Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 6

[Constance]

Is this, your understanding of HCT, still the case @Constance?

"In the earliest awakenings of consciousness in the primordial organism, it feels that it is ‘there’ without understanding what or where ‘there’ is. That is a kind of yet-inchoate knowledge that we have yet to recognize as real and productive in the development of consciousness and mind."

Yes. As I've said all along in commenting on versions of your HCT theory expressed in the series of papers you've linked, your theory fails to account for the prereflective experience {protoconsciousness} recognized in phenomenological philosophy. As Steve has indicated in his last several posts we have Jaak Panksepp and his Affective Neuroscience research to thank for biological and evolutionary insight into prereflective experience as understood in phenomenology. Consciousness proper develops from that which grounds it in protoconscious prereflective experience in the world. Maturana and Varela's profoundly significant biological discovery of autopoesis in the primordial single-celled organism became possible on the basis of their reading phenomenological philosophy, particularly the works of Merleau-Ponty. One needs to read Maturana, Varela, Panksepp, and the phenomenological philosophers in order to comprehend what prereflective 'knowing' is, exemplified both in the evolution of species and in the developmental nature of experienced being and consciousness in human infants and children.

A final comment, which might seem harsh but is valid: the interdisciplinary field of Consciousness Studies has been spearheaded by philosophers of two different schools, analytical (sharing the materialist/objectivist presuppositions of the still-dominant scientific paradigm) and phenomenologists, who examine experience more deeply. To attempt to make contributions to the understanding of consciousness, one needs to be familiar with both schools or else one is playing with only half a deck.

 

[Soupie]

I can re-iterate:
"When I saw a flower in a vase across the room, it felt like the qualities of the experience, were phenomenal qualities instantiated in my body/brain and internally mapped onto/into an external, buzzing, vibrating conglomeration of fundamental particles."

I had said previously:

"However, I do think some individuals with neurologic disorders may have experience/consciousness that feels as if its a dream, hallucination, or simulation. We've talked about a disorder here in this thread in the past where people feel as if they have no free will or feel as if they are not a self.

There are times when experience may feel like a hallucination or simulation to neurotypical individuals as well, of course. The experience of deja vu always knocks me for a loop when I experience it from time to time."

So are you saying that (1) you don't have a neurological disorder, but (2) your experience always was and always is such?

It's hard for me to not interpret your responses here as mere trolling. I'm saying that neurotypical individuals do not typically experience reality as if it were a simulation. You seem unable or unwilling to agree with this statement. I'll be frank: I think you're just being a ninny.

 

[Soupie]

I think @Constance expresses herself clearly and consistently. Some of the most interesting things she has said have not received any response here

I think @Constance has shared many, many interesting thoughts and concepts. However, when ive tried to engage her regarding the fundamental nature of consciousness, ive come up empty amd/or confused myself. The two are not mutally exclusive.

Re responding to her interesting posts. Much of what constance regards as "consciousness" i regard as psychology. While i am very interested in human and animal psychology, thats not what im interested in discussing in this thread.

 

[Soupie]

Internalism = mind can be in a brain in a vat?
Externalism = mind needs a brain in a skull in a body in an organism in an environment in a world in a universe ...

My approach to consciousness is an internalist approach.

In the Langlitz paper, it was articulated that the notion of pure consciousness—which you have argued for and I against—is a concept aligned with internalism.

On my view, consciousness is a phenomenon instatiated by states intrinsict to the organism. I'll stop short of calling it a biological phenomenon, because consciousness is not a physical substance on my view. Calling it a biological phenomenon might cause one to think of consciousness as if it were someting like bile. Its not. I suppose technically it would be a biological phenomenon, but one unlike any other. Not sure thats helpful.

Once an organism reaches a certain stage of development—I believe while still in the womb—they begin to instantiate consciousness.

There are innate phenomenal qualities to this consciousness due to the structure of their nervous system. I would consider this their innate "mind." That is, many organisms possess consciousness, but their innate mind (the shape of their consciousness if you will) will vary with their morphology.

However, the "shape" of an individual organism's consciousness, their mind, will also be determined by their physical interactions with the world.

Thus, consciousness is instantiated internally by the organism (it supervenes on internal states of the organism), and it is shaped over time by their interactions with the world resulting in a unique mind.

Just how an organism instantiates consciousness is the HP and what I am most interested in investigating.

 

[Constance]

[to Steve] It's hard for me to not interpret your responses here as mere trolling. I'm saying that neurotypical individuals do not typically experience reality as if it were a simulation. You seem unable or unwilling to agree with this statement. I'll be frank: I think you're just being a ninny.

Soupie, you are as surly and presumptuous as you are uneducated. It continues to be astonishing that you've learned nothing whatever from what the rest of us have written for more than 500 lengthy pages here. You strike out, as you have done tonight to Steve, at all of us whenever we disagree with your muddled thinking. It's especially unacceptable when you do so to Steve, who has made the greatest effort by far to help you develop as a reader, thinker, and would-be scholar over these last two years. I for one am not going to waste further time on you.

 

[Pharoah]

Yes. As I've said all along in commenting on versions of your HCT theory expressed in the series of papers you've linked, your theory fails to account for the prereflective experience {protoconsciousness} recognized in phenomenological philosophy. As Steve has indicated in his last several posts we have Jaak Panksepp and his Affective Neuroscience research to thank for biological and evolutionary insight into prereflective experience as understood in phenomenology. Consciousness proper develops from that which grounds it in protoconscious prereflective experience in the world. Maturana and Varela's profoundly significant biological discovery of autopoesis in the primordial single-celled organism became possible on the basis of their reading phenomenological philosophy, particularly the works of Merleau-Ponty. One needs to read Maturana, Varela, Panksepp, and the phenomenological philosophers in order to comprehend what prereflective 'knowing' is, exemplified both in the evolution of species and in the developmental nature of experienced being and consciousness in human infants and children.

A final comment, which might seem harsh but is valid: the interdisciplinary field of Consciousness Studies has been spearheaded by philosophers of two different schools, analytical (sharing the materialist/objectivist presuppositions of the still-dominant scientific paradigm) and phenomenologists, who examine experience more deeply. To attempt to make contributions to the understanding of consciousness, one needs to be familiar with both schools or else one is playing with only half a deck.

@Constance
I have read a lot of Panksepp, some varela and maturana and dipped my feet in MP which was great. So yu can give me a modicum of credit for responding to your insistence that I absorb some of the work of these thinkers.
Your final comment: I do not find it harsh. It is a fair comment, although I do disagree. It is impoverising to restrict one's knowledge in any area but it is not necessary to be even vaguely familiar with either to make a significant contribution. Otherwise one might be inclined to think that any philosopher pre-phenomenology made no sigqnificant contribution. Furthermore, my hct discovery was realised before I had read any philosophy, so total ignorance has its benefits too.
I googled 'pre-reflective knowing' and found not a single reference. And HCT does address 'experience before it is reflected upon' in the clearest possible terms. It is totally and utterly clear on this.

 

[Constance]

@Constance

I have read a lot of Panksepp, some varela and maturana and dipped my feet in MP which was great. So yu can give me a modicum of credit for responding to your insistence that I absorb some of the work of these thinkers.

I wasn't addressing those comments to you, Pharoah. And I did notice some proto-phenomenological thinking coming into your HCT paper, and commented on it, last summer as I recall. I think I suggested that you take that farther in moving between stages two and three as they stood at that point.

Your final comment: I do not find it harsh. It is a fair comment, although I do disagree. It is impoverising to restrict one's knowledge in any area but it is not necessary to be even vaguely familiar with either to make a significant contribution.

I think that where consciousness studies and philosophy of mind are concerned it is necessary that analytical and phenomenological philosophers become grounded in both approaches.

Otherwise one might be inclined to think that any philosopher pre-phenomenology made no sigqnificant contribution.

I don't know of any phenomenological philosopher of whom that might be said. The whole of the development of philosophy is essential in the archaeology of mind pursued in phenomenology. As you know, Heidegger went as far back as the pre-Socratics.

Furthermore, my hct discovery was realised before I had read any philosophy, so total ignorance has its benefits too.

I remember your mentioning that before, as well as your discussions with Galen Strawson's father and his comment to you on an early draft that you needed to decide whether you wanted to write a science paper or a philosophy paper.

I googled 'pre-reflective knowing' and found not a single reference. And HCT does address 'experience before it is reflected upon' in the clearest possible terms. It is totally and utterly clear on this.

Google tracks all books and papers concerning phenomenological philosophy but not all of its terminology and concepts. You’ll find prereflective knowing explicated in papers and books that I’ve linked here by Gallagher, Zahavi, and other contemporary phenomenological philosophers and in all of the works of the founders and developers of the school.

Re your last sentence, you may well address ‘experience before it is reflected upon’ -- and believe that prereflective experience does not orient animals and humans to their environing worlds in the form of subconscious knowledge -- but you will find that idea increasingly hard to defend in CS.

 

[Pharoah]

Soupie, you are as surly and presumptuous as you are uneducated. It continues to be astonishing that you've learned nothing whatever from what the rest of us have written for more than 500 lengthy pages here. You strike out, as you have done tonight to Steve, at all of us whenever we disagree with your muddled thinking. It's especially unacceptable when you do so to Steve, who has made the greatest effort by far to help you develop as a reader, thinker, and would-be scholar over these last two years. I for one am not going to waste further time on you.

@Constance
I know I have insulted evryone at times here. Such discussions bring both the worsed and the best out of... some of us. It is a tough journey, this thinking malarky, as we try to traverse this obscure landscape. I think we are stronger together though possibly because we have such contrasting approaches. Anyway... I hope we can keep our heads on and our hearts in a good place.

 

[Pharoah]

I wasn't addressing those comments to you, Pharoah. And I did notice some proto-phenomenological thinking coming into your HCT paper, and commented on it, last summer as I recall. I think I suggested that you take that farther in moving between stages two and three as they stood at that point.

I think that where consciousness studies and philosophy of mind are concerned it is necessary that analytical and phenomenological philosophers become grounded in both approaches.

I don't know of any phenomenological philosopher of whom that might be said. The whole of the development of philosophy is essential in the archaeology of mind pursued in phenomenology. As you know, Heidegger went as far back as the pre-Socratics.

I remember your mentioning that before, as well as your discussions with Galen Strawson's father and his comment to you on an early draft that you needed to decide whether you wanted to write a science paper or a philosophy paper.

Google tracks all books and papers concerning phenomenological philosophy but not all of its terminology and concepts. You’ll find prereflective knowing explicated in papers and books that I’ve linked here by Gallagher, Zahavi, and other contemporary phenomenological philosophers and in all of the works of the founders and developers of the school.

Re your last sentence, you may well address ‘experience before it is reflected upon’ -- and believe that prereflective experience does not orient animals and humans to their environing worlds in the form of subconscious knowledge -- but you will find that idea increasingly hard to defend in CS.

Phenomeonlogical language has started seeping into my writing sometimes, and when it has, it is as if you have been sitting on my shoulder guiding my thoughts because I only notice afterwards

 

[Pharoah]

Have any of you studied maths at degree level and familiar with propositional logic? I am eager to collaborate on a mathematical application concerning HCT.

 

[Soupie]

First of all, regarding "ninny," it was said in jest. In America, where I'm from, you don't call someone a ninny unless you are from 1850. I was going for something along the lines of a "stinker." Someone being difficult to get a rise out of someone. Apologies if feelings were hurt. I certainly don't think smcder is an "unwise person" (google definition).

So I am saying that I experienced entities in the external world not as simply objects in the external world but as "phenomenal" objects in the external world - the way I understand that is as phenomenal qualities instantiated in our body/brain and internally mapped onto/into an external .. etc. So for me reality was this strictly material/physicalist process of my brain ascribing phenomenal qualities or experiences to an outside world that was just made up of particles, my everyday reality took a back seat and/or disappeared altogether.

But I had said:

"There are times when experience may feel like a hallucination or simulation to neurotypical individuals as well,of course."

I don't doubt that you did, for a period of time, experience like that; but I still contend that neurotypical people don't generally experience objects as being phenomenal.

Ultimately, who cares. We can disagree.

 

[Pharoah]

In "the re-emergence of emergence" Paul davies says,
"The problem of downward causation from the physicist’s point of view is: How can wholes act causatively on parts if all interactions are local? Indeed, from the viewpoint of a local theory, what is a ‘whole’ anyway other than the sum of the parts? Let me distinguish between two types of downward causation. The first is whole–part causation, in which the behaviour of a part can be understood only by reference to the whole. The second I call level-entanglement (no connection intended with quantum entanglement, a very different phenomenon), and has to do with higher conceptual levels having causal efficacy over lower conceptual levels. "
Then, in discussing the two types, he seems to explain why there is not REALLY downward causation.
"The eye has evolved in at least forty independent ways in insects, birds, fish, mammals, and so on; although the starting points were very different, the end products fulfil very similar functions. Now the morphology of an organism is determined by its DNA, specifically by the exact sequence of base pairs in this molecule. Thus one might be tempted to ask, how does the biosphere act downwards on molecules of DNA to bring about species convergence? But this is clearly the wrong question. There is no mystery about convergence in Darwinian evolution....
natural selection is described as having causal powers, even though it is causatively neutral..."

 

[Soupie]

Right and this seems to be causing confusion - I don't think of experiencing objects as phenomenal as being a hallucination or simulation - there was no feeling of unreality...

I argue that a state in which one felt that reality was being generated from within themselves—as opposed to feeling as if it were something that existed outside of themselves—would have to feel unreal.

But let's agree to disagree.

Re: the mainstream materialist worldview and whether it affects how we experience the world. An interesting discussion for sure.

Perceiving other humans and organisms (even puppets, robots, etc.) to be intentional, feeling entities is something that entails both nature and nurture I think. Children naturally project intention and feeling onto other entities. But perhaps this natural (adaptive) tendency needs to be nurtured by the culture within which the child develops or it will cease.

 

[Pharoah]

he then says,
"in molecular biology we have the informational level of description, full of language about constructing proteins according to a blueprint, and the hardware level in terms of molecules of specific atomic sequences and shapes. Biologists flip between these two modes of description without addressing the issue how information controls hardware (e.g. in ‘gene silencing’ or transcription- inhibition)—a classic case of downward causation."
You might note (or not) that in my information paper I argue that the concept of information as an external commodity is false; that it is the embodiment of the construct. This clearly affcts the notion of information controlling hardware, "a classic case of downward causation."

 

[Soupie]

In "the re-emergence of emergence" Paul davies says,
"The problem of downward causation from the physicist’s point of view is: How can wholes act causatively on parts if all interactions are local? Indeed, from the viewpoint of a local theory, what is a ‘whole’ anyway other than the sum of the parts? Let me distinguish between two types of downward causation. The first is whole–part causation, in which the behaviour of a part can be understood only by reference to the whole. The second I call level-entanglement (no connection intended with quantum entanglement, a very different phenomenon), and has to do with higher conceptual levels having causal efficacy over lower conceptual levels. "
Then, in discussing the two types, he seems to explain why there is not REALLY downward causation.
"The eye has evolved in at least forty independent ways in insects, birds, fish, mammals, and so on; although the starting points were very different, the end products fulfil very similar functions. Now the morphology of an organism is determined by its DNA, specifically by the exact sequence of base pairs in this molecule. Thus one might be tempted to ask, how does the biosphere act downwards on molecules of DNA to bring about species convergence? But this is clearly the wrong question. There is no mystery about convergence in Darwinian evolution....
natural selection is described as having causal powers, even though it is causatively neutral..."

Pharoah, the importance of downward causation for HCT, I think, would have to do with mental causation and free will.

HCT says consciousness is a construct that emerges from lower constructs. So, does consciousness have causal power over the lower constructs? Or is consciousness (will) epiphenomenal?

 

[Soupie]

I didn't feel that reality was being generated from within myself - rather, it was an experience of the phenomenal qualities - a realization that the world as I knew it, was being "generated" "in here" from my brain - the out there, in and of itself, was not a chair or a vase of flowers - but a collection of particles subject to physical rules - that's not an unusual belief, but it was fully experiencing that and realizing that one set of particles isn't intrinsically a "flower" and another a "chair" that's language and classification - all that was de-conditioned.

With all due respect, smcder, I'm confused. You're saying that you didn't experience reality as being generated from within... But then you also seem to say that you did indeed experience reality as being generated from within. I simply don't follow. Sorry!

 

[Soupie]

I argue that a state in which one felt that reality was being generated from within themselves—as opposed to feeling as if it were something that existed outside of themselves—would have to feel unreal.

I didn't feel that reality was being generated from within myself - rather, it was an experience of the phenomenal qualities - a realization that the world as I knew it, was being "generated" "in here" from my brain - the out there, in and of itself, was not a chair or a vase of flowers - but a collection of particles subject to physical rules - that's not an unusual belief, but it was fully experiencing that and realizing that one set of particles isn't intrinsically a "flower" and another a "chair" that's language and classification - all that was de-conditioned.

Are you saying that you experienced or realized that our conceptions of reality are generated from within? While I agree that they are, I'm suggesting that a-conceptual, phenomenal qualities (colors, smells, etc) are generated from within as well.

 

[Soupie]

Soupie: I argue that a state in which one felt that reality was being generated from within themselves—as opposed to feeling as if it were something that existed outside of themselves—would have to feel unreal.

In typical language usage, "feel" and "think" are used interchangeably. When I use the word feel in this case, I do not mean think, haha.

Ex If someone feels that objects in the world are phenomenal—as opposed to real—this is quite different from thinking that objects in the world are phenomenal as opposed to real.

For example, I am one who thinks that the objects in my experience are phenomenal, but they feel quite real.

Another way to tease out the distinction might be someone with a phantom limb: they may not think they have an arm, but it may feel like they do.

So, I argue, even people who think the objects they experience are phenomenal and thus not real, don't feel those objects to be unreal.

Another way of conceptualizing this is via drug experiences: I've heard of people saying that during lsd use, everything appears as if its a cartoon. Reality is a-conceptually experienced as unreal. (And these same people often question the nature of reality due to these experience; they come away thinking consciousness is fundamental and that physical reality is an illusion.)

 

[Soupie]

In typical language usage, "feel" and "think" are used interchangeably.

??

The difference between feel, think, and believe - Everything2.com

 

[Soupie]

I read that too.

Then why the dramatic "??" after my comment? Thats what I meant about you being a "stinker."