Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 3

[smcder]

Yessir, it is answering questions.

Red light has a wavelength of 400–484 THz. It has one causal impact on cone cells in the retina. This is not the same mechanism that causes the phenomenal experience red. This is why there is a transcendent gap between the hierarchical levels: different kinds of physical mechanism cause different representational 'properties' (alternatively, 'characteristics' or 'effects'). Of course, the experience of red does not happen exactly when the cone cell is stimulated - there is no overdeterminism going on.

overdeterminism
I'm not sure I follow how this addresses overdeterminism, the problem I have in mind is:

------> means "causal impact" or just "causes"

red light ----> cones ----> brain ----> phenomenal experience red

so far so good ...

but now I decide to put on the brakes ... my (subjective) phenomenal experience of deciding has nothing to do with the brakes actually being applied, right? Because of the transcendent gap, phenomenal experience can't feed back down into action, so subjective experience is causally impotent (epiphenomenal) and "I" am literally and figuratively along for the ride?


(this is what makes zombies conceivable to some folks)

Youve read more HCT than I have @Soupie, what's your take on this?

@Pharoah - this would mean there is no intersubjective causality either, right? It's also illusory. One thought won't lead to another, I can't decide to raise my mood because the causality is upstream ... and so thinking cheery thoughts doesn't lead to becoming cheery, because if it did, that would involve a biochemical change in the brain violating causality - I hear what you are saying about causality occuring only on each level, but if it doesn't work on the subjective level, does it work on any other level either? In other words, chemical phenomena are really physical ... this is where all the issues of emergence ... emerge.

I need to go back and read Conscillience now ... but I think for him it all folds up into physics.

 

[Pharoah]

Another way of thinking about this is that all physical events are processes and processes are not identities. What I mean by this, is that we think of matter as a static, rigid, solid, identity but it is not. Matter is a process of subatomic interactions and is identified as solid only because we, as a material body ourselves, relate to it in that way.
Consequently, we can think of complex processes—that are no less physical than those of material processes—creating mental characteristics that are not apparently substantially material (substantially material in terms of a solid rigid identity).

Consequently, we can think of complex processes—that are no less physical than those of material processes—creating mental characteristics that are not apparently substantially material (substantially material in terms of a solid rigid identity).


complex processes - here refers to those creating mental characteristics, theses processes are no less physical than those of material processes (so you distinguish material from phyical - I'll have to come back to that ... )

mental characteristics are not apparently substantially material (in terms of a solid rigid identity)

The above seems to be an attempt to give an objective account of subjectivity (Nagel's original hard problem and to say it's "rhetorically incoherent" is no defense, because that is the hard problem ) except that "apparently" refers to a subjective evaluation ... so you have to call in subjectivity to objectively describe it? Or am I missing something?

I will reply to your previous comment in due course (needs a more considered response).
re. Material and physical
What i am saying is that matter is physical, but its solidity is observer dependent. We characterise matter as solid because of the way we relate to it (we don't see gamma rays or xrays passing through it as if it is not solid). Consequently, we think that a physical thing has to be tangible in some way because we assume, from our observation of matter, that physical things have permanence and rigidity. Thinking of mental 'properties' as physical is not such a problem when one sees physical things as a process, rather than as a permanent rigid identity.
Whilst physical appearance is observer dependent, there is truth in observer representations of the physical because inaccurate representation denies temporal stability (i use the term representation in my idiosyncratic unorthodox way): if matter were, in truth, not solid to my solid body, then I would be as a ghost that passes through walls and through myself and thereby cease to possess temporal existence. Indeed, this is where we can pursue an understanding of my definition of information, because it is by virtue of the resistance of one material to another that each becomes informed by the other (conversly, a ghost body, in passing through matter as if it is not there, is not informed by the matter through which it passes). And so we might say that our mental constructs are no less informed of other mental constructs due to their mutual interaction and relation to other physical things. (I am in danger of getting obscure here for definite!!).

 

[Constance]

I am not intelligent enough to understand what some philosophers mean by their use of the word transcendent, but I understand that people mean different things by the same term. I get confused. When I use it, I am saying that one hierarchical level represents the environment in a way that is entirely different (transcendentally separated) from the next level. The environmental causes to one hierarchical level lead to transcendentally separated types of effect thereby denying downward causal effects (I think). The constructs are informational about the environment and the type of information for each level is entirely distinct (unmixable... transcendentally isolated from one another).
That is what I mean by transcendental. I can't express it very well. But it is important to have this idea into the concept of emergence.

I don't understand the meaning of that last sentence, but it does seem to me that what you are doing is attempting to use the philosophical terms 'transcend' and 'transcendence' in the service of 1) a strictly analytical interpretation/theorization of what we can only partially (even fragmentarily) understand of the history of the evolution and increasing complexity of nature in our universe, and 2) within that theory to locate a temporally evolved place for consciousness and mind in stage 4 of your conceptual hierarchy. It's not clear what you expect to be the next evolutionary level, your stage 5, and how mind and world are to be evolved from stage 4. What's your best guess about stage 5? It seems to me that, given the preceding four stages you conceive of, there must be some grounds you've established upon which to postulate what will change in stage 5.

The main reason for my responding at this point is to focus discussion on the various ways in which the philosophical terms 'transcend' and 'transcendence' have been understood and used in the history of Western philosophy and particularly in the modern period beginning with the phenomenological turn. The following extract from a paper by Daniel Dahlstrom entitled "Heidegger's Transcendentalism" clarifies key differing usages of the concepts of 'transcendence' that I think you need to be aware of and responsive to in preparing your HCT theory for inevitable critiques by your readers and referees.


". . .transcendence here does not only characterize, as it typically does for

Husserl (at least circa 1913), what lies in some sense beyond the subject

(even if always also immanent or potentially immanent to it).

Instead, the transcendence that makes up the very being of being-here

encompasses a relation to oneself as well as a correlative relatedness

to the world at large. Heidegger attempts to capture this distinctive

transcendence with the metonym, “being-in-the-world.”19 Thus, it is

the very essence of being-here to transcend (range over and charac-

34

terize) itself and the world, others, and any other entities and modes

of being that it encounters within the world. It does so thanks to a

disposed understanding of being. In other words, an understanding of

being as mattering to it existentially constitutes and discloses “the transcendence

of the being of being-here.” Analysis of existence, this self-disclosive

constitution of being-here, yields the transcendental knowledge

that makes up fundamental ontology.


Earlier I noted differences between Heidegger’s and Husserl’s use

of the term ‘transcendence’. Yet the differences should not obscure

some basic homologies. Echoing the cognate central function of transcendental

subjectivity in Husserl’s phenomenology, Heidegger emphasizes

that for the problem of being in general as for the problem of

transcendence “the subjectivity of the subject itself ” is the central question.

20 Heidegger also follows Husserl here and elsewhere in adopting

Kant’s talk of a transcendental sphere providing “conditions of the

possibility” for some other, subordinate level. In a similar vein he

argues that grounding in general necessarily has a transcendental meaning

because it is rooted in Da-sein’s transcendence.21


Indeed, in this last respect there are patent, albeit easily misleading,

parallels among the three philosophers. Thus, in the Kritik der reinen

Vernunft Kant elaborates the transcendental principles that make empirical

judgments possible and how transcendental idealism at once takes

leave of and ensures commonsense realism; in Ideen I Husserl outlines

the phenomenological or transcendental reductions that yield transcendental

phenomena capable of explaining transcendence in the very

natural attitude that they suspend; and in Sein und Zeit Heidegger

demonstrates how what ontologically enables the encounter of innerworldly

entities, namely, the transcendence of the world, is grounded

in “the horizonal unity of ecstatic temporality,” itself the ontological

sense of being-here as its original illumination or clearing.22 While Kant

uses the term ‘transcendence’ to signify a principle that oversteps the

limits of what can be experienced and Husserl uses it to signify experiences

directed beyond themselves, they both sharply distinguish the

respective scope of the term from that which they, again in different

ways, reserve for ‘transcendental’.23 Given their different uses of ‘transcendence’,

we might capture the divergent roles assigned to transcendental

subjectivity in this regard by Kant and Husserl respectively,

as follows. While one of the aims of Kant’s critical analysis of transcendental

subjectivity is to demonstrate the insignificance of transcendent

claims, Husserl’s phenomenological analysis of transcendental

35

subjectivity is meant to explain its transcendence (a transcendence

always perspectivally limited in the case of perceptions of sensory

objects). By contrast, Heidegger retrieves and recasts the medieval sense

of ‘transcendence’ by applying it to Da-sein’s being, while applying

the term ‘transcendental’ to the disclosure (truth) of that transcendence.

Despite these significant variations, there is one final aspect of

Heidegger’s link with his transcendental predecessors that deserves note,

particularly in view of the way that Heidegger subsequently views all

philosophies of transcendence within the shadows of Plato’s interpretation

of being and what Heidegger takes to be its “idealist” legacy.24


Both Kant and Husserl style their philosophies as transcendental idealisms,

precisely to capture the irreducibility of knowledge (and, for

that matter, certain other values) to empirical or naturalistic descriptions

of human behavior or organisms. Herein lies the basic insight

driving Neo-Kantian thinkers, as noted at the outset, but also Heidegger’s

lifelong refrain that “ ‘there is’ being only as long as Dasein is.”25 In

this context, it is telling that Heidegger already in Sein und Zeit explicitly

links transcendentalism with idealism and even seems willing, under

proper constraints, to allow for a certain understanding of the latter.

To be sure, insofar as realism and idealism frame the traditional debate

in epistemology, he rejects both alike as untenable and their very

dichotomy as ungrounded.


Nonetheless, he lauds idealism as “the sole and legitimate possibility

of philosophical problematic” insofar as it is stands for the understanding

“that being is never explicable through beings but is respectively

already the ‘transcendental’ for every entity.”26 There is probably no

passage that better displays Heidegger with one foot firmly in a tradition

and another beyond it. But there is more than one way to interpret

his position here. In a less generous moment, we can interpret it

as mere fence-straddling or we can accept his own interpretation,

namely, that one foot must be planted firmly in a tradition in order

to be able to push off from it and make the leap to a new beginning

with the other.27 In any event, the question presents itself: are the

motives for the transcendental turn from empiricist and naturalistic

thinking no longer at work in the new, allegedly postmetaphysical and

posttranscendental beginning which Heidegger is attempting to prepare

for?

36

2. Heidegger’s Criticisms of Transcendentalism

One key text signaling Heidegger’s repudiation of the notion of transcendence

and the transcendental philosophy entailed by it is to be

found towards the conclusion of Part Three, “The Pass” (Das Zuspiel)

of the Beiträge. It is understandable that the critical discussion is to be

found here, since the pass is meant to prepare the way for another

beginning to thinking, precisely through an indispensable, detached,

yet thoughtful exchange with the thinkers who define the history of

the first beginning.28 Precisely in this pass, the task of thinking is to

appropriate the first beginning in an original way, a way that is concealed

from those thinkers themselves and allows us, indeed, even compels

us to set foot in another (but presumably not opposite) beginning.29

This transpires, Heidegger maintains, in a transition from the guiding

or leading question (what is the entity?) to the basic or ground question (what

is being? what is its truth?) or, as he also puts it, from thinking precipitated—

Vorgriff —by human beings (in the form of the correctness of

assertions and the objectivity of objects) to thinking that grounds being

human and completely transforms our relations to beings.30 Since the

leading question is the definitive question of metaphysics, the pass

amounts to overturning or, better, twisting free of metaphysics, a way

of thinking that “scales over beings to beingness (idea).”31 Here, without

explicitly invoking the term ‘transcendence’, Heidegger identifies

the inherently transcendent character of metaphysics, the sort of philosophy

that makes up the history of thinking from its first inception.

Heidegger locates his “historical” lectures in the ambit of the task

of the pass. In this context he provides an important clue to his assessment

of his own transcendental moves. He speaks of retracing Kant’s

major steps “and yet overturning the ‘transcendental’ departure point

by means of Da-sein.” In the same brief section (§88) he adds that

this was one path, among others, for showing that being, in order to

prevail, requires the grounding of its truth, a grounding necessarily consummated

as Da-sein, by means of which all idealism and metaphysics

in general are overcome. Yet he ends by remarking that this effort,

as “a necessary unfolding of the first beginning,” first stumbled into

the dark, with the result that it is only from the standpoint of the

other beginning that it can be conceived.32 In this way Heidegger characterizes

his work in the late 1920s: though it falls short because of

its heritage, it has the unmistakably “twofold transitional character of

at once conceiving metaphysics more originally and thereby overturning

it.” The fact that it points the way to a question that cannot be posed

by metaphysics and hence requires another beginning explains the

torso of fundamental ontology—and perhaps some of Heidegger’s reasons

for destroying the unpublished remainder of Sein und Zeit.33

It is in the context of sketching the pervasive influence of the Platonic

understanding of fid°a upon Western metaphysics that Heidegger provides

perhaps his most revealing account of philosophies centering on a

notion of transcendence, including his own earlier “transcendental”

efforts. The immediate context is one of the concluding and lengthier

sections of Part Three, namely, the section entitled “The fid°a, Platonism

and Idealism.” Heidegger begins this section by recounting how fid°a—

initially understood as the unifying look something presents as a constant,

available presence and presents to a potential onlooker (and

ultimately, perceiver or thinker)—came to be identified with the beingness

of beings. Heidegger acknowledges, to be sure, that Plato’s awareness

of being as something more, requiring a move beyond this beingness

(§p°keina t∞w oEsiaw), effectively brings the leading question of metaphysics

up against its limits. But because his questioning is only directed

at beings and their beingness, he can only determine that dimension

beyond beings in terms of what characterizes beingness in relation to

human beings, i.e., as something good or suitable to them. “Beingness

[Seiendheit] is not conceived in [a] more primordial way any more,

but instead is evaluated in such a way that the valuation itself is put

forth as the highest point.”34 Heidegger contends, further, that Plato’s

formulation of the leading question of Western metaphysics and his

answer to it provided the framework and paradigm for all subsequent

Western interpretations of being.

After tracing the transformations in the notion of the idea that led

to idealism (the equation of the beingness of beings with their being

presented or represented),35 Heidegger notes how the influential notion

of transcendence emerges from the Platonic interpretation of being.

For Heidegger the core of that Platonic interpretation is once again

the construal of entities in terms of the constant look—the fid°a—that

they present over many different and changing circumstances. So construed,

the beingness of a being is the fid°a or e‰dow that is common

(koinOn) or generic (g°nh). Insofar as the idea (the beingness of beings)

is put forward as common to, and yet beyond, any particular beings,

its separateness (xvrismOw) from beings is also posited. This manner of

representing being as separate from beings is, Heidegger maintains,

“the origin of ‘transcendence’ in its various forms.”


With this brief introduction, Heidegger then identifies five kinds of

transcendence in the following order: ontic, ontological, fundamental

ontological, epistemological, and metaphysical. . . .”

http://www.bu.edu/philo/files/2013/09/d-heidegger-transcendentalism.pdf



Also helpful, from the SEP article on Metaphysics:

". . . Most current work in the philosophy of mind presupposes physicalism, and it is generally agreed that a physicalistic theory that does not simply deny the reality of the mental (that is not an “eliminativist” theory), raises metaphysical questions. Such a theory must, of course, find a place for the mental in a wholly physical world, and such a place exists only if mental events and states are certain special physical events and states. There are at least three important metaphysical questions raised by these theories. First, granted that all particular mental events or states are identical with particular physical events or states, can it also be that some or all mental universals (‘event-types’ and ‘state-types’ are the usual terms) are identical with physical universals? Secondly, does physicalism imply that mental events and states cannot really be causes (does physicalism imply a kind of epiphenomenalism)? Thirdly, can a physical thing have non-physical properties—might it be that mental properties like “thinking of Vienna” or “perceiving redly” are non-physical properties of physical organisms? This last question, of course, raises a more basic metaphysical question, ‘What is a non-physical property?’ And all forms of the identity theory raise fundamental metaphysical questions, ontological questions, questions like, ‘What is an event?’ and ‘What is a state?’.

4. The Methodology of Metaphysics . . . ."

Metaphysics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

 

[smcder]

I will reply to your previous comment in due course (needs a more considered response).
re. Material and physical
What i am saying is that matter is physical, but its solidity is observer dependent. We characterise matter as solid because of the way we relate to it (we don't see gamma rays or xrays passing through it as if it is not solid). Consequently, we think that a physical thing has to be tangible in some way because we assume, from our observation of matter, that physical things have permanence and rigidity. Thinking of mental 'properties' as physical is not such a problem when one sees physical things as a process, rather than as a permanent rigid identity.
Whilst physical appearance is observer dependent, there is truth in observer representations of the physical because inaccurate representation denies temporal stability (i use the term representation in my idiosyncratic unorthodox way): if matter were, in truth, not solid to my solid body, then I would be as a ghost that passes through walls and through myself and thereby cease to possess temporal existence. Indeed, this is where we can pursue an understanding of my definition of information, because it is by virtue of the resistance of one material to another that each becomes informed by the other (conversly, a ghost body, in passing through matter as if it is not there, is not informed by the matter through which it passes). And so we might say that our mental constructs are no less informed of other mental constructs due to their mutual interaction and relation to other physical things. (I am in danger of getting obscure here for definite!!).

So I'm not seeing the analogy of thought ... it's as if you are saying thoughts rub up against one another, when on the brain model, it's a network, which maybe you are saying is information - the state of the brain at the time ... (I'll pick up on this below)

Anyway, I guess it's not mental "properties" in general as physical being a problem as subjectivity specifically, for which this doesn't seem to offer any help.

Mental processes are mostly "easy" according to Chalmers, it's when subjectivity comes in that the problem becomes hard. Subjectivity has no other referents except its own awareness. To say subjectivity is illusory is to undefine it. I prove my subjectivity by being aware of it. That's just what it is, so eliminativism isn't taken very seriously by many people. And maybe those who do have a very different kind of interior life? I don't think anyone has explored this - but I have heard that when Dawkins put on the "God Helmet" (what was the inventors name?) he claimed to feel nothing. So maybe he has a very different kind of mind/brain?

So the problem is "slippage" in the mental world - each though is caused by a physical process, it's in an epiphenomenal (causally impotent) bubble and so it should be like a ghost to other thoughts, except that you could argue the entire brain state and it's interrelatedness is just one thought, the state of the brain at the moment - but none of that shows why there should be subjectivity in the sense of "what it is like to be" because all of the above should function just fine without awareness. There would be no marker between zombie/non-zombie.

I'm wandering too if by not being able to feedback, if my thoughts are causally impotent, would there be any necessary correspondence with the objective world? Maybe when I stub my toe, I taste cream cheese (green cream cheese, no less).

@Conatance In the MPD video, I got the impression this could be happening for an alternate personality - if the dominant personality were in charge, it would have to interpret its experiences consistent with the actions of the dominant personality (which its not aware of) while thinking it was in charge ...

In the first paragraph I have a problem because we do see Xrays passing through matter as if it were not solid - I've seen the results, so I know matter isn't solid. Before Xrays people could see that things weren't solid, find an old house and see where the glass is no longer at the top of the frame because it has run down (it will have to be an old house!) Heraclitus could tell you matter was not solid. So we've long been aware of matter as relatively tangible because it's on the same time scale as we are - we are decaying more or less at the same rate as other matter around us ...

Now the same is true with mental properties, and how we've historically thought about them ... many traditions see the transition from life to death as a relative change in tangibility, some have pointed out that a completely ghostly body couldn't be punished in hell, for example ... and many traditions conceive of etheric bodies or sheaths of various layers from the physical to the almost compltely ethereal ... but many or maybe most see the soul as retaining some degree of tangibility, only God or some ultimate state would be utterly intangible ... and there are various common sense ways we talk about thoughts affecting us, conscience weighs heavy, his mind was light, walking ever gentle on my mind ...

 

[smcder]

Oops! I'm wrong about glass ... I learned something!

Does Glass Flow? | Corning Museum of Glass

 

[smcder]

@Pharoah

So all of that boils down to that the problem of epiphenomenalism is that

1. it posits something that has no purpose, subjectvity - it's just a quality of the brain running that there is subjectivity and "what it is like"-edness, a brute fact

2. more seriously it goes against evidence and experience that our subjective experience is causal, in fact there seems to be evidence that certain information is only brought to consciousness for special processing that can't take place elsewhere, we are only aware of a small percent of what goes on, comes into and goes out of our minds - what is special about that, that it has to be brought to light?

So it seems to me in this case, there is good argument for downward causility from the mental to the physical, and if you are saying the mental is physical or material, then ok, but then that can't be a transcendentally separate mode or layer, right? So I am confused on something.

And of the mental processes, subjective ones specifically are difficult because they aren't just on a scale of tangibility, they are nothing like the material ... processing colors or generating information, that's no problem to see these as physical processes, we could build a super computer out of tinker toys, theoretically, but it's hard to think of it becoming conscious

... this was Nagel's argument, if the subjective was phyical/material/tangible, it would be subject to an objective description and would therefore not be subjective.

 

[smcder]

@Soupie asked me about Strassman's latest book

DMT and the Soul of Prophecy

and so I picked it up at the library, it's fascinating ...

I'm listening to this interview now:
DMT And The Soul Of Prophecy, Rick Strassman | GFM Radio

and I'm not that interested in psychedelics or psychedelic experience but Strassman touches on aspects of running the study, getting it off the ground, who was concerned about what (he is pretty sanguine about government regulators) as well as his perceived failure to help subjects integrate their experience and how when his model of unitive experience, based on his own Buddhist practice, didn't pan out with DMT - he made a fascinating move to a very different model.

He also mentions that most of the DMT is made in our lungs, so even without a pineal gland (Descartes seat of the soul) we make plenty of DMT - it's also one of the chemicals moved into the brain by the brain's own energies, so its speculated to be part of normal consciousness and it's found in the retina ... suggesting that "this is the DMT world" ...

 

[Pharoah]

Yessir, it is answering questions.

Red light has a wavelength of 400–484 THz. It has one causal impact on cone cells in the retina. This is not the same mechanism that causes the phenomenal experience red. This is why there is a transcendent gap between the hierarchical levels: different kinds of physical mechanism cause different representational 'properties' (alternatively, 'characteristics' or 'effects'). Of course, the experience of red does not happen exactly when the cone cell is stimulated - there is no overdeterminism going on.

overdeterminism
I'm not sure I follow how this addresses overdeterminism, the problem I have in mind is:

------> means "causal impact" or just "causes"

red light ----> cones ----> brain ----> phenomenal experience red

so far so good ...

but now I decide to put on the brakes ... my (subjective) phenomenal experience of deciding has nothing to do with the brakes actually being applied, right? Because of the transcendent gap, phenomenal experience can't feed back down into action, so subjective experience is causally impotent (epiphenomenal) and "I" am literally and figuratively along for the ride?


(this is what makes zombies conceivable to some folks)

Ok @smcder . For simplicity we have an innate physiology in a fairly primitive insect with 2 mechanisms:

a) registers light of frequency 500THz
b) registers light of frequency 450 THz

but only in this particular species of insect does the following occur:

a)’s stimulation is given low priority. The signals are attenuated. The creature is motivated to look elsewhere, do something else.
b)’s stimulation is given high priority. The signal is re-enforced, focalised. The creature's innate motivation is to act quickly, to examine further the source of stimulation. This is accentuated by hormone release (faster respiration, increase heart rate etc) perhaps and leads inevitably to continual and heightened stimulation of b) mechanism

450THz is red. Red berries = nutrition. b) mechanism is qualitatively relevant to the species’ survival because it helps the creature locate nutrition.
500THz is green. Green = nothing in particular. a) mechanism is qualitatively relevant because it filters out useless stimulations.

In the end our creature locates a berry and a third mechanism is engaged with enthusiasm. A feeding mechanism c).
*****
Ok. @smcder . Put a circle round this idea in your mind. These are innate mechanisms. The creature can do nothing to modify its behaviour. It acts in a predetermined way to these two light stimulations.

Now, in our next scenario, we have a more sophisticated insect with the same mechanisms. But it is capable of more than innate responses to stimulation.
I am going to give you its mental narrative (obviously it does not have a verbal language - but I will translate its thoughts).

“I recognise this place. I was here in the past. There was something about this place that was somehow exciting. I don’t know what was exciting... it just was.
[my homeostatic needs might, on another occasion, be indifferent to this associative recall, but on this occasion my recognition of this place and my recall of excitement is enticing]
“I think I might (with mild enthusiasm) just mosey on down to take a look at this place that is vaguely enticing”
“Ah... this green is ubiquitous... I feel a bit lethargic (energy-less)...
But oh! what’s that? A red sphere (a berry) has engaged my innate b) mechanism... I don’t know why, but I just feel a rush of blood and I want to rush over to look in more detail at this food. Yummy, that is (mechanism c) engaged) very satisfying (my muscles are just relaxing mannn. I feel like chilling)”

“There is something about the red... don’t know what... but it just puts me on edge a bit... makes me feel good...”

So, the mechanism b) is engaged - an innate mechanism. BUT, the phenomenal quality of red is only understood as such by a creature that is capable of evaluating its qualitative relevancy. It doesn’t just experience the mechanism b), but the mechanism (along with many others) is employed in a changing landscape of qualitative impressions (or valencies) and the behaviours are motivated through that changing evaluation and prioritisation according to homeostatic needs.

Note, that the innate mechanisms a) and b) are engaged, but the evaluation of their associated relevancy to environmental conditions cannot causally impinge on their function. The innate mechanisms become tools-of-engagement by which environmental significances are assimilated and evaluated for their worth and relevancy.

Let me know if and how epiphenomenalism or overdeterminism is still an issue here

 

[Pharoah]

I don't understand the meaning of that last sentence, but it does seem to me that what you are doing is attempting to use the philosophical terms 'transcend' and 'transcendence' in the service of 1) a strictly analytical interpretation/theorization of what we can only partially (even fragmentarily) understand of the history of the evolution and increasing complexity of nature in our universe, and 2) within that theory to locate a temporally evolved place for consciousness and mind in stage 4 of your conceptual hierarchy. It's not clear what you expect to be the next evolutionary level, your stage 5, and how mind and world are to be evolved from stage 4. What's your best guess about stage 5? It seems to me that, given the preceding four stages you conceive of, there must be some grounds you've established upon which to postulate what will change in stage 5.

The main reason for my responding at this point is to focus discussion on the various ways in which the philosophical terms 'transcend' and 'transcendence' have been understood and used in the history of Western philosophy and particularly in the modern period beginning with the phenomenological turn. The following extract from a paper by Daniel Dahlstrom entitled "Heidegger's Transcendentalism" clarifies key differing usages of the concepts of 'transcendence' that I think you need to be aware of and responsive to in preparing your HCT theory for inevitable critiques by your readers and referees.


". . .transcendence here does not only characterize, as it typically does for

Husserl (at least circa 1913), what lies in some sense beyond the subject

(even if always also immanent or potentially immanent to it).

Instead, the transcendence that makes up the very being of being-here

encompasses a relation to oneself as well as a correlative relatedness

to the world at large. Heidegger attempts to capture this distinctive

transcendence with the metonym, “being-in-the-world.”19 Thus, it is

the very essence of being-here to transcend (range over and charac-

34

terize) itself and the world, others, and any other entities and modes

of being that it encounters within the world. It does so thanks to a

disposed understanding of being. In other words, an understanding of

being as mattering to it existentially constitutes and discloses “the transcendence

of the being of being-here.” Analysis of existence, this self-disclosive

constitution of being-here, yields the transcendental knowledge

that makes up fundamental ontology.


Earlier I noted differences between Heidegger’s and Husserl’s use

of the term ‘transcendence’. Yet the differences should not obscure

some basic homologies. Echoing the cognate central function of transcendental

subjectivity in Husserl’s phenomenology, Heidegger emphasizes

that for the problem of being in general as for the problem of

transcendence “the subjectivity of the subject itself ” is the central question.

20 Heidegger also follows Husserl here and elsewhere in adopting

Kant’s talk of a transcendental sphere providing “conditions of the

possibility” for some other, subordinate level. In a similar vein he

argues that grounding in general necessarily has a transcendental meaning

because it is rooted in Da-sein’s transcendence.21


Indeed, in this last respect there are patent, albeit easily misleading,

parallels among the three philosophers. Thus, in the Kritik der reinen

Vernunft Kant elaborates the transcendental principles that make empirical

judgments possible and how transcendental idealism at once takes

leave of and ensures commonsense realism; in Ideen I Husserl outlines

the phenomenological or transcendental reductions that yield transcendental

phenomena capable of explaining transcendence in the very

natural attitude that they suspend; and in Sein und Zeit Heidegger

demonstrates how what ontologically enables the encounter of innerworldly

entities, namely, the transcendence of the world, is grounded

in “the horizonal unity of ecstatic temporality,” itself the ontological

sense of being-here as its original illumination or clearing.22 While Kant

uses the term ‘transcendence’ to signify a principle that oversteps the

limits of what can be experienced and Husserl uses it to signify experiences

directed beyond themselves, they both sharply distinguish the

respective scope of the term from that which they, again in different

ways, reserve for ‘transcendental’.23 Given their different uses of ‘transcendence’,

we might capture the divergent roles assigned to transcendental

subjectivity in this regard by Kant and Husserl respectively,

as follows. While one of the aims of Kant’s critical analysis of transcendental

subjectivity is to demonstrate the insignificance of transcendent

claims, Husserl’s phenomenological analysis of transcendental

35

subjectivity is meant to explain its transcendence (a transcendence

always perspectivally limited in the case of perceptions of sensory

objects). By contrast, Heidegger retrieves and recasts the medieval sense

of ‘transcendence’ by applying it to Da-sein’s being, while applying

the term ‘transcendental’ to the disclosure (truth) of that transcendence.

Despite these significant variations, there is one final aspect of

Heidegger’s link with his transcendental predecessors that deserves note,

particularly in view of the way that Heidegger subsequently views all

philosophies of transcendence within the shadows of Plato’s interpretation

of being and what Heidegger takes to be its “idealist” legacy.24


Both Kant and Husserl style their philosophies as transcendental idealisms,

precisely to capture the irreducibility of knowledge (and, for

that matter, certain other values) to empirical or naturalistic descriptions

of human behavior or organisms. Herein lies the basic insight

driving Neo-Kantian thinkers, as noted at the outset, but also Heidegger’s

lifelong refrain that “ ‘there is’ being only as long as Dasein is.”25 In

this context, it is telling that Heidegger already in Sein und Zeit explicitly

links transcendentalism with idealism and even seems willing, under

proper constraints, to allow for a certain understanding of the latter.

To be sure, insofar as realism and idealism frame the traditional debate

in epistemology, he rejects both alike as untenable and their very

dichotomy as ungrounded.


Nonetheless, he lauds idealism as “the sole and legitimate possibility

of philosophical problematic” insofar as it is stands for the understanding

“that being is never explicable through beings but is respectively

already the ‘transcendental’ for every entity.”26 There is probably no

passage that better displays Heidegger with one foot firmly in a tradition

and another beyond it. But there is more than one way to interpret

his position here. In a less generous moment, we can interpret it

as mere fence-straddling or we can accept his own interpretation,

namely, that one foot must be planted firmly in a tradition in order

to be able to push off from it and make the leap to a new beginning

with the other.27 In any event, the question presents itself: are the

motives for the transcendental turn from empiricist and naturalistic

thinking no longer at work in the new, allegedly postmetaphysical and

posttranscendental beginning which Heidegger is attempting to prepare

for?

36

2. Heidegger’s Criticisms of Transcendentalism

One key text signaling Heidegger’s repudiation of the notion of transcendence

and the transcendental philosophy entailed by it is to be

found towards the conclusion of Part Three, “The Pass” (Das Zuspiel)

of the Beiträge. It is understandable that the critical discussion is to be

found here, since the pass is meant to prepare the way for another

beginning to thinking, precisely through an indispensable, detached,

yet thoughtful exchange with the thinkers who define the history of

the first beginning.28 Precisely in this pass, the task of thinking is to

appropriate the first beginning in an original way, a way that is concealed

from those thinkers themselves and allows us, indeed, even compels

us to set foot in another (but presumably not opposite) beginning.29

This transpires, Heidegger maintains, in a transition from the guiding

or leading question (what is the entity?) to the basic or ground question (what

is being? what is its truth?) or, as he also puts it, from thinking precipitated—

Vorgriff —by human beings (in the form of the correctness of

assertions and the objectivity of objects) to thinking that grounds being

human and completely transforms our relations to beings.30 Since the

leading question is the definitive question of metaphysics, the pass

amounts to overturning or, better, twisting free of metaphysics, a way

of thinking that “scales over beings to beingness (idea).”31 Here, without

explicitly invoking the term ‘transcendence’, Heidegger identifies

the inherently transcendent character of metaphysics, the sort of philosophy

that makes up the history of thinking from its first inception.

Heidegger locates his “historical” lectures in the ambit of the task

of the pass. In this context he provides an important clue to his assessment

of his own transcendental moves. He speaks of retracing Kant’s

major steps “and yet overturning the ‘transcendental’ departure point

by means of Da-sein.” In the same brief section (§88) he adds that

this was one path, among others, for showing that being, in order to

prevail, requires the grounding of its truth, a grounding necessarily consummated

as Da-sein, by means of which all idealism and metaphysics

in general are overcome. Yet he ends by remarking that this effort,

as “a necessary unfolding of the first beginning,” first stumbled into

the dark, with the result that it is only from the standpoint of the

other beginning that it can be conceived.32 In this way Heidegger characterizes

his work in the late 1920s: though it falls short because of

its heritage, it has the unmistakably “twofold transitional character of

at once conceiving metaphysics more originally and thereby overturning

it.” The fact that it points the way to a question that cannot be posed

by metaphysics and hence requires another beginning explains the

torso of fundamental ontology—and perhaps some of Heidegger’s reasons

for destroying the unpublished remainder of Sein und Zeit.33

It is in the context of sketching the pervasive influence of the Platonic

understanding of fid°a upon Western metaphysics that Heidegger provides

perhaps his most revealing account of philosophies centering on a

notion of transcendence, including his own earlier “transcendental”

efforts. The immediate context is one of the concluding and lengthier

sections of Part Three, namely, the section entitled “The fid°a, Platonism

and Idealism.” Heidegger begins this section by recounting how fid°a—

initially understood as the unifying look something presents as a constant,

available presence and presents to a potential onlooker (and

ultimately, perceiver or thinker)—came to be identified with the beingness

of beings. Heidegger acknowledges, to be sure, that Plato’s awareness

of being as something more, requiring a move beyond this beingness

(§p°keina t∞w oEsiaw), effectively brings the leading question of metaphysics

up against its limits. But because his questioning is only directed

at beings and their beingness, he can only determine that dimension

beyond beings in terms of what characterizes beingness in relation to

human beings, i.e., as something good or suitable to them. “Beingness

[Seiendheit] is not conceived in [a] more primordial way any more,

but instead is evaluated in such a way that the valuation itself is put

forth as the highest point.”34 Heidegger contends, further, that Plato’s

formulation of the leading question of Western metaphysics and his

answer to it provided the framework and paradigm for all subsequent

Western interpretations of being.

After tracing the transformations in the notion of the idea that led

to idealism (the equation of the beingness of beings with their being

presented or represented),35 Heidegger notes how the influential notion

of transcendence emerges from the Platonic interpretation of being.

For Heidegger the core of that Platonic interpretation is once again

the construal of entities in terms of the constant look—the fid°a—that

they present over many different and changing circumstances. So construed,

the beingness of a being is the fid°a or e‰dow that is common

(koinOn) or generic (g°nh). Insofar as the idea (the beingness of beings)

is put forward as common to, and yet beyond, any particular beings,

its separateness (xvrismOw) from beings is also posited. This manner of

representing being as separate from beings is, Heidegger maintains,

“the origin of ‘transcendence’ in its various forms.”


With this brief introduction, Heidegger then identifies five kinds of

transcendence in the following order: ontic, ontological, fundamental

ontological, epistemological, and metaphysical. . . .”

http://www.bu.edu/philo/files/2013/09/d-heidegger-transcendentalism.pdf



Also helpful, from the SEP article on Metaphysics:

". . . Most current work in the philosophy of mind presupposes physicalism, and it is generally agreed that a physicalistic theory that does not simply deny the reality of the mental (that is not an “eliminativist” theory), raises metaphysical questions. Such a theory must, of course, find a place for the mental in a wholly physical world, and such a place exists only if mental events and states are certain special physical events and states. There are at least three important metaphysical questions raised by these theories. First, granted that all particular mental events or states are identical with particular physical events or states, can it also be that some or all mental universals (‘event-types’ and ‘state-types’ are the usual terms) are identical with physical universals? Secondly, does physicalism imply that mental events and states cannot really be causes (does physicalism imply a kind of epiphenomenalism)? Thirdly, can a physical thing have non-physical properties—might it be that mental properties like “thinking of Vienna” or “perceiving redly” are non-physical properties of physical organisms? This last question, of course, raises a more basic metaphysical question, ‘What is a non-physical property?’ And all forms of the identity theory raise fundamental metaphysical questions, ontological questions, questions like, ‘What is an event?’ and ‘What is a state?’.

4. The Methodology of Metaphysics . . . ."

Metaphysics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Thanks for this.

I know you don't like abstraction @Constance but you did ask about #5:
What the other hierarchies tell us is that at each level there is an evolution of complex forms which is accidental - undirected. I call this "passively" acquired form in my writing.
When a new emergent phase commences, that process that was passive, becomes active. The new construct has the capability to actively acquire that which was previously passively acquired.
What this tells us of #5, is that in #4 something has been evolving accidentally (since mankind first existed) i.e. "passively". When #5 emergences that which has been evolving passively will be controlled by the new construct which will actively acquire that which was acquired passively (by us #4 humans).

What is this thing that we have been evolving by accident (in our culture and in our minds), that will lead by accident to a transcendent realisation that will enable us to actively acquired this thing?

 

[Soupie]

Whilst physical appearance is observer dependent, there is truth in observer representations of the physical because inaccurate representation denies temporal stability...

@smcder (I cant seem to quote select parts of your posts, but the following speaks to some of the issues youve raised.)

Minsky - Matter, Mind and Models

Matter, Mind and Models

Marvin L. Minsky

1. Introduction

This chapter attempts to explain why people become confused by questions about the relation between mental and physical events. When a question leads to confused, inconsistent answers, this may be because the question is ultimately meaningless or at least unanswerable, but it may also be because an adequate answer requires a powerful analytical apparatus. It is the author's view that many important questions about the relation between mind and brain are of that second kind, and that some of the necessary technical and conceptual tools are becoming available as a result of work on the problems of making computer programs behave intelligently. We shall suggest a theory to explain why introspection does not give clear answers to these questions. Technical solutions to the questions will not be attempted, but there is probably some value in finding at least a clear explanation of why we are confused.

2. Knowledge and Models

If a creature can answer a question about a hypothetical experiment without actually performing it, then it has demonstrated some knowledge about the world. For, his answer to the question must be an encoded description of the behavior (inside the creature) of some sub-machine or "model" responding to an encoded description of the world situation described by the question We use the term "model" in the following sense: To an observer B, an object A* is a model of an object A to the extent that B can use A* to answer questions that interest him about A. The model relation is inherently ternary. Any attempt to suppress the role of the intentions of the investigator B leads to circular definitions or to ambiguities about "essential features" and the like. It is understood that B's use of a model entails the use of encodings for input and output, both for A and for A*. If A is the world, questions for A are experiments. A* is a good mode of A, in B's view, to the extent that A*'s answers agree with those of A's, on the whole, with respect to the questions important to B. When a man M answers questions about the world, then (taking on ourselves the role of B) we attribute this ability to some internal mechanism W* inside M. It would be most convenient if we could discern physically within M two separate regions, W* and M-W*, such that W* "really contains the knowledge" and M-W* contains only general-purpose machinery for coding questions, decoding answers, or administering the thinking process. However, one cannot ready expect to find, in an intelligent machine, a clear separation between coding and knowledge structures, either anatomically or functionally, because (for example) some "knowledge" is likely to be used in the encoding and interpreting processes. What is important for our purposes is the intuitive notion of a model, not the technical ability to delineate a model's boundaries Indeed, part of our argument hinges on the inherent difficulty of discerning such boundaries.

3. Models of Models

Questions about things in the world are answered by making statements about the behavior of corresponding structures in one's model W* of the world. For simple mechanical, physical, or geometric matters one can imagine, as did Craik (1), some machinery that does symbolic calculation but when read through proper codings has an apparently analogue character. But what about broader question about the nature of the world? These have to be treated (by M) not as questions to be answered by W*, but as questions to be answered by making general statements about W*. If W** contains a model M* of M then M* can contain a model W** of W*; and, going one step further, W** may contain a model M** of M*. Indeed, this must be the case if M is to answer general questions about himself. Ordinary questions about himself, e.g., how tall he is, are answered by M*, but very broad questions about his nature, e.g., what kind of a thing he is, etc., are answered, if at all, by descriptive statements made by M** about M*.

The reader may be anxious, at this point, for more details about the relation between W* and W**. How can he tell, for example, when a question is of the kind that requires reference to W** rather than to W*. Is W** a part of W? (Certainly W*, like everything else, is part of W.) Unfortunately, I cannot supply these details yet, and I expect serious problems in eventually clarifying them. We must envision W** as including an interpretative mechanism that can make references to W*, using it as a sort of computer-program subroutine, to a certain depth of recursion. In this sense W** must contain W*, but in another, more straightforward, sense W* can contain W**. This suggests first that the notion "contained in" is not sufficiently sophisticated to describe the kinds of relations between parts of program-like processes and second that the intuitive notion of "model" used herein is likewise too unsophisticated to support developing the theory in technical detail. It is clear that in this area one cannot describe inter-model relationships in terms of models as simple physical substructures. An adequate analysis will need much more advanced ideas about symbolic representation of information- processing structures. ...
​

This is the "craziness" I've alluded to in reference to metacognition (thinking about thinking about thinking, etc) and what might come of it.

 

[smcder]

Ok @smcder . For simplicity we have an innate physiology in a fairly primitive insect with 2 mechanisms:

a) registers light of frequency 500THz
b) registers light of frequency 450 THz

but only in this particular species of insect does the following occur:

a)’s stimulation is given low priority. The signals are attenuated. The creature is motivated to look elsewhere, do something else.
b)’s stimulation is given high priority. The signal is re-enforced, focalised. The creature's innate motivation is to act quickly, to examine further the source of stimulation. This is accentuated by hormone release (faster respiration, increase heart rate etc) perhaps and leads inevitably to continual and heightened stimulation of b) mechanism

450THz is red. Red berries = nutrition. b) mechanism is qualitatively relevant to the species’ survival because it helps the creature locate nutrition.
500THz is green. Green = nothing in particular. a) mechanism is qualitatively relevant because it filters out useless stimulations.

In the end our creature locates a berry and a third mechanism is engaged with enthusiasm. A feeding mechanism c).
*****
Ok. @smcder . Put a circle round this idea in your mind. These are innate mechanisms. The creature can do nothing to modify its behaviour. It acts in a predetermined way to these two light stimulations.

Now, in our next scenario, we have a more sophisticated insect with the same mechanisms. But it is capable of more than innate responses to stimulation.
I am going to give you its mental narrative (obviously it does not have a verbal language - but I will translate its thoughts).

“I recognise this place. I was here in the past. There was something about this place that was somehow exciting. I don’t know what was exciting... it just was.
[my homeostatic needs might, on another occasion, be indifferent to this associative recall, but on this occasion my recognition of this place and my recall of excitement is enticing]
“I think I might (with mild enthusiasm) just mosey on down to take a look at this place that is vaguely enticing”
“Ah... this green is ubiquitous... I feel a bit lethargic (energy-less)...
But oh! what’s that? A red sphere (a berry) has engaged my innate b) mechanism... I don’t know why, but I just feel a rush of blood and I want to rush over to look in more detail at this food. Yummy, that is (mechanism c) engaged) very satisfying (my muscles are just relaxing mannn. I feel like chilling)”

“There is something about the red... don’t know what... but it just puts me on edge a bit... makes me feel good...”

So, the mechanism b) is engaged - an innate mechanism. BUT, the phenomenal quality of red is only understood as such by a creature that is capable of evaluating its qualitative relevancy. It doesn’t just experience the mechanism b), but the mechanism (along with many others) is employed in a changing landscape of qualitative impressions (or valencies) and the behaviours are motivated through that changing evaluation and prioritisation according to homeostatic needs.

Note, that the innate mechanisms a) and b) are engaged, but the evaluation of their associated relevancy to environmental conditions cannot causally impinge on their function. The innate mechanisms become tools-of-engagement by which environmental significances are assimilated and evaluated for their worth and relevancy.

Let me know if and how epiphenomenalism or overdeterminism is still an issue here

I just skimmed this as I'm getting tired, so I may miss something, I seem to understand this:

but the evaluation of their associated relevancy to environmental conditions cannot causally impinge on their function

But what I'm asking is I think much simpler:

Does the

subjective awareness (in me right now as I type this) my sense of thinking hard and choosing my words carefully ... ("I'm writing back to Pharoah and this is what I want to say")

... does that sense, that subjective experience have anything to do with what I actually type or is the subjective experience just the running commentary that arises from the neurons firing as the brain processes your post and produces mine? It would seem the thoughts that I am aware of can't have anything to do with it without violating causality, on your model?

 

[smcder]

@Pharoah

found a paper I posted a while back, we may have already dealt with all this in terms of HCT, so I'm sorry if we've duplicated ... bear with me as I think I am making progress:

causal closure of the physical domain means subjective experience is causally irrelevant


"What precisely is it that can’t be explained by physics? As we
have seen, Chalmers’ answer is, “how physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective
experience.” This answer is correct so far as it goes, but it is seriously incomplete. A more
complete answer would be, “how physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective
experience
in such a way that subjective experience reliably corresponds to the way things really

are in the world
.” This, of course, is a special form of the problem of accounting for the
rationality
of the functioning of the conscious mind."

...

" As the organisms and their
brains become more complex, we see the emergence of systems of beliefs and of strategies for
acquiring beliefs, and the strategies that lead to the acquisition of true rather than false beliefs
confer an adaptive advantage. Natural selection guarantees a high level of fitness, including
cognitive fitness.
4
It seems clear that this is the
only way of accounting for rationality that is available to naturalistic

dualism and similar accounts of the mind. It is out of the question to suppose any sort of preplanning
or design in the original state of things; that sort of explanation leads to immediate
expulsion from the naturalistic camp. So there must be some sort of “filtering mechanism” by
which the conscious states of organisms are sorted into those which are rationally substandard
and those which to some degree approximate the rational ideal. And the only such mechanism
that anyone has proposed is Darwinian evolution with its survival of the fittest;"

...

but ... Chalmers says:

“The process of natural selection cannot distinguish between me and my
zombie twin” (p. 120).


The problem is not merely that the evolutionary theory doesn’t
mention
the adaptive benefits of awareness and cognition. If that were the only problem, it could easily
be maintained that awareness and cognition are among the necessary preconditions for the more
successful behaviors and interactions with the environment that are featured in the account.
(That, in fact, is exactly what evolutionary epistemology affirms to be the case.) The problem,
rather, is that the account of evolution
precludes the kind of role for awareness and cognition that

is posited in the epistemological account. It does this by its last two sentences, which affirm the
causal closure of the physical domain. Those sentences guarantee that the conscious state of the
organism, as such, can have
no influence whatever on the organism’s behavior and thus on its

propensity to survive. Conscious experience is
invisible to the forces of natural selection, and

the central contention of evolutionary epistemology has been decisively undermined."

this will also help me see the difference in HCT and evolutionary theory (or you may be able to do away with the questions themselves!)

 

[Constance]

Thanks for this.

I know you don't like abstraction @Constance

Ah but I do like abstraction and abstract thinking, Pharoah. I only require that at some point it begin to make sense in accounting for experience in and of the world.

but you did ask about #5:
What the other hierarchies tell us is that at each level there is an evolution of complex forms which is accidental - undirected. I call this "passively" acquired form in my writing.
When a new emergent phase commences, that process that was passive, becomes active. The new construct has the capability to actively acquire that which was previously passively acquired.
What this tells us of #5, is that in #4 something has been evolving accidentally (since mankind first existed) i.e. "passively". When #5 emergences that which has been evolving passively will be controlled by the new construct which will actively acquire that which was acquired passively (by us #4 humans).

What is this thing that we have been evolving by accident (in our culture and in our minds), that will lead by accident to a transcendent realisation that will enable us to actively acquired this thing?

You're saying that all the developments and evolution on earth of ideas and cultures, arts and sciences, etc., have evolved by accident? and that in your hypothesized stage 5 you think we {we?} will be enabled to "actively acquire[d] this thing"? What kind of 'thing' will we acquire? Will it be animal, vegetable, mineral, technical/technological, or a philosophico/scientific knowledge of all of them and everything else in the being of ourselves and the universe?

 

[smcder]

Ah but I do like abstraction and abstract thinking, Pharoah. I only require that at some point it begin to make sense in accounting for experience in and of the world.




You're saying that all the developments and evolution on earth of ideas and cultures, arts and sciences, etc., have evolved by accident? and that in your hypothesized stage 5 you think we {we?} will be enabled to "actively acquire[d] this thing"? What kind of 'thing' will we acquire? Will it be animal, vegetable, mineral, technical/technological, or a philosophico/scientific knowledge of all of them and everything else in the being of ourselves and the universe?

I know @Pharoah has said what he thinks #5 will be ... searching for that now, it was "empathy" or something like that ... ?

 

[Pharoah]

Ah but I do like abstraction and abstract thinking, Pharoah. I only require that at some point it begin to make sense in accounting for experience in and of the world.




You're saying that all the developments and evolution on earth of ideas and cultures, arts and sciences, etc., have evolved by accident? and that in your hypothesized stage 5 you think we {we?} will be enabled to "actively acquire[d] this thing"? What kind of 'thing' will we acquire? Will it be animal, vegetable, mineral, technical/technological, or a philosophico/scientific knowledge of all of them and everything else in the being of ourselves and the universe?

Constance: "You're saying that all the developments and evolution on earth of ideas and cultures, arts and sciences, etc., have evolved by accident?"
No.
Non-human animals are creative by accident and their social interactions evolve by accident - "by accident" meaning that they don't go about trying to be creative for creativity's sake. So one of the offshoots of #4 is active creative intent.

The other thing to note is that
a) I am to a #5 human, what an early hominid is to a homo sapiens sapiens; Or...
b) another way of thinking about it is that the first #4 was not an individual, but an emerging developing realisation in individuals over generations.

In this way, one might say,
a) There is a lot of development to go in me to realise #5; or
b) one might think of #5 as having already started with the PreSocratics, (or perhaps not - I did used to think that #5 was essentially about the emergence of an active moral pursuit [morality having evolved by accident over millennia and adopted passively with a "faith mantra" in religious doctrine] - (a spiritual rebirth thing too), but now I know that its impact on morality is just an incidental consequence, just as language is an incidental consequence of #4).

But what is creativity for, other than for itself? I think of the historic evolution of creative endeavour as being undirected. #4 doesn't know where it is going with creative endeavour... exactly.
Furthermore, we don't know to what purpose we want knowledge. We acquire knowledge of physical things and then manipulate this knowledge through technologies, but we don't know what the bigger picture is. We don't see beyond this scientific "progress" paradigm.

 

[Pharoah]

I just skimmed this as I'm getting tired, so I may miss something, I seem to understand this:

but the evaluation of their associated relevancy to environmental conditions cannot causally impinge on their function

But what I'm asking is I think much simpler:

Does the

subjective awareness (in me right now as I type this) my sense of thinking hard and choosing my words carefully ... ("I'm writing back to Pharoah and this is what I want to say")

... does that sense, that subjective experience have anything to do with what I actually type or is the subjective experience just the running commentary that arises from the neurons firing as the brain processes your post and produces mine? It would seem the thoughts that I am aware of can't have anything to do with it without violating causality, on your model?

Writing, language, is only possible with #4. Language is not possible without #1,#2, and #3 mechanisms. (i.e. zombies are not possible in any physical world like our own according to HCT). Each word used in a sentence is a complex of concepts. The origins of those concepts must be phenomenally grounded.
For example, the word "and":
"And" is additional, a reference to quantity. Something more than was, not less. Quantity is more of something either undesired or desired. One more apple is good, one more poke in the eye is bad. Quantity is qualitatively referential. Something more to be wanted or wished for. What is it, to wish for more of? Something of qualitative relevance, and all that we can know of quality is our understanding of associated world experience and their phenomenal impact. That is the concept behind "and"
So there is a flavour to your words... in every word. A qualitative flavour that is represented by concept.
One concept glues to another creating a tapestry; it invokes conceptual meanings and emotive impressions. Even the sounds and rhythms of words carry phenomenal character. We experience these words as we write and as we read and their impression causes us to pause and consider our further action and intent, continually modulating our desires and needs.
All concepts must be grounded in phenomenal experience. Even imaginary concepts like unicorns are grounded. It is not possible to have concepts beyond experiential boundaries (there are psychological indications for this I think - someone who has always been blind has restricted conceptual capabilities in some way): one cannot have conceptual access to noumenon - it is a potential only. Incidentally, has anyone ever had a phantom limb that they never hand in the first place?

 

[smcder]

Writing, language, is only possible with #4. Language is not possible without #1,#2, and #3 mechanisms. (i.e. zombies are not possible in any physical world like our own according to HCT). Each word used in a sentence is a complex of concepts. The origins of those concepts must be phenomenally grounded.
For example, the word "and":
"And" is additional, a reference to quantity. Something more than was, not less. Quantity is more of something either undesired or desired. One more apple is good, one more poke in the eye is bad. Quantity is qualitatively referential. Something more to be wanted or wished for. What is it, to wish for more of? Something of qualitative relevance, and all that we can know of quality is our understanding of associated world experience and their phenomenal impact. That is the concept behind "and"
So there is a flavour to your words... in every word. A qualitative flavour that is represented by concept.
One concept glues to another creating a tapestry; it invokes conceptual meanings and emotive impressions. Even the sounds and rhythms of words carry phenomenal character. We experience these words as we write and as we read and their impression causes us to pause and consider our further action and intent, continually modulating our desires and needs.
All concepts must be grounded in phenomenal experience. Even imaginary concepts like unicorns are grounded. It is not possible to have concepts beyond experiential boundaries (there are psychological indications for this I think - someone who has always been blind has restricted conceptual capabilities in some way): one cannot have conceptual access to noumenon - it is a potential only. Incidentally, has anyone ever had a phantom limb that they never hand in the first place?

Let's go very simple:

We experience these words as we write and as we read and their impression causes us to pause and consider our further action and intent, continually modulating our desires and needs.

so subjective experience is causal for human beings? my subjective impression causes a physical change in my brain, correct?

so neurons firing ---> brain activity ---->subjective experience -----> neurons firing (physical outcome)

OR

neurons firing ----> brain activity ---->subjective experience
neurons firing ----> brain activity ----> physical outcome

in other words, do I pause because I have an "oh wow" experience or do I have an "oh wow" experience that floats over and above the physical activity ...

what I have difficulty understanding is how subjective experience can be causal when the model seems to indicate it (the experience) is caused and the neurons firing "underneath" the experience do all the work ...

what you seem to be saying though is that mental events are actually physical/material but you don't show me how some physical (objective) events has a subjective character? that would be to solve the hard problem and I don't think you claim that, do you?

 

[Pharoah]

Let's go very simple:

We experience these words as we write and as we read and their impression causes us to pause and consider our further action and intent, continually modulating our desires and needs.

so subjective experience is causal for human beings? my subjective impression causes a physical change in my brain, correct?

so neurons firing ---> brain activity ---->subjective experience -----> neurons firing (physical outcome)

OR

neurons firing ----> brain activity ---->subjective experience
neurons firing ----> brain activity ----> physical outcome

in other words, do I pause because I have an "oh wow" experience or do I have an "oh wow" experience that floats over and above the physical activity ...

what I have difficulty understanding is how subjective experience can be causal when the model seems to indicate it (the experience) is caused and the neurons firing "underneath" the experience do all the work ...

what you seem to be saying though is that mental events are actually physical/material but you don't show me how some physical (objective) events has a subjective character? that would be to solve the hard problem and I don't think you claim that, do you?

Two questions here really. We have the causal dilemma and the physical events = phenomenal experience dilemma.

Causation
You are trying to nail this with arrows going from one side of the page to the other. Is it going to be that simple? It is more like a ball of lines with arrows going in and out in all directions. Put it like this:
I throw a stone, it flies through the air, it hits your head, you put your hand to your head and say ow.
What caused you to go ow?
Was it the stone, or the feeling you had, or gravity's effect on a stone, was it you deciding not to wear a hard hat this morning when you got dressed? all causal contingencies were necessary components.
So there are physical causes to phen exp. You have to see red to experience it (ok... you can imagine it too etc but you get my point). But there are many mechanisms at work... multiple causal layers influencing multiple motivations to action. All in a feedback loop.
So... what are we talking about here? I don't understand the problem

Physical to phenomenal
You want an answer to the hard problem... Let's play 21 questions, see where it gets us. I have no idea beyond the first quation what I will ask you. You can answer yes, no, or say the question does not have a yes or no answer.

Q1. Replication leads to the evolution of mechanisms that make a difference to the survival potential of the replicating species'.

 

[smcder]

Two questions here really. We have the causal dilemma and the physical events = phenomenal experience dilemma.

Causation
You are trying to nail this with arrows going from one side of the page to the other. Is it going to be that simple? It is more like a ball of lines with arrows going in and out in all directions. Put it like this:
I throw a stone, it flies through the air, it hits your head, you put your hand to your head and say ow.
What caused you to go ow?
Was it the stone, or the feeling you had, or gravity's effect on a stone, was it you deciding not to wear a hard hat this morning when you got dressed? all causal contingencies were necessary components.
So there are physical causes to phen exp. You have to see red to experience it (ok... you can imagine it too etc but you get my point). But there are many mechanisms at work... multiple causal layers influencing multiple motivations to action. All in a feedback loop.
So... what are we talking about here? I don't understand the problem

Physical to phenomenal
You want an answer to the hard problem... Let's play 21 questions, see where it gets us. I have no idea beyond the first quation what I will ask you. You can answer yes, no, or say the question does not have a yes or no answer.

Q1. Replication leads to the evolution of mechanisms that make a difference to the survival potential of the replicating species'.

Phenomenal to physical, how does subjective experience have a causal effect - there may be many causes but within that swirl one thing is acting on another, how does subjective experience act on something to produce a physical change?

for epiphenomenalists:

physical (neurons firing) give rise to an action and an epiphenomenal experience (but the experience doesn't have a casual effect) -




The hard problem is to

Two questions here really. We have the causal dilemma and the physical events = phenomenal experience dilemma.

Causation
You are trying to nail this with arrows going from one side of the page to the other. Is it going to be that simple? It is more like a ball of lines with arrows going in and out in all directions. Put it like this:
I throw a stone, it flies through the air, it hits your head, you put your hand to your head and say ow.
What caused you to go ow?
Was it the stone, or the feeling you had, or gravity's effect on a stone, was it you deciding not to wear a hard hat this morning when you got dressed? all causal contingencies were necessary components.
So there are physical causes to phen exp. You have to see red to experience it (ok... you can imagine it too etc but you get my point). But there are many mechanisms at work... multiple causal layers influencing multiple motivations to action. All in a feedback loop.
So... what are we talking about here? I don't understand the problem

Physical to phenomenal
You want an answer to the hard problem... Let's play 21 questions, see where it gets us. I have no idea beyond the first quation what I will ask you. You can answer yes, no, or say the question does not have a yes or no answer.

Q1. Replication leads to the evolution of mechanisms that make a difference to the survival potential of the replicating species'.

no its not simple, but we can go a piece at a time - my question is about the causal effect of subjective experience, so even in a big ball it has to be shown to have a causal effect on some other piece ... but I'm not sure my first question is answered which is

is subjective experience causal? does it have physical effects?

the hard problem is if you are a physicalist, if you arent then maybe we dont have that problem, for example pan psychists who believe consciousness is fundamental (see @Soupie for dual aspect monism - or Chalmers) then we wont have that problem but we'll have others (see the combination problem) - so Nagel's original formulation says

the physicalist claims to be able to give an objective accounting of everything and so he asks for a physical (objective) accounting of subjectivity - this leads some people to say its rhetorically inconsistent, but Nagel very knowingly made a rhetorical argument ... (see what it is like to be a bat) ... he simply says that if you give me a complete physical description of an organism/environment/the whole universe, you will leave something out ... namely what it is like to be a bat

... ok, anyone else (please) want to take it from here?

 

[smcder]

Two questions here really. We have the causal dilemma and the physical events = phenomenal experience dilemma.

Causation
You are trying to nail this with arrows going from one side of the page to the other. Is it going to be that simple? It is more like a ball of lines with arrows going in and out in all directions. Put it like this:
I throw a stone, it flies through the air, it hits your head, you put your hand to your head and say ow.
What caused you to go ow?
Was it the stone, or the feeling you had, or gravity's effect on a stone, was it you deciding not to wear a hard hat this morning when you got dressed? all causal contingencies were necessary components.
So there are physical causes to phen exp. You have to see red to experience it (ok... you can imagine it too etc but you get my point). But there are many mechanisms at work... multiple causal layers influencing multiple motivations to action. All in a feedback loop.
So... what are we talking about here? I don't understand the problem

Physical to phenomenal
You want an answer to the hard problem... Let's play 21 questions, see where it gets us. I have no idea beyond the first quation what I will ask you. You can answer yes, no, or say the question does not have a yes or no answer.

Q1. Replication leads to the evolution of mechanisms that make a difference to the survival potential of the replicating species'.

I throw a stone, it flies through the air, it hits your head, you put your hand to your head and say ow.
What caused you to go ow?

Was it the stone, or the feeling you had, or gravity's effect on a stone, was it you deciding not to wear a hard hat this morning when you got dressed? all causal contingencies were necessary components.

So there are physical causes to phen exp. You have to see red to experience it (ok... you can imagine it too etc but you get my point). But there are many mechanisms at work... multiple causal layers influencing multiple motivations to action. All in a feedback loop.

So... what are we talking about here? I don't understand the problem

If I understand, you've said causation is upward, not downward ... but that seems inconsistent with:

Was it the stone, or the feeling you had, or gravity's effect on a stone, was it you deciding not to wear a hard hat this morning when you got dressed? all causal contingencies were necessary components.

because the feeling I had is across a transcendent or causal gap - otherwise we'd have downward causation ... ? So my experience seems a result but can't be a cause, so in HCT how does the feeling I have cause me to go "ow" - I don't me the nerve signals that give rise to my subjective experience of "ow" I mean the experience itself?

... and if that's the case, this brings up the question of pain, why do I need to feel pain if it's not causally effective? It doesn't add any information and it can't feed back down the line, so it could be a fluke that pain hurts - after all, I could argue that subjective experience is invisible to natural selection (see paper above) ... and reflex is sufficient to cause me to draw back my hand in many cases and in the rest, complex processing in the brain does the job ...

So ... why do we need to feel pain at all? Or fear? I mean as unpleasant sensations - why don't we feel a very strong motivation, a powerful sense of mastery and even exuberance or why don't we just act? Or why don't we think of Blue Velveeta? If subjective experience is not causally effective, then everything else can goes on as before - this is just another way to ask what the paper above is asking in terms of if subjective experience isn't causal and can't be selected one way or the other, then how is it coherent with the world?