Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 6

[Soupie]

Soupie said: No one is arguing that humans do not share a commonly experienced local world grounded in the commonality of our perceptions.

Constance said: Really? This does seem to be the implication of most of the 'models' you've brought into this discussion.

As far as I can recall, I havent shared any models which suggested that humans do not share a commonly experienced local world grounded in the commonality of our perceptions.

 

[Soupie]

Next I want to ask you to provide a definition (or a working definition) of what you mean by "environmental energies."

I trust that you saw my post clarifying my meaning of that phrase.

And next I want to suggest that your reliance on Chalmers in this passage --

"As you note, Chalmers refers to this as a relatively easy problem by comparison:

• the ability to discriminate, categorize, and react to environmental stimuli;

Thus, qualitative evaluations /= phenomenal consciousness."

-- attempts to place him in the category of higher-order theorists among whom you feel comfortable. The following link should take you directly to Shaun Gallagher's clarifying analysis of higher-order theories vis a vis phenomenological analysis in Brainstorming: Views and Interviews on the Mind and show you why your conclusion above {"Thus, qualitative evaluations/=phenomenal consciousness"} confuses the issue by failing to recognize that phenomenal experience also takes place in prereflective consciousness. Only the recognition that the ground of reflective consciousness lies in prereflective experience can enable us to address the actual source of the hard problem.

Brainstorming

Your attempt to distinguish "phenomenal consciousness" as solely the result of evaluations taking place in higher-order thought misses the seamlessness of consciousness as it spans prereflective and reflective experience in the world. What we need to explore is in fact prereflective knowing.

Just to be clear, the symbols "/=" mean "does not equal."

Secondly, while I have discussed HOT/R theories, I wasn't doing so in this case. And for what it's worth, it's my understanding that the processes described in HOT/R theories take place outside of consciousness (outside of conscious experience).

 

[Constance]

As far as I can recall, I havent shared any models which suggested that humans do not share a commonly experienced local world grounded in the commonality of our perceptions.

My impression has been that the models you put forward do not account for the interactivity of individual consciousnesses in and with their environments/world and do not in fact actually recognize the continuous directness of this interactivity in the lived experience of human beings (and likely other evolutionarily advanced species among what we think of as the 'animals' on our planet). If we humans experience a 'common world', how could they do so without feeling and thinking individually about the qualities of their existential experiences among the things, other consciousnesses, and culturally developed institutions they encounter in common? The informational and neuroscientific models you have supported seem to represent 'experience' in non-experiential terms -- as connections of some kind produced outside of consciousness and experience that create an illusion of conscious being-in-the world/the local natural and cultural environment in which each individual finds himself/herself situated in specific ways. These models might claim that experience can be explained merely as a representation that one lives and acts in an intimate felt and thought relationship with the world, but that is an empty claim until it's proved to be the case. Against such models we all sense, think, and live the recognition of our actual 'being-in-the-world' as experienced moment by moment, day by day, in circumstances sometimes static and more often changing, and on the basis of which we recognize the demands of finding a legitimate epistemology and a valid ontology.

 

[Constance]

Just to be clear, the symbols "/=" mean "does not equal."

Thanks. I'd forgotten that.

Secondly, while I have discussed HOT/R theories, I wasn't doing so in this case. And for what it's worth, it's my understanding that the processes described in HOT/R theories take place outside of consciousness (outside of conscious experience).

My usual question: where and by virtue of what 'mechanisms' and 'processes' does higher-order thought 'take place', happen?

 

[Soupie]

My impression has been that the models you put forward do not account for the interactivity of individual consciousnesses in and with their environments/world and do not in fact actually recognize the continuous directness of this interactivity in the lived experience of human beings (and likely other evolutionarily advanced species among what we think of as the 'animals' on our planet).

As when you've shared as much in the past, I'm not sure I follow you. I don't think that humans directly interact with the environment via their minds. However, I do think that humans directly interact with the environment via their bodies.

I think of consciouness as something organisms possess in large part to facilitate, via experience, their interaction with the world.

When we see, smell, or hear something in the environment via conscious experience, we do not consciously experience the billions (if not trillions) of physical processes taking place which—at the very least—facilitate these conscious experiences.

As far as the idea that the mind extends out from the body-brain, as with enactivism and other extended mind models, I do my best to remain, heh, open-minded; but I do not see how this could be so. The biggest stumbling blocks for me are dreams, lucid dreams, meditative/sensory deprivation states, and psychedelic drug experiences. By all accounts (including a very recent study of LSD) these experiences are "perceptual" in nature, with subjects having rich, phenomenal experiences in the absence of "typically" corresponding environmental stimuli.

There are many other lines of evidence weighing against extended-mind models, including synthesia in which subjects experience, for example, colors in the absence of corresponding light waves.

In any case, I will soon be reading the following paper which defends the enactivist approach:

https://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/bitstr...tual Consciousness.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

If we humans experience a 'common world', how could they do so without feeling and thinking individually about the qualities of their existential experiences among the things, other consciousnesses, and culturally developed institutions they encounter in common? The informational and neuroscientific models you have supported seem to represent 'experience' in non-experiential terms -- as connections of some kind produced outside of consciousness and experience that create an illusion of conscious being-in-the world/the local natural and cultural environment in which each individual finds himself/herself situated in specific ways. These models might claim that experience can be explained merely as a representation that one lives and acts in an intimate felt and thought relationship with the world, but that is an empty claim until it's proved to be the case. Against such models we all sense, think, and live the recognition of our actual 'being-in-the-world' as experienced moment by moment, day by day, in circumstances sometimes static and more often changing, and on the basis of which we recognize the demands of finding a legitimate epistemology and a valid ontology.

I'll be honest, I don't follow you here. I think it can be shown that our experience of reality does not exhaust reality. Reality—whatever it is—is larger than our experience of it.

 

[Soupie]

The informational and neuroscientific models you have supported seem to represent 'experience' in non-experiential terms -- as connections of some kind produced outside of consciousness and experience that create an illusion of conscious being-in-the world/the local natural and cultural environment in which each individual finds himself/herself situated in specific ways.

If one seeks to naturalize consciousness, if one believes consciousness has evolved within and emerged from nature, than to do so is unavoidable.

"The temptation is to view conscious observation as a very special sort of transduction. Let's remind ourselves about "transduction." It's a nice term because it cuts nicely across the artificial and the natural. We have artificial transducers, such as photocells, and natural transducers, such as the rods and cones in your retina. They take information in one medium and, at a boundary surface, transduce it; the same information is sent on in some other physical medium. It might be by turning photons into sound or by turning photons into spikes of electro-chemical activity in a neuron's axon. There's a temptation to think that what consciousness is is a very, very special sort of transduction--the sort that we call observation. ...

[L]ight is transduced right at the retinas and then the information works its way back, via the lateral geniculate nucleus, and by the time the information gets back to the occipital cortex, in the area known as V1 (for visual area number 1), it seems that it's all distorted. Of course if somebody looked at your cortex while you were looking at this woman in the figure, they wouldn't see the colored image depicted, but the patterns of stimulation on the cortex would actually be approximately as shown here--distorted, inverted and twisted in these various ways. A natural reaction when we learn this fact is to say something along the lines of "Well, that's interesting but that's surely not how it seems to me when I look at the woman--so I guess the seeming to me must happen at some later point in the process, where how it seems to me can be restored or put together in some later transduction!"

The transduction at the retina, into neuronal impulses, has taken us, it seems, into an alien medium, not anything we recognize as the intimate medium we are familiar with. That activity in V1 is not in the Medium, you might say. It may be a medium of visual information in my brain, but it's not . . .moi. It's not the medium in which I experience consciousness. So the idea takes root that if the pattern of activity in V1 looks like that (and that's not what consciousness is like), there must be some later second transduction into the medium that is consciousness."

 

[Soupie]

What I am inferring is that, with replication and other evolutionary transitions, the character of causal agency changes. Undoubtedly, it is 'the quality' of my experience that helps determine my behaviour. To this extent, quality is a causal agency. Qualitative relevancy exists no less than matter exists. And we say that matter is energy. But specifically, its solidity, as a defining and causally efficacious characteristic, is misleading. So what I am saying is that consciousness exists no less than matter exists... (you could say, consciousness is no less solid than matter)... and it has a causal mechanism to it. It is no less an 'dynamic energy construction' than is matter. importantly, it exists and is causally efficacious. There is no downward or upward causation... it is more nuanced than that. [work in progress]

Pharoah, I am very excited to see where your exploration of these questions takes you. Please share any interesting and relevant material you encounter. I think we've discussed the following in the past but it seems relevant:

http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam031/00025317.pdf

I'm especially interested in the exploration into the nature of so-called matter. I'm right there with you when you question the consciously perceived solidity of matter.

If the hard problem is whence consciousness, then the hardest problem is whence matter.

 

[Pharoah]

Pharoah, I am very excited to see where your exploration of these questions takes you. Please share any interesting and relevant material you encounter. I think we've discussed the following in the past but it seems relevant:

http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam031/00025317.pdf

I'm especially interested in the exploration into the nature of so-called matter. I'm right there with you when you question the consciously perceived solidity of matter.

If the hard problem is whence consciousness, then the hardest problem is whence matter.

@Soupie I've given the Sterelny a good read.
To clarify, is your "excitement" about causation or about solidity/ matter/ consciousness. I doubt there is much writing on the latter, plenty though on the former...

 

[Soupie]

@Soupie I've given the Sterelny a good read.
To clarify, is your "excitement" about causation or about solidity/ matter/ consciousness. I doubt there is much writing on the latter, plenty though on the former...

Both. Specifically how reconceptualizing the latter (the nature of matter) might provide new approaches to mental causation.

 

[Constance]

I'll be honest, I don't follow you here. I think it can be shown that our experience of reality does not exhaust reality. Reality—whatever it is—is larger than our experience of it.

Of course our physically and temporally situated experience does not "exhaust reality."

Of course reality -- i.e., 'what-is' -- is larger than any situated experience of it.

If your goal is to obtain factual knowledge of every process and interaction involved in the evolution of the universe/cosmos from its beginning [if it had a beginning] to the present, more power to you.

But you do need to recognize that even partial inquiries into the nature of the local world we live in would be impossible -- could not occur, take place -- in the absence of consciousness, affectivity, intentionality, and mind.

And thus that, in order to approach the whole complement of 'what-is', you, or any other inquirer into the nature of what-is, needs also to inquire into the nature of what consciousness and mind are.

The latter is what we intended to do in beginning this thread two years ago. It is the task that researchers from a wide range of disciplines have pursued over the past 25 years. We need all their approaches in this complex investigation, including the contributions made by phenomenology, which I'm afraid you will continue to avoid reading even if it would deepen your understanding of human experience, consciousness, and mind. In fact, that is the danger in it for you since you seem to be committed to objectivist presuppositions in order to reach objectivist conclusions. So we go round and round.

 

[Constance]

If one seeks to naturalize consciousness, if one believes consciousness has evolved within and emerged from nature, than to do so is unavoidable.

No it's not. I too believe that "consciousness has evolved within and emerged from nature." But I think you also believe that the book of nature is already written and is thus closed. You see nature as a vast and deterministic machine, whereas I see it as evolving and -- in its evolution -- open-ended, still being written until the universe collapses in a heat death (or whatever consensual 'science' currently hypothesizes).

What is the source of the quoted paragraphs in the rest of your post?

"The temptation is to view conscious observation as a very special sort of transduction. Let's remind ourselves about "transduction." It's a nice term because it cuts nicely across the artificial and the natural. We have artificial transducers, such as photocells, and natural transducers, such as the rods and cones in your retina. They take information in one medium and, at a boundary surface, transduce it; the same information is sent on in some other physical medium. It might be by turning photons into sound or by turning photons into spikes of electro-chemical activity in a neuron's axon. There's a temptation to think that what consciousness is is a very, very special sort of transduction--the sort that we call observation. ...

[L]ight is transduced right at the retinas and then the information works its way back, via the lateral geniculate nucleus, and by the time the information gets back to the occipital cortex, in the area known as V1 (for visual area number 1), it seems that it's all distorted. Of course if somebody looked at your cortex while you were looking at this woman in the figure, they wouldn't see the colored image depicted, but the patterns of stimulation on the cortex would actually be approximately as shown here--distorted, inverted and twisted in these various ways. A natural reaction when we learn this fact is to say something along the lines of "Well, that's interesting but that's surely not how it seems to me when I look at the woman--so I guess the seeming to me must happen at some later point in the process, where how it seems to me can be restored or put together in some later transduction!"

The transduction at the retina, into neuronal impulses, has taken us, it seems, into an alien medium, not anything we recognize as the intimate medium we are familiar with. That activity in V1 is not in the Medium, you might say. It may be a medium of visual information in my brain, but it's not . . .moi. It's not the medium in which I experience consciousness. So the idea takes root that if the pattern of activity in V1 looks like that (and that's not what consciousness is like), there must be some later second transduction into the medium that is consciousness."

 

[Constance]

Velmans claimed that the statement "the real skull is larger than the phenomenal sky" was absurd. Having read Velmans approach to consciousness, I don't see anything in his view that would allow him to claim that statement is absurd. @smcder went so far as to say that Velmans is an identity theorist, ie, that the mind just is the brain.

I think if you read Velmans more carefully (or just several times) you will follow his argument in that first paper you linked a few weeks ago. It's also helpful to read other papers by Velmans concerning his theory of reflexive monism to understand his arguments. I don't think Velmans supports identity theory, but you'll have to take that up with Steve when he returns to the thread. He's presently having internet connection problems.

If Velmans is an identity theorist, then on this view, the mind is the brain, and the brain is inside the skull, and the skull is therefore bigger than the phenomenal sky (which just is the brain). Likewise, if the mind just is the brain, then the phenomenal cat just is the brain, and is therefore inside the real skull, ie, the phenomenal cat is inside the real skull.

We all realize, I think, and Velmans surely does, that neither the brain nor the mind literally encompasses the whole of the local phenomenal world {i.e., the world as we experience it in its phenomenal appearances to us}, much less encompassing the extent of the wider world/universe beyond our immediate sensible horizons, the extent and nature of which we can only extrapolate through works of the mind, including physical science. Part of the problem you're having with Velmans is that you haven't yet grasped the philosophical meaning of the terms 'phenomena' and 'phenomenal'.

 

[Soupie]

@Constance, this is, i believe, the third time youve suggested ive gotten velmans wrong. I dont think i do. In any case, the only reason youre talking about velmans in this context is because i asked for help in understanding velmans. If you think ive got velmans wrong and youve got him right, then by all means explain how ive gotten velmans wrong. Its more than a little absurd to continue claiming ive got him wrong yet fail to explain how ive got him wrong. Im all ears.

 

[Soupie]

No it's not.

Constance, if conscious nature evolved from non-conscious nature, then that means that conscious nature is comprised of non-conscious nature. Thus, in order to understand conscious nature in this context it by necessity involves talking about consciousness (experience) in non-experiential terms. There is no way around it.

You cannot claim that consciousness evolved in nature from non-conscious nature, and then insist that consciousness be considered and spoken about as if it's a fundamental, irreducible aspect of nature.

If you do believe that consciousness is a fundamental, irreducible aspect of nature, well then, you cant simultaneously claim that it evolved/emerged within nature.

 

[Constance]

@Constance, this is, i believe, the third time youve suggested ive gotten velmans wrong. I dont think i do. In any case, the only reason youre talking about velmans in this context is because i asked for help in understanding velmans. If you think ive got velmans wrong and youve got him right, then by all means explain how ive gotten velmans wrong. Its more than a little absurd to continue claiming ive got him wrong yet fail to explain how ive got him wrong. Im all ears.

So you want me to write a paper for you explaining Velmans's thought concerning consciousness, developed over numerous papers and a book, and restate in other language the theory of reflexive monism he has developed over many years and which ultimately required that he write a book to contain it? Sorry, I don't have that much time to put at your service. You're going to have to do your own reading and thinking.

If you do believe that consciousness is a fundamental, irreducible aspect of nature, well then, you cant simultaneously claim that it evolved/emerged within nature.

I've never said that consciousness is a "fundamental" aspect of nature. In fact, most emergentists, whether philosophers or scientists, do not claim that consciousness is a "fundamental" aspect of nature, if by 'fundamental' you mean that consciousness was present in nature from the Big Bang forward (provided that the BB is a valid theory, another set of arguments). Evolution, development, and change are by now generally recognized to take place in nature. You seem to be unable to accept that.

As to the irreducibility of consciousness once it has evolved, there is a range of opinion among emergentists in both science and philosophy. So if you want to squelch "emergentism" you'll need to address your arguments to a variety of interpretations of what emergence is. You tend to think categorically, in either/or terms, and unfortunately the subjects we're discussing are more complicated than you're willing to accept.

 

[Constance]

Coming back to your complaint that I've repeated several times that you have got Velmans wrong, I actually have only two options here: to let your misrepresentation of one of the major philosophers of consciousness stand, or to point out that what you're claiming re Velmans is a misunderstanding. How can we solve this?

 

[Constance]

Constance, if conscious nature evolved from non-conscious nature, then that means that conscious nature is comprised of non-conscious nature.

No, it doesn't. It means that consciousness has emerged from nature, and that embodied conscious beings [even those who become scientists and analytical philosophers of mind] cannot separate themselves entirely from nature, from what they carry forward from nature into consciousness and mind.

Thus, in order to understand conscious nature in this context it by necessity involves talking about consciousness (experience) in non-experiential terms. There is no way around it.

There's no question that the evolution of consciousness is enabled by bodily and environmental processes and influences that are not consciously experienced by animals and humans. But there is much more that is essential for the evolution of consciousness and mind and that is precisely experience, which occurs both prereflectively and reflectively. Reflective consciousness carries forward that which has been experienced -- and in varying ways known, understood -- prereflectively. Experience in and of the sensible, palpable, world that envelopes us is the key at both the prereflective and reflective levels of consciousness, and it is therefore absurd to talk about 'consciousness' {which you yourself follow in parentheses with the word 'experience'} in "non-experiential terms." I won't repeat, because you know, what the sources are that you need to study in order to understand what I'm saying.

You cannot claim that consciousness evolved in nature from non-conscious nature, and then insist that consciousness be considered and spoken about as if it's a fundamental, irreducible aspect of nature.

But I've never said that, much less insisted on it. See the paragraphs just above for clarification (I hope).

If you do believe that consciousness is a fundamental, irreducible aspect of nature, well then, you cant simultaneously claim that it evolved/emerged within nature.

Again, you're misunderstanding what I have said (for two years now), which I don't think is all that difficult to understand.


ETA: you're using 'fundamental' and 'irreducible' together as if they are synonyms [or near synonyms] for one another. They're not. That might be one of the sources of the problems you're having with Velmans and phenomenology.

 

[Soupie]

So you want me to write a paper for you explaining Velmans's thought concerning consciousness, developed over numerous papers and a book, and restate in other language the theory of reflexive monism he has developed over many years and which ultimately required that he write a book to contain it? Sorry, I don't have that much time to put at your service. You're going to have to do your own reading and thinking.

All I ask is that if you're going to take the effort to create multiple posts telling me i've misinterpreted something/someone—a certain something/someone ive specifically asked for help interpreting—that you also take the time to explain how ive misinterpreted or what the correct interpretation is.

You seem to believe youve got a firm handle on reflexive monism and presumably perceptual projection. Please enlighten me. Im certainly not the only one confused al Lehar and perhaps @smcder.

As to the irreducibility of consciousness once it has evolved, there is a range of opinion among emergentists in both science and philosophy. So if you want to squelch "emergentism" you'll need to address your arguments to a variety of interpretations of what emergence is. You tend to think categorically, in either/or terms, and unfortunately the subjects we're discussing are more complicated than you're willing to accept.

I do follow you. As ive said, understanding your approach to consciousness is no easy task. From my perspective, you seem to be full of contradictions.

In any case, if you feel consciousness is not fundamental but is irreducible, then i would say it's still not out of bounds to at least talk about the physical process correlates of consciousness. I dont disagree with you at all that conscious experience cannot be reduced to physical processes; however, i do think there is fruit in determining, as best we can, those physical processes most closely related to the emergence of consciousness.

Interestingly, none other than Chalmers and Searle disagree about the implications of a consciousness that is irreducible; chalmers seems to believe it entails consciousness being fundamental, while searle believes an irreducible consciousness can still emerge from physical processes.

I think one treads in very interesting territory when one claims that consciousness emerges from natural processes but that consciousness cannot be logically/lawfully explained via those same natural processes (ie irreducibility).

Re the transducing paragraphs re physical processes and consciousness. (Which would be in line with an emergentist, irreducible approach to consciousness.) That is Dennett. Id post the entire paper here if i thought anyone would appreciate it heh.

 

[Pharoah]

@Constance
I am not sure about this statement:
“But you do need to recognize that even partial inquiries into the nature of the local world we live in would be impossible -- could not occur, take place -- in the absence of consciousness, affectivity, intentionality, and mind.”
You need to be conscious to enquire into the nature of the atomic world but being consciousness is not relevant to the explanations of that world. So, why can’t we explore the local world (as conscious beings) in terms that do not require consciousness to be relevant to the explanation either? Is it really impossible to explain something without first having to explore what it is to ’have it’?

Furthermore, I don’t like the term “objective presupposition”. It gives the air that you are accusing someone of being limited in scope, that they are in a box, that their objective stance has no real or relevant explanatory power. It sounds like a slur to me. What is so bad about an objectivist’s approach? The vitalists were wrong: the objectivist explanation for life is sublime. Objectivity does not take the humanity out of the explanatory equation. I agree with Nagel: objectivity can explain subjectivity.

re Velman: I think it is perfectly legitimate for soupie to ask for your better understanding of Velman. That does not require you write a book. If you know that @Soupie is getting Velman wrong, then you must know what is wrong about his understanding. Just put soupie out of his misery. You could say that I don’t get Heidegger, or that I interpret his work “incorrectly”. Tell me how you interpret him “more correctly”: telling me that I need to read his life’s works isn’t going to be helpful.

 

[Pharoah]

I have an idea I want to run past ye about causality.
It is a dualist hypothesis. (never thought I might be a dualist!):
1. the idea of cause and effect might be expressed as follows: one physical property interacts with another and there is a physical consequence or effect.

Kim say (not word exact. To help assimilate Kim, M might be construed as being equivalent to a 'mental property' and P a 'physical domain property'),
<I would like to give an idea of the difficulties that confront anyone who wants causal efficacy for emergent properties. Suppose a claim is made to the effect that an emergent property, M, is a cause of another emergent property, M1 (this is short for saying that an instance of M causes an instance of M1 ). As an emergent property, M1 is instantiated on this occasion because, and only because, its basal condition, call it P1, is present on this occasion. It is clear that if M is to cause M1, then it must cause P1. The only way to cause an emergent property is to bring about an appropriate basal condition; there is no other way. So the M-M1 causation implies a downward causal relation, M to P1. But M itself is an emergent property and its presence on this occasion is due to the presence of its basal condition, call it P. When one considers this picture, one sees that P has an excellent claim to be a cause of P1, displacing M as a cause of P1. The deep problem for emergent causal powers arises from the closed character of the physical domain, which can be stated as follows:
If a physical event has a cause, it has a physical cause. And if a physical event has an explanation, it has a physical explanation.>

This stance assumes that mental properties are part of the cause–effect relation as of 1. above.
However,

2. What HCT talks about is the notion that cause–effect relations are both physical (as of 1. above) but also have meaning to the physical constructs that do the interacting. There is an 'is' relation to interaction, and there is an 'about' relation to interaction. Mentality relates to the qualitative 'about' relation of the cause–effect dynamic whereas the physical component is the 'is' relation.

If mental properties relate to a qualitative construct—the aboutness of interaction generated through physical interaction—in what way is the qualitative 'dimension' causally efficacious on the physical (i.e., not merely epiphenomenal)?

HCT says—in different terms—that meaning-constructs evolve. Meaning is transductive (is this true @Soupie?). For instance, the meaning between two interacting people is transmitted through physical cause–effect processes. So there is physical cause-effect process running in parallel with an evolving meaning about the physical causal world.

There is a dual aspect to the physical world. At each hierarchical level there is cause and effect on the one hand, and the evolution of constructs that carry the meaning of causal interaction on the other.