Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 13

[Constance]

@Soupie, I think your post hasn't included the tools for responding because a coding 'toggle switch' wasn't activated when you typed your post. Randall explained to me that when this switch is off you can trigger it back on by going to the gear icon above and doing something I don't recall after that.)

Anyway, I want to ask a question about two sentences from your post that I've copied to post here:

So we might ask, if we allow that some neural processes carry representational content: why do the representations instantiated by some neural processes have a “something it’s like” accompanying them?

Bc that’s the work the representation is there to do for the organism as a whole; to provide for the organism a simple story of what is happening.

I'm wondering how an organism responds to an event such as a burn the first time it happens, i.e., before the representation of what a burn is has been constructed in the 'self-model'? It seems to me that a representation of a past experience can be called upon when the same experience occurs again, but in the first instance the event seems to have taken place in lived conscious reality.

ps, oops, it appears that this post too does not have the toggle switch in the working position. Maybe a glitch in the mother system.

 

[Constance]

@Constance ... I think you will find something you like from him.

Ennio Morricone, composer of 520 soundtrack albums dead at 91.



From The Mission:

• 520 soundtrack albums
• 14 studio albums
• 11 live albums
• 4 video albums
• 61 singles
• 116 compilation
• 15 piano concertos
• 30 symphonic pieces
• choral music
• one opera
• one mass

Ennio Morricone’s 25 Greatest Musical Cues

To say that Morricone was a great soundtrack composer — or even the greatest of all soundtrack composers — doesn’t quite do him justice.

www.vulture.com

Without a doubt.

 

[Constance]

They're not hard to explain at all.

Q. What is Consciousness?
A. Consciousness is our experience of the world

Q. What is consciousness made of?
A. Consciousness is made of our experience of the world.

Q. What is consciousness for?
A. Consciousness is for experiencing the world.

Q. How does consciousness experience the world?
A. Consciousness experiences the world remarkably.

The above answers may seem glib. They're not. They show that were not asking the right questions, or that instead of asking questions like the ones above, we should be performing tasks that help build an accurate description of the situation with consciousness. The people IMO best qualified to be on the forefront of this approach are:

1. Neuroscientists, primarily in neurophysiology, neurophilosophy, cognitive neuroscience.
2. Theoretical physicists, specializing in field theory and supervenience
3. Psychologists, primarily cognitive
4. Philosophers, primarily in metaphysics, phenomenology and epistemology

I think we have asked 'the right questions' in this thread throughout the four years it's gone on, and we're still wide open to newly arriving efforts to understand consciousness or either constrain or deny its reality. We have also cited, quoted, and discussed countless major thinkers and researchers prominent in the interdisciplinary field of Consciousness Studies. I don't know what you mean by our instead discussing "the situation with consciousness." Would you be more specific?

Given the above, I don't know how many of us here are qualified to be on the forefront. At least @Constance has her PhD. I'm an armchair philosopher at best. At worst I'm deluding myself into thinking I actually have something important to say.

Why do any of us need to be 'on the forefront' of Consciousness Studies in order to read and discuss the various approaches employed in this field? And btw my PhD machts nichts so please stop referring to it. I'm no better prepared than anyone else here to evaluate the wide span of interdisciplinary texts we've been diligently reading, discussing, and evaluating. It's a huge field of thought and discourse we're studying, and few if any of the most productive researchers in it achieve uniform applause and agreement.

 

[Randall]

I don't know what you mean by our instead discussing "the situation with consciousness." Would you be more specific?

What I mean by describing the situation as opposed to asking "how" and "why" type questions can be thought of this way: In a race to build an airplane who would win? The philosophers asking why an airplane flies, or the engineers with a set of blueprints? The latter need not know why an airplane flies. They just need to know that when they build it according to specs, that it will fly.

Why do any of us need to be 'on the forefront' of Consciousness Studies in order to read and discuss the various approaches employed in this field? And btw my PhD machts nichts so please stop referring to it.

No need to be so modest. I have respect for anyone who applies themselves to that level. But if you prefer that I not mention it, I can respect that too.

I'm no better prepared than anyone else here to evaluate the wide span of interdisciplinary texts we've been diligently reading, discussing, and evaluating. It's a huge field of thought and discourse we're studying, and few if any of the most productive researchers in it achieve uniform applause and agreement.

Sometimes I think we take ourselves too much for granted. Things that seem obvious to us now, were once new and less materialized in our minds. If I were to walk into this thread with the same perspective I did on the first day, I'd be totally lost. I only recently had a couple of new insights ( for me ) into phenomenology, something that I doubt would have happened if it weren't for you constantly sharing your perspective on it.

 

[Constance]

What I mean by describing the situation as opposed to asking "how" and "why" type questions can be thought of this way: In a race to build an airplane who would win? The philosophers asking why an airplane flies, or the engineers with a set of blueprints? The latter need not know why an airplane flies. They just need to know that when they build it according to specs, that it will fly.

No need to be so modest. I have respect for anyone who applies themselves to that level. But if you prefer that I not mention it, I can respect that too.

Sometimes I think we take ourselves too much for granted. Things that seem obvious to us now, were once new and less materialized in our minds. If I were to walk into this thread with the same perspective I did on the first day, I'd be totally lost. I only recently had a couple of new insights ( for me ) into phenomenology, something that I doubt would have happened if it weren't for you constantly sharing your perspective on it.

But we can't construct consciousness like we could a spacecraft. It's a powerful and ramifying natural phenomenon with a long history on this planet, and btw we wouldn't know the history of this planet and of life on it, or of anything else for that matter, to the extent we do were it not for consciousness and mind. Neither of which we can explain physically.

 

[Randall]

But we can't construct consciousness like we could a spacecraft.

It was an analogy to illuminate the disadvantage of "why" and "how" type questions, the principle of which can be applied to the pursuit of knowledge about pretty much anything. It's not limited by the nature of the subject at hand.

It's a powerful and ramifying natural phenomenon with a long history on this planet, and btw we wouldn't know the history of this planet and of life on it, or of anything else for that matter, to the extent we do were it not for consciousness and mind. Neither of which we can explain physically.

We can't explain anything physically ( or otherwise ) except superficially, including consciousness. We can only try our best to describe the situations in which we find them. Once this is made part of the model, the mystique about it dissipates, and more practical explorations can happen. This is relevant to phenomenology because it is very descriptive. It is less concerned with why or how things are red, and more concerned with describing redness.

If a robot could write poetry like Stevens or Merleau-Ponty, without having any prior knowledge of them, I might be tempted to think it wasn't simply a machine, but also experienced consciousness, much like Stevens and Merleau-Ponty. That is why I suggested above, that the best choice for those on the forefront of consciousness studies should include philosophers of phenomenology.

BTW: Nice tune. Djavan was born in '49 ! Maybe I'm not so crazy to pursue my music at 60+ either. I'm not quite that laid back yet though.

 

[Soupie]

I'm wondering how an organism responds to an event such as a burn the first time it happens, i.e., before the representation of what a burn is has been constructed in the 'self-model'? It seems to me that a representation of a past experience can be called upon when the same experience occurs again, but in the first instance the event seems to have taken place in lived conscious reality.

I think certain representational capacities are genetic rather than learned. Just as an organism doesn’t have to learn to digest food or pump blood, their brain organ begins representing the world in the womb.

All conscious experience—unless one is in an altered state—feels as if it has taken place in reality. The interface is opaque. It doesn’t seem like an interface, it seems like reality. We can only infer it’s an interface with objective reality as opposed to objective reality due to experiences with dreams, illusions, and things learned via science, and philosophy.

 

[Soupie]

@Soupie, I think your post hasn't included the tools for responding because a coding 'toggle switch' wasn't activated when you typed your post

I was just posting several comments and making one response.

 

[Soupie]

I'm wondering how an organism responds to an event such as a burn the first time it happens, i.e., before the representation of what a burn is has been constructed in the 'self-model'? It seems to me that a representation of a past experience can be called upon when the same experience occurs again, but in the first instance the event seems to have taken place in lived conscious reality.

Also this harkens to our discussion of Panksepp who believed that certain core types of affects were genetic in humans and other species, natural kinds of ways of feeling about the world instantiated by neurons ( affective neuroscience ) and constructivism, the view that the brain builds up a conscious experiential picture of the world via experience over time. The first time we taste wine or beer we may not taste their subtleties, but over time we are able to “build” a meaningful conscious experience of them.

I recall watching friends play chess in elementary school and it looked like absolute chaos. As I learned to play of course my experience of watching a game became completely different. ( Chess is my favorite board game btw. )

So I don’t think, say, a baby would watch a broadway musical and see what we see. It would takes years of experience for the baby to have meaningful conscious experience of the play. But a baby would be born with the capacity to represent basic colors, sounds, smells, etc. more than most people give them credit for. But I think that’s what a lot of explicit learning is, building up perceptual and conceptual models of the world. ( Implicit learning, equally if not more powerful, is subconscious. )

 

[smcder]

If the memory is of a self feeling pain, it will need to be conscious, bc selves feeling pain only exist in consciousness.

Right. So there is no problem of mental causation or overdetermination.

The conscious experience itself, instantiated by physiological processes—being a representation of what’s happening in the world—won’t casually interact with the physiological processes; it’s instantiated by them however.

So we might ask, if we allow that some neural processes carry representational content: why do the representations instantiated by some neural processes have a “something it’s like” accompanying them?

Bc that’s the work the representation is there to do for the organism as a whole; to provide for the organism a simple story of what is happening:

Quantum fields comprised of trillions of rippling interactions becomes:

Im cooking dinner and touched the burner and it hurt like hell.

The reason those neural processes carry a “something it’s like” is bc that’s the representational work they’re doing.

From the outside it will look like physiological goings on, bc that’s what it is. But from “inside” the representation, it will feel like something. That’s “where” we—the conscious self—live.

When you intersperse the comments (as above) then a simple reply won't catch everything, so I have to copy and paste the entire text and then edit out the blank space or paragraph marks. My answers to this go round are marked with "*".

smcder said:Why does the memory have to be conscious?

If the memory is of a self feeling pain, it will need to be conscious, bc selves feeling pain only exist in consciousness.

Come on ... what I am asking is why is the "feel" necessary? Why isn't access consciousness enough?

smcder said:


so pain isn't pain neurons firing, it's consciousness constructing neurons firing afterward, that separation raises causality issues.

smcder said:


So, not causal but a representational necessity.

smcder said:


this statement and the claim that consciousness isn't objective, means consciousness isn't causal - it's an accompaniment

Right. So there is no problem of mental causation or overdetermination.

The conscious experience itself, instantiated by physiological processes—being a representation of what’s happening in the world—won’t casually interact with the physiological processes; it’s instantiated by them however.

So we might ask, if we allow that some neural processes carry representational content: why do the representations instantiated by some neural processes have a “something it’s like” accompanying them?

Bc that’s the work the representation is there to do for the organism as a whole; to provide for the organism a simple story of what is happening:

Quantum fields comprised of trillions of rippling interactions becomes:

Im cooking dinner and touched the burner and it hurt like hell.

The reason those neural processes carry a “something it’s like” is bc that’s the representational work they’re doing.

From the outside it will look like physiological goings on, bc that’s what it is. But from “inside” the representation, it will feel like something. That’s “where” we—the conscious self—live.

*You write:

The conscious experience itself, instantiated by physiological processes—being a representation of what’s happening in the world—won’t casually interact with the physiological processes; it’s instantiated by them however.

So we might ask, if we allow that some neural processes carry representational content: why do the representations instantiated by some neural processes have a “something it’s like” accompanying them?

Bc that’s the work the representation is there to do for the organism as a whole; to provide for the organism a simple story of what is happening:

* But the simple story of what is happening doesn't causally interact with the physiological processes, so the organism gets a simple story of what is happening while the physiological processes are doing all the work. So what is the consequence if the simple story is missing? On this account, none. The simple story itself - the "feeling" has to matter - it has to matter that you felt the pain, not just that you got the story. I'll post two things from Humphrey's paper (above) below to show this.

Also, it may be true (seems reasonable) that phenomenal consciousness is a simpler story, but you can't simply proclaim it - you have to show that "something it is like" conveys a simpler story, conveys it with less biological cost than access consciousness alone and that the feel has to be there. Or, maybe it just comes along for the ride as a consequence of ..., and so you could try to show how that would work biologically, that would be a kind of necessity.

 

[smcder]

OK, looks like its from Clark's paper and I posted it above, I'll post again:

"The world appears to conscious creatures in terms of experienced sensory qualities, but science doesn't find sensory experience in that world, only physical objects and properties. I argue that the failure to locate consciousness in the world is a function of our necessarily representational relation to reality as knowers: we won't discover the terms in which reality is represented by us in the world as it appears in those terms. (your point, I think @Soupie) Physicalists who are realists about consciousness generally assume its objectivity: experience is something identical with physical processes or properties, perhaps the intrinsic nature of the physical, or perhaps some micro-physical, neural, or emergent property. I argue that this assumption wrongly reifies consciousness; it expects to find qualitative representational content-qualia-in the physical world as characterized using such content. Instead, we should grant that conscious experience constitutes a mind-dependent, subjective, representational reality for cognitive systems such as ourselves, (@Soupie - the interface) and that the physical world described by science is a represented objective reality. The former, since it exists only for conscious subjects, won't be found as an entity in the latter. I suggest that naturalistic approaches to explaining consciousness should acknowledge the representational relation and the non-objectivity of experience, and be constrained by evidence that consciousness accompanies certain sorts of behavior-controlling representational functions carried out by complex, physically-instantiated mind-systems. (@Soupie - this statement and the claim that consciousness isn't objective, means consciousness isn't causal - it's an accompaniment) I evaluate a variety of current hypotheses about consciousness on that basis, and suggest that a mature science of representation may eventually help explain why, perhaps as a matter of representational necessity, experience arises as a natural but not objectively discoverable phenomenon."

I'm going to go back through Clark's paper and see where he expands on this and make sure it says what I think it does, but right now, reading this:

"I suggest that naturalistic approaches to explaining consciousness should acknowledge the representational relation and the non-objectivity of experience, and be constrained by evidence that consciousness accompanies certain sorts of behavior-controlling representational functions carried out by complex, physically-instantiated mind-systems."

So consciousness accompanies certain sorts of behavior-controlling representational functions carried out by complex, physically-instantiated mind systems. Constrained by evidence that - tells me to look for why consciousness is a representational necessity even though physical systems do all the work - because remember, his main point is that consciousness isn't a thing, support for this is when he says consciousness is wrongly reified and in the title that consciousness can't be objectified. So the trick is to show why a "mind-dependent, subjective, representational reality" is necessary. Also, note that he explicitly denies that experience is identical to physical processes or properties.

 

[Soupie]

But the simple story of what is happening doesn't causally interact with the physiological processes, so the organism gets a simple story of what is happening while the physiological processes are doing all the work. So what is the consequence if the simple story is missing? On this account, none. The simple story itself - the "feeling" has to matter - it has to matter that you felt the pain, not just that you got the story. I'll post two things from Humphrey's paper (above) below to show this.

The pain is the story though. There’s no pain in the physical world, only the conscious (subjective, representational) world.

Only the self “inside” the story feels pain. The organism doesn’t feel pain. (Think of Bach’s saying again.)

We want the objective organism to feel the pain, that’s why we wonder how the physical organism feels the subjective pain.

At risk of sounding as if I’m introducing a homunculus, the organism “tells itself” a story of itself feeling pain (the self-world model).

I’m not entirely clear on this relationship myself. For example, we could ask “well then how can we talk about consciousness?”

But in the objective world, there is no talking, no language, no concepts. It’s only vocal chords and sounds waves.

Talking about consciousness happens in the conscious experience, the self-world model.

 

[Soupie]

If the simple story is missing, then the physiological correlates will be different, and thus “missing” something as well.

 

[Soupie]

It’s not like the brain is watching a little movie in the skull. The physiological processes instantiate the self-world model. The physiological processes are the model.

 

[smcder]

The pain is the story though. There’s no pain in the physical world, only the conscious (subjective, representational) world.

Only the self “inside” the story feels pain. The organism doesn’t feel pain. (Think of Bach’s saying again.)

We want the objective organism to feel the pain, that’s why we wonder how the physical organism feels the subjective pain.

At risk of sounding as if I’m introducing a homunculus, the organism “tells itself” a story of itself feeling pain (the self-world model).

I’m not entirely clear on this relationship myself. For example, we could ask “well then how can we talk about consciousness?”

But in the objective world, there is no talking, no language, no concepts. It’s only vocal chords and sounds waves.

Talking about consciousness happens in the conscious experience, the self-world model.

Only the self “inside” the story feels pain. The organism doesn’t feel pain. (Think of Bach’s saying again.)

Right.

At risk of sounding as if I’m introducing a homunculus, the organism “tells itself” a story of itself feeling pain (the self-world model).
.
Right.

If the simple story is missing, then the physiological correlates will be different, and thus “missing” something as well.

No, the arrow goes only one way ... so if the simple story is missing, it's because the physiological correlates weren't there. The tv station doesn't shut down when you turn your tv off. ;-)

It’s not like the brain is watching a little movie in the skull. The physiological processes instantiate the self-world model. The physiological processes are the model.

Clark says:

"Physicalists who are realists about consciousness generally assume its objectivity: experience is something identical with physical processes or properties, perhaps the intrinsic nature of the physical, or perhaps some micro-physical, neural, or emergent property. I argue that this assumption wrongly reifies consciousness; it expects to find qualitative representational content-qualia-in the physical world as characterized using such content.

Instead, we should grant that conscious experience constitutes a mind-dependent, subjective, representational reality for cognitive systems such as ourselves, and that the physical world described by science is a represented objective reality. The former, since it exists only for conscious subjects, won't be found as an entity in the latter. I suggest that naturalistic approaches to explaining consciousness should acknowledge the representational relation and the non-objectivity of experience, and be constrained by evidence that consciousness accompanies certain sorts of behavior-controlling representational functions carried out by complex, physically-instantiated mind-systems. I evaluate a variety of current hypotheses about consciousness on that basis, and suggest that a mature science of representation may eventually help explain why, perhaps as a matter of representational necessity, experience arises as a natural but not objectively discoverable phenomenon."

...consciousness accompanies certain sorts of behavior-controlling representational functions carried out by complex, physically-instantiated mind-systems ....

So on the one hand, if one is a physicalist, there is only the physiological processes, but on the other hand, for conscious subjects, consciousness accompanies the processes, so its not identical to them - if the processes changes ---> the experience changes, but this arrow only goes that direction. So we are left with experience as a representational necessity - there has to be "what it is like" for the representation to work and the representation has to be there for the efficient actions of the physiological processes...does this boil down to phenomenal consciousness is necessary for access consciousness?

Must read more!

 

[Constance]

...consciousness accompanies certain sorts of behavior-controlling representational functions carried out by complex, physically-instantiated mind-systems ....

l think I've read that sentence a dozen times by now and it still appears to me to beg the question 'how', precisely how, [i.e., out of what foresight of changing world structures and world knowledge?] does 'the physically-instantiated mind system' [surely 'brain', not mind, is intended] devise its 'behavior controlling representational functions' that control or manipulate what we think? And also, why would 'nature' produce such a filter between the awareness of evolving organisms and the actual environments they arise in? Also, you indicated that you do not mean to be subscribing to a notion of a 'homunculus', but it all sounds like a description of a 'homunculus'.

I'm trying to ferret out the grounds for these hypotheses, but I can't find them in the texts. It all sounds like a lot of 'hooey'.

So on the one hand, if one is a physicalist, there is only the physiological processes, but on the other hand, for conscious subjects, consciousness accompanies the processes, so its not identical to them - if the processes changes ---> the experience changes, but this arrow only goes that direction. So we are left with experience as a representational necessity - there has to be "what it is like" for the representation to work and the representation has to be there for the efficient actions of the physiological processes...does this boil down to phenomenal consciousness is necessary for access consciousness?

How does 'consciousness' come into it What do you and your sources mean by 'consciousness'?

This is all so fraught with ambiguity and sleight-of-hand that I can find no way to make sense of it. Why don't we all turn to SEP's extensive and responsible article on "Representational Theories of Consciousness" and see if we can figure out what these speculators we're reading now actually mean by 'representation'?

Representational Theories of Consciousness (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

 

[Soupie]

If the simple story is missing, then the physiological correlates will be different, and thus “missing” something as well.

No, the arrow goes only one way ... so if the simple story is missing, it's because the physiological correlates weren't there. The tv station doesn't shut down when you turn your tv off. ;-)

Sorry. “Missing” isn’t the right term. I mean they will be different. Not different in a “missing ingredient” kind of way.

Recall our discussion re whatever it is that makes some physiological processes have a “what it’s like” won’t be a physical something.

The neural processes correlated with conscious experience won’t have some extra physical ingredient that can be seen public ally ( intersubjectively ).

However I think I can say that neurological processes that do carry a consciousness representation ( say, of a self feeling pain ) And then moments later do not, there will be a physiological correlate that we can track publicly.

Now, we will still have to infer that the neurological process is instantiating a conscious experience—we will never publicly see a conscious experience.

 

[Constance]

Talking about consciousness happens in the conscious experience, the self-world model.

Can we listen in and see what the 'self-world model' has to say for itself?

 

[smcder]

l think I've now read that sentence a dozen times now and it still appears to me to beg the question 'how', precisely how, [i.e., out of what foresight of changing world structures and world knowledge?] does 'the physically-instantiated mind system' [surely 'brain', not mind, is intended] devise its 'behavior controlling representational functions' that control or manipulate what we think? And also, why would 'nature' produce such a filter between the awareness of evolving organisms and the actual environments they arise in? Also, you indicated that you do not mean to be subscribing to a notion of a 'homunculus', but it all sounds like a description of a 'homunculus'.

I'm trying to ferret out the grounds for these hypotheses, but I can't find them in the texts. It all sounds like a lot of 'hooey'.



How does 'consciousness' come into it What do you and your sources mean by 'consciousness'?

This is all so fraught with ambiguity and sleight-of-hand that I can find no way to make sense of it. Why don't we all turn to SEP's extensive and responsible article on "Representational Theories of Consciousness" and see if we can figure out what these speculators we're reading now actually mean by 'representation'?

Representational Theories of Consciousness (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Yes ... it begs!

All taken directly from Clark's paper...just the abstract.

 

[Soupie]

And also, why would 'nature' produce such a filter between the awareness of evolving organisms and the actual environments they arise in?

Subjectively is how organisms have awareness of their environments. There’s no way around it.

In order to be “aware” of its environment, an organism needs to a have a unified, subjective perspective/model/conscious experience on its environment, which includes its own body.

Conscious experience ( subjectively ) is the filter between the objective organism and the objective world.

Harken back to Pharoah’s approach. It’s no different.