Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 2

[Pharoah]

It [the evolving organism?] is showing that its dynamic structure is informed about the environment by virtue of its ability to survive interaction and maintain its temporal dynamic existence. Thus evolution is the process by which dynamic constructs become increasingly sophisticated in their informed construction and therefore in the way they interact and relate with environment. {The constructs interact with the environment?}

Constance said:
"As you see from what I've highlighted above in red and blue there is ambiguity in what you appear to be saying about what evolves and how it evolves. At the level of abstract surmises about the evolution of purely physical systems, it's reasonable to say that those systems of interaction and integration of information evolve from the quantum substrate up to the level of classical reality. But a [suppressed] problem arises as soon as life, living organisms, arrive on the scene. Thus between your red statement (where it appears that you are describing 'informed' organisms) and your blue statement {where your subject becomes the evolution of informational 'constructs' contained in the physical level of being itself, that which phenomenologists refer to as 'brute being'}, a lacuna opens up between the subjective and objective poles of reality that are integrated in phenomena -- bodied forth in experience. Neither we nor other animals need abstract conceptual thought to realize that we have experience in the phenomenal world and to act in accordance with it. Perhaps I'm incorrect in this observation (and in that case you can further enlighten me), but it seems to me that your theory distances -- by mechanizing as wholly objective and beneath awareness -- the phenomenal processes of evolution that are expressed in the biological evolution of species of life, consciousness, and mind. "

I have to say, this is a good attempt at diminishing my work. So I congratulate you on that.
Going back to the original post I said:
"One can regard anything that has temporal existence as being informed of its environment by virtue of the fact that its interactions with the environment do not lead to its immediate demise. It is showing that its dynamic structure..."
From this it can be seen that the word "It" (which begins the second sentence) refers to the "anything that has temporal existence" from the previous sentence.
Therefore, your assumption that the word "It" means "[the evolving organism]" (inserted by you c.f. the red highlighted section), is not what I was saying.
Even if you were right, however, I do not accept your notion that "a lacuna opens up between the subjective and objective poles of reality..." for I do not recognise these poles of reality of which you speak.
"we nor other animals need abstract conceptual thought to realize..." You don't need conceptual thought to experience, but you do need conceptual thought to recognise and to talk about it, which is why we do and other animals do not.
I don't get, "beneath awareness": To have concepts is to be aware - of the conscious state of experiencing the qualitative relevancy of environmental interaction.

Constance said:
"Perhaps the answer is as simple as this: evolving creatures are 'informed' by processes in nature -- interactions and integrations of information beginning in the quantum substrate and producing increasing complexity* -- but at each stage of development they increase by increments in their appreciation (awareness, sense) of their own being and that of the environment in which they maintain their existence and gradually come into purposeful interaction with the surrounding world [ecological niche] available to them. Exchanges of information in a fuller, more experiential, sense evidently take place in the phenomenal experience of evolving animals; they are not automatons any more than we are."
There is no incremental... "appreciation of being" or "gradually come into purposeful interaction" about it.
Each emergent phase led to an evolutionary explosion - this is as ignorable as a slap in the face with a mackerel - a sudden diversification of structures that were able to maximise the benefits of their new and transcendent construct. These were the:
primordial nucleosynthesis era, Eoarchean Era, Pre-Cambrian, and the Neogene Period... I think.
You have to explain the marked boundaries of change - why they came into being and why they evolved as they did with their particular behavioural characteristics. HCT does this. Your 'incremental appreciation of being' does not do this.

But we may well have to remain divided on this.

 

[Constance]

Constance said: ". . . a [suppressed] problem arises as soon as life, living organisms, arrive on the scene. Thus between your red statement (where it appears that you are describing 'informed' organisms) and your blue statement {where your subject becomes the evolution of informational 'constructs' contained in the physical level of being itself}, a lacuna opens up between the subjective and objective poles of reality that are integrated in phenomena -- bodied forth in experience. Neither we nor other animals need abstract conceptual thought to realize that we have experience in the phenomenal world and to act in accordance with it. Perhaps I'm incorrect in this observation, but it seems to me that your theory distances -- by mechanizing as wholly objective and beneath awareness -- the phenomenal processes of evolution that are expressed in the biological evolution of species of life, consciousness, and mind. "

I have to say, this is a good attempt at diminishing my work. So I congratulate you on that.

??? That's a rather paranoid reaction. Certainly an overreaction. I'm not trying to 'diminish your work'. I thought we were having a discussion of ideas about consciousness and their relative validity.

Going back to the original post I said:
"One can regard anything that has temporal existence as being informed of its environment by virtue of the fact that its interactions with the environment do not lead to its immediate demise. It is showing that its dynamic structure..."
From this it can be seen that the word "It" (which begins the second sentence) refers to the "anything that has temporal existence" from the previous sentence.
Therefore, your assumption that the word "It" means "[the evolving organism]" (inserted by you c.f. the red highlighted section), is not what I was saying.
Even if you were right, however, I do not accept your notion that "a lacuna opens up between the subjective and objective poles of reality..." for I do not recognise these poles of reality of which you speak.
"we nor other animals need abstract conceptual thought to realize..." You don't need conceptual thought to experience, but you do need conceptual thought to recognise and to talk about it, which is why we do and other animals do not.
I don't get, "beneath awareness": To have concepts is to be aware - of the conscious state of experiencing the qualitative relevancy of environmental interaction.

That you "do not recognize" the subjective and objective poles of reality is just to say that you either haven't read phenomenological philosophy or that you have read it and reject the entirety of its contributions to the understanding of consciousness and mind. If you are unaware of what that philosophy contributes to the understanding we seek here, I suggest you read the explication of the key concepts of phenomenology at the link I posted early this morning: http://cfs.ku.dk/staff/zahavi-publications/phenomenology-thompson-zahavi.pdf

Constance said:
"Perhaps the answer is as simple as this: evolving creatures are 'informed' by processes in nature -- interactions and integrations of information beginning in the quantum substrate and producing increasing complexity* -- but at each stage of development they increase by increments in their appreciation (awareness, sense) of their own being and that of the environment in which they maintain their existence and gradually come into purposeful interaction with the surrounding world [ecological niche] available to them. Exchanges of information in a fuller, more experiential, sense evidently take place in the phenomenal experience of evolving animals; they are not automatons any more than we are."

There is no incremental... "appreciation of being" or "gradually come into purposeful interaction" about it.
Each emergent phase led to an evolutionary explosion - this is as ignorable as a slap in the face with a mackerel - a sudden diversification of structures that were able to maximise the benefits of their new and transcendent construct. These were the:
primordial nucleosynthesis era, Eoarchean Era, Pre-Cambrian, and the Neogene Period... I think.
You have to explain the marked boundaries of change - why they came into being and why they evolved as they did with their particular behavioural characteristics. HCT does this. Your 'incremental appreciation of being' does not do this.

But we may well have to remain divided on this.

As you like. But as you'll see if you read the Gallagher/Zahavi paper I linked, the contributions of phenomenology to consciousness studies are increasingly recognized and have led to constructive research projects involving neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, and analytical and phenomenological philosophers.

 

[Constance]

ps to @Pharoah, I would certainly like to learn more about what you refer to in your second-last paragraph:

"Each emergent phase led to an evolutionary explosion - this is as ignorable as a slap in the face with a mackerel - a sudden diversification of structures that were able to maximise the benefits of their new and transcendent construct. These were the: primordial nucleosynthesis era, Eoarchean Era, Pre-Cambrian, and the Neogene Period... I think.

You have to explain the marked boundaries of change - why they came into being and why they evolved as they did with their particular behavioural characteristics. HCT does this. Your 'incremental appreciation of being' does not do this.[/quote]

Can you cite the sources that have informed you about these matters?

 

[Constance]

As I expected ... from the second link:

"The Mankind Quarterly is not and never has been afraid to publish articles in controversial areas, including behavioral group differences and the importance of mental ability for individual outcomes and group differences.

During the "Bell Curve wars" of the 1990s, it received more than its fair share of criticism when opponents realized that many of the works cited by Herrnstein and Murray had first been published in The Mankind Quarterly. However, this science has stood the test of time, and MQ is still prepared to publish controversial findings and theories."

Oesterdiekhoff's idea is even more deadly. He argues that in underdeveloped countries and societies humans become permanently fixed in developmental stages in which they can be mentally described as children. Thus the developed nations have no obligation to try to correct the human damage done in the third world by their success through colonialism, laissez-faire capitalism, and wars for resources and profit. This guy is dangerous.

 

[Constance]

The emergence of primary anoetic consciousness in episodic memory
Marie Vandekerckhove1*, Luis Carlo Bulnes1 and Jaak Panksepp2

Abstract: Based on an interdisciplinary perspective, we discuss how primary-process, anoetic forms of consciousness emerge into higher forms of awareness such as knowledge-based episodic knowing and self-aware forms of higher-order consciousness like autonoetic awareness. Anoetic consciousness is defined as the rudimentary state of affective, homeostatic, and sensory-perceptual mental experiences. It can be considered as the autonomic flow of primary-process phenomenal experiences that reflects a fundamental form of first-person “self-experience,” a vastly underestimated primary form of phenomenal consciousness. We argue that this anoetic form of evolutionarily refined consciousness constitutes a critical antecedent that is foundational for all forms of knowledge acquisition via learning and memory, giving rise to a knowledge-based, or noetic, consciousness as well as higher forms of “awareness” or “knowing consciousness” that permits “time-travel” in the brain-mind. We summarize the conceptual advantages of such a multi-tiered neuroevolutionary approach to psychological issues, namely from genetically controlled primary (affective) and secondary (learning and memory), to higher tertiary (developmentally emergent) brain-mind processes, along with suggestions about how affective experiences become more cognitive and object-oriented, allowing the developmental creation of more subtle higher mental processes such as episodic memory which allows the possibility of autonoetic consciousness, namely looking forward and backward at one’s life and its possibilities within the “mind’s eye.”

Frontiers | The Emergence of Primary Anoetic Consciousness in Episodic Memory | Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience

 

[Constance]

The periconscious substrates of consciousness: Affective states and the evolutionary origins of the self.
Panksepp, Jaak
Journal of Consciousness Studies, Vol 5(5-6), 1998, 566-582.
Special Section: Models of the self (Part 3).

Abstract
Evolutionary roots of a coherent, albeit primitive, self-centered affective awareness first emerged subcortically. The periaqueductal gray is implicated as the most essential component of the relevant neural systems. Panksepp envisions a simple ego-type life form (a primitive SELF structure) instantiated in those circuits. Ability of the primal SELF to resonate with primitive emotional values may help yield raw subjectively experienced feelings. A study of such systems is a starting point for neurological analysis of affective feelings, which may lie at the periconscious core of all other forms of animal consciousness. If such a neurodynamic process is an essential neural preadaptation for emergence of higher levels of consciousness, it may help to close the explanatory gap between brain circuit states and psychological nature of affective feelings and to reconceptualize the nature of psychological binding in higher forms of consciousness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)


http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1998-03017-003

 

[Pharoah]

Yes, thanks.
Your original version was too pithy for me, but the point is obvious now that you've added the sentences in blue. If I spent more time interacting with physicalists I might have groked your original statement.


re: Constance thread 557, "That would be interesting".
In a nutshell this is the germ of the idea:
1. All systems-constructs have properties - often unexpressed. I appreciate that 'properties' is an abstract notion, so I would have to explain that.
2. The characteristics of a system's properties are revealed only to higher level constructs during systems interaction. For example, by way of de-abstraction... NaCl has certain properties. It does not recognise these properties in itself. But a higher level construct (such as a human) does recognise some of them. One such property humans call "salty".
3. The experience we understand to be consciousness, is a systems-construct.
4. Therefore consciousness must have properties.
5. These properties cannot be revealed to the conscious self.
6. The properties can only be revealed to a higher level construct.
7. The higher level construct does not exist yet, as far as I know.
8. We can assume that consciousness has properties which are knowable only to a higher level construct of physical nature that does not yet exist.
9. The question is, which of us are sweet and which of us are salty?
)))

Points 3 and 8 are especially interesting. Your eight claims appear to be quite orderly as a sequence of propositions, but what is your evidence for the critical third point, that consciousness can be explained by systems theory? I realize that you carefully worded the noun phrase as "the experience we understand to be consciousness," but obviously not everyone agrees with what 'you understand to be consciousness'.


thread 554: Constance said,
"That's a fascinating paragraph in the extent to which you seem to be providing grounds for panpsychism."
re. me saying:
"Non-human animals think in so far as their neural mechanisms assimilate sensory experience, evaluate its relevancy and prioritise thought processing and action. This 'thinking' leads to the phenomenon, of 'feeling' motivated to thought, action, and enacting of emotive gestures and utterances. But for such animals this is their limitation, for they possess no other inclinations. The situation for humans, needless to say, is markedly different. 3.5 million years ago a new capability emerged as the cognitive processing of experience became increasingly sophisticated. This capability is an extension above and beyond phenomenal experience and all the thought, behaviour, and communication that comes with it. This is a transcendent capability that leads to creative thought, language, self realisation and so on. The emergent change was in essence, from one of evaluating experience, to that of questioning experience. Bear in mind however, that you don't need language skills to have concepts in the mind from which a question can be realised in thought. But notably, with the thought, follows the inclination - the inclination to form those questions about the objects of one's observation and their relation to other objects and consequences; and to do this, ultimately does demand - indeed compel - the formation of the formal structures of languages."

I've responded to that paragraph in a cross-post, which will be available to you now. I would say that what you have written in the underscored lines in that paragraph does suggest grounds for contemplating panpsychism.

Tell me you not trying to wind me up Constance - Where I come from people point and giggle at the talk of panpsychism... Why do you think Galen left the country for the US? (actually, it might have got something to do with getting paid)

Do they? You should probably get out of that country/culture more.[/QUOTE]

Constance:
"what is your evidence for the critical third point, that consciousness can be explained by systems theory?"
HCT used to be called Hierarchical Systems Theory... The key to the theory is that consciousness is a systems-construct that obeys unifying systems principles.
The idea is a consequential offshoot of HCT - it assumes HCT to be valid.

 

[Soupie]

Two interesting articles relevant to this discussion:

The first discusses whether consciousness can be scientifically studied, and presents an evolutionarily adaptive function of reflective consciousness that is new to me.

http://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S1364-6613(14)00133-8

... Importantly, the conviction that consciousness is ineffable may reflect assumptions people commonly make about consciousness based on their own introspections. If these assumptions are incorrect, the reasoning used to take consciousness research off the table may be faulty. Here, we point out some flaws in common intuitions about consciousness. In light of these flaws, we also highlight a broad range of promising directions for research on consciousness and strongly advocate against the position that this fundamental facet of the human mind will forever be beyond human understanding. ...

You may think that sensing, analyzing, and deciding necessitate consciousness. Not necessarily. You can have no awareness of a briefly flashed number but still accurately assess its value, perform a mathematical operation, and produce an appropriate answer [4].

If neither strong sensory stimulation, nor paying attention, nor deeply analyzing guarantees awareness, what is the crucial ingredient? One answer is that awareness depends on a reciprocal exchange of information across multiple areas in the cerebral cortex [5]. Consider how damage to the primary visual cortex usually blocks visual awareness, producing blindness. Yet, a patient might correctly discriminate moving objects and not consciously see them, demonstrating ‘blindsight’. In these cases, visual discrimination without awareness presumably reflects restricted cortical processing without the reverberating exchange of information [6]. ...

The awareness we each have of our own body and our place in the world seems to be distinctly natural and fundamental. Yet the conscious experience of having a body can be bizarrely disrupted in patients with right parietal damage, who sometimes deny ownership of an entire arm. The rubber-hand illusion is another striking phenomenon, whereby seeing someone rubbing a fake hand while feeling the simultaneous tactile sensation on your own hand momentarily makes you feel that the fake hand is yours. In an even more extreme way, altered neural activity can produce an out-of-body experience [9].

These unusual perceptual experiences are no less ‘real’ than the sensation of a self inside a body. This standard way we each think of our self is a manufactured sensation, learned on the basis of sensory relationships across modalities. Awareness of a self inhabiting a body is not as obligatory as it seems: it is likely to have evolved for a behavioral advantage.

Why does the brain construct the sensation of a self inside a body? One answer appeals to the idea that you fare better in a social environment when you can attend to your own needs and predict what will happen next, including what other people are going to do. To make this work, specific brain mechanisms evolved to construct models of the attention and intentions of others and to localize them in the corresponding people's heads. The social neuroscience theory of consciousness [10] postulates that these same brain mechanisms were adapted to construct a model of one's own attention and intentions, localized in one's own head and perceived as consciousness. If so, a primary function of consciousness is to allow us to predict our own behavior.

Conscious experiences must be understood in the context of neural processing that transpires without a concomitant conscious experience. ...

The following article discusses the need for a unified theory of mental illness (read: mind) in the field of psychiatry:

Manchester Psychiatry Society Blog: Why Psychiatry Needs a Unified Theory of Mental Illness

But there's a problem for psychiatry. The nature of the mind is a slippery one and psychiatry hasn't quite decided what exactly it is yet. This isn't the fault of psychiatrists, it simply reflects the complexity of the subject at hand. ...

Pragmatism, as I am using the term in the current context, refers to the theory that psychiatric explanations are ‘‘true’’ only insofar as they promote beneficial real-world results for individuals with mental illnesses. As a practical discipline, psychiatry is concerned more with its methodology than its ontology: by adopting a pragmatic position on explanatory models, psychiatrists do not necessarily commit themselves to a particular view on the underlying structure of the universe. Psychiatric explanations are coherent and plausible insofar as they are pragmatically useful and empirically testable in clinical settings.
​

... We can explain the [mind] at various different levels becoming more and more abstract from the levels of particles to chemicals to biology to systems etc. Depending on what we want to explain we have to choose the correct level. It would not, for example, be particularly useful to explain the heart at the level of particle physics.

Such an approach is a sensible temporary solution to guide scientific investigation into mental illness in the absence of an overriding ontology in order to avoid the dogmatism of past paradigms such as biological reductionism. The problem, however is that it must be recognised that it can only ever be a temporary solution, since the pragmatist pluralist paradigm offers no ontology of mind to guide methodology. Whilst research can be understood within the particular level of explanation, constrained by that particular ontology, pluralism does not offer a means by which we choose or reject certain levels or indeed integrate the different levels. As such we are simply stuck with the same kind of eclecticism offered by the biopsychosocial model, by which we have scattered and often incompatible theories and research.

Pluralism is correct in emphasising the need for a focus on the different levels of explanation available but fails in its assumption that we do not need a unifying theory to tie it all together. In order to truly understand and treat mental illness we need a unified theory of mental illness to guide and constrain the kind of integrative methodology the pluralist approach entails.

 

[Pharoah]

??? That's a rather paranoid reaction. Certainly an overreaction. I'm not trying to 'diminish your work'. I thought we were having a discussion of ideas about consciousness and their relative validity.

That you "do not recognize" the subjective and objective poles of reality is just to say that you either haven't read phenomenological philosophy or that you have read it and reject the entirety of its contributions to the understanding of consciousness and mind. If you are unaware of what that philosophy contributes to the understanding we seek here, I suggest you read the explication of the key concepts of phenomenology at the link I posted early this morning: http://cfs.ku.dk/staff/zahavi-publications/phenomenology-thompson-zahavi.pdf

As you like. But as you'll see if you read the Gallagher/Zahavi paper I linked, the contributions of phenomenology to consciousness studies are increasingly recognized and have led to constructive research projects involving neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, and analytical and phenomenological philosophers.

I reject a good deal of the phenomenological contributions to the 'understanding ' of consciousness and mind.
I did read a good deal of the G/Z paper. Found pages 22 to 24 very problematic.
At page 26, I suddenly had this thought as to why you like the phemenological approach. Basically, there is no explanatory substance - I do not mean this rudely. Rather, it is openended continually expansive and descriptive. It never condenses toward resolutions. Respectfully, in my submission, this speaks to the artist in you. As for me, I find it is like listening to Mahler... never seems to go anywhere, but does so with great conviction and drama.

I don't think I am paranoid. I have a lot of weaknesses, but paranoid doesn't turn up very often anymore. Dismantle was a lazy word. I was encouraged at the thought thst you might be finding flaws in HCT... bring it on

 

[Soupie]

IIT is regressive. I see no merit in it. How about u Soupie? Tell me what I'm missing

As a general concept, I like it. That is, I'm of the mind (ahem) that mind (all subjective thoughts, feelings, and experiences, etc.) is fundamentally constituted of information.

[T]he kinds of statements Soupie makes concerning his own view of information as generating (producing) both experiences and mind.

Okay. Sigh.

Let's try this again: Information generates neither experiences nor mind. Rather, physical brains generate information, and it is this very information that constitutes both experiences and all other aspects of mind.

Again, I'm not talking about some isomorphic relationship or correlation between information and mind. I'm saying, ontologically, information is mind.

Back to IIT: I wouldn't say I'm an advocate of IIT in any specific way; I would say that I am an advocate of an "information theory of mind."

Information Philosopher - Mind

Information philosophy views the mind as the immaterial information in the brain.

The brain is seen as a biological information processor. Mind is software in the brain’s hardware, although it is altogether different from the logic gates, bit storage, algorithms, computations, and input/output systems of the type of digital computer used as a "computational model of mind" by today's cognitive scientists.

The “stuff” of thought is pure information, neither matter nor energy, though it needs matter for its embodiment and energy for its communication. Information is the modern spirit, the soul in the body, the ghost in the machine. ...

A la the article from Cell I posted above, there appears to be growing interest in IIT and perhaps an "information theory of mind."

If I spent more time interacting with physicalists I might have groked your original statement.

As I've pointed out several times in this thread, such statements by @Constance leave me perplexed.

Nothing Constance has articulated about her beliefs regarding the nature of consciousness has been anti-physicalism, as noted in this thread: Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 2 | Page 25 | The Paracast Community Forums

To wit: Constance is a passionate phenomenologist. However, phenomenology does not presuppose anti-physicalism.

Phenomenology (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view.

Moreover, Constance is fond of saying that consciousness is embodied (physical) and that consciousness has evolved from a protoconscious state via the physical evolution of organisms.

Finally, while Constance believes that some aspects of mind are non-local, 1) she does not advocate a non-local, homunculus, mental-self, and 2) those aspects of mind that are non-local she proposes may operate via the physical mechanism of quantum entanglement.

So, while Constance is fond of dismissing, rejecting, and even deriding physicalism on the one hand, on the other hand she appears to hold physicalist views. Quite perplexing.

 

[Constance]

Good paper:

"There is No Question of Physicalism"
Tim Crane and D. H. Mellor

" . . . our arguments entail that there is no divide between the mental and the non-mental sufficient even to set physicalism up as a serious question, let alone as a serious answer to it. Physicalism is the wrong answer to an essentially trivial question. So it cannot begin to help philosophers of mind answer the serious questions about the mind and, above all, about intentionality: what enables some parts of the world (us) to think about other parts, including other people (and of course ourselves). And to those questions it is quite obvious that neither dualism nor physicalism has anything to contribute. The dualist does not even try to explain intentionality: he just takes it for granted, stipulating it into existence. And saying that minds are all physical no more helps to explain how some physical things can think than saying that all flesh is grass helps to explain the difference between carnivores and vegetarians. This, therefore, should really be the last paper on the subject of physicalism. But we fear it will not be."

https://ethik.univie.ac.at/fileadmi...__T._1990_There_is_no_quest.._Physicalism.pdf

 

[Constance]

I reject a good deal of the phenomenological contributions to the 'understanding ' of consciousness and mind.
I did read a good deal of the G/Z paper. Found pages 22 to 24 very problematic.

I'll post pp. 22-24 in a next post so you can identify your problems with that text.

At page 26, I suddenly had this thought as to why you like the phenomenological approach. Basically, there is no explanatory substance - I do not mean this rudely. Rather, it is openended continually expansive and descriptive. It never condenses toward resolutions. Respectfully, in my submission, this speaks to the artist in you. As for me, I find it is like listening to Mahler... never seems to go anywhere, but does so with great conviction and drama.

Hmm, page 26 is concerned with the temporality of consciousness (inner time-consciousness per Husserl), which is one of the foundational disclosures of the phenomenology of consciousness. One of its consequences is the 'unification of the self', another major issue for consciousness studies. Another is the existentiality of experience, its continuous open-endedness in one's ongoing stream of experiences and reflections upon them. It's incorrect to say that "there is no explanatory substance" in phenomenology, for it investigates the interaction of subjectivity (mind) and objectivity (physicality) in the lived world. I didn't take your statement as if it were "rude" since, as we both know, substance in our time refers to more than 'matter'. If there is any 'resolution' of the mind-body problem it will have to be found through phenomenology in cooperation with neuroscience, cognitive science, systems theory, etc. Where did you get the idea that I am an artist? Btw, I detest Mahler, and if reading phenomenology is like listening to Mahler for you, I suggest you read Merleau-Ponty.

I don't think I am paranoid. I have a lot of weaknesses, but paranoid doesn't turn up very often anymore. Dismantle was a lazy word. I was encouraged at the thought thst you might be finding flaws in HCT... bring it on

It's good that you're not paranoid. You did sound somewhat paranoid in your response to my analysis of that paragraph yesterday. My intention is certainly not to 'dismantle' your project/theory, though I do find it somewhat reductive at this point. On the other hand, we work at opposite ends of the inquiry into consciousness. You seek an ultimate explanation for how consciousness and mind arise in a physical world and, while I consider that question interesting, I'm much more interested in what consciousness and mind experience and do in the world.

 

[Constance]

Gallagher/Zahavi, pages 22=24

"In summary, every phenomenally conscious state, be it a perception, an emotion,
a recollection, an abstract belief, and so forth, has a certain subjective character, a certain phenomenal quality, corresponding to what it is like to live through or undergo that state. This is what makes the mental state in question phenomenally conscious.
This experiential quality of conscious mental states, however, calls for further
elucidation. Let us take perceptual experience as our starting point. Whereas the object of my perceptual experience is intersubjectively (publicly) accessible, in the sense that it can in principle be given to others in the same way it is given to me, the case is different with my perceptual experience itself. Whereas you and I can both perceive one and the same cherry, each of us has his own distinct perception of it, and we cannot share these perceptions, precisely as we cannot share each other’s pains. You might certainly realize that I am in pain, and even empathize with me, but you cannot actually feel the pain the same way I do. This point can be formulated more precisely by saying that you have no access to the first-personal givenness of my experience.

This first-personal quality of experience leads to the issue of self and self-awareness.
When one is directly and non-inferentially conscious of one’s own occurrent
thoughts, perceptions, feelings, or pains, they are characterized by a first-personal
givenness that immediately reveals them as one’s own. This first-personal givenness of
experiential phenomena is not something incidental to their being, a mere varnish the
experiences could lack without ceasing to be experiences. On the contrary, it is their first-personal givenness that makes the experiences subjective. To put it differently, their first-personal givenness entails a built-in self-reference, a primitive experiential self-referentiality. When I am aware of an occurrent pain, perception, or thought from the first-person perspective, the experience in question is given immediately and non-
inferentially as mine. I do not first scrutinize a specific perception or feeling of pain, and then identify it as mine. Accordingly, self-awareness cannot be equated with reflective (explicit, thematic, introspective) self-awareness, as claimed by some philosophers and cognitive scientists. On the contrary, reflective self-awareness presupposes a prereflective (implicit, tacit) self-awareness. Self-awareness is not something that comes about only at the moment I realize that I am (say) perceiving the Empire State Building, or realize that I am the bearer of private mental states, or refer to myself using the first-person pronoun. Rather, it is legitimate to speak of a primitive but basic type of self-awareness whenever I am acquainted with an experience from a first-person perspective. If the experience in question, be it a feeling of joy, a burning thirst, or a perception of a sunset, is given in a first-personal mode of presentation to me, it is (at least tacitly) given as my experience, and can therefore count as a case of self-awareness. To be aware of oneself is consequently not to apprehend a pure self apart from the experience, but to be acquainted with an experience in its first-personal mode of presentation, that is, from ‘within’. Thus, the subject or self referred to is not something standing opposed to, apart from, or beyond experience, but is rather a feature or function of its givenness. Or to phrase it differently, it is this first-personal givenness of the experience that constitutes the most basic form of selfhood (Zahavi, 1999, 2005).

In summary, any (object-directed) conscious experience, in addition to being of or
about its intentional object is pre-reflectively manifest to itself. To use another
formulation, transitive phenomenal consciousness (consciousness-of) is also intransitive self-consciousness (see Kriegel, this volume). Intransitive self-consciousness is a primitive form of self-consciousness in the sense that (i) it does not require any subsequent act of reflection or introspection, but occurs simultaneously with awareness of the object; (ii) does not consist in forming a belief or making a judgement; and (iii) is passive in the sense of being spontaneous and involuntary. According to some phenomenologists (e.g., Merleau-Ponty, 1962), this tacit self-awareness involves a form of non-objective bodily self-awareness, an awareness of one’s lived body (Leib) or embodied subjectivity, correlative to experience of the object (see Section 6). The roots of such pre-reflective bodily self-awareness sink to the passive and anonymous level of the interplay between receptivity and affectivity constitutive of ‘operative intentionality’ (see Section 3).

Phenomenology thus corroborates certain proposals about consciousness coming
from neuroscience. Theorists such as Panksepp (1999ba, 1998b) and Damasio (1999)
have argued that neuroscience needs to explain both how the brain enables us to
experience the world outside us and how it “also creates a sense of self in the act of
knowing… how each of us has a sense of ‘me’” (Parvizi and Damasio, 2001, pp. 136-
137). In phenomenological terms, this second issue concerns the primitive sense of ‘I-ness’ belonging to consciousness, known as ‘ipseity’ (see also Lutz, Dunne, and
Davidson, this volume). As a number of cognitive scientists have emphasized, this core
of self-awareness in consciousness is fundamentally linked to bodily processes of life regulation, emotion, and affect, such that cognition and intentional action are emotive
(Damasio, 1999; Panksepp 1998a, 1998b; Freeman, 2000). A promising line of
collaboration between phenomenology and affective-cognitive neuroscience could
therefore centre on the lived body as a way of deepening our understanding of
subjectivity and consciousness (Thompson, 2007).

Note: the two papers I linked by Panksepp early today are illustrative. The first one is available in full at the link and is fascinating. The second is unfortunately behind a pay wall but looks equally significant.

 

[Constance]

For some reason the quote functions are not working for me tonight, so most of this interactive post shows up within a lengthy quote screen. @Gene Steinberg, please see if others are having this problem too. Note: it appears to be the final close-quote code that refuses to be erased.

Let's try this again: Information generates neither experiences nor mind. Rather, physical brains generate information, and it is this very information that constitutes both experiences and all other aspects of mind.

But information is the origin of the physical brain as well, I gather, along with everything else we see out in the world beyond the skull?

Again, I'm not talking about some isomorphic relationship or correlation between information and mind. I'm saying, ontologically, information is mind.[/quote]

Is that because mind exists in a world that is likewise constituted out of information?

Back to IIT: I wouldn't say I'm an advocate of IIT in any specific way; I would say that I am an advocate of an "information theory of mind."
A la the article from Cell I posted above, there appears to be growing interest in IIT and perhaps an "information theory of mind."
As I've pointed out several times in this thread, such statements by @Constance leave me perplexed.

You mean that my reference to you as an advocate of ITT left you perplexed. Sorry if I overstated it; that was my impression. Btw, I too think that information theory must have relevance for consciousness/mind studies, but to think so is a long way from being convinced that mind and everything else in the world can explained by information theory.

Nothing Constance has articulated about her beliefs regarding the nature of consciousness has been anti-physicalism, as noted in this thread: Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 2 | Page 25 | The Paracast Community Forums

To wit: Constance is a passionate phenomenologist. However, phenomenology does not presuppose anti-physicalism.

Right.

Moreover, Constance is fond of saying that consciousness is embodied (physical) and that consciousness has evolved from a protoconscious state via the physical evolution of organisms.

Right.

Finally, while Constance believes that some aspects of mind are non-local, 1) she does not advocate a non-local, homunculus, mental-self, and 2) those aspects of mind that are non-local she proposes may operate via the physical mechanism of quantum entanglement.

Yes.

So, while Constance is fond of dismissing, rejecting, and even deriding physicalism on the one hand, on the other hand she appears to hold physicalist views. Quite perplexing.

What I oppose is the reductivism instantiated in modern science, philosophy, and culture generally, first by materialism and objectivism, more recently by what is called physicalism. It seems to me that information theory is also prey to reductivism. ////

 

[Michael Allen]

Interesting statement by Soupie:

"Let's try this again: Information generates neither experiences nor mind. Rather, physical brains generate information, and it is this very information that constitutes both experiences and all other aspects of mind"


Information and its relationship with both the act of event of "generating" and the notions of experience and mind is brought into a language structure that is modeled off the very interactions we take for granted (i.e. generating is your example, but we might easily substitute other items like "manipulating," etc. In other words, the base of the analogy rests on the very system that is under examination--i.e. an acting entity doing something).

I probably sound like a broken record--but I couldn't help reiterating the same old tired thesis that I have introduced many times before.

Strange that your emphasis on the physical remains just as dependent on the analogy...even though for a moment the reader accepts the better formulation (physical) as a substitute for the previous proposition on information. If we try to re-formulate the structure of consciousness (or mind) we should find something that is incomprehensible from the standpoint of our intuition, but nevertheless incontrovertible. It would seem that traversing from the <information, generation, mind, experience> analogy to the <physical, generation, information, experience> relies suspiciously on the same framework. Even if the analogy points to something else ineffable this does not detract from the very necessity of existence concerning the base analogy in the first place. If anything can be learned it is by tracing these underlying structures that we might come up with a better theory of consciousness and experience.

I predict that the more we unravel the structure of our own consciousness and "being" the less we will be satisfied with the answer to the question--even if absolutely true beyond any doubt. The doubt will remain because it is a necessary component of what we are trying to break apart. Strangely enough this self-paradox is very similar to the same predicament in Quantum Mechanics. Which is why the two fields of study (one of inquiry into the closest thing to ourselves, the other of trial and error and mathematical reformulation into the realm of the bizarre) are often merged into the same discussion.

 

[smcder]

Good paper:

"There is No Question of Physicalism"
Tim Crane and D. H. Mellor

" . . . our arguments entail that there is no divide between the mental and the non-mental sufficient even to set physicalism up as a serious question, let alone as a serious answer to it. Physicalism is the wrong answer to an essentially trivial question. So it cannot begin to help philosophers of mind answer the serious questions about the mind and, above all, about intentionality: what enables some parts of the world (us) to think about other parts, including other people (and of course ourselves). And to those questions it is quite obvious that neither dualism nor physicalism has anything to contribute. The dualist does not even try to explain intentionality: he just takes it for granted, stipulating it into existence. And saying that minds are all physical no more helps to explain how some physical things can think than saying that all flesh is grass helps to explain the difference between carnivores and vegetarians. This, therefore, should really be the last paper on the subject of physicalism. But we fear it will not be."

https://ethik.univie.ac.at/fileadmi...__T._1990_There_is_no_quest.._Physicalism.pdf

That is a good paper, hope it can be read and discussed.

Especially helpful for me was the discussion of microreduction and it's limits as a principle of explanation.

"In short, if the phenomena of psychology are less ontologically acceptable than those of physics and chemistry, it cannot be because psychology is irreducible to present or future physics.

Reducibility to physics or to micro physics is a hopeless test of the ontological authority of a science: a test which not even a physicalist can apply consistently.

For as we have seen, reducibility in practice is neither feasible nor to the point; while those who claim reducibility in principle either beg the question or appeal to principles of the unity of science or of micro reduction, which modern physics itself denies."

'Nuff said!

 

[Pharoah]

thread 574 by Constance says:
"What I oppose is the reductivism instantiated in modern science, philosophy, and culture generally, first by materialism and objectivism, more recently by what is called physicalism. It seems to me that information theory is also prey to reductivism"

HCT is a reductive explanation of consciousness.
When I say "consciousness" I refer to all the characteristics that people identify as constituting consciousness. But that is not to say there are aspects to consciousness that are not identified and therefore possibly not explained by HCT.

So... perhaps I was not so wrong in thinking that you might be eager to "dismantle" or dismiss HCT for no other reason than that it is an approach you do not believe in, Constance.

I think cognitive science has cause to relate to many different philosophical approaches to consciousness. e.g. cognitive science relates to behaviourism. But behaviourism has similar problems, in my view, as phemenology. It is observation to explain observation? Different ways to observe as a means of correlating to other ways to observe. There is no true explanatory power there... but the knowledge and interrelatedness is interesting and valuable.
Nevertheless, I am looking to different levels of explanation.

Soupie: re information.
Defining what information is, is key. Previous definitions are incorrect for the purposes of understanding consciousness.
I think you have an intuitive hunch, but have not managed to find a way of articulating it with persuasive force.
I think HCT will help you develop your intuitions about information to consciousness. I will be writing an extended post on information in the near future to express my views as they relate to HCT more specifically.

 

[smcder]

Fascinating.

It's often noted that children and adults see the world differently. Indeed, it could be said that children do see the world as animate. I wonder how much of this difference is developmental, and how much may be due to this phenomenon Dr. Abram identifies.

I'll have to read more about this. I'm curious how the alphabet (words?) can shape ones thinking. I don't doubt that it can, but I'm not sure how the alphabet does this...

When I think, I don't think via letters, I think via words (concepts). I'm not sure how someone using an idiographic writing system would think differently... Do they not think via words? Do they think via images alone?

Letters and words are definitely more abstract than images.

We've talked before about how conceptual/language thinking (Keller) has profoundly effected humans. Perhaps the alphabet raises this conceptual thinking to an higher level of abstraction.

Alliance for Wild Ethics || The Boundary Keeper || In Conversation with David Abram

"With older, non-alphabetic forms of writing, the pictorial or ideographic characters borrowed some of their shapes from the more-than-human surroundings. With the emergence of the phonetic alphabet however, the letters came to refer strictly to human sounds, and the more-than-human origin of those shapes was forgotten. The rest of nature was no longer a necessary part of the practice of reading and thinking, as it had long been when reading the hieroglyphics of the Maya or even the ideographic scripts of China."

@Soupie

"When I think, I don't think via letters, I think via words (concepts). I'm not sure how someone using an idiographic writing system would think differently... Do they not think via words? Do they think via images alone?"

But you think in some pictures too, right? In all the senses? I sometimes get very uncomfortable bodily sensations when dealing with a tricky problem - especially mathematics or logic ... Inversely when I'm uncomfortable physically I try to check in with my mind and see what problem it is that my body is working on ...

When you write stories do you see them as "movies" before or during writing them down?

Do you see words or hear them, talking to yourself as you think?

When I listen to audio I picture the words sometimes and sometimes even the letters one at a time, especially if I'm trying to memorize.

 

[smcder]

https://ethik.univie.ac.at/fileadmi...__T._1990_There_is_no_quest.._Physicalism.pdf

"It is indeed an old thought that mental causation is hard to make sense of and especially

causation linking the mental to the non-mental,

because they seem to be so different.

But why should that impress anyone who has learned from Hume that causation never makes sense: that it is always a matter of fact, not of reason?

Nothing in either Hume or other modern analyses of causation forces causes to be like their effects; nor does anything in them stop causes and effects being mental."

 

[smcder]

@Pharoah - I don't know if you participate in other online fora and/or can recommend any for consciousness studies?

I'll repost these two from part 1 of the thread:

Philosophy Discussion Forums

Philosophy Now Forum • Index page

I think those are the two I looked at and seemed to be active ... I also subscribed to the forums at The Partially Examined Life - they also have Not School discussion groups, smaller groups I believe any subscriber can take charge and lead one on any subject.