Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 11

[Constance]

illusion
The sun shines by itself

With the addition of a few structure words, the above line from Djavan's "Acai" could have been written by Stevens:

"[It is an] illusion [that] the sun shines by itself."

 

[Constance]

My last appeal for the day, two cantos {the 12th and 28th} from Stevens's late long poem "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."

 

[smcder]

My last appeal for the day, two cantos {the 12th and 28th} from Stevens's late long poem "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."

Your appeals do not go unheard ...

The statues will have gone back to be things about.

extraordinary ...

 

[Soupie]

That approximates to my way of thinking it too. But I would say that perception/measurement does not inform us of nature’s Intrinsic ‘properties’. At all.

Then what does perception/measurement inform us about?

 

[Soupie]

We more than 'infer' qualities of the world we live in, which is a local manifestation out of the whole of Being. I can't see the satisfaction to be gained in reducing perception to inference. In lived perception we see and feel the actuality of the local world pressing in upon us, undeniable in its presence, evoking what we experience and think, and revealing our own being, our presence within its inexhaustible horizons and alluring complexity.

Can you describe and/or offer a model of perception that is not inferential?

Would you disagree that the process of seeing an object involves EM waves reflecting off of it, exciting cone cells, stimulating the optic nerve, which gets various cortices all hot and bothered?

Sure, none of this is explicitly experienced in lived, subjective experience. In lived, subjective experience, we experience the phenomenal world directly.

As I see it, to answer the mind body problem is to bridge the gap between perception as experienced and perception as understood objectively.

 

[smcder]

Can you describe and/or offer a model of perception that is not inferential?

Would you disagree that the process of seeing an object involves EM waves reflecting off of it, exciting cone cells, stimulating the optic nerve, which gets various cortices all hot and bothered?

Sure, none of this is explicitly experienced in lived, subjective experience. In lived, subjective experience, we experience the phenomenal world directly.

As I see it, to answer the mind body problem is to bridge the gap between perception as experienced and perception as understood objectively.

Perception experienced is perception understood objectively.

 

[smcder]

Russell's first use of "intrinsic" in The Analysis of Matter:

"It is a matter for mathe-
matical logic to show how to construct, out of these, the
objects required by the mathematical physicist. It belongs
also to this part of our subject to inquire whether there is
anything in the known world that is not part of this meta-
physically primitive material of physics. Here we derive great
assistance from our earlier epistemological inquiries, since these
enable us to see how ph5rsics and psychology can be included
in one science, more concrete than the former and more com-
prehensive than the latter. Physics, in itself, is exceedingly
abstract, and reveals only certain mathematical characteristics
of the material with which it deals. It does not tell us any-
thing as to the intrinsic character of this material. Psychology
is preferable in this respect, but is not causally autonomous:
if we assume that psychical events are subject, completely, to
causal laws, we are compelled to postulate apparently extra-
psychical causes for some of them. But by bringing physics
and perception together, we are able to include psychical
events in the material of physics, and to give to physics the
greater concreteness which results from our more intimate
acquaintance with the subject-matter of our own experience.
To show that the traditional separation between physics and
psychology, mind and matter, is not metaphysically defensible,
will be one of the piuposes of this work ; but the two will be
brought together, not by subordinating either to the other,
but by displaying each as a logical structure composed of
what, following Dr H. M. Sheffer,* we shall call " neutral
stuff.” We shall not contend that there are demonstrative
grounds in favour of this construction,

*******but only that it is
recommended by the usual scientific grounds of economy and
comprehensiveness of theoretical explanation."*****

emphasis mine - smcder

 

[smcder]

And extrinsic:

"So far, I have said nothing about extrinsic causal laws, i.e.
those which we naturally regard as exemplifying the influence
of one piece of matter upon another. Einstein’s theory of
gravitation has thrown a new light upon these; but this is
matter for a new chapter."

 

[smcder]

Then what does perception/measurement inform us about?

sounds like the extrinsic nature of matter:

"So far, I have said nothing about extrinsic causal laws, i.e.
those which we naturally regard as exemplifying the influence
of one piece of matter upon another. Einstein’s theory of
gravitation has thrown a new light upon these; but this is
matter for a new chapter."

 

[Constance]

Then what does perception/measurement inform us about?

Among other things it informs us that we are perceiving. That there is some thing, or a gestalt of things, to be perceived.

Perceiving is not "measuring" by the human or animal eye in the same way as scientific or technological instruments take measurements of various physical phenomena.

In Stevens's poem "The Idea of Order at Key West" the persona observing and reflecting on the singer he watches walking along the shore recognizes toward the end of the poem that

"It was her voice that made
The sky acutest at its vanishing.
She measured to the hour its solitude . . . ."

Here's the whole poem, a poetic meditation on the persona's attempt to understand the relations among consciousness, the worlding world, and human expression in and of that world:


The Idea of Order at Key West
By Wallace Stevens

"She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.

The sea was not a mask. No more was she.
The song and water were not medleyed sound
Even if what she sang was what she heard,
Since what she sang was uttered word by word.
It may be that in all her phrases stirred
The grinding water and the gasping wind;
But it was she and not the sea we heard.

For she was the maker of the song she sang.
The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea
Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.
Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew
It was the spirit that we sought and knew
That we should ask this often as she sang.

If it was only the dark voice of the sea
That rose, or even colored by many waves;
If it was only the outer voice of sky
And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,
However clear, it would have been deep air,
The heaving speech of air, a summer sound
Repeated in a summer without end
And sound alone. But it was more than that,
More even than her voice, and ours, among
The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,
Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped
On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres
Of sky and sea.

It was her voice that made
The sky acutest at its vanishing.
She measured to the hour its solitude.
She was the single artificer of the world
In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there never was a world for her
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As the night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker’s rage to order words of the sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds."

 

[Soupie]

Perception experienced is perception understood objectively.

But can you explain how?

 

[Soupie]

Russell's first use of "intrinsic" in The Analysis of Matter:

"It is a matter for mathe-
matical logic to show how to construct, out of these, the
objects required by the mathematical physicist. It belongs
also to this part of our subject to inquire whether there is
anything in the known world that is not part of this meta-
physically primitive material of physics. Here we derive great
assistance from our earlier epistemological inquiries, since these
enable us to see how ph5rsics and psychology can be included
in one science, more concrete than the former and more com-
prehensive than the latter. Physics, in itself, is exceedingly
abstract, and reveals only certain mathematical characteristics
of the material with which it deals. It does not tell us any-
thing as to the intrinsic character of this material. Psychology
is preferable in this respect, but is not causally autonomous:
if we assume that psychical events are subject, completely, to
causal laws, we are compelled to postulate apparently extra-
psychical causes for some of them. But by bringing physics
and perception together, we are able to include psychical
events in the material of physics, and to give to physics the
greater concreteness which results from our more intimate
acquaintance with the subject-matter of our own experience.
To show that the traditional separation between physics and
psychology, mind and matter, is not metaphysically defensible,
will be one of the piuposes of this work ; but the two will be
brought together, not by subordinating either to the other,
but by displaying each as a logical structure composed of
what, following Dr H. M. Sheffer,* we shall call " neutral
stuff.” We shall not contend that there are demonstrative
grounds in favour of this construction,

*******but only that it is
recommended by the usual scientific grounds of economy and
comprehensiveness of theoretical explanation."*****

emphasis mine - smcder

Ok. As I noted a few posts back, I think my approach is different than neutral monism. Seems closer to strawson's RM.

It looks like the phrase "intrinsic nature of matter" is off limits too now, haha. Russell's distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties isn't the distinction I'm focused on.

The distinction I mean to pick out is the distinction between the properties of nature in-itself and the properties of nature given in human perception.

(Of course, if one is a monist, perception in-itself has properties which just are properties of nature in-itself. But these properties don't seem to match a la the MBP/HP, combination problem, structural mismatch, etc.)

 

[smcder]

But can you explain how?

Why ... nothing could be easier ...

(ahem)



Look for the fund-a-mentalities
The simple fund-a-mentalities
Forget about your worries and your strife!
I mean the fun-damentalities
Old Mother Nature's recipes
That brings the fun-duh-mentalities of life

 

[smcder]

Ok. As I noted a few posts back, I think my approach is different than neutral monism. Seems closer to strawson's RM.

It looks like the phrase "intrinsic nature of matter" is off limits too now, haha. Russell's distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties as he sees them seems ultimately arbitrary to me. From the perspective of a perceiving human, there is no intrinsic/extrinsic difference between the properties of nature... we infer all of them.

The distinction I mean to pick out is the distinction between the properties of nature in-itself and the properties of nature in human perception.

(Of course, if one is a monist, perception in-itself has properties which just are properties of nature in-itself.)

@Soupie perception in-itself has properties which just are properties of nature in-itself.

smcder But can you explain how? (makes at least as much sense as: Perception experienced is perception understood objectively.)

How do you objectively understand your experience?

@Soupie sez:

Russell's distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties as he sees them seems ultimately arbitrary to me.

What is Russell's distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties as he sees them?

We infer both:

1. Physics, in itself, is exceedingly
abstract, and reveals only certain mathematical characteristics
of the material with which it deals.

and

2. the greater concreteness which results from our more intimate
acquaintance with the subject-matter of our own experience.

that is, you think that we infer both physics and the subject-matter of our own experience?

 

[Soupie]

@Soupie perception in-itself has properties which just are properties of nature in-itself.

smcder But can you explain how? (makes at least as much sense as: Perception experienced is perception understood objectively.)

But I'm arguing for monism so it's ok for me to say that. A dualist couldn't say this, right?

How do you objectively understand your experience?

@Soupie sez:

Russell's distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties as he sees them seems ultimately arbitrary to me.

What is Russell's distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties as he sees them?

We infer both:

1. Physics, in itself, is exceedingly
abstract, and reveals only certain mathematical characteristics
of the material with which it deals.

and

2. the greater concreteness which results from our more intimate
acquaintance with the subject-matter of our own experience.

that is, you think that we infer both physics and the subject-matter of our own experience?

I heavily edited my post. Sorry. Makes better sense now. See above.

 

[smcder]

But I'm arguing for monism so it's ok for me to say that. A dualist couldn't say this, right?


I heavily edited my post. Sorry. Makes better sense now. See above.

 

[smcder]

But I'm arguing for monism so it's ok for me to say that. A dualist couldn't say this, right?


I heavily edited my post. Sorry. Makes better sense now. See above.

@Soupie perception in-itself has properties which just are properties of nature in-itself.

I have no idea - I can't make sense of perception-in-itself and nature in-itself ... the thing in itself is the object independent of observation ... plugging it in:

Perception as it is, independent of observation, has properties which just are properties of nature as (she) is, independent of observation.

Does that help us?

smcder The distinction I mean to pick out is the distinction between the properties of nature in-itself and the properties of nature given in human perception.

So this becomes the distinction (or just "difference") in the properties of nature as they are, independent of observation, and the properties of nature given in human perception - so that becomes the difference in what we see and what is. But the very difficult thing is to see how we could understand what a thing really is apart from how we see it - and not just that but apart from how anyone could see it, from how it could be seen (observed). What will this tell us?

Soupie (Of course, if one is a monist, perception in-itself has properties which just are properties of nature in-itself. But these properties don't seem to match a la the MBP/HP, combination problem, structural mismatch, etc.)

what are the properties of perception-in-itself which just are properties of nature in-itself (and what are the other properties of nature in-self)?

 

[Soupie]

@Soupie perception in-itself has properties which just are properties of nature in-itself.

I have no idea - I can't make sense of perception-in-itself and nature in-itself ... the thing in itself is the object independent of observation ... plugging it in:

Perception as it is, independent of observation, has properties which just are properties of nature as (she) is, independent of observation.

Does that help us?

I don't if that helps us, haha, but the above makes sense to me and is what I intended.

We can know nature only indirectly via perception excepting for the fact that perception itself just is nature.

Scmder

The distinction I mean to pick out is the distinction between the properties of nature in-itself and the properties of nature given in human perception.

So this becomes the distinction (or just "difference") in the properties of nature as they are, independent of observation, and the properties of nature given in human perception - so that becomes the difference in what we see and what is. But the very difficult thing is to see how we could understand what a thing really is apart from how we see it - and not just that but apart from how anyone could see it, from how it could be seen (observed). What will this tell us?

Very well said of course. What will this tell us? Well, you know what I'm after. Is p consciousness something that emerges from nonconscious matter, is p consciousness something distinct from matter—with a distinct origin and nature, or is it possible that p consciousness is matter in-itself?

Soupie

(Of course, if one is a monist, perception in-itself has properties which just are properties of nature in-itself. But these properties don't seem to match a la the MBP/HP, combination problem, structural mismatch, etc.)

what are the properties of perception-in-itself which just are properties of nature in-itself (and what are the other properties of nature in-self)?

Again, from a monist position, the ones of note would be quality/feeling and unity/combination.

 

[smcder]

Smcder
perception experienced is perception understood objectively.

Soupie
But can you explain how?

Smcder

(using Soupie's words)
for the fact that perception itself just is nature.

 

[Soupie]

Smcder
perception experienced is perception understood objectively.

Soupie
But can you explain how?

Smcder

(using Soupie's words)
for the fact that perception itself just is nature.

But to me, that's akin to saying mind is matter, matter is mind.

A strong emergence or otherwise dualist couldn't say this.