Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 3

[smcder]

Constance, I havent finished the following paper yet, but it seems to outline the concept pretty well:

"The Continuum of Experience: Non-Conscious Experience" | Gregory Nixon - Academia.edu

I posted this article August 12th, 2014.

C&P part 2

I wore a blue shirt that day.

 

[smcder]

Re Morton's book and Harman's outlook in general, I think it's good for us to think in terms of our own species' temporality, recognizing the persistence of things way beyond us and into the full extent of the planet's past.

Morton talks of hyper objects ...

 

[Constance]

Stevens's "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" presents, as I said, some perceptions of the world, some perspectives taken toward the world, related to blackbirds. It leads us, or should, to contemplate the innumerable perspectives that are taken on the world we share with blackbirds and innumerable other sentient beings with whom we share this same world.

The way to read this poem is to accumulate the perspectives expressed, all perspectives taken in/with-in a single world, suggesting all the other perspectives taken in and on parts or aspects of this world which would finally -- if they could be taken from within a single mind -- constitute the entirety of this world (just a particular planetary world in our case -- the earthworld) as it is real-ized from the totality of viewpoints available within it.

Blending, integrating, various perspectives on anything brings us closer to an appreciation of the integration of the world as experienced and 'knowable' by the beings living in this world who in sum, in toto, can be said to 'constitute' this world in the fullness of its experienced plenitude. Would any of us say that we could do better than this understanding of 'what-is' from within our own personal perspective or that of a school of philosophy or neuroscience to which we adhere? The world as experienced, the world understood as 'lived reality', is an incomprehensibly immense symphony of experience, some shared, some unshared, but in general integrated in the experiencing of what-is, which no single mind or theory can encompass.

What are the harmonics that seem to be essential in the physics of this world, perhaps supporting the similarities discovered in the ways we and others of our own species share commonalities of experience here, which, if Panksepp is correct, include deep commonalities with the experience of other living creatures? What are the harmonics we share and yet experience in individual ways as well in any and every lifetime? Can we humans at some point understand the extent of what we share sufficiently to harmonize the conditions of life on this planet for everyone, all humans and life in general?

 

[smcder]

Love not the whole poem? Or at least what it expresses about the multiply perceptible world?

The Wikipedia article was helpful and listed musical compositions based on the poem, looking for those I found I find this:

I like to hear him read his poems.

 

[smcder]

Stevens's "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" presents, as I said, some perceptions of the world, some perspectives taken toward the world, related to blackbirds. It leads us, or should, to contemplate the innumerable perspectives that are taken on the world we share with blackbirds and innumerable other sentient beings with whom we share this same world.

The way to read this poem is to accumulate the perspectives expressed, all perspectives taken in/with-in a single world, suggesting all the other perspectives taken in and on parts or aspects of this world which would finally -- if they could be taken from within a single mind -- constitute the entirety of this world (just a particular planetary world in our case -- the earthworld) as it is real-ized from the totality of viewpoints available within it.

Blending, integrating, various perspectives on anything brings us closer to an appreciation of the integration of the world as experienced and 'knowable' by the beings living in this world who in sum, in toto, can be said to 'constitute' this world in the fullness of its experienced plenitude. Would any of say that we could do better than this understanding of 'what-is' from within our own personal perspective or that of a school of philosophy or neuroscience to which we adhere? The world as experienced, the world understood as 'lived reality', is an incomprehensibly immense symphony of experience, some shared, some unshared, but in general integrated in the experiencing of what-is, which no single mind or theory can encompass.

What are the harmonics that seem to be essential in the physics of this world, perhaps supporting the similarities discovered in the ways we and others of our own species share commonalities of experience here, which, if Panksepp is correct, include deep commonalities with the experience of other living creatures? What are the harmonics we share and yet experience in individual ways as well in any and every lifetime? Can we humans at some point understand the extent of what we share sufficiently to harmonize the conditions of life on this planet for everyone, all humans and life in general?

Not if we are like the men of Haddam.

We live already with blackbirds at the feet of our women and Blackbirds don't imagine golden shoes ... maybe they've already started ignoring us.

This idea of blackbirds looking through and past us reminds me of Barry Lopez writing on crows ...

I'll find a reference.

 

[smcder]

Not if we are like the men of Haddam.

We live already with blackbirds at the feet of our women and Blackbirds don't imagine golden shoes ... maybe they've already started ignoring us.

This idea of blackbirds looking through and past us reminds me of Barry Lopez writing on crows ...

I'll find a reference.

Desert Notes

Amazon.com: Desert Notes and River Notes eBook: Barry Lopez: Kindle Store

 

[Constance]

The Wikipedia article was helpful and listed musical compositions based on the poem, looking for those I found I find this:

Regular rhythms, rhythmic 'feet', are not necessary in poetry, at least not in most modern poetry. I'll look for links to musical compositions created on the basis of this poem. Rhythm is still an essential part of most music, including the music I like best: modern jazz, which is exemplary in the opportunities it presents for individual creativity, freedom of expression, within coherently performing groups of musicians who work together in producing new developments of core 'pieces' of music. Musical harmonics we are accustomed to culturally, rhythmic substrates and patterns originating in our culture and others, and core melodic lines are all used to maintain the coherence of such performances, but within those parameters the performance is never the same twice since the point is to explore changes in all these basic elements with the individual musicians inspiring the others in further explorations, which makes live performances especially exciting.

Here is an example called "Two Part Contention," performed in 1958 at the Newport Jazz Festival by Dave Brubeck's stellar quartet at the time:

 

[Pharoah]

On what basis would you counter the unitarity of Being? Would you quote the source you mention, apparently in B&T, since I do not have a copy of that work at hand?

Forget the comment... it's not important.
The passage:
"The compound expression 'Being-in-the-world' indicates in the very way we have coined it, that it stands for a unitary phenomenon. this primary datum must be seen as a whole. But while Being in the world cannot be broken up into contents which may be pieced together, this does not prevent it from having several constitutive items in its structure....

 

[Constance]

"Like Socrates, Heidegger, in his 1929 to 1930 lecture course, The Fundamental Concepts of
Metaphysics (1983), emphasizes that philosophy is neither an absolute science nor a worldview, but “our own human activity” (p.4). “Philosophy is philosophizing.… It points the direction in which we have to search…” (p.4). More specifically, “Philosophy is a homesickness, an urge to be at home everywhere,…which awakens us to such questions as…what is world, finitude, individuation?” (p. 6),
questions by which we must “have first been gripped” (p.7). In philosophical questioning, “we ourselves, the questioners, are…placed into question”(p.9). Thus, philosophizing “is turbulence, the turbulence into which man is spun, so as in this way alone to comprehend Dasein [the human being]
without delusion” (p. 19, emphasis added). In philosophizing, man is “driven out of [the delusions of]everydayness and driven back into the ground of things” (p. 21).

Philosophy as Therapy: The Case of Heidegger | Robert D. Stolorow - Academia.edu

 

[Constance]

Forget the comment... it's not important.
The passage:
"The compound expression 'Being-in-the-world' indicates in the very way we have coined it, that it stands for a unitary phenomenon. this primary datum must be seen as a whole. But while Being in the world cannot be broken up into contents which may be pieced together, this does not prevent it from having several constitutive items in its structure....

Pharoah, would you continue a bit beyond the quotation you provide there, or identify the "several constitutive items" Heidegger goes on to specify?

 

[Constance]

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

 

[smcder]

ECOLOGY WITHOUT NATURE: OOO


"So here's my guide to object-oriented ontology for the curious.

Read this pithy statement by Ian Bogost.

Then watch Ian's excellent video, “Seeing Things.”
Watch this video by me.

Now listen to this talk by Graham Harman.

Listen to this class by me.

Series of OOO classes by Professor Tim.

Objects at Rest, Dreaming: Mental final project by my student Kevin O'Connor.

Then you can listen to the first ten minutes of this, in which I introduce OOO.

Now ready for some reading?

Start with this basic tutorial by Graham Harman.

Have a look at The Quadruple Object, a concise and lucid account of OOO by Graham.

Realist Magic (me)."

 

[Constance]

Constance, I havent finished the following paper yet, but it seems to outline the concept pretty well:

"The Continuum of Experience: Non-Conscious Experience" | Gregory Nixon - Academia.edu

Let me know where to look in that paper for an account of how we "unconsciously experience 'blue'." I've just read the introductory pages of the Nixon paper and am wondering if he has noted MP's distinction of prereflective and reflective consciousness and the way in which the former provokes the recognition of the latter. The complexity of 'consciousness' becomes even more intricate once we recognize that for each of us individually subconscious and collectively unconscious experiences and even ideations also rise up in consciousness. Basing one's idea of consciousness on color perception has never seemed to me to be very fruitful. It's clear I think that we first have to perceive colors -- plural -- consciously before we can begin to distinguish them and put names or other tags on different colors. And of course any color we perceive in our environment arrives before our eyes within a spectrum of hues, densities, and mixtures with other colors showing up in our perception of things, appearing as phenomena, in the world as we perceive it. I think it would of interest and benefit for you to read Merleau-Ponty's lengthy discussion of color in the Phenomenology of Perception.

From a Stevens poem:

"The last island and its inhabitant,
The two alike, distinguish blues,
Until the difference between air and sea
Exists by grace alone,
In objects, as white this, white that."

{corrected}

 

[Constance]

Pharoah, would you continue a bit beyond the quotation you provide there, or identify the "several constitutive items" Heidegger goes on to specify?

Is this where he begins talking about 'the fourfold'?

 

[Constance]

Is this where he begins talking about 'the fourfold'?

No, scratch that. The fourfold develops in Heidegger's later philosophy, as I now recall from several decades ago when I last read it. So I'm still wondering what follows the lines you quote, @Pharoah. As it's nighttime in England, you are probably asleep, but Steve is probably awake and has a copy of B&T at hand. If awake, Steve, would you check Pharoah's quotation and citation and identify what follows that quotation? Here it is from above:

Pharoah wrote:
"I can understand the 'in-the-world' bit as being unitary.
I happy to accept for argument that the 'Being' bit is unitary, but would counter that this need not necessarily be the case .
Ref chp II sec. 12 para 3 line 1-3"

When I asked what I'd find there if I had a copy of B&T at hand Pharoah posted this:

"The compound expression 'Being-in-the-world' indicates in the very way we have coined it, that it stands for a unitary phenomenon. this primary datum must be seen as a whole. But while Being in the world cannot be broken up into contents which may be pieced together, this does not prevent it from having several constitutive items in its structure...."

And I'm still wondering what are the "several constitutive items" in the structure of 'Being-in-the-World' Heidegger goes on to identify.

 

[Constance]

@Soupie, I've corrected the poem in this post, in which I did in fact miss an important line.

Constance, I havent finished the following paper yet, but it seems to outline the concept pretty well:

"The Continuum of Experience: Non-Conscious Experience" | Gregory Nixon - Academia.edu

Let me know where to look in that paper for an account of how we "unconsciously experience 'blue'." I've just read the introductory pages of the Nixon paper and am wondering if he has noted MP's distinction of prereflective and reflective consciousness and the way in which the former provokes the recognition of the latter. The complexity of 'consciousness' becomes even more intricate once we recognize that for each of us individually subconscious and collectively unconscious experiences and even ideations also rise up in consciousness. Basing one's idea of consciousness on color perception has never seemed to me to be very fruitful. It's clear I think that we first have to perceive colors -- plural -- consciously before we can begin to distinguish them and put names or other tags on different colors. And of course any color we perceive in our environment arrives before our eyes within a spectrum of hues, densities, and mixtures with other colors showing up in our perception of things, appearing as phenomena, in the world as we perceive it. I think it would of interest and benefit for you to read Merleau-Ponty's lengthy discussion of color in the Phenomenology of Perception.

From a Stevens poem:

"The last island and its inhabitant,
The two alike, distinguish blues,
Until the difference between air and sea
Exists by grace alone,
In objects, as white this, white that."

{corrected}

 

[Constance]

Pharoah quoted the following from Being and Time:

"The compound expression 'Being-in-the-world' indicates in the very way we have coined it, that it stands for a unitary phenomenon. this primary datum must be seen as a whole. But while Being in the world cannot be broken up into contents which may be pieced together, this does not prevent it from having several constitutive items in its structure...."

Steve just provided the following link to an online pdf of B&T at

Heidegger, Martin - Being and Time [trans. Macquarrie & Robinson] (Blackwell, 1962).pdf - Google Drive

The above quotation appears in paragraph 3 on page 78, and Heidegger's elaboration of what he means by "several constitutive items" in the structure of 'being-in-the-world' follows.

 

[Pharoah]

@smcder I was wondering if you could help me here: I.2 section 12. Paragraph 9. 2nd sentence.
Can you give me MH's German for the following:
There is no such thing as the 'side-by-side-ness' of Things that occur.

@Constance. I will reply. Bit busy at mo

 

[smcder]

@smcder I was wondering if you could help me here: I.2 section 12. Paragraph 9. 2nd sentence.
Can you give me MH's German for the following:
There is no such thing as the 'side-by-side-ness' of Things that occur.

@Constance. I will reply. Bit busy at mo

Do you mean:
p81 MacQuarrie/55 original?

There is no such thing as the 'side-by-side-ness' of an entity called 'Dasein' with another entity called 'world'.
Es gibt nicht so etwas wie das »Nebeneinander« eines Seienden, genannt »Dasein«, mit anderem Seienden, genannt »Welt«.

 

[Soupie]

@Soupie, I've corrected the poem in this post, in which I did in fact miss an important line.



Let me know where to look in that paper for an account of how we "unconsciously experience 'blue'." I've just read the introductory pages of the Nixon paper and am wondering if he has noted MP's distinction of prereflective and reflective consciousness and the way in which the former provokes the recognition of the latter. The complexity of 'consciousness' becomes even more intricate once we recognize that for each of us individually subconscious and collectively unconscious experiences and even ideations also rise up in consciousness. Basing one's idea of consciousness on color perception has never seemed to me to be very fruitful. It's clear I think that we first have to perceive colors -- plural -- consciously before we can begin to distinguish them and put names or other tags on different colors. And of course any color we perceive in our environment arrives before our eyes within a spectrum of hues, densities, and mixtures with other colors showing up in our perception of things, appearing as phenomena, in the world as we perceive it. I think it would of interest and benefit for you to read Merleau-Ponty's lengthy discussion of color in the Phenomenology of Perception.

From a Stevens poem:

"The last island and its inhabitant,
The two alike, distinguish blues,
Until the difference between air and sea
Exists by grace alone,
In objects, as white this, white that."

{corrected}

Constance, the entire article addresses the question of whether there can be experience "in itself." The approach is not based on color perception, but I (personally) use the experience of (a) color because I find it easier to conceptualize.

I recommend reading the entire article. Yes, he note the concepts of reflective and prereflectice consciousness. Indeed, that's the target of the article.

I'll post some excerpts from it when I get a moment; its in PDF format, so it won't be easy.

(I've got two other articles I'm anxious to share as well at some point.)