Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 3

[smcder]

@Pharoah

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Dreyfus is very good on Heidegger and Sartre worth bookmarking for a rainy day.

 

[smcder]

@Soupie ...

I'll start with the broken record ;-)

1. How do we fit "the evidence" into this scheme or do we dismiss or discredit it or reinterpret it?

2. I'll have to refresh but what bugs me right now is that subjectivity isn't information ... see the article I posted above on the problem of God (from this I took it that God has a very different kind of "mind" than we do!) otherwise I could know what it's like to be you.

Secondly is that information sounds suspiciously like arrangements of matter which leaves us needing the other aspect only for the pesky leftover matter of subjectivity ... but how does that plug into matter ... via information which is instantiated physically and communicated energetically?

For that matter what is energy? Are all these things "stem cells" that interconvert to make form of emptiness (Mu)?

What rules allow self-replicating structures in the first place? (Or the last place ... ) are the rules information? It's one thing to have something instead of nothing but we have something that can give rise to self replicating, intelligent and self-aware systems ... at least.

 

[Soupie]

Which models account for synesthesia?

Rare but Real: People Who Feel, Taste and Hear Color

...Long dismissed as a product of overactive imaginations or a sign of mental illness, synesthesia has grudgingly come to be accepted by scientists in recent years as an actual phenomenon with a real neurological basis. Some researchers now believe it may yield valuable clues to how the brain is organized and how perception works.

"The study of synesthesia [has] encouraged people to rethink historical ideas that synesthesia was abnormal and an aberration," says Amy Ione, director of the Diatrope Institute, a California-based group interested in the arts and sciences.

The cause remains a mystery, however.

According to one idea, irregular sprouting of new neural connections within the brain leads to a breakdown of the boundaries that normally exist between the senses. In this view, synesthesia is the collective chatter of sensory neighbors once confined to isolation.

Another theory, based on research conducted by Daphne Maurer and Catherine Mondloch at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, suggests all infants may begin life as synesthetes. In this way of thinking, animals and humans are born with immature brains that are highly malleable. Connections between different sensory parts of the brain exists that later become pruned or blocked as an organism matures, Mondloch explained.

Maurer and Mondloch hypothesize that if these connections between the senses are functional, as some experiments suggest, then infants should experience the world in a way that is similar to synesthetic adults.

In a variation of this theory, babies don't have five distinct senses but rather one all-encompassing sense that responds to the total amount of incoming stimulation. So when a baby hears her mother's voice, she is also seeing it and smelling it. ...

According to another theory that does not rely on extra connections, synesthesia arises when normally covert channels of communications between the senses are exposed to the light of consciousness.

All of us are able to perceive the world as a unified whole because there is a complex interaction between the senses in the brain, the thinking goes. Ordinarily, these interconnections are not explicitly experienced, but in the brains of synesthetes, "those connections are 'unmasked' and can enter conscious awareness," said Megan Steven, a neuroscientist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Because this unmasking theory relies on neural connections everyone has, it may explain why certain drugs, like LSD or mescaline, can induce synesthesia in some individuals. ...

Smilek and colleagues have identified two groups of synesthetes among those who associate letters and numbers with colors, he explained in a telephone interview. For individuals in one group, which Smilek calls "projector" synesthetes, the synesthetic color can fill the printed letter or it can appear directly in front of their eyes, as if projected onto an invisible screen. In contrast, "associate" synesthetes see the colors in their "mind's eye" rather than outside their bodies. ...​

 

[smcder]

@Soupie

It's a gut feeling too - something I'll try to pin down but a feel that this is just shifting things around a bit and renaming them - but it's not just the gut it's the philosophical fingers ... run them over the text and see if it doesn't feel the same? All these ideas seem to be kluges of the same pieces. But I'm not sure we have all the pieces. Did we leave a card on the table?

I think Chalmers fails on imagination - by allowing what he sees as the smallest exception in, in order to get subjectivity "explained" - that's consonant with his scrutability project.

But subjectivity may be the bigger thing with matter, energy, information, time and space all "nothing more than" a point of view.

 

[Constance]

Well... just between you and me smcder shhh! aren't they saying what I said: "the problem of phenomenal consciousness is not the same as the problem of my phenomenal consciousness" that we approach phenomenology from our perspective and when we take that all away from ourselves we end up with being-in-itself

?? When we take all what away from ourselves?

 

[Constance]

Which models account for synesthesia?

Rare but Real: People Who Feel, Taste and Hear Color

...Long dismissed as a product of overactive imaginations or a sign of mental illness, synesthesia has grudgingly come to be accepted by scientists in recent years as an actual phenomenon with a real neurological basis. Some researchers now believe it may yield valuable clues to how the brain is organized and how perception works.

"The study of synesthesia [has] encouraged people to rethink historical ideas that synesthesia was abnormal and an aberration," says Amy Ione, director of the Diatrope Institute, a California-based group interested in the arts and sciences.

The cause remains a mystery, however.

According to one idea, irregular sprouting of new neural connections within the brain leads to a breakdown of the boundaries that normally exist between the senses. In this view, synesthesia is the collective chatter of sensory neighbors once confined to isolation.

Another theory, based on research conducted by Daphne Maurer and Catherine Mondloch at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, suggests all infants may begin life as synesthetes. In this way of thinking, animals and humans are born with immature brains that are highly malleable. Connections between different sensory parts of the brain exists that later become pruned or blocked as an organism matures, Mondloch explained.

Maurer and Mondloch hypothesize that if these connections between the senses are functional, as some experiments suggest, then infants should experience the world in a way that is similar to synesthetic adults.

In a variation of this theory, babies don't have five distinct senses but rather one all-encompassing sense that responds to the total amount of incoming stimulation. So when a baby hears her mother's voice, she is also seeing it and smelling it. ...

According to another theory that does not rely on extra connections, synesthesia arises when normally covert channels of communications between the senses are exposed to the light of consciousness.

All of us are able to perceive the world as a unified whole because there is a complex interaction between the senses in the brain, the thinking goes. Ordinarily, these interconnections are not explicitly experienced, but in the brains of synesthetes, "those connections are 'unmasked' and can enter conscious awareness," said Megan Steven, a neuroscientist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Because this unmasking theory relies on neural connections everyone has, it may explain why certain drugs, like LSD or mescaline, can induce synesthesia in some individuals. ...

Smilek and colleagues have identified two groups of synesthetes among those who associate letters and numbers with colors, he explained in a telephone interview. For individuals in one group, which Smilek calls "projector" synesthetes, the synesthetic color can fill the printed letter or it can appear directly in front of their eyes, as if projected onto an invisible screen. In contrast, "associate" synesthetes see the colors in their "mind's eye" rather than outside their bodies. ...​

This is fascinating. I'm going to read the paper and then speculate on the possible explanations of synaesthesia.

 

[Randall]

Would it be too much of an imposition to suggest not using blue underline unless it's for a link?

 

[Constance]

Steve wrote:

"It's a gut feeling too - something I'll try to pin down but a feel that this is just shifting things around a bit and renaming them - but it's not just the gut it's the philosophical fingers ... run them over the text and see if it doesn't feel the same? All these ideas seem to be kluges of the same pieces. But I'm not sure we have all the pieces. Did we leave a card on the table?

I think Chalmers fails on imagination - by allowing what he sees as the smallest exception in, in order to get subjectivity "explained" - that's consonant with his scrutability project."

I agree. I think this is part of his largely analytical background/direction/approach in philosophy and of his long interest in computational science. It does indeed seem that we don't have "all the pieces," as you said above, and that Chalmers is not looking far enough beyond the dominant physicalist paradigm in seeking insight into the nature of consciousness.

"But subjectivity may be the bigger thing with matter, energy, information, time and space all "nothing more than" a point of view."

Subjectivity seems to be the proper designation of the hard problem. Chalmers reduced it to 'qualia', a term and concept wholly inadequate to characterize all that is given in experience. Chalmers doesn't seem to talk much about experience; he seems not to have read phenomenological philosophy in any depth. Has he ever written about Maturana and Varela's concept of autopoiesis or about Thompson and his group's work on neurophenomenology? I'll do some searching.

 

[Constance]

Would it be too much of an imposition to suggest not using blue underline unless it's for a link?

How does blue underlining present a problem? I've at times highlighted extracts in blue and then switched back to black for the underscoring. Would that help you?

 

[Constance]

More extracts from the synaesthesia paper Soupie linked:

"According to another theory that does not rely on extra connections, synesthesia arises when normally covert channels of communications between the senses are exposed to the light of consciousness.

All of us are able to perceive the world as a unified whole because there is a complex interaction between the senses in the brain, the thinking goes. Ordinarily, these interconnections are not explicitly experienced, but in the brains of synesthetes, "those connections are 'unmasked' and can enter conscious awareness," said Megan Steven, a neuroscientist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Because this unmasking theory relies on neural connections everyone has, it may explain why certain drugs, like LSD or mescaline, can induce synesthesia in some individuals."

The above seems reasonable. This following segment becomes more complicated:

"The synesthesia of those in the "perceptual" category is triggered by sensory stimuli like sights and sounds, whereas "conceptual" synesthetes respond to abstract concepts like time. One conceptual synesthete described the months of the year as a flat ribbon surrounding her body, each month a distinct color. February was pale green and oriented directly in front of her."

The conclusion of the far-too-brief article:

"Many of my colleagues claimed that synesthesia was 'made up' because it went against prevailing theory," Cytowic told LiveScience. "Today, everyone recognizes synesthesia as no mere curiosity but important to fundamental principles of how the brain is organized."

The usual presupposition: that neurological connections in the brain can account for synaesthesia as for everything else that occurs in human experience. The word 'mind' is passing out of usage in most scientific writing and across the board in pop science articles about science in which the dominant physicalist paradigm is trickled down to us mindlessly, unmindfully. .

 

[Randall]

How does blue underlining present a problem? I've at times highlighted extracts in blue and then switched back to black for the underscoring. Would that help you?

Blue underscore on the WWW is for hyperlinks. So silly me for trying to click on them only to find they do nothing. You could avoid confusing your readers by that if you use another method to emphasize the text you want to focus on. Traditionally that would be by using a highlight, but for some strange reason @Gene Steinberg doesn't have that feature enabled. Maybe we should ask him . Until they get that happening, I suggest using bold ( if you're so inclined ).

 

[Pharoah]

Ok. No joy with AJP.
This is a link to the paper
Knowledge Argument | New perspectives | Philosophy of Consciousness
It is password protected. The password is: Paracast
I have attached below the abstract a pdf of the paper and a pdf of the referee's comments and my response.
I would be very grateful for any critical or explanatory feedback.

 

[Constance]

Very sorry to hear this, Pharoah. It might, however, turn out to be advantageous since in rewriting the paper and thinking further about HCT (pursuing some suggestions we have made here) you will likely write a much better paper and develop HCT in ways that will forestall criticism at the point when you publish your book.

In searching for traces of Chalmer's responses to Varela, I came across this paper, which should clarify some of what I've been urging as a necessary direction forward for consciousness studies, POM, and information theories of consciousness and mind.


Towards a Neurophenomenology of Consciousness

In David Chalmers’ seminal paper “Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness,” Chalmers’ laid out his binary model of the hard and easy problems. The easy problems of consciousness are those which can be explained by computational or neural mechanisms, whereas the hard problem relates principally to experience and qualia. Reframed as a question, how can individuals have subjective mental experiences that arise from “soggy grey matter?” (McGinn). Moreover, why are these experiences different, and capable of producing a rich inner life? Chalmers showed that functional explanations simply failed to give a satisfactory account of phenomenal consciousness, and he moved to suggest that what was needed was an “extra ingredient” to bridge the explanatory gap in the science of the mind (Chalmers).

Responding to Chalmers’ non-reductive conclusion in 1996, the Chilean biologist, philosopher and neuroscientist Francisco Varela offered an alternative conception to the hard problem. Eschewing characteristic arguments associated with functionalism, reductionism, and mysterianism, Varela made the case for a first-person study of consciousness combined with cognitive scientific methods. Borrowing from the tradition of continental phenomenology, he maintained that consciousness is irreducible and “[l]ived experience is where we start from and where all must link back to, like a guiding thread” (Neurophenomenology 334). In other words, to arrive at any genuine knowledge of the world (and our place in it) presupposes a first-person view of phenomenality. Many philosophers of mind privilege the first-person view (Varela noted John Searle and Ray Jackendoff as examples), agreeing that consciousness is irreducible. However, they claim that such a position suffers from self-referential problems, and is therefore impossible to quantify or explain empirically. Varela attempted to move beyond this mere pessimistic surrender to the question. He proposed a first-person starting point, reinforced by a disciplined examination of experience, using both past and present methodologies. Ultimately, I feel that Varela’s neurophenomenology is an intellectually honest approach to the science of the mind. Cognitive science has so compartmentalized the brain that some philosophers are given to abstract analogy, comparing brains to robots or computers. These types of assertions are ontologically destitute, retaining little semblance of an originary, lived experience that, I believe, is necessary for understanding consciousness. Although the school of phenomenology has historically been neutral with regards to ontology, a co-determination of both external and phenomenological analysis offers a promising way ahead for studying consciousness.

Privileging a first-person view of consciousness invariably implies a phenomenological inspiration. Varela focused on the “anni mirabiles” for phenomenology: Edmund Husserl in the West, William James in the United States, and the Kyoto School in Japan (Neurophenomenology 335). Most fundamental to Varela’s project was Husserl. It was Husserl who inaugurated the method of phenomenological reduction, which consists of “bracketing” all our “folk or scientific opinions, beliefs, and theories about consciousness” (Gallagher 686). To this end, consciousness and the phenomenal field are stripped of any theoretical conclusions made by science or psychology. In other words, experience and qualia are returned to their essences for renewed study. Husserl advocated this return “to the things themselves,” precisely because lived experience is pretheoretical (Neurophenomenology 336). It would seem, then, that phenomenology is antithetical to the whole enterprise of science, since science seeks to understand reality. However, Husserl sought a firm grounding for epistemology (a necessary prerequisite for any scientific endeavor), which was to be without naïve allegiance to objectivism or scientism (Gallagher 686).

Enter Husserl’s concept of intentionality, borrowed from his preceptor, Franz Brentano. Husserl maintained that consciousness has an intentional character, meaning that one is always conscious of something. In other words, consciousness is object-related, which entails that experience is influenced by phenomena. However, an object can also be intended without it actually existing. For example, one can imagine a unicorn and relate to that object abstractly, rather than perceptually. Indeed, whether generated inwardly or outwardly, for Husserl, “[a]ll that is needed for intentionality to occur is the existence of an experience with the appropriate internal structure of object-directness” (Zahavi 21). Varela used this schema to defend the attitude of reduction, which he saw as necessary to “turn the direction of the movement of thinking from its habitual content-oriented direction backwards towards the arising of thoughts themselves” (Neurophenomenology 337). The phenomenological reduction, then, construed in this fashion, would affect a genuine approach to the study of the mind.

By following the premises of phenomenological reduction and intentionality, Varela maintained that the immediacy of experience gained a more vivid, intimate character. Varela noted that “[t]his gain in intimacy with the phenomenon is crucial, for it is the basis of the criteria of truth in phenomenological analysis, the nature of its evidence” (Neurophenomenology 337). What one intuits, then, is of exceeding importance. However, intuitive evidence still requires symbolic inscription, such as “an ‘embodiment’ that incarnates and shapes what we experience” (Neurophenomenology 337). Here, I believe, Varela was suggesting a radical change in Western epistemology. Based on his readings of Buddhist mindfulness/awareness, meditation, phenomenology, and cognitive science, Varela was pushing for a reflection of experience that necessarily includes the animate, breathing body. Moreover, for a proper reflection, the mind must be coordinated with the aforementioned body. Given the mind’s tendency to get distracted, it can be difficult to attune the mind-body relation. This is why Varela rounded off his discussion on the aspects of a phenomenological-reduced conscious by emphasizing the importance of skill-training in attentive bracketing, intuition, and illuminative description (Neurophenomenology 338).

The mind-body problem was explicated by Varela to show how abstract, disembodied reflection has traditionally dominated Western thought. For Varela, the Cartesian problematic was not simply a theoretical speculation separate from the body, but a speculation that originates in “a practical, lived experience. . . involving the mustering of one’s whole mind and body” (The Embodied Mind 30). Here, Varela drew parallels between his mission and the pragmatism of philosophers like William James. Varela was interested in what the mind-body relation was capable of doing in a very real, pragmatic sense. James had been unequivocal about pragmatism, concluding his lecture on “What Pragmatism Means” by stating that “[p]ragmatism is willing to take anything, to follow either logic or the senses and to count the humblest and most personal experiences” (James 36). Pragmatism, then, is a method that stands firm against rationalism and abstract, scientific dogmatism. Varela upheld this idea, and in keeping with classical phenomenology, he claimed that science was a “theoretical activity after the fact,” incapable of recapturing or explaining the richness of experience (The Embodied Mind 19). Maurice Merleau-Ponty developed this idea further in his book Phenomenology of Perception, and these insights largely paved the way for Varela’s phenomenological reduction.

Before the phenomenological reduction of Husserl, the dominant field of psychology posited introspectionism as the fundamental course for quantifying human experience. The idea inherent in early experimental psychology was that mental phenomena were physical, and it was therefore up to psychology to investigate mental structures (Zahavi 13). Husserl rejected this notion, because he saw psychologism as suffering from several categorical errors. Namely, that psychology was in a position to claim the theoretical foundation for logical empiricism. In order to come to a closer understanding of experience, introspectionism suggested that subjects reflect on their experiences as if they were an unbiased, outside observer. For obvious reasons, this research program failed, because subjects’ reflections were influenced by their very own preconceptions of the mind. Indeed, this preconceptual analysis was what Merleau-Ponty and Martin Heidegger referred to as “the abstract attitude of the scientist and the philosopher” (The Embodied Mind 30). Where phenomenology differs from mere introspectionism is in the technique of bracketing, or maintaining a critical distance from quick or easy descriptive processes. Other philosophers, such as Tim Bayne and Daniel Dennett, have been unable to draw this distinction between introspectionism and the method of phenomenological reduction. Here, it will be important to consider some typical objections to phenomenology before returning to Varela’s outline for neurophenomenology. . . ."

continued at Towards a Neurophenomenology of Consciousness – Digital Téchnē

 

[Constance]

Blue underscore on the WWW is for hyperlinks. So silly me for trying to click on them only to find they do nothing. You could avoid confusing your readers by that if you use another method to emphasize the text you want to focus on. Traditionally that would be by using a highlight, but for some strange reason @Gene Steinberg doesn't have that feature enabled. Maybe we should ask him . Until they get that happening, I suggest using bold ( if you're so inclined ).

I've thought about your suggestion, ufology. Using boldface type to foreground terms, phrases, or even sentences for subsequent discussion works well enough, but it becomes typographically overwhelming when one uses it to foreground whole passages of a post or text. And I often like to do that for two different reasons: one is to call attention to key passages from a quoted text for the benefit of anyone having to read the thread quickly; the other is to make the passage easy to locate when I want to respond to it. I think any reader who happens into this thread will realize soon enough that blue underscoring of blue text does not indicate that the passage is being linked to another website. One more thing: I chose bright blue when I began highlighting and underscoring key passages (in quoted texts including others' posts in the thread) because that color is vibrant enough to stand up within otherwise black type. Many of the colors available in the Paracast Forum are either too faded to be easily readable or so dark that they are almost indistinguishable from black. So I hope you can adjust to my using the strong blue with the blue underscore, which when combined maintain an evenness (of saturation and weight) with the surrounding black text.

 

[Soupie]

I think we are in a pre-theoretical stage where consciouness is concerned, the idea keeps slipping in on us that consciousness is an entity and it may be but it's study appears to be balkanizing and with no way currently to know if it's an elephant or a pair of rhinos or really is a tree and a vine and a palm leaf ... we may be calling the Many One.

I think until we dig down further into the assumptions we are each and alltogether making, including the language and the logic - ... we are about a fool's errand. ...

...The interesting work to me never gets done around here - what is consciousness? what isn't consciousness? I think because it's like hanging out at the lip of a black hole ... to quell our anxiety, our fear of the dark, we start telling stories. Someone needs to go out there in the dark and see what's making all the noise...

How do we fit "the evidence" into this scheme or do we dismiss or discredit it or reinterpret it?

(So this will likely be in vain since there was no interest in my earlier attempt to have us define the phenomenon we're all talking about, but here goes anyway.)

Okay, we are in a pre-theoretical stage. We aren't even close to understanding the ontology of conscious; and a major problem is that individuals have different conceptions of what consciousness is.

So what observations do we want a theory of consciousness to explain?

1) What is the ontology of consciousness (as it relates to matter/energy)?

1a) The hard problem (for physicalists)​

2) What is the nature of the apparent relationship between organisms — specifically brains — and consciousness?

2a) Plurality of consciousness

2b) Development of the mind with development of the brain; decay of the mind with decay of the brain

2c) Past life memories

2d) OBEs

2e) NDEs

2f) The profound effect of hallucinogenic chemicals on consciousness​

3) Does consciousness have causal influence on matter?

3a) Free will

3b) PSI​

 

[smcder]

.

 

[smcder]

(So this will likely be in vain since there was no interest in my earlier attempt to have us define the phenomenon we're all talking about, but here goes anyway.)

Okay, we are in a pre-theoretical stage. We aren't even close to understanding the ontology of conscious; and a major problem is that individuals have different conceptions of what consciousness is.

So what observations do we want a theory of consciousness to explain?

1) What is the ontology of consciousness (as it relates to matter/energy)?

1a) The hard problem (for physicalists)​

2) What is the nature of the apparent relationship between organisms — specifically brains — and consciousness?

2a) Plurality of consciousness

2b) Development of the mind with development of the brain; decay of the mind with decay of the brain

2c) Past life memories

2d) OBEs

2e) NDEs

2f) The profound effect of hallucinogenic chemicals on consciousness​

3) Does consciousness have causal influence on matter?

3a) Free will

3b) PSI​

I'm not sure I understand what you are wanting in response ... ?

 

[smcder]

Ok. No joy with AJP.
This is a link to the paper
Knowledge Argument | New perspectives | Philosophy of Consciousness
It is password protected. The password is: Paracast
I have attached below the abstract a pdf of the paper and a pdf of the referee's comments and my response.
I would be very grateful for any critical or explanatory feedback.

I am very impressed with the intelligence and energy you've put into the theory and into getting it published.

I'm excited about the possibilities for you - I will read the comments and see if there's any thing I can be helpful with - it may be this weekend before I have a block of time to concentrate on it.

 

[Pharoah]

I am very impressed with the intelligence and energy you've put into the theory and into getting it published.

I'm excited about the possibilities for you - I will read the comments and see if there's any thing I can be helpful with - it may be this weekend before I have a block of time to concentrate on it.

@smcder As I understand it, the referee is saying that

1.The standard view in philosophy is that 'facts' are unchanging observer independent, whereas I talk of them being 'made up of' our concepts about the world. Hence metaphysical/epistemological inconsistency.

As an answer, what I have been re-writing is that, ' “facts” are mind-dependent in a way that blurs the metaphysical/epistemology distinction '
Re metaphysical vs epistemological facts:
That which is a metaphysically conceivable fact, becomes an epistemological fact in Mary's case on condition of two accounts: firstly, as her knowledge is full and complete, the 'factual knowledge' must ultimately satisfy epistemologically grounded truth conditions; and second, she can only acquire her factual knowledge by means of conceptually constructed media (TV, books, maths etc) and she must ultimately have 'a belief' that the facts are true facts. Consequently, the distinction as to whether these facts are really concepts or identities is in their finality of no relevance to Mary and her factual knowledge about the world, c.f. the referee's comments about Lycan and propositions.
Re facts and representation:
The identification of facts, about which we and Mary can relate and communicate, entails exclusively the application of conceptual representation. One might argue that it is a fact that ‘the cat is on the mat’, and this fact does not represent anything but the (true) sentence; ‘the cat is on the mat’ is a linguistic representation of this fact. Whilst it may be true that the cat is on the mat, one labels it a fact only by virtue of one's belief that there is such a thing as a cat sitting on a mat—which is governed ultimately by one's conceptual representations of what constitutes cats, mats, and what it is to sit. And so too it is with Mary’s factual knowledge: her factual knowledge is necessarily representational and conceptual even if it too corresponds with metaphysical fact.

2. The standard view in philosophy is that knowledge is roughly justified true belief. If knowledge requires belief, and if we assume that belief is a conceptual state in the sense that you can believe that P only if you possess concepts sufficient for grasping P, then, that seems to entail knowledge is always conceptual. And if knowledge requires truth, that further entails that knowledge is always factive. Thus the standard is to assume that only humans possess knowledge by virtue of their identification of facts about reality.
My paper is devoted to explaining in what way knowledge (as a construction of information about reality) need not be only conceptual in form i.e., to argue against the standard view. The Edna the alien and Berrybug stories are intended to show that there are particular kinds of information constructions that demonstrate 'a kind of knowledge' about the world that is not conceptual in construction. I suppose I need to explain myself better, although I am at a loss as to how to do this. To my mind this is so obvious... feedback might help me understand why this is difficult to either grasp or is flawed or unclear.

General point,
I was going divide the paper into 3-parts:
1. About information, facts, knowledge - metaphysics vs epistemology.
2. Janice Dowell vs Chalmers - re, about reductive explanation requiring only an 'extension fixing story' (like mine!)
3. My extension fixing story that explains why knowledge can be constructed from more than just concepts. It can be physiologically, phenomenologically, and conceptually constructed. Therefore, what Mary acquires on exiting her sensory deprived room is phenomenological knowledge to supplement her full conceptual knowledge about reality.

 

[Constance]

Pharoah, in your paper (the version you sent to the journal) you wrote "Tye’s externalist account [see also Dretske 1995] fails to identify the underlying nature of representation itself and of the determinants of phenomenally qualitative content. Ultimately, some kind of connective account must be made in either naturalistic, evolutionary, emergent, or mechanistic terms."

What is "the underlying nature of representation itself" in your view? My impression, as I've suggested, is that this is the key issue -- that you have so far followed the analytical school's approach to philosophy of mind concerning 'representation' with which cognitive neuroscience has for the most part been aligned. The other approach is from phenomenology, which has opposed 'representation' as thought in analytical philosophy. From what you've posted today, my impression is that you are coming to the point of opening up to the issue of how we arrive at concepts from the basis of phenomenological experience rather than the other way around. I've got to go out in a few minutes so can't write more now, but will return. You might have a look at this paper in the meantime:

pdf (119 KB), English, Pages 355
Original Paper UDC 165.62: 165.82/Metzinger. Sonja Rinofner-Kreidl, Graz. The
Limits of Representationalism. A Phenomenological Critique of Thomas.