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Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 3
- Thread starter Gene Steinberg
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Soupie
Paranormal Adept
There's no doubt that I can organize the diagram in a more intuitive fashion. I'll do so asap.
(As noted, my intuitions typically leave others bewildered and confused. In RL it's not uncommon for me to spontaneously continue conversations that had ended weeks prior, to make associations that leave conversations participants befuddled, etc. I'll try to do better. I swear!)
S
smcder
Guest
Venn diagrams generally show overlap between 2-3 things ...
In your diagram - the relative size of "I exist" and being placed inside of the concept of green, I read that as being subsumed by the concept of green ... I don't know if that's how every one would see it, though.
In your diagram - the relative size of "I exist" and being placed inside of the concept of green, I read that as being subsumed by the concept of green ... I don't know if that's how every one would see it, though.
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
Ah, but the natives minds were blue, they just didn't know it. Being blue is different from seeing blue. Perhaps.
S
smcder
Guest
They weren't color blind, if I remember?
That said, I've had a blue Christmas and I've been green with envy - I've also seen red (you wouldn't like me when I'm Ang Lee) and I've blacked out a few times. But for all that, I always try to see the silver lining ...
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
The overlap is between subjective and objective, the liminal is the overlap.
The smaller texts in each domain are elements that fall within each domain. Duly noted that the diagram can be organized more clearly. I appreciate the feedback. (As to whether one agrees with the content is obviously a separate issue.)
S
smcder
Guest
May depend on where the deficit is:
1. eye
2. optic nerve
3. color processing area
4. conscious awareness area (of color)
5. psychological factors (hysterical color blindness)
6. conceptual deficits ("color stupid")
We need brain scans asap! Color brain scans!
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
They weren't color blind, and technically they apparently could indeed see blue, they just didn't until someone said: aye, this is blue.
But Helen Keller says she wasnt conscious until someone said aye this is water.
S
smcder
Guest
Your diagram may need a diagram ...
S
smcder
Guest
The "What is Philosopy" book has a chapter on diagrammatics in philosophy and on texts in philosophy. I can't tell if what he says is obvious or profound, though. Perhaps it is Obfound or Probvious.
He says the eidetic element of a philosophical idea exceeds the language it's put into and language is also excessive to any given philosophical idea.
Chapter 10
As evidenced by every philosopher having multiple goes at saying the same thing.
Its helped me recently as I've rassled with what can be expressed and how. It seem the more I ponder these things, the less I can talk about them or the less satisfied I am with my talk!
That said, I want to say that what can be said can be said simply and clearly. We already have so many words in the English language:
1.1 bazillion
:that we shouldn't be too quick to make up more. And terminologizing can be terminal.
Probably not so for German, though.
He says the eidetic element of a philosophical idea exceeds the language it's put into and language is also excessive to any given philosophical idea.
Chapter 10
As evidenced by every philosopher having multiple goes at saying the same thing.
Its helped me recently as I've rassled with what can be expressed and how. It seem the more I ponder these things, the less I can talk about them or the less satisfied I am with my talk!
That said, I want to say that what can be said can be said simply and clearly. We already have so many words in the English language:
1.1 bazillion
:that we shouldn't be too quick to make up more. And terminologizing can be terminal.
Probably not so for German, though.
S
smcder
Guest
In fact, the literary landscape is so littered, that I think what we should do, on any chance possible, is pick up fragments of used language and recycle them.
This would, of course, be called:
litterature.
This would, of course, be called:
litterature.
S
smcder
Guest
Maybe there are classes of ideas (that could be diagrammed!) that aren't well (or at all) expressed in language ... remember the S/V of natural languages ... I don't want to put down that the idea of the hard problem is a problem of language, but the opposite, that the "hard problem" is a problem for language ... in much the same way that it is a problem for physicalists, meaning if it weren't for language - we'd have a much easier time of expressing it ... so we should then become mute metaphysicians.
The idea of non- also shows up all the time because of the dual nature of language - so we don't have many words for non-material that aren't negations. We also express books as
fiction
and
non-fictions
but clearly this is often arbitrary.
And subject and object aren't opposities. Neither are mental and physical.
And it's no help looking to mathematics for answers, it's a language too with clearly defined limits ... and the search for "alien" and constructed languages, that's intriguing but when one comes back, even if one has downloded an entire language, no one else knows what you are talking about and/or I suspect while that new alien language is good at putting to word otherwise unexpressible notions, it probably falls down in communicating other mundane ideas - so there is always the problem of translation - understanding that language may only occur in an altered state
Rather, what "What Is Philosophy" tells me is that it is the eidetic experience we are always wanting to convey and cannot ... because it is "excessive" (an example of confusing terminilogy!) - it is the "what it is like to be" me while I am having that philosophic experience ... so that moment of insight (he says we lose many in a lifetime) has to be solidified with some kind of sign in our own minds before we ever have hope to convey it.
For me this is a kinesthetic experience and generally an uncomfortable one - like something sharp over or into something smooth - but if I can maintain that exact sensation over the course of hours or days I can bring it ever clearer and the sharper I can bring it, the more likely I can put it into words.
That (the above, very simple, ideas) I've just managed, with this process, to convey after several days of working on it muscularly (off and on)
The idea of non- also shows up all the time because of the dual nature of language - so we don't have many words for non-material that aren't negations. We also express books as
fiction
and
non-fictions
but clearly this is often arbitrary.
And subject and object aren't opposities. Neither are mental and physical.
And it's no help looking to mathematics for answers, it's a language too with clearly defined limits ... and the search for "alien" and constructed languages, that's intriguing but when one comes back, even if one has downloded an entire language, no one else knows what you are talking about and/or I suspect while that new alien language is good at putting to word otherwise unexpressible notions, it probably falls down in communicating other mundane ideas - so there is always the problem of translation - understanding that language may only occur in an altered state
Rather, what "What Is Philosophy" tells me is that it is the eidetic experience we are always wanting to convey and cannot ... because it is "excessive" (an example of confusing terminilogy!) - it is the "what it is like to be" me while I am having that philosophic experience ... so that moment of insight (he says we lose many in a lifetime) has to be solidified with some kind of sign in our own minds before we ever have hope to convey it.
For me this is a kinesthetic experience and generally an uncomfortable one - like something sharp over or into something smooth - but if I can maintain that exact sensation over the course of hours or days I can bring it ever clearer and the sharper I can bring it, the more likely I can put it into words.
That (the above, very simple, ideas) I've just managed, with this process, to convey after several days of working on it muscularly (off and on)
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
Haha, I purposeful used very common words, but at the same time avoided the concepts physical and phenomenal. I agree these aren't opposites. This diagram is a simple model of an obviously complex reality.
You say your mind isn't green. I wonder then what is your mind? If your mind isn't green, what is green? Is green then external to the mind?
One of the concepts I encounted in the Sense Data entry at SEP was the idea that one doesn't experience objective reality, one experiences sense data.
What the entry never clarified was who is the one doing all the experiencing?
S
smcder
Guest
Lol ... if the entry could clarify that, we could all go home!
You say your mind isn't green. I wonder then what is your mind? If your mind isn't green, what is green? Is green then external to the mind?
Silly kids, rabbit holes are for rabbits. I have no idea what green is ...
BUT, I will go up to the edge of the hole and give you some thoughts before you go back down ...
"The mind is green" is an example of eidetica ... (to maybe coin a term) it means something to you, it represent a constellation of ideas and more to you ... but it seems to me you aren't able to convey this to your gentle reader. This is all talked about in terms of language and signification in "What is Philosophy".
This is what I was talking about above for me that involves a usually muscular/kinesthetic effort to bring the idea up and fix it and then ultimately convey it ... sometimes. So perhaps you don't need to throw any more words at it, large or small.
The first thing I think is to ask
"have I really, after 2500 years, come up with a new idea? Or did someone else think the mind is green too?" the fix for this, of course, is more reading.
"the mind is green" smacks me of phenomenological thought ... perhaps some digging there ... perhaps when you get to the bottom of the hole, you will find there a river and then if you come across the salmon of knowledge, you should ask him (or her) - I think s/he'll know.
... the second thing is to try and become more conscious of the constellation of ideas and sensations, etc the "what it is like to be Soupie when he thinks "the mind is green"?" write things down, for me an excellent model of this kind of thing is Moby Dick
"The Whiteness of The Whale"
where he lists example of example of what the whiteness of the whale means to him so that you have a pretty good idea by chapter's end, but you'd have a hell of a time telling someone else, so you point to the chapter.
You also have a better sense of when people have such eidetica in real life and in literature ... if the author hasn't identified and elaborated what is eidetica, then you at least have some idea what it is of what to look for to decipher it ...
S
smcder
Guest
Liebnitz's monadology would not have evn an overlap between objective and subjective. It's the one conception of the hard problem that we haven't explored at all, as far as I know.
The one doing all the experiencing, it seems to me, could be simple. It could be (simply) you. Wonderful you!
Why do we assume our intuitions of who we are, that we even are - are wrong? Because they have been shown to be wrong in some areas? Albeit in useful ways, so wrong only when another layer of explanation comes in ... The heavens in a very useful way are still heliocentric. When you drive down the road, is the earth still while you drive over it, or is your car still and the earth rotates under it? Try making the switch next time - it works either way! People still tend to be phlegmatic or melancholy or some blend thereof ... and the hydraulic theory of emotions makes some good predictions - the most brilliant psychiatrist, hopefully, knows to let his patient "cool down" - only Sheldon Cooper would take his temperature at fixed intervals.
Here is the idea again:
(full tex here: Blog | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog
See if you see any much less manything wrong with it ... ?
Nicholas Humphrey, professor of psychology at The London School Of Economics, is a leading investigator of what philosopher David Chalmers dubbed the “hard problem” of consciousness. His Recent book Soul Dust approaches the second part of the Hard Problem: why human beings have consciousness, and why consciousness should have evolved at all. It is an excellent read for anyone interested in philosophy of mind and the evolution of the brain.
While there have been many attempts to get at what consciousness is (or what consciousness is like, see PEL episode 21), the goal of Soul Dust is describing why consciousness is evolutionarily advantageous–or, more exactly, why natural selection has led to creatures with the remarkable quality of being phenomenally conscious. It is an interesting question given that being conscious (not to be confused with being intelligent) does not seem to grant any survival skills. As Jerry Fodor famously asked “What mental processes can be performed only because the mind is conscious, and what does consciousness contribute to their performance? Why then did God bother to make consciousness?”
Humphrey’s solution is not terribly complex. Consciousness, he claims, does not add or enhance some survival ability (as, say, wings allow birds to fly). Consciousness improves the chance of survival because it makes life worth living. Being phenomenally conscious grants import, meaning, and ego, essentially fooling us into striving towards fulfillment.
and later ...
Humphrey asserts that it is this love of being alive and omnipresent fear of death that motivates us to fight for our “honor,” “legacy” and other abstract goals that just so happen to involve a lot of resource gathering, competition, and constructive activity that will positively affect our progeny. As per Humphrey, the more beautiful and meaningful life becomes, the harder the conscious creature will fight to improve and extend its own existence. And, the harder it will work to improve the likelihood of the success of it’s offspring. Thus, being conscious is a huge evolutionary advantage and is explainable in a standard Darwinian framework.
Gosh and all the simplest organisms have to work with is ... drive and instinct and yet, somehow there are sooooo many single celled creatures around!
Ladies and gentlemen ... as living counter-argument, I give you the Wolverine
Gulo gulo
Armed with powerful jaws, sharp claws, and a thick hide, wolverines, like most mustelids, are remarkably strong for their size. They may defend kills against larger or more numerous predators such as wolves or bears.
At least one account reported a wolverine's apparent attempt to steal a kill from a black bear, although the bear won what was ultimately a fatal contest.
In another account, a wolverine attacked a polar bear and clung to its throat until the bear suffocated.
Wolverines have also be known to take on a wolf pack for the remains of its kill.
The wolverine weighs between 20-55lbs and as far as we know, does not fight for honor, glory, legacy or the beauty of the morning sun-rise.
S
smcder
Guest
Let's have a look in on a field trip to the Museum of The Mind in the year 2155 in the city of Progredelphia in the United States of Wal-Mart, where all the women are strong, all the men good-looking and the children above average.
In fact, the average IQ of the school children is 148, ... but they still ask childish questions!
The class has reached the Chalmers'/McGinn Archive of Aporia - a huge bust of the men standing back to back dominates the otherwise empty room.
Little Johnnie-132:
"Mrs Perlsnukker, one of the concepts I encounted in the Sense Data entry at WEP was the idea that one doesn't experience objective reality, one experiences sense data. What the entry never clarified was who is the one doing all the experiencing?"
(the children had an awfully funny name they called Ms Perlsnukker behind her back ... it was "Old Lady Perlsnukker" - they laughed and laughed at this, proof that not everything in the future has made progress)
Mrs Perlsnukker-149, admonishing Little Johnnie-132:
"I admonish you! What grade are you in?"
LJ-132 (sheepishly): "Fourth ..."
MP-149: "OK, I want you to think back to last week, all the way to the first grade ... (silence from Little Johnnie, who at 132 is one of the slower students) ... do we need some more time in the Portable Persinger?"
Betty-Lou-142, teacher's assistant, leans in to MP-149 and whispers something.
MP-149: "Well, you are lucky! Betty-Lou-142 tells me the intuition pump is out on it ... I will have Jimmy-165, our maintenance man, have a look when we get back - those things are so hard to put in! Now, remember your Husserl! If your little sister, Mary-Lou 152 were to ask you such a silly question, what would you say!?"
And such humiliation led Little Johnnie-132 to sneak into his father's medicine closet for something to end the empty aloneness in his soul:
Narcodex for aching muscles, cough and ADD, Dexta-thrill for boredom, something called Viagra ... and there it was, the gleaming prize:
Soma!
Only it turns out, that due to an altered gene that the technicians never told Little Johnnie-132's parents about, his body reacted to this herbal supplement (and a synchronistic bite on the hand from a radioactive spider) to produce certain proteins that caused a rapid fire increase in neural pruning at the end of which Little Johnnie-132 became the legendary John-299!
-to be continued-
S
smcder
Guest
NOTE:
No resemblance to any person, living, dead or in a state of quantum superposition - is, or isn't implied.
So John-299 graduated from the Wal-Mart Institute of Technology at age 8 and began to work on the Pharonic Hierarchical Transducer. His PhD work had been to build the CNSTNC-1000 neurochip, which represented a great advance in self-aware technology. It was, in a word, useful. John-299 noticed that the first aritificially aware appliances were more concerned with broadcasting the size of their processors and with computing the ideal ratios say of an artificially aware refrigerator and then convincing humans to build them (in one notorious example, an early intelligent can opener, built to monstrous proportions, convinced his creator he would only stop meancing him with his razor sharp blade if he built him an appliance with only female couplers ... he refused and the can opener went on a rampage that left many dead and ended in a titanic conflagration in the north pole).
But you see John-299 was so smart and so observant, that, despite being a man, he began to suspect that women had a set of characteristics that taken together, seemed to indicate they were ... well, this was an eidetic cluster for him - but, although he never could quite name it satisfactorily, he ultimately found a way to measure it and discovered that women have a lot more of it than men and so he thought AI should probably have it as well. In this, he eventually came to be known as the Father of Artificial Common Sense. (he also invented the Heideggerean Hammer - which was always at hand, but nobody much used hammered in that time - so it can really only be seen in museums. The country Ludditonia tried it and found it generally useful, but finally opted for a lower tech version which they called a "hammer" - because they felt it was really what Heidegger actually had in mind.*
John-299 eventually placed the CNSTNC-1000 in the PHT but something was missing. Although it churned away happily and productively, it was still puzzled by the thing that always bothered John-299 himself "who is the one doing all the experiencing?"
So together, John-299 and CNSTNC-1000+PHT (which John-299 came to call Pearl) invented the Viridescent Light - a light that was truly green, objectively green, phenomenally green! Now any mind could be green.
But it wasn't enough, too many unanswered questions - so John-299 invented RNDL-1.o, software that could take any argument, cast it into predicate logic and run it to the nth degree. For over a hundred years, following ACT 6111788227342 (reforms in parenting and persistence), no one had taken an argument to the nth degree ... however, before starting the process RNDL to run on Pearl, John-299 had the foresight to run a query on how long it would take to take things to the nth degree, he ran this on a Diametric Mantronymic Nullifier - using a Maxwell optimizer - and it turns out to take an infinitely long time ...
*Ludditonia is located in the mountainous region once known as Sweden ... it's inhabitants are fierce and have an average IQ of 170. It is the only country in the world in which Wal-Mart has not gained a foothold.
No resemblance to any person, living, dead or in a state of quantum superposition - is, or isn't implied.
So John-299 graduated from the Wal-Mart Institute of Technology at age 8 and began to work on the Pharonic Hierarchical Transducer. His PhD work had been to build the CNSTNC-1000 neurochip, which represented a great advance in self-aware technology. It was, in a word, useful. John-299 noticed that the first aritificially aware appliances were more concerned with broadcasting the size of their processors and with computing the ideal ratios say of an artificially aware refrigerator and then convincing humans to build them (in one notorious example, an early intelligent can opener, built to monstrous proportions, convinced his creator he would only stop meancing him with his razor sharp blade if he built him an appliance with only female couplers ... he refused and the can opener went on a rampage that left many dead and ended in a titanic conflagration in the north pole).
But you see John-299 was so smart and so observant, that, despite being a man, he began to suspect that women had a set of characteristics that taken together, seemed to indicate they were ... well, this was an eidetic cluster for him - but, although he never could quite name it satisfactorily, he ultimately found a way to measure it and discovered that women have a lot more of it than men and so he thought AI should probably have it as well. In this, he eventually came to be known as the Father of Artificial Common Sense. (he also invented the Heideggerean Hammer - which was always at hand, but nobody much used hammered in that time - so it can really only be seen in museums. The country Ludditonia tried it and found it generally useful, but finally opted for a lower tech version which they called a "hammer" - because they felt it was really what Heidegger actually had in mind.*
John-299 eventually placed the CNSTNC-1000 in the PHT but something was missing. Although it churned away happily and productively, it was still puzzled by the thing that always bothered John-299 himself "who is the one doing all the experiencing?"
So together, John-299 and CNSTNC-1000+PHT (which John-299 came to call Pearl) invented the Viridescent Light - a light that was truly green, objectively green, phenomenally green! Now any mind could be green.
But it wasn't enough, too many unanswered questions - so John-299 invented RNDL-1.o, software that could take any argument, cast it into predicate logic and run it to the nth degree. For over a hundred years, following ACT 6111788227342 (reforms in parenting and persistence), no one had taken an argument to the nth degree ... however, before starting the process RNDL to run on Pearl, John-299 had the foresight to run a query on how long it would take to take things to the nth degree, he ran this on a Diametric Mantronymic Nullifier - using a Maxwell optimizer - and it turns out to take an infinitely long time ...
*Ludditonia is located in the mountainous region once known as Sweden ... it's inhabitants are fierce and have an average IQ of 170. It is the only country in the world in which Wal-Mart has not gained a foothold.
Try this for clarification:
Taylor Carman, "Sensation, Judgment, and the Phenomenal Field"
http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~hdreyfus/188_s05/pdf/Carman_Sensation.pdf
{^in the above, read 'intellectualism' in M-P as 'rationalism', nowadays reduced to 'cognitivism'; see note 1 of the paper}
Also, we might look at this again in SEP: The problem of perception
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-problem/
S
smcder
Guest
Good ... it is all in FUN ... just playing off as many of the ideas as I can ... not to be taken too seriously (or at all) by anyone ...
I am trying to remember the term @Soupie used back in Part 2, I think when we discussed mental causation and causal overdetermination ...
transduce up and down or something like that ... searched and can't find it, but I will
I am trying to remember the term @Soupie used back in Part 2, I think when we discussed mental causation and causal overdetermination ...
transduce up and down or something like that ... searched and can't find it, but I will
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