Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 12

[smcder]

yes

Usualcalgarology says:

"So I'm assuming that what you were getting at is that no matter what kind of subjective experience we're having, it is unique to each individual experiencer. Do I have that right?"

Ambiguity remains...I can always claim my experience is unique to me, that is trivially true. But I don't think I can claim that it is unique in a way that others don't/can't understand my unique experiences - there is too broad a base of empathy (for even the most odd experiences). So in what way is your subjective experience unique?

What differentiates YOU that asks WAIMANSE? from ME that asks WAIMANSE? If I were not me, I simply would not be, there is nothing contingent ... that doesn't necessitate that "I" be of a unique kind.

 

[Constance]

. . . I can always claim my experience is unique to me, that is trivially true. But I don't think I can claim that it is unique in a way that others don't/can't understand my unique experiences - there is too broad a base of empathy (for even the most odd experiences). So in what way is your subjective experience unique?

I don't think that the individuality and uniqueness of a human or an animal's lived experiences can fairly be described as only "trivially true." More important, I think, is the pressure the encountered world places on every living being in every place and situation, from moment to moment, to 'make sense' of its relation to the world. Regarding empathy, we like many species of life evolving and developing before our appearance do have a capacity for empathy, mutual understanding, and 'intersubjectivity', but that doesn't mean that we can understand one another completely as individuals or understand all the historical works of mind produced by members of our species as presenting uniform and mutually coherent descriptions of what we hope to call 'real' or define as 'reality'. That which exists in the experience of all sentient beings exists in motion, in continual change. We develop our ideas out of those parts and aspects of the world we have experienced, and we humans try to hold our ideas fast despite the ways in which the temporally open worlds we experience continue to exceed our grasp on every side. As Stevens wrote at the conclusion of one later poem, ". . . Where was it one first heard of the truth? The the."

Here's the poem:

The Man on the Dump
by Wallace Stevens

Day creeps down. The moon is creeping up.
The sun is a corbeil of flowers the moon Blanche
Places there, a bouquet. Ho-ho ... The dump is full
Of images. Days pass like papers from a press.
The bouquets come here in the papers. So the sun,
And so the moon, both come, and the janitor’s poems
Of every day, the wrapper on the can of pears,
The cat in the paper-bag, the corset, the box
From Esthonia: the tiger chest, for tea.

The freshness of night has been fresh a long time.
The freshness of morning, the blowing of day, one says
That it puffs as Cornelius Nepos reads, it puffs
More than, less than or it puffs like this or that.
The green smacks in the eye, the dew in the green
Smacks like fresh water in a can, like the sea
On a cocoanut—how many men have copied dew
For buttons, how many women have covered themselves
With dew, dew dresses, stones and chains of dew, heads
Of the floweriest flowers dewed with the dewiest dew.
One grows to hate these things except on the dump.

Now, in the time of spring (azaleas, trilliums,
Myrtle, viburnums, daffodils, blue phlox),
Between that disgust and this, between the things
That are on the dump (azaleas and so on)
And those that will be (azaleas and so on),
One feels the purifying change. One rejects
The trash.

That’s the moment when the moon creeps up
To the bubbling of bassoons. That’s the time
One looks at the elephant-colorings of tires.
Everything is shed; and the moon comes up as the moon
(All its images are in the dump) and you see
As a man (not like an image of a man),
You see the moon rise in the empty sky.

One sits and beats an old tin can, lard pail.
One beats and beats for that which one believes.
That’s what one wants to get near. Could it after all
Be merely oneself, as superior as the ear
To a crow’s voice? Did the nightingale torture the ear,
Peck the heart and scratch the mind? And does the ear
Solace itself in peevish birds? Is it peace,
Is it a philosopher’s honeymoon, one finds
On the dump? Is it to sit among mattresses of the dead,
Bottles, pots, shoes and grass and murmur aptest eve:
Is it to hear the blatter of grackles and say
Invisible priest; is it to eject, to pull
The day to pieces and cry stanza my stone?
Where was it one first heard of the truth? The the.

 

[smcder]

I don't think that the individuality and uniqueness of a human or an animal's lived experiences can fairly be described as only "trivially true." More important, I think, is the pressure the encountered world places on every living being in every place and situation, from moment to moment, to 'make sense' of its relation to the world. Regarding empathy, we like many species of life evolving and developing before our appearance do have a capacity for empathy, mutual understanding, and 'intersubjectivity', but that doesn't mean that we can understand one another completely as individuals or understand all the historical works of mind produced by members of our species as presenting uniform and mutually coherent descriptions of what we hope to call 'real' or define as 'reality'. That which exists in the experience of all sentient beings exists in motion, in continual change. We develop our ideas out of those parts and aspects of the world we have experienced, and we humans try to hold our ideas fast despite the ways in which the temporally open worlds we experience continue to exceed our grasp on every side. As Stevens wrote at the conclusion of one later poem, "Where was it one first heard of the truth? The the."

Here's the poem:

The Man on the Dump
by Wallace Stevens

Day creeps down. The moon is creeping up.
The sun is a corbeil of flowers the moon Blanche
Places there, a bouquet. Ho-ho ... The dump is full
Of images. Days pass like papers from a press.
The bouquets come here in the papers. So the sun,
And so the moon, both come, and the janitor’s poems
Of every day, the wrapper on the can of pears,
The cat in the paper-bag, the corset, the box
From Esthonia: the tiger chest, for tea.

The freshness of night has been fresh a long time.
The freshness of morning, the blowing of day, one says
That it puffs as Cornelius Nepos reads, it puffs
More than, less than or it puffs like this or that.
The green smacks in the eye, the dew in the green
Smacks like fresh water in a can, like the sea
On a cocoanut—how many men have copied dew
For buttons, how many women have covered themselves
With dew, dew dresses, stones and chains of dew, heads
Of the floweriest flowers dewed with the dewiest dew.
One grows to hate these things except on the dump.

Now, in the time of spring (azaleas, trilliums,
Myrtle, viburnums, daffodils, blue phlox),
Between that disgust and this, between the things
That are on the dump (azaleas and so on)
And those that will be (azaleas and so on),
One feels the purifying change. One rejects
The trash.

That’s the moment when the moon creeps up
To the bubbling of bassoons. That’s the time
One looks at the elephant-colorings of tires.
Everything is shed; and the moon comes up as the moon
(All its images are in the dump) and you see
As a man (not like an image of a man),
You see the moon rise in the empty sky.

One sits and beats an old tin can, lard pail.
One beats and beats for that which one believes.
That’s what one wants to get near. Could it after all
Be merely oneself, as superior as the ear
To a crow’s voice? Did the nightingale torture the ear,
Peck the heart and scratch the mind? And does the ear
Solace itself in peevish birds? Is it peace,
Is it a philosopher’s honeymoon, one finds
On the dump? Is it to sit among mattresses of the dead,
Bottles, pots, shoes and grass and murmur aptest eve:
Is it to hear the blatter of grackles and say
Invisible priest; is it to eject, to pull
The day to pieces and cry stanza my stone?
Where was it one first heard of the truth? The the.

"I don't think that the individuality and uniqueness of a human or an animal's lived experiences can fairly be described as only "trivially true."

What I say is that to say that my experiences are uniquely mine is to say something that to me seems strongly true. To say something is "trivially" true, I borrow that language from mathematics where it just means the proof is really, really easy. I was pointing to the ambiguity in the exchange above to point out that I think @Pharoah is saying something more than this - that he is saying not just that my experiences are unique but that they are of an individual kind. (I am assuming if my mind if of a unique kind, then my experiences are too.)

Nor do I mean to say that anyone can understand any given person completely nor all of human experience, but that broadly they are of a kind ... even experiences we have not had - nor do I rule out that we are evolving the ability to have new experiences or be new beings ... but that doesn't mean that we can yet say we are each of different kinds - that each mind is of a different kind entirely - and thus minds as a "general kind of entity" evade "generalis(z)ed principles and rules" (if not traditional physical explanation) - but I think @Pharoah's argument rests on that being the case...WAIMANSE certainly seems to.

@Pharoah writes:

"The mind: that is a little bit more problematic because, to my way of thinking, (as per my other recent comment) minds are of a specific unique kind and, though minds can be talk about as existing as a general kind of entity, they are individuated in a way that evades tradition physical explanation (which are about generalised principles and rules)."

But there may also be an internal tension in the argument here:

1. though mind(s) can be talk about as existing as a general kind of entity
2. they are individuated in a way that evades tradition physical explanation (which are about generalised principles and rules)

So the claim is that a subset of a general kind of entity is a unique kind. But if that is the case, how would we know to group them together? You cannot say "because they are all minds" because then each would not be a unique kind. And if that is the case it is hard to see how we would have a base to understand one another.

 

[Constance]

. . . Nor do I mean to say that anyone can understand any given person completely nor all of human experience, but that broadly they are of a kind ... even experiences we have not had - nor do I rule out that we are evolving the ability to have new experiences or be new beings ... but that doesn't mean that we can yet say we are each of different kinds - that each mind is of a different kind entirely - and thus minds as a "general kind of entity" evade "generalis(z)ed principles and rules" (if not traditional physical explanation) - but I think @Pharoah's argument rests on that being the case...WAIMANSE certainly seems to.

Oh dear, I've forgotten what WAIMANSE means. Can you remind me?

I haven't been reading @Pharoah as claiming that all human minds are [ETA] radically different from one another in core capacities, but I think it's likely that we've all met people whose thinking we cannot identify with [ETA] and at times cannot make sense of. And to a significant extent I'm in accord with Pharoah in suggesting that each human mind must be unique since none of us have identical experiences in life and it is our individual experiences that shape how we think about ourselves, others, and the nature of reality, i.e., what is real, what is important, what is valuable, what is unacceptable, etc., and how we should live within our community, and as participants in a given society and nation, and as members of an interdependent planetary ecology and economy.

 

[smcder]

Oh dear, I've forgotten what WAIMANSE means. Can you remind me?

I haven't been reading @Pharoah as claiming that all human minds are radically different from one another, but I think it's likely that we've all met people whose thinking we cannot identify with. And to a significant extent I'm in accord with Pharoah in suggesting that each human mind must be unique since none of us have identical experiences in life and it is our individual experiences that shape how we think about ourselves, others, and the nature of reality, i.e., what is real, what is important, what is valuable, what is unacceptable, etc., and how we should live within our community, and as participants in a given society and nation, and as members of an interdependent planetary ecology and economy.

Why Am I Me And Not Someone Else - WAIMANSE

@Pharaoh writes above:

"The mind: that is a little bit more problematic because, to my way of thinking, (as per my other recent comment) minds are of a specific unique kind and, though minds can be talk about as existing as a general kind of entity, 1) they are individuated in a way that evades tradition physical explanation (which are about generalised principles and rules)."

and

2) @Pharoah has stated that WAIMANSE is what keeps him from being a physicalist.

So can we deduce the claim that each mind is a unique kind? (Is that the same as the claim that they are individuated in a way that evades traditional physical explanation (or generalis(z)ed principles and rules?). It seems so, because if they were subject to such explanations and rules, we could say they are of a kind.

Problems:

1. Are there any other examples of unique kinds - which are presumably subject to unique principles and rules (or perhaps to none)?

2. How can unique kinds belong to a "general kind of entity"?

3. What are we to make of conflicting evidence and experience that minds often do seem to be subject to the same generalized principles and rules ... i.e. habits, patterns, obsessions, predictabilities and may be controlled externally through various stimuli and influences? People reliably lose consciousness, change their minds, forget things, remember things under certain circumstances (not perfectly and not without consideration for individual responses) but also not in an utterly unique way.

4. If each mind is a unique kind, then what is the basis for communication and empathy between them?

Finally, it seems to me there is a simpler explanation for WAIMANSE - (see previous threads for discussion) which is simply that each person that does happen to exist can ask WAIMANSE? and that no person could be other than who they are - that I am smcder is not contingent, I could not have been anyone else. That I am smcder and not someone else, is a necessary fact.

 

[smcder]

The above seems to me to be the doctrine of the soul. That there is something unique, non-physical and contingent in each person.

 

[Pharoah]

What features are non-emergent?

"Like time, they are not substantive tangible "properties"... but they do have influences on the physical world."

How? What is the causality?

Does "time" have tangible effects, or is time a measure of those effects? of change? When I say "her beauty was subject to the ravages of age ... and yet persisted" do I mean that TIME acted on her ... or that she aged and we can measure both?

"The mind: that is a little bit more problematic because, to my way of thinking, (as per my other recent comment) minds are of a specific unique kind and, though minds can be talk about as existing as a general kind of entity, they are individuated in a way that evades tradition physical explanation (which are about generalised principles and rules)."

Each mind is of a specific, unique kind, you claim, correct? Unique even from other minds. My kind is not yours? Then how do we know one another?

How do they evade generalized principles and rules? Can you give examples? The key claim is to evade "traditional" physical explanation but what is that? Do you mean Descartian push/pull / tinker toy causation? Do you mean the most modern available bio-logical explanations? Do you mean beyond what anyone is currently arguing? The fact that we have theories of mind, that we understand each other and anticipate each other points to generali(z)sed principles and rules - even if they are only in each others minds ... people even predictably go off the rails - we can point to physical features in the brain, past behavior, all sorts of things -
...
And if we stimulate region x, do we get predictable, repeatable effects on the mind, on subjectivity? Obviously, these studies are complex and we've been all over the Libet experiments and free will.

What features are non-emergent? don't know
Time's influence? Suspect comment by me...
@smcder you understand fully what I mean of kinds of mind etc...
I will add, that physics states that there are kinds of matter, say, atoms of hydrogen are of a kind. Physics does not distinguish one from another except through the function of spatiotemporal occupancy, ie, they are identicwl except for the fact that they occupy different spatial and temporal locations. Minds are of a kind but are located in different spatiotemporal locations, and different esperiential 'locations'. Although physics might facilitate a satisfactory model for these facts in kind, it doesnot drill down to specifics

 

[Pharoah]

Why Am I Me And Not Someone Else - WAIMANSE

@Pharaoh writes above:

"The mind: that is a little bit more problematic because, to my way of thinking, (as per my other recent comment) minds are of a specific unique kind and, though minds can be talk about as existing as a general kind of entity, 1) they are individuated in a way that evades tradition physical explanation (which are about generalised principles and rules)."

and

2) @Pharoah has stated that WAIMANSE is what keeps him from being a physicalist.

So can we deduce the claim that each mind is a unique kind? (Is that the same as the claim that they are individuated in a way that evades traditional physical explanation (or generalis(z)ed principles and rules?). It seems so, because if they were subject to such explanations and rules, we could say they are of a kind.

Problems:

1. Are there any other examples of unique kinds - which are presumably subject to unique principles and rules (or perhaps to none)?

2. How can unique kinds belong to a "general kind of entity"?

3. What are we to make of conflicting evidence and experience that minds often do seem to be subject to the same generalized principles and rules ... i.e. habits, patterns, obsessions, predictabilities and may be controlled externally through various stimuli and influences? People reliably lose consciousness, change their minds, forget things, remember things under certain circumstances (not perfectly and not without consideration for individual responses) but also not in an utterly unique way.

4. If each mind is a unique kind, then what is the basis for communication and empathy between them?

Finally, it seems to me there is a simpler explanation for WAIMANSE - (see previous threads for discussion) which is simply that each person that does happen to exist can ask WAIMANSE? and that no person could be other than who they are - that I am smcder is not contingent, I could not have been anyone else. That I am smcder and not someone else, is a necessary fact.

I didn't mean for us to return to WAIMANSE. I was meaning trying to point out that physicalism has a problem in articulating what it deems to be physical, existing, having physical influence...
physical features seem to emerge... physical explanation tends to entail inventing concepts to validate itself... physicalism looks to generalisations, to unify complexity through identifying nifying principles.
That fact that I am me is a fact that cannot be clarified with general rules or principles. It doesn't matter if I say that if I were someone else I would address this issue in exactly the same way, or if I come up with a physical explanation for the existence of mind. I am still the unique example of such kind and physicalism must be radically different to, or wrong, to provide an adequate account

 

[Randall]

I didn't mean for us to return to WAIMANSE. I was meaning trying to point out that physicalism has a problem in articulating what it deems to be physical, existing, having physical influence...
physical features seem to emerge... physical explanation tends to entail inventing concepts to validate itself... physicalism looks to generalisations, to unify complexity through identifying nifying principles.
That fact that I am me is a fact that cannot be clarified with general rules or principles. It doesn't matter if I say that if I were someone else I would address this issue in exactly the same way, or if I come up with a physical explanation for the existence of mind. I am still the unique example of such kind and physicalism must be radically different to, or wrong, to provide an adequate account

Again, there are different interpretations of the word "physical". So it's not that there is necessarily a problem articulating what "physical" means within each respective context. Rather, it's been my experience that when discussing it, people tend to skip that part, which can result in assumptions that are different between participants because they are each starting with a different premise.

 

[marduk]

Both the future and the past do not physically exist, therefore they are not physical.
If I cease to exist, but the universe physically exists, where have I gone... I, the subjective identity, must be physical
right... or am I non-physical.
My point: the non-lhysical is relevant to the physical.
Completed physicalism must account for the non-physical to be valid

Both the future and the past don't physically exist? If you mean "now," then by definition they don't. But time's arrow is a thing, as is entropy.

My point is that there isn't anything non-physical, and even if there was, there's no way to for it to interact with something physical.

If you're saying that the label you put on 'you' continues to exist even though the past 'you' doesn't, and that implies non-physicality, then I would disagree.

The past you lives on in the memories physically stored in your brain, the actions you've taken that still have a cause and effect relationship, and even your metabolic energy is entropic.

'You' is just an idea you have in your head. It's not a platonic ideal. Theseus' ship is a human problem, not a natural one.

 

[marduk]

Information does not exist... btw. Think about it..

Provably incorrect.

Entropy exists and is at its heart the measure of information in a system.

If information didn't exist, you could uncrack an egg, unexplode the bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and make Star Trek: Discovery a good show.

 

[marduk]

In short, we use the term “nature” in two conflicting ways, the first of which wholly includes us, while the second wholly excludes us. Following Donald Crawford, we may call these two senses “unrestricted nature” and “pure nature” respectively (Crawford 2004, 313–19).

This simple distinction would seem to resolve the apparent paradox according to which humans are both part of nature and estranged from it, since it is in relation to two different conceptions of nature that we are, on the one hand, essentially included within its scope as “unrestricted” nature, and, on the other, essentially separated from it as “pure” nature. Neither the concept of wilderness nor the condemnation of restoration projects as artifacts entails a metaphysical dichotomy, since, although both ideas rely on the contrast between “pure” nature and artifice, neither contradicts our inclusion within “unrestricted” nature.

I was kinda with you until this last bit. Now they are just pushing the problem around and arguing about labels people have in their head instead of the problem itself.

There is no paradox that I see here.

 

[marduk]

Who in this three-year-long discussion thread has "posit[ed] that the mind is not part of the physical universe" and thus requires the invention of "a whole new universe" to explain 'it'?

When someone implies a non-physical aspect to the mind, then that requires a non-physical universe for that non-physical thing to reside in, and then implies that there's a way to get information from that non-physical universe to the physical one.

Dualism implies two universes. I'm asserting that there is only one, and it's physical.

Also, what exactly do you mean to signify by your reference to "the mind"?

Mind, Noun, the element of a person that enables them to be aware of the world and their experiences, to think, and to feel; the faculty of consciousness and thought.

And what do you take to be the relationship of lived/living consciousness to 'the mind'?

Not following, could you expand?

 

[Constance]

I don't think that the individuality and uniqueness of a human or an animal's lived experiences can fairly be described as only "trivially true." More important, I think, is the pressure the encountered world places on every living being in every place and situation, from moment to moment, to 'make sense' of its relation to the world. Regarding empathy, we like many species of life evolving and developing before our appearance do have a capacity for empathy, mutual understanding, and 'intersubjectivity', but that doesn't mean that we can understand one another completely as individuals or understand all the historical works of mind produced by members of our species as presenting uniform and mutually coherent descriptions of what we hope to call 'real' or define as 'reality'. That which exists in the experience of all sentient beings exists in motion, in continual change. We develop our ideas out of those parts and aspects of the world we have experienced, and we humans try to hold our ideas fast despite the ways in which the temporally open worlds we experience continue to exceed our grasp on every side. As Stevens wrote at the conclusion of one later poem, ". . . Where was it one first heard of the truth? The the."

Here's the poem:

The Man on the Dump
by Wallace Stevens

Day creeps down. The moon is creeping up.
The sun is a corbeil of flowers the moon Blanche
Places there, a bouquet. Ho-ho ... The dump is full
Of images. Days pass like papers from a press.
The bouquets come here in the papers. So the sun,
And so the moon, both come, and the janitor’s poems
Of every day, the wrapper on the can of pears,
The cat in the paper-bag, the corset, the box
From Esthonia: the tiger chest, for tea.

The freshness of night has been fresh a long time.
The freshness of morning, the blowing of day, one says
That it puffs as Cornelius Nepos reads, it puffs
More than, less than or it puffs like this or that.
The green smacks in the eye, the dew in the green
Smacks like fresh water in a can, like the sea
On a cocoanut—how many men have copied dew
For buttons, how many women have covered themselves
With dew, dew dresses, stones and chains of dew, heads
Of the floweriest flowers dewed with the dewiest dew.
One grows to hate these things except on the dump.

Now, in the time of spring (azaleas, trilliums,
Myrtle, viburnums, daffodils, blue phlox),
Between that disgust and this, between the things
That are on the dump (azaleas and so on)
And those that will be (azaleas and so on),
One feels the purifying change. One rejects
The trash.

That’s the moment when the moon creeps up
To the bubbling of bassoons. That’s the time
One looks at the elephant-colorings of tires.
Everything is shed; and the moon comes up as the moon
(All its images are in the dump) and you see
As a man (not like an image of a man),
You see the moon rise in the empty sky.

One sits and beats an old tin can, lard pail.
One beats and beats for that which one believes.
That’s what one wants to get near. Could it after all
Be merely oneself, as superior as the ear
To a crow’s voice? Did the nightingale torture the ear,
Peck the heart and scratch the mind? And does the ear
Solace itself in peevish birds? Is it peace,
Is it a philosopher’s honeymoon, one finds
On the dump? Is it to sit among mattresses of the dead,
Bottles, pots, shoes and grass and murmur aptest eve:
Is it to hear the blatter of grackles and say
Invisible priest; is it to eject, to pull
The day to pieces and cry stanza my stone?
Where was it one first heard of the truth? The the.

@USI Calgary, I'm glad you like that Stevens poem. Further light on its meaning is expressed in the following canto from Stevens's Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction, specifically the last canto of Part I of that long poem, entitled "It Must Be Abstract".

X

"The major abstraction is the idea of man
And major man is its exponent, abler
In the abstract than in his singular,

More fecund as principle than particle,
Happy fecundity, flor-abundant force,
In being more than an exception, part,

Though an heroic part, of the commonal.
The major abstraction is the commonal,
The inanimate, difficult visage. Who is it?

What rabbi, grown furious with human wish,
What chieftain, walking by himself, crying
Most miserable, most victorious,

Does not see these separate figures one by one,
And yet see only one, in his old coat,
His slouching pantaloons, beyond the town,

Looking for what was, where it used to be?
Cloudless the morning. It is he. The man
In that old coat, those sagging pantaloons,

It is of him, ephebe, to make, to confect
The final elegance, not to console
Nor sanctify, but plainly to propound."


Note: The three parts of Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction are entitled "It Must Be Abstract," "It Must Change," and "It Must Give Pleasure." The referent of "It" in the three part-titles is the understanding of/the knowledge of the nature and character of humanly 'lived being' {within the unknowability of the nature of Being as a whole} which is available only to living embodied beings experiencing both prereflective and reflective consciousness that together underwrite and enable the development of what we refer to as 'mind'. If the abstractions and objectivizations of categorical thinking theorized to exist in so-called 'higher-order consciousness' could actually provide us with a satisfactory, or even an adequate, description of our own experientially lived being, phenomenological philosophy would not have been a necessary and clarifying development in modern philosophy. The issue is an ontological one concerning the difference that arises with life, with lived experience (animal and human) in and of the 'world' that opens and grounds all the questions our species asks about the nature of 'reality', the search for a definition of 'what is real'.

 

[Constance]

When someone implies a non-physical aspect to the mind, then that requires a non-physical universe for that non-physical thing to reside in, and then implies that there's a way to get information from that non-physical universe to the physical one.

Only for someone who adopts the same presuppositions you have accepted and propagate.

Dualism implies two universes. I'm asserting that there is only one, and it's physical.

Phenomenology is not a dualistic philosophy. Understood, it overcomes the errors of Cartesian dualism, which seem to continue to vex many scientists, particularly in the so-called 'hard' sciences. A grounding in phenomenological philosophy has, however, enabled many theorists in the 'hard' sciences to recognize the hardest problem: the hard problem of consciousness.

Mind, Noun, the element of a person that enables them to be aware of the world and their experiences, to think, and to feel; the faculty of consciousness and thought.

Do you experience yourself as a 'noun' then, @marduk? I experience myself as a verb in both transitive and intransitive states.

ETA: Here is a paper that might provide you with an opening to understanding phenomenology:

Taylor Carman, "The Principle of Phenomenology" --

The Principle of Phenomenology

 

[Constance]

I was kinda with you until this last bit. Now they are just pushing the problem around and arguing about labels people have in their head instead of the problem itself.

There is no paradox that I see here.

I think you need to understand that what you refer to in the cited text as a 'paradox' is indeed not a paradox, though it is a more complex idea than you have apparently ever entertained.

Allow me to express a caution: 'scientists', engineers, and 'technologists' should not be let loose upon the world we live in and struggle to understand without having studied modern philosophy as prerequisite to their receiving their degrees.

 

[Randall]

... And major man is its exponent, abler
In the abstract than in his singular ..."

Steely Dan - Any Major Dude

The Steely Dan Dictionary: S​

 

[Constance]

... And major man is its exponent, abler
In the abstract than in his singular ..."

Steely Dan - Any Major Dude

The Steely Dan Dictionary: S​

Right on the money, Randall. And a joy to listen to.

 

[Constance]

The lyrics . . .

Any Major Dude Will Tell You
Steely Dan

"I never seen you looking so bad my funky one
You tell me that your superfine mind has come undone

[CHORUS:]
Any major dude with half a heart surely will tell you my friend
Any minor world that breaks apart falls together again
When the demon is at your door
In the morning it won't be there no more
Any major dude will tell you
Have you ever seen a squonk's tears? Well, look at mine
The people on the street have all seen better times

[CHORUS:]

I can tell you all I know, the where to go, the what to do
You can try to run but you can't hide from what's inside of you."

[CHORUS:]

Songwriters: DONALD JAY FAGEN,WALTER CARL BECKER
© Universal Music Publishing Group
For non-commercial use only.

 

[Pharoah]

Both the future and the past don't physically exist? If you mean "now," then by definition they don't. But time's arrow is a thing, as is entropy.

My point is that there isn't anything non-physical, and even if there was, there's no way to for it to interact with something physical.

If you're saying that the label you put on 'you' continues to exist even though the past 'you' doesn't, and that implies non-physicality, then I would disagree.

The past you lives on in the memories physically stored in your brain, the actions you've taken that still have a cause and effect relationship, and even your metabolic energy is entropic.

'You' is just an idea you have in your head. It's not a platonic ideal. Theseus' ship is a human problem, not a natural one.

You agree that the future and past do not physically exist... ok... (ignoring QM) and that time's arrow is a thing. In this physical realm of non existing and existing things you have no room for the idea that a mind might be a physical thing one moment and a non-physical thing the next - Popping out of existence, like the present from the past, and then evaporating in a puff of smoke into the non existent future?

FYI entropy is a concept. It doesn't actually exist. To claim that informaiton exists (like some pervasive ether) on the basis that entropy exists is like saying that pig wings must exist because of flying pigs. It's like numbers... They help us model the world, but they don't exist. So... information does not exist.