Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 13

[Constance]

>> So my 'self-model' [where is that again?] has the experiences and stream of consciousness I have taken to be mine all these years?

No, your self-model IS your experience and your stream of consciousness.

It is instantiated by the physiological processes of your body, mostly your brain.

where is it? That’s kind of tricky. It’s instantiated by your brain—if you mess with your brain, your model (your phenomenology) will be effected. So we could say it’s “in” your brain. But that creates a duality and isn’t correct.

it’s more eaxact to say it IS your brain (processes).

But where is consciousness really? It’s within the umwelt. It’s within our subjective perspective of/on the world. That’s “where” it is.

Too much sleight of hand in your accounts. It's why I have no sense from what you write of 'how' neural nets present an illusion for me of my having conscious experiences. Especially since my intersubjective experiences all involve other people's subjectivity and subjective experiences, which are not my own. It doesn't help to write, as you do here, that

it’s more eaxact to say it IS your brain (processes).

But where is consciousness really? It’s within the umwelt. It’s within our subjective perspective of/on the world. That’s “where” it is.

As I said yesterday or the day before, I think you're misusing Jakob von Uexküll's term/concept of the Umwelt. What do you mean to say when you use the term? This definition comes up at the head of a search for the term:

"Umwelt
[ˈo͝omvelt]
NOUN

1. (in ethology) the world as it is experienced by a particular organism.
   "the worlds they perceive, their Umwelten, are all different"

 

[smcder]

The experience is the action of the nerves. Subjective - experience, Interobjective - nerves, objective - ?

there is no duality nor therefore overdetermination.

you keep wanting to say there is neurons action and then this additional phenomenal experience. The are one and the same seen from two different perspectives.

why does the organism need an expediting self model? There are limits to be stimulus response can allow an organism to do. I would say, re Constance, conscious experience always an organism to be a creative force over large spatiotemporally windows.

If there is a delay in consciousness, if it is constructed after the events ... what is phenomenal experience one and the same with?

In terms of an expediting self model, there are a number of complexes in the body that coordinate complex actions - one in the digestive system (which uses more serotonin than the brain!) and one around the heart and lots of local action and regulation. Humans seem to be able to do almost everything without immediate conscious attention - most of the time we are off in our heads doing something else ... no doubt the contents of which always relate to the evolutionary purpose at hand ... ;-)

"Why do cartoon balls go "boing"?"
"Did I leave the stove on?"
"Huh, stoveon, oveon, oven? nah..."
"What did Bill mean in that meeting today? Well, he can go "boing"!"

Gales of laughter as Sheila convulses swerving into the concrete embankment.

"There are limits to be stimulus response can allow an organism to do." Are there? What are they and how do we know that? Computers just add more binary states. More importantly - this is emergence - stimulus/response until a certain complexity and then something new/more efficient "simpler" emerges.

 

[Constance]

continuing to @Soupie from my quoted remark:

"Sorry but I find the whole premise to be absurd. I was there for all that and more. I know what happened. I remember all of it in sometimes beautiful, sometimes terrifying, detail."

Let me give you a minor example. When I was escaping Florida with Annie to fly to Milwaukee, rushing along in the Atlanta Airport trying to keep up with the mob of people rushing to reach the gate of the connecting flight to Milwaukee, carrying Annie (then 3 and half years old), her diaper bag, and my handbag), a man with a briefcase in a three-piece suit said "Here, let me carry her," which he did running alongside me talking about his own child. That's how I made that connecting flight safely with Annie.

That was, as it happens, the day the Berlin Wall fell, in November of 1989, as I had just learned watching CNN in the airport lounge when the gate change for the next flight was announced, leading to the mad rush. Looking back and vividly remembering that rush to the farther gate, I wonder: "Did I imagine that helpful man, or was he really there. Were we all really there, trying to get to Milwaukee and farther destinations on that plane? Were my conscious reflections on the fall of Berlin Wall real while I was running along talking to Annie, next to me in this stranger's arms? Did the Berlin Wall really fall that day? What did it mean to everyone there and all over the world?

An hour or so later, just past Chicago and over southern Wisconsin, Annie pointed out the window over the wing at a dazzling white light poised over the wingtip as we flew along the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. I've described that sighting elsewhere in the Paracast forums, years ago. I doubt, radically doubt, that all these things took place in a self-model constructed in my neural nets. The world is real, and so are we.

 

[smcder]

Yes, conscious experience is an interface. It presents the organism with an incredibly simplistic perspective of reality.

I was thinking about the fact that at some point in the not to distant past humans knew nothing about the inner workinhs of the body; the nervous system, circulatory system, etc.

From subjective experience our bodies are kind of like puppets. Our arms and legs move at the joints “on our command” and we look directly at the world etc.

We know things are much much more complex than that but we don’t experience it first hand.

there is a plethora of psychiatric literature that chronically unfortunate individuals who have all kinds of quirks of consciousness.

I have a one bookmarked now where a gentleman apparently cannot consciousnly see certain numbers.

It's interesting to think about how what we learns alters our perceptions. Richard Dawkins ended his discussion on memes, can't remember the book, basically by saying that humans have stepped away from instinctual behavior and so exposed themselves to tremendous opportunity and danhger. A suggestion can heal or kill. But the exact connection to our experience is elusive. I just doubt that anyone is going to accept a brute force or just so answer and stop looking - the hard problem has been enormously fruitful. With so many people arguing as passionately for as against it, it has harnessed a lot of energy and we've learned a lot from it - so I think we'll keep asking it.

 

[Randall]

In literature and philosophy, mentored by the phenomenologist in the Dept of Philosophy {note to Steve: that was Kaelin}. Nobody writes more than one dissertation unless they're pursuing degrees in several fields. The diss is probably still available from the national archive of dissertations at a university I've forgotten the name of ...

Hmm, so it was either written before you were using a computer or you lost the file. Do you remember what you titled it? The year?

 

[smcder]

This is what I meant about people not fully realizing what it means when it is said everything your are experiencing right now via perception and introspection is a model being instantiated by your transcendent organism.

the you experiencing all this is part of the model.

there is no duality of brain processes and experience. There is a brain processes that embody a model of an experiencing self.

Bach and Dennett would privilege the inter subjective “onject” world. They would say there “really” is only neural activity. The experiencing self is an illusion or virtual.

one could see that argument bc for me personally my self experience goes away at night and the two times I’ve had to go under. So it does seem that the “objective” world is primary and my conscious self experience is derivative.

however, I understand that the objective world of neurons and atoms is also a model. So I don’t really know what’s out there beyond my subjective perspective on the world.

that’s one reason I’ve shied away from panpsychism as of late. I think reality beyond our physics models and folk experiences is even stranger than we can imagine.

Sure and it could all be like the Matrix - but if it's all an illusion it's pointing to something that generates at least the illusion of consistency in subjective experience - this is why Descartes said even an all powerful demon wouldn't nullify his argument. The coherent thing we have to think with right now - (and it works even if the model covers everything) is the physical world model and we can look at others and take readings and come to a conclusion that there is a delay so that complex conscious experiences come after the event ... so if you grant all that, what is it they are synonymous with?

 

[smcder]

This is what I meant about people not fully realizing what it means when it is said everything your are experiencing right now via perception and introspection is a model being instantiated by your transcendent organism.

the you experiencing all this is part of the model.

there is no duality of brain processes and experience. There is a brain processes that embody a model of an experiencing self.

Bach and Dennett would privilege the inter subjective “onject” world. They would say there “really” is only neural activity. The experiencing self is an illusion or virtual.

one could see that argument bc for me personally my self experience goes away at night and the two times I’ve had to go under. So it does seem that the “objective” world is primary and my conscious self experience is derivative.

however, I understand that the objective world of neurons and atoms is also a model. So I don’t really know what’s out there beyond my subjective perspective on the world.

that’s one reason I’ve shied away from panpsychism as of late. I think reality beyond our physics models and folk experiences is even stranger than we can imagine.

"This is what I meant about people not fully realizing what it means when it is said everything your are experiencing right now via perception and introspection is a model being instantiated by your transcendent organism."

1. how the hell did we let transcendent organism creep in here??? More Soupology.
2. What is it exactly that you don't think I fully realize what it means ... etc etc

 

[Constance]

Hmm, so it was either written before you were using a computer or you lost the file. Do you remember what you titled it? The year?

The title was "The Sense of Time in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens" and the diss was a 300-page reading of major poems by the phenomenological poet Wallace Stevens informed by Husserl's theory of time consciousness, Heidegger's Being and Time, and Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception. I did not have a computer at the time, so I composed it on a typewriter and employed a legal secretary to type and proofread the final copy. A bound copy went to the FSU Library, and copies sought from the archive in Ann Arbor were produced by offprint by the archive I mentioned. The year was 1979. I think you could spend your time much more productively by reading the philosophers and theorists we all have quoted and cited extensively here over the last four years.

 

[Soupie]

I doubt, radically doubt, that all these things took place in a self-model constructed in m

Yes, your subjective conscious experience took place “in” your body. ( I would say it was instantiated by physiological processes, ie your body. )

If you reject that idea, which you seem to, where do you suggest your subjective conscious experience took place? Do you suppose that you have direct access to objective reality?

 

[Soupie]

"This is what I meant about people not fully realizing what it means when it is said everything your are experiencing right now via perception and introspection is a model being instantiated by your transcendent organism."

1. how the hell did we let transcendent organism creep in here??? More Soupology.
2. What is it exactly that you don't think I fully realize what it means ... etc etc

Transcendent organism = the inferred objective process instantiating my subjective experience. Probably shouldn’t call it an “organism” as that smacks of human perspective.

you’re asking onscious experience can have causal power. Conscious experience is instantiated by physiological processes. (Conscious experience is, in this sense, a physiological process.) therefor there is no issue of causal interaction or overdetermination.

now I always add the caveat that we don’t truly know what is “out there” beyond our subjective experience of the world. Most people are content to say its atoms or quantum fields. But we need to remember that even those concepts are models.

asking how conscious experience can have causal power is the subjective self asking. The subject self doesn’t exist in objective reality. It’s part of our self model. Which is something the organism instantiating is uses to interface with the world, including its own physiological states.

 

[smcder]

Transcendent organism = the inferred objective process instantiating my subjective experience. Probably shouldn’t call it an “organism” as that smacks of human perspective.

you’re asking onscious experience can have causal power. Conscious experience is instantiated by physiological processes. (Conscious experience is, in this sense, a physiological process.) therefor there is no issue of causal interaction or overdetermination.

now I always add the caveat that we don’t truly know what is “out there” beyond our subjective experience of the world. Most people are content to say its atoms or quantum fields. But we need to remember that even those concepts are models.

asking how conscious experience can have causal power is the subjective self asking. The subject self doesn’t exist in objective reality. It’s part of our self model. Which is something the organism instantiating is uses to interface with the world, including its own physiological states.

Probably shouldn't use transcendent either. Also probably shouldn't say things like "the inferred objective process instantiating my subjective experience." at least not in mixed company.

"you’re asking onscious experience can have causal power. Conscious experience is instantiated by physiological processes. (Conscious experience is, in this sense, a physiological process.) therefor there is no issue of causal interaction or overdetermination."

This and the rest of your post says "no" consciousness doesn't have causal power.

And again, again, again ... if consciousness is a post-construction, if it lags ... then it is not identical to the neural action at the time of events but of actions afterward and probably including other neurons.

Now stare into the deep, philosophical eyes of David Chalmers until you are enlightened:

 

[smcder]

Yes, your subjective conscious experience took place “in” your body. ( I would say it was instantiated by physiological processes, ie your body. )

If you reject that idea, which you seem to, where do you suggest your subjective conscious experience took place? Do you suppose that you have direct access to objective reality?

This is where I think the language of simulation, etc. confuses. You perceive the world directly through the senses and you experience the world directly through whatever processses ... there is no extra layer of simulation as in the Matrix, where what was perceived/experienced was generated by computers. (hopefully)

 

[Constance]

Yes, your subjective conscious experience took place “in” your body. ( I would say it was instantiated by physiological processes, ie your body. )

If you reject that idea, which you seem to, where do you suggest your subjective conscious experience took place? Do you suppose that you have direct access to objective reality?

My subjective openness to the world and my conscious experiences in it take place within the human organism that I am, which includes my body, my consciousness, and my mind in relation to the world in which I exist, move, think, and learn. No, I don't "suppose that I have direct access to 'objective' reality," but I do have subjective access to the natural and cultural reality I exist in, and so do you. But it seems you haven't tuned in to that yet for some reason. Perhaps because you have long accepted the idea that reality must be something totally objective, a remote and unknowable mass of things or processes beyond human perception, participation, or understanding. You don't live there, and neither do I.

 

[Constance]

Probably shouldn't use transcendent either. Also probably shouldn't say things like "the inferred objective process instantiating my subjective experience." at least not in mixed company.

"you’re asking onscious experience can have causal power. Conscious experience is instantiated by physiological processes. (Conscious experience is, in this sense, a physiological process.) therefor there is no issue of causal interaction or overdetermination."

This and the rest of your post says "no" consciousness doesn't have causal power.

And again, again, again ... if consciousness is a post-construction, if it lags ... then it is not identical to the neural action at the time of events but of actions afterward and probably including other neurons.

Now stare into the deep, philosophical eyes of David Chalmers until you are enlightened:

Good drawing!!! Is it yours?

 

[smcder]

Good drawing!!! Is it yours?

Good drawing!!! Is it yours?

If by "Is it yours?" you mean: Is it part of the self model created by your transcendent organism? Then yes, it is mine. ;-) lol

 

[Constance]

If by "Is it yours?" you mean: Is it part of the self model created by your transcendent organism? Then yes, it is mine. ;-) lol

That's what I thought. {well, not exactly what I thought}

Anyway, it's very good. Maybe you should send it to him. He might want to use it for the cover of his next book.

 

[smcder]

Excellent questions. Meaning is felt as much as it is thought, and it is from what we feel in our embodied conscious existence that we begin to think our thoughts. Let's pursue these questions. Let me start with the first: "Is there something it is like to solve the hard problem?"

I think that rather than hoping for Chalmers or McGinn or more likely Max Velmans to do that for us one day {and perhaps he already has; must get back to him}, we need to help ourselves by diving into the phenomenology of our own experience, paying attention to its carnal nature, the ways in which light and color strike our eyes and appeal to us or repel us; the ways in which sound touches us physically, in the tangible senses of an acoustic guitarist's fingers striking, stroking, or touching the strings of his instrument (we even hear the sounds of that touch itself in the resistance given by the strings, beneath the notes and chords struck, their tones and colors), and beyond that we feel the harmonic resonances stirred up by the movements and transitions of chords against chords, changes of keys, and satisfying resolutions of tensions aroused in the music that are so thick that we can almost taste them. I have in mind Djavan's performances and will link one in a minute to test for yourself. Merleau-Ponty's late works describe the 'flesh' of the world as of ourselves as part of the tangible, sensable, and sensible environments in which we draw our breath and live our lives and love what we love. Try this performance, more than one hearing, to enable you to concentrate on what reaches you from his guitar, not only his voice:

{I hope i've set the auto-play button correctly so that it's easy to replay the music several times}

Portugese! Listening now.

 

[smcder]

That's what I thought. {well, not exactly what I thought}

Anyway, it's very good. Maybe you should send it to him. He might want to use it for the cover of his next book.

Thank you! He has an interesting face, eyes - and his appearance varies wildly with various permutations of clean shaven, beard, no beard, long hair, etc. The careless good looks of a rock star (he has or had a band) yet he cleans up well. Whereas every picture of Dan Dennet or Thomas Nagel for the past forty years ... looks the same.

 

[Constance]

Thank you! He has an interesting face, eyes - and his appearance varies wildly with various permutations of clean shaven, beard, no beard, long hair, etc. The careless good looks of a rock star (he has or had a band) yet he cleans up well. Whereas every picture of Dan Dennet or Thomas Nagel for the past forty years ... looks the same.

I think your sketch captures those large penetrating oval eyes and the fluidity of his variable, loosely managed hair. And I think you capture a certain sensitivity in his eyes and face as a whole that show up in many videotapes of his lectures. I've seen photos of Dennet but not of Nagel. Will look him up.

 

[Constance]

Portugese! Listening now.

Hope you like. I think you can also link at the end to a fabulous Seu Jorge performance that I posted last week. And the sound of that Brazilian Portuguese (sp?) sends me, as they used to say, almost as much as much as the music.