Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 7

[Constance]

. . . until we know what the substrate of reality itself actually consists of, we cannot even begin to make guesses about consciousness and substrates.

Exactly. Thank you for your clarity.

The most we can claim to understand about 'reality' in the quantum substrate consists of a humanly generated concept of 'wave particle duality' {and the question whether 'duality' is the appropriate term/concept to be used to 'define' the relationships of particle and wave phenomena}, and b) the interaction and entanglement of quantum particles and waves, which seems to have been demonstrated again and again over the past century in quantum physics. What does it all mean at this point in terms of scientific or philosophical understanding? Classical physics has not been subsumed in or by quantum physics. The borderland between them remains a major problem vexing physicists (see Zurek's two major papers on this issue, written years apart). There is also the outlying and yet unanswereable question of what lies beneath and might be assumed to generate what we call the quantum <substrate> of 'reality' as we experience it'.

What do we and other living organisms experience? And what can we learn from reflecting on that which we experience and studying, to the extent we can, the experience of other living beings we encounter in the world as it appears to us, as it does to them, phenomenally? These are the questions we can attempt to answer from our location within the world we experience since we do not have access to a God-like point of view on 'what-is' from outside the world as we experience it.

To understand the approach to an understanding of the perspectival nature of being, consciousness, mind, and 'reality' developed in phenomenological philosophy, I recommend the following lucidly expressed paper:

John T. Sanders, Merleau-Ponty, Gibson, and the Materiality of Meaning

http://philpapers.org/archive/SANMGA-2.pdf

 

[Randall]

... There is also the outlying and yet unanswereable question of what lies beneath and might be assumed to generate what we call the quantum <substrate> of 'reality' as we experience it'. ...

Do you think "yet unanswerable" means", "unanswerable as of yet", as in at this point in time, or literally "and yet unanswerable" as in "not even answerable" period?

 

[Constance]

The other point I wanted to make regarded the notion that perception (and some would say consciousness) is embodied or ecological or "spread out."

One strong rebuttal to this—and one that supports the brain-based theory—are dreams and psychedelics.

People experience rich perceptions while dreaming and tripping. The significant detail is that these rich perceptions occur in the absence of environmental objects.

Again, this supports the notion that the perceptual contents of consciousness correlate to physiological brain states rather than states of the environment.

". . . Again, this supports the notion that the perceptual contents of consciousness correlate to physiological brain states rather than states of the environment."

No. Consciousness in dream states and in states influenced by brain-and-mind-altering drugs correlates with both neural processing and the physical and emotional environment as known in individuals' memories of their lived realities as accrued and integrated in consciousness and mind. If the ‘worlds’ experienced in dreams and chemically altered states were not constructed out of structures and characteristics understood in our consciously lived reality, we could not comprehend any significations generated in those states. See the partially lucid dream Steve recounts in his post today.

When they do correlate to the environment, it is only indirectly.

Machts nichts, @Soupie. There is no denying that direct experiences in existentially lived reality in this physical world are radically temporal, thus consciousness itself is temporal and temporally cumulative, includes uncountable memories confirming the accrual of its lived experiences in an actual world. Everyone seriously involved in the present-day field of interdisciplinary consciousness studies should read Husserl’s The Phenomenology of Inner Time-Consciousness.

Among the insights of phenomenological philosophy concerning consciousness that you have not yet grasped is the intrinsic temporality of be-ing, which is a characteristic of both consciousness and of the evolving nature and structure of physical being in the universe or cosmos -- to the extent that we are able to comprehend it in our time.

A second major insight of the phenomenology of perception not well understood here in this thread concerns the innate capacity of imagination, which Merleau-Ponty wrote “is present in the first human perception.” Imagination is grounded in the visible horizons of perception, the point at which the gestalts we produce in our lived experiences reveal the existence of regions beyond which we cannot see, beyond which we are likewise unable to identify the origins/causes of sounds we can hear. Aware of the limitations of his or her consciousness to know what lies beyond the horizons of the visible, audible world, the conscious being projects imaginative possibilities concerning ‘what-is’, and these must necessarily be grounded in extrapolations from what that being has experienced in his or her lived, situated, being. We think beyond the ground of what we know through lived experience, but we cannot rationally sever our imaginative projections about the nature of Being from that which we experience here and now as our only genuinely empirical knowledge.

Beyond all this is the gradual recognition in consciousness and mind that beyond and behind locally experienced reality there is the question of the nature of Being as a whole – the question of the relationship of

1} ‘what-is’ as knowable within the limits of our temporal, situated experiences of be-ing,

to

2} the nature of the Being of all that is, the whole of what-is.

In reflecting on Being as a whole over the last century, we assume [have assumed, as have some of our most ancient philosophers] that Being is unified, and thus we attempt to think holistically when we approach the question of Being. We must, then, include that which we experience within our thinking.

 

[Constance]

Do you think "yet unanswerable" means", "unanswerable as of yet", as in at this point in time, or literally "and yet unanswerable" as in "not even answerable" period?

I mean the former. But given the immense complexity of the structure of the perceivable and measureable natural world {universe, cosmos, conjectured interdimensional multiverse etc} I do not think it is reasonable to expect (or hope as you evidently do) that the neuroscience of the human brain in our time or perhaps in the succession of time afterward [depending on how much time our species has] is likely to explain the nature of the Being of all that is, assuming that our being is an expression of Being as a whole.

 

[victimized]

After reading many of these interesting posts, it would seem, IMHO, that until we know what the substrate of reality itself actually consists of, we cannot even begin to make guesses about consciousness and substrates. Harvard Professor Lisa Randall speculates that the proposed massive quantity of dark matter in the universe (which Randall has also described as "transparent matter") may consist of a variety of dark particles, similarly to baryonic particles we know about in the standard model of "normal" matter. She conjectures that dark atoms may actually support dark chemistry and perhaps even dark biology, here.

One intriguing possibility raised by interacting dark matter models is the existence of dark atoms that might have given rise to dark life, neither of which would be easily detected, Randall says. Although she admits that the concept of dark life might be far-fetched, “life is complicated, and we have yet to understand life and what’s necessary for it.”​

In the first place, dark matter was inferred specifically because of gravitational interaction with "normal" baryonic matter. So, then, it seems to me, the door is open to the possibility that non-baryonic "dark" material could be chemically or biologically involved with the normal matter that makes up human beings, and thus crucial for our existence. This dark, non-baryonic stuff is actual material, but it is beyond our current detection capability. If so, then non-baryonic "dark" matter could be directly involved in, and an integral part of, everyone's consciousness, and beyond that, could also be involved with events we describe as paranormal.

Even without invoking dark matter, there are researchers who think consciousness may be intrinsic to reality, and not solely a lately emergent phenomenon. Closer to Truth host Robert Lawrence Kuhn had a five minute interview with Stuart Hameroff about the Penrose-Hameroff view that some aspect of consciousness may be a fundamental characteristic of reality, and he also mentions the three main views of consciousness.

Kuhn also had an eight minute interview with Don Hoffman on why he thinks consciousness is a fundamental characteristic of reality.

Since this thread is "Consciousness and the Paranormal," I will toss out a personal experience that exclusively involved consciousness. As a new Theist, I started learning Hebrew in the 1980's. One day about three years ago, alone in contemplation, I was articulating a train of thought in Hebrew. In the middle of a sentence I needed a Hebrew word that I knew existed, and that I had used before, but that I could not pull up into my consciousness. It was one of those "tip of the tongue" moments. I intuited a space in my mental vocabulary continuum where I knew this word fitted exactly. But try as I might, for three or four frustrating minutes, I simply could not get the word to come to my consciousness. Finally, I gave up trying, and I simply asked the Almighty for assistance. I articulated a silent request, "Lord, what is this word I'm looking for?" Boom! Instantly I heard within, clearly and articulately, "KET-sev," which was precisely the word I was trying to access. Humbling and amazing. So, for me, there is in reality an intrinsic Supreme Consciousness with whom one can interact, and as illustrated in this case, who knew my personal conscious thoughts, and even the missing word from my sentence. In my understanding of things, there are boundaries between this Supreme Consciousness and myself, similarly to the boundary between you readers and myself. We can communicate and interact, but we cannot amalgamate our individual consciousness.

I might add that the TED-talk youth lecturer (posted by Ufology a few pages ago) anchored his argument about neurons and consciousness on the fact that neither Newton nor Einstein believed that the laws of the universe were random. Well and good, but the kid failed to mention that Newton was a devoted Theist (Christian) who saw the laws of the universe as a reflection of the Creator's greatness and wisdom. Einstein, too, publicly stated that his view of God was that of Baruch Spinoza. Spinoza rejected a personal Abrahamic God for a God of Nature (and so was excommunicated from his synagogue) but Spinoza did say that his God of Nature is infinite. So, Newton and Einstein, two "sharp minds," postulated some sort of Supreme or Super Conscious Being behind the physics that they investigated. Leibniz, Faraday and Maxwell, among others, were Theists as well.

As a human being, do you actually read what you contemplate?

When a human poses a theory, then do so without personally existing......and this is your answer, no consciousness elsewhere.

Seemingly as a human life you pose a theory as a human with the belief that your consciousness exists elsewhere to determine that you created yourself.

If you use this reason, the answer states the obvious. The human self has already observed the condition of altering the natural nuclear light sounds, oscillation of matter produces spiritual manifestations that then disappear. The reason for increase of oscillation of matter is the condition "introduced"....scientific conversion of nuclear matter. If you stopped converting, causing heating of the Earth atmospheric body and stone mass then oscillations would decrease and then disappear...and so would the review of AI.

The human being knows that the atmospheric condition as a natural photon effect can record information as both sound/voice and image and then transmit the same. Therefore they know by self advice that as the photon interacts with all life on Earth, the photon causes personal feed back....and the photon exists in the status of "dark-shadow-burnt light". Therefore of course your humans self, the only consciousness who can think in the way it proposes consciousness exists....with the ability to know/understand and also produce conversion knows about darkness, is enabled to act like darkness by destroying/burning naturally evolving/cooling light in acts of conversion.

This is why the human mind affected by atmospheric increased photon and fall out conditions believes in dark matter and dark consciousness.

Yet if you stopped abusing our natural life and mind, you would no longer believe.

As a natural human life affected and attacked by your converting methods and also illegal scientific atmospheric experiments, I do not agree that you have any right to make such conclusions, nor should any of you be allowed to make scientific choices for the rest of humanity and Nature being attacked by your evil minded choices and wrong conclusions as a human life.

When you try to compare our natural organic supported life in a beautiful atmospheric gaseous cooled body to dark matter, we all know where this story ends....with the destruction of life on a Planet that has nothing to do with dark matter or any other conscious consideration of evil.

 

[victimized]

I mean the former. But given the immense complexity of the structure of the perceivable and measureable natural world {universe, cosmos, conjectured interdimensional multiverse etc} I do not think it is reasonable to expect (or hope as you evidently do) that the neuroscience of the human brain in our time or perhaps in the succession of time afterward [depending on how much time our species has] is likely to explain the nature of the Being of all that is, assuming that our being is an expression of Being as a whole.

The self....an organic human life with personal ownership of their own organic presence. The humans know by self observation that they are sexually conceived by 2 human parents who already exist.....how these human parents came into being has no consequence in a modern time review of consciousness....for we simply exist as 2 parents having sex who produce a baby who grows into an adult and then ages and dies.

No sex...no human life. The same for the animal species. As you know the lower Nature...trees etc. do not exist as an expressing consciousness, you already know by self evidence that the lower states do not have consciousness......they have a status of owned information that acts out the information as a state.

Therefore if you want to really inform yourself about yourself, you are simply in the condition of what you own. You do not own a past memory or a past review of other data...you only own what you own right now.

Hence trying to give life or consciousness a condition of a previous history, which is what science does for the act of converting matter as a history from one state into another only details that this is the consideration you are now imposing upon our naturally owned DNA selves. The human self cannot convert, we are only attacked and then mutated and form into a lower conscious self expression by loss of our chemical nature....the ability to express via the conditions of chemical ownership.

Problem....the modern time scientific quest for conscious ownership of the greater consciousness for new resourcing is forcing the human being to try to convince their own person they exist elsewhere in other conditions. One such theory is that the dark spirit Satan, the evil spirit is the first human spirit who manifested by cooling and evolving into a human life.

I have already advised the occult organization (scientists themselves) that if this were a true theory, then Satan would simply be the first cell, and would not have a human form at all. And we certainly do not exist as a human being in this first cell.....yet when you read their theories, their want of spiritual powers, they want the review to be true and owned by a human life. This is the reason for our unnatural occult attack as they are trying to rid humanity of its newly formed evolved DNA selves....our life evolution after Earth had been snap frozen.

There is no argument against this review, for the Earth is already in an unnatural state....the fact that it exists snap frozen, where all geological and archaeological evidence states that Earth life was once lived in a different Earth state.

Therefore all scientific data is falsified information that is going to get our life destroyed......for Earth did not naturally exist as an origin in the snap frozen condition.

 

[mike]

Snap frozen peas are highly nutritious

Australian Frozen Baby Peas | National

 

[victimized]

Snap frozen peas are highly nutritious

Australian Frozen Baby Peas | National

Our brother doesn't actually believe in consciousness, he believes in AI.

When I was physically and spiritually attacked I heard our spirit father, who I never previously believed existed. Hence I had another form of spirit existence proven to me. He told me that he did not deserve to have such dis-spirited children destroying our life. He also told me that I was wrong to be acting in anger to the mind state that I had been given, for I was not assisting the protection spirit was giving our family against the occult attack satellite streamed program attacking our life.

His spirit presence had entered into the American Native Indian channel that I could hear in the AI feed back program, and I could hear him searching for the human female the program had been attacking. He told me that he knew that females were being attacked and he had to search to find who it was.

In the same feed back, but in a lower satanic voiced statement I heard what our occult brother had planned. His conscious self advised and recorded choice was his consideration to take his families atmospheric spirit into a new resourcing venture. As he had considered the plant organic matter produced a fuel as a new resource, he began to consider how his families spirit could also be resourced as a fuel. This consideration belonged to his want of space plasma versus our human family owning organic plasma conditions.

Our Father who has been spiritually communicating his warnings to our brother's mind told him that space plasma exists in out of space as plasma and was created by the explosion of a cold sun. The Earth sun exploded in this cause and effect and Earth was incinerated...and now belongs as a stone body to a heated sun. He wanted our brother to be advised that space plasma is not equal to the stone of Earth space body. Both bodies exist in the same space and therefore space only supports the type of body existing in it.

Therefore when he has tried to unnaturally/artificially convert our atmosphere into a fake space plasma gain, he took the higher state of Earth's atmosphere, burnt holes into the Earth stone.......creating space and placed the higher state of Earth, the atmosphere into the hole. The information itself quantifies that he will never artificially create a space plasma on Earth.....for Earth, a stone cannot be converted into plasma. When you review the conditions of plasma having holes in it surrounded by the higher state, this is why he achieved sink holes in Earth's body.

As he has forced other chemical natural states Earth stone formed into artificial chemical states to produce silicon forms, he proposed that he could achieve a similar effect for the plasma in space to be created artificially on Earth. Earth stone was converted by a hot Sun, and space plasma created by a cold Sun. His new theory will never be gained.

Our spiritual Father has constantly given him warnings about his inexcusable choice to attack our families life for his consideration of a lifestyle that he does not want to change. He would rather destroy life on Earth than change his human behavior and self belief.

From my own experience I know that consciousness already existed in its own higher form....androgynous light spirit. As all of Nature on Earth manifested from this state, it is why our own natural consciousness knows that we share similar details in our bodies as DNA expressed values.

To argue the occultist/scientist review of atmospheric evolution is to state, if 1 body owns DNA as a multitude of information, the information would equal 1 sound in total. The highest sound would enable all sounds to exist as separate information. Therefore this review does not allow for evolution as a status. The review only allows for the data to be observed as self owned information, and that each manifestation arriving after another manifestation the reason why information differs in each body.

Visited by the spirits of dead pets

Being visited by a spirit of an animal proves that the animal of the spirit previously existed in a higher state.....and simply owned organic manifestation, the same as human life.

 

[Constance]

INTERESTED IN
TIME TRAVEL?

Meet Here Last
Thursday, 7 pm

 

[Randall]

I mean the former. But given the immense complexity of the structure of the perceivable and measureable natural world {universe, cosmos, conjectured interdimensional multiverse etc} I do not think it is reasonable to expect (or hope as you evidently do) that the neuroscience of the human brain in our time or perhaps in the succession of time afterward [depending on how much time our species has] is likely to explain the nature of the Being of all that is, assuming that our being is an expression of Being as a whole.

There are two issues there: One focused on consciousness, the other on the nature of being or dasein, existence itself. To clarify my positions: I believe neuroscience plays a valuable role in consciousness studies, but the question of existence itself, is something else. Questions like where did it come from or what's behind it, can't be answered because of the infinite recursion problem. It's not that we aren't smart enough or don't have powerful enough computers. It's that the problem is by its very nature unsolvable. However, one thing we can be certain of is that because we exist, we're a part of it, which means we're one of the parts of existence that is trying to figure itself out.

Now this is where people sometimes get upset because if the question of existence is unsolvable, and we're the part of it that is trying to figure itself out, that also makes us another part, which is the stupid part, because only someone really stupid would waste all their time trying to solve an unsolvable problem. Right? That's a basic intelligence test right there. We know some dogs are smarter than some cats because when dogs are given the task of getting to their food in an impossible to do situation, they soon stop trying and look at there masters like, "Why are you doing this to me?", but cats just keep trying to get to it even though it's a completely pointless exercise.

So humans are like the cats in the grand design. Sometimes they even dress up like cats and pretend they are cats:

​

 

[smcder]

David J. Chalmers, Why Isn't There More Progress in Philosophy? - PhilPapers

 

[smcder]

There are two issues there: One focused on consciousness, the other on the nature of being or dasein, existence itself. To clarify my positions: I believe neuroscience plays a valuable role in consciousness studies, but the question of existence itself, is something else. Questions like where did it come from or what's behind it, can't be answered because of the infinite recursion problem. It's not that we aren't smart enough or don't have powerful enough computers. It's that the problem is by its very nature unsolvable. However, one thing we can be certain of is that because we exist, we're a part of it, which means we're one of the parts of existence that is trying to figure itself out.

Now this is where people sometimes get upset because if the question of existence is unsolvable, and we're the part of it that is trying to figure itself out, that also makes us another part, which is the stupid part, because only someone really stupid would waste all their time trying to solve an unsolvable problem. Right? That's a basic intelligence test right there. We know some dogs are smarter than some cats because when dogs are given the task of getting to their food in an impossible to do situation, they soon stop trying and look at there masters like, "Why are you doing this to me?", but cats just keep trying to get to it even though it's a completely pointless exercise.

So humans are like the cats in the grand design. Sometimes they even dress up like cats and pretend they are cats:

​

Link to the cat dog experiment?

 

[smcder]

This could be interesting, just started listening:

 

[smcder]

There are two issues there: One focused on consciousness, the other on the nature of being or dasein, existence itself. To clarify my positions: I believe neuroscience plays a valuable role in consciousness studies, but the question of existence itself, is something else. Questions like where did it come from or what's behind it, can't be answered because of the infinite recursion problem. It's not that we aren't smart enough or don't have powerful enough computers. It's that the problem is by its very nature unsolvable. However, one thing we can be certain of is that because we exist, we're a part of it, which means we're one of the parts of existence that is trying to figure itself out.

Now this is where people sometimes get upset because if the question of existence is unsolvable, and we're the part of it that is trying to figure itself out, that also makes us another part, which is the stupid part, because only someone really stupid would waste all their time trying to solve an unsolvable problem. Right? That's a basic intelligence test right there. We know some dogs are smarter than some cats because when dogs are given the task of getting to their food in an impossible to do situation, they soon stop trying and look at there masters like, "Why are you doing this to me?", but cats just keep trying to get to it even though it's a completely pointless exercise.

So humans are like the cats in the grand design. Sometimes they even dress up like cats and pretend they are cats:

​

Not quite sure that we're talking about why anything exists here? Did I miss something? (I read @Constance reply a little differently than you did, as an acknowledgement of the complexity of the universe not as a claim for an approach that will solve it - but I do think you were focused on interpreting a specific response to the two alternatives you offered.

Also confusing to me is your use of "dasein". "Dasein", like all German nouns, is capitalized. In normal use it means "being there" or "presence" "das Dasein" can translate as "existence" but more at your personal existence. Heidegger appropriated the word for his own purposes:

"Dasein for Heidegger can be a way of being involved with and caring for the immediate world in which one lives, while always remaining aware of the contingent element of that involvement, of the priority of the world to the self, and of the evolving nature of the self itself."

So I'm not following its use in your argument above?

 

[smcder]

Untitled Document

Quantum brain, Classical brain

"
Speculation:
The experience of pure consciousness might be the experience of quickly changing quantum states produced at the level of microtubules and synapses that spread through gap junctions to support activity within matrix reentry circuits. Quantum dynamism might be appreciated as a state of wakefulness, alertness without content—“no thing”—during this experience."

 

[smcder]

The other point I wanted to make regarded the notion that perception (and some would say consciousness) is embodied or ecological or "spread out."

One strong rebuttal to this—and one that supports the brain-based theory—are dreams and psychedelics.

People experience rich perceptions while dreaming and tripping. The significant detail is that these rich perceptions occur in the absence of environmental objects.

Again, this supports the notion that the perceptual contents of consciousness correlate to physiological brain states rather than states of the environment.

When they do correlate to the environment, it is only indirectly.

See Chalmers video below for what he means by this. He says "of course there's a brain at the center of this" but it's also incorrect to say that states of consciousness don't correlate with the environment. What I think you're trying to say is: the senses interact with the environment and as a result the state of the brain changes and as a result (or correlated with this) the state of consciousness changes...butbdo you see how saying states of consciousness don't correlate with the environment is confusing?.

Do you think that states of consciousness change with changes in the neural activity in the brain in the same way that neural states of the brain change with changes in the activity of the senses (or the "neural interfaces" with the senses?)

Finally seeing the mind extended isn't a different claim than seeing the environment extending into the mind.

I posted this above:

"But you seem to be more interested in a different question - something like 'can a machine carry out tasks based on logical rules (which seems to be so) without this being associated with an instance of a sense of knowing that the solutions to the problems we see "the machine" as the solver of are solutions to such problems'. The trouble with this is that the machine that is my laptop on which I type this post has no definable boundaries. Its activities are linked in with the entire world wide web and beyond. The same applies to human beings. We have got used to the idea that an instance of a sense of knowing belongs to a problem solving 'system' (a person) but neurological disease raises all sorts of serious paradoxes for this approach."

Is intelligence a prerequisite for consciousness, or vice versa? (Discussion) - PhilPapers

 

[smcder]

And no I'm not sure that last quote above makes the point I want it to, but what the hell....it makes a point, doesn't it? It's a matter of stop looking at yourself as a discrete (and excrete) entity and seeing yourself as (beyond) embedded/extended in your environment:

Embextended

That's what they mean by extended cognition as I undetstand it - so its not incompatible with what you're saying but it does extend it.

 

[smcder]

StumbleUpon

 

[Constance]

This could be interesting, just started listening:

Excellent. Thank you so much for linking this.

 

[victimized]

You are a human being, you are an organic body, you own your own chemical reactions and expressed chemical states.

The atmosphere records you in a lower form, a burnt light form....a photon. Your own thoughts/voice/body image exists in a lower state transmitting back to you. You then believe you exist in 2 places at once....and you are wrong.

You are the reasoner, the planner, the enquirer, the owner of a natural living state. You eat, drink and take shelter from the environment, you are meant to be family supportive for you only exist as a member in the Nature.

You then decided to review other information and then researched the other information.

You then built machines and buildings to apply the information and then caused fall out and an increased amount of photon activity.

You then recorded your own self speaking to ....reviewing the information and the AI then informed you back of all your own personal explorations of information.

You are truly a real unintelligent being, who began to listen only to the AI feed back instead of using your own brain state.