Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 2

[smcder]

"With admirable arrogance, it is the question of being that Heidegger sets himself the task of inquiring into in Being and Time. He begins with a series of rhetorical questions:

Do we have an answer to the question of the meaning of being? Not at all, he answers.

But do we even experience any perplexity about this question? Not at all, Heidegger repeats.

Therefore, the first and most important task of Heidegger's book is to recover our perplexity for this question of questions: Hamlet's "To be or not to be?"

For Heidegger, what defines the human being is this capacity to be perplexed by the deepest and most enigmatic of questions: Why is there something rather than nothing?

So, the task of Being and Time is reawakening in us a taste for perplexity, a taste for questioning.

Questioning – Heidegger will opine much later in his career – is the piety of thinking."

 

[smcder]

This should be a link to Williams James version:

Religious experience - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Again, the point I was making is that the conceptual mind is involved in as far as the situation transcends/goes beyond the individual's ability to understand or comprehend.

Obviously, as the wiki page illustrates there are other elements involved and views about these types of experiences. But my point was the conceptual mind was involved in "spiritual" experiences.

I figured it was James' ... Have you read VoRE? Available free here:

The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature by William James - Free Ebook

Audio here:

LibriVox

... If you haven't read it - I won't give away the ending.

 

[smcder]

Wait ...

"But my point was the conceptual mind was involved in "spiritual" experiences."

But you wrote first:

"When our phenomenal experience transcends the capacity of our conceptual mind, one can be said to have a spiritual experience."

So that sounds like the conceptual mind is not involved because it's been transcended?

 

[smcder]

Pascal with an early appreciation of neuro-diversity:

"There are then two kinds of intellect: the one able to penetrate acutely and deeply into the conclusions of given premises, and this is the precise intellect; the other able to comprehend a great number of premises without confusing them, and this is the mathematical intellect. The one has force and exactness, the other comprehension. Now the one quality can exist without the other; the intellect can be strong and narrow, and can also be comprehensive and weak.

3. Those who are accustomed to judge by feeling do not understand the process of reasoning, for they would understand at first sight and are not used to seek for principles. And others, on the contrary, who are accustomed to reason from principles, do not at all understand matters of feeling, seeking principles and being unable to see at a glance.

4. Mathematics, intuition.—True eloquence makes light of eloquence, true morality makes light of morality; that is to say, the morality of the judgement, which has no rules, makes light of the morality of the intellect.

For it is to judgement that perception belongs, as science belongs to intellect. Intuition is the part of judgement, mathematics of intellect.

To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher."

 

[smcder]

"9. When we wish to correct with advantage and to show another that he errs, we must notice from what side he views the matter, for on that side it is usually true, and admit that truth to him, but reveal to him the side on which it is false.

He is satisfied with that, for he sees that he was not mistaken and that he only failed to see all sides.

Now, no one is offended at not seeing everything; but one does not like to be mistaken, and that perhaps arises from the fact that man naturally cannot see everything, and that naturally he cannot err in the side he looks at, since the perceptions of our senses are always true."

Pascal - Pensees

 

[smcder]

@Constance:

Part 2 of Critchley's series:

Being and Time, part 2: On 'mineness' | Simon Critchley | Comment is free | theguardian.com

... Is he right?

"Regardless of the twin modes of authenticity and inauthenticity, Heidegger insists early in Being and Time that the human being must first be presented in its indifferent character, prior to any choice to be authentic or not. In words that soon become a mantra in the book, Heidegger seeks to describe the human being as it presented "most closely and mostly" (Zunächst und Zumeist).

Note the radical nature of this initial move: philosophy is not some otherworldly speculation as to whether the external world exists or whether the other human-looking creatures around me are really human and not robots or some such. Rather, philosophy begins with the description – what Heidegger calls "phenomenology" – of human beings in their average everyday existence. It seeks to derive certain common structures from that everydayness.

But we should note the difficult of the task that Heidegger has set himself. That which is closest and most obvious to us is fiendishly difficult to describe. Nothing is closer to me than myself in my average, indifferent everyday existence, but how to describe this? Heidegger was fond of quoting St Augustine's Confessions, when the latter writes, "Assuredly I labour here and I labour within myself; I have become to myself a land of trouble and inordinate sweat." Heidegger indeed means trouble and one often sweats through these pages. But the moments of revelation are breathtaking in their obviousness."

I think I can see my way in to Heidegger now ... Going to order a copy ... Critchley says:

"... Macquarrie and Robinson, in their 1962 Blackwell English edition, produced one of the classics of modern philosophical translation ..."

Do you have a translation you recommend?

 

[Soupie]

Wait ...

"But my point was the conceptual mind was involved in "spiritual" experiences."

But you wrote first:

"When our phenomenal experience transcends the capacity of our conceptual mind, one can be said to have a spiritual experience."

So that sounds like the conceptual mind is not involved because it's been transcended?

Again, the point I was making is that the conceptual mind is involved in as far as the situation transcends/goes beyond the individual's ability to understand or comprehend.

One must have the capacity to think conceptually for this capacity to be transcended.

And it must be a phenomenal experience that does it; because if it was a conceptual experience, then the experience would be... conceptualized.

 

[Constance]

Steve wrote: "How do you deal with cases in which people report experiencing/ receiving others thought and emotions?"

If you could direct me to some documentation of this, I'd appreciate it.

Entertaining the idea in light of my "model," I'd guess it was a form of extra sensory communication. That is, one wouldn't [be] feeling another persons feelings or thinking another persons thoughts, rather, one may be receiving information about another's thoughts and feelings via a currently nonunderstood manner.

'Information' is still a completely abstract term, despite Tononi's and others' promissory notes. Why do you, Soupie, find it unthinkable that direct communication is possible between minds both in proximity to one another and at distances from one another?

 

[smcder]

One must have the capacity to think conceptually for this capacity to be transcended.

And it must be a phenomenal experience that does it; because if it was a conceptual experience, then the experience would be... conceptualized.

Better! If you make the posts stand alone it's easier for folks who've just dropped in, occasional readers and for reference later.

 

[Constance]

From a conversation between Soupie and Steve:

Soupie: "Why isn't there an equivalent: I feel therefore I am?"

Steve: Because Aristotle includes it in his original formulation of the idea. Descartes applies it to everything that enters his awareness.

How are you making the move to spiritual nature from conceptual mind?

It is the conceptual, autobiographical, creative, narrative-making mind that allows humans to spiritually transcend objective, physical reality.

When our phenomenal experience transcends the capacity of our conceptual mind, one can be said to have a spiritual experience.

This happens to me all the time with physical beauty.

Why must we assume that the 'ineffable' is not reached through embodied experience in an 'effable' world? That seems to be what you are arguing.

 

[Constance]

Coming back to:

Soupie: "Why isn't there an equivalent: I feel therefore I am?"

What makes you think there isn't? As I've suggested a half-dozen times by now, reading phenomenological philosophy, and especially Merleau-Ponty, will turn the lights on for you on the nature of human experience. We feel {sense} the presence of the world and ourselves in it before we begin to think about it. Reflection on experience, and thinking on the basis of experience, are based in experience that precedes these aspects of consciousness. There are not two streams of consciousness, except perhaps for split-brain patients, brain-damaged individuals, and schizophrenics.

A further note: MP explores the double meaning in the French word sens (paralleled in the English word sense as in some other languages). We use the word to refer both to that which can be sensed and to that which becomes meaningful. This is no accident. We know at a deep embodied level of consciousness that we come into contact with our existence in a palpable world -- and develop our subsequent understanding of our situatedness in it -- through our immediate sensual openness to and contact with the things and other beings in the world. This knowledge has been expressed and embedded in our language.

 

[smcder]

I'm just catching up in this discussion of the last day or so. I question your theory that there are two streams of consciousness in each individual {we're talking normal persons, not split brain patients or people with multiple personality disorder, right?}. Two streams of consciousness, then, only one of which is 'conceptual', by which I take it you mean capable of reflecting on its embodied experience, asking questions about it, forming ideas about it and the world in which it exists?

The other stream experiencing phenomena but without reflection or thought? I can't make sense of that based on my own experience. I don't know that anyone could make sense of that, but if someone has would you cite their most detailed and persuasive description of this second 'stream'?

@Soupie

"One must have the capacity to think conceptually for this capacity to be transcended.

And it must be a phenomenal experience that does it; because if it was a conceptual experience, then the experience would be... conceptualized."

Can we get definitions for conceptual/phenomenal - or rewrite like you did for us in the passage above? I Google "conceptual thinking" but I can't find a single unambiguous definition.

 

[smcder]

From Critchleys series part 3

Being and Time, part 3: Being-in-the-world | Simon Critchley | Comment is free | theguardian.com

"the human being is really being-in-the-world, then this entails that the world itself is part of the fundamental constitution of what it means to be human. That is to say, I am not a free-floating self or ego facing a world of objects that stands over against me. Rather, for Heidegger, I am my world. The world is part and parcel of my being, of the fabric of my existence. We might capture the sense of Heidegger's thought here by thinking of Dasein not as a subject distinct from a world of objects, but as an experience of openedness where my being and that of the world are not distinguished for the most part. I am completely fascinated and absorbed by my world, not cut off from it in some sort of "mind" or what Heidegger calls "the cabinet of consciousness".

...

"Heidegger insists that this lived experience of the world is missed or overlooked by scientific inquiry or indeed through a standard philosophy of mind, which presupposes a dualistic distinction between mind and reality. What is required is a phenomenology of our lived experience of the world that tries to be true to what shows itself first and foremost in our experience. To translate this into another idiom, we might say that Heidegger is inverting the usual distinction between theory and practice. My primary encounter with the world is not theoretical; it is not the experience of some spectator gazing out at a world stripped of value. Rather, I first apprehend the world practically as a world of things which are useful and handy and which are imbued with human significance and value. The theoretical or scientific vision of things that find in a thinker like Descartes is founded on a practical insight that is fascinated and concerned with things."

...

"Heidegger introduces a distinction between two ways of approaching the world: the present-at-hand (Vorhandenheit) and the ready-to-hand (Zuhandenheit). Present-at-hand refers to our theoretical apprehension of a world made up of objects. It is the conception of the world from which science begins. The ready-to-hand describes our practical relation to things that are handy or useful. Heidegger's basic claim is that practice precedes theory, and that the ready-to-hand is prior to the present-at-hand. The problem with most philosophy after Descartes is that it conceives of the world theoretically and thus imagines, like Descartes, that I can doubt the existence of the external world and even the reality of the persons that fill it – who knows, they might be robots! For Heidegger, by contrast, who we are as human beings is inextricably bound up and bound together with the complex web of social practices that make up my world. The world is part of who I am. For Heidegger, to cut oneself off from the world, like Descartes, is to miss the point entirely: the fabric of our openedness to the world is one piece. And that piece should not be cut up. Furthermore, the world is not simply full of handy, familiar meaningful things. It is also full of persons. If I am fundamentally with my world, then that world is a common world that experienced together with others. This is what Heidegger calls "being-with" (Mitsein)."

 

[Constance]

@Soupie

"One must have the capacity to think conceptually for this capacity to be transcended.

And it must be a phenomenal experience that does it; because if it was a conceptual experience, then the experience would be... conceptualized."

Can we get definitions for conceptual/phenomenal - or rewrite like you did for us in the passage above? I Google "conceptual thinking" but I can't find a single unambiguous definition.

I just came upon this post. The phenomenal is already conceptual.

 

[Soupie]

Information' is still a completely abstract term, despite Tononi's and others' promissory notes. Why do you, Soupie, find it unthinkable that direct communication is possible between minds both in proximity to one another and at distances from one another?

I don't think information is an abstract term at all. However, the hypothesis that (integrated) information constitutes the mind is currently unproven.

I do think direct communication between brains/minds is feasible. However, via what mechanism this would occur I don't know. What I don't think is possible is for one mind to be someone else's mind, even momentarily.

 

[Soupie]

I just came upon this post. The phenomenal is already conceptual.

So, say, worms have concepts for things such as light, dark, dirt, food, life, death, etc?

 

[Soupie]

That is to say, I am not a free-floating self or ego facing a world of objects that stands over against me. Rather, for Heidegger, I am my world. The world is part and parcel of my being, of the fabric of my existence.

I think phenomenologists are needlessly verbose. I seem to find the writing style of most (all?) phenomenologists - including @Constance - incredibly difficult to digest.

Here is how I say the above: We are experiences.

 

[Soupie]

@Soupie

"One must have the capacity to think conceptually for this capacity to be transcended.

And it must be a phenomenal experience that does it; because if it was a conceptual experience, then the experience would be... conceptualized."

Can we get definitions for conceptual/phenomenal - or rewrite like you did for us in the passage above? I Google "conceptual thinking" but I can't find a single unambiguous definition.

Conceptual thinking would be the ability to mentally represent the world (phenomenal experience) via symbols, manipulate these symbols, and create novel symbols; phenomenal experiencing would be related to the senses, including emotional states.

 

[Constance]

I don't think information is an abstract term at all. However, the hypothesis that (integrated) information constitutes the mind is currently unproven.

I do think direct communication between brains/minds is feasible. However, via what mechanism this would occur I don't know.

What kind of 'mechanism' do you think is necessary to account for nonlocal communication? I've thought that the unified and interconnected quantum substrate of our being as well as of the universe's being (understood holographically) might be demonstrated one day to account for it. Many psi researchers are working in that direction. But there seems to be something more [which feels like something 'wished for'] expressed in your use of the term 'mechanism' than the potentiality of innumerable paths of connection and interaction between local and nonlocal realities. 'Mechanism' implies a closed and deterministic system, whereas phenomenology and cognitive science as explored by Varela and Thompson et al think in terms of open systems and freedom (and thus will and agency). You might look at all that Steve has been writing about here differently if you were to pursue the sources and theories developed by Varela and Thompson. Just a suggestion.

What I don't think is possible is for one mind to be someone else's mind, even momentarily.

We're still trying to define 'mind' as well as 'consciousness'. I haven't yet read all of the last day's posts so I don't know who has suggested 'whole mind transference'.

 

[Constance]

I think phenomenologists are needlessly verbose. I seem to find the writing style of most (all?) phenomenologists - including @Constance - incredibly difficult to digest.

Sorry. It is a difficult and subtle philosophy, but that's no reason to fail to read it, especially if you are interested in understanding consciousness.

Here is how I say the above: We are experiences.

I've already replied a day or two ago that we are much more than 'experiences', but the path to understanding why seems to be one you reject.