Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 2

[Soupie]

I finally read the Velmans paper posted by Constance above. He is adept at writing with clarity. He seems to be making the same case as Nagel with his bat example. That is, there appear to be ( at least ) two poles of reality, a subjective and objective ( mental and physical; inside and outside ).

My understanding ( which is probably wrong ) is that when an individual says that "consciousness is a state of the brain" they are not suggesting phenomenal experience does not exist. as noted, I may be wrong about that!

I also think Velmans is playing a bit with semantics. He says that his theory rejects the idea that pain is in the brain, but then goes on to describe how the information from a physical stimulus is relayed to the brain which then "projects" the pain to a location in 3D space where the brain approximates the stimulus to be. Uhh... How is this technically different from saying the pain is really in the brain? (Anyhow, the latest research on phantom limbs suggests that the pain may not be solely in the brain, but is rather within the physical nervous system. This is one reason, among others that I believe cognition takes place in the entire body — and the environment!)

[Side note: Ive stumbled on the idea of, for lack of a better term, anti-systems theory, and it fits with my thinking. Currently, reductive science is overly focused on considering "systems" independent of their environment. As I believe no system is truly distinct from its environment, the insights gained from this practice will ultimately be limited. ( The apparent para-normal nature of phenomena of psi may be such as result. )]

Velmans: "Theories about phenomena do not make the phenomena go away! Furthermore, neurophysiological theories of consciousness deal with its neural causes and correlates rather than its ontology, for the simple reason that causes and correlates are all one can observe in the brain. And, as shown above, even a complete understanding of neural causes and correlates would not suffice to reduce conscious phenomena to states of the brain. ..."

My own ( evolving ) view is that the subjective and objective poles go all the way down; that is, they are fundamental. Thus, I take the panexperientialist view: all that exists has both a physical and a mental aspect/property.

Thus, I think Velmans is presenting the situation incorrectly, but i can't find the words to capture it at the moment. Its evident below however.

Velmans: "The absence of any completely persuasive reductionist case, in spite of the eloquence of its protagonists, suggests that reductionist accounts of consciousness attempt to do something that cannot be done. Examination of the brain from the outside can only reveal the physical causes and correlates of consciousness. It can never reveal consciousness itself. Many phenomenal properties of conscious experience appear very different to those of brain states. Consequently, it is difficult to imagine what science could discover to demonstrate that experiences are ontologically identical to states of the brain."

Im not sure what he means by "appear" in this case. As Constance is fond of saying, everything comes to us via consciousness. Thus, its a catagory error (?) to compare the "appearance" of phenomenal experience and a screwdriver...

Im not sure what Velmans metaphysical position is, but my view is that the subjective pole of reality does not emerge only in the case of living organisms. I believe that even an electron has both a phsyical and subjective pole, if you will.

However, there does appear ( understatement ) to be something quite special about the subjective pole of living organisms. My current thinking is that it lies in the ability of these systems to form internal, physical isomorphisms of external, physical reality. These isomorphisms are not perfect, but they are not arbitrary; however, their phenomenology may be arbitrary.

@marduk and I mentioned the phenomenon of a strange loop coming into play from the perspective of an individual organism if they were to create an internal, physical isomorphism of their own internal, phsyical state.

However, from the perspective of the universe at large, the same phenomena could be said to arise with the origin of organisms: when a physical organism creates a physical isomorphism of some physical state of the universe, this may create a strange loop within the universe. As various thinkers have said: Life is something the universe uses to look at itself. Life itself is a way for the universe to metacognate.

 

[smcder]

I finally read the Velmans paper posted by Constance above. He is adept at writing with clarity. He seems to be making the same case as Nagel with his bat example. That is, there appear to be ( at least ) two poles of reality, a subjective and objective ( mental and physical; inside and outside ).

My understanding ( which is probably wrong ) is that when an individual says that "consciousness is a state of the brain" they are not suggesting phenomenal experience does not exist. as noted, I may be wrong about that!

I also think Velmans is playing a bit with semantics. He says that his theory rejects the idea that pain is in the brain, but then goes on to describe how the information from a physical stimulus is relayed to the brain which then "projects" the pain to a location in 3D space where the brain approximates the stimulus to be. Uhh... How is this technically different from saying the pain is really in the brain? (Anyhow, the latest research on phantom limbs suggests that the pain may not be solely in the brain, but is rather within the physical nervous system. This is one reason, among others that I believe cognition takes place in the entire body — and the environment!)

[Side note: Ive stumbled on the idea of, for lack of a better term, anti-systems theory, and it fits with my thinking. Currently, reductive science is overly focused on considering "systems" independent of their environment. As I believe no system is truly distinct from its environment, the insights gained from this practice will ultimately be limited. ( The apparent para-normal nature of phenomena of psi may be such as result. )]

Velmans: "Theories about phenomena do not make the phenomena go away! Furthermore, neurophysiological theories of consciousness deal with its neural causes and correlates rather than its ontology, for the simple reason that causes and correlates are all one can observe in the brain. And, as shown above, even a complete understanding of neural causes and correlates would not suffice to reduce conscious phenomena to states of the brain. ..."

My own ( evolving ) view is that the subjective and objective poles go all the way down; that is, they are fundamental. Thus, I take the panexperientialist view: all that exists has both a physical and a mental aspect/property.

Thus, I think Velmans is presenting the situation incorrectly, but i can't find the words to capture it at the moment. Its evident below however.

Velmans: "The absence of any completely persuasive reductionist case, in spite of the eloquence of its protagonists, suggests that reductionist accounts of consciousness attempt to do something that cannot be done. Examination of the brain from the outside can only reveal the physical causes and correlates of consciousness. It can never reveal consciousness itself. Many phenomenal properties of conscious experience appear very different to those of brain states. Consequently, it is difficult to imagine what science could discover to demonstrate that experiences are ontologically identical to states of the brain."

Im not sure what he means by "appear" in this case. As Constance is fond of saying, everything comes to us via consciousness. Thus, its a catagory error (?) to compare the "appearance" of phenomenal experience and a screwdriver...

Im not sure what Velmans metaphysical position is, but my view is that the subjective pole of reality does not emerge only in the case of living organisms. I believe that even an electron has both a phsyical and subjective pole, if you will.

However, there does appear ( understatement ) to be something quite special about the subjective pole of living organisms. My current thinking is that it lies in the ability of these systems to form internal, physical isomorphisms of external, physical reality. These isomorphisms are not perfect, but they are not arbitrary; however, their phenomenology may be arbitrary.

@marduk and I mentioned the phenomenon of a strange loop coming into play from the perspective of an individual organism if they were to create an internal, physical isomorphism of their own internal, phsyical state.

However, from the perspective of the universe at large, the same phenomena could be said to arise with the origin of organisms: when a physical organism creates a physical isomorphism of some physical state of the universe, this may create a strange loop within the universe. As various thinkers have said: Life is something the universe uses to look at itself. Life itself is a way for the universe to metacognate.

Strange loop = hand waving. @marduk admits this.

reductionists have to take their own subjectivity for granted in order to be scientific about consciousness

What I think Velmans is saying is that reductionists argue that there really is no such thing as the subjective. That's what reductionism means. That's what materialism means. Reductionists don't say that there aren't phenomenal states or subjective experiences. They do say that these states can be reduced to physical states with nothing left over. If that is the case, the word "subjective" is meaningless. But, if this were the case, we could get rid of all subjective language.

some people have a visceral reaction to a reductionist approach to consciousness

Forget Zombies, let's talk about Sociopaths (I distinguish psychopaths and sociopaths) a sociopath objectifies everything. Sheldon Cooper is a good example and that's why he is the caricature of a scientist. Reductionists see consciousness the way a sociopath sees other people. The analogy is pretty exact. In the same way that a sociopath takes his own subjective experience for granted (as the whole world) the reductionist has to do the same thing in order to objectify consciousness. This gets a very natural response from some people - because they feel they are being objectified. It's hard to argue that they aren't.

pain isn't any where because it isn't any thing

To your pain example, pain can be located without consciousness, you may actually grab your leg before it "hurts" - you might be sound asleep dreaming of a walrus massaging a porpoise with Velveeta ( (c) product placement) and grab your leg ... you might be delusional and think it feels good, but you still wince and grab your leg. You might have a spinal block ... So where is the pain in these examples? Trick question, under any circumstance whatsoever, it isn't any where because it isn't any thing.

That's all Velmans is saying and that therefore you can't apply the objective tools of science to subjectivity.

 

[Soupie]

@smcder: Pain isn't anywhere because it isn't anything.

Somehow thats more helpful then both Nagel's and Velman's papers. Bravo.

 

[Constance]

@smcder: Pain isn't anywhere because it isn't anything.

Somehow thats more helpful then both Nagel's and Velman's papers. Bravo.

Hi Soupie. Even if you're not talking to me until we discuss jellyfish and fruit flies, I want to talk with you about the proposition that "pain isn't anywhere because it isn't anything." Whether Steve is supporting that proposition or characterizing it is for him to say. I just want to say that pain is real (all kinds of pain, physical and emotional and intellectual, and probably also spiritual). I think Steve indicated in his post that pain can be experienced in sleep and potentially misinterpreted by the sleeping brain as not pain but pleasure. What part of consciousness is involved in that experience, whether misinterpreted as in the case Steve proposed or not misinterpreted (as when a leg cramp awakens me in sleep and demands to be addressed)? It must be the subconscious brain -- or is it the subconscious mind -- that receives physical impressions through the body and reacts to them in some fashion, with some interpretive response. Stevens writes in one poem that "thought in sleep may never meet another thought or thing." But we know that the subconscious mind (encyclopedic in its own way) grasps and grabs and stores experiences from our daily waking walk through the world and also stores experiences of our own that can be recalled from our meandering in dreaming through the physically, emotionally, and mentally interconnected/entangled worlds we contain, parts of our lived reality {awake and when dreaming} that get expressed -- often fragmentarily -- in dreaming. To understand human consciousness we need to understand much more than we presently do about the subconscious mind that operates in each of us as embodied beings, integrating experience beneath the level of waking consciousness.

One of the subdisciplines of paranormal investigation we need to study is the dream research carried out at the Maimonides Institute referenced in posts in other threads in the forum. I've kind of always thought so, but the need for such dream studies became pronounced for me a few minutes ago in reading a link posted by @Poltergeist in the Death! forum, here:

AWAREness Beyond Death? | The Daily Grail


During the many years during which I've reflected on my own spontaneous OBE at age 21, and something I learned about later, I've gradually realized what might have provoked that OBE and what it suggests about the region of the subconscious mind and the connections it makes to the conscious mind. It's all consciousness, at one level or another. But it is the subconscious level of our existence that attempts to knit together the theads of our experience attended to in the totality of our experience, whether that experience took place nonreflectively or reflectively. The subconsciousness appears to be a kind of note-taker in the wings of the stage on which we intentionally navigate the world in waking states. It contains and even knows more than we know about ourselves and what we have experienced as embodied consciousnesses. It even participates in the sorting out of experience as carried out through the languages our species has developed consciously (we suppose), but the question is what the subconscious mind does with the syntax and semantics it absorbs from our waking conscious experience. Does the subconscious mind find the structures embedded in the languages we use to be sufficient to express all that the subconscious mind knows? It's been frequently observed by depth psychologists and dream researchers that the subconscious often expresses itself in puns*, and is often overly literal in the way it uses language to communicate with waking, reflective consciousness and also in dreams while that consciousness is partly 'off-line'.

I think that we will not have an adequate 'model' for what consciousness is until we have a better understanding of the subconscious.

*Note: If I recall correctly, however, it's sometimes been remarked by specialists working with the subconscious in therapy, dreams, hypnotic states, and other states that the 'puns' contain germinal insights into the problems with which the mind as a whole attempts to cope.

Further note: This same phenomenon of word-play (for lack of a better word) appears in communications from discarnates through spirit mediums and physical mediums. If I recall correctly from my SPR archival research, the information thus received by the medium only captures a situation from the past life of the discarnate for a friend or relative who was with the discarnate at the time of the experience. In other words, the meaning intended requires a specific listener to recognize it.

 

[smcder]

Yes Virginia, pain is real.

I took Velmans point to be that the subjective experience of pain, no matter it's neurological correlates - can't be located as an object.

 

[Soupie]

Strange loop = hand waving. @marduk admits this.

So you think the idea is DOA?

What I think Velmans is saying is that reductionists argue that there really is no such thing as the subjective. That's what reductionism means. That's what materialism means. Reductionists don't say that there aren't phenomenal states or subjective experiences. They do say that these states can be reduced to physical states with nothing left over.

As if on synchronistic cue:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/12/opinion/sunday/are-we-really-conscious.html?_r=0

Are We Really Conscious?

[T]he argument here is that there is no subjective impression; there is only information in a data-processing device. When we look at a red apple, the brain computes information about color. It also computes information about the self and about a (physically incoherent) property of subjective experience. The brain’s cognitive machinery accesses that interlinked information and derives several conclusions: There is a self, a me; there is a red thing nearby; there is such a thing as subjective experience; and I have an experience of that red thing. Cognition is captive to those internal models. Such a brain would inescapably conclude it has subjective experience. ...

In the attention schema theory, attention is the physical phenomenon and awareness is the brain’s approximate, slightly incorrect model of it. In neuroscience, attention is a process of enhancing some signals at the expense of others. It’s a way of focusing resources. Attention: a real, mechanistic phenomenon that can be programmed into a computer chip. Awareness: a cartoonish reconstruction of attention that is as physically inaccurate as the brain’s internal model of color.

In this theory, awareness is not an illusion. It’s a caricature. Something — attention — really does exist, and awareness is a distorted accounting of it.

While I certainly don't deny the reality of subjective experience (and I don't think this model does either despite the click bait headline) it seems to fit my thinking. (Or I'm simply twisting it to fit my model.)

The body-brain is constantly generating phenomenal experience regardless of whether we're consciously aware (or attentive) of it or not. However, at times this phenomenal experience is the focus of our awareness -- or in this model, the brain's "attention." When this is so, the various "signals are enhanced."

 

[smcder]

So you think the idea is DOA?


As if on synchronistic cue:


While I certainly don't deny the reality of subjective experience (and I don't think this model does either despite the click bait headline) it seems to fit my thinking. (Or I'm simply twisting it to fit my model.)

The body-brain is constantly generating phenomenal experience regardless of whether we're consciously aware (or attentive) of it or not. However, at times this phenomenal experience is the focus of our awareness -- or in this model, the brain's "attention." When this is so, the various "signals are enhanced."

Details ... Otherwise, Agnostic.

 

[Constance]

It remains unclear from the NYT piece on 'social brain' theory why experience exists at all, and why qualia lead us to explore our experience and the brain's and mind's roles in it. If we speculate that the human brain has evolved for the usual reason assumed by Darwinists -- that it aids in the survival of our species -- why should experience have become conscious (and be maintained and worked on by the subconscious mind which interacts with waking consciousness) in the first place? Especially if what we think about our experience is a mere 'caricature' of reality rather than a means to our understanding the nature of reality? It seems from the researcher quoted in the NYT piece that our brains are essentially stupid, unable to use what information they {somehow*} pick up from the palpable world in a coherent sharing with the brain as a whole, rather than sequestering coherence only at a basement level of the brain's cognitive machinery where what we experience is irrelevant or misunderstood. Perhaps our brains will eventually learn, through further evolution, to connect their basement-level information with what we absorb phenomenally from the world in which we live? Will our brains then become more capable brains, able to integrate all that is present within them, including what we know from the similarly subterranean level of the subconscious mind?

Brain/consciousness/mind theories become curiouser and curiouser as Alice might say. It's a good thing that they also become more and more interesting.

*re the sentence highlighted in blue above, how exactly do theorists such as Graziano propose that information gets into the brain in the first place?

 

[smcder]

Hi Soupie. Even if you're not talking to me until we discuss jellyfish and fruit flies, I want to talk with you about the proposition that "pain isn't anywhere because it isn't anything." Whether Steve is supporting that proposition or characterizing it is for him to say. I just want to say that pain is real (all kinds of pain, physical and emotional and intellectual, and probably also spiritual). I think Steve indicated in his post that pain can be experienced in sleep and potentially misinterpreted by the sleeping brain as not pain but pleasure. What part of consciousness is involved in that experience, whether misinterpreted as in the case Steve proposed or not misinterpreted (as when a leg cramp awakens me in sleep and demands to be addressed)? It must be the subconscious brain -- or is it the subconscious mind -- that receives physical impressions through the body and reacts to them in some fashion, with some interpretive response. Stevens writes in one poem that "thought in sleep may never meet another thought or thing." But we know that the subconscious mind (encyclopedic in its own way) grasps and grabs and stores experiences from our daily waking walk through the world and also stores experiences of our own that can be recalled from our meandering in dreaming through the physically, emotionally, and mentally interconnected/entangled worlds we contain, parts of our lived reality {awake and when dreaming} that get expressed -- often fragmentarily -- in dreaming. To understand human consciousness we need to understand much more than we presently do about the subconscious mind that operates in each of us as embodied beings, integrating experience beneath the level of waking consciousness.

One of the subdisciplines of paranormal investigation we need to study is the dream research carried out at the Maimonides Institute referenced in posts in other threads in the forum. I've kind of always thought so, but the need for such dream studies became pronounced for me a few minutes ago in reading a link posted by @Poltergeist in the Death! forum, here:

AWAREness Beyond Death? | The Daily Grail


During the many years during which I've reflected on my own spontaneous OBE at age 21, and something I learned about later, I've gradually realized what might have provoked that OBE and what it suggests about the region of the subconscious mind and the connections it makes to the conscious mind. It's all consciousness, at one level or another. But it is the subconscious level of our existence that attempts to knit together the theads of our experience attended to in the totality of our experience, whether that experience took place nonreflectively or reflectively. The subconsciousness appears to be a kind of note-taker in the wings of the stage on which we intentionally navigate the world in waking states. It contains and even knows more than we know about ourselves and what we have experienced as embodied consciousnesses. It even participates in the sorting out of experience as carried out through the languages our species has developed consciously (we suppose), but the question is what the subconscious mind does with the syntax and semantics it absorbs from our waking conscious experience. Does the subconscious mind find the structures embedded in the languages we use to be sufficient to express all that the subconscious mind knows? It's been frequently observed by depth psychologists and dream researchers that the subconscious often expresses itself in puns*, and is often overly literal in the way it uses language to communicate with waking, reflective consciousness and also in dreams while that consciousness is partly 'off-line'.

I think that we will not have an adequate 'model' for what consciousness is until we have a better understanding of the subconscious.

*Note: If I recall correctly, however, it's sometimes been remarked by specialists working with the subconscious in therapy, dreams, hypnotic states, and other states that the 'puns' contain germinal insights into the problems with which the mind as a whole attempts to cope.

Further note: This same phenomenon of word-play (for lack of a better word) appears in communications from discarnates through spirit mediums and physical mediums. If I recall correctly from my SPR archival research, the information thus received by the medium only captures a situation from the past life of the discarnate for a friend or relative who was with the discarnate at the time of the experience. In other words, the meaning intended requires a specific listener to recognize it.

riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. Sir Tristram, violer d’amores, fr’over the short sea, had passencore rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor had topsawyer’s rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens County’s gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe totauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all’s fair in vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a peck of pa’s malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.

 

[smcder]

It remains unclear from the NYT piece on 'social brain' theory why experience exists at all, and why qualia lead us to explore our experience and the brain's and mind's roles in it. If we speculate that the human brain has evolved for the usual reason assumed by Darwinists -- that it aids in the survival of our species -- why should experience have become conscious (and be maintained and worked on by the subconscious mind which interacts with waking consciousness) in the first place? Especially if what we think about our experience is a mere 'caricature' of reality rather than a means to our understanding the nature of reality? It seems from the researcher quoted in the NYT piece that our brains are essentially stupid, unable to use what information they {somehow*} pick up from the palpable world in a coherent sharing with the brain as a whole, rather than sequestering coherence only at a basement level of the brain's cognitive machinery where what we experience is irrelevant or misunderstood. Perhaps our brains will eventually learn, through further evolution, to connect their basement-level information with what we absorb phenomenally from the world in which we live? Will our brains then become more capable brains, able to integrate all that is present within them, including what we know from the similarly subterranean level of the subconscious mind?

Brain/consciousness/mind theories become curiouser and curiouser as Alice might say. It's a good thing that they also become more and more interesting.

*re the sentence highlighted in blue above, how exactly do theorists such as Graziano propose that information gets into the brain in the first place?

This is also a way for the researcher to demonstrate his intelligence and thus attract females ... I'm assuming it's a "he" ... they always seem to forget the rules apply to them. "Hey look at me! I'm smarter than my brain!"

 

[Constance]

Stevens's conclusion of "Looking Across the Fields . . ."

“. . . The spirit comes from the body of the world,
Or so Mr. Homburg thought: the body of a world
Whose blunt laws make an affectation of mind,

The mannerism of nature caught in a glass
And there become a spirit's mannerism,
A glass aswarm with things going as far as they can.”


Exemplified in Steve's extract from Finnegan's Wake:

riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. Sir Tristram, violer d’amores, fr’over the short sea, had passencore rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor had topsawyer’s rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens County’s gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe totauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all’s fair in vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a peck of pa’s malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.

Only technicians seem to be genuinely interested in the structure of nature conceived as an objective 'reality'. More of us find the structure of nature as experienced and imagined in human consciousness to be what draws our interest given that we possess our existence in an experientially lived reality, from which we draw further insights into what-is.

 

[Constance]

This is also a way for the researcher to demonstrate his intelligence and thus attract females ... I'm assuming it's a "he" ... they always seem to forget the rules apply to them. "Hey look at me! I'm smarter than my brain!"

Gets to the nub of things.

 

[smcder]

Stevens's conclusion of "Looking Across the Fields . . ."

“. . . The spirit comes from the body of the world,
Or so Mr. Homburg thought: the body of a world
Whose blunt laws make an affectation of mind,

The mannerism of nature caught in a glass
And there become a spirit's mannerism,
A glass aswarm with things going as far as they can.”


Exemplified in Steve's extract from Finnegan's Wake:




Only technicians seem to be genuinely interested in the structure of nature conceived as an objective 'reality'. More of us find the structure of nature as experienced and imagined in human consciousness to be what draws our interest given that we possess our existence in an experientially lived reality, from which we draw further insights into what-is.

Finnegan's Wake reminded me of your comments about the subconscious mind and puns/wordplay.

Your comment on technicians ... interesting, I think about friends of mine who were interested in justice and became attorneys or cops, fascinated with language and became editors, fascinated by science and numbers and became doctors or computer programmers. All honorable professions but the ones I know are technicians and not doing creative work. Very few who work in any profession get the chance to do creative work and of those who do, it's probably a small percentage of their time.

A lot of things going on here: the scientists of the 1950s as portrayed in sci-fi were men like John Agar and Russell Jonson, former B-movie and cowboy stars - essentially smart men of action in their movies, portrayed for a working class movie going public. I think this archetype persists in the popular fascination with science. Combine this with a deep streak of anti-intellectualism in the United States and a distaste for the "highbrow" and we get debates like Pinker and McGilchrist:

Pinker Iain McGilchrist, Contacts
McGilchrist Iain McGilchrist, Contacts

Neither one needs my abbreviation or interpretation and deserves to be read in full.

I have more thoughts on the politics specific to the consciousness debate.

 

[smcder]

@Soupie and @marduk have questioned the relevance of philosophy to science or specifically the relevance of phenomenology. The frame problem in AI is a good and ongoing example in response, not only because a philosopher said what was wrong but because AI based it's efforts (implicitly) on a faulty philosophy: substance ontology.

http://leidlmair.at/doc/WhyHeideggerianAIFailed.pdf

Hubert Dreyfus predicts based on Heidegger's philosophy that good old fashioned AI (GOFIA) would fail. It did and Marvin Minsky admitted it, and his successor Rodney Brooks gave Dreyfus credit but his approach failed too.

http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~hdreyfus/pdf/Dreyfus APA Address 10.22.05 .pdf

Dreyfus and protégé' Sean Kelly continue their argument here:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/watson-still-cant-think/

 

[smcder]

So you think the idea is DOA?


As if on synchronistic cue:


While I certainly don't deny the reality of subjective experience (and I don't think this model does either despite the click bait headline) it seems to fit my thinking. (Or I'm simply twisting it to fit my model.)

The body-brain is constantly generating phenomenal experience regardless of whether we're consciously aware (or attentive) of it or not. However, at times this phenomenal experience is the focus of our awareness -- or in this model, the brain's "attention." When this is so, the various "signals are enhanced."

Is Emergence DOA?

The idea has an appeal like Chaos theory or fractals did ... it seems to intuit ... but when you take the view from 20,000 feet "Something entirely new emerges when things just get complicated enough." then it looks a little shakier.

Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software: Steven Johnson: 9780684868769: Amazon.com: Books

This was a popular book back in the day, looking back it seems like the culmination of the emergence idea in the popular mind because it had five basic rules:

Emergence by Steven Johnson - Book Review

More is different: A critical mass of ants is necessary for useful statistical averages to emerge. One or two ants bumping against each other does not a colony make.

Ignorance is Useful: Simplicity of the individual components (ie: the ants) is beneficial. There is no need for each ant to have imprinted a map of what is in the colony's best interests, and in fact such ideas would be a detriment to the colony as a whole.

Encourage random encounters: Johnson illustrates how ants use the feedback from encountering the activities of other ants to usefully modify their behavior. Similarly, Jane Jacobs, in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, shows how humans in urban areas positively effect the emergence of cities by their encounters in public areas.

Look for Patterns in the Signs: Ants follow trails of pheromones left by other ants. Programmers have modeled this behavior when creating computer software that emerges from very simple programs that leave behind digital pheromone trails of their own.

Pay Attention to Your Neighbors: "Local information leads to global wisdom." When an ant notices a large number of his fellow ants are foraging, he will alter his behavior to another activity. Likewise, in the development of a human embryo, individual cells are able to get information from their neighbors that will guide them in their own formation, whether that be as skin cells, bone cells, muscle cells...

 

[smcder]

So you think the idea is DOA?


As if on synchronistic cue:

While I certainly don't deny the reality of subjective experience (and I don't think this model does either despite the click bait headline) it seems to fit my thinking. (Or I'm simply twisting it to fit my model.)

The body-brain is constantly generating phenomenal experience regardless of whether we're consciously aware (or attentive) of it or not. However, at times this phenomenal experience is the focus of our awareness -- or in this model, the brain's "attention." When this is so, the various "signals are enhanced."

I think emergence makes sense for a lot of things - ant colonies and birds flying, etc. because these are all clearly physical systems ... they exist in space and time but consciousness is something different: it doesn't displace volume, it doesn't have weight, its relationship to time is ... is what?

So ... we are seem to be back to:

1. consciousness is the outlier, everything else falls in line for us - I think this is why we hastily jump on something that even remotely seems to explain things in a physical manner ... like emergence, because we want to tidy up this "loose end". The fact that it seems to be becoming Physic's problem is very telling. I think other scientists think they are supposed to give anything weird and complicated to physics. ;-)

2. because everything comes to us via consciousness we can see everything everything else as the outlier

1. is the Physicalist's problem 2. is the Idealist's

Now, what else is like this - such a thing that it can be put into a category of everything or everything but?

Matter

1. matter is the outlier, everything else falls in line for us ... if we didn't have to account for the so-called "hard problem" of inter-subjective agreement. (Some extremists account for this by saying there is nothing but matter. This is known as Panmaterialism but it's a marginal view and no one takes it seriously.) We should be able to resolved this into Idealist terms in a few years, great progress is being made.

2. Everything that comes to us, comes in material form, it comes through our sense and through our brain - all of this other stuff, everything else, love, poetry and Family Guy is an outlier.

So do you mind? Or does it matter?

Or ...

3. both are fundamental (you mind and it matters)

 

[smcder]

Hi Soupie. Even if you're not talking to me until we discuss jellyfish and fruit flies, I want to talk with you about the proposition that "pain isn't anywhere because it isn't anything." Whether Steve is supporting that proposition or characterizing it is for him to say. I just want to say that pain is real (all kinds of pain, physical and emotional and intellectual, and probably also spiritual). I think Steve indicated in his post that pain can be experienced in sleep and potentially misinterpreted by the sleeping brain as not pain but pleasure. What part of consciousness is involved in that experience, whether misinterpreted as in the case Steve proposed or not misinterpreted (as when a leg cramp awakens me in sleep and demands to be addressed)? It must be the subconscious brain -- or is it the subconscious mind -- that receives physical impressions through the body and reacts to them in some fashion, with some interpretive response. Stevens writes in one poem that "thought in sleep may never meet another thought or thing." But we know that the subconscious mind (encyclopedic in its own way) grasps and grabs and stores experiences from our daily waking walk through the world and also stores experiences of our own that can be recalled from our meandering in dreaming through the physically, emotionally, and mentally interconnected/entangled worlds we contain, parts of our lived reality {awake and when dreaming} that get expressed -- often fragmentarily -- in dreaming. To understand human consciousness we need to understand much more than we presently do about the subconscious mind that operates in each of us as embodied beings, integrating experience beneath the level of waking consciousness.

One of the subdisciplines of paranormal investigation we need to study is the dream research carried out at the Maimonides Institute referenced in posts in other threads in the forum. I've kind of always thought so, but the need for such dream studies became pronounced for me a few minutes ago in reading a link posted by @Poltergeist in the Death! forum, here:

AWAREness Beyond Death? | The Daily Grail


During the many years during which I've reflected on my own spontaneous OBE at age 21, and something I learned about later, I've gradually realized what might have provoked that OBE and what it suggests about the region of the subconscious mind and the connections it makes to the conscious mind. It's all consciousness, at one level or another. But it is the subconscious level of our existence that attempts to knit together the theads of our experience attended to in the totality of our experience, whether that experience took place nonreflectively or reflectively. The subconsciousness appears to be a kind of note-taker in the wings of the stage on which we intentionally navigate the world in waking states. It contains and even knows more than we know about ourselves and what we have experienced as embodied consciousnesses. It even participates in the sorting out of experience as carried out through the languages our species has developed consciously (we suppose), but the question is what the subconscious mind does with the syntax and semantics it absorbs from our waking conscious experience. Does the subconscious mind find the structures embedded in the languages we use to be sufficient to express all that the subconscious mind knows? It's been frequently observed by depth psychologists and dream researchers that the subconscious often expresses itself in puns*, and is often overly literal in the way it uses language to communicate with waking, reflective consciousness and also in dreams while that consciousness is partly 'off-line'.

I think that we will not have an adequate 'model' for what consciousness is until we have a better understanding of the subconscious.

*Note: If I recall correctly, however, it's sometimes been remarked by specialists working with the subconscious in therapy, dreams, hypnotic states, and other states that the 'puns' contain germinal insights into the problems with which the mind as a whole attempts to cope.

Further note: This same phenomenon of word-play (for lack of a better word) appears in communications from discarnates through spirit mediums and physical mediums. If I recall correctly from my SPR archival research, the information thus received by the medium only captures a situation from the past life of the discarnate for a friend or relative who was with the discarnate at the time of the experience. In other words, the meaning intended requires a specific listener to recognize it.

Was there a theory about the word play in these instances?

I don't have a good idea about the subconscious, but what about this:

We often ascribe a lot of intelligence to unconscious processing, it might be a slip of the tongue that ingeniously gives us away (The Imp of the Perverse) or saves us ... or a criminal systematically but "unconsciously" leaving a complex trail behind in order to be caught ... these things we didn't mean to do would seem to be the kinds of things that we say we need conscious awareness for ... in other words, one of the reasons we say consciousness isn't epiphenomenal is because it appears that for particular problems (rational choice) the information is kicked up to consciousness to be sorted out ... but if that's true, then is there a similar area of consciousness in the subconscious? Can this area of conscious processing stand on its own, or does it need a personality too? Does it have an Imp of the Perverse? Or is what we think of as us it's subconscious? During the day, does it catches crazy glimpses of our lives and call them its dreams? That kind of reciprocal relationship is better than an infinite regress.

And does AI have to have an artificial subconscious? If so, will it make the same kind of slips we do?

Hilarious consequences ensue ....

 

[Soupie]

I think emergence makes sense for a lot of things - ant colonies and birds flying, etc. because these are all clearly physical systems ... they exist in space and time but consciousness is something different: it doesn't displace volume, it doesn't have weight, its relationship to time is ... is what?

My view is that the constituent of consciousness is fundamental; that is, I believe consciousness (subjectivity) is information. It is essentially the state of matter at any given (plank?) moment.

When I speak of recursive or strange loops, I'm referring to the origin of the sense of self - not the origin of consciousness per se. (We know the confusion the arises due to the different meanings of "consciousness.")

That is, consciousness (or the mental aspect of reality) is fundamental on my view. However, I entertain the idea that the sense of self "layer" of mind emerges from a process of meta-awareness; this meta-awareness (being aware of being aware) may involve a recursive loop.

Re: time

I think the mental aspect of reality is ontologically the same as the informational aspect of reality.

I think the informational aspect of reality is — if not the same – intimately related to the motion of matter.

I think the motion of matter is ontologically the same as Time.

Thus, I think the mental aspect of reality is intimately related to time.

Motion > Time-Information > Mental

So do you mind? Or does it matter?

3. both are fundamental (you mind and it matters)

Matter is the outside aspect of reality which can be objectively measured, and information is the inside aspect of reality which constitutes subjectivity.

 

[Pharoah]

Hi Pharoah. Can you link me to parts of your book where you dismantle all of Velman's points? I haven't yet read the book from which this paper for the second Tucson conference was extracted, but I have the impression that he has more detailed critiques of reductionism in the book. I'm really interested in seeing your interactions with Velman's reflexive monism and his full critique of reductionism.



I don't remember reading anyone in consciousness studies who attempts to distinguish the first-person perspective from phenomenological approaches to consciousness. You'd probably be more likely to have come across such an effort in analytical philosophy of mind. Have you?

Phenomenology is expressed more broadly than as a path to understanding human consciousness and mind, where we'd only find the term 'first person' used appropriately. As you know, Panksepp applies phenomenology to protoconsciousness deep in the primordial evolution of life. So did Maturana and Varela and their immediate successor Evan Thompson and his colleagues. That last paper you received from Panksepp and linked here was especially good I thought. How are your discussions with him going?

1. On Velman, what do you think of the following:

Imagine ten concave shaped seashells floating in a bath. As I drop a pebble in the water, a rippling wave spreads out so that some of the shells fill with a little water. As the ripples radiate out, three shells sink whilst seven remain afloat.
There is a correlative relation between pebbles falling in water and the shells that sink.
There is a causal relation between pebbles falling in water and sinking shells.
But one need not stipulate from causal or correlative principles, that exactly "three" shells must sink. Any number of shells might sink if we repeat the process:
For any given experiment of dropping pebbles, we cannot say how many shells will sink, even if we know such things as the characteristics of water tension and its effects on the rippling of water; or if we know the height from which the pebbles are being dropped and their shape and mass; or if we know the size and concaveness of the shells and their proximity to one another; or if we know the depth of the water and its temperature etc.

What then, if we extend the experiment and have 85 billion falling pebbles and 100 trillion shells in an ocean of water?
We can still say there is a correlation and causal connection between falling pebbles and sinking shells.
Similarly, we might say that brain states cause consciousness or that there is a correlation between brain states and consciousness.

But Velman (Goodbye to reductionism - In S. Hameroff, A. Kaszniac, A.Scott (eds) Toward a Science of Consciousness: The Second Tucson Discussions and Debates, pp 45-52, MIT Press, 1998. ARCHIVE: ) makes the following point persuasively,

"For consciousness to be nothing more than a brain state, it must be ontologically identical to a brain state. However, correlation and causation are very different to ontological identity."

Consequently, whilst the causal / correlative relation is valid and may explain that each occasion of dropping pebbles will lead to differences in regard the exact number and manner of falling shells, this explanation is not sufficient. We can equate this distinction to the explanation of consciousness. In this manner, causal / correlative relational explanations might explain why first-person perspectives arise and are caused by the brain. But they will not necessarily explain the order and number of sinking shells nor explain the fluttering and swaying nature of each shell as it drifts to the ocean bed. But, unlike Velman, I am of the view that it is not incumbent on reduction to give this kind of explanation, i.e., to explain the exact individual nature of every falling shell. Similarly, explaining the phenomenon of consciousness does not require explaining every individual's phenomenal consciousness. Rather, this is the task beset by the phenomenologist. They want to know about the individual's fluttering swaying shells. Consequently, the reductionist and phenomenologist are working on two entirely different if not unrelated projects.

So, on one level Velman may well be right to say,

"the physical causes and correlates of consciousness.... can never reveal consciousness itself."

But there still remains an issue with this blunt edged attack on reductionism. It assumes that reductive explanation need only be causally or correlatively efficacious. But there is a problem with Velman's wording, that a reductive explanation must demonstrate "an ontological relation between brain states and consciousness". The premise can be considered in relation to the pebble and the shells analogy. The problem is that the relation between brain states and consciousness is seen purely as a causally derived physically reactive relation - purely mechanistic, if you will. But consciousness does not exist by virtue of such relations in themselves, nor is it the degree of complexity of the physics involved, that is of relevance (as Dennett's Intentional Stance argues). It is not a brain state, equals, consciousness thing anymore than it is a pebble, equals, fluttering shell thing. Consequently, what an ontological reductive explanation does is link the interactive environment to the evolution of the brain itself and thereby explain the phenomenon of consciousness contextually. Instead of it being a brain state equals consciousness thing, it becomes an environmentally integrated construct thing, whereby the brain body construct is explained in terms of its informed interactive meaning in so far as it evinces qualitatively relevant relations concerning environmental experience - and where such relations of qualitative representation are, consciousness is evoked. One way of looking at this level of explanation is to say that for consciousness, the causal dynamic of the pebble and the shells is not relevant. Instead, what is relevant is the nature of the pebble and shells in the construction of an integrated relation. Of course, there is no pebble shell integration despite the causal complexities. However, the brain and its states are integrated with the environment, and in being so, derive representational features in the manner of their processes from which consciousness becomes the qualitatively relevant feature. The ontology is that of an environment / brain relation not a brain / consciousness relation.

2. you say,
I don't remember reading anyone in consciousness studies who attempts to distinguish the first-person perspective from phenomenological approaches to consciousness. "
I call this, 'the elephant in the philosophy of consciousness room' that nobody has noticed.
I see clear distinctions between the problems of the first-person perspective, self-identified individuated perspectives, and phenomenal experience. Entirely separate problems. Thus when chalmers says the hard problem is that of phenomenal experience, he is denying any distinction between the problems above which I regard as separate.
HCT provides solutions to two of the three problems, which is why its advocates might be either dualists, monists, or materialists. My noumenon paper, which was referenced in this discussed some time ago, is a speculative attempt to address the third problem.

 

[Constance]

1. On Velman, what do you think of the following:

Imagine ten concave shaped seashells floating in a bath. As I drop a pebble in the water, a rippling wave spreads out so that some of the shells fill with a little water. As the ripples radiate out, three shells sink whilst seven remain afloat.
There is a correlative relation between pebbles falling in water and the shells that sink.
There is a causal relation between pebbles falling in water and sinking shells.
But one need not stipulate from causal or correlative principles, that exactly "three" shells must sink. Any number of shells might sink if we repeat the process . . . .What then, if we extend the experiment and have 85 billion falling pebbles and 100 trillion shells in an ocean of water?
We can still say there is a correlation and causal connection between falling pebbles and sinking shells.
Similarly, we might say that brain states cause consciousness or that there is a correlation between brain states and consciousness.

I think your pebbles and shells analogy is interesting, but I'm not sure it serves your purpose clearly enough yet. My impression of the post as a whole is that you have several purposes in mind (overcoming Velman's arguments against reductionism concerning consciousness; challenging Chalmers's identification of phenomenal experience as the hard problem of consciousness; defending reductionism in general; and presenting your own theory as one that resolves all questions and issues in consciousness studies). What I would like to read is a paper in which you untangle your presentation of all these issues and lay out a defense of the premises of HCT [clearly stated], issue by issue, against all comers. As it is you draw conclusions before you have constructed the arguments supporting them, as in the last two sentence above, highlighted in blue. You might not want to proceed in that workmanlike manner, but I think it will be necessary for you to make the case persuasively for HCT.

But Velman . . . makes the following point persuasively,

"For consciousness to be nothing more than a brain state, it must be ontologically identical to a brain state. However, correlation and causation are very different to ontological identity."

Consequently, whilst the causal / correlative relation is valid and may explain that each occasion of dropping pebbles will lead to differences in regard the exact number and manner of falling shells, this explanation is not sufficient. We can equate this distinction to the explanation of consciousness. In this manner, causal / correlative relational explanations might explain why first-person perspectives arise and are caused by the brain. But they will not necessarily explain the order and number of sinking shells nor explain the fluttering and swaying nature of each shell as it drifts to the ocean bed. But, unlike Velman, I am of the view that it is not incumbent on reduction to give this kind of explanation, i.e., to explain the exact individual nature of every falling shell.

I'm lost here. Nor do I see what you're seeing in applying your pebbles and streams analogy to Velmans.

Similarly, explaining the phenomenon of consciousness does not require explaining every individual's phenomenal consciousness. Rather, this is the task beset by the phenomenologist. They want to know about the individual's fluttering swaying shells. Consequently, the reductionist and phenomenologist are working on two entirely different if not unrelated projects

.

Where did you get the idea that phenomenology seeks to "explain every individual's phenomenal consciousness"? (The phenomenologist would indeed be 'beset' by that task.)
Again your concluding sentence leaps beyond whatever grounds you may be building it on in your own mind for you have not expressed those grounds. And your claim itself -- that "the reductionist and phenomenologist are working on two entirely different if not unrelated projects" -- would/will come as a great surprise to most consciousness researchers since they all seem to think they are working on the same problem: i.e., the present lack of an adequate account of consciousness and its relation to the world.

So, on one level Velman may well be right to say,

"the physical causes and correlates of consciousness.... can never reveal consciousness itself."

But there still remains an issue with this blunt edged attack on reductionism. It assumes that reductive explanation need only be causally or correlatively efficacious. But there is a problem with Velman's wording, that a reductive explanation must demonstrate "an ontological relation between brain states and consciousness". The premise can be considered in relation to the pebble and the shells analogy. The problem is that the relation between brain states and consciousness is seen purely as a causally derived physically reactive relation - purely mechanistic, if you will. But consciousness does not exist by virtue of such relations in themselves, nor is it the degree of complexity of the physics involved, that is of relevance (as Dennett's Intentional Stance argues). It is not a brain state, equals, consciousness thing anymore than it is a pebble, equals, fluttering shell thing. Consequently, what an ontological reductive explanation does is link the interactive environment to the evolution of the brain itself and thereby explain the phenomenon of consciousness contextually. Instead of it being a brain state equals consciousness thing, it becomes an environmentally integrated construct thing, whereby the brain body construct is explained in terms of its informed interactive meaning in so far as it evinces qualitatively relevant relations concerning environmental experience - and where such relations of qualitative representation are, consciousness is evoked. One way of looking at this level of explanation is to say that for consciousness, the causal dynamic of the pebble and the shells is not relevant. Instead, what is relevant is the nature of the pebble and shells in the construction of an integrated relation. Of course, there is no pebble shell integration despite the causal complexities. However, the brain and its states are integrated with the environment, and in being so, derive representational features in the manner of their processes from which consciousness becomes the qualitatively relevant feature. The ontology is that of an environment / brain relation not a brain / consciousness relation.

This appears to be what you hope to demonstrate and prove. There is an ambiguity in your use of the term 'environment'. Phenomenologists study the situation of consciousness in the local environment {that which is present to an embodied consciousness and to which the embodied consciousness becomes present in varying degrees following the line of evolution from protoconscious to prereflective consciousness to reflective consciousness and thought}. Setting aside descriptions of cosmic consciousness which some individuals claim to have achieved through certain intentional practices, conscious beings generally achieve the fullness of the consciousness they attain in relation to the local environment, subsequently thinking abstractly beyond that to the unanswered question of the nature of being as a whole, while existing in temporally embodied relations that are always in motion, change, flux.

For your pebbles and shells, there is likely no sense of presence or situated consciousness. Soupie might disagree. Wallace Stevens, with his sense of the living world and of the need for presence within it and to it, might also have disagreed, though it's hard to tell in this poem, which your pebbles and shells called to mind:

The Place of the Solitaires

Let the place of the solitaires
be a place of perpetual undulation.
whether it be in mid-sea
on the dark, green water-wheel,
or on the beaches,
there must be no cessation
of motion, or of the noise of motion,
the renewal of noise
and manifold continuation;
and most, of the motion of thought
and its restless iteration,
in the place of the solitaires,
which is to be a place of perpetual undulation.

We (I) don't get a sense of consciousness there, but we do get an ontological evocation of a world characterized by continuous motion in which any 'place' is "a place of perpetual undulation." Nevertheless a consciousness was required to write the poem and another consciousness is required to read it if it is to generate a signifying statement, and the same applies to every other form of protoconsious and conscious expression. The place of protoconsciousness and consciousness -- multiplied a trillion-trillion-trillion times in the universe (even perhaps on this planet) -- is the unique place in which the awareness of being makes a profound difference in what-is.

2. you say,
I don't remember reading anyone in consciousness studies who attempts to distinguish the first-person perspective from phenomenological approaches to consciousness. "
I call this, 'the elephant in the philosophy of consciousness room' that nobody has noticed.
I see clear distinctions between the problems of the first-person perspective, self-identified individuated perspectives, and phenomenal experience. Entirely separate problems. Thus when chalmers says the hard problem is that of phenomenal experience, he is denying any distinction between the problems above which I regard as separate.
HCT provides solutions to two of the three problems, which is why its advocates might be either dualists, monists, or materialists. My noumenon paper, which was referenced in this discussed some time ago, is a speculative attempt to address the third problem.

Pharoah, I admire the ambitiousness of your project and your deep background in philosophy of mind and I might yet be persuaded of the soundness of HCT, but I'm not persuaded yet. I think you might do well to begin a paper-length presentation of HCT with the sentences highlighted in blue just above, distinguish the problems you want to separate and the reasons why they must be separated, state your arguments on these issues with others such as Chalmers and Velman, and then present the details of HCT as the solution.