Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 4

[smcder]

Where can I read the text you're drawing from?

Aggi-Vacchagotta Sutta: To Vacchagotta on Fire

 

[smcder]

@Constance

Brain Waves as Neural Correlates of Consciousness

"When we are thinking, thoughts flicker in and out of our minds. What does that mean on the level of the brain? Recent research, conducted by researchers at at MIT and Boston University(link is external), suggests that when thoughts are in our minds, corresponding groups of neurons are oscillating in synchrony in a high frequency range, around 30 or higher, whereas thoughts that are no longer in our minds oscillate at lower frequencies. When several, distinct thoughts are held in mind simultaneously, several oscillating bundles are out of sync with each other.

The normal waken brain has brain activity that fluctuates between 8 and 100 Hz. An alert and active brain will tend to have neural oscillations, roughly, in the 40 Hz range in at least some parts of the brain. These brain waves are also known as gamma waves. Alpha waves—oscillations in the 8 to 12 Hz frequency range—and beta waves—oscillations in the 12 to 30 Hz range—become more prominent when you are inactive, for example, when you are passively watching television. Brain dead people and coma patients can have oscillations that approach zero. And in seizure patients the brain oscillates even faster and more regions of the brain vacillate in the same frequency range. In a grand mal seizure large areas of the brain flicker in synchrony at extremely high frequencies."

http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v16/n8/full/nrn3962.html

"For over a century, the neuron doctrine — which states that the neuron is the structural and functional unit of the nervous system — has provided a conceptual foundation for neuroscience. This viewpoint reflects its origins in a time when the use of single-neuron anatomical and physiological techniques was prominent. However, newer multineuronal recording methods have revealed that ensembles of neurons, rather than individual cells, can form physiological units and generate emergent functional properties and states. As a new paradigm for neuroscience, neural network models have the potential to incorporate knowledge acquired with single-neuron approaches to help us understand how emergent functional states generate behaviour, cognition and mental disease."

Neural oscillation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Epilepsy is a common chronic neurological disorder characterized by seizures. These seizures are transient signs and/or symptoms of abnormal, excessive or hypersynchronous neuronal activity in the brain.[78]"

You Won't Feel A Thing: Your Brain On Anesthesia

"So far, researchers have learned that different drugs create different patterns in the brain, Brown says. For example, propofol — one of the most widely used anesthetics — is a very potent drug and initially puts the brain into a state of excitation.

"It doesn't really cause a state of sedation or anesthesia [initially]," Brown says. "Then what we actually see next is the brain start to slow. [So first you see] a period where the brain is active, and then [when you give] a higher dose, the brain starts to slow."

In contrast, the drug ketamine — which is used in conjunction with anesthesia to make certain drugs work better — puts the brain into a state of excitation even at higher doses.

"The state of unconsciousness you get with ketamine is created by making the brain active," Brown says. "As you transition through this active state, you very frequently hallucinate. It's this hallucination or sense of euphoria or dissociative state that people who are using it as a drug of abuse are seeking.""

How Magic Mushrooms Change Your Brain

"Though previous research surmised that psilocybin decreased brain activity ( @smcder ), the current study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to see what was really going on. The study used 15 participants with prior positive experiences with hallucinogens to avoid a bad trip inside the enclosed machine. Some of the participants received psilocybin, while the other half received a saline placebo.

Surprisingly, the researchers saw that upon receiving psilocybin, the brain actually re-organized connections and linked previously unconnected regions of the brain. These connections were not random, but appeared very organized and stable. Once the drug wore off, the connections returned to normal."

-----

While the above is not a collection of longform articles from scholarly journals, they all refer to research studies, etc.

It seems that consciousness—and its contents—are correlated with the synchronous occilations of neural networks (brain waves). How and why this should be is currently unknown.

For some reason, conscious experience is associated with particular brain waves. How these brain waves "give rise" or "bring forth" conscious experience is an exciting mystery.

From what I can gather, the computational and DST are the two, main competing models of how the brain operates; and thus, how consciousness is associated with brain waves.

"the normal waken brain"? Grammarians - is that correct? It hits my ear funny.

"While the above is not a collection of longform articles from scholarly journals, they all refer to research studies, etc."

I've been reading on common problems with science reporting and popularization - found some good writing on this.

 

[smcder]

I've missed the link to the paper you're discussing. Would one of you repost it? (Lots to catch up with today, thus too much tracking back and forth in the thread.)

I take it that the following is a quote from a post by Soupie?



Once I read the paper you're discussing I might understand the underscored. In the meantime my impression is that Buddhist and other Eastern schools of practice have worked with consciousness and mind rather than with 'brain processes'. What 'brain processes' does the author of the paper identify as having been discovered through meditation and reflection on what is experienced in meditation?

I'll try to catch up on this tomorrow if you still need this?

 

[Constance]

@smcder

Killing the observer

"Abstract. Phenomenal consciousness is often thought to involve a first-person perspective or point of view which makes available to the subject categorically private, first-person facts about experience, facts that are irreducible to third-person physical, functional, or representational facts. This paper seeks to show that on a representational account of consciousness, we don’t have an observational perspective on experience that gives access to such facts, although our representational limitations and the phenomenal structure of consciousness make it strongly seem that we do. Qualia seem intrinsic and functionally arbitrary, and thus categorically private, because they are first-order sensory representations that are not themselves directly represented. Further, the representational architecture that on this account instantiates conscious subjectivity helps to generate the intuition of observerhood, since the phenomenal subject may be construed as outside, not within, experience. Once the seemings of private phenomenal facts and the observing subject are discounted, we can understand consciousness as a certain variety of neurally instantiated, behavior controlling intentional content, that constituted by an integrated representation of the organism in the world. Neuroscientific research suggests that consciousness and its characteristic behavioral capacities are supported by widely distributed but highly integrated neural processes involving communication between multiple functional sub-systems in the brain. This ‘global workspace’ may be the brain’s physical realization of the representational architecture that constitutes conscious subjectivity."

I haven't read this yet, but since you seem to have an affinity for the observer/knower approach, I thought you might like to hear their arguments.

Interestingly (for me), the neurophenomenological/DST approach is non-representational. MIL touched on this just a little bit. I'm not sure though in which sense it is not; ie, whether there are different varieties of representationalism.

Soupie, I'm wondering why you're bringing this paper forward given the datedness of the research on which it depends:

"The neural correlates of the phenomenal subject are the focus of an ongoing research program (Damasio, 1999, 2000; Metzinger, 2000a, 2003; Parvisi & Damasio, 2001; Vogeley & Fink, 2003). I’ll argue in section 9 that this experienced sense of being a self presented with the world can play a role in generating the problematic construal of the first-person perspective."

Damasio has revised his thinking since the sources you cite. It might be better to pursue why and how his thinking evolved.

 

[Constance]

I'll try to catch up on this tomorrow if you still need this?

If you could do that I'd appreciate it; I'm interested in the claims that were made about it above.

 

[smcder]

I've missed the link to the paper you're discussing. Would one of you repost it? (Lots to catch up with today, thus too much tracking back and forth in the thread.)

I take it that the following is a quote from a post by Soupie?



Once I read the paper you're discussing I might understand the underscored. In the meantime my impression is that Buddhist and other Eastern schools of practice have worked with consciousness and mind rather than with 'brain processes'. What 'brain processes' does the author of the paper identify as having been discovered through meditation and reflection on what is experienced in meditation?

Is Consciousness a “Stream”? | The Brains Blog

And the quote is in the comments section.

 

[smcder]

I've missed the link to the paper you're discussing. Would one of you repost it? (Lots to catch up with today, thus too much tracking back and forth in the thread.)

I take it that the following is a quote from a post by Soupie?



Once I read the paper you're discussing I might understand the underscored. In the meantime my impression is that Buddhist and other Eastern schools of practice have worked with consciousness and mind rather than with 'brain processes'. What 'brain processes' does the author of the paper identify as having been discovered through meditation and reflection on what is experienced in meditation?

Your last questions here are answered by Evan Thompson in the last comment if the "Us Consciousness A Stream?"
Article.

 

[smcder]

"Phenomenology is not based exclusively on first-person metacognition; it’s also based on conceptual/theoretical analysis, intersubjective methods of eliciting careful descriptive reports about experience, and methods for refining first-person attention and awareness. All of these things taken together are precisely the kinds of methods that enable us to get beyond certain entrenched forms of metacognitive neglect. If you read works on contemporary phenomenology, especially neurophenomenology, this is the view you’ll find, so it seems to me you are arguing against a phenomenological straw man. In any case, nothing in what we’ve been discussing casts any kind of global doubt on the reliability of phenomenology.

Notice also that the questions about continuousness versus discreteness that I consider in my post are not decided by rejecting phenomenology, but by using it carefully and properly in tandem with experimental science. This is the basic approach of neurophenomenology."

Evan Thompson - comments section "Is Consciousness A Stream?"

 

[Randall]

Is Consciousness a “Stream”? | The Brains Blog

And the quote is in the comments section.

Just skimmed that and I'll post up a quick thought to reflect on. If consciousness is some sort of thing separate from the body that can wander around disembodied at will, then why do we have gaps in our "Stream of Consciousness". Why would a consciousness not dependent on the brain need to sleep? And if it doesn't sleep, why can't it simply wander around while we're sleeping standing guard and if something happens, like if your house gets broken into, why can't it take detailed notes of the incident, float off to the culprits hideout, and then report back to you in the morning when you wake up so that you can call the police and have them busted? I'm sure you know that if I ventured a guess, what my answer would be, so I'll just set it aside and leave that idea out there for others to reflect on. Why the gaps, and why doesn't the hypothetically independent consciousness seem unable to fill them?"

 

[smcder]

Just skimmed that and I'll post up a quick thought to reflect on. If consciousness is some sort of thing separate from the body that can wander around disembodied at will, then why do we have gaps in our "Stream of Consciousness". Why would a consciousness not dependent on the brain need to sleep? And if it doesn't sleep, why can't it simply wander around while we're sleeping standing guard and if something happens, like if your house gets broken into, why can't it take detailed notes of the incident, float off to the culprits hideout, and then report back to you in the morning when you wake up so that you can call the police and have them busted? I'm sure you know that if I ventured a guess, what my answer would be, so I'll just set it aside and leave that idea out there for others to reflect on. Why the gaps, and why doesn't the hypothetically independent consciousness seem unable to fill them?"

"If consciousness is some sort of thing separate from the body that can wander around disembodied at will ..." I'm not finding that posted anywhere ... whose view is that?

 

[smcder]

↑
Soupie asked: "at what level of computation might consciousness emerge. Atoms? Microtubuals? Neurons? Neural networks?

and Steve responded:
"And if consciousness is fundamental?"

I wonder what you mean here by 'fundamental', Steve. Do you mean that consciousness was/might have been generated at the Big Bang, which, we're assured, generated the expanding universe we think we live in?

I'm not sure I remember now what I meant!

I'm going to instead write:

"And if subjectivity is fundamental?"

That would mean subjectivity doesn't have to emerge and we can drop the physical metaphors comparing consciousness to a field or particle (perceptroniu) etc - we can drop the physical like metaphors. Of course we still have to get to self-awareness and that just might take brains ;-) but that's OK because self-awareness takes a view from a time/place i.e. a physical instantiation. So that just leaves us with:

• there is something it is like to be the view from nowhere

... and that ought to be much easier to solve.

 

[smcder]

I wouldn't know. I don't play games of chance except the lottery. I figure if I'm gonna gamble, it might as well be for a few million in winnings .

Poker is a game of skill and chance.

 

[smcder]

WARNING OT

How about checkers on a 10x10 board? 12x12 etc ... hard to upgrade chess like this because you have to decide which pieces to add or invent new ones ...

Computational Complexity of Games and Puzzles

Interesting comments here too:

The American Checker Federation • View topic - Why Checkers is NOT easier than Chess

 

[smcder]

Problems with Popular Science
John McGowan

http://www.jmcgowan.com/popular.pdf

 

[Soupie]

"If consciousness is some sort of thing separate from the body that can wander around disembodied at will ..." I'm not finding that posted anywhere ... whose view is that?

Really? Both you and @Constance have stated either directly or indirectly on many occasions that OOBEs may—as they seem—be a case of consciousness becoming disembodied. Now, neither of you have argued, at least that I can recall, that anyone can do this "at will."

Furthermore, you've brought to the discussion on several occasions the idea of the "external knower/observer" which stands outside of the brain and phenomenal contents.

Yes, science and science reporting is not perfect. There are flaws. Why are you bringing that to the discussion right at this moment however?

You say you don't have an affinity for the External Observer model, so why do you continue to bring it to this discussion? What do make of the (albeit old) contra argument?

 

[Soupie]

Soupie, I'm wondering why you're bringing this paper forward given the datedness of the research on which it depends:

A link to this article appeared in my news feed a few weeks ago. I had it tucked away to read. When @smcder highlighted Nova's comments re the Observer, I recalled the article. I hadn't noted its publication date.

I haven't seen many articles which address this issue. As I noted at the beginning of this discussion many moons ago, I suspect that many people think of the "observer" when they think of the mind. That is, the mind = the observer. Hence my contra, notorious phrase, "the mind is green."

That is, the mind is not the observer, observing green. The mind is green.

Does that clear things up, haha?

In any case, I'll try to find a more-current article on the "observer problem." A neurophenomenological discussion would be ideal.

 

[smcder]

Really? Both you and @Constance have stated either directly or indirectly on many occasions that OOBEs may—as they seem—be a case of consciousness becoming disembodied. Now, neither of you have argued, at least that I can recall, that anyone can do this "at will."

Furthermore, you've brought to the discussion on several occasions the idea of the "external knower/observer" which stands outside of the brain and phenomenal contents.

Yes, science and science reporting is not perfect. There are flaws. Why are you bringing that to the discussion right at this moment however?

You say you don't have an affinity for the External Observer model, so why do you continue to bring it to this discussion? What do make of the (albeit old) contra argument?

Really? Both you and @Constance have stated either directly or indirectly on many occasions that OOBEs may—as they seem—be a case of consciousness becoming disembodied.

Does that mean I have a particular affinity for it? I've also offered to work through the evidence, objectively, if anyone wanted to - but no one has taken me up on it and I haven't insisted on it. But the offer stands.

Furthermore, you've brought to the discussion on several occasions the idea of the "external knower/observer" which stands outside of the brain and phenomenal contents.

I may have, can you give me several examples? Also, above you say the observer/knower approach ... I assume these are the same? What is this approach exactly?

Yes, science and science reporting is not perfect. There are flaws. Why are you bringing that to the discussion right at this moment however?

Because we often post articles that may have some of the specific concerns expressed in the McGowan article. Have you read it?

You say you don't have an affinity for the External Observer model, so why do you continue to bring it to this discussion?

I don't follow the logic that I can only bring models to the discussion that I have a particular affinity for ... I've posted many times that I don't personally espouse any particular model ... so according to this logic I should stop posting. :-(

 

[Constance]

Is Consciousness a “Stream”? | The Brains Blog

And the quote is in the comments section.

Thanks Steve.

 

[Soupie]

Really? Both you and @Constance have stated either directly or indirectly on many occasions that OOBEs may—as they seem—be a case of consciousness becoming disembodied.

Does that mean I have a particular affinity for it? I've also offered to work through the evidence, objectively, if anyone wanted to - but no one has taken me up on it and I haven't insisted on it. But the offer stands.

Not necessarily (though I suspect you do), but I'm suggesting that you seemed to suggest that @ufology was suggesting that you suggested people could experience OOBEs at will. And maybe you havent suggested that, but youre certainly more entertaining of the idea than others in this thread have been.

Furthermore, you've brought to the discussion on several occasions the idea of the "external knower/observer" which stands outside of the brain and phenomenal contents.

I may have, can you give me several examples? Also, above you say the observer/knower approach ... I assume these are the same? What is this approach exactly?

By "approach," I just mean a view of consciousness in which the self/observer, phenomenal consciousness, and the brain have three distinct origins.

Yes, science and science reporting is not perfect. There are flaws. Why are you bringing that to the discussion right at this moment however?

Because we often post articles that may have some of the specific concerns expressed in the McGowan article. Have you read it?

You say you don't have an affinity for the External Observer model, so why do you continue to bring it to this discussion?

I don't follow the logic that I can only bring models to the discussion that I have a particular affinity for ... I've posted many times that I don't personally espouse any particular model ... so according to this logic I should stop posting. :-(

So are you suggesting that the apparently identified correlation between certain brain waves and reports of conscious experience is mistaken?

I just often get the sense—rightly or wrongly—that youre not pulling with the group. I've said you have some tricksterish qualities. You like to challenge the viewpoints of others. Which is great. However, sometimes, in the course of this discussion, we've hit a particular topic that seems to engage all of us, and then you blow it up.

You'll want examples, im sure, but I'm not gonna dig through the thread. Its just my perception after several months of participation. Im not mad or angry. Im not suggesting you do differently. Just sharing.

 

[Constance]

Why the gaps, and why doesn't the hypothetically independent consciousness seem unable to fill them?"

Surely these are gaps in attention and can/need to be/and have been contemplated by researchers working with various 'models' of the relationship between consciousness and mind. Gaps in attention, shifts in the intentionality of consciousness (for example 'daydreaming' as opposed to moments or periods of dreamless sleep) do not signify that consciousness disappears. See Thompson's books, including his most recent one [
Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy], to recognize the subtlety and complexity understood in phenomenological and neurophenomenological investigations of consciousness. This school of thought about consciousness does not propose a "hypothetically independent consciousness," but you would have to read the major works in this discipline in order to recognize that.

I think Steve also asked this question today: who does propose a 'hypothetically independent consciousness'?


I had asked Steve what he meant by the possibility that "consciousness is fundamental." He replied today:

I'm not sure I remember now what I meant!

I'm going to instead write:

"And if subjectivity is fundamental?"

That would mean subjectivity doesn't have to emerge and we can drop the physical metaphors comparing consciousness to a field or particle (perceptronium) etc - we can drop the physical like metaphors.

Yes, that would be to hold a serious (not a merely hypothetical brief) for panpsychism. Tononi and Koch have suggested that Integrated Information Theory could support panpsychism, and that they've [edit: made that suggestion] is a measure of just how far afield IIT is from recognizing the surrounding world as experienced by living organisms including ourselves. In information theory in general, 'representations' communicate with 'representations' in constructing animals', humans', and potentially (it is thought) machines' ability to navigate and think about the 'world' outside the skull. The problem with this approach is that the world around us is real, an actual world we explore, interact with, and increasingly understand, thereby enabling ontological and other higher order thinking, enabling science, philosophy, and art. Tononi has recognized in his most recent version of IIT that 'information' must be connected to phenomenal experience in the actual world we live in. [edit to add: It remains for him to do so.] Without making that connection, IIT like all standard neuroscience can as well support the notion that we live in a 'virtual' reality [edit to add: a notion that fails to address the correlation that matters : between the mind and the world].

Of course we still have to get to self-awareness and that just might take brains ;-) but that's OK because self-awareness takes a view from a time/place i.e. a physical instantiation. So that just leaves us with:

• there is something it is like to be the view from nowhere

... and that ought to be much easier to solve.

Can you expand on how 'the view from nowhere' is like the view from somewhere in particular, from a situated perspective on parts of the world that we have perspectival access to in the phenomena we encounter?