Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 7

[smcder]

More Searle on reductionism:

I have a specific intellectual objective in making the proposal that we should abandon skepticism and reductionism. I believe we cannot get a satisfactory constructive analysis of language, mind, society, rationality, political justice, etc., until we abandon our obsession with the idea that the presupposition of all investigation is first to provide a justification for the very possibility of knowledge, and that real advances in philosophical knowledge in general require the reduction of higher level phenomena to more epistemically fundamental phenomena. The way to deal with skepticism is not to try to refute it on its own terms, but to overcome it in such a way that we can go on to deal with the problems at hand. As I said earlier, I am not certain that this is where we are, but it certainly is where I am in my own intellectual development. On my interpretation of the contemporary philosophical scene, skepticism has finally ceased to be a primary concern of philosophers, and reductionism has in general failed. The situation we are in is somewhat analogous to the situation of the Greeks at the time of the transition from Socrates and Plato to Aristotle. Socrates and Plato took skepticism very seriously and struggled with piecemeal issues. Aristotle did not regard the skeptical paradoxes as a serious threat to his overall enterprise of attempting to do systematic, constructive, theoretical philosophy. I think we now have the tools to move into a twenty first century version of an Aristotelian phase. Wittgenstein, one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century thought that general theories in philosophy were impossible. Paradoxically, by helping to clear the field of skeptical worries Wittgenstein did as much as anybody to make general philosophical theories possible.

 

[smcder]

Again, Searle:

Once we overcome that presupposition, the presupposition that the mental and the physical naively construed are mutually exclusive, then it seems to me we have a solution to the traditional mind-body problem.

And here it is:

All of our mental states are caused by neurobiological processes in the brain, and they are themselves realized in the brain as its higher level or system features. So, for example, if you have a pain, your pain is caused by sequences of neuron firings, and the actual realization of the pain experience is in the brain.

I am assuming for the sake of this article that the right functional level for explaining mental phenomena is the level of neurons. It might turn out to be some other level -- micro-tubules, synapses, neuronal maps, whole clouds of neurons, etc. -- but for the purposes of this article it does not matter what the right neurobiological explanatory level is, only that there is a neurobiological explanatory level.

Why do we not rest content here? There is no scientific theory of consciousness per se (Searle's [paper "Consciousness" offers some specific places in the brain to look for one - but that doesn't deviate from his footnote above) so why don't we just continue down this road until one appears?

It seems to me that is where the interesting part starts - with so many divergent approaches: Tononi, Hoffman - all the various ones we have looked at ... neuro-phenomenology ... Nagel's Mind and Cosmos ... are these just the products of restless imaginations that can't wait for neurobiology to close the gap?

Keep in mind this is Searle's writing from the late 1990s - I'm not sure he is on the same track now, but he can be used as a yardstick for a pretty straightforward physicalist/materialist etc etc view.

 

[Soupie]

I should have added that, your having not as yet read any phenomenological philosophy, I would not have expected you to recognize the progress it has made [particularly in Merleau-Ponty's works] in demonstrating the intimate and inescapable relationship of mind and body. While you wait for a full resolution of the mind-body problem you might find some satisfaction in finally reading this philosophy.

There are at least two levels of investigation of the problem of consciousness that we have been engaging in in this discussion. I'm sure in POM there are phrases for these two levels, but here are the phrases I'll use. The personal level and the ontological level.

It seems to me that the contribution of the phenomenologists is to provide a deep and rich investigation of consciousness at the personal level. In particular, MP shows us that contrary to what thinkers may have thinked, human perception and conception is is deeply, wholly embodied. So while we may think our thinks are objective and rational, the thoughts we think are really grounded in our humanness.

“The Ethiops say that their gods are flat-nosed and black,
While the Thracians say that theirs have blue eyes and red hair.
Yet if cattle or horses or lions had hands and could draw,
And could sculpt like men, then the horses would draw their gods
Like horses, and cattle like cattle; and each they would shape
Bodies of gods in the likeness, each kind, of their own.”

― Xenophanes

I see these insights as dovetailing with Hoffman's thesis, i.e., we humans are fully and wholly grounded in the human, species-specific user interface. It follows from this--and MP's insights--that we should take our percepts and concepts seriously, but not literally.

It may appear that I have jumped on this bandwagon since discovering Hoffman's thesis, but this is a drum I have been banging for a long while now. I posted this article months ago:

Perception and Reality: Why a Wholly Empirical Paradigm is Needed to Understand Vision

"A seemingly straightforward interpretation of these observations is that the visual system operates analytically, extracting features from retinal images, efficiently filtering and processing image features in a series of computational steps, and ultimately combining them to provide a close approximation of physical reality that is then used to guide behavior. This concept of visual perception is logical, accords with electrophysiological and anatomical evidence, and has the further merit of being similar to the operation of computers, providing an analogy that connects biological vision with machine vision and artificial intelligence (Marr, 1982). Finally, this interpretation concurs with the impression that we see the world more or less as it really is and behave accordingly. Indeed, to do otherwise would seem to defy common sense and insure failure.

Attractive though it is, this interpretation fails to consider an axiomatic fact about biological vision: retinal images conflate the physical properties of objects, and therefore cannot be used to recover the objective properties of the world (Figure 1). Consequently, the basic visual qualities we perceive—e.g., lightness, color, form, distance, depth and motion—cannot specify reality. A further fact that adds to the challenge of understanding how vision works is the discrepancy between these perceived qualities and the physical parameters of objects and conditions in the world (Figure 2). As numerous psychophysical studies have shown, lightness and darkness percepts are at odds with luminance, color is at odds with distributions of spectral power, size, distance and depth are at odds with geometrical measurements, and speeds and directions of motion are at odds with measured vectors (Gelb, 1929; Stevens, 1975; Rock, 1984; Robinson, 1998; Purves and Lotto, 2003; Wojtach et al., 2008, 2009; Sung et al., 2009; Purves et al., 2014). These differences between perception and reality cannot be dismissed as minor errors or approximations that are “close enough” to succeed, since the discrepancies are ubiquitous and often profound (see Figure 2A, for example)."

We have multiple schools of investigation converging on the same conclusion: Our perception of reality is not veridical.

From the comments section of the MP & Buddhism link @smcder shared:

"The implications of Merleau-Ponty's emphasis on the body seem more clearly articulated in George Lakoff's work on the body as the basis of meaning. The effects of this seem to me far reaching, because the whole edifice of analytic philosophy and the philosophical assumptions of many scientists are built on the truth-conditional theory of meaning that Merleau-Ponty and Lakoff demolish. Without the truth-conditional theory of meaning propositions are not just given their meaning by their relationship to a representation of an assumed world, but instead ultimately to their grounding in bodily experience. Factual propositions are thus not so clearly differentiable from value propositions or from non-propositional symbols, which all gain their meaning in the same way. The fact-value distinction then becomes untenable, along with many of the assumptions of Western academia."

All of us agree to suppose that there is an objective reality and that there are indeed other minds. But what I take from Kant, Heidegger (as articulated by @Michael Allen), MP, Hoffman, and others is that our perceptual and conceptual access to objective reality is limited and what access we do have is heavily colored by our humanness.

I said rather seriously a while back that very little progress may be made on the MBP unless we happen to encounter a non-human intelligence with which we can conceptually communicate. We are perceptually and conceptually locked into our UI and perhaps exchanging concepts with a non-human intelligence is what will be needed (for both) to make progress on this aporia. Of course and interaction with an Other will be filtered through our UI, but one wonders if some conceptual progress can be made.

What do you mean by "objective reality"? Do you mean 'reality in itself'? As beings capable of taking perceptual perspectives on the being of the environments in which we find ourselves existing, how could we expect to have access to any 'thing-in-itself', let alone any entire 'reality-in-itself'? That we cannot know any 'reality-in itself' does not mean that we can obtain no knowledge whatever of the reality in which we exist.

Agreed. But we must take all knowledge with a block of salt, at least as pertains to the nature of objective reality.

Also, what is Hoffman's evidence that a) there exists a 'reality-in-itself' beyond the reality within which we exist (and to which we have partial, perspectival, access), and b) that our limited access to this experienced reality is somehow legislated by consciousnesses that are located outside the margins/horizons within which we exist?

(a) I can only assume he is supposing like us, for similar reasons, that objective reality and other minds do indeed exist.

(b) I'm not sure how he arrived at his thesis that such a thing as conscious agents exist. It's pretty unique so far as I have encountered, although @ufology alluded to a philosopher who may have coined the concept.

It may be a supposition Hoffman is making to avoid/account for the Combination/Differentiation Problem.

You also refer at times to "phenomenal objects." What does that term signify to you?

I take it to mean the contents of perceptual consciousness.

So the mind-body problem is only a "problem" for philosophers who choose to look at the co-existence of the mind and body as "problematic" in their context, and therefore since the nature of the problem in philosophical terms it's not relevant to science, I would question the relevance of your comment. Searle has no problem saying that we can take an objective and scientific approach to studying subjective experience. I agree.

We'll have to agree to disagree as it seems there are many scientists from many schools who have begun to investigate consciousness on an ontological level.

We know our senses can be fooled and that what we perceive is a mental construct rather than an experience of the actual object being perceived, but this translates to: "Objective external reality isn't what we perceive it to be." not to "There is no objective external reality."

Just to be clear, no one, including Hoffman, is claiming that there is no objective external reality. The claim is that (1) our experience of objective reality is not veridical, and (2) objective reality is not material, ie, fundamentally constituted of non-feeling matter.

Hoffman makes it quite clear at the start of the video that we don't perceive photons. We perceive the resulting mental experience that the photons initiate via the biology of our eyes and visual processing centers in the brain. He even has pictures that explain this in no uncertain terms. This is just fine. It's where he wanders off in his suggestion that all reality including spacetime and atoms and so on are also conscious constructs that he falls off the ledge.

Agreed re photons and perception.

However, we'll have to agree to disagree regarding all the rest of perceived and conceived reality. As of right now, our investigations appear largely to be investigations of our species-specific UI. We are only just beginning to conceptually peak behind the icons.

Not quite. Basically, I'm presupposing that all reality is physical in the sense that that everything that exists has properties and behaviors that lead to arbitrary relationships between them. This is a physicalist ( as opposed to materialist ) perspective because the "physical" isn't simply what we perceive to be "material".

So what you are saying is that matter is derivative of the physical? Moreover, the apparent materialism of the physical is a product of our perception?

It seems to me, Ufology, is that all you need do is recognize that what you conceive of as the physical is actually consciousness and you'll grok Hoffman's thesis.

I'm not sure what would qualify in your comment as "beginning to support this claim.", but I would say that the number of posts I've contributed more than constitute a "beginning" and most are either based on or include accepted scientific information, particularly those that directly correlate brain function to conscious experience, and those that explore the idea that consciousness is an emergent property.

There's no doubt that the contents of consciousness and the body are correlated. Currently, neuroscience supposes that consciousness emerges at the neural level. I don't see any conceptual--let alone empirical--models of how this might be so (save for IIT, which is still not explanatory). As has been pointed out many times, the mind-body problem is not simply an epistemic problem. The problem is more nuanced than that.

You like to compare consciousness and magnetism. You want to know how the brain causes consciousness just as you'd like to know how a magnet causes a magnetic field.

Let's do a thought experiment and suppose that consciousness is a field. Let's call it a mind-mag field. And let's suppose that we discover the physiological mechanism for how the brain produces this field. When three specific types of brain cells distributed in a central circuit of the brain oscillate at 8-13 Hz for 2 minutes, a mind-mag field is produced.

Question: Why is there something it is like to be a mind-mag field?

 

[smcder]

Response to Searle

Chalmers response to Searle (1997) including links to Searle's response to Chalmers' response to Searle's response to Chalmers and Chalmers' response to Searle's response to Chalmers' response to Searle's response to Chalmers.

We've been down that or similar roads - so I'm not sure that's where time needs to be spent ... more interesting is where is Searle now and what does he say about what's happened in consciousness research in the past decade and a half? I did find a review of Tononandonandononi's work by Searle (2014) but you had to pay to get the article ... maybe I can find it elsewhere.

 

[smcder]

Another interesting thing is that many of the people we are talking about: Chalmers, Searle, Nagel - seem to have an initial idea, maybe a breakthrough or maybe just a good solid argument for a position - and then they mature into that, collect their evidence and defenses and then really don't get too far away from that - Chalmers seems to be there now (age 50) - Nagel is a bit of a departure with Mind and Cosmos although I don't think the ideas are that new for him ... it's more an interesting case study in the sociology of academics and a but of a frightening one - some pretty nasty things get said about Nagel who is actually in very good company - which just means that scientists, philosophers, etc are in the end not necessarily any more than just pretty average human beings with certain intellectual abilities.

Heidegger and Nietzsche both had turns or changes, big ones in their careers - but there was also a lot going on at that time in the world ... so what's the relevance here? I'm not sure ... but obviously there is something like a kind of intellectual inertia - it takes a lot of time to accumulate knowledge and a lot of energy - I came across a Searle interview where he is quite candid in comparing himself with Bernard Williams (interestingly Williams' striking intelligence has been seen as a bit of disadvantage to him ... by more than just Searle ... he was so quick to see the flaws in any argument - including his own ... and it does seem the critical faculty outruns the imaginative or creative - it's just easier to find flaws - so maybe Williams failed on imagination) - but there's also something of a mental picture we may carry about ourselves - why should it be so hard to change our minds? Again, lots of interlocking forces contrive for those in the public eye ... but if you're just in it for your own game - what keeps us so tied to our particular views? It seems like there is a lot of irrational fear there - or identification with our thoughts and ideas ... and an unwillingness to dig into our own assumptions - they are hard to see of course, but why? What obscures them? To some degree we do ... willfully. I don't think it's running out of horsepower as we get older - our brains and minds do change as we age - but we improve on many things - I think there is a sociology and psychology behind mental flexibility as well as physiology - Gauss learned, taught himself, Russian very late in life (80s?) ... we do also grow more sophisticated or complicated in some ways as we age and we could lose interest in many things - power struggles, the need to be right - but also an interest in certain problems - or certain kinds of problems - testosterone probably, surely plays a role in any academic field as it does in any other aspect of life (plays a role for men and women) and one area that gets more interesting to me, because it's more accessible, is that feminine view - specifically where it avoids the problems of the male view. This won't solve everything - but we must surely move toward a recognition that the male perspective and language is dominant (see Searle's use of the word "weapon" - the language of science and technology is overwhelmingly rung with masculine and violent language) - and toward some kind of exploration of balance within ourselves as well as a larger society - that's if we are able to continue on some kind of path at all.

So my sense of it is that we are leaving behind Chalmers, Nagel and Searle ... a number of interesting theories like Tononi and Hoffman ... etc pop up and seem inadequate - but the ability to be very idiosyncratic is a new feature in research - you can be an independent researcher in these areas - and we've looked at the work of a lot of these folks - so that it may not be that a new paradigm is just ahead - rather many new paradigms and voices, that could never be developed before - may appear and demand our attention ... and this may needs change our simple ideas about things.

I always think back to the article about the brain as a "kluge" and that there may be sciences and philosophies of consciousness plural in the future (I'll try to find that quote) - and this goes to questions about Searle's "unity" of consciousness ... as @Constance has noted - there are many interesting things to explore in consciousness.

 

[Randall]

... Also, there seems to be some confusing language around "emergence" and "fundamental" ...

It's not surprising that confusing language should emerge from philosophical discussion ;-)

I'll attempt to clarify. Starting with your chosen example:

"We might roughly characterize the shared meaning thus: emergent entities (properties or substances) ‘arise’ out of more fundamental entities and yet are ‘novel’ or ‘irreducible’ with respect to them. (For example, it is sometimes said that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain.). Emergent Properties (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)​

And we have Chalmers saying: "Consciousness is fundamental." and he compares consciousness to electromagnetism ( as in the Chalmers vidieo here: David Chalmers: How do you explain consciousness? | TED Talk | TED.com )

Now because Chalmers avoids thinking of properties as emergent, instead focusing on behavior, and doesn't explain ( at least anyplace I've seen ) that the word "fundamental" is a situation that arises out of irreducibility and that irreducibility is a key concept of emergentism ( as described above ), there is a sort of explanatory gap where the words "fundamental" and "irreducible" might be seen as synonymous and used in different contexts where their meaning should be differentiated, opening the way for the confusion that may be applicable here.

So, to fill in that gap, let's first accept that properties are also among the list of emergent phenomena and that electromagnetism is for all intent and purpose, an emergent phenomena, and there are many articles out there describing Emergent Electromagnetic Phenomena. For the sake of illustration; here's one example: http://digital.csic.es/bitstream/10261/117431/1/Electromagnetism.pdf

Putting this all together: Because consciousness is irreducible to anything other that itself, Chalmers sees it as something fundamental, which gets the basic point across, but opens the door for confusion between the words "irreducible" and "fundamental" in the context of the definition of "emergent", where consciousness can be seen as an irreducible property rather than irreducible behavior, and because Chalmers himself likens consciousness to emergent phenomena like electromagnetism, his viewpoint when looked at in the context of emergentism ( as defined above ), actually adds-up to a case for consciousness being an emergent property.

This idea IMO is very promising. It leads to a model that essentially says that we cannot reduce consciousness to the brain's matter, electricity, and EM fields, just like we can't reduce magnetism to the core, wire, or the current that makes up a magnet, yet overwhelming amounts of correlative evidence indicate that just like magnetism is dependent upon the existence of a magnet, consciousness is dependent on the existence of a brain, and therefore both appear to be emergent properties of specific types of systems. This points the way to discover relationships between the brain and consciousness that might facilitate practical applications.

On a related note with respect to Searle: It seems to me that Searle doesn't reject the idea that there is something we call consciousness that we identify with as our own personal experience of the world. It's that he sees consciousness as an integral part of the human brain in the same way that we might think magnetism is an integral part of a magnet. Each is integral to what we conceptualize the object to be. Personally, although that view is reasonable, I'm not entirely comfortable with it because it then requires that we redefine our general notions of what a brain is. For example the CPU in our PC is sometimes referred to as a brain, but it's not IMO conscious.

 

[Randall]

- why should it be so hard to change our minds? Again, lots of interlocking forces contrive for those in the public eye ... but if you're just in it for your own game - what keeps us so tied to our particular views? It seems like there is a lot of irrational fear there - or identification with our thoughts and ideas ... and an unwillingness to dig into our own assumptions - they are hard to see of course, but why? What obscures them? To some degree we do ... willfully ...

Great point. I often wonder the same thing. I would propose that people become invested in their own positions to the extent that change means a loss of one or more elements including credibility, prestige, the comfort of one's own worldview, and possibly even material wealth, particularly if one has been lecturing and writing books for a living that would become irrelevant. Personally, as I've gotten older, I've found that my views tend to change less, not because of any of the aforementioned reasons, but because over time, I've distilled the applicable content from so many sources that new ideas that are substantial enough to compete are rare.

In this entire discussion, there has only been one significant change in my viewpoint, and that has been that I used to see no reason that artificial intelligence could not arise from sufficiently complex and powerful processing systems with the right programming, and that because such an intelligence would be indistinguishable from our own, notions of consciousness were largely irrelevant and in the domain of mystics and philosophers. I have completely changed my view on that because I realized at some point early on in the discussion that intelligence and consciousness may not simply go hand in hand.

Intelligence might be accomplished with the kinds of processors and programming we're used to in our computers, but consciousness might require different materials than our current line of microprocessors, and those materials might also need to be configured in very specific ways. That's why I began alluding to magnetism ( or sometimes light ) as an illustrative comparison, and when I heard Chalmers doing the same thing, I revaluated his views and came to appreciate them a lot more than I originally had, and that's why I've thanked you a number of times for introducing us to his ideas.

 

[Soupie]

Great doubt—great awakening
Little doubt—little awakening
No doubt—no awakening

 

[Randall]

Great doubt—great awakening
Little doubt—little awakening
No doubt—no awakening

I'm doubtful of those claims ... LOL . Uh oh ... I'm fast approaching post 6666 .

 

[Constance]

There are at least two levels of investigation of the problem of consciousness that we have been engaging in in this discussion. I'm sure in POM there are phrases for these two levels, but here are the phrases I'll use. The personal level and the ontological level.

It seems to me that the contribution of the phenomenologists is to provide a deep and rich investigation of consciousness at the personal level. In particular, MP shows us that contrary to what thinkers may have thinked, human perception and conception is is deeply, wholly embodied. So while we may think our thinks are objective and rational, the thoughts we think are really grounded in our humanness.

Can you clarify the steps in and the conclusion of your observations/reasoning in this post? Do you believe that ontological thinking and the very concept of 'ontology' as developed in the history of human thought has some identifiable source beyond us [ETA: and the horizons of scrutability beyond which we cannot see and still must continue to think]? If so, on what basis? Similarly, what is the source of philosophical concepts such as subjectivity, objectivity, and rationality if not our attempts to comprehend the nature of being {and for some thinkers the nature of Being} from the basis of what we experience?

 

[Constance]

. . . Putting this all together: Because consciousness is irreducible to anything other that itself, Chalmers sees it as something fundamental, which gets the basic point across, but opens the door for confusion between the words "irreducible" and "fundamental" in the context of the definition of "emergent", where consciousness can be seen as an irreducible property rather than irreducible behavior, and because Chalmers himself likens consciousness to emergent phenomena like electromagnetism, his viewpoint when looked at in the context of emergentism ( as defined above ), actually adds-up to a case for consciousness being an emergent property.

This idea IMO is very promising. It leads to a model that essentially says that we cannot reduce consciousness to the brain's matter, electricity, and EM fields, just like we can't reduce magnetism to the core, wire, or the current that makes up a magnet, yet overwhelming amounts of correlative evidence indicate that just like magnetism is dependent upon the existence of a magnet, consciousness is dependent on the existence of a brain, and therefore both appear to be emergent properties of specific types of systems. This points the way to discover relationships between the brain and consciousness that might facilitate practical applications.

The most that can be said about the brain, neurons, neural nets is that they facilitate the capabilities of conscious beings to act and think in the world. The brain is a necessary but not sufficient cause of consciousness itself. There is a further necessary (yet in itself insufficient) cause for the activities and insights of evolving consciousness -- the actual, sensible, palpable, environing natural world in which consciousness arises, a world including things and other consciousnesses as experienced and reflected upon by human consciousnesses alone and together.

 

[Constance]

Question: Why is there something it is like to be a mind-mag field?

The hard problem, still, inescapably.

 

[Constance]

Again, Searle:

"Once we overcome that presupposition, the presupposition that the mental and the physical naively construed are mutually exclusive, then it seems to me we have a solution to the traditional mind-body problem."

Is that ^ you or Searle? I've put it in quotation marks because it has to be one or the other. The ambiguity continues in the sequence of your post below. Is it you writing in roman type and Searle in italics? If so or if not, which statements are whose? Who's speaking?

And here it is:

All of our mental states are caused by neurobiological processes in the brain, and they are themselves realized in the brain as its higher level or system features. So, for example, if you have a pain, your pain is caused by sequences of neuron firings, and the actual realization of the pain experience is in the brain.

I am assuming for the sake of this article that the right functional level for explaining mental phenomena is the level of neurons. It might turn out to be some other level -- micro-tubules, synapses, neuronal maps, whole clouds of neurons, etc. -- but for the purposes of this article it does not matter what the right neurobiological explanatory level is, only that there is a neurobiological explanatory level.

Is that claim -- that "there is a neurobiological explanatory level" -- meant to exhaust the inquiry into what consciousness is? Does it satisfy you, Steve, or even Searle?

Why do we not rest content here? There is no scientific theory of consciousness per se (Searle's [paper "Consciousness" offers some specific places in the brain to look for one - but that doesn't deviate from his footnote above) so why don't we just continue down this road until one appears?

Would you specify what 'road' you mean, and also specify what we are waiting for that might eventually 'appear'? Thanks.

 

[Constance]

Another interesting thing is that many of the people we are talking about: Chalmers, Searle, Nagel - seem to have an initial idea, maybe a breakthrough or maybe just a good solid argument for a position - and then they mature into that, collect their evidence and defenses and then really don't get too far away from that - Chalmers seems to be there now (age 50) - Nagel is a bit of a departure with Mind and Cosmos although I don't think the ideas are that new for him ... it's more an interesting case study in the sociology of academics and a but of a frightening one - some pretty nasty things get said about Nagel who is actually in very good company - which just means that scientists, philosophers, etc are in the end not necessarily any more than just pretty average human beings with certain intellectual abilities.

I have to say that for me philosophy of mind, both analytical and phenomenological, think and express much more than 'the sociology of academics'. However, if by that phrase you mean the influence of unchallenged contemporary scientistic presuppositions on too many contemporary philosophers of consciousness and mind, I see your point and agree.

I also think that we've seen and recognized a great deal of development and 'changing of mind' among some philosophers, neurological and cognitive scientists, and biological and evolutionary scientists participating in the now-inescapably-interdisciplinary field of Consciousness Studies, and that we cannot afford to dismiss the paths they've forged and go off on the basis of our own 'lights' at this point.

 

[Constance]

I think it's worth noting that we live in an iconoclastic age, particularly in popular internet culture rather than in academic culture. The demonstration of this iconoclastic impulse coincides with the growth of internet 'blogging' concerning philosophical and scientific ideas and hypotheses, too often leading to reductiveness, posturing, and superficial debate rather than engagement with fully developed and articulated positions on and informed discussions of critical issues concerning the nature of 'reality' [ETA: and the significance, the meaning and obligations, inherent in our position and role within it as consciousness of it].

One of the most fundamental examples of the oversimplification and distortion of complex subject matter in internet blogs and discussions is the widespread and uncritical claim that 'reality is constructed by consciousness/mind'. [Corollary: there is no connection we are able to comprehend and establish between mind and world, between what we experience and what we see and otherwise sense in our existence, except by erasing our experience from our equations.] People who utter these philosophically naieve sound bites are clearly (and wilfully) ignorant of the complex development in modern philosophy initiated by Brentano and Husserl and continuing into our time.

 

[Constance]

This is well worth reading, from the SEP entry on Kukai. See especially the Concluding Remarks for their relevance to the state of contemporary Western investigations of 'consciousness'.

"3.12 Ten States in the Development of the Mind

By 830 Kûkai has shifted his interest from an earlier focus upon the controversy between Madhaymaka and Yogâcâra concerning the emptiness or existence of the dharmas and his critique of their view on language as not conveying truth (the Dharma), to evaluating Buddhist doctrines as a whole, including the other major Buddhist schools. This shift is most likely connected to the dispute on-going during that period between the founder of the Tendai school, Saichô, and the older Nara Buddhist schools. In providing a comprehensive scheme that would explain the place of each religious teaching as well as the place of esoteric Buddhism in relation to the other Buddhist doctrines, Kûkai aimed to demonstrate the significance of his version of Buddhism.

In this scheme, Kûkai is adamant in using the above-discussed concepts to distinguish esoteric from exoteric Buddhism. And yet, given a bird's eye view, the truth, the Dharma, in Kûkai's scheme is encompassing enough to include exoteric Buddhism and all other teachings as its unfoldings or manifestations, in relative degrees in accordance with the appropriate circumstance or context and the level of attainment. In order to explain the different levels or states (jû, literally “dwellings” or “lodgings”) of mind (jûjûshin) that correspond to the various doctrines of other schools and religious sects, Kûkai developed an hierarchical scheme. Shingon Buddhism is placed at the top of the hierarchy as providing the most comprehensive view to the Dharma. Kûkai provides this systematization in what many consider to be his magnum opus, Himitsu mandara jûjûshinron (Treatise on the Secret Mandala of the Ten States of Mind) in ten volumes, composed around 830, five years before his death. It was written in response to an order of Emperor Junna that each Buddhist sect present an introductory treatise of its teachings. When the text proved to be too difficult for the emperor, Kûkai produced an abridged and more accessible treatise on the same theme,Hizô hôyaku (Precious Key to the Secret Treasury) in three volumes. At the core of both works is this classification of the various doctrines whereby each is critically evaluated under the light of the culminating and most comprehensive view of Shingon. A similar sort of system of classifying doctrines, called p’an-chiao (panjiao) or chiao-pan (jiaoban) (Jpn:kyôsô hanjaku or kyô-han) already existed in China, e.g. within the T’ien-t’ai and the Hua-yen traditions. Such a system of classification proved helpful in their attempts to distinguish themselves from, and at the same time, incorporate previous doctrines as expedient means that are relatively true. The Lotus Sûtra had also already expressed the similar idea that various doctrines were meant as expedient means that lead eventually to a fuller truth (expressed within its own text). It is Kûkai's own invention however to associate the different doctrines evaluated and classified with specific states of mind or stages of spiritual attainment. That is, each state in the development of the mind is correlated with a specific set of doctrines appropriate to it, as its perspective and lived experience of reality, true to a certain extent within its limited purview but not yet the whole truth until the final state is reached. In other words, to move up this hierarchy of levels of mind, is to experience the unfolding of the Dharma as one becomes further awakened until one fully realizes one's enlightenment in non-duality with the Dharma itself, i.e. the attainment of Buddha-hood. From a mandalic perspective, this unfolding of the Dharma is also indicative of one's evolution from the periphery towards the center of the mandalic universe. However as each level of mind is a “dwelling” or “lodging” place for the mind, the hierarchy from the lowest to the highest “stages” is sequential only in the exoteric dimension. That is to say that the sequential ordering is not necessary in itself when viewed from the esoteric, i.e., holistic, standpoint. In other words, it is possible to move directly from any state or “dwelling” to the most comprehensive realm.

The teachings evaluated here not only include Buddhist schools but also variations of Brahmanism, Hinduism, and Indian religious practices as well as Chinese non-Buddhist doctrines. And the Buddhist teachings include the major Indian and Chinese doctrines that have made their way to Japan: Ritsu (Chn. Lu-tsung, Vinaya studies), Kusha (based on Abhidharma), Jôjitsu (Skrt. Satyasiddhi, based on Sautrântika), Hossô (Skrt. Yogâcâra, Chn. Fa-hsiang), Sanron (Chn. San-lun based on Indian Madhyamaka), Tendai (Ch. T’ien-t’ai), Kegon (Chn. Hua-yen), and Shingon. Kûkai's classification system may be briefly summarized in the following schema:

1st to 3rd states: Pre-Buddhist stages: worldly “vehicles” of samsaric entrapment:

1st state: “The mind of the goat foolishly transmigrating in the six destinies (or realms)” (ishô teiyô-shin): The state of desire driven by animal instincts without moral restraint; the stage to which belong common people, hell-beings, hungry-ghosts, beasts, asuras (“titans”), and various deities or celestial beings trapped in their samsaric destinies.

2nd state: “The mind of the child tempered but ignorantly obsessed with moral precepts” (gudô jisai-shin): The state of ethical actions and virtue that promote social order but without any “religious” goal; the stage to which belong Confucianism and the Buddhist precepts (ritsu) for the laity.

3rd state: “The mind of the child composed and fearing nothing” (yodô mui-shin): The state of deity worship and extrinsic magico-religious practice for the sake of overcoming anxiety with the thought of attaining supernatural powers or immortality, or reaching an eternal and blissful heaven; the stage to which belong Taoism and various forms of Hinduism or Brahmanism.

4th to 10th states: Buddhist stages (the fourth to ninth being exoteric Buddhism and the tenth being esoteric Buddhism):

4th to 5th states: Hinâyâna stages: “vehicles” of those who aspire towards self-enlightenment without caring for the enlightenment of others.

4th state: “The mind of one affirming only the elements and negating the self” (yuiun muga-shin): The state of the śrâvaka who analyzes phenomena into the psycho-physical “aggregates” (skandhas) and/or the elements (dharmas), to thus negate any belief in a permanent ego (atman); the stage to which belong the teachings of the historical Buddha and his direct disciples and of the Abhidharma scholastics. While the substantiality of reality is thus deconstructed into its elemental dharmas, the dharmas themselves however become fetters, thus taking from three lives to sixty aeons to achieve liberation.

5th state: “The mind freed from karmic seeds” (batsu gôinju-shin): The state of the pratyeka-buddha, who, masterless on his own, attains insight into the chain of dependent origination to recognize the impermanence, self-less-ness, and non-substantiality of all, thus preventing new karma to arise. But in enjoying a certain level of “enlightenment,” he falls back into the “egoism” of self-complacency, compassionless apathy towards fellow beings, and the narrow vision of other-worldliness. Hence he has not yet reached complete enlightenment. The Sautrântika school belongs to this stage.

6th to 9th states: Mahâyâna stages: “vehicles” of the bodhisattvas, those who seek enlightenment both for self and for others, by overcoming self-other duality and recognizing the interdependency between self-enlightenment and other-enlightenment and between wisdom and compassion.

6th state: “The mind of the Mahâyâna adherent who is concerned with others” (taen daijô-shin): The state of Yogâcâra with its Vijñapti-mâtratâ (Jpn: yuishiki) standpoint that everything is “mind-only,” reached by its analysis of thing-events as phenomena of consciousness originating from a deep un-conscious “storehouse” or “receptacle consciousness” (âlaya-vijñâna). Its point is to detach oneself from the discriminating objectification of phenomena in order to realize the tranquility of “mind-only” from a non-discriminating perspective, which would allow the practice of “great compassion.” And yet this still takes several aeons of practice to achieve and is not the final state.

7th state: “The mind of one who realizes non-origination” (kakushin fushô-shin): The state of Madhyamaka with its śûnyavâda (Jpn: kûgan) standpoint that everything is empty. Here reifying and substantializing conceptions — including both objects and mind — that act as fetters are eliminated through Nâgârjuna's eight-fold negations which via their dependent origination show their emptiness.

8th state: “The mind of one who realizes harmony with the one path of truth” (nyojitsu ichidô-shin or ichidô muishin): The state of T’ien-t’ai with its standpoint of “oneness of all,” wherein one realizes that one moment contains eternity, a single thought contains all possible worlds, and a sesame seed contains a mountain, i.e. the non-duality between one and many; and between emptiness, dependent origination, and their “middle.”

9th state: “The mind of one who realizes the absence of substance within ultimate truth” (goku mujishô-shin): The state of Hua-yen with its standpoint of the mutual non-obstruction and interpenetration between the patternment (Chn: li; Jpn: ri) of all and the concrete thing-events (Chn: shih; Jpn: ji) on the basis of their emptiness, whereby one and many are non-dualistic. This non-duality is extended to the level of the entire dharmadhâtu.

10th state: Both Tendai and Kegon for Kûkai however lack the crucial element of direct experiential understanding to truly realize what they preach. One must thus proceed further by means of bodily ritual practice provided by the next and final state: Mantrayâna: “The mind of secret sublimity” (himitsu shôgon-shin). This is the state of Shingon, whose esoteric teachings and bodily experiential practice constitute the summit of the development of the mind. At this summit hosshin seppô is revealed and one attains sokushinjôbutsu through the micro-macro-cosmic correlativity of the three mysteries and through kaji.

Rather than rejecting or negating the previous states, this final state fulfills and encompasses their standpoints from what is claimed to be the most comprehensive standpoint, in view of — or rather in non-duality with — the Dharma. In light of the Dharma, the truths taught in those previous states are but relative or provisional truths, expedient means that are helpful only insofar as they lead one towards this final truth but which can also serve as fetters if one becomes attached to them. Each state is referred to as a “palace” (kyû or gû), which are all combined in the one grand cosmic palace (hokkaigû or hokkai shinden). This grand palace constitutes the entire cosmos as a mandala, with the tenth and highest state, the innermost secret palace of Dainichi, at the center and summit from which the Dharma emanates into its various manifestations in the lower states, the outer palaces. The closer one is to the center, the stronger one feels the pull of kaji drawing one up towards the central summit. But as stated above, the sequential ordering of the hierarchy is not necessary when the whole is viewed from this most comprehensive standpoint. For the grand cosmic palace penetrates and comprehends all of the specific palaces or dwellings of the mind. Hence one can make a sudden leap from any point in this cosmic mandala towards the center by successfully engaging in the esoteric practice of Shingon Buddhism. It is this mandalic structure that the term mandala in the title of the longer version of this work (Treatise on the Secret Mandala of the Ten States of Mind) signifies. It refers to the blueprint of the cosmic embodiment of the Dharma (hosshin), which in turn structures one's (ritual) practice in its arrangement and how one accordingly experiences the Dharma.

4. Concluding Remarks
Unfortunately Kûkai has been for the most part ignored by twentieth century and contemporary philosophers, not only of the West but in Japan as well. This includes Nishida Kitarô, Watsuji Tetsurô and related major Kyoto school philosophers, in spite of their interest in and influence by Zen and Kegon Buddhism. It has been suggested that this neglect may have something to do with an intellectual's prejudice against the “esoteric,” e.g. the significance of ritual with its symbols and images, which are not so easily amenable to rational comprehension and instead conjure up preconceptions of the “occult” and the “magical.” However the philosophical aspects of Shingon Buddhism are often traceable to the same Mahâyâna seeds that sprouted Zen. Once such prejudices are overcome, it would not be so difficult for the contemporary philosopher to find in Kûkai a well-spring of ideas and thoughts which may be of interest today. For example, Kûkai's ideas engender an holistic view towards nature and the cosmos as encompassing ourselves and in our interrelationships with others. They may be of relevance to the dilemmas we face today in this epoch of globalization, religious wars, technological “enframing” (to use Heidegger's terminology), and environmental hazards. And in terms of scholarship, Kûkai offers a wealth of ideas for comparative analyses: e.g. with Derrida on the world as text, with Process thought on “cosmo-holism,” with Merleau-Ponty or Deleuze on the significance of the body and bodily spatiality and interrelationality vis-à-vis the environment, with Nishida or Hegel on dialectics and interrelationality, or with major “mystic” thinkers of other religious traditions such as Ibn Arabi of Islam or Meister Eckhart of Christianity on a dynamic non-duality as opposed to both static monism and subject-object dualism. Kûkai's thinking provides a wealth of insights, of much value, to offer to philosophers of today.

Kûkai (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

 

[Constance]

A further extract from SEP's article on Kukai:

"3.9 Sokushinjôbutsu: Enlightenment via Embodiment

One of the most distinguishing characteristic of Kûkai's Buddhist thought is his concept of sokushinjôbutsu, the attainment of enlightenment in this very embodied existence. This idea of sokushinjôbutsu represents the apex of Kûkai's synthesis of Buddhist theoria and praxis. The doctrine itself is not explicit in the two major esoteric sûtras, the Dainichikyô and the Kongôchôgyô. The idea first appears rather in I-hsing's commentary on the Dainichikyô (Ta-jih Ching Su; Commentary on the Mahâvairocana Sûtra). Kûkai was the first however to provide the idea with a systematic explication in his Sokushinjôbutsugi, which has been regarded by commentators as the most important of his philosophical expositions. Kûkai's appropriation and systematic development of the theory takes the form of a unique philosophy of praxis that is simultaneously a philosophy of the body.

The phrase sokushinjôbutsu means literally, “attaining enlightenment in this very body” or “becoming buddha in this very body.” “Body” (shin) — as Kûkai explains inSokushinjôbutsugi, ch. 6 — here is not merely one's corporeal body but one's lived embodied existence of body-and-mind as one whole. . . . .

 

[Constance]

And from
3.7.5 The mantric syllable of A

". . .Kûkai in several works (especially in Shôjijissôgi andUnjigi) explicates the syllabic letter Aas signifying the above-mentioned “primal non-originating” character of all thing-events, as the “mother” of all syllables, letters, and languages, and the king of all mantras. The sound A is also the primal sound made when the mouth first opens to exhale. And in its written form,A constitutes the first stroke of every other syllable. A is the first syllable of the Sanskrit alphabet as well as of the Sanskrit words for “origin” (âdi) and “unborn” (anutpâda), combined in the Sanskrit word “primal non-origination” (âdyanutpâda). It is also the first letter of the root mantra of Dainichi as depicted in the Taizô Mandara (which we shall discuss below): A Vi Ra Hûm Kham Hûm (Jpn: A Bira Un Ken). Furthermore in Sanskrit, A is used as a negative prefix. All of these manifold meanings are combined in Shingon's mantric use of A to represent the primal vocalization of Dainichi. Its omnipresence in form and sound symbolizes the Buddha-nature of the hosshin pervading everywhere, while condensing the significance of that all-prevalence within its singular form and sound. But its all-pervasiveness also means the origin of all things in their interdependence, that is, their interdependent origination, hence emptiness. This emptiness of substance is denoted by its use as a negative prefix, i.e., the absence of self-presence in infinite referentiality. As stated above, A signifies the “primal non-originating” character of all being. For in signifying the origin of all in their on-going dependent origination A is thus the “origin of no origin.” What this points to is the endlessness of the chain of conditions behind each thing-event, never reaching an ultimate origin or first cause. But paradoxically this primal absence of any distinguishing origin, this ubiquitous in-difference of all differentiation, is itself the ultimate origin of all thing-events in their mutual differentiations and co-relativity. Or put differently, Dainichi's mind (along with his body), making no discrimination between this and that, is like a great space (“emptiness”; kû) from out of which he transforms himself through self-differentiation into the myriad thing-events and beings. This causeless cause is symbolized in the last letter in Sanskrit, the letter H, the first letter of the mantra Hûm (Jpn: Un). Its meaning thus coincides with the “primal non-origination” denoted by the first letter of the alphabet, A. The syllable A, together with H then embodies the meanings of emptiness, dependent origination, and primal non-origination, all expressing the beginningless and endless dynamic non-substantiality of the entire cosmos and all being, the empty space that is the body of the hosshin, the Dharma of all dharmas.

It should be remembered however that while Kûkai thus links the hosshin's preaching to the mantric sound and letter of A, this same preaching, symbolized in A, in fact encompasses all movements of the cosmos, involving colors, shapes, silence, bodily movements, etc., not just the explicitly vocal. Dainichi preaches the Dharma via all phenomenal means through the three media, the “three mysteries,” of body, speech, and mind, omnipresencing himself through all objects of the six senses (the five physical senses plus thought). The entire cosmos is hence the language of the Buddha, inseparable from the Buddha's body that is in fact the embodiment of the Dharma (i.e., hosshin, dharmakâya). . . . ."

 

[Constance]

While searching today for a paper on consciousness I linked here at some point in the past I came across this post and link provided by Steve /@smcder. I followed the link (to a discussion at the Conscious Agents blog), read it, and hope that we might discuss it here. Here's the link to Steve's post, in Part 4 of the thread:

Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 4

 

[Constance]

Also in Part 4 I came across the following reference that likely relates to the material I posted last night concerning Kukai:

Jake H. Davis and Evan Thompson, “From the Five Aggregates to Phenomenal Consciousness: Toward a Cross-Cultural Cognitive Science,” in Steven Emmanuel, ed., A Companion to Buddhist Philosophy, pp. 585-597. John Wiley & Sons, 2014.