Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 2

[Constance]

. . .where we diverge is that I am firmly in the monist camp and you seem to be a staunch dualist.

Chalmers has a paper we discussed in Part 1 of this thread identifying contemporary philosophical models of consciousness which include a variety of monisms and dualisms. I'll link the paper again for what it offers all of us in thinking about the relationship between mind and world. My own approach to this question is based in phenomenological philosophy, a major turn in 20th century philosophy that sought to overcome Cartesian dualism and develop an understanding of the interrelation and interpenetration of consciousness and the physically given in nature. In this view, consciousness emerges in material being as "a difference that makes a difference" in what can be called 'reality' once life, experience, awareness of experience, and thinking begin to develop in the material evolution of the universe. The "lived reality" of conscious and even protoconscious species of life is the difference that makes a difference in how we can describe 'what is'. Panksepp explores this difference and as a result his biological research is invaluable at this point in consciousness studies.

Just like I've ran my own dual slit experiment, etc. Have you? Have you any formal training at all in QM or philosophy or AI? I have, and I don't claim to be an expert but I do claim to grasp the underlying concepts enough to form a grounded opinion.

I have no formal scientific training but I do have formal training in philosophy. I have been interested in QM for about ten years now, reading books and papers in it and discussing it with others, because it seems to me that q entanglement is likely to be the key to the deep interrelationship, interconnection, of mind and world. But no, I have never done a dual slit experiment. I've read enough in q physics to realize that different ontological interpretations of QM proposed by q theorists remain unresolved after a hundred years of experimentation, and that experimentation has generally been restricted to epistemological goals [the 'shut up and calculate' approach to learning enough to use qm in q computing, cryptology, etc.] -- that which can be learned about qm and qft for application to technologies we can use. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but the effect after 50 years has been to turn most q physicists engaged in experimentation 180 degrees away from any interest in questioning the ontological significance of q processes in the substrate and upward into classically described 'reality'. Several years ago there was a fascinating 30-page thread in the physorg forums in which debate exploded between physicists satisfied with this situation and those not satisfied with it. (note: the latter, unsurprisingly, were in the minority, but they put up a good fight. If I can find the link to that thread again I'll post it.)

I've also experienced psi, had my share of strange experiences, and am conscious, so I disregard your assertion.

?? I haven't questioned your being conscious and enduring all that comes with being conscious. What I said was that the complexity of what it is to be conscious, to be part of the difference that consciousness makes in our understanding of what we can call 'reality', is most fully developed today in interdisciplinary consciousness studies and that I think you're missing some of what's going on there by holding fast to your conviction that physicalism/materialism accounts for everything.

There's nothing, at least yet, that requires consciousness to be not part of the material universe as we understand it.

I agree. My view is that consciousness and mind develop out of nature, evolve within the physical universe and introduce into it a process, a capability, a ground on which the universe in its evolution of mind can be thought, increasingly understood, and made significant by the signifying organisms it has produced. What we can call 'real' must also be scientifically investigated in terms of the ways in which it is experienced. This requires philosophy, which is not "hand-waving" as you characterize it, but disciplined inquiry into what we 'know' in our immediate experience and can understand further from phenomenological analysis of protoconsciousness and consciousness as they have evolved in the world's being.

 

[marduk]

My perspective is very simple, and I'll boil it down to this:

1. We know a lot about the universe. So much so, in fact, that we should probably at least exclude the natural forces that we do understand before seeking out or inventing new ones. That's basic science.
2. Quantum mechanics does not imply non-local information transfer, nor does it imply non-causality (at least in the deterministic sense) which some imply as free will. In short, it's not a get out of jail free card, and it frustrates me to no end that people think it is.
3. We exist as part of the natural world. We are not apart from the natural world, and that includes our consciousness. Inventing some magic "stuff" that we call consciousness that is not a part of the natural materialistic universe is the stuff of pseudoscience and of extreme frustration on my part.
4. Our brain is extremely complicated, and yet extremely simple. We can describe how neurons work and learn pretty well. So well, that we can do the same thing in software that we write. What we (currently) lack is the ability to scale the whole thing up to something like the massive parallel system that is the human mind. I believe that "consciousness" is an emergent property of this massively parallel wet computation device built out of grey matter in our skull.

 

[Constance]

Yes, it's clear that that is your point of view. All I'm saying is that it could be challenged (in ways you yourself might find very interesting) if you were to engage in some research into the subjects I mentioned.

 

[Constance]

ps: when I first read Sartre I was a strict (but naieve) rationalist. Neither Sartre's concept of radical freedom nor the stunning, spontaneous OBE I'd experienced three years before reading him, shook the foundations of my view of reality. I did not even take the subconscious seriously at that time (the early 70s) or for many years afterward. My perspective changed a lot when I read other phenomenologists, especially Merleau-Ponty.

 

[marduk]

Yes, it's clear that that is your point of view. All I'm saying is that it could be challenged (in ways you yourself might find very interesting) if you were to engage in some research into the subjects I mentioned.

I'm an empiricist.

All moving semantic objects around (which is all that philosophy seems to have become) does is fiddle with our ideas of how things might be. I've read nearly every link you've provided, and I have as yet to come up with anything tangible that they're actually saying. It just boils down to word games while the rest of the world moves on and does science.

Describing or postulating what happens in terms of neurolinguistic babble is very different to me than describing how or why.

Theorizing that hitherto unknown physical mechanisms somehow make it all possible (of which QM is the current meme) just lead us down the garden path -- when you haven't actually solved the problem, you need to invent something that maybe just will. Rather than speaking to the heart of it.

It's like the .com bubble in the 90's, which I offer as a metaphor not a straw man. Basically people thought they were going to get rich by:
1. I have an idea
2. I'll write some code and put it online
3. ???
4. profit!

Where step 3 is the important bit.

Where I see all this going sideways is:
1. I have an idea
2. I'll move some semantic layer ideas around arranged in a pattern that roughly describes how I seem to think about things when I think about thinking about things.
3. ???
4. Consciousness!

Where step 3 (and the hard bit) never actually gets done, and some of it sounds semantically like quantum mechanics, therefore maybe that's the answer!

Panskepp himself postulates a biological mechanism for emotion. As do I, and personality, cognition, and the sense of "me."

 

[Constance]

I'm an empiricist.

All moving semantic objects around (which is all that philosophy seems to have become) does is fiddle with our ideas of how things might be. I've read nearly every link you've provided, and I have as yet to come up with anything tangible that they're actually saying. It just boils down to word games while the rest of the world moves on and does science.

Describing or postulating what happens in terms of neurolinguistic babble is very different to me than describing how or why.

Theorizing that hitherto unknown physical mechanisms somehow make it all possible (of which QM is the current meme) just lead us down the garden path -- when you haven't actually solved the problem, you need to invent something that maybe just will. Rather than speaking to the heart of it.

It's like the .com bubble in the 90's, which I offer as a metaphor not a straw man. Basically people thought they were going to get rich by:
1. I have an idea
2. I'll write some code and put it online
3. ???
4. profit!

Where step 3 is the important bit.

Where I see all this going sideways is:
1. I have an idea
2. I'll move some semantic layer ideas around arranged in a pattern that roughly describes how I seem to think about things when I think about thinking about things.
3. ???
4. Consciousness!

Where step 3 (and the hard bit) never actually gets done, and some of it sounds semantically like quantum mechanics, therefore maybe that's the answer!

Panskepp himself postulates a biological mechanism for emotion. As do I, and personality, cognition, and the sense of "me."

Wow. Do you by any chance have an identical twin in California?

Never mind. It's just deja vu. I've had a ten-year-long conversation with someone who thinks exactly the way you do about philosophy {boo oo oo} and science {rah, rah, rah}. I'll come back to this after dinner.

 

[smcder]

My perspective is very simple, and I'll boil it down to this:

1. We know a lot about the universe. So much so, in fact, that we should probably at least exclude the natural forces that we do understand before seeking out or inventing new ones. That's basic science.
2. Quantum mechanics does not imply non-local information transfer, nor does it imply non-causality (at least in the deterministic sense) which some imply as free will. In short, it's not a get out of jail free card, and it frustrates me to no end that people think it is.
3. We exist as part of the natural world. We are not apart from the natural world, and that includes our consciousness. Inventing some magic "stuff" that we call consciousness that is not a part of the natural materialistic universe is the stuff of pseudoscience and of extreme frustration on my part.
4. Our brain is extremely complicated, and yet extremely simple. We can describe how neurons work and learn pretty well. So well, that we can do the same thing in software that we write. What we (currently) lack is the ability to scale the whole thing up to something like the massive parallel system that is the human mind. I believe that "consciousness" is an emergent property of this massively parallel wet computation device built out of grey matter in our skull.

"extreme frustration" and "frustrates me to no end" I read this and think but why be frustrated with a natural fact??

It's no different than being frustrated by someone's IQ? Can we really say they could think differently? But different thoughts could only arise if the causes differed so that the meat machine extruded a different thought, right? I'm thinking of Dennets interpretation of some experiments where what a person would decide could be determined before hand by reading an EEG or similar and his book on free will - been a while though so I may have it wrong.

I suppose because frustration is the end of the causal chain for your meat machine, your brain - it has to be. You can't think or feel any differently. And if we say we can do something about that, meditate or just try to be more aware of that frustration - that too is the result of causes that we then form into a conscious sense of having decided to change our minds.

When I reframe things like that - see others' actions as determined ... it's a little spooky at first and I look in the mirror and remember I too am determined and there's "no one there" ... not in the sense we talk about it in day to day speech. Something that the Buddhists have got onto interestingly and actually really developed this line of thinking - although Karma isn't the deterministic doctrine it's often thought to be.

So I'm trying to see how much this figures into your daily interactions - do you see meat machines everywhere and act accordingly or find it easier to operate with conventional thoughts and reactions - accept the programming and enjoy life?

You've done a lot of things it sounds like, what is your profession if I can ask?

 

[marduk]

My frustration is people ascribing all kinds of nonsensical properties to QM that isn't true, and seeing a magical substance that doesn't need to be there to find answers.

There seems to be some mysticism about QM and dualism that compels and distracts people.

I meandered my way thru university, and although I've distanced myself from academia on the whole I still hang out with some folks.

Currently I've settled in a business field where surprisingly I can put my comp Sci, pure math, etc to work - although the social engineering aspects I learned from doing a full course load in heavy topics while working full time seems to be more beneficial to my current career.

 

[marduk]

Wow. Do you by any chance have an identical twin in California?

Never mind. It's just deja vu. I've had a ten-year-long conversation with someone who thinks exactly the way you do about philosophy {boo oo oo} and science {rah, rah, rah}. I'll come back to this after dinner.

I hate guys like that.

 

[marduk]

Part of my frustration is its stuff like that that drives a lot of science away from this field.

 

[marduk]

Here's an example of inventing new things that may not exist as an answer to a question before you've excluded the mundane, material "stuff" of the universe:
Gravity wave evidence disappears into dust | Ars Technica

Oops! Inflationary theory could just have been dust after all.

I'm not disparaging inflationary theorists, after all at least their theories can be tested. What I'm after is not inventing new entities to solve our problems instead of looking at what we already know exists.

 

[marduk]

I just came across this and it made me laugh out loud in a meeting because it's so appropriate and damn funny.

 

[smcder]

There is a sensation here in the thorax, not unpleasant, followed by rapid contractions and loud exhalations best approximated by the phoneme "ha".

This does appear to be associated with the concept of humor and is in context with recent concepts under discussion.

 

[smcder]

I don't know how I screwed that up, but at least you can read it.

 

[marduk]

I don't know how I screwed that up, but at least you can read it.

Oh, I thought that was ironic, and made it even funnier.

 

[technomage]

Has anyone read this thread from beginning to end and recorded the amount of time it took to do so? I bet it would take several man-days.

 

[Soupie]

We exist as part of the natural world. We are not apart from the natural world, and that includes our consciousness. Inventing some magic "stuff" that we call consciousness that is not a part of the natural materialistic universe is the stuff of pseudoscience...

In explaining your thoughts on how the brain and consciousness are related, you've used the analogy of a computer and software.

When it comes to computers and software (input), it's easy to see how both are physical. I think. Marduk, of what would you say computer software is constituted? How about output?

And I'm wondering about whether the output of a computer and software fit into the brain/consciousness analogy. Is consciousness input, output or both?

One of the things Chalmers helped me understand is that it's not easy to see of what phenomenal experience — one aspect of consciousness — is constituted. A common example is the experience of the color green. We can call this "experience of green" a quale. (Sorry for the semantics. Shred it if needed.) Of what is a green quale "made?" Quarks? Atoms? Chemicals? Neurons?

 

[smcder]

In explaining your thoughts on how the brain and consciousness are related, you've used the analogy of a computer and software.

When it comes to computers and software (input), it's easy to see how both are physical. I think. Marduk, of what would you say computer software is constituted? How about output?

And I'm wondering about whether the output of a computer and software fit into the brain/consciousness analogy. Is consciousness input, output or both?

One of the things Chalmers helped me understand is that it's not easy to see of what phenomenal experience — one aspect of consciousness — is constituted. A common example is the experience of the color green. We can call this experience of a green a quale. (Sorry for the semantics. Shred it if needed.) Of what is a green quale "made?" Quarks? Atoms? Chemicals? Neurons?

Quale hunt!

 

[Soupie]

Quale hunt!

I'm not sure of you're meaning here, but I want to be clear that I'm not trying to "trick" Marduk. It's an honest question. I'm curious to hear his thoughts.

If it's the term "quale" that you're bulking at, let's just focus on phenomenal experience.

 

[smcder]

I'm not sure of you're meaning here, but I want to be clear that I'm not trying to "trick" Marduk. It's an honest question. I'm curious to hear his thoughts.

If it's the term "quale" that you're bulking at, let's just focus on phenomenal experience.

Easy now ... it's just humor ... we've been on a quale hunt for much of this thread and I'm curious too.

But, don't be upset if he treats you like just another piece of meat ... I mean, don't take it personally! ;-)