Can experience be 'demonstrated' mathematically? I don't think so. Moreover, according to your representation of Tononi's claim, he himself uses the term 'may' or some equivalent -- thus he evidently realizes that he has not demonstrated anything about the nature of experienced reality but is presenting a conjecture postulated on an analogy the grounds of which exist only in his own theory.
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Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 5
- Thread starter Gene Steinberg
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Can experience be 'demonstrated' mathematically? I don't think so. Moreover, according to your representation of Tononi's claim, he himself uses the term 'may' or some equivalent -- thus he evidently realizes that he has not demonstrated anything about the nature of experienced reality but is presenting a conjecture postulated on an analogy the grounds of which exist only in his own theory.
S
smcder
Guest
Have you run a literature review?Well...I can't believe it to be too brilliant because it's one of those too obvious questions that make me feel as though I am missing something big in its development in the philosophical literature...as though I'm the only kid on the playground who doesn't know the "rules" of dodge ball
Not sure about your question...will think it through
ie Google?
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S
smcder
Guest
If not, I have a kind of "black box" idea.
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Sent from my LGLS991 using Tapatalk
S
smcder
Guest
Pharoah
Paranormal Adept
Go on then... I am all ears. open the box
S
smcder
Guest
hang on a tick ...
In the middle of Nagel 98
philosophy.fas.nyu.edu/docs/IO/.../conceiving.pdf
and don't see immediately how HCT is going to answer it if HCT doesn't solve the M/B problem ...
give me a bit of time
S
smcder
Guest
interesting "twist" on the zombie argument or maybe I missed it or forgot it
Above, Pharoah asked Soupie: "↑What does IIT say information is?"
Soupie quoted the following from wikipedia:
This wiki article has obviously been written by another individual steeped in the presuppositions and even the language of IIT and other theories based in 'information theory' (derived from developments in computational 'science'). This author uses the same. The premises of computationism and informationism alike include presuppositions concerning determinism {an unproved article of faith that the universe is a 'closed system' and thus deterministic}, leading to materialism/physicalism, objectivism, and reductivism and/or eliminativism concerning consciousness. All this is clear from the wiki author's presupposition that 'information' in the brain 'generates' qualitative experience and consciousness, a word choice and concept I've repeatedly objected to in your posts, Soupie, since you entered this conversation a year ago. No one has demonstrated that 'information' -- that highly abstract and still-undefined concept -- generates 'experience' or consciousness, neither of which can be approached with comprehension without recognizing their phenomenology. And that requires phenomenological investigation of both what is given in our situated existence and that which we bring to it in and through our own increasing awareness, activity, and consciousness of the nature of our 'reality' in the actual temporally changing world in which we find ourselves existing.
You go on to quote this further paragraph from the author of the wiki article:
"In a system composed of connected "mechanisms" (nodes containing information and causally influencing other nodes), the information among them is said to be integrated if and to the extent that there is a greater amount of information in the repertoire of a whole system regarding its previous state than there is in the sum of the all the mechanisms considered individually. In this way, integrated information does not increase by simply adding more mechanisms to a system if the mechanisms are independent of each other. Applied to consciousness, parts of an experience (qualia) such as color and shape are not experienced separately for the reason that they are integrated, unified in a single, whole experience; applied in another way, our digestive system is not considered part of our consciousness because the information generated in the body is not intrinsically integrated with the brain.[/quote]
First note the presupposition expressed in the opening of that paragraph: "in a system composed of connected "mechanisms". Connected and interconnected processes -- processing of information -- no doubt exist and evolve in the brain and involve additional processes in the body, but that does not mean that these 'mechanistic' processes account for all that the living creature experiences in the world. To think so requires that one utterly ignores one's own experience, conscious reflection upon it, and thought (mind), replacing that which is experientially undergone in existence with a concept of be-ing -- the be-ing of what-is -- as a mechanistic matrix in which we are acted upon by, manipulated within, a world/universe that is a totalized informational system, but never acting or capable of thinking and choosing in our own right on the basis of what we learn and know directly, both prereflectively and reflectively, in our temporally accumulating conscious experience in a palpable world presented to us directly through our senses and our sense-making.
Continuing from the wiki extract:
"Applied to consciousness, parts of an experience (qualia) such as color and shape are not experienced separately for the reason that they are integrated, unified in a single, whole experience; applied in another way, our digestive system is not considered part of our consciousness because the information generated in the body is not intrinsically integrated with the brain."
To begin with, theorizing about the perception of color and shape does not begin to touch the almost inexhaustible range of 'qualia' we experience [again, we have Nagel and Chalmers, esp Chalmers, to thank for reducing the concept of qualia to the catch phrase 'what it feels like', as if what we feel in our existence is a random collection of colors, shapes, tastes, etc. What does it 'feel like' to be an individual living organism existing in the 'world' we live in, a world comprising nature and culture --- i.e., in that which is given in physical and biological nature and what we add to it -- and in which what we add to it (interpersonally, socially, culturally, economically, politically) also becomes part of that which is 'given' to the extent that we individually either accommodate ourselves to it or attempt to change it, improve it? We will never understand human consciousness [and the forms of protoconsciousness that precede it in evolution] until we investigate all the levels and aspects of its production of meaning in the world, until we look our own human experience whole, comprehensively, historically, and in the present we ourselves exist in.
The last lines of your extract from the wiki author's belief system add further to the naievte and confusion in ‘integrated information theory’ regarding the relationship between the brain and phenomenal experience.
“Applied to consciousness, parts of an experience (qualia) such as color and shape are not experienced separately for the reason that they are integrated, unified in a single, whole experience; applied in another way, our digestive system is not considered part of our consciousness because the information generated in the body is not intrinsically integrated with the brain.”
The first half of the sentence is nonsense because, while we generally encounter colors and shapes integrated in phenomenal appearances of things [except people like Steve who are color-blind], we can, with the speed of thought, transfer our attention -- from the combined color and shape seen in the momentary appearance of some thing (in a given moment in the changing light provided by our location on the turning earth) to a concentration on either the shape or the color. Are we then ‘dis-integrating’ our phenomenal experience? I don’t think so; we are merely attending to different aspects of what we see. And we do see and hear and touch and taste and smell and generally feel the actual world in our vicinity directly. Just as we directly sense the state of our own digestive system, when we are hungry and when our digestive system is disturbed, and we obviously become conscious of those states and act according to our needs.
Soupie quoted the following from wikipedia:
This wiki article has obviously been written by another individual steeped in the presuppositions and even the language of IIT and other theories based in 'information theory' (derived from developments in computational 'science'). This author uses the same. The premises of computationism and informationism alike include presuppositions concerning determinism {an unproved article of faith that the universe is a 'closed system' and thus deterministic}, leading to materialism/physicalism, objectivism, and reductivism and/or eliminativism concerning consciousness. All this is clear from the wiki author's presupposition that 'information' in the brain 'generates' qualitative experience and consciousness, a word choice and concept I've repeatedly objected to in your posts, Soupie, since you entered this conversation a year ago. No one has demonstrated that 'information' -- that highly abstract and still-undefined concept -- generates 'experience' or consciousness, neither of which can be approached with comprehension without recognizing their phenomenology. And that requires phenomenological investigation of both what is given in our situated existence and that which we bring to it in and through our own increasing awareness, activity, and consciousness of the nature of our 'reality' in the actual temporally changing world in which we find ourselves existing.
You go on to quote this further paragraph from the author of the wiki article:
"In a system composed of connected "mechanisms" (nodes containing information and causally influencing other nodes), the information among them is said to be integrated if and to the extent that there is a greater amount of information in the repertoire of a whole system regarding its previous state than there is in the sum of the all the mechanisms considered individually. In this way, integrated information does not increase by simply adding more mechanisms to a system if the mechanisms are independent of each other. Applied to consciousness, parts of an experience (qualia) such as color and shape are not experienced separately for the reason that they are integrated, unified in a single, whole experience; applied in another way, our digestive system is not considered part of our consciousness because the information generated in the body is not intrinsically integrated with the brain.[/quote]
First note the presupposition expressed in the opening of that paragraph: "in a system composed of connected "mechanisms". Connected and interconnected processes -- processing of information -- no doubt exist and evolve in the brain and involve additional processes in the body, but that does not mean that these 'mechanistic' processes account for all that the living creature experiences in the world. To think so requires that one utterly ignores one's own experience, conscious reflection upon it, and thought (mind), replacing that which is experientially undergone in existence with a concept of be-ing -- the be-ing of what-is -- as a mechanistic matrix in which we are acted upon by, manipulated within, a world/universe that is a totalized informational system, but never acting or capable of thinking and choosing in our own right on the basis of what we learn and know directly, both prereflectively and reflectively, in our temporally accumulating conscious experience in a palpable world presented to us directly through our senses and our sense-making.
Continuing from the wiki extract:
"Applied to consciousness, parts of an experience (qualia) such as color and shape are not experienced separately for the reason that they are integrated, unified in a single, whole experience; applied in another way, our digestive system is not considered part of our consciousness because the information generated in the body is not intrinsically integrated with the brain."
To begin with, theorizing about the perception of color and shape does not begin to touch the almost inexhaustible range of 'qualia' we experience [again, we have Nagel and Chalmers, esp Chalmers, to thank for reducing the concept of qualia to the catch phrase 'what it feels like', as if what we feel in our existence is a random collection of colors, shapes, tastes, etc. What does it 'feel like' to be an individual living organism existing in the 'world' we live in, a world comprising nature and culture --- i.e., in that which is given in physical and biological nature and what we add to it -- and in which what we add to it (interpersonally, socially, culturally, economically, politically) also becomes part of that which is 'given' to the extent that we individually either accommodate ourselves to it or attempt to change it, improve it? We will never understand human consciousness [and the forms of protoconsciousness that precede it in evolution] until we investigate all the levels and aspects of its production of meaning in the world, until we look our own human experience whole, comprehensively, historically, and in the present we ourselves exist in.
The last lines of your extract from the wiki author's belief system add further to the naievte and confusion in ‘integrated information theory’ regarding the relationship between the brain and phenomenal experience.
“Applied to consciousness, parts of an experience (qualia) such as color and shape are not experienced separately for the reason that they are integrated, unified in a single, whole experience; applied in another way, our digestive system is not considered part of our consciousness because the information generated in the body is not intrinsically integrated with the brain.”
The first half of the sentence is nonsense because, while we generally encounter colors and shapes integrated in phenomenal appearances of things [except people like Steve who are color-blind], we can, with the speed of thought, transfer our attention -- from the combined color and shape seen in the momentary appearance of some thing (in a given moment in the changing light provided by our location on the turning earth) to a concentration on either the shape or the color. Are we then ‘dis-integrating’ our phenomenal experience? I don’t think so; we are merely attending to different aspects of what we see. And we do see and hear and touch and taste and smell and generally feel the actual world in our vicinity directly. Just as we directly sense the state of our own digestive system, when we are hungry and when our digestive system is disturbed, and we obviously become conscious of those states and act according to our needs.
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Michael Allen
Paranormal Adept
You are right of course...it's a habit of mine not to read arguments and proofs before I try to work them out myself...a habit i developed during my undergrad years reading math proofs which i found extremely dull and tedious if i had not already taken a "crack" at it first. Interesting.
Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk
Randall
J. Randall Murphy
Perhaps the reason that reductionism is so popular is because most things are reducible.
Isn't that a little reductive?
This is a wonderful post by Pharoah in response to a question about the possible comparability of mathematical and musical notation from Steve:
Pharoah: "Short answer: no.
Long answer: A composer could write a note with a symbol notation. As a performer, I could then hit my wastepaper bin with a stick and the composer say, "No that is not quite the sound I had in mind" etc ad infinitum, as I go round my room hitting objects with sticks to try to find the sound that the composer has in mind. Is that notation an idea or concept in music? I would say no, but others (the avandgarde) might say yes. I wuld say that one could play Beethoven's fifth symphony on bins of different timbre because the nature of the sound does not define the music—though not as impactful as an orchestra.
I would say that sound is not necessarily music (or a music idea or concept). E.g. Bird song is not music, rap is not music, poetry is not music, a heart beating is not music. Musical expression (i.e. the evocation of mood, feeling, and concepts structured in sounds) using sound is integral to something being music. Notation is the means of conveying that intent and therefore notation in itself cannot transcend musical intent... though that does not stop people from pretending that it can."
I'm not sure I agree that birdsong and other sounds made by animals do not express something similar to music (as a musicologist you might well disagree), something originating in the same source -- the need of living organisms to express their sense of life, in a way to declare their presence in the world and to celebrate their experience in it. Of course animals also vocalize to express warnings to their conspecifics, also to attempt to frighten a threatening predator, and simply to express rage in stressful situations. But in my experience, what I hear in birdsong, the growling of dogs and tigers, and the purring of my cat is expression out of the fullness of various feelings, some of which do not have obvious motivations in self-preservation.
The poet of consciousness whom I often quote has a relevant statement of this thought in a poem entitled "The Creations of Sound":
"If the poetry of X was music,
So that it came to him of its own,
Without understanding, out of the wall
Or in the ceiling, in sounds not chosen,
Or chosen quickly, in a freedom
That was their element, we should not know
That X is an obstruction, a man,
Too exactly himself, and that there are words
Better without an author, without a poet,
Or having a separate author, a different poet,
An accretion from ourselves, intelligent
Beyond intelligence, an artificial man
At a distance, a secondary expositor,
A being of sound, whom one does not approach
Through any exaggeration. From him, we collect.
Tell X that speech is not dirty silence
Clarified. It is silence made still dirtier.
It is more than an imitation for the ear.
He lacks this venerable complication.
His poems are not of the second part of life.
They do not make the visible a little hard
To see, nor, reverberating, eke out the mind
On peculiar horns, themselves eked out
By the spontaneous particulars of sound.
We do not say ourselves like that in poems
We say ourselves in syllables that rise
From the floor, rising in speech we do not speak."
I'd have preferred that he use the word 'ground' rather than the word 'floor' at the end (though to do so would fail to sustain his metaphor), but his meaning is the same as what Heidegger means by the word 'ground', that the meaning we draw from being in the world extends the meaning that we find in the earthly ground of our being.
Comparable lines from Heidegger:
“. . . poetry that thinks is in truth
The topology of Being.
This topology tells Being the
Whereabouts of its actual
presence.” Page 12 of Poetry, Language, Thought
This paper by Denis Donoghue provides a good (enough) introductory reading of what Stevens's poetry expresses and the various linguistic means by which he expresses it:
The Motive for Metaphor | The Hudson Review
Pharoah: "Short answer: no.
Long answer: A composer could write a note with a symbol notation. As a performer, I could then hit my wastepaper bin with a stick and the composer say, "No that is not quite the sound I had in mind" etc ad infinitum, as I go round my room hitting objects with sticks to try to find the sound that the composer has in mind. Is that notation an idea or concept in music? I would say no, but others (the avandgarde) might say yes. I wuld say that one could play Beethoven's fifth symphony on bins of different timbre because the nature of the sound does not define the music—though not as impactful as an orchestra.
I would say that sound is not necessarily music (or a music idea or concept). E.g. Bird song is not music, rap is not music, poetry is not music, a heart beating is not music. Musical expression (i.e. the evocation of mood, feeling, and concepts structured in sounds) using sound is integral to something being music. Notation is the means of conveying that intent and therefore notation in itself cannot transcend musical intent... though that does not stop people from pretending that it can."
I'm not sure I agree that birdsong and other sounds made by animals do not express something similar to music (as a musicologist you might well disagree), something originating in the same source -- the need of living organisms to express their sense of life, in a way to declare their presence in the world and to celebrate their experience in it. Of course animals also vocalize to express warnings to their conspecifics, also to attempt to frighten a threatening predator, and simply to express rage in stressful situations. But in my experience, what I hear in birdsong, the growling of dogs and tigers, and the purring of my cat is expression out of the fullness of various feelings, some of which do not have obvious motivations in self-preservation.
The poet of consciousness whom I often quote has a relevant statement of this thought in a poem entitled "The Creations of Sound":
"If the poetry of X was music,
So that it came to him of its own,
Without understanding, out of the wall
Or in the ceiling, in sounds not chosen,
Or chosen quickly, in a freedom
That was their element, we should not know
That X is an obstruction, a man,
Too exactly himself, and that there are words
Better without an author, without a poet,
Or having a separate author, a different poet,
An accretion from ourselves, intelligent
Beyond intelligence, an artificial man
At a distance, a secondary expositor,
A being of sound, whom one does not approach
Through any exaggeration. From him, we collect.
Tell X that speech is not dirty silence
Clarified. It is silence made still dirtier.
It is more than an imitation for the ear.
He lacks this venerable complication.
His poems are not of the second part of life.
They do not make the visible a little hard
To see, nor, reverberating, eke out the mind
On peculiar horns, themselves eked out
By the spontaneous particulars of sound.
We do not say ourselves like that in poems
We say ourselves in syllables that rise
From the floor, rising in speech we do not speak."
I'd have preferred that he use the word 'ground' rather than the word 'floor' at the end (though to do so would fail to sustain his metaphor), but his meaning is the same as what Heidegger means by the word 'ground', that the meaning we draw from being in the world extends the meaning that we find in the earthly ground of our being.
Comparable lines from Heidegger:
“. . . poetry that thinks is in truth
The topology of Being.
This topology tells Being the
Whereabouts of its actual
presence.” Page 12 of Poetry, Language, Thought
This paper by Denis Donoghue provides a good (enough) introductory reading of what Stevens's poetry expresses and the various linguistic means by which he expresses it:
The Motive for Metaphor | The Hudson Review
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I heard from a past male companion who was enchanted by opera and also by symphonies conducted by Toscanini that he loved listening to recordings of these works in which he could hear Toscanini humming the music as he conducted the orchestra. There were evidently many of those recordings, thus this was habitual with Toscanini.
I've referred to and linked this paper in the past in this thread, but this is a place in the discussion where it might be particularly helpful:
"Singing the World in a New Key:
Merleau-Ponty and the Ontology of Sense"
Ted Toadvine, University of Oregon
To what extent can meaning be attributed to nature, and what is the relationship between such “natural sense” and the meaning of linguistic and artistic expressions? To shed light on such questions, this essay lays the groundwork for an “ontology of sense” drawing on the insights of phenomenology and Merleau-Ponty’s theory of expression. We argue that the ontological continuity of organic life with the perceived world of nature requires situating sense at a level that is more fundamental than has traditionally been recognized. Accounting for the genesis of this primordial sense and the teleology of expressive forms requires the development of an ontology of being as interrogation, as suggested by Merleau-Ponty’s later investigations. The relation between nature and language may seem, at first glance, to be of merely regional philosophical interest, relevant primarily to theories of expression and perhaps to environmental philosophy.1 But a little reflection reveals that the relation between nature and language is pivotal for virtually all of continental philosophy in this century. Derrida has argued quite famously that the entire problematic of phenomenology flows from Husserl’s differentiation, in the opening pages of the Logical Investigations, between “natural” indication and linguistic signification.2 The relation between the natural and phenomenological attitudes, then, is bound up with the distinction–-a juridical distinction, Derrida argues, that cannot finally be maintained in any pure way–between natural signs and gestures, on the one hand, and the iterability of ideal significations on the other. Nature versus language. Or consider Merleau-Ponty’s analysis in The Prose of the World of the painstaking emergence of linguistic sense, and ultimately the abstract languages and concepts of science and mathematics, from our embodied perceptual dialogue with the world, that is, the gradual blossoming of linguistic signification from our inherence in the substratum of natural meaning.3 Nature giving rise to language. Or, once again, consider Foucault’s archeology of the human sciences in The Order of Things, a work that traces the very appearance of the modern conception of man and of the contrast between “nature” and “human nature” to a transformation of language: the discourse of representation that subtended the Classical episteme, with its continuity between words and things, is replaced by an analytic of finitude according to which “man” first conceives of himself as “a being whose nature . . . is to know nature.”4 What was once a continuity of language with nature transforms into a discontinuity. And, to take one last example, consider Deleuze’s analyses in The Logic of Sense that treat sense as the hinge between things and propositions, as a pure event or surface effect that is neither physical nor mental, but that makes signification possible precisely by distinguishing itself purely from the “edible nature” of bodies.5 Sense, as neither nature nor language, operates as a kind of slippery surface between the two. Crucial for each of these four positions is precisely the relation between nature and language, or rather the mediations, effects, and strata that traverse this relation. An analysis of the development of continental thought in the twentieth century could perhaps be developed around this motif.
The present essay is concerned, however, with the systematic and methodological issues raised by this relation rather than its historical development. The recurring thread in the relation of nature and language for the four philosophers mentioned above is the concept of noema or sense.6 Our concern therefore is with the ontological status of sense: is sense “natural,” and if so, what is its relation with linguistic meaning? It is valuable to remember here that the French word sens and the German Sinn signify not only “meaning” but also “direction.” To ask whether nature has a sense, therefore, is also to ask whether it has a direction, a telos. The examination of nature’s sense has implications then for a metaphysics of nature and the problem of teleology.7 Our examination will proceed by first considering the dilemma that phenomenology faces in its analysis of sense, specifically in its attempt to situate sense with respect to subjectivity. We will then evaluate attempts to bypass this dilemma using the concepts of life and style suggested by Merleau-Ponty, taking into account Foucault’s criticisms of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of expression. Consideration of the ontological continuity of life and nature will lead us, next, to recognize the dimension of sense as more primordial than subjectivity and the emergence of meaning in language as an operation derivative from this more fundamental dimension of sense. We conclude with the suggestion that further exploration of the ontology of sense take as its point of departure Merleau-Ponty’s investigations of interrogation as a fundamental ontological operation. . . . .
http://www.janushead.org/7-2/toadvine.pdf
"Singing the World in a New Key:
Merleau-Ponty and the Ontology of Sense"
Ted Toadvine, University of Oregon
To what extent can meaning be attributed to nature, and what is the relationship between such “natural sense” and the meaning of linguistic and artistic expressions? To shed light on such questions, this essay lays the groundwork for an “ontology of sense” drawing on the insights of phenomenology and Merleau-Ponty’s theory of expression. We argue that the ontological continuity of organic life with the perceived world of nature requires situating sense at a level that is more fundamental than has traditionally been recognized. Accounting for the genesis of this primordial sense and the teleology of expressive forms requires the development of an ontology of being as interrogation, as suggested by Merleau-Ponty’s later investigations. The relation between nature and language may seem, at first glance, to be of merely regional philosophical interest, relevant primarily to theories of expression and perhaps to environmental philosophy.1 But a little reflection reveals that the relation between nature and language is pivotal for virtually all of continental philosophy in this century. Derrida has argued quite famously that the entire problematic of phenomenology flows from Husserl’s differentiation, in the opening pages of the Logical Investigations, between “natural” indication and linguistic signification.2 The relation between the natural and phenomenological attitudes, then, is bound up with the distinction–-a juridical distinction, Derrida argues, that cannot finally be maintained in any pure way–between natural signs and gestures, on the one hand, and the iterability of ideal significations on the other. Nature versus language. Or consider Merleau-Ponty’s analysis in The Prose of the World of the painstaking emergence of linguistic sense, and ultimately the abstract languages and concepts of science and mathematics, from our embodied perceptual dialogue with the world, that is, the gradual blossoming of linguistic signification from our inherence in the substratum of natural meaning.3 Nature giving rise to language. Or, once again, consider Foucault’s archeology of the human sciences in The Order of Things, a work that traces the very appearance of the modern conception of man and of the contrast between “nature” and “human nature” to a transformation of language: the discourse of representation that subtended the Classical episteme, with its continuity between words and things, is replaced by an analytic of finitude according to which “man” first conceives of himself as “a being whose nature . . . is to know nature.”4 What was once a continuity of language with nature transforms into a discontinuity. And, to take one last example, consider Deleuze’s analyses in The Logic of Sense that treat sense as the hinge between things and propositions, as a pure event or surface effect that is neither physical nor mental, but that makes signification possible precisely by distinguishing itself purely from the “edible nature” of bodies.5 Sense, as neither nature nor language, operates as a kind of slippery surface between the two. Crucial for each of these four positions is precisely the relation between nature and language, or rather the mediations, effects, and strata that traverse this relation. An analysis of the development of continental thought in the twentieth century could perhaps be developed around this motif.
The present essay is concerned, however, with the systematic and methodological issues raised by this relation rather than its historical development. The recurring thread in the relation of nature and language for the four philosophers mentioned above is the concept of noema or sense.6 Our concern therefore is with the ontological status of sense: is sense “natural,” and if so, what is its relation with linguistic meaning? It is valuable to remember here that the French word sens and the German Sinn signify not only “meaning” but also “direction.” To ask whether nature has a sense, therefore, is also to ask whether it has a direction, a telos. The examination of nature’s sense has implications then for a metaphysics of nature and the problem of teleology.7 Our examination will proceed by first considering the dilemma that phenomenology faces in its analysis of sense, specifically in its attempt to situate sense with respect to subjectivity. We will then evaluate attempts to bypass this dilemma using the concepts of life and style suggested by Merleau-Ponty, taking into account Foucault’s criticisms of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of expression. Consideration of the ontological continuity of life and nature will lead us, next, to recognize the dimension of sense as more primordial than subjectivity and the emergence of meaning in language as an operation derivative from this more fundamental dimension of sense. We conclude with the suggestion that further exploration of the ontology of sense take as its point of departure Merleau-Ponty’s investigations of interrogation as a fundamental ontological operation. . . . .
http://www.janushead.org/7-2/toadvine.pdf
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Extract from the Toadvine paper, pg. 279 ff.
". . . This deeper dimension can be called “natural” only in a singular way, since this notion of “nature” is no longer defined by the classic opposition with the artificial, the human, or the organic. Rather, the term “nature” here can name only the continuity of being itself. Investigating the ontological status of sense and the motivations behind a teleology of sense leads us, therefore, to an examination of being as such, and we can turn once more to Merleau-Ponty’s later investigations for inspiration. In primordial perception, Merleau-Ponty writes, subject and object, noesis and noema, are blurred to the point of disappearing into one sole “intentional fabric,” namely, the “flesh of the sensible.”27 Rather than claiming that the body extracts the emotional essence of things, we should instead speak of a single reverberation out of which perception, gesture, painting, and speaking emerge.28 Sense is ontologically more primordial than either a sense-bestowing subject or a sense-carrying substance, more basic than the poles of life and world themselves. It is the pure event from which the two orders of subject and object, or the two series of causality and intentionality, split off. Ex-pression presses world and life out of the cauldron of sense. And if sense is ontologically basic, the classical dilemma of teleology falls by the wayside: we no longer need choose whether nature’s telos is inherent or a projection of subjectivity, since the telos of sense lies at a level deeper than the separation of nature and subjectivity.
But if the world thinks itself in me, if I am its consciousness, does this guarantee my right to speak on behalf of nature? Are all of my gestures and utterances, in fact, the pure “voice of nature” channeled apriori through my being? Not exactly, for several reasons. First of all, each expression is no more than a single limited moment of the world, the world as exposed, in the photographic sense of the term, from a single unique perspective. The singing of the entire world would require an infinite chorus of voices, one for each Abschattung of every object, one for each possible perspective on the world and across every sensory dimension.29 And, second, even if all of these expressions could give voice at once, the result would be not cosmic harmony but cacophony, since the perspectives that they represent are incompossible: the perceived world is composed of “incompatible and simultaneous ‘faces’”30 arrayed like focal points on intersecting spatial and temporal axes, like a grand multi-dimensional stage set. There is no guaranteed harmony, no overarching scheme that would organize each expressed perspective, like interlocking monads, into a god’s-eye view. Nor, thirdly, is there any guarantee that sense traverses different mediums without
distortion or remainder, as if a voice could be so pure that it carries nothing of the movement of the air. This is not a fault of sense but the very means of its expression, what Merleau-Ponty calls a “good error.”31 Moving forward with this theory of sense would require taking seriously Merleau-Ponty’s remarks that treat interrogation as a fundamental ontological operation, and specifically his interpretation of the emergence of sense as the self-interrogative becoming of being. This is a radicalization of Heidegger’s claim, in Being and Time, that the being of Dasein is the being of a question and, in particular, the being of the question of being. For Merleau-Ponty, our flesh is the node or pivot around which the flesh of the world turns back on itself, interrogating itself. The claim that sense is ontologically fundamental, then, must be qualified, since this may give the impression that sense is something present, a being. But sense is rather a happening, the event of radical creation, a vortex of self-reflective movement whose ongoing rupture throws off questioner and questioned, subject and object, body and thing, as so many by-products of its fission. In fact, it is in just this interrogative movement, the self-palpitation of the world’s flesh, that we find the engine for a teleology of expression. Each expressive modality—perception, art, language—carries forward an increasingly supple reflexive movement, a constant becoming that is as much absent as present, much more a blind stumbling forward into an unknown future than the unwrapping of a pre-packaged and present sense. An understanding of being in the interrogative mode might resolve our outstanding questions about the being of sense and the teleology of expression. And if the activity of sense is a radical self-wondering, it would be fair to say not only that philosophy begins in wonder, but that nature does as well."
". . . This deeper dimension can be called “natural” only in a singular way, since this notion of “nature” is no longer defined by the classic opposition with the artificial, the human, or the organic. Rather, the term “nature” here can name only the continuity of being itself. Investigating the ontological status of sense and the motivations behind a teleology of sense leads us, therefore, to an examination of being as such, and we can turn once more to Merleau-Ponty’s later investigations for inspiration. In primordial perception, Merleau-Ponty writes, subject and object, noesis and noema, are blurred to the point of disappearing into one sole “intentional fabric,” namely, the “flesh of the sensible.”27 Rather than claiming that the body extracts the emotional essence of things, we should instead speak of a single reverberation out of which perception, gesture, painting, and speaking emerge.28 Sense is ontologically more primordial than either a sense-bestowing subject or a sense-carrying substance, more basic than the poles of life and world themselves. It is the pure event from which the two orders of subject and object, or the two series of causality and intentionality, split off. Ex-pression presses world and life out of the cauldron of sense. And if sense is ontologically basic, the classical dilemma of teleology falls by the wayside: we no longer need choose whether nature’s telos is inherent or a projection of subjectivity, since the telos of sense lies at a level deeper than the separation of nature and subjectivity.
But if the world thinks itself in me, if I am its consciousness, does this guarantee my right to speak on behalf of nature? Are all of my gestures and utterances, in fact, the pure “voice of nature” channeled apriori through my being? Not exactly, for several reasons. First of all, each expression is no more than a single limited moment of the world, the world as exposed, in the photographic sense of the term, from a single unique perspective. The singing of the entire world would require an infinite chorus of voices, one for each Abschattung of every object, one for each possible perspective on the world and across every sensory dimension.29 And, second, even if all of these expressions could give voice at once, the result would be not cosmic harmony but cacophony, since the perspectives that they represent are incompossible: the perceived world is composed of “incompatible and simultaneous ‘faces’”30 arrayed like focal points on intersecting spatial and temporal axes, like a grand multi-dimensional stage set. There is no guaranteed harmony, no overarching scheme that would organize each expressed perspective, like interlocking monads, into a god’s-eye view. Nor, thirdly, is there any guarantee that sense traverses different mediums without
distortion or remainder, as if a voice could be so pure that it carries nothing of the movement of the air. This is not a fault of sense but the very means of its expression, what Merleau-Ponty calls a “good error.”31 Moving forward with this theory of sense would require taking seriously Merleau-Ponty’s remarks that treat interrogation as a fundamental ontological operation, and specifically his interpretation of the emergence of sense as the self-interrogative becoming of being. This is a radicalization of Heidegger’s claim, in Being and Time, that the being of Dasein is the being of a question and, in particular, the being of the question of being. For Merleau-Ponty, our flesh is the node or pivot around which the flesh of the world turns back on itself, interrogating itself. The claim that sense is ontologically fundamental, then, must be qualified, since this may give the impression that sense is something present, a being. But sense is rather a happening, the event of radical creation, a vortex of self-reflective movement whose ongoing rupture throws off questioner and questioned, subject and object, body and thing, as so many by-products of its fission. In fact, it is in just this interrogative movement, the self-palpitation of the world’s flesh, that we find the engine for a teleology of expression. Each expressive modality—perception, art, language—carries forward an increasingly supple reflexive movement, a constant becoming that is as much absent as present, much more a blind stumbling forward into an unknown future than the unwrapping of a pre-packaged and present sense. An understanding of being in the interrogative mode might resolve our outstanding questions about the being of sense and the teleology of expression. And if the activity of sense is a radical self-wondering, it would be fair to say not only that philosophy begins in wonder, but that nature does as well."
Pharoah
Paranormal Adept
S
smcder
Guest
Post #712
Here is the link
http://mind-phronesis.co.uk/18-9-15-HCT-MP.pdf
Sent from my LGLS991 using Tapatalk
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S
smcder
Guest
Like the journalist that anticipates tragic events about which to write but then writes about them when they occur as regrettable and most unfortunate, so too the philosopher’s craft is perpetually in danger of anticipating no immediate solutions because of a perverse yearning motivation to vigorously debate the conceivability of answers: a craft in both denying yet relinquishing defeat.
relinquishing or relishing? ;-)
S
smcder
Guest
HCT
@Pharoah - these are my notes from the Abstract and Introduction of your paper - as if I were preparing for in-class participation or a discussion section
smcder
9-20-2014
notes from Professor Pharoah's lecture on HCT
Bridging the objective–subjective divide through a narrow expansionist framework
Abstract: This paper is a response to Nagel’s (1986) call for an ‘integrated theory of reality’ which, he argues, is necessary to provide an objective–subjective bridge. Such a theory, he suggests (1998), requires an expansionist rather than a reductionist or eliminativist approach. I argue that a narrow expansionism is attainable and testable, requiring a revisionary approach to knowledge, representation and information. This narrow expansionism entails explicating a trichotomous hierarchy of causally distinct, informational construct classes. Part I begins by introducing the key concept of ‘qualitative relevancy’ in the evolution of biochemical mechanisms and develops this concept to hypothesise about the qualitative representation of colour in primitive organisms. It then extends this approach to explicate the possible biochemical and neural correlates of phenomenal consciousness. Part II proposes how and why the individuated spatiotemporal world-view emerges—a world-view that, for its individuals, comprises a subjective qualitative impression of a constantly changing phenomenal landscape of experience. The final overview utilises this revisionary expansionist framework to deflect Jackson’s (1986) knowledge argument against physicalism. Existing research in neuroscience and biological sciences is not applied rigorously to evaluate the thesis. Rather, the hope is that this philosophical model will broaden the vision and scope of research to enhance our potential understanding of the objective–subjective divide.
Keywords: knowledge · representation · information · phenomenal consciousness · subjectivity · objectivity
smcder notes on the Abstract
OK, Pharoah’s paper is a response to Thomas Nagel's call for an integrated theory of reality - to provide an objective–subjective bridge, ie to solve the hard problem
Wide expansionism“is an alternative and emphatic rejection of the reductionist’s and eliminativist’s aspirations, it’s an entirely new science or discipline of thought” – current models of reality need not apply.
BUT Pharoah argues that a narrow expansionism is "attainable and testable" and this doesn’t require a whole new science, this narrow expanisionism only requires revising our approach to
· Knowledge
· Representation
· Information
It requires explicating a trichotomous hierarchy of causally distinct, informational construct classes,
the rest of the Abstract outlines the paper, but then it ends with this statement:
Existing research in neuroscience and biological sciences is not applied rigorously to evaluate the thesis. Rather, the hope is that this philosophical model will broaden the vision and scope of research to enhance our potential understanding of the objective–subjective divide.
*This statement relates to the claim that his narrow expansionism is "attainable and testable" – with the above, I think this means that his aim is to provide a philosophical model resulting in a broader vision/scope of research – from that research then would come testable hypotheses
Notes from the Introduction
In ‘The View from Nowhere’ (1986), Nagel expresses his opinion that bridging the objective–subjective divide will require a radical theory of reality that is probably centuries away (p.51).
Nagel (1998) calls for an expansionist program for bridging the objective–subjective divide.
BUT
P says expansionism could also be a narrow expansionism and that would “only” require expanding the interpretation of what is now known.
Specifically expanding the orthodox interpretation(s) of
· knowledge,
· information,
· representation
· intentionality
So that’s less “ominous” than coming up with a whole new science. The paper ends with this statement:
This article goes some way to challenging the orthodoxy and proposes, by way of incentive, an objective-subjective bridge of this narrow kind.
I’m not sure what he means by “incentive” but I can burn that bridge when I come to it.
@Pharoah - these are my notes from the Abstract and Introduction of your paper - as if I were preparing for in-class participation or a discussion section
smcder
9-20-2014
notes from Professor Pharoah's lecture on HCT
Bridging the objective–subjective divide through a narrow expansionist framework
Abstract: This paper is a response to Nagel’s (1986) call for an ‘integrated theory of reality’ which, he argues, is necessary to provide an objective–subjective bridge. Such a theory, he suggests (1998), requires an expansionist rather than a reductionist or eliminativist approach. I argue that a narrow expansionism is attainable and testable, requiring a revisionary approach to knowledge, representation and information. This narrow expansionism entails explicating a trichotomous hierarchy of causally distinct, informational construct classes. Part I begins by introducing the key concept of ‘qualitative relevancy’ in the evolution of biochemical mechanisms and develops this concept to hypothesise about the qualitative representation of colour in primitive organisms. It then extends this approach to explicate the possible biochemical and neural correlates of phenomenal consciousness. Part II proposes how and why the individuated spatiotemporal world-view emerges—a world-view that, for its individuals, comprises a subjective qualitative impression of a constantly changing phenomenal landscape of experience. The final overview utilises this revisionary expansionist framework to deflect Jackson’s (1986) knowledge argument against physicalism. Existing research in neuroscience and biological sciences is not applied rigorously to evaluate the thesis. Rather, the hope is that this philosophical model will broaden the vision and scope of research to enhance our potential understanding of the objective–subjective divide.
Keywords: knowledge · representation · information · phenomenal consciousness · subjectivity · objectivity
smcder notes on the Abstract
OK, Pharoah’s paper is a response to Thomas Nagel's call for an integrated theory of reality - to provide an objective–subjective bridge, ie to solve the hard problem
- Nagel T (1986) The view from nowhere. OUP, Oxford
Wide expansionism“is an alternative and emphatic rejection of the reductionist’s and eliminativist’s aspirations, it’s an entirely new science or discipline of thought” – current models of reality need not apply.
BUT Pharoah argues that a narrow expansionism is "attainable and testable" and this doesn’t require a whole new science, this narrow expanisionism only requires revising our approach to
· Knowledge
· Representation
· Information
It requires explicating a trichotomous hierarchy of causally distinct, informational construct classes,
the rest of the Abstract outlines the paper, but then it ends with this statement:
Existing research in neuroscience and biological sciences is not applied rigorously to evaluate the thesis. Rather, the hope is that this philosophical model will broaden the vision and scope of research to enhance our potential understanding of the objective–subjective divide.
*This statement relates to the claim that his narrow expansionism is "attainable and testable" – with the above, I think this means that his aim is to provide a philosophical model resulting in a broader vision/scope of research – from that research then would come testable hypotheses
Notes from the Introduction
In ‘The View from Nowhere’ (1986), Nagel expresses his opinion that bridging the objective–subjective divide will require a radical theory of reality that is probably centuries away (p.51).
Nagel (1998) calls for an expansionist program for bridging the objective–subjective divide.
- Conceiving the impossible and the mind-body problem.
Philosophy 73(285):337–352 http://philosophy fas nyu edu/docs/IO/1172/conceiving pdf
- wide an emphatic rejection of the reductionist’s and eliminativist’s aspirations, looking instead to an entirely new science or discipline of thought. A "wide" solution would require “expansion into another realm” such a jump or revolution in thought might be “fundamentally transformative” – Pharaoh compares this to the kind of revolutionary discoveries that might be required to understand dark energy and its relation to matter and dark matter
- Nagel’s examples of wide expansionism (see 2012, where Nagel gives as examples, relativity theory, the introduction of electromagnetism or the original scientific revolution itself).
BUT
P says expansionism could also be a narrow expansionism and that would “only” require expanding the interpretation of what is now known.
Specifically expanding the orthodox interpretation(s) of
· knowledge,
· information,
· representation
· intentionality
So that’s less “ominous” than coming up with a whole new science. The paper ends with this statement:
This article goes some way to challenging the orthodoxy and proposes, by way of incentive, an objective-subjective bridge of this narrow kind.
I’m not sure what he means by “incentive” but I can burn that bridge when I come to it.
- Status