Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 4

[Robert Baird]

Dear smcder

You are right it is difficult to do something with such unsharpened tools. Make a number of threads (which I have done here already) to address each area of contemplation - allowing integration in each. Then begin to really question each BELIEF you have, and insist on honest responses from those contributing - which I did.

Then throw these threads of jargon and NONsense into the trash heap they belong in. Be willing to answer specific questions in non-specialized simple English when a person joins in who may not have the time to read through (and when doing it has no ability to respond because of insufficiency of authority or points here) numerous posts with repetitious content and no summary of what has been agreed upon. Please do not quote me in this thread I have removed it from my watch list because I found nothing germane to real research beyond tired old approaches and academic denial or cover-up.

But I really do not want to have a discussion on this thread which has already mired itself in NONsense. Then why post here? Why take the time and energy to insult those of us who participate? Just go to another thread or start your own.

I'm tired of people saying this thread is nonsense or saying things about "mutual mental masturbation" - etc ... (that was posted on another thread, which I think is cowardly, you know who you are - or, if you like, I can call you out) ... we've been trolled, insulted, etc. I think we've got a fairly thick skin and I have no problem with the ignore button.

But this is a difficult topic and I've not see anything better from those who criticize it, those of us who have participated from the beginning have made some effort to work with something that has no points of agreement and no valid experts ... others have come and gone. If you want to participate and be constructive, I would like that.

 

[Pharoah]

Dear smcder

You are right it is difficult to do something with such unsharpened tools. Make a number of threads (which I have done here already) to address each area of contemplation - allowing integration in each. Then begin to really question each BELIEF you have, and insist on honest responses from those contributing - which I did.

Then throw these threads of jargon and NONsense into the trash heap they belong in. Be willing to answer specific questions in non-specialized simple English when a person joins in who may not have the time to read through (and when doing it has no ability to respond because of insufficiency of authority or points here) numerous posts with repetitious content and no summary of what has been agreed upon. Please do not quote me in this thread I have removed it from my watch list because I found nothing germane to real research beyond tired old approaches and academic denial or cover-up.

But I really do not want to have a discussion on this thread which has already mired itself in NONsense. Then why post here? Why take the time and energy to insult those of us who participate? Just go to another thread or start your own.

I'm tired of people saying this thread is nonsense or saying things about "mutual mental masturbation" - etc ... (that was posted on another thread, which I think is cowardly, you know who you are - or, if you like, I can call you out) ... we've been trolled, insulted, etc. I think we've got a fairly thick skin and I have no problem with the ignore button.

But this is a difficult topic and I've not see anything better from those who criticize it, those of us who have participated from the beginning have made some effort to work with something that has no points of agreement and no valid experts ... others have come and gone. If you want to participate and be constructive, I would like that.

And like a puff of smoke, he was gone

 

[Soupie]

Well that escalated quickly.

I haven't been busy doing other things, because life has been happening. But I have been (slowly) reading through MIL. Chapter 11 has been the most educational and engaging one for me so far. Wow. Good stuff. I hope to pull quotes and share questions/comments at some point... (After I do so for Faichney's dissertation and Pharoah's paper.)

I think I'm going to have to read a layman' primer on dynamic systems theory to really grok MIL. I'll be re-reading chapter 11 again (already did once).

Maybe it's the term "self" that is throwing me off re pre-reflective self. I can't grok the concept of a non-reflective self. Is the pre-reflective self synonymous with sentience? That I could grok.

Here are two neuroscience-based articles that I found very interesting. (Both of which seem to be reflected in MIL published in 2007.)

Could Travelling Waves Upset Cognitive Neuroscience? - Neuroskeptic

From the neuron doctrine to neural networks : Nature Reviews Neuroscience : Nature Publishing Group

I'll pull quotes of interest from these articles in the future but dump them here for now.

 

[smcder]

Well that escalated quickly.

I haven't been busy doing other things, because life has been happening. But I have been (slowly) reading through MIN. Chapter 11 has been the most educational and engaging one for me so far. Wow. Good stuff. I hope to pull quotes and share questions/comments at some point... (After I do so for Faichney's dissertation and Pharoah's paper.)

I think I'm going to have to read a layman' primer on dynamic systems theory to really grok MIN. I'll be re-reading chapter 11 again (already did once).

Maybe it's the term "self" that is throwing me off re pre-reflective self. I can't grok the concept of a non-reflective self. Is the pre-reflective self synonymous with sentience? That I could grok.

Here are two neuroscience-based articles that I found very interesting. (Both of which seem to be reflected in MIL published in 2007.)

Could Travelling Waves Upset Cognitive Neuroscience? - Neuroskeptic

From the neuron doctrine to neural networks : Nature Reviews Neuroscience : Nature Publishing Group

I'll pull quotes of interest from these articles in the future but dump them here for now.

Did you duck behind the piano when the shooting started?

 

[smcder]

From a comment following that second blog I linked to a page by Sam Harris, at the link below, which I hope we can discuss in terms of the mystery of consciousness. Here is an extract:
"The emergence of vision from a blind apparatus strikes us as a difficult problem simply because when we think of vision, we think of the conscious experience of seeing. That eyes and visual cortices emerged over the course of evolution presents no special obstacles to us; that there should be “something that it is like” to be the union of an eye and a visual cortex is itself the problem of consciousness—and it is as intractable in this form as in any other."
The Mystery of Consciousness : Sam Harris
As I see it, not just in this thread but in this forum as a whole [and in many of the blogs and other sources cited] we witness an ever-widening spiraling outward of hypotheses concerning the relationship of mind and world, of subjectivity and objectivity, that remain un-anchored in any achieved understanding of what consciousness is. We don't know what consciousness is. We don't know what it is or how it arises in the physical world (to the extent that we comprehend the nature of the physical world in which we seem to feel fairly sure we exist).
It's not too much to say that this continuing ignorance concerning consciousness constitutes an intellectual scandal initiated during the dominance of the reductive materialist/objectivist paradigm of our species' physical sciences, and abstracted still further in the current aegis of 'information theory' understood in computational terms. As trickled down to popular discourse cited and entertained here and elsewhere, the widely invoked term 'information' suffers from the same lack of definition as the term 'consciousness' as used by many popular writers. Popular discourse concerning consciousness and 'information' increasingly attempts to draw far-ranging conclusions concerning the nature of reality by reducing consciousness and mind to effects of/outputs of computationally processed 'information' but without identifying the origin/source of that information.
The results are often bizarre and wildly imaginative, postulating 'control systems' that shape our sense of reality but which remain in themselves beyond our ken. These efforts are surely sincere attempts to 'make sense' of the variety of human experiences recorded and reported historically up to the present, especially those experiences involving physical and psychical anomalies. But I question attempts to reduce human experience to informational input received and processed by the brain conceived of as a computer connected to a larger computer. It is the anomalies in experience – both physical and psychical -- that require investigation before we can begin to propose a creditable theory of how and why they occur. And we will not reach that point before we have thoroughly studied consciousness itself as the site of all humanly possible integration of subjective and objective aspects of what-is as directly experienced in the world.
I’m impressed by Bernardo Kastrup’s response to the film Ex Machina, linked above by Steve, and by what I’ve seen so far of his writing and thinking as a whole. The comments following his response to Ex Machina raise some questions we could develop here. I think you, Steve, could provide some guidance for us in evaluating the discussion toward the end of those comments concerning concepts derived from
Eastern thought.

That's a great topic, Constance

transcendence through methodology​

In this interview with Kathleen Harrison, Terrance McKenna's partner:

Expanding Mind - Botanical Beings - 05.14.15 - Progressive Radio Network

"... we are both reduced to thinking only matter is real and at the same time, you know, so powerful and so prone to illusion ..."

... so powerful and so prone to illusion ... the karma of Enlightenment ceding certainty with smugness rather than grace

and here:

Hit or Myth: Why We Need Ufology | EsoterX

... and the insistent dismissiveness of the skeptic and scientific communities who insist they only wish to protect you from the obvious limitations of the human brain – well, your brain, not theirs of course. They have managed transcendence through methodology.

EsoterX | If Monsters Don't Exist, Why Are They Out To Get Me?

and (same source) on bizarre and wildly imaginative results:

Erich Fromm suggested “Both dreams and myths are important communications from ourselves to ourselves. If we do not understand the language in which they are written, we miss a great deal of what we know and tell ourselves in those hours when we are not busy manipulating the outside world”.

 

[Pharoah]

shooting... ? I was thinking custard pies, cream shooting tommy guns, and handbag slapping.

 

[smcder]

shooting... ? I was thinking custard pies, cream shooting tommy guns, and handbag slapping.

none of which do you need a PhD to participate in ... ;-)

it was maybe an obscure reference, but there is always a scene in Hollywood western barfights where somebody throws themself behind a piano ... I wonder if people who made their livelihoods playing in those bars learned to put a steel plate in the works somewhere? I will Google and see ...

 

[smcder]

sorry ... that should be "saloon"

 

[Constance]

none of which do you need a PhD to participate in ... ;-)

it was maybe an obscure reference, but there is always a scene in Hollywood western barfights where somebody throws themself behind a piano ... I wonder if people who made their livelihoods playing in those bars learned to put a steel plate in the works somewhere? I will Google and see ...

Upright pianos, the kind usually seen in saloons in the old west, already had a very heavy sounding board (bronze, I think, or maybe some other resonant metal) that would work like a shield for anyone diving behind the piano. Those instruments usually required two strong men to move them from one place to another. I had a century-old Mason and Hamlin that required three men to move it.

 

[smcder]

lucid dreaming

@Constance wrote:

Coming back to this quote from the introduction to Thompson's Waking, Dreaming, Being:

"At times, however, something else happens. We realize we’re dreaming, but instead of waking up, we keep right on dreaming with the knowledge that we’re dreaming. We enter what’s called a lucid dream. Here we experience a different kind of awareness, one that witnesses the dream state. No matter what dream contents come and go, including the forms the dream ego takes, we can tell they’re not the same as our awareness of being in the dream state. We no longer identify only with our dream ego – the “I” as dreamed – for our sense of self now includes our dreaming self – the “I” as dreamer.”

re: the “I” as dreamer.”

Expanding Mind - Liminal Dreaming - 06.11.15 - Progressive Radio Network

Jennifer Dumpert talks about developing awareness of the dreaming self ... which she claimed was distinct in habits, memories, etc from her waking self ... the waking self, she says, will sometimes emerge into the dream state ... and then she mentions one time when the dreaming self emerged into the waking world (and that this was deeply weird)

she also linked to some interesting sites on lucid and liminal (hypnoidal) dreaming at the end, I'll try to post up ... I spend a lot of time in liminal states because of being a poor sleeper, physical pain and effects of medication ... so this may be the state I initially explore

oneirogens

• she recommended Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) ... which I've used in the past, but not consistently - now I'm having a cup before bedtime each night

• melatonin - more interestingly, low dose (3mg) melatonin was recommended for increasing the possibility of sleep paralysis I've not specifically seen this claim before, but I take 1.5mg of melatonin several times a week, I've used high doses in the past but never experienced sleep paralysis

so tonight, I will try both together, mugwort and melatonin 3.0

 

[Randall]

I have spent decades doing far more than you have here. It is ego and mental masturbation - and I clicked on the do not follow function but still I am drawn back into this nonsense despite creating numerous threads to disassemble the very integrative research I have done - since you made the remark about it covering too much for you to address.

This thread is the longest running derail I've ever seen LOL. It began way back here on the thread: Philosophy, Science, and The Unexplained, and hundreds of posts later, still, nobody seems to know or agree on what consciousness is or how it comes into being. During my time away from this site I ran across other "consciousness" threads, and it seems to me that it's become a sort of buzz-word. Just add the word "consciousness" to the subject and Presto! You've created an intellectually stimulating conversation. Like we could start a thread called "Consciousness and Doughnuts" and propose that we cannot truly know what doughnuts are unless we know what it's like to be a doughnut. At some point I think maybe it's time to stop contemplating the doughnuts and just enjoy eating them .

 

[smcder]

Coming to Moscow by the morning train, Levin had
stopped at the house of his half-brother, Koznuishef.

After making his toilet, he went to the library with the
intention of telling him why he had come, and asking
his advice ; but his brother was not alone. He was
talking with a famous professor of philosophy who had
come up from Kharkof expressly to settle a vexed
question which had arisen between them on some very
important philosophical subject. The professor was
waging a bitter war on materialists, and Sergei" Koznui-
shef followed his argument with interest ; and, having
read the professor's latest article, he had written him a
letter expressing some objections. He blamed the pro-
fessor for having made too large concessions to the
materialists, and the professor had come on purpose to
explain what he meant. The conversation turned on
the question then fashionable :

Is there a dividing line between the psychical and the
physiological phenomena of man's action ?
and where is it to be found .''

Sergei Ivanovitch welcomed his brother with the
same coldly benevolent smile which he bestowed on
all, and, after introducing him to the professor, con-
tinued the discussion.

The professor, a small man with spectacles, and
narrow forehead, stopped long enough to return Levin's
bow, and then continued without noticing him further.
Levin sat down to wait till the professor should go, but
soon began to feel interested in the discussion.

He had read in the reviews articles on this subject, but
he had read them with only that general interest which
a man who has studied the natural sciences at the uni-
versity is likely to take in their development ; but he
had never appreciated the connection that exists between
these learned questions of the origin of man, of reflex
action, of biology, of sociology, and those touching the
significance of life and of death for himself, which had
of late been more and more engaging his attention.

As he listened to the discussion between his brother
and the professor, he noticed that they agreed to a cer-
tain kinship between scientific and psychological ques-
tions, that several times they almost took up this subject ;
but each time that they came near what seemed to him
the most important question of all, they instantly took
pains to avoid it, and sought refuge in the domain of
subtile distinctions, explanations, citations, references to
authorities, and he found it hard to understand what
they were talking about.

" I cannot accept the theory of Keis," said Sergef
Ivanovitch in his characteristically elegant and correct
diction and expression, " and I cannot at all admit that
my whole conception of the exterior world is derived
from my sensations. The most fundamental concept of
being does not arise from the senses, nor is there any
special organ by which this conception is produced."

" Yes; but Wurst and Knaust and Pripasof will reply
that your consciousness of existence is derived from an
accumulation of all sensations, that it is only the result
of sensations. Wurst himself says explicitly that where
sensation does not exist, there is no consciousness of
existence."

" I will say, on the other hand .... " began Sergei Ivan-
ovitch

But here Levin noticed that, just as they were about
to touch the root of the whole matter, they again steered
clear of it, and he determined to put the following ques-
tion to the professor.

" Suppose my sensations ceased, if my body were
dead, would further existence be possible .'' "

The professor, with some vexation, and, as it were,
intellectual anger at this interruption, looked at the
strange questioner as if he took him for a clown
rather than a philosopher, and turned his eyes to
Sergei" Ivanovitch as if to ask, "What does this man
mean

But Sergeif Ivanovitch, who was not nearly so one-
sided and zealous a partisan as the professor, and who
had sufficient health of mind both to answer the pro-
fessor and to see the simple and natural point of view
from which the question was asked, smiled and said : —

" We have not yet gained the right to answer that
question."....

"Our capacities are not sufficient," continued the pro-
fessor, taking up the thread of his argument. " No, I
insist upon this, that if, as Pripasof says plainly, sensa-
tions are based upon impressions, we cannot too closely
distinguish between the two notions."

Levin did not listen any longer, and waited until the
professor took his departure.

Anna Kareninina - Leo Tolstoy (1878)

 

[Randall]

Coming to Moscow by the morning train, Levin had stopped at the house of his half-brother, Koznuishef ...

On June 10, 1881, Leo Tolstoy setoff on a pilgrimage to a monastery disguised as a peasant. On the same day in 2002, a doughnut truck thief is arrested after driving into a patrol car while attempting to flee. Hey did you every get around to trying the Mag Smart ?

 

[DissectionStalker]

That is an encouraging thought. However, the tendency in AI has been to project the possibility of 'downloading' or 'uploading' human sentience into machine substrates thus creating a human-computer interface. I've never thought it possible to interface, interconnect, consciousness/sentience with a computational machine, but the AI people do (naively imo) seem to think this is possible. Which suggests that they are going to need instruction from the neurophenomenologists, the sooner the better, before they do attempt to transplant machine intelligence into humans or vice versa in order to produce a 'posthuman' species.

These computer nerds [Master Race Freaks!] have already been overtaken by genetics. Kurzweil is dead with his Singularity ideology, but he still has a huge following and Brain Trust built-up. You can see these SyFy ideas have infiltrated all the way down to popular prime time tv. See Extant and Wayward Pines. These are the apex years of what they've been working towards to infiltrate this ideology into the mass media, and they've succeeded brilliantly. Seriously!

But, within ten years people will see the BS Kurzweil and his ilk failed to do, and the power of genetics will be the new revolution for transcendence -meaning life extension.

So, there will still be the threat of a Master Race using genetics [not AI] to dominate, so we ultimately get a Planet of the Apes. That's my nightmare scenario.

 

[smcder]

On June 10, 1881, Leo Tolstoy setoff on a pilgrimage to a monastery disguised as a peasant. On the same day in 2002, a doughnut truck thief is arrested after driving into a patrol car while attempting to flee. Hey did you every get around to trying the Mag Smart ?

I didn't - there's probably a magneisum deficiency, but unfortunately magnesium in larger amounts can trigger some of the symptoms of my illness.

 

[Randall]

I didn't - there's probably a magneisum deficiency, but unfortunately magnesium in larger amounts can trigger some of the symptoms of my illness.

Guess I missed something someplace. I thought your illness was the cause of the symptoms that the product is supposed to help with. Sorry it didn't help you. Health problems can sure be irksome. Mine are small but they're adding up. A week ago I twisted my ankle just walking normally with no real explanation why it happened, my back which had stopped bothering me 24/7 flared up, I injured the tendons in my right arm fixing a leak in the roof of our patio, the tendonitis in my wrist started acting up again, and yesterday, I was cutting a piece of plywood on my table saw when it kicked back hitting me in the leg, which hurt a lot. So I went to put ice on it, and while I was doing that the neighbor offered me a deal to load some yard waste into a big bin for him in exchange for sharing the bin, which is great because I have a bunch of yard waste of my own to get rid of. So I limped over and got that done, which made my leg hurt more, so I put some more ice on it, went to bed, and this morning I woke up with a migraine, and it's pouring rain. And I still have to load all my own yard waste into the bin before tomorrow when they pick it up ... LOL. Ain't life wonderful.

 

[smcder]

Guess I missed something someplace. I thought your illness was the cause of the symptoms that the product is supposed to help with. Sorry it didn't help you. Health problems can sure be irksome. Mine are small but they're adding up. A week ago I twisted my ankle just walking normally with no real explanation why it happened, my back which had stopped bothering me 24/7 flared up, I injured the tendons in my right arm fixing a leak in the roof of our patio, the tendonitis in my wrist started acting up again, and yesterday, I was cutting a piece of plywood on my table saw when it kicked back hitting me in the leg, which hurt a lot. So I went to put ice on it, and while I was doing that the neighbor offered me a deal to load some yard waste into a big bin for him in exchange for sharing the bin, which is great because I have a bunch of yard waste of my own to get rid of. So I limped over and got that done, which made my leg hurt more, so I put some more ice on it, went to bed, and this morning I woke up with a migraine, and it's pouring rain. And I still have to load all my own yard waste into the bin before tomorrow when they pick it up ... LOL. Ain't life wonderful.

I hope you get to feeling better soon.

 

[Randall]

I hope you get to feeling better soon.

Thanks and same to you as always.

 

[DissectionStalker]

I'm very interested in your discussions about AI and C. Constance and I seem to agree in many respects about about this topic, imo, unless I'm mistaken, but I can't search this thread just using AI as a search term. Has there been many discussions about AI and C before on this thread or the previous threads that preceded this one? Thanks.

I'm certain there are many good posts here on other topics too besides AI, so thanks for the contributions by those normally posting here. I just want to start with posts relating to AI for now, so I'm sure some of you know if AI and C has been discussed much before these recent AI posts.

Thanks for your help.

 

[Randall]

I'm very interested in your discussions about AI and C. Constance and I seem to agree in many respects about about this topic, imo, unless I'm mistaken, but I can't search this thread just using AI as a search term. Has there been many discussions about AI and C before on this thread or the previous threads that preceded this one? Thanks.

I'm certain there are many good posts here on other topics too besides AI, so thanks for the contributions by those normally posting here. I just want to start with posts relating to AI for now, so I'm sure some of you know if AI and C has been discussed much before these recent AI posts.

Thanks for your help.

I think I may have mentioned that this all started on a thread called Science, Philosophy, and the Unexplained, that ended up derailed here for hundreds of pages. Along the way the AI angle has been touched on in various places. One of my views that touched on the concept of machine intelligence was:

"On the issue of whether or not we're machines. I posit that if we consider machines to be a collection of parts that when combined work together to accomplish a specific goal ( or set of goals ), then the only differences between what we consider a typical machine and human beings is the size, number, composition, design, organization, and purpose of the various parts. Our cells are machines made up of even smaller nano-machines:" See post and video here
​

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