Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 5

[smcder]

"Homo something or other became a cyborg the moment he did this."

Let's talk about that proposition, which followed from what Soupie was arguing and Steve entertained at that point. Who can believe that proposition at this point, and why (on what basis)?

Still catching up but I brought this point up again recently (or did I only bring it up in my mind?) it came up when I was thinking about technicity and whether we were in charge of our technology or vice-versa. I think there was a Cyborg Manifesto in there too ... the idea that any tool was an extension (Merleau Pony uses similar examples in the recent articles I posted and in discussion of artificial limbs) our ability (and some other apes and birds?) to do that, to extend our bodies does make us pre-cyborgs. When the fella above picked up the stick, he became one - he augmented himself and his abilities. The defintion of a cyborg is a being with both organic and biomechanical parts. In this case a stick is biomechanical. So the image above is a cyborg. ehhhh waving hand back and forth ... it at least is going that way, fair? Or not?

And I do still stand by that and the image from 2001 above still makes that point to me. As a male, I get the heady rush that image represents. And I do think it's hard (as a male) to imagine a future that didn't run its course from there. Now how much blame to assign us and how much to the technology is a matter of sorting out the parts of us and how much control we have. I guess, as I posted above, I tend to be a bit pessimistic on this. And for many, there is the lure of the shiny supersuitism of transhumanism. It doesn't appeal to me, but then again, right now I'm just trying to hold on to all the parts I started with!

BUT ... saying all that is different, in my mind, than endorsing it or being happy about it or being closed to other ways of seeing it. In fact, right now I'm excited because I may end up completely changing my mind and see this in a whole new way. This isn't a proposition I want to hold on to, I just don't have anything to replace it with.

AND let me say there's another side to it ... this too:



Is a cyborg and one I might be very glad to see one day. Finally, in a week or two, I myself will be something of a cyborg or at least a chimera as I am set to receive a treatment consisting of artificial antibodies that will become part of my body. So for me, being a cyborg is a potential, not a destiny.

 

[smcder]

Ufology wrote:

"Although you may think that telling someone else you don't think I understand something doesn't imply any judgement about my comprehension, the fact is that the words themselves do, and that position ( intended or not ) might even be true. I don't always understand everything. But that's not the problem. I wouldn't stand next to you at a meeting and tell the guy across from us I don't think you understand something. Please have the same consideration is all I'm asking."

FFS, can you just let it go and allow the rest of us to get on with the subject of the discussion? All of us have felt dismissed or misunderstood in on-line discussions. Get over it.

There's something else, something obvious, in your verbal behavior that clogs up discussions in this thread. It's what Steve had in mind when he said, approximately, that 'you've always got to be right'. I should probably have let this addendum go, because now you'll most likely engage yourself in further self-defensiveness and irrelevant self-aggrandizement. Let's see if you can resist and step your ego aside for awhile.

OK Back to reading ... my last post may not have been on point.

 

[Constance]

Still catching up but I brought this point up again recently (or did I only bring it up in my mind?) it came up when I was thinking about technicity and whether we were in charge of our technology or vice-versa. I think there was a Cyborg Manifesto in there too ... the idea that any tool was an extension (Merleau Pony uses similar examples in the recent articles I posted and in discussion of artificial limbs) our ability (and some other apes and birds?) to do that, to extend our bodies does make us pre-cyborgs. When the fella above picked up the stick, he became one - he augmented himself and his abilities. The defintion of a cyborg is a being with both organic and biomechanical parts. In this case a stick is biomechanical. So the image above is a cyborg. ehhhh waving hand back and forth ... it at least is going that way, fair? Or not?

And I do still stand by that and the image from 2001 above still makes that point to me. As a male, I get the heady rush that image represents. And I do think it's hard (as a male) to imagine a future that didn't run its course from there. Now how much blame to assign us and how much to the technology is a matter of sorting out the parts of us and how much control we have. I guess, as I posted above, I tend to be a bit pessimistic on this. And for many, there is the lure of the shiny supersuitism of transhumanism. It doesn't appeal to me, but then again, right now I'm just trying to hold on to all the parts I started with!

BUT ... saying all that is different, in my mind, than endorsing it or being happy about it or being closed to other ways of seeing it. In fact, right now I'm excited because I may end up completely changing my mind and see this in a whole new way. This isn't a proposition I want to hold on to, I just don't have anything to replace it with.

AND let me say there's another side to it ... this too:



Is a cyborg and one I might be very glad to see one day. Finally, in a week or two, I myself will be something of a cyborg or at least a chimera as I am set to receive a treatment consisting of artificial antibodies that will become part of my body. So for me, being a cyborg is a potential, not a destiny.

Curious thing just happened when I began reading this latest post of yours -- my consciousness must have gone back to the last place I'd placed you in my mind -- cutting the grass -- and I immediately experienced the wonderful smell of newly cut grass which I have enjoyed numberless times going back to my childhood. What's that about, cybernauts?

Do you think I'm saying that I actually smelled the aroma of newly cut grass, or that I simply remembered it so vividly that it seemed to me that I smelled that aroma? I couldn't tell the difference in that moment. This bears on the nature of consciousness. It can't be sidestepped and requires a physical or cybernetic explanation if you claim there is one. Let's not presume that a physical or cybernetic explanation exists, but rather recognize the yet-unmet challenge of demonstrating, validating, such an explanation.

 

[smcder]

@Constance ... I'm remembering this ... good stuff!

Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 2

I'm looking at emergence in five easy steps now ... and thinking about Sheldrake's morphic resonance now and you know that looks a lot to me like some ideas about consciousness ... just like it's hard to think how individual ants with brains this big -----> " " can come together and do something so complicated as create an air conditioned, fully functioning city ... so its hard to think neurons can come together to form a brain (and like I pointed out in the post above and in my response to @Pharoah, these aren't direct comparisons - ants being physical systems - but consciousness being ? ... but now I go the other way and ask about the rule ignorance is useful ... after all the ensuing discussion, I think "are those ants do dumb after all?" if so, why don't we have artificial ant colonies by now ... after all, those five rules are easy to implement in a computer system, aren't they?

 

[Randall]

Another case of rinse and repeat, that one!

Ya. And, If it only led to the illusion that those people had consciousness too, it would be even better. There's always some animatronic creepiness to those types when they get in power .

 

[smcder]

Curious thing just happened when I began reading this latest post of yours -- my consciousness went back to the last place I'd placed you in my mind -- cutting the grass -- and I experienced the wonderful smell of newly cut grass which I have enjoyed numberless times going back to my childhood. What's that about, cybernauts?

 

[Randall]

Ufology wrote:

"Although you may think that telling someone else you don't think I understand something doesn't imply any judgement about my comprehension, the fact is that the words themselves do, and that position ( intended or not ) might even be true. I don't always understand everything. But that's not the problem. I wouldn't stand next to you at a meeting and tell the guy across from us I don't think you understand something. Please have the same consideration is all I'm asking."

FFS, can you just let it go and allow the rest of us to get on with the subject of the discussion? All of us have felt dismissed or misunderstood in on-line discussions. Get over it.

There's something else, something obvious, in your verbal behavior that clogs up discussions in this thread. It's what Steve had in mind when he said, approximately, that 'you've always got to be right'. I should probably have let this addendum go, because now you'll most likely engage yourself in further self-defensiveness and irrelevant self-aggrandizement. Let's see if you can resist and step your ego aside for awhile.

Had you not continued to make an issue out of it above, and had @smcder not made the "pre-emptive" post, the issue would have been buried in posts from days gone by. But that's not what either of you did, so before you point fingers at me, take a look at yourself, and if you address a post to me or mention me in a post, don't expect that I won't have a comment about it. Now please don't make me regret what I said back here: Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 5

 

[Constance]

Hi Constance. Glad we're speaking again ... I think ... LOL. You've made some really great comments lately and I hope we can continue on in that spirit. I'll take it that your comment above is just a friendly gibe to encourage me not to be dismissive of the ideas you present. As always, you can be assured that when I do make a comment, it has followed at least some study and reflection, and that I'm not being dismissive. I value your participation here and am glad you stayed.

Ufology wrote:"Hi Constance. Glad we're speaking again ... I think ... LOL. You've made some really great comments lately and I hope we can continue on in that spirit. I'll take it that your comment above is just a friendly gibe to encourage me not to be dismissive of the ideas you present. As always, you can be assured that when I do make a comment, it has followed at least some study and reflection, and that I'm not being dismissive. I value your participation here and am glad you stayed."

As usual you assume and presume too much. My comment above was not 'just a friendly jibe'. Some day you'll get the point.

I also think a number of our views are actually much more aligned than might be presumed, and I feel better about that. I don't recall your exact words, but you mentioned that you believe consciousness is something that is part of the natural universe ( in the larger sense ), and I took that as being opposed to something supernatural.

So you think that the present extent of our species' knowledge has grokked nature in its entirety and can thus exclude/deny experiences that cannot be accounted for within our current knowledge base. That is not the way I see it.

If that's true then between that and a number of other points you've made, there are only a few differences of opinion with respect to a couple of key issues.

Wrong again.

We both know what those issues are, so no need to recap them.

As usual, you're presuming -- and thus taking the easy way out of demonstrating what you're claiming. That's fine with me. But to be clear, I am not engaging in a dialogue with you and your ideas.

 

[Randall]

I just came in and noticed your post after cutting the grass in the backyard .

 

[smcder]

Had you not continued to make an issue out of it above, and had @smcder not made the "pre-emptive" post, the issue would have been buried in posts from days gone by. But that's not what either of you did, so before you point fingers at me, take a look at yourself, and if you address a post to me or mention me in a post, don't expect that I won't have a comment about it. Now please don't make me regret what I said back here: Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 5

Ah, if you only had free will ... no one could make you regret anything!

 

[smcder]

Curious thing just happened when I began reading this latest post of yours -- my consciousness must have gone back to the last place I'd placed you in my mind -- cutting the grass -- and I immediately experienced the wonderful smell of newly cut grass which I have enjoyed numberless times going back to my childhood. What's that about, cybernauts?

Do you think I'm saying that I actually smelled the aroma of newly cut grass, or that I simply remembered it so vividly that it seemed to me that I smelled that aroma? I couldn't tell the difference in that moment. This bears on the nature of consciousness. It can't be sidestepped and requires a physical or cybernetic explanation if you claim there is one. Let's not presume that a physical or cybernetic explanation exists, but rather recognize the yet-unmet challenge of demonstrating, validating, such an explanation.

I've had too many such experiences to claim or presume any particular explanation. My wife and I used to always comment on "odd" experiences until we found that the more attention we gave them, the more they happened, at one point we seemed to have shared a very odd dream - actual a figure or entity in a dream ... it may have been doing different things in each dream. At any rate, it came to the point where we stopped commenting on it and then the odd events seemed to drop off - now they happen when they need to and I just let things happen that way. For example if I need to see someone, they will show up in an expectedly unexpected way - meaning in a way I can't anticipate but I can predictably not anticipate. It's made getting things done much easier ...

wu wei

 

[smcder]

And the next post following Soupie's 1356 is this one by you, Steve:

"Light comes into your eyes, sound comes into your ears - stick your finger in a socket, you feel something, stick a wire into a nerve in your shoulder you feel something, change the input enough and it will feel "like" your real arm did ... where's the new information?

Take a pencil and run it along a smooth surface ... now run it along a rough surface ... "where" do you feel the surface, at the tip of the pencil?

Homo something or other became a cyborg the moment he did this:

Here's your post after @Soupie's:

It seems to me that the artificial organs and other devices you're discussing facilitate nervous transmissions in injured or absent parts of the body that enable those parts to function again sufficient to the degree that qualia experienced through those injured or missing parts are restored. Again, the body does not "produce" qualia; it experiences qualia, and it is this capacity for qualitative experience that is restored to the individual through technologies that reintegrate the sense of the bodily capacity to interact again with the world through the agency it formerly experienced through the amputated limb. Not only the 'brain' but the conscious self and the mind of an amputee are shocked and estranged from the local world, the environment, when a primary means of access to and agency in it are cut off. This is a measure of the holistic integration of the mind and the body it inhabits.

"That which a being is made to bear it is not made to bear the want of."I don't remember who wrote or said that. The statement was cited several times by a professor of mine in graduate school and it has stayed with me for years.

If I read it right, not made to bear the wont of is why I don't want them taking any of my body parts - I can't really remember how it used to be before the illness, how it felt - or honestly if it is actually worse - you get into a way of being in the body gradually, with sharp pain of course there's a quick adjustment but when sharp, occasional pain, though unpredictable is a normal part of things ... then you get into that as a way of being too.

What you say in the first paragraph is very much in my idea of a cyborg ... I read a book called Man Plus as a kid - where an astronaut was cybernetically altered to live on Mars and the story was about how hard it was for him to adapt, how lonely he was and it made a big impression on me. Robocop had a similar message, when they tried to create more cybernetic police officers they went crazy or killed themselves ... only Peter Weller's character was strong enough, devoted enough to make it and be a good cop.

My idea for a human technology - humorously illustrated in the idea of the Heideggerean hammer (always at hand!) is that technology is transparent and we can put on and take off the technology, we can wear it - it's not embedded ... but it now seems to me, having carried a new smart phone around for a few weeks, that there may not be as much of a difference ... for a long time I didn't carry a cell phone and now I see the effects - on balance I don't think I've gained anything and the past few days it's been sort of drifting away from me ... now there's the issue of this laptop.

 

[smcder]

Yes, @Pharoah provided a long post there that clarified the line of his thinking and its eventuation in his HCT theory. We should take all this up again.

Where is this post from @Pharoah?

From one of my posts ...

From "I sing the body electric" - Whitman
And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul?
And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?

Which reminds me, I still haven't figured out the Wallace Stevens poem but I made a connection with the Varela paper I posted above.

 

[Constance]

... the idea that any tool was an extension (Merleau Pony uses similar examples in the recent articles I posted and in discussion of artificial limbs) our ability (and some other apes and birds?) to do that, to extend our bodies does make us pre-cyborgs.

I don't think it does.

Also, MP's phenomenological explorations of our conscious relation to artificial limbs (when we have them) or missing limbs (when we don't), cannot be made coherent in terms of cybernetics.

We seem to be coming to a fork in the road in this current discussion which we should explore more deeply. Two viewpoints seem prominent -- that when our species began {and we began long ago} to supplement what we could accomplish for our purposes in the environment by using tools, we were either

a) using our intelligence to expand the range or precision of our activities [based on what we wanted to do], or

b) acting out a cog-like function as tools of the Great CyberThing that some people seem to believe controls our behaviors and even our thoughts.

There is probably some subtler form of thinking that will subsume or integrate those radically different interpretations of what kind of beings we are, but it doesn't appear to have been reached yet.

 

[smcder]

I don't think it does.

Also, MP's phenomenological explorations of our conscious relation to artificial limbs (when we have them) or missing limbs (when we don't), cannot be made coherent in terms of cybernetics.

We seem to be coming to a fork in the road in this current discussion which we should explore more deeply. Two viewpoints seem prominent -- that when our species began {and we began long ago} to supplement what we could accomplish for our purposes in the environment by using tools, we were either

a) using our intelligence to expand the range or precision of our activities [based on what we wanted to do], or

b) acting out a cog-like function as tools of the Great CyberThing that some people seem to believe controls our behaviors and even our thoughts.

There is probably some subtler form of thinking that will subsume or integrate those radically different interpretations of what kind of beings we are, but it doesn't appear to have been reached yet.

My idea of a cyborg fits a) so maybe it's my phrasing "makes us a cyborg" that use of makes doesn't imply a change - when I pick up an axe, as I did today, or get on a mower, I'm just me on a mower or with an axe, happily expanding my range ... but now I see (see I told you I would end up learning and changing!) that idea of a cyborg as dehumanizing - that's why those narratives - Man Plus and Robocop made an impression on me, because the characters were shown to be more human (ah ... hence the title? Man Plus? There's also a Theodore Sturgeon book More Than Human when five people with extraordinary powers join telepathically - they become something greater, but then through it all, they also become more human as individuals ... just as Robo Cop and Man Plus did) ... now that also seems to be b) the sense in which Heidegger used the word technicity as something that could subsume us ... let me find the text - it's from his Der Spiegel interview at the end of his life.

But ... is there some truth in both interpretations? Or do we choose to let go of our humanity or become submissive in b) in which case we are still human but letting go our individuality as we did say in other totalitarian regimes? So a) for me fits the idea of human or transparent technology, that serves us ... but again, it never seems to work that way in practice.

Here's a very specific example. The weapon effect - which is the idea that having a weapon actually increases the likelihood of violence ... that is a very nuanced statement - we can say when and where and how and who and we can conduct training to mitigate this - but it's still an effect. But it's also true of the unknown hominid above when he picks up that stick and changes the course of human history ... so maybe it's a) and c) with b) being our real place - i.e. in a position to have a choice?

 

[smcder]

That link you posted PDF is the only copy of Stevens poem I can find.

 

[smcder]

Only a God Can Save Us

Heidegger: First of all, please tell me where I have spoken about democracy and the other things you mention. I would indeed characterize them as half-way measures, [though] because I do not see in them any actual confrontation with the world of technicity, inasmuch as behind them all, according to my view, stands the conception that technicity in its essence is something that man holds within his own hands. In my opinion, this is not possible. Technicity in its essence is something that man does not master by his own power.25

...

SPIEGEL: It is obvious that man it never [complete] master of his tools -- witness the case of the Sorcerer's Apprentice. But is it not a little too pessimistic to say: we are not gaining mastery over this surely much greater tool [that is] modern technicity?
Heidegger: Pessimism, no. In the area of the reflection that I am attempting now, pessimism and optimism are positions that don't go far enough. But above all, modern technicity is no "tool" and has nothing at all to do with tools.

SPIEGEL: Why should we be so powerfully overwhelmed by technicity that...?

Heidegger: I don't say [we are] "overwhelmed" [by it]. I say that up to the present we have not yet found a way to respond to the essence of technicity.

SPIEGEL: But someone might object very naively: what must be mastered in this case? Everything is functioning. More and more electric power companies are being built. Production is up. In highly technologized parts of the earth, people are well cared for. We are living in a state of prosperity. What really is lacking to us?

Heidegger: Everything is functioning. That is precisely what is awesome, that everything functions, that the functioning propels everything more and more toward further functioning, and that technicity increasingly dislodges man and uproots him from the earth. I don't know if you were shocked, but [certainly] I was shocked when a short time ago I saw the pictures of the earth taken from the moon. We do not need atomic bombs at all [to uproot us] -- the uprooting of man is already here. All our relationships have become merely technical ones. It is no longer upon an earth that man lives today. Recently I had a long [209] dialogue in Provence with Rene Char -- a poet and resistance fighter, as you know. In Provence now, launch pads are being built and the countryside laid waste in unimaginable fashion. This poet, who certainly is open to no suspicion of sentimentality or of glorifying the idyllic, said to me that the uprooting of man that is now taking place is the end [of everything human], unless thinking and poetizing once again regain [their] nonviolent power.

 

[smcder]

Donna Haraway - A Cyborg Manifesto

A Cyborg Manifesto is an essay written by Donna Haraway. Haraway began writing the Manifesto in 1983 to address the Socialist Review request of American socialist feminists to ponder over the future of socialist feminism in the context of the early Reagan era and the decline of leftist politics. The first versions of the essay had a strong socialist and European connection that the Socialist Review East Coast Collective found too controversial to publish. The Berkeley Socialist Review Collective published the essay in 1985 under the editor Jeff Escoffier.[1] The essay is most well known for being published in Donna Haraway's 1991 book Simians, Cyborgs and Women.
In Donna Haraway's essay, the concept of the cyborg is a rejection of rigid boundaries, notably those separating "human" from "animal" and "human" from "machine." She writes: "The cyborg does not dream of community on the model of the organic family, this time without the oedipal project. The cyborg would not recognize the Garden of Eden; it is not made of mud and cannot dream of returning to dust."[2]
The Manifesto criticizes traditional notions of feminism, particularly feminist focuses on identity politics, and encouraging instead coalition through affinity. She uses the metaphor of a cyborg to urge feminists to move beyond the limitations of traditional gender, feminism, and politics.[2] Marisa Olson summarized Haraway's thoughts as a belief that there is no distinction between natural life and artificial man-made machines.[3]

 

[Burnt State]

Hence the rise of Janelle Monae and her own reconceptualization of not only early sci fi cinema like Lang but also Blade Runner. The other, and othering is reinvented in her work using Black Consciousness as the basis for her time traveling rebel of the future. Question: is it easier for white feminists to dissolve boundary lines that Black Women are constantly being held to?

 

[Randall]

As usual you assume and presume too much. My comment above was not 'just a friendly jibe' ... But to be clear, I am not engaging in a dialogue with you and your ideas.

God please send me a therapist

.