Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 2

[smcder]

Why is that weird?
I see it as a loop. Your subjective experience is more that a little informed by your environment, and it can inform your body how to respond.

What am I missing?

On this model, a bunch of neurons perceived as subjective experience, it can be a loop - but the loop is closed on the neurons firing, subjective experience isn't in the loop it's just what it feels like for the neurons to fire ... if that's the case, then free will is an illusion.

 

[marduk]

What informs your body how to respond? Neurons firing or the subjective experience?

if I understand your model:

1. subjective experience is a result of neurons firing
2. your hand moves as a result of neurons firing

Yes to both.

so the subjective experience is what we feel, but it doesn't do anything (on this model)

I'm not there.

but if you say "it (your subjective experience, not the neurons firing, the experience) can inform your body how to respond", then I ask how a subjective experience can have an objective effect?

Where I'm at, the difference is purely philosophical, not physical.

If an object is having a subjective experience, it is still a material object.

Hence, if I induce a hallucination in my dog and he freaks out because of his subjective experience, it's because I induced his brain to behave differently.

I'm not seeing the delineation.

 

[marduk]

On this model, a bunch of neurons perceived as subjective experience, it can be a loop - but the loop is closed on the neurons firing, subjective experience isn't in the loop it's just what it feels like for the neurons to fire ... if that's the case, then free will is an illusion.

That's why I hope free will exists, but I'm still on the fence whether we really have it or not.

 

[smcder]

Yes to both.

I'm not there.


Where I'm at, the difference is purely philosophical, not physical.

If an object is having a subjective experience, it is still a material object.

Hence, if I induce a hallucination in my dog and he freaks out because of his subjective experience, it's because I induced his brain to behave differently.

I'm not seeing the delineation.

I think I'm getting there ...

We now have that there is no delineation between neurons firing and subjective experience (thanks to your freaked out dog above)

and we have:

"I see it as a loop. Your subjective experience is more that a little informed by your environment, and it can inform your body how to respond."
and, just to be sure, we have yes to both these questions:

1. subjective experience is a result of neurons firing
2. your hand moves as a result of neurons firing

Substituting, we get:
I see it as a loop. The (results of your neurons firing) is more than a little informed by your environment, and the (results of your neurons firing) can inform your body how to respond.

... which seems incoherent because we can just say "neurons firing" without reference to the other result (subjective experience) ...

So it really doesn't make sense to say that your subjective experience can inform your body how to respond ... or at least it's exactly the same thing as saying that neurons firing inform etc.

If all that is right, we just have neurons firing and so there is no room for free will.

So our job is to defend Raskolnikov and we have this statement for the jury:

"Ladies and gentleman of the jury ... I see it as a loop. Raskolnikov's neurons fired in such a way that fateful night that he did kill the old woman, but the neurons were more than a little informed by his environment, and in turn the neurons firing informed his body how to respond. The old woman's death was the result of a purely physical process, the end of a long, long chain of causality. Of course he said many wicked things to himself - but these were also the results of neurons firing, the many wicked things he said to himself were not the cause of her death, it was the firing of his hideous neurons!"

With apologies to Dostoyevsky and Poe ...

"In the meantime, is this another blow to the idea of free will generally? The research will certainly hearten hard determinists, but personally I remain a compatibilist. I think making a decision and becoming aware of having made that decision are two different things, and I have no deep problem with the idea that they may occur at different times. The delay between decision and awareness does not mean the decision wasn’t ours, any more than the short delay before we hear our own voice means we didn’t intend what we said. Others, I know, will feel that this relegates consciousness to the status of an epiphenomenon.[/I]"

 

[smcder]

Here is the link to the Libet paper I posted in August in a discussion here of issues related to brain vis a vis consciousness research:

Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 2 | Page 25 | The Paracast Community Forums

Here is that link:

http://www.imprint.co.uk/pdf/Libet.pdf

Very interesting ...

Roger Sperry (1980) had proposed that the mind is an emergent property of suitable brain functions, with special attributes not evident in the neural activities within the system, the brain. Among these attributes, Sperry included an ability of the conscious mind to supervene in certain neural activities. Initially, Sperry believed that the whole system obeyed the deterministic physical laws. But in his later years, he concluded that one had to invoke the possibility that the conscious mind could control certain neural functions in a way that was independent of the physical laws.

 

[smcder]

http://www.imprint.co.uk/pdf/Libet.pdf

It's all in the timing:

However, our experimental observations also showed that the conscious wish to act (W) preceded the final motor act by about 200 msec (or 150 msec when corrected for a –50 msec bias in the reporting process). That provided an opportunity for the conscious will to control the outcome of the volitional process. It could do that by providing a possibly necessary trigger for the process to proceed to completion in a motor act; there is, however, no evidence for such a mechanism. Or, the conscious will could block or ‘veto’ the process, resulting in no motor act (Libet, 1985).

He's right that this is in line with personal experience and with discussions of morality generally, it's about not following an impulse.

Here's the problem then:


In his footnote number 4, Velmans discusses the veto or ‘censor’ potentiality.
But he raises an obvious question: Why doesn’t the veto decision have its own
unconscious antecedents, just as appears to be the case for W itself? If the veto
were developed by preceding unconscious processes, that would eliminate conscious
free will as the agent for the veto decision.

 

[smcder]

Links to Libet papers and books:
Works by Benjamin W. Libet - PhilPapers

Links to summaries and discussion of Libet's research and related research and possible conclusions from it:
Benjamin Libet - a short delay.
Conscious Entities » Blog Archive » Unconscious decisions
Conscious Entities » Blog Archive » Libet was wrong…?

Link to Manzotti paper: http://www.consciousness.it/manzotti/On Line Papers/Manzotti - 2011 - The Spread Mind-Seven Steps to Situated Consciousness.pdf

Good stuff on the Conscious Entities Blog ... two statements about free will in the links you provided:

the first from the "Unconscious Decisions" article discusses compatibilism:

Conscious Entities » Blog Archive » Unconscious decisions

In the meantime, is this another blow to the idea of free will generally? The research will certainly hearten hard determinists, but personally I remain a compatibilist. I think making a decision and becoming aware of having made that decision are two different things, and I have no deep problem with the idea that they may occur at different times. The delay between decision and awareness does not mean the decision wasn’t ours, any more than the short delay before we hear our own voice means we didn’t intend what we said. Others, I know, will feel that this relegates consciousness to the status of an epiphenomenon.

http://imprint.co.uk/pdf/Libet.pdf

And here Libet shows that what Velmans offers is not genuine free will:

So, what can we make out of all this? Velmans points out that a physical reductionism, that proposes the conscious experience is identical with neural activity, is not acceptable. Yet, he assumes that the processes giving rise to conscious experience follow deterministic physical laws. Velmans then offers the view that the unconscious neural processes that lead to a conscious wish to act could be regarded as an expression of free will, because we feel that we have free choice and control over the act.

Clearly, such a view does not represent a genuine free will. The voluntary act is, in this view, not free of the inexorable adherence to deterministic physical processes. In this view, the feeling of an independent freedom of choice and control is merely an illusion.
Instead he sets the bar higher:

Roger Sperry (1980) had proposed that the mind is an emergent property of suitable brain functions, with special attributes not evident in the neural activities within the system, the brain. Among these attributes, Sperry included an ability of the conscious mind to supervene in certain neural activities. Initially, Sperry believed that the whole system obeyed the deterministic physical laws. But in his later years, he concluded that one had to invoke the possibility that the conscious mind could control certain neural functions in a way that was independent of the physical laws (Doty, 1998).

 

[smcder]

I'd like to suggest again the help available in the Manzotti paper "The Spread Mind":

http://www.consciousness.it/manzott...ind-Seven Steps to Situated Consciousness.pdf

Now this is interesting ...

Here, I will venture one step further. I will openly consider a perilous hypothesis: are the vehicles of phenomenal experience spread in time and space beyond the boundaries of the skin? Is phenomenal experience itself extended in time and space? Is consciousness situated in a strong sense? So far, many authors stepped back from this counterintuitive view. For instance, David Chalmers, in the foreword to Andy Clark’s book on the extended mind, wrote that “[the extended mind does] not rule out the supervenience of consciousness on the internal” (Chalmers 2008, p. 6). As we have seen, Kim’s dictum explicitly rules out such a possibility. Likewise, many objections have been raised against the hypothesis that the processes underpinning phenomenal experience might be totally or partially external to the body (Kim 1995; Clark and Chalmers 1998; Wilson 2004; Velmans 2007; Adams and Aizawa 2008; Clark 2008).

And yet, what are the strong arguments against strong situated consciousness – namely the hypothesis that the physical processes constituting consciousness are larger than the nervous system? Here I will venture to consider and put under scrutiny such a hypothesis. I will consider whether our phenomenal experience might indeed be extended in time and space beyond the limits of the nervous system.

 

[smcder]

The Information Philosopher (Bob) on free will:

"Free Will"

Our Thoughts are Free,
they come to us.

Our Actions are Willed,
they come from us.
Compatibilists and Determinists were right about the Will,
but wrong about Freedom.

Libertarians were right about Freedom, but wrong about the Will,
which is determined enough to insure moral responsibility.

 

[smcder]

Regarding Free Will

@scmder You have asked "why the movie?" If our CM does not control (all of) our thoughts or actions, what does it do?

Going back to Peterson, he talked about how we humans live in a self-created narrative. As I've said, I think the higher cognitive abilities (conceptual cognition and meta-cognition) are there for social problem solving.

I think the conscious mind gets the information/awareness second hand in order to construct a narrative. "Life is happening to us." We know that the narratives people create are not accurate nor objective. However, my guess is that this ability is adaptive. I struggle to understand how it could exist and be epiphenomenal. I mean, it's not even an accurate narrative!

My guess is that this meta-cognitive, conscious awareness and the narrative (meaning) it creates has some causal influence further down the road.

Ok, I went back to Russellian monism, where you started, and if that's where you still are, there's an answer there more so than for a standard materialist account. But it means you aren't a materialist, by Chalmers scheme anyway.

Here is Chalmers:

"This view holds the promise of integrating phenomenal and physical properties very tightly in the natural world. Here, nature consists of entities with intrinsic (proto)phenomenal qualities standing in causal relations within a spacetime manifold. Physics as we know it emerges from the relations between these entities, whereas consciousness as we know it emerges from their intrinsic nature. As a bonus, this view is perfectly compatible with the causal closure of the microphysical, and indeed with existing physical laws. The view can retain the structure of physical theory as it already exists; it simply supplements this structure with an intrinsic nature.

***And the view acknowledges a clear causal role for consciousness in the physical world: (proto)phenomenal properties serve as the ultimate categorical basis of all physical causation.*** " "

But this view isn't strictly materialist in the sense of the physical referring only to dispositional properties, it sneaks consciousness in one proto phenomena at a time:

"This view has elements in common with both materialism and dualism. From one perspective, it can be seen as a sort of materialism. If one holds that physical terms refer not to dispositional properties but the underlying intrinsic properties, then the protophenomenal properties can be seen as physical properties, thus preserving a sort of materialism. From another perspective, it can be seen as a sort of dualism. The view acknowledges phenomenal or protophenomenal properties as ontologically fundamental, and it retains an underlying duality between structural-dispositional properties (those directly characterized in physical theory) and intrinsic protophenomenal properties (those responsible for consciousness). One might suggest that while the view arguably fits the letter of materialism, it shares the spirit of antimaterialism."

 

[Soupie]

And has anyone else had a green mind? I feel like I am missing out. ...

on my view experience is what I am aware of - if I'm not aware of it, I don't experience it...

I'm still riddling out awareness and experience...

You seem to equate qualitative experience with self-awareness. Thus, you must believe one of the following:

(1) All organisms have qualitative experiences and are self-aware, or,

(2) Not all organisms have qualitative experiences.

my idea then is that any organism only experiences what it can make use of .... at some level, it's probably not even "pain" in terms of what we think - but "aversive stimuli" - more and more like a reflex ...

It seems like you're leaning toward the latter?

So do you think "adverse stimuli" becomes the qualitative experience of pain once an organism acquires self-awareness?

To be clear, my view is that proto-qualitative and qualitative experience are fundamental aspects of physical reality. I think qualitative experience exists in the absence of self-awareness, or even more specifically awareness!

Qualitative experience is something distinct from the rest of reality. Qualitative experience is considered one aspect of mind/consciousness. The experience of the color green is a qualitative experience. Thus, when a physical organism is qualitatively experiencing green, we can say the mind of the physical organism is green. That is to say, the qualitative experience of green is the organism's mind at that moment in time.

Furthermore, on my view, for an organism's mind to consist of the qualitative experience green does not require any meta-awareness that the physical organism is experiencing green.

By insisting that there must be an additional layer of awareness or self-awareness is to bring the homunculus into the picture.

 

[Soupie]

Ok, I went back to Russellian monism, where you started, and if that's where you still are, there's an answer there more so than for a standard materialist account. But it means you aren't a materialist, by Chalmers scheme anyway.

Okay, you really, really don't like me calling information immaterial, haha. So let's not. (Even though I secretly will, mwuhaha! Shhh! What!? He can hear us! Oh, shit.)

Yes, let's call information a fundamental property of the primal stuff. You may not recall, but we already visited this issue. For me, I wasn't sure if information was an intrinsic or extrinsic property of the primal stuff. According to CRP3, mind would be an intrinsic property of the primal stuff. I'm just not that worried about it.

I think physical properties and mental/informational properties are two sides of the same coin. Ergo, when you have physical stuff, you have mental stuff.

The question is, when does mental stuff become mind stuff? That is, when does proto-phenomenal stuff become fully phenomenal stuff?*

For my part, I think it has to do with organisms. Organisms are physical and informational structures that somehow combine the primal stuff in a way that proto-life becomes life and proto-mind becomes mind.

No doubt about it, living organisms are pretty spiffy!

*For you, @scmder, maybe the answer is proto-phenomenal stuff becomes fully phenomenal stuff only when there is awareness of this awareness? That is, when the mental homunculus is aware of it.

 

[Soupie]

To clarify my view and distinguish from @smcder a little more:

I believe there is:

(1) Qualitative layer of mind, and,

(2) Self-Aware layer of mind.

Smcder seems to believe these two layers are one:

(1) Qualitative Self-Aware layer of mind.

On my view, a physical cat could experience qualitative mental pain, but lack the meta mental awareness that it is a physical cat experiencing qualitative mental pain.

Physical Organism > Qualitative Pain

On smcder's view - if I understand it - a physical cat would only experience qualitative mental pain if it was also meta mentally aware that it was a physical organism experiencing qualitative mental pain. That is, the physical organism does not experience mental pain unless it is mentally aware that it is a physical organism experiencing mental pain.

Physical Organism > Proto-Qualitative Pain(?) > Meta Awareness of Proto-Qualitative Pain (homunculus) > Qualitative Pain

 

[smcder]

You seem to equate qualitative experience with self-awareness. Thus, you must believe one of the following:

(1) All organisms have qualitative experiences and are self-aware, or,

(2) Not all organisms have qualitative experiences.


It seems like you're leaning toward the latter?

So do you think "adverse stimuli" becomes the qualitative experience of pain once an organism acquires self-awareness?

To be clear, my view is that proto-qualitative and qualitative experience are fundamental aspects of physical reality. I think qualitative experience exists in the absence of self-awareness, or even more specifically awareness!

Qualitative experience is something distinct from the rest of reality. Qualitative experience is considered one aspect of mind/consciousness. The experience of the color green is a qualitative experience. Thus, when a physical organism is qualitatively experiencing green, we can say the mind of the physical organism is green. That is to say, the qualitative experience of green is the organism's mind at that moment in time.

Furthermore, on my view, for an organism's mind to consist of the qualitative experience green does not require any meta-awareness that the physical organism is experiencing green.

By insisting that there must be an additional layer of awareness or self-awareness is to bring the homunculus into the picture.

Your words have a strange power to cloud men's minds ...

I've googled all sorts of combinations of perception, awareness, experience and I've been able to understand everything my searches have turned up, for example:

Perception ECVP abstract

... I understand blindsight, the critique Dennett makes of the Cartesian theater, the homunculus ...

And I've been caught up in flow, quite often - most times that I'm in the gym I get into a very focused state ... when you have several hundred pounds on your back, you tend to stay very focused ...

So I think it must be how words are used. Here is an example:

"So do you think "adverse stimuli" becomes the qualitative experience of pain once an organism acquires self-awareness?

To be clear, my view is that proto-qualitative and qualitative experience are fundamental aspects of physical reality. I think qualitative experience exists in the absence of self-awareness, or even more specifically awareness!"

In the first paragraph we have that pain is a qualitative experience and in the second paragraph we have that you think qualitative experience exists in the absence of self-awareness, or even more specifically awareness ...

So that means pain exists in the absence of awareness ... ?

Is that right?

What is the larger point these ideas are in service of ? What does it gain us to be able to say the mind IS green? That might help me understand.



... what larger idea is all this in service of?

 

[Soupie]

Now this is interesting ...

Here, I will venture one step further. I will openly consider a perilous hypothesis: are the vehicles of phenomenal experience spread in time and space beyond the boundaries of the skin? Is phenomenal experience itself extended in time and space? Is consciousness situated in a strong sense? So far, many authors stepped back from this counterintuitive view. For instance, David Chalmers, in the foreword to Andy Clark’s book on the extended mind, wrote that “[the extended mind does] not rule out the supervenience of consciousness on the internal” (Chalmers 2008, p. 6). As we have seen, Kim’s dictum explicitly rules out such a possibility. Likewise, many objections have been raised against the hypothesis that the processes underpinning phenomenal experience might be totally or partially external to the body (Kim 1995; Clark and Chalmers 1998; Wilson 2004; Velmans 2007; Adams and Aizawa 2008; Clark 2008).

And yet, what are the strong arguments against strong situated consciousness – namely the hypothesis that the physical processes constituting consciousness are larger than the nervous system? Here I will venture to consider and put under scrutiny such a hypothesis. I will consider whether our phenomenal experience might indeed be extended in time and space beyond the limits of the nervous system.

I began reading this last night. It is incredibly interesting! I love the focus on "process" and that the boundaries between macro objects are not as hard as we perceive them. But I especially love this:

My representation of the
rainbow is literally the rainbow. It is the process taking place from the cloud
and concluding into my visual cortex.

Consider again A, B, and C, as in the previous section. Beatrix watches
Alex and sees a face. It may be misleading to assume that there is a face to be
seen and that Beatrix concocts either a neural or a mental representation of
the face – a representation that is nonetheless separate from Alex’s face. The
Spread Mind tells a different story. Neither A nor B are a face. The face is C,
the process. C is a process that is at the same time the face and the representation
of the face.

Hence the Spread Mind suggests that identity is the solution to the issue of
representation. To represent something is to be that something. To represent
the world means to be identical to that world. Consciousness is situated in
the strongest possible sense – it is literally spread in the environment. The
mind spreads into the world since it is made of those processes that made the
particular world one has an experience of. After all, it is well known that individuals
with different motor and sensor apparatuses live in different worlds
(von Uexküll 1909). Faces, chairs, colors, sounds, and the like would not exist
as wholes without a body that allows them to take place. Once they take place,
they are what the mind is made of. ...

The mind is green.

 

[smcder]

To clarify my view and distinguish from @smcder a little more:

I believe there is:

(1) Qualitative layer of mind, and,

(2) Self-Aware layer of mind.

Smcder seems to believe these two layers are one:

(1) Qualitative Self-Aware layer of mind.

On my view, a physical cat could experience qualitative mental pain, but lack the meta mental awareness that it is a physical cat experiencing qualitative mental pain.

Physical Organism > Qualitative Pain

On smcder's view - if I understand it - a physical cat would only experience qualitative mental pain if it was also meta mentally aware that it was a physical organism experiencing qualitative mental pain. That is, the physical organism does not experience mental pain unless it is mentally aware that it is a physical organism experiencing mental pain.

Physical Organism > Proto-Qualitative Pain(?) > Meta Awareness of Proto-Qualitative Pain (homunculus) > Qualitative Pain

I can even understand this:

"consider this example. You look around in a room. You see a flower in a vase, a computer and a bookshelf overflowing with books. Because of you, those things – which are processes according the argument defended above – take place at once. If you were not there, those processes would remain isolated. If you were not conscious of your visual field as a whole, those processes would not intermingle together. At least from a behavioral perspective being unable to react to the room as a whole is a sign of a lack of consciousness of it. I skip other possibilities such as blindsight."

 

[Soupie]

Soupie said: "To be clear, my view is that proto-qualitative and qualitative experience are fundamental aspects of physical reality. I think qualitative experience exists in the absence of self-awareness, or even more specifically awareness!"

Scmder said: "In the first paragraph we have that pain is a qualitative experience and in the second paragraph we have that you think qualitative experience exists in the absence of self-awareness, or even more specifically awareness ...

So that means pain exists in the absence of awareness ... ?

Close. Pain exists in the absence of meta-awareness.

An organism can experience pain but lack the meta-awareness that it is experiencing pain.

Meta-awareness is the homunculus that Dennett is trying to get rid of. You seem to want to keep it.

What does it gain us to be able to say the mind IS green?

Lots of things. In relation to what you and I are discussing, it means an organism can have qualitative experiences but lack the meta-awareness that it is having qualitative experiences.

 

[smcder]

I'd like to suggest again the help available in the Manzotti paper "The Spread Mind":

http://www.consciousness.it/manzott...ind-Seven Steps to Situated Consciousness.pdf

What do you make of this Constance? One thing I don't see yet is how it helps with hard problem ...

 

[Soupie]

What do you make of this Constance? One thing I don't see yet is how it helps with hard problem ...

No, it doesn't help with the hard problem.

 

[smcder]

Close. Pain exists in the absence of meta-awareness.

An organism can experience pain but lack the meta-awareness that it is experiencing pain.

Meta-awareness is the homunculus that Dennett is trying to get rid of. You seem to want to keep it.


Lots of things. In relation to what you and I are discussing, it means an organism can have qualitative experiences but lack the meta-awareness that it is having qualitative experiences.

Trust me ... I'd like nothing more than to get rid of the damn homunculus.

You say "close" but you do realize I'm using your words ...?