Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 11

[Constance]

It seems like there are some contradictions there. How is one supposed to experience something that is by definition not consciously perceived? On the other hand if it is consciously perceived, how can it be considered to be part of the unconscious? Freud used the term subconscious, which I think is much better. One might also point out that if the process you're talking about is a normal part of human existence, then by simple virtue of our existence, we all ( including me ) must experience exactly what you describe as a normal part of daily life.

Freud was important because he discovered and disclosed the workings of subconscious feelings, ideations, and motivations in his psychiatric practice, but his insight was restricted to analysis of human sexuality. Jung took that recognition far deeper, tapping into archetypal memories carried in the subconscious mind and influencing the emotions, ideas, and behaviors of his patients in the early 20th century. Freud stated later in his own life that he wished that he had followed the path taken by Jung.

 

[Randall]

Is that self-assessment, or something other people tell you?

Let's not change the subject. What is it about your post that the content didn't mean to literally convey that you think I missed?

 

[Randall]

Freud was important because he discovered and disclosed the workings of subconscious feelings, ideations, and motivations in his psychiatric practice, but his insight was restricted to analysis of human sexuality. Jung took that recognition far deeper, tapping into archetypal memories carried in the subconscious mind and influencing the emotions, ideas, and behaviors of his patients in the early 20th century. Freud stated later in his own life that he wished that he had followed the path taken by Jung.

Yes, it's too bad there was that all too prevalent air of believing it had to be this way or that rather than a combination of the best of both. But we're not bound by those same allegiances. So IMO there's no harm in saying that the subconscious is where Jung's archetypes dwell ( assuming there are such things ). These days we might be tempted to call the same sort of things genetic memory. Whatever the case, it doesn't change the circumstance that we're all operating on similar wetware and that the major differences in worldviews stem from our socialization and social conditioning ( our programming ).

 

[smcder]

Let's not change the subject. What is it about your post that the content didn't mean to literally convey that you think I missed?

I haven't changed the subject - there are a number of questions I've asked that you've not answered, if you want to be picky ... besides, my question is relevant - it's a lot of things I've noticed over a long period of time and I'm curious what kind of feedback you get. It's probably not worth the effort as I don't expect the pattern of our interaction to change nor to be particularly productive, so I'm fine to leave it where it is.

 

[Constance]

Curious. I'm usually pretty good at picking up on context and reading between the lines, so what is it you're getting at there that is causing the big sigh?

You might think that you 'pick up on the context' of what some of us explore and write about in this thread but I think that you do not yet comprehend the contexts from which our thinking proceeds. Nor is it possible to read the significance of what we pursue "between the lines" of what we write. If you're really interested in the multiple bases of our approaches, you will have to spend considerable time reading the research we've cited and our earlier discussions here of Jung, depth psychology, psychical research, psi, mediumship, phenomenological philosophy, Buddist and other Eastern philosophies, and anomalous experiences in NDEs, OOBEs, case studies supporting reincarnation, and past-life regressions. All of the above subjects have been extensively explored by now and together they yield information about human consciousness that cannot be understood within the strictly dualistic conceptions you hold concerning 'objectivity' and 'subjectivity'.

My point is that what you take us to be exploring remains couched in/limited by your own preliminary beliefs -- the presuppositions that prevent your following the directions some of us have been pursuing in consciousness studies.

 

[Randall]

You might think that you 'pick up on the context' of what some of us explore and write about in this thread but I think that you do not yet comprehend the contexts from which our thinking proceeds.

That's why I asked for clarification.

Nor is it possible to read the significance of what we pursue "between the lines" of what we write.

That's why I asked for clarification.

If you're really interested in the multiple bases of our approaches, you will have to spend considerable time reading the research we've cited and our earlier discussions here of Jung, depth psychology, psychical research, psi, mediumship, phenomenological philosophy, Buddist and other Eastern philosophies, and anomalous experiences in NDEs, OOBEs, case studies supporting reincarnation, and past-life regressions. All of the above subjects have been extensively explored by now and together they yield information about human consciousness that cannot be understood within the strictly dualistic conceptions you hold concerning 'objectivity' and 'subjectivity'.

One could read everything and still not be sure about what someone means when they make an ambiguous statement. Therefore although your opinion is generically valid, it isn't applicable to the specific example in question.

My point is that what you take us to be exploring remains couched in/limited by your own preliminary beliefs -- the presuppositions that prevent your following the directions some of us have been pursuing in consciousness studies.

I don't respond based on what I "take you to be exploring". I respond based on the content of the text displayed on the screen. Therefore what you think that text means and what significance it is to you might be different than what other people ( including me ) think it means, and therefore it will have different significance for others than for you. That doesn't necessarily make anyone is right or wrong, but it can lead to miscommunication and questionable assumptions, e.g. that someone else is "limited" because they have a different perspective. We need to be careful about those sorts of value judgements.

 

[Constance]

Yes, it's too bad there was that all too prevalent air of believing it had to be this way or that rather than a combination of the best of both. But we're not bound by those same allegiances. So IMO there's no harm in saying that the subconscious is where Jung's archetypes dwell ( assuming there are such things ). These days we might be tempted to call the same sort of things genetic memory. Whatever the case, it doesn't change the circumstance that we're all operating on similar wetware and that the major differences in worldviews stem from our socialization and social conditioning ( our programming ).

So if it can't be proved that "we are our neurons", and/or cogs inside a totalized and totalizing informational mechanism/'matrix', we should look for understanding of what we feel and think in our genes or in 'social conditioning' aka 'programming'?

Btw, the concept of 'social constructivism' that you grasp-at in the conclusion of your above paragraph has run its course by now as recognized some years ago by its major theoretical proponents.

 

[Constance]

That's why I asked for clarification.

That's why I asked for clarification.

One could read everything and still not be sure about what someone means when they make an ambiguous statement. Therefore although your opinion is generically valid, it isn't applicable to the specific example in question.

I don't respond based on what I "take you to be exploring". I respond based on the content of the text displayed on the screen. Therefore what you think that text means and what significance it is to you might be different than what other people ( including me ) think it means, and therefore it will have different significance for others than for you. That doesn't necessarily make anyone is right or wrong, but it can lead to miscommunication and questionable assumptions, e.g. that someone else is "limited" because they have a different perspective. We need to be careful about those sorts of value judgements.

I don't think that *you* are 'limited'. I think that your curiosity is limited since you have refused for three years now to do the work necessary, to take the time required, to read carefully and at length the various sources we have recommended. It's of course your choice to do as you like with those references. But it's unseemly, I think, to get all bent out of shape if I or someone else points out that your research in the subject matters we pursue has been limited. And to suggest that there is more you can find out about the nature of consciousness by examining those sources.

 

[smcder]

That's why I asked for clarification.

That's why I asked for clarification.

One could read everything and still not be sure about what someone means when they make an ambiguous statement. Therefore although your opinion is generically valid, it isn't applicable to the specific example in question.

I don't respond based on what I "take you to be exploring". I respond based on the content of the text displayed on the screen. Therefore what you think that text means and what significance it is to you might be different than what other people ( including me ) think it means, and therefore it will have different significance for others than for you. That doesn't necessarily make anyone is right or wrong, but it can lead to miscommunication and questionable assumptions, e.g. that someone else is "limited" because they have a different perspective. We need to be careful about those sorts of value judgements.

I don't respond based on what I "take you to be exploring". I respond based on the content of the text displayed on the screen.

That's a good way to put it - you say you've read this thread from the beginning, but your responses read as if you are starting over every time, there doesn't seem to be an accumulated knowledge of the thread or the posters ... so the responses seem generic and subject to what I think of as a kind of "logic chopping" - and if you are literally parsing the text and only the text in each present message, that would help explain it - so there is no flow to it, and that's why it feels oddly stilted and like each exchange is the first!

 

[Randall]

So if it can't be proved that "we are our neurons", and/or cogs inside a totalized and totalizing informational mechanism/'matrix', we should look for understanding of what we feel and think in our genes or in 'social conditioning' aka 'programming'?

I'm not sure how your filters took what I said and turned it into the above. Perhaps exploring that would help illuminate something. Perhaps the most significant word there is what you meant to convey by the word "understanding". My post was more of an observation of the situation, that situation being that most humans are made pretty much the same way and that there are elements inherent in that design that manifest as things that might be considered as archetypes, including certain instincts, e.g. behavior based on inherent pattern recognition.

Btw, the concept of 'social constructivism' that you grasp at last in the above paragraph has run its course by now as recognized some years ago by its major theoretical proponents.

Hmm. A brief search indicates that the topic of social constructivism is very much alive and well and a matter of interest and debate: Social constructivism: the basics | In Due Course Can you post a link to where the "major proponents" have stated they believe it's "run its course"? I'd probably find that quite interesting. Also to be clear, although Social constructivism appears to be related to socialization and social conditioning, I didn't use the phrase "social constructivism". At any rate perhaps we're straying off the course you were wanting to explore. So maybe this is all something for another time.

 

[Constance]

A few last bites of food for thought regarding the relationship between consciousness and the brain -- one is contained in the recent scientific studies demonstrating the production of physical changes in structure of the brain attending the deep meditation techniques achieved by skilled practitioners. A second is the demonstration of changes in brain waves and states of mind produced by music employing binaural beats (and I guess also in nonmusical transmissions of binaural beats). See this page regarding the increasing employment of binaural beats in musical performances of new music and the ways in which these binaural devices work:

Binaural Beats – The Beauty of Binaural Entrainment and Binaural Recordings

Here is an example of a performance that I think employs binaural beats to produce brain states in which a state of reverie is produced. That's been my experience listening to this music with eyes closed; it has deftly encouraged me to block all ordinary occurrent thoughts and to follow my consciousness back to significant memories of my daughter at a point in her life when she enjoyed being a member of a synchronized swimming team. I'm also able in this reverie to place myself in the pool water with Annie and her teammates, observing all the difficult positions and motions with which they move together beneath the surface of the water in executing their performances (always set to music).

I wish I knew a way to place this recording in a loop so I could remain in this state without having to repeat the video every three minutes or so. The other night I listened to it eight times in a row because I did not want to relinquish this state. Anyone know how to do this -- produce a looped version of this recording?

 

[Randall]

I don't respond based on what I "take you to be exploring". I respond based on the content of the text displayed on the screen.

That's a good way to put it - you say you've read this thread from the beginning, but your responses read as if you are starting over every time, there doesn't seem to be an accumulated knowledge of the thread or the posters ... so the responses seem generic and subject to what I think of as a kind of "logic chopping" - and if you are literally parsing the text and only the text in each present message, that would help explain it - so there is no flow to it, and that's why it feels oddly stilted and like each exchange is the first!

That's because the content of the thread hasn't provided sufficient reason for me to change the views that were developed early in the thread. BTW I'm not the only one who has restated their position here more than once. We're all up against the same wall, just looking at it from different angles. Also, I still don't see an explanation for what you think I missed because I took what you said literally. If you think it was something important, then getting that figured out might help. But I don't want to wast time on it if it was just an offhanded expression of frustration. If that's the case, we can move on. It's fine.

 

[Constance]

That's because the content of the thread hasn't provided sufficient reason for me to change the views that were developed early in the thread. BTW I'm not the only one who has restated their position here more than once. We're all up against the same wall, just looking at it from different angles. Also, I still don't see an explanation for what you think I missed because I took what you said literally. If you think it was something important, then getting that figured out might help. But I don't want to wast time on it if it was just an offhanded expression of frustration. If that's the case, we can move on. It's fine.

Like one of the scientists who refused to look through Galileo's telescope. Their modern progeny are the scientists who refuse to read psychical, parapsychological, and phenomenological research.

 

[Constance]

I'm not sure how your filters took what I said and turned it into the above. Perhaps exploring that would help illuminate something. Perhaps the most significant word there is what you meant to convey by the word "understanding". My post was more of an observation of the situation, that situation being that most humans are made pretty much the same way and that there are elements inherent in that design that manifest as things that might be considered as archetypes, including certain instincts, e.g. behavior based on inherent pattern recognition.

Hmm. A brief search indicates that the topic of social constructivism is very much alive and well and a matter of interest and debate: Social constructivism: the basics | In Due Course Can you post a link to where the "major proponents" have stated they believe it's "run its course"? I'd probably find that quite interesting. Also to be clear, although Social constructivism appears to be related to socialization and social conditioning, I didn't use the phrase "social constructivism". At any rate perhaps we're straying off the course you were wanting to explore. So maybe this is all something for another time.

Lots of lower echelon academics tend to stick to the theoretical structures they've worked hard to learn and thus repeatedly consume and excrete them like food past its sell-by date. Here's a paper by the French sociologist Bruno Latour, the original theorist of 'social constructivism', that you might read. Maybe it would be productive for all of us to read it and discuss it here.

"The promises of constructivism"
Bruno Latour
Paper prepared for a chapter in Don Idhe (editor), Chasing Technology : Matrix of Materiality, Indiana Series for the Philosophy of Science, Indiana University Press, pp. 27-46 (2003)

http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/87-CONSTRUCTIVISM-GB.pdf

 

[Randall]

Lots of lower echelon academics tend to stick to the theoretical structures they've worked hard to learn and thus repeatedly consume and excrete them like food past its sell-by date. Here's a paper by the French sociologist Bruno Latour, the original theorist of 'social constructivism', that you might read. Maybe it would be productive for all of us to read it and discuss it here.

"The promises of constructivism"
Bruno Latour
Paper prepared for a chapter in Don Idhe (editor), Chasing Technology : Matrix of Materiality, Indiana Series for the Philosophy of Science, Indiana University Press, pp. 27-46 (2003)

http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/87-CONSTRUCTIVISM-GB.pdf

Thanks for posting up the info. I'll have a closer look this evening.

 

[Randall]

Like one of the scientists who refused to look through Galileo's telescope. Their modern progeny are the scientists who refuse to read psychical, parapsychological, and phenomenological research.

The analogy is somewhat ironic because Galileo was questioning the teachings of superstition, myth, and religion, much of which has translated itself into a belief in the "paranormal". If Galileo were alive today he'd probably be a keynote speaker at this year's CSICon, and if it were only as easy as looking through a telescope, there'd be a lot less debate about whether or not the paranormal deserves serious scientific attention. Nevertheless your point is well taken. Friedman has more than one story about skeptics who have never studied the phenomenon. There's also more than one story of a skeptic turned believer after having some sort of personal experience.

 

[Constance]

New at academia.edu, this interesting paper, particularly relevant here currently. . . .

Peter Sjostedt-H, John Smythies' Theories of Mind, Matter, and N-Dimensional Space: Conspectus of part of his Analysis of Perception (1956)

John R. Smythies' Theories of Mind, Matter, and N-Dimensional Space

 

[Constance]

The analogy is somewhat ironic because Galileo was questioning the teachings of superstition, myth, and religion, much of which has translated itself into a belief in the "paranormal".

We have to love irony here. For example, your chronic conflating of 'superstition, myth, religion, and the paranormal' despite all distinctions to the contrary carried in this thead over the last three years.

 

[Randall]

We have to love irony here. For example, your chronic conflating of 'superstition, myth, religion, and the paranormal' despite all distinctions to the contrary carried in this thead over the last three years.

Where conflation works there's no problem with it, and in the case of myth, religion, and superstition, the paranormal elements are so obvious, that on a forum dedicated to paranormal phenomena, it's difficult not to chronically conflate them. Whatever "distinctions" you speak of to the contrary pale in comparison and appear to be either academic or the result of bias and socio-political preferences around labeling. Maybe try this:

• Paranormal - New World Encyclopedia
• Blood, Money, the Paranormal

 

[smcder]

That's because the content of the thread hasn't provided sufficient reason for me to change the views that were developed early in the thread. BTW I'm not the only one who has restated their position here more than once. We're all up against the same wall, just looking at it from different angles. Also, I still don't see an explanation for what you think I missed because I took what you said literally. If you think it was something important, then getting that figured out might help. But I don't want to wast time on it if it was just an offhanded expression of frustration. If that's the case, we can move on. It's fine.

And you still haven't answered the question (or questions) I asked above.