Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 3

[Pharoah]

[Who's in Helsinki?]
solipsism - no. But I thought about it as an obvious option.

 

[Constance]

?? Sorry, that went right past me.

Clarification?

 

[Constance]

"We must," writes Merleau-Ponty in the Phenomenology of Perception, "recognize the indeterminate as a positive phenomenon" (6). With this declaration, he begins his attempt to overcome a philosophical habit of opposing self and world, of perpetuating dualisms in which the ultimate foundation of "truth" invariably resides in whichever term of the duality a given thinker deems more fundamental than the other. Behind this restless foundationalism is a particular desire that sets it in play—the desire for an initial set of principles which, however few and narrow in scope, can at the very least be taken as certain. To this desire for certainty Merleau-Ponty will oppose the fact of ambiguity, since "ambiguity is of the essence of human existence," since "existence is indeterminate in itself, by reason of its fundamental structure" (169). This structure is that of consciousness itself, or more precisely, that of embodied consciousness, since for Merleau-Ponty consciousness, in its original, pre-reflective capacity, "is being-toward-the-thing through the intermediary of the body" (138-39). And while this somatic intentionality depends on a certain "transcendence" (169), without which consciousness would never find itself within a given situation, we must resist the temptation to conceive of this transcendence as in any way "transcendent"—i.e., as an elevation of the subject to a vantage point above, beyond, or prior to the relation between body and world, or as the "transcendental" activity of a cogito that founds this relation and to which embodiment appears as an afterthought or, worse still, an impediment.

What embodiment calls for is an understanding of the subject not as constitutive of, but as constituted along with experience—a move of particular importance not only in aesthetics (in its broadest sense), but also in cognitive science, as attested to by Varela, Thompson and Rosch, who cite Merleau-Ponty's work as the starting point for what has come to be "the tangible demonstration within cognitive science that the self or cognizing subject is fundamentally fragmented, divided, or nonunified" (Embodied Mind, xvii). By shifting the point of inquiry from the self-identity of the cogito to a subject that is "fragmented" and "nonunified," these authors are able to conceptualize, with the aid of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology, a consciousness whose cohesion is immediately "divided," immediately doubled within the synaesthetic nexus of the body: "For Merleau-Ponty, as for us, embodiment has this double sense: it encompasses both the body as a lived, experiential structure and the body as the context or milieu of cognitive mechanisms" (ibid., xvi). It is by virtue of this double sense that ambiguity becomes "the essence of human existence."

The question then arises: By what method does one disclose the truth of ambiguity? When the aim is not to minimize or dispel but rather to hold forth and positively investigate the ambiguous, is not every method (since its task, qua method, is to elucidate, clarify, account for and explain) inevitably destined to conceal in its very act of disclosure that which it hopes to disclose, so that in order to remain faithful to its topic, the analysis of ambiguity is forced to remain ambiguous and hence ineffectual, allowing us to proceed no further than the assertion that ambiguity is, in fact, "essential"?

Since for Merleau-Ponty meaning and ambiguity are interwoven "in the silence of primary consciousness" (xv), it is toward this silence that the analysis of ambiguity must lead in order both to accomplish and to articulate its task. Access to this silent realm is gained through "radical reflection," a method whose aim "consists, paradoxically enough, in recovering the unreflective experience of the world" (241). Paradoxically enough. For how is one to account for this silence without converting it into its opposite in the process? How can one take up the unreflective experience of the world, "the ante-predicative life of consciousness" (xv), and expect to have anything to say about it? A violation occurs the moment we begin. . . ."

Todd Belazic, "Embodied Consciousness and the Poetic Sense of the World"

 

[smcder]

Very interesting to read this.

My own view is that experience preceeds awareness of experience. I view introspection as essentially metacognition, or as I've often phrased it, awareness of awareness or meta-awareness.

It is the phenomenon I am most interested in, but I think understanding meta-awareness is contingent on understanding phenomenal awareness.

My current avatar is of an Ouroboros, a serpent eating its tail. This, to me, represents this meta-awareness, the structure of the "I."

Once an organism is able to distinguish between (their) awareness and that which they are aware, the seperation (and isolation) from what-is begins.

The body (self)
The mental self (awareness)
The meta-mental self (meta-awareness)

I think it's one thing to purposefully introspect on the contents of our awareness; but it's quite another to lose the ego in a moment of pure awareness.

Regarding awareness or consciousness not being "about something." Awareness that awarness is distinct from its contents is still an awareness about something, namely awareness. Self-awareness.

@Soupie wrote:

Regarding awareness or consciousness not being "about something." Awareness that awarness is distinct from its contents is still an awareness about something, namely awareness. Self-awareness.

It seems to me your response highlights one of the most important points of the article:

The failure of Western psychology to discriminate awareness from contents, and the resulting confusion of `I' with mental contents, may be due to a cultural limitation: the lack of experience of most Western scientists with Eastern meditation disciplines.

I'm assuming you haven't tried the experiment in the original article or experienced the states of mind described in the quotes below?

And from my original post:

*Awareness is considered to exist independent of contents and this `pure consciousness' is accessible — potentially — to every one. A more contemporary statement of this position is given by Sri Krishna Menon, a twentieth century Yogi:

He who says that consciousness is never experienced without its object speaks from a superficial level. If he is asked the question `Are you a conscious being?', he will spontaneously give the answer `Yes'. This answer springs from the deepmost level. Here he doesn't even silently refer to anything as the object of that consciousness (Menon, 1952).

... - this is interesting, it challenges the statement that all consciousness is consciousness of something:

We see the same problem arising in philosophy. After Husserl, nearly all modern Western philosophical approaches to the nature of mind and its relation to the body fail to recognize that introspection reveals `I' to be identical to awareness.

*Furthermore, most philosophers do not recognize awareness as existing in its own right, different from contents.

Owen Flanagan, a philosopher who has written extensively on consciousness, sides with James and speaks of `the illusion of the mind's ``I'' ' (Flanagan, 1992). C.O. Evans starts out recognizing the importance of the distinction between the observer and the observed, `the subjective self', but then retreats to the position that awareness is `unprojected consciousness', the amorphous experience of background content (Evans, 1970).

*However, the background is composed of elements to which we can shift attention. It is what Freud called the preconscious. `I'/awareness has no elements, no features. It is not a matter of a searchlight illuminating one element while the rest is dark — it has to do with the nature of light itself.

...
In the classical Buddhist literature we find:

When all lesser things and ideas are transcended and forgotten, and there remains only a perfect state of imagelessness where Tathagata and Tathata are merged into perfect Oneness . . . (Goddard, 1966). [6]

Western mystics also speak of experiencing consciousness without objects. Meister Eckhart declares:

There is the silent `middle', for no creature ever entered there and no image, nor has the soul there either activity or understanding, therefore she is not aware there of any image, whether of herself or of any other creature' (Forman, 1990).
Similarly, Saint John of the Cross:

That inward wisdom is so simple, so general and so spiritual that it has not entered into the understanding enwrapped or clad in any form or image subject to sense' (1953).

And again:

The failure of Western psychology to discriminate awareness from contents, and the resulting confusion of `I' with mental contents, may be due to a cultural limitation: the lack of experience of most Western scientists with Eastern meditation disciplines. [7]

 

[Constance]

Max Velmens, "How experienced phenomena relate to things themselves: Kant, Husserl, Hoche, and reflexive monism" at

How experienced phenomena relate to things themselves: Kant, Husserl, Hoche, and reflexive monism | Max Velmans - Academia.edu



"Reflexive Monism: psychophysical relations among mind, matter and consciousness"

Max Velmans, Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, London SE14 6NW
In M. Velmans and Y. Nagasawa (eds.) (2012)
Journal of Consciousness Studies Special Issue
on Monist Alternatives to Physicalism
, 19 (9-10) pp. 143-165.

Reflexive Monism: Psychophysical relations among mind, matter and consciousness | Max Velmans - Academia.edu

 

[smcder]

I don't consider my view eliminativist, no. But the author seems to. He had this to say as well:

More subtly, there are many who insist that consciousness just reduces to brain states - a pang of regret, say, is just a surge of chemicals across a synapse. They are collapsers rather than deniers. Though not avowedly eliminative, this kind of view is tacitly a rejection of the very existence of consciousness, because the brain processes held to constitute conscious experience consist of physical events that can exist in the absence of consciousness. Electricity in the brain correlates with mental activity but electricity in your TV presumably does not - so how can electrical processes be the essence of conscious experience? If there is nothing happening but electrochemical activity when I say, "My finger hurts," or, "I love her so," then there is nothing experiential going on when I say those things. So reduction is tantamount to elimination, despite the reductionist's intentions (it's like maintaining that people called "witches" are nothing but harmless old ladies – which is tantamount to saying that there are no witches).
​

The analogy I've used — which I know is a poor one for many reasons — is to think of the concept of "5."

On my view, the concept of 5 is immaterial, but in order to exist, it must be embodied in material.

The concept of 5 can be embodied in the word five, or the word cinco, or the numeral V, or presumably the firing of neurons, etc.

Five is definitely something, but it's not a physical something.

I conceive of minds/consciousness in a very similar way. Our minds are constituted of percepts and concepts that are embodied by physical processes of the body-brain.

So just as we wouldn't say that the concept of 5 is identical to the pixels on our screens which embody it, we also would not say that our minds are identical to the neurons in our brains which embody them.

You left out part of it ... he also had this to say, to put it in its full context:

The eliminativist position attempts to dissolve the problem of explaining consciousness simply by declaring that there isn't any: there is no such thing - no seeing, hearing, thinking, and so on. There is just blank matter; the impression that we are conscious is an illusion.

This view is clearly absurd, a form of madness even, and anyway refutes itself since even an illusion is the presence of an experience (it certainly seems to me that I am conscious). There are some who purport to hold this view but they are a tiny (and tinny) minority: they are sentient beings loudly claiming to be mindless zombies.
More subtly, there are many who insist that consciousness just reduces to brain states - a pang of regret, say, is just a surge of chemicals across a synapse. They are collapsers rather than deniers. Though not avowedly eliminative, this kind of view is tacitly a rejection of the very
existence of consciousness, because the brain processes held to constitute conscious experience consist of physical events that can exist in the absence of consciousness. Electricity in the brain correlates with mental activity but electricity in your TV presumably does not - so how can electrical processes be the essence of conscious experience? If there is nothing happening but electrochemical activity when I say, "My finger hurts," or, "I love her so," then there is nothing experiential going on when I say those things. So reduction is tantamount to elimination, despite the reductionist's intentions (it's like maintaining that people called "witches" are nothing but harmless old ladies – which is tantamount to saying that there are no witches).

@Soupie wrote


The analogy I've used — which I know is a poor one for many reasons — is to think of the concept of "5."
On my view, the concept of 5 is immaterial, but in order to exist, it must be embodied in material.
The concept of 5 can be embodied in the word five, or the word cinco, or the numeral V, or presumably the firing of neurons, etc.
Five is definitely something, but it's not a physical something.
I conceive of minds/consciousness in a very similar way. Our minds are constituted of percepts and concepts that are embodied by physical processes of the body-brain.
So just as we wouldn't say that the concept of 5 is identical to the pixels on our screens which embody it, we also would not say that our minds are identical to the neurons in our brains which embody them.

This sounds like Platonic Forms.

Why should I think five is a non-physical or not-physical something? ... take away the matter to instantiate it and the energy to communicate it and what do you have left? Is five made of a contentless field, substance or thing that exists in a neutral, formless way? Is it some thing/stuff that exists independent of organisms?

Or is it an arrangement of matter and energy according to a set of physical principles? Four gravitational objects interact differently than five - but they don't use the concept of five to do so ... some animals can distinguish small groupings of objects without a concept of five ... so, whence five?

The concept of 5 can be embodied in the word five, or the word cinco, or the numeral V, or presumably the firing of neurons, etc.

Represented in the words and symbols, embodied in the firing of neurons - but these are different kinds of examples. No matter how hard you look you won't see a "five" in the firing of neurons.

... so far I'm not seeing it ... can I suggest that calling it a non-physical or not-physical "thing" is a stop-gap for the hard problem? Because you don't have (yet) physical language to talk about the subjective concept of five? Five is five when a computer works with it ... it's information, instantiated in matter and communicated by energy but where is the non-physical aspect of five as the computer works with it?

 

[smcder]

In Our Time
The Continental/Analytic split

Good overview ... touches on key differences in the two approaches ... Continental as concerned with existential, styles and methods (hermeneutic) ... Kant/also Hegel as seminal as well as crossover ... will want to find more substantial material but this is a very good overview I think ...

 

[smcder]

@Soupie

The problem I have with "doing" consciousness is

Emergence

Strong emergence (of novel properties) ... the strongest of which may be the subjective from the objective ... is problematic.

Otherwise what I see life "doing" is capitalizing on existing properties of, for example, carbon and water ... But not producing something novel.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

... so on this logic, life would capitalize on some existing property to form consciousness rather than emerge it out of thin air ... compatible with dual aspect type ideas, combination problem then comes up ... etc etc but also I think compatible with @Constance's ideas ... consciousness/proto-consciousness ... just that it doesn't entail very, very strong emergence of an utterly novel property ... idea the "subjective" ...

 

[Soupie]

@Soupie wrote:

Regarding awareness or consciousness not being "about something." Awareness that awarness is distinct from its contents is still an awareness about something, namely awareness. Self-awareness.

It seems to me your response highlights one of the most important points of the article:

The failure of Western psychology to discriminate awareness from contents, and the resulting confusion of `I' with mental contents, may be due to a cultural limitation: the lack of experience of most Western scientists with Eastern meditation disciplines.

I'm assuming you haven't tried the experiment in the original article or experienced the states of mind described in the quotes below?

And from my original post:

*Awareness is considered to exist independent of contents and this `pure consciousness' is accessible — potentially — to every one. A more contemporary statement of this position is given by Sri Krishna Menon, a twentieth century Yogi:

He who says that consciousness is never experienced without its object speaks from a superficial level. If he is asked the question `Are you a conscious being?', he will spontaneously give the answer `Yes'. This answer springs from the deepmost level. Here he doesn't even silently refer to anything as the object of that consciousness (Menon, 1952).

... - this is interesting, it challenges the statement that all consciousness is consciousness of something:

We see the same problem arising in philosophy. After Husserl, nearly all modern Western philosophical approaches to the nature of mind and its relation to the body fail to recognize that introspection reveals `I' to be identical to awareness.

*Furthermore, most philosophers do not recognize awareness as existing in its own right, different from contents.

Owen Flanagan, a philosopher who has written extensively on consciousness, sides with James and speaks of `the illusion of the mind's ``I'' ' (Flanagan, 1992). C.O. Evans starts out recognizing the importance of the distinction between the observer and the observed, `the subjective self', but then retreats to the position that awareness is `unprojected consciousness', the amorphous experience of background content (Evans, 1970).

*However, the background is composed of elements to which we can shift attention. It is what Freud called the preconscious. `I'/awareness has no elements, no features. It is not a matter of a searchlight illuminating one element while the rest is dark — it has to do with the nature of light itself.

...
In the classical Buddhist literature we find:

When all lesser things and ideas are transcended and forgotten, and there remains only a perfect state of imagelessness where Tathagata and Tathata are merged into perfect Oneness . . . (Goddard, 1966). [6]

Western mystics also speak of experiencing consciousness without objects. Meister Eckhart declares:

There is the silent `middle', for no creature ever entered there and no image, nor has the soul there either activity or understanding, therefore she is not aware there of any image, whether of herself or of any other creature' (Forman, 1990).
Similarly, Saint John of the Cross:

That inward wisdom is so simple, so general and so spiritual that it has not entered into the understanding enwrapped or clad in any form or image subject to sense' (1953).

And again:

The failure of Western psychology to discriminate awareness from contents, and the resulting confusion of `I' with mental contents, may be due to a cultural limitation: the lack of experience of most Western scientists with Eastern meditation disciplines. [7]

I understand what they are saying but I disagree with it. I've read elsewhere the state being described above described as awareness of awareness.

If one is in a state of awareness, they are aware of something, whether that's awareness of awareness or awareness of being.

If someone is aware, and they know they are aware, then they are aware of something, namely that they are aware.

Introspection implies self-awareness, which implies content.

 

[Soupie]

Why should I think five is a non-physical or not-physical something? ... take away the matter to instantiate it and the energy to communicate it and what do you have left?

Nothing.

Is five made of a contentless field, substance or thing that exists in a neutral, formless way? Is it some thing/stuff that exists independent of organisms?

No.

Or is it an arrangement of matter and energy according to a set of physical principles?

No. It is embodied by those things, but it is not those things.

Four gravitational objects interact differently than five - but they don't use the concept of five to do so ... some animals can distinguish small groupings of objects without a concept of five ... so, whence five?

Five is an immaterial concept embodied in the material world.

Soupie: The concept of 5 can be embodied in the word five, or the word cinco, or the numeral V, or presumably the firing of neurons, etc.

Smcder: Represented in the words and symbols, embodied in the firing of neurons - but these are different kinds of examples. No matter how hard you look you won't see a "five" in the firing of neurons.

No matter how hard you look you won't see "five" in the words or numerals either.

... so far I'm not seeing it ... can I suggest that calling it a non-physical or not-physical "thing" is a stop-gap for the hard problem? Because you don't have (yet) physical language to talk about the subjective concept of five? Five is five when a computer works with it ... it's information, instantiated in matter and communicated by energy but where is the non-physical aspect of five as the computer works with it?

Five is only in our minds, it's not anywhere else. Our minds are immaterial. Ergo five is immaterial.

I think there may be a conceptual hurdle here. There are some how feel that consciousness is not physical. But they seem to want it to be physical at the same time. So it's not physical, but it feels like something that is physical?

Information is not physical, but must be embodied by the physical.

Consciousness is not physical, but must be embodied by the physical.

Information is subjective. Only the system that produces it can know what it's like.

Consciousness is subjective. Only the organism that produces it can know what it's like.

Consciousness is there but we can't see it from the 3rd person; information is there but we can't see it from the 3rd person.

What are "we?" We are subjective consciousness, we are information.

 

[smcder]

Nothing.


No.


No. It is embodied by those things, but it is not those things.


Five is an immaterial concept embodied in the material world.


No matter how hard you look you won't see "five" in the words or numerals either.


Five is only in our minds, it's not anywhere else. Our minds are immaterial. Ergo five is immaterial.

I think there may be a conceptual hurdle here. There are some how feel that consciousness is not physical. But they seem to want it to be physical at the same time. So it's not physical, but it feels like something that is physical?

Information is not physical, but must be embodied by the physical.

Consciousness is not physical, but must be embodied by the physical.

Information is subjective. Only the system that produces it can know what it's like.

Consciousness is subjective. Only the organism that produces it can know what it's like.

Consciousness is there but we can't see it from the 3rd person; information is there but we can't see it from the 3rd person.

What are "we?" We are subjective consciousness, we are information.

I just don't see the need for the term "immaterial" or non-physical ... it seems to me you can do everything you want with a physicalist approach ... so that's cleaner. Calling something immaterial that is "nothing" without matter/energy ... is wordplay, right? Information then is arrangement of matter and energy. What part, exactly, is not physical?

If you're righting promissory notes waiting on the solution to the HP, you need to cover the entire bill - not just say the things you can't yet explain are "non-physical".

 

[smcder]

I understand what they are saying but I disagree with it. I've read elsewhere the state being described above described as awareness of awareness.

If one is in a state of awareness, they are aware of something, whether that's awareness of awareness or awareness of being.

If someone is aware, and they know they are aware, then they are aware of something, namely that they are aware.

Introspection implies self-awareness, which implies content.

*SIGH*

You are sure it's the same state being described ... ? How do you know that? He responded to that I think pretty directly - as a state of being ... I will find the wording. What I am saying and what his point is - is that neither one of us is in a position to disagree ... not having experienced the state for ourselves, correct?

 

[smcder]

@Soupie

The identity of awareness and the `I' means that we know awareness by being it, thus solving the problem of the infinite regress of observers.

DO the experiment ... then report back.

• 
  Experiment 1: Stop for a moment and look inside. Try and sense the very origin of your most basic, most personal `I', your core subjective experience. What is that root of the `I' feeling? Try to find it.
  

When you introspect you will find that no matter what the contents of your mind, the most basic `I' is something different. Every time you try to observe the `I' it takes a jump back with you, remaining out of sight. At first you may say, `When I look inside as you suggest, all I find is content of one sort or the other.' I reply, `Who is looking? Is it not you? If that ``I'' is a content can you describe it? Can you observe it?' The core `I' of subjectivity is different from any content because it turns out to be that which witnesses — not that which is observed. The `I' can be experienced, but it cannot be `seen'. `I' is the observer, the experiencer, prior to all conscious content.

Thus, experience is dualistic, not the dualism of mind and matter but the dualism of awareness and the contents of awareness. To put it another way, experience consists of the observer and the observed. Our sensations, our images, our thoughts — the mental activity by which we engage and define the physical world — are all part of the observed. In contrast, the observer — the `I' — is prior to everything else; without it there is no experience of existence. If awareness did not exist in its own right there would be no `I'. There would be `me', my personhood, my social and emotional identity — but no `I', no transparent centre of being.

 

[smcder]

I understand what they are saying but I disagree with it. I've read elsewhere the state being described above described as awareness of awareness.

If one is in a state of awareness, they are aware of something, whether that's awareness of awareness or awareness of being.

If someone is aware, and they know they are aware, then they are aware of something, namely that they are aware.

Introspection implies self-awareness, which implies content.

I don't think you are saying the same thing he is (therefore agreeing with yourself, rather than disagreeing with him ...)

If awareness did not exist in its own right there would be no `I'. There would be `me', my personhood, my social and emotional identity — but no `I', no transparent centre of being.

moving on ...

 

[Pharoah]

@Soupie
does immaterial = non-physical?

 

[Constance]

Five is an immaterial concept embodied in the material world.

Whose concept is it?

 

[Soupie]

I just don't see the need for the term "immaterial" or non-physical ... it seems to me you can do everything you want with a physicalist approach ... so that's cleaner. Calling something immaterial that is "nothing" without matter/energy ... is wordplay, right? Information then is arrangement of matter and energy. What part, exactly, is not physical?

If you're righting promissory notes waiting on the solution to the HP, you need to cover the entire bill - not just say the things you can't yet explain are "non-physical".

Yes, youve expressed that many times. Well have to disagree on that.

Because the objective and subjective are so different, its hard to find analogies. But one might be the relationship between water molecules and rippling.

Rippling is technically constituted of water molecules, but saying rippling is identical to water molecules is inaccurate. Rippling isnt even unique to water molecules. Rippling can occur in a number of substrates, even the earth's crust.

Rippling isn't a "thing." If there were rippling occuring in a substance, and we were to somehow freeze time, there would be no rippling... But the substance would still exist.

Rippling /= any material substrate.

Again, this is not a perfect analogy because the subjective is different from the objective. We can see physical material, and we can see physical material "rippling."

My point is that consciousness — like rippling — exists via physical processes but need not be considered a (physical) thing. But they are processes constituted by the dynamic interactions of physical things.

Along with the concept of "5," we might say the same of "green." Look as we might, we won't see green in the brain or in any physical radiation.

Percepts, concepts, and sensations exist only in the immaterial mind.

 

[Soupie]

@Soupie
does immaterial = non-physical?

Yes, that is how I meant it. Sorry to switch terms. Ill try to use only non-physical from now on.

 

[Soupie]

Whose concept is it?

Any entity capable of conceptual cognition would be elegible to embody the concept. The concept of "5" is probably part of the human collective unconscious — ie it's hardwired into the structure of our brains — or it may be learned or conjured on ones own.

If you're asking how humans possess conceptual thinking, I don't know.

 

[Pharoah]

"Clearly, being known to Mary is a representation-dependent property; whether Mary knows a given fact depends on how she represents that fact. Facts can be differently represented from differing perspectives," Lycan on perspectivalism