Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 8

[smcder]

If dolphins, now or in the future, philosophize and we learn to communicate with them ... we could ask them about Nagel's paper ... they echolocate like the bat, so the example might not make much sense to them ... I wonder too what they would make of opposable thumbs ... they might choose something that for them is very exotic ... perhaps, if feeling particularly magnanimous, they might choose a shark.

Indeed, in other respects, you can hardly regard any creatures of the deep with the same feelings that you do those of the shore. For though some old naturalists have maintained that all creatures of the land are of their kind in the sea; and though taking a broad general view of the thing, this may very well be; yet coming to specialties, where, for example, does the ocean furnish any fish that in disposition answers to the sagacious kindness of the dog? The accursed shark alone can in any generic respect be said to bear comparative analogy to him.

Why Melville chose the shark over the dolphin to compare to the "sagacious kindness of the dog" ...

 

[smcder]

In terms of naive realism (which could also be called native reifism ... I always think of this:

"And when we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers, that all other earthly hues- every stately or lovely emblazoning- the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea, and the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of young girls; all these are but subtile deceits, not actually inherent in substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deified Nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and consider that the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great principle of light, for ever remains white or colorless in itself, and if operating without medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses, with its own blank tinge- pondering all this, the palsied universe lies before us a leper; and like wilful travellers in Lapland, who refuse to wear colored and coloring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him."

from the chapter "The Whiteness of the Whale"

Moby-Dick; or, The Whale - Chapter 42 - The Whiteness of The Whale

I should have mentioned it earlier.

 

[smcder]

except understanding what it is like to be alive, and therefore -- lacking lived experience -- would be incapable of comprehending how and why we humans have produced the failing world we have indeed brought about on earth in our time. If AI were given enough data about human history, it's most logical response would be to obliterate human life and any life forms similar to it.



Still worse. At least half of what AI could scarf up from the internet would be at best contradictory or frivolous and at worst false concerning serious subject matter. How could AI's rapid-fire computational 'intelligence' evaluate sound interpretations of the phenomena of, say, climate change from incoherent ones and -- worse -- interpretations based not in science but in capitalist ideology and corporate bottom lines?

And even if AI could reach a conclusion about what it should do about climate change, how could its conclusions include the interests of the living species of earth, and especially the human race that largely cannot yet recognize the difference between facts and ideology (which AI might at some point recognize)? By that time, it's likely that AI would prefer to disappear us rather than risk our continuing meddling. And by that time, why should we care? Increasingly our confused and depressed species seems ready to kiss the earth good-bye anyway.

I'd also like to observe that just because computerized 'intelligences' process 'information', we have no reason to expect, much less conclude, that it will have a mainline into the 'information' that some people today think drives the evolution and the being of the universe/cosmos/multiverse, or whatever else exists beyond the horizons of what is visible to us or measureable by us. AI is just another attempt by hubristic homo sapiens to 'steal fire from the gods'.

Nietzsche wrote presciently about the late stages of empire and had an exquisite nose for decadence in art, his work on morals also called for something like a return to the vitality of barbarism ... which is a stage in the cycle of civilization ... this recharges our lust for life ... John Michael Greer hits all these notes in his writing on the "long descent" which he bases on Spengler et al's work ... I think the comments on "our confused and depressed species" remind me of these writings ... normally, we would cycle again and re-vivify human life, but if we escape off the planet, we might short circuit that cycle but I suspect colonies on Mars might look like the Old West or even contemporary boom mining towns in the Dakotas.

 

[smcder]

Hey you can always put me on ignore for a while. I'm sure it works as well on your system as it does mine.

What do you know about my system?? Are you spying on me??

 

[Soupie]

Hmmm ... that makes me think that maybe there is something it like to be a bat?

The insight for me was the "stance" we take. We are systems with inner experience who perceive a physical world seemingly devoid of experience.

We ask why is this? (The mbp or hp.)

We can assume the physicalist stance (naive realism) that the world just is physical and devoid of experience.

Or we can take the stance that the world just is experiential (conscious realism) and that we merely perceive it to be physical.

Even the term "inner" hints at our naive realism.

 

[Soupie]

Nietzsche wrote presciently about the late stages of empire and had an exquisite nose for decadence in art, his work on morals also called for something like a return to the vitality of barbarism ... which is a stage in the cycle of civilization ... this recharges our lust for life ... John Michael Greer hits all these notes in his writing on the "long descent" which he bases on Spengler et al's work ... I think the comments on "our confused and depressed species" remind me of these writings ... normally, we would cycle again and re-vivify human life, but if we escape off the planet, we might short circuit that cycle but I suspect colonies on Mars might look like the Old West or even contemporary boom mining towns in the Dakotas.

Modern man prides himself on his rationality without realizing it is won at the expense of his vitality. ~ Carl Jung

 

[Randall]

Aristotle was wrong and so are we: there are far more than five senses | Aeon Videos

Interesting, but he did miss something I thought should have been obvious in his questioning of how we know a cup before us is in fact a 3D object. Within reaching distance, stereoscopic vision is very acute. We are not only seeing from one angle as he stated, but in reality from two, that are combined into a 3D image. I'm not sure he has taken all the variables for the airplane takeoff example into account either. But I would certainly agree that there are more than our traditional 5 senses:

 

[smcder]

@Constance from the Crease paper:

"Even when, at the hands of Heidegger and Gadamer, hermeneutics was shown to be involved not only in fields like art, law, history, and literature, but in the entire scope of human engagement with the world, hermeneutically trained philosophers reacted to the hegemony of positivism by saying to the natural scientists and to their philosophical defenders, “Hands off the human sciences!” – thereby implicitly sanctioning the positivist self- portrait of the natural sciences."

This is what happened with early science and consciousness, the Church taking the inner, the Science the outer.

 

[smcder]

Interesting, but he did miss something I thought should have been obvious in his questioning of how we know a cup before us is in fact a 3D object. Within reaching distance, stereoscopic vision is very acute. We are not actually only seeing from one angle as he stated, but in reality from two, that are combined into a 3D image. I'm not sure he has taken all the variables for the airplane takeoff example into account either. But I would certainly agree that there are more than our traditional 5 senses:

Please list all the variables for the "take-off" example, eh?

 

[smcder]

Perhaps of some relevance:

- Non-Reductive Physicalism and the Mind Problem1 - SUSAN SCHNEIDER - University of Pennsylvania
- Is “Nonreductive Physicalism” an Oxymoron?

What, for you, did you see as the take-away from these two articles? The "executive summary" so to speak?

Or ... as my philosophy prof used to say: "Can you unpack that?"

 

[smcder]

@Constance

Have you read some of the philosophers listed here?

"A few thinkers have opposed the traditional view – most notably Paul Ricoeur, who has been unrelenting in his insistence that hermeneutics is not a method but a philosophy. A few Continentally-trained professional
[2]

HERMENEUTICS AND THE NATURAL SCIENCES: INTRODUCTION 261

philosophers with both hermeneutic-phenomenological and scientific back- grounds (such as Heelan, Ihde, Theodore Kisiel, Joseph Kockelmans) have begun to read the work of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Gadamer, and others as also entailing a positive re-evaluation of practices of the natural sciences.

A few professional scientists with a scholarly background in hermeneutic- phenomenological philosophy (among whom is Martin Eger) have begun to do the same. A number of more mainstream philosophers of science are utilizing hermeneutical insights effectively and perceptively (Joseph Rouse), while many sociologically-trained scholars who speak with the terminology and often the assumptions of analytic philosophy reveal in their work a deep appreciation for the hermeneutical insight into the nature of histori- cally situated knowledge (Harry Collins, Bruno Latour, Andrew Pickering, Simon Schaffer, Steve Shapin and others influenced by social constructivism). All of these initiatives manifest the rediscovery that all discourse is situated culturally and historically. The days are gone when it could be seriously debated whether a hermeneutical perspective on the natural sciences exists.2 The challenge remains today to understand more explicitly the hermeneutical dimension of the natural sciences in terms of an overarching hermeneutic of all knowledge."

And I wonder what the status/state of this work is today?

 

[smcder]

Personality predicts professional philosophers' beliefs

 

[Randall]

Please list all the variables for the "take-off" example, eh?

A variable that we don't know is included in the example is whether or not subjects automatically tilt their head forward somewhat to compensate during takeoff. I've seen it in movies, but I couldn't tell you if that's been just for effect or if it really happens, but if it happens then a change in viewing angle would naturally lead to a change of perspective. For example if you tilt your head down a bit while looking at your screen, the top edge seems higher up in your visual frame of reference.

 

[smcder]

A variable that we don't know is included in the example is whether or not subjects automatically tilt their head forward somewhat to compensate during takeoff. I've seen it in movies, but I couldn't tell you if that's been just for effect or if it really happens, but if it happens then a change in viewing angle would naturally lead to a change of perspective. For example if you tilt your head down a bit while looking at your screen, the top edge seems higher up in your visual frame of reference.

object constancy?

 

[smcder]

A variable that we don't know is included in the example is whether or not subjects automatically tilt their head forward somewhat to compensate during takeoff. I've seen it in movies, but I couldn't tell you if that's been just for effect or if it really happens, but if it happens then a change in viewing angle would naturally lead to a change of perspective. For example if you tilt your head down a bit while looking at your screen, the top edge seems higher up in your visual frame of reference.

But wouldn't it flip-flop though when you looked down at your lap and back up, though? So that the plane would appear to tilt and level out as you moved your head? I've flown a lot and not noticed this. Have you flown?

"But I want to show you sight and what you see is actually influenced massively by the sense of balance. Think of being on an aeroplane and imagine that I’m your steward. So you sit down in the cabin, you’re looking at me, and I tell you about the exits, there are two at the rear and two over the wings and two at the front and so on. Look around the cabin, see where everything is, see where everyone is, look around, locate yourself in relation to everything there. Now, you’re doing that on the ground.

Now you take off and you’re in ‘the climb’, and when you’re in the climb, look again at the front of the cabin — it looks higher than you are. How can it look higher than you are? You’re in exactly the same optical relation to all the things in the cabin — if it moves, you move with it — everything’s the same, and yet it looks higher. Even though nothing has changed visually, optically, the perspective’s exactly the same.What’s happened, of course, is that those lovely fluids in your ear canals, in the vestibular system, they’re tipping backwards, they’re telling you you’re going up and that this is up, so therefore it’s influencing your vision — it’s overruling your eyes and saying, ‘You’re not looking straight ahead of you in the cabin, you’re looking up’.

Same happens side-to-side, when the aircraft turns, you don’t have to look out the window so there are no visual clues. It’ll look to you as though that side of the cabin, this side of the cabin’s up. How can it look that way? Because it looks exactly the same when you’re on the ground. It’s not as though you’ve changed your head position or the wing went up or down, it’s the same.

So that’s a way in which your sense of balance is influencing your visual experience."

From the Sensory to the Multi-sensory – Work + Life

 

[Randall]

object constancy?

That doesn't seem to be the same thing, if you mean the way it's described here: Understanding Constancy in Relationship

 

[smcder]

@Constance the Crease article makes me think again that the most difficult test of our intelligence is shifting our point of view as a result of examining (and we must first find (and then admit) them) our assumptions.

 

[smcder]

That doesn't seem to be the same thing, if you mean the way it's described here: Understanding Constancy in Relationship

perceptual constancy | psychology

"Perceptual constancy, also called Object Constancy, or Constancy Phenomenon, the tendency of animals and humans to see familiar objects as having standard shape, size, colour, or location regardless of changes in the angle of perspective, distance, or lighting."

 

[Randall]

... It’s not as though you’ve changed your head position or the wing went up or down, it’s the same.

That's the assumption I'm not sure has actually been confirmed in the study. It seems to me that our sense of balance tends to influence the position of our head, so when the plane lifts its nose that could ( and probably does in some cases ) cause heads to gimbal slightly, perhaps unnoticeably unless intentionally measured. The position of the eyes also needs to be taken into account. One might be tempted to think that such obvious things would have been taken into consideration, but then again, stereoscopic vision wasn't taken into consideration with the cup example, so that only goes to show how obvious variables can get overlooked, leading to erroneous conclusions. To be sure the effect is real, one would need to monitor the subject's head and eye positions accurately with some sort of instrumentation during takeoff. Actual perceptual factors could then be replicated on a camera.

Peripheral vision is also more powerful than might be considered. I know it's entirely possible to have the illusion of movement of my position just because my peripheral vision picks up cues from objects next to me, because it's happened to me more than one while sitting at a stop light, when the car next to me has rolled back slightly, making me think I'm going forward when I'm not. I don't see why the change in the angle of the objects on the ground, coupled with things like changing shadows inside the plane, and the subtle movement of people's heads could not lead to a similar illusion to the one described.

 

[smcder]

That's the assumption I'm not sure has actually been confirmed in the study. It seems to me that our sense of balance tends to influence the position of our head, so when the plane lifts its nose that could ( and probably does in some cases ) cause heads to gimbal slightly, perhaps unnoticeably unless intentionally measured. The position of the eyes also needs to be taken into account. One might be tempted to think that such obvious things would have been taken into consideration, but then again, stereoscopic vision wasn't taken into consideration with the cup example, so that only goes to show how obvious variables can get overlooked, leading to erroneous conclusions. To be sure the effect is real, one would need to monitor the subject's head and eye positions accurately with some sort of instrumentation during takeoff. Actual perceptual factors could then be replicated on a camera.

Peripheral vision is also more powerful than might be considered. I know it's entirely possible to have the illusion of movement of my position just because my peripheral vision picks up cues from objects next to me, because it's happened to me more than one while sitting at a stop light, when the car next to me has rolled back slightly, making me think I'm going forward when I'm not. I don't see why the change in the angle of the objects on the ground, coupled with things like changing shadows inside the plane, and the subtle movement of people's heads could not lead to a similar illusion to the one described.

In popular articles like this, they don't often go into these details, but maybe in the discussion notes or if this guy has a formally published piece, or in the original study you mention? - in my experience, the things I think of as critiques often have been taken into account.

The place I would look for that would be in studies for pilot training, I bet the military has examined every angle there is ... there might also be studies related to nausea in passengers as well that might have gone into designing visual cues into the airplane, etc.