Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 6

[smcder]

Mental illness is a result of misery, yet still we stigmatise it | Richard Bentall

 

[Constance]

I haven't watched the 'Memory Hackers' program but will do so to get a better idea of what's being proposed in it. Re your summary of the hypothesis expressed in the program -- that "memory gets made in the brain through physical growth of synaptic connections and that all memories and experiences are coordinated events that aligns experience with a variety of sensory and emotional response experiences" -- I question the core belief that memories are 'made in the brain through the growth of synaptic connections'. I question it because that 'explanation' comes too late to account for the persistent and often profound effects of experiences occurring in the early years of an individual's life, before the significance of certain memories can be understood -- made sense of. Neural nets developed further along in life enable individuals at best to categorize and reflect on vaguely recalled experiences of fear and abandonment in their most helpless states as infants and toddlers. This is especially clear in persons who spent those years in the 'care' of indifferent or inadequate or even cruel caregivers who did not or could not provide the emotional comfort and nurturing essential to the thriving of infants and young children. Those are losses, sources of grief, that cannot be overcome by 're-wiring' the brain [as if that is something that can actually be done for the general well-being of an individual in the first place*, and especially after emotionally disabling damage has been done to the whole person].

Similarly, veterans suffering from PTSD break down because of radical assaults on their emotions when they see their comrades and even their 'enemies' blown up before their eyes, and witness (if not themselves cause) larger-scale destruction of inhabited villages and cities. One can't be neurologically 'rewired' to forget about such experiences; they are permanent inhabitants of the mind and soul of the person who has experienced them. Such a person needs longtime therapy not to forget such wounds but to accommodate them, contextualize them, and heal what the individual feels in the body as well as in the mind. Consciousness is not a product of neurons, synapses, and neural nets, though it is true that a functioning brain is necessary to enable any 'making sense' of whatever one experiences in the world.

The damage done by some emotional and demoralizing assaults (in childhood as well as in adulthood) destroys the individual's will to live and openness to further experience, compromises the ability to form or sustain new relationships that might be efficacious, and also disrupts an individual's ability to function mentally, to concentrate on and carry through on purely mental tasks. Victims of PTSD need help not only emotionally but also in following through on practical mental tasks if they are to return to a degree of self-efficacy in and self-management of their lives. The latter kind of therapy has been developed in the last few decades to assist soldiers and others damaged in wartime situations -- as well as school-age children damaged by one or another or several kinds of emotional and mental abuse and assault experienced in early childhood -- to redevelop skills in focusing on and building degrees of success in the kind of functioning needed to survive, if not thrive, in the world they live in. But that kind of therapy alone cannot touch the deeper wounds to consciousness in the situations I've discussed, which must be healed (to the extent they can be) through different and deeper forms of therapy.

[*curing 'phobias' (concerning unmanageable fear of spiders, snakes, flying in airplanes, swimming in deep water etc) is another matter entirely, far simpler to do and worth attempting through cognitive-behavioral therapy or (perhaps) whatever else is proposed in the NOVA program you cite, which I'll watch before reposting on this subject.]

 

[Constance]

Mental illness is a result of misery, yet still we stigmatise it | Richard Bentall

Excellent article. Thanks for posting it Steve.

 

[Constance]

Here is an online discussion of the issues regarding reduction and emergence that are central to the major debate in consciousness studies between objectivist approaches to consciousness, as expressed in materialist neuroscience and information theory on one side, and the phenomenological approach to consciousness, expressed in phenomenological philosophy of mind and in neurophenomenology in recent years. These issues in consciousness studies stand behind the lengthy exchanges at this link in which philosophers and physicists exchange viewpoints on reduction and emergence in the physical sciences in general. It's all well worth reading for us since it clarifies the ongoing struggle in the sciences between reductivist and emergentist approaches to nature itself, how it evolves, and what it can enable in the evolution of species and the development of consciousness and mind.

I saw when I reached the end of the lengthy exchanges in the comments that our own @Pharoah had posted the last comment when this discussion ended in 2012. This first online symposium was to be the first of four discussions on reduction and emergence, each following an introductory essay by Massimo Pigliucci [each to be based on a key paper by a physicist or a philosopher of science presenting influential perspectives on reduction and emergence]. Pigliucci is a professor of philosophy at the City University of New York. I'm looking now for the links to the succeeding three parts of this project and will post them when I locate them.

Rationally Speaking: Essays on emergence, part I

Here is part of the biographical note on Pigliucci's background; the rest can be read under the heading 'Contributors' on his 'Rationally Speaking' blog at the above link:

"Massimo Pigliucci. Massimo started the Rationally Speaking blog and is the principal contributor to the site. He has a Doctorate in Genetics from the University of Ferrara (Italy), a PhD in Evolutionary Biology from the University of Connecticut, and a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Tennessee. He has done post-doctoral research in evolutionary ecology at Brown University and is currently Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His research interests include the philosophy of biology, in particular the structure and foundations of evolutionary theory, the relationship between science and philosophy, the relationship between science and religion, and the nature of pseudoscience.

Massimo is the Editor-in-Chief of the open access journal Philosophy & Theory in Biology (philosophyandtheoryinbiology.org). He has been elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science “for fundamental studies of genotype by environmental interactions and for public defense of evolutionary biology from pseudoscientific attack. . . .”

 

[Burnt State]

I haven't watched the 'Memory Hackers' program but will do so to get a better idea of what's being proposed in it. Re your summary of the hypothesis expressed in the program -- that "memory gets made in the brain through physical growth of synaptic connections and that all memories and experiences are coordinated events that aligns experience with a variety of sensory and emotional response experiences" -- I question the core belief that memories are 'made in the brain through the growth of synaptic connections'. I question it because that 'explanation' comes too late to account for the persistent and often profound effects of experiences occurring in the early years of an individual's life, before the significance of certain memories can be understood -- made sense of. Neural nets developed further along in life enable individuals at best to categorize and reflect on vaguely recalled experiences of fear and abandonment in their most helpless states as infants and toddlers. This is especially clear in persons who spent those years in the 'care' of indifferent or inadequate or even cruel caregivers who did not or could not provide the emotional comfort and nurturing essential to the thriving of infants and young children. Those are losses, sources of grief, that cannot be overcome by 're-wiring' the brain [as if that is something that can actually be done for the general well-being of an individual in the first place*, and especially after emotionally disabling damage has been done to the whole person].

Similarly, veterans suffering from PTSD break down because of radical assaults on their emotions when they see their comrades and even their 'enemies' blown up before their eyes, and witness (if not themselves cause) larger-scale destruction of inhabited villages and cities. One can't be neurologically 'rewired' to forget about such experiences; they are permanent inhabitants of the mind and soul of the person who has experienced them. Such a person needs longtime therapy not to forget such wounds but to accommodate them, contextualize them, and heal what the individual feels in the body as well as in the mind. Consciousness is not a product of neurons, synapses, and neural nets, though it is true that a functioning brain is necessary to enable any 'making sense' of whatever one experiences in the world.

The damage done by some emotional and demoralizing assaults (in childhood as well as in adulthood) destroys the individual's will to live and openness to further experience, compromises the ability to form or sustain new relationships that might be efficacious, and also disrupts an individual's ability to function mentally, to concentrate on and carry through on purely mental tasks. Victims of PTSD need help not only emotionally but also in following through on practical mental tasks if they are to return to a degree of self-efficacy in and self-management of their lives. The latter kind of therapy has been developed in the last few decades to assist soldiers and others damaged in wartime situations -- as well as school-age children damaged by one or another or several kinds of emotional and mental abuse and assault experienced in early childhood -- to redevelop skills in focusing on and building degrees of success in the kind of functioning needed to survive, if not thrive, in the world they live in. But that kind of therapy alone cannot touch the deeper wounds to consciousness in the situations I've discussed, which must be healed (to the extent they can be) through different and deeper forms of therapy.

[*curing 'phobias' (concerning unmanageable fear of spiders, snakes, flying in airplanes, swimming in deep water etc) is another matter entirely, far simpler to do and worth attempting through cognitive-behavioral therapy or (perhaps) whatever else is proposed in the NOVA program you cite, which I'll watch before reposting on this subject.]

It's not about forgetting the memory; it's about retraining the brain to no longer associate certain emotions with the trauma, to learn to accept the trauma event as real, but not something that should have to continue to debilitate the person. Meditation, as a component of Dialectical Behavioural Therapy, has been shown to alter brain chemistry and change the ability for people to cope with anxiety, depression etc. You can ether accept or not accept her research cited at the end of the show, whose preliminary findings demonstrated positive impacts of her therapies on people with PTSD.

I think our continued increase in understanding how memory is made and how emotional associations are created to produce different disorders, especially as a result of repeated early traumas in children, and in any PTSD sufferer, shows great promise and hope for those afflicted. In an age of youth suicide and youth mental health crisis this is good news IMHO. I wish youth had access to such therapies now, though the first step in therapy is still about whether or not that person wants to get better and has the resources and continued support to assist in that journey. Most do not.

 

[smcder]

my latest paper (for The Monist submission):
http://mind-phronesis.co.uk/Info-essay-10-02-16.pdf
feedback welcome

Best of luck with your submission Pharoah.

 

[Burnt State]

Mental illness is a result of misery, yet still we stigmatise it | Richard Bentall

I find it difficult to believe that in this day and age, especially with the ramped up increase in youth mental health issues, that psychiatry would ignore the role of human narratives and early traumas. That's all I'm seeing in the many youth I have in jeopardy. My one student recently made two suicide attempts back to back - both of which he described as "attempts" to staff and friends but to the doctors & parents he called it an overdose. So he was released without a psych assessment. The family just wants to pray about it instead of seeking clinical care. I can see how he descends from a narrative of male violence at home. This kid is a slow motion train wreck and the source of it all is his own history.

Increasingly I'm finding the Healthcare system to be overwhelmed and often unable to meet the needs of youth in crisis in a timely manner. Issues of mental health in society and how we care for this cohort still needs a dramatic overhaul. Many in the circle of care just don't have the training or the wherewithal to deal with these issues as they present.

 

[smcder]

trauma technology and PTSD
Can we use this above technology to get soldiers back on the battle-field (faster), and soldiers that would otherwise be debiliated by PTSD and/or a danger to their own troops?

something I have never seen discussed
How about violent offenders for whom the trauma they experienced at other's hands as well as the trauma they experienced when committing their own crimes - as they are playing out the violent narratives of their own childhoods (in some cases) - this trauma leaves no space for anything but self-hatred and hatred of the world - could we use this technology to alleviate some of that trauma and allow the person to work on things - even if they remained in prison the rest of their lives, they would be beter inmates, gaurds and fellow inmates would be safer - although they might not be able to defend themselves as well and surely would have to be transferred to another unit where they had no history.

cruel, unusual?
Or in rare instances of extreme psychopathy, suppose they are simply biologically unable to empathize -they are predators or have some cross-wiring of the aggression and other appetitive centers ... in effect this technology could give them their "souls" back (actually give them "souls" for the first time) presenting an interesting ethical dilemma:

Let's say a violent serial offender has been determined to be a level four psychopath - we can offer him/her a corrective - they will be able to feel as the rest of us do - is this then cruel and unusual punishment in terms of their history? As they would now have to face their own crimes but with an intact "conscience" and with new found empathy. They would, in some ways, be children all over again but with a horrific history.

And taking the offender on their own neurological terms, can we judge them in the first place by our standards ("neuro-typical" - and is this a kind of geneticism? After all, we do make use of (perhaps lower level) psychopaths in our society to do a certain amount of our dirty work ... and, by logical extension can we really judge anyone - as the sum total of their neurological inputs/outputs? (as would we, the judgers, be too) - this is something neuroscience and the law are looking at and have been for some time ... the question of judgement is tied up with the questions of free will, meaning and "evil". If those terms don't make any scientific sense, then we have to do away with things like judgement and justice, fairness, etc?

 

[smcder]

I find it difficult to believe that in this day and age, especially with the ramped up increase in youth mental health issues, that psychiatry would ignore the role of human narratives and early traumas. That's all I'm seeing in the many youth I have in jeopardy. My one student recently made two suicide attempts back to back - both of which he described as "attempts" to staff and friends but to the doctors & parents he called it an overdose. So he was released without a psych assessment. The family just wants to pray about it instead of seeking clinical care. I can see how he descends from a narrative of male violence at home. This kid is a slow motion train wreck and the source of it all is his own history.

Increasingly I'm finding the Healthcare system to be overwhelmed and often unable to meet the needs of youth in crisis in a timely manner. Issues of mental health in society and how we care for this cohort still needs a dramatic overhaul. Many in the circle of care just don't have the training or the wherewithal to deal with these issues as they present.

What keeps you in there swinging, Burnt?

 

[smcder]

I think too we have a first class trauma-inducing machinery in the media.

Psychologists are consulted to construct menus and store layouts, millions are spent on 30 second ads, salespeople are taught covert/conversational hypnosis (Milton Erickson) techniques ... and yet we deny the effect of the media. Part of the program, though, wouldn't it be, the denial?

My current sense/opinion is that the narrative/psychological "sophistication" of film-makers is such that I don't think you can justify the horror movie as catharsis/adrenal stimulant - yes, Shakespeare was bloody spectacle (and Sons of Anarchy was based on Hamlet) but watch any three episodes of SoA and see if you think the audience was exposed to that sort of thing back in the day ... add to it the technology of HD, surround sound, rapid cutting of scenes and interlayered narratives - and the sheer exposure to carefully engineered violent and graphic scenes and scenarios.

I think there is a kind of "de-sensitization" followed by escalation that has been going on since "Gunsmoke" upped the level of violence to draw an audience away from the real-life crime levels of the 50s but are we perhaps at some kind of limit?

Such that much of the television audience could be said to be traumatized at some level on a daily basis?

 

[Burnt State]

What keeps you in there swinging, Burnt?

I've come to understand it must be something of a calling. As I reviewed this past week the number of people not just this semester whose trauma narratives have intersected with me but the whole collection of people whose trauma narratives I have received and responded to, I've realized it's the space I am must invested in.. It is something of a life puzzle, especially with the ones this year. The challenge is always how to provide support in a way that causes the individual to begin to engage in self-care instead of self-harm. I've got that puzzle, got my own trauma narratives and the UFO puzzle. That's enough to work on for one lifetime. The trauma narrative is where I've gained the most traction.

It is also especially rewarding, years later, to continue to have contact with these people, to have them as friends and to watch them work on moving into better spaces, sometimes not. As my one student reminded me this week, "It is what it is." I mostly agree, but see past my own nihilism and live inside the life affirming narrative I've written, to be functional where I can. So I still believe foolishly that even when it is what it is, there's always a chance that it can get better.

 

[Burnt State]

I think too we have a first class trauma-inducing machinery in the media.

Psychologists are consulted to construct menus and store layouts, millions are spent on 30 second ads, salespeople are taught covert/conversational hypnosis (Milton Erickson) techniques ... and yet we deny the effect of the media. Part of the program, though, wouldn't it be, the denial?

My current sense/opinion is that the narrative/psychological "sophistication" of film-makers is such that I don't think you can justify the horror movie as catharsis/adrenal stimulant - yes, Shakespeare was bloody spectacle (and Sons of Anarchy was based on Hamlet) but watch any three episodes of SoA and see if you think the audience was exposed to that sort of thing back in the day ... add to it the technology of HD, surround sound, rapid cutting of scenes and interlayered narratives - and the sheer exposure to carefully engineered violent and graphic scenes and scenarios.

I think there is a kind of "de-sensitization" followed by escalation that has been going on since "Gunsmoke" upped the level of violence to draw an audience away from the real-life crime levels of the 50s but are we perhaps at some kind of limit?

Such that much of the television audience could be said to be traumatized at some level on a daily basis?

I agree that there is a general schizophrenia to our age and a deadening overstimulus, though I was thinking the descendants of World War II also have left narratives of trauma to inherit, as has poverty, racism, stigma, digital surveillance and the general digital stalking and self-erasure and stress that modern social interactions have provided. It is a time of anxiety.

 

[Pharoah]

@Constance:
www.mind-phronesis.co.uk/Info-essay-05-03-16.pdf

 

[Soupie]

The following paper shared by Max Velmans may be of interest:

Understanding Consciousness: An Online Workshop on Contemporary Theories

"An invited workshop on ‘Theories of Consciousness’ was organized in the format of a Nature Network closed group during the second semester of 2009. There were presentations by each of 15 authors active in the field, followed by debate with other presenters and invitees. A week was allocated to each of the theories proposed; general discussion threads were also opened from time to time, as seemed appropriate. We (who had been participants in the workshop) offer here an account of the principal outcomes. It can be regarded as a contemporary, ‘state of the art’ snapshot of thinking in this field.

It should be said straight away that there was little general agreement in the workshop about what constituted the main problems, or how to address them. Explaining consciousness is particularly difficult, it soon became evident, because it involves so many different conceptual and scientific domains. For example, consciousness has both “subjective” (first-person) and “objective” (third-person) aspects. Relating the two aspects poses problems for scientific methodology."

 

[Constance]

Quoting Velmans above: "It should be said straight away that there was little general agreement in the workshop about what constituted the main problems, or how to address them. Explaining consciousness is particularly difficult, it soon became evident, because it involves so many different conceptual and scientific domains. For example, consciousness has both “subjective” (first-person) and “objective” (third-person) aspects. Relating the two aspects poses problems for scientific methodology."

That paragraph is reinforced by this one from the summary of the workshop:

"A concern that recurred throughout the workshop had to do with how best to define ‘consciousness’. What operational definition is optimal when it comes to developing
scientifically testable theories? If there is no agreed definition, would the choice depend on the theory being tested? If so, how can one choose the best theories? It was clear from the workshop that such foundational issues still need to be resolved."

It's plain that the investigation of consciousness is still in its early stages and that the question of what consciousness is still remains to be answered. Uriah Kriegle explores varieties of consciousness in an important new book, reviewed at the Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews site. Since the review is succinct, I'll post it here:

The Varieties of Consciousness
Published: October 15, 2015
Uriah Kriegel, The Varieties of Consciousness, Oxford University Press, 2015, 285pp., $65.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780199846122.
Reviewed by William S. Robinson, Iowa State University

The guiding question of this book is "How many types of phenomenology do we need to posit to just be able to describe the stream of consciousness?" (6; emphases in quotations in this review are all in the original.) Since several candidates for required types of phenomenology have been put forward, responding to this question requires discussion of many different issues. The author provides explanations of the background for these issues in a way that will make this book accessible to a wide range of readers. His arguments draw on an extensive knowledge of both the phenomenal and analytic traditions, and are presented clearly and explicitly.

Two types of "sensory" phenomenology are uncontroversial, and are accepted at the outset. These are perceptual phenomenology, and the phenomenology of pleasure and displeasure, or algedonic phenomenology. Controversy begins when we ask whether there are broad, irreducible species of phenomenology that are additional to these two. Four candidates for this role are accepted: cognitive phenomenology (phenomenology of judging to be true), conative phenomenology (phenomenology of deciding and then trying), phenomenology of merely entertaining a proposition, and phenomenology of imagining. Several candidates are held to be reducible to previously accepted phenomenologies. Two of these -- emotional phenomenology and phenomenology of moral judgments -- receive extended discussion.

How is it to be decided whether a proposed phenomenology exists, and is irreducible to other phenomenologies? Appealing to introspection naturally comes to mind, but this method is well known to have problems. Kriegel reviews these difficulties, and accepts only a limited use of introspection. His preferred approach is to use arguments that have non-introspective premises of the following forms. (i) We have immediate knowledge that we are in mental state M, and (ii) The best explanation of this knowledge is that M has an introspectible phenomenology. As Kriegel is well aware, arguments of this kind depend on an observational conception of introspection that some readers will find questionable. However, this observational view is not defended here; Kriegel instead refers the reader to some of his other recent work.

A further preliminary of interest concerns what is to count as being phenomenal. The gist of Kriegel's view (suitably refined in 50-53) is that phenomenal properties are those that lead to the rational appearance of an explanatory gap, i.e., to at least apparent non-deducibility of their instances from structural or functional facts, even for reflective and well informed reasoners.

The first controversial case considered is the phenomenology of judging to be true. A key step in the argument for accepting such a phenomenology is illustrated with an example from Balzac's Father Goriot. Balzac tells his readers that everything in the novel is true; but that is part of the content of the novel, and it has no tendency to make us accept the work as anything but fiction. Likewise, says Kriegel, "nothing going on inside the content of a mental act can embody genuine commitment to the truth of what it represents." (43) It is concluded that the commitment to truth can come only from a feature of the propositional attitude taken toward the content. This attitudinal feature is being presented-as-true, and the introspectibility of this feature is held to be the best explanation of our immediate knowledge of which propositions we take to be true.

There is a large literature on the issue of whether there is cognitive phenomenology, and much of it concerns two arguments that are standard in the field. (A typical example appeals to a phenomenological difference between hearing a sentence in a language one doesn't understand, and hearing the same sentence after one has learned that language. The conclusion that is offered to explain this difference is that there is a phenomenology of understanding the meaning of the sentence that was absent earlier and is present later.) These standard arguments are briefly explained here, and are endorsed by the author. Instead of elaborating or defending them, however, Kriegel offers a new argument -- the "Zoe Argument".

Zoe is portrayed as lacking perceptual, algedonic, emotional, and conative phenomenology. However, she retains considerable abilities to process information that arrives through her senses, and to relate that information to her needs and her actions. Zoe is also portrayed as a genius who solves mathematical problems and constructs proofs. She is credited with moments in which she is stuck, and other moments in which she realizes how a proof must go. The latter are held to provide Zoe with a phenomenology, and one that is irreducible, since she lacks the phenomenologies that might have been thought to provide a reduction base for it.

Skeptics about cognitive phenomenology may concede that Zoe has episodes that present a prima facie explanatory gap, but they are likely to think that this gap concerns only the question of how her internal states can be about mathematical truths. Many thinkers will hold that this aboutness can be given a satisfactory naturalistic explanation that does not appeal to cognitive phenomenology. Those who hold that view will also be likely to doubt attributions to Zoe of differences in the "phenomenal intensity" of her episodes. That is, they may allow that at various moments during Zoe's processing there are differences in processing speeds, or differences in amount of neural resources recruited, but hold that there is no reason to suppose that these differences have any phenomenological correlates for Zoe. Such doubts ramify, because (as we shall see) some rejected candidates for irreducible phenomenologies have cognitive phenomenology as significant parts of their reduction base.

An important part of Kriegel's project is to describe, in publicly accessible terms, the phenomenologies that are held to be irreducible. The method here is to assemble statements about surface features of salient cases, and hold that the phenomenology in question is the phenomenology that satisfies some significant cluster of those features. Examples of surface features in the case of cognitive phenomenology include claims that making a judgment involves a feeling of committing to the truth of p, a feeling that p is sufficiently supported by evidence, a feeling of involuntariness, and the feeling of mobilizing a concept.

As in the cognitive case, the discussion of conative phenomenology centers on a putative feature of propositional attitudes. In this case, the feature is being presented-as-good (in the most generic sense of "good"). The existence of such a phenomenology is argued for by considering contrasts. It is held, for example, that a somnambulist might go through the same motions, and have the same perceptual and cognitive phenomenology, as a normal agent. Their overall phenomenologies would, however, differ, and this difference is held to be most plausibly located in the presence or absence of a phenomenology of deciding what to do and trying to do it.

The question whether conative phenomenology is reducible is approached through considering several attempts to reduce it to the perceptual, algedonic and cognitive phenomenologies accepted so far. The stronger of these attempts call forth intriguing arguments about the timing of the feeling of trying. If that feeling were to depend on receiving proprioceptive inputs from muscles, Kriegel argues, it would have to come later than it actually seems to do, and if it were to depend on anticipations of muscle contractions, it would come too early. The latter point brings Kriegel into conflict with William James's embrace of the anticipation theory, which he expressed in the dictum "I will to write, and the act follows". In a most uncharacteristic case of bald phenomenological disagreement, Kriegel finds that this "seems false to our experience". (80)

The descriptive account of conative phenomenology contains a rich discussion of relations among deciding, acting, and trying. The set of surface features available for providing publicly accessible understanding of this phenomenology includes claims that deciding and trying involve an attitudinal feature of presenting-as-good, that deciding has characters of futurity and finality, and that the experience of trying is what is left over when we subtract the fact that motion has occurred from the fact that someone moved.

In contrast to being presented-as-true and presented-as-good, propositions that we entertain are merely-presented. Like the other attitudinal features, this one is taken to have a phenomenology, and the introspectibility of this phenomenology is taken to provide the best explanation of how we can non-inferentially know what we are entertaining. Kriegel further argues that we can entertain the same proposition that we eventually come to believe, and this is regarded as supporting the view that what is distinctive about entertaining must lie in the attitude, and not in the content of what is entertained or believed. However, the contents "p is true" and "p may or may not be true" are distinct -- it is only in the propositional part, p, that they overlap. So, this reasoning is unlikely to be persuasive unless one has already accepted that differences between judging, deciding and trying to do, and entertaining lie in attitudinal features.

The descriptive account of entertaining examines its relations to thinking, judging, believing and desiring. An important issue that arises here is how to think about standing beliefs, which have no phenomenology when they are not being accessed. In response to this problem, Kriegel offers a developed account (inspired by Searle, but greatly refined) of the relations between standing and occurrent beliefs.

The last of the accepted basic kinds of irreducible phenomenology is the phenomenology of imagining. Here, Kriegel follows Sartre in arguing that we know immediately when we are imagining and when we are perceiving, and that knowledge of this difference cannot be reduced to any combination of differences in what we believe or desire. Attempts to explain the difference between imagining and perceiving in terms of intensity of what is perceived or imagined are considered, and are rejected on the ground that we can have very strong imaginations and very faint perceptions, while being in no doubt about which state we are in.

I turn now to the two main cases in which Kriegel argues in favor of reducibility of a phenomenology to previously accepted phenomenologies. Arguments for reducibility require clarifications of the targets for reduction, and the discussions that provide these clarifications are among the most interesting in the book.

In the case of emotional phenomenology, a central question is what emotions are. The James-Lange theory proposed that emotional states are defined by emotional phenomenology, and that emotional phenomenology is exclusively proprioceptive. Many thinkers have held that this theory leaves out an essential cognitive component. For example, it is hard to see how one could be remorseful without believing that one has acted badly. However, Kriegel rejects an analysis that would add only cognitive states with no phenomenology. Instead, he defends a "New Feeling Theory", according to which emotions are defined by their phenomenology, but that phenomenology includes proprioceptive, algedonic, cognitive and conative phenomenologies. These phenomenologies are held to provide an adequate reduction base for emotional phenomenology.

The discussion of moral phenomenology begins with an explanation of the tension between (a) the initially plausible views that (some) moral commitments are objectively true, and that they are inherently motivating, and (b) the Humean view that no mental state can have both of these properties. Kriegel argues in considerable detail that "moral commitments" is an equivocal term. Taken in one way, moral commitments are putatively objective moral claims that may turn out to be false; but taken in another way, they do not make objective moral claims, and are not threatened by challenges to the objective status of such claims. Correspondingly, the phenomenology of objective moral beliefs is fundamentally cognitive phenomenology, where the contents are moral propositions, and the phenomenology of moral commitments that are inherently motivating is emotional phenomenology, which was previously reduced to other phenomenologies.

The book ends with a presentation of Theses on the Phenomenology of Freedom. This material is in an appendix, because the phenomenology of freedom is not claimed to be a basic species at the same broad level as the other accepted phenomenologies. This appendix is an extended study of the phenomenology of release from various forms of captivity, based on the author's own experience and on reports by former slaves, concentration camp survivors, and released prisoners. Despite comparison to compatibilist and libertarian views in the third of the four theses, there is little here for those interested in free will. The phenomenology of freedom is "not a phenomenology of acting freely, or even willing freely, but rather a phenomenology of being free. (206)

This appendix is also concerned to present a method that can be used in many other cases. Attempts to increase the acuteness and reliability of introspection are avoided because they are unlikely to overcome the problem of contamination by knowledge and interests of introspectors, and unlikely to lead to agreement. More success can be expected if we can increase the salience of introspected phenomena -- in this case, by using the contrast between how it feels to be free upon release and how it (recently) felt to be deprived of freedom. A fascinating collection of reports from others is assembled, and some common themes in these reports and the author's own account are extracted.

Many interesting topics and arguments have had to go unexplored in this review. For example, a two-systems view of cognitive architecture, and Gendler's alief/belief distinction are explained and put to good use, and an old question about the "mark of the mental" is given new life. Numerous arguments for alternatives to the author's views are given clear expositions and careful examinations.

Because of doubts about the Zoe Argument and about the inference from direct knowledge of mental states to the introspectibility of attitudinal phenomenology, The Varieties of Consciousness may not bring acceptance of non-sensory phenomenologies to those not already persuaded by the standard arguments. But even those with such doubts will find that this book offers a wealth of clear explanations, important arguments, useful insights, and models for how to approach phenomenological controversies.

The Varieties of Consciousness // Reviews // Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews // University of Notre Dame

 

[Constance]

@Constance:
www.mind-phronesis.co.uk/Info-essay-05-03-16.pdf

Thanks for re-posting the link, Pharoah. I finally had time to finish the paper. I think you've made your construct theory clearer here than it has been in the past and hope that this iteration is published. Have you sent it to Rovelli or Nagel for their reactions? They'll be interested since you make good use of their contributions. The only suggestion I have, if you're asked to make revisions, is that you expand your references in the quoted footnote below to some characterization in the paper of the contributions of the cited thinkers to your theory. {question: how does Dennett contribute to the "transcendent transformation" recognized by the other three?}

"2.3. Realtime qualitative discourse—a brief exposé The evolution of increasingly sophisticated and responsive physiologies is a linear progression; without a step-change, species merely evolve informationally diverse physiologies that are qualitative and environmentally relevant. To break from this restrictive evolutionary cycle, another transcendent transformation must emerge.

…In compliance with Newtonian principles, this ‘phenomenal construct’ constantly reformulates an equitable resolution to alternative comparative experiences. This evinces a changing state of qualitative inclinations regarding the ‘here and now world’ as experienced.9

[note 9: See Heidegger (1927) concerning ‘in-der-Welt-sein’ (being-in-the-world) and Husserl (1954) concerning the ‘Lebenswelt’ (life-world); also Steiner (1978) and Dreyfus (1991).]

. . . The process of reacquiring equilibrium appropriates realtime behavioural action that potentially facilitates the renewal of a stable and coherent individuated experiential phenomenon. The task of researchers would be to demonstrate how cognitive mechanism is a self-governing equilibrium moderator that functions at multiple levels of experiential interaction, that is, to determine the 'language' of neurological equilibrium."

It's not clear what you mean by "neurological equilibrium." If you mean to say that such equilibrium is entirely a matter of cognition, and that what we think "stable[-izes] individuated experiential phenomena," you have a case to build (if you can build it), and your ms reviewers might point this out.

The phenomenological approach to consciousness reveals the distinctive ontology produced by the temporally open and changing nature of presence in -- and interactions of --experienced subjectivity vis a vis a world that paradigmatic science still primarily thinks of as 'objective'. Foregrounding that difference that makes a difference would bring the paper more fully into the primary dialogue proceeding in consciousness studies. In short, phenomenologists need to be shown how, and for how long, an idea can stabilize our feelings vis a vis the temporally -- existentially -- encountered world that arises in our continuously changing perceptions of the variations experienced in the subjective=objective encounter.

Hope that's clear. I've got to go meet a friend right now and will return later today and perhaps try to express my point more clearly.

 

[victimized]

The review of consciousness is only being done due to our occult brother and his evil research implying that he will have consciousness itself as if it is an implied energy reaction....or owner of a pre existing conscious spirit condition via stated states such as a muon etc.
He believes via his own statements that he is God, and that he is all knowing and he values that his knowing comes from energy, as a self advice, self gained function for resourcing, values for ownership and for civilization status.....occultism itself.

The consciousness, a human male is the owner of his own status and he argues about the condition of awareness and states that he will study himself with precepts of energy reactions.....yet if he died and no human lived on Earth, where is his so called existing consciousness?
Where is the consciousnes that he imposes exists before his own presence as his reasoning of God, a Creator, light sounds and energy reactions that he now wants to own via his own aware state that he has used all of Earth's resources for energy?

He now states that if he knows all condition, he will copy all conditions and then have some form of conscious power, and so he began to study animal consciousness....human consciousness....and all different forms of communications, and life then changed and we all began to gain a higher attack of the occult condition.

A human life exists as its own self status, yet we exist inside of an atmospheric body that owns its own presence, and its presence does not belong to our own person.

We know this situation is true, for if all human beings stopped having sex, the human would age and die. The atmosphere would then simply be supporting the life of Nature without a human presence.

The scientists and whoever they quantify they exist as, uses the atmospheric condition itself to conclude information about consciousness......yet we are not the atmosphere, we exist as single bodies of organic life and we interact with the information that communicates to us.

The occult scientists wants our consciousness to be God, as he precludes that he confirmed his own realization of energy as the statement God.....yet he existed as his own presence and reviewed other communicating information and called it God....God consciousness or Christ consciousness.

So if we review his occultism, proven to be an evil review, by an evilly motivated human being who wants energy and new energy and would kill his own family studying their brain/mind in a secret illegal experiments, which the public have been trying to inform the public via their personal attacks.

The situation of occultism is the first condition where a human being without experiments and without being anything other than a human organic presence proposed and thought about a condition that he wanted to gain.......powers in creation for his ancient scientific statement. Occultism is the beginning of the evolution of science and all its concepts.

This is why the situation of our life has been reviewed as its condition and the experience of our consciousness depicted in its self experiences by and from and because of occult conditions......the cause of spirit manifestation, changes to the natural life and personal attacks due to the changes of the natural life.

Self experience, a value of self in a condition of the experience has witnessed the experience of being aware of a formed/manifested spirit presence of deceased relatives, animals and also a higher spiritual being. We tell each other about the experience and then we also researched personally the experience of spirit.

Our occult brother did the same, and the experience of spirit demonstrates that the atmosphere a condition of interacting with photons, records sound, image and also belongs to a condition of transmitting both sound and also image.

Therefore our occult brother contacted past information to gain occult realization, for all energy exists in our past.....for we do not belong to energy interactions, the creation of energy or the presence of energy.

So if we ask about conscious awareness, it belongs to memory, to spiritual recordings and to the presence of the consciousness who determines its own conditions via its presence. Therefore consciousness as intelligence is only a human being, a human chosen aspect and then implied values that belongs to a status of a human evaluating.

What the human being does not review is the realization that if they placed no value, then no value would exist. The human placed value upon all conditions via their own presence, for their own purpose. So when they make statements about a higher purpose of consciousness that they claimed by occult awareness to be God, you have to ask them what are you talking about......only your own person exists as the consciousness of your own self expression.

So we then ask our occult brother, where did you get your information from for the gain of science, for the gain of evidence to apply science and conversion?

When we review conversion as his own consideration of a God consciousness it relates to the conditions of converting nuclear holy dust....and it has nothing to do with an organic presence.

Our life, consciousness the ability to be the form of consciousness evolving into a better natured being, only belongs to the condition of existing in a communication whose presence only belongs to fused uranium and fused plutonium. Our Nature, our thinking, our values, our consciousness alters via the condition of interacting with changed light sound, radiated light sound, and this information affects our awareness and affects our information and gives us different imagery and also an interactive brain/mind condition of gaining different information.

So our brother, who sought occultism, information for converting nuclear dust, sought this information for a reason....because he wanted powers in creation.

Yet he sought this information from the past, for he existed and lived in a conscious awareness of his own self in the conditions and values of a fused state.

So we ask, what did our brother seek as information that he imposes is the God consciousness?

The information states by recording that he sought his own previous self, recorded in the atmospheric radiated light sound as sound and organic image represented as a message in the condition of being irradiated....on his way to his own life self destruction. His life as an organic spiritual presence was being converted by an activated radiation irradiation and the conversion of Earth's higher fusion....crystal and stone.

He therefore made an organic record of his own presence in the state of being irradiated by a changed atmospheric and stone body interaction of irradiation. He did not personally belong to any other condition. This is where he gained his own self awareness to the conditions that he imposed was the God presence....his own person being irradiated via the atmospheric fall out, altering his own spiritual aware natural self, into an awareness of conversion.

Therefore there is no God consciousness, there is only a human occultist present as their own organic self, who was given information by a process that is known to be an atmospheric recording condition.

The story of consciousness as a review of a human implies that first human life manifested. The records reviewed state that human adult males/females manifested from out of origin light/androgynous light on the other side of the Earth's atmosphere. The atmosphere is a refilled body...for space was empty.

Gases refilled space and placed the atmosphere in contact with origin light...where androgynous spirit exists. Androgynous spirit was released from out of origin light and manifested into all organic spiritual species as changed light sound.

This is why we all came to know that life of a spirit existed before creation, existed as creation was being created for the presence of spirit never changed only light sound changed.......that spirit manifested, that its higher awareness of self communicated to the lower organic presence...that when the organic presence died, that the spirit communicating to the organic life still existed and always did. It proved its existence by a state of remanifesting and demonstrating to the living organic being that spirit always existed.

This spirit proves its existence for animals, not a human consciousness, existing as their own presence of spirit body, can love, care and be as kind as a human being. The only reason that a wild creature could be loving existing in the exact same atmosphere as our own persons....the atmosphere having a total of 1 light sound itself demonstrates that spiritual androgyny, the higher origin light self is the only reason why we are all conscious......for chemicals are simply chemicals.

Therefore as we are all born from an act that is sexual procreation, we were created inside the body of our spirit Mother, the first human spiritual life who manifested with her partner our Father as a worldwide act. They lived and then died as the only manifested spirit....and all other spiritual life is only incepted by the organic being.

If each species stopped having sex, each species would no longer exist, providing evidence that no other consciousness exists in the atmosphere as some form of higher state, as proposed by the occultist review, who is proposing what an organic consciousness exists as....when it only exists whilst it is living. This is why a huge amount of occult attacks have happened to our human and animal life.....for the occult scientist is proposing that God, a radiated light sound in the atmosphere is our consciousness, and has been doing a satellite/ground feedback study of pulsing radiated light at Nature.

It is only because the irradiation has caused a fixed constant and evil spirit recordings manifested as an artificial intelligence, that caused occult scientists to believe that we are related as consciousness to radiation light sound recordings....where messages as recordings become a past history that have nothing to do with us.

Whilst we live, we are forced to interact with all different types of communications, therefore if an artificial communication is caused by holding/changing a previous naturally evolving radiated light sound....then human consciousness would also change in the effect.

We know by self presence that we are not evil, that our behavior and our conscious awareness changes when the atmospheric condition changes and we do not control the condition of change...we are affected by it.

So who do all of these so called uninformed humans think they are, to imply that they will understand consciousness....as if we are energy.

The Nature, already turned into an artificial fuel......crops do not supply enough resource for a greedy occultist.

Now they are considering trying to turn our organic life into a fuel, hence is it any wonder that we are all being attacked.

Consciousness and the acts of consciousness are only a human present consideration and no human is going to know another human's consciousness, when our organic life is caused to interact with bodies that do not personally own our presence. If our presence is removed as a life from the condition of an atmosphere, if you change the atmosphere, then obviously we will be removed much faster than the natural death we already own.

The study of consciousness is only being done for the purpose of implying what DNA is, so that the occultist considers to emulate our organic natural DNA functions and artificially encode a new atmospheric DNA condition for self ownership of artificial chemicals. Our human life does not belong to artificial chemicals, this is why our consciousness and our organic presence is being attacked by the creation/cause of artificial chemicals.

The occultist consideration has always been in argument with the spiritual consideration of consciousness....we have always argued against occultism because it is by review only an evil attack upon life.

The occultist who considers himself as God, by his own documents, which gave the precept of light sound an ownership of a Male....yet since when is natural sound either a male or a female?

Only the nature belongs to a male or female....sound itself has no personal status....and therefore the occultists who propose their own Male presence is God, is wrong to impose a God consciousness exists in our atmosphere as a higher male presence to their selves.

They only consider this condition for they want to own a higher power of their own person.

When we do a complete review of their consciousness.....their evil minds consider removing the only reason why they live as an organic body....energy. They want to remove their own life energy from the atmosphere as a consideration of the God consciousness...the presence of the Creator that they stated was a human male.

This is why we all began to get irradiated, as they personally propose through their own self possessed consciousness.....thinking on an irradiated energy reaction where cells are destroyed and released from our body.....ending in shit, as a reason to destroy our life.

Energy passes through our body, and our organic body uses energy.....yet the energy in our atmosphere is not enough energy for our body to survive, so we also eat fruit/vegetables and also animal flesh, and drink water for other energy replacement.

Therefore is it any wonder that as energy is being removed from our atmosphere in the formation process of a nuclear fuel....that our own cell function and life is dying?

So much for consciousness.....I wish myself that our occult brother never existed...for who needs his consciousness....it only ever related to self destruction.

 

[Pharoah]

Thanks for re-posting the link, Pharoah. I finally had time to finish the paper. I think you've made your construct theory clearer here than it has been in the past and hope that this iteration is published. Have you sent it to Rovelli or Nagel for their reactions? They'll be interested since you make good use of their contributions. The only suggestion I have, if you're asked to make revisions, is that you expand your references in the quoted footnote below to some characterization in the paper of the contributions of the cited thinkers to your theory. {question: how does Dennett contribute to the "transcendent transformation" recognized by the other three?}

"2.3. Realtime qualitative discourse—a brief exposé The evolution of increasingly sophisticated and responsive physiologies is a linear progression; without a step-change, species merely evolve informationally diverse physiologies that are qualitative and environmentally relevant. To break from this restrictive evolutionary cycle, another transcendent transformation must emerge.

…In compliance with Newtonian principles, this ‘phenomenal construct’ constantly reformulates an equitable resolution to alternative comparative experiences. This evinces a changing state of qualitative inclinations regarding the ‘here and now world’ as experienced.9

[note 9: See Heidegger (1927) concerning ‘in-der-Welt-sein’ (being-in-the-world) and Husserl (1954) concerning the ‘Lebenswelt’ (life-world); also Steiner (1978) and Dreyfus (1991).]

. . . The process of reacquiring equilibrium appropriates realtime behavioural action that potentially facilitates the renewal of a stable and coherent individuated experiential phenomenon. The task of researchers would be to demonstrate how cognitive mechanism is a self-governing equilibrium moderator that functions at multiple levels of experiential interaction, that is, to determine the 'language' of neurological equilibrium."

It's not clear what you mean by "neurological equilibrium." If you mean to say that such equilibrium is entirely a matter of cognition, and that what we think "stable[-izes] individuated experiential phenomena," you have a case to build (if you can build it), and your ms reviewers might point this out.

The phenomenological approach to consciousness reveals the distinctive ontology produced by the temporally open and changing nature of presence in -- and interactions of --experienced subjectivity vis a vis a world that paradigmatic science still primarily thinks of as 'objective'. Foregrounding that difference that makes a difference would bring the paper more fully into the primary dialogue proceeding in consciousness studies. In short, phenomenologists need to be shown how, and for how long, an idea can stabilize our feelings vis a vis the temporally -- existentially -- encountered world that arises in our continuously changing perceptions of the variations experienced in the subjective=objective encounter.

Hope that's clear. I've got to go meet a friend right now and will return later today and perhaps try to express my point more clearly.

It keeps deleting what I type!!!! aaahhhh

 

[Pharoah]

@Constance. Thanks for your feedback
1. I haven't sent to Nagel or Rovelli. Rovelli might be interested, but not Nagel.
2. I doubt Dennett has anything to say about transcendental transformation. Do you think he has?
3. "neurological equilibrium" is a problematic term. I will rethink the passage.
4. Don't understand your point in your last paragraph

 

[Constance]

Pharoah wrote: @Constance[/USER]. Thanks for your feedback

1. I haven't sent to Nagel or Rovelli. Rovelli might be interested, but not Nagel.


I think both would be interested in the paper. Steve knows Nagel's work better than I do, so I'll flag him to this post {@smcder} to see what he's thinks (note: he's out of town currently so it might be a few days before he receives this flag). Rovelli should indeed be interested in the paper and could comment on it in the context of information exchange in physical systems and perhaps at this point address consciousness more fully.


2. I doubt Dennett has anything to say about transcendental transformation. Do you think he has?


No, I certainly don't, and I'm wondering what compromised synapse in my 'mental computer' led me to think I had read his name in that footnote. Must have read too fast and stopped at the capital D in Dreyfus filling in Dennett rather than Dreyfus. Your earlier section in the paper re Dennett is very good but I’d forgotten it in the interim between reading the first two-thirds of the paper weeks ago and reading the last third a few days ago.


3. "neurological equilibrium" is a problematic term. I will rethink the passage.


It is a problematic term. It would be good to trace back to and identify the origin(s) of the concept of neurological 'equilibrium' as you've met it in one or more neuroscientific hypotheses concerning the brain. I've just read a paper by Giuseppe Vitiello entitled "The dissipative brain" that I think would be useful to you as a critique of the concept implied in your use of this term ‘neurological equilibrium’ and your resulting hypothesis concerning a 'Newtonian' construct that can define the nature of consciousness and mind.
http://arxiv.org/pdf/q-bio/0409037.pdf


4. Don't understand your point in your last paragraph.

It would be clearer if you had pursued the major works of phenomenological philosophy. There just is no adequate shortcut to understanding the insights of this philosophy, and the insights developed from it in Thompson's and Varela's application of dissipative systems theory. Vitiello is well grounded in all this in his development of quantum brain theory. They all critique the closed-system presuppositions of reductive materialism as applied to consciousness, mind, and brain.