Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 3

[Constance]

Again, I'm not sure why a non-dualist such as @Pharoah would struggle with this question. Although Pharoah's has noted in the past that HCT is compatible with dualism and monism.

So it seems Pharoah's is open to the fact that some aspect of the mind may be incarnate or non-physical.

Let's just ask @Pharoah to respond to this question. Pharoah?

 

[Constance]

@Pharoah, I've received the email. Have you read The View from Nowhere, or chapter four of that work? I suppose you will want to and look forward to hearing what you take from it.

Re major philosophers of mind who confess to being 'mystified' by the problem of consciousness {I count two we've mentioned but there may well be more}, it seems their mystification concerns how to explain consciousness. We've spent a lot of time in this forum talking vaguely and idly about the possibility of explaining what consciousness is in terms of various materialist and physicalist theories concerning nature and I for one am growing tired of the repetition and confusion in our interactions. I think it's fair to say that no materialist or physicalist theory has yet made real progress on the problem of consciousness -- and in my opinion has little hope of doing so -- and so my preference is to turn instead to producing a survey of what can be called demonstrated capacities of consciousness that range beyond the few words, terms, and phrases [primarily originating with Chalmers and Nagel] which we have been torturing in our discussions so far. How do the rest of you feel about this suggestion?

 

[Constance]

Are you relating the discussion of problems and ideas (from the first link, foot note to the hard problem? ... oops, I followed your link again to get the foot note # for reference but this time I can't seem to preview the material, it says "no preview available" ... strange because I saw long list of footnotes before ... ? Anyway, here is a quote:

".. the undetermined is not a simple imperfection in our knowledge or a lack in the object: it is a perfectly positive, objective structure which acts as a focus or horizon within perception."

Steve. what footnote to which work?

The phenomenology of the hard problem? Of aporia? (just thinking out loud)

Another thing that struck me is:

I shall not here dwell upon the service which philosophy has done to human reason through the laborious efforts of its criticism, granting even that in the end it should turn out to be merely negative; something more will be said on this point in the next section.

[651] But I may at once reply: Do you really require that a mode of knowledge which concerns all men [652] should transcend the common understanding, and should only be revealed to you by philosophers? Precisely what you find fault with is the best confirmation of the correctness of the above assertions. For we have thereby revealed to us, what could not at the start have been foreseen,

namely, that in matters which concern all men without distinction nature is not guilty of any partial distribution of her gifts,

and that in regard to the essential ends of human nature the highest philosophy cannot advance further than is possible under the guidance which nature has bestowed even upon the most ordinary understanding. - Kant

It seems clear that the passage highlighted in blue is from Kant (which work?), but who is speaking in what follows in italics?

Now what does this mean?

There is this explanation:

"One final implication of Kant's philosophy is that its insistence on an area of necessary human ignorance keeps the philosopher humble. This might seem surprising, especially for those of you who have read some of Kant's own writing, since Kant was certainly not ignorant about the
greatness of his own achievement! For on several occasions he proudly explained why his system is superior to those of all past philosophers.
But my point here is that, whereas most philosophers' ideas are based on the assumption that philosophers have access to some kind of special knowledge to which the man on the street is blind, Kant's philosophy puts philosophers in general on an even par with non- philosophers when it comes to their ability to gain knowledge about the most basic metaphysical issues. Because Kant used such complicated terminology to express his ideas, this implication of his philosophy is often overlooked, even by those who spend years studying his writings. Yet Kant stated this "humiliating" aspect of his Critical system clearly enough on several occasions. One of the best examples, near the end of the first Critique (pp. 651-2), is worth quoting in full:

So, humility as a philosophical tool, arrogance as an intellectual fault.

namely, that in matters which concern all men without distinction nature is not guilty of any partial distribution of her gifts,

Kant's philosophy puts philosophers in general on an even par with non- philosophers when it comes to their ability to gain knowledge about the most basic metaphysical issues.

 

[Constance]

ps: I was not really suggesting that we collectively perform an analysis of the Stevens poem "The Snow Man," which has been worked over by a variety of literary critics including some accomplished in philosophy with no reading yet that persuades the large company of Stevens scholars. I cited the poem because I think it gathers together in one place a number of ideas related to phenomenological and existentialist descriptions of consciousness and also opens up to meta-phenomenological thinkers such as Deleuze and other postmodernists and post structuralists. I even called attention to Deleuze in the extract from Difference and Repetition that is available at the Google Books sample. I think it helps us to be aware of the more abstract level of discourse concerning the nature of being expressed in Deleuze and other postmodernists, but I do not think it will help us to make progress on the kinds of issues that have tangled us up in this thread.

 

[smcder]

Steve. what footnote to which work?



It seems clear that the passage highlighted in blue is from Kant (which work?), but who is speaking in what follows in italics?

It's in the first link - page 77?, that's as far as I can get now - the first time I could go in and scroll down, now all I get are the links to page 77, 209 and 397 and a note urging me to buy the book because the preview isn't available.

Kant yes - the other quote is from this link:

http://staffweb.hkbu.edu.hk/ppp/top/top08

When I Googled this:

".. the undetermined is not a simple imperfection in our knowledge or a lack in the object: it is a perfectly positive, objective structure which acts as a focus or horizon within perception."

it took me to page 169 of Difference and Repetition ...

Do I have to get some kind of account for Google Books? Just log in to my Google account? Let me try that.

 

[smcder]

Just signed in to Google, but same problem, I follow your link and all I can see is this:
Page 209
6 On this common sense and the persistence of the model of recognition, see
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, transl. Colin Smith,
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962, pp. 239 ff, 313 ff. On the Kantian theory
of ...
No preview available for this page. Buy this book.
Page 77
Merleau- Ponty, on the other hand, undoubtedly followed a more thoroughly
Heideggerian inspiration in speaking of "folds" and "pleating" (by contrast with
Sartrean "holes" and "lakes of non-being") from The Phenomenology of
Perception ...
No preview available for this page. Buy this book.
Page 397
... Stephane, 82 Marx, Karl, xx, 11, 87, 114, 234, 258-9 Meinong, Alois, 211, 328
Memory, 8, 91-2, 101-7, 149, 177-9, 181-2, 185, 299, 343, 358 Meno, 76, 206,
228 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 77, 209 Meyer, Fran, cois, 278, 329 Meyerson,
Emile, ...
No preview available for this page. Buy this book.
As I said the first time I could go into the links and on the first one it was a long list of footnotes ... that's where I got the material I posted.

 

[Constance]

It's in the first link - page 77?, that's as far as I can get now - the first time I could go in and scroll down, now all I get are the links to page 77, 209 and 397 and a note urging me to buy the book because the preview isn't available.

So you're citing the Deleuze extracts. That's what I thought but it needs clarification if all of us are to follow you to your source.

Kant yes - the other quote is from this link:

http://staffweb.hkbu.edu.hk/ppp/top/top08

When I Googled this:

".. the undetermined is not a simple imperfection in our knowledge or a lack in the object: it is a perfectly positive, objective structure which acts as a focus or horizon within perception."

it took me to page 169 of Difference and Repetition ...

Do I have to get some kind of account for Google Books? Just log in to my Google account? Let me try that.

I think with Google Books you have to take what you can get by searching the text under various terms, names, etc. A few years back, GB made more extensive extracts available from the tables of contents of more works. Might be a bandwidth issue?

 

[smcder]

ps: I was not really suggesting that we collectively perform an analysis of the Stevens poem "The Snow Man," which has been worked over by a variety of literary critics including some accomplished in philosophy with no reading yet that persuades the large company of Stevens scholars. I cited the poem because I think it gathers together in one place a number of ideas related to phenomenological and existentialist descriptions of consciousness and also opens up to meta-phenomenological thinkers such as Deleuze and other postmodernists and post structuralists. I even called attention to Deleuze in the extract from Difference and Repetition that is available at the Google Books sample. I think it helps us to be aware of the more abstract level of discourse concerning the nature of being expressed in Deleuze and other postmodernists, but I do not think it will help us to make progress on the kinds of issues that have tangled us up in this thread.

I think if we weren't tangled up ... we wouldn't be doing it right! ;-)

Riddles and engimas and mysteries, oh my! (apologies to Churchill and Baum and whatever wit put these two together for the first time)

 

[smcder]

So you're citing the Deleuze extracts. That's what I thought but it needs clarification if all of us are to follow you to your source.





I think with Google Books you have to take what you can get by searching the text under various terms, names, etc. A few years back, GB made more extensive extracts available from the tables of contents of more works. Might be a bandwidth issue?

I don't think so - I got into it just a little while ago.

 

[Constance]

I think if we weren't tangled up ... we wouldn't be doing it right! ;-)

You think we're doing it right?

Riddles and engimas and mysteries, oh my! (apologies to Churchill and Baum and whatever wit put these two together for the first time)

Winston? Churchill? Why? Who is Baum? And re the phrase in blue, "put [which] two together for the first time"?

 

[Constance]

I don't think so - I got into it just a little while ago.

If it's not a bandwidth issue, perhaps it's the time and talent required to decide which parts of a book to make available on GB. The author's preferences would have to be considered, and that requires communication back and forth between the author and the editor at GB.

 

[smcder]

You think we're doing it right?



Winston? Churchill? Why? Who is Baum? And re the phrase in blue, "put [which] two together for the first time"?

I don't think there is a right way to do it ... if someone handed you a hammer, a nail and a bowl of jello and pointed to the nearest tree, would you think to ask him the right way to do this? ;-) I think we're circling an aporia - my best thought about the "hard" problems of consciousness is that we use it:

1. as a Koan for daily meditation
2. we think of an aporia as a black hole - and we use that intellectual gravity (in both senses of the word) to slingshot around and out into deeper space ...

As to how others have gone about it ... have a look at the link to the forum discussion I posted above ... it sounds a lot like parts of this thread in some ways. Blogs and comments reinforce what a muddle this all is!

Yes, Winston Churchill wrote the famous riddle, mystery enigma thing about Russia and L Frank Baum wrote "Lion and Tigers and Bears, oh my!"in The Wizard of Oz and I surely wasn't the first one to put these two together.

 

[smcder]

If it's not a bandwidth issue, perhaps it's the time and talent required to decide which parts of a book to make available on GB. The author's preferences would have to be considered, and that requires communication back and forth between the author and the editor at GB.

An hour or so ago I got in and could go from page to page and scroll down ... so I think it's out there, but now it won't let me go into it. I dunno.

 

[Constance]

Yes, Winston Churchill wrote the famous riddle, mystery enigma thing about Russia and L Frank Baum wrote "Lion and Tigers and Bears, oh my!"in The Wizard of Oz and I surely wasn't the first one to put these two together.

Oh. I've not run across either item, much less their comparison.

 

[smcder]

You've never seen The Wizard of Oz?

I think this is a clip of that scene:

I realized I know a lot of really odd kinds of things ... trivia I mean ... I walked by a couple of co workers yesterday and one of them is from India, she was talking about an Indian game show ... said the only thing she missed was the word for "Japanese flower arranging" - I blurted out Ikibana and they both turned around and the one from India said "how are you knowing this?" ... but that sort of thing happens all the time. In some ways, I realize I have a good memory, it's just not organized for practical purposes, but for the ends to which I put it - which is getting odd kinds of things together, it works very well ... but then people see that as skipping around - when I very clearly see the connection.

 

[smcder]

I'll read this article asap, but in the meantime, can you outline this problem for me? I read the abstract of the above paper and it doesn't make sense to me.

The author says "I can imagine being someone else."

Haha, ok, then you would be someone else... But you would still be you, right? Albeit a different you. You'd still be you though. In other words, I could be my dad and my dad could be me, but then that would just mean I am my dad and he is me.

The only way this question makes sense is if we assume dualism. If it's a question of "why is my incarnate mind attached to this carnate body, " then that makes sense.

However, if one assumes mind-body identity, then the question is moot. Then as you said Smcder, it becomes question of why anything is anything. Why is my phone my phone? Why is my arm my arm? Why is my mom my mom? There seem to be very practical answers to those questions.

Again, I'm not sure why a non-dualist such as @Pharoah would struggle with this question. Although Pharoah's has noted in the past that HCT is compatible with dualism and monism.

So it seems Pharoah's is open to the fact that some aspect of the mind may be incarnate or non-physical.

I'll read this article asap, but in the meantime, can you outline this problem for me? I read the abstract of the above paper and it doesn't make sense to me.

My best advice is just read and think, rinse and repeat. Try not to let any preconceptions get in the way ... this is hard, but if you get up every morning and say "I really don't know anything at all!" and then practice believing just one or two impossible things (on an empty stomach) - you'll get quite good at ignorance and absurdity and then I think you'll find that you understand everything at least as well "the most ordinary understanding" and that, coming from Kant, is high praise indeed.

 

[Constance]

You've never seen The Wizard of Oz?

Not in a very long time, and I did not attend to it even fractionally as closely as I've attended to other stuff. Yes, we live in a world of stuff impinging on our consciousnesses, subconsciousnesses, and minds from all directions.

 

[smcder]

Not in a very long time, and I did not attend to it even fractionally as closely as I've attended to other stuff. Yes, we live in a world of stuff impinging on our consciousnesses, subconsciousnesses, and minds from all directions.

My attitude toward aporia shouldn't be taken to mean I think we can't know anything or all is illusory ... rather I think ignorance and humility serve the pursuit of the ultimate goal of Western philosophy, a kind of transcendence, the way that doubt serves faith (and vice versa) - without doubt, faith becomes dogmatic and fundamentalist - without ignorance and humility, our philosophy becomes rigid. I see ignorance and humility as positive tools, as means of avoiding mistakes and arrogance as corrosive to the intellect.

But these are also things we have to be reminded of - we either need a daily practice of remembering them or we have to be in a community that will remind us, hopefully gently, from time to time.

 

[smcder]

I wrote it.
Thanks for the Deleuze MP paper... will have a look

Can someone drop the Phi paper link again... I can't find it? I do think they/he/she is are talking about my noumenon but the attributions to N and C are incorrect.

@smcder
"the ability to discriminate, categorize, and react to environmental stimuli;" = Chalmers thinking "behaviourism"
"the integration of information by a cognitive system;" = Chalmers thinking "function(alism)"
"the reportability of mental states;" = Chalmers thinking "psychology/language/representation(alism) poss. HOR"
"the ability of a system to access its own internal states" = Chalmers thinking "Cognitive science"
etc.

I am not that keen on going over this Hard Problem easy problem blah blah because ultimately, if you want to think HCT addressing an easy problem then that is what you are going to think... BUT nota bena DC says "we do not yet have anything close to a complete explanation of these [easy] phenomena" so... if HCT is only a solution to an "easy" problem that is no small measure!! But it's not anyway... it's the Hard Problem

@Constance
So pleased you are finding this recent discussion positive. Even if we go our separate ways in our approach to consciousness, I think we are richer and wiser in our understandings.

I need to read Phi again, plus the other three papers linked. cyall

"the ability to discriminate, categorize, and react to environmental stimuli;" = Chalmers thinking "behaviourism"
"the integration of information by a cognitive system;" = Chalmers thinking "function(alism)"
"the reportability of mental states;" = Chalmers thinking "psychology/language/representation(alism) poss. HOR"
"the ability of a system to access its own internal states" = Chalmers thinking "Cognitive science"

I had actually plugged your examples of the hard problem into these categories of the easy problem (for Chalmers) in a post above - so I was questioning your interpretation of these examples, what you seemed to pose as hard problems, appeared to me in Chalmers categories of easy one.

Just a note, let's move on - I want to see the solution to the hard problem, that should tell me more about your concept (and mine) of it than anything else.

I hope!

i know nothing i know nothing i know nothing

 

[Constance]

My attitude toward aporia shouldn't be taken to mean I think we can't know anything or all is illusory ... rather I think ignorance and humility serve the pursuit of the ultimate goal of Western philosophy, a kind of transcendence, the way that doubt serves faith (and vice versa) - without doubt, faith becomes dogmatic and fundamentalist - without ignorance and humility, our philosophy becomes rigid. I see ignorance and humility as positive tools, as means of avoiding mistakes and arrogance as corrosive to the intellect.

But these are also things we have to be reminded of - we either need a daily practice of remembering them or we have to be in a community that will remind us, hopefully gently, from time to time.

Once again, I see the problem in terms of our failure to reflect on what goes on in the stream of our own consciousnesses, and also in terms of the general ignorance of phenomenological philosophy here in the US. The latter has resulted from the difficulty and unavailability for a long time of the major texts of Continental Philosophy and the clinging to positivism and materialism by the analytical school dominant in the UK and US. In addition, the linguistic turn led to a long detour in thinking phenomenologically because of the celebrated entrance of structuralism on the philosophical scene in the late 1960s, before phenomenology had been absorbed and understood.

But to come back to my first clause above, the point is that anyone who attends to the flow of perception, imagery, feelings, and ideas that cross one another in the temporal being of his or her consciousness/awareness is capable of thinking through to the partiality of our perspectives on what-appears (phenomena) and the limited nature of our understanding of the nature of reality. This should indeed inspire humility before the ambiguity of what-is which is given in our existentiality. At the same time, all of this is subject matter for reflection and thinking, the kind of thinking expressed in phenomenological philosophy. If our individual 'takes' on what lies before us are perspectivally limited, and if we recognize that others of our species [and indeed other species] exist for the most part in a commonly experienced world, it's obvious that the major path to increased knowledge of what-is is through the multiplication of perspectives, ours and others'. I think that this was Kant's essential perspective in the quotations from him that you cited in an earlier post today or last night.