Not diametrically opposed so far as I can see. Stapp reaches for the totalized state of consciousness as that which undergoes a shift with q collapse or decoherence; Penrose and Hameroff contemplate it as involving less than the whole brain. No one knows at present which is more likely to be accurate.
-
NEW! LOWEST RATES EVER -- SUPPORT THE SHOW AND ENJOY THE VERY BEST PREMIUM PARACAST EXPERIENCE! Welcome to The Paracast+, eight years young! For a low subscription fee, you can download the ad-free version of The Paracast and the exclusive, member-only, After The Paracast bonus podcast, featuring color commentary, exclusive interviews, the continuation of interviews that began on the main episode of The Paracast. We also offer lifetime memberships! Flash! Take advantage of our lowest rates ever! Act now! It's easier than ever to susbcribe! You can sign up right here!
Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 3
- Thread starter Gene Steinberg
- Start date
Free episodes:
- Status
Not diametrically opposed so far as I can see. Stapp reaches for the totalized state of consciousness as that which undergoes a shift with q collapse or decoherence; Penrose and Hameroff contemplate it as involving less than the whole brain. No one knows at present which is more likely to be accurate.
Just reread the paper titled "Quantum Consciousness, Quantum Information, and Subjectivity," by T.J. Nelson. Says at the top that it was "last updated June 16, 2007," so I think we can assume it is not going to be updated. And that's just as well. Nelson lost his own plot along the way.
S
smcder
Guest
Well this is timely -
"The consciousness myth" | Galen Strawson - Academia.edu
Apparently ... there was no resurgence ... it's always been the hard problem.
"The consciousness myth" | Galen Strawson - Academia.edu
Apparently ... there was no resurgence ... it's always been the hard problem.
Yes, but only to those who could see it. Very interesting paper. Both appalling and hilarious.
Pharoah
Paranormal Adept
What do you mean appalling and hilarious?
S
smcder
Guest
That article (Strawson) - Flesch sent it to me ... said he'll send more on his idea of the HP as "why I am me" soon
Very good. Please link any other papers he sends. I reread his review of Tononi's Phi a few minutes ago and want to cite this extract as definitive:
"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?"
Both a) the existence of conscious and protoconscious experience in nature and b) the individuality, self-reference, and personality expressed in consciousness and protoconscious as experienced by living organisms constitute the hard problem of consciousness -- the problem to be understood when/if we can answer the question 'what is consciousness?'. The latter condition is a gradually evolving part of the former condition and is indeed an extremely daunting and significant aspect of consciousness, but it is not reserved to our species. The distinction we are able to make between a) and b) marks the increasing depth of our inquiry into what consciousness is. We are not dealing with categorical differences but with an evolving condition of life.
I mean that the history of approaches to and retreats from confrontation with the problem of consciousness summarized in the paper is both appalling and hilarious. The paper itself is beautifully written and informative. It becomes somewhat obscure at the end, where Strawson alludes to his own and several others' belief that all matter thinks.
S
smcder
Guest
Including
The Theory of Everything
Simplicity - AC Grayling
The Universe - Seth Lloyd
IQ
Brain Plasticity
Changing the Brain - Howard Gardner
Indivi-duality
Etc etc
S
smcder
Guest
If you're a Snowman - you pretty much got to go with Existentialism.
That might refer merely to your experience of your current weather conditions, but it likely signifies more. In either case, here's a poem by Stevens to contemplate while your feeling the chill:
The Snow Man
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
I think we're going to have to read Deleuze, not only to interpret that poem but to continue in our exploration of consciousness as informed by phenomenology and post-phenomenological Continental Thought. It seems the best place to start reading Deleuze is with Difference and Repetition. I've located a few pages of that book , available at Google Books, that are enlightening: Follow this link:
Difference and Repetition - Gilles Deleuze - Google Books
This will take you either to three extracts from the book obtained by searching by the name Merleau-Ponty, or directly to the second extract, going to page 77. Scroll up a few pages for orientation and then read pages 77-80, if you will. I am interested in what you, @Pharoah, and @Soupie think of this.
Pharoah
Paranormal Adept
@Constance
1. Neither answer to a) nor b) would give us any incling as to why I am me whilst you are you... just to make that clear.
2. Chalmers baptised the hard problem the Hard Problem by his definition of it. That definition is the Hard Problem. You can agree, disagree or disprove, but you cannot redefine it.
Well, I cannot take the words of Chalmers out of his mouth, but other philosophers can and do interpret those words in a variety of ways, as we have seen and will continue to see. The problem of consciousness lies before us all, the whole company of individuals and approaches (scientific as well as a philosophical) addressing this problem in our time. We are past the point in our own history when we can ignore either scientific or philosophical contributions to progress in understanding what consciousness is. Our increasing progress will rely on a variety of interdisciplinary insights as we reach them, and we will certainly have to state and restate partial claims and discoveries along the way.
Can you tell me what in particular you object to in what I wrote?
Both a) the existence of conscious and protoconscious experience in nature and b) the individuality, self-reference, and personality expressed in consciousness and protoconscious as experienced by living organisms constitute the hard problem of consciousness -- the problem to be understood when/if we can answer the question 'what is consciousness?'. The latter condition is a gradually evolving part of the former condition and is indeed an extremely daunting and significant aspect of consciousness, but it is not reserved to our species. The distinction we are able to make between a) and b) marks the increasing depth of our inquiry into what consciousness is. We are not dealing with categorical differences but with an evolving condition of life.
Pharoah
Paranormal Adept
Can't say I objected to anything you say above.
It is not about having to take the words out of his mouth... it is not about interpretation. it is about taking the words from the article that he took great pains to write.
With a philosopher of his standing it is not something like what he wrote, but exactly what he wrote that counts...
Which reminds me, I am assuming you have had an email forwarded to you and soupie from Steve. Let me know if you have not.
S
smcder
Guest
I haven't forwarded the email Pharoah - difficulty with the mobile email app on my phone - I just got home and can log in to Laptop if you aren't able to send ...
S
smcder
Guest
What question are we on now? Three (3)?
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
Great read!
Smeder, can you clarify what you mean above: it's always been the hard problem?
I actually discerned three essentially distinct "problems" noted in the above article.
(1) The mind-body problem: How can a physical body have what we now call mental states?
(2) The problem of other minds. It was only mentioned once, and Strawson didn't go into detail. I'm not sure what the tradition is with this "problem." I interpret this as the problem of objectively knowing if there are other minds. (Or is this the problem of the plurality of consciousness? Edit: Doesnt seem so: Problem of other minds - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia )
(3) The Hard Problem. This is distinct from the mind-body problem. My guess is that computer science and information theory allowed us to conceive how a physical system could possess information processing and/or mental states. These questions now became "easy."
As Strawson apparently identified first, conscious awareness specifically now becomes the "hard part," or as Chalmers phrased it, the Hard Problem.
Last edited:
Setting aside the special pleading in the last sentence, I object to the claim that we must be hidebound in our thinking by C's words, which were inadequate in the first place to define the hard problem of consciousness.
Last edited:
- Status