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Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 9

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Ontological Arguments and the Superiority of Existence:
Reply to Nagasawa

Peter Millican

Abstract: Yujin Nagasawa accuses me of attributing to Anselm a principle (the ‘principle of the superiority of existence’, or PSE) which is not present in his text and which weakens, rather than strengthens, his Ontological
Argument. I am undogmatic about the interpretative issue, but insist on a philosophical point: that Nagasawa’s rejection of PSE does not help the argument, and appears to do so only because he overlooks the same ambiguity that vitiates the original. My conclusion therefore remains: that the fatal flaw in Anselm’s argument — as in many other variants — is a relatively shallow ambiguity rather than a deep metaphysical mistake.


http://www.millican.org/papers/2007OntArgMind.pdf
 
Hume, Causal Realism, and Causal Science
Peter Millican

Abstract: The ‘New Hume’ interpretation, which sees Hume as a realist about ‘thick’ Causal powers, has been largely motivated by his evident commitment to causal language and causal science. In this, however, it is fundamentally misguided, failing to recognise how Hume exploits his anti-realist conclusions about (upper-case) Causation precisely to
support (lower-case) causal science. When critically examined, none of the standard New Humean arguments — familiar from the work of Wright, Craig, Strawson, Buckle, Kail, and others — retains any significant force against the plain evidence of Hume’s texts. But the most devastating objection comes from Hume’s own applications of his analysis of causation, to the questions of ‘the immateriality of the soul’ and ‘liberty and necessity’. These show that the New Hume interpretation has misunderstood the entire purpose of his ‘Chief Argument’, and presented him as advocating some of the very positions he is arguing most strongly against.

http://millican.org/papers/2009HumeMind.pdf
 
Constance said:
Leslie Kean was interviewed last week for The Paracast radio program concerning her new book on evidence of survival of consciousness --
Surviving Death: A Journalist Investigates Evidence for an Afterlife.
Here's the link to a thread discussing that interview, which I have not yet heard but will listen to shortly. I've also purchased a copy of her book and look forward to reading it.

March 12, 2017 — Leslie Kean with co-host Erica Lukes
Click to expand...

I look forward to this! Thank you for sharing ....
 
Galen Strawson, David Hume: Objects and Powers
[a chapter published in The New Hume Debate: Revised Edition
edited by Rupert Read, Kenneth A. Richman]

David Hume: objects and power

Extract:

"It is a very simple point. Hume has to grant that thought and language can reach beyond perceptions in such away that the thought that something other than perceptions exists can be allowed to be intelligible and possibly true. For if he does not do this, then, once again, he is condemned to dogmatic metaphysics; to outright ontological idealism; to the view that the statement ‘Perceptions are all that exist’ is provably true . He is landed with a form of metaphysical certainty that he cannot possibly tolerate, as a sceptic who denies the possibility of attaining knowledge about the ultimate nature of reality (other than perceptions). This is the first, crucial component of what John Wright calls his ‘sceptical realism’. The second is simply his endorsement of certain ‘natural beliefs’. He really does believe that external objects exist, and that Causation exists (see §§7–11 below)."
 
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Constance said:
Not following you here, as usual, beginning with your 'if' clause. What is the basis for thinking that analogical thinking is 'created by consciousness solely for consciousness's own purposes'? Would you explain more fully what you mean by that?

It seems to me that analogical thinking begins in prereflective consciousness and develops further in reflective consciousness and is a response to the recognition that some things encountered in the environment are similar to one another. Birds, for example, while varying among species in their appearances and even in their songs, are similar to one another and different from creatures that move about on the ground or disappear into it and never fly. This observation was doubtlessly made by species in the evolution of the primate line, and possibly in others, and is doubtless repeated in the obvious interest of small children in similarities and differences between and among the variety of living beings they encounter.

Given what we understand of the eons-long evolution of consciousness out of awareness, affectivity, and seeking behavior in the primordial world of organisms and animals, and its development of reflection/reflective thought in beings of our human type, consciousness does not create the concept of analogies for 'its own purposes' -- unless you mean by that that one of the motivations of/pressures on evolving consciousness, both prereflective and reflective, is to orient itself to changes in the structure and nature of the physical environment/world in which it finds itself existing, and that this development of consciousness occurs as the result of increasingly self-conscious subjective-objective experiences in the environing local world.

But this doesn't seem to be what you intend to say, to claim. Rather, you seem to present a notion of human reflective consciousness as suddenly appearing fully-fledged in beings formerly un-aware of their being in a world among things and others and, further, suddenly capable of higher-order thought. So that, rather than developing out of awareness, affectivity, and gradual orientation to one's situated existence, the human experience of consciousness is a sudden shock, an entirely new and perplexing experience of an unfamiliar, even alien, self-presence that cannot understand itself in relation to that which exists in its lived environment and is thus under immediate pressure to 'think up' explanations for itself, any one of which "must remain trivially inadequate."

I'm truly mystified by your ideas concerning consciousness; it does seem that somehow you yourself haven't experienced consciousness before beginning to think about it in abstract and objective terms.
Click to expand...

Firstly, I will say that "pre-reflective" consciousness is still "consciousness." So I think we are in agreement for the most part.

Regarding the 'it's own purposes" clause, I think I oversimplified things a bit (just a little) and for the most part agree with your rewording regarding "motivations ...pressures on evolving consciousness..."

I will have to look further into my comments and see where the "suddenness" came from and attempt to backtrack.

I can only provide an analogy to illustrate your misunderstanding (as it appears to me) with a Zen story:

A student came to a master and asked "I have been here for many months and have yet to receive any instruction" The master replied "have you finished eating?" The student replied "Yes." The Master said "well then go wash your bowl."

In another story:

Someone asked master Bokuju, "We have to dress and eat every day - how do we get out of all that?"
Bokuju answered, "We dress, we eat."
The questioner said, "I don't understand."
Bokuju replied, "If you don't understand, put on your clothes and eat your food."

In the first, the "instruction" given was not noticed...
In the second, the understanding sought could not be put into words.

Regarding my apparent lack of experienced conciousness...I would mostly agree. I feel that consciousness is nothing special. But then again..


A sudden crash of thunder.
The mind doors burst open,

...and there sits the ordinary old man.
 
Michael Allen said:
Firstly, I will say that "pre-reflective" consciousness is still "consciousness." So I think we are in agreement for the most part.

Regarding the 'it's own purposes" clause, I think I oversimplified things a bit (just a little) and for the most part agree with your rewording regarding "motivations ...pressures on evolving consciousness..."

I will have to look further into my comments and see where the "suddenness" came from and attempt to backtrack.

I can only provide an analogy to illustrate your misunderstanding (as it appears to me) with a Zen story:

A student came to a master and asked "I have been here for many months and have yet to receive any instruction" The master replied "have you finished eating?" The student replied "Yes." The Master said "well then go wash your bowl."

In another story:

Someone asked master Bokuju, "We have to dress and eat every day - how do we get out of all that?"
Bokuju answered, "We dress, we eat."
The questioner said, "I don't understand."
Bokuju replied, "If you don't understand, put on your clothes and eat your food."

In the first, the "instruction" given was not noticed...
In the second, the understanding sought could not be put into words.

Regarding my apparent lack of experienced conciousness...I would mostly agree. I feel that consciousness is nothing special. But then again..


A sudden crash of thunder.
The mind doors burst open,

...and there sits the ordinary old man.
Click to expand...

Someone asked master Bokuju, "We have to dress and eat every day - how do we get out of all that?"
Bokuju answered, "We dress, we eat."
The questioner said, "I don't understand."
Bokuju replied, "If you don't understand, put on your clothes and eat your food."

Upon hearing this, the questioner threw off his clothes and spat out his food. Bokuju immediately recognized his spiritual master, bowed and disappeared into the woods, where, the evidence showed, he was eaten by a tiger - or perhaps was bitten by a water-snake.

"Crazy old man." the questioner muttered, putting his clothes back on and cleaning up his bowl ... for there had been some very hot spices in his food and this caused his skin to itch and his tongue to burn.
 
Here is one for @Usual Suspect chess player and genius:

Can you solve the chess problem which holds key to human consciousness?

75 years after Bletchley Park sought codebreakers in the Second World War by placing a crossword in The Telegraph, scientists are again inviting readers to pit their wits against a new conundrum to find the quickest minds.

The chess problem - originally drawn by Sir Roger - has been devised to defeat an artificially intelligent (AI) computer but be solvable for humans. The Penrose Institute scientists are inviting readers to workout how white can win, or force a stalemate and then share their reasoning.The team then hopes to scan the brains of people with the quickest times, or interesting Eureka moments, to see if the genesis of human ‘insight’ or ‘intuition’ can be spotted in mind.
 
“If we find out how humans differ from computers then it could have profound sociological implications. People get very depressed when they think of a future where robots or computers will take their jobs, but it might be that there are areas where computers will never be better than us, such as creativity.”

interesting implications and possible sci-fi stories ... since not everyone is creative
 
Michael Allen said:
I feel that consciousness is nothing special.
Click to expand...

A Zen conclusion I guess, and not a point of view I'd argue with. I think it's the title of a book on Zen someone once gave me. According to the Sufi, even 'enlightenment' might be 'nothing special', depending on how we read these lines: "Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water." Others, having their own experiences, might disagree, even though they still have to do what's needed to maintain their physical existence.

In one respect it's obvious that consciousness is nothing special -- we all have it, humans and many animals. That's what I was trying to point out in what I wrote to you last, that we grow up in consciousness without paying attention to it, grow into it in childhood, so that it is as familiar to us as light and air until we become reflectively aware of it as our own continual companion in existence (if we do), and then wonder about it, wonder at it, and perhaps look for ways in which to understand what it is and where it comes from. I still think it is the most interesting and ramifying subject in the world, but your mileage may vary. But if you don't find the inquiry into the nature of consciousness to be interesting, why do you follow the subject and write about it?

Btw, I enjoyed the Zen anecdotes, yours and Steve's.
 
David Morris, Bringing Phenomenology Down to Earth: Passivity, Development, and Merleau-Ponty’s Transformation of Philosophy

Abstract:
I suggest how Merleau-Pontian sense hinges on an ontology in which passivity and what I call “development” are fundamental. This means, though, that the possibility of philosophy cannot be guaranteed in advance: philosophy is a joint operation of philosophers and being, and is radically contingent on a pre-philosophical field. Merleau-Ponty thus transforms philosophy, revealing a philosophy of tomorrow: a new way of doing philosophy that, because it is grounded in pre-reflective contingency, has to wait to describe its beginnings, and so has to keep studying its beginnings tomorrow. This does not destroy Husserl’s project of a transcendental philosophy, it just accepts that the transcendental conditions of philosophy cannot be constituted or even revealed via wholly active or autonomous reflection. Merleau-Ponty thus brings phenomenology down to earth by expanding it into a phenomenology of life and earth that describes the concrete beginnings of phenomena and phenomenology.

Bringing Phenomenology Down to Earth: Passivity, Development, and Merleau-Ponty’s Transformation of Philosophy - Spectrum: Concordia University Research Repository
 
I think for me consciousness is something special. We know it is for the Eastern traditions because they spend so much time telling you that it isn't. The guru doth protest too much, methinks. It is, in the normal course of things, the last power or capacity I want to give up and it is also the very thing from which you can make statements like: "consciousness is/isn't something special".

Zen/Buddhist-ish statements take some considerable knowledge, I think, of the culture, era and language in which they were made - as well as personal experience in the contemplative practices associated with them. For that reason, I can't really assess them for any particular person making them, except to say, I think one indication would be whether the person making them appears to be taking into account the audience they are making them to.

The story I shared was not canonical. In fact I outright made it up. But you know it is true!. Someone somewhere made that sort of mistake - especially if you consider reincarnation and great Kalpas of time - every bizarre thing has happened and there are many canonical stories about these things.

It was inspired by a story (taken from the Midrash?) about the Jews kvetching about mud in their sandals as they crossed the Red Sea.
 

Much of the discussion of Naive Realism about veridical experience has focused on a consequence of adopting it—namely, disjunctivism about perceptual experience. However, the motivations for being a Naive Realist in the first place have received relatively little attention in the literature. In the first part of the talk, Heather Logue criticises arguments for Naïve Realism offered by M.G.F. Martin, John Campbell, and John McDowell. In the second part, she elaborates and defends the claim that Naïve Realism provides the best account of the phenomenal character of veridical experience.
 
Disjunctivism | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

"Disjunctivism, as a theory of visual experience, claims that the mental states involved in a “good case” experience of veridical perception and a “bad case” experience of hallucination differ. They differ even in those cases in which the two experiences are indistinguishable for their subject. Consider the veridical perception of a bar stool and an indistinguishable hallucination; both of these experiences might be classed together as experiences of a bar stool or experiences of seeming to see a bar stool. This might lead us to think that the experiences we undergo in the two cases must be of the same kind, the difference being that the former, but not the latter, is connected to the world in the right kind of way. Such a conjecture has been called a “highest common factor” or “common kind” assumption. At heart, disjunctivism consists in the rejection of this assumption. According to the disjunctivist, veridical experiences and hallucinations do not share a common component."
 
"The naïve realist claims that, in the good cases, external objects and their properties “partly constitute one’s conscious experience” (Martin 1997: 83) and thereby “shape the contours of the subject’s conscious experience” (Martin 2004: 64). So naïve realism entails disjunctivism: if naïve realism is true, then the kind of mental state that is involved in a veridical perception – a mental state that relates the subject to elements of the mind-independent environment – could not be involved in a hallucinatory situation. The hallucinatory state must therefore be of a different kind. A defence of naïve realism therefore requires a defence of disjunctivism."
 
smcder said:
I think for me consciousness is something special. We know it is for the Eastern traditions because they spend so much time telling you that it isn't. The guru doth protest too much, methinks. It is, in the normal course of things, the last power or capacity I want to give up and it is also the very thing from which you can make statements like: "consciousness is/isn't something special".
Click to expand...

Really well said. Consciousness is the last power or capacity any of us want to give up -- naturally, because it is what makes a world possible for us in the first place through its open and intersubjective nature. When we lose someone we love, it is the loss of their conscious presence that afflicts us, because their consciousness has been essential in, woven into, the shared world of our own consciousness, the home we make together in an inscrutable cosmos.

The story I shared was not canonical. In fact I outright made it up.
Click to expand...

I knew that right away. It had the mark of your incomparable wit.

It was inspired by a story (taken from the Midrash?) about the Jews kvetching about mud in their sandals as they crossed the Red Sea.
Click to expand...

That's fascinating if true. So typically human a response in the midst of a miracle.


Speaking of miracles, I have no idea what miracles of consciousness occur for deep meditators, mystics, and mediums, but I think they must occur, and that might be why the guru also instructs his students to pay attention to the mundane activities of their existence during their ordinary hours.
 
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