Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 6

[smcder]

@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.

I googled 'pre-reflective knowing' and found not a single reference.

I found a number of hits for pre-reflective knowing. (pre-reflective and prereflective)

pre-reflective knowing - Google Search

 

[smcder]

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.

It has been many years but I would like to hear something of the project/application if you have time - I might know someone who has this background.

 

[Soupie]

Language varies a lot from state to state in the US - "ninny" is not uncommon here.

Where I'm from in America, ninny is not common. (Language again... And its not even about consciousness.)

I first encountered the term in one of the "George and Martha" stories.

 

[Pharoah]

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?

These are good questions. Mental causation and free will are important. Haven't worked my way round free will properly yet but am dealing with causation which interests me a great deal.

Typically, one might think of causation as cold and mechanical. A reductive approach implies the accentuation of this aspect to causality. It is impersonal, devoid of colour and meaning. what we have, in essence, is an absence of meaning in brute causal mechanism but a rich unexplained vein of meaning in mental properties.
Where does the meaning comes from? The desire for emergentists is to find a means of adding the colour and meaning through the concept of emergent downward global influences.
What I say in contrast, is that meaning is a derivative of all causal interaction. Interaction is not cold. Brute interaction leads to the evolution of meaningful constructs (cf. my paper on information)

But then the problem is the charge of epiphenomenalism.
There are two ways I can think of that might help examine this issue:
1. In a crude Newtonianesque way, one can think of a lump of matter's meaning—its value—as its mass. It is its mass that comes into play during causal interaction. Yes cause leads to effect, but it also invokes meaning to determine evolving meaning. So the ontological status is separate to the process, in a way.
2. If one goes along with HCT, you hsve transcendentally distinct layers of meaning invoked by interaction. Any given single causal impetus can invoke different meanings in each class—each being distinct. As a composite of these classes, a human individual mentality then has the task of determining the value of the respective meanings to that single causal interaction which thereby determines their ideological stance and qualifies their actions—their ethical judgment.
Does this deal with epiphenomenalism or free will?I'm not sure that it does nor whether it matters whether it does... You tell me

 

[smcder]

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.

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

Can you give an example? Something that @Constance regards as "consciousness" and you regard as psychology?

 

[Pharoah]

I googled 'pre-reflective knowing' and found not a single reference.

I found a number of hits for pre-reflective knowing. (pre-reflective and prereflective)

pre-reflective knowing - Google Search

That's google and its attitude to us Brits for you! It's hidden there in Penguin!
@smcder I drop you an email.

 

[smcder]

5:25 experience has a scale, the world does not ...proof that our experience has a varible representational scale ... proof that it's a model ...

5:40 strange reactions "everyone knew that" ... so he explains it in a different way:
beyond the farthest things you can perceive in all directions ... beyond all that is the inner surface of your true physical skull and beyond that is ... (the world)
Then he say how the other view is the incredible one.

Panpsychism?

15:35 all physical matter has a primal consciousness
again at 16:45 and then

17:00 dont tell me that the water does not feel the urgency that its clearly expressing

experience has a scale, the world does not ...proof that our experience has a varible representational scale ... proof that it's a model ... 5:25
5:40 strange reactions "everyone knew that"
beyond the farthest tings you can perc in all directions ... beyond al lthat is the inner surface of your true physical skull and beyond that is ...

 

[smcder]

Independent Researcher

when did the "independent researcher" emerge?

 

[smcder]

That's google and its attitude to us Brits for you! It's hidden there in Penguin!
@smcder I drop you an email.

OK

 

[smcder]

How does one get started as an independent researcher? - Quora

 

[Randall]

Coupled with the recent and long-time-coming confirmation of gravity waves, I'm hopeful that the standard model and GR can final be united via superfluid vacuum theory. IE particles in the standard model don't just exist in spacetime, they are constituted of spacetime.

Thanks for sharing.

We humans have a tendency to try to jam what we don't understand into boxes we do understand. Sometimes this is useful, but at the same time, some of us forget we did that, and therefore what's really going on isn't what we see inside the box.

 

[Soupie]

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

Can you give an example? Something that @Constance regards as "consciousness" and you regard as psychology?

Of course any discussion of psychology will involve consciousness. @Constance actually articulated best out different interests re consciousness at the start of this particular thread:

Constance said: @Soupie continues to want to know 'how' the biologically evolved enablements that Pharoah delineates produce protoconsciousness and consciousness in living organisms. [As I see it, this goes to the root of the hard problem, and we do not yet know enough about nature to solve it.]

Constance often focuses on the phenomenology of experience; I'm primarily focused on how and why experience exists from a metaphysical perspective.

So while I find many of her comments and shared articles fascinating, since they don't deal directly with the HP, I often don't engage in discussion of them.

I'm not suggesting her focus/interest is in any way negative, just that it's different from mine.

 

[Soupie]

We humans have a tendency to try to jam what we don't understand into boxes we do understand. Sometimes this is useful, but at the same time, some of us forget we did that, and therefore what's really going on isn't what we see inside the box.

SVT is a model that elegantly unites QM and GR. If empirical support for SVT can be established, it would be a big deal.

 

[Randall]

SVT is a model that elegantly unites QM and GR. If empirical support for SVT can be established, it would be a big deal.

Sure. Just don't forget the word "model". Reality may still be something else entirely.

 

[Pharoah]

Gravitational waves: breakthrough discovery after a century of expectation

 

[Soupie]

Sure. Just don't forget the word "model". Reality may still be something else entirely.

Oh, it surely is!

 

[Randall]

Gravitational waves: breakthrough discovery after a century of expectation

We were discussing this on another thread recently. My last post here in: You are a simulation

 

[smcder]

Of course any discussion of psychology will involve consciousness. @Constance actually articulated best out different interests re consciousness at the start of this particular thread:

Constance said: @Soupie continues to want to know 'how' the biologically evolved enablements that Pharoah delineates produce protoconsciousness and consciousness in living organisms. [As I see it, this goes to the root of the hard problem, and we do not yet know enough about nature to solve it.]

Constance often focuses on the phenomenology of experience; I'm primarily focused on how and why experience exists from a metaphysical perspective.

So while I find many of her comments and shared articles fascinating, since they don't deal directly with the HP, I often don't engage in discussion of them.

I'm not suggesting her focus/interest is in any way negative, just that it's different from mine.

Constance said: @Soupie continues to want to know 'how' the biologically evolved enablements that Pharoah delineates produce protoconsciousness and consciousness in living organisms. [As I see it, this goes to the root of the hard problem, and we do not yet know enough about nature to solve it.]

I read the discussions of autopoesis and other topics that @Constance posts to be directly about this, to go to the root of the hard problem by not making the assumptions that created it. Phenomenology also is about starting from experience, bracketing our assumptions. So that would be directly about how and why experience exists from a metaphysical perspective:

Constance often focuses on the phenomenology of experience; I'm primarily focused on how and why experience exists from a metaphysical perspective.

Phenomenology is bracketing off assumptions, you can't hold onto those assumptions and do phenomenology. It's hard to argue that, to get "under" it as a good starting point because it's a direct examination of experience (which includes our assumptions). So what is conveyed by words to the phenomenologist is opaque to the non-phenomenologist.

@Constance, do I understand your position here correctly?

 

[Randall]

Constance said: @Soupie continues to want to know 'how' the biologically evolved enablements that Pharoah delineates produce protoconsciousness and consciousness in living organisms. [As I see it, this goes to the root of the hard problem, and we do not yet know enough about nature to solve it.]

I read the discussions of autopoesis and other topics that @Constance posts to be directly about this, to go to the root of the hard problem by not making the assumptions that created it. Phenomenology also is about starting from experience, bracketing our assumptions. So that would be directly about:

Constance often focuses on the phenomenology of experience; I'm primarily focused on how and why experience exists from a metaphysical perspective.

She's made many metaphysical statements about how and why experience exists from a metaphysical standpoint.

I have used the Chalmers video on the "Hard Problem" now numerous times, and still can't thank you enough for that introduction and sticking with me while I got it into perspective.

Now I'd like to understand your focus on, to quote: "... why experience exists from a metaphysical perspective." It seems that the "why" question about fundamental phenomena, which consciousness may be, isn't really a question that can be answered, at least not without invoking some sort of multiple universe theory, because these phenomena are by their nature "fundamental". Even if we invoke other universes, then we get into the old infinite recursion problem with respect to the question. For example, let's suppose that consciousness is a fundamental property of a universe created by beings advanced enough to create a universe as complex as ours.

We might then answer: The reason why consciousness was created in our universe was so that the beings who created our universe could study how consciousness comes into being and affects the behavior of the beings associated with it. It may even be the case that they created us in the hope of finding an explanation for their own consciousness. If this is the case, it wouldn't be a waste of time to know for sure, because it would be an incredible discovery for us, but still, the fundamental question remains the same.

 

[smcder]

I can

I have used the Chalmers video on the "Hard Problem" now numerous times, and still can't thank you enough for that introduction and sticking with me while I got it into perspective.

Now I'd like to understand your focus on, to quote: "... why experience exists from a metaphysical perspective." It seems that the "why" question about fundamental phenomena, which consciousness may be, isn't really a question that can be answered, at least not without invoking some sort of multiple universe theory, because these phenomena are by their nature "fundamental". Even if we invoke other universes, then we get into the old infinite recursion problem with respect to the question. For example, let's suppose that consciousness is a fundamental property of a universe created by beings advanced enough to create universes as complex as ours.

We might then answer: Consciousness was created in our universe so that the beings who created our universe could study how consciousness comes into being and affects the behavior of the beings associated with it, but this wouldn't explain why those beings wanted to have the experience of knowing the answer to that question. It may be the case that by creating us to study they are hoping to find an explanation for their own consciousness. If this is the case, it wouldn't be a waste of time to know for sure, because it would be an incredible discovery for us, but still, the fundamental question remains the same.

Now I'd like to understand your focus on, to quote: "... why experience exists from a metaphysical perspective."

That @Soupie 's focus - the quote from @Soupie is:

@Constance often focuses on the phenomenology of experience; I'm primarily focused on how and why experience exists from a metaphysical perspective.