Yes, it was Deutsch's program. Thanks for the link to this page and other sources of information concerning it. I'm glad you are following this approach and hope you will inform us of developments in the theory.
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Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 3
- Thread starter Gene Steinberg
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Yes, it was Deutsch's program. Thanks for the link to this page and other sources of information concerning it. I'm glad you are following this approach and hope you will inform us of developments in the theory.
@Constance
Ive just begun chapter three of Mind and Life. (Im a very slow reader to begin with and I have precious little quiet time to read.)
At the start of ch 3, he contrasts the computationalist and dynamicist approachs to cognition. Very good stuff as I wasn't (and still am not) clear on either approach.
The end of ch 1 and all of ch 2 covered phenomenology. Incorporating 1st-person descriptions of consciousness is something I have come to (consciously) appreciate via this discussion, however, it is very difficult material to read. The terminology used to express the concepts is challenging, and I always feel like I have no reference point in trying to understand the terms; they seem so arbitrary.
However, as I find Thompson's non-phenomenology based writing to very clear, concise, and easy to comprehend, I trust that if I am going to learn about phenomenological philosophy concepts, Thompson is my best bet.
Its a good book so far. Im anxious to continue.
"The end of ch 1 and all of ch 2 covered phenomenology. Incorporating 1st-person descriptions of consciousness is something I have come to (consciously) appreciate via this discussion, however, it is very difficult material to read. The terminology used to express the concepts is challenging, and I always feel like I have no reference point in trying to understand the terms; they seem so arbitrary."
I thought you would appreciate this book and am glad you're making progress in reading it is. It is a bear of a book and very challenging indeed. If you feel like doing so, perhaps bring some of those terms you mention here for discussion.
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I'll have to find that 'save as other' device. What does it link to on your computer? A word document or a typepad/notebook type device? I'm about to pay for that pdf-to-Word doc device I had for awhile from Adobe.
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smcder
Guest
In Adobe, you should be able to save as other and choose text or text compatible.
Or you can select all and paste into Word (or directly into the forum).
The paragraph breaks will be messed up, so I usually edit those in Word with a find/replace.
re "information, aka, knowledge, aka meaning"
That phrase foregrounds a fundamental problem in 'information theory' as I understand it. I understand 'information' as conveyed in and between 'nature' and 'lived reality/experienced reality' as not reducible to 'knowledge' in terms of concepts and propositions with which the mind works. 'Meaning' [significance, signification], on the other hand, is sensed, felt, by living organisms in nonconceptual ways, and this is understood and explicated in phenomenological philosophy and in Affective Neuroscience. This preconceptual 'meaning' is what I think @Pharoah attempts to reduce to something mechanistically and invisibly, insensibly, automatic in the early evolution of life on earth. The challenge is to think our way back to the preconceptual/prereflective experience we all have had as infants and young children, and which we reasonably postulate as similar to the at-first inchoate groping toward complex awareness in early man -- awareness of 'oneself' as located in the midst of a physical environment composed of things, others, and horizons of visibility, within which situation the increasingly self-aware organism moves out into its environing 'world', acting and being acted upon in its exploration of the local terrain. Over the long evolution of living organisms, the 'meaningfulness' of the environment and of one's own being and possibilities in it, unfold to what we can call consciousness built up out of preconscious and protoconscious experience.
So to conceive of information as 'knowledge' seems to me to begin by grabbing the wrong end of the stick.
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I'll try that with the next pdf I read.
And now for something completely different: Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-Birds, by Bernd Heinrich, biologist and writer extraordinaire.
I think it would do us good to get closer to nature if we're going to contemplate the role of nature in consciousness and mind, and anything by Heinrich is a refreshing immersion in the natural world {which we could use after all this abstract talk}. I already have a copy, still unread, and have immensely enjoyed two other books by Heinrich. Used copies are not expensive. Try it, you'll like it. Maybe love it.
I think it would do us good to get closer to nature if we're going to contemplate the role of nature in consciousness and mind, and anything by Heinrich is a refreshing immersion in the natural world {which we could use after all this abstract talk}. I already have a copy, still unread, and have immensely enjoyed two other books by Heinrich. Used copies are not expensive. Try it, you'll like it. Maybe love it.
Pharoah
Paranormal Adept
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
The following article shared by @smcder is excellent, outlines the metaphysical issues with materialism and dualism in the context of experience and consciousness, and provides as overview of how dual-aspect monism in the form of panexperiencialism can provide an approach to answering questions that the former two approaches cannot.
David Ray Griffin "Consciousness as a Subjective Form: Whitehead’s
Nonreductionist Naturalism"
The concepts I take from it, which may or may not align precisely with those offered, is that:
(1) all cause-effect interactions of fundamental entities/individuals manifest as a physical and phenomenal event. (Its unclear whether these fundamental entities have physical-phenomenal properties, or whether their interactions give rise to physical and phenomenal properties; im inclined toward the latter.) of course the nature/ontology of these fundamental, neutral entities is unknown.
(2) these cause-effect events which manifest as physical-phenomenal actualities, can combine into more complex "societies" or compound entities/individuals, such as atoms, molecules, cells, etc. (all of which are temporal "events" constituted of these cause-effect physical-phenomenal actualities)
(3) in this way, all "societies" (or structures) that arise within what-is have a fundamental physical and phenomenal nature, however primitive.
(4) as certain of these physical-phenomenal "societies" become more complex by way of evolution, phenomena such as life and consciousness manifest respectively from the physical and phenomenal properties of these cause-effect actualities.
(5) how a richer, unified experience manifests in "societies" constituted of millions of individuals remains an important question. Perhaps there are fundamental "laws" of organisation not unlike physical "laws;" for instance, how multiple charged particles combine/organize to create one unified, charged structure.
As noted, this is my takeaway from the notion of dual-aspect, PE and is not necessarily the view of others.
David Ray Griffin "Consciousness as a Subjective Form: Whitehead’s
Nonreductionist Naturalism"
The concepts I take from it, which may or may not align precisely with those offered, is that:
(1) all cause-effect interactions of fundamental entities/individuals manifest as a physical and phenomenal event. (Its unclear whether these fundamental entities have physical-phenomenal properties, or whether their interactions give rise to physical and phenomenal properties; im inclined toward the latter.) of course the nature/ontology of these fundamental, neutral entities is unknown.
(2) these cause-effect events which manifest as physical-phenomenal actualities, can combine into more complex "societies" or compound entities/individuals, such as atoms, molecules, cells, etc. (all of which are temporal "events" constituted of these cause-effect physical-phenomenal actualities)
(3) in this way, all "societies" (or structures) that arise within what-is have a fundamental physical and phenomenal nature, however primitive.
(4) as certain of these physical-phenomenal "societies" become more complex by way of evolution, phenomena such as life and consciousness manifest respectively from the physical and phenomenal properties of these cause-effect actualities.
(5) how a richer, unified experience manifests in "societies" constituted of millions of individuals remains an important question. Perhaps there are fundamental "laws" of organisation not unlike physical "laws;" for instance, how multiple charged particles combine/organize to create one unified, charged structure.
As noted, this is my takeaway from the notion of dual-aspect, PE and is not necessarily the view of others.
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smcder
Guest
This looks very good - I'll check first and see if we have it or can get it through my library.
From Barry Lopez's Desert Notes
http://www.dickinsonclassroom.com/uploads/2/2/9/4/22944492/the_raven.pdf
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smcder
Guest
It's good, I enjoy Dreyfus' teaching style and his enthusiasm, I've listened to several of his series, there is also one on Merleau Ponty here:
Philosophy: Free Courses Online | Open Culture
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smcder
Guest
What was this in response to ... ?
Pharoah
Paranormal Adept
Something completely different... It's the idea of reading classic texts in the language in which they were written. And the idea that they enrich one's understanding of conscious self
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smcder
Guest
I like it ... Nietzsche's degree was in Philology.
Enrich in what ways, exactly?
I have a pretty fair knowledge of German and I'm learning Spanish ... when I get a little further along with that, I'd like to learn either Latin, Pali or Hebrew.
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smcder
Guest
Goethe's Theory of Colors: The 1810 Treatise That Inspired Kandinsky & Early Abstract Painting | Open Culture
"But whatever his intentions, Goethe’s work has been well-received as a psychologically accurate account that has also, through his text and many illustrations you see here, had significant influence on twentieth century painters also greatly concerned with the psychology of color, most notably Wassily Kandinsky, who produced his own “schematic outline” of the psychological effects of color titled Concerning the Spiritual in Art, a classic of modernist aesthetic theory. As is usually the case with Goethe, the influence of this single work is wider and deeper than he probably ever foresaw."
Goethe ... Schopenhauer ... Wittgenstein ... Heiesenberg
Along with the rest of the world I was convinced that all the colors are contained in the light; no one had ever told me anything different, and I had never found the least cause to doubt it, because I had no further interest in the subject.
But how I was astonished, as I looked at a white wall through the prism, that it stayed white! That only where it came upon some darkened area, it showed some color, then at last, around the window sill all the colors shone… It didn’t take long before I knew here was something significant about color to be brought forth, and I spoke as through an instinct out loud, that the Newtonian teachings were false.
Schopenhauer would later write that “[Goethe] delivered in full measure what was promised by the title of his excellent work: data toward a theory of colour. They are important, complete, and significant data, rich material for a future theory of colour.” It was a theory, Schopenhauer admits, that does not “[furnish] us with a real explanation of the essential nature of colour, but really postulates it as a phenomenon, and merely tells us how it originates, not what it is.”
Another later philosophical interpreter of Goethe, Ludwig Wittgenstein—a thinker greatly interested in visual perception—also saw Goethe’s work as operating very differently than Newton’s optics—not as a scientific theory but rather as an intuitive schema. Wittgenstein remarked that Goethe’s work “is really not a theory at all. Nothing can be predicted by means of it. It is, rather, a vague schematic outline, of the sort we find in [William] James’s psychology. There is no experimentum crucis for Goethe’s theory of colour.”
Yet a third later German genius, Werner Heisenberg, commented on the influence of Zur Farbenlehre, writing that “Goethe’s colour theory has in many ways borne fruit in art, physiology and aesthetics. But victory, and hence influence on the research of the following century, has been Newton’s.”
I’m not fit to evaluate the relative merits of Goethe’s theory, or lack thereof, versus Newton’s rigorous work on optics. Whole books have been written on the subject. But whatever his intentions, Goethe’s work has been well-received as a psychologically accurate account that has also, through his text and many illustrations you see here, had significant influence on twentieth century painters also greatly concerned with the psychology of color, most notably Wassily Kandinsky, who produced his own “schematic outline” of the psychological effects of color titled Concerning the Spiritual in Art, a classic of modernist aesthetic theory. As is usually the case with Goethe, the influence of this single work is wider and deeper than he probably ever foresaw.
You can find Goethe’s Theory of Colors in our collection of 450 Free Ebooks.
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smcder
Guest
Fascinating parallels to a lot of the topics we cover here ...
Theory of Colours - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The crux of his color theory is its experiential source: rather than impose theoretical statements, Goethe sought to allow light and color to be displayed in an ordered series of experiments that readers could experience for themselves." (Seamon, 1998[15]). According to Goethe, "Newton's error.. was trusting math over the sensations of his eye." (Jonah Lehrer, 2006).[16]
To stay true to the perception without resort to explanation was the essence of Goethe's method. What he provided was really not so much a theory, as a rational description of colour. For Goethe,
"the highest is to understand that all fact is really theory. The blue of the sky reveals to us the basic law of color. Search nothing beyond the phenomena, they themselves are the theory."
"The human being himself, to the extent that he makes sound use of his senses, is the most exact physical apparatus that can exist." (Goethe, Scientific Studies[13])
@Soupie:
Magenta appeared as a colour term only in mid-19th century, after Goethe. Hence, references to Goethe's recognition of magenta are fraught with interpretation. If one observes the colours coming out of a prism — an English person may be more inclined to describe as magenta what in German is called Purpur — so one may not lose the intention of the author.
"The essential difference between Goethe’s theory of colour and the theory which has prevailed in science (despite all modifications) since Newton’s day, lies in this: While the theory of Newton and his successors was based on excluding the colour-seeing faculty of the eye, Goethe founded his theory on the eye’s experience of colour."
"The renouncing of life and immediacy, which was the premise for the progress of natural science since Newton, formed the real basis for the bitter struggle which Goethe waged against the physical optics of Newton. It would be superficial to dismiss this struggle as unimportant:
there is much significance in one of the most outstanding men directing all his efforts to fighting against the development of Newtonian optics." (Werner Heisenberg, during a speech celebrating Goethe's birthday)
----------------------------
Mitchell Feigenbaum came to believe that "Goethe had been right about colour!"[2]
As Feigenbaum understood them, Goethe's ideas had true science in them. They were hard and empirical. Over and over again, Goethe emphasized the repeatability of his experiments. It was the perception of colour, to Goethe, that was universal and objective. What scientific evidence was there for a definable real-world quality of redness independent of our perception?
— James Gleick, Chaos[40]
Current status
Goethe started out by accepting Newton's physical theory. He soon abandoned it... finding modification to be more in keeping with his own insights. One beneficial consequence of this was that he developed an awareness of the importance of the physiological aspect of colour perception, and was therefore able to demonstrate that Newton's theory of light and colours is too simplistic; that there is more to colour than variable refrangibility.
—Michael Duck, 1988[41]
As a catalogue of observations, Goethe's experiments probe the complexities of human colour perception. Whereas Newton sought to develop a mathematical model for the behaviour of light, Goethe focused on exploring how colour is perceived in a wide array of conditions.
*Developments in understanding how the brain interprets colours, such as colour constancy and Edwin H. Land's retinex theory bear striking similarities to Goethe's theory.
A modern treatment of the book is given by Dennis L. Sepper in the book, Goethe contra Newton: Polemics and the Project for a New Science of Color (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
Theory of Colours - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The crux of his color theory is its experiential source: rather than impose theoretical statements, Goethe sought to allow light and color to be displayed in an ordered series of experiments that readers could experience for themselves." (Seamon, 1998[15]). According to Goethe, "Newton's error.. was trusting math over the sensations of his eye." (Jonah Lehrer, 2006).[16]
To stay true to the perception without resort to explanation was the essence of Goethe's method. What he provided was really not so much a theory, as a rational description of colour. For Goethe,
"the highest is to understand that all fact is really theory. The blue of the sky reveals to us the basic law of color. Search nothing beyond the phenomena, they themselves are the theory."
"The human being himself, to the extent that he makes sound use of his senses, is the most exact physical apparatus that can exist." (Goethe, Scientific Studies[13])
@Soupie:
Magenta appeared as a colour term only in mid-19th century, after Goethe. Hence, references to Goethe's recognition of magenta are fraught with interpretation. If one observes the colours coming out of a prism — an English person may be more inclined to describe as magenta what in German is called Purpur — so one may not lose the intention of the author.
"The essential difference between Goethe’s theory of colour and the theory which has prevailed in science (despite all modifications) since Newton’s day, lies in this: While the theory of Newton and his successors was based on excluding the colour-seeing faculty of the eye, Goethe founded his theory on the eye’s experience of colour."
"The renouncing of life and immediacy, which was the premise for the progress of natural science since Newton, formed the real basis for the bitter struggle which Goethe waged against the physical optics of Newton. It would be superficial to dismiss this struggle as unimportant:
there is much significance in one of the most outstanding men directing all his efforts to fighting against the development of Newtonian optics." (Werner Heisenberg, during a speech celebrating Goethe's birthday)
----------------------------
Mitchell Feigenbaum came to believe that "Goethe had been right about colour!"[2]
As Feigenbaum understood them, Goethe's ideas had true science in them. They were hard and empirical. Over and over again, Goethe emphasized the repeatability of his experiments. It was the perception of colour, to Goethe, that was universal and objective. What scientific evidence was there for a definable real-world quality of redness independent of our perception?
— James Gleick, Chaos[40]
Current status
Goethe started out by accepting Newton's physical theory. He soon abandoned it... finding modification to be more in keeping with his own insights. One beneficial consequence of this was that he developed an awareness of the importance of the physiological aspect of colour perception, and was therefore able to demonstrate that Newton's theory of light and colours is too simplistic; that there is more to colour than variable refrangibility.
—Michael Duck, 1988[41]
As a catalogue of observations, Goethe's experiments probe the complexities of human colour perception. Whereas Newton sought to develop a mathematical model for the behaviour of light, Goethe focused on exploring how colour is perceived in a wide array of conditions.
*Developments in understanding how the brain interprets colours, such as colour constancy and Edwin H. Land's retinex theory bear striking similarities to Goethe's theory.
A modern treatment of the book is given by Dennis L. Sepper in the book, Goethe contra Newton: Polemics and the Project for a New Science of Color (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
Pharoah
Paranormal Adept
Cool.
I started a couple of languages and found it easier than I had anticipated. The main problem was that I was being taught how to say, "where is the nearest train station" and " can I have the bill please" and useless stuff like that. I want to learn languages to read classic texts.
The trouble with the website I linked to is that he advocates dedicating hours per day to dozens of languages. I haven't the time for that.
I do like the sound of spoken Hebrew.
German is a must for me, and Latin. I know a bit of Russian and my mother-in-law has loads of study books on Greek which would be useful when reading some of the early 20th century authors who quote it as if everyone knows it as their second language.
I am curious about the enriching bit too. It is on the website I linked to: " It embodies a quest to philosophically understand the nature of your own consciousness through the passionate, in-depth, and respectful study of as many different languages as possible, focusing both upon their diachronic evolution as actual entities and upon the intellectual heritage they have left in the form of great texts. "
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smcder
Guest
v
The Latin materials I've seen are of course geared toward reading classic texts. There should be plenty of German available too (Librivox, Gutenberg are good starting places) - learning to read a language should come mch quicker than speaking ... and you have all the resources of the internet for translation and interpretation. Who/what texts are you wanting to read in German?
Also you may have more time than you think, at least for passive learning ... I've now read several places that simply exposing yourself to the language by native speakers - radio, tv, online - leads to a surprising amount of learning. One site for learning Japanese says to simply focus on input and when the time comes (10,000 sentences) production (speech) will be there. That's essentially what happened for me in German. And I'm doing what I can to reproduce this in SPanish - we have lots of Spanish speakers in our state, so also newspapers and radio, plus I listen and watch online, and download podcasts to my mp3, often falling asleep listening or listen while I drive to work ... but it does take several hours a day total.
Classic texts of course also require a pretty good understanding of the times, culture, etc - Shakespeare being an easy example - it's written in "modern" English but ... you get the point. So much the more so in other languages.
The Latin materials I've seen are of course geared toward reading classic texts. There should be plenty of German available too (Librivox, Gutenberg are good starting places) - learning to read a language should come mch quicker than speaking ... and you have all the resources of the internet for translation and interpretation. Who/what texts are you wanting to read in German?
Also you may have more time than you think, at least for passive learning ... I've now read several places that simply exposing yourself to the language by native speakers - radio, tv, online - leads to a surprising amount of learning. One site for learning Japanese says to simply focus on input and when the time comes (10,000 sentences) production (speech) will be there. That's essentially what happened for me in German. And I'm doing what I can to reproduce this in SPanish - we have lots of Spanish speakers in our state, so also newspapers and radio, plus I listen and watch online, and download podcasts to my mp3, often falling asleep listening or listen while I drive to work ... but it does take several hours a day total.
Classic texts of course also require a pretty good understanding of the times, culture, etc - Shakespeare being an easy example - it's written in "modern" English but ... you get the point. So much the more so in other languages.
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smcder
Guest
The main thing I've learned is to start and do something every day.
Also, it was actually easier for me at some point to sit down with a Spanish newspaper than to read a kids book - the kids book had so few words, so little context that you had to know pretty much every word ... in the newspaper you had lots of context - because you knew what the story was about (current event) or it had a photograph or chart or was in a particular section of the paper (sports/international) and there are lots of cognates to English in adult vocabulary - so in a paragraph, from a fraction of all the words, you can get the gist and even learn some words from that context ... on the other hand I read a Spanish sentence this morning that I thought said they were going to keep someone out of the room, even if it took force - and what it really meant was the guy was having a hard time and needed some strength and support! But that kind of error gets moderated over the course of a paragraph or two and then you realize what was actually said.
One thing I wouldn't do is try to always have the exact English translation - if you're reading serious texts, if that's your aim, to translate or even see the exact differences from the original, its very helpful, but to get some fluency in the language, you have to learn to think in the language and this can be a hundrance - to always need to translate back and forth - and of course there are always more than one translation anyway and every text has ambiguities in its own language anyway
Also, it was actually easier for me at some point to sit down with a Spanish newspaper than to read a kids book - the kids book had so few words, so little context that you had to know pretty much every word ... in the newspaper you had lots of context - because you knew what the story was about (current event) or it had a photograph or chart or was in a particular section of the paper (sports/international) and there are lots of cognates to English in adult vocabulary - so in a paragraph, from a fraction of all the words, you can get the gist and even learn some words from that context ... on the other hand I read a Spanish sentence this morning that I thought said they were going to keep someone out of the room, even if it took force - and what it really meant was the guy was having a hard time and needed some strength and support! But that kind of error gets moderated over the course of a paragraph or two and then you realize what was actually said.
One thing I wouldn't do is try to always have the exact English translation - if you're reading serious texts, if that's your aim, to translate or even see the exact differences from the original, its very helpful, but to get some fluency in the language, you have to learn to think in the language and this can be a hundrance - to always need to translate back and forth - and of course there are always more than one translation anyway and every text has ambiguities in its own language anyway
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smcder
Guest
Zwitschen zwei Zweigen zwitschern zwei Schwalben.
Kluge kleine Katzen kratzen keine Krokodile.
Kluge kleine Katzen kratzen keine Krokodile.
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