Soupie
Paranormal Adept
Are there—or can there be—entirely "subjective side" explanations of consciousness? What might a purely subjective explanation of consciousness even look like?
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Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 3
- Thread starter Gene Steinberg
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Pharoah
Paranormal Adept
There are many potential explanations for the colour discrepancy: innate physiological differences, learnt associative variation, cultural or language. I bet, if you played two pitches of one Hz difference, I would hear whilst others would not... if you are attuned to certain senses, sense identification becomes more acute to minor differences... it is the same with muscle dexterity: if you put your muscles under test, your body connects more nerves to more muscle fibre and you get to control those capabilities with your mind in action etc. So many potential reasons for differences...
Child development is a good way to observe progressive stages which are likely to relate to evolutionary developments
Pharoah
Paranormal Adept
Appreciate your comments. I will be looking at changing 11.You are still just getting your feet wet in phenomenology, but I celebrate your progress
I'm not saying you should rewrite part of your conclusions, but a reviewer might question one or two related statements there (related to what you write in 9.1/2). You could preempt those questions by foregrounding the point you make next here:
I think the growth of the mind (the potentiality for conceptual thinking) is dependent on many 'revelations' obtainable at the level of reflective phenomenological experience, revelations of various kinds about the connections between ourselves and other animals, about the feelings inspired in us by nature and natural beings, and about the profound interconnections evidently woven throughout nature as it appears to us in local macroreality. Reflective phenomenological experience also opens us to/turns us toward awareness of the levels of our own consciousness so that our consciousness and thinking become a subject of equal importance to us. Phenomenal consciousness -- in discerning the birth of reflection and thinking out of our prereflective awareness of being in a world among other beings and things -- becomes a major part of our understanding of reality and therefore that upon which the mind works conceptually. I don't think your second and third 'constructs' can be radically separated. As you say above, "the levels feed into each other in marvellous ways," and these are already becoming the subject of the most interesting philosophy and science available to us now.
I think you are on the cusp of articulating the situation well. But what needs further exploration is the explanatory gap that exists between mind and world and how it comes into being. Can 'mechanisms' radically closed and separate from one another be understood to produce our reflexivity, our insights, and our freedom? How do we come to thinking, about ourselves in and of the natural world, and yet recognize our unique position as standing apart from -- and conceptualizing -- that which contains us, enabling in us in Nagel's words 'the view from nowhere'. Both the expansion of our conceptualization of the world and the freedom of our minds emerge in nature and are -- in some way yet undefined -- integral with nature. As Wallace Stevens expressed the idea,
". . . A new scholar replacing an older one reflects
A moment on this fantasia. He seeks
For a human that can be accounted for.
The spirit comes from the body of the world,
Or so Mr. Homburg thought: the body of a world
Whose blunt laws make an affectation of mind,
The mannerism of nature caught in a glass
And there become a spirit's mannerism,
A glass aswarm with things going as far as they can."
Looking Across the Fields and Watching the Birds Fly Poem by Wallace Stevens - Poem Hunter
"As I understand it, I would accept Nagel's analysis and terms of reference and reject my own. On that issue however, I am not sure that I understand his distinction of the subjective and its relation to the personal identity that is "me" rather than anyone else. Only half way through book though."
Pharoah, when you've finished Nagel's The View from Nowhere would you summarize for us "his distinction of the subjective" as part of the 'view from nowhere' that individual subjects can and do achieve? What I mean is how does Nagel identify the various levels of reflection {and their sources} that are available to subjects situated in local realities, which enable the asking of broadly ontological questions concerning the whole in which the local world is contained. I'm more interested in this subject than in the question of how one achieves 'personal identity', which to me is a natural outcome of the moving point of self-awareness, consciousness, reflection, and thought experienced by individuals as 'their own' in their interactions with a palpable world containing things and other consciousnesses.
Soupie, I don't see how. Do you?
Pharoah
Paranormal Adept
I would have to re-read a previous chapter or two because I am not sure I understand this very part of his stance. I am not sure whether he is saying that an objective mental explanation necessarily must determine that there must be subjective too. I would say yes, but I am not sure he is saying the same...
@Soupie good question. Again I really like Nagel's description of how an internal perspective reaches out into the external world for relations that might give answers, but the further one goes into the objective world the more one ends up detaching from the subjective realm... or words to that effect. I think he calls for a conceptual awakening that somehow attaches the two... but don't quote me on that.
I've just purchased View from Within: First-person Approaches to the Study of Consciousness
edited by Francisco J Varela and Jonathan Shear (see at link):
View from Within: First-person Approaches to the Study of Consciousness (Consciousness Studies): Francisco J Varela, Jonathan Shear: 9780907845256: Amazon.com: Books
The papers in this volume should probably be read alongside Nagel's The View from Nowhere. I also wonder whether Nagel has altered or developed his approach since he wrote that book. You and Steve have both read more of Nagel than I have, so perhaps you can answer that question.
I suggest going to the sample text at that amazon link to the Varela and Shear and reading page 2 of the Editor's Introduction and then scanning the titles of the papers included in the volume in the table of contents. This collection and other of Varela's writings have led, in company with Evan Thompson's and other's research, to the development of experimentation in neurophenomenology, which stands as the most significant challenge to the reductiveness of what I've come to think of as 'neurowang'. We might discuss Nagel's ideas alongside both the theory and practice of neurophenomenology and the reductive neuroscience and "information theory" approaches to consciousness/mind that we've followed here for a long time now.
Steve, you might have read The View from Within already. In any case it takes up Eastern perspectives on consciousness that you alone are knowledgeable about in our group, so you will be a very helpful guide to us in reading this book.
edited by Francisco J Varela and Jonathan Shear (see at link):
View from Within: First-person Approaches to the Study of Consciousness (Consciousness Studies): Francisco J Varela, Jonathan Shear: 9780907845256: Amazon.com: Books
The papers in this volume should probably be read alongside Nagel's The View from Nowhere. I also wonder whether Nagel has altered or developed his approach since he wrote that book. You and Steve have both read more of Nagel than I have, so perhaps you can answer that question.
I suggest going to the sample text at that amazon link to the Varela and Shear and reading page 2 of the Editor's Introduction and then scanning the titles of the papers included in the volume in the table of contents. This collection and other of Varela's writings have led, in company with Evan Thompson's and other's research, to the development of experimentation in neurophenomenology, which stands as the most significant challenge to the reductiveness of what I've come to think of as 'neurowang'. We might discuss Nagel's ideas alongside both the theory and practice of neurophenomenology and the reductive neuroscience and "information theory" approaches to consciousness/mind that we've followed here for a long time now.
Steve, you might have read The View from Within already. In any case it takes up Eastern perspectives on consciousness that you alone are knowledgeable about in our group, so you will be a very helpful guide to us in reading this book.
Comments on The View from Within quoted at the amazon link above:
Review
Since William James, there has been remarkably little attention in the sciences of the mind to the detailed investigation of conscious experience at the personal level. THE VIEW FROM WITHIN advances such investigation along several fronts, with articles on introspection, phenomenology, and meditative psychology. Especially valuable is the editors' introduction, which provides a useful guide to the methodology of first-person accounts, and the articles that build bridges to cognitive science, psychiatry, and the scientific study of meditation techniques. Invited commentaries by leading investigators of consciousness, together with authors' replies, make for a provocative presentation that will be discussed for some time to come. -- Evan Thompson
The View From Within is a brilliant presentation of the need to include first-person accounts in a science of consciousness. The editors sensibly maintain that a judicious balance of first-, second-, and third-person perspectives is not only desirable but unavoidable in any satisfactory study of consciousness. But their integrative approach is not merely a theoretical call for such; they provide instances of precisely how such a comprehensive approach can be pragmatically executed. As such, this book marks a major milestone in the science of consciousness, and it will surely become one of the standard references in the field. -- Ken Wilber
The View from Within, sets out to argue that it would be counterproductive for current consciousness research to continue to disregard the resources contained within exactly these three traditions. In their useful introduction, Varela and Shear, the two editors, spell out why we have to take first-person data into account, and why it is so necessary to develop an appropriate methodology. The publication is very timely indeed. It is a splendid initiative. -- Dan Zahavi, Times Literary Supplement, December 31, 1999
This is an important collection addressing what is arguably the greatest challenge now facing a science of consciousness. Such a science must connect third-person data about brain and behavior with first-person data about conscious experience. But how do we gather the first-person data, and how can we represent it? This book explores sophisticated ideas from a variety of traditions. I hope it sets the agenda for a renewed investigation of first-person methodologies and formalisms in the next few years. -- David Chalmers
Review
Since William James, there has been remarkably little attention in the sciences of the mind to the detailed investigation of conscious experience at the personal level. THE VIEW FROM WITHIN advances such investigation along several fronts, with articles on introspection, phenomenology, and meditative psychology. Especially valuable is the editors' introduction, which provides a useful guide to the methodology of first-person accounts, and the articles that build bridges to cognitive science, psychiatry, and the scientific study of meditation techniques. Invited commentaries by leading investigators of consciousness, together with authors' replies, make for a provocative presentation that will be discussed for some time to come. -- Evan Thompson
The View From Within is a brilliant presentation of the need to include first-person accounts in a science of consciousness. The editors sensibly maintain that a judicious balance of first-, second-, and third-person perspectives is not only desirable but unavoidable in any satisfactory study of consciousness. But their integrative approach is not merely a theoretical call for such; they provide instances of precisely how such a comprehensive approach can be pragmatically executed. As such, this book marks a major milestone in the science of consciousness, and it will surely become one of the standard references in the field. -- Ken Wilber
The View from Within, sets out to argue that it would be counterproductive for current consciousness research to continue to disregard the resources contained within exactly these three traditions. In their useful introduction, Varela and Shear, the two editors, spell out why we have to take first-person data into account, and why it is so necessary to develop an appropriate methodology. The publication is very timely indeed. It is a splendid initiative. -- Dan Zahavi, Times Literary Supplement, December 31, 1999
This is an important collection addressing what is arguably the greatest challenge now facing a science of consciousness. Such a science must connect third-person data about brain and behavior with first-person data about conscious experience. But how do we gather the first-person data, and how can we represent it? This book explores sophisticated ideas from a variety of traditions. I hope it sets the agenda for a renewed investigation of first-person methodologies and formalisms in the next few years. -- David Chalmers
Further note: as we have seen in our survey of many papers by philosophers of mind concerning consciousness, there is a general recognition that consciousness and mind are deeply related and interrelated -- that we can't discuss one without discussing the other. I think we need to agree to accept this premise if we are to make further progress in investigating consciousness (and ultimately the paranormal, though we've generally bracketed that subject matter for the time being).
Good. That's what I'd hoped from your recent remarks and look forward to your summarizing for us, when you can, how he develops his new way of "conceptualizing about the objective/subjective relation." As I think we've all seen by now, that relation is escapable.
That's the nut of the issue, I think. Can one detach one's 'mind' from one's subjective openness to the world from which we gather all that we can work on conceptually? What happens when we try to do so, as materialist/objectivist scientists have attempted to do for several centuries? The quantum revolution in physics has presented scientists with the philosophical scandal of the interaction of consciousness/mind with the existing physical world even at the level considered to be the substrate of the evolution of the universe itself and life within it. The result for philosophy as well as for science is the revelation of the contingency of all our ideas, embedded in an existentially contingent 'reality'. Within this contingent mileau, what can we come to agree upon in terms of reliable (and surely temporally limited) propositions about what we can consider to be {and refer to as} 'real' at this point in our species' development?
I hasten to add: not just any or every hypothesis or proposition will do. We operate within constraints on knowledge and possibility that we can, or need to, recognize in common, alongside the recognition of the creativity of consciousness and mind.
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Constance.
I have a question, you fit the profile, do you think being a woman who has been pregnant you could be more open to a sub-conscious connection/s with not just your off-spring, but with their off-spring, and perhaps their off-spring, i guess what i am getting at is DNA.
See the magic happened in you, life and consciousness began in you, consciousness twice, your own, and then your childs, a separate life, not you, but still you, the very essence of that new being came from you.
l'm going to be a grandad Constance [first time], i guess i am pondering abit deeper than i normally would.
Maybe to answer Soupies question about envisioning consciousness, we need no more than envision our unique DNA string, because thats what we are, does it also determine who we are.
And every bit of that unique DNA string is other people, are there invisible threads to those people do you think, between their and their, [i havent misspelt there and there].
I have a question, you fit the profile, do you think being a woman who has been pregnant you could be more open to a sub-conscious connection/s with not just your off-spring, but with their off-spring, and perhaps their off-spring, i guess what i am getting at is DNA.
See the magic happened in you, life and consciousness began in you, consciousness twice, your own, and then your childs, a separate life, not you, but still you, the very essence of that new being came from you.
l'm going to be a grandad Constance [first time], i guess i am pondering abit deeper than i normally would.
Maybe to answer Soupies question about envisioning consciousness, we need no more than envision our unique DNA string, because thats what we are, does it also determine who we are.
And every bit of that unique DNA string is other people, are there invisible threads to those people do you think, between their and their, [i havent misspelt there and there].
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S
smcder
Guest
S
smcder
Guest
This Idea Must Die
This Idea Must Die: Scientific Theories That Are Blocking Progress (Edge Question Series):Amazon:Books
1. Simplicity
"Compelling as the idea of simplicity is, there's no guarantee that nature itself has as much interest in simplicity as those attempting to describe it. If the idea of emergent properties still has purchase, biological entities cannot be fully explained in terms of them, which means in their full complexity, even though considerations of structure and composition are indispensable."
AC Grayling
This Idea Must Die: Scientific Theories That Are Blocking Progress (Edge Question Series):Amazon:Books
1. Simplicity
"Compelling as the idea of simplicity is, there's no guarantee that nature itself has as much interest in simplicity as those attempting to describe it. If the idea of emergent properties still has purchase, biological entities cannot be fully explained in terms of them, which means in their full complexity, even though considerations of structure and composition are indispensable."
AC Grayling
S
smcder
Guest
This Idea Must Die: Scientific Theories That Are Blocking Progress (Edge Question Series):Amazon:Books
The Neural Correlates of Consciousness
"Consciousness is a hot topic in neuroscience, and some of the brightest researchers are hunting for the neural correlates of consciousness - NCCs - but they'll never find them. The implicit theory of consciousness underlying this quest is misguided and needs to be retired."
Susan Blackmore
@Soupie - her critique seems to apply directly to neural scans of so-called "blue".
As an exercise, see how many errors, biases and rhetorical/polemical devices you can find in Blackmore's essay.
The Neural Correlates of Consciousness
"Consciousness is a hot topic in neuroscience, and some of the brightest researchers are hunting for the neural correlates of consciousness - NCCs - but they'll never find them. The implicit theory of consciousness underlying this quest is misguided and needs to be retired."
Susan Blackmore
@Soupie - her critique seems to apply directly to neural scans of so-called "blue".
As an exercise, see how many errors, biases and rhetorical/polemical devices you can find in Blackmore's essay.
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S
smcder
Guest
This Idea Must Die: Scientific Theories That Are Blocking Progress (Edge Question Series):Amazon:Books
Entropy
"The second law seemed of minor importance compared to the first law ... the first law had beautiful partial differential equations ... whose solutions accurately described and predicted so much of the world and literally changed our lives. The second law was not a conservation equation and had no beautiful partial differential equations. It wasn't even an equality.
Has the idea of entropy and the second law had any major effect on science and engineering or changed the world?"
2nd law ---> universe had a beginning and an end
But oscillating models are being proffered to avoid the problems if a finite universe.
Oscillating = high entropy at the end and low at the beginning of each cycle, what process resets the entropy for each cycle? Is entropy conserved? Is energy converted without work? Is the universe:
ein Perpetuum Mobile?
"The greatest result on our expanding and evolving universe is it's ever increasing complexity. "
Gravity condenses matter ---> supernovae create higher number elements
Chemical evolution
Biological evolution
Self reproducing life ...
And finally, he says:
"The incredible complexity of our brains."
Bruce Parker
Entropy
"The second law seemed of minor importance compared to the first law ... the first law had beautiful partial differential equations ... whose solutions accurately described and predicted so much of the world and literally changed our lives. The second law was not a conservation equation and had no beautiful partial differential equations. It wasn't even an equality.
Has the idea of entropy and the second law had any major effect on science and engineering or changed the world?"
2nd law ---> universe had a beginning and an end
But oscillating models are being proffered to avoid the problems if a finite universe.
Oscillating = high entropy at the end and low at the beginning of each cycle, what process resets the entropy for each cycle? Is entropy conserved? Is energy converted without work? Is the universe:
ein Perpetuum Mobile?
"The greatest result on our expanding and evolving universe is it's ever increasing complexity. "
Gravity condenses matter ---> supernovae create higher number elements
Chemical evolution
Biological evolution
Self reproducing life ...
And finally, he says:
"The incredible complexity of our brains."
Bruce Parker
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