Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 4

[smcder]

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.


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


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.

I would like an example of where I've blown up a topic where all have been engaged. If it was able to be blown up ... well, you see where I'm going.

 

[Constance]

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.

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

I don't remember Steve's comments on OBEs as capable of being successfully 'willed'. Also, I don't recall his discussing a "self/observer" existing outside the brain or the mind. Can you link to those statements?

Steve and I have both discussed a comparatively 'neutral' position locatable within consciousness. He has referred to this on the grounds of discoveries made in deep meditative states. I have referred to it in phenomenological terms, as in MP's writings concerning the recognition of a level of awareness existing beneath 'personal' situated consciousness in which it is no longer an identified 'I' who sees but rather that "one sees." In "Eye and Mind," MP writes about this recognition/experience as also described by Cezanne. You can read this paper here:

https://pg2009.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/eye-and-mind-merleu-pontymmp-text1.pdf

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

Is "the apparently identified correlation between certain brain waves and reports of conscious experience" developed anywhere to the extent that we could evaluate its possible accuracy and significance"? As I read your reference to this correlation it is merely a speculation. Where is the evidence that 'certain brain waves' can be identified and their specific 'function' and significance understood?

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.

I understand Soupie's frustration with Steve's tendency to change the subject (strike out in other directions) when we have an opportunity to stick with and work through a particular issue in consciousness investigations. I understand this tendency to be the result of his extremely active mind and wide-ranging interests and reading. So I, like Soupie, am not suggesting or asking that Steve change his modus operandi, unless he himself decides to make a change. We have, in this thread, long pursued various theories or 'models' of consciousness and mind, and I would be interested in knowing which theories or models seem more justified than others from Steve's point of view.

Given the major background issue motivating consciousness studies in general, and our following that field here, there is a significant pressure to arrive at a more accurate understanding of consciousness and mind before we bypass and erase these human capabilities in an AI "Singularity." To the extent that we as human beings do not understand the role -- past, present, and future -- of human consciousnesses and minds in managing what has happened on the planet that we have managed and mismanaged, we fail to recognize our responsibility in and for this local world and radically doubt the freedom we have to correct our mistakes before it's too late.

Failing to recognize the extent of our own understanding and ability to act rationally -- therefore our obligation to do so -- we are presently on the verge of turning the planet over to machined 'intelligences' whose capabilities for understanding the nature of reality are radically doubtful and whose behavior is unpredictable. It seems likely to me that the reductive materialist/physicalist/objectivist paradigm that has trickled down from science to popular culture in our time feeds the inclination to prefer artificial intelligence to our own and to look forward to handing over our responsibility for ourselves and our world to machines.

 

[Randall]

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.

I don't mean gaps in attention. I mean gaps in consciousness. Even when one is daydreaming one still possesses consciousness. I don't mean dreaming ( lucid dreams ) because that has a similar type of thing going on. I mean periods when one has an apparent total loss of consciousness.

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'?

The naming of individuals who believe in the possibility of disembodied consciousness or continuity of consciousness after the death of the body, isn't relevant. It's the ideas that are relevant to the question posed ( What about the gaps? ). What do they suggest or imply about such beliefs?

 

[smcder]

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:



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].



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?

I can try ... ;-)

 

[smcder]

I don't remember Steve's comments on OBEs as capable of being successfully 'willed'. Also, I don't recall his discussing a "self/observer" existing outside the brain or the mind. Can you link to those statements?

Steve and I have both discussed a comparatively 'neutral' position locatable within consciousness. He has referred to this on the grounds of discoveries made in deep meditative states. I have referred to it in phenomenological terms, as in MP's writings concerning the recognition of a level of awareness existing beneath 'personal' situated consciousness in which it is no longer an identified 'I' who sees but rather that "one sees." In "Eye and Mind," MP writes about this recognition/experience as also described by Cezanne. You can read this paper here:

https://pg2009.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/eye-and-mind-merleu-pontymmp-text1.pdf




Is "the apparently identified correlation between certain brain waves and reports of conscious experience" developed anywhere to the extent that we could evaluate its possible accuracy and significance"? As I read your reference to this correlation it is merely a speculation. Where is the evidence that 'certain brain waves' can be identified and their specific 'function' and significance understood?




I understand Soupie's frustration with Steve's tendency to change the subject (strike out in other directions) when we have an opportunity to stick with and work through a particular issue in consciousness investigations. I understand this tendency to be the result of his extremely active mind and wide-ranging interests and reading. So I, like Soupie, am not suggesting or asking that Steve change his modus operandi, unless he himself decides to make a change. We have, in this thread, long pursued various theories or 'models' of consciousness and mind, and I would be interested in knowing which theories or models seem more justified than others from Steve's point of view.

Given the major background issue motivating consciousness studies in general, and our following that field here, there is a significant pressure to arrive at a more accurate understanding of consciousness and mind before we bypass and erase these human capabilities in an AI "Singularity." To the extent that we as human beings do not understand the role -- past, present, and future -- of human consciousnesses and minds in managing what has happened on the planet that we have managed and mismanaged, we fail to recognize our responsibility in and for this local world and radically doubt the freedom we have to correct our mistakes before it's too late.

Failing to recognize the extent of our own understanding and ability to act rationally -- therefore our obligation to do so -- we are presently on the verge of turning the planet over to machined 'intelligences' whose capabilities for understanding the nature of reality are radically doubtful and whose behavior is unpredictable. It seems likely to me that the reductive materialist/physicalist/objectivist paradigm that has trickled down from science to popular culture in our time feeds the inclination to prefer artificial intelligence to our own and to look forward to handing over our responsibility for ourselves and our world to machines.

A friend of mine in college told me "you can talk for three hours straight, never repeat yourself and you always come back to where you started!" ... she learned to wait for - so I never see it as changing topics ... and I do come generally come back to each point with new information or a new perspective, although I'm not so adroit as I was 25 years go ... one metaphor I have for this is the "spinning plates" act you see in Chinese acrobatics ... you have to get the plate spinning, then add another one and another and then go back and spin the first one, etc.

 

[Constance]

The naming of individuals who believe in the possibility of disembodied consciousness or continuity of consciousness after the death of the body, isn't relevant. It's the ideas that are relevant to the question posed ( What about the gaps? ). What do they suggest or imply about such beliefs?

Let me give you again the name of one individual whose thinking on this subject is most relevant -- Pim von Lommel, whose book Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience I've referred you to several times over the last few years. Anyone who has not read this book {and for good measure some of the other essential research on NDEs} is imply unprepared to discuss "the 'ideas' that are relevant to the question posed." You're one of several people in the Paracast forum as a whole who actually think that their knee-jerk reactions to complex subjects {uncomplicated by having read the research on those subjects} is interesting -- and even impressive -- to those who have read the research. It's not, and thus your reactions on some subjects, such as the subject here, are a bore to read (and at times an irritant)..

 

[Constance]

Steve, I ran across the following and think you will fine it interesting:

https://www.upaya.org/uploads/pdfs/2010ZenBrainRetreat.pdf

This too:
Jake H. Davis and Evan Thompson, “From the Five Aggregates to Phenomenal Consciousness: Toward a Cross-Cultural Cognitive Science,” in Steven Emmanuel, ed., A Companion to Buddhist Philosophy, pp. 585-597. John Wiley & Sons, 2014.

from this list of publications by Thompson and others:

Complete List of Publications

 

[Constance]

@Soupie, this link you provided is really excellent and includes well informed commentary.

Is Consciousness a “Stream”? | The Brains Blog

Thanks.

 

[Constance]

Steve wrote:
"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."

I asked:
"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?"

Steve replied:
"I can try ..."

Please do, Steve. This could become very interesting.

ps, it looks as if you will need to summarize Nagel's hypothesis in his book The View from Nowhere. Note that there is a book by Varela's colleagues that has approximately the same title. I'll link to both.

 

[smcder]

Steve wrote:
"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."

I asked:
"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?"

Steve replied:
"I can try ..."

Please do, Steve. This could become very interesting.

ps, it looks as if you will need to summarize Nagel's hypothesis in his book The View from Nowhere. Note that there is a book by Varela's colleagues that has approximately the same title. I'll link to both.

No - Nagel's view from nowhere is the idea that we humans can take an objective view ...

... I'm saying that if we take subjectivity as fundamental seriously and not use the metaphors that then turn it around and make it like the physical - then why do we have to maintain that our kind of embodied human subjectivity correlated with the brain is the only possible kind?

That the niche we fill is the only one in which "what it is like" can exist?

 

[smcder]

@Constance - I don't think we are going to end up turning over our world to AI and until recently, I didn't think you did either?

 

[smcder]

@Constance you asked what ideas I thought were worth pursuing - neuro phenomenology as it seems to marshall most of the ways we have of approaching a problem ... other approaches are more narrow.

But for this to work we may have to give up some preconceptions as to what a satisfying answer will look like - we've come to this thing insisting the solution will have certain characteristics - this is why I think the Eastern philosophies haven't had to deal with the hard problem.

 

[smcder]

Two ideas that have impressed me recently are Smolin's five types of problems, five levels ... and the guy with the funny name saying basically for the brain to do what it does requires the whole universe (thus can't be simulated)

 

[Constance]

. . . Nagel's view from nowhere is the idea that we humans can take an objective view ...

That's what I thought. I was confused by your writing the following:

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.

I thought you had something else in mind, something more exotic. There is, indeed, no view from 'nowhere' available to us, just as there is no view from 'everywhere' {i.e., no objective view on the whole of what-is} available to us.

... I'm saying that if we take subjectivity as fundamental seriously and not use the metaphors that then turn it around and make it like the physical - then why do we have to maintain that our kind of embodied human subjectivity correlated with the brain is the only possible kind?

So by 'fundamental' some posts back you were referring to the hypothesis of panpsychism, that not only other animals besides us but plants and rocks, etc., even EM fields and gravity, might experience subjectivity?

 

[Constance]

@Constance - I don't think we are going to end up turning over our world to AI and until recently, I didn't think you did either?

There seems to be a possible risk of that.

 

[Constance]

@Constance you asked what ideas I thought were worth pursuing - neuro phenomenology as it seems to marshall most of the ways we have of approaching a problem ... other approaches are more narrow.

But for this to work we may have to give up some preconceptions as to what a satisfying answer will look like - we've come to this thing insisting the solution will have certain characteristics - this is why I think the Eastern philosophies haven't had to deal with the hard problem.

Can you break down/explicate what you're saying there about 'preconceptions' and why Eastern philosophies haven't had to deal with the hard problem?

 

[Randall]

Let me give you again the name of one individual whose thinking on this subject is most relevant -- Pim von Lommel, whose book Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience I've referred you to several times over the last few years. Anyone who has not read this book {and for good measure some of the other essential research on NDEs} is imply unprepared to discuss "the 'ideas' that are relevant to the question posed."

I wasn't asking for Lommel's opinion on the question. I was responding to @smcder's post on Stream of Consciousness. If you have nothing to say about it yourself, that's fine. If you think Lommel might have something to say about it, then please post up a quote of what he has to say.

You're one of several people in the Paracast forum as a whole who actually think that their knee-jerk reactions to complex subjects {uncomplicated by having read the research on those subjects} is interesting -- and even impressive -- to those who have read the research. It's not, and thus your reactions on some subjects, such as the subject here, are a bore to read (and at times an irritant)..

Your subjective criticism of me on a personal level doesn't help add any insight to the topic under discussion, so I suggest that you attempt to remain objective and contribute something of substance, which BTW doesn't mean simply referring people to volumes of external information without any specific citations that are relevant to the issue at hand. So again, if you think Lommel has something relevant to say about gaps in the stream of consciousness, then rather than getting personal, it would be more useful to quote what he has to say about it .

 

[Constance]

I wasn't asking for Lommel's opinion on the question. I was responding to @smcder's post on Stream of Consciousness. If you have nothing to say about it yourself, that's fine. If you think Lommel might have something to say about it, then please post up a quote of what he has to say.

I was responding to your posting this:

"The naming of individuals who believe in the possibility of disembodied consciousness or continuity of consciousness after the death of the body, isn't relevant."

which was a nonsequitur to what I'd posted and you were responding to: my reference to Evan Thompson's most recent book. Thompson is not an NDE researcher and holds no brief for survival of consciousness. Since you raised the topic of NDE and survival research {which you also did out of the blue a week or two ago in this thread} I referred you to Lommel.

I think it's best if I just put you on 'ignore' since I find that conversation with you so often involves your losing the plot.

 

[smcder]

@Constance
When I hit reply, my responses to you aren't visible, so I'm pasting parts in this way ... hope it's not confusing:

Constance
I thought you had something else in mind, something more exotic. There is, indeed, no view from 'nowhere' available to us, just as there is no view from 'everywhere' {i.e., no objective view on the whole of what-is} available to us.

smcder No, I do have something more exotic in mind ... and I'm looking at the traditions that say there is something available to us on the nowhere/everywhere spectrum ..



smcder
... I'm saying that if we take subjectivity as fundamental seriously and not use the metaphors that then turn it around and make it like the physical - then why do we have to maintain that our kind of embodied human subjectivity correlated with the brain is the only possible kind?
Click to expand...

constance
So by 'fundamental' some posts back you were referring to the hypothesis of panpsychism, that not only other animals besides us but plants and rocks, etc., even EM fields and gravity, might experience subjectivity?

smcder I hope not in the way it's been discussed so far ...

This started with @Soupie post #902:
1) Consciousness (subjectivity) is neither objective nor physical. It cannot be measured/observed in the 3rd person. Furthermore, it is unclear how subjective processes (subjectivity) could arise/emerge from objective processes. (The Hard Problem.) Thus, it is proposed that consciousness/subjectivity is a fundamental feature of what-is, not unlike space, time, and energy/matter.

(the bold is from @Soupie's original post)

I'm trying to see what happens if we take "subjectivity is a fundamental feature of what-is" seriously and we avoid then turning around and talking about subjectivity in physical terms - as just another particle, wave, as "perceptronium" or in terms of dual aspect monism - the problem of panpsychism as it's been discussed here is the baggage of rocks having minds and the combination problem - which comes from conceiving of subjectivity as particulate - individual packets of qualia, subjectons let's call them.

In Nova Spivack's interview above, he discusses the limitations of Western language in talking about these ideas - and I wonder if that's true ... throughout the discussion here on the C&P, we've had only a handful of words and it has been very confusing to say what we mean even by "consciousness" because it has many meanings - so if there are several individual words available that refer to the exact ideas we've been discussing or concepts available through these eastern traditions ... well, you see where I am going.

Our experience as individuals, we call that subjectivity ... it doesn't seem likely that when we say subjectivity is fundamental (IF it is) that we can use the same word for both of these ideas.

In reading about how other languages have words for concepts that we don't have individual words for - someone noted that it doesn't mean we don't have that experience, for example Schadenfreude it just means we don't have one exacting word for it ... but in Spivack's article, he does seem to be saying that Eastern philosophy has developed concepts and vocabulary that we don't have, through generations of contemplative experience and philosophical discussion.

 

[smcder]

@Constance - link to the Spivack article in the preceding post:

Nova Spivack: World Renowned; Pioneering Global Technology Visionary, Innovator, Strategist, Entrepreneur, Investor - Top Interview - Social Media for China Business

When we talk about consciousness, there's a very specific distinction that we have to make, and that is what do we really mean by consciousness? Do we mean an entire landscape of thought, or do we mean something more precise? That is the entity that's actually aware, or witnessing of what is taking place. These are two very different phenomena, and in the West when we talk about consciousness, we don't make that distinction; we're very messy when we talk about this. In Eastern philosophy, they're very precise about this. In Buddhism for example, there are very, very precise distinctions for all the different phenomena taking place within the field of consciousness. When you experience something, there are many different things going on in that experience, and there are labels and names and technical descriptions in all of these. That's still very lacking in the Western cognitive science and neuroscience. We have a very simple, primitive language we barely understand when we talk about what's going on in consciousness.