Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 2

[Pharoah]

Re Steven's post: "Will resume pursuit of Dowell critique ... It was in terms of two dimensionality (Chalmers) I think ... have to learn to book mark,"

You do that far better than I do, Steve, or otherwise keep track of sources and links. I've been amazed by your ability to do that.

Re that McGinn paper linked and extracted above, you were the one who first brought it to my attention. I read it again tonight and it's brilliant. Though I still sense something is 'off' in McGinn's passages on language and 'universal grammar', and if there is something off about it it's most likely something off in Chomsky's theorizing. I'm presently searching for critiques of Chomsky's theory. [edited] If some core syntactic structures are found across all human languages and constitute a minimal 'universal grammar', these could support adequately a claim regarding a'universal grammar', but the semantics of languages are another matter. Universal 'grammar' can't "control" what we are able to think. McGinn actually uses the word 'control' in that context at one point in the paper. But he moves beyond the boundaries implied in that idea in the last few fascinating paragraphs of the paper when he refers to the subconscious mind as the source of much of what we can think without our being able (yet) to understand how.

@Pharoah, I'm trying to understand what's involved in the program you're advocating that is not already practiced in various forms of psychotherapy, e.g., cognitive-behavioral therapy, family of origin therapy, and more classic forms of deep therapy (Jungian, Adlerian, etc.). Can you clarify the differences in what you're prop0sing?

Also, is there a paper by Panksepp that presents his ideas concerning psychotherapy? I haven't listened to the interview you and Steve refer to because I prefer to get my information from written texts rather than taped interviews and lectures. But if these ideas of Panksepp are available only in the taped interview I'll listen to it.




My impression is that what you're talking about is effecting a change in how dysfunctional and socially destructive ideations are modified in psychotherapy and psychoactive drug therapies the purpose of which change is to minimize suffering both for individuals and communities in which they exist. Steve asked above: "How would the associative/feeling potency be adjusted? Medication? Talk therapy or do you mean some kind of direct alteration of the neural substrate?" I'm also interested in the latter question. Are you proposing some kind of physical interventions in the neurological processes of persons afflicted with what we would likely agree to call self-destructive and socially destructive psychological conditions? If so, does that imply that you theorize only neurological sources for psychological maladjustment? It's always seemed to me that most psychological maladjustment arises in childhood out of inadequate (even destructive) parenting or later in life from existential conflicts arising from conflicts in values between an individual and his/her social mileau, that in general sickness in individuals is produced by the sickness of their societies and that the level at which intervention most needs to be undertaken is the social, economic, ideological level of values dominant in sick societies. The essential question is whether 'adjustment' of individuals to sets of negative, destructive values dominant in their society is necessarily a 'good thing' even if it produces 'stability'. What do you mean by 'stability'?

I didn't realise that my comments where going to lead to so many questions...
The first thing to say, is that I do think that HCT must have an impact on therapies.
The second thing is that I am ignorant. I just know that HCT must be relevant.
Thirdly, I made a mistake, not "stabilising phenomenal feelings" but 'stabilising understandings regarding the qualitative relevance of realtime experiences', where "understandings" are not part of an individual's awareness but a relation between environmental causal associations and the feelings they seem to generate. The methods of doing this are varied... eg DBS, drugs, therapies (yes as already exist)
Therapy: I would imagine a therapist to say, ooh, aah, that works because of this, and I think I could try that because it should work because of the other.... etc. Basically, a grounding in causes improves the means for targetting treatments. HCT makes for a good evaluative tool.
With regard to drugs: Panksepp has said, that ALL drug treatments for mental problems to date have been discovered by accident, none of them relying on science. And of course there is direct brain stimulation, why and how it should work and be applied - of course, one could always explore the options by trial and error, but HCT might be an improvement on this.
Conflict negotiation: Again conflict negotiation does exist, and there are methods applied to create resolution. HCT provides a theoretical framework as to what methods would work and why (in terms of conceptual stability, instability, restability and their relation to more primitive affectations on the individual. e.g. fear of change or of other cultures etc etc... big subject)

 

[Constance]

I didn't realise that my comments where going to lead to so many questions...
The first thing to say, is that I do think that HCT must have an impact on therapies.
The second thing is that I am ignorant. I just know that HCT must be relevant.
Thirdly, I made a mistake, not "stabilising phenomenal feelings" but 'stabilising understandings regarding the qualitative relevance of realtime experiences', where "understandings" are not part of an individual's awareness but a relation between environmental causal associations and the feelings they seem to generate. The methods of doing this are varied... eg DBS, drugs, therapies (yes as already exist)

Excellently clear. I now understand where you are coming from and where you are going in this application of HCT.

Therapy: I would imagine a therapist to say, ooh, aah, that works because of this, and I think I could try that because it should work because of the other.... etc. Basically, a grounding in causes improves the means for targetting treatments. HCT makes for a good evaluative tool.

Yes, it could be a great help in psychology, individual and social, as well as in CS by developing our insights into the emotional mind/brain. I think our understanding of language itself [as both cause and effect of varieties of human behavior and thinking] might also be improved as a result of these applications of HCT.

With regard to drugs: Panksepp has said, that ALL drug treatments for mental problems to date have been discovered by accident, none of them relying on science. And of course there is direct brain stimulation, why and how it should work and be applied - of course, one could always explore the options by trial and error, but HCT might be an improvement on this.

If so, it would be a great benefit.

Conflict negotiation: Again conflict negotiation does exist, and there are methods applied to create resolution. HCT provides a theoretical framework as to what methods would work and why (in terms of conceptual stability, instability, restability and their relation to more primitive affectations on the individual. e.g. fear of change or of other cultures etc etc... big subject

If so, this would constitute a very significant theoretical accomplishment on your part, Pharoah. I gather that you and Panksepp are already beginning to test some possible applications of HCT. If you are discussing this in more detail in the new google forum you've set up, I'd like to join it. In that case would you message me the link? Thanks.


I've been doing some research on the 'universal grammar' question as worked on by linguists and philosophers of mind. I think that if we are going to understand consciousness and mind in humans we need to understand the extent to which human languages (in their variety) influence, even shape, perception and emotion supplementary to the more foundational causes and influences originating in human biology and environmental circumstances. There is a good selection of papers concerning the question of universality in language at this phil papers link:

http://philpapers.org/s/cHOMSKY, UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR

This is a good place to start:

Nicholas Evans & Stephen C. Levinson (2009). The Myth of Language Universals: Language Diversity and its Importance for Cognitive Science.
Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32 (5):429-448 (2009)
Abstract
Talk of linguistic universals has given cognitive scientists the impression that languages are all built to a common pattern. In fact, there are vanishingly few universals of language in the direct sense that all languages exhibit them. Instead, diversity can be found at almost every level of linguistic organization. This fundamentally changes the object of enquiry from a cognitive science perspective. This target article summarizes decades of cross-linguistic work by typologists and descriptive linguists, showing just how few and unprofound the universal characteristics of language are, once we honestly confront the diversity offered to us by the world's 6,000 to 8,000 languages. After surveying the various uses of we illustrate the ways languages vary radically in sound, meaning, and syntactic organization, and then we examine in more detail the core grammatical machinery of recursion, constituency, and grammatical relations. Although there are significant recurrent patterns in organization, these are better explained as stable engineering solutions satisfying multiple design constraints, reflecting both cultural-historical factors and the constraints of human cognition.

Nicholas Evans & Stephen C. Levinson, The myth of language universals: Language diversity and its importance for cognitive science - PhilPapers

 

[Constance]

They're off-putting to people like us who believe that we can understand the whole structure of reality --or find it in a system or construct deep in evolving nature.

Colin McGinn
New Statesman | All machine and no ghost?

I'm so glad you found and linked this article by McGinn. That man is wonderfully lucid, saying much the same thing as the new French 'realists' {known here as 'anarchists'}. Their writing is dense and challenging -- as a result of their elaborate recent philosophical context in poststructuralism and deconstruction as well as in the phenomenological critique of classical metaphysics -- but I find it personally liberating in the way it relocates my own thinking to the actual situation in which I exist: as part of the human flash in the pan in a world/cosmos/evolutionary process that exceeds our ability to comprehend it, much less dispose of it in categories. It doesn't stop there, however, but continues thinking since that is part of our condition, that which we cannot not do. I'm just going to repeat here key extracts you provided from this recent article by McGinn, underscoring the statements with which I most agree. The whole article should of course be read. I read it once last night and will do so again.

I am not against the [mysterian] label, understood correctly, but like all labels it suggests an overly simple view of a complex position. At first the view was regarded as eccentric and vaguely disreputable but now it is a standard option - though one with very few adherents. Its primary attraction lies in the lack of appeal of all the other options, to which supporters of those options are curiously oblivious. People sometimes ask me if I am still a mysterian, as if perhaps the growth of neuroscience has given me pause; they fail to grasp the depth of mystery I sense in the problem. The more we know of the brain, the less it looks like a device for creating consciousness: it's just a big collection of biological cells and a blur of electrical activity - all machine and no ghost.

... and now it gets interesting:

Latterly, I have come to think that mystery is quite pervasive, even in the hardest of sciences. Physics is a hotbed of mystery: space, time, matter and motion - none of it is free of mysterious elements. The puzzles of quantum theory are just a symptom of this widespread lack of understanding (I discuss this in my latest book, Basic Structures of Reality).

The human intellect grasps the natural world obliquely and glancingly, using mathematics to construct abstract representations of concrete phenomena, but what the ultimate nature of things really is remains obscure and hidden.

How everything fits together is particularly elusive, perhaps reflecting the disparate cognitive faculties we bring to bear on the world (the senses, introspection, mathematical description). We are far from obtaining a unified theory of all being and there is no guarantee that such a theory is accessible by finite human intelligence.
[/QUOTE]

 

[Pharoah]

Excellently clear. I now understand where you are coming from and where you are going in this application of HCT.



Yes, it could be a great help in psychology, individual and social, as well as in CS by developing our insights into the emotional mind/brain. I think our understanding of language itself [as both cause and effect of varieties of human behavior and thinking] might also be improved as a result of these applications of HCT.



If so, it would be a great benefit.



If so, this would constitute a very significant theoretical accomplishment on your part, Pharoah. I gather that you and Panksepp are already beginning to test these applications of HCT. If you are discussing this in more detail in the new google forum you've set up, I'd like to join it. In that case would you message me the link? Thanks.


I've been doing some research on the 'universal grammar' question as worked on by linguists and philosophers of mind. I think that if we are going to understand consciousness and mind in humans we need to understand the extent to which human languages (in their variety) influence, even shape, perception and emotion supplementary to the more foundational causes and influences originating in human biology and environmental circumstances. There is a good selection of papers concerning the question of universality in language at this phil papers link:

http://philpapers.org/s/cHOMSKY, UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR

This is a good place to start:

Nicholas Evans & Stephen C. Levinson (2009). The Myth of Language Universals: Language Diversity and its Importance for Cognitive Science.
Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32 (5):429-448 (2009)
Abstract
Talk of linguistic universals has given cognitive scientists the impression that languages are all built to a common pattern. In fact, there are vanishingly few universals of language in the direct sense that all languages exhibit them. Instead, diversity can be found at almost every level of linguistic organization. This fundamentally changes the object of enquiry from a cognitive science perspective. This target article summarizes decades of cross-linguistic work by typologists and descriptive linguists, showing just how few and unprofound the universal characteristics of language are, once we honestly confront the diversity offered to us by the world's 6,000 to 8,000 languages. After surveying the various uses of we illustrate the ways languages vary radically in sound, meaning, and syntactic organization, and then we examine in more detail the core grammatical machinery of recursion, constituency, and grammatical relations. Although there are significant recurrent patterns in organization, these are better explained as stable engineering solutions satisfying multiple design constraints, reflecting both cultural-historical factors and the constraints of human cognition.

Nicholas Evans & Stephen C. Levinson, The myth of language universals: Language diversity and its importance for cognitive science - PhilPapers

Why does language happen?
If, an animal has understandings in terms of a relationship between the qualitatively felt phenomenon of its experience and the perceptual cues that are recognised as their cause, it will express evocations of those qualitative feelings in response to those perceptual interactions. It will be compelled to communicate feelings both through gesture and calls.
Additionally, a human has conceptual realisations about the qualitative phenomena of its experiences. Concepts are relational principles whose revelatory content with regard the individual's interpretation of its 'self' (self concept) - both within its phenomenal landscape and as the object of a phenomenal landscape - compels the individual to communicate about those relational principles. The evolving conceptual network necessitates the communication of conceptual realisations. Grammar is the universal facilitator for the communication of conceptual realisations.
Yes, when apes first wanted to communicate concepts, their brain had not evolved language zones, or the musculature in the mouth, lips and tongue. But the survival benefits of communicating conceptual realisations ensured that the brain and musculatures did then evolve very rapidly(!) to maximise the potential benefits of communicating concepts.
Thus, the anatomical changes were a response to changes in mentality... not what Chomsky implies with his UG; that some structure in the brain was the initial impetus giving rise to UG and its mental/survival advantages - UG being something that switches on in infancy.
Rather, HCT explains that the infant human, is compelled - following its emerging conceptual realisations - to communicate about those basic conceptual notions. The principle characteristic of those early conceptual representations is the notion of an Object, in active relation to an experiencing Subject. This mental construct through conceptual interpretation is what compels language evolution in infancy.
That is about as much as I know about language - as HCT tells me.

 

[smcder]

Anyone familiar with this site?

DMOZ - the Open Directory Project
DMOZ - Society: Philosophy

 

[Constance]

Apropos of what we don't know, here's an interesting experience published by Michael Shermer, posted by boomerang in another Paracast forum today.

Anomalous Events That Can Shake One’s Skepticism to the Core
I just witnessed an event so mysterious that it shook my skepticism

Sep 16, 2014 |By Michael Shermer

Credit: Izhar Cohen

Often I am asked if I have ever encountered something that I could not explain. What my interlocutors have in mind are not bewildering enigmas such as consciousness or U.S. foreign policy but anomalous and mystifying events that suggest the existence of the paranormal or supernatural. My answer is: yes, now I have.

The event took place on June 25, 2014. On that day I married Jennifer Graf, from Köln, Germany. She had been raised by her mom; her grandfather, Walter, was the closest father figure she had growing up, but he died when she was 16. In shipping her belongings to my home before the wedding, most of the boxes were damaged and several precious heirlooms lost, including her grandfather's binoculars. His 1978 Philips 070 transistor radio arrived safely, so I set out to bring it back to life after decades of muteness. I put in new batteries and opened it up to see if there were any loose connections to solder. I even tried “percussive maintenance,” said to work on such devices—smacking it sharply against a hard surface. Silence. We gave up and put it at the back of a desk drawer in our bedroom.

Three months later, after affixing the necessary signatures to our marriage license at the Beverly Hills courthouse, we returned home, and in the presence of my family said our vows and exchanged rings. Being 9,000 kilometers from family, friends and home, Jennifer was feeling amiss and lonely. She wished her grandfather were there to give her away. She whispered that she wanted to say something to me alone, so we excused ourselves to the back of the house where we could hear music playing in the bedroom. We don't have a music system there, so we searched for laptops and iPhones and even opened the back door to check if the neighbors were playing music. We followed the sound to the printer on the desk, wondering—absurdly—if this combined printer/scanner/fax machine also included a radio. Nope.

At that moment Jennifer shot me a look I haven't seen since the supernatural thriller The Exorcist startled audiences. “That can't be what I think it is, can it?” she said. She opened the desk drawer and pulled out her grandfather's transistor radio, out of which a romantic love song wafted. We sat in stunned silence for minutes. “My grandfather is here with us,” Jennifer said, tearfully. “I'm not alone.”

Shortly thereafter we returned to our guests with the radio playing as I recounted the backstory. My daughter, Devin, who came out of her bedroom just before the ceremony began, added, “I heard the music coming from your room just as you were about to start.” The odd thing is that we were there getting ready just minutes before that time, sans music.

Later that night we fell asleep to the sound of classical music emanating from Walter's radio. Fittingly, it stopped working the next day and has remained silent ever since.

What does this mean? Had it happened to someone else I might suggest a chance electrical anomaly and the law of large numbers as an explanation—with billions of people having billions of experiences every day, there's bound to be a handful of extremely unlikely events that stand out in their timing and meaning. In any case, such anecdotes do not constitute scientific evidence that the dead survive or that they can communicate with us via electronic equipment.

Jennifer is as skeptical as I am when it comes to paranormal and supernatural phenomena. Yet the eerie conjunction of these deeply evocative events gave her the distinct feeling that her grandfather was there and that the music was his gift of approval. I have to admit, it rocked me back on my heels and shook my skepticism to its core as well. I savored the experience more than the explanation.

The emotional interpretations of such anomalous events grant them significance regardless of their causal account. And if we are to take seriously the scientific credo to keep an open mind and remain agnostic when the evidence is indecisive or the riddle unsolved, we should not shut the doors of perception when they may be opened to us to marvel in the mysterious.

This article was originally published with the title "Infrequencies."

 

[Constance]

ps, I always find it most satisfying when evidence of 'the paranormal' comes to us through machines, mechanical objects. And from someone whose mind was formerly blocked to considering such evidence.

 

[Constance]

Why does language happen?
If, an animal has understandings in terms of a relationship between the qualitatively felt phenomenon of its experience and the perceptual cues that are recognised as their cause, it will express evocations of those qualitative feelings in response to those perceptual interactions. It will be compelled to communicate feelings both through gesture and calls.
Additionally, a human has conceptual realisations about the qualitative phenomena of its experiences. Concepts are relational principles whose revelatory content with regard the individual's interpretation of its 'self' (self concept) - both within its phenomenal landscape and as the object of a phenomenal landscape - compels the individual to communicate about those relational principles. The evolving conceptual network necessitates the communication of conceptual realisations. Grammar is the universal facilitator for the communication of conceptual realisations.
Yes, when apes first wanted to communicate concepts, their brain had not evolved language zones, or the musculature in the mouth, lips and tongue. But the survival benefits of communicating conceptual realisations ensured that the brain and musculatures did then evolve very rapidly(!) to maximise the potential benefits of communicating concepts.
Thus, the anatomical changes were a response to changes in mentality... not what Chomsky implies with his UG; that some structure in the brain was the initial impetus giving rise to UG and its mental/survival advantages - UG being something that switches on in infancy.
Rather, HCT explains that the infant human, is compelled - following its emerging conceptual realisations - to communicate about those basic conceptual notions. The principle characteristic of those early conceptual representations is the notion of an Object, in active relation to an experiencing Subject. This mental construct through conceptual interpretation is what compels language evolution in infancy.
That is about as much as I know about language - as HCT tells me.

". . .The evolving conceptual network necessitates the communication of conceptual realisations. Grammar is the universal facilitator for the communication of conceptual realisations.
Yes, when apes first wanted to communicate concepts, their brain had not evolved language zones, or the musculature in the mouth, lips and tongue. But the survival benefits of communicating conceptual realisations ensured that the brain and musculatures did then evolve very rapidly(!) to maximise the potential benefits of communicating concepts.
Thus, the anatomical changes were a response to changes in mentality... not what Chomsky implies with his UG; that some structure in the brain was the initial impetus giving rise to UG and its mental/survival advantages - UG being something that switches on in infancy.
Rather, HCT explains that the infant human, is compelled - following its emerging conceptual realisations - to communicate about those basic conceptual notions. The principle characteristic of those early conceptual representations is the notion of an Object, in active relation to an experiencing Subject. This mental construct through conceptual interpretation is what compels language evolution in infancy.

Well thought out and beautifully expressed. I'm seeing much more in your recent posts about HCT than I was able to see before. If I understand you correctly, the emergence of consciousness and mind needs to be understood as more than a one-sided entirely physical process, rather as an interactive process that takes root once affectivity [the capacity of being affected] arises in organisms, establishing the beginnings of a subjective, experiential pole through which the objective pole of reality is sensed and responded to. It's a process in which life increasingly bootstraps itself toward the capability of generating meaning in the objectivity of the world. Or so it seems to me.

 

[Soupie]

If I understand you correctly, the emergence of consciousness and mind needs to be understood as more than a one-sided entirely physical process, rather as an interactive process that takes root once affectivity [the capacity of being affected] arises in organisms, establishing the beginnings of a subjective, experiential pole through which the objective pole of reality is sensed and responded to. It's a process in which life increasingly bootstraps itself toward the capability of generating meaning in the objectivity of the world. Or so it seems to me.

I can't speak for Pharoah, of course, but yes, that is my understanding of HCT. And it is my understanding of Panksepp for that matter. Additionally, it is what I have been arguing for as well (which explains my affinity for HCT and Affective Neuroscience).

Speaking of which, I've finally had an opportunity to read some of Panksepp's work.

(1) Affective neuroscience of the emotional BrainMind: evolutionary perspectives and implications for understanding depression (<-- link)

(2) The Philosophical Implications of Affective Neuroscience (<-- link)

Panksepp's research and writing has captured much of the discussion in this thread related to concepts and questions that I have raised. Since @Constance seems to have an affinity for Panksepp, I thought I would post a section from his paper that appears to touch on concepts that we've debated here in this thread. His writing will be more clarifying than mine.

From the Philosophical Implications" paper:

Central to the affective neuroscientific epistemic approach is the recognition that the vertebrate BrainMind is an evolved organ, the only one in the body where evolutionary progressions remain engraved at neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and functional levels.

That both Life and consciousness have evolved, I think we've agreed on. But that seems to be where the agreements ceased.

Thus, in order to understand the whole MindBrain, one has to understand the evolutionary stratifications within the central nervous system, and to recognize how functions that emerged first i) retain a substantial degree of primacy in spontaneous behaviours, ii) govern the mechanisms of learning (e.g. the unconditioned stimuli and responses behaviourists use to control animal learning are typically affective in nature), as well as iii) motivating higher (tertiary-process)
reflective decision-making processes — cognitive choices that integrate affective states within the informational complexities of the world. Between the primary ‘affective-regulatory’ and tertiary ‘affective-cognitive’ processes — the first experienced directly [ the mind is green - Soupie ] and the other within the guiding ‘light’of reflective awareness—there is a vast territory of automatized learning processes: habituation, sensitization, classical conditioning, operant conditioning, etc.—automatic brain processes that are deeply unconscious. They arise from unexperienced and unreflective mechanical operations of the brain, that help mould instinctual emotional behaviours, imbued with primal affective values, permitting organisms to fit into environments more effectively, hand-in-glove, so to speak. ...

These primary to tertiary gradients of mental development ultimately yield nested-hierarchies of BrainMind relationships (Figure 1), where the lower functions are re-represented within higher functions, providing multiple avenues of bottom-up and top-down relations — circular/two-way causal loops — that work as a coherent unit (for discussion, see Northoff et al., 2011). For a neuroscientific understanding of mind, it is important to focus on the stratification of mental layers to better understand where to situate the various sciences of the MindBrain. ...

In other words, due to the evolution of the brain, the organ is stratified; as a result, the mind is stratified as well.

Panksepp identifies three layers of mental stratification: 1) Tertiary Cognitive, 2) Secondary Learning & Memory, and 3) Primary Emotional-Affective Processing Systems

(Furthermore, Panksepp has identified the tertiary cognitive layer of mind (what I consider the metacognitive layer) as the layer in which free will might emerge, an idea that I have expressed.)

Most human psychological research, including cognitive and social sciences, typically focuses on the highest levels, commonly with little recognition of the lower levels. ...

Some of the confusion that arises in this thread, in my opinion, has been a failure to recognize these layers of mind. My focus in this thread had mostly been on -- what I consider -- the primary layers of mind, while some of us have wanted to center the discussion of consciousness on tertiary layers of mind.

Only cross-species affective neuroscience explicitly acknowledges primal affective states in other animals, and seeks to understand the subcortical loci of control for the affective BrainMind. Its claims are based on abundant evidence (vide infra) that many of these brain functions (i.e. the primal emotional, motivational, and sensory affects) are experienced in valuative (valenced) ways — yielding a raw, unreflective affective consciousness (Panksepp, 2007). In this view, all mammals, including humans, share sets of primal affective experiences—anoetic tools for existence—that unconditionally guide living. This level of experience should not be called ‘awareness’ — for that would require noetic (knowing) and autonoetic (self-knowing) forms of consciousness (see Tulving, 2004; 2005; Vandekerckhove and Panksepp, 2009). Subcortical emotional networks constitute raw ‘affective experience’ — perhaps the sine qua non foundation for all higher forms of consciousness.

This concept reflects my view that phenomenal experiences can and do exist in the absence of a meta-awareness and/or a sense of self.

A major aim of cross-species affective neuroscience is to parse primary-process consciousness into its component networks and functions, with a special focus on emotional feelings, especially since they are of such great importance for understanding and treating psychiatric disorders (Panksepp, 2004; 2006), and potentially those social disorders that get writ large in so many individual lives and cultural fabrics.We might call them the universal ‘borderline personality disorders’.

This aspect of Panksepp's work may appeal to @Constance and @smcder as they have discussed mental disorders throughout this discussion.

 

[smcder]

Speculative Realism Pathfinder

A guide to the emerging school of Speculative Realism:

"I have linked most of the items listed in the Fundamental Texts section to their Google Books entry in an attempt to make this guide useful to all; Google Books lists the prices of various book retailers and has a "Find in a Library" link which can be used to find a freely-available copy near you."

 

[smcder]

A friend of mine just announced he is going to succumb to the great American novel impulse ... he's got a PhD in maths so should be interesting ... I've long thought about the philosophical novel and something as sprawling as the fish tale in Moby Dick.

Came across this genre-buster while looking at speculative realism.



"At once a horror fiction, a work of speculative theology, an atlas of demonology, a political samizdat and a philosophic grimoire, CYCLONOPEDIA is work of theory-fiction on the Middle East, where horror is restlessly heaped upon horror. Reza Negarestani bridges the appalling vistas of contemporary world politics and the War on Terror with the archaeologies of the Middle East and the natural history of the Earth itself. CYCLONOPEDIA is a middle-eastern Odyssey, populated by archeologists, jihadis, oil smugglers, Delta Force officers, heresiarchs, corpses of ancient gods and other puppets. The journey to the Underworld begins with petroleum basins and the rotting Sun, continuing along the tentacled pipelines of oil, and at last unfolding in the desert, where monotheism meets the Earth’s tarry dreams of insurrection against the Sun."

 

[smcder]

I can't speak for Pharoah, of course, but yes, that is my understanding of HCT. And it is my understanding of Panksepp for that matter. Additionally, it is what I have been arguing for as well (which explains my affinity for HCT and Affective Neuroscience).

Speaking of which, I've finally had an opportunity to read some of Panksepp's work.

(1) Affective neuroscience of the emotional BrainMind: evolutionary perspectives and implications for understanding depression (<-- link)

(2) The Philosophical Implications of Affective Neuroscience (<-- link)

Panksepp's research and writing has captured much of the discussion in this thread related to concepts and questions that I have raised. Since @Constance seems to have an affinity for Panksepp, I thought I would post a section from his paper that appears to touch on concepts that we've debated here in this thread. His writing will be more clarifying than mine.

From the Philosophical Implications" paper:


That both Life and consciousness have evolved, I think we've agreed on. But that seems to be where the agreements ceased.


In other words, due to the evolution of the brain, the organ is stratified; as a result, the mind is stratified as well.

Panksepp identifies three layers of mental stratification: 1) Tertiary Cognitive, 2) Secondary Learning & Memory, and 3) Primary Emotional-Affective Processing Systems

(Furthermore, Panksepp has identified the tertiary cognitive layer of mind (what I consider the metacognitive layer) as the layer in which free will might emerge, an idea that I have expressed.)


Some of the confusion that arises in this thread, in my opinion, has been a failure to recognize these layers of mind. My focus in this thread had mostly been on -- what I consider -- the primary layers of mind, while some of us have wanted to center the discussion of consciousness on tertiary layers of mind.


This concept reflects my view that phenomenal experiences can and do exist in the absence of a meta-awareness and/or a sense of self.


This aspect of Panksepp's work may appeal to @Constance and @smcder as they have discussed mental disorders throughout this discussion.

You make some good points - before I invest time in a reply, I think it fair to ask if you are planning on rejoining this thread?

 

[smcder]

The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness was written by Philip Low and edited by Jaak Panksepp, Diana Reiss, David Edelman, Bruno Van Swinderen, Philip Low and Christof Koch. The Declaration was
publicly proclaimed in Cambridge, UK, on July 7, 2012, at the Francis Crick

There's an interview with Panksepp on the implications of this for animal experimentation ... And I believe he said in the Shrinkrap interview that he no longer lobotomizes rats.

The author of the article below is a professor at the college I attended.

Animals Have Consciousness - Jesus Jazz and Buddhism

 

[Pharoah]

Constance: I have sent the invite info for joining the MM group in your private inbox...

 

[Constance]

Speculative Realism Pathfinder

A guide to the emerging school of Speculative Realism:

"I have linked most of the items listed in the Fundamental Texts section to their Google Books entry in an attempt to make this guide useful to all; Google Books lists the prices of various book retailers and has a "Find in a Library" link which can be used to find a freely-available copy near you."

What an excellent resource, Steve. Kudos for finding it. This paragraph is particularly helpful as a succinct overview of the core ideas expessed by this new French movement:

"E. Terms
Speculative Realism is generally considered “a useful umbrella term, chosen precisely because it was vague enough to encompass a variety of fundamentally heterogeneous philosophical research programmes.” (Brassier, 2009) These philosophies, while at once radically different from one another, could be said to find some coherence in their opposition to correlationist philosophies; to quote Ray Brassier again, “the only thing that unites us is antipathy to what Quentin Meillassoux calls ‘correlationism’—the doctrine, especially prevalent among ‘Continental’ philosophers, that humans and world cannot be conceived in isolation from one other—a ‘correlationist’ is any philosopher who insists that the human-world correlate is philosophy’s sole legitimate concern” (2009). An analogy could be drawn to the term “postmodernism,” which is used to label a very diverse set of theories which nonetheless could be said to be united in their opposition to the modernist project of enlightenment."

I think that Quentin Meillassoux is the one I need to read next since he appears to be the philosopher in this group who first reacts against phenomenological philosophy. I'm ready to give up the idea that "the human-world correlate is philosophy’s sole legitimate concern" {and I'm not sure I ever subconsciously subscribed to that idea}, but I want to find out the particulars of his critique of Merleau-Ponty re this basic premise. In my reading of MP, I think this claim must be difficult to support given MP's posthumously published work, especially that published under the title Nature and the insight into the chiasmic relation of subjectivity and objectivity in the previous book The Visible and the Invisible and the key paper "Eye and Mind."

 

[Constance]

Constance: I have sent the invite info for joining the MM group in your private inbox...

Thanks Pharoah.

 

[Constance]

The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness was written by Philip Low and edited by Jaak Panksepp, Diana Reiss, David Edelman, Bruno Van Swinderen, Philip Low and Christof Koch. The Declaration was
publicly proclaimed in Cambridge, UK, on July 7, 2012, at the Francis Crick

There's an interview with Panksepp on the implications of this for animal experimentation ... And I believe he said in the Shrinkrap interview that he no longer lobotomizes rats.

The author of the article below is a professor at the college I attended.

Animals Have Consciousness - Jesus Jazz and Buddhism

Steve, do you have links to the two sources I've highlighted in blue? Or will I find them once I get over to the google forum?

 

[smcder]

Which ones? A little color blind, am I.

 

[smcder]

Steve, do you have links to the two sources I've highlighted in blue? Or will I find them once I get over to the google forum?

Is it the podcast interview?

 

[Constance]

In other words, due to the evolution of the brain, the organ is stratified; as a result, the mind is stratified as well.

I don't think the mind itself is 'stratified', unless you're referring to traditional concepts of the hierarchical relationship between consciousness and the 'subconscious' (including the personal biographical subconscious, the deeply, bodily, unconscious, and the collective 'unconscious' which would better be referred to, I think, as the collective subconscious). The "subconscious mind" is now becoming a viable concept in several lines of brain/mind research as a result of recognitions of the degree to which we often operate on the basis of the 'automatic pilot' it provides.

Moreover, when we come to recognize the sources of 'meaning' expressed by our species (beginning in artistic expression and expanding in other forms and directions of expressiveness) we are confronted with works of the 'mind' that involve both prereflective consciousness and reflective consciousness. It seems to be the case, as parapsychologists and psychical researchers have long recognized, that the mind works with and through subconscious ideation and subconsciously received information as well as active waking consciousness. In other words, there are subconscious inflows into the conscious mind through permeable 'boundaries'. Rather than adopting the iceberg metaphor to denote the conscious mind's distinction (separation) at the water line from the 90 percent of human protomentality situated beneath and beyond conscious thought/mentation, it might be more valid to think of the conscious mind and the subconscious mind as interrelated in a more fluid environment {say, for example, an underground spring issuing into a body of water, in which what is sensed and inchoately 'known' in the underground water remains intermingled with what becomes visible and otherwise sensible and thinkable in the pool of water that forms at the surface (which is continually charged by what continues to flow upward from the spring's source deep in the earth in cases where the spring issues not just in a local body of water but one which flows into a river eventually issuing in a sea).

It's just a metaphor but it might be an accurate one to represent the holism of consciousness realized at and through various levels of existence in its issuing and evolution from its ultimate grounding conditions in physical nature. To carry the metaphor a little further, the water issuing from deep underground springs -- such as the one located 20 miles from where I live, claimed to be the deepest underground spring on the planet, is extraordinarily clear by the time it pools at the surface and begins its subsequent issuance in a river that empties into the Gulf of Mexico -- incredibly clear except after considerable storms in the area during which tannin from tree roots on and beneath the banks of the pool leaks into the water and stains it the color of strong tea. I think we are intrinsically 'one' with the natural world in which, from which, we have evolved, despite the development of consciousness and mind by which we are able to stand a degree or two apart from 'what-is' and express the 'difference' brought about by our perspective -- which is always colored by the natural (and later the cultural) world in which we exist.