Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 2

[Soupie]

What really needs doing is to develop a conception of mental units that can compose a subject but which are not themselves subjects.[2] I'll come at this view -- a form of neutral monism -- via consideration of Riccardo Manzotti's paper on perception.

Boom! Yes, this is my view. This is what I am attempting to do. The mind is green; as opposed to: the mind experiences green.

Lose the homunculus.

Without micro-subjects everywhere, there seems no unavoidable reason why we will run into a combination problem. Basile finds this Russellian avenue foreclosed by the thesis that experiences cannot exist without an experiencer -- which suffices to put ubiquitous micro-subjects back in the frame, and the combination problem, with its threat of emergentism, thereby re-surfaces. I accept this thesis, that experiences require subjects.

Why can't the physical organism be the "experiencer?" It's true that it might be an extrinsic, epiphenomenal relationship, but a relationship nonetheless. (I still need to think on this.)

Why can't a physical organism, by way of interaction with the environment, give rise to (words fail me) self-existing (?) phenomenal experiences? Experiences that exist in their own right, so to speak.

It goes back to what @Constance said about building concepts from experiences. Indeed.

Lets use my number-letter code from above as an example.

1) Physical body-brain receives physical energy from computer screen

2) Physical body-brain "decodes" this data, the phenomenal experience ( decoded information ) of light and dark and colors are experienced by the body-brain

3) From these phenomenal experiences of light, dark, and color, the mind (not the body-brain) builds concepts - letters and numbers

My question is: how does the phenomenal experience (information) become aware of itself in step (3)?

 

[smcder]

Boom! Yes, this is my view. This is what I am attempting to do. The mind is green; as opposed to: the mind experiences green.

Lose the homunculus.


Why can't the physical organism be the "experiencer?" It's true that it might be an extrinsic, epiphenomenal relationship, but a relationship nonetheless. (I still need to think on this.)

Why can't a physical organism, by way of interaction with the environment, give rise to (words fail me) self-existing (?) phenomenal experiences? Experiences that exist in their own right, so to speak.

It goes back to what @Constance said about building concepts from experiences. Indeed.

Lets use my number-letter code from above as an example.

1) Physical body-brain receives physical energy from computer screen

2) Physical body-brain "decodes" this data, the phenomenal experience ( decoded information ) of light and dark and colors are experienced by the body-brain

3) From these phenomenal experiences of light, dark, and color, the mind (not the body-brain) builds concepts - letters and numbers

My question is: how does the phenomenal experience (information) become aware of itself in step (3)?

What if it turns out the homunculus is green?

The Homunculus problem

 

[Soupie]

What if it turns out the homunculus is green?

The Homunculus problem

At step (3) above, yes, it is green; that is, the mind becomes aware of itself. The question is, how does the mind become aware of itself?

The link above was helpful, but it begs the same question I've asked Constance: If we must consider the mind as a whole; how do we consider non-human minds?

Is consciousness binary? An organism either is conscious or is not? That is, an organism either has phenomenal, affectual, conceptual, and reflective conscious or it does not?

Is there no continuum? Might there be some minds composed of phenomenal consciousness; some minds composed of affectual and, say, phenomenal consciousness; and some minds composed of affectual, phenomenal, and conceptual consciousness, or is it all or nothing?

If it's the latter, this would either include many surprising organisms, ex an amoeba would needs have affectual, phenomenal, conceptual, and reflective consciousness; or exclude many surprising organisms, ex an amoeba would have no consciousness at all, no?

This may be the case. It must be seriously considered.

 

[smcder]

At step (3) above, yes, it is green; that is, the mind becomes aware of itself. The question is, how does the mind become aware of itself?

The link above was helpful, but it begs the same question I've asked Constance: If we must consider the mind as a whole; how do we consider non-human minds?

Is consciousness binary? An organism either is conscious or is not? That is, an organism either has phenomenal, affectual, conceptual, and reflective conscious or it does not?

Is there no continuum? Might there be some minds composed of phenomenal consciousness; some minds composed of affectual and, say, phenomenal consciousness; and some minds composed of affectual, phenomenal, and conceptual consciousness, or is it all or nothing?

If it's the latter, this would either include many surprising organisms, ex an amoeba would needs have affectual, phenomenal, conceptual, and reflective consciousness; or exclude many surprising organisms, ex an amoeba would have no consciousness at all, no?

This may be the case. It must be seriously considered.

How would you go about figuring this out? The mirror test is limited ... not sure what you would do with say an amoeba ... it reminds me of the testing of the blood in the movie The Thing ...

 

[Pharoah]

Not sure about that last ... have to think about it ... mentality "emphemerally distinctive" do you mean we identify mentality as made of something less solid than matter?


This is from Strawson's lecture on Nietzsche, about Descartes and substance

"One might think that Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza want to hang on to a robust notion of substance in a way that Nietzsche doesn’t, but there’s a fundamental respect in which this is not so—in which they’re at one. The great rationalists are not less radical than Nietzsche.

All agree, of course, that something exists, and all agree that whatever exists is identical with (nothing substantially over and above) concrete propertiedness. This thesis is indeed radical and initially difficult to think, given the structure of human thought and language, given in particular that ‘property’ is an intrinsically relational word that demands something for it to be a property of, but it’s sufficiently understandable for all that, and fully in line with the intuitive metaphysics of physics.

Does it seem hard to think? Yes, but it’s not that hard, and it’s something one can cultivate and grow into—deeply. This is doing philosophy.

Descartes is Mr. Substance, for most philosophers, but the popular version of early modern philosophy bears little resemblance to the true story, which is much more exciting. Descartes was neither the first nor the last to think that ‘substance’ is an empty word, a mere place holder with no clear meaning other than ‘existent’ or ‘real’, and zero explanatory power. I believe this is one of the reasons he preferred the word ‘thing’, (Latin res, French chose) to the word ‘substance’. At the same time, he badly wanted to be left in peace to get on with his work, was anxious not to annoy the church, and used the word ‘substance’ increasingly in communication with others who weren't prepared to talk in other terms."

I'm not sure that "emphemerally distinctive" was the best way of explaining my thought. So yes, we think of mentality as being something different to matter if we think of matter as having permanence whilst mentality as being fleeting and mysterious (you cannot prod mentality with your finger, like you can a brick). So I am saying that matter is only apparently permanent (in the grand scheme of the evolution of the universe) and is as much a product of change and process as is mentality - the timescales differ massively as does the nature of their processes of construction.

 

[Pharoah]

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.

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.

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}.

I understand from the prereflective and reflective notion, that there is categorical stages. This too is implied in the following: And in the following, is your question,
"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."
similar or indeed, the same as Soupie's in #1501:
"My question is: how does the phenomenal experience (information) become aware of itself in step (3)?"?

 

[smcder]

I'm not sure that "emphemerally distinctive" was the best way of explaining my thought. So yes, we think of mentality as being something different to matter if we think of matter as having permanence whilst mentality as being fleeting and mysterious (you cannot prod mentality with your finger, like you can a brick). So I am saying that matter is only apparently permanent (in the grand scheme of the evolution of the universe) and is as much a product of change and process as is mentality - the timescales differ massively as does the nature of their processes of construction.

Interesting ... not sure how to get a handle on this .... I have to think about it a little more - but just in thinking through it, I realize something that may be related to dyslexia ... I looked at some websites on dyslexia and one thing that was mentioned was thinking in pictures ... and I remembered something I knew about my thinking but had forgotten or just stopped noticing and that's that I have specific imagery (often pictures and kinesthetic sensations) that come up when particular ideas show up ... and the imagery is consistent in a given context and sometimes even across contexts. So certain words on the page will always trigger specific imagery and when I am reading, that is when I think my eyes leave the page and attend to the image, up and to the left or the right or off to the side and out - but it takes me off the page and I have to move back, if I try to hold my eyes to the page, then there is almost a compulsive quality to attend to the imagery. Do you get anything like that when you try to read?

I notice it especially when dealing with abstract concepts - in your paragraph above it came up several times, trying to compare how I think about the mental and the physical - and if I try to make a picture of something abstract, I have to be careful not to confuse the two, because the picture is concrete and that will be the wrong way to think of it. This happened a lot when I was studying math. There the imagery was very kinesthetic and could be very uncomfortable physically. I'm starting to really remember this! Interesting that it could be something like dyslexia.

 

[Constance]

Interesting discussion today. I think we are getting somewhere. The Coleman review of the Blamauer book linked by Steve is particularly lucid in my opinion.

 

[Soupie]

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?

Constance, I'm going to venture to say our thinking is closer than you might suspect.

I think you find some of my "reductive" language unpalatable and likely just plan disagree with some of my ideas, but I think there is a core of agreement.

Namely, that both life and consciousness have evolved together in the nexus of organisms. I dont think the objective and subjective aspects of reality are as distinct as we sometimes make them sound when discussing them as abstract concepts.

I think life is unique in the physical world for many reasons; in the context of this discussion, I identify living organism's ability to collect data from palpable reality and use it, as you say, to support intelligent behavior and survival. I think organisms do this by extracting from this data meaningful information. I believe that it is this meaningful information which constitutes what we know as subjectivity.

I dont think the meaningful information of a living organism can be considered apart from the physical body of the organism. Just how the body and the meaning interact, i don't know. Perhaps they don't. Epiphenominalism. But I believe they do.

 

[Pharoah]

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.


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.

This reply is instigated by the above but includes the back and forth exchange between Soupie and Constance today.

Soupie, you say

“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.”
What type of information gets passed on?

You say,
“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.”
So... why does it not evolve senses, for example, that register levels of gamma radiation instead, or that detect ultraviolet light?
Therefore, what type (by which I mean, that a term is required that functions as a universal descriptor for all cases) of information is passed on?

For Constance:
At this point, Soupie is talking about only innately acquired physiological mechanisms - in virtue of his use of the term, “replication” as being the means of “passing on data”.

Soupie, you say,
“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.”
Phenomenal? How did you get “phenomenal experience” into it?
You have a cell responding innately to light - does that constitute phenomenal experience?
In my previous response to you yesterday, I said that you leapt from the non-mental into the mental domain through the use of the term “phenomenal experience”.
So, if innate mechanism does constitute phenomenal experience, do all the primal responses enacted by all forms of physiologically inherited mechanism, constitute phenomenal experience? Yes or no.
If no, how do you get phenomenal experience into the model?
If yes, I have more to ask at another time.
In addressing a related question from Constance,
“How is the information/meaning distinct from the cell's] phenomenal experience of cold and warmth, light and darkness?”
you reply
“It's not.”

You say (#1462) in response to Constance,
“Sensory perception is physical; information/meaning is not.”
and
“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”
Therefore, do you still say information is not physical given that it demands a physical conduit through “engagement by a physical system”? i.e. Does information actually exist in the absence of the physical system?

In answering Constance (#1471 )
“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?”
you say,
“The meaning comes to the cell via its direct, physical interaction with the environment.”
I don’t think so. A brick does not gain meaning by its physical interaction with the environment.
In fact, you say (#1465 - also quoted at the start of this response above, and I abbreviate you sentence) that the meaning cannot be passed on in the absence of replication. Therefore, replication is a requisite of gaining information. In fact, the information gained must be compounded through (alternatively, 'augmented by') successive replicating generations.
So, over these generations, what is the nature of the information that is being gained over generations?

 

[Constance]

I understand from the prereflective and reflective notion, that there is categorical stages. This too is implied in the following: And in the following, is your question,

"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."
similar or indeed, the same as Soupie's in #1501:

"My question is: how does the phenomenal experience (information) become aware of itself in step (3)?"?

The same question, very different proposed answers.

 

[Soupie]

The same question, very different proposed answers.

Constance, the only "answer" you have ever proposed is to say that consciousness evolved from quantum foam. And "entangled."

 

[Constance]

Constance, I'm going to venture to say our thinking is closer than you might suspect.

I think you find some of my "reductive" language unpalatable and likely just plan disagree with some of my ideas, but I think there is a core of agreement.

Namely, that both life and consciousness have evolved together in the nexus of organisms. I dont think the objective and subjective aspects of reality are as distinct as we sometimes make them sound when discussing them as abstract concepts.

I think life is unique in the physical world for many reasons; in the context of this discussion, I identify living organism's ability to collect data from palpable reality and use it, as you say, to support intelligent behavior and survival. I think organisms do this by extracting from this data meaningful information. I believe that it is this meaningful information which constitutes what we know as subjectivity.

The difference between our approaches is that in my view our experience [prereflective and reflective] in the palpable world is sufficient to orient us to our possible actions within it and also to yield recognition of the nature of our own consciousness as a partial and concerned perspective on what-is to the limits of what we can see and otherwise sense -- and on that basis what we can think. Your approach is far less direct, seems to attempt to avoid/efface the tangible, sensual nature of our experienced presence in and to the world {and that of our forebears in evolution yielding for them responses along the continuum from 'affectivity', to intentionality, proto-consciousness, and in some cases consciousness similar to ours}, and to arrive at the conclusion that what we achieve in mind unique to our species is a computation of "data" ['information'] of an abstract, immaterial, still-undefined sort which only our computational physical brains receive and process. As far as I can understand your point of view, it loses the intimate integration of living species' sensually obtained awareness with the being of the 'world' in which that awareness has come to exist. The kind of informational hypothesis you present appears to radically separate, even disassociate, the subjective and objective poles of phenomenal experience, whereas in my view these poles are almost seamlessly interwoven in lived experience as analyzed by Merleau-Ponty.

I dont think the meaningful information of a living organism can be considered apart from the physical body of the organism. Just how the body and the meaning interact, i don't know. Perhaps they don't. Epiphenominalism. But I believe they do.

I don't either. The body is also conscious; it is the location from which primordial organisms first begin to sense a further location of themselves in relation to "an outer bush", a larger mileau, "a place of being large and light" {I might be misquoting my poet there}. I'll insert a link to the post where I copied "The Dove in Spring."

 

[Constance]

Constance, the only "answer" you have ever proposed is to say that consciousness evolved from quantum foam. And "entangled."

I don't remember ever referring to 'quantum foam' (unless it was indirectly by linking a paper by Rovelli). The word 'foam' in that phrase is a good example of how word choices can be and are used in ways that can be misleading, even coercive, the thesis developed in the linguistics paper I linked yesterday or the day before (which I really do think we all ought to read at this point).

What I have said on the possible relation of quantum mechanics and q field theory to consciousness is that the entanglement demonstrated in quantum phenomena might account for both the way in which a) our ideas and feelings are entangled and remain so for long periods of time (some entanglements enduring for a lifetime), and b) the nonlocality of consciousness recognized in several key physics experiments and demonstrated in a half-dozen different types of 'para-normal' experience.

Before this thread began many months ago, I'd been drawn for several years to the idea of quantum-entangled 'information' in the holographic mind of the individual and between individuals and in the holographically entangled universe (Bohm, Pribram) as the perhaps portable state of the personal self (with all its accomplished entanglements with significant others, with a loved and remembered experienced world, and with an achieved complex of ideas and insights) that could enable the survival of personal consciousness in some form after the death of the body. I see information in terms of what we produce in our lives through our continuous presence to our experiences in and of the world, to what we value, and to whom and what we love -- all of it entangled in the developing self and preserved in consciousness and mind.

No doubt prior kinds of information exchanged in the evolution of the physical world and of life arising within it are also real, and I think arise in the quantum level of physical being, generating what I've called a 'habit' in nature of interaction and entanglement, in particles and waves producing fields and forces that constitute systems of systems maintained in and maintaining the universe as a system. Like the 'constants' recognized in the current standard model in physics (without which, we are told, this universe we're located in would fly apart rather than maintain its integrity, its holism), there is evidently an inherent, though evolving, order maintained by the integration of systems of systems in nature.

Hope that clarifies what I've posted.

 

[Constance]

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.

~~~Wallace Stevens

 

[smcder]

Constance, the only "answer" you have ever proposed is to say that consciousness evolved from quantum foam. And "entangled."

I did a search for Quantum Foam, I remember you just mentioned it today or yesterday ... when talking about the Unus Mundus ...

@Conistance asked:

And what is the source of the information the brain suddenly 'integrates', enabling us to see and smell and touch the phenomenal world we live in, even as infants? Is the source the 'quantum foam'? Can you clarify your theory?

@Soupie replied:

As I understand it, it's different for each sense. For instance, vision involves eyes and photons, sound involves ears and sound waves, smell involves the nose and various molecules, etc., and of course the corresponding brain regions for all these sensory organs/systems.

Yes, the quantum foam is the source of the information.

And you mention it a couple more times:

The Unus Mundus is very similar to the concept of Unbound Telesis that I first encountered in Langan. As I understand it—or perhaps conceive it—the Unus Mundus and Unbound Telesis are synonomous with the Quantum Foam, the holistic, non-boolean state of what-is.

No, I think you're right. Again, imagine a super intelligent lizard with the ability to augment it's body - nano swarms? - or even move/expand it's mind into the internet/electric grid and/or the quantum foam itself.

Also, while I do describe the mind, brain, and environment as discrete, from the perspective of reality consisting of a foam of quantum particles such discreteness doesn’t really exist.

 

[smcder]

I don't remember ever referring to 'quantum foam' (unless it was indirectly by linking a paper by Rovelli). The word 'foam' in that phrase is a good example of how word choices can be and are used in ways that can be misleading, even coercive, the thesis developed in the linguistics paper I linked yesterday or the day before (which I really do think we all ought to read at this point).

What I have said on the possible relation of quantum mechanics and q field theory to consciousness is that the entanglement demonstrated in quantum phenomena might account for both the way in which a) our ideas and feelings are entangled and remain so for long periods of time (some entanglements enduring for a lifetime), and b) the nonlocality of consciousness recognized in several key physics experiments and demonstrated in a half-dozen different types of 'para-normal' experience.

Before this thread began many months ago, I'd been drawn for several years to the idea of quantum-entangled 'information' in the holographic mind of the individual and between individuals and in the holographically entangled universe (Bohm, Pribram) as the perhaps portable state of the personal self (with all its accomplished entanglements with significant others, with a loved and remembered experienced world, and with an achieved complex of ideas and insights) that could enable the survival of personal consciousness in some form after the death of the body. I see information in terms of what we produce in our lives through our continuous presence to our experiences in and of the world, to what we value, and to whom and what we love -- all of it entangled in the developing self and preserved in consciousness and mind.

No doubt prior kinds of information exchanged in the evolution of the physical world and of life arising within it are also real, and I think arise in the quantum level of physical being, generating what I've called a 'habit' in nature of interaction and entanglement, in particles and waves producing fields and forces that constitute systems of systems maintained in and maintaining the universe as a system. Like the 'constants' recognized in the current standard model in physics (without which, we are told, this universe we're located in would fly apart rather than maintain its integrity, its holism), there is evidently an inherent, though evolving, order maintained by the integration of systems of systems in nature.

Hope that clarifies what I've posted.

The word 'foam' in that phrase is a good example of how word choices can be and are used in ways that can be misleading, even coercive, the thesis developed in the linguistics paper I linked yesterday or the day before (which I really do think we all ought to read at this point).

This one?

http://www.mind-consciousness-language.com/A%20semantics%20outside%20language.pdf

 

[Soupie]

(1) What type of information gets passed on?

(2) Therefore, what type (by which I mean, that a term is required that functions as a universal descriptor for all cases) of information is passed on?

(3) How did you get “phenomenal experience” into it?

(4) You have a cell responding innately to light - does that constitute phenomenal experience?

(5) So, if innate mechanism does constitute phenomenal experience, do all the primal responses enacted by all forms of physiologically inherited mechanism, constitute phenomenal experience? Yes or no. If no, how do you get phenomenal experience into the model? If yes, I have more to ask at another time.

(6) Therefore, do you still say information is not physical given that it demands a physical conduit through “engagement by a physical system”? i.e. Does information actually exist in the absence of the physical system?

(7) “The meaning comes to the cell via its direct, physical interaction with the environment.” I don’t think so. A brick does not gain meaning by its physical interaction with the environment.

(8) So, what is the nature of the information that is being gained over generations?

Whew. I'll do my best to "answer" these questions. (I am going to use lots of generalities: (i) because I'm more focused on concepts right now, (ii) because I don't have the specifics.)

Let's start by looking at the differences between a brick and an organism.

A brick does not have a multi-part structure for receiving and processing light, an organism does (at least the one in this example does). An organism does have a multi-part structure for receiving and processing light. Moreover, an organism has a process by which it can modify and improve its multi-part structure for receiving and processing light; that is, mutation, selection, and replication.

The information for assembling this multi-part structure is passed on from generation to generation. Moreover, the multi-part structure itself is improved from generation to generation. These improvements get passed on from generation to generation. The improvement include the multi-part structures ability to receive and process (and even shape) the light that it receives. Therefore, this improved, innate physical ability to receive, process, and shape the light is passed on from generation to generation.

This ability to shape* the "light" is important for several reasons.

You ask how I got phenomenal experience into this model. The answer is that its components were there right from the beginning.

Does the brain process light? No. Rather, (1) photons moving at a particular wavelength strike the retina, (2) the retina translates these wavelengths into electrical pulses, (3) these electrical pulses are translated to neuronal spikes in the visual cortex. (*There is research that indicates that the visual cortex automagically begins to "shape" the incoming data if it recognizes it. This innate ability--which evolved over generations--is information that is passed on from generation to generation.)

So let's step back for a second... What we have here (in the words of Constance) is stuff happening in the palpable world. Photons getting translated to electrical pulses, electrical pulses getting translated to neuronal spikes, etc. Lot's of physical stuff happening!

But we can view all of this from another perspective as well. (A perspective that makes Constance's skin crawl!) What is happening is data collection and data processing. The photons are translated to data, not once but twice. But not only that, the data becomes more than raw data; it becomes meaningful information. It becomes light, dark, and colors.

What I am proposing is that the very act of data becoming meaningful information is the very act of physical sensory perception realizing phenomenal experience. It doesn't "come out of nowhere." Data collection and processing in order to obtain meaningful information is what organism do to survive and reproduce. Information, meaning, and phenomenal experience are all subjective; and the reason is because they are all the same thing.

Do I still say information is not physical? Yes, I do. Is information intimately tied to its physical substrate? Absolutely. Take the example of the photon above: The data from that photon had 3 substrates: wavelength, electrical pulse, and neuron spikes. (And probably more.) But the data is not ontologically the same as the three substrates carrying it.

I like the word you chose: conduit. The environment and living organisms are conduits for the wonderful, transcendent meaning that we make. Meaning that transcends the physical world. Meaning that is not intrinsically in the physical world, but that is embodied in various ways by the physical world.

Living, reproducing organisms are dynamic, physical systems that -- by way of their finely tuned and evolved multipart sensory processing systems -- pull data from the environment, collate, and process this data, and ultimately give it subjective, qualitative meaning which in turn manifests as phenomenal experience.

 

[smcder]

And do I not also say that the views of Constance and myself are not that far apart as one might think?

You certainly do!

 

[Constance]

The word 'foam' in that phrase is a good example of how word choices can be and are used in ways that can be misleading, even coercive, the thesis developed in the linguistics paper I linked yesterday or the day before (which I really do think we all ought to read at this point).

This one?

http://www.mind-consciousness-language.com/A%20semantics%20outside%20language.pdf

Yes. It's excellent.