Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 2

[smcder]

@Pharoah

What does HST have to say about the paranormal?

This is the go-to I've posted for peer reviewed research on Psi:

http://deanradin.com/evidence/evidence.htm

 

[Constance]

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

This short article from BBC Science last year is a helpful summary of the limits of QM as a "principle of explanation." http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130124-ll-we-ever-get-quantum-theory

The limits of scientific understanding of qm have led to a half-dozen different ontological interpretations still proffered 100 years after the discovery of the apparent mechanics of the q substrate. The incoherence of these interpretations has yielded the present situation in which quantum research is taken by most researchers in the field to represent a purely epistemological inquiry, though there are others who attempt to work out its ontological implications. A fascinating and lengthy discussion of the need to think in terms of qm's ontological implications took place a few years ago in a phys.org forum that I might still have the link to (I'll look for it). It is quantum entanglement, now generally recognized to be a unified universal phenomenon, that calls for ontological interpretation.

"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."

It seems to me that what qm itself does ground and propound in nature is a habit of interaction and exchange (and increasing synthesis) of information. I think we see a parallel phenomenon in the subjectivity of individual consciousness always reacting to and interacting with information coming from the objective pole of 'reality' in the phenomenal appearances of 'things'. {Husserl: 'no things without consciousness; no consciousness without things'}

 

[Pharoah]

@Pharoah

What does HST have to say about the paranormal?

This is the go-to I've posted for peer reviewed research on Psi:

http://deanradin.com/evidence/evidence.htm

Thanks smcder for the links to other forums.
I have not commented on forums before. I was drawn to this one because some of my work was misattributed to Frank Jackson. I then found the comments engaging.

Paranomal? HST says nothing about the paranormal.

Constance:
I would suggest you make sure you understand why you detest the work of a genius before you say as much.
I am not interested in critiquing the G/Z paper. I think that is what you should try doing for yourself.

I think this is my last comment. Thanks for the interesting contributions. If anyone wants to discuss ideas related to hierarchical construct theory, please feel free to email me or leave comments on my website at Philosophy of Consciousness & Hierarchical Systems Theory of Mind
If you want to guest post on my blog, or want tips on creating you own blog, drop me a line.

 

[Constance]

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'm not "eager to 'dismantle' or dismiss HCT," Pharoah, but, as you've represented it so far, it does not yet address primary "characteristics of consciousness" identified in phenomenological philosophy, Continental philosophy in general, and even analytical philosophy. Thus I'm not eager to embrace the theory taken at face value. That's not to say that I don't think it's possible that, when fully worked out, HCT might make a significant contribution to understanding the origins of consciousness and mind.

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.

"Observation to explain observation" is necessary when observation is at the core of experience and reflection on its meaning -- the base from which we build all of our conceptions about the natural (and cultural) world and our relationship to it. This is the core insight of phenomenology and existentialism, which you seem to resist contemplating. I agree that we need to consider "different levels of [potential] explanation" in studying consciousness, and that is exactly what's being done in interdisciplinary consciousness studies. It's clear by now that adequate "explanatory power" concerning consciousness and mind will require further interdisciplinary investigations that cannot avoid phenomenology.

You also wrote above: "e.g. cognitive science relates to behaviourism. But behaviourism has similar problems, in my view, as phemenology." I would like to hear your ideas about those similar problems. Phenomenology as developed by MP has in part been a reaction to Behaviorism.

 

[Constance]

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?"

This is an intriguing subject. I don't think we generally think in 'words' unless we are doing a linguistic analysis or writing theoretically about language. On the basis of my own experience in paying attention to how my thoughts develop and interconnect [which I believe is likely true of everyone's experience], the connections between one thought (or image) and another occur too quickly for words or images to be produced in my stream of consciousness. Related ideas, images, and concepts come together with 'the speed of thought', an idiom that captures what seems to happen in the mind on the basis of its extensive integration.

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 ...

I've had the same experience.

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.

As you know, I have difficulty with, and so avoid, audio lectures. I always want a text to work with, whatever the subject matter. Listening to music, by contrast, is for me an absorbing experience (when I like, am attuned to, the music). As the jazz critic Nat Hentoff wrote years ago, "in jazz you get the message when you hear the music."

 

[Constance]

Constance:
I would suggest you make sure you understand why you detest the work of a genius before you say as much.

Mahler might have been a genius, but I can't listen to his music with pleasure. I doubt that reading about his genius as understood by musicologists would change my personal feeling about his music.

I am not interested in critiquing the G/Z paper. I think that is what you should try doing for yourself.

I guess you're implying that I haven't read that paper critically? As a brief summary of six foundational insights of phenomenology, the paper doesn't represent any ideas I haven't worked through and found persuasive years ago. I did find the paper unnecessarily bland, but that is the kind of prose the authors write. If there are major critiques that you could present of the ideas expressed in the paper, it would be a considerable benefit to me if you would make them.

I think this is my last comment. Thanks for the interesting contributions. If anyone wants to discuss ideas related to hierarchical construct theory, please feel free to email me or leave comments on my website at Philosophy of Consciousness & Hierarchical Systems Theory of Mind
If you want to guest post on my blog, or want tips on creating you own blog, drop me a line.

I'm surprised to see that you are leaving this forum and wish that you would continue here.

 

[Pharoah]

Mahler might have been a genius, but I can't listen to his music with pleasure. I doubt that reading about his genius as understood by musicologists would change my personal feeling about his music.
I guess you're implying that I haven't read that paper critically? As a brief summary of six foundational insights of phenomenology, the paper doesn't represent any ideas I haven't worked through and found persuasive years ago. I did find the paper unnecessarily bland, but that is the kind of prose the authors write. If there are major critiques that you could present of the ideas expressed in the paper, it would be a considerable benefit to me if you would make them.
I'm surprised to see that you are leaving this forum and wish that you would continue here.

Constance, I do appreciate many of the points you have raised today. I do take them seriously and will consider them because they are valid. However, I have to let you have the last word here because I have so much other work to do. I suspended a very difficult critical analysis of Searle's 'Intentionality' which demands all my attention.
It is true I was finding our exchange frustrating, but a lot of good has come from it as far as I am concerned. I have learnt a great deal and will be more open to philosophy that I have been too hasty to dismiss.

1. Tell me what "characteristics of consciousness" identified in phenomenological philosophy, Continental philosophy in general, and even analytical philosophy are not addressed in HCT - give me notable works as references where possible please.

2. This is the G/Z issue I had in mind - for your reference. It is obvious what the stance taken would be in applying HCT:
"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"

3. Don't go near the musicologists!

 

[Soupie]

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?

When you say "information is the origin" I'm not sure whether you mean "the cause" or whether you mean the physical brain is "constituted" of information at the most fundamental level.

In either case, I think no.

As I've said before, in my opinion, what we call physical and mental are two properties of some currently unknown third, primal "substance." See neutral monism and/or property dualism for more about this model. I don't think we have a firm understanding of this process we call physical nor the process we call mental.

It is my current belief that what we call "mental" is synonymous with "informational." That is, first person, subjective experience structures (qualia) are, when viewed from the objective, third person perspective, informational structures.

To clarify what I've said earlier, the brain doesn't produce information so much as it receives, translates, and shapes information. For example, the physical processes of thunder and lighting produce information with is carried via physical processes. The physical brain receives this physical energy and the information it carries and shapes it into informational structures otherwise known as qualia.

I don't pretend that this process as so described is not incredibly vague, haha, but I'm hopeful that phenomenology, the physics of information, and neuroscience can help suss he details out and determine if the concept is ultimately fruitful or not.

 

[Soupie]

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 think I actually understand what you're saying a little better this time; however, I think my difficulty in understanding you is that your thought implies some unspoken assumptions. (I say this, because I can't understand what you're saying without assuming such assumptions on your part, haha.)

When I say the brain "generates" information, perhaps you think I'm implying some teleology, which perhaps you think can't exist in the absence of a mind capable of making meaning (I'm just guessing here).

However, if we assume that the brain (and mind) evolved to be adaptive, then the brain will have evolved to create mental structures that are advantageous for -- according to the current paradigm -- the production of offspring. As has been noted in this thread in the past, these informational structures may or may not be true (isomorphic with what-is). That is, our thoughts and experiences may not accurately represent what-is. However, so long as these structures are adaptive, they will suffice.

So, lighting might not be jagged and bright (as we perceive it) and thunder might not be loud and booming (as we perceive it) but these informational structures as generated by the brain are adaptive and that's what matters.

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.

Again, I'm not completely sure what you're saying here — it seems like you're talking about the sense of self rather than consciousness in general — but this quote comes to mind:

The ego continuously constitutes itself as existing. (Husserl 1929)

 

[Soupie]

@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.

Sure, I do both. When I'm imagining something, it's usually via a mental movie. And at times I use the word "thinking" to describe this a la: what are you thinking about? Oh, just that time milk shot out of my nose.

But quite often my thoughts are too abstract for anything like a mental movie, and this thinking consists of words and concepts. It's possible this is due to my use of an alphabet... But also simply due to the nature and capabilities of the human mind.

 

[Constance]

Tell me what "characteristics of consciousness" identified in phenomenological philosophy, Continental philosophy in general, and even analytical philosophy are not addressed in HCT - give me notable works as references where possible please.

I'd have to read a lot more of what you've written about HCT to be able to do that (and it would take considerable time and space to do so). I'd also like to read other explications of HST than that which you presented before you changed the term to HCT. I don't have a clear enough conception of HCT to do what you request. It would be simpler and quicker for you to respond to the question I asked you, which was to identify the problems you said you found in pp. 22-24 in the Gallagher-Zahavi paper. In your next paragraph, you say "it is obvious what the stance taken would be in applying HCT" to the paragraph you quote from those pages. I'm afraid it's not obvious to me what fault(s) an advocate of HCT would/could find in that paragraph. I can only repeat my request for clarification and let the question go if you don't have time to answer it.

This is the G/Z issue I had in mind - for your reference. It is obvious what the stance taken would be in applying HCT:

"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."

My impression from what you've written about HCT is that the second to last 'transcendental' step (in a series of four or five 'constructs' asserted to be embedded in the evolution of information systems in nature leading to consciousness) is the progress to conceptual thought, and that the theory considers this to be a qualitative leap beyond the level of supposedly noncognitive phenomenological qualia considered (by analytical philosophers) to characterize protoconciousness in humans. The Panksepp et al research I linked two days ago (essential reading) argues against such a radical transcendental distinction. So does the theory of the neuroscientist that I quoted some pages back. These are scientists who have been working for years in fields dominated by the materialist-physicalist presupposition that brains produce consciousness and mind from 'information', yet they, and others such as Varela and Thompson, have found that phenomenological approaches get closer to describing the nature of consciousness as originating in "prereflective (implicit, tacit) self-awareness," arising in experiences that body forth a being's sense of the 'mine-ness' of its experience, disclosing a felt sense of subjectivity [prior to language and conceptual thinking] that positions the being as existing both within its surrounding mileau and yet standing by degrees apart from it in enduring its own experience in and of that mileau. Another excellent source to read concerning the phenomenon of prereflective cognition is Strawson in this paper:

http://www.academia.edu/742477/Cognitive_Phenomenology_Real_Life

So it seems that in rejecting the phenomenological approach to consciousness expressed in the G/Z paper, HCT would also have to be prepared to overcome the arguments of the above scientists and philosophers.

 

[smcder]

Constance, I do appreciate many of the points you have raised today. I do take them seriously and will consider them because they are valid. However, I have to let you have the last word here because I have so much other work to do. I suspended a very difficult critical analysis of Searle's 'Intentionality' which demands all my attention.
It is true I was finding our exchange frustrating, but a lot of good has come from it as far as I am concerned. I have learnt a great deal and will be more open to philosophy that I have been too hasty to dismiss.

1. Tell me what "characteristics of consciousness" identified in phenomenological philosophy, Continental philosophy in general, and even analytical philosophy are not addressed in HCT - give me notable works as references where possible please.

2. This is the G/Z issue I had in mind - for your reference. It is obvious what the stance taken would be in applying HCT:
"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"

3. Don't go near the musicologists!

Best of luck with your work ... I've enjoyed your comments and blog - I hope you'll return to the forum as you have time.

 

[smcder]

Thanks smcder for the links to other forums.
I have not commented on forums before. I was drawn to this one because some of my work was misattributed to Frank Jackson. I then found the comments engaging.

Paranomal? HST says nothing about the paranormal.

Constance:
I would suggest you make sure you understand why you detest the work of a genius before you say as much.
I am not interested in critiquing the G/Z paper. I think that is what you should try doing for yourself.

I think this is my last comment. Thanks for the interesting contributions. If anyone wants to discuss ideas related to hierarchical construct theory, please feel free to email me or leave comments on my website at Philosophy of Consciousness & Hierarchical Systems Theory of Mind
If you want to guest post on my blog, or want tips on creating you own blog, drop me a line.

I asked about the paranormal (psi) because this thread is nominally about consciousness and the paranormal ... although we don't always, or even usually, focus on it.

I think any complete theory of consciousness has to account for the peer reviewed evidence of psi ... or dismiss it and dismissal is on an almost case by case basis. And there are a lot of cases ...

That said I realize few mainstream theorists are going to tackle psi or even acknowledge it, but that's changing a little as the nature of the relationship between research and traditional institutions and funding is changing.

 

[Constance]

When you say "information is the origin" I'm not sure whether you mean "the cause" or whether you mean the physical brain is "constituted" of information at the most fundamental level.

I actually don't mean either of those alternatives. Causality (as in "the cause") is not as secure an assumption as it used to be in science given the recognition of complexity in nature and mutually interacting processes in the evolution of the physical universe to 'our time'. I wasn't being quite straight with you in my responses to the first statements you made in that post for I actually don't believe that 'information' originating in some fundamental computational system can be said to account for the proliferation of everything we see and understand in the evolution of the universe over the last 16 billion years and in the present in which we dwell.

I do follow a growing trend in scientific and philosophical theory to consider that the universe as a complex and integrated whole has been produced out of billions of years of interaction and integration of information exchanged between substances, forces, and fields, generated from the quantum substrate (which cannot be thought to contain or express the whole of reality -- i.e., that which has become real).

The brain and mind, like the body itself, have also been evolved through complex integrations of information but are not reducible to information. In my view, protoconsciousness and consciousness do not traffic in 'information' of an abstract nature stored and processed in the brain in building our species' (and other species') apprehension [prehension] of and increasing insight into the nature of the reality in which we live in. Rather, we build our understanding of 'reality' gradually from our embodied experience in the world, which with sufficient thought in the human case discloses the inescapable relationship between the perceiver and the perceived and what that relationship means/signifies for the task of knowing anything. Understanding that relationship leads to the disclosure of the existentiality of our being, our thinking, and our responsibility to one another in how we justifiably construe the meaning and value of existence {our own and that of others and of life in general} during our embodied lives here.

 

[Constance]

I asked about the paranormal (psi) because this thread is nominally about consciousness and the paranormal ... although we don't always, or even usually, focus on it.

I think any complete theory of consciousness has to account for the peer reviewed evidence of psi ... or dismiss it and dismissal is on an almost case by case basis. And there are a lot of cases ...

That said I realize few mainstream theorists are going to tackle psi or even acknowledge it, but that's changing a little as the nature of the relationship between research and traditional institutions and funding is changing.[/QUOTE]

I agree, especially with this: "I think any complete theory of consciousness has to account for the peer reviewed evidence of psi." There is by now too much evidence for the reality of psi and related phenomena to 'dismiss' paranormal cognition from consciousness studies (and there are in fact papers published in that field that pursue this subject). We've only rarely discussed the paranormal capabilities of consciousness yet, as you say, but we'll get there.

 

[Constance]

The issue of subjectivity/subjective experience is the core issue in the phenomenology of consciousness and cannot be ignored in consciousness studies. It is not merely the issue {the question} of how consciousness comes into existence but also the question of what it enables in prehistorical and historical, philosophical, aesthetic, and ethical consequences in terms of a) the meaning of human experience and b) the understanding of the nature of being. It is prereflective subjective awareness, arising early in our species and others, that is the germinal sense out of which consciousness and mind gradually develop and disclose the nature of reality as including the nature of mind in its open-ended explorations of what-is. Whitehead might call this ‘germinal sense’ a major ‘occasion of experience’ since that which is to be explored and understood is precisely the relation and interrelation of consciousness/mind and ‘world’.
Thus in sensing one’s own being within the mileau of other beings and things that appear, the self-aware protoconscious being first senses ‘meaning’/signification in that mileau. The dual significations of the word ‘sens’ in French, ‘sense’ in English, already contain the embedded conjunction of sensing (experiencing) our presence in the world and cognizing meaning in the world; thus we still use the phrase ‘make sense’ to refer to the instinctive requirement that what we think and say about experienced reality needs to correspond to that which we discover in our experience [that which we can think about]. Thought arises in phenomenal experience even at prereflective levels of experience. For scientific corroboration, as I’ve said, see the two papers by Jaak Panksepp et al that I linked two days ago and the considered judgment of the neuroscientist that I linked earlier in part 2 of this thread.

So again I wonder how does, or would, HST and HCT respond to the ramifications of these insights coming from analytical scientists who have, like phenomenological philosophers, come to recognize that prereflective subjective experience is the ground of reflective thought and thus of the growth of consciousness and mind in becoming capable of disclosing the origin of the meaning of our experience in ontological terms? What are the differences between the phenomenological ontology developed in MP’s philosophy and the ontology of HST/HCT? What is the ontology of HST/HCT, explicitly, if it can be or has been stated, or implicitly in its interpretation of how meaning comes to exist in the world?

Strawson on cognitive phenomenology http://www.academia.edu/742477/Cognitive_Phenomenology_Real_Life

“When Paul Dirac says ‘God used beautiful mathematics in creating the world’, the no-cognitive-experiencers find subexperiential processes of understanding in Dirac, subexperiential processes that fully constitute everything that is correctly called understanding in Dirac and that cause him to have the purely sense/feeling beauty-feeling . These processes also put Dirac into a state in which he is, if asked to give an example of a beautiful equation, disposed to give an example by making certain sounds (he might cite the relativistic quantum-mechanical wave equation we know as the Dirac equation or Ricci scalar). So it seems he finds the equation beautiful. He says so, after all. He passes all the behavioural tests. There is, however, no sense in which he has experienced the beauty of the math, the beauty of that particular math, in experiencing the meaning of the math, on the no-cognitive-experience view. For there is no cognitive experience, no understanding-experience, at all. We do understand things, on this view: that is, sub-experiential processes go on, processes which alter our dispositional set. And we live or experience beauty-feelings, and much else. But we never live or experience meaning.I don’t think that this is what it was like to be Dirac, strange as he undoubtedly was.”

This is another helpful paper in approaching an understanding of the philosophical significance of phenomenology:
http://www.academia.edu/269896/The_Enigma_of_Reversibility_and_the_Genesis_of_Sense_in_Merleau-Ponty

 

[smcder]

@Soupie

Project MUSE - Melancholy, Love, and Time

Ancient literature features many powerful narratives of madness, depression, melancholy, lovesickness, simple boredom, and the effects of such psychological states upon individual sufferers. Peter Toohey turns his attention to representations of these emotional states in the Classical, Hellenistic, and especially the Roman imperial periods in a study that illuminates the cultural and aesthetic significance of this emotionally charged literature. His probing analysis shows that a shifting representation of these afflicted states, and the concomitant sense of isolation from one's social affinities and surroundings, manifests a developing sense of the self and self-consciousness in the ancient world. This book makes important contributions to a variety of disciplines including classical studies, comparative literature, literary and art history, history of medicine, history of emotions, psychiatry, and psychology. Peter Toohey is Professor and Department Head of Greek and Roman Studies at the University of Calgary, Canada.

 

[Constance]

What a fascinating project, and the book by Toohey must have had significant repercussions in Classics and comp lit. when it was published ten years ago. The following paragraph from the publisher's webpage about this book points up its special interest for those of us pursuing an understanding of consciousness and selfhood:

"Toohey also examines some of the ways that the "self" was (or was not) formulated in ancient literature, looking at conditions that could be said to endanger the fragile stability of "self" and how the "self," in ancient experience, was reestablished. Ancient representations of suicide, the perception of time, and the formulation of leisure, Toohey argues, challenge the widespread orthodoxy that melancholic emotions were somehow "discovered" during the European Enlightenment. Blending ancient literature, ancient art, modern psychological theory, and modern literature into his interpretive matrix, Toohey concludes that, paradoxically, difficult emotional registers represent key modes for buttressing an individual's sense of self in both the ancient and modern world." - See more at: Melancholy, Love, and Time

Publisher's webpage:
Melancholy, Love, and Time

 

[smcder]

What a fascinating project, and the book by Toohey must have had significant repercussions in Classics and comp lit. when it was published ten years ago. The following paragraph from the publisher's webpage about this book points up its special interest for those of us pursuing an understanding of consciousness and selfhood:

"Toohey also examines some of the ways that the "self" was (or was not) formulated in ancient literature, looking at conditions that could be said to endanger the fragile stability of "self" and how the "self," in ancient experience, was reestablished. Ancient representations of suicide, the perception of time, and the formulation of leisure, Toohey argues, challenge the widespread orthodoxy that melancholic emotions were somehow "discovered" during the European Enlightenment. Blending ancient literature, ancient art, modern psychological theory, and modern literature into his interpretive matrix, Toohey concludes that, paradoxically, difficult emotional registers represent key modes for buttressing an individual's sense of self in both the ancient and modern world." - See more at: Melancholy, Love, and Time

Publisher's webpage:
Melancholy, Love, and Time

Difficult emotional registers, perversity (deliberate action against self-interest and biological or genetic interest - masochism, killing ones immediate family, mass murder - serial killing as a sadistic pursuit) suicidal thinking (apart from clinical depression) are of particular interest because they seem to detach from ready biological explanation - they at least challenge the "just so" story telling abilities of evolutionary psychology ...

How to explain a de Sade? Or a Ted Bundy? At any given time there are 25-50 serial killers active in the US and psychopathy is relatively common, how do we answer demands for a strict evolutionary or information processing answer to these behaviors and states of mind? The extreme weirdness of even everyday conscious experience seems to indicate to me interaction with something ... Can a strictly evolved (and so convergent) solution for survival account for the weirdness of being human?

And, if we can't trust introspection - phenomenological analysis, meditation, etc to return something true about the world, how can we trust our conscious experience in doing science or even everyday life?

 

[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

Has everyone read this? The part on micro-reduction and supervenience especially ... The part on micro-reduction cleared up confusion for me on the arguments FOR atoms in the void, that everything reduces to and so just is particles ... Clearly written and the argument/counter- argument on supervenience appears (feels!) exhaustive. ;-) hard to argue strict physicalism without going through this paper.