Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 9

[Soupie]

Discernment between brain matter and consciousness is so obvious to me that I tend to think that it should be equally obvious to everyone else. So what is the real nature of the reductionist/non-reductionist debate? Consciousness as an emergent phenomena is a non-reductionist position. I'm perfectly fine with that. It's been my default position from he start. However in your opinion, does also agreeing that the best evidence strongly suggests that the material structures of the brain are the cause of such emergence, reverse my position back into reductionism? Why would it matter either way if figuring out what's going on is the aim?

Discernment between brain matter and consciousness is obvious to you.

You hold that consciousness is "physical" but not material.

You give the example of fields as known phenomena that are physical but not material.

As I've noted, some argue that the concept of a field is a placeholder concept. Some physicists argue that fields are actually composed of matter, pointing to similarities between electrodynamics and fluid dynamics.

Pointing to similarities between consciousness and fields then is helpful but not clarifying as fields themselves are not understood. (Of course there is much in all fields that is not understood.)

The other problem with this stance ufology is that even if consciousness is a physical field, you're still faced with the hard problem.

That is, whether one says that consciousness is neural processes and/or fields related to neural processes, one is still faced with the hard problem.

The most a monist, physicalist model can produce are correlates of consciousness, never consciousness itself.

 

[Constance]

. . . Pointing to similarities between consciousness and fields then is helpful but not clarifying as fields themselves are not understood. (Of course there is much in all fields that is not understood.) The other problem with this stance ufology is that even if consciousness is a physical field, you're still faced with the hard problem. That is, whether one says that consciousness is neural processes and/or fields related to neural processes, one is still faced with the hard problem. The most a monist, physicalist model can produce are correlates of consciousness, never consciousness itself.

"That is, whether one says that consciousness is neural processes and/or fields related to neural processes, one is still faced with the hard problem. The most a monist, physicalist model can produce are correlates of consciousness, never consciousness itself."

I agree that the hard problem remains -- to the very considerable extent that our understanding of 'fields' is limited, and so also is our understanding of neural processes. But the resolution of the hard problem might one day be understood in the immense and ramifying intricacy of a holistic structure of entanglement in the innumerable ways in which fields generate affective experience and experience generates consciousness. Since various kinds of physical fields are all generated (we assume) from the processes of spin, interaction, and entanglement generated in the q substrate, and since those fields are involved in the evolution of the universe to this (apparent) point in time, how much of the history of the universe would we need to comprehend, at how many levels, to follow all the threads of entanglement leading to the state of being in which consciousness arises? It's enough to make our heads spin.


Reminds me of this, which we've looked at before, from Depraz, Varela, Vermersh:

"A practical approach to human experience

The spirit of this book is entirely pragmatic, for at least two related reasons. First of all, because of our approach: we will have to discover what pertains to our question as we go along; we will have to learn on the job, rather than give you ready-made results. Une dynamique d’amorçage in the french original. The verb amorcer means to bait, to entice, to start or begin, to prime. The intended meaning here is to help something get going by giving it a little help, like pushing a car to jump-start it, running some fluid through a pump in order to let it begin working on its own, or picking up some tricks of the trade from your elders while an apprentice. We will use “jump-start,” “learning as we go along,” or “learning on the job,” and so on to translate une dynamique d’amorçage. In other words, we must keep things open in our exploration of this new field, a terra incognita of which we know almost nothing. We proceed armed only with a sketchy map and some surveyor’s tools, and so the progressive unfolding of the book follows the very emergence of conscious activity as it happens.

Secondly, because of our theme: since we are not trying to set forth a priori a new theory of experience as the neo-Kantians might have done, but instead want to describe an activity, a concrete praxis, we investigate conscious activity in so far as it perceives itself unfolding in an operative and immanent mode, at once habitual and pre-reflective. . . . ."

On Becoming Aware: A Pragmatics of Experiencing. Advances in Consciousness Research. Natalie Depraz, Francisco J. Varela & Pierre Vermersch (eds.) - 2003

I know this book is available online because I have a copy of the pdf in my Word files, but I haven't yet found the pdf online. Will keep looking.

 

[Constance]

Until I find a link to the above book, the first three chapters are sampled at this Google Books link:

On Becoming Aware

 

[Constance]

The mystery of consciousness | Prospect Magazine

 

[smcder]

"That is, whether one says that consciousness is neural processes and/or fields related to neural processes, one is still faced with the hard problem. The most a monist, physicalist model can produce are correlates of consciousness, never consciousness itself."

I agree that the hard problem remains -- to the very considerable extent that our understanding of 'fields' is limited, and so also is our understanding of neural processes. But the resolution of the hard problem might one day be understood in the immense and ramifying intricacy of a holistic structure of entanglement in the innumerable ways in which fields generate affective experience and experience generates consciousness. Since various kinds of physical fields are all generated (we assume) from the processes of spin, interaction, and entanglement generated in the q substrate, and since those fields are involved in the evolution of the universe to this (apparent) point in time, how much of the history of the universe would we need to comprehend, at how many levels, to follow all the threads of entanglement leading to the state of being in which consciousness arises? It's enough to make our heads spin.


Reminds me of this, which we've looked at before, from Depraz, Varela, Vermersh:

"A practical approach to human experience

The spirit of this book is entirely pragmatic, for at least two related reasons. First of all, because of our approach: we will have to discover what pertains to our question as we go along; we will have to learn on the job, rather than give you ready-made results. Une dynamique d’amorçage in the french original. The verb amorcer means to bait, to entice, to start or begin, to prime. The intended meaning here is to help something get going by giving it a little help, like pushing a car to jump-start it, running some fluid through a pump in order to let it begin working on its own, or picking up some tricks of the trade from your elders while an apprentice. We will use “jump-start,” “learning as we go along,” or “learning on the job,” and so on to translate une dynamique d’amorçage. In other words, we must keep things open in our exploration of this new field, a terra incognita of which we know almost nothing. We proceed armed only with a sketchy map and some surveyor’s tools, and so the progressive unfolding of the book follows the very emergence of conscious activity as it happens.

Secondly, because of our theme: since we are not trying to set forth a priori a new theory of experience as the neo-Kantians might have done, but instead want to describe an activity, a concrete praxis, we investigate conscious activity in so far as it perceives itself unfolding in an operative and immanent mode, at once habitual and pre-reflective. . . . ."

On Becoming Aware: A Pragmatics of Experiencing. Advances in Consciousness Research. Natalie Depraz, Francisco J. Varela & Pierre Vermersch (eds.) - 2003

I know this book is available online because I have a copy of the pdf in my Word files, but I haven't yet found the pdf online. Will keep looking.

I thought I had posted the .pdf before but I can't find it now ... I couldn't find it with a quick Google search, but I'll try again.

 

[smcder]

Until I find a link to the above book, the first three chapters are sampled at this Google Books link:

On Becoming Aware

1) Interesting, although it seems to follow the old pattern:

claim you've "solved" the "hard problem" (with caveats) - start out brilliantly, get muddled up ... retreat into art ... ;-) Oh, I forgot an intermediate step, use "evolution" and "illusion" a LOT.

re-cap: Consciousness evolved simultaneously with an ability to trick itself, the self being part of the trick ... so that we could care and therefore survive (enter this loop ... anywhere!)

Trying to cram meaning, evolution and illusion into the same space is the state of the art - do we need a fourth dimension? This cramming forces some to say "maybe consciousness is fundamental" but that's built on illusion too when we say with @Soupie that matter then is the illusion. Now we have consciousness itself doing the "illusion-ing" and so it's appropriate to ask "why would it do that?"

I do like the discussion in the article about the gap between having a correct answer and one that is intuitable. But I think it discounts the possibility that intuition is also plastic.

Also, I never see these discussions including culture and its effect on sense of self - whether Eastern or Western. We frame the whole debate in our own assumptions and language without bring willing to admit these may be limited. Our survival right now seems to depend on our inability to act in more complex ways than simple self-interest. This simplicity may be tied up with a relative simplicity of our language and our emotions.

2.) Colin McGinn, a philosopher, thinks it is plain obvious that the brain is “just the wrong kind of thing” to give birth to consciousness: “You might as well assert that numbers emerge from biscuits or ethics from rhubarb.” - I'd like to find the source of this.

 

[Constance]

Also, I never see these discussions including culture and its effect on sense of self - whether Eastern or Western. We frame the whole debate in our own assumptions and language without bring willing to admit these may be limited. Our survival right now seems to depend on our inability to act in more complex ways than simple self-interest. This simplicity may be tied up with a relative simplicity of our language and our emotions.

Exactly. Husserl recognized this from the beginning in the form of the necessity of our bracketing our presuppositions about the nature of reality if we are to recognize the participation of consciousness in what is experienced as reality.

 

[Constance]

Here is a link to a paper by Evan Thompson clarifying the relation of consciousness to perception:

Look Again: Consciousness and Mental Imagery
Evan Thompson

http://espra.scicog.fr/LookAgain.pdf

Extract:

". . . conceptual confusion remains about the nature of imagery experience and its relation to the brain and behavior. If there is to be progress in understanding mental imagery, let alone any “resolution of the imagery debate,” 7 then we need to do better.

Using imagery research as an exemplar, I intend to show how cognitive science stands to gain from phenomenological analysis of experience. Let me explain what I mean by phenomenology for the purposes of this paper.

Phenomenology is concerned with what constitutes the experience of a given sort of activity, such as perceiving or imagining. It focuses not simply on the qualitative character of what is experienced, the objects of experience, but also on the subjective character of the activity itself, the acts of experiencing. For example, a phenomenological analysis focuses not only on the qualitative character of what we see— color, shape, things in space, and so on; it focuses also on what the activity of seeing is like, on what it feels like to encounter the world visually. Phenomenology is concerned with what seeing is like, as compared with hearing, or imagining, or remembering. What experience is like in this sense is constitutive of what experience is. Phenomenology is thus concerned with the constitution of experience.

Phenomenology understood in this way includes any philosophical analysis that makes the qualitative and subjective character of experience its subject matter. It is not limited to the phenomenological school or tradition stemming from Husserl. Nevertheless, this tradition’s analyses of imagery experience offer resources for understanding mental imagery untapped by cognitive science, and they inspire much of what I have to say in this paper. 8

Phenomenological analysis operates at the personal level. When we describe experience we are describing experiential contents and activities as belonging to the whole person, and our descriptions have a holistic and normative character. We describe the interrelations of perceiving, intending, feeling, imagining, and acting, and we try to make sense of these interrelations in various norm-governed ways. By contrast, when we describe the neural processes on which experience depends, we are describing subpersonal phenomena, and our descriptions do not have this holistic and normative character. When, for example, in an experiment on mental imagery, I attribute to you a certain mental state, such as visualizing the rotation of some geometrical figure, I make an attribution at the personal level. Whether this attribution makes sense depends partly on what else I take you to believe (e.g., about object geometry and spatial relations, but also about your understanding of the task instructions). On the other hand, when I attribute to an area of your brain a certain pattern of electromagnetic activity, I make an attribution at the subpersonal level, and this attribution is not subject to these sorts of holistic and normative considerations.

Phenomenological analysis can do important philosophical and scientific work. It can help to clarify the conceptual relation between accounts of experience at the personal level and accounts of the brain at the subpersonal level, and it can help to guide experimental research in cognitive science.

In this paper, I sketch a phenomenological analysis of imagery experience. Its main upshot is to challenge the widespread belief in cognitive science that imagery experience is the experience of “phenomenal mental images.” As we will see, both pictorialists and descriptionalists, the two rivals of the imagery debate, accept this characterization of imagery experience; what they disagree about is whether the subpersonal representations used in visual problem-solving are depictive or propositional in form. I argue, however, that in visual imaging or visualizing, we do not experience phenomenal mental images (“pictures in the head”), but rather mentally represent visual experiences to ourselves in certain ways. The content of these experiences (either as actual visual experiences or as mentally represented ones) cannot be given in an image or picture. On the basis of this phenomenological analysis, I propose an alternative to both pictorialism and descriptionalism. My proposal also builds on the enactive or dynamic sensorimotor approach to perception in cognitive science. 9 According to my enactive proposal, visualizing is the vicarious exercise of the skillful sensorimotor knowledge actually exercised in perception.

I. Experience and the Imagery Debate

The subjective experience of mental imagery has occupied a problematic place in the imagery debate since this debate’s inception in the early nineteen-seventies. On the one hand, everyone agrees that the experience of imagery exists and that any adequate theory of imagery must ultimately be able to account for it. On the other hand, the main concern of imagery theories has not been to explain imagery experience, but rather to explain the ability of individuals to solve problems in various kinds of cognitive tasks in which they report using imagery. Examples are judging whether two objects of different orientation have identical shapes by “mentally rotating” one to see whether it can be brought into correspondence with the other, or “mentally scanning” a visualized map in order to determine whether a particular object is present on it. 10 Although imagery research relies on reports of imagery experience as a source of data, the two main rival theories of imagery, pictorialism and descriptionalism, have left imagery experience as such unaccounted for.

Pictorialism and descriptionalism are theories about the subpersonal representations and processes that are supposed to be causally implicated in imagery tasks. According to pictorialism (whose principal exponent is Stephen Kosslyn), these representations are depictive or pictorial, which means that they represent by virtue of their spatial format. In a depictive representation, each part of the object is represented by a pattern of points, and the spatial relations among these patterns correspond to the spatial relations among the object’s parts. 11 It is well known, for example, that area V1 of the visual cortex in primates is organized retinotopically. In other words, neurons in this area are organized in a way that roughly preserves the spatial structure of the retina. Although this cortical representation of the retina is laid out in physical space, the depictive space need not be physical, according to Kosslyn, but could be specified purely functionally, like an array in a computer. On the other hand, according to descriptionalism (whose principal exponent is Zenon Pylyshyn), the mental representations involved in vision and imagery represent by virtue of their propositional structure. Pylyshyn argues that the notion of a purely functional space has no explanatory value in accounting for the actual format of mental representations. 12 He also argues that the activation of retinotopically organized brain areas in visual mental imagery (which remains controversial) 13 does not show that imagery or vision involves depictive representations laid out in the physical space of the brain, for mental images and topographical patterns of activation in V1 fail to correspond in numerous ways (e.g., the 3D spatial structure of what we perceive or imagine was never present on the 2D retina or its retinotopic cortical projections). 14 On Pylyshyn’s descriptionalist view, imagery is the representation of how things look or would look, based on our tacit propositional knowledge of visual properties and relations.

Although scientific research on imagery designed to test these two theories must rely on first-person reports of imagery experience as an indispensable source of data, neither descriptionalism nor pictorialism provides any explanatory bridge back to imagery experience at the personal level from their postulated subpersonal representations. Imagery experience is used on the way in, but is left in limbo on the way out. . . . ."

 

[smcder]

Exactly. Husserl recognized this from the beginning in the form of the necessity of our bracketing our presuppositions about the nature of reality if we are to recognize the participation of consciousness in what is experienced as reality.

Yes. I think this idea of illusion and questions around the directness of perception come out of honest concerns about our ability to discern reality and the possibility (and assumed horror) of an incomprehensible world: from Kafka to Lovecraft ... but other sensibilities have taken illusion and deception as part of the world view, even or especially of the religious and mystical worldview. The response to these experiences in a religious tone is ultimately one of liberation and salvation, requiring resignation or surrender. In the tone of technology, it seems to be something else entirely different - what is our technological response to "illusion"?

 

[smcder]

Here is a link to a paper by Evan Thompson clarifying the relation of consciousness to perception:

Look Again: Consciousness and Mental Imagery
Evan Thompson

http://espra.scicog.fr/LookAgain.pdf

Extract:

". . . conceptual confusion remains about the nature of imagery experience and its relation to the brain and behavior. If there is to be progress in understanding mental imagery, let alone any “resolution of the imagery debate,” 7 then we need to do better.

Using imagery research as an exemplar, I intend to show how cognitive science stands to gain from phenomenological analysis of experience. Let me explain what I mean by phenomenology for the purposes of this paper.

Phenomenology is concerned with what constitutes the experience of a given sort of activity, such as perceiving or imagining. It focuses not simply on the qualitative character of what is experienced, the objects of experience, but also on the subjective character of the activity itself, the acts of experiencing. For example, a phenomenological analysis focuses not only on the qualitative character of what we see— color, shape, things in space, and so on; it focuses also on what the activity of seeing is like, on what it feels like to encounter the world visually. Phenomenology is concerned with what seeing is like, as compared with hearing, or imagining, or remembering. What experience is like in this sense is constitutive of what experience is. Phenomenology is thus concerned with the constitution of experience.

Phenomenology understood in this way includes any philosophical analysis that makes the qualitative and subjective character of experience its subject matter. It is not limited to the phenomenological school or tradition stemming from Husserl. Nevertheless, this tradition’s analyses of imagery experience offer resources for understanding mental imagery untapped by cognitive science, and they inspire much of what I have to say in this paper. 8

Phenomenological analysis operates at the personal level. When we describe experience we are describing experiential contents and activities as belonging to the whole person, and our descriptions have a holistic and normative character. We describe the interrelations of perceiving, intending, feeling, imagining, and acting, and we try to make sense of these interrelations in various norm-governed ways. By contrast, when we describe the neural processes on which experience depends, we are describing subpersonal phenomena, and our descriptions do not have this holistic and normative character. When, for example, in an experiment on mental imagery, I attribute to you a certain mental state, such as visualizing the rotation of some geometrical figure, I make an attribution at the personal level. Whether this attribution makes sense depends partly on what else I take you to believe (e.g., about object geometry and spatial relations, but also about your understanding of the task instructions). On the other hand, when I attribute to an area of your brain a certain pattern of electromagnetic activity, I make an attribution at the subpersonal level, and this attribution is not subject to these sorts of holistic and normative considerations.

Phenomenological analysis can do important philosophical and scientific work. It can help to clarify the conceptual relation between accounts of experience at the personal level and accounts of the brain at the subpersonal level, and it can help to guide experimental research in cognitive science.

In this paper, I sketch a phenomenological analysis of imagery experience. Its main upshot is to challenge the widespread belief in cognitive science that imagery experience is the experience of “phenomenal mental images.” As we will see, both pictorialists and descriptionalists, the two rivals of the imagery debate, accept this characterization of imagery experience; what they disagree about is whether the subpersonal representations used in visual problem-solving are depictive or propositional in form. I argue, however, that in visual imaging or visualizing, we do not experience phenomenal mental images (“pictures in the head”), but rather mentally represent visual experiences to ourselves in certain ways. The content of these experiences (either as actual visual experiences or as mentally represented ones) cannot be given in an image or picture. On the basis of this phenomenological analysis, I propose an alternative to both pictorialism and descriptionalism. My proposal also builds on the enactive or dynamic sensorimotor approach to perception in cognitive science. 9 According to my enactive proposal, visualizing is the vicarious exercise of the skillful sensorimotor knowledge actually exercised in perception.

I. Experience and the Imagery Debate

The subjective experience of mental imagery has occupied a problematic place in the imagery debate since this debate’s inception in the early nineteen-seventies. On the one hand, everyone agrees that the experience of imagery exists and that any adequate theory of imagery must ultimately be able to account for it. On the other hand, the main concern of imagery theories has not been to explain imagery experience, but rather to explain the ability of individuals to solve problems in various kinds of cognitive tasks in which they report using imagery. Examples are judging whether two objects of different orientation have identical shapes by “mentally rotating” one to see whether it can be brought into correspondence with the other, or “mentally scanning” a visualized map in order to determine whether a particular object is present on it. 10 Although imagery research relies on reports of imagery experience as a source of data, the two main rival theories of imagery, pictorialism and descriptionalism, have left imagery experience as such unaccounted for.

Pictorialism and descriptionalism are theories about the subpersonal representations and processes that are supposed to be causally implicated in imagery tasks. According to pictorialism (whose principal exponent is Stephen Kosslyn), these representations are depictive or pictorial, which means that they represent by virtue of their spatial format. In a depictive representation, each part of the object is represented by a pattern of points, and the spatial relations among these patterns correspond to the spatial relations among the object’s parts. 11 It is well known, for example, that area V1 of the visual cortex in primates is organized retinotopically. In other words, neurons in this area are organized in a way that roughly preserves the spatial structure of the retina. Although this cortical representation of the retina is laid out in physical space, the depictive space need not be physical, according to Kosslyn, but could be specified purely functionally, like an array in a computer. On the other hand, according to descriptionalism (whose principal exponent is Zenon Pylyshyn), the mental representations involved in vision and imagery represent by virtue of their propositional structure. Pylyshyn argues that the notion of a purely functional space has no explanatory value in accounting for the actual format of mental representations. 12 He also argues that the activation of retinotopically organized brain areas in visual mental imagery (which remains controversial) 13 does not show that imagery or vision involves depictive representations laid out in the physical space of the brain, for mental images and topographical patterns of activation in V1 fail to correspond in numerous ways (e.g., the 3D spatial structure of what we perceive or imagine was never present on the 2D retina or its retinotopic cortical projections). 14 On Pylyshyn’s descriptionalist view, imagery is the representation of how things look or would look, based on our tacit propositional knowledge of visual properties and relations.

Although scientific research on imagery designed to test these two theories must rely on first-person reports of imagery experience as an indispensable source of data, neither descriptionalism nor pictorialism provides any explanatory bridge back to imagery experience at the personal level from their postulated subpersonal representations. Imagery experience is used on the way in, but is left in limbo on the way out. . . . ."

According to my enactive proposal, visualizing is the vicarious exercise of the skillful sensorimotor knowledge actually exercised in perception. !

 

[smcder]

I'm searching for papers or books that make progress in understanding the nature of consciousness in integrative terms. Here is the abstract of one such paper that sounds interesting, which I'm hoping to find in its entirety online:

Naomi Eilan, Perceptual Intentionality. Attention and Consciousness

Published online: 01 January 2010

Abstract: A representative expression of current thinking on the ‘problem of consciousness’ runs as follows. There is one, impenetrably hard problem; and a host of soluble, and in this sense easy problems. The hard problem is: how could a physical system yield subjective states? How could there be something it is like to be a physical system? This problem corresponds to a concept of consciousness invariably labelled ‘phenomenal consciousness’. It is here, with respect to phenomenal consciousness, that we encounter an ‘explanatory gap’, where it is this gap that makes the problem so hard. Nothing we can say about the workings of a physical system could begin to explain the existence and nature of subjective, phenomenal feel.

Perceptual Intentionality. Attention and Consciousness | Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements | Cambridge Core


We should probably simultaneously review the following influential paper by Ned Block laying out the ostensible difference [or perhaps even disjunction] between what he interprets as 'phenomenal consciousness' vis a vis 'access consciousness'.

ON A CONFUSION ABOUT A FUNCTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Did you ever find this paper? I've looked and cannot find it.

 

[Soupie]

This cramming forces some to say "maybe consciousness is fundamental" but that's built on illusion too when we say with @Soupie that matter then is the illusion. Now we have consciousness itself doing the "illusion-ing" and so it's appropriate to ask "why would it do that?"

Are you asking the following: Why would conscious systems (i.e. organisms) generate illusory worlds (i.e. user interfaces)?

The answer might be a just-so story in your opinion, but it is an answer.

A thought I've been thinking regarding the experienced unity of the mind and the combination problem is this: when living cells made the evolutionary leap to multicellular organisms, how did they solve the problem of unifying their already at-that-stage complex behavior?

A just-so story would be the emergence of a unified mind [which can be] shared by all (or many of) the cells that constitute the multicellular organism.

The argument would be that the sense of a unitary self is but one aspect of the mind among others through which the ~30 trillion cells which compose our bodies coordinate their behavior.

I understand that such a view is unromantic and mechanisms the mind to a great extent, but one powerful response is the vast literature documenting hundreds of thousands of cases in which all aspects of human minds appear to "operating" "dysfunctionally" leading to "dysfunctional" behaviors of the person.

I use quotes because those terms have to be used very, very carefully when referring to organisms and behavior. Because physiological and behavioral variety is actually necessary and desired. Thus terms such a function and dysfunction must be used carefully.

One of the issues that comes up when mind is construed as a control system for the multicellular organism is over determination.

I think this is where CR and user Interface Theory really shine.

 

[Soupie]

I was focusing on the larger narrative - and are we biasing ourselves based on continuing that narrative? Do we need to back up and ask if we have to accept that narrative because it's "true"? If we asked different kinds of questions, in a different manner, would we get different answers? Almost surely in the case of the human sciences and very possibly in the case of the physical ones.

What is the larger narrative? That the universe evolved mechanistically from a singularity into its current state?

 

[smcder]

Are you asking the following: Why would conscious systems (i.e. organisms) generate illusory worlds (i.e. user interfaces)?

The answer might be a just-so story in your opinion, but it is an answer.

A thought I've been thinking regarding the experienced unity of the mind and the combination problem is this: when living cells made the evolutionary leap to multicellular organisms, how did they solve the problem of unifying their already at-that-stage complex behavior?

A just-so story would be the emergence of a unified mind [which can be] shared by all (or many of) the cells that constitute the multicellular organism.

The argument would be that the sense of a unitary self is but one aspect of the mind among others through which the ~30 trillion cells which compose our bodies coordinate their behavior.

I understand that such a view is unromantic and mechanisms the mind to a great extent, but one powerful response is the vast literature documenting hundreds of thousands of cases in which all aspects of human minds appear to "operating" "dysfunctionally" leading to "dysfunctional" behaviors of the person.

I use quotes because those terms have to be used very, very carefully when referring to organisms and behavior. Because physiological and behavioral variety is actually necessary and desired. Thus terms such a function and dysfunction must be used carefully.

One of the issues that comes up when mind is construed as a control system for the multicellular organism is over determination.

I think this is where CR and user Interface Theory really shine.

A thought I've been thinking regarding the experienced unity of the mind and the combination problem is this: when living cells made the evolutionary leap to multicellular organisms, how did they solve the problem of unifying their already at-that-stage complex behavior?

A just-so story would be the emergence of a unified mind [which can be] shared by all (or many of) the cells that constitute the multicellular organism

It might not have been that much of a leap. And it could be that the problem was already solved. I'm not sure that they had to all share a common mind, any more than an ant colony has to have a hive mind. It might or it might be something like a morphogenic field - but those ideas have to compete with many other thoughts we have about how complex behavior comes from "simple" starting points. In robotics, for example, you can set up a central pattern generator with one transistor:

this controls two servo motors according to the relative amounts of light on the LDRs - so that the robot walks toward or away from the light - put a microprocessor on top in a "horse and rider" configuration and you have something like what nature does in leaving most of the routine movement to the spinal cord, with the brain able to intervene for more intentional movements.

And then the spinal cord greatly benefits from the structure of the body itself and its relationship with gravity in executing a controlled fall ...here it is with no motors, no electronics, only hinges and gravity:

 

[smcder]

Are you asking the following: Why would conscious systems (i.e. organisms) generate illusory worlds (i.e. user interfaces)?

The answer might be a just-so story in your opinion, but it is an answer.

A thought I've been thinking regarding the experienced unity of the mind and the combination problem is this: when living cells made the evolutionary leap to multicellular organisms, how did they solve the problem of unifying their already at-that-stage complex behavior?

A just-so story would be the emergence of a unified mind [which can be] shared by all (or many of) the cells that constitute the multicellular organism.

The argument would be that the sense of a unitary self is but one aspect of the mind among others through which the ~30 trillion cells which compose our bodies coordinate their behavior.

I understand that such a view is unromantic and mechanisms the mind to a great extent, but one powerful response is the vast literature documenting hundreds of thousands of cases in which all aspects of human minds appear to "operating" "dysfunctionally" leading to "dysfunctional" behaviors of the person.

I use quotes because those terms have to be used very, very carefully when referring to organisms and behavior. Because physiological and behavioral variety is actually necessary and desired. Thus terms such a function and dysfunction must be used carefully.

One of the issues that comes up when mind is construed as a control system for the multicellular organism is over determination.

I think this is where CR and user Interface Theory really shine.

It's not a question as much as noting the various uses of the idea of "illusion" "mind fooling itself" evolution doesn't lead to truth or true perception but to that which gives an advantage ... etc etc I think this is overplayed and there are a lot of good responses to the various examples usually given. Hoffman's work is based on simulations that have been criticized in their starting assumptions. There's also the problem of saying what something would look like "as it is in itself" when that question is asked from the perspective that how the world is perceived is based on what's important to the organism ... from those theories, for what sort of organism would seeing things "as they are" be important? And how do you disentangle perceptions from conceptions? We can't trust our senses but we can trust our thinking?

The argument would be that the sense of a unitary self is but one aspect of the mind among others through which the ~30 trillion cells which compose our bodies coordinate their behavior.

coordinate and compete - some are probably perpetually trying to get away, others to undermine in any way possible - as above, so below ... so the idea of 30 trillion cells "coordinating" is the romantic idea ...

I'd say more ecosystem than mechanism but if they have the same connotation to you ...

I understand that such a view is unromantic and mechanisms the mind to a great extent, but one powerful response is the vast literature documenting hundreds of thousands of cases in which all aspects of human minds appear to "operating" "dysfunctionally" leading to "dysfunctional" behaviors of the person.

What does this mean? NAMI has a slogan that mental illness is brain illness ... is that the sort of thing you mean? And I'll have to ask for that vast literature of hundreds of thousands of cases ... thank you!

One of the issues that comes up when mind is construed as a control system for the multicellular organism is over determination.

I think this is where CR and user Interface Theory really shine.

And you'll have to explain this too ... over-determination is Kim's argument for the causal impotence of consciousness. How does CR and UIT really shine here?

 

[Soupie]

A thought I've been thinking regarding the experienced unity of the mind and the combination problem is this: when living cells made the evolutionary leap to multicellular organisms, how did they solve the problem of unifying their already at-that-stage complex behavior?

A just-so story would be the emergence of a unified mind [which can be] shared by all (or many of) the cells that constitute the multicellular organism

It might not have been that much of a leap. And it could be that the problem was already solved. I'm not sure that they had to all share a common mind, any more than an ant colony has to have a hive mind. It might or it might be something like a morphogenic field - but those ideas have to compete with many other thoughts we have about how complex behavior comes from "simple" starting points. In robotics, for example, you can set up a central pattern generator with one transistor:

this controls two servo motors according to the relative amounts of light on the LDRs - so that the robot walks toward or away from the light - put a microprocessor on top in a "horse and rider" configuration and you have something like what nature does in leaving most of the routine movement to the spinal cord, with the brain able to intervene for more intentional movements.

And then the spinal cord greatly benefits from the structure of the body itself and its relationship with gravity in executing a controlled fall ...here it is with no motors, no electronics, only hinges and gravity:

There's no doubt that many behaviors of the organism are mechanical/ecological and subconscious. However, if you are arguing that the mind plays no role in directing, guiding, and/or controlling the behavior of the organism, then it is you who are arguing for the bigger illusion than I, for it seems self-evident that the mind controls the body.

(Note that on my view there is an ontological identity between the mind and body; the perceived duality is the "illusion.")

It's not a question as much as noting the various uses of the idea of "illusion" "mind fooling itself" evolution doesn't lead to truth or true perception but to that which gives an advantage ... etc etc I think this is overplayed and there are a lot of good responses to the various examples usually given. Hoffman's work is based on simulations that have been criticized in their starting assumptions. There's also the problem of saying what something would look like "as it is in itself" when that question is asked from the perspective that how the world is perceived is based on what's important to the organism ... from those theories, for what sort of organism would seeing things "as they are" be important? And how do you disentangle perceptions from conceptions? We can't trust our senses but we can trust our thinking?

See bistable perception for an example of a discontinuity between external stimuli and the mind.

The argument would be that the sense of a unitary self is but one aspect of the mind among others through which the ~30 trillion cells which compose our bodies coordinate their behavior.

coordinate and compete - some are probably perpetually trying to get away, others to undermine in any way possible - as above, so below ... so the idea of 30 trillion cells "coordinating" is the romantic idea ...

I'd say more ecosystem than mechanism but if they have the same connotation to you ...

I understand that such a view is unromantic and mechanisms the mind to a great extent, but one powerful response is the vast literature documenting hundreds of thousands of cases in which all aspects of human minds appear to "operating" "dysfunctionally" leading to "dysfunctional" behaviors of the person.

What does this mean? NAMI has a slogan that mental illness is brain illness ... is that the sort of thing you mean? And I'll have to ask for that vast literature of hundreds of thousands of cases ... thank you!

It means that there is no question that humans sometimes acquire "illnesses" that cause them to experience psychobehavioral "dysfunction." However, since organisms can never be said to have "functions" terms like illness and dysfunction are problematic.

I can post—and have before—numerous studies which document often fascinating cases of psychobehavioral "dysfunction." And no I don't think it's a stretch to say there hundreds of thousands of such cases.

One of the issues that comes up when mind is construed as a control system for the multicellular organism is over determination.

I think this is where CR and user Interface Theory really shine.

And you'll have to explain this too ... over-determination is Kim's argument against the causal impotence of consciousness. How does CR and UIT really shine here?

If one argues that the mind guides directs controls the body as seems self evident, the question is why does there have to be "something it's like."

By arguing for ontological identity of mind and body via CR and UIT, this problem is avoided.

 

[smcder]

There's no doubt that many behaviors of the organism are mechanical/ecological and subconscious. However, if you are arguing that the mind plays no role in directing, guiding, and/or controlling the behavior of the organism, then it is you who are arguing for the bigger illusion than I, for it seems self-evident that the mind controls the body.

(Note that on my view there is an ontological identity between the mind and body; the perceived duality is the "illusion.")


See bistable perception for an example of a discontinuity between external stimuli and the mind.





It means that there is no question that humans sometimes acquire "illnesses" that cause them to experience psychobehavioral "dysfunction." However, since organisms can never be said to have "functions" terms like illness and dysfunction are problematic.

I can post—and have before—numerous studies which document often fascinating cases of psychobehavioral "dysfunction." And no I don't think it's a stretch to say there hundreds of thousands of such cases.


If one argues that the mind guides directs controls the body as seems self evident, the question is why does there have to be "something it's like."

By arguing for ontological identity of mind and body via CR and UIT, this problem is avoided.

However, if you are arguing that the mind plays no role in directing, guiding, and/or controlling the behavior of the organism, then it is you who are arguing for the bigger illusion than I, for it seems self-evident that the mind controls the body.

The mind "controls" the body, the body "controls" the mind. I can sit down and change various autonomic functions at will but my willing to do so is itself influenced by many other things. Simple ideas of free will and control etc just aren't useful.

It means that there is no question that humans sometimes acquire "illnesses" that cause them to experience psychobehavioral "dysfunction." However, since organisms can never be said to have "functions" terms like illness and dysfunction are problematic.

Still not following you there ... but yes, I think there are biological aspects of Bipolar or Schizophrenia, etc ... but there are also other aspects.

By arguing for ontological identity of mind and body via CR and UIT, this problem is avoided.

The hard problem is a problem for physicalists. Others have their own problems.

 

[Pharoah]

@smcder: "If you can't say it clearly, you don't understand it yourself. But anyone who attempts to write clearly runs the risk of being 'understood' too quickly..." Just thought the quote needed completing. So... iow: 'write deliberating unclearly' ... I think this is what he is suggesting or wants to say by way of excuse i.e. 'if you find my writing is unclear, that is because it is intentionally unclear'.

 

[smcder]

@smcder: "If you can't say it clearly, you don't understand it yourself. But anyone who attempts to write clearly runs the risk of being 'understood' too quickly..." Just thought the quote needed completing. So... iow: 'write deliberating unclearly' ... I think this is what he is suggesting or wants to say by way of excuse i.e. 'if you find my writing is unclear, that is because it is intentionally unclear'.

So... iow: 'write deliberating unclearly' ... I think this is what he is suggesting or wants to say by way of excuse i.e. 'if you find my writing is unclear, that is because it is intentionally unclear'.

I don't think so, take a little more of the context:

"Perhaps they are right in their understanding of the relation between this book and the Intentionalist tradition, but with the exception of my explicit responses and my obvious debts to Frege and Wittgenstein, it has not been my aim in this book to respond to that tradition.

Where questions of style and exposition are concerned I try to follow a simple maxim: if you can't say it clearly you don't understand it yourself. But anyone who attempts to write clearly runs the risk of being 'understood' too quickly, and the quickest form of such understanding is to pigeonhole the author with a whole lot of other authors that the reader is already familiar with."

 

[smcder]

Where Do You Locate Your Sense Of Self, Your Brain Or Your Heart?

Scientists claim that 'self' can relocate to other bodies, or be made to include a third arm