Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 5

[smcder]

That conversation is very revealing. It reveals a slippage in the text [something the poststructuralists have taught us to notice] in the referents of the term 'consciousness'. What causes NCC theorists to blink is the daunting challenge of accounting for how consciousness (and mind) continuously involve the subconscious in both ideation and feeling (which includes relations of resonance sensed in the relationship of consciousness/mind and world at the core of the subject-object relation itself.


Such sensings are difficult to articulate, express, in language [and are often thought to be 'ineffable'*], but they are unquestionably influential in what we are able to think as well as what we more comprehensively feel in and concerning our situated location in the natural world and also in the cultural world that overlays it.


For a full appreciation of what I’m referring to here one needs to read Merleau-Ponty's unpacking of the meaning of the word 'sense' {in French, 'sens'}, which refers to and recognizes the lived integration of meaning in that which we sense and the direction in which it points. That which we sense comes to us from the tactile, visible, audible, and otherwise sensible world in which we exist. Our sensing things and relations in the world points us outward in the direction of the world and then back toward ourselves in the temporal unfolding of our incremental understanding of the nature of our relation with the world {a relation immersed in signification and, as Heidegger recognized, Sorge}.

addendum: How close is this phenomenological insight to the relation you've described at the core of Eastern philosophy, Steve, characterized as "codependent arising"?


*experience that has been thought to be 'ineffable' is part of what neurophenomenology has now begun to explore.

I've read your post a couple of times ... not sure which phenomenological insight you mean here?

How close is this phenomenological insight to the relation you've described at the core of Eastern philosophy, Steve, characterized as "codependent arising"?

 

[smcder]

In the discussion between Ramachandran and Wallace I posted above, Ramachandran called for a map of introspection. He compared it to what we know from behaviorism and there are problems with the comparison, but that helps illustrate what he's getting at.

So I wondered how the goals of introspection are chosen? ... unitive/oceanic consciousness, union with God, nibbana (the cessation of suffering) atman is braman ... who first decided where we should go when we sat down and turned inward or was there a path opened up and choices made? Each tradition marks out some of the same hazards but then some go down where others do not - is there only one destination common to all if you keep the pursuit? Can St John of the Cross ultimately reconcile with the Buddha? There is something in common going on - the God of St John is not at all like the exoteric understanding of God. St John might grok nibbana = samsara I don't know, certainly lots of language would have to be swept up.

Entheogens are right in this question too

All that made me think of Mary, the non-introspective neurologist. The question is will the science of NCC become specific enough to reveal that there is a road map of introspection?

Could non-introspective Mary look at the brain, the neural pathways and see the signs exactly where the Buddha gets on and off and whence St John of the Cross and where in the world is John Lilly now?

And then, if she herself is allowed to contemplate for herself, the question is will she have learned anything new?

 

[Constance]

. . . This seems a pretty natural progression in any field and at the point of collapsing structures - that's where we begin to look for other approaches. The complex explanations work but the underlying ad-hoc nature becomes very noticeable even before a collapse and by that time, all but sub-sub-disciplinarians have been repelled. . . .Phenomenology it seems was a response to the limits of the preceding tradition {yes, because of the limits of its positivistic presupposition assumed in Husserl's time-- i.e., that all of 'what-is' could be understood objectively; Ernst Mach also objected to this presupposition} but it got routed prematurely with advances in computing technology and the analytical approach, instead of dying at that point, was extended because computational power was extended ... but then decades later we run back into those same problems and phenomenology is revitalized.

That's a concise overview of the failure of positivists and analytical philosophers to understand the phenomenological turn initiated by Husserl. The great irony is that the rapid rise of computationalism led computer scientists and AI theorists to attempt to design a conscious computer, thus again raising the question 'what is consciousness?' to a level at which that question now consumes both the scientific and philosophical disciplines that Husserl addressed it to in the first place.

I've read your post a couple of times ... not sure which phenomenological insight you mean here?

How close is this phenomenological insight to the relation you've described at the core of Eastern philosophy, Steve, characterized as "codependent arising"?

I mean the phenomenological insight that the being of the world cannot be recognized and understood without the being of consciousness.

 

[Constance]

In the discussion between Ramachandran and Wallace I posted above, Ramachandran called for a map of introspection. He compared it to what we know from behaviorism and there are problems with the comparison, but that helps illustrate what he's getting at.

As far as I know, "what we know from behaviorism" includes no recognition of or interest in introspection, thus provides no clues whatever to introspection, though Ramachandran might hope that neuroscience could eventually provide a 'map of introspection' that would explain spirituality in material terms. Are you persuaded that that might be possible?

So I wondered how the goals of introspection are chosen?

Don't students of the Buddha and other spiritual teachers have the goals of introspection described and defined for them preparatory to learning the techniques of meditation? Aren't they are taught what they will find before they attempt to find it? The Buddha and other Teachers, or the teachers of those teachers, must at some point have individually discovered deeper regions of consciousness by themselves, without instruction.

I think we can account for introspection and spirituality as events along the way in the passage from unreflective consciousness to reflective consciousness, the latter carrying along with it what has been sensed and developed in prereflective experience of the self/world relation, including its open-endedness for the duration of embodied life.

As you indicate in the rest of your post, introspection and spirituality take many forms, probably innumerable forms, based on the experiences of the individual. So I don't see how one could expect the immense plurality and variety of conscious and subconscious experiences of members of our species to be accounted for by "a map of introspection" accountable by neuronal pathways.

I think I need to go back and listen to the Ramachandran-Wallace discussion to follow your train of thought in this post. As often, I didn't want to listen to the podcast and settled for reading the short text that accompanied it.


{personal aside: With all the progress that's supposed to have been made in computer science, shouldn't we by now have computers that can cough up written transcripts of all these podcast discussions? If not, why not?}

 

[smcder]

@Constance

Before you invest the time in listening to the podcast - i think i can answer your questions. Might be tomorrow though.

 

[Constance]

OK, thanks.

 

[Randall]

"... one thing banging into another with the effect of the second thing banging into something else. Put enough of these things
together in a very complex way, call them neurons, and voila, consciousness emerges. A rather impoverished recipe however, with no real way to account for the rich intentionality of consciousness ..."

"... the rich intentionality of consciousness ..." In this statement, a key point in the entire question discussed in the post, it seems to me that an assumption is being made that "intentionality of consciousness" implies that intentionality is a product of consciousness, and yet we find that different philosophers look at the issue of intentionality in different ways, Sartre figuring that the two are indistinguishable, in which case the statement, "rich intentionality of consciousness" is like saying the "rich consciousness of consciousness", which means he might as well have simply said, "... with no real way to account for consciousness ...". This dressing up of a situation to make it seem more important than it is doesn't add any weight to the analysis and therefore means nothing ( if you're with Sartre ). So let's look at the situation a little differently.

Are we aware of intentionality as something separate from our state of awareness ( consciousness ) itself? Personally, I tend to think so. No matter how you look at the issue of intentionality, whether linked to qualia or not, when we take a moment to examine our actions or thoughts, it seems to me that we're making an analysis of our intentionality. Some higher part of our selves is compartmentalizing intentionality in a sort of freeze frame, so in that moment we have two separate things going on, and therefore the two cannot be one in the same. So just what is going on then? I would propose the following:

We know that the subconscious is making the real decisions because neuroscience has shown that decisions are made before we become consciously aware of them. The resulting biological responses are also taking place before you become aware of them, so for example; if we're frightened by something, by the time it registers in our consciousness, the fight or flight response has already been set in motion, the adrenaline has been injected, our heart rates have climbed, and we're either drawing a sword or hightailing it outta there with great "intention". So intentionality may very well be due to all the automatic bio-neural processes taking place, while consciousness is just along for the ride, experiencing it all unfold in slow motion as the car careens toward the embankment. This leaves us no closer to solving the puzzle of consciousness, but at least it seems to clear up that bit of confusion.

Moving on to the "billiard-ball type causality" comment. It seems to me that we've already done that with the idea that the brain produces measurable fields. EM type fields aren't simply "billiard ball type causality". We don't really know how to explain it. We only know how to harness it using rules that we've developed by observing how it behaves. But in fact, there's no particles bumping into other particles to cause an EM field to emerge. In a standard electromagnet the core and the winding are separated by insulation so that no electricity in either ever comes into contact. What happens is called induction, and some physicists explain it using the idea of virtual particles that can pop in and out of existence, as if from another realm. This is as cutting edge in this discussion as I can see it getting, the rest seems like a constant revisiting of history. I suppose that can be interesting as a mental exercise. But is that the point of the discussion?

So how about asking some new questions relevant to the "paranormal" part of the title? Like if consciousness emerges from the material world via a dynamic connection to some other realm that is able to impart this phenomena onto us, what does that suggest about these two realms? Logically the dynamic nature of the two implies a sort of symbiosis, facilitating the existence of environments in our universe conducive to the emergence of consciousness. Is that pure chance evolution? What about Dark Matter? The same thing seems to be going on there, as does it with Dark Energy. Are we prepared to take the leap and say that we believe that this other realm actually exists? Or are we going to play it safe and say that it's just an analogy that makes the math work, but of course there couldn't really be another physical realm out there with mass and energy that's invisible, and without which our existence would not be possible?

 

[smcder]

"... the rich intentionality of consciousness ..." In this statement, a key point in the entire question discussed in the post, it seems to me that an assumption is being made that "intentionality of consciousness" implies that intentionality is a product of consciousness, and yet we find that different philosophers look at the issue of intentionality in different ways, Sartre figuring that the two are indistinguishable, in which case the statement, "rich intentionality of consciousness" is like saying the "rich consciousness of consciousness", which means he might as well have simply said, "... with no real way to account for consciousness ...". This dressing up of a situation to make it seem more important than it is doesn't add any weight to the analysis and therefore means nothing ( if you're with Sartre ). So let's look at the situation a little differently.

Are we aware of intentionality as something separate from our state of awareness ( consciousness ) itself? Personally, I tend to think so. No matter how you look at the issue of intentionality, whether linked to qualia or not, when we take a moment to examine our actions or thoughts, it seems to me that we're making an analysis of our intentionality. Some higher part of our selves is compartmentalizing intentionality in a sort of freeze frame, so in that moment we have two separate things going on, and therefore the two cannot be one in the same. So just what is going on then? I would propose the following:

We know that the subconscious is making the real decisions because neuroscience has shown that decisions are made before we become consciously aware of them. The resulting biological responses are also taking place before you become aware of them, so for example; if we're frightened by something, by the time it registers in our consciousness, the fight or flight response has already been set in motion, the adrenaline has been injected, our heart rates have climbed, and we're either drawing a sword or hightailing it outta there with great "intention". So intentionality may very well be due to all the automatic bio-neural processes taking place, while consciousness is just along for the ride, experiencing it all unfold in slow motion as the car careens toward the embankment. This leaves us no closer to solving the puzzle of consciousness, but at least it seems to clear up that bit of confusion.

Moving on to the "billiard-ball type causality" comment. It seems to me that we've already done that with the idea that the brain produces measurable fields. EM type fields aren't simply "billiard ball type causality". We don't really know how to explain it. We only know how to harness it using rules that we've developed by observing how it behaves. But in fact, there's no particles bumping into other particles to cause an EM field to emerge. In a standard electromagnet the core and the winding are separated by insulation so that no electricity in either ever comes into contact. What happens is called induction, and some physicists explain it using the idea of virtual particles that can pop in and out of existence, as if from another realm. This is as cutting edge in this discussion as I can see it getting, the rest seems like a constant revisiting of history. I suppose that can be interesting as a mental exercise. But is that the point of the discussion?

So how about asking some new questions relevant to the "paranormal" part of the title? Like if consciousness emerges from the material world via a dynamic connection to some other realm that is able to impart this phenomena onto us, what does that suggest about these two realms? Logically the dynamic nature of the two implies a sort of symbiosis, facilitating the existence of environments in our universe conducive to the emergence of consciousness. Is that pure chance evolution? What about Dark Matter? The same thing seems to be going on there, as does it with Dark Energy. Are we prepared to take the leap and say that we believe that this other realm actually exists? Or are we going to play it safe and say that it's just an analogy that makes the math work, but of course there couldn't really be another physical realm out there with mass and energy that's invisible, and without which our existence would not be possible?

Sounds like good ideas that could be used to start a new thread.

Re: paragraph three, the key search terms are the "Libet" experiments - and epiphenomenalism. Weve discussed both extensively on the C&P threads. The website Conscious Entities is a good place to start.

 

[smcder]

.

 

[smcder]

As far as I know, "what we know from behaviorism" includes no recognition of or interest in introspection, thus provides no clues whatever to introspection, though Ramachandran might hope that neuroscience could eventually provide a 'map of introspection' that would explain spirituality in material terms. Are you persuaded that that might be possible?

Don't students of the Buddha and other spiritual teachers have the goals of introspection described and defined for them preparatory to learning the techniques of meditation? Aren't they are taught what they will find before they attempt to find it? The Buddha and other Teachers, or the teachers of those teachers, must at some point have individually discovered deeper regions of consciousness by themselves, without instruction.

I think we can account for introspection and spirituality as events along the way in the passage from unreflective consciousness to reflective consciousness, the latter carrying along with it what has been sensed and developed in prereflective experience of the self/world relation, including its open-endedness for the duration of embodied life.

As you indicate in the rest of your post, introspection and spirituality take many forms, probably innumerable forms, based on the experiences of the individual. So I don't see how one could expect the immense plurality and variety of conscious and subconscious experiences of members of our species to be accounted for by "a map of introspection" accountable by neuronal pathways.

I think I need to go back and listen to the Ramachandran-Wallace discussion to follow your train of thought in this post. As often, I didn't want to listen to the podcast and settled for reading the short text that accompanied it.


{personal aside: With all the progress that's supposed to have been made in computer science, shouldn't we by now have computers that can cough up written transcripts of all these podcast discussions? If not, why not?}

As far as I know, "what we know from behaviorism" includes no recognition of or interest in introspection, thus provides no clues whatever to introspection, though Ramachandran might hope that neuroscience could eventually provide a 'map of introspection' that would explain spirituality in material terms. Are you persuaded that that might be possible?

No, I am not persuaded.

Ramachandran isn't trying to learn anything about introspection from behaviorism. He is calling for the same kind and extent of knowledge about introspection that he says we have about behaviorism. In other words, he wants a big lab book of introspection, a field guide to subjective experience from which experiments can be designed, conducted and replicated. Later in the interview he nuances this and agrees with Alan Wallace that this isn't as quantifiable as behavorism but that it needs to be more rigorous and empirical. (with a lovely rolling of the rrrs: rrrrigorous)

My play on the "Mary" thought experiment is tongue in cheek ... but the point is that it's one thing to say Mary won't learn anything new after she is seeing the red, it's another to say that she wouldn't know anything new after introspection.

Don't students of the Buddha and other spiritual teachers have the goals of introspection described and defined for them preparatory to learning the techniques of meditation? Aren't they are taught what they will find before they attempt to find it?

No. That's up to the teacher ... schools may have their approaches but like anything done by humans how that plays out is pretty idiosyncratic. And I wouldn't want to go to school that gave everyone the step by step approach.

That said one of my favorite stories is from an American teacher who went to the east and received a little hut in the woods and a 30 minute cassette tape and didn't get anything else for the next six months.

There are so many books out there on how to meditate, etc so there's a much better idea of out there now. Better except that it's really complicated things. The real difficulty in understanding is clearing away all the ways you can misunderstand things. As Greg said on Radio Mysterioso the useful thing he learned from magick was how to get out of his own way. That's something that I think isn't known generally, that things unfold if you let your natural intelligence work. I think that's Taoism.

Yes. The Pali Cannon provides detailed instructions and various analogies of the states to be achieved but I'm not sure it matters beyond the basic mechanical instructions what you tell people, if they stick with it the Dhamma will unfold from simply following the breath. It's very simple to understand and very hard to do.

Yes and no - you really can't tell people what a novel experience is going to be like, you can't teach an experience.

The difference from the first time someone discovered this is that there is someone who's already been there for you to talk about it with when you come back. That's when the real learning occurs and when the real risk of indoctrination happens. That said I hav real reservations about "secular" meditation practices because I don't know of any approach to personal experience that doesn't come with its own set of assumptions. Let me use the phrase secular indoctrination.

The Buddha and other Teachers, or the teachers of those teachers, must at some point have individually discovered deeper regions of consciousness by themselves, without instructions.

Yes and that's interesting but maybe it's like any other kind of exploration - something that we as a species seem to have a knack for and I think that comes from a basic restlessness - it's as natural to roam on the inside as out on the plains. But there's a discipline to this tendency that can make it more successful.

And where's the starting point? The Neanderthals? Surely before any kind of oral tradition even - there were ways of communicating even complex experiences and how to attain them before there were words to express them. It may be that it's not appropriate to call them deeper regions of consciousness as it's possible indigenous people fully occupy all of these spaces ... and that's not to give credit to the "noble savage" myth.

At any rate, maybe finding these areas inside of us is inevitable and it's only special to us now because we've alienated ourselves from ourselves.

 

[smcder]

"... the rich intentionality of consciousness ..." In this statement, a key point in the entire question discussed in the post, it seems to me that an assumption is being made that "intentionality of consciousness" implies that intentionality is a product of consciousness, and yet we find that different philosophers look at the issue of intentionality in different ways, Sartre figuring that the two are indistinguishable, in which case the statement, "rich intentionality of consciousness" is like saying the "rich consciousness of consciousness", which means he might as well have simply said, "... with no real way to account for consciousness ...". This dressing up of a situation to make it seem more important than it is doesn't add any weight to the analysis and therefore means nothing ( if you're with Sartre ). So let's look at the situation a little differently.

Are we aware of intentionality as something separate from our state of awareness ( consciousness ) itself? Personally, I tend to think so. No matter how you look at the issue of intentionality, whether linked to qualia or not, when we take a moment to examine our actions or thoughts, it seems to me that we're making an analysis of our intentionality. Some higher part of our selves is compartmentalizing intentionality in a sort of freeze frame, so in that moment we have two separate things going on, and therefore the two cannot be one in the same. So just what is going on then? I would propose the following:

We know that the subconscious is making the real decisions because neuroscience has shown that decisions are made before we become consciously aware of them. The resulting biological responses are also taking place before you become aware of them, so for example; if we're frightened by something, by the time it registers in our consciousness, the fight or flight response has already been set in motion, the adrenaline has been injected, our heart rates have climbed, and we're either drawing a sword or hightailing it outta there with great "intention". So intentionality may very well be due to all the automatic bio-neural processes taking place, while consciousness is just along for the ride, experiencing it all unfold in slow motion as the car careens toward the embankment. This leaves us no closer to solving the puzzle of consciousness, but at least it seems to clear up that bit of confusion.

Moving on to the "billiard-ball type causality" comment. It seems to me that we've already done that with the idea that the brain produces measurable fields. EM type fields aren't simply "billiard ball type causality". We don't really know how to explain it. We only know how to harness it using rules that we've developed by observing how it behaves. But in fact, there's no particles bumping into other particles to cause an EM field to emerge. In a standard electromagnet the core and the winding are separated by insulation so that no electricity in either ever comes into contact. What happens is called induction, and some physicists explain it using the idea of virtual particles that can pop in and out of existence, as if from another realm. This is as cutting edge in this discussion as I can see it getting, the rest seems like a constant revisiting of history. I suppose that can be interesting as a mental exercise. But is that the point of the discussion?

So how about asking some new questions relevant to the "paranormal" part of the title? Like if consciousness emerges from the material world via a dynamic connection to some other realm that is able to impart this phenomena onto us, what does that suggest about these two realms? Logically the dynamic nature of the two implies a sort of symbiosis, facilitating the existence of environments in our universe conducive to the emergence of consciousness. Is that pure chance evolution? What about Dark Matter? The same thing seems to be going on there, as does it with Dark Energy. Are we prepared to take the leap and say that we believe that this other realm actually exists? Or are we going to play it safe and say that it's just an analogy that makes the math work, but of course there couldn't really be another physical realm out there with mass and energy that's invisible, and without which our existence would not be possible?

So how about asking some new questions relevant to the "paranormal" part of the title? Like if consciousness emerges from the material world via a dynamic connection to some other realm that is able to impart this phenomena onto us, what does that suggest about these two realms? Logically the dynamic nature of the two implies a sort of symbiosis, facilitating the existence of environments in our universe conducive to the emergence of consciousness. Is that pure chance evolution? What about Dark Matter? The same thing seems to be going on there, as does it with Dark Energy. Are we prepared to take the leap and say that we believe that this other realm actually exists? Or are we going to play it safe and say that it's just an analogy that makes the math work, but of course there couldn't really be another physical realm out there with mass and energy that's invisible, and without which our existence would not be possible?

... the physics of dark matter and dark energy are way over my head although I've started looking at learning a little about physics, I'm not sure what a layman can grasp there ... maybe more than I have assumed in the past and I do have a fair college-level background in math ... anyway if you are prepared to make the leap and elaborate on this and it's relationship to consciousness, that would be interesting.

 

[smcder]

@ufology

from part 4

My post was to point out that the issue of East meets West in the search for answers to what goes on inside our heads isn't taking place merely with respect to old religious and philosophical beliefs, but also in neuroscience. How constructive you find that position be within the context of this thread is dependent on the way you choose to compare the two issues. I seriously doubt that Ramachandran is the only Eastern neuroscientist they have. Would you seek to discredit the rest of them too, or accept that on the level of East meets West, some progress is being made by both cultures, through the medium of science, and that [science] is at least as relevant to the issues here as mysticism and philosophy?

I understand that the Straw Men of the World have united and aren't going to put up with further attacks on them ... ;-)

I didn't seek to discredit Ramachrandan. And I agree with what you say here, science is at least as relevant ... but then I don't see a solid demarcation between the three fields/approaches.

I admit that I do sometimes leave my statements open-ended in order to see what assumptions people will make, it tells me more sometimes than what they would say directly.

Allow me to restate for the sake of clarity. My participation ( or in this case the lack thereof ) in this thread, has been ( historically ) mainly in protest to the derail of the thread I had started all this on ( Philosophy, Science, and the Unexplained ), but not posting doesn't mean I haven't been observing, and it not does it mean that as Constance implies at times, that I'm so uninformed that opinions don't carry any weight with respect to the issues discussed. They [ my opinions ] may however carry no weight on a subjective personal level with some participants. But that's not my concern.
Based on the frequency with which you raise the issue one might think it's very much your concern!

Regarding why I choose to post: It's the same as it always is. Something in a post will grab my attention. I like to write and share my opinions, so it gives me an excuse to lay down a few words and/or post something I think is relevant. If that's not to the liking of those who view the thread, then they can always post their rebuttals or ignore my posts ( just like anyone else ).

I really liked your last post above, the one I just commented on - about dark energy, etc - I like to see your thoughts and your words and ideas and not just videos ... for one thing my "country internet" only streams about once a day ... most of the time the speed we get out here is about the level of dial-up.

 

[Randall]

I understand that the Straw Men of the World have united and aren't going to put up with further attacks on them ... ;-) I didn't seek to discredit Ramachrandan. And I agree with what you say here, science is at least as relevant ... but then I don't see a solid demarcation between the three fields/approaches ...

No straw man in the context of my post, which was on the concept of East meets West in the search for understanding of consciousness, mind, brain etc. Your response to Ramachandran was, to quote:

"... Ramachandran is very interesting and very popular, but also controversial. I don't know if the following casts any concern on the video you posted, but it would be worth checking into: "​

So rather than embrace the idea that neuroscience is playing a constructive role in the East meets West search for understanding, you began by pointing out subjective aspects of Ramachandran's participation that brought into question his credibility. Therefore my comment, which was intentionally posed as a question rather than an accusation was designed to focus your attention on the issue rather than the individual involved.

I admit that I do sometimes leave my statements open-ended in order to see what assumptions people will make, it tells me more sometimes than what they would say directly.

I know

Based on the frequency with which you raise the issue one might think it's very much your concern!

Nope. If a reader finds no value in what I post because it disagrees with what they want to believe, then it's not my concern; that is, unless they want to make it into an issue, in which case I'll probably say something about it, but that still has no bearing on my comments regarding the subject matter.

I really liked your last post above, the one I just commented on - about dark energy, etc - I like to see your thoughts and your words and ideas and not just videos ... for one thing my "country internet" only streams about once a day ... most of the time the speed we get out here is about the level of dial-up.

Not being able to get video is a real disadvantage where time is a factor. I don't have time to post text based essays or read volumes of information, most of which have little bearing on the issue I am posting on at any given time. Instead I try to distill down to the content that's relevant to the issue at hand, and post content that seems to hold promise for progress.

 

[smcder]

No straw man in the context of my post, which was on the concept of East meets West in the search for understanding of consciousness, mind, brain etc. Your response to Ramachandran was, to quote:

"... Ramachandran is very interesting and very popular, but also controversial. I don't know if the following casts any concern on the video you posted, but it would be worth checking into: "​

So rather than embrace the idea that neuroscience is playing a constructive role in the East meets West search for understanding, you began by pointing out subjective aspects of Ramachandran's participation that brought into question his credibility. Therefore my comment, which was intentionally posed as a question rather than an accusation was designed to focus your attention on the issue rather than the individual involved.
I know
Nope. If a reader finds no value in what I post because it disagrees with what they want to believe, then it's not my concern; that is, unless they want to make it into an issue, in which case I'll probably say something about it, but that still has no bearing on my comments regarding the subject matter.

Not being able to get video is a real disadvantage where time is a factor. I don't have time to post text based essays or read volumes of information, most of which have little bearing on the issue I am posting on at any given time. Instead I try to distill down to the content that's relevant to the issue at hand, and post content that seems to hold promise for progress.

Excellent - i definitely embrace the idea of neuroscience playing a constructive role in the search for understanding ... like democracy in the west, I think its a very good idea.

Are the ideas in the last post not yours? If not can you point me to the source?

Also what resources do you recommend for a layperson to learn physics? I dont mind a few equations and diagrams but no videos.

 

[Randall]

Are the ideas in the last post not yours? If not can you point me to the source?

I don't recall the term for it at the moment, but I think a number of people are hitting on the idea more or less simultaneously, so although consciousness and fields is something I came up with independently during the discussion, I'm not the only one who has expressed similar ideas. I haven't been keeping track of everyone I've run across since the idea popped into my head, but the gamut ranges from complete quantum woo to more or less reasonable theories based on observation and measurement. If you search around using the words "consciousness" and "field", you'll start to get a pretty good idea for yourself.

Also what resources do you recommend for a layperson to learn physics? I dont mind a few equations and diagrams but no videos.

The first resource that comes to mind is academic courses in physics. But if you don't have the time or money to do it the hard, expensive, time consuming way, which is what my situation is, you can look up the associated principles that have a bearing on the discussion as you go, and from there explore the relationships that way. Just stick to real science resources as opposed to new-agey interpretations, and if you are suspicious about something do some cross referencing. In these discussions the math isn't as important as getting the concepts behind the math straight, and to recognize that math ≠ reality.

Physics is only an abstract expression of the behavior of some physical phenomenon, and being able to describe that behavior mathematically doesn't explain the cause of the fundamental behavior itself. Your local library, recognized mainstream encyclopedias ( Brittanica, Encarta, etc ), and the Internet are all good resources. I'm pretty good at sorting this stuff out too, so if you have a question about something you think might be relevant, I can probably give you a half decent layman's explanation.

 

[smcder]

I don't recall the term for it at the moment, but I think a number of people are hitting on the idea more or less simultaneously, so although consciousness and fields is something I came up with independently during the discussion, I'm not the only one who has expressed similar ideas. I haven't been keeping track of everyone I've run across since the idea popped into my head, but the gamut ranges from complete quantum woo to more or less reasonable theories based on observation and measurement. If you search around using the words "consciousness" and "field", you'll start to get a pretty good idea for yourself.

The first resource that comes to mind is academic courses in physics. But if you don't have the time or money to do it the hard, expensive, time consuming way, which is what my situation is, you can look up the associated principles that have a bearing on the discussion as you go, and from there explore the relationships that way. Just stick to real science resources as opposed to new-agey interpretations, and if you are suspicious about something do some cross referencing. In these discussions the math isn't as important as getting the concepts behind the math straight, and to recognize that math ≠ reality.

Physics is only an abstract expression of the behavior of some physical phenomenon, and being able to describe that behavior mathematically doesn't explain the cause of the fundamental behavior itself. Your local library, recognized mainstream encyclopedias ( Brittanica, Encarta, etc ), and the Internet are all good resources. I'm pretty good at sorting this stuff out too, so if you have a question about something you think might be relevant, I can probably give you a half decent layman's explanation.

In these discussions the math isn't as important as getting the concepts behind the math straight, and to recognize that math ≠ reality.

Physics is only an abstract expression of the behavior of some physical phenomenon, and being able to describe that behavior mathematically doesn't explain the cause of the fundamental behavior itself.

A nominalist and in the wild, I thought they were but the stuff of legends.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2026384?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

stack exchange looks like a good source and Quora to post specific questions

I'm definitely going the auto-didactic route.

Keep up the good work.

 

[smcder]

Excellent that the whole book is available online. At last we have a detailed exploration of approaches to issues of consciousness that we can discuss together. And thank you for the series of extracts you're highlighting. Very cruxy indeed. .

"He asks if it's possible to say that there are contexts in the world that "call forth" or elicit consciousness ... in that sense causing consciousness to emerge?"

I'm going to chapter 6 now to see what follows that question.

. . . On the way to locating that question in chapter 6 I'm reading Gallagher's exchange with Tony Marcel (who seems to be impressively subtle in his thinking about consciousness). Here's an extract from their conversation in medias res on page 93:

Extract

SG: This is also where emotions could fit into the picture.

Marcel: Yes, in the sense that things matter or that you take an interest.

SG: I think Chalmers would say that it is the phenomenal aspect that is the hard problem, and he would think of it in terms of qualia, and in terms of thought experiments like Nagel's bat, or Jackson's story of Mary the color scientist. The phenomenal aspect is hard because objective science seems unable to capture precisely that first-person experience, and any attempt to do so turns it into a thirdperson neuronal process and misses the phenomenal quality of the experience. So it's the explanatory gap that is hard to close.

Marcel: I have to say that I don't personally have a strong position worked out on this problem of there being a first-person / third-person explanatory gap. There are philosophers on both sides of that gap, and you see what they say to each other, and you find that both groups make some sense.

SG: So do you think it is simply a matter of two different discourses that cannot be translated?

Marcel: It's interesting to put it that way. I oscillate between two views. Sometimes I really think it is a matter of two discourses. But, oddly enough, it is not clear that there is any isomorphism between them, or that you can translate them. This is quite common in many disciplines. It is not clear that there is any mapping between the entities – an entity in one discourse may not have a counterpart in the other discourse, and it's not clear how you map between them. So sometimes I do think it is a matter of two discourses. Other times, what I find myself doing, is being caught in between and trying to negotiate or broker a marriage or arrangement. But certainly it is never the case that we can reduce one to the other. I find it an uncomfortable position, but the fact that it is uncomfortable doesn't mean that I would give it up. What I don't want to do is what I feel to be crass and ridiculous. Namely, there are a number of cognitive neuroscientists or cognitivists who take something to be phenomenological, and then say this is equivalent to some "X" in a functionalist or information-processing scheme. I remain terribly unconvinced by that because these are not the kind of entities that exist in personal level or phenomenological discourse – they're just not, and it's absurd to say they're equivalent to such and such, because they're not. For example, here's a concept that emerges in various ways – it doesn't have anything to do particularly with phenomenology, but I think it does have relevance – it's the notion of there being relations, that some kinds of things are relational. Now something that Freud said does bear very much on this – his notion of cathexis – this idea that there is an investment in something. Take the notion of desire. Desire is a thick, heavy term. And I mean that's good. Yet, by desire they [the cognitivists] just mean that the system needs something, or that I have a propositional attitude, namely I perceive that woman, for example, plus whatever it is that I desire to do or happen. But certainly there is more, and there is something wrong about reducing desire to something purely cognitive. They've just got it wrong. And it is not just the fact that there are two discourses, but rather that at least one of the discourses extends away to other things. It extends to existential aspects. Existential discourse is not just a descriptive one. If something is merely descriptive, it could be mapped onto a Naturwissenschaft.

SG: So to the extent that a personal level discourse involves evaluations or evaluative judgments, desires, emotions, a cathexis, and so on, directed outward in a relation toward the world, they cannot be reduced to a descriptive science.

Marcel: Towards the world, but also towards oneself. As you yourself know, an existentialist discourse will raise questions about all sorts of things that simply have nothing to do with Naturwissenschaft, or reductive natural science. By reductive here I don't mean to devalue the term. And actually, such natural scientists usually want nothing to do with those things.

SG: At least when they are doing their natural science. . . ."

OK, back on topic ... @Constance this is exactly where I left off with Marcel!

<below is a combination of paraphrase, quotation and commentary, it's >

Gallagher states that the "easy" problems of consciousness are functional problems and Marcel notes that 'awareness' (access to my knowledge) can be seen as functional, as information processing, and may be distinguished from the hard problem, which Marcel calls "phenomenology".

So for Marcel, awareness is one of the "easy" problems. By awareness, Marcel means simple second-order access to the first-order phenomenal level and he distinguishes this view from Ned Block's primary and access consciousness:

(a) the processes of second-order consciousness or "awareness” in taking first-order consciousness as content can operate on the content of first-order consciousness to mould, shape it or change it

(b) under certain modes of attention (especially immersion, when you are fully immersed in some task) second-order consciousness can disappear so that there is almost only first-order consciousness. In addition I am not sure to what extent that what we build around our distinction would be acceptable to Ned Block.

Gallagher asks then if the only aspect of consciousness that is "hard" is the phenomenal aspect of consciousness.

Marcel
one aspect of what is meant by "hard" is special properties but Marcel isn't convinced there are special properties:

• experiencing something as unanalyzable doesn't mean it is unanalyzable
• qualia with some exceptions, like color, can almost all be treated as spatio-temporal information or dynamics
• spatio-temporal information/dynamics are tractable

What Marcel does think is hard is a certain type of attentional attitude. Although Marcel doesn't think Nagel's "what it is like" says very much, he draws on it to make the point that "what it is like" is what it is like for somebody (dative) ... so to be something it is like for somebody brings in the personal and brings in some aspect of self.

smcder this goes back to a discussion here on the thread about Nagel's what it is like and @Pharoah's concept of the really hard problem ... which I thought was already implicit in Nagel's paper ... apparently Marcel didn't think so

"Now that does seem to be hard. In another paper, this is my paper on the sense of agency (Marcel, 2003), I tried to bring in a minimalist conception of selfhood that is really a geometrical perspectivalist aspect of where the source of an action is. But then I thought that that was not a thick enough entity for there to be a "for", something it is like "for" that entity. A point of view, a geometric point of view, or a point in space and time, an origin of a reference frame, can't be sufficient. It has to matter, when we say it's for somebody. One thing that is going to be hard is to unpack what the 'for' means."

@Constance - and this is where your excerpt begins ... so I'll end with the first bit of that:
SG: I think Chalmers would say that it is the phenomenal aspect that is the hard problem, and he would think of it in terms of qualia, and in terms of thought experiments like Nagel's bat, or Jackson's story of Mary the color scientist. The phenomenal aspect is hard because objective science seems unable to capture precisely that first-person experience, and any attempt to do so turns it into a third person neuronal process and misses the phenomenal quality of the experience.
(smcder - which I thought was exactly Nagel's point ... but Marcel does emphasize the "what it is like for someone" - )
So it's the explanatory gap that is hard to close.
Marcel: I have to say that I don't personally have a strong position worked out on this problem of there being a first-person / third-person explanatory gap. There are philosophers on both sides of that gap, and you see what they say to each other, and you find that both groups make some sense.

 

[smcder]

As fas as an east meets west search for understanding - specifically in regards to Buddhism:

Buddhism is a pragmatic path to end suffering. It's a complete path. Questions about whether the universe is infinite or finite, whether there is a soul, what it's relation to the body is and whether it endures after life - and most other metaphysical questions, the Buddha refused to answer on the grounds that taking a view either way hindered the goal of alleviating suffering.

Free will he answered in a very specific way for the same reason.

So when the Dalai Lama says if science disagrees with Buddhism, Buddhism will change ... he has very little to worry about.

From the other side of it, the Buddha was equally skillful in dealing with questions about the nature of enlightenment and nibbana such that its hard to conceive of a finding of fact in
science that would be in conflict with these teachings.

So it may be helpful in this dialogue to think about Buddhism as a set of skills for dealing with stress, suffering, dukkha rather than as a religion, philosophy or even applied psychology - although it may have more in common with the latter.

Other aspects of eastern philosophy I don't know much about.

 

[smcder]

Here's the next part of the Gallagher/Marcel dialogue, I want to come back to this later:

Marcel: Viewed in these terms, the hard problem now seems to be much harder than even Chalmers thinks.

SG: Viewed in these terms, a solution to the hard problem cannot be found if you stay with just neuroscience or the natural sciences.

Marcel: I think that's right. But it doesn’t mean that there is an essence of consciousness, or a bottom to it, as it were, but the different ways in which things can seem to you. And I mean, for example, something like this. I can be sitting in my office looking at my desk in front of me. I can experience this desktop in front of me with papers on it, and it's sort of a brown or grey-brown with lots of papers on top. On the other hand, I can have exactly the same view and I can see a sort of a rhomboid shape of a certain color with white and grey parallelograms. It seems to me that the way I attend, and I will call that attending, can give me different things. I have different kinds of experiences as of distinct objects or not. In fact, one thing you can have, and I think both William James, and oddly enough, Merleau-Ponty, both used the term, is the notion of perceptual field. It doesn't seem to me that the perceptual field is the basic consciousness, which many psychologists of the late 19th century were taking this to be. – People in psychological experimental laboratories in Germany, that's what they were trying to do. But I don't think that's right. I think that that's one take you can have under one perceptual attitude.
SG: So consciousness is varied, and there is probably not one thing that we should call consciousness?

Marcel: Well, hang on. I'm saying that the content is not a single thing, or one
basic thing. But there is even a problem with saying that. I don't want to say that
there is something called consciousness, and then there is various content. What I
don't want to do is to make what I consider to be a mistake that William James
made. And I really do think it's a mistake. If you go down that road, then what you
say is that there is something called consciousness, and that's a container, and
consciousness itself is independent of the kind of content that might fill it. I don't
want to say that. It seems to me that there is no such thing as a consciousness with
no content. It's just not on, as far as I'm concerned. It seems to me to lead into the
information processing black box approach.

*And listen, that is how I was educated, or rather, socialized. It's very difficult for me to get out of it, but I nonetheless think
it's an error.

smcder this is where biography = philosophy?

SG: This leads to a slightly different question. Even if there is no consciousness
independent of content, one can also talk about the formal features of
consciousness.

Marcel: Yes, I think so.

SG: Although content changes, there is something there that has a relatively stable
structure or formal features.

Marcel: Yes, that's difficult, but also very interesting. I don't know quite if you're
saying this, but are you saying that you could abstract out, or do a technical analysis
that would give you something irreducible to content?

*SG: Yes, I think phenomenologists try to do that.

Marcel: Yes, that's right. I wanted to ask you, when you discuss such things with
other people, have you gone onto that topic?

SG: Yes, these sorts of issues often come up in discussions I've had with
proponents of higher order representation theory, for example, David Rosenthal's
higher-order thought model. I have found myself defending the idea that
phenomenal consciousness doesn't require some kind of higher-order representation
to make it self-conscious, but it has a certain implicit structure of its own that
phenomenologists define in terms of pre-reflective self-awareness.

Marcel: That's very interesting. One of Chalmers' questions [at a recent conference]
was about this issue. One of the questions was about emotion experience – what is
it that makes emotion experience? My reply is that it involves two things. There are
the kinds of content we are referring to as kinds of emotion content, and these are
what we experience as emotion. And there is another aspect of consciousness,
actually a certain kind of relational aspect that has a certain kind of structure. In
other words, it doesn't need an extra stage of processing.

SG: Right, the two aspects are processed together, so to speak.

Marcel: There is a very interesting issue there. I could interpret my own statement
in two ways. I could say, as long as the content had that structure in it, that is
experiential. And that's it. But you could interpret it in a slightly different way.
Does that structure give it an autonomous existence? If it has its own structure, and
doesn't need a higher-order or extra stage, if it doesn't need anything else, does that
mean it exists or has a certain existence on its own?

@Constance - this makes me think that once you begin to abstract these things out, the very way you experience changes them in such a way as to reinforce your opininon, your own subjectivity changes in such a way as to confirm your opinions about it

 

[smcder]

I think the same is true for Western esotericism - there the goal is union with God and its equally pragmatic in its use of contemplation and the spiritual path.

What I think is of more interest is the possibility that @Constance raised here:

As you indicate in the rest of your post, introspection and spirituality take many forms, probably innumerable forms, based on the experiences of the individual. So I don't see how one could expect the immense plurality and variety of conscious and subconscious experiences of members of our species to be accounted for by "a map of introspection" accountable by neuronal pathways.

The pioneers here of course are the psychonauts - they are involved in technology from the beggning - from various forms of brain machines to alter brain waves, to psychedelic exploration with a wide range of chemicals, entheogens, etc - they come closer to being interested in mapping whatever can be mapped and there you can look at the chemical pathways as another way in to the A&P of it.

Buddhism, Sufism, Kabbalah, Christian contemplative prayer give highly detailed "maps" of specific regions* - psychonauts go crashing about all over the place and are quite eager to do just about anything to break new territory.

*they may inhabit some of the same ground but interpret their surroundings differently, but if so - that should all show up in the brain scans too?