Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 7

[Soupie]

Regarding the similarity between “wetness” and “consciousness” let’s start over.

You initially said the following:

I suspect that this tinker-toy analogy is used to illustrate a point other than what it seems to be on the surface, that being the conceptual difference between things and properties of things. Things aren't their properties and properties aren't things. Water is wet but wetness isn't water. Brains are conscious but consciousness isn't the brain.

I thought this was helpful. You say: “Things aren't their properties and properties aren't things.”

Water is a thing, wet/wetness is a property of water (groups of molecules)

Brain is a thing, consciousness is a property of brain (groups of cells)

So far, so good.

But then I point out that we can objectively observe wetness (which I defined at the liquidity of water [groups of molecules]). And that we can’t objectively observe consciousness.

You respond:

That's obvious. Physical processes are often objectively observable whereas consciousness is subjectively experiential.

And I agree with this statement. But it follows then that the comparison between the property of “wet” and the property of “consciousness” is diminished. Because although both wet/wetness and consciousness may be properties of things, one of them can be objectively observed and one of them cannot. This is a major, categorical difference between the two properties.

The analogy doesn't fail with respect to what it was meant to convey, which was the difference between things and properties of things. It wasn't meant to explain consciousness.

I agree with this. And if you would have stopped here, we’d be good.

You were making the point that consciousness could be a property of brains just as wet/wetness is a property of water.

While that’s potentially helpful, I was pointing out that if they are both properties of things, one of these is still not like the other.

But then you said:

Actually, I think I used the idea of wetness ( not liquidness ). Two subjects can objectively observe water, but they can only each subjectively experience wetness.

But this damages your analogy and the comparison you were making because subjective experience is a property of brains, e.g., consciousness is a property of brains, wetness a property of water.

I think you got lost in your own analogy. And then it got more fuzzy.

I pressed you to explain why it is “obvious” that the property of consciousness cannot be objectively observed but the property of “liquidity” can be objectively observed.

You respond:

Essentially, what is obvious is the difference between the physical ( a house ) and the conceptual ( the idea of a house ). I suppose there are those who might argue that there is no difference, but I along with most architects and mortgage lenders would tend to disagree that the two are the same.

So you’re saying the difference between liquidity and consciousness is the difference between a physical house and a the concept of a house.

This implies that liquidity is physical but that consciousness is merely a… concept?

So I asked/stated that consciousness was more than a concept, right?

To which you reply:

So is wetness.

Haha, which takes us back to square one!

Yes, both consciousness and wetness are more than concepts. So let’s just move away from the whole concept thing, as it doesn’t explain why we can’t see consciousness but we can see wetness.

So, wetness is a property of water, and consciousness is a property of brains. But why the former is objective and the latter is subjective is not obvious. Rather, it’s mysterious.

One might just as easily be of the view that because there are billions of people with consciousness and more being born every day, that consciousness is quite mundane, a daily occurrence that is mostly taken for granted, and why it exists is no more profound a question than why anything else exists. If that sounds like a "glossing over", you're entitled to that opinion. But then again, have you considered why anything else should exist? Before you answer that maybe check here: Existence (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Sure, but asking why anything exists versus why a particular, say, house exists are categorically different.

If we are asking why consciousness exists as a “property” of brains, this is categorically different than asking why anything exists at all. But yes, point taken. I agree.

A "why" question is answered with a "because" response, and one response to why consciousness exists is because it's useful in motivating behavior that contributes to the survival of our species. If it had no usefulness it would have gone by way of the tail, quadrupedalism, hairy knuckles, and extremely bushy eyebrows. Then again there's still a few throw-backs around with hairy knuckles and extremely bushy eyebrows, so perhaps some female members of our species still find them attractive.

That consciousness experience can motivate (causally affect) physical behavior will be met with sympathy here in this discussion.

However, it’s one thing to make that claim, and quite another to explain or even prove it.

In order to explain how conscious experience affects physical behavior, ufology, one would need to answer the following very real problems:

1. Overdetermination - Wikipedia
   
   
2. Mind–body problem - Wikipedia
   
   
3. Hard problem of consciousness - Wikipedia
   
   
4. Problem of mental causation - Wikipedia

 

[smcder]

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[smcder]

Why don't you guys use pictures?

1 picture = 1000 words

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[smcder]

Help me sort out the diff in "undeniable sensation" of free will (Pearl) from it's social/cultural trappings:

E.g. the Greeks thought there actions were determined by the gods/fate but may have had a sense of agency locused in their bodies but attributed its ultimate cause elsewhere ... This tangles the talk of free will if not every culture has it ... Distinguish that from what it is Pearl says gives a computational advantage... Although it wouldn't have to show up in cs awareness or would it.

Very confusing

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[Randall]

Regarding the similarity between “wetness” and “consciousness” let’s start over ... But then I point out that we can objectively observe wetness (which I defined at the liquidity of water [groups of molecules]). And that we can’t objectively observe consciousness.

You have interpreted wetness as liquidity ( fluid motion ) and that's not what I was getting at. Wetness, like redness, is a sensory experience. Water and wetness are two entirely different things. Observation is irrelevant. We also "observe" redness. It makes no difference to the point I was trying to make.

But it follows then that the comparison between the property of “wet” and the property of “consciousness” is diminished. Because although both wet/wetness and consciousness may be properties of things, one of them can be objectively observed and one of them cannot. This is a major, categorical difference between the two properties.

More accurately: Water is an objectively real thing, while wetness is a subjective experience. So is consciousness.

You were making the point that consciousness could be a property of brains just as wet/wetness is a property of water. While that’s potentially helpful, I was pointing out that if they are both properties of things, one of these is still not like the other.

Wetness and consciousness are alike in that they are subjective experiences related to objective things.

But this damages your analogy and the comparison you were making because subjective experience is a property of brains, e.g., consciousness is a property of brains, wetness a property of water.

The simile remains intact with respect to the context. No simile can be perfect. It's the essential point within the context that is of value. If you are to deconstruct the simile, then it must pertain to the intended context. However because the intended context doesn't seem to have been well communicated, the errors in the deconstruction are inconsequential. Maybe we should just set this one aside for the time being.

In order to explain how conscious experience affects physical behavior, ufology, one would need to answer the following very real problems:

1. Overdetermination - Wikipedia
   
2. Mind–body problem - Wikipedia
   
3. Hard problem of consciousness - Wikipedia
   
4. Problem of mental causation - Wikipedia

Those are relevant points of discussion, but the question of "how" hinges on shifting contexts that are not transposable between the points. For example it's obvious how conscious experience affects behavior when we look at the two basic types of experience, pain and pleasure, and volumes have been written about it. Below is a primer on Operant and Classical Conditioning.

However the issue of how pain and pleasure affect behavior is an entirely different context from the question of how neural impulses from a hot surface or a cool drink become the conscious experience of pain or pleasure. These two very different contexts seem to get conflated from time to time, as in the Hard Problem of Consciousness, which is not an answerable problem because it's not a coherent problem in the first place. It's an intellectual tool used to describe a situation. I suggest you try to get away from the idea of trying to "solve" it.

We also touched recently on the concept of overdetermination, which like Ockham's razor is not a physical or philosophical law or principle, but merely a maxim that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. So we don't "need to answer" that problem. We can simply accept that it has happened regardless. Mental causation also happens. We don't know exactly how it happens, and we may never know exactly how it happens, but that doesn't mean we can't make use of it. I've used the analogy to magnetism many times now to illustrate that point.

The mind-body problem is another non-problem. It arbitrarily assumes different fundamental principles and conflates contexts to give the illusion of a "problem" where none exists. At least that's how I see it because I'm ultimately a sort of physicalist ( not to be confused with materialist ).

 

[Soupie]

Ha, okay. We'll have to completely disagree that consciousness is a subjective experience.

Consciousness is experience, not a subjective experience like the conscious experience of "wetness."

We've reached angels on pinheads territory here. Moving on.

 

[smcder]

You have interpreted wetness as liquidity ( fluid motion ) and that's not what I was getting at. Wetness, like redness, is a sensory experience. Water and wetness are two entirely different things. Observation is irrelevant. We also "observe" redness. It makes no difference to the point I was trying to make.
More accurately: Water is an objectively real thing, while wetness is a subjective experience. So is consciousness.

Wetness and consciousness are alike in that they are subjective experiences related to objective things.
The simile remains intact with respect to the context. No simile can be perfect. It's the essential point within the context that is of value. If you are to deconstruct the simile, then it must pertain to the intended context. However because the intended context doesn't seem to have been well communicated, the errors in the deconstruction are inconsequential. Maybe we should just set this one aside for the time being.

Those are relevant points of discussion, but the question of "how" hinges on shifting contexts that are not transposable between the points. For example it's obvious how conscious experience affects behavior when we look at the two basic types of experience, pain and pleasure, and volumes have been written about it. Below is a primer on Operant and Classical Conditioning.

However the issue of how pain and pleasure affect behavior is an entirely different context from the question of how neural impulses from a hot surface or a cool drink become the conscious experience of pain or pleasure. These two very different contexts seem to get conflated from time to time, as in the Hard Problem of Consciousness, which is not an answerable problem because it's not a coherent problem in the first place. It's an intellectual tool used to describe a situation. I suggest you try to get away from the idea of trying to "solve" it.

We also touched recently on the concept of overdetermination, which like Ockham's razor is not a physical or philosophical law or principle, but merely a maxim that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. So we don't "need to answer" that problem. We can simply accept that it has happened regardless. Mental causation also happens. We don't know exactly how it happens, and we may never know exactly how it happens, but that doesn't mean we can't make use of it. I've used the analogy to magnetism many times now to illustrate that point.

The mind-body problem is another non-problem. It arbitrarily assumes different fundamental principles and conflates contexts to give the illusion of a "problem" where none exists. At least that's how I see it because I'm ultimately a sort of physicalist ( not to be confused with materialist ).

Lol

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[Soupie]

One of the things I appreciate about autopoeitic approach to consciousness is that it has an answer for the boundary issue.

Many perceived boundaries in physical reality are just that, perceptions and not necessarily objective boundaries.

The various processes within nature are incredibly tangled and enmeshed. The fundamental particles of which a system is constituted are continually switching and swapping. Etc.

Autopoesis suggests the cells are self-organizing, self-sustaining systems who establish a non-arbitrary boundary between themselves and the external world. The interaction between these cells and the world constitutes cognition and possibly even consciousness awareness. I do have an affinity for this approach.

But this approach also explains why subjective awareness—which seems bounded (but importantly might not be of course), is bounded.

Why doesn't my consciousness bleed into the consciousnesses of those around me and vice versa? Why is there a boundary? Autopoesis provides an answer.

I just recently posted the following:

The interesting thing about conscious perception is that what we are consciously perceiving is physiological states of the brain, not the external environment.

Another confounding aspect of consciousness is its subjectivity. It can't be objectively observed.

There's (at least) two meanings of subjective. The way I just used it above, but also to mean that the way in which the world is experienced is unique, ie, subjective.

The bit I wrote above speaks to this meaning of subject. Two people may witness the same external, objective event but the base line of their physiology and the subsequent physiological changes will be different. Thus, their perception of the objective event will be experienced differently, which is to say subjectively.

So autopoesis provides a plausible explanation for why conscious experience is bounded and why it's subjective (unique).

What it can't answer is why some—but not all—physiological stats in the cell/organism "rise" to the "level" of conscious awareness while others do not.

 

[smcder]

Ha, okay. We'll have to completely disagree that consciousness is a subjective experience.

Consciousness is experience, not a subjective experience like the conscious experience of "wetness."

We've reached angels on pinheads territory here. Moving on.

Soupie you fool! Haven't you learned better than to argue with Randall about the non-problems that continue to trouble the great, but incoherent minds of our times, whose very SUBTLETY betrays them!?





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[Randall]

Ha, okay. We'll have to completely disagree that consciousness is a subjective experience. Consciousness is experience, not a subjective experience like the conscious experience of "wetness."
We've reached angels on pinheads territory here. Moving on.

So in your view consciousness is not subjective? What do you propose as an alternative? That it's universal? Do you have any degree of experience of someone else's consciousness? I didn't think so.

 

[smcder]

So in your view consciousness is not subjective? What do you propose as an alternative? That it's universal? Do you have any degree of experience of someone else's consciousness? I didn't think so.

He's saying it's not "a" experience ... it IS experience.

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[Randall]

Soupie you fool! Haven't you learned better than to argue with Randall about the non-problems that continue to trouble the great, but incoherent minds of our times, whose very SUBTLETY betrays them!?

Your offhanded dismissals are most entertaining, but perhaps that particular hidden talent should remain hidden ... lol ... or at least reserved for the comedy club audience. I think you could actually make money if you could come up with whole routine .

He's saying it's not "a" experience ... it IS experience.

I definitely see the "a" in there, but either way it makes no difference. Look at the context to which the comment references. It's used as a qualifier for the purpose of discussion to differentiate between the objective and the subjective and the physical and the conceptual.

 

[Soupie]

@smcder Regarding the presence of consciousness but the inability to remember/recall after the fact.

Note that anethesialogists check for behavioral signs that individuals are conscious.

But in any case, here is a (perhaps maddening) 14 min podcast with Ned Block in which he discusses his confusing notion of p consciousness and access consciousness.

He says we can have p consciousness yet not have cognitive access to it. (And he may be right of course. If animals have p consciousness but lack conceptual/cognitive access then there may be moments when we are in similar states.)

I just throw that out there as a possibility during anesthesia. (Although I don't think anyone is actually arguing that.)

Ned Block on Consciousness

At the very least, this just serves to remind us how complex this topic is. Ned has degrees in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience.

 

[smcder]

The hard problem is a problem for physicalists. The physicalist claims the world can be completely explained in physicalists terms. The hard problem shows that once everything is fully expressed in physicalist terms, experience remains.

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[smcder]

@smcder Regarding the presence of consciousness but the inability to remember/recall after the fact.

Note that anethesialogists check for behavioral signs that individuals are conscious.

But in any case, here is a (perhaps maddening) 14 min podcast with Ned Block in which he discusses his confusing notion of p consciousness and access consciousness.

He says we can have p consciousness yet not have access to it.

I just throw that out there as a possibility during anesthesia. (Although I don't think anyone is actually arguing that.)

Ned Block on Consciousness

At the very least, this just serves to remind us how complex this topic is. Ned has degrees in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience.

Remember that one counter argument to NDEs is that patients aren't really dead - that cs can run on extremely low levels of energy and we just don't have sensitive enough equipment to pick it up ... Think about that in terms of cs and also do some research ... You may be surprised. Since I may have to undergo surgery I am looking at this.

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[smcder]

Your offhanded dismissals are most entertaining, but perhaps that particular hidden talent should remain hidden ... lol ... or at least reserved for the comedy club audience. I think you could actually make money if you could come up with whole routine .

I definitely see the "a" in there, but either way it makes no difference. Look at the context to which the comment references. It's used as a qualifier for the purpose of discussion to differentiate between the objective and the subjective and the physical and the conceptual.

I agree that offhand dismissals should remain hidden.

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[Randall]

The hard problem is a problem for physicalists. The physicalist claims the world can be completely explained in physicalists terms. The hard problem shows that once everything is fully expressed in physicalist terms, experience remains.

Those who see "the problem" have arbitrarily isolated experience from the set of "physicalist terms" to create the "problem", whereas from my particular physicalist perspective, experience is a "physicalist term" that relates to a particular context ( way of looking at things ) that we often refer to as "subjective" ( versus objective ). Hence there is no "problem" from my perspective, but not unlike Chalmers, I find the HPC to be a useful tool for prying open the discussion, and have to hand it to you again for introducing me to it in the first place.

 

[smcder]

Those who see "the problem" have arbitrarily isolated experience from the set of "physicalist terms" to create the "problem", whereas from my particular physicalist perspective, experience is a "physicalist term" that relates to a particular context ( way of looking at things ) that we often refer to as "subjective" ( versus objective ). Hence there is no "problem" from my perspective, but not unlike Chalmers, I find the HPC to be a useful tool for prying open the discussion, and have to hand it to you again for introducing me to it in the first place.

I'm glad you see that it's just from your perspective and hopefully you can appreciate that there are competing perspectives.

I remember the prof saying about half his students didn't get the HP. So you're in good company.

By the way is the " " " key worn out on your pc?

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[Randall]

Remember that one counter argument to NDEs is that patients aren't really dead - that cs can run on extremely low levels of energy and we just don't have sensitive enough equipment to pick it up ... Think about that in terms of cs and also do some research ... You may be surprised. Since I may have to undergo surgery I am looking at this.

Yes. There's different versions of death. There's also the possibility that what is recalled and assumed to have been a real-time event, was nothing more than a false memory created by natural biological processes. If you have the opportunity, consider asking your physician if you can do a version of the objective correspondence test to help verify that any OOBE you might experience was actually some form of nonlocal consciousness. This is a test that involves putting a random display of unambiguous sentences, symbols, and/or pictures up and out of sight of the OR people and you during your procedure.

 

[smcder]

Yes. There's different versions of death. There's also the possibility that what is recalled and assumed to have been a real-time event, was nothing more than a false memory created by natural biological processes. If you have the opportunity, consider asking your physician if you can do a version of the objective correspondence test to help verify that any OOBE you might experience was actually some form of nonlocal consciousness. This is a test that involves putting a random display of unambiguous sentences, symbols, and/or pictures up and out of sight of the OR people and you during your procedure.

Lol

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