Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 11

[Soupie]

Chalmers

A final strategy is to deflate subjects of experience or to eliminate them entirely. Views like this are familiar in the Buddhist tradition, which denies the existence of the self and is often understood to deny the existence of subjects as well (at least in ultimate reality). On views of this sort, there are experiences but no subjects that have them; or at least, any bearers of the experiences are very much unlike the primitive persisting entities that we have in mind when we think of subjects. This non-subject-involving view is often combined with a sort of idealism on which conventional reality is grounded in conventional appearances, and in which all this is grounded in cosmic experience at the ultimate level. This picture at least tends to suggest a view on which macroexperience is grounded in non-subject-involving cosmic experience in ultimate reality.

I'm not sure about this bit ... denying the existence of subjects in ultimate reality - may be, but there is ultimate reality and conventional reality and subjects do exist in conventional reality ... so that goes to what is ultimate and conventional reality and I'm not sure that's the same as what we might mean which is ultimate reality is what is "really" true ... this is better I think:

On views of this sort, there are experiences but no subjects that have them; or at least, any bearers of the experiences are very much unlike the primitive persisting entities that we have in mind when we think of subjects. This non-subject-involving view is often combined with a sort of idealism on which conventional reality is grounded in conventional appearances, and in which all this is grounded in cosmic experience at the ultimate level. This picture at least tends to suggest a view on which macroexperience is grounded in non-subject-involving cosmic experience in ultimate reality.

So to me that doesn't get rid of subjects ...

And I think of the idea of Dependent Origination - and the idea of the self being a composite thing - so that experience and subject are intermeshed ... so the "ultimate reality" of experiences on this view may be as ethereal as the "ultimate reality" of the subjects who have them ... so experiences hanging around completely unfettered by subjectivity ... I'm not sure about in Buddhism, maybe someone knows better?

When experience and subject are intermedhed we get subjective experience.

 

[smcder]

When experience and subject are intermedhed we get subjective experience.

not sure what intermedhed means ... but if it means when they come together, this doesn't mean they are separable, can exist apart from one another ... they aren't apart from one another - you couldn't even slip a very thin piece of paper between them ... nary an adhective!

subjective experience as subject and experience doesn't mean you can have one without the other ... no subject without experience, no experience without a subject - they only appear together, are in fact two ways of talking about the same thing - "where" is experience without a subject, "what" is a subject without an experience ... ?

etc. etc.

Reader's respond:

Dear Sir, that last post was wordy and repetitive.

Sincerely,
Morris Q. Lively
East Hog Creek Thief, Arkansas

 

[Soupie]

Yes, we think the experiences of a bat are like those of a human ... that's pretty important to WILTBAB. Nagel chose bats because we can readily think they have experiences (unlike say an amoeba, which takes more imagination) but they are pretty different from us .... on the cosmic level, at the very least if the cosmic subject has experiences then, like our experiences, they are at least experience-like ...

smcder this seems contradictory to "nothing like experiential states of humans":

"the experiential states of humans and the universe will be as similar and as different as their physical structure."? If they are as similar (and different) as their physical structures, then they cannot be "nothing like experiential states of humans ... "

and if a cosmic subject constitutes macro subjects like ordinary human consciousness ... ?

As we've concluded in the past, the term 'experiential' is problematic because it implies—rightly so—familiar states of human subjective experience such as feeling pleasure, tasting something sweet, seeing a green ball, etc.

Experience in this context refers to the phenomenal aspect of human consciousness, not any particular experience.

What I am after is even more subtle than that. If we consider that physics only reveals the structure of reality, then I am trying to get at the substance of physical reality.

Perhaps I can suggest that the intrinsic nature of reality is proto-phenomenal. This is in the same vein as Strawson's statement that we don't know enough about matter to say that it be conscious (or however he phrases it).

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

I add the term "proto" because if a cosmic idealist claims that all states are experiential or phenomenally conscious states, then as you say, all states should be like experiential human states, but also pretty different.

On my view they are very different. Consider the difference in being under anesthesia and not be under anesthesia. (I know we've quibbled back and forth about what it's like to be under anesthesia (WILTBUA?) but by most accounts when someone is under, they are not responding to external cues and don't recall subjective experiences afterward.)

So that would appear to make cosmic idealism a non-starter. I think it's interesting that charmers doesn't explore it as noted.

So if all states are experiential states, why aren't humans having experiential states when under anesthesia?

This is where the "proto" comes in. All states of the universe are proto-phenomenal, but not, necessarily, phenomenal.

Therefore, some states are proto-phenomenal and some are phenomenal.

But how is this any different than materialism!? Which says that some brain states are conscious and some are not.

Interestingly, both views will argue that a particular structure (or spatiotemporal process) will be necessary, but the cosmic idealist/real materialist will say that structure is not sufficient. A materialist will argue that structure is sufficient.

A cosmic idealist will say that structure is not sufficient and we need to consider the intrinict nature of reality. The substance that grounds physics.

What is the intrinict nature of reality? A la Strawson's we don't know and science can't tell us anything about it. However, via subjective experience—when "we" "have" "it"—we can "experience" "it" first hand.

SE seems to be centered on the body, specifically the brain. States of SE seem to covary (better than isomorphic?) with states of the brain. Sometimes SE goes completely away as in anesthesia.

Thus, the intrinsic nature of reality is proto-phenomenal, or maybe potentio-phenomenal.

To the uninitiated this sounds like glorified materialism. And this is why I say scientists studying AI could create a sentient machine while completely ignoring the HP.

Bc structure is necessary and they don't have to worry about it not being sufficient.

I'll respond to the below asap. Thanks for comments as always.

dunno - if ordinary human conscious subjects are constituted of cosmic subjectivity ... we can analogize from what we know of our subjectivity or we need to use a different word (than subject) for either us or for the cosmic case ... it seems like we do constitute subjects smaller than our overall sense of subject or self - "thin subjects" certainly we are larger than our momentary subjective experiences? As Chalmers notes "it is AT LEAST not easy" ... ;-)

How could experiences come to be macro bundled? While this question is not completely answered of course, the response seems quite straighforward enough for me: organisms/brains persisting in time and space. If experiences, roughly speaking, are isomorphic to the physical structure of the universe, then we would expect to find physical structures that could constitute the macro "bundle" of experiences of our minds. Uh, I submit that human bodies/brains constiute the macro bundle that I seem to have...? smcder (you just reinvented the subject!)

smcder yes, It causes waves in the air around it ... that's what sound is ... if you are asking if no one is around to hear it, will it be heard? the answer is no. if there is no subject, there is no experience - not without redefining both words because they are defined in terms of one another ... Chalmers is pointing to this problem here:

". Presumably experiences still come bundled into relatively unified groups (corresponding to what we thought of as subjects), and we still need to know how a cosmic bundle of experiences could constitute a macro bundle of the sort I seem to have. This problem is by no means straightforward (on the face of it one could run a conceivability argument against it analogous to the one for subjects), but perhaps the problems for it are at least more tractable than the corresponding problems for non-subject-involving views. One cost is then to make sense of experiences without subjects of experience. I am not sure I can do this, but many theorists have at least tried, and again the view is certainly worth taking seriously."

Strawson answers the question of whether there can be an experience without a subject of experience more bluntly: "!@^&%!@#%^$ NO!!!"

smcder what is "roughly isomorphic?" one thing we can look at in the brain is the complexity .... things like stars do have a complex structure, but we are able to define complexity in a way that is meaningful to say that brains are more complicated than ... as far as we know, anything else in the universe, so one possibility is that, considering how much more complex a brain is than anything else - that being a bowl of water, being a star, etc ... being the whole universe even (because except for the dense complexity of brains which so far seem to be few and far between and themselves aren't interconnected ... things are relatively uncomplex) is much more like being anything else than being a brain ... and maybe if only one or the other has the advantage of being able to imagine or appreciate how different being a bowl of water is from being a brain is ... that advantage, as far as we know now, lies entirely with the brain, not the bowl of water. And what could make a lot of sense is that being a bowl of water (or a bat) is roughly isomorphic to what you would imagine it to be ... or what is an imagination for?

the brian (or Brian's brain) may be altered as a result, the persons behavior, etc ... but here again I suggest using a different word from "experience" - how would you know that it had not entered consciousness vs was not heard? Could you point to a bit of the brain that registered it - we might could do that, but the person might go back and think about it and go "yeah, I did hear that, I was just so focused at the time" so did they hear it - or did they go back and pull up that experience? or did they have that experience of hearing it at the time later and if so, isn't that an experience of recalling rather than what the experience would have been at the time? We can distinguish the two I argue and as evidence I think I would not want all of my experiences to be of this recollected type as they have a different quality from immediate experience.

you are given "phenomenal consciousness" (or do you mean given the fundamental or primary nature of consciousness?) and if you are allowed to have things like "non-subjective albeit experiential mediums" then I say yes it IS easier! (but not really because you have the hard problem of physics instead of the hard problem of mind) And, for my part, I am determined to have my free will and I leave you in the company of the Queen:

 

[Constance]

So to me that doesn't get rid of subjects ...

Nor does it for me.

If we abstractly postulate levels or conditions of 'experience' that do not require subjectivity of the kind we experience from birth to death, then we must deal with, explore, the explanatory gap, or abyss, that seems to exist between two very different kinds, and meanings, of 'experience' -- one sensed and therefore known and another one requiring no subjective sense of being whatever. We would, imo, need to compose two different concepts of experience, and devise different terms/words with which to distinguish them. And these must be products of discovery yet to be undertaken. It would at this point be good to know from @Soupie what sources among researchers in both science and philosophy have explored these issues deeply and written papers or books that can guide or enlighten us in venturing into this new territory. Chalmers refers to a number of such researchers or theorists in his footnotes. Perhaps we can explore the writings of several of them.

 

[Constance]

One way in which we can approach the challenge of @Soupie's effort to redefine 'experience' as significantly 'nonsubjective' is to investigate the etymology of the word 'experience' as it reflects consistent and coherent meanings of the word and concept of 'experience' expressed throughout the human past in the variety of languages developed by humans. Etymological dictionaries, of which there are several online, are initially helpful, but the following page {Princeton's Word Net} gives us much more to work with in investigating the globally common applications of the term 'experience' in human languages. The importance of such etymological research has been exemplified by Heidegger.

What does experience mean?

We should also recognize the importance of philosophically common understandings of the related term 'empirical'.

 

[smcder]

As we've concluded in the past, the term 'experiential' is problematic because it implies—rightly so—familiar states of human subjective experience such as feeling pleasure, tasting something sweet, seeing a green ball, etc.

Experience in this context refers to the phenomenal aspect of human consciousness, not any particular experience.

What I am after is even more subtle than that. If we consider that physics only reveals the structure of reality, then I am trying to get at the substance of physical reality.

Perhaps I can suggest that the intrinsic nature of reality is proto-phenomenal. This is in the same vein as Strawson's statement that we don't know enough about matter to say that it be conscious (or however he phrases it).

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

I add the term "proto" because if a cosmic idealist claims that all states are experiential or phenomenally conscious states, then as you say, all states should be like experiential human states, but also pretty different.

On my view they are very different. Consider the difference in being under anesthesia and not be under anesthesia. (I know we've quibbled back and forth about what it's like to be under anesthesia (WILTBUA?) but by most accounts when someone is under, they are not responding to external cues and don't recall subjective experiences afterward.)

So that would appear to make cosmic idealism a non-starter. I think it's interesting that charmers doesn't explore it as noted.

So if all states are experiential states, why aren't humans having experiential states when under anesthesia?

This is where the "proto" comes in. All states of the universe are proto-phenomenal, but not, necessarily, phenomenal.

Therefore, some states are proto-phenomenal and some are phenomenal.

But how is this any different than materialism!? Which says that some brain states are conscious and some are not.

Interestingly, both views will argue that a particular structure (or spatiotemporal process) will be necessary, but the cosmic idealist/real materialist will say that structure is not sufficient. A materialist will argue that structure is sufficient.

A cosmic idealist will say that structure is not sufficient and we need to consider the intrinict nature of reality. The substance that grounds physics.

What is the intrinict nature of reality? A la Strawson's we don't know and science can't tell us anything about it. However, via subjective experience—when "we" "have" "it"—we can "experience" "it" first hand.

SE seems to be centered on the body, specifically the brain. States of SE seem to covary (better than isomorphic?) with states of the brain. Sometimes SE goes completely away as in anesthesia.

Thus, the intrinsic nature of reality is proto-phenomenal, or maybe potentio-phenomenal.

To the uninitiated this sounds like glorified materialism. And this is why I say scientists studying AI could create a sentient machine while completely ignoring the HP.

Bc structure is necessary and they don't have to worry about it not being sufficient.

I'll respond to the below asap. Thanks for comments as always.

@Soupie says:

Experience in this context refers to the phenomenal aspect of human consciousness, not any particular experience.

What I am after is even more subtle than that. If we consider that physics only reveals the structure of reality, then I am trying to get at the substance of physical reality.

Perhaps I can suggest that the intrinsic nature of reality is proto-phenomenal. This is in the same vein as Strawson's statement that we don't know enough about matter to say that it be conscious (or however he phrases it).

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

I add the term "proto" because if a cosmic idealist claims that all states are experiential or phenomenally conscious states, then as you say, all states should be like experiential human states, but also pretty different.

On my view they are very different. Consider the difference in being under anesthesia and not be under anesthesia. (I know we've quibbled back and forth about what it's like to be under anesthesia (WILTBUA?) but by most accounts when someone is under, they are not responding to external cues and don't recall subjective experiences afterward.)

So that would appear to make cosmic idealism a non-starter. I think it's interesting that charmers doesn't explore it as noted.

So if all states are experiential states, why aren't humans having experiential states when under anesthesia?

This is where the "proto" comes in. All states of the universe are proto-phenomenal, but not, necessarily, phenomenal.

Therefore, some states are proto-phenomenal and some are phenomenal.

smcder what it is like to be under anesthesia could be a stream of consciousness without memory - islands of conscious moments isolated in memory (but not time) (could be very painful) the brain might or might not be changed by these instants - same for dreamless sleep, I don't know how or if you could disprove this hypothesis.

@Soupie says But how is this any different than materialism!? Which says that some brain states are conscious and some are not.

Interestingly, both views will argue that a particular structure (or spatiotemporal process) will be necessary, but the cosmic idealist/real materialist will say that structure is not sufficient. A materialist will argue that structure is sufficient.

A cosmic idealist will say that structure is not sufficient and we need to consider the intrinict nature of reality. The substance that grounds physics.

What is the intrinict nature of reality? A la Strawson's we don't know and science can't tell us anything about it. However, via subjective experience—when "we" "have" "it"—we can "experience" "it" first hand.

SE seems to be centered on the body, specifically the brain. States of SE seem to covary (better than isomorphic?) with states of the brain. Sometimes SE goes completely away as in anesthesia.

Thus, the intrinsic nature of reality is proto-phenomenal, or maybe potentio-phenomenal.

To the uninitiated this sounds like glorified materialism. And this is why I say scientists studying AI could create a sentient machine while completely ignoring the HP.

Bc structure is necessary and they don't have to worry about it not being sufficient.

I'll respond to the below asap. Thanks for comments as always.

smcder

the problem with proto-phenomenal but not phenomenal is how does the proto-phenomenal become phenomenal ... this is the same gap we see in the hard problem ... I think Chalmers used it to avoid talking (much) about how there might be something it is like to be a quark. You want to say something about how quarks have mental properties but they don't have experiences, so you say proto-pheneomenal ... meaning the immediate antecedent ... but since it is a qualitative change from not conscious to conscious, you can get as immediately close to consciousness and the step to consciousness is still the same leap .... it doesn't make sense to say almost conscious ...

it's like a vertical asymptote or singularity in mathematics ... the function can get infinitely close to the asymptote ...

 

[Soupie]

smcder what it is like to be under anesthesia could be a stream of consciousness without memory - islands of conscious moments isolated in memory (but not time) (could be very painful) the brain might or might not be changed by these instants - same for dreamless sleep, I don't know how or if you could disprove this hypothesis.

This is more than just a metaphysical or philosophical question, as you know. There are many people lying in beds in "vegetative" states and there are real questions about whether they are conscious or not.

We know for little for certain about consciousness, so everything is on the table. Having said that, I think there's good reason to believe that when people are under anesthesia, they're are not conscious—not "having" subjective experiences. People do not respond to external stimuli when under anesthesia, and brain signatures are different as well. You're right that this doesn't prove that they aren't though. It could be that they are and just body control and memory are impaired. I think it's also likely that SE ceases.

In cases where people wake up, are conscious, or have memories, it's possible that the anesthesia simply didn't work as it typically does. It uncommon for drugs.

smcder

the problem with proto-phenomenal but not phenomenal is how does the proto-phenomenal become phenomenal ... this is the same gap we see in the hard problem ... I think Chalmers used it to avoid talking (much) about how there might be something it is like to be a quark. You want to say something about how quarks have mental properties but they don't have experiences, so you say proto-pheneomenal ... meaning the immediate antecedent ... but since it is a qualitative change from not conscious to conscious, you can get as immediately close to consciousness and the step to consciousness is still the same leap .... it doesn't make sense to say almost conscious ...

it's like a vertical asymptote or singularity in mathematics ... the function can get infinitely close to the asymptote ...

But if we assume idealism/real materialism/non-materialist physicalism, this is where we are led. It's very interesting.

Why are some brain processes conscious and some unconscious? We know materialists cannot answer this question.

But idealists are faced with the same exact question.

If an idealist tries to answer this question by appealing to physical (structural) facts, they too will fail to answer this question.

This means that the answer, for an idealist, lies not in structural (objective) facts but in intrinsic facts. Or facts that we can't access via physics.

 

[smcder]

This is more than just a metaphysical or philosophical question, as you know. There are many people lying in beds in "vegetative" states and there are real questions about whether they are conscious or not.

We know for little for certain about consciousness, so everything is on the table. Having said that, I think there's good reason to believe that when people are under anesthesia, they're are not conscious—not "having" subjective experiences. People do not respond to external stimuli when under anesthesia, and brain signatures are different as well. You're right that this doesn't prove that they aren't though. It could be that they are and just body control and memory are impaired. I think it's also likely that SE ceases.

In cases where people wake up, are conscious, or have memories, it's possible that the anesthesia simply didn't work as it typically does. It uncommon for drugs.

But if we assume idealism/real materialism/non-materialist physicalism, this is where we are led. It's very interesting.

smcder I don't follow the immediately above ... if we assume ... we are more than led ... ;-) ... but where are we led?

soupie . Having said that, I think there's good reason to believe that when people are under anesthesia, they're are not conscious—not "having" subjective experiences. How does your view explain this?

Why are some brain processes conscious and some unconscious? We know materialists cannot answer this question.

But idealists are faced with the same exact question.

If an idealist tries to answer this question by appealing to physical (structural) facts, they too will fail to answer this question.

This means that the answer, for an idealist, lies not in structural (objective) facts but in intrinsic facts. Or facts that we can't access via physics.

smcder I think that's Russell and Strawson's idea, right? And they are both monists: materialists. We talk about the extrinsic (what I think you are calling structural facts) with mathematics because, Russell says, we know so little about them, the intrinsic facts we know from our consciousness ... what is matter like?

extrinsic: F=ma
intrinsic: a thundering right hook that drops you nauseatingly to the canvas

The interesting thing to me is that Russell doesn't put any fine point on it that we don't know enough about matter, etc .... he just very straightforwardly points out that consciousness could well be a property of matter (in certain arrangements) Strawson adds to this in response to more recent history (eliminativism for example) by saying we have no reason to think that it couldn't be.

But that's still a fascinating question .... if consciousness is dependent on a certain arrangement of matter ... then how (and why) did nature "discover" it ... ? Even at the level of the crustacean, in which representation may be present, this is an enormously complex arrangement of matter ... it certainly seems there could be some kind of "gradient" or "attractor".

 

[Constance]

smcder what it is like to be under anesthesia could be a stream of consciousness without memory - islands of conscious moments isolated in memory (but not time) (could be very painful) the brain might or might not be changed by these instants - same for dreamless sleep, I don't know how or if you could disprove this hypothesis.

This is an interesting issue, and I agree with your suggestion that even under anaesthesia consciousness is not obliterated or dissolved out of existence. I've mentioned here earlier a surgery I had during which I awoke twice -- the first time listening to what the surgeon was saying on my right side to one of the nurses located on my left side; the second time reporting that I was feeling pain at the site the surgeon was cutting, to which the surgeon replied that he was just cauterizing the margins of his incision. On both occasions the anaesthesiologist put me under more deeply. It seems that bodily awareness lies just beneath awareness of pain in such situations, and from my experience when one becomes conscious of what's being said around one, or of felt pain, one knows immediately where one is and where others are standing in relation to one despite not being able to see them.

It also seems clear that the body carries memories of its own, whether of shocking experiences such as surgeries performed under anaesthesia, of car accidents, fires, etc., when one has 'passed out' for one reason or another, or of physical abuse suffered in early childhood, when the child's mind is flooded with terror or even dissociates from what is experienced, but can be recalled under hypnosis. As Ian Stephenson revealed, children who have reincarnated in additional embodied lifetimes, often carry physical scars left by the causes of their deaths in a previous lifetime. And clearly, these children still vividly remember major elements of their previous existences.

Consciousness is evidently not like a light bulb that can be switched on and off within consciously embodied lifetimes, nor completely extinguished with the body's death. We've discussed in an earlier part of this thread Evan Thompson's book Waking, Dreaming, Being, much or all of which I think Steve read, and which adds to an enormous literature of research concerning consciousness as expressed and essential in so-called 'paranormal' communications and experiences involving living humans and those supposed to have ceased to exist as consciousnesses -- consciousnesses that, on the basis of what they communicate, clearly maintain core elements of personality, shared lived experiences, and continuing emotional bonds.

 

[Constance]

. . . The interesting thing to me is that Russell doesn't put any fine point on it that we don't know enough about matter, etc .... he just very straightforwardly points out that consciousness could well be a property of matter (in certain arrangements) Strawson adds to this in response to more recent history (eliminativism for example) by saying we have no reason to think that it couldn't be.

But that's still a fascinating question .... if consciousness is dependent on a certain arrangement of matter ... then how (and why) did nature "discover" it ... ? Even at the level of the crustacean, in which representation may be present, this is an enormously complex arrangement of matter ... it certainly seems there could be some kind of "gradient" or "attractor".

Strawson might propose that "we have no reason to think that it couldn't be," but he does not actually undertake the project of identifying the means by which we might demonstrate the validity of the materialist claim he adheres to. Re 'gradients' or 'attractors', we are at risk of mistaking these as we recognize them in objectively observed physical interactions as being explanatory of that which is felt, and known as felt, in living organisms and increasingly evolved biological beings. 'What might be' for Russell and Strawson remains an abstraction without grounds in consciously and preconsciously lived experience as this experience contextualizes our lives and enables all of our reflections and thinking. So Strawson's declaration that "we have no reason to think that it couldn't be [that matter always includes consciousness]" remains an empty presupposition for me unless and until we find actual evidence that it is true.

 

[Soupie]

smcder I don't follow the immediately above ... if we assume ... we are more than led ... ;-) ... but where are we led?

We are led to the idea that if all states are conscious states, but only some states are associated with phenomenal consciousness/subjective experience/something it's like, it must be an intrinsic fact rather than an extrinsic fact that distinguishes them.

The interesting thing to me is that Russell doesn't put any fine point on it that we don't know enough about matter, etc .... he just very straightforwardly points out that consciousness could well be a property of matter (in certain arrangements) Strawson adds to this in response to more recent history (eliminativism for example) by saying we have no reason to think that it couldn't be.

But that's still a fascinating question .... if consciousness is dependent on a certain arrangement of matter ... then how (and why) did nature "discover" it ... ? Even at the level of the crustacean, in which representation may be present, this is an enormously complex arrangement of matter ... it certainly seems there could be some kind of "gradient" or "attractor".

I think a certain arrangement of matter will be found to be a necessary element of subjective experience, but it will not be a sufficient element. Again, materialism cannot explain why some brain states are conscious and others unconscious.

As I said above, the difference will be intrinsic rather than extrinsic.

http://axc.ulb.be/uploads/2016/01/14-casys11.pdf

"From this perspective, as Frege pointed out, conscious experience cannot be understood independently from the agent who experiences these experiences. Yet, as obvious as this
may seem, neuroscientists have approached the question as though the differences between conscious and unconscious representations could be understood independently of the subject, from a purely “objective”, third-person point of view. The entire “search for the Neural Correlates of Consciousness” is, in this sense, at least, misguided."

Am I Self-Conscious? (Or Does Self-Organization Entail Self-Consciousness?). - PubMed - NCBI

Re anesthesia

@smcder @Constance

And this is the difficulty with studying/discussing consciousness. We can't even agree on whether consciousness ceases during sleep/coma/anesthesia/death.

I feel strongly that there is good reason to believe that [edit: phenomanl] consciousness does cease at times for living humans and permanently for dead humans.

What Anesthesia Can Teach Us About Consciousness

But if we can't agree on this relatively straightforward issue, then making any headway on the murky issues is unlikely—as this thread has born out over the years.

 

[Constance]

I happened to read a few minutes ago the linked article from the Washington Post concerning what is lost and what is not lost in people afflicted with dementia and/or Alzheimer's disease. The article does not distinguish between these conditions because they do overlap and share the same core qualities of self-world experience that remain residual in consciousness even when brain processes have become minimized.

Extract:

"Some of what he tells them: 'As soon as people learn you have Alzheimer’s, you’re stigmatized. People treat you different, like you don’t understand, and that’s very upsetting.'

Even if memory is lost, intuition and emotional understanding remain intact, Savage explained.

What he and other people with dementia want most is “emotional connection — that feeling of love that we had, that we may have lost” when a diagnosis was delivered and a sense of being a burden to other people descended."

Changing The Way We Look At Dementia

 

[Constance]

continuing . . . I know from personal experience of my father's last ten years of life that what is being explained in the above article is sound, valid, 'information' concerning the nature of consciousness and selfhood, part of the emotional information concerning consciousness and mind that we need to understand if we are ever to understand what consciousness is. Also, re what the body is conscious of and thus knows even in states of dreaming, non-REM sleep, anesthesia, coma, morphine-induced deep sleep near death, and other straightened conditions must become the focus of a major program of investigation.

 

[Constance]

Here is a helpful paper concerning Derrida's deconstructive semiotics that I hope others here will read and perhaps help me to understand better than I do. It brings us back to language itself and the inherent nature of expression and signification that eventuate in languages. A few extracts, and then the link:

". . . 4. Différance is the future in progress (the fight against frozen meanings); it is the displacement of signifying signifiers to the fringe, since there is no organizing, original, transcendental signified.

The writing of différance refers to itself, because it breaks with the concepts of signified and referent. The emphasis on the theme of writing functions as an antidote against idealism, metaphysics and ontology."

Jacques Derrida : Deconstruction and différance / Signo - Applied Semiotics Theories


I have long resisted Derrida's deconstructionism since it led a generation of scholars in the humanities and social sciences to accept the view that the significance of the lived world consists only of 'texts' in which we can discover only ambiguity and ultimately failure to arrive at a grounded understanding of ourselves and of life and consciousness in general. Re Derrida's point #4 above, I disagree that we are unable to find, personally and collectively, a metaphysical and ontological significance in our own being and the world's being, their intrinsic relatedness, on the basis of the premise that "there is no organizing, original, transcendental signified." I don't think we need to establish or place faith in a "transcendental signified" in order to come to an understanding that it is our own {and all other consciousnesses'} transcendent relations to objects/things encountered in the world and their transcendent relations to us that constitute the nature of being as we are capable of understanding being as that understanding is developed in phenomenological-existential philosophy. Yes, our understanding of the world is partial, changing and developing in time/temporality, and radically incomplete. That doesn't suggest to me that, unless we believe in or postulate a single 'transcendental signified', our existences and what we do with them are without intrinsic meanings and values.

Derrida was a philosopher who was schooled in phenomenology in French universities but, as I read him, failed to comprehend it deeply.

 

[Constance]

I've often referred in this thread to poems by the phenomenological poet Wallace Stevens as ways in which to come into an understanding of the phenomenology of experience of the kind we have, of humanly situated being-in-the-world as both an energizing and ultimately unsatisfactory condition. The following linked page, consisting of two cantos from the long Stevens poem "An Ordinary Evening in New Haven" and two paragraphs written by an unknown reader of Stevens on his/her website -- The Poetic Quotidian: Wallace Stevens, from "An Ordinary Evening in New Haven" -- provides some possible positions that can be taken concerning this existential situation that illustrate how consciousness [which always includes the inscrutable and genuinely mysterious influences of subconscious feelings and ideations] copes with what it experiences in a world not fully knowable or explicable.


Wallace Stevens, from "An Ordinary Evening in New Haven"

XII

The poem is the cry of its occasion,
Part of the res itself and not about it.
The poet speaks the poem as it is,

Not as it was: part of the reverberation
Of a windy night as it is, when the marble statues
Are like newspapers blown by the wind. He speaks

By sight and insight as they are. There is no
Tomorrow for him. The wind will have passed by,
The statues will have gone back to be things about.

The mobile and immobile flickering
In the area between is and was are leaves,
Leaves burnished in autumnal burnished trees

And leaves in whirlings in the gutters, whirlings
Around and away, resembling the presence of thought,
Resembling the presences of thoughts, as if,

In the end, in the whole psychology, the self,
the town, the weather, in a casual litter,
Together, said words of the world are the life of the world."

...

XXVIII

If it should be true that reality exists
In the mind: the tin plate, the loaf of bread on it,
The long-bladed knife, the little to drink and her

Misericordia, it follows that
Real and unreal are two in one: New Haven
Before and after one arrives or, say,

Bergamo on a postcard, Rome after dark,
Sweden described, Salzburg with shaded eyes
Or Paris in conversation at a café.

This endlessly elaborating poem
Displays the theory of poetry,
As the life of poetry. A more severe,

More harassing master would extemporize
Subtler, more urgent proof that the theory
Of poetry is the theory of life,

As it is, in the intricate evasions of as,
In things seen and unseen, created from nothingness,
The heavens, the hells, the worlds, the longed-for lands."



"One could hardly talk about the theme of ars poetica without quoting Wallace Stevens (1879-1955). Arguably, the entirety of Stevens' writing is about poetry itself - or, more widely, about the relationship between the imagination and reality. I could have picked any of a hundred poems from his collected works, as you can tell simply from the titles of some of the other major contenders: "The Idea of Order at Key West", "Poetry is a Destructive Force", "The Poems of Our Climate", "Of Modern Poetry", "Men Made Out of Words", "Notes toward a Supreme Fiction", "The Solitude of Cataracts", "The Ultimate Poem Is Abstract", "A Primitive like an Orb", "The Plain Sense of Things", "The Planet on the Table", "Not Ideas about the Thing but the Thing Itself" etc. etc. etc. But I chose these sections because his later, meditative mode is often undervalued, and certainly less anthologized than his earlier works.

This later mode finds Stevens pursuing the style and form of, as he calls it in "Of Modern Poetry", "the poem of the act of the mind." Not only is the poem not paraphrasable, but it is also not separable from the experiences of composition - this is a poetry of process, the very process of the mind encountering "reality," which is to say all that we can know: "Part of the res itself and not about it," . . .

Up to this point I concur with the commentator, but must depart from him/her in some of what follows:

". .words of the world are the life of the world." Perception, rather than being unreal, is reality for Stevens: "reality exists / In the mind ... Real and unreal are two in one". Poetry, then, being perception/imagination/the mind in process, is not an imitation of reality, but is real experience itself: "the theory / Of poetry is the theory of life, // As it is, in the intricate evasions of as, / In things seen and unseen, created from nothingness, / The heavens, the hells, the worlds, the longed-for lands"—not mere physical "reality," but life in its lived fullness."


Rather than saying, as Stevens said at one point in this particular poem, that "words of the world are the life of the world" (which Derrida might also be understood to claim), I think, and Stevens also thought increasingly in the later poems, that poetry and the other human arts can guide us in understanding the character of our own a) speaking, writing, sculpting, painting, singing, and composing of music, etc., and also the character of b) our thinking as attempts to express our sensed position as beings living within and indeed produced out of the world's being in time and as moved by our own nature to contemplate and express that which cannot be fully or completely expressed by any of us at any lived time or place concerning the nature of our being or of Being as a Whole. The theory of poetry can be understood as the theory of life only within the limitations of what is knowable phenomenologically, and thus we must become accustomed to remaining always "at the edge" of understanding 'what is', globally/universally, as it includes what consciousness and mind bring forward for vision, contemplation, and thinking from out of things/objects/gestalts accessible in their phenomenal appearances. All perceptions/all things as perceived are perceived perspectivally, within perspectives taken by conscious beings located both spatially and temporally in change. Thus, given the nature of our basis for claimed knowledge, what we can assemble and categorize in thought does not, cannot, 'represent' objects or an 'objective reality' as fully understood, much less fully 'known'.

 

[Soupie]

continuing . . . I know from personal experience of my father's last ten years of life that what is being explained in the above article is sound, valid, 'information' concerning the nature of consciousness and selfhood, part of the emotional information concerning consciousness and mind that we need to understand if we are ever to understand what consciousness is. Also, re what the body is conscious of and thus knows even in states of dreaming, non-REM sleep, anesthesia, coma, morphine-induced deep sleep near death, and other straightened conditions must become the focus of a major program of investigation.

The body is filled with information/representations/inferential processes, indeed one could argue (see article above) that the body—and life in general—is an inferential process. (Similarly, some argue that life is a cognitive process.)

The question is, then, why all this information in the body is present in subjective experience at varying times. Why are some body states conscious and others unconscious at any given time? (@smcder Said from the perspective of idealism, why are some body states phenomally conscious and others proto-conscious at any given time?)

While there will be necessary structural elements accessible via objective, third-person perspectives, there will also be necessary intrinsic elements which will determine the distinction.

Representations which contain the element of "I-ness" will be subjectively experiential and those that do not will not.

An idealist will understand (in this context) that all states are conscious and only states with the character of I-ness are states reportable as being phenomenally conscious.

A materialist on the other hand—with only objective data at their disposal—will be left with the hard problem of understanding what distinguishes the states.

I think the mainstream is creeping closer to such an idea—that self-modeling is a necessary condition for subjective experience. However, the mainstream will continue assuming materialism in principal, but it won't matter in practice.

 

[Soupie]

All perceptions/all things as perceived are perceived perspectivally, within perspectives taken by conscious beings located both spatially and temporally in change. Thus, given the nature of our basis for claimed knowledge, what we can assemble and categorize in thought does not, cannot, 'represent' objects or an 'objective reality' as fully understood, much less fully 'known'.

Our perceptual/conceptual models will always be imperfect. The map is not the territory.

Applying this fact to the MBP has led me to realist idealism as I've attempted to articulate over the past couple years.

 

[smcder]

The body is filled with information/representations/inferential processes, indeed one could argue (see article above) that the body—and life in general—is an inferential process. (Similarly, some argue that life is a cognitive process.)

The question is, then, why all this information in the body is present in subjective experience at varying times. Why are some body states conscious and others unconscious at any given time? (@smcder Said from the perspective of idealism, why are some body states phenomally conscious and others proto-conscious at any given time?)

While there will be necessary structural elements accessible via objective, third-person perspectives, there will also be necessary intrinsic elements which will determine the distinction.

Representations which contain the element of "I-ness" will be subjectively experiential and those that do not will not.

An idealist will understand (in this context) that all states are conscious and only states with the character of I-ness are states reportable as being phenomenally conscious.

A materialist on the other hand—with only objective data at their disposal—will be left with the hard problem of understanding what distinguishes the states.

I think the mainstream is creeping closer to such an idea—that self-modeling is a necessary condition for subjective experience. However, the mainstream will continue assuming materialism in principal, but it won't matter in practice.

Where do the necessary structural elements accessible via objective, third-person perspectives come from?

 

[Soupie]

Where do the necessary structural elements accessible via objective, third-person perspectives come from?

I think natural selection is as good a candidate as any.

If you're asking why matter has structural properties in the first place, I don't know. Of course, materialists don't know either.

My current "placeholder" for an answer is a la Unbound Telesis.

 

[Constance]

What I take from Strawson's materialism is that there is nothing we know about the extrinsic nature of matter that says anything about or limits it's intrinsic or felt nature. I think of it as a rich materialism which is compatible with much of phenomenology and "as being explanatory of that which is felt, and known as felt, in living organisms and increasingly evolved biological beings. " .... I don't know that that's where Strawson would go with it, but for me the important point is to enrich the concept of matter from brute particles. As far as the idea of an attractor, what I mean by that is just that a narrow view of matter as brute particles seems unlikely to have "come up" with consciousness out of whole cloth in response to evolutionary pressure.

.... I don't know that that's where Strawson would go with it, but for me the important point is to enrich the concept of matter from brute particles. As far as the idea of an attractor, what I mean by that is just that a narrow view of matter as brute particles seems unlikely to have "come up" with consciousness out of whole cloth in response to evolutionary pressure.

Trying to understand the above re 'rich materialism'. From what I understand of quantum physics and the hypotheses and theories postulated about 'the quantum substrate', particles are always already interactive with one another and produce entanglements the extent and nature of which we are far from understanding. Is the seed of interactions between a) later evolved consciousnesses in the world(s) we experience and b) these worlds, these evolved environments in which life has evolved to be found in q entanglement? Some people have thought so, and I have thought so for a long time now. But if entanglement among particles constitutes a germinal point at which awareness and thus protoconsciousness...consciousness become possible, we have yet to understand how that occurs before we have reason to believe that it does.

Beyond a possible germination point of awareness in q particles, it's necessary to understand the meaning of entanglement as holistic (hologrammatic, as in Bohm and Pribram) in the interaction and integration of quantum fields. How can we understand the meaning of/implicit in entanglement in and of q fields that emerge and interact in the evolution of the universe and maintain, again and again, the balance and the order of the universe we live in? And is that level of entanglement closer to the intersubjectivity we discover in consciousness as we experience it?

As to 'where Strawson would go with this', that's a good question. He does not seem to have gone anywhere with his speculations re 'rich materialism'. Where is the 'richness', and where does it begin? Strawson does not seem to have investigated scientific matters at all, nor has he pursued an understanding of phenomenology. That's why I've characterized some of his papers, and he himself as a philosopher, as 'squirrelly'. He's written nothing recently to change my mind.