator is correct in identifying some unsatisfying ambiguities/ambivalences and unresolved tensions in Strawson's papers regarding perception, consciousness, and experience.

 

[smcder]

Other than by perhaps brute, strong emergentism, feeling cannot emerge from non-feeling, physical processes.

This may seem a problem until one realizes that what we know to be non-feeling, physical processes are merely intersubjective, human perceptions and conceptions of reality, not reality in-itself (noumenal reality).

Moreover, human minds don't emerge from any substrate ex nihilo. They appear to develop in richness and complexity on the timeline of Life and individual lives. So whence minds?

Thus, I propose the existence of a substrate with qualities capable of giving rise to minds. What those qualities are I can't say.

Other than by perhaps brute, strong emergentism, feeling cannot emerge from non-feeling, physical processes.

But you also say:

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.

and:

Sure. Consciousness (feeling) could emerge strongly emerge when autopoeitic cells weakly emerge.

 

[smcder]

Other than by perhaps brute, strong emergentism, feeling cannot emerge from non-feeling, physical processes.

1. brute, strong emergentism is OK by me but it is indistinguishable from Mysterianism - if we can't know how consciousness works, we can't know that it works by brute, strong emergentism - similarly, brute, strong emergentism is opaque so again, we can't know if it simply IS or if we can't know ...

2. when presented by an absolute statement like this, it's enough to just cast doubt on it and to do that we just have to offer another conceptual pathway like this:

Opinion | Consciousness Isn’t a Mystery. It’s Matter.

"His mistake is to go further, and conclude that physical goings-on can’t possibly be conscious goings-on. Many make the same mistake today — the Very Large Mistake (as Winnie-the-Pooh might put it) of thinking that we know enough about the nature of physical stuff to know that conscious experience can’t be physical. We don’t. We don’t know the intrinsic nature of physical stuff, except — Russell again — insofar as we know it simply through having a conscious experience.

We find this idea extremely difficult because we’re so very deeply committed to the belief that we know more about the physical than we do, and (in particular) know enough to know that consciousness can’t be physical. We don’t see that the hard problem is not what consciousness is, it’s what matter is — what the physical is."

 

[Constance]

Links at philpapers, not working at the moment:

Galen Strawson, What is the relation between an experience, the subject of the experience, and the content of the experience? - PhilPapers

The link is now working and produces a download of the paper.

 

[smcder]

The link is now working and produces a download of the paper.

Excellellent!

I got it at the consc.net link

 

[smcder]

Strawson is such a nerd ...

I call the part of reality that consists of Louis the Louis-reality—the L-reality for short. The notion of the L-reality is rough, for as a concrete physical being Louis is enmeshed in wide-reaching physical interactions, but it is serviceable and useful none the less.[1]


[1] Louis is constitutively entangled with the quantum vacuum, and is not neatly separable out as a single portion of reality. There are at any given time many millions of transient neutrinos in the spatial volume bounded by the surface of Louis’s skin that are not, I take it, part of Louis. The same goes for much of the contents of his digestive system. And so on.

Imagine this at cocktail parties ... Hello, I am the Galen-reality, but you can call me the G-reality for short ... what's your sign?

 

[Soupie]

Other than by perhaps brute, strong emergentism, feeling cannot emerge from non-feeling, physical processes.

But you also say:

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.

and:

Sure. Consciousness (feeling) could emerge strongly emerge when autopoeitic cells weakly emerge.

Do you see a contradiction in those statements?

 

[Constance]

Opinion | Consciousness Isn’t a Mystery. It’s Matter.

His mistake is to go further, and conclude that physical goings-on can’t possibly be conscious goings-on. Many make the same mistake today — the Very Large Mistake (as Winnie-the-Pooh might put it) of thinking that we know enough about the nature of physical stuff to know that conscious experience can’t be physical. We don’t. We don’t know the intrinsic nature of physical stuff, except — Russell again — insofar as we know it simply through having a conscious experience.

We find this idea extremely difficult because we’re so very deeply committed to the belief that we know more about the physical than we do, and (in particular) know enough to know that consciousness can’t be physical. We don’t see that the hard problem is not what consciousness is, it’s what matter is — what the physical is.

Let's look at the last three paragraphs of that newspaper column by Strawson:

"Those who make the Very Large Mistake (of thinking they know enough about the nature of the physical to know that consciousness can’t be physical) tend to split into two groups. Members of the first group remain unshaken in their belief that consciousness exists, and conclude that there must be some sort of nonphysical stuff: They tend to become “dualists.” Members of the second group, passionately committed to the idea that everything is physical, make the most extraordinary move that has ever been made in the history of human thought. They deny the existence of consciousness: They become “eliminativists.”

This amazing phenomenon (the denial of the existence of consciousness) is a subject for another time. The present point — it’s worth repeating many times — is that no one has to react in either of these ways. All they have to do is grasp the fundamental respect in which we don’t know the intrinsic nature of physical stuff in spite of all that physics tells us. In particular, we don’t know anything about the physical that gives us good reason to think that consciousness can’t be wholly physical. It’s worth adding that one can fully accept this even if one is unwilling to agree with Russell that in having conscious experience we thereby know something about the intrinsic nature of physical reality.

So the hard problem is the problem of matter (physical stuff in general). If physics made any claim that couldn’t be squared with the fact that our conscious experience is brain activity, then I believe that claim would be false. But physics doesn’t do any such thing. It’s not the physics picture of matter that’s the problem; it’s the ordinary everyday picture of matter. It’s ironic that the people who are most likely to doubt or deny the existence of consciousness (on the ground that everything is physical, and that consciousness can’t possibly be physical) are also those who are most insistent on the primacy of science, because it is precisely science that makes the key point shine most brightly: the point that there is a fundamental respect in which ultimate intrinsic nature of the stuff of the universe is unknown to us — except insofar as it is consciousness."


If so, shouldn't we be examining consciousness and experience? Strawson doesn't do that, though he makes various declarations about limited aspects of these subjects, meanwhile holding firmly to the promissory note offered by most {but not all} modern physicists that one day physics will account for everything.

Strawson is such a nerd ...

I think 'squirrely' is a better term to describe him.

 

[smcder]

Do you see a contradiction in those statements?

Do you?

 

[Soupie]

Do you?

No. I think autopoiesis provides a physical model of how a "subject" process can emerge within non-subject processes. However, this subject-process remains distinct from phenomenal consciousness (and subjective experience).

However, because we know little to nothing about the origin and nature of phenomenal consciousness, I agree that phenomenal consciousness in the form of subjective experience could strongly emerge from purely physical, autopoietic processes or processes like them.

 

[smcder]

No. I think autopoiesis provides a physical model of how a "subject" process can emerge within non-subject processes. However, this subject-process remains distinct from phenomenal consciousness (and subjective experience).

However, because we know little to nothing about the origin and nature of phenomenal consciousness, I agree that phenomenal consciousness in the form of subjective experience could strongly emerge from purely physical, autopoietic processes or processes like them.

@Constance - do you understand what a "subject" process is? And how it remains distinct from pheneomenal consciousness (and subjective experience)?

 

[smcder]

The link is now working and produces a download of the paper.

Here is the relevant part:

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

 

[Constance]

I think autopoiesis provides a physical model of how a "subject" process can emerge within non-subject processes.

The question of how autopoiesis emerged in primordial single-celled organisms remains unanswered. The Chilean biologists Maturana and Varela recognized the existence of this autopoietic relation -- sensed self-other relatedness and interaction -- and wrote about its biological and phenomenological significance.

 

[Constance]

@Constance - do you understand what a "subject" process is?

No. Glad you asked. @Soupie, would you define or describe what you mean by a 'subject process'?

And how it remains distinct from pheneomenal consciousness (and subjective experience)?

Imponderable. Let's wait for S to define the term/concept.

 

[Constance]

Here is the relevant part:

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

Thanks. Score one for Strawson.

 

[smcder]

Gadamer, Hans-Georg | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

This was a helpful article for me.

"With Aristotle, Gadamer affirms the commitment that all philosophy starts from praxis (human practice) and that hermeneutics is essentially practical philosophy. We must not allow knowing to remain only on the conceptual (that is, distanced and theoretical) level; we must remember that knowing emerges from our practical quest for meaning and significance."

"By hermeneutics I understand the ability to listen to the other in the belief that he could be right."

 

[Soupie]

No. Glad you asked. @Soupie, would you define or describe what you mean by a 'subject process'?



Imponderable. Let's wait for S to define the term/concept.

A subject process is a process that is a subject. Autopoiesis explains how a system can be fully enmeshed within a larger system and yet maintain autonomy from the larger system. It explains how subjects come into existence purely on physical terms.

But this gives us no insight into whether and how phenomenal consciousness and subjective experience emerge.

Maybe they too emerge via this process, maybe not.

 

[smcder]

A subject process is a process that is a subject. Autopoiesis explains how a system can be fully enmeshed within a larger system and yet maintain autonomy from the larger system. It explains how subjects come into existence purely on physical terms.

But this gives us no insight into whether and how phenomenal consciousness and subjective experience emerge.

Maybe they too emerge via this process, maybe not.

How do you define subject?

The second question we had was: (1. "do you understand what a "subject" process is?")

2. and how it remains distinct from pheneomenal consciousness (and subjective experience)?