Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 5

[smcder]

Interesting response. I think you are correct in one sense. However at the same time we cannot dismiss that the experience also happens and that without that experience in place we have no subjective object upon which to gaze and feel for one reason or another is aesthetically pleasing or not ( that the color red is preferable to yellow ). So there is the aspect that only conscious experience can serve the purpose of giving the "OK signal" back to the physical brain for this process. This is again analogous to the way we use some magnetic fields as filters. So this implies that the structure of consciousness correlates directly to specific parts of the brain, some responsible for the decisions it will make in the future ( that again, at that moment, we're still not aware of ).

Let me make sure I am being clear ... I am looking at this in terms of a and p consciousness as defined by Ned Block, this line of reasoning started with the Block paper I posted a few pages back, that's what's in the back of my head, but I may not have been explicit. These categorie aren't without controversy of course ... but that's what I pointed out with Jaegwon Kim's argument - it doesn't apply if you aren't a non-reductive physicalist and/or don't accept causal closure and causal sufficiency ... but for my purposes, I am using these defintions:

Phenomenal and Access Conciousness
There is no generally agreed upon way of categorizing different types of consciousness. Block's distinction between phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness tries to distinguish between conscious states that either do or do not directly involve the control of thought and action.

a-consciousness
Access consciousness. Access consciousness is available for use in reasoning and for direct conscious control of action and speech. For Block, the "reportability" of access consciousness is of great practical importance. Also, access consciousness must be "representational" because only representational content can figure in reasoning. Examples of access consciousness are thoughts, beliefs, and desires.

p-consciousness
Phenomenal consciousness. According to Block, phenomenal consciousness results from sensory experiences such as hearing, smelling, tasting, and having pains. Block groups together as phenomenal consciousness the experiences of sensations, feelings, perceptions, thoughts, wants and emotions. Block excludes from phenomenal consciousness anything having to do with cognition, intentionality, or with "properties definable in a computer program".

On that account, what you describe:

However at the same time we cannot dismiss that the experience also happens and that without that experience in place we have no subjective object upon which to gaze and feel for one reason or another is aesthetically pleasing or not ( that the color red is preferable to yellow ). So there is the aspect that only conscious experience can serve the purpose of giving the "OK signal" back to the physical brain for this process.

Is access consciousness. But in your example here, you seem to conflate the two - is there an implicit acknowledgement of two kinds, though? Specifically, that the minimal control over the direction of the board would come, if it came at all, from a-consciousness, but the "along for the ride" would be p-consciousness ... if so, here it seems hard to give an account of even the causal efficacy of p-consciousness.

This doesn't mean consciousness doesn't play a role in the decision making process ( it does ), but from a sheer cause and effect perspective, or in other words it's only along for the ride. I've likened this to a surfer on a wave, where all the conditions that give rise to the wave reside in the great ocean below, while the surfer, supported by little more than surface tension and inertia, skims above the depths, experiencing the blue sky, spray, wind and all the sensations that flood into our conscious awareness while awake. We might ( and I emphasize the word might ) have some minimal control over the direction of the board ( but one could argue that such control is pure reflex ), but we certainly have no control over the direction of the wave itself.
Here, though - I think we have a very good example of p-consciousness and its causal inertness:

In the meantime, as you put it, until I see some compelling argument to the contrary, not only is everything I perceive a rather fabulous VR simulation caused by our brain, the idea that I have any real-time conscious control over anything is equally illusory ( and fabulous )

So the puzzle in the aesthetic judgement isn't in regards to a-consciousness which makes the judgements you are talking about, but rather in the p-consciousness, the what it is like to be you painting a picture, that is clearly along for the ride, right?

 

[Constance]

I don't think that p-consciousness and a-consciousness are two different compartments of consciousness; I think they are intermingled. So I like this paragraph in the source Steve quoted:

"Some philosophers such as Thomas Nagel have claimed a fundamental distinction between the first person experience of consciousness and any third person account of the mechanisms by which consciousness is generated[5]. If philosophers can be overly-pessimistic about what neuroscientists and computer scientists can accomplish from the third person perspective, they might also be overly-enthusiastic about the reliability of first person introspection. Some philosophers have been fundamentally skeptical about our ability to be certain about anything we observe from the first person perspective[6]. Despite any sense we me [may] have about our inability to be wrong about our subjective evaluations of our own consciousness, it may be wise to keep an open mind and remain open to the possibility that phenomenal consciousness is not a distinct category from access consciousness. For example, they may be at the two ends of a continuous spectrum of consciousness for which some forms of consciousness are easier to imagine as being algorithmically generated that [than] others."

I don't think what I've just said is pertinent to the discussion you two are having, but I don't have anything further to add. It's a long time since I've read the Block paper and I'm not moved to read it again not having found much of use in it the first time. So be well and carry on.

 

[Randall]

Verified by fMRI? What information do we have about sleep walkers? How reliable would their own testimony be, after they wake up? I will look to see if any studies have been done.

Sounds good.

But this still doesn't address my other question about p-consciousness matching up with the behavior of the person ... the somnambulist, as I said, might, in his or her quasi-conscious state, be dreaming of blue velveeta as he strangles his wife to death - so what's the moral responsibility there? and if so, by breaking p-consciousness off - what moral responsibility anywhere?

You might find the concept of Rational Choice Theory in Criminology relevant.

(by p consciousness I mean specifically not just the inner movie you are watching - but also the "what it is like" - that bit specifically doesn't need to be there in any of the examples, the hunter/warrior can run his movie without there being anything that it is like to be him or her specifically, individually (@Pharoah) - visualization is enough, then the whole thing can finish the rinse cycle from there ... right?)

I don't think there is any "extra bit" involved. The experience of visualization = that part of the overall "what it's like" to be the visualizer.

the point being to try and find cases where p and a consciousness might diverge. The overall goal being to think about if p-consciousness plays an essential role ... I can't think of a way of proving directly that p-consciousness has no function, so I am looking indirectly to see if every function we assume it does play can also occur in its absence - again, that doesn't mean it doesn't have a function but it tells us where not to look ...

If I recall correctly, p-consciousness has already been described in one paper back there someplace as the "what it's like" part of experiencing anything ( p ). So without consciousness there can be no p-consciousness. There would be no "theatre of the mind" in which phenomena is visualized. So perhaps, rather than looking at the problem as p-consciousness isn't required to get the job done and therefore ( what I'm not sure ). Maybe try looking at it as we have p-consciousness ( obviously ), and it gets the job done ( obviously ), therefore it has a role to play whether there are other options to get the job done or not. After that we can explore the implications.

We get into circular arguments about the value of experience if for example we say that pain motivates us to learn or being in love motivates us to mate and protect, etc because clearly we have all of that from the wiring - the hormones crank up the intensity or the pain sends very strong signals and the organism learns - so of what use is the actual suffering (or joy) involved? Another loop of cirularity is that the pain signals, coming first, have to do additional work by playing a role in creating an experience of pain for us to learn from - arguably a waste of resources and time consuming, when the organism could just go ahead and learn ... and surely it's that way for the simplest organisms that respond quite well and learn what they need to without much or anthing in the way of experience and which got us to where we are now, presumably - so theres not an essential story of pain there.

At least that's how I see the problem of explaining the evolution of experience.

What am I missing?

I don't think you're necessarily missing anything. The questions are all valid and the assumptions are logical. But the reality of the situation is still that it's less likely you're going to be successful at securing a mate and raising a family if you don't have a variety of completely subjective experiences about your potential mate that are only available through the "what it's like" part of your consciousness, e.g. the what it's like to be you in love, attracted by beauty, and so on. You won't even make it to second base if you go on Borg analysis alone ( did you see the video download option I mentioned in a previous post? )

Harry Tries - Lord Knows he Really Tries

 

[Randall]

Follow-up: This is where I took p-consciousness from with respect to my usage recently:

"How might consciousness have evolved? Unfortunately for the prospects of providing a convincing answer to this question, there is no agreed account of what consciousness is. So any attempt at an answer will have to fragment along a number of different lines of enquiry. More fortunately, perhaps, there is general agreement that a number of distinct notions of consciousness need to be distinguished from one another; and there is also broad agreement as to which of these is particularly problematic – namely phenomenal consciousness, or the kind of conscious mental state which it is like something to have, which has a distinctive subjective feel or phenomenology (henceforward referred to as p-consciousness)." Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 5 | The evolution of consciousness
​

@smcder - From back here: Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 5

"Can you please put together a paragraph for me that sums up your present view, how close it comes to a belief for you, and if it's not sufficient for you to believe your view is actually be the case, what's still missing for you and which direction do you think the answer lies?"​

Did I miss your response somewhere?

​

 

[Constance]

. . . We should remember that computer systems and system theory grew out of the mechanization of our own patterns of thinking and logic -- in effect these systems are an externalization of many structural relations we've become accustomed too (and sometimes take for granted) in our daily interactions. I don't assume one-to-one correspondence between systems of understanding -- but it may turn out that such correspondences (isomorphisms) are a basis for self-modeling embodied systems of replicators--I am just saying that we may have to push away some accumulated fictions in our brain that have aided us in our evolutionary development in the past, but are no longer effective.

Effective for what purpose? And equally important, whose purpose? In that vein, the lure of constructing AI might also be premised on a fiction. In fact I think it is, and on the way to accomplishing that goal our culture is seeding a further fiction -- that we are not capable of solving the problems we've created.

I think I had too many glasses of wine when I wrote that first statement, which almost appears like a troll to me when I read it now. A few other things I should correct while I am thinking about it: I do not dismiss metaphysics and human understanding; I do not think we need to destroy metaphysics -- but we may wish to flush out the accretion of useless terms from our vocabulary.

Which terms do you want to flush out?

I also do not like the division of calculative and meditative thinking -- meditative thinking is just elevator music to put the ego to sleep while millions of automata underlying are busy cranking out their individually discrete systems of interrelated tasks

So long as the automata are busily doing their thing out of sight anyway, why dismiss meditative thinking if it improves people's mental health and strengthens their spirits and capacity for good will? And especially when it leads to deep insights into the nature of reality for those who practice it?

I take the "we are survival machines" viewpoint of evolution--our brains are machines to help us regulate our interactions with the environment. As for the ultimate "why" question, techne, and Heidegger's critique of technological thinking, I'll get back to you.

I think we are more than 'survival machines' and also that the technological path we are on will destroy/is destroying our possibilities of finding meaningful satisfaction in life and improving the conditions of earth life in general.

 

[Randall]

I think we are more than 'survival machines' and also that the technological path we are on will destroy/is destroying our possibilities of finding meaningful satisfaction in life and improving the conditions of earth life in general.

Interesting irony that one of the survival machine's biggest threats to survival is itself. Regarding technology, technological advancement isn't the real problem, it's what people do with it.

 

[Randall]

... So the puzzle in the aesthetic judgement isn't in regards to a-consciousness which makes the judgements you are talking about, but rather in the p-consciousness, the what it is like to be you painting a picture, that is clearly along for the ride, right?

OK I've been operating on another frequency. I haven't been making a distinction between "a or p" consciousness. I've just been using p-consciousness ( Peter Carruthers definition ). Unless you can you sum what the "puzzle" is a little differently in a single paragraph accompanied by an example that really gets my attention as to why it matters, my impression of the relevance of "a vs b" consciousness is sending me towards @Constance's view back here: Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 5 Otherwise I need a break from this discussion. Getting tired. This is draining. Need rest. Leaving off with a final thought:

IMO it's not just p-consciousness or any particular aspect of consciousness, or unconscious, or subconscious, or material configuration that's just "along for the ride". Everything is. Existence at the most fundamental level seems to be nothing but the unfolding of the universe according to laws set in place by agencies unknown ( assuming that there actually are any such agencies in the first place ).

 

[Soupie]

Not really sure how to answer because of the formulation of the question, but allow me to give an example using one of your choices, the composition of a work of art: Having taken Fine Arts courses, I would often use visualization to imagine in my mind the work in progress, along with how it should appear when complete. This involves an evaluation of line, shape, color, texture, aesthetic pleasantness, and so on, all of which are part of the conscious experience, but which is missing when we're completely unconscious. I do the same thing when I'm composing a song. I don't write sheet music. I imagine the music. I literally hear the instruments in my imagination. I once thought all musicians did this, but was really surprised by a piano player one time who told me she had never done that. She was taught to read and play and she envied my ability to simply play what I thought, while I very much admired her ability to read and play.

The above examples do not suggest to me that consciousness can visualize without a brain, so the "only it can do" part in my interpretation of your question is not the same kind of "only it can do" in the example of belief in life after death where when someone's brain is literally gone, one's consciousness goes floating around on its own with all it's faculties still intact.

Also, once again I can see how having the ability to visualize problems could be beneficial for survival. A hunter or warrior for example might be more successful if he or she were to visualize the hunt or the battle, rehearsing it in their mind so as to prepare. In modern times the hunt and the battle are more cerebral, but it can still apply to someone preparing to give a lecture or navigate a set of roads from point A to point B.

Since Ufology does not think consciousness reduces to neurophysiological processes but rather is itself an additional physical process generated by neurophysiological processes, I think the above is coherent.

(However, I do think this approach is unfortunately ultimately incoherent as consciousness does not appear to be a physical processes generated by the brain.)

Otherwise, someone such as Chalmers might say that the "what its like" of visualization is not necessary since the underlying neurphysiological processes do all the work.

My own view, at the risk of boring you all to tears, is that the "what its like" of say, visualization, is information embodied by neurophysiological processes. This information of course is necessary for the brain to guide the body.

The question of course is why does this information, but not all neurophysiological information, feel like something to the body-system?

IIT, Graziano's Attention Schema, and HOT theories attempt to address this question.

 

[smcder]

the sense that, despite all the exciting advances and insights into the functioning of the brain, the predominant narratives that are routinely spun, the stories that are being told about neuronal organization are remarkably lacking in spirit, creativity, or possibility.

Catherine Malabou (trans. from French by Sebastian Rand)
What Should We Do with Our Brain?
New York: Fordham University Press, 2008
ISBN: 9780823229536
Reviewed by Jan Slaby
Assistant Professor, Philipps University of Marburg, Germany
http://www.imprint.co.uk/pdf/17_9-10_br.pdf

"In times where much of philosophy is lacking both a critical spirit and an energizing vision, Malabou’s book is a much-needed manifesto coming at the right time. However, in the end it is little more than a manifesto — it is no worked-out study, it does not present much of an argument. Still, this might be what this branch of philosophy is in urgent need of.

How long have we waited for sentences like this one:

‘Even if it is fascinating to observe aplysias, we cannot spend our time in ecstasies over slugs’ (p. 67)?

Malabou dares to articulate powerfully an inchoate feeling that many share, but few have so far given sufficient expression:

• the sense that, despite all the exciting advances and insights into the functioning of the brain, the predominant narratives that are routinely spun, the stories that are being told about neuronal organization are remarkably lacking in spirit, creativity, or possibility.*

Instead, what we are presented with, over and over again, are variations of the same sad tales of rigidity and determination, of stable traits and hard-wired routines, of dumb mechanisms programmed in the stone ages by the unrelenting imperatives of natural selection.

This virus has infected philosophy, as expressed in the lingering-on of the lame spirit and boring habitus of nineteenth century materialism and early twentieth century scientism, superficially ‘fancied up’ with borrowings from modern technoscience with its futuristic machinery and colourful images of ‘the mind at work’. In short, we live in an academic environment hostile to creative thought, hostile to the new—a world in which it is clear that god and Nietzsche are dead."

*smcder

the sense that, despite all the exciting advances and insights into the functioning of the brain, the predominant narratives that are routinely spun, the stories that are being told about neuronal organization are remarkably lacking in spirit, creativity, or possibility.

Which is what I would expect from spinners of narratives - who believe things like spirit, creativity and possibility don't exist.

You kids today with your deterministic universes!

 

[smcder]

OK I've been operating on another frequency. I haven't been making a distinction between "a or p" consciousness. I've just been using p-consciousness ( Peter Carruthers definition ). Unless you can you sum what the "puzzle" is a little differently in a single paragraph accompanied by an example that really gets my attention as to why it matters, my impression of the relevance of "a vs b" consciousness is sending me towards @Constance's view back here: Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 5 Otherwise I need a break from this discussion. Getting tired. This is draining. Need rest. Leaving off with a final thought:

IMO it's not just p-consciousness or any particular aspect of consciousness, or unconscious, or subconscious, or material configuration that's just "along for the ride". Everything is. Existence at the most fundamental level seems to be nothing but the unfolding of the universe according to laws set in place by agencies unknown ( assuming that there actually are any such agencies in the first place ).

IMO it's not just p-consciousness or any particular aspect of consciousness, or unconscious, or subconscious, or material configuration that's just "along for the ride". Everything is. Existence at the most fundamental level seems to be nothing but the unfolding of the universe according to laws set in place by agencies unknown ( assuming that there actually are any such agencies in the first place ).

That kind of thinking IS draining ... ;-) It's depressing and depression affects cognition.

 

[smcder]

Follow-up: This is where I took p-consciousness from with respect to my usage recently:

"How might consciousness have evolved? Unfortunately for the prospects of providing a convincing answer to this question, there is no agreed account of what consciousness is. So any attempt at an answer will have to fragment along a number of different lines of enquiry. More fortunately, perhaps, there is general agreement that a number of distinct notions of consciousness need to be distinguished from one another; and there is also broad agreement as to which of these is particularly problematic – namely phenomenal consciousness, or the kind of conscious mental state which it is like something to have, which has a distinctive subjective feel or phenomenology (henceforward referred to as p-consciousness)." Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 5 | The evolution of consciousness
​

@smcder - From back here: Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 5

"Can you please put together a paragraph for me that sums up your present view, how close it comes to a belief for you, and if it's not sufficient for you to believe your view is actually be the case, what's still missing for you and which direction do you think the answer lies?"​

Did I miss your response somewhere?

​

You must have.

 

[smcder]

I don't think that p-consciousness and a-consciousness are two different compartments of consciousness; I think they are intermingled. So I like this paragraph in the source Steve quoted:

"Some philosophers such as Thomas Nagel have claimed a fundamental distinction between the first person experience of consciousness and any third person account of the mechanisms by which consciousness is generated[5]. If philosophers can be overly-pessimistic about what neuroscientists and computer scientists can accomplish from the third person perspective, they might also be overly-enthusiastic about the reliability of first person introspection. Some philosophers have been fundamentally skeptical about our ability to be certain about anything we observe from the first person perspective[6]. Despite any sense we me [may] have about our inability to be wrong about our subjective evaluations of our own consciousness, it may be wise to keep an open mind and remain open to the possibility that phenomenal consciousness is not a distinct category from access consciousness. For example, they may be at the two ends of a continuous spectrum of consciousness for which some forms of consciousness are easier to imagine as being algorithmically generated that [than] others."

I don't think what I've just said is pertinent to the discussion you two are having, but I don't have anything further to add. It's a long time since I've read the Block paper and I'm not moved to read it again not having found much of use in it the first time. So be well and carry on.

Block attempts to support his division of a and p consciousness by coming up with examples of one without the other - how successful he is, is controversial. Whatever the case, the phenomenal aspect or quality of consciousness can either be seen as an outlier - the one thing we can't explain scientifically/objectively - or it's the whole thing, the reason we can explain anything scientifically/objectively, the reason the universe isn't a "nothing-but" ... all of the difficulties above are resolved if phenomenal experience is fundamental. And the first thing that comes into phenomenal experience is meaning. If you don't make those two simple steps, you have to, by your own choice, live in a meaningless universe and additionally you cut yourself off from all kinds of spirit, creativity and possibility. That's what I was hoping to show ... ;-)

 

[smcder]

‘Why do we persist in our belief that the brain is purely and simply a “machine”, a program without promise? Why are we ignorant of our own plasticity?’ - asks Catherine Malabou in What Should We Do With Our Brain?

smcder I see this applies very directly to the last several posts and to an attitude we don't often take here on the thread, which is to ask what kind of neuroscience (what kind of science) do we want? A question we feel we can ask of every other area of our existence.

------
plasticity - the new brain sciences
flexibility - new capitalism

flexibility is the ugly sibling, the mutated miniature of a hopeful idea —‘the ideological avatar of plasticity’ (p. 12).

We can either capture the potential of the brain's plasticity - the brain is what we do with it - or we can watch the possibilities be closed off by the demans and norms of new capitalism in the form of the ideal employee:

the ideal employee

• flexibility
• functionality
• adaptability in the work place
• and the ability to constantly relocate and re-connect emotionally (think social media)

Malabour envisions a ‘hostile takeover’ of the promising idea of plasticity by its miniature, flexibility and unless "neuronal man" finds his freedom, Malabou says neuroscientific discourse will unwittingly produce criteria, models, and categories for regulating social functioning, increasing daily the legitimation of the demand for flexibility as global norm.

To produce consciousness of the brain is not to interrupt the identity of brain and world and their mutual speculative relation; it is just the opposite, to emphasize them and to place scientific discovery at the service of an emancipatory political understanding. (p. 53)

Can we do neuroscience in an emancipatory way? Malabou doesn't answer this - but asking it could provoke us to look at the futility, the boredom, the dangers that arise when neuroscience

• and neuro-philosophical choruses

... fail to understand the full potentials and responsibilities that come with their insights.

What we are lacking is life, which is to say: resistance. Resistance is what we want. Resistance to flexibility, to this ideological norm advanced consciously or otherwise by a reductionist discourse that models and naturalizes the neuronal process in order to legitimate a certain social and political functioning. (p. 68)

 

[smcder]

the seductive allure of the neurosciences

This can be seen as a first step towards a phenomenology of the “seductive allure” that the neurosciences are exerting upon both the academic and the popular imagination.

Steps Toward a Critical Neuroscience - Dr. Jan Slaby
janslaby.com/downloads/slaby_stepstowardscns_2010.pdf

Abstract
This paper introduces the motivation and idea behind the recently founded interdisciplinary initiative:

Critical Neuroscience (Critical Neuroscience).

Critical Neuroscience is an approach that strives to understand, explain, contextualize, and, where called for, critique developments in and around the social, affective, and cognitive neurosciences with the aim to create the competencies needed to responsibly deal with new challenges and concerns emerging in relation to the brain sciences. It addresses scholars in the humanities as well as, importantly, neuroscientific practitioners, policy makers, and the public at large.

• Does neuroscience indeed have such wide-ranging effects or are we collectively overestimating its impacts at the expense of other important drivers of social and cultural change?
• Via what channels is neuroscience interacting with contemporary conceptions of selfhood, identity, and well-being?

Importantly, Critical Neuroscience strives to make the results of these assessments relevant to scientific practice itself. It aspires to motivate neuroscientists to be involved in the analysis of contextual factors, historical trajectories, conceptual difficulties, and potential consequences in connection to their empirical work. This paper begins to spell out a philosophical foundation for the project by outlining examples of the interaction taking place between the neurosciences and the social and cultural contexts in which they are embedded and by exposing some of the assumptions and argumentative patterns underlying dominant approaches. Recent anthropological work will be discussed to convey a sense of the defacto interactions between neuroscientific knowledge, its promissory projections, and the self-understandings of laypeople. This can be seen as a first step towards a phenomenology of the “seductive allure” that the neurosciences are exerting upon both the academic and the popular imagination. The concept of “critique” relevant to the project's overall orientation is outlined in the final section.

• exposing some of the assumptions and argumentative patterns underlying dominant approaches
• recent anthropological work will be discussed to convey a sense of the defacto interactions between neuroscientific knowledge, its promissory projections, and the self-understandings of laypeople.

This can be seen as a first step towards a phenomenology of the “seductive allure” that the neurosciences are exerting upon both the academic and the popular imagination.

 

[smcder]

The last of Slaby's review of Malabou ... dynamite

It is thus clear that this book will not serve everyone’s tastes. On the other hand, that might exactly be the problem these days: too many people in the humanities want to serve too many tastes, catering simultaneously the demands of the neoliberal university (‘research grants’, ‘interdisciplinarity!’), the debilitating culture of political correctness (‘no ad hominem arguments…’), the trend towards careful, piecemeal, local studies instead of large-scale social critique (‘better be careful!’), often resulting, on the part of scholars in the humanities, in escapes to aestheticized or marginal treatments.

Can we re-invigorate ourselves — even enrage us to revive the spirit, the power of intellectual critique? Do we still have the guts to say ‘no’?

 

[smcder]

Interesting irony that one of the survival machine's biggest threats to survival is itself. Regarding technology, technological advancement isn't the real problem, it's what people do with it.

Solutions?

 

[smcder]

Effective for what purpose? And equally important, whose purpose? In that vein, the lure of constructing AI might also be premised on a fiction. In fact I think it is, and on the way to accomplishing that goal our culture is seeding a further fiction -- that we are not capable of solving the problems we've created.

Which terms do you want to flush out?

So long as the automata are busily doing their thing out of sight anyway, why dismiss meditative thinking if it improves people's mental health and strengthens their spirits and capacity for good will? And especially when it leads to deep insights into the nature of reality for those who practice it?

I think we are more than 'survival machines' and also that the technological path we are on will destroy/is destroying our possibilities of finding meaningful satisfaction in life and improving the conditions of earth life in general.

I think we are more than 'survival machines' and also that the technological path we are on will destroy/is destroying our possibilities of finding meaningful satisfaction in life and improving the conditions of earth life in general.

How do we get off the path ... ? Here's the box I can't think myself out of:

Our wisdom traditions are pessimistic in a sense on this, Eccelsiastes for example, mythology is replete with relevant stories - Buddhism builds the "uninstructed" human psychology on GAD - greed, anger and delusion.

solutions offered

• repent
• meditate off the wheel of samara

You've mentioned an interesting idea before - that man's mind has been genetically altered or engineered (what is the source of this?) and this is also reflected in gnostic ideas of the split in our minds and souls - which gets a new telling in McGilChrist's The Master and His Emissary in terms of a war between the hemispheres ... arguing that the line of communication between the two is evolving ever thinner.

This was the sort of sermon too that Nietzsche preached from the high, icy mountains - calling for the Ubermensch for the "overcoming" of man by something greater ... reality: he spent much of his time alone in a cabin with migraines and other complaints.

But your call is a bit different, it's like Ishmael the gentle gorilla in Daniel Quinn's story who classified man as a "taker" and the gorillas as "leavers" only that might not be so ... there's a line of argument that leaving a swath of destruction and depletion is a primate legacy ... we aren't the only guilty party and the idea of the noble savage is a myth: native americans piling up thousands of buffalo at the bottom of a cliff and moving on to other territories when the grass is no longer green. *Is this true?? Let me see what I can find ...

But doesn't the knowledge we have of the possible disastrous effects facing us comes from the science and technology the development of which may be the cause of ... you can see where I complete that circle ... but arguably it took the whole history of getting here the way we did to know this ... so we would have had to be creatures of preternatural foresight to have avoided it or we would have had to be so gentle and careful that something less benevelont could have come out of the woods and taken up the narrative for us (William Golding's The Inheritors - anything to do with Hobbittses) and current narratives, like Quinns, are frustrating to me because they presuppose the whole of existing society as it is to get their books published - in other words, its a fantasy we can only now afford to indulge in which you can see clearly from the rest of the world - where those who have lived in resource rich areas contentedly for centuries, so the story goes, are slashing and burning and selling there homes for a "better" way of life. And what do we tell them? Because we are the ones buying it?

So to get off the path, do we have to better people than we are? Do we have to fix what's been broken in us? Do have to evolve? Do we have to just get out of the way - in which case what comes after could be much, much worse.

 

[smcder]

Natural Man

I can't find anything on primates over consuming and impacting their environments and then just moving on (although population would have been kept in check by disease and predators and this would have been a workable strategy) - everything I can turn up of course is on human damage to primate environment, the source I was thinking on was about 25 years ago.

What are good sources for the idea of alien alteration of human DNA - I've read or heard interviews where this is a source of schizophrenia for example and just the idea of keeping humans generally dissatisfied and unhappy as an outcome allowing us to be controlled or to cripple our development as a species - a common trope - I remember a science fiction stories in which a breed of humans had been developed to great intelligence and then inflicted with OCD to keep them from posing a threat to the less intelligent.

 

[Michael Allen]

Effective for what purpose? And equally important, whose purpose? In that vein, the lure of constructing AI might also be premised on a fiction. In fact I think it is, and on the way to accomplishing that goal our culture is seeding a further fiction -- that we are not capable of solving the problems we've created.

Which terms do you want to flush out?

If you must ask--most from the following list are suspect (I use them too) or are in need of revision or breaking:
Consciousness, Mental, Physical, Subject, Object, Awareness, Reason, Cause, Effect, Freedom, Will, Free-will, Artificial, Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence, Natural, Nature, Supernatural, Miracle, Spirit, Intentions/Intentionality...

So long as the automata are busily doing their thing out of sight anyway, why dismiss meditative thinking if it improves people's mental health and strengthens their spirits and capacity for good will? And especially when it leads to deep insights into the nature of reality for those who practice it?

Not dismissing it -- but just as you don't like divisions between p and a consciousness... Meditative insight may be a higher layer of activity resting on a bedrock of daemonic calculating automata...to try to break these things up and treat them as if they had independent existence is another bad habit.

I think we are more than 'survival machines' and also that the technological path we are on will destroy/is destroying our possibilities of finding meaningful satisfaction in life and improving the conditions of earth life in general.

I didn't say we were "only" -- our genes complexes evolved first a body, then an 'AI' construct called a brain and its now the machine is turning against its "maker" But if we are looking for ultimate meaning in our lowly origins alone, we are in for the greatest disappointment.

Also, thanks to @smcder for the Dawkins quote...I was of course not trying to take credit for the quote (but I did forget to put down the reference assuming everyone knew where it came from).

Interesting irony that one of the survival machine's biggest threats to survival is itself. Regarding technology, technological advancement isn't the real problem, it's what people do with it.

I can't keep up with all the threads on this thread...

 

[Michael Allen]

http://leidlmair.at/doc/WhyHeideggerianAIFailed.pdf