Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 2

[Constance]

I meant, can you not say of one person, they organise experience like "this" which corresponds to others'.

Interesting question. Each of us knows some people well enough (spouses, mates, children, parents, close friends) to at least speculate on what might be called their customary 'mental switchboard' -- the way in which they personally connect events, persons, ideas, etc., with one another. But lived reality for any consciousness is inexhaustible, even for the individual who would seek to comprehend his or her entire experience in the world, in relation to others, in relation to nature and culture, and in the midst of partial but persistent memories in both the conscious and subconscious mind. Psychologists have generally recognized that the mind is well-represented by the image of an iceberg viewed from the side, the conscious mind {10 percent of the iceberg) floating above the water line, the rest -- 90 percent -- beneath the waterline, less easily accessible but 'anchoring' and influencing the self (or if you prefer 'the mind) in a fluid and changing environment.

Are there no principles governing experience?

Phenomenology has foregrounded both the prereflective level of experience in which we continually function and the reflective level of consciousness (which can but does not always involve a meta-awareness of self, or egoic consciousness). The prereflective demonstrates our immersion in the environing world {our openness to it and our orientation within it before we think about it}. The reflective demonstrates our attempts to a) come to grips with both our immediate situation in the natural and cultural 'world' within which we have and recognize our existence, and b) our thinking about the ways in which the parts of our world are put together, and eventually about the ontological situation within which this world and our experiences in it have come into being. Consciousness and even protoconsciousness in life forms early in evolution are intentional, as Husserl demonstrated. The most interesting question, again, is how a protoconscious 'point of view' arises in the evolution of the physical world, by virtue of which point of view a being increasingly becomes self-aware through its awareness of some thing beyond itself that it senses, that 'affects' it.

Or if there are, are you not interested in that possibility?

I think the principal structures of protoconsciousness and consciousness as described in phenomenology are extremely interesting and vital to our comprehension of what-is in the world we exist in. Do they "govern" experience? I would say rather that these structures enable experience, and that experience-attended-to and reflected upon enables insightful thinking about the nature of reality {what is}.

 

[Soupie]

@Soupie

I disagree that the proposition that information is immaterial is semantics.

If I told you:

1 = H

2 = E

3 = L

4 = O

And then I created the following physical structures:

12334

12

1233

1432

I could say the above physical structures “carry” information. We know what information they carry. The information is very real. It exists. But where is the information physically located? Nowhere because it is nothing.

Right, my phrasing was confusing - but my point was about defining the word "immaterial" in terms of "material" compared to ( for example) "physical" and "mental" ... it's hard to find an English word for immaterial that isn't defined as a negation of another word ( incorporeal) and doesn't have a religious connotation ... Ethereal ?


.

Is there a word you would prefer? I'd gladly consider using it. However, in the context of this discussion, it seems that distinguishing it from the physical is what's most important, no?

 

[smcder]

Isn't Ritalin for ADHD. I think Panksepp makes a case for why it is a bad thing.
There are lots of strategies for dealing with it. But they are strategies not cures.
I suspect my grandfather was dyslexic. His brother did all the paper work for his businesses because he could not read. Then his brother got him to sign his business to him and they never spoke to each other again. So... quite often people do not know they are dealing with some of these kinds of issues. I only found out in my thirties that it was not just a reading thing and it was a profound shock to me: My son was tested and he couldn't recall two digits in reverse order to hearing them... However he could remember longer sequences than the average, if he had repeat them in the same sequential order as he heard them. This illustrated the short term memory to medium term memory problem - which obviously affects reading because of the construction of words from syllables etc.

Search on ADD and dyslexia or Ritalin and dyslexia ...

Panksepp discussed ADD and Ritalin a bit in the Shrinkrap interview ... I did find this of possible interest.

Hope for millions as scientists find 'cure' for dyslexia | Daily Mail Online

So he could remember more than average digits in order and only two backward?

that bit sounds like me, STM has always been lousy in some ways.

 

[Soupie]

I'm still not following what is new in the artificial arm report ...

For me it was:

1) That the individual perceived the sensations to be eminating from the hand. The hand was perceived to be part of their body.

2) The combination of the perceived hand and the electrical pulses "caused" the phantom limb pain to cease.

What are the physical systems we currently know are required and what physical systems are left on the list - to the extent that's answerable?

I would think

1. sense organs
2. Brain (substructures listed as 2.1a etc)

Or do I misunderstand?

Yes, sense organs, but apparently not organic sense organs.

That there is apparently nothing "special" about the organic substrate of sense organs that is necessary for the realization, release, and/or generation of phenomenal experience.

My question is how far up and how far in does it go? Where does it stop? Does it stop?

I'd thought you posted something about consciousness existing outside the body but I found this:

"Regarding the "survival" of an information structure:

Said information structure would need to be embodied physically. Thus, in order for a mind to survive the death of its body, it would need to be embodied in another physical body. The only requirement is that the body be physical."

and in another post

"For example, if the mind is an information structure, can this information structure survive the death of the physical body? I think it is theoretically possible."

So one question is how is the information structure transmitted? Something like a radio transmission?

Another is what information structures specifically are preserved?

I don't know. At one point, many, many posts ago, I had described it like trying to preserve a whirlpool of water. And its not the water youre trying to preserve but rather the pattern.

What would be preserved? The entire mind: phenomenal and conceptual memories, and the active mind: phenomenal experiences, cognitions, and meta-cognitions.

To recreate the pattern, you would need a physical substrate that could do so. So essentially you would need a physical substrate able to recreate the body-brain.

 

[Soupie]

In quote 2, you tentatively suggest a possible vehicle of agency. How and why do these things fulfil the role of agency?

Quote 2. Can we can say, that the "who is the coder?" route - i.e. who is the agency route - is ultimately a route that cannot lead to a coherent physicalist thesis? If so, you, like me I think, must ask not who is agency, but how and why is their agency. And yet still, there need be no obvious engagement in PoM or phenomenal consciousness at this stage of our enquiry.

My thought was that information (ie meaning) could be coded into the evironment, not by an intelligent agent per se, but rather by its relative consistency over time and its engagment by a physical system capable of storing data and passing this data on via replication.

For example, a primitive cell (just about as primitive as this idea) might move about in a pond (its always a pond). At the bottom of the pond the water is cold and dark, at the surface it is warm and bright. The cell — through a process of mutation and selection (or some other process) — might evolve a mechanism for sensing temperature and light. As the environment of the cell and its progeny in which they might evolve — the pond — would remain consistent over time, the physiologically sensed cold and warm water and the physiologically sensed light and darkness would — over time — constitute physiological learning in the cell, ie, a physical change in the cell due to its physiological processing of cold/warm and light/dark.

The physiological states of cold/warm and light/dark would begin to acquire meaning; that is, light/dark and cold/warm would provide meaningful information about the environment-cell relationship.

The physical state of the environment and the responsive state of the physical cell would give rise to the information/meaning/phenomenal experience of hot/cold and light/dark.

Quote 3. most people associate learning with consciousness, and that consciousness is not carried through from generation to generation. So you make a conceptual leap into PoM and phenomenal consciousness. Consequently,
Quote 4. your 'how and why agency' answer needs to account for the conceptual leap into the phenomenal landscape that Constance is so eager for us to contemplate. This leap is a crucial one because for many the physical relation is unbridgeable. Could the how and why explain the qualitative and characteristic aspects of phenomenal experience? If so, what are the limits of such an explanation?
Quote 5. "The coder is experience" you say. Environmental interaction (my broader term for 'experience') is a critical feature. But different things are 'informed' by environmental interaction in different ways. The encoding, i.e. the representing, differs markedly. Is there a classification of ways? yes or no. If "maybe", what is that classification and why does it both exist and come into existence without the need for extrinsic agency? And what determines the distinctiveness of different embodiments of informed constructs?
Finally in quote 5 you say, "retained in the organism": "retained in" implies external agency because it gives a sense that the organism is a conduit of something extrinsic to its own construct, rather than the information being part and parcel of the organism construct. It is an easy trap to fall into but must be avoided.

Soupie, I think you are on a journey of HCT discovery for yourself via information enquiries. I am asking you these questions because I feel that if you explore them yourself, you will arrive at HCT. Ultimately, there are many roads that one can take to try to address the phenomenon of consciousness, but there can only be one decisive coherent physicalist road - but importantly, I do say there is ultimately far more to 'us' humans than that. So I am basically being a bit devious in my questioning, so let me know if that is a bad thing.

If my previous thought has any merit, and it well may not, then I will consider wasting more of your time with a response to these appreciated questions, haha.

 

[Constance]

My thought was that information (ie meaning) could be coded into the evironment, not by an intelligent agent per se, but rather by its relative consistency over time and its engagment by a physical system capable of storing data and passing this data on via replication.

For example, a primitive cell (just about as primitive as this idea) might move about in a pond (its always a pond). At the bottom of the pond the water is cold and dark, at the surface it is warm and bright. The cell — through a process of mutation and selection (or some other process) — might evolve a mechanism for sensing temperature and light. As the environment of the cell and its progeny in which they might evolve — the pond — would remain consistent over time, the physiologically sensed cold and warm water and the physiologically sensed light and darkness would — over time — constitute physiological learning in the cell, ie, a physical change in the cell due to its physiological processing of cold/warm and light/dark.

For example, a primitive cell (just about as primitive as this idea) might move about in a pond (its always a pond). At the bottom of the pond the water is cold and dark, at the surface it is warm and bright. The cell — through a process of mutation and selection (or some other process) — might evolve a mechanism for sensing temperature and light. As the environment of the cell and its progeny in which they might evolve — the pond — would remain consistent over time, the physiologically sensed cold and warm water and the physiologically sensed light and darkness would — over time — constitute physiological learning in the cell, ie, a physical change in the cell due to its physiological processing of cold/warm and light/dark

Do you have an example of two of what you mean by this physical change? Do you mean that the physiology of the cell adapts to the conditions in which it exists (the changing temperatures and light at different depths of the pond)? It might be drawn toward one or the other depth 'instinctively' as a means of maintaining its homeostasis?

The physiological states of cold/warm and light/dark would begin to acquire meaning; that is, light/dark and cold/warm would provide meaningful information about the environment-cell relationship.

Do you mean that the 'meaningful information' acquired by the cell comes to it not experientially, through sensing and preferring one or another condition (degree of temperature, amount of light) but via some other less direct path? If the latter, what is nature of that path?

This information/meaning would be perceived by the physical cell as the phenomenal experience of cold and warmth, light and darkness.

How is the information/meaning distinct and separate from the cell's sensory perception, its phenomenal experience of cold and warmth, light and darkness? Doesn't the cell, like us, know what cold and warmth, light and darkness, are when experiencing them? Precisely in having the experience? Nat Hentoff, a jazz critic, once answered the question 'what is jazz? what is it trying to say?' by responding: "In jazz, you get the message when you hear the music."

 

[Soupie]

How is the information/meaning distinct and separate from the cell's sensory perception...

Sensory perception is physical; information/meaning is not.

[How is the information/meaning distinct from the cell's] phenomenal experience of cold and warmth, light and darkness?

It's not.

Doesn't the cell, like us, know what cold and warmth, light and darkness, are when experiencing them?

If by "know" you mean phenomenally, then yes. If you mean conceptually, then no.

 

[Constance]

Wallace Stevens wrote a number of poems meditating on how animals and birds might experience phenomenal consciousness. Here is one of my favorites:

The Dove in Spring

Brooder, brooder, deep beneath its walls--
A small howling of the dove
Makes something of the little there,

The little and the dark, and that
In which it is and that in which
It is established. There the dove

Makes this small howling, like a thought
That howls in the mind or like a man
Who keeps seeking out his identity

In that which is and is established...It howls
Of the great sizes of an outer bush
And the great misery of the doubt of it,

Of stripes of silver that are strips
Like slits across a space, a place
And state of being large and light.

There is this bubbling before the sun,
This howling at one's ear, too far
For daylight and too near for sleep.

 

[Constance]

Constance: Doesn't the cell, like us, know what cold and warmth, light and darkness, are when experiencing them?

Soupie: If by "know" you mean phenomenally, then yes. If you mean conceptually, then no.


Granted we don't expect concepts from cells. But I think we can agree that we find the formulation of concepts to be essential to our survival as a species at this point in the evolutionary spectrum. So at some point, phenomenal knowledge must play a role in supporting intelligent behavior and survival of species. Or what's a physical world for? What is experience at all levels of life for? What I'm asking might not be clear. Your theory makes my head swim. I find what you're claiming -- that phenomenal experience {lived reality} is never directly meaningful, does not form the basis for concepts (and likely proto-concepts in simpler forms of life) -- to be enormously puzzling.

 

[Soupie]

[A]t some point, phenomenal knowledge must play a role in supporting intelligent behavior and survival of species.

What do you mean by "phenomenal knowledge?"

I believe that phenomenal experience and conceptual thinking both play a role in supporting intelligent behavior.

I find what you're claiming -- that phenomenal experience {lived reality} is never directly meaningful, does not form the basis for concepts (and likely proto-concepts in simpler forms of life) -- to be enormously puzzling.

I'm not claiming that.

 

[Constance]

Sensory perception is physical; information/meaning is not.

It's not.

If by "know" you mean phenomenally, then yes. If you mean conceptually, then no.

Would you also respond to these questions of mine?

The physiological states of cold/warm and light/dark would begin to acquire meaning; that is, light/dark and cold/warm would provide meaningful information about the environment-cell relationship.
Click to expand...

Do you mean that the 'meaningful information' acquired by the cell comes to it not experientially, through sensing and preferring one or another condition (degree of temperature, amount of light) but via some other less direct path? If the latter, what is the nature of that path?

This information/meaning would be perceived by the physical cell as the phenomenal experience of cold and warmth, light and darkness.
Click to expand...

How is the information/meaning distinct and separate from the cell's sensory perception, its phenomenal experience of cold and warmth, light and darkness? Doesn't the cell, like us, know what cold and warmth, light and darkness, are when experiencing them? Precisely in having the experience?

 

[Soupie]

Would you also respond to these questions of mine?

Do you mean that the 'meaningful information' acquired by the cell comes to it not experientially, through sensing and preferring one or another condition (degree of temperature, amount of light) but via some other less direct path? If the latter, what is nature of that path?

The meaning comes to the cell via its direct, physical interaction with the environment.

How is the information/meaning distinct and separate from the cell's sensory perception, its phenomenal experience of cold and warmth, light and darkness? Doesn't the cell, like us, know what cold and warmth, light and darkness, are when experiencing them? Precisely in having the experience?

How is the information/meaning distinct and separate from the cell's sensory perception...

Sensory perception is physical; information/meaning is not.

[How is the information/meaning distinct from the cell's] phenomenal experience of cold and warmth, light and darkness?

It's not.

 

[Constance]

What do you mean by "phenomenal knowledge?"

I mean the awareness and affectivity that Panksepp observes even in primitive organisms. I linked one or two other papers recently by philosophers of mind arguing on behalf of phenomenal knowledge.

I believe that phenomenal experience and conceptual thinking both play a role in supporting intelligent behavior.

I had written: "I find what you're claiming -- that phenomenal experience {lived reality} is never directly meaningful, does not form the basis for concepts (and likely proto-concepts in simpler forms of life) -- to be enormously puzzling.

You said in reply:

I'm not claiming that.

It's difficult for me to understand what you are claiming. Maybe, worked out in more detail, your claims and explanations will be persuasive to me.

 

[Constance]

. . . Sensory perception and phenomenal experience are not synono

Can you present an explanation, or cite one, to help me understand this point?

 

[Soupie]

I mean the awareness and affectivity that Panksepp observes even in primitive organisms. I linked one or two other papers recently by philosophers of mind arguing on behalf of phenomenal knowledge.

I believe that conceptual thinking is built on phenomenal and affectual experience.

It's difficult for me to understand what you are claiming. Maybe, worked out in more detail, your claims and explanations will be persuasive to me.

I've mostly been focused on phenomenal experience. I'm hypothesizing that phenomenal experience is the imphysical information/meaning that arises by way of the ongoing, dynamic, physical interaction between an organism and the environment.

 

[Soupie]

Can you present an explanation, or cite one, to help me understand this point?

Sensory perception is a physical/physiological process; phenomenal experience is imphysical.

Sensory Perception | Gene Ontology Consortium

 

[Constance]

Sensory perception is a physical/physiological process; phenomenal experience is imphysical.

Imphysical? What does that mean? I've seen some word play with that term in the thread recently, but do we have a definition for it?

What is the basis of your claim that "phenomenal experience is [not physical]?

 

[Constance]

I believe that conceptual thinking is built on phenomenal and affectual experience.

I've mostly been focused on phenomenal experience. I'm hypothesizing that phenomenal experience is the imphysical information/meaning that arises by way of the ongoing, dynamic, physical interaction between an organism and the environment.

My impression is that you have been 'focusing on' a concept of phenomenal experience, one largely of your own construction that bypasses experience itself.

 

[smcder]

Imphysical? What does that mean? I've seen some word play with that term in the thread recently, but do we have a definition for it?

What is the basis of your claim that "phenomenal experience is [not physical]?

Imphysical is my coinage ... I was trying to point up how immaterial is the negation of material ... for an idealist, matter might be called "immental".

Here is how it all started:

When describing the status of information, @Soupie uses the word "immaterial".

But Soupie is not a dualist:

"That is, I think everything in reality is made out of "material." And moreover, I think everything is made of the same kind of material."

If everything in reality is made out of material and the same material, then what does "immaterial" mean? I checked some other posts to be sure I understood the position and found:

"I'm fine with the concept that thoughts and qualia are not constituted of matter/energy, but since they exist as opposed to not existing, they must exist, ergo they must be made of something (and not nothing, i.e. non-existent)."

So "everything in reality" is made out of material and the same material but thoughts and qualia are not constituted of matter/energy ... but they must be made out of something ... but again everything in reality is made out of material and the same material. So this seems to be a contradiction.

The Information Philosopher says:

"Abstract information is neither matter nor energy, yet it needs matter for its concrete embodiment and energy for its communication. Information is immaterial."

"Abstract" information is immaterial but it requires matter and energy to actually show up in reality ... but for that matter it (abstract information) seems to require matter and energy even in it's abstract state - ie as an idea in a brain. "abstract" and "information" seem to be more like qualities or properties, things we use to describe special states of matter - information is an organized state of matter, an idea is an organized state of neurons in the brain that relates to something in the environment ... one of the reasons I'm a stickler on this, is that if you play fast and loose it gets really confusing ... our language is full of dualisms.

So I wondered if part of the problem is the language we take for granted. I looked up synonyms for immaterial:

"bodiless, ethereal, formless, incorporeal, insubstantial, nonmaterial, nonphysical, spiritual, unbodied, unsubstantial

Related Words metaphysical, psychic (also psychical), supernatural; impalpable, insensible, intangible, invisible; airy, diaphanous, gaseous, gossamery, tenuous, thin, vaporous, wispish"

The words in bold above are negations, mostly of words for material things - supernatural isn't a negation but it's defined in terms of the natural.

Of the remaining words:

ethereal and spiritual have religious connotations

the other words are still physical words, or words used for substances - a spider's web is gossamer for example ...

"metaphysical" and "psychic" then seem to be two words that mean immaterial, stand alone and without too specific of a connotation but obviously neither apply to information, ideas, the mental ...

I think it's just easy to say immaterial even in a strictly materialist world view because the word is still there in our vocabulary.

The other thing that may be confusing is when I used the phrase pain is nowhere because it is nothing. I said this in trying to explain what I understood from the Velmans paper on reduction. I noticed @Soupie has used that or a similar phrase a couple of times since then. But I don't think in a system of material monism, you are justified in referring to the subjective and related words like qualia, ideas, etc as immaterial.

If you make the statements that everything in reality is made of material and the same kind of material and thoughts and qualia must be made of something, then thoughts and qualia are made things and you have to account for thoughts, qualia and information in terms of the material or you have to find some other word to use. To say the material is immaterial is a contradiction.

subjective/objective

Could we substitute subjective for the problematic words? Thoughts are subjective ... qualia is subjective?

The only problematic aspect of five is the "fiveness" of it. But isn't that just what it is like to think about five? The subjective aspects of five? So we can split out the physical aspects of information - the matter needed to embody it and the energy to communicate it from the subjective aspects of it (the "fivenes") and that seems to me to be clearer than saying it's immaterial.

 

[smcder]

Is there a word you would prefer? I'd gladly consider using it. However, in the context of this discussion, it seems that distinguishing it from the physical is what's most important, no?

Forthwith and going forward hereinafter - please use "subjective" as prescribed in the post above. Failure to do so could cause you to be identified as a dualist.



These are not the dualists you are looking for ...