Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 7

[smcder]

@Soupie - using Feynman's method:

Learn Anything Faster With the Feynman Technique

can you tell us what the Hoffman paper on conscious realism says?

by the way the Farnham street blog I think offers several interesting tools on thinking and expressing ideas -

 

[smcder]

Perhaps they've reached a 'model' that has it right on Alpha Centauri. No telling how long it takes conscious beings to understand consciousness fully enough to 'model' it. We do have, however, various 'models' of perception and we have discussed them and disagreed about their validity. Perception is the 'without which nothing' [the sine qua non] on the basis of which protoconsciousness evolves toward consciousness in living beings. Perception is the opening -- the openness -- that links us to the natural world from which we and species preceding us in evolution have evolved situated perspectives on the world as we exist within it -- out of the natural affordances by which we sense, feel, and increasingly know our physical and temporal presence within it.



That's a very mystical idea, and perhaps Steve (@smcder ) can identify it in one or more articulated texts of Eastern philosophy. I don't dislike the idea as an effort to understand what-is holistically. I do think that it is more interesting to explore the ways and means by which this idea becomes thinkable in Eastern mysticism and Western phenomenology.



There is more to being than perceiving.



As I read him, Chalmers was protesting both radical dualism and reductive materialism. What I meant by Hoffman's "going off the rails" is that he goes entirely off the rails of our empirical experience in and of the tangible and thinkable world in which we exist, which in my view (as in James and the phenomenologists) is what we have to work with in understanding the nature of 'what-is' as we confront it.

That's an enormous area in its own right - Eastern philosophy and what is meant by "mystical" ... the history of Eastern thought seems to be as complex and contentious as the west - maybe most interesting and accessible are the places where they intersect - surprising when and where this has happened, what very little I know of it. It also points us to an overall history of philosophy ...

There is also the issue of practice - in phenomenology there is the epoche' and the phenomenological reduction but this is different than the purposes and goals of meditation as I understand them in Buddhism and Western contemplative traditions. I know very little about the Platonic and the Stoic traditions of contemplation - more about Christian mysticism - a very rich and largely forgotten history and there is also the work of Arthur Zajonc and others in Western contemplative traditions as applied to science, contemporary work ... this comes I believe from Rudolf Steiner and brings us into the Western esoteric tradition - also a fascinating area we've not discussed in a long time.

At one time I had a PDF for:
The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction


so it may be available and is a good overview. I do think one overall difference in Eastern and Western tradition is that the Western tradition has moved away from practice, entirely away - has, it seems to me, become increasingly abstract - the domain of the left hemisphere (McGilchrist) and that seems to produce things like Hoffman's paper - which don't seem to me to offer much in the way of the love of wisdom and how we should live our lives, the basic problems of what is good and true and beautiful.

There was a time when Huston Smith could claim that the Western tradition was "transcendental" and had its place among the world's religions - but that line of thinking is probably extinguished, most certainly in the upper levels of academic philosophy.

 

[smcder]

Here is Pigliucci's go at it:

‘Why not Stoicism?’ by Massimo Pigliucci

 

[Soupie]

@Soupie - using Feynman's method:

Learn Anything Faster With the Feynman Technique

can you tell us what the Hoffman paper on conscious realism says?

by the way the Farnham street blog I think offers several interesting tools on thinking and expressing ideas -

Here's a first attempt:

Conscious Realism

CR is the concept that "feeling" entities are ontologically fundamental. These entities interact to form systems, systems of systems, etc. How and why these entities interact is not explicated by Hoffman so far as I have read.

Humans are one such example of a system of interacting entities. How, why, and if these systems of entities share one pov Hoffman hasn't explained so far as I've read.

These systems perceive other systems. Perceiving feels like something because these systems are constituted of feeling entities.

However, perception of other systems is not perfect. That is, perception does not capture all the details of other systems.

Systems of entities evolve in a local environment of other systems; however, evolution dictates that a system evolve to perceive details of the environment that are adaptive.

Different systems will evolve to perceive different systems and moreover to perceive systems differently. For example, dogs and birds will perceive different systems and will perceive the same systems differently.

In this manner, evolving systems are enmeshed and coupled to their local environment which consists of other systems of systems.

Perceptions—and other structures of mind—are real in the sense that they exist, but the phenomenal objects that appear in perception are not perfect representations (replicas) of the systems in the local environment.

In this way, it can be said that consciousness is fundamental and perceived phenomena, such as atoms, molecules, cells, organisms, etc. are secondary, emerging from the evolution of interacting systems of feeling entities.

 

[boomerang]

Pickover is an interesting guy - are you familiar with his question:

If an alien comes to you and asks:

"What is the most important question we can ask humanity and what is the best possible answer you can give?"

Alas, If I have read this in one of his many thought provoking works, my brain has "dropped those packets" and I do not recall. Can you give me another hint or better yet, a synopsis ?

I would highly recommend Pickover--especially much of his earlier stuff--as a kind of imaginative "micro dosing" (term not originally mine) to stimulate out of the box and cross disciplinary thinking. He has a most beautiful gift for linking seemingly unrelated cognitive and academic genres in meaningful ways.

 

[boomerang]

If one attacks the Hard Problem as scientific and one can tolerate the notion that consciousness may only be defined operationally, that is by how it acts and interacts with other phenomena, then disciplines such as computer science and neurophysiology have already made inroads (admittedly meager) in solving the "hard problem". Brain mapping is doing the job of correlating self-reported inner states of self-awareness with functional response in real time of sufficient magnitude to impress itself.

The take-away in this approach is that it produces testable hypotheses. If one accepts as axiomatic that science by definition never tells us the "why", but rather only the "how", (Not everyone will!) then progress is being made. This implies there may be no understanding of self-awareness except in terms of what thought affects and how it is in turn affected.

[big yawn] Nothing new here.

Donald Hoffman: His seeming attempts to create a kind of mathematically modeled Theory of Everything based on physical law as consciousness emergent (Is that essentially correct?) could land him in the pantheon of great thinkers alongside Newton and Einstein. Or it might just as easily leave him relegated to dusty pages in pseudoscience as per Paracelsus. Time and peer review should tell.

 

[Constance]

That's an enormous area in its own right - Eastern philosophy and what is meant by "mystical" ... the history of Eastern thought seems to be as complex and contentious as the west - maybe most interesting and accessible are the places where they intersect - surprising when and where this has happened, what very little I know of it. It also points us to an overall history of philosophy ...

Indeed "most interesting and accessible ... where they intersect." You go on to write:

"There is also the issue of practice - in phenomenology there is the epoche' and the phenomenological reduction but this is different than the purposes and goals of meditation as I understand them in Buddhism and Western contemplative traditions. I know very little about the Platonic and the Stoic traditions of contemplation - more about Christian mysticism - a very rich and largely forgotten history and there is also the work of Arthur Zajonc and others in Western contemplative traditions as applied to science, contemporary work ... this comes I believe from Rudolf Steiner and brings us into the Western esoteric tradition - also a fascinating area we've not discussed in a long time.

At one time I had a PDF for:
The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction


so it may be available and is a good overview."

Steve, this is one of many book references you've provided that I've meant to follow up on and haven't. If you can relocate a pdf of the text, please post the link. The illustration/artwork used in the cover of this book visually expresses the transcendental nature of mind as emergent from phenomenological experience in and of the world as consciousness encounters and reflects on it. I've come across this illustration numerous times in the past and can't remember (if I ever knew) its source or creator. The name Flammarion bubbles up from some semiconscious source. Anyone know?

I do think one overall difference in Eastern and Western tradition is that the Western tradition has moved away from practice, entirely away - has, it seems to me, become increasingly abstract - the domain of the left hemisphere (McGilchrist) and that seems to produce things like Hoffman's paper - which don't seem to me to offer much in the way of the love of wisdom and how we should live our lives, the basic problems of what is good and true and beautiful.

That history has been, as Heidegger expressed it, the history of "the forgetfulness of being" -- of the 'be-ing' of radically temporal consciousness recognized as 'being-there' in an asymmetrical relationship with, and within, nature.


This paper might serve as a beginning guide to our thinking about the development of phenomenological philosophy from Kantian transcendental philosophy and the major differences marked in that development, beginning with the author’s critique of the vague notions regarding 'transcendence' among analytical philosophers such as Davidson:


The Transcendental Significance of Phenomenology

Stephen L. White


http://www.theassc.org/files/assc/2669.pdf

 

[Constance]

Donald Hoffman: His seeming attempts to create a kind of mathematically modeled Theory of Everything based on physical law as consciousness emergent (Is that essentially correct?) could land him in the pantheon of great thinkers alongside Newton and Einstein.

I doubt it, for reasons developed in phenomenological philosophy and neurophenomenology as discussed at length in earlier parts of this thread.

 

[Constance]

Here's a first attempt:
Conscious Realism
CR is the concept that "feeling" entities are ontologically fundamental. These entities interact to form systems, systems of systems, etc. How and why these entities interact is not explicated by Hoffman so far as I have read.

The first question that occurs: how do 'feeling entities' that are to be understood 'mathematically' arise organically in the natural world?

You continue as follows:

"Humans are one such example of a system of interacting entities. How, why, and if these systems of entities share one pov Hoffman hasn't explained so far as I've read.

These systems perceive other systems. Perceiving feels like something because these systems are constituted of feeling entities.

However, perception of other systems is not perfect. That is, perception does not capture all the details of other systems.

Systems of entities evolve in a local environment of other systems; however, evolution dictates that a system evolve to perceive details of the environment that are adaptive.

Different systems will evolve to perceive different systems and moreover to perceive systems differently. For example, dogs and birds will perceive different systems and will perceive the same systems differently.

In this manner, evolving systems are enmeshed and coupled to their local environment which consists of other systems of systems.

Perceptions—and other structures of mind—are real in the sense that they exist, but the phenomenal objects that appear in perception are not perfect representations (replicas) of the systems in the local environment.

In this way, it can be said that consciousness is fundamental and perceived phenomena, such as atoms, molecules, cells, organisms, etc. are secondary, emerging from the evolution of interacting systems of feeling entities."


Perhaps what you (and Hoffman) say 'can be said', but so far there is no account of the reasons why-- the grounds on which -- it should be believed.

 

[Constance]

I've looked for and found online three papers (one is a book review) that I think clarify the issues in recent attempts to 'naturalize' consciousness in standard neuroscience and among philosophers who accept its presuppositions:

Thomas Szanto, What ‘Science of Consciousness’?
A Phenomenological Take on Naturalizing the Mind [1]

What ‘Science of Consciousness’? A Phenomenological Take on Naturalizing the Mind [1]


Philosophy in Review XXXIII (2013), no. 6 500
Dan Zahavi, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Phenomenology.

file:///C:/Users/Owner/Downloads/12838-8863-1-SM.pdf


Dermot Moran, Husserl’s transcendental philosophy and the critique of naturalism

https://www.ucd.ie/t4cms/husserls transcendental philosophy&naturaliism.pdf

 

[Soupie]

The first question that occurs: how do 'feeling entities' that are to be understood 'mathematically' arise organically in the natural world?

They don't arise on this view. They are fundamental. They constitute the natural world.

Perhaps what you (and Hoffman) say 'can be said', but so far there is no account of the reasons why-- the grounds on which -- it should be believed.

The MBP.

 

[Constance]

For most newcomers to phenomenological philosophy a major obstacle to comprehension of phenomenology consists in the paradox evoked in its recognition of transcendental qualities and aspects of consciousness and mind available and accessible to human beings who are radically situated spatiotemporally and culturally-historically in a changing, evolving, world. The last link I want to provide addresses this and several associated paradoxes in its final chapter:

The Paradox of Nature: Merleau-Ponty 's SemiNaturalistic Critique of Husserlian Phenomenology
Shazad Akhtar Marquette University

http://epublications.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1064&context=dissertations_mu

==> Scroll down to the last section, beginning on pg. 207:

ChapterFive: "MerleauPonty and Husserl on the Question of the Paradox of Subjectivity and Nature"

 

[Soupie]

I doubt it, for reasons developed in phenomenological philosophy and neurophenomenology as a discussed earlier in this thread.

What reasons have these schools developed that contradict multimode user interface and conscious realism?

Do those schools of thought share the HFD? The hypothesis of faithful depiction? That is, do those schools of thought assert that human perception of objective reality is veridical?

My understanding is those schools of thought support the idea that the organism and environment interact to create a (phenomenal) world.

Neither school can contradict conscious realism. I do believe that neurophen takes an emergentist approach to consciousness and mind. I'm incertain if phenomenology is emergentist.

Either way, neither school of thought has produced a model of how feeling could emerge from non-feeling matter. And neither has otherwise resolved the MBP.

 

[Constance]

I wrote: "The first question that occurs: how do 'feeling entities' that are to be understood 'mathematically' arise organically in the natural world?

You replied:
'They don't arise on this view. They are fundamental. They constitute the natural world."

Do you mean to say that the 'feelings' of an Abstract Conscious Entity located outside nature generate 'feelings' on the part of beings evolved within nature, and that these transmitted 'feelings' exhaust the nature of consciousness as we (and other animals) experience it?


I wrote: "Perhaps what you (and Hoffman) say 'can be said', but so far there is no account of the reasons why-- the grounds on which -- it should be believed."

You replied:
"The MBP."

Are you saying that the mind-body problem itself provides the grounds for Hoffman's and your interpretation of its resolution? Again, I have to ask 'how'?

 

[Soupie]

Do you mean to say that the 'feelings' of an Abstract Conscious Entity located outside nature generate 'feelings' on the part of beings evolved within nature, and that these transmitted 'feelings' exhaust the nature of consciousness as we (and other animals) experience it?

No. Nature (Being) and organisms (beings) within nature are constituted of conscious agents.

Are you saying that the mind-body problem itself provides the grounds for Hoffman's and your interpretation of its resolution? Again, I have to ask 'how'?

The MBP provides the grounds for models that postulate consciousness—rather than non-conscious matter—as fundamental.

 

[Constance]

What reasons have these schools developed that contradict multimode user interface and conscious realism?

Not clear what you mean by "these schools." I've sought to clarify phenomenological philosophy, not as a solution to the mind-body problem but as a productive analysis of the complexity of this problem through the analysis of experience, consciousness, and mind as evolved in the natural world. If what I've written and quoted over these two years has not clarified phenomenological reasoning for you, I can only say, as I've said before, that reading the major texts of this philosophy will be necessary.

Do those schools of thought share the HFD? The hypothesis of faithful depiction? That is, do those schools of thought assert that human perception of objective reality is veridical?

Have you read anything I've written or extracted and linked here? If you had, you could not ask that question.

My understanding is those schools of thought support the idea that the organism and environment interact to create a (phenomenal) world.

Not 'create'. Organism and environment interact to produce a 'lived world' known and understood phenomenologically.

Neither school can contradict conscious realism. I do believe that neurophen takes an emergentist approach to consciousness and mind. I'm incertain if phenomenology is emergentist.

The term "conscious realism" in Hoffman's hypothesis asserts a truth-claim that he doesn't deliver on in my opinion. Neurophenomenology requires an understanding of both phenomenology and neuroscience. It is an attempt to further the thinking and research of Francisco Varela who was knowledgeable in both disciplines. I understand phenomenology and neurophenomenology as emergentist approaches to consciousness and mind.

Either way, neither school of thought has produced a model of how feeling could emerge from non-feeling matter. And neither has otherwise resolved the MBP.

I think Panksepp's neuro-biological research and 'affective neuroscience' are necessary supplements to phenomenology and neurophenomenology in fleshing out the origins of feeling and protoconsciousness in the understanding of the evolutionary development of consciousness and mind.

Re 'resolving the mind-body problem,' this problem constitutes a daunting philosophical and scientific challenge that has persisted throughout the history of philosophy. You seem to require an immediate and complete resolution of this problem, but I suggest it would be less stressful for you to contemplate the progress that has been made in understanding the nature of consciousness over the last several decades.

 

[Constance]

No. Nature (Being) and organisms (beings) within nature are constituted of conscious agents.

That's a highly idealist claim for someone who has been looking for 'naturalistic' explanations for consciousness. Nature precedes us and exceeds us on every side.

ETA: What do you take to be the meaning of the term "constitutes." You will need to read Husserl or his exponents to understand that meaning.

The MBP provides the grounds for models that postulate consciousness—rather than non-conscious matter—as fundamental.

I don't see how you can make the claim that the mind-body problem itself provides the grounds for its resolution. Again, what grounds?

 

[Constance]

As a last resort in clarifying some of the concepts and terms originating in phenomenological philosophy I suggest the article on Phenomenology in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Phenomenology | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

 

[Soupie]

Organism and environment interact to produce a 'lived world' known and understood phenomenologically.

So the phenomenological position is not antithetical to Hoffman's MUI theory.

I understand phenomenology and neurophenomenology as emergentist approaches to consciousness and mind.

Okay. As this approach has yet to produce a viable model of how feeling might emerge from non-feeling matter, it does not render Conscious Realism unlikely.

I don't see how you can make the claim that the mind-body problem itself provides the grounds for its resolution. Again, what grounds?

No. Thats not what im claiming. Im claiming that the mbp provides the grounds for postulating that consciousness is fundamental rather than matter.

 

[Constance]

So the phenomenological position is not antithetical to Hoffman's MUI theory.

I'm afraid you don't understand. The lived world of experienced reality takes place in the actual world as partially described in the physical sciences and partially known to all of us on the basis of our existence in it.

Okay. As this approach has yet to produce a viable model of how feeling might emerge from non-feeling matter, it does not render Conscious Realism unlikely.

You are now asking the question that has most perplexed the physical and human sciences, i.e., how life itself emerges. Only hypotheses are on the table to date. Hoffman's 'Conscious Realism' does not seem to me to produce "a viable model of how feeling might emerge from non-feeling matter." I see that this latter question (the hard problem in simplified, primordially biological, terms) besets you. I can only suggest that you try to live with the problem while interdisciplinary researchers attempt to resolve it.

No. Thats not what im claiming. Im claiming that the mbp provides the grounds for postulating that consciousness is fundamental rather than matter.

Hoffman is hardly the first human in history to contemplate that consciousness/mind might be more fundamental than matter. My question is what he provides in the way of evidence and reasoning that can persuade the interdisciplinary company of consciousness researchers to sign on to his imagiantive resolution of the mind-body problem.