Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 2

[smcder]

An Atheist’s Guide to Spirituality - Issue 16: Nothingness - Nautilus

"The other traditional response to the paradox of spiritual seeking is to fully acknowledge it and concede that all efforts are doomed, because the urge to attain self-transcendence or any other mystical experience is a symptom of the very disease we want to cure. There is nothing to do but give up the search."

"Many scientists and philosophers believe that consciousness is always tied to one of the five senses—and that the idea of a “pure consciousness” apart from seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching is a category error and a spiritual fantasy. I am confident that they are mistaken. "

 

[Pharoah]

Just at the points I've highlighted in blue and where, following your analysis, you still think Mary's seeing the color red, or any color, does not add to her knowledge of being. But I'm probably the last person you or anyone could convince that I, or Mary, don't experience our phenomenal surroundings directly, even tactilely through every sense available to us. No one among the consciousness researchers I've yet read on the Mary thought experiment has yet persuaded me that Mary doesn't learn something new, essential, and vital when she is released from her b&w room. Some lines from Stevens express the directness of phenomenal experience well: ". . . the eye so played upon by clouds, / the ear so magnified by thunder." Those lines appear in the last poem in this little suite of poems by Stevens.


Tattoo

The light is like a spider.
It crawls over the water.
It crawls over the edges of the snow.
It crawls under your eyelids
And spreads its webs there --
Its two webs.


from Variations on a Summer Day

Words add to the senses. The words for the dazzle
Of mica, the dithering of grass,
The Arachne integument of dead trees,
Are the eye grown larger, more intense.


from Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction {second part: It Must Change}:

Canto IV

Two things of opposite natures seem to depend
On one another, as a man depends
On a woman, day on night, the imagined

On the real. This is the origin of change.
Winter and spring, cold copulars, embrace
And forth the particulars of rapture come.

Music falls on the silence like a sense,
A passion that we feel, not understand.
Morning and afternoon are clasped together

And North and South are an intrinsic couple
And sun and rain a plural, like two lovers
That walk away as one in the greenest body.

In solitude the trumpets of solitude
Are not of another solitude resounding;
A little string speaks for a crowd of voices.

The partaker partakes of that which changes him.
The child that touches takes character from the thing,
The body, it touches. The captain and his men

Are one and the sailor and the sea are one.
Follow after, O my companion, my fellow, my self,
Sister and solace, brother and delight.


Canto V

On a blue island in a sky-wide water
The wild orange trees continued to bloom and to bear,
Long after the planter’s death. A few limes remained,

Where his house had fallen, three scraggy trees weighted
With garbled green. These were the planter’s turquoise
And his orange blotches, these were his zero green,

A green baked greener in the greenest sun.
These were his beaches, his sea-myrtles in
White sand, his patter of the long sea-slushes.

There was an island beyond him on which rested,
An island to the South, on which rested like
A mountain, a pineapple pungent as Cuban summer.

And la-bas, la-bas, the cool bananas grew,
Hung heavily on the great banana tree,
Which pierces clouds and bends on half the world.

He thought often of the land from which he came,
How that whole country was a melon, pink
If seen rightly and yet a possible red.

An unaffected man in a negative light
Could not have borne his labor nor have died
Sighing that he should leave the banjo’s twang.


Landscape with Boat

An anti-master man, floribund ascetic.
He brushed away the thunder, then the clouds,
Then the colossal illusion of heaven. Yet still
The sky was blue. He wanted imperceptible air.
He wanted to see. He wanted the eye to see
And not be touched by blue. He wanted to know,
A naked man who regarded himself in the glass
Of air, who looked for the world beneath the blue,
Without blue, without any turquoise hint or phase,
Any azure under-side or after-color. Nabob
Of bones, he rejected, he denied, to arrive
At the neutral center, the ominous element,
The single colored, colorless, primitive.
It was not as if the truth lay where he thought,
Like a phantom, in an uncreated night.
It was easier to think it lay there. If
It was nowhere else, it was there and because
It was nowhere else, its place had to be supposed,
Itself had to be supposed, a thing supposed
In a place supposed, a thing he reached
In a place that he reached, by rejecting what he saw
And denying what he heard. He would arrive.
He had only not to live, to walk in the dark,
To be projected by one void into
Another.

It was his nature to suppose
To receive what others had supposed, without
Accepting. He received what he denied.
But as truth to be accepted, he supposed
A truth beyond all truths.

He never supposed
That he might be truth, himself, or part of it,
That the things that he rejected might be part
And the irregular turquoise part, the perceptible blue
Grown dense, part, the eye so touched, so played
Upon by clouds, the ear so magnified
By thunder, parts, and all these things together,
Parts, and more things, parts. He never supposed divine
Things might not look divine, nor that if nothing
Was divine then all things were, the world itself,
And that if nothing was the truth, then all
Things were the truth, the world itself was the truth.

Had he been better able to suppose
He might sit on a sofa on a balcony
Above the Mediterranean, emerald
Becoming emeralds. He might watch the palms
Flap green ears in the heat. He might observe
A yellow wine and follow a steamer's track
And say, "The thing I hum appears to be
The rhythm of this celestial pantomime."

--Wallace Stevens

Constance:
I am not sure that I am saying that we, in your words, "don't experience our phenomenal surroundings directly, even tactilely through every sense available to us..." And I agree there is "something new, essential, and vital when she [Mary] is released from her b&w room". However, I do have an issue with the interpretation of what that "new" something is. Jackson says it is not physically explainable - he is wrong. What we are talking about is different 'classes of representation', different 'classes of informed construct' (or classes of knowledge). One class can be articulated with the languages of science because it is constructed from the same relational mechanisms - those mechanisms which entice us to speak and write using languages. The other class cannot be articulated except by comparative description - it functions beyond (or outside) analytic thought and introspection. It is a more primitive feature of evolution. We, rather mysteriously, feel it (as do many animals), but we cannot put our finger on the processes of thought that give rise to it. From the first-person perspective, it is un-analysable, unknowable conceptually. From the first-person perspective, it is recognised as that remarkable ability to feel the qualitative relevance of sensory experience as and when it happens.

Interestingly, according to Hierarchical Construct Theory - and I think observation of humanity bears witness to this - maintaining a stable conceptual interpretation about reality overrides all logical and rational considerations. One must believe in one's conceptual interpretations because they define the interpreted identity of 'self' i.e., any logic that runs counter to one's conceptual interpretation will tend to be rejected to preserve the concepts that give rise to 'self' identity. Ideological labels are sought to reenforce like-for-like concepts whose status of 'belonging' gives an individual a sense that the accuracy of their worldview is corroborated - truth is not the overriding consideration.

But there is nothing to fear in a reductive explanation of phenomenal experience - the Hard Problem thankfully lies elsewhere, and the art of humanity is not diminished by the theory. I am not a hard-nosed militant reductive materialist:

If I were suddenly to become a bat, I would "discover" what it feels like. The knowledge I would gain would not, by virtue of the experience, be in itself, conceptual, introspective, analytic, or represented directly through language. The feeling would instead be a unique qualitative association made about those objects sensed and their innate value to me as a bat. Experiences would happen and they would be felt qualitatively. Yes, on turning into a bat, the knowledge acquired is new, but it is not conceptual. I would not know, purely from the feeling, how to write poetically about the experience, for there would be no representation of that experience to conceptual utterances - comparative description is only possible if I am capable of accessing comparative conceptualised interpretations of those feelings and relaying them with language: if I describe a wine as “nutty, blackcurranty, and with a lemon after taste”, it is because there is no conceptual language that fully articulates the nuance of the exact feeling of tasting wine, which is why I am compelled to call upon the poetic licence of comparative description to alternative fruits that we commonly recognise. "A lemony aftertaste"?! That doesn't sound like the kind of experience I am after in a bottle of wine... Much of communication through language is its communicator's conceptualised interpretation and comparative description of phenomenal experience.

Pain: In speaking of pain, we know what we are talking about - pain is that unpleasant sensation we experience when our bodies suffer tissue damage. A few years ago, I hit my finger with a sledge hammer: the pain was different - it was a pain I had not felt before. To express this difference, I might draw parallels with other types of pain experience, but I can't give you that experience itself merely through the concepts of languages. My Gran broke her hip, "It hurt more than giving childbirth", she told me. Ok... so childbirth is painful, but I have not given birth so the analogy is not very helpful - I do not know the experience of breaking my hip, but I have a conception of just how extreme the feeling might be. Ultimately, a poet's words give us scope for catharsis, to empathise, sentimentalise, to evoke memories of like for like experiences, to learn how we might express what we would be unable to express, to get a flavour of other people's experiences of the world, and so on. In these readings, we get a conceptual sense of what certain experiences are like that we have not been privileged to experience, or of experiences we have felt but not been skilled enough to express with any eloquence using the conceptual structures of language - that eloquence read is beautiful. The languages of science, arts, mathematics and the written and spoken word can be viewed as conceptual 'translations' of the phenomenon of experience, whose parallels with other individuals' experiences make the life we know appear relatable and relevant.

Perhaps you are right, though: we cannot hope to see conceptually eye to eye - this is the painful experience of creative expression. But maybe, given your artistic leanings, my phenomenal communications will strike a chord instead https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/mpbcd01/10partita2sarabandafinaly1HAuCok.mp3 and you will hear knowledge of the kind that is beyond words. It is a phenomenal experience that you, most likely, will understand but it is foundered on a conceptual knowledge of which, unlike that of poetry, you may well be ignorant.

 

[Constance]

"The other traditional response to the paradox of spiritual seeking is to fully acknowledge it and concede that all efforts are doomed, because the urge to attain self-transcendence or any other mystical experience is a symptom of the very disease we want to cure. There is nothing to do but give up the search."

"Many scientists and philosophers believe that consciousness is always tied to one of the five senses—and that the idea of a “pure consciousness” apart from seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching is a category error and a spiritual fantasy. I am confident that they are mistaken. "

Interesting essay isn't it? I have to read it again because I read it quickly this morning, but my impression is that this author has examined his consciousness deeply and discovered some mutually transparent layers there. I'll comment further on this idea after I read the essay again, but I wonder if you also sense the same thing here?

 

[Constance]

"Every poem is a poem within a poem: the poem of the idea within the poem of the words.”

Yes, we can represent that as follows:

Wo(Po(po(idea)em)em)rds

As I said earlier today: , and I want to add . I wanted to respond in words to the next part of your post but couldn't because my keypad had breathed its last and I was reduced to being able only to cut and paste links. So . . .

I found the quote:

"perceiver has difficulty finding himself in the act of perception"

Is this Stevens difficulty? Or a more general problem for human perception?

I think it's definitely Stevens's difficulty and accounts for various aspects of the poetry that would take a long time to point out with examples. But I think it's also the difficulty of any thinker or artist who reflects on his or her experience in the world more than superficially (i.e., in terms of what Husserl referred to as 'the natural attitude'). This is of course the position of naive dualism: "I" am inside myself and "the world" is out there, separate from me. Individuals who spend time in 'reflective consciousness', analyzing their experiences in terms of that which is presented in the environment and that which ensues in the form of feeling and thought, recognize the first level of their unavoidable interconnection with the sensually palpable world. They also begin to realize the various ways in which they respond to what presents itself in their perception of things and the behavior of others in the world, many instances of which cannot be perceived without immediately involving emotions along a broad spectrum of possible responses from felt affirmation to felt revulsion and rejection. If we look at the responses of even very young children to witnessing certain things (e.g., the abuse of animals or other children, or the helplessness of wild creatures such as young birds on the ground that cannot fly) we understand that these feelings do not depend on conceptual reasoning or attitudes picked up from their parents but on an instinctive sense of values -- rightness and wrongness in things, beings, and their behavior -- in other words felt meaning in the world and also one's felt involvement in it.

What is perceived in the world calls forth responses before it is understood, in children and also in primordial consciousness according to Heidegger, MP, and other phenomenologists. I think the sense of a 'self', of one's having an individual continuous and unified presence in the world, arises in our prehistory and history from the very ground of our sense of being in relation to the 'world', of Dasein (being-in-the-world), which is a distinct sense of presence to, with, and in the world that precedes systematic thinking. I think it is precisely this active sense of presence as 'compresence' that modern humans have increasingly lost in the dominant reductive ideas and ideologies of the modern world. Our planetary ecological crisis is the most vivid expression of this loss. Before I write all night (on my wonderfully functional new keyboard), I'll recommend this excellent book again:


Amazon.com Review
David Abram's writing casts a spell of its own as he weaves the reader through a meticulously researched work that gently addresses such seemingly daunting topics as where the past and future exist, the relationship between space and time, and how the written word serves to sever humans from their primordial source of sustenance: the earth.

"Only as the written text began to speak would the voices of the forest, and of the river, begin to fade. And only then would language loosen its ancient associations with the invisible breath, the spirit sever itself from the wind, the psyche dissociate itself from the environing air," writes Abram of the separation caused by the proliferation of the written word.

In writing The Spell of the Sensuous, Abram consulted an engaging collection of peoples and works. He uses aboriginal song lines, stories from the Koyukon people of northwestern Alaska, the philosophy of phenomenology, and the speeches of Socrates to paint a poetic landscape that explains how we became separated from the earth in the first place. With minimal environmental doomsaying, Abram discusses how we can begin to recover a sustainable relationship with the earth and the nonhuman beings who live among us--in the more-than-human world. --Kathryn True


From Publishers Weekly
How did Western civilization become so estranged from nonhuman nature that we condone the ongoing destruction of forests, rivers, valleys, species and ecosystems? Santa Fe ecologist/philosopher Abram's search for an answer to this dilemma led him to mingle with shamans in Nepal and sorcerers in Indonesia, where he studied how traditional healers monitor relations between the human community and the animate environment. In this stimulating inquiry, he also delves into the philosophy of phenomenologists Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who replaced the conventional view of a single, wholly determinable reality with a fluid picture of the mind/body as a participatory organism that reciprocally interacts with its surroundings. Abram blames the invention of the phonetic alphabet for triggering a trend toward increasing abstraction and alienation from nature. He gleans insights into how to heal the rift from Australian aborigines' concept of the Dreamtime (the perpetual emerging of the world from chaos), the Navajo concept of a Holy Wind and the importance of breath in Jewish mysticism.

Put down your books; learn to read the world around you. . .
By Ruth Henriquez Lyon VINE VOICE on January 15, 2001

The Spell of the Sensuous reveals how our Western worldview has evolved to be based on literacy, abstract thought, and separation from the body. By "the body" I mean not just our individual, animal bodies, but the body of the earth and the material cosmos. By removing ourselves from this sensuous realm, we have lost the connection to "the living dream that we share with the soaring hawk, the spider, and the stone silently sprouting lichens on its coarse surface."

There is a paradox here, because Abrams' book exposes the drawbacks of literacy and abstract, logical thinking. But it is itself a piece of very well-argued written discourse. However, it works, and not just because Abrams' arguments are so convincing. Part of their power stems from the fact that Abrams is an artist; he has the gift of using words and imagery that can reach below the logical brain to inspire a more direct way of perceiving the world. The result is a book which is a moving combination of philosophical writing and pure poetry.

Abrams works from a phenomenological standpoint, and the book begins with a discussion of phenomenology's history and major ideas.* This is a readable and unintimidating introduction to the subject. Abrams then proceeds to show how, starting at the time of alphabetization, the Western mind began to grow away from direct physical knowing of the world and toward abstract, conceptual representations. Our language became removed from nature, and helped us to remove ourselves from it and to inhabit an almost entirely human-centered world.

As a counterpoint to the Western use of language, Abrams goes on to show how people in non-literate cultures use language as a way to connect with the body and the physical realm. In these oral cultures language "is experienced not as the exclusive property of humankind, but as a property of the sensuous life-world." In other words, the world--the animals, plants, stones, wind--speaks a language that most of us can no longer hear. Abrams explores indigenous oral poetry and stories to illustrate this entirely other way of experiencing language.

My first reading of this book triggered a conversion of sorts. It spun me 180 degrees, from the world of concepts to the world of immediate perception. I'm on my third reading now and still incorporating teachings passed over previously. I am finding that returning my gaze to the uninterpreted physical world is a difficult practice, as I have been conditioned (like most Westerners) to run my experience through a filter of concepts and judgments. But, like meditation, this practice can help to loosen one's psyche from its "mind-forg'd manacles." For this reason, The Spell of the Sensuous is really a manual for liberating one's inner and outer vision.

*Phenomenology is the study of how we experience consciousness. Unlike many branches of philosophy which rely on arguments built in logical steps, phenomenology is more about how we perceive and feel the immediate play of events around and within ourselves. Thus it is less abstract and more experiential than many branches of philosophy.

 

[Constance]

@Pharoah, reading your post a second time. Meanwhile, can you copy and paste from the link you provided, which Mozilla flags as having "an invalid security certificate"? (whatever that means)

 

[Pharoah]

@Pharoah, reading your post a second time. Meanwhile, can you copy and paste from the link you provided, which Mozilla flags as having "an invalid security certificate"? (whatever that means)

I checked my website using Firefox and found no issues which makes me think it might be your end (though I will make some other checks).
Your computer via Firefox is communicating with my website host via SSL certification and deciding my site is not safe to view.

Three things you might try:
1. Check to see that the date is set correctly on your computer (via the computer settings)
2. Tell firefox that my site is a safe site to visit by doing the following:
In firefox, goto > preferences (or you might find this under tools and options)
Click on the advanced tab
click on certificates
click on "View certificates"
click on "Add exception"
type in my web address
click on "Get certificate"
tick "Permanently store this exception"
Click on "confirm security exception"
3. Use another browser e.g. Internet explorer, opera, safari, google chrome - all of which are free downloads from internet.

I am going to re-read the article myself today to check its clarity. I would normally take longer to write this kind of stuff.

Jackson’s Mary Argument against physicalism versus Hierarchical Construct Theory
Author: Mark Pharoah | mind.phronesis@live.com | August 8th, 2014
In considering Jackson’s Mary Argument, the first thing to acknowledge is that conceptualising about the phenomenon of reality is not equivalent to experiencing the phenomenon of reality. I say “conceptualising”, because I equate Jackson’s interpretation of ‘physical knowledge’ with ‘conceptual knowledge’, since our scientific understandings are based exclusively on conceptual principles that most accurately reflect our experience of reality. In other words, everything that Mary might read about colour would be a conceptually constructed derivative – the formal mechanism for the communication of concepts being languages (which incidentally includes mathematics).

Phenomenal experience is not a conceptual construct. We can conceptualise about phenomenal experience but concepts do not generate qualitative parallels with the phenomena. This would seem to be the point of the thought experiment; that a complete conceptual knowledge would not tell Mary everything there is to know about the actual feeling of phenomenal experience – a complete conceptual understanding of ‘red’ cannot substitute the experience ‘red’. But from this realisation, one need not come to Jackson’s conclusion that physicalism is false. Concepts are but one format by which reality – physical reality – can be represented. Physicalism is not encapsulated only by this one form of representation. As a solution to the argument, one needs to understand that different physical explanations are required to explain phenomenally constructed knowledge and conceptually constructed knowledge. With a full understanding of these both, one would not be enlightened by the phenomenal characteristics of experiencing colour for the first time – although the experience itself would have a novel qualitative impact:

How does Hierarchical Construct Theory (HCT – formally Hierarchical Systems Theory) help us reflect on the Mary thought experiment?

Part 1

HCT informs us that conceptualising is hierarchically dependent on the presence of phenomenal experience i.e., it is not possible to have concepts without there being some underpinning phenomenal capability in the first place. One might say as a generality, that levels of conceptual sophistication are dependent on the richness of phenomenal experience. If one imagines an individual that is sight, then also sound, and then also touch deprived, one should find it increasingly difficult, whilst communicating with this individual, to come up with concepts that satisfactorily depict, not merely experience itself but the relational principles of reality.

To illustrate this briefly, imagine there is an individual entity that can hear your thoughts. This eavesdropper, called Raymond, is envious because he has never experienced any sensory input; having never possessed a body. Since the beginning of time Raymond has been alone, eager to find out what it is like to feel experience. Mindful of how unpleasant total sensory deprivation must be, you wish to inform Raymond about what it is like to be a human experiencing the world, so you entertain a dialogue with him in your head:

“Some experiences are best not experienced”, you say to the eavesdropper in your head: “I hit my thumb with a hammer… It really hurt”.

Raymond asks: What is pain like? what is a hammer? What is experience? What is a thumb?
The more one tries to answer these questions, and to answer the questions that arise because of your initial answers, the more one comes to realise that Raymond needs some phenomenal experience in order to connect with the answers; Raymond needs some level of experience in order to evolve a network – or, more accurately, a ‘construct’ – of conceptual realisations because all that is relevant to conceptual understanding comes from qualitative experiential relations. Whilst you can have phenomenal experience without concepts, you cannot have concepts without phenomenal experience. Any degree of experiential deprivation has some degree of impact on the potential boundaries of conceptual realisability. Similarly, and more obviously, one cannot have concepts without physicality impeding its influences upon the material existence from which conceptualising can arise in the first place.

An all knowing non-physical being such as Raymond is not viable, because such an entity possesses neither the physical nor the phenomenal equipment necessary to institute conceptual knowledge. So the very idea of Raymond is invalidated by the pretext of the thought experiment. This is also true, but more subtly so, of Mary:

Part 2

If I want to imagine what it would be like to see infrared or ultraviolet, or even to see X-rays or Gamma rays, I have to call upon my current understanding of phenomenal experience in order to extrapolate conceptual parallels. I image them to ‘resemble’ such things as a ‘glowing red’ or an ‘iridescent purple’. But of course, I have no true qualitative reference to these spectra, because my thoughts are only imaginings. I am assuming with creative imaginings what the phenomenal experience of infrared and ultraviolet might be. Even though I know what it is like to experience ‘red’, I cannot know what it is like to actually experience ultraviolet or infrared. To see is to experience qualitatively. For me to suddenly see infrared or ultraviolet would be to possess a unique phenomenal experience.

What is it to have a true phenomenal experience?
HCT informs us that to have true phenomenal experience is to possess an understanding regarding the qualitative relevance of environmental experience. In this context, “understanding” is a type of informed construct which, importantly, is non-conceptual in its construction – indeed, in certain instances, it may entail mechanisms that are not even neural based. This notion of physiological mechanisms that are responsive to the qualitative nature of environmental experience enables us to consider two possible actualities in relation to the Mary thought experiment:

In the first theoretical actuality, Mary has a conceptual understanding of the minutiae of ‘red’ in the absence of any background sub-conceptual understanding regarding its qualitative relevance. But with the background physiology absent, the sighting of red for the first time would be an event lacking any qualitative relevancy, and therefore would be a sighting lacking any phenomenal experience. Consequently, she would experience nothing qualitatively. This is the zombie scenario.

Alternatively, in the second actuality, to possess this background would have been to have actually possessed it all along, even prior to the ‘actual’ experience of the ‘red’. Whilst Mary, is denied the actual experience of ‘red’ at the earlier stages of the thought experiment, she nevertheless possesses the background qualitatively relevant physiology. This is the Jackson’s Mary scenario.

To summarise these two actualities, to experience ‘red’ entails possessing the physiological construct that determines red’s qualitative relevance: if that physiological construction is absent, it can never be switched on simply by virtue of ‘red’ being ‘sighted’; alternatively if that physiological construction is present – if that sub-conceptual understanding is present – it must be present (and the potential to possess the phenomenal experience must be present), even when seeing ‘red’ is denied through sensory deprivation. In like fashion, I could taste my first mango tomorrow and be amazed at its flavour. Nevertheless, I would not be shocked to learn that I might be amazed by novel phenomenal experiences of this nature.

Given the above, to combat Jackson’s conclusion one needs to answer the following question:

How does experience become qualitatively relevant non-conceptually?
HCT informs us that the qualitative feeling of experience is grounded in innate physiological mechanisms which are acquired over generations in response to their survival relevance (c.f. examples below). In a way, qualitative relevance is biochemically and biomechanically hot-wired. These mechanisms cannot be accessed by conceptual thought, for the mechanisms of conceptual thought transcend the mechanisms that generate phenomenal experience.

Nature has ensured that all forms of sensation have facilitated the evaluation – the informed evaluation – of qualitative relevance in response to survival pressures:

Example 1
One might describe the smell of a rose as divine, and the smell of faeces as disgusting. But why? Flies find faeces irresistibly attractive and my cat is indifferent to the smell of roses. Why the difference among different species? Evolutionary pressures ensure that a species’ physiological mechanisms are appropriately responsive to environmental stimulations. Thus, innately acquired physiological mechanisms are appropriately responsive to threatening, toxic, nutritional etc sensations. This is a survival precedent. Sophisticated animals are able to respond to the changing experiences of the environment in order to respond to the qualitative relevance of sensation. It is this changing reflexivity that grants them the feeling of a changing phenomenal landscape of experiences – some of which are nice, others horrid, unpleasant, delicious etc. For humans, infrared and ultraviolet are qualitatively irrelevant to survival, which is why the physiology is absent as is the qualitative experience.

Example 2
Many animal species experience sounds. With loud articulated sound, animals invariably become fearfully and alert. Conversely, gentle, gradual, lilting noises are reassuring or comforting, like the sound of wind in trees or grass, the bubble of water in a stream. The qualitative relevance of these types of noise is obvious. Sudden noises tend to be associated with attacking predators and demand immediate flight or fight responses with their accompanying adrenaline rush. Gentle articulation may indicate a water source for bathing or quenching thirst. The phenomenal feeling is linked to an innately acquired physiological response that is of qualitative relevance. Note, that this relevance is not informed by way of concepts, but by way of physicochemical mechanisms which include neural mechanisms.

Example 3
From a physical standpoint, an object might reflect light in the frequency 526–606 THz whilst a second object 400-484 THz. That these objects reflect light in these frequencies is objectively the case. As to the identified frequencies themselves, they are a correlative concept that humans have invented by associating spectral frequencies (quantified by physics laws) with particular qualitative colour phenomena.

Let us assume that on earth, surfaces that reflect frequency 526-606 THz are ubiquitous (for complex reasons that we shall not explore here for the sake of brevity) and that these surfaces are of no material evolutionary benefit to a particular organism species. Conversely, some rare objects that reflect frequency 400-484 THz are highly prized by this particular organism species for their nutritional content. It would be qualitatively pertinent, and responsive to survival pressures, for that species to evolve mechanisms (innate mechanisms) that are hyper-alert to 400-484 THz reflecting colourations, as these mechanisms would enable the organisms of that species to locate those nutritional, highly prized objects more efficiently. Conversely, it would be pertinent for innate mechanisms to be indifferent to the ubiquitous 526-606 THz reflecting objects. Additionally, if those desirable 400-484 THz objects had the added characteristic of possessing the contours of a sphere, rather than jagged contours, this would supplement the role of shape in the qualitative identifications of those objects and further benefit those individuals that possessed innate mechanisms capable of making the distinction with automated efficiency. In themselves, these coloured objects have no phenomenal identity, but the organism will tend to evolve innate mechanisms that are phenomenally and qualitatively distinctive and relevant. Their mechanisms might remain innately acquired and therefore, appear both non-representational and “hardwired” – much like computational mechanisms. But these appearances would be deceptive as the innate physiologies would be representative of the environment’s qualitative relevance to that organism species. Thus, it makes sense to interpret each of these frequencies (whose colours we experience as green and red), and each shape (spherical and jagged), as qualitatively differentiated and observer-dependent phenomenologically, in this particular species. The organism’s innately acquired mechanisms are an observer-dependent phenomenological representation whose qualitative relevancy is engaged anatomically outside of any processes of associative learning, introspection, feeling, or emotion.

Part 3

What are the innately acquired mechanisms that inform an organism of the qualitative relevance of environmental experience?
Before I respond to this question, it is important to note that it is not necessary to identify and explain the nature of innately acquired mechanisms in order to disarm Jackson’s claim that physicalism is false. One need merely have to point out the obvious, which is that a full and complete conceptual knowledge of physiological mechanisms tells you all you need to know about the physics of phenomenal experience, but this conceptually constructed knowledge does not invoke phenomenal experience. There is information in the form of conceptual knowledge, and there is information in the form of physiological knowledge. They are both different types of representational construct: they are different ways of relating to physicality – though they are hierarchical. Therefore physicalism is not shown to be false, but is shown to entail different layers or types of representational constructs: fundamentally, knowledge is not just multiple layers of thinking via conceptual representation. Knowledge that is non-conceptual is qualitatively relevant to conceptual interpretation, but importantly cannot be analysed through conceptual thought, because the mechanisms of conceptual thought do not have first-person access to the mechanisms of bio-physiology. There is a transcendent gap between the function of these distinct physical mechanisms.

Why do maggots love a carcass? Why do worms hate light? Why are dung beetles attracted to dung? Why does water taste so great when we are very thirsty? Why does one have thirsty feelings? Why do leaves turn to face the light? The mechanisms behind these case scenarios are likely to be varied and in most cases very complex. Some will be chemical, pheromonal, or will include cognitive mechanisms and combinations of these and others. Furthermore, whilst the neurone is a biochemical mechanism, its function has transcendent potential. Nevertheless, there are principles of both biochemical and cognitive mechanism that share similarities.

Feedback mechanisms
In general terms, feedback mechanisms are very important in assimilating and evaluating experiential relevance. For example, a beetle might taste the air continually for dung scent. (Dung scent is attractive because evolution has deemed it nutritionally relevant to survival through the dung beetle’s evolved physiology – the innately acquired physiology of the creature is geared around prioritising dung acquisition.) A feedback of chemical potency might institute neuro-mechanical responses. (Resulting behaviours are indicative of the attractive appeal of dung; the beetle seems to ‘feel good’ about dung). A cognitive mechanism evaluates competing behavioural possibilities through feedback of their evaluated importance (such competing behaviours may include the relevancy of heat and/or humidity – the biochemical mechanisms of which may be similar to the scenting of dung). Prioritisation of behaviour occurs in accordance with the sophistication of the beetles cognitive feedback mechanisms. The beetle zigzags along toward the dung with a smile on its face.

Negating mechanisms
Another type of mechanism that will be important are those that nullify saturating stimuli. Stimulation saturation is disadvantageous to survival. Where nullification of stimulation fails to occur (as I believe is the case with some insects) behaviour enters a cyclic catch 22 and the creature gets stuck, like an automaton, in repetitive behaviour. More advanced animals have mechanisms that nullify or de-prioritise or de-sensitise feedback loops. This feature would be important as a means for prioritising one potential behaviour over another.

Threshold mechanisms
Mechanisms that determine threshold values would also be ubiquitous features that help to determine qualitative relevancy. Chemical threshold in neurone operation determine firing frequency setting up potential channels of qualitative evaluation.

Of course a key development is the biochemical structure of the neurone. It has the unique feature of being able to transmit sensory stimulation across significant distances and at speed. Imagine if pheromone transmission by colony ants was both targeted and instantaneous. The mobilisation of the colony to realtime conditions would be very powerful and move the evolutionary goalposts. Mechanisms could evolve to take advantage of the realtime assimilation of experience.

An important transcendent development made possible by the neurone is the evolution of cognitive mechanisms that enable the qualitative distinction of macro features of the environment. Whilst chemical mechanisms might facilitate photosensitive behaviours in less complex creatures, only neurones have the potential to assimilate the colours and contours of space and shape. Such neural mechanisms would consist of many layers of processing that entail conjoining neural frequency patterns, assigning relevancy through frequency re-enforcement gates, reward feedback re-enforcement etc. I am no neuroscientist, but I think it is clear that the potential mechanisms are there that would assign qualitative prioritising roles to patterns and colours through threshold, re-enforcement, nullification processes etc all of which are sub-conceptual in function.

Conclusion – The first-person perspective

As humans, we introspect about the continually changing consequences of our own underlying physiological and cognitive mechanisms. Should we be surprised that they possess certain unique ineffable characteristics? The innate function of these mechanisms in their totality, is to determine what they deem to be qualitatively relevant and pertinent for survival – by virtue of their accurate, environmentally reflective function. Consequently, we experience a continually changing and rich phenomenal landscape of qualitative non-conceptual impressions; a functioning knowledge that remains mysteriously intangible in its processes of operation. And yet the mechanisms form the indispensable bedrock of our conceptual thought whose construction defines our individual sense of personal identity – an identity we find subjected, rather curiously, to this subjective “qualitative” phenomenal experience. Is the process physical? Yes: it is just that we cannot explore phenomenal feeling with our constructed network of relational principles. Conceptual thought cannot invoke phenomenal experience, so the experience must always remain amazing even though we might understand the phenomenon in its totality. So what must we learn from its uniqueness? We must learn that information constructs – knowledge constructs – come in more than one guise; there is more to knowledge, representation and intentionality than concepts.

 

[Soupie]

Here are two articles about the brain/mind that I think are relevant:

The first is another article about how the brain "translates" various sensory input into information via neuronal spiking. In my opinion, this supports the mind-is-information model.

BBC - Future - How to speak the language of thought

When he was asked, as a joke, to explain how the mind works in five words, cognitive scientist Steven Pinker didn't hesitate. "Brain cells fire in patterns", he replied. It's a good effort, but all it really does is replace one enigma with another mystery.

It’s long been known that brain cells communicate by firing electrical signals to each other, and we now have myriad technologies for recording their patterns of activity – from electrodes in the brain or on the scalp, to functional magnetic resonance scanners that can detect changes in blood oxygenation. But, having gathered these data, the meaning of these patterns is still an enduring mystery. They seem to dance to a tune we can't hear, led by rules we don't know.

Neuroscientists speak of the neural code, and have made some progress in cracking that code. They are figuring out some basic rules, such as when cells in specific parts of the brain are likely to light up depending on the task at hand. Progress has been slow, but in the last decade various research teams around the world have been pursuing a far more ambitious project. We may never be able to see the complete code book, they realised, but by trying to write our own entries, we can begin to pick apart the ways that different patterns correspond to different actions. ...

The second article is about recent finding in the phantom limb phenomenon.

@Constance you are found of saying that reality is palpable and cite Stevens in regards to the nexus between phenomenal experience and physical reality. You seem to suggest that phenomenal experience and physical reality share a direct relationship. You cited the poetic line about clouds touching our eyes, etc.

One paper posted here mentioned the experience of seeing a supernova; any supernova that a human were to see in the sky would have occurred millions (if not billions) of years in the past. So while we might be seeing the original light from the event — ie the event can last millions of years — it still makes the point that when we see and experience an event, it is always a few moments or even many moments after the event has happened.

Re phantom limbs: It's well documented that humans can have phenomenal experience of limbs and pain in these phantom limbs, despite not physically having limbs.

So while I'm not suggesting that phenomenal experience isn't related to interaction with the physical environment, I don't think — outside of our subject experience — that phenomenal experience is directly related to physical events.

Rather, I think these events produce physical effects that our bodies receive and translate into information that our bodies (brain and nervous system) use to generate/facilitate the mind.

Why Do Amputees Feel the Ache of Nothingness? - Facts So Romantic - Nautilus

The new research, published in the journal Pain, clashes with the modern consensus around a neurological cause—and also with the old ideas about psychological causes. The study involved amputees in Albania, many of whom had lost legs when they stepped on landmines, and Israel. These 31 amputees described a variety of agonies in their phantom limbs, including “electric shock–like,” “shooting,” “constricting,” and “pulsating” pains.

The researchers didn’t focus on the nerves in these patients’ limb stumps, but rather on clusters of neurons near the spinal cord called dorsal root ganglia, which relay sensory information from the peripheral nervous system on toward the brain. When the researchers injected an anesthetic in the ganglia associated with the amputees’ missing limbs, the subjects swiftly reported that their phantom limb pains vanished—as, indeed, did the whole sensation of having phantom limbs. Sham injections had no effect.

The findings support a “bottom-up” theory of phantom pain, the researchers write: If the pain originated in the brain, blocking the activity of neurons way down the spinal cord would provide no relief. While the conscious perception of pain “undoubtedly” involves processing in the central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord), the authors write, “the raw feel of a phantom limb” comes from activity in the peripheral nervous system (nerves beyond beyond the brain and spinal cord). The researchers also posit that the cortical reorganization that’s been observed isn’t the cause of the pain; rather, both the brain changes and the pain may stem from irregular activity in the peripheral nerves.

The well-known neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran, of the University of California, San Diego, has conducted research on ways to modulate phantom limb sensations with brain tricks alone, potentially implicating the central nervous system as the origin of phantom pain. But when asked about the new research, Ramachandran replies that a “false dichotomy” has been set up between peripheral- and central-nervous-system explanations. Instead, he says, we should consider an amputee’s perception of a twinge in his missing leg as akin to his perception of the red color of a fire engine. In color vision, the cone cells in the retina respond to the wavelengths of light, but “the final perception of color depends on the brain.” ...

 

[Pharoah]

Constance... fyi I am re-writing the article.

 

[Constance]

I see a new text by you a few posts up, which I'll read now. Is that the rewrite you refer to being engaged in in this last post?

I browsed back in this thread to a point where we first discussed your Hierarchical Systems Theory (now Hierarchical Construct Theory) and found the post linked below in which you break your ideas down fairly clearly. At one point you appear to claim that it is these systems or constructs that possess intentionality, and that seems to me to be a major issue we should probe.

Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 2

 

[smcder]

Interesting essay isn't it? I have to read it again because I read it quickly this morning, but my impression is that this author has examined his consciousness deeply and discovered some mutually transparent layers there. I'll comment further on this idea after I readthe essay again, but I wonder if you also sense the same thing here?

I do - I'd meant to post more than the two quotes earlier, but ran out if time - but they caught my attention ...

I don't agree with everything in the article, you'd have to be careful about secularizing a religion completely - and Harris has his own sacred cows, although he is the least venomous of the "Four Horsemen" of the new atheism ... And the only one I can see meditating! His outlook may be a little more mature than in "The End of Faith". - the last thing I read by him.

Also, his sudden insights came after a lot of meditation and retreats - and that is very common.

But he describes his meditative experiences clearly and they do seem to match up with others and with some of my own.

 

[smcder]

Here are two articles about the brain/mind that I think are relevant:

The first is another article about how the brain "translates" various sensory input into information via neuronal spiking. In my opinion, this supports the mind-is-information model.The second article is about recent finding in the phantom limb phenomenon.

@Constance you are found of saying that reality is palpable and cite Stevens in regards to the nexus between phenomenal experience and physical reality. You seem to suggest that phenomenal experience and physical reality share a direct relationship. You cited the poetic line about clouds touching our eyes, etc.

One paper posted here mentioned the experience of seeing a supernova; any supernova that a human were to see in the sky would have occurred millions (if not billions) of years in the past. So while we might be seeing the original light from the event — ie the event can last millions of years — it still makes the point that when we see and experience an event, it is always a few moments or even many moments after the event has happened.

Re phantom limbs: It's well documented that humans can have phenomenal experience of limbs and pain in these phantom limbs, despite not physically having limbs.

So while I'm not suggesting that phenomenal experience isn't related to interaction with the physical environment, I don't think — outside of our subject experience — that phenomenal experience is directly related to physical events.

Rather, I think these events produce physical effects that our bodies receive and translate into information that our bodies (brain and nervous system) use to generate/facilitate the mind.

So, how does this explain the stabbing pain I get from time to time in my third eye?

 

[smcder]

Philosophy Referee Hand Signals | Open Culture

 

[smcder]

"Was pre-modern man a child?"

http://www.iapsych.com/iqmr/fe/LinkedDocuments/oesterdiekhoff2012.pdf


Pretty interesting - regarding The Mindless Babylonian Theory

 

[Constance]

Followup q&a to the posting between Pharoah and me on page ten of this thread:

Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 2

I browsed back in this thread to a point where we first discussed your Hierarchical Systems Theory (now Hierarchical Construct Theory) and found the post linked below in which you break your ideas down fairly clearly. At one point you appear to claim that it is these systems or constructs that possess intentionality, and that seems to me to be a major issue we should probe.

Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 2

Reading several posts that followed the above, I find myself wondering why, given that you conceive of 'intentionality' existing in physical systems -- ostensibly for the purpose of maintaining their own integrity or inner order against chaos intruding from outside of them -- you cannot conceive of intentionality operating in the phenomenal consciousness of humans interacting with the local world in which they find themselves existing. As we know from chaos theory, dissipative physical systems coming into contact with other such systems experience a period of chaos following which a newly integrated order emerges from their interaction. This process apparently involves phenomenal awareness {a 'prehension' in Whitehead's term} by System A of the proximity and difference of System B. The exchange of information takes place, generates chaos, then generates a shared/integrated order. How is this significantly different from what takes place between the human subject and phenomena encountered in the physical world which the subject comes into contact with by virtue of his/her own intentionality? I use the word 'significantly' to signal that in both cases a semiotic exchange (an exchange of information if you like) takes place. Both exchanges can be understood as "occasions of experience," events in the evolution of the world (Whitehead again). Human thinking through phenomenal experience is a high-water mark in the evolution of life to date. Yet you wish to divide thinking by humans from phenomenal experience of humans. How have philosophers who see phenomenal experience as involving conceptual thought responded to your theory?

 

[Constance]

Here are two articles about the brain/mind that I think are relevant:

The first is another article about how the brain "translates" various sensory input into information via neuronal spiking. In my opinion, this supports the mind-is-information model.

There appears to be a question why we need the brain to translate sensory input into information at all if Pharoah is correct in his conclusion that Mary can learn nothing new by leaving her black and white room and entering a world characterized by color.

The second article is about recent finding in the phantom limb phenomenon.

By some coincidence I also read that article, yesterday (I thought about posting it here and maybe I did, but that's irrelevant). I know a man who suffers from phantom limb pain and have often wondered what causes it. Perhaps the medical scientist is correct, that the pain originates in scar tissue on the severed nerves. If so, it's one of Mother Nature's dirty tricks that someone who loses his leg at 21 should also have to suffer agonizing pain for the rest of his life. In any case, I'm not sure that a purely physical explanation can explain the pain.

@Constance you are found of saying that reality is palpable and cite Stevens in regards to the nexus between phenomenal experience and physical reality. You seem to suggest that phenomenal experience and physical reality share a direct relationship. You cited the poetic line about clouds touching our eyes, etc.

One paper posted here mentioned the experience of seeing a supernova; any supernova that a human were to see in the sky would have occurred millions (if not billions) of years in the past. So while we might be seeing the original light from the event — ie the event can last millions of years — it still makes the point that when we see and experience an event, it is always a few moments or even many moments after the event has happened.

I don't see how the distance of spacetime matters: one encounters (in this case sees) a phenomenon when one encounters it. Your last sentence seems to refer to one of Libet's experiments, which Libet himself interpreted very diffently from the way it was interpreted in the popular scientific press.

Re phantom limbs: It's well documented that humans can have phenomenal experience of limbs and pain in these phantom limbs, despite not physically having limbs.

So while I'm not suggesting that phenomenal experience isn't related to interaction with the physical environment, I don't think — outside of our subject experience — that phenomenal experience is directly related to physical events.

Rather, I think these events produce physical effects that our bodies receive and translate into information that our bodies (brain and nervous system) use to generate/facilitate the mind.

I know that's your point of view, very similar to Pharoah's. Can you identify the similarities and differences between his approach and yours?

 

[smcder]

@Pharoah

It seems your argument is similar enough to Flanagan's (based on "metaphysical" vs "linguistic" physicalism) to raise the same objection:

"It may be argued against this view that it becomes hard to understand what it is for a property or a fact to be physical once we drop the assumption that physical properties and physical facts are just those properties and facts that can be expressed in physical terminology."

It seems to me this just pushes the hard problem into conceptually unknowable structures ...

so you can't, by definition, prove this is where phenomenal experience arises ...

it's just the only physical place left for it to be, but that doesn't prove physicalism.

it also seems this might be a form of Mysterianism?

 

[Constance]

@Pharoah

It seems your argument is similar enough to Flanagan's (based on "metaphysical" vs "linguistic" physicalism) to raise the same objection:

"It may be argued against this view that it becomes hard to understand what it is for a property or a fact to be physical once we drop the assumption that physical properties and physical facts are just those properties and facts that can be expressed in physical terminology."

It seems to me this just pushes the hard problem into conceptually unknowable structures ...

so you can't, by definition, prove this is where phenomenal experience arises ...

it's just the only physical place left for it to be, but that doesn't prove physicalism.

it also seems this might be a form of Mysterianism?

I'm at a loss re the Mindless Babylonian Theory. What is the provenance of this theory?

I slogged through that Oesterdiekhoff paper and was dismayed by it. I was curious about his other publications and came across the one at the first link, in a journal apparently published by a reactionary think tank in Washington D.C. The second link goes to the organization's description of its goals and intentions in this journal

http://www.mankindquarterly.org/samples/MQLIV3_4_Oesterdiekhoff.pdf

http://www.mankindquarterly.org/about.html

 

[Constance]

This looks helpful re the knowledge argument and poor Mary:

Knowledge Argument: Annotated Bibliography

 

[Constance]

http://cfs.ku.dk/staff/zahavi-publications/phenomenology-thompson-zahavi.pdf

 

[Pharoah]

I see a new text by you a few posts up, which I'll read now. Is that the rewrite you refer to being engaged in in this last post?

I browsed back in this thread to a point where we first discussed your Hierarchical Systems Theory (now Hierarchical Construct Theory) and found the post linked below in which you break your ideas down fairly clearly. At one point you appear to claim that it is these systems or constructs that possess intentionality, and that seems to me to be a major issue we should probe.

Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 2

I have re-drafted the website article last night. The version I put up here on pg 27 post no. 526 is the older version. Sorry about that. I do rework my writing a lot.

HCT can be used as an interpretative tool of representation, intentionality, and information construction (knowledge). Different types of systems-construct lead to different types/ expressions of each. The different types/classes obey unified principles and relate hierarchically.