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Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 11
- Thread starter Gene Steinberg
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Randall
J. Randall Murphy
I'm not sure that there is anything that would qualify as a theory, but there is the belief by some that everything is a product of consciousness which makes consciousness primordial rather than emergent, and it makes the world we think of as material as emergent instead. This is basically a form of subjective idealism, which personally I have a very difficult time with because it makes no logical sense to me given the evidence at hand.
smcder
Paranormal Adept
...emergent ... (fill in blank)? Looks like you might have left a word out or that there's more to your question?
Pharoah
Paranormal Adept
whoops... emergence
@USI Calgary ok... not theory but position or stance. Yea... so you are agreeing with me? All positions cannot kick the emergence can down the line indefinitely.
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
I would say theories that involve some form of dualism would avoid emergence.
But regarding emergence itself. Emergence in itself isn't a problem per se. When it comes to the MBP, it's problematic to explain how phenomenal consciousness might weakly emerge from non-phenomenal physical processes.
However, as with your relational ontology, to suggest that phenomenal consciousness might emerge from a non-physical background is to make a different kind of argument.
Pharoah
Paranormal Adept
I don't see how dualism avoids emergence: Presumably, a certain physical body, at some designated point, gets a mind... otherwise it is in panpsychist territory (which, anyway, also has to address emergence to be credible)
If it's a problem, be it weak or strong, it is a problem. You can't just relegate it by saying its a "weak" problem... that's just kicking the can.
smcder
Paranormal Adept
What I understand @Soupie to be saying is that it is difficult to explain consciousness on the same terms as other "weakly" emergent phenomena, such as ant colonies or birds flocking - Chalmers says consciousness is a case of "strong emergence" but that's problematic to me, because then we have to take the cartoon literally
"... and then a miracle occurs" ...
and there is no following the process all the way through, stepbystepwise (sic) ... when @Soupie asks for a physical theory of mind, I take him to want a step by step explanation of how we get to consciousness from non/un conscious matter, the way we can do a step by step on other physical theories...
single ants, -> simple behaviors, pheromones ... ... ... = ant colony
single bird, simple rules of flight -
Boids - Wikipedia
So what we have for consciousness is ...
single neuron, group of neurons, various configurations, hypothetical fields or means of synchronizing, communicating
... and then a miracle occurs ...
-> consciousness
"... and then a miracle occurs" ...
and there is no following the process all the way through, stepbystepwise (sic) ... when @Soupie asks for a physical theory of mind, I take him to want a step by step explanation of how we get to consciousness from non/un conscious matter, the way we can do a step by step on other physical theories...
single ants, -> simple behaviors, pheromones ... ... ... = ant colony
single bird, simple rules of flight -
- separation: steer to avoid crowding local flockmates
- alignment: steer towards the average heading of local flockmates
- cohesion: steer to move toward the average position (center of mass) of local flockmates
Boids - Wikipedia
So what we have for consciousness is ...
single neuron, group of neurons, various configurations, hypothetical fields or means of synchronizing, communicating
... and then a miracle occurs ...
-> consciousness
Pharoah
Paranormal Adept
I'm not convinced your ant to colony description is any less vacuous than the consciousness sequence. The assumption is that it is not, but what you describe is a bunch of physical stuff with a lot missing in between.
Besides, I was talking about consciousness only... in whatever guise one wishes to think of it. Weak or strong, emergence must come into all stances somewhere along the line as I see it.
smcder
Paranormal Adept
The assumption, my assumption is not that it's not, I'm not convinced either...and I've posted McGinn on this a number of times...you'll find it pinned to a dead donkey floating somewhere on the forum.
Besides, I'm not sure you can talk about consciousness only, for the sake of that very donkey not having died in vain.
Besides...everything is vacuous.
Pharoah
Paranormal Adept
evrything is vacuous true.. but some things are more vacuous than others.
And I'm sorry about the donkey... and the slug, which deserved better
smcder
Paranormal Adept
Nature may abhor a vacuum...but I never met one I didn't like.
Then again, when I stare into the abyss, the abyss averts its gaze.
smcder
Paranormal Adept
"Weak or strong, emergence must come into all stances somewhere along the line as I see it."
per se, or as a stand in for what we don't know? Do you accept emergence on its own merits/terms?
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
Dualism can avoid emergence in two ways:
1) emergence from matter
2) emergence from anything. Minds are fundamental on this view. How they become paired with bodies is anyone's guess.
Yes, the 'weak' in this case referred to weak emergence as opposed to strong emergence, wherein phenomenal consciousness makes a loud popping sound as it pops into existence from non-existence.
In the case of weak emergence, we can back trace it via the causal chain that gave rise to it.
Ufology likes to point to electromagnetism as a phenomenon that seems to defy our normal conception of matter. And he's not wrong. However, it's still apples to oranges when it comes to mind and body.
For example as I've noted in the past, there are very mundane although certainly not perfect models of how electromagnetic fields might be physical/material.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1202.4611.pdf
We have no such models of phenomenal consciousness.
Again, emergence in itself is not the issue. It's emergence of the mind (particularly phenomenal consciousness I would argue) from the body that is the problem.
If one wants to make an argument about phenomenal consciousness emerging from some other substrate than non-phenomenally conscious quarks, molecules, cells, organs, etc. than that's a different argument.
smcder
Paranormal Adept
"Yes, the 'weak' in this case referred to weak emergence as opposed to strong emergence, wherein phenomenal consciousness makes a loud popping sound as it pops into existence from non-existence."
I love that!
Very interesting post, Steve. Do you support the hypothesis that neurons produce consciousness or are you proposing that we discuss it? The first question that comes to mind for me is how and why a single neuron or a group of neurons can be imagined to appear in nature as a phenomenon separate from the embodied organisms within which neurons evolved.
I followed this link from the 'Boids' page:
Self-propelled particles - Wikipedia
Extract:
"Self-propelled particles interact according to various social and physical rules, which can lead to the emergence of collective behaviours, such as flocking of birds, swarming of bugs, the formation of sheep herds, etc. To understand the ubiquity of such phenomena, physicists have developed a number of self-propelled particles models. These models predict that self-propelled particles share certain properties at the group level, regardless of the type of animals in the swarm.[1] It has become a challenge in theoretical physics to find minimal statistical models that capture these behaviours.[2][3][4]"
Shall we tackle the biological phenomena that these physicists attempt to explain in terms of 'self-propelled particles' subject to rules of 'collective behaviours'? Can we do that without first accounting for the 'self'-referentiality imputed to these 'particles'. How is 'particles' an appropriate designation for the self-dissipating systems that Maturana, Varela, Thompson et al have recognized in forms of biological life? Does/can any thing or being occur and exist temporally in isolation from the physical context in which it occurs and exists? If the answer is 'no', on what basis can we side-step the metaphysical questions always lurking behind our attempts to account for 'what-is' in what we take to be the nature of 'reality' ?
Here are some additional search terms gathered at the bottom of the wiki article on 'self-propelled particles':
smcder
Paranormal Adept
"Do you support the hypothesis that neurons produce consciousness or are you proposing that we discuss it?"
No.
My post is in context with Soupie and Pharoah's discussion.
smcder
Paranormal Adept
One argument is that in the case of flocks and colonies, the end is more "expectable"...you start with an ant and end with a colony, but you can still see all the ants. Same with Hs and Os...but some argue that starting with neurons and ending with mind is surprising. That mind is nothing like neurons. Its phenomenal!
But others say no, mind just is matter.
"Oh stuff and bother! The true mystery is: what's at the bottom of the honey pot?"
smcder
Paranormal Adept
@Constance, this may help clarify my post above:
"The assumption is that it is not, but what you describe is a bunch of physical stuff with a lot missing in between."
I would just say, that's all we ever have, but that doesn't mean we can't make some decisions about or have intuitions about what's a better or worse explanation or if there is a difference in explanations in the case of consciousness (when we say we can't see how you get from matter to phenomena) ... we kicked around the question of what is an explanation a while back.... and that's why I posted above that what I think @Soupie is posing, the challenge he presents, what he wants from a physicalist (which is fair, I think) is a step wise, physical explanation of consciousness from matter - of the kind we have for other phenomena that we are more satisfied with - or even of the kind of bird to flock, ant to colony, Hs and Os to water. In other words, explain it like you explain everything/anything else.
Me ... I don't really believe in explanations.
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