Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 12

[Constance]

BTW: Apologies to everyone if I seem to be coming across a little crusty. I don't mean to be. I'm sure the frustration is nobody's fault but my own. But either way, this sciatica/piriformis syndrome I've been recovering from has been a really painful drain. Sorry.

Click Me ---​

Worry not, Randle. I don't think you owe anyone an apology. I hope the back condition you're suffering from, is getting better. Have you tried acupuncture? Someone I worked with had excellent results from it, after years of chronic pain. Good luck.

 

[Michael Allen]

There's so many interpretations for the Ouroboros that I wouldn't know where to start. Can you please rephrase the above in more definitive terms?

Regardless of the first part, the second part above depends on what you mean by "full satisfaction" and "nature of it's own abilities". I am fully satisfied that the nature of my own abilities is as nature has made them. Maybe other people are fully satisfied that God is the nature of their abilities. However you might not be personally satisfied of either ( or anything ). Perhaps you even feel it is impossible to feel fully satisfied about anything? I must admit that being fully satisfied about anything these days is tough, but, then what did Hemingway say? Something about happiness in intelligent people being one of the rarest things he knew?

Well on the second part regarding "full satisfaction" I was referring to something like an "itch" that cannot be removed in our own thinking regarding consciousness--I guess I expected (based on the length of this discussion) that not many (including myself) in this thread are satisfied with our own models or theories regarding our own experience of consciousness and reality. Further evidence can be found in the numerous monographs, essays and books on the same posted here.

Regarding the snake eating it's tail, I just mean that...the vanishing point of nothingness expected when something observes or experiences itself experiencing and yet expecting such a dynamical self-devouring process to fully eliminate our feeling of "mineness" and "ownership" in our "first-person perspective" is a lot like a snake trying to make itself disappear by eating its tail.

There are other more blunt metaphors...such as the head of a needle trying to prick itself. Strange that a metaphor such as that makes a very blunt instrument out of sharpness.

 

[Constance]

Well on the second part regarding "full satisfaction" I was referring to something like an "itch" that cannot be removed in our own thinking regarding consciousness--I guess I expected (based on the length of this discussion) that not many (including myself) in this thread are satisfied with our own models or theories regarding our own experience of consciousness and reality. Further evidence can be found in the numerous monographs, essays and books on the same posted here.

Regarding the snake eating it's tail, I just mean that...the vanishing point of nothingness expected when something observes or experiences itself experiencing and yet expecting such a dynamical self-devouring process to fully eliminate our feeling of "mineness" and "ownership" in our "first-person perspective" is a lot like a snake trying to make itself disappear by eating its tail.

There are other more blunt metaphors...such as the head of a needle trying to prick itself. Strange that a metaphor such as that makes a very blunt instrument out of sharpness.

I had been going back through recent pages in the thread and had settled on the post [#859] you are responding to now by Randle. I thought the dialogue between the two of you was quite good. Randle was re-stating, for clarification, what it seemed you were saying just previously. I'll copy here the text of #859:

_________________________
USI Calgary said:
"The inference in what I would consider to be standard grammar is that because consciousness creates the models, it is consciousness that is assumed to be applying those models to itself. So to be exact,

"IT ( Consciousness ) creates models of interdependent entities. How will IT ( consciousness ) apply such models to itself ( consciousness' self )? "

If that's not it, then further clarification ..."

MA: "yes...that's a close enough approximation of what I was getting at; probably more useful in fact..."
____________________________

Is it indeed your claim that 'consciousness creates the models'? It seems, rather, that 'models' of self and other, self and 'world', are the products of mind, not consciousness, and we can trace the development of these models through recorded human history in philosophy, art, and other conceptual productions and expressions of human thought. Consciousness is prereflectively open to the world and only gradually develops a sense of 'what-is' in its immediate surroundings, long before it begins to reflectively interpret the nature of 'reality' or to conceive of such a thing as its own tacit 'self-awareness' and all that it might increasingly comprehend by degrees, even beyond its existentially lived, visible, horizons.

 

[Michael Allen]

I had been going back through recent pages in the thread and had settled on the post [#859] you are responding to now by Randle. I thought the dialogue between the two of you was quite good. Randle was re-stating, for clarification, what it seemed you were saying just previously. I'll copy here the text of #859:

_________________________
USI Calgary said:
"The inference in what I would consider to be standard grammar is that because consciousness creates the models, it is consciousness that is assumed to be applying those models to itself. So to be exact,

"IT ( Consciousness ) creates models of interdependent entities. How will IT ( consciousness ) apply such models to itself ( consciousness' self )? "

If that's not it, then further clarification ..."

MA: "yes...that's a close enough approximation of what I was getting at; probably more useful in fact..."
____________________________

Is it indeed your claim that 'consciousness creates the models'? It seems, rather, that 'models' of self and other, self and 'world', are the products of mind, not consciousness, and we can trace the development of these models through recorded human history in philosophy, art, and other conceptual productions and expressions of human thought. Consciousness is prereflectively open to the world and only gradually develops a sense of 'what-is' in its immediate surroundings, long before it begins to reflectively interpret the nature of 'reality' or to conceive of such a thing as its own tacit 'self-awareness' and all that it might increasingly comprehend by degrees, even beyond its existentially lived, visible, horizons.

I think I overstated ... it isn't as if consciousness and the "model-generation" are actual seperate things. I think your illustration is better. Better is the realization of those prereflective primitives brought to light within our interpretation/comprehension/understanding with respect to our being-in-the-world is somehow a tool trying to grasp, hammer or pull itself (depending on the tool). We apply these very primitives into some kind of model resembling the way we already mindlessly grasp and pull on door handles ...we fasten our understanding of ourselves to an analogue of "being" which resides in a chain of "in-order-tos" forgetting that the entire framework and ground of our "existence" comes from presuming (and then forgetting) that chain.

Edit:

"IT (Consciousness) arises out of our experience of those foundational primitive and prereflective world-generating-self thingamajigs...How will IT (Consciousness) apply it's own snapshots of temporality and spatiality to the very elements which have already been taken for granted in its own coming to be?"

 

[Constance]

I think I overstated ... it isn't as if consciousness and the "model-generation" are actual seperate things. I think your illustration is better. Better is the realization of those prereflective primitives brought to light within our interpretation/comprehension/understanding with respect to our being-in-the-world is somehow a tool trying to grasp, hammer or pull itself (depending on the tool). We apply these very primitives into some kind of model resembling the way we already mindlessly grasp and pull on door handles ...we fasten our understanding of ourselves to an analogue of "being" which resides in a chain of "in-order-tos" forgetting that the entire framework and ground of our "existence" comes from presuming (and then forgetting) that chain.

Edit:

"IT (Consciousness) arises out of our experience of those foundational primitive and prereflective world-generating-self thingamajigs...How will IT (Consciousness) apply it's own snapshots of temporality and spatiality to the very elements which have already been taken for granted in its own coming to be?"

Neither your first paragraph nor the edited version bears any resemblance to what I wrote above, thus it puzzles me that you claim to see what I wrote as a "better illustration" of what you had been saying to Randle. So we are apparently at an impasse in our communication attempts.

If you are genuinely interested in understanding phenomenology you might read The Phenomenological Mind, 2d edition, by Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi, linked below, as well as The Mechanical Mind by Tim Crane, to which the Gallagher/Zahavi book responded. The following paragraph from a paper by Daniel Hutto [published in an issue of the journal Abstracta devoted to the first edition of The Phenomenological Mind and linked last below] might be clarifying concerning the fundamental differences between our approaches.

". . . The fact is that while phenomenology and pure neuroscience may co-operate well, it is less obvious that the same is true of phenomenology and cognitive science. This is because the latter’s explanations are pitched at the subpersonal level of description (into which we have no first-personal insight or access) but they nevertheless focus on phenomena above the level of interest to neuroscientists, who are concerned with the ground floor mechanics and implementation of mental activity. The root trouble is that in pursuing its own agenda, cognitive science seeks to operate with a mixed economy: it aims to give us theories at the subpersonal level that explain everyday psychological phenomena while at the same time incorporating and revising constructs from that very domain. Thus it offers computational or functionalist theories of perception, memory and thought that invoke notions of ‘content’ and ‘experience’ in ways that put its enterprise directly at odds with certain, non-theoretically laden phenomenological insights. This being so, it certainly seems that PA and MRA are straightforwardly incompatible. And if we take the commitment to some form of ‘representational theory of mind’ as central to cognitive science, the discussions of many chapters of PM make this tension abundantly clear. . . ."

The Phenomenological Mind: Shaun Gallagher: 9780415610377: Amazon.com: Books

Amazon.com: The Mechanical Mind (9781138858350): Tim Crane: Books

The following link goes to the full issue of the journal Abstracta devoted to discussions and critiques of the first edition of The Phenomenological Mind by way of presenting one of the papers in that journal issue (just scroll down):

https://www.academia.edu/36758969/I...Internalism_Debate?email_work_card=view-paper

 

[Soupie]

It seems, rather, that 'models' of self and other, self and 'world', are the products of mind, not consciousness...

@Constance I know you asked me several questions above—which I feel like I’ve already answered numerous times—and I will attempt to answer them again shortly.

However I’d like to ask how you distinguish between consciousness and mind.

in short, I would say that models of world and self *are* mind instantiated in (phenomenal) consciousness.

I read recently that a distinction needs to be made between “consciousness” and “conscious.” I agree.

I think the above is relevant to discussions of the intrinsic argument for p consciousness.

ie just because p consciousness is a field that pervades the universe does *not* that the universe nor all “perturbations” within it are conscious.

 

[Soupie]

it isn't as if consciousness and the "model-generation" are actual seperate things.

One of the things that might be helpful for this discussion is to establish where we all have common ground. There may not be much, honestly.

Unless I’m mistaken we all believe that humans and their minds have evolved over billions of years due to natural processes.

@Constance approaches consciousness and mind mostly from a phenomenological perspective, which is to say from the personal level. However, and again I may be mistaken, Constance and phenomenologists do not deny that there is a non-personal level to reality that is the ground of the human mind.

regarding model making and models of world and self. These are obviously all analogies.

nature hasn’t set out to make maps of itself.

human perception evolved naturally over billions of years. Presumably perception is how creatures navigate in the world. Without perception there would be nothingness*. Not even blackness. Nothingness.

However as we’ve discussed each creature has its own unique umwelt. Ie how each creature perceives what-is is unique. Perception and the thing perceived are numerically distinct.

As metzinger says our world models and self models are transparent. To the organism, its self model and world model feel like the real world, not the umwelt.

again, we know the above is an analogy. Nature doesn’t really make maps. But how does it so happen that our umwelts feel like reality? We don’t know.

Because our world models and self models (!) are transparent, we constantly forget about them. (Possibly what MA means about forgetting the chain.)

 

[Soupie]

An Existential Crisis in Neuroscience

We’re mapping the brain in amazing detail—but our brain can’t understand the picture.

m.nautil.us

Quote:

““Let me put it this way,” Lichtman said. “Language itself is a fundamentally linear process, where one idea leads to the next. But if the thing you’re trying to describe [the brain] has a million things happening simultaneously, language is not the right tool. It’s like understanding the stock market. The best way to make money on the stock market is probably not by understanding the fundamental concepts of economy. It’s by understanding how to utilize this data to know what to buy and when to buy it. That may have nothing to do with economics but with data and how data is used.”

The problem is worse than the above. Language is produced by the brain. Can we call on the product to describe the producer? - Soupie

““Maybe human brains aren’t equipped to understand themselves,” I offered.

“And maybe there’s something fundamental about that idea: that no machine can have an output more sophisticated than itself,” Lichtman said. “What a car does is trivial compared to its engineering. What a human brain does is trivial compared to its engineering. Which is the great irony here. We have this false belief there’s nothing in the universe that humans can’t understand because we have infinite intelligence. But if I asked you if your dog can understand something you’d say, ‘Well, my dog’s brain is small.’ Well, your brain is only a little bigger,” he continued, chuckling. “Why, suddenly, are you able to understand everything?”

Some might find the above depressing. I’ve been thinking about this paragraph for a week or so. It is humbling.

but ultimately I find it exciting bc reality is surely way more exotic and complicated than we can even begin to imagine. - Soupie

“Late one night, after a long day of trying to make sense of my data, I came across a short story by Jorge Louis Borges that seemed to capture the essence of the brain mapping problem. In the story, “On Exactitude in Science,” a man named Suarez Miranda wrote of an ancient empire that, through the use of science, had perfected the art of map-making. While early maps were nothing but crude caricatures of the territories they aimed to represent, new maps grew larger and larger, filling in ever more details with each edition. Over time, Borges wrote, “the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province.” Still, the people craved more detail. “In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it.”

I think many people realize (but not all) that human knowledge and perception amounts to a “model” of what-is. But most seem to think that our knowledge and perception (our models) are pretty close. Thus this fact is trivial.

I don’t think so. As I’ve tried to make clear, I think it’s crucial to the mind body problem. I think what-is and our perceptual, conceptual, and mathematics models are significantly different. How different I wonder. The temptation is to think we’ve got everything almost figured out. That’s the temptation.

 

[Soupie]

The problem of consciousness

Many people find consciousness deeply puzzling. It is often described as one of the few remaining problems for science to address that is genuinely

blog.oup.com

quote:

“In fact, however, there are no special properties. There are no qualia. The temptation to think otherwise derives from the special way in which we can think introspectively about our own perceptual states, deploying concepts such as this (feel of my experience of red). The “problem” of consciousness merely arises out of the contrast between first- and third-person modes of thinking about our own states. For it is one-and-the-same state, with one-and-the-same set of physical and functional properties, that can be thought of now as a perception of red and now as this feel. The latter is just a different way of thinking of the very same state as the former.

Given that there is no extra property that enters the world with phenomenal consciousness, it follows that the question of consciousness in non-human animals is of no scientific importance.”

And here is Peter Carruthers who denies the reality of phenomenal consciousness. The phenomenal quality of red is not real, he says, it’s merely how one thinks of the perception of red from the 1st person.

Does that make sense to anyone here?

@smcder and I have talked about the possibility that some people REALLY are p zombies.

Aphantasia is a real thing after all.

Aphantasia - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

“Aphantasia is a condition where one does not possess a functioning mind's eye and cannot voluntarily visualize imagery.[1]”

 

[Soupie]

Most interesting hypothesis. Apparently it's based in Stuart Hameroff's discovery with Roger Penrose of quantum processes at neuronal junctures or synapses in the brain [these might not be the correct terms]. It certainly makes sense to me that consciousness is a 'field phenomenon

No it doesn’t have anything to do with their theory.
The intrinsic nature argument simply says consciousness is matter/energy.

matter/energy doesn’t come from consciousness. Comsciousness doesn’t come from matter/energy.

Consciousness is the intrinsic nature of what-is and matter/energy is the extrinsic nature.

what precisely that means is complicated. One way to grok this is to say that consciousness is what-is for itself, matter/energy is consciousness for us, ie as we perceive. Excepting the fact that we ARE consciousness.

the map is made of the same substrate that it is mapping. But the map can’t capture its own substrate. Excepting for the fact that it is made of the substrate.

Hence the simulation theory? But how do quantum fields generate in the brain concepts of both ‘self’ and encompassing ‘world’?

They would have evolved naturally over billions of years in the same way organisms and brains have evolved. They are on this account one and the same. Mind is intrinsic body is extrinsic.

So the brain begins to interact with its projected models/concepts of self and world? At what point in the biological evolution of consciousness does this process begin? Also, you say that matter and consciousness “are the same field(s).” I take it you mean they are one and the same field. This idea appeals to me, but I wonder why and how this single field would generate in conscious beings the sensual/sensible apprehension of a material world alongside an immaterial consciousness. Perhaps it’s time to apply to Bohm’s writings for clarification.

Brains don’t interact with the models. There is no dualism on this model. Brains just are the model.

remember brains are part of the world model. What-is is more complex than brains.

So this unified field can account for both matter and mind, object and subject, neither of which is actually what it appears to be in what we take to be our experience -- as also in the history of human science and philosophy -- but instead constitutes an illusion produced by the ‘brain’? A marvel, if so, because the essence of phenomenal consciousness is that it responds to phenomena – i.e., phenomenal appearances that denote the actual existence of things and others in our lived experience (and as the history of human science has also assumed). It doesn’t hang together for me, but I will continue to read and contemplate your hypothesis.

I wouldn’t use the word illusion. Perception is a way for an evolved organism to move in the world. Perception is not an illusion, but neither is it a veridical model of what-is. It’s an umwelt which evolved along with the organism to allow it to move through the world.

Can temporal vortices within nature fully understand nature? I wonder if even out concept of “understand” is rational.

 

[smcder]

An Existential Crisis in Neuroscience

We’re mapping the brain in amazing detail—but our brain can’t understand the picture.

m.nautil.us

Quote:

““Let me put it this way,” Lichtman said. “Language itself is a fundamentally linear process, where one idea leads to the next. But if the thing you’re trying to describe [the brain] has a million things happening simultaneously, language is not the right tool. It’s like understanding the stock market. The best way to make money on the stock market is probably not by understanding the fundamental concepts of economy. It’s by understanding how to utilize this data to know what to buy and when to buy it. That may have nothing to do with economics but with data and how data is used.”

The problem is worse than the above. Language is produced by the brain. Can we call on the product to describe the producer? - Soupie

““Maybe human brains aren’t equipped to understand themselves,” I offered.

“And maybe there’s something fundamental about that idea: that no machine can have an output more sophisticated than itself,” Lichtman said. “What a car does is trivial compared to its engineering. What a human brain does is trivial compared to its engineering. Which is the great irony here. We have this false belief there’s nothing in the universe that humans can’t understand because we have infinite intelligence. But if I asked you if your dog can understand something you’d say, ‘Well, my dog’s brain is small.’ Well, your brain is only a little bigger,” he continued, chuckling. “Why, suddenly, are you able to understand everything?”

Some might find the above depressing. I’ve been thinking about this paragraph for a week or so. It is humbling.

but ultimately I find it exciting bc reality is surely way more exotic and complicated than we can even begin to imagine. - Soupie

“Late one night, after a long day of trying to make sense of my data, I came across a short story by Jorge Louis Borges that seemed to capture the essence of the brain mapping problem. In the story, “On Exactitude in Science,” a man named Suarez Miranda wrote of an ancient empire that, through the use of science, had perfected the art of map-making. While early maps were nothing but crude caricatures of the territories they aimed to represent, new maps grew larger and larger, filling in ever more details with each edition. Over time, Borges wrote, “the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province.” Still, the people craved more detail. “In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it.”

I think many people realize (but not all) that human knowledge and perception amounts to a “model” of what-is. But most seem to think that our knowledge and perception (our models) are pretty close. Thus this fact is trivial.

I don’t think so. As I’ve tried to make clear, I think it’s crucial to the mind body problem. I think what-is and our perceptual, conceptual, and mathematics models are significantly different. How different I wonder. The temptation is to think we’ve got everything almost figured out. That’s the temptation.

@Soupie wrote: "Which is the great irony here. We have this false belief there’s nothing in the universe that humans can’t understand because we have infinite intelligence."

Who is this quote from? WHO thinks this???

@Soupie wrote: “Maybe human brains aren’t equipped to understand themselves,” I offered.

Setting aside those who think humans have "infinite intelligence" (WHO thinks that??) Isn't the question whether human brains can understand themselves well enough to ___? Fill in the blank, for example, with: "the hard problem".

Nagel in WILTBAB doesn't rule out an "explanation of the physical nature of a mental phenomenon" - he does claim that

""And careful examination will show that no currently available concept of reduction is applicable to it."

and leaves a door slightly ajar:

"Perhaps a new theoretical form can be devised for the purpose, but such a solution, if it exists, lies in the distant intellectual future."

But he does take seriously the question of experience having an objective character:

Very little work has been done on the basic question (from which mention of the brain can be entirely omitted) whether any sense can be made of experiences' having an objective character at all. Does it make sense, in other words, to ask what my experiences are really like, as opposed to how they appear to me? We cannot genuinely understand the hypothesis that their nature is captured in a physical description unless we understand the more fundamental idea that they have an objective nature (or that objective processes can have a subjective nature).

I should like to close with a speculative proposal. It may be possible to approach the gap between subjective and objective from another direction ..."

Which argues against taking his stance to be an entirely rhetorical one, especially in light of Mind and Cosmos.

McGinn says maybe minds like ours can't understand consciousness, but maybe some other kind of mind could - but then perhaps that mind couldn't grasp something we take for granted. The problem with cognitive closure, some point out, is that you never can know what you can't know - so keep trying! And as an interesting adjunct: at the boundary of cognitive closure are there problems a kind of mind might not be able to figure out for itself, but which could understand when given an explanation of? Could McGinn's aliens explain consciousness to us and we understand it, or more enticingly, could we build a machine that could then explain it to us?

 

[smcder]

The problem of consciousness

Many people find consciousness deeply puzzling. It is often described as one of the few remaining problems for science to address that is genuinely

blog.oup.com

quote:

“In fact, however, there are no special properties. There are no qualia. The temptation to think otherwise derives from the special way in which we can think introspectively about our own perceptual states, deploying concepts such as this (feel of my experience of red). The “problem” of consciousness merely arises out of the contrast between first- and third-person modes of thinking about our own states. For it is one-and-the-same state, with one-and-the-same set of physical and functional properties, that can be thought of now as a perception of red and now as this feel. The latter is just a different way of thinking of the very same state as the former.

Given that there is no extra property that enters the world with phenomenal consciousness, it follows that the question of consciousness in non-human animals is of no scientific importance.”

And here is Peter Carruthers who denies the reality of phenomenal consciousness. The phenomenal quality of red is not real, he says, it’s merely how one thinks of the perception of red from the 1st person.

Does that make sense to anyone here?

@smcder and I have talked about the possibility that some people REALLY are p zombies.

Aphantasia is a real thing after all.

Aphantasia - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

“Aphantasia is a condition where one does not possess a functioning mind's eye and cannot voluntarily visualize imagery.[1]”

If I remember, Strawson writes pretty well on the reality of consciousness. It does seem like arguments such as the above assume what they are trying to argue away. The peculiar thing, the special thing is also inherent in the argument that there are no special properties and also in the very ability to think of the "very same state" in a different way.

"no extra property that enters the world with phenomenal consciousness"

Maybe the subjective is not a property? Maybe he'd be willing to get along without it?

It seems more like he is arguing about the "value" of consciousness, he does say " of no scientific importance" and I assume he thinks of humans as animals - so the question is whether he would be willing to forfeit the ability to think of things in that other way ... would he be willing to sell his consciousness to the devil, or whether he has a use for it.

 

[Randall]

"IT (Consciousness) arises out of our experience of those foundational primitive and prereflective world-generating-self thingamajigs...How will IT (Consciousness) apply it's own snapshots of temporality and spatiality to the very elements which have already been taken for granted in its own coming to be?"

I would not say that, "IT (Consciousness) arises out of our experience of ..." but rather consciousness is "... our experience of ..."

 

[Randall]

One of the things that might be helpful for this discussion is to establish where we all have common ground. There may not be much, honestly ...

You have made a key observation. It seems to me that our relative positions have also shifted somewhat since the start of this discussion. To unify things, I once again propose that we set aside our differences and give the serious process of critical thinking a collective try. We don't necessarily have to go with the model proposed by the FCT. In fact, from a critical thinking perspective, I think their Elements & Standards could be improved.

At the same time, even with the weaknesses in the FCT model, it is far more evolved than what we've been doing here, and I haven't seen a better presentation for us to adapt to our needs.The Elements & Standards is an easy to follow illustrated step-by-step guide. The first step would be to do as you suggest, which is to get on common ground regarding specific questions and concepts.

This is something I would be willing to participate in, and assist with facilitation, if nobody else wants the job. By "assist", I mean I wouldn't want to do this all myself. I would want at least one other participant here who would be willing to meet-up on Skype on a weekly basis to develop a systematic plan by talking and reviewing the guidelines in real-time, determining where we are, and then establishing the sequence of steps to follow.

After that, we could post the info here to solicit ideas and responses from anyone else who is interested. In theory, the process should lead us to the most reasonable and likely picture of the situation that is possible. Personally, I think I've already gotten to that point, but then again, maybe there's something I've missed that this process can filter out of background noise.

Any takers?

 

[Soupie]

Perception and the thing perceived are numerically distinct.

With one important exception: when the perceiver perceives itself.

 

[Soupie]

So what seems to be happening in ultra simplified form, is that sensory stimuli reach sense organs that send signals to corresponding brain regions, that create associated sensory fields that disturb the consciousness field. The disturbances in the consciousness field then induce a reaction in receptors in the thalamocortical loop, which transmits those signals to the various processing centers in the brain.

Personally, I think I've already gotten to that point, but then again, maybe there's something I've missed that this process can filter out of background noise.

I’m not interested in doing the logic study USI but I will attempt to understand your approach to phenomenal consciousness. Let me ask you some questions. Please correct any inaccuracies in my questions:

You believe that phenomenal consciousness is a field emitted by a certain part of the brain. Can you describe this phenomenal consciousness field?

 

[Constance]

I’m not interested in doing the logic study USI but I will attempt to understand your approach to phenomenal consciousness. Let me ask you some questions. Please correct any inaccuracies in my questions:
You believe that phenomenal consciousness is a field emitted by a certain part of the brain. Can you describe this phenomenal consciousness field?

I'd like to add this question to Randle, or anyone else here. Aside from an attempt to "describe this phenomenal consciousness field" scientifically or instrumentally, can you describe how you experience your own consciousness?

I also wonder whether anyone here would be willing, if it were a possible option, to give up their own consciousness? To let it disappear down the drain of his or her own experienced being, or in short to cut off its capacity for experience and reflections on experience?

 

[Pharoah]

And here is Peter Carruthers who denies the reality of phenomenal consciousness. The phenomenal quality of red is not real, he says, it’s merely how one thinks of the perception of red from the 1st person.
Does that make sense to anyone here?

Carruthers' 'logic' leads him to some pretty odd (many might say unacceptable) conclusions. Nothing unusual about that I suppose.
Does anyone live near Tuscon? I've been offered to give a presentation there in April (The Science of Consciousness Conference 2020)... on my paper. It'd be worth going if some of you lot are nearby.

 

[Soupie]

can you describe how you experience your own consciousness?

I swear I’m not trying to be difficult, but what exactly are you asking? How does one experience their own consciousness? Are you asking one to describe what they find when they introspect?

When introspect I discover emotions such as sad, mad, hurt, worried; I discover perceptions such as green, salty, hot, etc; and I discover thoughts, questions, worries, etc. As well as other “feels” which I haven’t words for.

[This reminds me of the * I left hanging way above. Without perceptions there would be nothingness... with the exception of non-perceptual mental phenomena such as thoughts and emotions.]

How else might one experience their own consciousness? Did you have something else in mind?

I also wonder whether anyone here would be willing, if it were a possible option, to give up their own consciousness? To let it disappear down the drain of his or her own experienced being, or in short to cut off its capacity for experience and reflections on experience?

I doubt it. Why ask such a question? ?

 

[Soupie]

I guess @Constance I feel like we are WAY past questions like these. I feel like many of us are hungry to explore the mbp and whatnot. But you seem to still be bewildered by the ideas and notions we are tentatively exploring.
Maybe that’s just my perception. I’m not trying to attack you but you act like if we step outside of the phenomenological approach we are all consciousness deniers who think p consciousness is a computer program. We are way past all that methinks.