Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 11

[smcder]

@Soupie

Around 18 minutes in .... And then at 24 he discusses "direct realism".

 

[Soupie]

Galen Strawson and Andy Clark (who argues for predictive processing) both consider themselves to be direct realists. (I'm not sure what Clark's metaphysical position is but Strawson is a monist.)

Re Putnam, even if we assume monism, I think there are problems with direct realism.

For instance, how would Putnam respond to the picture physics, biology, and neuroscience give us of perception? The photon reflecting from the flower, the photon exciting cone cells in the eye, the cone cell exciting the optic nerve, the optic nerve communicating to the visual cortex, etc.?

Would Putnam say, no, the above process doesn't happen? Where would the color enter the above process on his view?

He mentions a naive naivety. That's my view haha! Because the materialist thinks the above view is reality, and I say it's our perception of reality.

On my view, a photon/EM field may be colored in-itself!

But even if it is, how do our bodies/brains perceive that color in-itself?

We still have X and X1, where X is the object and X1 is the perception/perceiver.

If Putnam has any writing on direct realism, I'd be happy to read.

 

[Constance]

But even if it is, how do our bodies/brains perceive that color in-itself?

How can we say that there is such a thing as 'color in itself' since the colors that we see in our environing world are continually changing with the changes in available light, as well as in the positions and perspectives we can and do take in moving about things and gestalts in the world as made visible to us? Without perception and awareness in living beings, there would be neither experience of nor concepts of 'color'.

 

[Soupie]

Here is a challenging new paper from PhilSci:

How embodied is time?
Rakesh Sengupta
Center for Vision Research,
York University, Toronto, CA

I've read some of it but not all of it yet, will continue with it tonight, and would appreciate it if others here would read and respond to it as well.

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/14747/1/embodiment_time_apa.pdf

I honestly can't make heads or tails of this. Way over my head. I think I agree with the comment in the abstract that our experience of time and time understood in physics are different. It seems like a really good paper though.

 

[Constance]

JOE HIGGINS University of St. Andrews and University of Stirling (SASP) [email protected], [email protected]

EMBODIED MIND – ENSOCIALLED BODY: NAVIGATING BODILY AND SOCIAL PROCESSES WITHIN ACCOUNTS OF HUMAN COGNITIVE AGENCY1

Abstract: There is a prevalent tension within recent cognitive scientific accounts of human selfhood in that either bodily processes or social processes are explanatorily favored at the expense of the other. This tension is elucidated by the body-social problem (Kyselo, 2014) and at its heart is ambiguity regarding the body’s role within embodied cognitive science. Drawing on a range of phenomenological and empirical insights, I propose that we can avoid the problem by embracing the concept of an ensocialled body, in which all organic bodily processes are simultaneously social processes from the perspective of human cognitive agency.


"In broad terms, embodied cognitive science construes mind as a dynamic phenomenon1 that depends non-trivially – sometimes constitutively – on an agent’s physical body and surrounding world. However, a persistent problem for this broadly construed paradigm has been a lack of clarity over the exact role of “body” for embodied cognitive agents. This lack of clarity has recently been highlighted by the body-social problem (Kyselo, 2014), which describes how, on the one hand, we have bodily oriented cognitive science that risks an account of human selfhood2 that is individualistically confined by the physical boundary of the organic body, thereby downplaying the significance of social processes in the individuation of the self. On the other hand, we have socially oriented cognitive science, which risks prioritizing explanatory focus on constituting social relations to the extent that any notion of bodily individuality seems to be “lost” to supra-individual social organizations. Exactly how one can reconcile these dichotomizing perspectives on selfhood will be the target of this paper. My claim, presented in section 3, will be that one route to resolving the body-social problem is to understand human selfhood as relying on the concept of an ensocialled body, in which all Self-constituting3 organic bodily processes are simultaneously social processes. This conception implies that there is no ontological separation between “bodily” and “social” processes as far as human selfhood is concerned. Instead, the body is an inherently social phenomenon, such that both bodily and social processes are indispensable to the constitution of selfhood.4 This claim will be supported by a range of phenomenological and empirical insights. . . ."

www.fupress.net/index.php/pam/article/viewFile/21121/19401

 

[Constance]

Note: Joe Higgins ^^ is the author of the first paper in the current issue of the journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, which I linked next last above.

 

[Constance]

I honestly can't make heads or tails of this. Way over my head. I think I agree with the comment in the abstract that our experience of time and time understood in physics are different. It seems like a really good paper though.

Yes, that is a difficult paper; I'm still slogging through it. I agree with your comment that "our experience of time and time understood in physics are different."

 

[Soupie]

How can we say that there is such a thing as 'color in itself' since the colors that we see in our environing world are continually changing with the changes in available light, as well as in the positions and perspectives we can and do take in moving about things and gestalts in the world as made visible to us? Without perception and awareness in living beings, there would be neither experience of nor concepts of 'color'.

>> How can we say there is such a thing as color in-itself

When we have a waking experience of perceiving color, the assumption is that there is something in our environment that we are perceiving.

The problem with saying that we are directly perceiving color when we have a waking experience of perceiving color, is that there will always be a difference between the perception/perceiver and the thing being perceived. In my way of thinking, therefore, I consider perception to be indirect by default.

However as I think we've covered in the past a la Strawson, because perception can't be any more direct than the above account (X and X1) some people refer to that as direct realism/perception.

>>Without perception and awareness in living beings, there would be neither experience of nor concepts of 'color'.

I agree with this 100%. So the question is, sans living things and their properties of perception and awareness, what is color?

 

[Constance]

>> How can we say there is such a thing as color in-itself

When we have a waking experience of perceiving color, the assumption is that there is something in our environment that we are perceiving.

Yes, but the colors in which it is bathed and which we experience as a series of changing appearances are the product of the phenomenological way in which we perceive things. I think we established before that we and bees, for example, see the colors of things (flowers, etc) differently. This supports what phenomenologists refer to as the 'as-structure' of our perception and likewise that of any other living beings equipped with vision and neuronal support with which to conceive of the appearances of things as disclosing the existence of things.

After long comparisons with others of our species of the ways in which things appear to us {"multiplication of perspectives"}, we recognize that what we see is indeed a 'thing', an object existing in the world we inhabit, and thus available to our consciousness as existing behind "the appearances that tell of it" [line from a Stevens poem].

The problem with saying that we are directly perceiving color when we have a waking experience of perceiving color, is that there will always be a difference between the perception/perceiver and the thing being perceived. In my way of thinking, therefore, I consider perception to be indirect by default.

I don't think perception is indirect, and I think Strawson agrees with this view. Yes there is "a difference between the perception/perceiver and the thing being perceived," as you say, but this does not make us aliens in the world we perceive and inhabit. Rather it founds a new discipline in human thought within which we attempt to describe the existential, radically temporal, nature of our being and what this signifies concerning what we can come to understand about the nature of 'being' and potentially conceive to be the nature of 'Being' as all of what-is in the extended World within which our world/s arise.

Coming back to this phrase of yours: "a difference between the perception/perceiver and the thing being perceived," I'd add that there are also vast differences between 'perceptions' and 'perceivors'. In all cases, organisms that perceive parts and aspects of their environing worlds act out of what is learned through their perceptions [note: not exclusively visual perceptions], and at our stage of evolution attempt to construct finished concepts of the relation between being and Being. Such concepts are inadequate the more they become closed in intellectualized 'systems' based in objective presuppositions and propositions about the nature of 'reality'.

 

[smcder]

Galen Strawson and Andy Clark (who argues for predictive processing) both consider themselves to be direct realists. (I'm not sure what Clark's metaphysical position is but Strawson is a monist.)

Re Putnam, even if we assume monism, I think there are problems with direct realism.

For instance, how would Putnam respond to the picture physics, biology, and neuroscience give us of perception? The photon reflecting from the flower, the photon exciting cone cells in the eye, the cone cell exciting the optic nerve, the optic nerve communicating to the visual cortex, etc.?

Would Putnam say, no, the above process doesn't happen? Where would the color enter the above process on his view?

He mentions a naive naivety. That's my view haha! Because the materialist thinks the above view is reality, and I say it's our perception of reality.

On my view, a photon/EM field may be colored in-itself!

But even if it is, how do our bodies/brains perceive that color in-itself?

We still have X and X1, where X is the object and X1 is the perception/perceiver.

If Putnam has any writing on direct realism, I'd be happy to read.

"If Putnam has any writing on direct realism, I'd be happy to read."

LMGTFY

 

[smcder]

Galen Strawson and Andy Clark (who argues for predictive processing) both consider themselves to be direct realists. (I'm not sure what Clark's metaphysical position is but Strawson is a monist.)

Re Putnam, even if we assume monism, I think there are problems with direct realism.

For instance, how would Putnam respond to the picture physics, biology, and neuroscience give us of perception? The photon reflecting from the flower, the photon exciting cone cells in the eye, the cone cell exciting the optic nerve, the optic nerve communicating to the visual cortex, etc.?

Would Putnam say, no, the above process doesn't happen? Where would the color enter the above process on his view?

He mentions a naive naivety. That's my view haha! Because the materialist thinks the above view is reality, and I say it's our perception of reality.

On my view, a photon/EM field may be colored in-itself!

But even if it is, how do our bodies/brains perceive that color in-itself?

We still have X and X1, where X is the object and X1 is the perception/perceiver.

If Putnam has any writing on direct realism, I'd be happy to read.

30 min

And at 42 min "reliabilism"

 

[smcder]

Galen Strawson and Andy Clark (who argues for predictive processing) both consider themselves to be direct realists. (I'm not sure what Clark's metaphysical position is but Strawson is a monist.)

Re Putnam, even if we assume monism, I think there are problems with direct realism.

For instance, how would Putnam respond to the picture physics, biology, and neuroscience give us of perception? The photon reflecting from the flower, the photon exciting cone cells in the eye, the cone cell exciting the optic nerve, the optic nerve communicating to the visual cortex, etc.?

Would Putnam say, no, the above process doesn't happen? Where would the color enter the above process on his view?

He mentions a naive naivety. That's my view haha! Because the materialist thinks the above view is reality, and I say it's our perception of reality.

On my view, a photon/EM field may be colored in-itself!

But even if it is, how do our bodies/brains perceive that color in-itself?

We still have X and X1, where X is the object and X1 is the perception/perceiver.

If Putnam has any writing on direct realism, I'd be happy to read.

A good primer:

 

[Soupie]

Yes, but the colors in which it is bathed and which we experience as a series of changing appearances are the product of the phenomenological way in which we perceive things. I think we established before that we and bees, for example, see the colors of things (flowers, etc) differently. This supports what phenomenologists refer to as the 'as-structure' of our perception and likewise that of any other living beings equipped with vision and neuronal support with which to conceive of the appearances of things as disclosing the existence of things.

After long comparisons with others of our species of the ways in which things appear to us {"multiplication of perspectives"}, we recognize that what we see is indeed a 'thing', an object existing in the world we inhabit, and thus available to our consciousness as existing behind "the appearances that tell of it" [line from a Stevens poem].



I don't think perception is indirect, and I think Strawson agrees with this view. Yes there is "a difference between the perception/perceiver and the thing being perceived," as you say, but this does not make us aliens in the world we perceive and inhabit. Rather it founds a new discipline in human thought within which we attempt to describe the existential, radically temporal, nature of our being and what this signifies concerning what we can come to understand about the nature of 'being' and potentially conceive to be the nature of 'Being' as all of what-is in the extended World within which our world/s arise.

Coming back to this phrase of yours: "a difference between the perception/perceiver and the thing being perceived," I'd add that there are also vast differences between 'perceptions' and 'perceivors'. In all cases, organisms that perceive parts and aspects of their environing worlds act out of what is learned through their perceptions [note: not exclusively visual perceptions], and at our stage of evolution attempt to construct finished concepts of the relation between being and Being. Such concepts are inadequate the more they become closed in intellectualized 'systems' based in objective presuppositions and propositions about the nature of 'reality'.

I tentatively think that my approach to the experience of perception and thebthing perceived is similar to the one you describe.

My reason for using the 'perception/perceiver' phrase is to indicate an ontological identity between the two. Said differently, a perception is a process occurring within an organism, the perceiver.

 

[Constance]

I tentatively think that my approach to the experience of perception and thebthing perceived is similar to the one you describe.
My reason for using the 'perception/perceiver' phrase is to indicate an ontological identity between the two. Said differently, a perception is a process occurring within an organism, the perceiver.

"My reason for using the 'perception/perceiver' phrase is to indicate an ontological identity between the two. Said differently, a perception is a process occurring within an organism, the perceiver."

But this 'process' couldn't occur in an organism that didn't exist in and as part of an actual world.

 

[Constance]

Another paper I think we need to read from the current issue of Phenomenology and Cognitive Science . . .

Victor Loughlin, "Sensorimotor theory, cognitive access and the ‘absolute’ explanatory gap"

"Sensorimotor Theory (SMT) is the claim that it is our practical know-how of the relations between our environments and us that gives our environmental interactions their experiential qualities. Yet why should such interactions involve or be accompanied by experience? This is the ‘absolute’ gap question. Some proponents of SMT answer this question by arguing that our interactions with an environment involve experience when we cognitively access those interactions. In this paper, I aim to persuade proponents of SMT to accept the following three claims. First, that appeals to cognitive access fail to answer the absolute gap question. Second, that SMT can be read in a way that rejects the gap question. Third, that if proponents of SMT are prepared to read SMT in a way that rejects the absolute gap question, then they can also reject the claim that cognitive access is needed to explain experience.

Keywords -- O’Regan Noë Sensorimotor theory Cognitive access Explanatory gap Phenomenal experience Identity theory

Sensorimotor theory, cognitive access and the ‘absolute’ explanatory gap

 

[Soupie]

Another paper in that current issue of Phenomenology and Cognitive Science linked above . . .


"My reason for using the 'perception/perceiver' phrase is to indicate an ontological identity between the two. Said differently, a perception is a process occurring within an organism, the perceiver."

But this 'process' couldn't occur in an organism that didn't exist in and as part of an actual world.

I agree. (Would you have thought that I wouldn't?)

 

[smcder]

Galen Strawson and Andy Clark (who argues for predictive processing) both consider themselves to be direct realists. (I'm not sure what Clark's metaphysical position is but Strawson is a monist.)

Re Putnam, even if we assume monism, I think there are problems with direct realism.

For instance, how would Putnam respond to the picture physics, biology, and neuroscience give us of perception? The photon reflecting from the flower, the photon exciting cone cells in the eye, the cone cell exciting the optic nerve, the optic nerve communicating to the visual cortex, etc.?

Would Putnam say, no, the above process doesn't happen? Where would the color enter the above process on his view?

He mentions a naive naivety. That's my view haha! Because the materialist thinks the above view is reality, and I say it's our perception of reality.

On my view, a photon/EM field may be colored in-itself!

But even if it is, how do our bodies/brains perceive that color in-itself?

We still have X and X1, where X is the object and X1 is the perception/perceiver.

If Putnam has any writing on direct realism, I'd be happy to read.

"Because the materialist thinks the above view is reality, and I say it's our perception of reality."

Materialist? If you mean DR...then
a direct realist claims:

"that the senses provide us with direct awareness of objects as they really are"

Which is what you seem to be saying too.

 

[smcder]

The second video gives several arguments/ defenses of the color problem @Soupie poses.

 

[Soupie]

"Because the materialist thinks the above view is reality, and I say it's our perception of reality."

Materialist? If you mean DR...then
a direct realist claims:

"that the senses provide us with direct awareness of objects as they really are"

Which is what you seem to be saying too.

>> direct awareness

I would say my view is 'direct' in the sense that there is no intermediary between the object perceived and the perceiver/perception. For instance, I wouldn't say we perceive internal representations or sense data.

>> realist

I would say my view is 'realist' in the sense that the 'objects' we perceive are real, concrete, and perception-independent.

As far as the claim that we perceive reality "pretty much as it is" which is often found with definitions of direct/naive realism—this is where my view would depart from direct realism. I don't see how anyone could support this view.

 

[smcder]

>> direct awareness

I would say my view is 'direct' in the sense that there is no intermediary between the object perceived and the perceiver/perception. For instance, I wouldn't say we perceive internal representations or sense data.

>> realist

I would say my view is 'realist' in the sense that the 'objects' we perceive are real, concrete, and perception-independent.

As far as the claim that we perceive reality "pretty much as it is" which is often found with definitions of direct/naive realism—this is where my view would depart from direct realism. I don't see how anyone could support this view.

First you said "materialist" this time you say "direct awareness" ... do you mean "direct realism"?