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Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 11
- Thread starter Gene Steinberg
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Soupie
Paranormal Adept
Thanks for this. However, before I dig in, I note that Maurice Merleau-Ponty is mentioned at the beginning of the second paragraph. I have read some of MPs work and read @Constance 's references to him over the years. I don't understand how MP approach to conscious perception is non-representational. I'm begging you, @smcder, seriously, can you explain? I am completely clueless.
Note: I do not mean representation in the computational sense nor the miniature, internal, replica model sense. I mean it in the following sense:
http://www.jp.philo.at/texte/LimbeckC1.pdf
"It is a widely held view that perception is a kind of representation of external objects, events and their properties. In perception we gain access to features of our environment. Perception provides us with information about the environment and it guides successfully our interaction with external objects. Perceptual states are therefore about something and have a representational (or intentional) content. Intentionalism, the view that perception is a representational state, is shared by many philosophers, although not uncontroversial, as shows the growing debate about relationalism. ..."
In what way does MP's approach to conscious perception reject the previous? I'm sincerely clueless.
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
Havent been able to get to the gist of Thau (band name?).
Consciousness and Cognition by Michael Thau, 2002 | Online Research Library: Questia
"Our thinking about consciousness and cognition is dominated by a certain very natural conception. This conception dictates what we take the fundamental questions about consciousness and cognition to be as well as the form that their answers must take. In this book, Michael Thau shows that, despite its naturalness, this conception begins with and depends upon a few fundamental errors. Exorcising these errors requires that we completely reconceive the nature of both consciousness and cognition as well as the fundamental problems each poses. Thau proceeds by discussing three famous and important philosophical puzzles - Spectrum Inversion, Frege's Puzzle, and Black-and-White Mary - each of which concerns some aspect of either consciousness or cognition. It has gone unnoticed that at a certain important level of generality, each of these puzzles presents the very same problem and, in bringing out this common problem, the errors in our natural conception of consciousness and cognition are also brought out. Thau's book will appeal to the casual reader interested in the proper solution of these puzzles and the nature of consciousness and cognition. The discussion of Frege's puzzle also contains important insights about the nature of linguistic communication and, hence, anyone interested in the fundamental questions in philosophy of language will also want to read the book."
Review on JSTOR
Consciousness and Cognition by Michael Thau, 2002 | Online Research Library: Questia
"Our thinking about consciousness and cognition is dominated by a certain very natural conception. This conception dictates what we take the fundamental questions about consciousness and cognition to be as well as the form that their answers must take. In this book, Michael Thau shows that, despite its naturalness, this conception begins with and depends upon a few fundamental errors. Exorcising these errors requires that we completely reconceive the nature of both consciousness and cognition as well as the fundamental problems each poses. Thau proceeds by discussing three famous and important philosophical puzzles - Spectrum Inversion, Frege's Puzzle, and Black-and-White Mary - each of which concerns some aspect of either consciousness or cognition. It has gone unnoticed that at a certain important level of generality, each of these puzzles presents the very same problem and, in bringing out this common problem, the errors in our natural conception of consciousness and cognition are also brought out. Thau's book will appeal to the casual reader interested in the proper solution of these puzzles and the nature of consciousness and cognition. The discussion of Frege's puzzle also contains important insights about the nature of linguistic communication and, hence, anyone interested in the fundamental questions in philosophy of language will also want to read the book."
Review on JSTOR
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~dbraun2/Research/thau.pdf
"Michael Thau s book challenges much of current orthodox theory about consciousness and cognition. It is an enormously stimulating tour de force. I highly recommend it. I find it useful to think of Thau s book as an extended defense of a single argument that appears in the final chapter (p. 193). This argument is a variation on Frank Jackson s Mary argument. ..."
"Michael Thau s book challenges much of current orthodox theory about consciousness and cognition. It is an enormously stimulating tour de force. I highly recommend it. I find it useful to think of Thau s book as an extended defense of a single argument that appears in the final chapter (p. 193). This argument is a variation on Frank Jackson s Mary argument. ..."
smcder
Paranormal Adept
Section 4.2 defines mental representation for contrast with embodied cognition:
"At the heart of the traditional scientific understanding of cognition lies a particular conception of mental representation (Fodor and Pylyshyn 1988; Newell and Simon 1972)."ff
And the opening paragraphs tie in MP.
Randall
J. Randall Murphy
Yes, OOBE's are an interesting phenomena IMO too. To consider the problem objectively we need to assess our assumptions about what we mean by "seeing". Visual perception is a mental phenomenon that can be instantiated by means other than ocular stimuli, e.g. dream states and visualization. Therefore if ocular stimuli could not have been possible, the logical choice is that other presumably subconscious stimuli in this case caused the brain to create the experience.
What stimuli this could have be has already been speculated on and involves subconscious auditory and tactile cues being translated to visual ones. But how reasonable a hypothesis is this? Given that the visual cortex processes auditory signals too ( source ), and that auditory signals are processed while we're unconscious ( source ). It's not much of a stretch from there to see how a human mind could create imagery from sounds heard in an OR, including conversation and the sounds of instruments and cabinets being opened and closed ( including the one the patient's dentures went into ).
Remember too, that this case doesn't involve a patient who was sedated, but one that they were trying to revive. Once circulation began and things started functioning, there may have been a more extended period of quasi-conscious/lucid dream-like visions that translated to the reported experience. Given the amazing power of the human brain, this seems like a perfectly reasonable explanation. It may or may not be the right one, but at least it seems more plausible than invoking some sort of magical or "spiritual" explanation.
"Remember too, that this case doesn't involve a patient who was sedated, but one that they were trying to revive. Once circulation began and things started functioning, there may have been a more extended period of quasi-conscious/lucid dream-like visions that translated to the reported experience. Given the amazing power of the human brain, this seems like a perfectly reasonable explanation. It may or may not be the right one, but at least it seems more plausible than invoking some sort of magical or "spiritual" explanation."
If your 'may be that'/'might be that' hypotheses are sound, why did the man in this case recognize in the hospital days later the male nurse who had removed his dentures and placed them on a crash cart while sitting on him massaging his heart for a lengthy and painful period of time during which he was by all signs and accounts considered to be 'dead', i.e., beyond possibility of resuscitation?
I'm surprised that, if you read the whole article at the source you linked, you remain skeptical that anything unusual/para-normal/supra-what-we-believe-in-our-time-to-constitute-the-sum-total-of 'reality' {ETA: ... happened here and in other cases of naturally occurring spontaneous OOBEs* [not the kind artificially engineered in neuroscientist's labs].} I ask and hope that everyone aboard our little ship here will read that article in its entirety and comment on the issues it raises concerning the nature of human consciousness. The link to that article again:
https://netwerknde.nl/wp-content/uploads/jndsdentureman.pdf
*note: I experienced a spontaneous OOBE when I was 21 and remember every moment of it. It's the kind of thing that can't be understood by one who hasn't experienced it.
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The article linked above by Steve provides an excellent reading list for those of us interested in exploring the nature of consciousness and mind beyond reductive representationalist approaches formerly characteristic of 'neuroscience'. Many thanks for this link, Steve.
Here is a link to one of the key papers linked in that article:
https://christianlotz.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/lotz-cognitivism-and-practical-intentionality.pdf
Extract: ". . . I think that Dreyfus (as do most of the interpreters of Husserl’s phenomenology) misunderstands the Husserlian conception of practical intentionality. Therefore, in this paper I will examine Dreyfus’s well-known interpretation, first by offering a Husserlian critique of Dreyfus’s objections to Husserl and, second, by outlining Husserl’s account of practical intentionality and the practical lived Body. Curiously, as far as I know, no commentator, with the exception of Dagfi nn Føllesdal, has dealt with these topics in Husserl’s phenomenology. This consideration is timely,2 especially since Føllesdal did not fully develop an alternative, but simply outlined some basic ideas.3
Nevertheless, there have been three main attempts to criticize Dreyfus’s approach to Heidegger,4 his account of Husserl’s phenomenology,5 and his interpretation of intentionality as representational.6 After reviewing these approaches, I will show concretely that Husserl’s phenomenology must be understood as a much more complex project than its opponents admit. For this reason, I shall argue that Dreyfus’s critique of Husserl should be taken as a kind of “shadow-boxing,” since, contra Dreyfus, Husserl’s phenomenology should be conceived neither as representationalist nor as cognitivist. The task of offering a phenomenology of background awareness (which plays a central role in Searle’s account of intentionality as well) seems to be central if we are to be successful in tying these objections together. In more detail, I will deal with the following points:
(1) Dreyfus claims that Husserl’s core thoughts should be taken to be a variant of modern cognitivism, for, as he maintains, Husserl’s phenomenology is based on a disembodied, mental subject, which is disconnected from non-intentional content. It can easily be shown that this objection to Husserl’s phenomenology is a misconstrual of some of Husserl’s central thoughts as presented in his Ideas I, Ideas II and Analysis of Passive Synthesis. In contradistinction, Husserl claims that every consciousness has two parts: one that is explicitly intentional, while the other is a “potential” form of explicit content. The latter form of consciousness is practical, embodied, and non-representional.
(2) Dreyfus maintains first that Husserl’s phenomenology is unable to deal with the everyday dimension of human actions, habits, social customs, and body schemas because of its assumption of the priority of representational states. A representational account of human action, according to Dreyfus, is unable to render actions and behaviors intelligible that are not ruled by representations, but rather, are habitualized in a non-representational way. Accordingly, mentalism, according to Dreyfus, cannot explain practical aspects of our experience and the non-representational “background” consciousness, which is prior to mental representations. As I will show, against Dreyfus, Husserl has a rather sophisticated theory and phenomenology of background consciousness and intentionality, which leads Husserl to claim that practical intentionality is prior to representational content. In order to show evidence for this claim, I will first analyze Husserl’s concept of the ego (which Dreyfus misunderstands), on the basis of which I will maintain that the embodied and practical intentionality, for Husserl, has priority over any explicit representational and mental content.
I shall sketch the critique and the approach of Dreyfus in three steps. First, I shall deal with his objections against Husserl’s supposed cognitivism, second, I will examine his supposed representationalism, and, third, I shall briefly elucidate the central role of that what [which] I call the “practical lived Body” has in Husserl’s theory. I will, finally, conclude that Dreyfus’s objections paint a distorted and wrongheaded picture of Husserl’s phenomenology.7
DREYFUS’S FIRST OBJECTION: COGNITIVISM
One of the most prevalent objections that Dreyfus’s interpretation raises against Husserl is that his phenomenology is supposed to be understood as a form of “cognitivism.”8 Dreyfus defines this term as a theory that presupposes that everyday practice and the habitualization of skills, as well as bodily and social practices, are caused by representional (mental) elements. . . ."
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Randall
J. Randall Murphy
I remain skeptical to a certain degree about most things, including my own experiences, but that doesn't mean I don't believe that the phenomena or the experiences aren't genuine. It's more a case of trying to ascertain what explanation for them is the most reasonable. The particular case we're covering is a very interesting one to dig into and I certainly don't have all the answers.
Maybe the recognition was triggered by auditory memories gained subconsciously. Maybe the patient was visited more than once by the same nurse as a normal part of follow-up, and together with other info obtained after-the-fact added up to recognition. I don't know. But going back to the original point, this case comes from a person with a functioning brain, and we need to be careful about making assumptions about what state a patient is really in when we say "dead". My former life-partner's sister was pronounced dead and she woke up in the morgue. I've heard more than one similar story.
At any rate. I've had a number of paranormal experiences, but never had an OOBE. I think that would be really cool. I'd like to hear more about yours. One story I like to relate was one I heard on a radio show once. The person being interviewed said she had experienced an OOBE. She said she floated up out of her campus dormitory and could see the old European architecture of the roof along with details such as windows and roof tiles and such. She contacted the caretaker soon afterwards to gain roof access so she could see if it was really the way she had experienced it. She said it was completely different than she had "seen" it in her OOBE.
It seems her mind extrapolated what it should be like based on cues from inside the building and other experiences associated with old architecture and spontaneously created a realistic waking dream or hallucination. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find that particular interview again. She said she went on to study paranormal phenomena more closely as part of one of the few institutions that would allow that sort of thing. It was someplace in Europe. I have since written to a couple of schools over there in an effort to find the person, but haven't been successful, but if I ever run across it again I'll post it up.
What any inquirer is able to 'ascertain' [wrong word] as the "most reasonable" explanation for anomalous experiences -- his/her own and the recorded experiences of others -- will always depend on the breadth and depth of the individual's reading and research in the relevant disciplines focused on anomalous experiences. It takes years to read and absorb the data recorded and analyzed in the the disciplines of parapsychology, psychical research, NDE and OOBE research, reincarnation research, past-life regression research, and ancient accounts and descriptions that remain available to us today.
Right. This powerful case we're discussing is just one of many thousands of OOBE and NDE experiences supported by veridical evidence, and digging down into its complexities in the light of the mass of similar experiences requires much more than anecdotal reductions of it to be found in the popular press and on the internet.
How do memories of 'sounds heard' translate into veridically accurate 'visual memories' of persons, things, and events encountered outside of the capacities of vision?
Read all that the male nurse who worked at length on the attempt to restart the patient's heart reports, with other medical personnel present, about the events in the ER. What "other info obtained after-the-fact added up to recognition" of the nurse a week or more afterward? 'Maybe this', 'maybe that' -- such speculations and would-be conclusions are useless unless you or anyone else can identify precisely how/the means by which the 'brain' produces visual information in the absence of waking consciousness and the capability of actual 'vision'.
Not proved and inconsistent with the reports of any and all of the emergency medical personnel involved in the resuscitation of this man's heart and minimal brain function, at which point the man was moved to Intensive Care and required days to regain operative brain function. Again, read the source you linked.
I've provided an account of my OOBE at least once in this thread, quite a while ago. I'll try to get the search engine to cough up a link. I also described it in detail several years ago at a website where descriptions of individuals' OOBEs are gathered by parapsychological researchers. If I can find that site again and/or my own report I'll post it here.
You should compare that account with the case reported by _______ of a woman admitted to a hospital in a state of unconsciousness following a major heart attack. In the days following this woman's resuscitation she wanted to talk with ________ about her memories of her first hours in the hospital, and particularly about her having left the building and viewing from an outside position a single tennis shoe [I think a red one] sitting on the ledge beneath a window higher up in the building than the room in which she was recovering (likely also that the ER was on the ground level). ________ was so impressed by what the woman told her that she began a search for this shoe by looking through the windows on numerous higher floors of the hospital, and she found it on one such ledge exactly as the woman had described it. Multiply such veridical cases by all the OOBE and NDE accounts we now have access to and you will have to recognize the weight and significance of these experiences and the inability of neuroscience to explain them. {I will search for links to this case and the name of the hospital employee who reported it.}
Try the University of Edinburg, where parapsychological research has long been carried out. Meanwhile, you would inspire more confidence in your opinions ['maybe this', 'maybe that', 'It seems her mind extrapolated...'] if, instead of searching for evidence against the veridicality of OOBE and NDE reports to support your own confirmation bias concerning this subject matter, you would undertake a serious and detailed investigation of the vast databases by now accumulated by researchers of these phenomena.
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ABOUT THE CONTINUITY OF OUR CONSCIOUSNESS Pim van Lommel
In: Brain Death and Disorders of Consciousness. Machado, C. and Shewmon, D.A., Eds. New York, Boston, Dordrecht, London, Moscow: Kluwer Academic/ Plenum Publishers, Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology Adv Exp Med Biol. 2004; 550: 115-132.
Dr. Pim van Lommel, M.D.: Continuity of Consciousness - Results from #1
Home - Pim van Lommel
In: Brain Death and Disorders of Consciousness. Machado, C. and Shewmon, D.A., Eds. New York, Boston, Dordrecht, London, Moscow: Kluwer Academic/ Plenum Publishers, Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology Adv Exp Med Biol. 2004; 550: 115-132.
Dr. Pim van Lommel, M.D.: Continuity of Consciousness - Results from #1
Home - Pim van Lommel
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Randall
J. Randall Murphy
You were missing the context there. I wasn't talking about the state of the patient's brain at the time the experience allegedly happened.
I was saying all stories ( the accounts of the experience ) come from patients well after the fact when there's no doubt they have a functioning brain. So there's always been time for the patient's brain to subconsciously put all the pieces together in a way that gives the impression that they had such an experience. But the fact remains that these impressions are always memories, which means that even if the details are accurate, there's no way to determine that the event itself actually happened. It's simply an assumption based on association, and that's a rather large leap to make, especially when there have been zero positive results from verifiable objective studies like the AWARE study.
Your argument rests on assumptions and speculations concerning the black box of consciousness and mind in humans. It appears to me that you will never begin to understand the multiply-leveled and integrated complexity of consciousness and mind if you continue to approach it from the basis of 'objectivity', of what can be objectively and mechanically measured in human experience. You cling to objectivist, materialist, presuppositions and presumptions as if your life depended on them.
Black box - Wikipedia
Randall
J. Randall Murphy
My reasoning is based on evidence, not assumptions. By evidence I mean all examples of OOBEs are stories from people with functioning brains. Whether or not the brain is a "black box" is irrelevant to that. It could just as easily be a white box. Either way the evidence is the same. However there is zero evidence for the converse situation. Show me an example of a single person ( any person ) without a functioning brain who is telling a story ( any story ).
Reasoning is based in assumptions -- i.e., consensually accepted interpretations of what is real or true, which change over time and through temporal experience and temporally developed knowledge about ourselves and the world.
The brain facilitates thinking and the expression of thoughts; it does not generate thinking from within itself. Thinking arises from prereflective consciousness and is developed by reflective consciousness. Consciousness is the mystery.
Randall
J. Randall Murphy
None of that changes the evidence that only those with normally functioning brains appear to have consciousness, prereflective or otherwise. That's not an assumption. It's an observation with literally billions of living examples and no verifiable exceptions backed by neuroscience that has consistently shown that changing the brain changes thinking. Therefore the relative weight of the position that the brain doesn't do any thinking is so small as to be inconsequential.
I am willing to concede however, that even if we accept that the brain along with all its attendant physical support systems is what gives rise to consciousness, that still doesn't fully explain exactly how consciousness comes into being. But then again, that's like looking for the answer to the problem of existence itself. So at some point the problem becomes purely academic. I don't think we're all the way to that point yet. Just 99.99% the way there, and that last little bit is proving to be very stubborn indeed. Perhaps to your delight it will all collapse back on itself and we'll have to start over.
smcder
Paranormal Adept
Another way to look at it is as the claim that if a brain is currently functioning, it has always been functioning. That claim doesn't seem to allow the possibility of an example of a person without a functioning brain telling a story.
A is clinically dead or brain dead or the brain is not functioning.
A is brought back to life, consiousness and tells a tale.
Therefore, A was not clinically dead. Under this assumption, it can always be claimed that there were levels of brain activity at all times for A, they were simply undetectable.
The same would go for any claim of non physicalist or materialist phenomena like psi or reincarnation.
Well, there must be some physical explanation...either fraud or error in methodology, perhaps some kind of signal between brains that we can't detect.
Is that correct ... or can someone provide a counter-example? Anyone....anyone...Buehler? Buehler?
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