Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 3

[Constance]

@Constance Click on the link called "contents." Make of it what you will.

The last entry in the poster's individual index -- "beyond subject and object" -- seems to be the place where he sums up his theory. Here are the final several paragraphs:

"In the terms of philosophy of mind and of physics we have transcended, or explained away, subject and object, and appearance and reality go with them. This departure of the basic concepts of our naïve metaphysics might seem to leave us floundering in a void, but a certain variety of wholism, inspired by Spinoza, might prove an adequate substitute, if we suppose that absolute reality is composed neither of mind and matter as substances, nor of something else behind them of which they are aspects, but of all its aspects, being “the whole thing” and nothing less. (This is just a tentative metaphysical sketch.) We may thus, for those who tend towards objectivity, satisfy their sense of the superiority of the big picture, if only for some purposes: an account that covers more aspects than another is more objective, with all the advantages and disadvantages thus entailed. At the same time we justify the tendency of the subjectivist to feel that that of which we are directly, immediately aware, the natural viewpoint of the person, is of vital importance.

Using “aspects” in a wider sense here, to include particular phenomena, as well as such classes of phenomena as “subjective” and “objective.”

The relationship between physiological phenomena and sensation, in the case of perception, and between the act of willing and brain activity, in the case of action, is not one of causation, but of correlation. My sensation of sound, and the corresponding activity of my brain cells, are aspects not of some fundamental substance beyond our senses and concepts, but of the universe as a whole—the totality of its aspects—and therefore, as a useful approximation wherever we see such correlations as between sensation and brain activity, or particle and wave, of each other.

subjectivity and objectivity, matter and consciousness are equally real; while outside it, towards either extreme, they are equally unreal—and the realm of ordinary experience is no less (nor more) real than any other."


Do you think that accepting this general statement takes us any distance in understanding consciousness, which is what we set out to do? Do you think that we are trapped in a situation in which we are unable to distinguish appearance from reality? If so, is there any purpose in/need for either philosophy or science or both? And what does 'information' explain, and how does it do so?

 

[Constance]

Exploring other parts of that JCS online site I see that there's very interesting material there. For example, this paper by Arthur Deickman, which might have been linked here earlier:

JCS-ONLINE

Actually no, I found that paper through a link to the JCS site itself.

JCS, Journal of Consciousness Studies

 

[Pharoah]

Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to conceive ...

@Pharoah ... Can you talk sense into the lad?
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What you have to remember @Soupie is that the philosophical and scientific treatment/ analysis of information is in its infancy. Understand the various definitions and critique them or try to relate the concept to nature and the evolution of complexity. The material /immateial thing is not worth getting embroiled in. I think of the concept of information, as a means of interpreting relation of coherence between entities when they interact i.e. if there was no underlying rule of unifying coherence, interactive behaviours would be random and the universe would not exist.
So five is a concept, is a representation... (... is information? - i.e. is info some kind of representation?)

 

[smcder]

Exploring other parts of that JCS online site I see that there's very interesting material there. For example, this paper by Arthur Deickman, which might have been linked here earlier:

JCS-ONLINE

Actually no, I found that paper through a link to the JCS site itself.

JCS, Journal of Consciousness Studies

I linked that earlier:

I = Awareness

You might want to go back and see the exchange between Soupie & I on this


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Soupie]

What you have to remember @Soupie is that the philosophical and scientific treatment/ analysis of information is in its infancy. Understand the various definitions and critique them or try to relate the concept to nature and the evolution of complexity. The material /immateial thing is not worth getting embroiled in. I think of the concept of information, as a means of interpreting relation of coherence between entities when they interact i.e. if there was no underlying rule of unifying coherence, interactive behaviours would be random and the universe would not exist.
So five is a concept, is a representation... (... is information? - i.e. is info some kind of representation?)

Have I disagreed with any of this? No. I agree with it, in fact. I'm not getting embroiled in anything. I don't care what @smcder wants to call information, as I don't think any labels will—in themselves—help us understand information and how it relates to brains, the environment, and consciousness.

 

[Soupie]

Do you think that accepting this general statement takes us any distance in understanding consciousness, which is what we set out to do?

Do you think that we are trapped in a situation in which we are unable to distinguish appearance from reality?

If so, is there any purpose in/need for either philosophy or science or both?

And what does 'information' explain, and how does it do so?

I'm not accepting any general statement. However, imo the idea that consciousness is information and that brains generate/process information is a very promising avenue to explore. Apparently many professional thinkers agree, for whatever that is worth.

I think appearance is reality. The mind is green.

Yes, I think consciousness needs to be explored via 1st person and 3rd person methods.

I think information explains how meaning is conveyed and/or represented in physical reality. Just exactly how patterns of causality (data) become meaning (information) we don't know. That is, how do brains give meaning to patterns of causality? Indeed, do they? And if they do, how do they—these meaningful patterns—become self-aware?

This is what I am excited to continue exploring.

 

[Soupie]

In P2 I posted about scientists using a special device that stimulates a blind persons tongue to give them information/feedback about their environment. In one podcast I listened to, the subject described not just perceiving her environment, but actually phenomenally seeing it.

I recently listened to an episode of a podcast called Invisibilia in which blind individuals using echolocation also report—not simply perceiving their environment—but phenomenally seeing it (although not with the richness of someone with working eyes).

There is research that shows that blind using echolocation are activating their visual cortex.

How To Become Batman : Invisibilia : NPR

Blind people echolocate with visual part of brain - Technology & Science - CBC News

For example, if a person is watching something, the visual part of the brain lights up because it uses more oxygen for that task.

The researchers found that when echolocators were listening to their echolocation clicks and echoes, the part of the brain normally used to see lights up.

"The job of understanding the echoes seemed to be the job of this remaining visual cortex," Goodale said. In fact, when Kish was using echolocation to detect moving objects, the part of brain that is used to see moving objects lit up. ...
​

Of course, we dont want to jump to any conclusions with this 3rd person information, but... formerly sighted individuals who are now blind and use echolocation say that they can literally phenomenally see. (Of course none of the dozens of articles i could find include the subjects 1st person reports.)

But this raises many interesting questions! Can we phenomenal see without eyes and photons? Do we just need the visual cortex? We should we have—a la Chalmers—phenomenal sight at all? So much so that if we lose it with our eyes, we can then regain it with echolocation?

 

[Soupie]

[Kant's] theory that objective experience is actively constituted or constructed by the functioning of the human mind ... i.e. "the mind is green"

I = Awareness

You might want to go back and see the exchange between Soupie & I on this

Smcder, if you were to walk up to 25 random people on the streets in a Western city and 25 random people in an Eastern city, and asked the following question, what might be the percentage of A1 and A2 responses do you think?

Q: How does your mind/consciousness relate to sights, sounds, and smells?

A1: My mind is the sights, sounds, and smells.

A2: My mind is experiencing the sights, sounds, and smells.

 

[Soupie]

Neither the senses, nor the brain, nor the empirically observable neural processes between them permit the inference that any of these is the causal grounds of our experience of them. . . .

In the Invisibilia podcast episode "How to Become Batman," a scientists specializing in vision noted how during one of the echolocation/MRI sessions, she watched the subject's grid cells/neurons fire in a pattern which mirrored the movement of a frisbee across the echolocation/visual field of the subject. Meanwhile, the subject gave a 1st person report of seeing an object move in front of his face.

That is, a 3rd person observer watched neurons fire in a pattern which appeared to represent the movement of an object through space. Meanwhile, the subject whose neurons the scientist was observing from the 3rd person, gave a 1st person report of phenomenally experiencing an object moving in front of his face.

Neither the senses, nor the brain, nor the empirically observable neural processes between them permit the inference that any of these is the causal grounds of our experience of them. . . .
​

Grid cell - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A grid cell is a type of neuron in the brains of many species that allows them to understand their position in space.[1][2][3][4][5][6]

Grid cells derive their name from the fact that connecting the centers of their firing fields gives a triangular grid.

Grid cells were discovered in 2005 by Edvard Moser, May-Britt Moser and their students Torkel Hafting, Marianne Fyhn and Sturla Molden at the Centre for the Biology of Memory (CBM) in Norway. They were awarded the 2014Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine together with John O'Keefe for their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain. The arrangement of spatial firing fields all at equal distances from their neighbors led to a hypothesis that these cells encode a cognitive representation of Euclidean space.[1] The discovery also suggested a mechanism for dynamic computation of self-position based on continuously updated information about position and direction.
​

Neither the senses, nor the brain, nor the empirically observable neural processes between them permit the inference that any of these is the causal grounds of our experience of them. . . .

I submit--again--that we are our senses. And while we will never be able to objectively describe subjective experiences from a 3rd person perspective, it seems likely that finding a causal grounds for their existence is possible. But by no means a done deal.

 

[smcder]

Exploring other parts of that JCS online site I see that there's very interesting material there. For example, this paper by Arthur Deickman, which might have been linked here earlier:

JCS-ONLINE

Actually no, I found that paper through a link to the JCS site itself.

JCS, Journal of Consciousness Studies

I've had some interesting experiences running his experiment ... it has a very quieting effect - to look for I/awareness ... I'll go through the article and write up a comparison with my experiences and his description.



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[smcder]

Smcder, if you were to walk up to 25 random people on the streets in a Western city and 25 random people in an Eastern city, and asked the following question, what might be the percentage of A1 and A2 responses do you think?

Q: How does your mind/consciousness relate to sights, sounds, and smells?

A1: My mind is the sights, sounds, and smells.

A2: My mind is experiencing the sights, sounds, and smells.

I don't recommend trying this in New Jersey.

 

[smcder]

Exploring other parts of that JCS online site I see that there's very interesting material there. For example, this paper by Arthur Deickman, which might have been linked here earlier:

JCS-ONLINE

Actually no, I found that paper through a link to the JCS site itself.

JCS, Journal of Consciousness Studies

I think there may be a couple different versions of this article ... the one I linked I think only had the one experiment.

This is the experiment I tried:

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.

Stop a moment and try that if you like ... I think it helps in understanding the article. It was very calming to me in part I think because it occupied my attention, I was doing something. The kind of breath meditation I normally practice is very active - at first - you spend time asking yourself "what kind of breath should I take now? Long, short ... etc" and interestingly, the mind knows what it needs next. Over time, you settle in to the breath that works and quiet down, but at first you are doing a lot and this is much easier for me to engage with than simply counting breaths - so this Experiment 1 above also gives the mind something to do - it's almost a kinesthetic - activity, because I felt like I was moving through different layers in search of this "I".

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.

I think that's exactly right ... on my experience anyway.

Now this next part goe to consciousness and content and here it will be very helpful to have tried the experiment in order to understand the author.

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.

Again, I would say that was what it was like to me. I circled around the "I" looking for it ... then I would pop into it, inhabit or embody it - I was I ... from this space, there was only a kind of awareness or pure consciousness. I can do it sitting here right now ... one place you can get to (and don't lock onto this, because there are other experiences) is that the content of awareness is awareness while at the same time awareness is empty of content ... content and awareness are one and the same. Content and emptiness are one in the same.

Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.

 

[smcder]

CONTINUED

JCS-ONLINE

"In contemporary psychology and philosophy, the `I' usually is not differentiated from the physical person and its mental contents.

The self is seen as a construct and the crucial duality is overlooked.

As Susan Blackmore puts it,

• 
  Our sense of self came about through the body image we must construct in order to control behaviour, the vantage point given by our senses and our knowledge of our own abilities — that is the abilities of the body–brain–mind. Then along came language. Language turns the self into a thing and gives it attributes and powers. (Blackmore, 1994)

Dennett comments similarly that what he calls the `Center of Narrative Gravity' gives us a spurious sense of a unitary self:

A self, according to my theory, is not any old mathematical point, but an abstraction defined by the myriads of attributions and interpretations (including self- attributions and self-interpretations) that have composed the biography of the living body whose Center of Narrative Gravity it is (Dennett, 1991).
​

However, when we use introspection to search for the origin of our subjectivity,

we find that the search for `I' leaves the customary aspects of personhood behind and takes us closer and closer to awareness, per se.

If this process of introspective observation is carried to its conclusion, even the background sense of core subjective self disappears into awareness. Thus, if we proceed phenomenologically, we find that the `I' is identical to awareness: `I' = awareness.
Awareness is something apart from, and different from, all that of which we are aware: thoughts, emotions, images, sensations, desires and memory. Awareness is the ground in which the mind's contents manifest themselves; they appear in it and disappear once again.
I use the word `awareness' to mean this ground of all experience. Any attempt to describe it ends in a description of what we are aware of.

On this basis some argue that awareness per se doesn't exist.

But careful introspection reveals that the objects of awareness — sensations, thoughts, memories, images and emotions — are constantly changing and superseding each other. In contrast, awareness continues independent of any specific mental contents."

 

[smcder]

In the two editions of CPR, there are seven (7) main discussions of the mind.

The first is in the Transcendental Aesthetic, the second is in what is usually called the Metaphysical Deduction (for this term, see below). Then there are two discussions of it in the first-edition TD, in parts 1 to 3 of Section 2 (A98 up to A110) and in the whole of Section 3 (A115-A127)[2] and two more in the second-edition TD, from B129 to B140 and from B153 to B159, the latter seemingly added as a kind of supplement.

The seventh and last is found in the first edition version of Kant's attack on the Paralogisms,

in the course of which he says things of the utmost interest about consciousness of and reference to self.

(What little was retained of these remarks in the second edition was moved to the completely rewritten TD.) For understanding Kant on the mind and self-knowledge, the first edition of CPR is far more valuable than the second edition. Kant's discussion proceeds through the following stages.

 

[smcder]

The Soul is substance[edit]

Every one of my thoughts and judgments is based on the presupposition "I think." "I" is the subject and the thoughts are the predicates.

Yet I should not confuse the ever-present logical subject of my every thought with a permanent, immortal, real substance (soul).

The logical subject is a mere idea, not a real substance. Unlike Descartes who believes that the soul may be known directly through reason, Kant asserts that no such thing is possible. Descartes declares cogito ergo sum but Kant denies that any knowledge of "I" may be possible.

"I" is only the background of the field of apperception and as such lacks the experience of direct intuition that would make self-knowledge possible.

This implies that the self in itself could never be known.

smcder these two statements echoing Deikman's experiment above

Like Hume, Kant rejects knowledge of the "I" as substance. For Kant, the "I" that is taken to be the soul is purely logical and involves no intuitions. The "I" is the result of the a priori consciousness continuum not of direct intuition a posteriori. It is apperception as the principle of unity in the consciousness continuum that dictates the presence of "I" as a singular logical subject of all the representations of a single consciousness. Although "I" seems to refer to the same "I" all the time, it is not really a permanent feature but only the logical characteristic of a unified consciousness.[31]

 

[smcder]

Kant - Cargo example design

 

[smcder]

What you have to remember @Soupie is that the philosophical and scientific treatment/ analysis of information is in its infancy. Understand the various definitions and critique them or try to relate the concept to nature and the evolution of complexity. The material /immateial thing is not worth getting embroiled in. I think of the concept of information, as a means of interpreting relation of coherence between entities when they interact i.e. if there was no underlying rule of unifying coherence, interactive behaviours would be random and the universe would not exist.
So five is a concept, is a representation... (... is information? - i.e. is info some kind of representation?)

Yes ... good this is the physicalist interpretation. Did you see the eliminativist defintion by McGinn I posted? Does it fit?

 

[smcder]

still can't see the question... but i am no eliminativist and i dont consider soupie to be either. Is that the answer?
the tree and infomotion thing... I cant remember how it went exactly but I do remember it as being a bit vague at the time anyway. perhaps the point could be clarified...
re: my being cryptic recently:
"When you turn your head to look at a noise, the difference that you heard has informed you.
When an atom's parts exchange a glance, perhaps they just react as they do.
Perhaps we should think of information as a verb to describe any reactive impact that arises from interactions."
Well, everything that exists is process and not rigid, though such things as matter may be defined as rigid; in truth matter often displays remarkable temporal stability and spatial consistency.
Information is not substantial but neither are "material" things; really.
Both matter and information are processes.
Information, from my stance, is merely a particular way of relating to or describing a characteristic of the process between interacting entities.
To say that information is immaterial or not substance in the way matter is, is a bit of a fudge (to put the point crudely)

See the eliminatist defintion by McGinn I posted, the "lesser" version does seem to fit? You, I think, did answer the Tree of Information question. Perhaps that's what we weren't supposed to have access to in the Garden! Here is the answer I will take anyway:

Well, everything that exists is process and not rigid,

including trees

though such things as matter may be defined as rigid; in truth matter often displays remarkable temporal stability and spatial consistency.

compared to what ... some truths (information?) are eternal how is that for temporal stability?

Information is not substantial but neither are "material" things; really.

including trees

Both matter and information are processes.

including trees ... and forests ... and seeing one for the other

 

[Pharoah]

Yes ... good this is the physicalist interpretation. Did you see the eliminativist defintion by McGinn I posted? Does it fit?

what a dreadful piece of writing that was.

 

[smcder]

what a dreadful piece of writing that was.

That doesn't answer the question ... !