S
smcder
Guest
Looks like Blogger will support web pages ... not sure how this works exactly or the limitations ... still exploring, if anyone has any experience let me know.
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Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 5
- Thread starter Gene Steinberg
- Start date
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Randall
J. Randall Murphy
Once again we see the word "prove". All proof is, is sufficient evidence to justify belief in a claim, and there's plenty enough evidence to provide sufficient cause for some people ( myself included ) to believe that "conscious experience derives from a material basis". Therefore, for some people, the view has been proven, while for others, it has not. And let's not forget: Failing to prove the opposite of what somebody wants to believe doesn't make their belief true, or necessarily even credible. For example, not to compare the two issues, but to illustrate a point, I can't prove there are no unicorns, and writing 6 academic papers on it wouldn't prove there are no unicorns, but that doesn't make it reasonable to believe in unicorns.
S
smcder
Guest
"
Can you clarify this statement:
"And let's not forget: Failing to prove the opposite of what somebody wants to believe doesn't make their belief true, or necessarily even credible."
Can you clarify this statement:
"And let's not forget: Failing to prove the opposite of what somebody wants to believe doesn't make their belief true, or necessarily even credible."
Last edited by a moderator:
S
smcder
Guest
Nevermind, I've sorted it.
Can you point to specific concerns in the article?
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/4007/1/ConsciousnessPrimaryArt2.pdf
An outstanding summary of Bitbol's thinking, Steve, and a major contribution to our discussion at this point.
The objective descriptions which are characteristic of science arise as an invariant structural focus for subjects endowed with conscious 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
Yes, everything we feel and think and do goes to an essential motivation generated by the primordial sense of situated being -- a sense of being situated among environmental presences, pressures, obstructions, and facilitations outside the 'self's/the organism's 'own being'. Panksepp identifies the nexus of the"affectivity" of even primitive organisms -- lacking sensoria we can identify and lacking neurons -- with the organism’s "seeking behavior." Maturana and Varela recognized the same sense {crossing, chiasm} of 'inner' and 'outer' being in the primordial cell and expressed the condition of the cell in terms of autopoiesis. Panksepp’s research extends the significance of the autopoietic nature of the primitive cell already recognized and explicated by Maturana and Varela. While the single-celled organism maintains boundaries against the intrusion of damaging substances in the environment, it also remains open to taking in the nutrients it needs to maintain its life. The porous boundaries of the primordial single-celled organism already reveal the subject-object relationship instantiated with life -- not a mutually closed relationship but an open one in which interactivity is the base.
Steve also quotes Bitbol on these critical point:
“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.
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.
For us, now, while we are reading/writing these lines, conscious experience might even be everything. It is not something that we have, but it identifies with what we are in the first place. It is not something that can be known or described by us in the third person as if we were separated from it ; but it is what we dwell in and what we live through in the first person. I would recapitulate this by saying that consciousness is existentially primary.”
I’d just add that we will never understand what we are, the distinctiveness of what all of life is, so long as we attempt to comprehend it from a wholly objective, reductively physical, third-person point of view. This should have been clear by now to scientists and philosophers and would have been had they engaged the works in which phenomenological philosophy was developed. The phenomenological turn in philosophy initiated by Husserl (but latent, if not already implicit, in Brentano) developed out of the insights articulated by Bitbol. Phenomenological philosophy is initially difficult to understand if one comes to the reading of it still constrained by the presuppositions of materialism/physicalism. Reading and understanding this philosophy inspired Maturana, Varela, Thompson, Panksepp et al to recognize that the 'lived reality' experienced by preconscious life forms is the germinal seed of the evolutionary development of consciousness as we experience it prereflectively and reflectively.
The objective descriptions which are characteristic of science arise as an invariant structural focus for subjects endowed with conscious 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
Yes, everything we feel and think and do goes to an essential motivation generated by the primordial sense of situated being -- a sense of being situated among environmental presences, pressures, obstructions, and facilitations outside the 'self's/the organism's 'own being'. Panksepp identifies the nexus of the"affectivity" of even primitive organisms -- lacking sensoria we can identify and lacking neurons -- with the organism’s "seeking behavior." Maturana and Varela recognized the same sense {crossing, chiasm} of 'inner' and 'outer' being in the primordial cell and expressed the condition of the cell in terms of autopoiesis. Panksepp’s research extends the significance of the autopoietic nature of the primitive cell already recognized and explicated by Maturana and Varela. While the single-celled organism maintains boundaries against the intrusion of damaging substances in the environment, it also remains open to taking in the nutrients it needs to maintain its life. The porous boundaries of the primordial single-celled organism already reveal the subject-object relationship instantiated with life -- not a mutually closed relationship but an open one in which interactivity is the base.
Steve also quotes Bitbol on these critical point:
“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.
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.
For us, now, while we are reading/writing these lines, conscious experience might even be everything. It is not something that we have, but it identifies with what we are in the first place. It is not something that can be known or described by us in the third person as if we were separated from it ; but it is what we dwell in and what we live through in the first person. I would recapitulate this by saying that consciousness is existentially primary.”
I’d just add that we will never understand what we are, the distinctiveness of what all of life is, so long as we attempt to comprehend it from a wholly objective, reductively physical, third-person point of view. This should have been clear by now to scientists and philosophers and would have been had they engaged the works in which phenomenological philosophy was developed. The phenomenological turn in philosophy initiated by Husserl (but latent, if not already implicit, in Brentano) developed out of the insights articulated by Bitbol. Phenomenological philosophy is initially difficult to understand if one comes to the reading of it still constrained by the presuppositions of materialism/physicalism. Reading and understanding this philosophy inspired Maturana, Varela, Thompson, Panksepp et al to recognize that the 'lived reality' experienced by preconscious life forms is the germinal seed of the evolutionary development of consciousness as we experience it prereflectively and reflectively.
Whoever wrote that must think that we're here only to exchange 'beliefs' -- presuppositional ideas that we personally prefer or are comfortable with, rather than to make progress in developing a rationally substantiated understanding of what consciousness is. The scientists I've identified in my last post take this inquiry beyond the presuppositional thinking of materialists/objectivists. The question is whether materialists/objectivists will by and large be capable of bracketing their presuppositions long enough to recognize the significance of what these scientists have presented in their biological research.
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
Robin Faichney.Blatner seems to indicate that Heidegger was unclear on whether a world depended on dasein or vice versa. This may be repeating the same old chicken-egg problem of a working dasein in a vacuum (deworlded dasein is often framed as "consciousness" and put aside as an entity rather than leaving it as is in its necessary relations & connections to an environment with tools, objectives, methods, goals, etc.) Our language likes to set limits and bounds on entities based on these relations. Something like seems to be the target of Metzinger's thesis regarding the phenomenal self-model.
"The brain, specifically the brainstem and hypothalamus, processes this information into representational content, namely linguistic reflections. The PSM then uses this representational content to attribute phenomenal states to our perceived objects and ourselves. We are thus what Metzinger calls naïve realists, who believe we are perceiving reality directly when in actuality we are only perceiving representations of reality. The data structures and transport mechanisms of the data are “transparent” so that we can introspect on our representations of perceptions, but cannot introspect on the data or mechanisms themselves." (Self-model theory of subjectivity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
Now to address the issues you raised in this comment:
If we take the reality engine of our PSM (Metzinger) which shows how a mechanism embedded in a world can also embed a model of itself in a "world" within itself and now consider the model of a world with itself in that model of the world considering its own conceptions of how the entire transaction occurred--its a mess to work out because we are dealing with our understanding of the visible relations lying within the domain of our neurological infrastructure and trying to work out first and third order perspectives. With the third order perspective, we break things up and habitually "deworld" them (stare at them and divorce them from the relational totality which preceded their formation) reversing the necessary transparency layer of the object (i.e. you don't "notice" what works -- working tools and environment lay in the background of phenomenal experience as a basis and become "noticed" when something in the relational totality linking "in order to's" become twisted or broken--Dasien giving mention to these relations now "sees" what was transparent and tries to find meaning in a broken chain)
So to be clear our conception of our own "consciousness" requires the engines and infrastructure primitives of our own understanding, if those primitives and their relations emerge our own understanding to denote "consciousness," as a term for the entire process, then what can we do but laugh at our own attempt to reverse engineer a process (and its relations to other things, processes) as though it was a self-sufficient entity? Thus when the PSM breaks down we end up with a similar issue: the brain attempts to dissect and disassemble its own structures leading to some of the pathologies and aberrations (altered states) cited by Metzinger.
If Heidegger is to be taken seriously, the phrase "dasein is its world existingly" doesn't denote any foundationalism of "world" dependent on "dasein" or vice versa--if true then perhaps the only way to solve the chicken-egg issue is to use an evolutionary or natural selection model to help us determine precedence--which is a funny way of saying that the problem doesn't really exist, or only existed due to human elementalism habits.
So in short, by the time we get to our own idea of consciousness, the transparent and background processes and infrastructure have already pre-loaded the answer in our questioning--we'll formulate virtual entities and relations in our PSM--its like a Virtualbox virtual machine trying to understand the hardware through the distortions of its hypervisor
http://www.robinfaichney.org/pdf/MScDissertation.pdf
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
Re pre-reflective consciousness
Affording introspection: an alternative model of inner awareness. - PubMed - NCBI
Abstract
"The ubiquity of inner awareness thesis (UIA) states that all conscious states of normal adult humans are characterised by an inner awareness of that very state. UIA-Backers support this thesis while UIA-Skeptics reject it. At the heart of their dispute is a recalcitrant phenomenological disagreement. UIA-Backers claim that phenomenological investigation reveals 'peripheral inner awareness' (or 'pre-reflective self-consciousness') to be a constant presence in their non-introspective experiences. UIA-Skeptics deny that their non-introspective experiences are characterised by inner awareness, and maintain that inner awareness is only gained when they explicitly introspect. Each camp has put forward a range of arguments designed to resolve this dispute, but I argue that none of these arguments has genuine dialectical purchase. This leads me to develop a compromise position that trades on the contribution that affordances can make to our phenomenology. According to the Affordance Model of inner awareness, all conscious states of normal adult humans are characterised by an affordance of introspectability. In line with the UIA-Skeptic, non-introspective experiences are not characterised by inner awareness. But against the traditional UIASkeptic, non-introspective experiences are characterised by an awareness of the opportunity for introspection. On this view, our capacity to gain inner awareness of our current experience is a ubiquitous feature of our phenomenology. I show how the Affordance Model respects the driving phenomenological intuitions of both the UIA-Backers and the traditional UIA-Skeptics, and suggest that it is able to explain why neither camp achieves an accurate description of how inner awareness figures in their phenomenology."
This seems to be similar to what @ufology was saying—if i understood—about introspection involving memory in some degree.
Re Michael Allen's comments: really appreciate his ideas, and feel that Faichney touches on these ideas. A human is an intentional (representational) system which recursively represents itself.
Affording introspection: an alternative model of inner awareness. - PubMed - NCBI
Abstract
"The ubiquity of inner awareness thesis (UIA) states that all conscious states of normal adult humans are characterised by an inner awareness of that very state. UIA-Backers support this thesis while UIA-Skeptics reject it. At the heart of their dispute is a recalcitrant phenomenological disagreement. UIA-Backers claim that phenomenological investigation reveals 'peripheral inner awareness' (or 'pre-reflective self-consciousness') to be a constant presence in their non-introspective experiences. UIA-Skeptics deny that their non-introspective experiences are characterised by inner awareness, and maintain that inner awareness is only gained when they explicitly introspect. Each camp has put forward a range of arguments designed to resolve this dispute, but I argue that none of these arguments has genuine dialectical purchase. This leads me to develop a compromise position that trades on the contribution that affordances can make to our phenomenology. According to the Affordance Model of inner awareness, all conscious states of normal adult humans are characterised by an affordance of introspectability. In line with the UIA-Skeptic, non-introspective experiences are not characterised by inner awareness. But against the traditional UIASkeptic, non-introspective experiences are characterised by an awareness of the opportunity for introspection. On this view, our capacity to gain inner awareness of our current experience is a ubiquitous feature of our phenomenology. I show how the Affordance Model respects the driving phenomenological intuitions of both the UIA-Backers and the traditional UIA-Skeptics, and suggest that it is able to explain why neither camp achieves an accurate description of how inner awareness figures in their phenomenology."
This seems to be similar to what @ufology was saying—if i understood—about introspection involving memory in some degree.
Re Michael Allen's comments: really appreciate his ideas, and feel that Faichney touches on these ideas. A human is an intentional (representational) system which recursively represents itself.
I haven't the time to read Faichney's thesis, but I did read his conclusion, the last sentence of which reads:
". . . using the concepts of material form as physical information (from physics) and meaning, representation, etc. as intentional information (my own concept), I argued that the latter is very usefully viewed as always encoded in the former."
I'm not sure what he means by the verb phrase "[can be] usefully viewed as always encoded in the former." His word choice in the phrase 'viewed as' suggests that he likes the idea he's promoting but not that he's provided others with grounds to take it seriously. [It might be that he's had to revise his concluding sentence to satisfy members of his committee not persuaded by his argument.] Can you summarize his argument concerning how meaning and representation {intentional information} are so encoded in 'physical form' that consciousness is not involved in/required for emotions, behaviors, and decision-making by humans?
In other words, his preceding paragraph in the conclusion (quoted below) cannot be the extent of his reasoning to a conclusion that others would necessarily take seriously:
"By taking a “strong representationalist” standpoint, based on intentionality and modeling, I found I could eliminate phenomenality from the phenomenal stance, leaving us with what I call “the empathic stance.” This is, like Dennett’s intentional stance, a matter of interpretation, but I believe that it explains the concept of sentience: we experience affective empathy for the apparent ability of “lower” organisms to experience pleasure and suffering, and then rationalise our experience by saying that such organisms are sentient."
Here is a link to the full paper you cited, which I will read. There is as usual at the PubMed site a list of related papers taking different positions on the subject which also need to be consulted, including one I recently linked..
Affording introspection: an alternative model of inner awareness
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
And here's another, easier to read, version:
http://download.springer.com/static...5cea15411d0fe52d1241104fba14f4eac73507914605a
S
smcder
Guest
Computationalism became an attractive intellectual enterprise because of the ease of computation with the onset of the computer revolution. We’re a lazy species but also one attracted by new glitz, and if we have a great new tool we will use it for everything that we can possibly think of.
- Jaak Panksepp
More very cruxy stuff available in Gallagher's Brainstorming - a definite recommend, here's the TOC:
Contents
Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. How to study the mind
Chapter 3. Preliminaries, prerequisites and precedents
Chapter 4. Movement
Chapter 5. Moving into action
Chapter 6. Consciousness
Chapter 7. Intersubjectivity
Chapter 8. A short robotic interlude
Chapter 9. Emotion and empathy
Chapter 10. Language, cognition, and other extras
Chapter 11. Self and self-consciousness
Chapter 12. Free will and moral responsibility
This is semi-transcribed from an interview with Jaak Panksepp, beginning on page 17 -
SG
So then is it possible to be led astray if we focus too narrowly on one
methodology or one model? For example, have we misunderstood cognition by
staying too close to the computational model? I think I know how you would
respond to this. You suggest its not computations or representations all the way
down but that at some point we need to talk about embodied, nonlinear dynamics,
and still you do want to leave some place for the computational model. ...
Panksepp
Yes, comparatively narrow information-processing approaches have
been much oversold in the mind sciences. Endogenous global state-control system
of the brain cannot be clarified in those ways. Likewise, in neuroscience narrower
and narrower approaches give you ever better knowledge of smaller and smaller
parts.
One big question is how to move creatively toward synthetic wholes.
Certainly one coarse way to parse useful sensory-perceptual, channel-contro
information-processing and global attentional and affective state-control approaches
is at cortical vs. subcortical levels of brain function. Information processing models
are especially useful for studying cognitions, where mental functions are strongly
linked to external stimuli impinging on the senses that then get transformed into
perceptions in the neocortex.
Affective analog, state-control functions are more
embodied, with large-scale networks having intrinsic patterns that control large
numbers of bodily processes. Also, the one thing that all scholars should agree upon
at this point is that mind as truly manifested in the world is fundamentally organic,
with information-processing being just one aspect of a more complex whole.
Information-processing as a comprehensive model of mind, has not only been
oversold, but it is imbued with more than a residue of dualism. The idea that mind
can be simply computed on any type of sufficiently complex computational
platform seems to leave the real body and brain behind. One wonders what the
computationalists do with the simple reality that minds, as they currently exist on
the face of the earth, are most surely organic processes and are in some deep and
perhaps essential way grounded in non-mental organic processes.
Computationalism became an attractive intellectual enterprise because of the ease
of computation with the onset of the computer revolution. We’re a lazy species but
also one attracted by new glitz, and if we have a great new tool we will use it for
everything that we can possibly think of. So we’ve now had this metaphor of a
computational mind for almost four decades, and I think it is a highly misleading
metaphor for the emotional mind.
Many in robotics are now heading toward embodied architectures, and making more progress.
The allure of the modern computer has prevented too many brilliant people from pursuing more useful
approaches such as organic, neuroscientific ones.
[….] One way to look at it is that too much of cognitivism is stuck with the belief based
view that external information-processing is the foundation of what
organisms do, rather than the embodied emotional and motivational states that
depend on large non-linear attractor landscapes, arising from below, that control
bodily actions and associated feelings. In fact, there is probably an organismic
center, a core self process, for most things animals do. Information-processing
revolves around an affectively self-centered, “What’s in it for me?” type of process.
If we gave those ancient systems primacy, I think we would have a dramatically
different view of learning—namely how informational schemes become embedded
within the finer neurodynamics of those ancient, lumbering, emotional “beasts of
the mind” (large “attractor landscapes”?) that are gradually educated to put on
some cognitive clothes.
. . .
I tend to accept that there is a level of complexity in the system that is
not capable of being observed directly, just like in particle physics, and that the only
way to penetrate the internal organizations of such processes is by theory. That’s
where I differ from quite a few of my colleagues. I do not believe in ruthless
reductionism, and the dangerous, value-free, and culture diminishing view that the
need for mental concepts disappears when all the neural firings have been tabulated.
A key function of the brain is to generate global network states that are the raw
foundational stuff of mentality, and much of the underlying organization currently
has to be inferred rather than directly observed.
Anyone who says that behaviorism was killed by the cognitive revolution has
not been paying attention. The behaviorists made a transformation. They became
neuroscientists. The behaviorist biases are with us to this day but they are amon
the neuroscientists who still refuse to make inferences. For instance, in the realm of
emotion they will say an emotion cannot be seen, ever. I tend to agree with them
that yes a neurodynamic process can only be seen indirectly. Just as in particle
physics the internal structure of matter at some point can only be seen by theoretical
inference. In physics the inference is based completely on mathematics.
Mathematics will not work on the brain. But an understanding of neuro-systems,
neuro-chemistries, where you can translate from animal experiments to potential
studies of human experience can generate predictions. As soon as you have a
coherent logical prediction you’re doing science.
- Jaak Panksepp
More very cruxy stuff available in Gallagher's Brainstorming - a definite recommend, here's the TOC:
Contents
Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. How to study the mind
Chapter 3. Preliminaries, prerequisites and precedents
Chapter 4. Movement
Chapter 5. Moving into action
Chapter 6. Consciousness
Chapter 7. Intersubjectivity
Chapter 8. A short robotic interlude
Chapter 9. Emotion and empathy
Chapter 10. Language, cognition, and other extras
Chapter 11. Self and self-consciousness
Chapter 12. Free will and moral responsibility
This is semi-transcribed from an interview with Jaak Panksepp, beginning on page 17 -
SG
So then is it possible to be led astray if we focus too narrowly on one
methodology or one model? For example, have we misunderstood cognition by
staying too close to the computational model? I think I know how you would
respond to this. You suggest its not computations or representations all the way
down but that at some point we need to talk about embodied, nonlinear dynamics,
and still you do want to leave some place for the computational model. ...
Panksepp
Yes, comparatively narrow information-processing approaches have
been much oversold in the mind sciences. Endogenous global state-control system
of the brain cannot be clarified in those ways. Likewise, in neuroscience narrower
and narrower approaches give you ever better knowledge of smaller and smaller
parts.
One big question is how to move creatively toward synthetic wholes.
Certainly one coarse way to parse useful sensory-perceptual, channel-contro
information-processing and global attentional and affective state-control approaches
is at cortical vs. subcortical levels of brain function. Information processing models
are especially useful for studying cognitions, where mental functions are strongly
linked to external stimuli impinging on the senses that then get transformed into
perceptions in the neocortex.
Affective analog, state-control functions are more
embodied, with large-scale networks having intrinsic patterns that control large
numbers of bodily processes. Also, the one thing that all scholars should agree upon
at this point is that mind as truly manifested in the world is fundamentally organic,
with information-processing being just one aspect of a more complex whole.
Information-processing as a comprehensive model of mind, has not only been
oversold, but it is imbued with more than a residue of dualism. The idea that mind
can be simply computed on any type of sufficiently complex computational
platform seems to leave the real body and brain behind. One wonders what the
computationalists do with the simple reality that minds, as they currently exist on
the face of the earth, are most surely organic processes and are in some deep and
perhaps essential way grounded in non-mental organic processes.
Computationalism became an attractive intellectual enterprise because of the ease
of computation with the onset of the computer revolution. We’re a lazy species but
also one attracted by new glitz, and if we have a great new tool we will use it for
everything that we can possibly think of. So we’ve now had this metaphor of a
computational mind for almost four decades, and I think it is a highly misleading
metaphor for the emotional mind.
Many in robotics are now heading toward embodied architectures, and making more progress.
The allure of the modern computer has prevented too many brilliant people from pursuing more useful
approaches such as organic, neuroscientific ones.
[….] One way to look at it is that too much of cognitivism is stuck with the belief based
view that external information-processing is the foundation of what
organisms do, rather than the embodied emotional and motivational states that
depend on large non-linear attractor landscapes, arising from below, that control
bodily actions and associated feelings. In fact, there is probably an organismic
center, a core self process, for most things animals do. Information-processing
revolves around an affectively self-centered, “What’s in it for me?” type of process.
If we gave those ancient systems primacy, I think we would have a dramatically
different view of learning—namely how informational schemes become embedded
within the finer neurodynamics of those ancient, lumbering, emotional “beasts of
the mind” (large “attractor landscapes”?) that are gradually educated to put on
some cognitive clothes.
. . .
I tend to accept that there is a level of complexity in the system that is
not capable of being observed directly, just like in particle physics, and that the only
way to penetrate the internal organizations of such processes is by theory. That’s
where I differ from quite a few of my colleagues. I do not believe in ruthless
reductionism, and the dangerous, value-free, and culture diminishing view that the
need for mental concepts disappears when all the neural firings have been tabulated.
A key function of the brain is to generate global network states that are the raw
foundational stuff of mentality, and much of the underlying organization currently
has to be inferred rather than directly observed.
Anyone who says that behaviorism was killed by the cognitive revolution has
not been paying attention. The behaviorists made a transformation. They became
neuroscientists. The behaviorist biases are with us to this day but they are amon
the neuroscientists who still refuse to make inferences. For instance, in the realm of
emotion they will say an emotion cannot be seen, ever. I tend to agree with them
that yes a neurodynamic process can only be seen indirectly. Just as in particle
physics the internal structure of matter at some point can only be seen by theoretical
inference. In physics the inference is based completely on mathematics.
Mathematics will not work on the brain. But an understanding of neuro-systems,
neuro-chemistries, where you can translate from animal experiments to potential
studies of human experience can generate predictions. As soon as you have a
coherent logical prediction you’re doing science.
S
smcder
Guest
... from Chapter 12 Free Will and Moral Responsibility
At the beginning of the 18th century, the German philosopher Leibniz wrote that our
conscious thoughts are influenced by sensory stimuli of which we are not aware:
...at every moment there is in us an infinity of perceptions, unaccompanied
by awareness or reflection.... That is why we are never indifferent, even
when we appear to be most so.... The choice that we make arises from these
insensible stimuli, which... make us find one direction of movement more
comfortable than the other.
Everything depends on how strongly one interprets the word ‘arises’. Do these subconscious processes influence or motivate our choices, or do they cause them? It seems that if there is something that we call a self, part of what we have in mind by that term is not only some kind of entity capable of self-conscious action, but an entity that takes responsibility for that action – in effect, someone with the status of moral agency.
Where in previous ages this was a huge controversy in theological contexts (see, for example, St. Augustine, and Leibniz himself: if God knows what I’m going to do before I do, am I not already predetermined and without free will?), today this is still a huge controversy, but now in contexts informed by neuroscience (if the brain knows what I am going to do before I do, am I not already determined and without free will?).
The brain has taken the place of God, at least in this corner of the discussion.
At the beginning of the 18th century, the German philosopher Leibniz wrote that our
conscious thoughts are influenced by sensory stimuli of which we are not aware:
...at every moment there is in us an infinity of perceptions, unaccompanied
by awareness or reflection.... That is why we are never indifferent, even
when we appear to be most so.... The choice that we make arises from these
insensible stimuli, which... make us find one direction of movement more
comfortable than the other.
Everything depends on how strongly one interprets the word ‘arises’. Do these subconscious processes influence or motivate our choices, or do they cause them? It seems that if there is something that we call a self, part of what we have in mind by that term is not only some kind of entity capable of self-conscious action, but an entity that takes responsibility for that action – in effect, someone with the status of moral agency.
Where in previous ages this was a huge controversy in theological contexts (see, for example, St. Augustine, and Leibniz himself: if God knows what I’m going to do before I do, am I not already predetermined and without free will?), today this is still a huge controversy, but now in contexts informed by neuroscience (if the brain knows what I am going to do before I do, am I not already determined and without free will?).
The brain has taken the place of God, at least in this corner of the discussion.
S
smcder
Guest
Chapter 12 Free Will and Moral Responsibility
Descartes’s answer to this question still frames the discussion today. So, for
example, two neuropsychologists who have done some important experiments on the
question of free will,
frame the question in exactly the same way, referring to it as the traditional concept: "how can a mental state (my
conscious intention) initiate the neural events in the motor areas of the brain that lead to
my body movement?" (Haggard and Libet 2001,47).
If we substitute ‘the pineal gland’ for ‘neural events in the motor areas’, this is precisely Descartes’ question.
Neuroscientists, of course are interested in identifying the precise area of the brain
responsible for the movement in question. The kind of responsibility they are interested
in is
responsibility two questions come immediately to mind:
Descartes’s answer to this question still frames the discussion today. So, for
example, two neuropsychologists who have done some important experiments on the
question of free will,
- Patrick Haggard
- Benjamin Libet
frame the question in exactly the same way, referring to it as the traditional concept: "how can a mental state (my
conscious intention) initiate the neural events in the motor areas of the brain that lead to
my body movement?" (Haggard and Libet 2001,47).
If we substitute ‘the pineal gland’ for ‘neural events in the motor areas’, this is precisely Descartes’ question.
Neuroscientists, of course are interested in identifying the precise area of the brain
responsible for the movement in question. The kind of responsibility they are interested
in is
- causal responsibility.
responsibility two questions come immediately to mind:
- does causal responsibility stretch back to include the mental state that seemingly gets the relevant neural mechanisms going (with some arguing that the mental state is nothing other than another set of neural mechanisms, or something caused by another set of neural mechanisms).
- to what degree is moral responsibility dependent on causal responsibility?
Randall
J. Randall Murphy
S
smcder
Guest
Chapter 8
A short robotic interlude
What if, given a certain physical system at the sub personal level, the way this system interacts with both the physical and social environments is what allows for the emergence of something new – which may (or may not) be what we call consciousness. In fact, according to some theorists, this is the way it is with us.
Is it possible to design a system that moves around the world like an animal (but isn’t an animal), interacts with objects, and interacts with people in a way that approaches a smooth intersubjective interaction (even if it isn’t conscious – although that can be left as an open question too).
A short robotic interlude
What if, given a certain physical system at the sub personal level, the way this system interacts with both the physical and social environments is what allows for the emergence of something new – which may (or may not) be what we call consciousness. In fact, according to some theorists, this is the way it is with us.
- We have a system – the brain – the sub personal explanation of which is never sufficient to account for consciousness; rather, for the emergence of consciousness we need embodied interaction with physical and social environments.
Is it possible to design a system that moves around the world like an animal (but isn’t an animal), interacts with objects, and interacts with people in a way that approaches a smooth intersubjective interaction (even if it isn’t conscious – although that can be left as an open question too).
S
smcder
Guest
Chapter 8
motor neurons and the Turing test
Here’s a version of a subpersonal Turing Test for this experiment, as suggested by Oberman et al. (in press).
Currently there is good evidence to suggest that mirror neurons, which are activated when we see others engaged in intentional actions, are not activated when we see mechanical things do the things that could be done by people (see, e.g., Di Pellegrino et al. 1992; Gallese 1996; Tai et al. 2004). So, if a monkey sees food being grasped by a mechanical apparatus rather than by a monkey or human hand, its MNs fail to fire. On the version of the Turing Test that would be relevant here, a robot would pass the Turing Test if in performing an action it caused our MNs to fire.
That at least would signal some progress in the construction of social robots.
motor neurons and the Turing test
Here’s a version of a subpersonal Turing Test for this experiment, as suggested by Oberman et al. (in press).
Currently there is good evidence to suggest that mirror neurons, which are activated when we see others engaged in intentional actions, are not activated when we see mechanical things do the things that could be done by people (see, e.g., Di Pellegrino et al. 1992; Gallese 1996; Tai et al. 2004). So, if a monkey sees food being grasped by a mechanical apparatus rather than by a monkey or human hand, its MNs fail to fire. On the version of the Turing Test that would be relevant here, a robot would pass the Turing Test if in performing an action it caused our MNs to fire.
That at least would signal some progress in the construction of social robots.
These are significant findings. In both humans and monkeys they indicate prereflective understanding of the difference between other living organisms {in their sensed subjectivity} and mechanical equipment {its sensed lack of subjectivity}. It strongly supports the theory of subconscious mentation -- of 'mind' already developing in preconscious experience in the world. It is an example of the orientation to the environing local world already attained by conscious beings before reflective consciousness rises out of prereflective consciousness, as phenomenologists recognized.
It also suggests a preconscious base for empathy -- the understanding that other living beings experience the world in ways similar to, even parallel to, one's own. This is the ground out of which empathy evolves in living species to the point of morality, ethics, and laws in human social organizations. It is an example of how thinking grows out of feeling. The question of most intense interest is how empathy, between and among individuals of a single species and also across species, is achieved. I think it's most likely born out of instincts for nurturing the young, but is over time extended to other adults of one's group and even to adults as well as the young of other species.
It must be that the sense of the feeling of one's own existence and its precariousness is by some means transmitted from one subconscious mind to another before it is possible to reflect on it in conceptual terms. Psychical researchers have long contemplated a field theory of consciousness to account for such subliminal perception and understanding, which becomes a means of preverbal, pre-ideational, communication among the living and even, evidence suggests, between living and postmortem consciousnesses..
This is an appropriate place to cite again this major work by Kelly and Kelly et al, Irreducible Mind: Towards a Psychology for the 21st Century.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51JwTcew4nL._SX332_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
Amazon description:
"Current mainstream opinion in psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind holds that all aspects of human mind and consciousness are generated by physical processes occurring in brains. Views of this sort have dominated recent scholarly publication. The present volume, however, demonstrates empirically that this reductive materialism is not only incomplete but false. The authors systematically marshal evidence for a variety of psychological phenomena that are extremely difficult, and in some cases clearly impossible, to account for in conventional physicalist terms. Topics addressed include phenomena of extreme psychophysical influence, memory, psychological automatisms and secondary personality, near-death experiences and allied phenomena, genius-level creativity, and 'mystical' states of consciousness both spontaneous and drug-induced. The authors further show that these rogue phenomena are more readily accommodated by an alternative 'transmission' or 'filter' theory of mind/brain relations advanced over a century ago by a largely forgotten genius, F. W. H. Myers, and developed further by his friend and colleague William James. This theory, moreover, ratifies the commonsense conception of human beings as causally effective conscious agents, and is fully compatible with leading-edge physics and neuroscience. The book should command the attention of all open-minded persons concerned with the still-unsolved mysteries of the mind."
Early in Part 4 of this thread Steve [smcder] provided an overview of the parts of this book, which I'll link next.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51JwTcew4nL._SX332_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
Amazon description:
"Current mainstream opinion in psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind holds that all aspects of human mind and consciousness are generated by physical processes occurring in brains. Views of this sort have dominated recent scholarly publication. The present volume, however, demonstrates empirically that this reductive materialism is not only incomplete but false. The authors systematically marshal evidence for a variety of psychological phenomena that are extremely difficult, and in some cases clearly impossible, to account for in conventional physicalist terms. Topics addressed include phenomena of extreme psychophysical influence, memory, psychological automatisms and secondary personality, near-death experiences and allied phenomena, genius-level creativity, and 'mystical' states of consciousness both spontaneous and drug-induced. The authors further show that these rogue phenomena are more readily accommodated by an alternative 'transmission' or 'filter' theory of mind/brain relations advanced over a century ago by a largely forgotten genius, F. W. H. Myers, and developed further by his friend and colleague William James. This theory, moreover, ratifies the commonsense conception of human beings as causally effective conscious agents, and is fully compatible with leading-edge physics and neuroscience. The book should command the attention of all open-minded persons concerned with the still-unsolved mysteries of the mind."
Early in Part 4 of this thread Steve [smcder] provided an overview of the parts of this book, which I'll link next.
Randall
J. Randall Murphy
It might not be technically true that, " ... all aspects of human mind and consciousness are generated by physical processes occurring in brains.", but any such truth hinges on how we interpret the phrase, "all aspects" and the word "generated". For example, when we stub our toe on a piece of furniture there is an "aspect" that involves the stimulation of nerves in our toe from which signals are sent to our brain where they are "interpreted" as pain. So there's one example of an "aspect" of pain ( a primary contributor leading to the sensation of pain ) that involves signals "generated" by your toe instead of your brain. So what? Somehow I suspect that it isn't what the authors are attempting to illuminate.
Sure enough a sentence or two later we see the mention of NDEs and "mystical states of consciousness" mentioned and that's got shades of "What the Bleep do We Know" all over it. A quick look at some other reviews and we find that, "It is written by a group of researchers mostly associated by their belief in the paranormal and their involvement in a New-Age Californian think-tank called the Esalen Center for Theory and Research." | SOURCE | Perhaps this outfit isn't as trailer park as the Ramtha School of Enlightenment, but here's an extract about one of their a recent "Initiatives":
"This conference will focus on two related themes: (1) the doctrine and experiential lore of the subtle body in both Eastern and Western traditions, with particular attention on its contemporary expression in the West, including the widely held belief in the chakra system of yoga traditions; and (2) the metaphysical frameworks of the East and West that present a dual aspect of soul: embodied and disembodied, descended and undescended, heavenly and earthly, etc."
IMO this has the smell of woo all over it and since we've already been through NDEs, OOBEs, past lives and similar claims, and found them to lack any substantial and definitive evidence for the idea that consciousness doesn't require a functioning brain, I would almost bet my grandmother's secret recipe for risalamande that Irreducible Mind also offers nothing substantial. That being said, it still might be interesting to ponder and even entertaining for those who are into that sort of thing. Buy the hardback for $93.00 and maybe you can even get your chakras cleansed.
Paul Selig Channeling At The Esalin Institute
Now if that's whets your appetite for more, you can move on to
Beyond Physicalism: Toward Reconciliation of Science and Spirituality
Beyond Physicalism: Toward Reconciliation of Science and Spirituality
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