Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 5

[smcder]

You're not funny, randle. You're suffocating. You've changed the tone and atmosphere of what had been a pleasant and productive conversation in this thread since December 2013. Since you seem to want to dig in here, I'll take the path of least resistance and leave now by the nearest exit.

I hope you will stay Constance, we've put a lot of time and effort into this thread and there is still a lot to explore and discuss.

 

[Constance]

I hope you will stay Constance, we've put a lot of time and effort into this thread and there is still a lot to explore and discuss.

Yes we have, and yes there is much more to explore and discuss. It's of particular interest to me at this point, of course, since neuroscientists are beginning to recognize the significance of phenomenology for an understanding of consciousness. So it's no time to leave and I won't.


But, @ufology , I'm going to have to put you on ignore to avoid further pointless confrontations.

 

[Michael Allen]

It seems to me that the points made above in Steve's extract from Gallagher address Michael's view of consciousness as intractable or self-defeating or perhaps pointless.

I think it is the layered nature of consciousness -- from prereflective experience to reflective consciousness to mind and 'higher order thought' -- that most resists our attempts to comprehend its structure {and/or accept its structure}. If we reach an impasse in our thinking such as that which Michael or HOT/HOR theorists describe, we nevertheless automatically return to the continuous, open=ended, presence to the world that consciousness provides. We keep on experiencing our existence in the world and we continue to reflect on it. We never "pass GO and go directly to jail," to take a metaphor from a board game whose name escapes me at the moment. We can't think our way out of consciousness. Everything returns to the present moment in which we still find ourselves existing in a world that draws us out of ourselves and simultaneously magnifies our experience in it.

I had the thought -- no it escaped me. Now there it is again...no.

A fair proposition at this point is to say that the boundary between pre-reflection and reflective consciousness is yet another necessary feature for the same. The structures however seem to imply that the entire background of worldly existence (infrastructure of "consciousness") is itself a framework of pre-reflection, and that the entire world of dasein (again positing no foundation either in dasein or in its "world"--but that the two are coeval) could be fleshed out as pre-reflective experience. I guess what I am using the word "infrastructure" in the same way Heidegger used the term "primordial" (perhaps). Either way we probably aren't usually "conscious" of the background infrastructure (referential totality) and all of its myriad connections. Recall the definition of "systems" as being a "something somewhere" connections between things somewhere else. But usually we think of entities and relationships between bounded (read: semi-fictional) ob-jects and the like, perhaps forgetting that some of these entities are simply virtualizations of others locked inside some other arbitrary container "created" by the same. Nothing about systems says that such intra-activites are prohibited since the object in question (i.e. "consciousness") has decided once and for all to make itself a copy-container-of-copies of "once-for-alls," "all-for-alls," etc

Boundaries are queerer when they are examined by the very thing that nurtured and created (or exists) because of such boundaries. The resistance we have in comprehending the structure of our own methods and tools of comprehension are in fact the very tools themselves. To make an object (like our methods of awareness and consciousness) for us we must remove it from us temporarily and then break the chain of "in-order-tos" leading to an impossible incomprehensible mess.

Or not...just a thought

 

[Constance]

I had the thought -- no it escaped me. Now there it is again...no.

A fair proposition at this point is to say that the boundary between pre-reflection and reflective consciousness is yet another necessary feature for the same.

You mean boundaries are necessary features of consciousness? Yes, but the boundaries are all porous. Phenomenology shows us that the subject-object boundary is porous, and the self-nature boundary is porous. The 'boundary' between prereflective and reflective consciousness is particularly porous. That porosity is revealed most markedly in the fact that primordial consciousness [exemplified in protohuman species and in human infants] is always already oriented to the environment before reflective consciousness emerges. So there is preconscious learning going on in the subconscious mind. And the 'boundary' between our subconscious and conscious minds remains porous throughout our lifetimes. Jaak Panksepp in his work on emotion in humans and less evolved animals is working at the nexus of subconscious impulses and consciousness. What I love about phenomenology is its recognition and demonstration that consciousness arises in nature, by and through nature, building up [through and in evolution] the increasingly clear positionality of consciousness in living beings. I think the unfinished Renaissance statues that show the human form half-emerging from a block of marble are an excellent visual representation of our condition as products of nature that stand out from nature at a sufficient distance to reflect on nature. Merleau-Ponty provided an apt metaphor for our [and all living beings'] situation in the world: "the fish is in the water and the water is in the fish." MP's later writing on nature in terms of the chiasmic relation of mind and nature deepens this insight.

The structures however seem to imply that the entire background of worldly existence (infrastructure of "consciousness") is itself a framework of pre-reflection, and that the entire world of dasein (again positing no foundation either in dasein or in its "world"--but that the two are coeval) could be fleshed out as pre-reflective experience.

As I understand phenomenology, prereflective experience -- in which our experience in and of the world is seamless -- is the base, but we move off that base in our transposition into reflective experience leading to what we call 'mind'. Heidegger writes about this in "The Origin of the Work of Art" in terms of the Greek Temple as a human construction out of the materials provided by nature (rocks and stones). All of this becomes visible as we see the temple rising up out of the rocks and stones lying on the ground at the margins of the temple. He speaks at the same time of the distinction between 'earth' [as given] and 'world' [as the human construction of meaning out of the earth]. It is, of course, consciousness and mind that produce the human world(s) we live in historically and in the present.

I guess what I am using the word "infrastructure" in the same way Heidegger used the term "primordial" (perhaps). Either way we probably aren't usually "conscious" of the background infrastructure (referential totality) and all of its myriad connections.

I think (and Heidegger thought) that poets have long expressed this 'infrastructure' of our being. And now we are moving toward an understanding of that infrastructure through neuroscience and biology informed by phenomenology and psychology. Maybe in another twenty or fifty years this will lead to a widespread recognition of the ecology that earth and world share on this planet (and probably any other planet where life has evolved). We'll understand ourselves more fully by that time as well.

Recall the definition of "systems" as being a "something somewhere" connections between things somewhere else. But usually we think of entities and relationships between bounded (read: semi-fictional) ob-jects and the like, perhaps forgetting that some of these entities are simply virtualizations of others locked inside some other arbitrary container "created" by the same. Nothing about systems says that such intra-activites are prohibited since the object in question (i.e. "consciousness") has decided once and for all to make itself a copy-container-of-copies of "once-for-alls," "all-for-alls," etc

That's very interesting and I hope you will develop your ideas there somewhat more fully, especially concerning 'virtualizations'.

Boundaries are queerer when they are examined by the very thing that nurtured and created (or exists) because of such boundaries. The resistance we have in comprehending the structure of our own methods and tools of comprehension are in fact the very tools themselves.

Yes, understanding the nature of the 'boundaries' between and among ourselves/our consciousnesses and material things and substances has challenged human thought from its beginnings. Please develop more fully the interesting idea contained in your next sentence regarding resistance of comprehension being rooted in our tools themselves.

To make an object (like our methods of awareness and consciousness) for us we must remove it from us temporarily and then break the chain of "in-order-tos" leading to an impossible incomprehensible mess.

Are our awareness and consciousness objects? I don't think that's what you're saying. Perhaps you're referring to Husserl's methodological reductions on the way to understanding what consciousness is?

Or not...just a thought

Very interesting thoughts. Thank you very much for sharing your thinking.

 

[Constance]

Thinking about your subject of boundaries in and for consciousness, and also about Heidegger's view of poets' capabilities for 'originary' language generated through their staying (dwelling) close to nature leads me to acknowledging the real limitations of consciousness in understanding nature as it is in itself, in its depths, and in the intricacies of its processes. We can only approach nature in itself from the distance at which consciousness and mind conceive of it, distance brought about by the limitations of our perspectives on the phenomenal appearances of things that we encounter in nature.

It seems to me that language is one of the 'tools' you mention, which poets too must use and often find constraining or even falsifying, at any rate incapable of expressing the insights they feel in contemplating nature and particular things formed by nature. Language as a settled, developed system (anywhere and everywhere) is a restraint upon what we can think and do think, based on the sedimentations of interpretations of nature, mind, and being.that are laid down in the language we speak. Poets in the modern period saw this and felt the need to express themselves in new and different ways, still using the language they inherited but to "make it new." Richard Lanigan has written brilliant books concerning the differences between language as a nearly closed system and the freedom still available in "existential speech" -- authentic speech as that which we express spontaneously in conversation {in which we are actually exploring our ideas as we express them, at best in interaction with someone else capable of doing the same} as opposed to the formality (and predigested nature) of what we express in most written texts). He develops MP's ideas about language in these terms.

So what you wrote here --

". . . The resistance we have in comprehending the structure of our own methods and tools of comprehension are in fact the very tools themselves." --

seems to me to be a very ramifying idea, and I hope you will add other examples that have come to mind for you.

 

[Randall]

I hope you will stay Constance, we've put a lot of time and effort into this thread and there is still a lot to explore and discuss.

I'll second that, and I'm fine with being on her ignore list. Less personal gibes to deflect and one fewer heckler in the audience .

 

[smcder]

I love the word chiasmic.

@Constance writes:

Jaak Panksepp in his work on emotion in humans and less evolved animals is working at the nexus of subconscious impulses and consciousness. What I love about phenomenology is its recognition and demonstration that consciousness arises in nature, by and through nature, building up [through and in evolution] the increasingly clear positionality of consciousness in living beings. I think the unfinished Renaissance statues that show the human form half-emerging from a block of marble are an excellent visual representation of our condition as products of nature that stand out from nature at a sufficient distance to reflect on nature. Merleau-Ponty provided an apt metaphor for our [and all living beings'] situation in the world: "the fish is in the water and the water is in the fish." MP's later writing on nature in terms of the chiasmic relation of mind and nature deepens this insight.



http://www.sherrysanderstudio.com/resume/

 

[smcder]

evolutionary argument against epiphenomenalism
(short version)

Birds have evolved intelligence, social cognition and perhaps self-recognition independently of the mammalian neocortex. This gives some additional weight to the evolutionary argument against epiphenomenalism:

• William James (semi-paraphrased)
  • if the development of consciousness and its preservation is a result of natural selection, then it's plausible that consciousness has not only been influenced by neural processes, but has had a survival value (in) itself; and it could only have had this if it had been efficacious.
  • Karl Popper develops in the book The Self and Its Brain a similar evolutionary argument.

 

[smcder]

evolutionary argument against epiphenomenalism
(the long version)

@Constance writes:

Jaak Panksepp in his work on emotion in humans and less evolved animals is working at the nexus of subconscious impulses and consciousness. What I love about phenomenology is its recognition and demonstration that consciousness arises in nature, by and through nature, building up [through and in evolution] the increasingly clear positionality of consciousness in living beings. I think the unfinished Renaissance statues that show the human form half-emerging from a block of marble are an excellent visual representation of our condition as products of nature that stand out from nature at a sufficient distance to reflect on nature. Merleau-Ponty provided an apt metaphor for our [and all living beings'] situation in the world: "the fish is in the water and the water is in the fish." MP's later writing on nature in terms of the chiasmic relation of mind and nature deepens this insight.

I was trying to think if we had another species that could self-represent in art ... that had independently developed this ... what that would be like, what the sense of recongition would be, a common sense of nature standing out from nature at a sufficient distance to reflect on nature ... unheimliche ... a mix of the familiar and the unfamiliar, seeing ourselves in the alien and yet affirming our common origins.

I've also been thinking about the intelligence of birds, developed in brain structures very different from the mammalian neo-cortex (nearest common anscestor: 300 million years) ... in light of this, of very different structures converging on the same outcome, intelligence, social intelligence - self recognition (the mirror test - although this test isn't without controversy):

Animal consciousness - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Until recently it was thought that self-recognition was absent from animals without a neocortex, and was restricted to mammals with large brains and well developed social cognition. However, in 2008 a study of self-recognition in corvids reported significant results for magpies. Mammals and birds inherited the same brain components from their last common ancestor nearly 300 million years ago, and have since independently evolved and formed significantly different brain types. The results of the mirror and mark tests showed that neocortex-less magpies are capable of understanding that a mirror image belongs to their own body. The findings show that magpies respond in the mirror and mark test in a manner similar to apes, dolphins and elephants. This is a remarkable capability that, although not fully concrete in its determination of self-recognition, is at least a prerequisite of self-recognition. This is not only of interest regarding the convergent evolution of social intelligence; it is also valuable for an understanding of the general principles that govern cognitive evolution and their underlying neural mechanisms. The magpies were chosen to study based on their empathy/lifestyle, a possible precursor for their ability of self-awareness.[61] However even in chimpanzee, the species most studied and with the most convincing findings, clear-cut evidence of self-recognition is not obtained in all individuals tested. Occurrence is about 75% in young adults and considerably less in young and old individuals.[68] For monkeys, non-primate mammals, and in a number of bird species, exploration of the mirror and social displays were observed. However, hints at mirror-induced self-directed behavior have been obtained.[69]

... in light of this look at the idea of epiphenomenalism:

Animal consciousness - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Epiphenomenalism is the theory in philosophy of mind that mental phenomena are caused by physical processes in the brain or that both are effects of a common cause, as opposed to mental phenomena driving the physical mechanics of the brain. The impression that thoughts, feelings, or sensations cause physical effects, is therefore to be understood as illusory to some extent. For example, it is not the feeling of fear that produces an increase in heart beat, both are symptomatic of a common physiological origin, possibly in response to a legitimate external threat.[21]
The history of epiphenomenalism goes back to the post-Cartesian attempt to solve the riddle of Cartesian dualism, i.e., of how mind and body could interact. La Mettrie, Leibniz and Spinoza all in their own way began this way of thinking. The idea that even if the animal were conscious nothing would be added to the production of behavior, even in animals of the human type, was first voiced by La Mettrie (1745), and then by Cabanis (1802), and was further explicated by Hodgson (1870) and Huxley (1874).[22][23] Huxley (1874) likened mental phenomena to the whistle on a steam locomotive. However, epiphenomenalism flourished primarily as it found a niche among methodological or scientific behaviorism. In the early 1900s scientific behaviorists such as Ivan Pavlov, John B. Watson, and B. F. Skinner began the attempt to uncover laws describing the relationship between stimuli and responses, without reference to inner mental phenomena. Instead of adopting a form of eliminativism or mental fictionalism, positions that deny that inner mental phenomena exist, a behaviorist was able to adopt epiphenomenalism in order to allow for the existence of mind.

However, by the 1960s, scientific behaviourism met substantial difficulties and eventually gave way to the cognitive revolution. Participants in that revolution, such as Jerry Fodor, reject epiphenomenalism and insist upon the efficacy of the mind. Fodor even speaks of "epiphobia"—fear that one is becoming an epiphenomenalist.
Thomas Henry Huxley defends in an essay titled On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and its History an epiphenomenalist theory of consciousness according to which consciousness is a causally inert effect of neural activity — “as the steam-whistle which accompanies the work of a locomotive engine is without influence upon its machinery”.[24]

To this William James objects in his essay Are We Automata? by stating an evolutionary argument for mind-brain interaction implying that if the preservation and development of consciousness in the biological evolution is a result of natural selection, it is plausible that consciousness has not only been influenced by neural processes, but has had a survival value itself; and it could only have had this if it had been efficacious.[25][26] Karl Popper develops in the book The Self and Its Brain a similar evolutionary argument.[27]

 

[smcder]

@Constance writes

I doubt that brain scans can determine that 'decisions have been formed' by subjects, though the fMRI likely does recognize that decision-making is in process. Look up 'readiness potentials'. What the brain scans you refer to likely show is the forming of an intention to react or decide. Libet's response to those who read his experimental results as proof of no free will in consciousness was to point out that the experiments could not measure 'free won't' -- a conscious decision such as we've all experienced not to follow through with an impulse to do or say something. The subjects in those experiments were set up, oriented, for a stimulus-response test and were thus primed to be ready to respond as soon as the cue to respond was sensed. The conscious ability to veto an action one has initiated, as Libet pointed out, is unquestionably an example of free will.

Given the concerns re: experiments conducted so far, for example relatively simple tasks and short time periods and the lack of agreement on what these experiments mean and given the variety of conceptions of free will we have a situation in which we have to make decisions without certainty (that's nothing new!) so I think we have to give consideration to moral agency and personal responsibility - if we chalk up our actions to deterministic processes ... then we risk absolving ourselves of any responsibility for our actions and give up not just our freedom, but our dignity.

 

[smcder]

@Constance

Richard Lanigan and "existential speech" sounds fascinating ... taking a look for this - do you have recommended books, articles?

Given the limitations in my personal technology, I'm building the website off line - setting up the structure, what links to what and what's on each page first and creating them in Word - too slow to create this on the fly on the software online ...

I'll post something up in this format for feedback.

 

[Constance]

@Constance

Richard Lanigan and "existential speech" sounds fascinating ... taking a look for this - do you have recommended books, articles?

Speaking and Semiology: Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenological Theory of Existential Communication is the book of his that I've read. There are two others listed under his name at amazon. But it appears that everything he's published is listed and available for download at academia.edu at this link.

Richard L. Lanigan | Southern Illinois University - Academia.edu


I also want to read the book he published before that one:

Phenomenology of Communication: Merleau Ponty's Thematics in Communicology and Semiology

Description: "This work presents the first systemic account of the author's innovative theory of semiotic phenomenology and its place in the philosophy of communication and language. The creative and compelling project presented here spans more than fifteen years of systematic eidetic and empirical research into questions of human communication. Using the thematics of Merleau-Ponty's existential phenomenology, the author explores the concepts and practices of the human sciences that are grounded in communication theory, information theory, language, logic, linguistics, and semiotics. The hermeneutic discussion ranges over contemporary theories that include Roman Jakobson's phenomenological structuralism, the semiotics of Umberto Eco, Charles Pierce, and Alfred Schutz, the theory of speech acts offered by Jurgen Habermas and John Searle, and Michel Foucault's phenomenological rhetoric of discourse. In general, this highly developed study offers the reader a fresh account of the problematic issues in the philosophy of communication. It is a work that any scholar in communication, philosophy, linguistics, or social theory would welcome for its scope and sustained research."

 

[Randall]

Given the concerns re: experiments conducted so far, for example relatively simple tasks and short time periods and the lack of agreement on what these experiments mean and given the variety of conceptions of free will we have a situation in which we have to make decisions without certainty (that's nothing new!) so I think we have to give consideration to moral agency and personal responsibility - if we chalk up our actions to deterministic processes ... then we risk absolving ourselves of any responsibility for our actions and give up not just our freedom, but our dignity.

We may not want to admit that our choices are made before we're conscious of them, but when you think about it, there's no other reasonable way that it can be. How that relates to concepts like responsibility and dignity are simply more constructs of the mind. Let's consider criminal responsibility. If I were judging a criminal case where the defendant claimed innocence based on a lack of conscious control, I might even agree with them, and then for the same reason claim that I had no choice in finding them guilty and throw them in the slammer. But seriously: Knowing in advance that there are consequences to ones actions allows the brain to take those consequences into account subconsciously while formulating decisions. Therefore the concept of responsibility remains intact.

The same kind of thinking can be applied to the concept of dignity. It's just that the whole process is largely automated. That's why we don't have to stop and consciously think about every little thing we do all the time. If we did, we'd never get anything done! Instead, because we already know what's probably going to happen in most circumstances, our brain takes it into account and plans for that eventuality, and then what we do next adds more info to our memory, which is then used in formulating the next sequence of behavioral events.

Most of the time we're acting on short term memory of recent events, sort of surfing above the deep dark depths of our subconscious on a wave of consciousness. Sure, we have some say about what direction to point our board and we can have a lot of fun experiencing what's happening up here on the bright sunny surface of awareness, but ultimately, we're kept afloat only by a little surface tension and momentum. In the bigger picture, our choices are still limited to the direction of the wave, which was set in motion by forces beyond our control, and when each ride is over we've got no choice but to wait until the next one.

But while we're conscious, the few milliseconds of delay inherent in the system goes as unnoticed as as the delay they put in a live sportscast. It's as close to real-time experience as it gets, and we're usually none the wiser. But psychologists, pickpockets and magicians have known for years what the brain scans are only confirming now. The delay is real. You cannot escape it, and therefore there is no way to know with absolute certainty exactly what you'll think or do next. You might fully intend on driving down to the store to get a loaf of bread for the sandwich you're packing for tomorrow's lunch, and end up who knows where ...

Bruce Springsteen - Hungry Heart

​

 

[Michael Allen]

Thinking about your subject of boundaries in and for consciousness, and also about Heidegger's view of poets' capabilities for 'originary' language generated through their staying (dwelling) close to nature leads me to acknowledging the real limitations of consciousness in understanding nature as it is in itself, in its depths, and in the intricacies of its processes. We can only approach nature in itself from the distance at which consciousness and mind conceive of it, distance brought about by the limitations of our perspectives on the phenomenal appearances of things that we encounter in nature.

It seems to me that language is one of the 'tools' you mention, which poets too must use and often find constraining or even falsifying, at any rate incapable of expressing the insights they feel in contemplating nature and particular things formed by nature. Language as a settled, developed system (anywhere and everywhere) is a restraint upon what we can think and do think, based on the sedimentations of interpretations of nature, mind, and being.that are laid down in the language we speak. Poets in the modern period saw this and felt the need to express themselves in new and different ways, still using the language they inherited but to "make it new." Richard Lanigan has written brilliant books concerning the differences between language as a nearly closed system and the freedom still available in "existential speech" -- authentic speech as that which we express spontaneously in conversation {in which we are actually exploring our ideas as we express them, at best in interaction with someone else capable of doing the same} as opposed to the formality (and predigested nature) of what we express in most written texts). He develops MP's ideas about language in these terms.

So what you wrote here --

". . . The resistance we have in comprehending the structure of our own methods and tools of comprehension are in fact the very tools themselves." --

seems to me to be a very ramifying idea, and I hope you will add other examples that have come to mind for you.

Perhaps at a lower level, the "tools of comprehension" may reside within the infrastructure and relations built between the neuro/biological coupled into its environment ("fish in water made of water," etc). And then you have the embedded (i.e. hardwired) "language acquisition device" (Language acquisition device - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) and its associated programming laid in place by thousands (if not millions) of years of evolution.

If comprehension is based primordially on the the fact that we are "always already" situated toward our 'objects' of comprehension and that these 'objects' emerging as distinct by the very mechanisms (tools neurological) that allow Dasein to organize and comport, conduct and carry itself through the usual linked framework of in-order-tos , e.g.

I go to the store in order to by food in order to make dinner in order to serve others who each (and myself) eat in order to stay alive in order to continue being a _________ (endless chain of in-order-tos)

. . . funny thing . . . it is then that (when or if) tools of comprehension and understanding are laid bare as present-at-hand, they cease to function naturally in the transparent (i.e. invisible) in-order-to framework--when they are ignored and allowed back into the background of pre-reflective experience, then Dasein must learn to 'see' them through its own comportment with the realities that exist on top of that invisible framework.

 

[smcder]

@Constance

Going through papers and links as I work on the webpage, I came across your post in part 4:

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

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

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

Here is a short version of that paper:

On the primary nature of consciousness (a short statement)

From Bitbol's wikipedia page:

His research interests are mainly focused on the influence of quantum physics on philosophy. He first worked on Erwin Schrödinger's metaphysics and philosophy of physics.[3]
Using theorems demonstrated by Jean-Louis Destouches, Paulette Destouches-Février, and R.I.G. Hughes, he pointed out that the structure of quantum mechanics may be derived to a large extent from the assumption that microscopic phenomena cannot be dissociated from their experimental context.[4] His views on quantum mechanics converge with ideas developed by Julian Schwinger[5] and Asher Peres,[6] according to whom quantum mechanics is a "symbolism of atomic measurements", rather than a description of atomic objects. He also defends ideas close to Anton Zeilinger's, by claiming that quantum laws do not express the nature of physical objects, but only the bounds of experimental information.
Along with this view, quantum mechanics is no longer considered as a physical theory in the ordinary sense, but rather as a background framework for physical theories, since it goes back to the most elementary conditions which allow us to formulate any physical theory whatsoever. Some reviewers suggested half-seriously to call this view of physics "Kantum physics". Indeed, Michel Bitbol often refers to the philosophy of I. Kant, according to whom one can understand the contents of knowledge only by analyzing the (sensorial, instrumental, and rational) conditions of possibility of such knowledge.[7]
He was granted an award by the French "Académie des sciences morales et politiques" in 1997, for his work in the philosophy of quantum mechanics.
Later on, he concentrated on the philosophy of mind and consciousness,[8] defending a strongly anti-reductionist[9] and neo-Wittgensteinian view.[10] He collaborated with Francisco Varela on this subject.
He participated in the 2002/2013 conferences of the Mind and Life Institute, whose aim is to promote a dialogue between science and Buddhism.[11] He subsequently wrote a book developing a thoroughly relational reading of quantum mechanics, with due reference to the Buddhist concept of dependent arising.[12][13]

 

[smcder]

We may not want to admit that our choices are made before we're conscious of them, but when you think about it, there's no other reasonable way that it can be. How that relates to concepts like responsibility and dignity are simply more constructs of the mind. Let's consider criminal responsibility. If I were judging a criminal case where the defendant claimed innocence based on a lack of conscious control, I might even agree with them, and then for the same reason claim that I had no choice in finding them guilty and throw them in the slammer. But seriously: Knowing in advance that there are consequences to ones actions allows the brain to take those consequences into account subconsciously while formulating decisions. Therefore the concept of responsibility remains intact.

The same kind of thinking can be applied to the concept of dignity. It's just that the whole process is largely automated. That's why we don't have to stop and consciously think about every little thing we do all the time. If we did, we'd never get anything done! Instead, because we already know what's probably going to happen in most circumstances, our brain takes it into account and plans for that eventuality, and then what we do next adds more info to our memory, which is then used in formulating the next sequence of behavioral events.

Most of the time we're acting on short term memory of recent events, sort of surfing above the deep dark depths of our subconscious on a wave of consciousness. Sure, we have some say about what direction to point our board and we can have a lot of fun experiencing what's happening up here on the bright sunny surface of awareness, but ultimately, we're kept afloat only by a little surface tension and momentum. In the bigger picture, our choices are still limited to the direction of the wave, which was set in motion by forces beyond our control, and when each ride is over we've got no choice but to wait until the next one.

But while we're conscious, the few milliseconds of delay inherent in the system goes as unnoticed as as the delay they put in a live sportscast. It's as close to real-time experience as it gets, and we're usually none the wiser. But psychologists, pickpockets and magicians have known for years what the brain scans are only confirming now. The delay is real. You cannot escape it, and therefore there is no way to know with absolute certainty exactly what you'll think or do next. You might fully intend on driving down to the store to get a loaf of bread for the sandwich you're packing for tomorrow's lunch, and end up who knows where ...

Bruce Springsteen - Hungry Heart

​

I plan to have a section on free will on the website, if you want to write something up on this - I can publish it there.

 

[smcder]

On the primary nature of consciousness (a short statement)

a semi-paraphrase, please refer to the link above or the extended version found here:

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

in the extended version Bitbol argues from epistemology, phenomenology, neuropsychology, and philosophy of quantum mechanics

the bottom line
Complex features of consciousness, such as reflexivity or self-consciousness are late outcomes of a process of biological adaptation but there are good reasons to think that:

• pure non-reflexice experience
• the mere feel of sensing and being, irrespective of any second-order awareness of this feel
• pure experience
• elementary consciousness
• phenomenal consciousness

... is no secondary feature of an objective item but plainly here, primary in the strongest sense of the word.

The world is not a collection of objects, it is indissolubly a perceptive-experience-of-objects or an imaginative experience of objects out of reach of perceptive experience. Conscious experience is self-evidently pervasive and existentially primary. Any scientific undertaking presupposes one’s own experience and the others experiences as well. The objective descriptions which are characteristic of science arise as an invariant structural focus for subjects endowed with conscious experience.

elementary consciousness is methodologucally primary for science

• scientific findings including results of neurophysiology and evolution theory are methodologically secondary to experience
• Experience, or elementary consciousness, can then be said to be methodologically primary for science, this is not a scientific statement, it just expresses a most basic prerequisite of science

Thus, the objective science of nature has no real bearing on the pure experience that tacitly underpins it. It is in virtue of the very efficience of neurosciences, its many momentous successes, that they can have no grip on phenomenal consciousness. As soon as this efficience is fully put to use, nothing prevents one from offering a purely neurophysiological account of the chain of causes operating from a sensory input received by an organism to the elaborate behaviour of this organism. At no point does one need to invoke the circumstance that this organism is perceiving and acting consciously - in the most elementary sense of its "having a feel". In a mature cognitive neuroscience, the fact of phenomenal consciousness is bound to appear as irrelevant or incidental, as a result any attempt at providing a scientific account of phenomenal consciousness, by way of neurological or evolutionary theories, is doomed to failure not because of any deficiency of these sciences but precisely as a side effect of their most fruitful methodological option.

Modern neurological theories, such as global workspace theory or integrated information theory, have been remarkably successful in accounting for major features of higher levels of consciousness, such as the capacity of unifying the field of awareness and of elaborating self-mapping. They have also turned out to be excellent predictors of subject’s behavioral wakefulness and ability/inability of provide reports in clinical situations such as coma and epileptic seizure. But they have provided absolutely no clue about the origin of phenomenal consciousness. They have explained the functions of consciousness, but not the circumstance that there is something it is like to be an organism performing these functions. The same is true of evolutionist arguments.

Evolution can select some useful functions ascribed to consciousness (such as behavioral emotivity of the organism, integrated action planning, or self-monitoring), but not the mere fact that there is something it is like to implement these functions. Indeed, only the functions have adaptative value, not their being experienced.

smcder in this case, epiphenomenality is used to argue that since phenomenal consciousness is causally impotent, then it can't be selected for evolutionary and so must be primary - in the "bird brain" argument (above) - the fact that nature arrived at consciousness through two different routes raises some questions about epiphenomenalism (I'm really not at all sure about this idea)

Even the ability of neurophysiological inquiry to identify correlates of phenomenal consciousness can be challenged on that basis. After all, identifying such correlates rely heavily on the subject’s ability to discriminate, to memorize, and to report , which is used as the ultimate experimental criterion of consciousness.

• we can't preclude the possibility that the large-scale synchronization of complex neural activity of the brain cortex often deemed indispensible for consciousness, is in fact only required for interconnecting a number of cognitive functions including those needed for memorizing, self-reflecting and reporting

faculties that are usually taken together as necessary to consciousness are in fact dissociable from one another

Extrapolating Semir Zeki’s suggestion, can we preclude that any (large or small) area of the brain or even of the body is associated to some sort of fleeting pure experience, although no report can be obtained from it? Data from general anaesthesia feed this doubt. When the doses of certain classes of anaesthetic drugs are increased and coherent EEG frequency is decreased, mental abilities are lost step by step, one after another. At first, subjects lose some of their appreciation of pain, but can still have dialogue with doctors and remember every event. Then, they lose their ability of recalling long-term explicit memories of what is going on, but they are still able to react and answer demands on a momentary basis. With higher doses of drugs, patients lose ability to respond to requests, in addition to losing their explicit memory; but they still have “implicit memories” of the situation.

To recapitulate, faculties that are usually taken together as necessary to consciousness are in fact dissociable from one another.

And pure, instantaneous, unmemorized, non-reflective experience might well be the last item left.

This looks like a scientific hint as to the ubiquity and primariness of phenomenal consciousness.

• scientific hint does not mean a scientific proof
• claiming that there exists a scientific proof of the primariness of elementary consciousness would badly contradict our initial aknowledgment that objective science can have no real grip on pure experience
• the scientific hint is only an indirect indication coming from the very blindspot of science : the pure passing experience it presupposes, and of which it retains only a stabilized and intersubjectively shared structural residue.

Should we content ourselves with these negative remarks?

"As Francisco Varela has shown, one can overcome them by proposing a broadened definition of science. Instead of remaining stuck within the third-person attitude, the new science should include a “dance” of mutual definition taking place between first-person and third-person accounts, mediated by the second person level of social exchange. As soon as this momentous turn is taken, elementary consciousness is no longer a mystery for a truncated science, but an aknowledged datum from which a fuller kind of science can unfold."

smcder if we takes elementary consciousness as fundamental, then it seems we know as much about it as we do matter (as primary datum) and we can proceed from there

 

[Randall]

I plan to have a section on free will on the website, if you want to write something up on this - I can publish it there.

Feel free to quote anything I write from here ( provided of course that it's kept in context and not credited to anyone else ). The Paracast does not have an exclusive copyright over participant content. In fact I'd like to see you do that with everything you find useful here so that it distills down in an organized manner to help illuminate whatever it is your site is about.

 

[smcder]

Free Will and Determinism in Science and Philosophy

youtube

I hope this link works, the original citation is:

• Notices of the AMS. Volume 56, Number 2, Feb. 2009.

http://www.ams.org/notices/200902/r...AQFjAB&usg=AFQjCNE7L-k87yWE32ru0rDjkLOdg12LRQ

more can be found on The Information Philosopher, physics stack exchange, etc.

I'm going to see if I can find or pull the six lecture series down into an .mp3 format and listen to it offline.

Lecture 1 | Free Will Lecture Series |

Meet John Conway; hear about Simon Kochen and how the theorem came about. Thoughts on senility. Free will and determinism in science and philosophy over the last two millennia; the implications of Newtonian and quantum mechanics. What Conway and Kochen mean by “free will.” What the theorem does, and doesn’t, imply about behavior. A brief introduction to the three underlying principles of the theorem: SPIN, FIN, and TWIN. The idea of talking to particles, and how it’s like playing 20 questions with your sisters.

 

[smcder]

Feel free to quote anything I write from here ( provided of course that it's kept in context and not credited to anyone else ). The Paracast does not have an exclusive copyright over participant content. In fact I'd like to see you do that with everything you find useful here so that it distills down in an organized manner to help illuminate whatever it is your site is about.

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