This is a really excellent paper, Soupie, and I'm glad you linked it. Does Zlatev lead to any changes in your thinking?
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Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 6
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This is a really excellent paper, Soupie, and I'm glad you linked it. Does Zlatev lead to any changes in your thinking?
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
How would you differentiate the problem of consciousness and the mind-body problem? I think this might clarify what you hope to accomplish with HCT.
What I was trying to capture in this case with the / was to focus on the "what it's like" or "feeling" aspect of consciousness, as opposed to the contents of consciousness.
Meaning is more fundamental then consciousness? Interesting.
Pharoah
Paranormal Adept
I have differentiated the POC from the MBP before:
Briefly, you can explain why the first-person exists (why it emerges) and why it has qualitative phenomenal consciousness and why it is individuated. But, when this is achieved the explanation does not account for the individual that you are; why is it, that in the 13.8 billion years of the universe's past and 100 trillion years of its future, you happen to be the individual mind that you are. Answering that would be to answer the MBP.
The first answer explains subjectivity from objectivity, but does not explain the uniquely personal nature of your particular mind and why it is the one that it is.
Put it this way, conscious individuals could have existed in the universe without you ever having existed. An explanation of those other consciousnesses would not have to account for you in order to account for consciousness. The two problems are entirely separate though intimately entwined.
This is all articulated in Nagel's View from Nowhere (especially chp. 4).
wiil ok.. got that.
meaning is fundamental... I am currently writing a new paper on this. Will post when ready.
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
So the problem of consciousness (on your view) is the problem of subjectivity, phenomenal consciousness, and individuation. However, explaining these will not explain the mind-body problem.
In my opinion, subjectivity and phenomenal consciousness cannot be solved without solving the mind-body problem. However, I would agree that individuation can be explained without solving the MBP.
I'm recalling now our lengthy discussion about this in the past. Your concept of the mind-body problem is very different from the standard concept of the problem. I believe smcder dubbed it the "why am I me" problem.
To me, the WAIM problem is no different than the individuation problem.
Anyhow, here is how the SEP defines the MBP:
Dualism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
"The mind-body problem is the problem: what is the relationship between mind and body? Or alternatively: what is the relationship between mental properties and physical properties?"
As you can see, your WAIM problem is very different from the MBP. As I've stated before, WAIM is only a problem if we hold a Trialist stance: Mind-Body-Experience.
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
For those of us who recognize the Hard Problem or mind-body problem, we will go round and round until it is solved.
Is consciousness a problem of physics? Even if it is a problem of physics, which it may be, we still do not have any physical models of consciousness.
(One potential that I have been investigating on this front is whether the "what it is like" aspect of consciousness is a phase state of matter, not unlike gas, liquid, solid, and plasma. Of course it would be unlike these states of matter in the important sense that those states are objective and consciousness is subjective.)
Or is consciousness a problem of symbol processing? For example, does the "what it is like" aspect of consciousness manifest when a symbol system references itself in a particular way?
Below isn't the best articulation of this potential, but it's a start:
Strange loop - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Hofstadter argues that the psychological self arises out of a similar kind of paradox. We are not born with an ‘I’ – the ego emerges only gradually as experience shapes our dense web of active symbols into a tapestry rich and complex enough to begin twisting back upon itself. According to this view the psychological ‘I’ is a narrative fiction, something created only from intake of symbolic data and its own ability to create stories about itself from that data. The consequence is that a perspective (a mind) is a culmination of a unique pattern of symbolic activity in our nervous systems, which suggests that the pattern of symbolic activity that makes identity, that constitutes subjectivity, can be replicated within the brains of others, and perhaps even in artificial brains.[2]"
It's not clear whether the "what it is like" aspect of consciousness is a physical phenomenon or a self-referencing symbol system phenomenon.
There are no compelling models for either.
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Soupie
Paranormal Adept
Ive not finished, but I find his writing on various topics discussed here to be helpful.
Here is a section which essentially summarizes my critique of @Pharoah's HCT:
"3.1. Level 1: organism, biological value, Umwelt
Following von Uexküll (1982), the theory maintains that the fundamental subject (S) is an organism, even of the simplest kind. Its world (W) is that of the Umwelt – that part of the larger “environment” which is picked out by a value system (V), which is either innately, or through learning, geared for the survival and reproduction of the organism. [Very similar concept and language as HCT.] Only organisms (living systems), and not artificially created machines, have the properties of self-organization, autopoiesis (Maturana & Varela 1980), identity-Umwelt polarity (Thompson 2007), and an intrinsic value system (Edelman 1992), serving their own interests, rather than optimizing some externally defined function. No artificial system has these properties, but if such a system is one day created (or perhaps: is allowed to emerge), then the term “artificial life” would become more than a metaphor (cf. Zlatev 2003).
Thus, in agreement with biosemiotics, though not exactly for the same reasons, meaning is seen to be co-extensional with life. However, the subject of biology, the organism, is not yet an experiencing subject. The living body is not identical to the lived body (Husserl’s Leib). The relationship between the organism-subject and the phenomenon (e.g. the “smell” of the animal picked up by the tick in the famous example of von Uexküll 1982), is intrinsically meaningful for the tick, but this is not a sufficient reason to grant the tick subjective experience, as done by von Uexküll. Otherwise, without special reasons to assume that e.g. the tick, but not simpler (and even unicellular) organisms, has some basic consciousness, one would have to postulate that Popper’s “world 2” does indeed commence with life itself. There is no logical fault with this, but the point is that it is not required by assuming a basic pre-conscious, biological level of meaning. Following “Morgan’s Cannon” (do not assume more complex processes if simpler are sufficient), biological value suffices to explain why an Umwelt is intrinsically meaningful for an organism.
On the other hand, the proto-intentional relationship inherent in the organism-Umwelt polarity, i.e. the biological directedness of the organism-subject toward phenomena which it “experiences” (due to its intrinsic value system) as meaningful, even if non-phenomenally, is a plausible ground for the emergence of consciousness (as primitive sentience) in evolution. Discussion on why this could be so will be postponed for Section 4.1, since the purpose here is to define the levels, and not the transitions."
As I've noted, I believe HCT presents a good model for symbol grounding in biological organisms (a biological level of meaning), but as the author notes above, it does not explain subjective experience (as @Pharoah asserts).
I look forward to the rest of the paper.
Pharoah
Paranormal Adept
@Soupie
I would take issue with pretty much everything you have said in this post... not sure where to start.
re SEP and the MBP bit:
Given the author's use of the colon in the sentence you quote,
mental properties = mind.
physical properties = body.
The author stipulates that the mind section includes consciousness (including perceptual experience, emotional experience, and much else), intentionality (including beliefs, desires, and much else), and they are possessed by a subject or a self.
The sentence does not make sense. The self is a property of the mental that possesses properties... a property possesses properties...
You may note that under mind section, the said 'mental properties' cannot include "a subject or a self" in the list of mental properties unless you take the view that 'subject'/'self' can be classified as examples of properties.
What I am saying, if this point is unclear, is that the author has subdivided 'mind' in two parts within his 'mental properties' section, namely, those things that might be called properties, and the self. Now you could argue that the author could have used a term like 'mental characteristics' instead of 'mental properties'. But the problem remains for it would require that we consider the self as merely a characteristic which it clearly is not. If it was, rather bizarrly, You and I are the same self with different experiences and bodies... it's a kind of solopsist stance which I have rejected for now.
The upshot is this. Under the mind section—forgetting for a moment that there is a body section—one has all the duality one needs to consider the nature of dualism. Namely, you have mental properties and characteristics, and you have the possession of those properties and characteristics in 'the self'.
Don't forget that this is in the Dualism entry.
Incidentally, the WAIM problem is different to individuation. A snowflake is individuated... You can explain individuation in all its physical guises without explaining WAIM.
In your last post @Soupie you quote from the paper and underline sections:
"Thus, in agreement with biosemiotics, though not exactly for the same reasons, meaning is seen to be co-extensional with life. However, the subject of biology, the organism, is not yet an experiencing subject. The living body is not identical to the lived body (Husserl’s Leib). The relationship between the organism-subject and the phenomenon (e.g. the “smell” of the animal picked up by the tick in the famous example of von Uexküll 1982), is intrinsically meaningful for the tick, but this is not a sufficient reason to grant the tick subjective experience, as done by von Uexküll. Otherwise, without special reasons to assume that e.g. the tick, but not simpler (and even unicellular) organisms, has some basic consciousness, one would have to postulate that Popper’s “world 2” does indeed commence with life itself."
To be clear, HCT does not stipulate that the smell picked up by a tick is sufficient reason to grant it subjectivity or some basic form of consciousness. To think otherwise is to misunderstand HcT. There is no critique in that section of HCT
It seems to me that to foreground the issue that divides us* we need to pick up where Pharoah's quote leaves off and continue that statement from Zlatev, as follows:
". . . Following 'Morgan’s Cannon' (do not assume more complex processes if simpler are sufficient), biological value suffices to explain why an Umwelt is intrinsically meaningful for an organism.
On the other hand, the proto-intentional relationship inherent in the organism-Umwelt polarity, i.e. the biological directedness of the organism-subject toward phenomena which it “experiences” (due to its intrinsic value system) as meaningful, even if non-phenomenally, is a plausible ground for the emergence of consciousness (as primitive sentience) in evolution. Discussion on why this could be so will be postponed for Section 4.1, since the purpose here is to define the levels, and not the transitions."
Why don't we read Zlatev's Section 4.1 on the 'transitions' between levels and discuss that in detail? What Zlatev expressed in this paragraph is similar to Panksepp's thinking. I haven't checked Zlatev's bibliography yet but I think it's likely he cites Panksepp or one of his colleagues in affective neuroscience and theory.
Let's first look at this portion of Zlatev's extended statement:
". . . Following 'Morgan’s Cannon' (do not assume more complex processes if simpler are sufficient), biological value suffices to explain why an Umwelt is intrinsically meaningful for an organism."
Neuroscience has as yet no insight into the levels of evolution in which protoconsciousness eventually builds consciousness like ours and that of other higher animals -- consciousness that is both prereflective (accumulating subconscious knowledge) and reflective (in which we develop mind as we know it). Whoever Morgan is, his 'cannon' is something like the standard take on 'Occam's Razor' except that Occam, fully quoted, specified that 'the simplest explanation' for a phenomenon should be preferred but that it must be able to account for all recognizable aspects of the phenomenon, in other words: what we think we know about the world at this point in our investigations. The question is how adequate is our knowledge concerning the evolution of consciousness from one level to another? Another question is to what extent are some cognitive neuroscientists and information theorists operating these days on a materialist/physicalist presupposition that consciousness is an effect of what is done unto life by a matrix-like mechanical 'nature' rather than an expression of what living organisms achieve in their interactions with the natural environment all the way up the evolutionary scale on earth?
*it if's not clear what I mean by "the issue that divides us," please say so.
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
So you're saying your conception of the MBP is correct and the SEP has it wrong?
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
HCT says that environmental stimuli (the world) are qualitatively relevant (have value and are thus picked out) to the organism (subject) and this process results in phenomenal consciousness.
I say it does not. This is symbol grounding or biological meaning.
I'm not sure you've accurately characterized what Pharoah argues with HCT, but let's see how he responds. I'd change 'to' to 'by' in your statement above, thus:
"HCT says that environmental stimuli (the world) are qualitatively relevant (have value and are thus picked out) to/by the organism (subject) and this process results in phenomenal consciousness."
That change in prepositions changes everything, doesn't it? Which is why you were careful to change the ordinary English usage [X was picked out by A] when we speak of persons and animals 'picking out' one thing (food, person, other animal, toy) rather than another. In the case of more primitive organisms evolving in narrow environmental niches we are accustomed to thinking that they are not presented with options or choices to pursue (and we have no way of knowing). But options do become available to individuals in various species the higher up the ladder of evolution we proceed, and at some point in any evolutionary line options are exercised by individuals. On what basis can we explain/account for an individual animal's choices among alternatives if not a form of protoconsciousness or consciousness?
I suspect that Pharoah too would have to prefer 'to' to 'by' in your statement, but I'd need to hear him clarify that to be sure.
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Here are some additional recent publications by Platev:
Zlatev, J. (2008c). The co-evolution of intersubjectivity and bodily mimesis. In J. Zlatev, T. Racine, C. Sinha & E. Itkonen (Eds.), The Shared Mind: Perspectives on Intersubjectivity (pp. 215–244). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Zlatev, J. (2008d). From proto-mimesis to language: Evidence from primatology and social neuroscience. Journal of Physiology 102 (1–3), 137–151.
Zlatev, J. (in press). Phenomenology and cognitive linguistics. In D. Schmicking & S. Gallagher (Eds.), Handbook of Phenomenology and Cognitive Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Zlatev, J. (2008c). The co-evolution of intersubjectivity and bodily mimesis. In J. Zlatev, T. Racine, C. Sinha & E. Itkonen (Eds.), The Shared Mind: Perspectives on Intersubjectivity (pp. 215–244). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Zlatev, J. (2008d). From proto-mimesis to language: Evidence from primatology and social neuroscience. Journal of Physiology 102 (1–3), 137–151.
Zlatev, J. (in press). Phenomenology and cognitive linguistics. In D. Schmicking & S. Gallagher (Eds.), Handbook of Phenomenology and Cognitive Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
This is also relevant:
A Natural History of Human Thinking
Hardcover – February 17, 2014
by Michael Tomasello
"Tool-making or culture, language or religious belief: ever since Darwin, thinkers have struggled to identify what fundamentally differentiates human beings from other animals. In this much-anticipated book, Michael Tomasello weaves his twenty years of comparative studies of humans and great apes into a compelling argument that cooperative social interaction is the key to our cognitive uniqueness. Once our ancestors learned to put their heads together with others to pursue shared goals, humankind was on an evolutionary path all its own.
Tomasello argues that our prehuman ancestors, like today's great apes, were social beings who could solve problems by thinking. But they were almost entirely competitive, aiming only at their individual goals. As ecological changes forced them into more cooperative living arrangements, early humans had to coordinate their actions and communicate their thoughts with collaborative partners. Tomasello's "shared intentionality hypothesis" captures how these more socially complex forms of life led to more conceptually complex forms of thinking. In order to survive, humans had to learn to see the world from multiple social perspectives, to draw socially recursive inferences, and to monitor their own thinking via the normative standards of the group. Even language and culture arose from the preexisting need to work together. What differentiates us most from other great apes, Tomasello proposes, are the new forms of thinking engendered by our new forms of collaborative and communicative interaction.
A Natural History of Human Thinking is the most detailed scientific analysis to date of the connection between human sociality and cognition."
copied from amazon.com
A Natural History of Human Thinking
Hardcover – February 17, 2014
by Michael Tomasello
"Tool-making or culture, language or religious belief: ever since Darwin, thinkers have struggled to identify what fundamentally differentiates human beings from other animals. In this much-anticipated book, Michael Tomasello weaves his twenty years of comparative studies of humans and great apes into a compelling argument that cooperative social interaction is the key to our cognitive uniqueness. Once our ancestors learned to put their heads together with others to pursue shared goals, humankind was on an evolutionary path all its own.
Tomasello argues that our prehuman ancestors, like today's great apes, were social beings who could solve problems by thinking. But they were almost entirely competitive, aiming only at their individual goals. As ecological changes forced them into more cooperative living arrangements, early humans had to coordinate their actions and communicate their thoughts with collaborative partners. Tomasello's "shared intentionality hypothesis" captures how these more socially complex forms of life led to more conceptually complex forms of thinking. In order to survive, humans had to learn to see the world from multiple social perspectives, to draw socially recursive inferences, and to monitor their own thinking via the normative standards of the group. Even language and culture arose from the preexisting need to work together. What differentiates us most from other great apes, Tomasello proposes, are the new forms of thinking engendered by our new forms of collaborative and communicative interaction.
A Natural History of Human Thinking is the most detailed scientific analysis to date of the connection between human sociality and cognition."
copied from amazon.com
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
Read it without the parentheses.
"HCT says that environmental stimuli are qualitatively relevant to the organism and this process results in phenomenal consciousness."
The bottom line is that HCT does not provide an explanation of the "what its like" or "feeling" aspect of consciousness.
Pharoah
Paranormal Adept
@Soupie
Are yu sure that I wrote that? I would be surprisd. If I did, it is inaccurate and needs changing.
re. SEP. As an opening gambit, it's not a great start. The author might be able to rewrite it successfully but as it stands the sentence is dreadful.
Nagel is the only philosopher that know who seems to understand this subject as I do.
How do the folloing relate to each other:
1. MBP
2. objectivity/subjectivity problem OSP
3. explanatory gap problem EGP
4. something I have missed out
Pharoah
Paranormal Adept
The only thing about existence that qualifies the MBP is the individuality of the self, which coincidentally possesses such things as experience, awareness of reality, a body, consciousness etc...
All aspects of the mental (as those listed above) could merely be properties of physical process were it not for the fact that a self undergoes them and introspects about why they are his or hers. Put it this way, if some bodily thing in existence were conscious but had no self, it would not contemplate the MBP... it would not relate its consciousness to it-as-a-self, and we, as external God-like observers of this bodily thing, would observe it as something with characteristic consciousness-like properties in common with all such bodily things; just as we might observe atoms as individual bodily things with certain properties and charactrristics lacking a self.
All aspects of the mental (as those listed above) could merely be properties of physical process were it not for the fact that a self undergoes them and introspects about why they are his or hers. Put it this way, if some bodily thing in existence were conscious but had no self, it would not contemplate the MBP... it would not relate its consciousness to it-as-a-self, and we, as external God-like observers of this bodily thing, would observe it as something with characteristic consciousness-like properties in common with all such bodily things; just as we might observe atoms as individual bodily things with certain properties and charactrristics lacking a self.
Pharoah
Paranormal Adept
In the animal kingdom, no one knows what charactristics or properties are indicative of the existence of 'a self' which is why people cannot agree what 'point' in evolutionary development the MBP becomes relevant or pertinent. Few would argue that many animals do not possess mental properites or characteristics... but which of this is indicative of the existence of subjectivity or soul
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
How do they relate? The SEP article articulates it concisely:
"What is the realtionship between physical properties and mental properties?"
Pharoah, you say:
"The only thing about existence that qualifies the MBP is the individuality of the self, which coincidentally possesses such things as experience, awareness of reality, a body, consciousness etc...
All aspects of the mental (as those listed above) could merely be properties of physical process..."
This is a very radical statement! You seem to be saying (1) that all mental properties (experience, awareness, consciousness) could merely emerge (?) from physical processes, and (2) that the self is primary and experience, awareness, and consciousness are secondary.
My understanding is that most philosophers of mind would say that the Sense of Self is a (mental) property of consciousness, not the other way around, as you seem to suggest.
And, you say that all mental aspects* could be properties of physical processes, but you havent articulated a model of how this might be. Yes, you assert that HCT is such a model, but so far as I know, no one who has read it agrees. (I've sincerely tried to seek clarity to no avail.)
*Do you believe that the Sense of Self is a mental property of physical processes?
Pharoah
Paranormal Adept
@Soupie:
you say, 'The SEP articulates it concisely'
Where?
"HCT says that environmental stimuli are qualitatively relevant to the organism and this process results in phenomenal consciousness."
Where?
A lot of 'selves' exist without me existing.
All these existing 'selves' have the same catgorical classes of mental properties and characteristics. [which I would argue has something to do with the nature of th physics of all such bodies]
Therefore, mental properties and characteristics do not explain 'a self'
The puzzle of the mind is not that minds have mental properties and characteristics, but that you have the particular one you have.
If the world differed such that I could, at will, see through the eyes of every human being that ever existed or will ever exist (in this galaxy and every other galaxy with certain types of organism living on some of its planets), then I, being every human et al. would rightfully conclude that there was a oarticular kind of mental property or characteristic that created the property or characteristic of 'self'... that self being me. All organisms with that mental property would instantiate the property of self... I.e. me. As this particular mental property would explain the existence of my-self, such a world would have no MBP because the physics of mental properties would be sufficient to explain the nature of self. Self wold still be a mystery, but we/I would conclude it was a mystery of physics and would call it the Body Problem.
Anothr world in which the MBP does not exist is a universe in which I have never and will nver exist. This univers may have organisms with mental properties and characteristics identical to our own, but we can surmise that, without any selves in evident existence there might possibily be no selves populating—we might conclude they are bodies without souls. There being no evidence that bodies have minds and selves would suggest there are bodies and no minds and therfore no MBP (and no Bidy Problem either).
The point is @Soupie, one can conceivably have worlds with mental properties in for whom its inhabitants would not conclude there was a MBP... it would not cross their ''minds" that there was a MBP. A bit like before hominids existed funnily enough...
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