Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 3

[smcder]

This particular question has never made sense to me. "Why is my consciousness mine?"

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the question. Is the question as follows:

Person A and person B are standing in a field. Person A gets stung by a wasp. Person A feels pain. Why doesn't person B feel the pain instead?

Is that the question being asked here?

Ask @Pharoah or read his paper on the noumenal ... I think he feels this is the true hard problem.

 

[smcder]

Yes, I've seen that, but wasn't sure it dealt with Minsky and specifically the idea of how modeling may related to consciousness. I'll check it out.

As you've frequently noted, one can never be sure.

The critique is based on object oriented ontology - throw an "ooo" in your search box and a Heidegger for good measure.

 

[smcder]

Yes, I've seen that, but wasn't sure it dealt with Minsky and specifically the idea of how modeling may related to consciousness. I'll check it out.

I don't know what you have in mind but this is one I posted, I think or at least read at the time.

Monomorphic - How one might develop a Heideggerian AI that uses software equipment

"I’ve also come to understand that Heidegger played an important role in the so-called “AI debate” in the 70’s and 80’s. At the time, people at MIT, DARPA and other institutions were trying to make AI software based on the presumptions of an Aristotelian world view, representing facts as logical propositions. (John McCarthy, of Lisp fame, and Marvin Minsky were some of the key people working on these projects). Dreyfus made himself known as a proponent of uncomfortable views (for the AI establishment) at the time, such as Heidegger’s claim that you cannot represent human significance and meaning using predicate logic (more on that in a different post, when I understand it better)."

The Minsky article is in a computing magazine where he admits GOFAI failed - if I recall he made minimal reference to Dreyfus ... Cognitive scientists are such sore losers!

Ok ... Here it is - Try Wired magazine for Minsky.

 

[smcder]

This particular question has never made sense to me. "Why is my consciousness mine?"

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the question. Is the question as follows:

Person A and person B are standing in a field. Person A gets stung by a wasp. Person A feels pain. Why doesn't person B feel the pain instead?

Is that the question being asked here?

Looky here (the ****** means I think this bit is very important):

"Tononandonandoni's fictional Galileo meets Nagel in a purgatorial region of his dream, complete with a scared (and scary) bat; as Nagel famously argued in his seminal essay “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” it is like something to be one. Tononi doesn’t think it much matters that we don’t know what it’s like to be a bat: bats have their qualia and we have ours.

*****But he misses, or nearly misses, the force of Nagel’s critique. Nagel’s deepest question about consciousness is not provoked by the sheer fact of conscious experience.

It’s the plurality of consciousness that’s strange.

No objective scientific account of all the elements in the universe could say why I am me and you are you. Objectively speaking, we could accept that there are many different conscious beings. But we don’t have the ghost of an idea of how there could be an objective explanation for the distribution of subjectivities among them. Why is my consciousness mine? Why isn’t your consciousness mine? The hard question of consciousness is less this question, “How can consciousness exist?” than the question of how there can be more than one. What is the principle of discrimination between them?"

Now when I ran that by @Pharoah (who I hope is, per my instructions, currently ignoring me on the forum (to a mutually higher end ) he said this was almost exactly it ... but I think he too misses the force of Nagels critique only to rewrite it as the problem of the noumenal - and that's why it doesn't make sense to us when he says ive solved the hard problem, long live the hard problem in the form of the noumenal ... because they are the same ding dang thang.

So what Pharoah understands as the noumenal problem, we just call the hard problem 1.0.

What I think ( very tentatively ) HCT does when he claims it solves the hard problem ... is instead answer how can consciousness exist as framed in this paragraph below ( by the author above, as above - so below):

"The hard question of consciousness is less this question, “How can consciousness exist?” than the question of how there can be more than one. What is the principle of discrimination between them?"

For the Trifecta I think Dowel is trying to undermine Jackmers by misunderstanding this same point ... but he'll I could be lying at this point for all I know.

Questions? .... anyone ... anyone ... Buehler?

 

[smcder]

OT but worth reading:

Professor's reflections on his battle with depression touch many at recent disciplinary meeting @insidehighered

See Dowells comment.

 

[smcder]

@smcder

So physics has no use for (free will and) consciousness (causal closure), and biology via TENS has no use for consciousness (it has no known function).

As noted by Nagel and others, this is a red flag. I'm all for exploring the idea that phenotypic evolution is driven by something deeper and more powerful then natural selection, i.e., natural teleology.

Could it be that the emergence and evolution of conscious minds in certain species is driven by a deeper process then natural selection? Natural selection as the main engine of evolution has been questioned without even considering consciousness.

So if the evolution of species (and the consciousness they possess) has been driven by some deeper principle or law than NS, what does this mean, if anything? Such a law could still be arbitrary, right? Even if the emergence of complex organisms with conscious mental states may be inevitable in our what-is, it may still be a result of intentionless parameters/laws of what-is, right?

If you see Pip down there ... Tell him Stubbs looking for him.

Intentionless inevitability ... still working on this, the answer is either:



Or

Mu.

 

[smcder]

@Constance

For your post on the Bangless Universe:

"physical terms, the model describes the universe as being filled with a quantum fluid. The scientists propose that this fluid might be composed of gravitons—hypothetical massless particles that mediate the force of gravity. If they exist, gravitons are thought to play a key role in a theory of quantum gravity."

"I have a kind of kooky hunch that the paradigm of space as a cold, black emptiness will be overthrown ... we will have some other way to look at space and time and things will become much cozier and more crowded ... "

See what you can do from the comfort of your own armchair?

 

[Pharoah]

I've been reading book entitled an introduction to Hegel's phenomenology to help me get to grips with it:
On the section on 'self-certainty' the author writes, "...and since I find large parts of it unintelligible I shall say little about it"
I'm all prepared now

 

[Soupie]

@Constance

For your post on the Bangless Universe:

"physical terms, the model describes the universe as being filled with a quantum fluid. The scientists propose that this fluid might be composed of gravitons—hypothetical massless particles that mediate the force of gravity. If they exist, gravitons are thought to play a key role in a theory of quantum gravity."

"I have a kind of kooky hunch that the paradigm of space as a cold, black emptiness will be overthrown ... we will have some other way to look at space and time and things will become much cozier and more crowded ... "

See what you can do from the comfort of your own armchair?

I saw that article when it was published a few weeks ago. I posted this presentation by Thad Roberts about a superfluid universe a while ago if you recall:

 

[Soupie]

"So if the evolution of species (and the consciousness they possess) has been driven by some deeper principle or law than NS, what does this mean, if anything? Such a law could still be arbitrary, right? Even if the emergence of complex organismswith conscious mental states may be inevitable in our what-is, it may still be a result of intentionlessparameters/laws of what-is, right?"

I suppose you can get away with using "inevitable" and "intentionless" in the same sentence, but what is it you are wanting to be true and why?

I must misunderstand the concept of natural teleology then, which I understood to be intentionless inevitability (in regards to the direction of evolution towards complexity).

What do I want to be true and why?

Hm, I'll try to formulate a statement in those terms, haha:

I subjectively perceive an ordered reality, so I would like it to be true that there exists an ordered reality. Because I want my perceptions of an ordered reality to be real perceptions of a real reality.

 

[smcder]

I've been reading book entitled an introduction to Hegel's phenomenology to help me get to grips with it:
On the section on 'self-certainty' the author writes, "...and since I find large parts of it unintelligible I shall say little about it"
I'm all prepared now

Next question, please. My docs only give me 30 yrs to live ...

 

[smcder]

I saw that article when it was published a few weeks ago. I posted this presentation by Thad Roberts about a superfluid universe a while ago if you recall:

Well, you do spend a lot more time in your armchair than I do! ;-)

 

[smcder]

I must misunderstand the concept of natural teleology then, which I understood to be intentionless inevitability (in regards to the direction of evolution towards complexity).

What do I want to be true and why?

Hm, I'll try to formulate a statement in those terms, haha:

I subjectively perceive an ordered reality, so I would like it to be true that there exists an ordered reality. Because I want my perceptions of an ordered reality to be real perceptions of a real reality.

does inevitable work out different if we start with a Bang or a whimper? (see Gould on "rewinding the tape")

 

[smcder]

@Soupie when I plugged

Intentionless inevitability

Into Google I got lots of results of Heidegger critiquing Dreyfus ... so apparently that triggered a history altering tempo-logical convulsion (rewound the tape) and we are all in an alternate timeline now.

 

[Soupie]

@Soupie when I plugged

Intentionless inevitability

Into Google I got lots of results of Heidegger critiquing Dreyfus ... so apparently that triggered a history altering tempo-logical convulsion (rewound the tape) and we are all in an alternate timeline now.

Inevitable in the sense that certain "phenomena" will arise, i.e., complex life. But not in the deterministic sense.

I'm a visual person. Help me out. Imagine that the universe is a cube with marbles in it.

If natural teleology is true, how would the box and marbles behave? If X is true (where X is whatever you and Constance mean when you say "reductive/determined"), how would the box and marbles behave? You will probably decline, and if so, I will give it a go, and then you can question my two visualizations.

 

[Constance]

This particular question has never made sense to me. "Why is my consciousness mine?"

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the question. Is the question as follows:

Person A and person B are standing in a field. Person A gets stung by a wasp. Person A feels pain. Why doesn't person B feel the pain instead?

Is that the question being asked here?

Ask @Pharoah or read his paper on the noumenal ... I think he feels this is the true hard problem.

Yes, @Pharoah defined this hard (harder) problem some months ago and at the time I did not stop to think about it. He's correct that we need to grapple with this harder problem, and I hope he'll speak more about it here today or tomorrow. I appreciate the informative review of Tononi's Phi that Steve linked yesterday. After reading it today I'm eager to read that book. And I hope we will pursue Chalmer's hard problem and this harder problem here.

 

[Constance]

[quoting the review of Phi]: "No objective scientific account of all the elements in the universe could say why I am me and you are you. Objectively speaking, we could accept that there are many different conscious beings. But we don’t have the ghost of an idea of how there could be an objective explanation for the distribution of subjectivities among them. . . .The hard question of consciousness is less this question, “How can consciousness exist?” than the question of how there can be more than one. What is the principle of discrimination between them?"

Now when I ran that by @Pharoah (who I hope is, per my instructions, currently ignoring me on the forum (to a mutually higher end ) he said this was almost exactly it ... but I think he too misses the force of Nagels critique only to rewrite it as the problem of the noumenal - and that's why it doesn't make sense to us when he says ive solved the hard problem, long live the hard problem in the form of the noumenal ... because they are the same ding dang thang.

Now when I ran that by @Pharoah (who I hope is, per my instructions, currently ignoring me on the forum (to a mutually higher end ) he said this was almost exactly it ... but I think he too misses the force of Nagels critique only to rewrite it as the problem of the noumenal - and that's why it doesn't make sense to us when he says ive solved the hard problem, long live the hard problem in the form of the noumenal ... because they are the same ding dang thang.

I hope that @Pharoah has not put your posts on 'ignore', Steve, because we need all our points of view present if we are to work on the hard and harder problems of consciousness. In doing so, with Pharoah's further participation here, we will be able to understand what he means by the 'noumenal'. I am now most eager to hear from him about the connection he sees between the noumenal and the plurality of consciousnesses experienced among our species and others.

Question: will 'hard' and 'harder' do as terms by which to distinguish the general significance of consciousness in biological organisms and the more ramifying significance of the plurality of consciousnesses/subjectivities worlding the world we live in on earth and also, most probably, elsewhere in the universe?

Yesterday @Pharoah wrote in a response to me that

It [HCT's account of learning] is an understanding of the qualitative relevancy of experience that compels a creature to adjust its behavioural responses in association with its identified (and thereby represented) environmental cause... this leads to the process we call learning, or the process I refer to as "behavioural adaptation" (innate mechanism can only alter behaviour through physiological adaptation over generations - alternatively, behavioural adaptation is realtime response to evaluated realtime qualitative experience and relevancy)

These are all big subjects. I can elaborate on any if you wish one at a time... for clarity.

I am interested to hear from Pharoah how his theory accounts for the kinds of 'adaptation' that occur in the human mind that emerges in stage 4, which constitute an explosive plurality of unique subjectivities.

 

[Constance]

So what Pharoah understands as the noumenal problem, we just call the hard problem 1.0.

What I think ( very tentatively ) HCT does when he claims it solves the hard problem ... is instead answer how can consciousness exist as framed in this paragraph below ( by the author above, as above - so below):

"The hard question of consciousness is less this question, “How can consciousness exist?” than the question of how there can be more than one. What is the principle of discrimination between them?"

For the Trifecta I think Dowel is trying to undermine Jackmers by misunderstanding this same point ... but he'll I could be lying at this point for all I know.

Questions? .... anyone ... anyone ... Buehler?

Steve, could you summarize the positions you include in 'the Trifecta' or, alternatively, provide links to the places where we will find them expressed?

 

[Constance]

@Constance

For your post on the Bangless Universe:

"physical terms, the model describes the universe as being filled with a quantum fluid. The scientists propose that this fluid might be composed of gravitons—hypothetical massless particles that mediate the force of gravity. If they exist, gravitons are thought to play a key role in a theory of quantum gravity."

"I have a kind of kooky hunch that the paradigm of space as a cold, black emptiness will be overthrown ... we will have some other way to look at space and time and things will become much cozier and more crowded ... "

See what you can do from the comfort of your own armchair?

What I'd like to do is follow a link or links to the source or sources of the two paragraphs you quote so that I might understand the point you're making.

 

[Constance]

I've been reading book entitled an introduction to Hegel's phenomenology to help me get to grips with it:
On the section on 'self-certainty' the author writes, "...and since I find large parts of it unintelligible I shall say little about it"
I'm all prepared now

Lol. I wish I had a suggestion at hand for a better introduction to Hegel's phenomenology, but there must be one. What is the text you're using?