Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 8

[smcder]

I think it's adequate in the sense that whatever one considers the phenomena of phenomenology to be, it is something that is perceived in some way, otherwise it would be irrelevant because we would not experience it. So an extensive examination of what perceptions are involved and who thinks this or that about them and whether or not they qualify isn't relevant to the point. The idea was to illustrate the concepts in a way that might better facilitate a common understanding.

Imagine a Venn diagram with two circles. Whatever one's position is on the phenomena of phenomenology, it can be taken and put inside one circle, and whatever ones position is on consciousness, it can be put inside another circle. Where the circles overlap we have phenomenological content. Hypothetically the circles do not have to overlap, in which case we can look at consciousness as "contentless". It seems to be the goal of some kinds of meditation to attain this state. I had hoped this idea would to bring the issue into sharper focus without all the extra baggage. It works for me, so I thought maybe it might help others.

"All the extra baggage" is what I consider the whole point of the discussion ... Otherwise we could just draw a big circle around everything and go home ...

 

[smcder]

@Soupie i haven't listened to this yet but his stuff is always good ...

Yeah ... It's good

 

[Randall]

"All the extra baggage" is what I consider the whole point of the discussion ... Otherwise we could just draw a big circle around everything and go home ...

Hmm. Seems to me the point that evoked the comment wasn't the "whole discussion", but what was meant by "contentless consciousness" and if it was similar in concept to "pre-reflective consciousness". But if extra baggage is what you're after, at least my brevity will make your discomfort short lived ... lol. Merry Christmas to you too .

 

[Constance]

A fascinating study ... I admire your poly-curiousity and the diversity of your interests. Have you thought about writing a book on this subject?

Not for a moment. I'm still a beginner in this Mars rover image research. There are numerous people in many countries on the planet who have been engaged in this work for nearly two decades.[/quote]

I was wondering if someone had done a speculative "bestiary" for Mars ... had looked at the conditions and raw materials and speculated on just what anatomy and physiology might thrive there ... I think there was may be a book by Carl Sagan ... maybe something in the Cosmos series where they speculate on life forms in the galaxy ... "Encyclopedia Galactica" something like that maybe ,,, and there were two television series ... I think both available on YouTube "Alien Planet" or a similar title that speculates about life on other planets and "The Future is Wild" that speculates about future life here on our planet. Not anything rigorous but indicates the genre ... speculative xeon-biology I guess.

I'm not familiar with works of this type, but if anyone can find them you can.

What do you think of Elon Musk's plan to put a colony on Mars? If I'm right Boeing responded to his announcement saying they would get there first -

I'm squarely opposed to it. What might be 'adventure' and profit for humans could well be further disaster for natives of Mars, who have struggled mightily against natural disasters on their planet (and possibly a nuclear war at some point) and, based on what I have seen, survived by will and ingenuity in a still physically stressed world, and carry on an evidently well-integrated civil and communal life in their hours on the surface at mid-day. Mars is not our property to annex. We might offer to help the Martians in their present circumstances, if there is some way we could do so without compromising their own lives and future.

 

[Constance]

As I understand it, phenomenology stands against the idealism and intellectualism of earlier philosophy

Yes, and also against the objectivist presuppositions of modern science.

... this is the reference to "pure or empty field of consciousness" - that would be a point to look at in comparison with Buddhist phenomenology ... or claims of "contentless awareness" ... a point to keep in mind is that this came as a later development in Buddhism as the Buddha himself, it is claimed was very pragmatic and only concerned with the elimination of "suffering" and famously took no stance on a long list of philosophical questions ... Nargajuna and later Buddhist philosophers developed what we might think of as Buddhist phenomenology.

It seems to me that even in deep states of meditation (often described as a sense of 'emptiness') there is still a consciousness present that experiences this sense of emptiness. There is someone having the experience and attempting to describe it in words.

 

[Constance]

If phenomenology is largely about our relationship to perceptual phenomena, then perhaps we can look at "contentless awareness" and "prereflective awareness", as an awareness of the absence of phenomenal content.

@Constance - I'm not sure this is the correct understanding of "pre-reflective awareness"? (or "contentless awareness" either)

I would say that @Usual Suspect needs to immerse himself in and tangle with the texts, beginning with the SEP article I linked concerning pre-reflective awareness and the coexisting sense of one's experience in the world as one's own.

 

[smcder]

Hmm. Seems to me the point that evoked the comment wasn't the "whole discussion", but what was meant by "contentless consciousness" and if it was similar in concept to "pre-reflective consciousness". But if extra baggage is what you're after, at least my brevity will make your discomfort short lived ... lol. Merry Christmas to you too .

 

[Randall]

In other words a "usual" approach is fine at the beginning of a discussion and may be useful at certain junctures further along but it is no substitute for actual knowledge of the subject and familiarity with the specific readings at hand.

That depends on the reason one chooses to explore the subject matter. Those who want to become experts at philosophical trivia or fulfill the word count for a classroom essay or lecture will want to retain the baggage. You may have other reasons that are applicable to you. My journey is different. I'm on a climb and need to travel light. All I need to determine is if the concepts involved afford advancement toward whatever lies above and beyond where I am now.

 

[smcder]

That depends on the reason one chooses to explore the subject matter. Those who want to become experts at philosophical trivia or fulfill the word count for a classroom essay or lecture will want to retain the baggage. You may have other reasons that are applicable to you. My journey is different. I'm on a climb and need to travel light. All I need to determine is if the concepts involved afford advancement toward whatever lies above and beyond where I am now.

Ok

 

[Randall]

@Soupie i haven't listened to this yet but his stuff is always good ...

Uh. If this was the first lecture I attended with this guy, I'd be wanting to get my money back. Setting aside his misinterpretation of quantum indeterminacy, and the totally ludicrous statement that there's no evidence that consciousness is the result of material processes, even the most casual of Star Trek fans knows that the hull of the Starship Enterprise is not composed of titanium dioxide: The Materials Demands of the Star Trek Universe

 

[smcder]

Shaun Gallagher with some intentional goodness ... I forget this is just up the road a piece from me ... a hotbed of phenomenological activity ...

@Constance ... around 7:30 in he gives us a tidbit on Dreyfus which is that Dreyfus defends the position that self-awareness is missing altogether if we are totally immersed in an action.

 

[Constance]

Shaun Gallagher with some intentional goodness ... I forget this is just up the road a piece from me ... a hotbed of phenomenological activity ...

Good!!!

@Constance ... around 7:30 in he gives us a tidbit on Dreyfus which is that Dreyfus defends the position that self-awareness is missing altogether if we are totally immersed in an action.

I'll listen to Gallagher's lecture, all of it, but first to see the part where he refers to Dreyfus's position re self-awareness. From what I have read by Drefus, he does not actually seem to grok either prereflective consciousness or the activity of the subconscious mind as it influences both prereflective and reflective consciousness, thus also influencing behavior and thought.

 

[Constance]

Steve wrote: "In other words a "usual" approach is fine at the beginning of a discussion and may be useful at certain junctures further along but it is no substitute for actual knowledge of the subject and familiarity with the specific readings at hand." Usual Suspect responded, characteristically, as follows:

That depends on the reason one chooses to explore the subject matter. Those who want to become experts at philosophical trivia or fulfill the word count for a classroom essay or lecture will want to retain the baggage. You may have other reasons that are applicable to you. My journey is different. I'm on a climb and need to travel light. All I need to determine is if the concepts involved afford advancement toward whatever lies above and beyond where I am now.

Then I can't see what you hope to gain by participating in your presuppositionally self-limiting way in the discussions in this thread. It seems from what you say above -- and also from your responses to specific discussions here -- that what you want to do is to reduce the complexities of philosophical contributions to the understanding of consciousness [our goal here] to brief statements you frame from within the limited premises of your current mindset, rather than to see what these various philosophical contributions have provided and continue to provide for our understanding of both the nature of consciousness and the nature and structure of 'reality' as our species has been able to conceptualize it. No one can understand the concepts involved in interdisciplinary Consciousness Studies without engaging the detailed texts in which they are expressed by various philosophers, philosophers of science, quantum physicists, psychologists, neuroscientists, biologists, and other researchers.

 

[Constance]

Merry Christmas and Peace to All in the New Year.

 

[Constance]

Listening to the Gallagher lecture (part of a lecture). I think he's clearest when he responds to the first questioner by reminding him of the question he had asked members of the audience at the beginning of the lecture: i.e., 'When did you first become aware that you were sitting in this lecture hall?' The answer he had looked for and that the student or listener had apparently not provided for himself is that the student was already in this situation and pre-reflectively aware of it before Gallagher asked the question. MP speaks about prethetic consciousness, pre-reflective consciousness, as our being "always-already" aware of our being/presence in our surrounding environment -- the natural, or natural-and-cultural, mileau within which we exist before we begin to reflect on it, think about it.

 

[Constance]

I think it helps us to understand the nature and reality of pre-reflective consciousness if we consult MP's rejection of Cartesian dualism/the mind-body problem through his identification of the subjectivity residing in the body well before the development of reflective consciousness emerges from prereflective awareness. MP writes at length about what he refers to as "the Body-Subject" in the Phenomenology of Perception. Here is a paper that will be helpful in understanding the concept of the Body-Subject, in addition to understanding the relationship of MP's phenomenological philosophy to Husserl's vast development of phenomenological methods.

Russell Keat, "Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of the Body"

http://www.russellkeat.net/admin/papers/51.pdf

 

[smcder]

"... and our modern presuppositions ... especially the scientific presuppositions or what pass for scientific presuppositions are generally extremely reductionist and they assume that consciousness is in some manner that's not yet been determined a secondary by-product of fundamentally material processes and it's a perfectly reasonable hypothesis but I wouldn't say there is real evidence for it. It's hard to overstate how mysterious consciousness is as a phenomena." - Jordan B. Peterson

Dr Jordan B Peterson, Professor of Psychology & Clinical Psychologist

Jordan Peterson of the University of Toronto has a number of excellent talks, interviews, lectures and lecture series on YouTube ... I find him to be an eloquent and at times entrancing speaker ...

As a Harvard professor, he was nominated for the prestigious Levinson Teaching Prize, and is regarded by his current University of Toronto students as one of three truly life-changing teachers.​

Maps and Meaning

Peterson published Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief in 1999. The book describes a comprehensive rational theory for how we construct meaning, represented by the mythical process of the exploratory hero, and also provides a way of interpreting religious and mythical models of reality presented in a way that fits in with modern scientific understanding of how the brain works. It synthesizes ideas drawn from narratives in mythology, religion, literature and philosophy, as well as research from modern neuropsychology.

Peterson’s primary goal was to figure out the reasons why individuals, not simply groups, engage in social conflict, and try to model the path individuals take that results in atrocities like the Holocaust or the Soviet Gulag. Peterson considers himself a pragmatist, and uses science and neuropsychology to examine and learn from the belief systems of the past and vice versa, but his theory is primarily phenomenological. Peterson explores the origins of evil, and also posits that an analysis of the world’s religious ideas might allow us to describe our essential morality and eventually develop a universal system of morality.

Harvey Shepard, writing in the Religion column in the Montreal Gazette in 2003, states "To me, the book reflects its author's profound moral sense and vast erudition in areas ranging from clinical psychology to scripture and a good deal of personal soul searching..." He goes on to note that "Peterson's vision is both fully informed by current scientific and pragmatic methods, and in important ways deeply conservative and traditional."[3]

Personality and Its Transformations

Slaying the Dragon Within Us

Dragons, Divine Parents, Heroes and Adversaries: A Complete Cosmology of Being

He has also been on Joe Rogan's show
Joe Rogan Experience #877 - Jordan Peterson

And has spoken out against Canada's Bill C-16

On 27 September 2016, Peterson released the first part of a three-part lecture video series on political correctness.[1] In the video, he objects to the Canadian government's Bill C-16, which proposes to outlaw harassment and discrimination based on gender identity and gender expression under the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code.[4] His objection to the bill did not concern the LGBT discrimination legal debate, but rather the freedom of speech implications of C-16's other amendments to the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code, regarding their accommodation language.

• Peterson argued that the new amendments ... would make it possible for "employers and organizations to be subject to punishment under the code if any employee or associate says anything that can be construed as 'directly or indirectly' offensive."
• arguing that it is necessary for people to recognize the importance of free speech and particularly free speech on college campuses.

 

[smcder]

And then there is this on Jordan B. Peterson ... THE MAN

• Raised and toughened in the frigid wastelands of Northern Alberta, Jordan Peterson has flown a hammer-head roll in a carbon-fiber stuntplane, piloted a mahogany racing sailboat around Alcatraz Island, explored an Arizona meteorite crater with a group of astronauts, built a Native American Long-House on the upper floor of his Toronto home, and been inducted into the coastal Pacific Kwakwaka’wakw tribe.

... makes Jack London look like a middle-weight ..

• He’s been a dishwasher, gas jockey, bartender, short-order cook, beekeeper, oil derrick bit re-tipper, plywood mill laborer, railway line worker and has wrestled Sasquatch in a no-holds barred, steel-cage match. He’s taught mythology to lawyers, doctors and businessmen, consulted for the UN Secretary General’s High Level Panel on Sustainable Development, helped his clinical clients manage depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety, and schizophrenia, served as an advisor to senior partners of major Canadian law firms, identified thousands of promising entrepreneurs on six different continents, and lectured extensively in North America and Europe.

• With his students and colleagues, Dr. Peterson has published more than a hundred scientific papers, transforming the modern understanding of personality, and revolutionized the psychology of religion with his now-classic book, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief. As a Harvard professor, he was nominated for the prestigious Levinson Teaching Prize, and is regarded by his current University of Toronto students as one of three truly life-changing teachers.

Kinda makes me wonder what I've done with my life ...

 

[smcder]

Merry Christmas and Peace to All in the New Year.

And may you all have an out of this world Christmas!

 

[smcder]

I think it helps us to understand the nature and reality of pre-reflective consciousness if we consult MP's rejection of Cartesian dualism/the mind-body problem through his identification of the subjectivity residing in the body well before the development of reflective consciousness emerges from prereflective awareness. MP writes at length about what he refers to as "the Body-Subject" in the Phenomenology of Perception. Here is a paper that will be helpful in understanding the concept of the Body-Subject, in addition to understanding the relationship of MP's phenomenological philosophy to Husserl's vast development of phenomenological methods.

Russell Keat, "Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of the Body"

http://www.russellkeat.net/admin/papers/51.pdf

Reading this now ...