Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 4

[smcder]

@smcder

Where is psychology's non-stick frying pan? | The Psychologist

"If you were asked to list the top five achievements in psychology, what would you say? Be honest, you’d probably splutter for a bit and then try to divert the question. I’ve sprung this on colleagues and they have come up with suggestions like attachment theory, the multi-stage memory model or even CBT. I don’t consider this an impressive list. In fact, to me it suggests a horrible truth – for all the bluster about science, all the fancy equipment and million pound research grants, we haven’t discovered any great new understandings or technologies about our core subject – ourselves.

Yes, we have produced studies and papers that cite and excite our colleagues. When spun in the right way, psychology can light up the sofa of The One Show or the Today studio. But does any of it amount to any more than a hill of beans? A standard definition of psychology is ‘the scientific study of people, the mind and behaviour’. So what are the headline discoveries about people, mind and behaviour? And do these findings match up to the discoveries of the other sciences?

Look at physics. It has split the atom, it has gravity, it has quantum theory, the Large Hadron Collider and the Higgs boson. It has the Big Bang theory, which offers an explanation of how the universe was formed. Chemistry has the periodic table of elements, a classification of all substances in the universe. Biology has evolution, a robust theory of how we came to be here. I could go on.

‘Psychology is a young science’, we say by way of excuse for the lack of great findings. But 150 years is not that young. There are younger sciences that have more to show: electronics has the microchip, genetics has mapped out the human genome.

The central issue concerns how we develop knowledge in psychology. To start with, other sciences have testable theories; psychology has testable hypotheses. What’s the difference? Einstein’s theory of general relativity was first presented in 1915 and then spectacularly tested in 1919 when light was shown to bend round the sun during a solar eclipse to the amount predicted by the theory. The existence of the Higgs boson was predicted by theory in the 1960s, as a crucial test of the Standard Model of particle physics. It was finally confirmed to exist in 2013.

What psychological theory produces predictions that can be tested in this way? Or to be even more challenging, what collection of ideas in psychology have we got that we can call a testable theory? What is psychology’s Big Bang? ..."

I generally agree with what's being said in this article ... I'm still curious why you tagged me on it?

 

[Soupie]

I asked you first! (see post#1077 above)

I know, that's why I tagged you.

 

[smcder]

@smcder

Where is psychology's non-stick frying pan? | The Psychologist

"If you were asked to list the top five achievements in psychology, what would you say? Be honest, you’d probably splutter for a bit and then try to divert the question. I’ve sprung this on colleagues and they have come up with suggestions like attachment theory, the multi-stage memory model or even CBT. I don’t consider this an impressive list. In fact, to me it suggests a horrible truth – for all the bluster about science, all the fancy equipment and million pound research grants, we haven’t discovered any great new understandings or technologies about our core subject – ourselves.

Yes, we have produced studies and papers that cite and excite our colleagues. When spun in the right way, psychology can light up the sofa of The One Show or the Today studio. But does any of it amount to any more than a hill of beans? A standard definition of psychology is ‘the scientific study of people, the mind and behaviour’. So what are the headline discoveries about people, mind and behaviour? And do these findings match up to the discoveries of the other sciences?

Look at physics. It has split the atom, it has gravity, it has quantum theory, the Large Hadron Collider and the Higgs boson. It has the Big Bang theory, which offers an explanation of how the universe was formed. Chemistry has the periodic table of elements, a classification of all substances in the universe. Biology has evolution, a robust theory of how we came to be here. I could go on.

‘Psychology is a young science’, we say by way of excuse for the lack of great findings. But 150 years is not that young. There are younger sciences that have more to show: electronics has the microchip, genetics has mapped out the human genome.

The central issue concerns how we develop knowledge in psychology. To start with, other sciences have testable theories; psychology has testable hypotheses. What’s the difference? Einstein’s theory of general relativity was first presented in 1915 and then spectacularly tested in 1919 when light was shown to bend round the sun during a solar eclipse to the amount predicted by the theory. The existence of the Higgs boson was predicted by theory in the 1960s, as a crucial test of the Standard Model of particle physics. It was finally confirmed to exist in 2013.

What psychological theory produces predictions that can be tested in this way? Or to be even more challenging, what collection of ideas in psychology have we got that we can call a testable theory? What is psychology’s Big Bang? ..."

Here's a more optimistic view ... at least in terms of the consistency of research results, comparing physics and psychology:

http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~paritosh/papers/others/HedgesHardSoftScience87.pdf

The abstract and first paragraph and then the conclusions will give you the talking points. The last part of the conclusion about theory is helpful in understanding the differences in social/physical sciences ...

 

[smcder]

I know, that's why I tagged you.

You have a couple of responses from me now ... do you need more?

 

[smcder]

That's certainly the case, and it's been manifested in this lengthy thread. But I think it's important to see the problem in terms of the limitations of any of the existing approaches to consciousness rather than in terms of 'errors'. That is, the error is in thinking that any one of the approaches we've surveyed could be adequate in itself since consciousness is evidently more complex than any single approach can recognize and account for.

There is a parallel to this situation in the efforts in physics to produce an integrated and whole 'theory of everything' based on what is known thus far about parts, components, of the physical world. Quanta recently published an interactive graphic to assist its readers in recognizing the difficulty of integrating these components of 'what-is' physically.

Steve refers to 'paradigms' and 'pre-paradigm' science and the possibility of an eventual 'science of consciousness'. Physics has developed over the last two centuries under a single paradigm variously described as materialist, physicalist, objectivist. Investigations of consciousness and mind have bumped up against this paradigm continually because the physical {to the extent that, and in the way that, we understand it} cannot account for the mental. While many materialist physicists hope that it can, argue that it can, others have called for a paradigm shift that can accommodate experienced reality as well as objectively described components of reality. The Varela paper linked yesterday indicates the effort in phenomenology and neurophenomenology to understand, if not bridge, this gap. This is work concretely pursuing the grounds of a new paradigm and we might speculate here on what that paradigm would be like -- what it would have to include and encompass in terms of both physics and consciousness. Perhaps there is some possibility, as Steve has been suggesting, that consciousness and mind are involved in the evolution of the physical universe we live in, that they exist germinally in some form in the substrate of the universe evolved to the point at which we currently exist in it, observe it, and attempt to describe it. If so, that would be the basis for a significantly different paradigm in which science could eventually recognize consciousness and mind for what they are rather than attempt to 'explain them away' by reduction or elimination.

Anyway, here's a link to Quanta's interactive graphic representing the struggle in physics to produce an integrated theory that can accommodate the parts of what is known at the purely physical level of description. Something similar would be useful in revealing the complexity of consciousness.

Theories of Everything, Mapped | Quanta Magazine

I'm having a look at this now ...

Theories of Everything, Mapped | Quanta Magazine

 

[Constance]

The physical and the phenomenal are blended in our conscious experience in and of the world.

Perception understood phenomenologically is grounded in both prereflective and reflective direct encounters with the actual physical world in which one finds oneself existing. The 'brain' does not [cannot] perceive this world directly; the embodied conscious being can and does.

You seem to claim that the brain is grounded in 'information' received and correlated {made sense of} only in and by the brain, but that this information does not come to the brain through/by way of a being's conscious experiences of interrelation with the physicality of things. You refer to the brain's activities as 'conceptual' -- the brain devising concepts of ‘what-is’ without directly experiencing interaction with the physical actuality of what-is as perceived, felt, contemplated, and understood by the organism that experiences what-is.

There is still an unbreached gap in your theory between the way in which the world's being is experienced and understood and that which, in your view, the brain or the neurons conceptualize about the world and the mind's relation to the world.

Those concepts are grounded in, built up and developed in, consciousness and mind before the brain can accommodate itself to them, integrate and support them. Consciousness and mind are built up out of actual sensed and perceptual experience in the world. Consciousness begins in preconscious acquaintance with the physical world/environment, in what phenomenologists refer to as "prereflective experience" that already orients us to our situation in the world before we begin to reflect on it.

Prereflective experience eventually gives way to reflective consciousness, which thinks about its relationship with the world and recognizes (or ought to recognize) its relationship as one of interdependence of consciousness and worldly things as understood through analysis of their phenomenal appearances. Phenomenology reveals that our knowledge of the world comes to us initially through our embodied conscious experience in and of the world. Our consequent propounding of that experience reveals its character and quality as intelligent openness to the world and thereby discovery of the world’s intelligibility.


The human consequences of reductive materialist/physicalist theories of consciousness and mind seem to me to be well expressed in this sculpture:

Mousa Alseabawi - Photos from Mousa Alseabawi's post in... | Facebook

This image reminds me of these lines from Stevens:

“The world is still profound, and in its depths
Man sits and studies silence and himself. . ."

and of this line from Merleau-Ponty:

“Man is in the world and only in the world
does he know himself.”

The man in the sculpture has his eyes closed and his ears covered. No wonder he is confused and miserable. {Perhaps he's trying to understand himself as a quantitative phenomenon.}

 

[Constance]

I'm having a look at this now ...

Theories of Everything, Mapped | Quanta Magazine

Good. It's fascinating, isn't it? And ramifying for our existential situation in the world.

 

[Soupie]

@smcder

My optimism stems from neuroscience, specifically the increasing understanding that the brain/CNS is dynamic and "plastic." Qualities that would be necessary were it to share an identity with the mind.

Additionally, knowledge—albeit severely limited knowledge—about the relationship between brain disorder/injury and its affect on the mind, has bolstered our understanding of the relationship between the body and mind. (There's a growing body of research right now that our mood is modulated in some great degree by the bacteria in our intestines.)

Also, there has been much research lately about the positive effects that "mindfulness" and meditation have on reducing stress and therefor inflammation in the body. And I'll throw in CBT and cognitive framing as well.

While neuroscience still has not given us a paradigmatic model of how the mind-brain works, it has imho showed us how intertwined they two are.

There seems to be a small contingent of neuroscientists, psychologists, and psychiatrists trying to steer the herd away from the computational model of relation between mind-body.

Perhaps a model of how the brain works will surpass the computational model, and only then will a breakthrough be made regarding the relationship of the mind and body.

My guess is that there are two main views on the mind-body problem:

(1) people think the mind is spiritual/supernatural, that they have free will, and don't realize this presents a philosophical problem, and

(2) people think the mind and brain are identical, but believe they have free will, and don't realize this presents a philosophical problem.

Again, I'm with Faichney on this; comparing the objective and the subjective is like comparing apples and oranges. There is no mind-body problem. They are identical. They don't have a causal relationship.

But if it's brain states that cause my arm to move, and my will to move my arm is identical to brain states, then I (the intentional system) moved my arm.

However, I fully concede that the reason why some brain states have a dual objective and subjective, phenomenal identity is a mystery.

One of the reasons I want to learn more about DST is so I can begin to ponder this in a more educated manner. Again, broken record here, but I think HOT theories might have something to say here.

 

[smcder]

@smcder

My optimism stems from neuroscience, specifically the increasing understanding that the brain/CNS is dynamic and "plastic." Qualities that would be necessary were it to share an identity with the mind.

Additionally, knowledge—albeit severely limited knowledge—about the relationship between brain disorder/injury and its affect on the mind, has bolstered our understanding of the relationship between the body and mind. (There's a growing body of research right now that our mood is modulated in some great degree by the bacteria in our intestines.)

Also, there has been much research lately about the positive effects that "mindfulness" and meditation have on reducing stress and therefor inflammation in the body. And I'll throw in CBT and cognitive framing as well.

While neuroscience still has not given us a paradigmatic model of how the mind-brain works, it has imho showed us how intertwined they two are.

There seems to be a small contingent of neuroscientists, psychologists, and psychiatrists trying to steer the herd away from the computational model of relation between mind-body.

Perhaps a model of how the brain works will surpass the computational model, and only then will a breakthrough be made regarding the relationship of the mind and body.

My guess is that there are two main views on the mind-body problem:

(1) people think the mind is spiritual/supernatural, that they have free will, and don't realize this presents a philosophical problem, and

(2) people think the mind and brain are identical, but believe they have free will, and don't realize this presents a philosophical problem.

Again, I'm with Faichney on this; comparing the objective and the subjective is like comparing apples and oranges. There is no mind-body problem. They are identical. They don't have a causal relationship.

But if it's brain states that cause my arm to move, and my will to move my arm is identical to brain states, then I (the intentional system) moved my arm.

However, I fully concede that the reason why some brain states have a dual objective and subjective, phenomenal identity is a mystery.

One of the reasons I want to learn more about DST is so I can begin to ponder this in a more educated manner. Again, broken record here, but I think HOT theories might have something to say here.

I wish you well as you pursue these ideas.

 

[Constance]

As I awoke today I found the terms 'transformational grammar' and 'transcendental consciousness' carrying over from my sleeping/dreaming consciousness to my just-awakening consciousness. {I've often had this kind of experience during the last few years; it suggests to me that I continue to think about consciousness while asleep.} So the first thing I've done since waking up and responding to a message from Steve is to put those terms into a search engine, and this link goes to the results.

I'm now reading the material at the first link concerning insights obtained during experiments with LSD. This page might be interesting to others here and is linked below. A brief extract:

"Transpersonal experiences that involve transcendence of spac[t]ial barriers suggest that boundaries between the individual and the rest of the universe are not fixed and absolute.

We are not just biological machines and highly developed animals, but also fields of consciousness without limits, transcending space and time."

Transcendental

 

[Constance]

Further extract:

"Because of their clarity and vividness, transcendent states frequently feel more real than “ordinary” reality; people often compare the discovery of these realms to awakening from a dream, removing opaque veils, or opening the doors of perception.

Human beings have a profound need for transpersonal experiences and for states in which they transcend their individual identities to feel their place in a larger whole that is timeless.

I doubt if this can possibly be made to seem meaningful at the ordinary level of consciousness. No wonder the mystics of all faiths teach that understanding comes only when logic and intellect are transcended!

In experiences that have transpersonal dimensions, the individual has the sense of having transcended his or her own identity and ego boundaries as they are defined in the ordinary state of consciousness.

Individuals who transcend the boundaries of ordinary reality and embark on the spiritual journey, typically experience a dramatic change in their concepts of the dimensions of existence."


The sentence I've highlighted in blue is especially significant. I think it describes an innate tendency in human consciousness arising from its recognition of the horizons of what can be seen and potentially understood in ordinary embodied and situated consciousness -- and the consequent desire to learn what exists beyond those horizons. This tendency is evident in human rituals and expressive artworks beginning well before what we can more fully understand of our species' ideas in historical time, in recorded history. I think this tendency has inspired ontological thinking since before the speculative philosophers of the ancient human world recorded their ideas, devised their philosophies. We should read the pre-Socratics, as Heidegger did, and explore Eastern philosophy and thinking among the Greeks before what Bruno Shnell recognized as the 'the discovery of the mind' in ancient Greece. Significantly, the ancient mystery schools extended their influence beyond their sites of origin, informing the thinking of the Essenes who were active all the way from Greece to Judea before and during the time of Christ, who was a member of an Essene community to which his parents belonged.


Further note: "transpersonal consciousness," at the center of the discipline of Transpersonal Psychology, is, as the author suggests, part of our ancient heritage. It is connected with the "intersubjectivity" of consciousness recognized and described in phenomenological philosophy. It suggests, again, an innate character of consciousness which we can understand partially by pursuing the evolution of consciousness beginning in "affectivity" as identified by Matura, Varela, and Panksepp in the primordial single-celled organism and in multi-cellular primitive organisms lacking 'brains' or 'neurons'. Affectivity, in turn, is necessary for the evolution of empathy which is developed in the hominid line from which we have evolved and also seems to be evident in animals evolved in other branches of the tree of life. Empathy is undeniably an expression of intersubjectivity -- interpersonal and transpersonal feeling informing and extending experiential consciousness beyond the individual to others with whom the individual organism shares its life.

I think the transpersonal nature of consciousness and its transcendental impulses have everything to do with the development of spirituality and religion in our species. Today 'religion' is a dirty word, and people influenced by the desire to declare that 'God is dead' and religion is worthless (even pernicious) deter us from exploring the origins of religion and the meaning of spirituality. I think that, if we wish to understand what consciousness is, we cannot avoid the challenge of penetrating more deeply into the religious impulse itself.

Search at amazon or Google Books for Bruno Shnell, The Discovery of the Mind in Greek Philosophy and Literature

The works of Stanislav Grof, founder of the transpersonal school in psychology, are even more relevant. Search his name at amazon and you will be linked to his books.

 

[Constance]

Two further extracts from the same text:

"The enlightened individual goes beyond grammar. He has what may be called a 'grammar-transcending experience' which permits him to live in the consciousness of the divine continuum of the world and see the one continually manifest in the many."

"The experience transcends our ordinary concepts of causality. The idea of something happening without a tangible precedent, sufficient cause, or initiating impulse simply is not questioned on this level of experience."

"The importance and value of transpersonal experiences is extraordinary. It is a great irony and one of the paradoxes of modern science that phenomena with a therapeutic potential transcending what Western psychiatry has to offer are, by and large, seen as pathological."


The claims above identify the primary ways in which materialist/objectivist presuppositions about the nature of reality <of what-is> in both science and philosophy -- and the embedded presuppositional constraints in our language itself -- foreclose the possibility of our exploring consciousness empirically and recognizing the ways in which it cannot be understood from an 'objective' third-person point of view.

'Causality' as objectivist science thinks of it has been reduced to studying only that which can be described in objective measurements of parts of the physical world, an integrated account of which has not been achieved and perhaps cannot be by our species. Neuroscience has aped the physicalist paradigm perpetuated in physics and chemistry in its attempt to comprehend consciousness. Panksepp in biological neuroscience and Varela, Thompson, et al proceeding from first-person experiences of consciousness are currently making inroads into overturning objectivist approaches to consciousness. In effect, this development challenges the physicalist presuppositions concerning causality and in time will overcome them, just as the recognition of open systems has done. Without attainable "causal closure," the entire question of causality is again open.

 

[Constance]

Another extract:

"To men and women who have had direct experience of self-transcendence into the mind’s Other World of vision and union with the nature of things, a religion of mere symbols is not likely to be very satisfying."

Stevens understood such experience as presenting to those who receive it "not the symbol / But that for which the symbol stands." In this poem, the poet describes a momentary access to transcendental consciousness, given to him as a kind of grace, provoked undoubtedly by the massive pain endured by numberless human beings in World War II, which tortured him psychologically with an unspeakable feeling of helplessness and despair.

Martial Credenza

I

Only this evening I saw again low in the sky

The evening star, at the beginning of winter, the star

That in spring will crown every western horizon,

Again . . . as if it came back, as if life came back,

Not in a later son, a different daughter, another place,

But as if evening found us young, still young,

Still walking in a present of our own.

II

It was like sudden time in a world without time,

This world, this place, the street in which I was,

Without time: as that which is not has no time,

Is not, or is of what there was, is full

Of the silence before the armies, armies without

Either trumpets or drums, the commanders mute, the arms

On the ground, fixed fast in a profound defeat.

III

What had this star to do with the world it lit,

With the blank skies over England, over France

And above the German camps? It looked apart.

Yet it is this that shall maintain–Itself

Is time, apart from any past, apart

From any future, the ever-living and being,

The ever-breathing and moving, the constant fire,

IV

The present close, the present realized,

Not the symbol but that for which the symbol stands,

The vivid thing in the air that never changes,

Though the air change. Only this evening I saw it again,

At the beginning of winter, and I walked and talked

Again, and lived and was again, and breathed again

And moved again and flashed again, time flashed again.

 

[Randall]

I'd be interested in those papers. I didn't see anything of interest on his naturalism page.

Re evidence of correlation:

Researcher discovers 'brain signature' that predicts human emotions

"Chang and his colleagues studied 182 participants who were shown negative photos (bodily injuries, acts of aggression, hate groups, car wrecks, human feces) and neutral photos. Thirty additional participants were also subjected to painful heat. Using brain imaging and machine learning techniques, the researchers identified a neural signature of negative emotion—a single neural activation pattern distributed across the entire brain that accurately predicts how negative a person will feel after viewing unpleasant images.

"This means that brain imaging has the potential to accurately uncover how someone is feeling without knowing anything about them other than their brain activity," Chang says. "This has enormous implications for improving our understanding of how emotions are generated and regulated, which have been notoriously difficult to define and measure. In addition, these new types of neural measures may prove to be important in identifying when people are having abnormal emotional responses - for example, too much or too little—which might indicate broader issues with health and mental functioning."

Unlike most previous research, the new study included a large sample size that reflects the general adult population and not just young college students; used machine learning and statistics to develop a predictive model of emotion; and, most importantly, tested participants across multiple psychological states, which allowed researchers to assess the sensitivity and specificity of their brain model.

"We were particularly surprised by how well our pattern performed in predicting the magnitude and type of aversive experience," Chang says. "As skepticism for neuroimaging grows based on over-sold and -interpreted findings and failures to replicate based on small sizes, many neuroscientists might be surprised by how well our signature performed. Another surprising finding is that our emotion brain signature using lots of people performed better at predicting how a person was feeling than their own brain data. There is an intuition that feelings are very idiosyncratic and vary across people. However, because we trained the pattern using so many participants - for example, four to 10 times the standard fMRI experiment—we were able to uncover responses that generalized beyond the training sample to new participants remarkably well.""

As noted above, seeing the brain state pattern in the 3rd person is not the same as being consciousness in the 1st person. We will never observe consciousness via the 3rd person.

Moreover, the brain wasn't "generating" consciousness. Rather, the global brain state pattern—in the context of the intentional brain system—is negative emotion.

While some intentional brain states are conscious intentional brain states, not all of them are. In my discussions with Robin Faichney, he had noted re IIT that he didn't feel there would be a physical cause of consciousness per se (I'm paraphrasing; I may have misunderstood). That is, since brain states don't cause consciousness but rather are consciousness, there is some other, non-physical mechanism that instantiates consciousness. It's possible HOT theories could provide a model.

Note: these informational patterns need not be computationally derived patterns. DST I think offers such a non-computational model.

Not sure if maybe you missed the post I inserted the brain map of regions corresponding to what parts of the brain seem to produce subjectivity: "Then in the Stephen Laurey TED Talk at 7:37, we hear him say, "You don't need your whole brain to be aware ..." and goes on to identify the critical brain network responsible for self awareness ..." Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 4

Here's the video

​

 

[Constance]

Max Velmans, "From West toward East in Five Simple Steps"

"Drawing on some aspects of Reflexive Monism, this talk suggests how one can move from a careful, Western analysis of ordinary conscious experience towards a more Eastern understanding of its transformative potential in five simple steps. Step 1: accept that the boundaries of ordinary conscious experience encompass the entire phenomenal world, which requires an understanding of reflexivity and perceptual projection. Step 2: accept that experiences arise from somewhere—that there is a chain of normally unconscious/preconscious causation that precedes the arising of each experience that one can investigate in both a third- and first-person way. Step 3: accept that it is only when entities, events and processes are directly experienced that they become real-ized in the sense of becoming subjectively real, and that this applies not just to everyday conscious processes such as speaking, reading and thinking, but also to one’s conscious sense of Self. Step 4: accept an expanded sense of Self that includes not just one’s conscious Ego but also the unconscious embedding and supporting ground of which it is an expression. Step 5: accept that human consciousness is not a “freak accident of nature”; rather it is one natural expression of what the universe is like (although we have some way to go to discover the precise psychophysical laws that govern how conscious experiences relate to their associated material forms). I then show how these aspects of Reflexive Monism take one in the direction of Advaita Vedanta and other forms of perennial philosophy—although the point of balance between Eastern and Western ways of understanding mind, consciousness and self may need to be somewhere midway between the two.

Suggested readings: the book Understanding Consciousness Edition 2 (2009-particularly Chapters 12 and 14); online papers: How to arrive at an Eastern Place from a Western direction (2013); Reflexive Monism: Psychophysical relations among mind, matter and consciousness (2012); Reflexive Monism (2008).

 

[Randall]

If you found the science and evidence in Laurey's TED Talk interesting; here's another one:

1:55 | "For you to be consciously aware, really what is critical is this connectivity
within this frontal parietal network ..."

​

 

[Constance]

Is Consciousness primary?
Michel Bitbol CREA, CNRS / Ecole Polytechnique, 1, rue Descartes, 75005 Paris, France NeuroQuantology, vol. 6, n°1, 53-72, 2008

Abstract : Six arguments against the view that conscious experience derives from a material basis are reviewed. These arguments arise from epistemology, phenomenology, neuropsychology, and philosophy of quantum mechanics. It turns out that any attempt at proving that conscious experience is ontologically secondary to material objects both fails and brings out its methodological and existential primacy. No alternative metaphysical view is espoused (not even a variety of Spinoza’s attractive double-aspect theory). Instead, an alternative stance, inspired from F. Varela’s neurophenomenology is advocated. This unfamiliar stance involves (i) a complete redefinition of the boundary between unquestioned assumptions and relevant questions ; (ii) a descent towards the common ground of the statements of phenomenology and objective natural science : a practice motivated by the quest of an expanding circle of intersubjective agreement. Keywords : Consciousness, epistemology, phenomenology, quantum mechanics, neurophysiology, neurophenomenology

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/4007/1/ConsciousnessPrimaryArt2.pdf

 

[Randall]

Max Velmans, "From West toward East in Five Simple Steps" "Drawing on some aspects of Reflexive Monism, this talk suggests how one can move from a careful, Western analysis of ordinary conscious experience towards a more Eastern understanding of its transformative potential in five simple steps ...

Velman's framing of "Western" and "Eastern" appears to be based on, at least in part, a loose association of "Western" phenomenology with the "Eastern" likes of Krishna and Eastern Mysticism. But with respect to the progress being made on a common understanding between East and West, of what's really going on inside our heads, there is a growing understanding of neuroscience. For example Dr. Vijayalakshmi Ravindranath, Director, National Brain Research Centre, India, and Vilayanur Subramanian Ramachandran, born in India, and now living in San Diego. They tend to be exploring things along the same lines as Laurey ( above ). Here's a video featuring Ramachandran:

3 clues to understanding your brain​

 

[smcder]

@Constance: I had a lucid dream last night! An incredible sense of possibility: I didn't fly, but ironically I'll Fly Away was playing in the background of the dream - instead I ran, but my body, though it felt like a body, felt incredibly light and fluid - no pain, no limitations - as I became fully lucid and actually thought, I can do anything, what should I do? - I woke up!

It felt like at that point, when you are awake in the dream, you have a tendency to wake up for real ... I understand initially this is something that is very difficult, to stay in the dream - not just from the excitement, but the realization itself of being awake - another thing was how incredibly "lucid" I was - when I woke up for "real": I was groggy, my neck and back hurt as usual, etc - the quality of my mind was heavy and dense, in the dream there was this incredible clarity of thought and this sense of being wide awake - like you get when you awake from an unusually restful night.

I'll Fly Away - in the dream this was playing in the background in such a way that I noticed it didn't change as I moved through the dreamscape - I remember wondering how it could sound that way as if I were wearing headphones. It was sung a cappella, I think and very slowly - by a beautiful baritone voice ... I will check today and see if I can find out if I've ever actually heard this rendition.

Finally I was wearing headphones when I fell asleep ... but I was listening to this thread (I found an app that reads the text of any file out loud and it was reading the posts above on this very page as I fell asleep. That worked itself in to the early part of my dream in a comical way. So the part about having headphones on was reality, but not the "I'll Fly Away", that had to come from memory.

 

[smcder]

@smcder

Where is psychology's non-stick frying pan? | The Psychologist

"If you were asked to list the top five achievements in psychology, what would you say? Be honest, you’d probably splutter for a bit and then try to divert the question. I’ve sprung this on colleagues and they have come up with suggestions like attachment theory, the multi-stage memory model or even CBT. I don’t consider this an impressive list. In fact, to me it suggests a horrible truth – for all the bluster about science, all the fancy equipment and million pound research grants, we haven’t discovered any great new understandings or technologies about our core subject – ourselves.

Yes, we have produced studies and papers that cite and excite our colleagues. When spun in the right way, psychology can light up the sofa of The One Show or the Today studio. But does any of it amount to any more than a hill of beans? A standard definition of psychology is ‘the scientific study of people, the mind and behaviour’. So what are the headline discoveries about people, mind and behaviour? And do these findings match up to the discoveries of the other sciences?

Look at physics. It has split the atom, it has gravity, it has quantum theory, the Large Hadron Collider and the Higgs boson. It has the Big Bang theory, which offers an explanation of how the universe was formed. Chemistry has the periodic table of elements, a classification of all substances in the universe. Biology has evolution, a robust theory of how we came to be here. I could go on.

‘Psychology is a young science’, we say by way of excuse for the lack of great findings. But 150 years is not that young. There are younger sciences that have more to show: electronics has the microchip, genetics has mapped out the human genome.

The central issue concerns how we develop knowledge in psychology. To start with, other sciences have testable theories; psychology has testable hypotheses. What’s the difference? Einstein’s theory of general relativity was first presented in 1915 and then spectacularly tested in 1919 when light was shown to bend round the sun during a solar eclipse to the amount predicted by the theory. The existence of the Higgs boson was predicted by theory in the 1960s, as a crucial test of the Standard Model of particle physics. It was finally confirmed to exist in 2013.

What psychological theory produces predictions that can be tested in this way? Or to be even more challenging, what collection of ideas in psychology have we got that we can call a testable theory? What is psychology’s Big Bang? ..."

Here's another good one, I've posted this before:

The New Psychology of Depression | University of Oxford Podcasts - Audio and Video Lectures

We live in a world filled with material wealth, live longer and healthier lives, and yet anxiety, stress, unhappiness, and depression have never been more common. What are the driving forces behind these interlinked global epidemics?
In this series, Professor Mark Williams (Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow at Oxford University) and Dr Danny Penman discuss the recent scientific advances that have radically altered our understanding of depression and related disorders. Also discussed is the latest treatments and therapies that are offering hope to those suffering from depression.
Professor Williams co-developed Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), a treatment for anxiety, stress and depression that is at least as effective as drugs at preventing new episodes of depression. It's now one of the preferred treatments for depression recommended by the UK's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. The same technique, based upon an ancient form of meditation, can also help us cope more effectively with the relentless demands of our increasingly frantic world. Professor Williams and Dr Penman co-authored the bestselling book Mindfulness: Finding Peace in a Frantic World.