Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 11

[Soupie]

The reason why I think of them as separate problems is because HCT does not address the explanatory gap directly but does tackle the issue of why phenomenal experience must evolve in a physical objective world and be 'qualitative' and subtle.

Can you post one of your papers and note the section that you feel answers this particular question? Because as far as I understand it, HCT does not answer that question.

 

[Pharoah]

Can you post one of your papers and note the section that you feel answers this particular question? Because as far as I understand it, HCT does not answer that question.

You've read it: discourse... merit... qualitative relevance... biochemical assimilation.... realtime evaluation... spatiotemporally delineated worldview... conceptual interpretation... self-realisation... blah blah. That paper has benefited immensely from the contributions of this forum in terms of me learning how better to communicate what is in my head. I am indebted. but I also recognise I have some way to go understanding and overcoming its shortcomings... and any other -comings I might be unaware of.
Perhaps this is one of them: The paper doesn't say how biochemical mechanisms do the phenomenal experience think though. If it did, the theory would not be, so much 'theoretical', as 'an accepted fact of biophysics'. But to my way of thinking, the 'how' is an empirical challenge and therefore would be classified under 'the easy problem' list. I have my ideas on 'the how', but they need 100 years of biochemical and neurophysical research to test and develop.
Now, without HCT a philosopher sees both aspects as a mystery... as a HP... that is no surprise. If you suffered amnesia and found yourself in the pitch dark at the bottom of an ocean, you would think of your situation and how you got in it as part of the same infathomable mystery. But if you correctly theorised you were at the bottom of an ocean, you would then simply be faced with the empirical question as to how you managed to get there.

Like gravitational waves, doubts will persist until the evidence lays them to rest. I will never have the evidence for HCT. I can only improve my copy, and expand the theoretical implications into new areas

 

[Soupie]

You've read it: discourse... merit... qualitative relevance... biochemical assimilation.... realtime evaluation... spatiotemporally delineated worldview... conceptual interpretation... self-realisation... blah blah. That paper has benefited immensely from the contributions of this forum in terms of me learning how better to communicate what is in my head. I am indebted. but I also recognise I have some way to go understanding and overcoming its shortcomings... and any other -comings I might be unaware of.
Perhaps this is one of them: The paper doesn't say how biochemical mechanisms do the phenomenal experience think though. If it did, the theory would not be, so much 'theoretical', as 'an accepted fact of biophysics'. But to my way of thinking, the 'how' is an empirical challenge and therefore would be classified under 'the easy problem' list. I have my ideas on 'the how', but they need 100 years of biochemical and neurophysical research to test and develop.

Sigh. Ok. I appreciate the reply, I do.

Your paper doesn't answer how phenomenal experience exists, it doesn't answer what phenomenal experience does in a material world, and therefore doesn't answer why phenomenal experience exists, evolves, and develops.

Now, without HCT a philosopher sees both aspects as a mystery... as a HP... that is no surprise. If you suffered amnesia and found yourself in the pitch dark at the bottom of an ocean, you would think of your situation and how you got in it as part of the same infathomable mystery. But if you correctly theorised you were at the bottom of an ocean, you would then simply be faced with the empirical question as to how you managed to get there.

Like gravitational waves, doubts will persist until the evidence lays them to rest. I will never have the evidence for HCT. I can only improve my copy, and expand the theoretical implications into new areas

It seems obvious to most people (all people?) that phenomenal experience has a special relationship with the body, especially the brain and nervous system. And therefore as goes the evolution of organisms, so goes the evolution of phenomenal experience.

It is true that some people may still hold that only humans possess phenomenal experience but I don't think that's a mainstream view anymore. It's also true that most evolutionary biologists studying the evolution of the nervous system probably don't say much about the evolution of phenomenal experience.

So technically you are probably correct to say that HCT offers something special. However, I don't think it's unique. And I don't think anybody, especially philosophers, are lost without HCT.

To say that certain organisms have evolved sensory systems with corresponding phenomenal perceptual experiences adapted to their environments I don't think is breaking new ground.

I don't want to take anything away from HCT, but I'm not sure how it moves us forward on the HP or on really understanding the chemical, biological, and neurological evolution of organisms and the phenomenal experiences some of us assume that they possess.

I think @smcder has probably asked: what are some helpful or research-directing predictions HCT makes that could help us bridge the EP or help us understand the evolution of the NS and perception?

In other words, do you imagine evolutionary biologists or neurologists or theoretical biologists or neurologists reading HCT and having it change the course of their work or research?

 

[Pharoah]

soupie: "Your paper doesn't answer how phenomenal experience exists, it doesn't answer what phenomenal experience does in a material world, and therefore doesn't answer why phenomenal experience exists, evolves, and develops."
Not how I agree, but I disagree strongly with the what and why primarily because the why is the very purpose of the paper and the what is self-evident. If it isn't clear, then that ultimately is because I have been unable to articulate it with sufficient clarity or explanatory force. It is possible that we are at cross wires on what the 'why' and 'what' entail or even what we mean by phenomenal experience. But I do feel that progress has happened.
I don't want to get into the EP. It is a pointless exercise without the first step.

 

[smcder]

If we have a current copy- I think I can walk through it with@Soupie.

"It is possible that we are at cross wires on what the 'why' and 'what' entail or even what we mean by phenomenal experience."

Yes to what is meant by "why" and "what".

 

[Pharoah]

If we have a current copy: OK. Will get a link sorted tomorrow.

 

[Constance]

Chalmer's comments on Levine (in Facing Up To The Problems of Consciousness)
"A technical note: Some philosophers argue that even though there is a conceptual gap between physical processes and experience, there need be no metaphysical gap, so that experience might in a certain sense still be physical (e.g. Hill 1991; Levine 1983; Loar 1990). Usually this line of argument is supported by an appeal to the notion of a posteriori necessity (Kripke 1980). I think that this position rests on a misunderstanding of a posteriori necessity, however, or else requires an entirely new sort of necessity that we have no reason to believe in; see Chalmers 1996 (also Jackson 1994 and Lewis 1994) for details. In any case, this position still concedes an explanatory gap between physical processes and experience. For example, the principles connecting the physical and the experiential will not be derivable from the laws of physics, so such principles must be taken as explanatorily fundamental. So even on this sort of view, the explanatory structure of a theory of consciousness will be much as I have described.)

Chalmers's reasoning on this issue is developed and critiqued in the paper at this link: http://www.diametros.iphils.uj.edu.pl/serwis/pdf/diam7polcyn.pdf

 

[Constance]

soupie: "Your paper doesn't answer how phenomenal experience exists, it doesn't answer what phenomenal experience does in a material world, and therefore doesn't answer why phenomenal experience exists, evolves, and develops."

Not how I agree, but I disagree strongly with the what and why primarily because the why is the very purpose of the paper and the what is self-evident. If it isn't clear, then that ultimately is because I have been unable to articulate it with sufficient clarity or explanatory force.

The why and what of HCT theory have always been clear to me. For others I think you merely need to insert an introductory paragraph stating the questions you will address in laying out your hierarchical construct theory (the what and the why) and the question you will not explore -- the how -- since the explanatory gap continues to lie there wide open and calling out for deep exploration by scientists in multiple disciplines.

It is possible that we are at cross wires on what the 'why' and 'what' entail or even what we mean by phenomenal experience. But I do feel that progress has happened.

I agree. And look forward to reading the ms you now have with the Biosemiotics journal.

 

[smcder]

The why and what of HCT theory have always been clear to me. For others I think you merely need to insert an introductory paragraph stating the questions you will address in laying out your hierarchical construct theory (the what and the why) and the question you will not explore -- the how -- since the explanatory gap continues to lie there wide open and calling out for deep exploration by scientists in multiple disciplines.



I agree. And look forward to reading the ms you now have with the Biosemiotics journal.

Could you do a brief write up on HCT for us?

 

[Constance]

Could you do a brief write up on HCT for us?

No one here should need me or someone else to do that for them. Just re-read @Pharoah's posts of the last few weeks and then read the current version of his HCT paper again.

I also think it would be helpful, as we speculate on the no-man's land of the explanatory gap, to spend some time reading MP's The Structure of Behavior, which I linked yesterday.

 

[smcder]

No one here should need me or someone else to do that for them. Just re-read @Pharoah's posts of the last few weeks and then read the current version of his HCT paper again.

I also think it would be helpful, as we speculate on the no-man's land of the explanatory gap, to spend some time reading MP's The Structure of Behavior, which I linked yesterday.

Not as a matter of need. It would be helpful to see how each of us understands HCT. I suspect we do not all understand it the same way.

 

[smcder]

Part 10 page 45 is where/when @Pharoah posted his latest work. Looks like it doesn't take long to get stuck on what "sentience" means. We do have a lot of verbal disputes ... The resolution on the hard problem is not to get hung up on "the hard problem" per se but to recognize that the issue is that HCT doesn't address the problem @Soupie is concerned with - once we got that, it was a lot more productive.

I think @Soupie it's going to be that way when we get @Pharoah's paper-at least that's been helpful to me - look at what @Pharoah is laying out that HCT does, take that on its own terms, get the thing in your head, then you can go back and see if you think something is missing or if it's just not something HCT deals with.

Very specific issues of wording are crucial.

 

[smcder]

Page 5o we start a discussion comparing HCT with more standard theories of evolution ... sample:

Pharoah
"What my earlier work focuses on, is that increasing complexity happens accidentally at each level. Most examples of greater complexity (for example, most mutations) are not advantageous and do not perpetuate. But a small proportion do make a difference, which is why, however slow the process, complexity at each hierarchical level tends to increase. This is not to say however, that less complex forms count for nothing because less complexity can mean improved efficiencies. The former does not discount the latter...
@smcder what do you mean by "a fixed progression" #995

smcder #998 "I would say the knowledge of disparate disciplines (including empirical knowledge) is implicit in the scientists' knowledge and technology" "I am not sure that no matter how sophisticated a knowledge of DNA one has, that all of this could be pulled out of only a sample of DNA? I'm not sure everything is coded in DNA - there is lots of information in the environment - and species move into novel environments - if you were given the DNA of an ancient mammal with a wide range (say a hominid) would you be able to tell everything about it? I don't think you would be able to say where it lived in that wide range?"

Pharoah A reviewer made a similar point... but I am not saying that everything is coded in DNA. All I am proposing is that details about an organism and its environment will be coded for in some way and to some degree, and, therefore, that eDNA (and DNA) will bear a meaningful correspondence with its environment (courtesy of discourse through replication)
You are right... the term 'knowledge' need not be used. But I think the argument is very relevant to Jackson 1986 Knowledge Argument (which is where this paper started its life). And it is important to understand the different discourse levels and how they determine a unique class of meaningful correspondence. But... I agree that the term 'knowledge' is not vital.

#999 "Again, I am not sure that's important to your argument."
Don't get what you are saying

#1000 "1. that is a phrase that will be used in cases of ambiguity "did he means this or that" and the reviewer will go back to this and say "remember he said that .... so ..." because, if I read it write, it's radical ...

smcder 2. parsimony the standard theory would say something like human language came out of the (physiological) variability of various ways of communicating and some kind of mutation - or the physiology was there at some point and there was a new understand of how to use it ... now the physiology may have been there and continued to evolve and that may be what you are saying (?) - but to say that the physiology evolved as a result of the "compulsive desire" qua "compulsive desire" ... would be a departure, something more like Lamarckism ... but also we would need a "how" and would need to see if this is a parsimonious explanation ... at the species level would there be only one "compulsive desire"? Does it make sense in the light of what you may mean by this statement to ask "why didn't we evolve the physiology to fly?" as that also seem a compulsive desire ... or, since we have the compulsive desire to communicate directly with another person, why did we not develop ESP? (maybe we did!) ... why does language seem to have so much in common with the "languages" or "communications" of other animals - why aren't more and more species evolving it?"

Pharoah Good points. Animals communicate and so would have early hominid. Let's say that at some early stage, hominid communication was not 'language'.
The question is, did a mechanism of language (a language acquisition device) arise due to some kind of mutation and language evolved from that? I say no. I say, that the early hominids started developing proto-concepts (as described in my paper) and that when an individual has a realisation of its own existential being, conceived thus, the individual then wants to relate that world-view... because it is revelatory. Proto-language then functions to inform about objects and subjects and their relation to one another and to the individual... and that ultimately requires a grammatical structure. Initially the language-specific physiology would not have been there... but the demand for new and novel sounds and expressions would have led to brain expansion and the evolution of physiologies.* That's my argument. Perhaps "compulsive desire" is not the best term.
The problem with flying, is that our bones and brains are too heavy. You have to trade one for the other and then you don't end up with humans anymore. So perhaps some hominids did develop wings, but they ended up as crows.

smcder this is a current comment 2.3.2018

I think that's a critical point to keep in mind, @Pharoah argues:

"the demand for new and novel sounds and expressions would have led to brain expansion and the evolution of physiologies"

 

[smcder]

Whatever you think about HCT is not the point really—Well trodden ground now.
The point I am making is that Chalmers' HP is nonsensical because you, me, and he don't know specifically what he is talking about (putting it crudely). I think the vagueness of what he is addressing is indicated by my [bracketed] commentaries. I can't make sense of it. Enlighten me.

Incidentally, I claim that HCT explains why qualitative experience evolved and is rich and complex. I provide a detailed argument and relate it to subjectivity. Typically, philosophical dialogue entails finding flaws in an argument by articulating counter arguments and highlighting inconsistencies. I think @smcder may have found a problem with HCT which is interesting. You, however, just deny that I am explaining either what I claim to be explaining or that I am not explaining what you want me to explain. Well... not a lot I can do about that. I analyse Chalmers and think I highlight inconsistency... you may disagree... not a lot I can do about that either.

Typically, philosophical dialogue entails finding flaws in an argument by articulating counter arguments and highlighting inconsistencies. I think @smcder may have found a problem with HCT which is interesting.

@Pharoah what is the problem I may have found?

 

[Pharoah]

Typically, philosophical dialogue entails finding flaws in an argument by articulating counter arguments and highlighting inconsistencies. I think @smcder may have found a problem with HCT which is interesting.

@Pharoah what is the problem I may have found?

Way back... but you dropped it at the time. Not sure how to word what you said, but you mentioned epiphenomenalism and it relates to causation and overdetermination.
Its not a death blow but requires a significant shift in thinking... it connects to a lot of what we have been talking about recently...
That Strawson article you linked a couple of days ago. Basically, what Strawson is saying is that all this 'consciousness talk' (the resurgence in last 30 years) is the MB problem and is nothing new to philosophy. He sees no purpose, or 'value' perhaps, in categorising problems that might be subdivisions of the MB problem (also developments from neuroscience etc). But I disagree and think this is ultimately where panpsychism has problems: it eliminates the subtleties of the questions to which we seek answers.

 

[Constance]

I've come across a page linking all chapters and parts of Merleau-Ponty's Philosophy of Nature by Ted Toadvine, who is imo the best and most fluent exponent of MP's philosophical works. He's also the author of one of the SEP articles on MP that I've linked here [I think the most recent one]. I recommend Toadvine's book for anyone here who is interested in understanding phenomenology. All chapters and parts of the book are downloadable at the links embedded here:

Project MUSE - Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of Nature

 

[Constance]

Two papers on MP's phenomenological philosophy of language:

Merleau-Ponty’s Embodied Semantics —From Immanent Meaning, to Gesture, to Language Mark Johnson Department of Philosophy, University of Oregon E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract: Merleau-Ponty gave us an exemplary model of an empirically responsible philosophy of mind and language. At the heart of his view is his rejection of mind-body dualism and a view of meaning as tied to human embodiment. Merleau-Ponty gave an account of gestural meaning that can serve as the basis for a theory of meaning in general, including linguistic meaning. I show how gesture is embodied, immanent meaning and how it works in the same ways as meaning in art. Eugene Gendlin’s account of the felt sense that accompanies semantic forms and structures can provide a link between an account of immanent gestural and artistic meaning and an account of embodied meaning in language and thought.


Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Language
Christopher Watkin

This chapter builds on the account in chapter 1 of the difference between perception and expression to show how, contrary to Derrida's assumption, Merleau-Ponty's account of the relationship of language and the ontological, drawing as it does on the structure of figure and ground that we encountered in relation to perception, need not be reductively violent. The argument moves through two main moments: Merleau-Ponty's reference to being ‘in the interrogative mode’ and his characterisation of the relationship of world and language in terms of call and response. The chapter ends by offering Merleau-Ponty's ‘work of expression’ as an alternative to the deconstructive abyss between subject and world, and by interrogating deconstructive questioning itself from a Merleau-Pontean standpoint.

Keywords: Language, Expression, Violence, Logos, Contact

Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Language - Edinburgh Scholarship

{Just realized that only the abstract/first paragraph of the second item is available at the link; will look for an online copy of the chapter. The book might be available in part at Google Books.}

 

[smcder]

Way back... but you dropped it at the time. Not sure how to word what you said, but you mentioned epiphenomenalism and it relates to causation and overdetermination.
Its not a death blow but requires a significant shift in thinking... it connects to a lot of what we have been talking about recently...
That Strawson article you linked a couple of days ago. Basically, what Strawson is saying is that all this 'consciousness talk' (the resurgence in last 30 years) is the MB problem and is nothing new to philosophy. He sees no purpose, or 'value' perhaps, in categorising problems that might be subdivisions of the MB problem (also developments from neuroscience etc). But I disagree and think this is ultimately where panpsychism has problems: it eliminates the subtleties of the questions to which we seek answers.

"Way back... but you dropped it at the time. Not sure how to word what you said, but you mentioned epiphenomenalism and it relates to causation and overdetermination."

Jaegwon Kim's argument on over-determination/Causal closure? But we've been talking about that from the get-go...maybe it was a particular wording?

I'd be interested when you're able to get it worded, exactly what the issue is.

 

[smcder]

Way back... but you dropped it at the time. Not sure how to word what you said, but you mentioned epiphenomenalism and it relates to causation and overdetermination.
Its not a death blow but requires a significant shift in thinking... it connects to a lot of what we have been talking about recently...
That Strawson article you linked a couple of days ago. Basically, what Strawson is saying is that all this 'consciousness talk' (the resurgence in last 30 years) is the MB problem and is nothing new to philosophy. He sees no purpose, or 'value' perhaps, in categorising problems that might be subdivisions of the MB problem (also developments from neuroscience etc). But I disagree and think this is ultimately where panpsychism has problems: it eliminates the subtleties of the questions to which we seek answers.

I've skimmed back through Strawson's article...but I don't get the same sense of it when you say:

"He sees no purpose, or 'value' perhaps, in categorising problems that might be subdivisions of the MB problem (also developments from neuroscience etc). But I disagree and think this is ultimately where panpsychism has problems: it eliminates the subtleties of the questions to which we seek answers."

I'll look again ... Are you drawing more broadly than just this article by Strawson? Or is it in the article?

Some times though that is what happens...e.g. eliminating epicycles in some sense eliminated the subtleties of questions about the orbits of the planets...because they were the wrong questions.

 

[smcder]

You've read it: discourse... merit... qualitative relevance... biochemical assimilation.... realtime evaluation... spatiotemporally delineated worldview... conceptual interpretation... self-realisation... blah blah. That paper has benefited immensely from the contributions of this forum in terms of me learning how better to communicate what is in my head. I am indebted. but I also recognise I have some way to go understanding and overcoming its shortcomings... and any other -comings I might be unaware of.
Perhaps this is one of them: The paper doesn't say how biochemical mechanisms do the phenomenal experience think though. If it did, the theory would not be, so much 'theoretical', as 'an accepted fact of biophysics'. But to my way of thinking, the 'how' is an empirical challenge and therefore would be classified under 'the easy problem' list. I have my ideas on 'the how', but they need 100 years of biochemical and neurophysical research to test and develop.
Now

without HCT a philosopher sees both aspects as a mystery... as a HP... that is no surprise. If you suffered amnesia and found yourself in the pitch dark at the bottom of an ocean, you would think of your situation and how you got in it as part of the same infathomable mystery. But if you correctly theorised you were at the bottom of an ocean, you would then simply be faced with the empirical question as to how you managed to get there.

Like gravitational waves, doubts will persist until the evidence lays them to rest. I will never have the evidence for HCT. I can only improve my copy, and expand the theoretical implications into new areas

"I have my ideas on 'the how', but they need 100 years of biochemical and neuro-physical research to test and develop."

A hundred years?