Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 6

[smcder]

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[Soupie]

Actually, what I said is that we cannot understand what experience is without attending to it, becoming aware of it, and describing it phenomenologically as experience.

The below is the statement I was referring to:

Constance said: "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."

As per the recent topic of discussion, any model that explains the origin of consciousness as an emergent phenomenon within what-is will needs explain it as emerging from "connections of some kind produced outside of consciousness and experience."

Furthermore, against any such emergent model we will "all sense, think, and live the recognition of our actual 'being-in-the-world' as experienced moment by moment, day by day..."

I would argue the same for models that approach consciousness as fundamental.

Why am I saying any of this? Its not to pick a fight with you or argue for the sake of argument. Weve all been at this discussion for two years. I am confused by your approach and thus your rejection of approaches Ive wanted to discuss.

You feel that consciousness emerged from non-conscious, natural processes, but it appears to me that you balk at any and all models that merely explore such processes. As I think @Michael Allen has explicated so clearly—and you appear to generally agree with—not only will we need to check our human-centric language and questions that weve constructed out of the experience of our being in order to explain being, it seems its an impossible task.

Any attempt to model the preconditions of being will require using terms/concepts (language) that is non-experiential (in as much as any concepts we can conceive can be said to be non-experiential).

 

[Soupie]

If the materialist are right, then experience is merely folk pyschology, and things like the self, agency/free will, and mental causation are illusions.

If the dualists are right, then physical causal closure, matter, and cause and effect are illusions.

If the idealists are right, other minds and an external what-is are illusions.

 

[Soupie]

Speaking of non-experiential terms:

Excellent (excellent) video "explaining" electron spin. (Spoiler: they don't really spin and no one knows what electron spin is or why it happens or what an electron is.)

 

[smcder]

Two Zen Classics

Under heading "causation" first nen second nen ... pre-reflective consciousness?

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[Constance]

Two Zen Classics

Under heading "causation" first nen second nen ... pre-reflective consciousness?

Thanks for linking us to that book section Steve. I think the first nen parallels what western phenomenologists describe as prereflective consciousness and the second nen closely matches the western concept of reflective consciousness. The third nen seems to move beyond western phenomenology in general.

The third nen was evidently developed and practiced in Zen Buddhism (and perhaps in other Eastern disciplines?) for millenia before consciousness itself became a subject of investigation for philosophy and other disciplines. No wonder Varela, Thompson, and their colleagues have studied Eastern thought and meditative practice, followed by a number of contemporary scientific theorists who have turned to Eastern thought and the practice of meditation to seek insight into their own consciousness. In the west we have had numerous mystical thinkers and experiencers as well, and it would be interesting indeed to read their descriptions of their passage through different stages of consciousness.

Here are two papers by a French phenomenologist concerning various aspects of prereflective consciousness, which I recommend for those still seeking an understanding of what is referred to by this term.

Pre-Reflective Self-Consciousness: On Being Bodily in the World
Dorothée Legrand CREA—Centre de Recherche en Epistémologie Appliquée
http://www.janushead.org/9-2/Legrand.pdf

Pre-reflective self-as-subject from experiential and empirical perspectives
Dorothée Legrand * CREA – CNRS, 1 rue Descartes, 75005 Paris, France
http://psychology.illinoisstate.edu/cbs/documents/Legrand2007.pdf

 

[Constance]

The below is the statement I was referring to:

Constance said: "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."

As per the recent topic of discussion, any model that explains the origin of consciousness as an emergent phenomenon within what-is will needs explain it as emerging from "connections of some kind produced outside of consciousness and experience."

Yes, we want to understand the means by which consciousness emerges in living beings.

Furthermore, against any such emergent model we will "all sense, think, and live the recognition of our actual 'being-in-the-world' as experienced moment by moment, day by day..."

I'm not clear on your meaning in that last sentence, which seems to quote something I wrote toward the end but which is contextualized by what you write in the first clause ['against any such emergent model']. Can you make your point more directly?

Why am I saying any of this? Its not to pick a fight with you or argue for the sake of argument. Weve all been at this discussion for two years. I am confused by your approach and thus your rejection of approaches Ive wanted to discuss.

You feel that consciousness emerged from non-conscious, natural processes, but it appears to me that you balk at any and all models that merely explore such processes.

On the contrary, I welcome research clarifying the biological and physical processes that enable the evolution of consciousness, such as that by Jaak Panksepp and his colleagues in affective neuroscience
.

As I think @Michael Allen has explicated so clearly—and you appear to generally agree with—not only will we need to check our human-centric language and questions that weve constructed out of the experience of our being in order to explain being, it seems its an impossible task.

Not sure what you mean by "checking our human-centric language and questions that we've constructed out of the experience of our being." I suspect that what @Michael Allen meant is that we need to be aware of our tendencies to reify the concepts and terms we use in discussing consciousness, but I'll leave that for him to clarify.

Any attempt to model the preconditions of being will require using terms/concepts (language) that is non-experiential (in as much as any concepts we can conceive can be said to be non-experiential).

I don't know how we can discuss being, experience, consciousness, or concepts without using the language we have to work with. Languages develop in the first place out of the need to communicate within shared experiential situations. I think you recognize this given your parenthetical addition to that last sentence.

 

[Constance]

If the materialist are right, then experience is merely folk pyschology, and things like the self, agency/free will, and mental causation are illusions.

If the dualists are right, then physical causal closure, matter, and cause and effect are illusions.

If the idealists are right, other minds and an external what-is are illusions.

Perhaps you'll find a way through those apparent walls by reading phenomenology.

 

[Soupie]

Yes, we want to understand the means by which consciousness emerges in living beings.



I'm not clear on your meaning in that last sentence, which seems to quote something I wrote toward the end but which is contextualized by what you write in the first clause ['against any such emergent model']. Can you make your point more directly?

You were arguing that informational or neurobiological approaches to consciousness cannot be correct because "against such models" we have our experiences of the world. Ie, those models cannot be correct because, presumably, our experiences don't feel like information or neurological processes.

The point I am making is that if one believes that consciousness emerged from non-conscious processes—as you do—then whatever those processes turn out to be, whether quantum, molecular, cellular (neuronal), or computational, our experiences will not "feel like" those processes.

Whichever natural processes turn out to be preconditions for consciousness, they will not "feel like" experience due to the fact that they are outside of consciousness.

On the contrary, I welcome research clarifying the biological and physical processes that enable the evolution of consciousness, such as that by Jaak Panksepp and his colleagues in affective neuroscience
.


Not sure what you mean by "checking our human-centric language and questions that we've constructed out of the experience of our being." I suspect that what @Michael Allen meant is that we need to be aware of our tendencies to reify the concepts and terms we use in discussing consciousness, but I'll leave that for him to clarify.



I don't know how we can discuss being, experience, consciousness, or concepts without using the language we have to work with. Languages develop in the first place out of the need to communicate within shared experiential situations. I think you recognize this given your parenthetical addition to that last sentence.

It's as you say. We must be careful not to reify our experience of being. We mustn't assume the preconditions of being are similar to the preconditions of a ham sandwich.

 

[Constance]

Here is an example of ancient rock art in Nevada, estimated in age at a minimum of 10,000 years BP. It expresses, in my opinion, the directness and intimacy with which early humans observed natural forms (plant and animal) and reproduced their detailed surfaces in an attempt to comprehend (as well as, I think, to celebrate aesthetically) the structure of phenomenal appearances of things in the environment/world in which they found themselves living. This is an instance of what MP referred to as the way in which living creatures "sing the world."

http://media.npr.org/assets/img/201...-700fcd62467fe2a3c1621531aee11ccd91c29887.jpg

 

[Soupie]

@smcder Sometime again, maybe under your previous account, you speculated whether pov could be fundamental. You also recently wrote a little more about panenpsychism. I'll have to circle back and re read what you wrote.

However the following seemed in line with the above approach:

The Case Against Reality

"Hoffman: Here’s the striking thing about that. I can pull the W out of the model and stick a conscious agent in its place and get a circuit of conscious agents. In fact, you can have whole networks of arbitrary complexity. And that’s the world.

Gefter: The world is just other conscious agents?

Hoffman: I call it conscious realism: Objective reality is just conscious agents, just points of view. Interestingly, I can take two conscious agents and have them interact, and the mathematical structure of that interaction also satisfies the definition of a conscious agent. This mathematics is telling me something. I can take two minds, and they can generate a new, unified single mind. Here’s a concrete example. We have two hemispheres in our brain. But when you do a split-brain operation, a complete transection of the corpus callosum, you get clear evidence of two separate consciousnesses. Before that slicing happened, it seemed there was a single unified consciousness. So it’s not implausible that there is a single conscious agent. And yet it’s also the case that there are two conscious agents there, and you can see that when they’re split. I didn’t expect that, the mathematics forced me to recognize this. It suggests that I can take separate observers, put them together and create new observers, and keep doing this ad infinitum. It’s conscious agents all the way down.

Gefter: If it’s conscious agents all the way down, all first-person points of view, what happens to science? Science has always been a third-person description of the world.

Hoffman: The idea that what we’re doing is measuring publicly accessible objects, the idea that objectivity results from the fact that you and I can measure the same object in the exact same situation and get the same results — it’s very clear from quantum mechanics that that idea has to go. Physics tells us that there are no public physical objects. So what’s going on? Here’s how I think about it. I can talk to you about my headache and believe that I am communicating effectively with you, because you’ve had your own headaches. The same thing is true as apples and the moon and the sun and the universe. Just like you have your own headache, you have your own moon. But I assume it’s relevantly similar to mine. That’s an assumption that could be false, but that’s the source of my communication, and that’s the best we can do in terms of public physical objects and objective science.

...

Hoffman: The formal theory of conscious agents I’ve been developing is computationally universal—in that sense, it’s a machine theory. And it’s because the theory is computationally universal that I can get all of cognitive science and neural networks back out of it. Nevertheless, for now I don’t think we are machines—in part because I distinguish between the mathematical representation and the thing being represented. As a conscious realist, I am postulating conscious experiences as ontological primitives, the most basic ingredients of the world. I’m claiming that experiences are the real coin of the realm. The experiences of everyday life—my real feeling of a headache, my real taste of chocolate—that really is the ultimate nature of reality."

 

[Constance]

The point I am making is that if one believes that consciousness emerged from non-conscious processes—as you do—then whatever those processes turn out to be, whether quantum, molecular, cellular (neuronal), or computational, our experiences will not "feel like" those processes.

Consciousness, in my view, emerges and evolves from evolving processes in nature that enable the increasing sense of a being's openness and presence in its environmental setting. Being-in-the world in presence to things encountered phenomenally is the other essential precondition for the emergence of consciousness which begins in pre-reflective experience. As Husserl argued: 'No things without consciousess; no consciousness without things'.

Whichever natural processes turn out to be preconditions for consciousness, they will not "feel like" experience due to the fact that they are outside of consciousness.

Please read Panksepp and Legrand and also the major phenomenological philosophers in order to have your categorical thinking broken down. Legrand in particular addresses the question to what extent autonomic and subliminal processes in the body might be sensed, felt, to some degree on the path toward a being's experiential sense of being-in-the-world, having a 'world' to become acquainted with.

 

[Constance]

It's as you say. We must be careful not to reify our experience of being. We mustn't assume the preconditions of being are similar to the preconditions of a ham sandwich.

?? If you think that's an apt metaphor for the emergence of consciousness in phenomenological philosophy and research, you do need quite desperately to obtain an education in what phenomenology brings to consciousness studies. Of course you might continue to choose not to do that, but without your doing so it becomes virtually impossible to continue a meaningful dialogue with you.

 

[Constance]

Here is an example of ancient rock art in Nevada, estimated in age at 10,000 BP. It expresses, in my opinion, the directness and intimacy with which early humans observed natural forms (plant and animal) and reproduced their detailed surfaces in an attempt to comprehend (as well as, I think, to celebrate aesthetically) the structure of phenomenal appearances of things in the environment/world in which they found themselves living. This is an instance of what MP referred to as the way in which living creatures "sing the world."

http://media.npr.org/assets/img/201...-700fcd62467fe2a3c1621531aee11ccd91c29887.jpg

Here is a good place to begin contemplating the meanings expressed in ancient rock art (there are many others on the web as well):

oldest petroglyphs

 

[Constance]

Here is an extract from an article quoting archaeologists and geochemists concerning the character of the Nevada geoglyphs and the evidence of their antiquity:

". . . We initially thought people 12,000 or 10,000 years ago were primitive, but their artistic expressions and technological expertise associated with these paints a much different picture," said Eugene Hattori, the curator of anthropology at the Nevada State Museum in Carson City who co-wrote a paper on the findings earlier this month in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

The petroglyphs could be as much as 14,800 years old, said Larry Benson, a geochemist who used radiocarbon testing to date the etchings and was the lead author of the research paper.

Radiocarbon testing dated the carbonate layer underlying the petroglyphs to roughly 14,800 years ago. Geochemical data and sediment and rock samples from adjacent Pyramid Lake show they were exposed to air from 13,200 to 14,800 years ago, and again from 10,500 to 11,300 years ago.

"Whether they turn out to be as old as 14,800 years ago or as recent as 10,500 years ago, they are still the oldest petroglyphs that have been dated in North America," said Benson, a former research scientist for the U.S. Geological Survey and current curator of anthropology at the University of Colorado Natural History Museum in Boulder. . . ."


"Oldest petroglyphs in North America confirmed in Nevada

 

[Constance]

This article is essential reading for an introduction to Merleau-Ponty's later philosophy of nature:

DYLAN TRIGG, THE ROLE OF THE EARTH IN MERLEAU-PONTY’S ARCHAEOLOGICAL PHENOMENOLOGY

Introduction

This paper aims to chart the importance of the concept Earth in Merleau-Ponty’s late philosophy, specifically as it figures in a series of commentaries on a late fragment of Husserl’s widely known as “The Earth Does Not Move” (Merleau-Ponty 2002). As I argue in this paper, the fragment is essential not only for scholars of Husserl, but also for an understanding of the development of Merleau-Ponty’s late thinking, especially as it is played out in the lecture notes on nature as well as his unfinished manuscript The Visible and the Invisible (Merleau-Ponty 2003/1968). As we will see, it is striking if not uncanny how the Earth fragment continues to haunt Merleau-Ponty during the late years of his life, and with each re-reading, the axis of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy seems to turn increasingly away from the horizon of experience to what will become an “archaeological phenomenology.”2

Written in 1934, Husserl’s fragment is a preliminary study of the relation of the Earth as the ground of being. His Earth, as we will see, is that which renders movement, rest, and thus the structure of the body possible in the fi rst instance in both its kinaesthetic relation with the world and in its intercorporeal relation with others. Against the “modern” (Copernican) tendency to reduce the Earth to a planet among many, for Husserl, the Earth as it is pregiven to experience is no less than the ground of all possibilities.

Merleau-Ponty’s “commentary” on the Earth fragment in his lecture notes is as much a dialogue with the dead Husserl as it is a development of his own thinking at the time.3 For Merleau-Ponty, Husserl’s fragment becomes an opportunity to articulate a series of concepts he was working on at the time of his Collége de France lectures on nature (1957) through to his lectures on Husserl at the same institution (1959-60), and then up to his final incomplete manuscript, The Visible and the Invisible (1960-1961), published three years after his premature death in 1961. Throughout this trajectory in his career, Merleau-Ponty’s continuous dialogue with Husserl is aimed at grounding Merleau-Ponty’s own radical ontology, an ontology that seeks to incorporate Husserl while also recognising that only through betraying Husserl’s transcendental idealism is a genuine ontology possible.

It is, perhaps, no coincidence, therefore, that faced with the Husserlian fragment on the Earth as an arc—or better arche (origin)— Merleau-Ponty will term his method of eliciting the unthought element in Husserl an “archaeology” (2002). By phrasing his late phenomenology as archaeological, Merleau-Ponty not only accents the importance of origins but also points to the ground in which those origins are buried while at the same time remaining constitutive of the ground itself. Thus, if Merleau-Ponty is able to pronounce his phenomenology as a “phenomenology of origins” in the Phenomenology of Perception, then it is only in his late thinking that his thought gains the archaeological foundations able to support this claim (Merleau-Ponty 2012, xxxii).

In order to assess the role of this fragment within Merleau-Ponty’s thinking, three stages are mapped out. First, I offer a preliminary exposition of the fragment itself, focusing in particular on the role of the body in its co-constitution with the Earth. From this account, a series of questions opens up that are left unresolved in Husserl, not least the question of whether the Earth as playing a constitutive structure in the body can be understood in terms of transcendental phenomenology alone.

Accordingly, in the second part of the paper, I turn to both Merleau-Ponty’s lectures on nature and also his specific lectures on Husserl as they are collected under the title Husserl and the Limits of Phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty 2003/2002). Each of these lectures presents us with a different treatment of Husserl, and the difference becomes vital in Merleau-Ponty’s own ontology. For what is at stake in the late reading of Husserl is the departure from Husserlian phenomenology to what will become Merleau-Ponty’s “archaeological phenomenology,” a term I will explicate in time.

Thus, in the final part of the paper, I sketch out how this archaeological thinking is rooted in the Earth fragment, without a consideration of which any understanding of Merleau-Ponty’s late thinking would remain incomplete. My argument can be formulated as follows: Merleau-Ponty’s account of the Earth is Husserlian insofar as it reinforces the primordial “ground (sol) of experience” but at the same time marks a departure from Husserl insofar as the Earth registers a brute or wild layer that resists phenomenology (cf. Merleau-Ponty 1964b, 1968). This notion of a brute and wild being (l’être sauvage), which Merleau-Ponty owes in part to the influence of Schelling,4 refers to an elemental Being, which is not only anonymous but also anterior to the subject and in this respect, fulfils an archaeological phenomenology. . . . ."

http://philpapers.org/archive/TRITRO-8.pdf

 

[Soupie]

?? If you think that's an apt metaphor for the emergence of consciousness in phenomenological philosophy and research, you do need quite desperately to obtain an education in what phenomenology brings to consciousness studies. Of course you might continue to choose not to do that, but without your doing so it becomes virtually impossible to continue a meaningful dialogue with you.

The comment wasn't directed at phenomenological philosophy. Just underlining the fact that our experience-based concepts may be useless in modeling the preconditions of consciousness.

For example, all the concepts in the following statement might be useless for explaining consciousness: The rock smashed into the pineapple tree and caused it to fall over.

And the fact that we don't have any working models to explain statements with concepts such as: The pain in my hand caused by the grumpy zebra purposefully stepping on it caused me to yell: Cripes!

 

[Pharoah]

Consciousness, in my view, emerges and evolves from evolving processes in nature that enable the increasing sense of a being's openness and presence in its environmental setting. Being-in-the world in presence to things encountered phenomenally is the other essential precondition for the emergence of consciousness which begins in pre-reflective experience. As Husserl argued: 'No things without consciousess; no consciousness without things'.



Please read Panksepp and Legrand and also the major phenomenological philosophers in order to have your categorical thinking broken down. Legrand in particular addresses the question to what extent autonomic and subliminal processes in the body might be sensed, felt, to some degree on the path toward a being's experiential sense of being-in-the-world, having a 'world' to become acquainted with.

@Constance
I think @Soupie has been zoning in on a valid query regarding your stance.
You say,
"Consciousness, in my view, emerges and evolves from evolving processes in nature that enable the increasing sense of a being's openness and presence in its environmental setting. Being-in-the world in presence to things encountered phenomenally is the other essential precondition for the emergence of consciousness which begins in pre-reflective experience."
I don't think it is important to anwer this question necessarily, but I am curious about your view.
I have a sense from what you say that "Being" pre-exists consciousness and prereflexivity: that evolution "enables" Being to emerge into-the-world. This is an area I thought H was going to tackle in B&T and where I was left disappointed.
What I want to know is something about Being: what it is before it is in the world. Is your stance inevitably antiphysicalist, dualist...? Or would you argue otherwise? or would you not care to address the question because it is not a) important or relevant, b) answerable, c) "knowable" etc?

 

[Constance]

@Constance
I think @Soupie has been zoning in on a valid query regarding your stance.

You say, "Consciousness, in my view, emerges and evolves from evolving processes in nature that enable the increasing sense of a being's openness and presence in its environmental setting. Being-in-the world in presence to things encountered phenomenally is the other essential precondition for the emergence of consciousness which begins in pre-reflective experience."

I don't think it is important to anwer this question necessarily, but I am curious about your view. I have a sense from what you say that "Being" pre-exists consciousness and prereflexivity: that evolution "enables" Being to emerge into-the-world. This is an area I thought H was going to tackle in B&T and where I was left disappointed.

How much of Being and Time did you read? One really needs to read all of that work and many subsequent shorter works of Heidegger to understand his philosophy of being and existence. When we discussed B&T a year or so ago I suggested that newcomers to phenomenology simultaneously read the following guide to the work by my mentor:

Eugene F. Kaelin, Being and Time: A Reading for Readers

Being and Time presents not just Heidegger's thought but an overview of the history of philosophical approaches to being/Being. For a short overview of this context, the wikipedia entry at this link is helpful:

Being - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Re your take on my 'approach' above --

"I have a sense from what you say that "Being" pre-exists consciousness and prereflexivity: that evolution "enables" Being to emerge into-the-world.",

it's partially correct. Being is the Whole within which be-ing such as that which we experience takes place. Being as the whole of 'what-is' evidently 'pre-exists' the evolution of consciousness in the world we know, but what emerges with consciousness is the capability of thinking about both our being and Being as a whole. Which leaves us with the primary question we have been discussing in this thread: how consciousness arises in 'what-is' {how awareness of our being arises in 'Being' and enables us to ask the question about Being beginning with our experience of being in the physically evolved world in which we find ourselves existing}. To understand the nature of the things that are as we encounter them phenomenally, we need also to understand the nature of the consciousness -- phenomenal, prereflective, and reflective -- by which we experience them and ourselves in experiencing existence in the world.

What I want to know is something about Being: what it is before it is in the world.

Philosophers since the pre-Socratics in the west and the ancient philosophers of the east have attempted to understand what Being is. Phenomenologists since the late 19th century have realized that our only avenue toward postulating the nature of Being as a whole is through analysis of our own experience of being-in-the-world. This means analyzing to the extent we can all of the aspects of our lived experience here and now. To know something, much less everything, about Being as a whole requires a God's eye view that we obviously do not possess. Phenomenological existentialism expresses that which we can know about being-in-the-world as we exist in it and think about it. It defines the epistemology we have to work with and in Merleau-Ponty arrives at a phenomenological ontology (to appreciate which requires reading MP's later thought concerning our chiasmic relationship with nature).

Is your stance inevitably antiphysicalist, dualist...? Or would you argue otherwise? or would you not care to address the question because it is not a) important or relevant, b) answerable, c) "knowable" etc?

I follow the insights of phenomenological philosophy (from Husserl and Heidegger through Sartre and ultimately Merleau-Ponty), all of which overcome dualism. To see why it is necessary to read the works of these philosophers. Physicalism/materialism/objectivism cannot account for experience, consciousness, and mind because they do not recognize the essential nature of the subjectivity that we bring to everything we experience.

 

[Pharoah]

How much of Being and Time did you read? One really needs to read all of that work and many subsequent shorter works of Heidegger to understand his philosophy of being and existence. When we discussed B&T a year or so ago I suggested that newcomers to phenomenology simultaneously read the following guide to the work by my mentor:

Eugene F. Kaelin, Being and Time: A Reading for Readers

Being and Time presents not just Heidegger's thought but an overview of the history of philosophical approaches to being/Being. For a short overview of this context, the wikipedia entry at this link is helpful:

Being - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Re your take on my 'approach' above --

"I have a sense from what you say that "Being" pre-exists consciousness and prereflexivity: that evolution "enables" Being to emerge into-the-world.",

it's partially correct. Being is the Whole within which be-ing such as that which we experience takes place. Being as the whole of 'what-is' evidently 'pre-exists' the evolution of consciousness in the world we know, but what emerges with consciousness is the capability of thinking about both our being and Being as a whole. Which leaves us with the primary question we have been discussing in this thread: how consciousness arises in 'what-is' {how awareness of our being arises in 'Being' and enables us to ask the question about Being beginning with our experience of being in the physically evolved world in which we find ourselves existing}. To understand the nature of the things that are as we encounter them phenomenally, we need also to understand the nature of the consciousness -- phenomenal, prereflective, and reflective -- by which we experience them and ourselves in experiencing existence in the world.

Philosophers since the pre-Socratics in the west and the ancient philosophers of the east have attempted to understand what Being is. Phenomenologists since the late 19th century have realized that our only avenue toward postulating the nature of Being as a whole is through analysis of our own experience of being-in-the-world. This means analyzing to the extent we can all of the aspects of our lived experience here and now. To know something, much less everything, about Being as a whole requires a God's eye view that we obviously do not possess. Phenomenological existentialism expresses that which we can know about being-in-the-world as we exist in it and think about it. It defines the epistemology we have to work with and in Merleau-Ponty arrives at a phenomenological ontology (to appreciate which requires reading MP's later thought concerning our chiasmic relationship with nature).

I follow the insights of phenomenological philosophy (from Husserl and Heidegger through Sartre and ultimately Merleau-Ponty), all of which overcome dualism. To see why it is necessary to read the works of these philosophers. Physicalism/materialism/objectivism cannot account for experience, consciousness, and mind because they do not recognize the essential nature of the subjectivity that we bring to everything we experience.

@Constance
1. Unsurprisingly, I reject your view that "our only avenue toward postulating the nature of Being as a whole is through analysis of our own experience of being-in-the-world."
The reason why I reject it is because our own experience, and our ability to think about our experience, are things existing 'on top' of, or are things presented to something already Being—as you say, "Being . . . evidently 'pre-exists' the evolution of consciousness in the world we know". Consequently, I do not have high hopes of exploring Being through the analysis of experience.
2. And Being "in the world we know" implies the existence of Being 'in a world that we do not'. I can accept therefore, Being, as something of this world but unknowable (perhaps revealed by emerging consciousness etc), or Being, as something not of this world and unknowable.
I was curious where you like to think of yourself on these points, but as I said, they do not require an answer . . . I was just wondering.
3. Incidentally, nobody has overcome dualism.