Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 4

[Soupie]

An interesting article by Ram Dass about death of the body and reincarnation of the soul:

Dying is Absolutely Safe - Ram Dass

 

[Randall]

An interesting article by Ram Dass about death of the body and reincarnation of the soul:

Dying is Absolutely Safe - Ram Dass

What one finds interesting is rather subjective. Things can be interesting and still be mostly nonsense.

- The Nonsense of Reincarnation | misebogland
- Buddhist “Reincarnation” and the Silliness about Souls | Psychology Today

 

[Soupie]

.

What one finds interesting is rather subjective. Things can be interesting and still be mostly nonsense. The Nonsense of Reincarnation | misebogland

Until man can explain, engineer, and manipulate consciousness at will (if any of those three things are possible), we simply don't have enough knowledge to rule out the possibility that some aspect of individual human minds is global—that is, part of a larger whole which transcends a temporal body-process.

I'm personally not arguing that it is. However, until we have the knowledge/technology to explain in detail how and why "feeling" is associated with an integrated network of billions of neurons occilating in synchrony, we can't scientifically rule out such potentialities.

(By the way, the article you linked, imo, didn't make a strong case for reincarnation being nonsense.)

 

[smcder]

What one finds interesting is rather subjective. Things can be interesting and still be mostly nonsense.

- The Nonsense of Reincarnation | misebogland
- Buddhist “Reincarnation” and the Silliness about Souls | Psychology Today

I didn't even have to use my ESPN to see this reply coming ...

 

[Pharoah]

It would be rather tiresome to be to write "IMO" after expressing any opinion. Rather... We all act as research filters in our reading of material and bring papers that, in out opinion, would engage the key contributors of the thread.

 

[Randall]

.

Until man can explain, engineer, and manipulate consciousness at will (if any of those three things are possible), we simply don't have enough knowledge to rule out the possibility that some aspect of individual human minds is global—that is, part of a larger whole which transcends a temporal body-process.

I'm personally not arguing that it is. However, until we have the knowledge/technology to explain in detail how and why "feeling" is associated with an integrated network of billions of neurons occilating in synchrony, we can't scientifically rule out such potentialities.

(By the way, the article you linked, imo, didn't make a strong case for reincarnation being nonsense.)

Technically you are correct. In fact I think that, to quote: "... the possibility that some aspect of individual human minds is global — that is, part of a larger whole which transcends a temporal body-process...." is a matter of fact, but the key to that acceptance lies in the word "some", as in "some aspect". These days, more than at any other time in recorded history, there is a global sharing of information created by individual minds that is facilitated by networks that transcend our "body-process". On that level it's happening now as we speak, and it's not as simplistic as it sounds. Many minds converging on the same issues on a global scale means that there is a connection ( in the abstract sense ) between all those minds.

 

[Constance]

Technically you are correct. In fact I think that, to quote: "... the possibility that some aspect of individual human minds is global — that is, part of a larger whole which transcends a temporal body-process...." is a matter of fact, but the key to that acceptance lies in the word "some", as in "some aspect". These days, more than at any other time in recorded history, there is a global sharing of information created by individual minds that is facilitated by networks that transcend our "body-process". On that level it's happening now as we speak, and it's not as simplistic as it sounds. Many minds converging on the same issues on a global scale means that there is a connection ( in the abstract sense ) between all those minds.

Ufology, you were responding to this statement by @Soupie:

"Until man can explain, engineer, and manipulate consciousness at will (if any of those three things are possible), we simply don't have enough knowledge to rule out the possibility that some aspect of individual human minds is global—that is, part of a larger whole which transcends a temporal body-process.",

but I don't think you've recognized what he was referring to. I'll leave it to him to clarify, though, in case I'm misinterpreting what he wrote.

 

[Randall]

Ufology, you were responding to this statement by @Soupie:

"Until man can explain, engineer, and manipulate consciousness at will (if any of those three things are possible), we simply don't have enough knowledge to rule out the possibility that some aspect of individual human minds is global—that is, part of a larger whole which transcends a temporal body-process.",

but I don't think you've recognized what he was referring to. I'll leave it to him to clarify, though, in case I'm misinterpreting what he wrote.

You may be right, but I wanted to point out that given the parameters of the statement, the issue could be looked at in that "aspect". If there is another aspect that you would like to discuss, then I doubt if @Soupie would mind if you interject. I certainly don't mind. What other "aspect" do you think may apply and how might it work?

 

[Soupie]

@ufology

Yes, I was suggesting a more literal meaning of "being part of a larger whole." Again, it's not an idea that I subscribe to, but technically, since we don't know how nor why "feeling" is associated with synchronized, occilating, integrated networks of neurons (SOINN), we can't rule it out.

That is, we still don't know for certain that "feeling," aka consciousness, emerges from neural activity. I believe that we can say—at least for human consciousness—that it is strongly correlated with SOINN; but correlation is not causation.

It is plausible—although not a belief I subscribe to—that "feeling" is nonlocal and that—rather than generate "feeling"—SOINN access and subsequently mold "feeling." That is, rather than feeling emerging from neural activity—pure, undifferentiated feeling may exist (imagine a uniform, global field intwined with the fabric of spacetime) as a fundamental aspect of our universe; brains and the complex, synchronic, integrated activity of neurons may manipulate/perturb this field in some way, giving rise to temporal patterns known to us as subjective, conscious feelings such as emotions, perceptions, and thoughts.

A crude analogy might be that brains (SOINN) are like sculptors and feeling/consciousness like clay. The sculptor does not generate the clay, but rather molds/shapes the already-existing-but-formless clay into various, wonderous forms, which would be the various emotions, perceptions, and thoughts "of" the brain.

 

[Randall]

@ufology

Yes, I was suggesting a more literal meaning of "being part of a larger whole." Again, it's not an idea that I subscribe to, but technically, since we don't know how nor why "feeling" is associated with synchronized, occilating, integrated networks of neurons (SOINN), we can't rule it out.

I'm not so sure that your logic is entirely sound there. I think we can safely say that the "why" component of "feeling" ( emotions ) exists because it has proven to be a useful motivator for survival and reproduction, and the "how" part is that as a result of its usefulness, the genes responsible for creating the part of our brain that is responsible for feelings has been passed down from generation to generation. There's nothing particularly mysterious or supernatural about that.

That is, we still don't know for certain that "feeling," aka consciousness, emerges from neural activity. I believe that we can say—at least for human consciousness—that it is strongly correlated with SOINN; but correlation is not causation.

It's not safe to assume that consciousness and "feeling" are both required in order for consciousness to emerge. So we can simplify by dropping feeling from the equation. As for the causes of things, we still don't know the underlying causes of the fundamental forces of nature either, e.g. electromagnetism. Virtual particles are the current theory. Yet we still have no problem ascribing an electromagnetic field to the presence of an iron core surrounded by a conducting wire through which electricity is applied. In the same way, we can safely say that the cause of consciousness is due to the way our cells have been organized and operate. If we go further down into the subatomic realm we can use the logic of not knowing how that all really works to claim that we don't really know the cause of pretty much anything at all, and while it's true to some extent, it also doesn't do much to advance our understanding.

It is plausible—although not a belief I subscribe to—that "feeling" is nonlocal and that—rather than generate "feeling"—SOINN access and subsequently mold "feeling." That is, rather than feeling emerging from neural activity—pure, undifferentiated feeling may exist (imagine a uniform, global field intwined with the fabric of spacetime) as a fundamental aspect of our universe; brains and the complex, synchronic, integrated activity of neurons may manipulate/perturb this field in some way, giving rise to temporal patterns known to us as subjective, conscious feelings such as emotions, perceptions, and thoughts.

I don't have a problem with the idea that our cellular structure might be attuned to naturally occurring fields. In some animals this has been proven as a means by which they are able to navigate long distances, and perhaps, because our own brains produce measurable fields, they must be interacting with other fields around us all the time ( which not to get side tracked, is why I don't like all the EM pollution out there ). So maybe there is some physical mechanism like the larger global magnetic field through which the fields we produce act and react, producing changes that are detectable to those tuned to them at some distance.

I don't know, but at least it's an attempt to look at the phenomena logically instead of invoking mysticism and religion. The skeptics would probably call it pseudoscience, but that would be inaccurate because we're not claiming to be doing any science. We're just discussing possibilities and attempting to apply some critical thinking. In the ocean, it's been discovered that whales can communicate much farther than previously believed by sensing the sound waves emitted from other whales. In a sense we're all swimming in a global ocean of EM fields and every action on it must logically have some effect. It's far fetched, but not so far gone that it's safe to completely dismiss it.

A crude analogy might be that brains (SOINN) are like sculptors and feeling/consciousness like clay. The sculptor does not generate the clay, but rather molds/shapes the already-existing-but-formless clay into various, wonderous forms, which would be the various emotions, perceptions, and thoughts "of" the brain.

I don't see that analogy working as well as a simple transceiver analogy where we are attuned to different fluctuations in physical fields. In my own unsubstantiated opinion, based on entirely subjective experience, I'll risk sounding like a purveyor of woo when I say that I believe certain things happen between people who are closely related, e.g. a mother's intuition about the welfare of her children, or "radar love" where two people seem to be connected in a way that is beyond the obvious measurable physical circumstances, and other "psychic" phenomena ( for lack of a better term ). I believe strange stuff does happen, and I don't pretend to have all the answers. But I try my best to be rational about it, and I guess that's what makes it so fascinating for me. I think we can be rational about these phenomena even if we don't fully understand them yet.

 

[Constance]

Raymond Tallis, "What Consciousness is Not," a thorough and enlightening critique of Chalmers's most recent book, The Character of Consciousness.

Extract

". . . One way of revealing the autochthonous nature of phenomenal properties is to imagine, as Frank Jackson did in a famous thought experiment known as “Mary’s room,” the case of a super-scientist named Mary who knows everything about the physical properties and functional relations of color but is herself completely colorblind. If, as a result of surgery, she were endowed with color vision, it is obvious that she would have been introduced to something new, since phenomenal experience is different from the material world as revealed to or described in physics. This argument, it would seem, is sufficient to show that subjective experience is not reducible to the kind of objective knowledge that describes the physical world.

But Chalmers is not satisfied with this, and has to argue additionally that “pure phenomenal concepts and phenomenal beliefs are conceptually irreducible to the physical and functional because these concepts themselves depend on the constitutive role of experience.” He also refers to a “class of concepts that have phenomenal concepts as constituents.” In other words, he asserts that some concepts and beliefs are irreducible by proxy — by arguing that some of them depend on experience, and experience itself is irreducible. But this is a narrow and unnecessarily complicated way of asserting that we cannot see how such concepts could arise out of the purely material world. Indeed, how do any concepts arise out of the inert matter-energy interchanges of physics? Until we are presented with a plausible account of how the concept of “matter” arose out of matter itself, we should be prepared to argue that there is nothing in matter as described by physics that would suggest it could rise above itself, and enclose that which it has risen above in quotation marks. (It is this simple insight — and not anything about how confusing, difficult, or incomplete is quantum physics — that is one of the great challenges to materialism.)

Once one recognizes the inherent irreducibility of concepts, little more needs to be said on the idea of “concepts of consciousness.” Certainly that little more need not occupy the nearly ninety closely printed pages that follow. Chalmers could have spared his readers a grueling trudge, marked from time to time by what he seems to believe are bold assertions — such as that “a wide range of social concepts will turn out to be partly phenomenal,” as if things could be otherwise. Society could hardly be established in the absence of phenomenal consciousness; and social concepts seem to exist about as far into the phenomenal realm as they could relative to the “microphysical” truths that he sees as fundamental to physics. Similarly, it hardly seems that Chalmers should introduce as an “intriguing possibility” the notion that “phenomenology could play a crucial role in a subject’s possessing a causal or a mathematical concept even though these concepts are conceptually independent of phenomenal concepts.” The proper response would seem to be: you bet."

What Consciousness Is Not - The New Atlantis

 

[Soupie]

I'm not so sure that your logic is entirely sound there. I think we can safely say that the "why" component of "feeling" ( emotions ) exists because it has proven to be a useful motivator for survival and reproduction, and the "how" part is that as a result of its usefulness, the genes responsible for creating the part of our brain that is responsible for feelings has been passed down from generation to generation. There's nothing particularly mysterious or supernatural about that.

I'll get to the remainder of this reply later, but I wanted to clarify and address this initial part first.

When I use the term "feeling," I don't mean "emotion," rather I mean consciousness (as indicated in the post).

Here's why: A human and a camera are both capable of sensing light. However, the human "feels" the light—ie, is conscious of the light—whereas, for the sake of argument, we'll agree that the camera does not feel the light—ie, does not have a conscious experience of light.

Consciousness is essentially feeling.

I'll try to clarify further: We can build machines that can "sense" smell, touch, light, and noise, much like humans can sense smells, touch, light, and noise. However, humans, unlike machines, in addition to sensing this stimuli, also "feel" these stimuli. (Interestingly, we don't always feel the stimuli our body is sensing however.)

Thus, for the sake of clarity, I have taken to refer to consciousness as feeling. Feeling is what separates us from sensing machines.

Re your reply: "we can safely say feeling is evolutionarily advantageous." This is actually false. Science and scientists have been unable to identify any adaptive function for "feeling." Sensing yes; feeling no.

There is no evolutionary, adaptive, objective function for feeling. There just isn't.

If an entity can sense heat and avoid it without feeling the heat, then there is no reason for it to feel the heat; merely sensing the heat is enough.

Ufology, if you can identify an objective function for "feeling," then you will need to publish a paper because many inquiring minds will want to hear it.

Re how feeling is associated with SOINN, do you really think "the genes do it" is an explanation haha. I expect better from you, Ufology. That is no where close to an explanation and is technically not even true. The genes are surely indirectly involved, but they don't "cause" consciousness any more than genes "cause" people to have a stomach ache.

This is like explaining how gas works in an engine by saying cars are made in factories because people find them useful.

No, an objective explanation of precisely how global brain waves are associated with feeling will require much, much more by way of explanation than "because genes."

I'm going to have to agree with @Constance here, ufology, and second the notion that you either don't understand the rich complexity of the problem of consciousness or you are simply motivated to gloss over it.

 

[Soupie]

As for the causes of things, we still don't know the underlying causes of the fundamental forces of nature either, e.g. electromagnetism. Virtual particles are the current theory. Yet we still have no problem ascribing an electromagnetic field to the presence of an iron core surrounded by a conducting wire through which electricity is applied. In the same way, we can safely say that the cause of consciousness is due to the way our cells have been organized and operate. If we go further down into the subatomic realm we can use the logic of not knowing how that all really works to claim that we don't really know the cause of pretty much anything at all, and while it's true to some extent, it also doesn't do much to advance our understanding.

I don't disagree with the overall logic of this, but you're glossing over one very, very important aspect of the problem of consciousness: unlike other phenomena, it is not objective. It can't be seen from the 3rd person perspective.

So unlike other fields, forces, and phenomena which can be observed by 2 or more people and measured/recorded objectively, consciousness/feeling cannot.

It may be "like" other objective fields/phenomena but at the same time it will be quite unlike them.

This important aspect of consciousness cannot be overlooked.

That is—we can't lay John Smith on a table, cut open his skull, peel open his brain, and objectively observe, measure, or watch the "feelings" he is experiencing. We will not see any of the colors he is experiencing, any of the smells he is smelling, any of the thoughts he is having. We cannot objectively see these things, not with our eyes or any machine.

Yes, we can see blood flow, neural activity, etc. but that is not the same as seeing emotions, perceptions, and thoughts.

Feeling/consciousness is subjective, and as such is a different animal than any other phenomenon we know of.

 

[Randall]

I'll get to the remainder of this reply later, but I wanted to clarify and address this initial part first.

When I use the term "feeling," I don't mean "emotion," rather I mean consciousness (as indicated in the post) ...

I won't be using the words "feeling" and "consciousness" interchangeably. It's a bad idea. When I use the word "feeling" it will be a reference to the sense of touch or to emotions. I suggest you do the same because it only adds confusion, and we need less of that, not more.

I don't disagree with the overall logic of this, but you're glossing over one very, very important aspect of the problem of consciousness: unlike other phenomena, it is not objective. It can't be seen from the 3rd person perspective.

EM fields are also invisible. We generally recognize them by the forces they impart on other objects. They are perceived indirectly. Can we perceive another consciousness indirectly? I wouldn't be so sure that we can't. Perhaps the measureable fields that surround a functioning brain are what constitute consciousness. This is of course different than experiencing another consciousness. We cannot do that unless we literally become another person.

So unlike other fields, forces, and phenomena which can be observed by 2 or more people and measured/recorded objectively, consciousness/feeling cannot.

We don't know that for sure. If the various EM fields and waves produced by the brain are the physical components of consciousness, then we have been measuring and recording them for quite some time now. It's not necessary that we also experience them directly, however we can experience the effects of messing around with the fields in our own brains using specially designed equipment like Persinger's God Helmet, a device that uses magnetic fields that interact with the brains fields, resulting in changes to the users consciousness that manifest themselves in various perceptions only experienced by the wearer of the helmet.

It may be "like" other objective fields/phenomena but at the same time it will be quite unlike them.

That's pretty much like everything isn't it. No two things are identical. The best we can do to compare two different things is talk about them using examples, analogies and other abstractions ( e.g. math ).

This important aspect of consciousness cannot be overlooked.

That is—we can't lay John Smith on a table, cut open his skull, peel open his brain, and objectively observe, measure, or watch the "feelings" he is experiencing. We will not see any of the colors he is experiencing, any of the smells he is smelling, any of the thoughts he is having. We cannot objectively see these things, not with our eyes or any machine.

Yes, we can see blood flow, neural activity, etc. but that is not the same as seeing emotions, perceptions, and thoughts.

Feeling/consciousness is subjective, and as such is a different animal than any other phenomenon we know of.

Sure, we've covered that way back in the thread someplace. Two points. Point one: We may not be able to personally experience someone else's situation, like "John Smith on a table." However John smith on the table certainly can. People have had their brains operated on while conscious and experienced the effects directly for themselves. Second point: The before and after effects of poking around in the brain have revealed a lot of information about what areas of the brain are responsible for what, and therefore even if we don't know exactly why consciousness arises from it ( any more than we know why an EM field emerges ) it doesn't mean it's safe to conclude that the brain isn't the cause. Quite the opposite. There is no convincing evidence IMO of anyone or anything without a brain possessing consciousness., yet every normal person possessing consciousness has a brain ( duh ) ... this is so obvious I find it amazing that anyone ( with a brain ) has a hard time with it.

 

[Pharoah]

@ufology and @Soupie
An interesting exchange between you two... many points are falling by the way side I think.

soupie says,
"We can build machines that can "sense" smell, touch, light, and noise, much like humans can sense smells, touch, light, and noise. However, humans, unlike machines, in addition to sensing this stimuli, also "feel" these stimuli.... I have taken to refer to consciousness as feeling. Feeling is what separates us from sensing machines.
Re Ufology reply: "we can safely say feeling is evolutionarily advantageous." This is actually false. Science and scientists have been unable to identify any adaptive function for "feeling." Sensing yes; feeling no. There is no evolutionary, adaptive, objective function for feeling. There just isn't."

What gives you the idea that we can make machines that can sense? (Weiner wrote nonsense like that cf. "Cybernetics: or control and communication in the animal and the machine" p.42) We can't. If I set up a thousand dominos on their end and push the first over to set the rest in sequential motion, has the set (has the "system") of dominos sensed anything, sc. computer systems and attached electronic 'sensors'? Complicated causal function can look like sensing—"as if" sensing—but you are not a advocate of Dennett's stance surely.

What gives you the idea that there there is no evolutionary, adaptive, objective function for feeling? This is such a bizarre statement I am not sure how to quiz you on it. Expand pls.

 

[Constance]

<Consciousness is essentially feeling.> I'll try to clarify further: We can build machines that can "sense" smell, touch, light, and noise, much like humans can sense smells, touch, light, and noise. However, humans, unlike machines, in addition to sensing this stimuli, also "feel" these stimuli. (Interestingly, we don't always feel the stimuli our body is sensing however.)

Language limits all of us in this discussion so we need to refine the terms we use rather than follow the misuses of language and concepts employed by advocates of machine intelligence and the computational theory of mind that reduce consciousness and mind to the operations of a biological computer. Consciousness is more than 'feeling', but @Soupie is correct to say that consciousness arises from the ground of 'feeling'. Panksepp provides us with a more precise term to use in exploring the basis, the grounding of consciousness -- i.e., the term 'affectivity' to refer to the foundational awareness in primordial organisms of their 'own' relationship to that which surrounds them in their environments. Out of this inchoate sense of situatedness -- a relation of sensed 'selfness/ownness' within a physical mileau that is 'other' to it -- protoconsciousness, consciousness, and mind proliferate and evolve.

Soupie continues:

Feeling is what separates us from sensing machines.

Re your reply: "we can safely say feeling is evolutionarily advantageous." This is actually false. Science and scientists have been unable to identify any adaptive function for "feeling." Sensing yes; feeling no.
There is no evolutionary, adaptive, objective function for feeling. There just isn't.

It seems to me that 'sensing' is the fundamental difference that arises with living organisms; we can call it 'affectivity' and understand Panksepp's view that this is the basis from which feelings of various sorts develop in various organisms, eventually grounding core emotions. All of this remains within the category of prereflective consciousness, but the prereflective stimulates reflective capacities in the evolution of consciousness. Reflections on our experience ground what we call 'mind', but mind too must be understood as still subject in part to prereflective experience carried in, and worked with by, the subconscious mind.

I'm going to have to agree with @Constance here, ufology, and second the notion that you either don't understand the rich complexity of the problem of consciousness or you are simply motivated to gloss over it.

It might help Ufology at this point to read Tallis's critique of Chalmer's work in order to gain an orientation to many of the subtopics in consciousness studies that we've explored in this thread over the last year or so. Here's an extract that strikes to one of the major issues we've discussed and which must be discussed to appreciate the complexity of consciousness in its interrogation of what-is -- 'what-is' being utterly unknowable without the situated/localized and thus partial insights achieved only through, by virtue of, the evolved accomplishments of consciousness and mind in 'lived experience' [Husserl et al]..

Tallis: ". . . how do any concepts arise out of the inert matter-energy interchanges of physics? Until we are presented with a plausible account of how the concept of “matter” arose out of matter itself, we should be prepared to argue that there is nothing in matter as described by physics that would suggest it could rise above itself, and enclose that which it has risen above in quotation marks. (It is this simple insight — and not anything about how confusing, difficult, or incomplete is quantum physics — that is one of the great challenges to materialism."

 

[Randall]

Re Ufology reply: "we can safely say feeling is evolutionarily advantageous." This is actually false. Science and scientists have been unable to identify any adaptive function for "feeling." Sensing yes; feeling no. There is no evolutionary, adaptive, objective function for feeling. There just isn't."

I'm not certain if you are referencing the word "feeling" the way @Soupie is, or the way I am ( as an emotional component ). If it is as an emotional component, then I'd need you to be more clear on what you mean by an "adaptive function" before I understand your argument. In the meantime, I'll try to be more clear about what I mean when I say "evolutionarily advantageous". It seems plainly obvious, at least to me, that emotions play a significant role in mating, and mating is the primary force behind the passing on of genes, which is the primary mechanism through which biological evolution takes place.

For example, love binds humans together fostering intimacy, which leads to children, and motivates parents to protect their children, thereby increasing survival and the chance to pass along their genes through their children. Jealously fosters competition for a desired mate, in which case the winner gets the opportunity to pass along his or her genes. I think you would have to agree that these factors cannot be dismissed. There is ample behavioral evidence for them, even if we have never experienced it ourselves.

 

[Soupie]

@Pharoah

I see that "sense" is commonly meant to mean "feel" and "perceive." Apologies for not clarifying. I meant it in the sense (ahem) of a sensor (Google):

1. a device that detects or measures a physical property and records, indicates, or otherwise responds to it.

Both a human eye and a camera could be considered "sensors" in this way. However, the human but not the camera will "feel" the light as well; that is, will have a conscious experience of light.

@Pharoah @ufology

Re: consciousness (feeling) having an adaptive, objective, evolutionary function.

See the "problem of mental causation. (Wiki)"

"The basic problem of mental causation is an intuitive one: on the face of it, it seems that mental events cause physical events (and vice versa), but how can mental events have any causal effect on physical events? Suppose, for example, some person, John, orders dessert after dinner. It seems that at least one cause for such a physical, behavioral event is that John desired to have dessert and believed that by ordering dessert he would be able to soon have dessert. But, how can such mental events as beliefs and desires cause John's mouth to move in such a way that he orders dessert?"

The problem of mental causation is really the problem of free will; if we say we move our hand away from the fire because we feel pain, or that we laugh because we feel happy; it's only a small step to say that we jumped because we thought/intended to do it (ie, free will).

If either of you take issue with either problem, haha, i'm not the one to argue with about them.

@Pharoah

This is very interesting, because this is the root of the criticism @smcder and I have had with HCT.

You have done an amazing job of outlining how physiological "sensors" have evolved over the millenia imparting adaptive function to organisms. What you still have not done—even in your latest paper—is explain, in detail, how and why organisms "feel," ie, why they are conscious. You have explained how and why they have physiological mechanisms adapted to their enviroment, but not the former.

@Constance @ufology

Re: Consciousness being more than feeling.

Hm, yes and no. Philosophers of mind often use the phrase "what it's like" to stand in for consciousness. What they mean is "what it feels like." So, what ive done is just use the word "feel."

At its must fundamental, consciousness is the "what it feels like," that is, feeling.

The core question needing answered is: what is the ontological nature of "feeling."

On the other hand, things such as specific thoughts, emotions, and perceptions—which are differentiated forms of consciousness/feeling, constitute our minds.

Going back to my sculptor/clay analagy: the formless, undifferentiated clay is fundamental consciousness/feeling/what-its-like. The clay that has been shaped/molded into various forms would be various thoughts, emotions, and perceptions, i.e., mental contents. A stream of mental contents is a stream of consciousness, a mind.

Fundamental, raw consciousness is undifferentiated feeling; differentiated, "shaped" consciousness is what constitutes a mind.

@ufology

Re: the brain as transceiver versus the brain as sculptor.

There is a subtle but important difference between these two models:

In the transceiver model, thoughts, emotions, perceptions are received by the brain already having been formed. Thus, one must ask: if the brain does not form these things, who and how do they form? Is it not the brain/body which forms consciousness into specific thoughts, perceptions, and emotions? How and why must they come to us fully formed from the ether?

In the sculptor model, consciousness is received (or accessed) by the brain in a formless state; once redeived/accessed, the brain then shapes it as needed.

When one burns their finger on a stove or is given a compliment by a peer, the activity of the neurons shapes the "consciousness field/clay" into phenomenal pain and phenomenal happiness. Thus, it does not generate consciousness/feeling but shapes it as needed; and additionally, pain and happiness to don't come to us from the ether fully formed as in the transceiver model.

 

[Randall]

... When one burns their finger on a stove or is given a compliment by a peer, the activity of the neurons shapes the "consciousness field/clay" into phenomenal pain and phenomenal happiness. Thus, it does not generate consciousness/feeling but shapes it as needed; and additionally, pain and happiness to don't come to us from the ether fully formed as in the transceiver model.

The transceiver analogy was in response to your proposal that consciousness is connected to a larger global whatever it may be, not as an analogy to burning one's finger. In terms of sensory perception from ones own body, what we're dealing with is more like an in-house wired network rather than a global wireless one, and your suggestion that, "... the activity of the neurons shapes the "consciousness field/clay" into phenomenal pain and phenomenal happiness." makes sense to me, at least if it assumes that the field itself is also product of brain activity. Then I'd like it for sure, and suggest you keep that one in your basket of possibilities .

 

[Randall]

It might help Ufology at this point to read Tallis's critique of Chalmer's work in order to gain an orientation to many of the subtopics in consciousness studies that we've explored in this thread over the last year or so ...

Been there, done that. If you or @Soupie believe that there is some error in one of my posts, then rather than suggesting it's me that doesn't understand "the complexities" with respect to someone else's work, please begin by placing the discussion within the context of that specific work. This thread weaves around through a lot of people's ideas. Then if you have an issue, identify it with specificity, explain why you think I'm in error, and include a reference link to the relevant section of the work. It is not sufficient or useful to simply say I don't get what you're talking about because I've posted something that you don't expect for an answer.