Consciousness and the Paranormal

[Constance]

When it comes to the mystery of consciousness, the nature of the subject or the "I" is one aspect that particularly fascinates me (though really, all aspects are fascinating).

I agree; all aspects of consciousness are fascinating, and they all need to be recognized as we attempt to understand what consciousness is. There is a new revised entry on Consciousness at the SEP by Robert Van Gulick, who has been developing the entry over the last ten years or so in response to developments in interdisciplinary Consciousness Studies [CS]. It is a very long article but I think one has to read it all in order to appreciate the various aspects of consciousness that have been recognized and continue to be explored in CS, which is a vast ongoing inquiry. Here is the link to that article:

Consciousness (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

I also agree that what you refer to as the "I" {the continuous unifying 'presence' at the core of consciousness} is a particularly fascinating and significant aspect of consciousness. In a next post I'll copy Section 4.4 of the SEP article which surveys seven principal features of consciousness that are generally recognized in CS and that we need to recognize before we form our theories about consciousness. In introducing this section, Van Gulick writes:

The What question asks us to describe and model the principal features of consciousness, but just which features are relevant will vary with the sort of consciousness we aim to capture. The main properties of access consciousness may be quite unlike those of qualitative or phenomenal consciousness, and those of reflexive consciousness or narrative consciousness may differ from both. However, by building up detailed theories of each type, we may hope to find important links between them and perhaps even to discover that they coincide in at least some key respects.

Soupie continues:

If our brain is deceiving us... then it seems that we are distinct from our brain. Is this simply semantics, or is there really a mind-body duality? Or more precisely a subject-object duality?

So if we - the subject - are distinct from our brain/body, which is "having" the experiences? Is the brain/body having the experience or is the mind (the subject) having the experience?

I think many people confuse these concepts as above. Our brain can deceive us, but it is us who is having the experiences and not the brain? Who does the "processing?" Who does the perceiving? The brain or the mind? It's all very muddled.

Yes it is. I wonder, though, why nature would evolve brains in humans that "deceive us" to significant extents -- if they do -- when, according to the dominant scientific theory of evolution, the 'intent' or 'goal' of evolution is the survival of species of life. I also think that popularized concepts of information theory and of machine-like, computational, minds that merely 'process' information within the brain have further inclined some scientists and many nonscientists to entirely disregard consciousness as embodied experience in and of the world {which seems to require ignoring, or failing to pay attention to, one's own stream of experience}.

People tend to think something like organisms > minds > experiences. That is, there are objects that have minds that have experiences.

I think this is wrong.

I think minds = experiences. Furthermore, I don't think organisms "have" macro-experiences per se. I think they "generate" macro-experiences. (Chalmers has convinced me that micro-experiences are fundamental and/or non-physical.)

Would you cite the passages/source from Chalmers where you find this most explicitly expressed so we can all get a fuller idea of what he is saying there?

Going way back to my music analogy: we wouldn't say an orchestra "has" music, but we would say an orchestra "generates" music. Music is to macro-experience, as musical notes are to micro-experience. Musical notes are to vibrating molecules as micro-experiences are to Chalmers' fundamental mental property.

Before an orchestra can perform a piece of music, a composer must first have composed it, not out of a collection of individual 'notes' or 'tones', but out of the phenomenon of harmonics and dynamics as expressed in the history of music up to his or her time (and in some cases beyond that expression). The marvel is the endless variety of human music created from a limited number of scales and harmonic relationships that our species seems attuned to, which appear to some theorists to have their sources in nature. In a way, we seem to 'sing the world' in the frequencies and diatonic ratios/relationships we receive from the physical world, the latter appearing also in our mathematics and geometry. (That may be very badly expressed; I've read only random papers and articles expressing the idea I'm referring to.) Btw, 'singing the world' is a phrase from Merleau-Ponty by which he denotes the inexhaustible way in which various lifeforms express responses to, and communicate with their fellows in, the natural mileau in which they live, the particular 'world' each creature or species connects with and responds to and thus 'worlds' (transitive verb).

]@Constance, I believe, has posted material or thinkers indicating that the subject/object divide is false.[/U] I agree. Chalmers addresses this briefly at the end of one of his papers on Panpsychism. Chalmers appears to believe that phenomenal experience must entail a subject-object pair. My conception is that phenomenal experience is an object. It just so happens that that object is us.

Not 'false' but misleading. I follow MP's philosophy, which sought an overcoming of Cartesian dualism (still influential in science and some philosophy of mind) on the basis that radical dualism could not account for consciousness in and of the world. In MP's penultimate writing {The Visible and the Invisible} he describes this relationship of consciousness and world as 'chiasmic' -- involving two poles {one 'subjective', one 'objective'} of experience in/of the phenomenal world {which is the world that we have access to, that which we encounter}. In the Chiasm MP discerned, consciousness/awareness and phenomena are 'interfused' in the worlding of the world by our species and others). Both poles of the relationship are necessary to the generation of conscious experience in/of the world. From that ground, our species thinks its way to understanding being, including nature and mind.

While agree with most of Chalmers' conclusions - which I hope to share at some freaking point - I think this subject/object issue is huge.

Indeed, the subject/object and mind/body problems are huge, and philosophy has dealt with them for centuries.

Btw, I doubt that Chalmers would agree that he has reached 'conclusions' about consciousness. I think he considers himself to be still on the way to doing so, like all of us.

 

[Constance]

Steve, thanks for posting the link to the E Prime analysis and recommendations. Wilson performed a substantial service there, and I had not been aware of it until your post.

E-Prime

 

[Michael Allen]

would we not call an all-knowing being "God"? (or at least "sir"?)



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Not if by unwrapping the phrase "all-knowing being" you end up with an incontrovertible contradiction.

 

[Jeff Davis]

Not if by unwrapping the phrase "all-knowing being" you end up with an incontrovertible contradiction.

"Unwrapping" would seem illogical. That would mean that we somehow possess the knowledge of how God got into the package in the first place. We do not. We can only theorize in what is the false hope of materialism. At this point, a positive failed notion if ever there was one. Everything within what is QM dictates that we don't understand the first thing about matter. Materialism is dead.

This is what is far more so likely. All time exists as one. We are only allowed snapshots due to the natural constraint of time based perception within waking consciousness. If all time exists as one, the so does all knowledge. Everything is happening right now from time immemorial to this very second until the very collapse of infinity. IMO, Superposition teaches us this with abundant clarity.

 

[Michael Allen]

Constance has asked me to let you all know that she is having some problems with the internet and posting to the forum, this is being worked on - and she can read the posts in the meantime. In response to Michael Allen's post:
Michael Allen wrote: “mindlessness is the absolute foundation of mind...understand?”
Constance asks:

Actually, no. Would you clarify your argument by expressing what philosophical consequences you draw from the above claim? And how these consequences will, or should, “throw a general reset into this forum”?

Well I did say "try," so it isn't as if I knew beforehand any such "reset" would occur.

Our "thinking" is an activity built on a framework of figure vs ground (the old saw). To think about something--to involve ourselves in an activity--requires a foundation of things that both appear and do not appear. Our directed awareness to a particular tasks is induced by our immediate relations to things--and of those same things our focus on them (and their relations--although I am only using these terms for convenience, in reality packages of relations can be considered "things" and we even "thingify" relations without even noticing) is dependent on not having our attention directed elsewhere. Daniel Dennett talks about the "serial processing consciousness" overlaying on top of a "pandemonium" (potentially, although he mentions other less extreme examples) of subsystems each specialized to a particular task...all running in parallel. The sense of wondering what will come next down the serial pipe vs something else, depending on which "ports" you've turned on or off (like right now you're thinking about breathing...in a few seconds you won't be...at least after you quit looking off in the distance after reading this sentence and re-reading the first part before the bracket )



Think about all of the subsystems you aren't directly "consciously in charge of"

Dispatching Viruses and malicious bacterial invasions
Growing
Body Cell Division
Heart Beat (for most people)
Breathing (when you're not, like now, thinking about it)
Reading (try this one out)

So it seems that the body's natural state is to be vegetative. For instance we like to ask ourselves "why do we sleep?" when the real problem (at least from an evolutionary and economics perspective) is "why are we awake." Our need to have an "aways on" global consciousness (a transient state of "all hands on deck") falls within a background of parallel processing subsystems each to their own tasks (pumping blood, breathing air, creating new tissues, etc). When these subsystems are gathered together and fed to a serial processor with memory tied to itself, you end up with something like what you are experiencing right now.

So there it is--mindlessness background for mind.

 

[Michael Allen]

"Unwrapping" would seem illogical. That would mean that we somehow possess the knowledge of how God got into the package in the first place. We do not. We can only theorize in what is the false hope of materialism. At this point, a positive failed notion if ever there was one. Everything within what is QM dictates that we don't understand the first thing about matter. Materialism is dead.

This is what is far more so likely. All time exists as one. We are only allowed snapshots due to the natural constraint of time based perception within waking consciousness. If all time exists as one, the so does all knowledge. Everything is happening right now from time immemorial to this very second until the very collapse of infinity. IMO, Superposition teaches us this with abundant clarity.

Well to be clear we aren't unwrapping "God" himself, but a proposition pertaining to a supposed state of knowledge regarding God. Since knowledge is a notion we are familiar with along with the qualification of "all," we have already in our grasp a well-formed proposition regarding a particular state which this "God" has in the word "all-knowing." Unwrapping the notion of "all-knowing" is therefore within our grasp even if someone were to come along (as you do) and state that "we don't know how _____ got the ability of "all-knowing." A non-sequitur results:

"We don't know how the Red Ferrari became Blue, therefore it is illogical to unwrap and discuss the notion of 'Blue.'

And at any rate we're not discussing anything about materialism--false hopes of materialism have invaded a brain made of matter. This matter, if anything, has false hopes of existence after its inevitable dissolution

And I sympathize with your "we don't know anything about matter" statement, even if hyperbole. But what would it really mean to know something about matter? Lets say you found the ultimate building block of the universe...what would it mean to know it? Wouldn't you just continue to be mystified by the "whys" of this mysterious black box? Knowing something about matter is an extremely tall order even if it were handed to us on a silver platter. We might know everything about this universal block and yet continue to be mystified (why doesn't it have parts?) by its existence. We could even have a system of knowledge built on the deterministic relations of these black boxes and yet continue to claim "well we know everything and nothing about this ...this...thing!"

 

[Constance]

Yes, i wouldn't call it earth shattering, but was more interested in the linguistic aspect of how we interpret the supernatural through personal narrative. The other part i appreciated about it was its sociological considerations in terms of how it explored who are the tellers of the tales and the nature of the tales told.

My impression was that the author's main project was to reveal how the subjects studied were constrained or inhibited in their narratives describing their paranormal experiences by the generally negative mindset in our time concerning paranormal and spiritual experience. The defenses she identified in the narratives against anticipated prejudice by readers are familiar to all of us who become interested enough in paranormal experiences and capabilities, and in ufo phenomena, to speak about these anomalies with skeptics and even debunkers. Also, it's not clear what you mean by "the linguistic aspect of how we interpret the supernatural through personal narrative."

I don't think that examinations of the 'paranormal' or mingling of consciousness could even begin to be categorized or discussed academically as these experiences are "i" experiences and most concerned with our perceptions and our formations of self.

But they have been categorized and discussed by academic and independent researchers in Europe and the Americas since the founding of the SPR and parallel psychical research organizations in the late nineteenth century. In our time, more fully dominated by scientific and philosophical materialism, most academics are reluctant to take significant anomalies seriously, let alone to engage themselves in researching them. Interestingly, paranormal researchers today (including the academic ones) are returning after decades of massive statistical research with humans and RNGs to the investigation of mediumship, telepathy, and other anomalies of conscious and subconscious interaction.

For me her approach is a concretized one, in the way that Vallee also approaches the discussion from known frames of reference as opposed to mystical guesswork, assumptions and descriptions. I don't think, in any observation of paranormal studies outside of lab testing which is minimal at best, there is much in the way that can be said about paranormality, though we can gain some insight into it through understanding who the experiencer is and their circumstances. I think that this helps out immensely with paranormal studies as unlike the mostly unverifiable experience, the experiencer can perhaps be quantified, and it may also help us to understand why some perceptions of paranormality play out the way that they do with different types of witnesses.

The author was working with descriptions of individuals' paranormal experiences. The frames of reference she recognized concerned the cultural and social differences over time in the way in which such reports and narratives have been received. Her charts did not look to me like attempts to 'quantify' the paranormal experiences described or the experiencers themselves, and most of her analysis of the narratives concerned the ways in which the narrators attempted verbally to forestall negative classification of themselves as uncritical, impaired, or unbalanced individuals. What 'frames of reference' employed by Vallee strike you as parallel to the dissertation research we're discussing?

 

[Constance]

Well I did say "try," so it isn't as if I knew beforehand any such "reset" would occur.

I'm still curious why you thought your point of view as expressed in that post might 'reset' the discussion in this thread. We've discussed here a variety of perspectives, hypotheses, and theories expressed in 'the consciousness wars', including the one you seem to be expressing in the rest of your post here:

Our "thinking" is an activity built on a framework of figure vs ground (the old saw). To think about something--to involve ourselves in an activity--requires a foundation of things that both appear and do not appear. Our directed awareness to a particular tasks is induced by our immediate relations to things--and of those same things our focus on them (and their relations--although I am only using these terms for convenience, in reality packages of relations can be considered "things" and we even "thingify" relations without even noticing) is dependent on not having our attention directed elsewhere. Daniel Dennett talks about the "serial processing consciousness" overlaying on top of a "pandemonium" (potentially, although he mentions other less extreme examples) of subsystems each specialized to a particular task...all running in parallel. The sense of wondering what will come next down the serial pipe vs something else, depending on which "ports" you've turned on or off (like right now you're thinking about breathing...in a few seconds you won't be...at least after you quit looking off in the distance after reading this sentence and re-reading the first part before the bracket )

Think about all of the subsystems you aren't directly "consciously in charge of"

Dispatching Viruses and malicious bacterial invasions
Growing
Body Cell Division
Heart Beat (for most people)
Breathing (when you're not, like now, thinking about it)
Reading (try this one out)

So it seems that the body's natural state is to be vegetative. For instance we like to ask ourselves "why do we sleep?" when the real problem (at least from an evolutionary and economics perspective) is "why are we awake." Our need to have an "aways on" global consciousness (a transient state of "all hands on deck") falls within a background of parallel processing subsystems each to their own tasks (pumping blood, breathing air, creating new tissues, etc). When these subsystems are gathered together and fed to a serial processor with memory tied to itself, you end up with something like what you are experiencing right now.

So there it is--mindlessness background for mind.

 

[Michael Allen]

I'm still curious why you thought your point of view as expressed in that post might 'reset' the discussion in this thread. We've discussed here a variety of perspectives, hypotheses, and theories expressed in 'the consciousness wars', including the one you seem to be expressing in the rest of your post here:

The "reset" statement was more a warning that what I was about to post what was probably already discussed. "Revisit" was a better word.

At any rate...I can take a hint. I'll shut up now

 

[smcder]

The "reset" statement was more a warning that what I was about to post what was probably already discussed. "Revisit" was a better word.

At any rate...I can take a hint. I'll shut up now

from Constance:

"I've just lost my connection to the forum again and want to say that I apologize to Michael if I gave him the impression that I wanted him to 'shut up'. I would be glad to see him "revisit" the approach he takes to consciousness so we could all discuss the issues it raises. "



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[Jeff Davis]

Well to be clear we aren't unwrapping "God" himself, but a proposition pertaining to a supposed state of knowledge regarding God. Since knowledge is a notion we are familiar with along with the qualification of "all," we have already in our grasp a well-formed proposition regarding a particular state which this "God" has in the word "all-knowing." Unwrapping the notion of "all-knowing" is therefore within our grasp even if someone were to come along (as you do) and state that "we don't know how _____ got the ability of "all-knowing." A non-sequitur results:

"We don't know how the Red Ferrari became Blue, therefore it is illogical to unwrap and discuss the notion of 'Blue.'

And at any rate we're not discussing anything about materialism--false hopes of materialism have invaded a brain made of matter. This matter, if anything, has false hopes of existence after its inevitable dissolution

And I sympathize with your "we don't know anything about matter" statement, even if hyperbole. But what would it really mean to know something about matter? Lets say you found the ultimate building block of the universe...what would it mean to know it? Wouldn't you just continue to be mystified by the "whys" of this mysterious black box? Knowing something about matter is an extremely tall order even if it were handed to us on a silver platter. We might know everything about this universal block and yet continue to be mystified (why doesn't it have parts?) by its existence. We could even have a system of knowledge built on the deterministic relations of these black boxes and yet continue to claim "well we know everything and nothing about this ...this...thing!"

I always like your reasoning Michael, but I apologize for being out of context here, that was not my intention. Via that emboldened statement above, I would point you to the quote in my signature. Pretty relevant, and indeed, crucial to any and all advancements. BTW, God is not a "he" IMO. God simply is.

 

[Michael Allen]

from Constance:

"I've just lost my connection to the forum again and want to say that I apologize to Michael if I gave him the impression that I wanted him to 'shut up'. I would be glad to see him "revisit" the approach he takes to consciousness so we could all discuss the issues it raises. "

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No worries.

If there's anything worth revisiting--I re-read some of the previous posts on this forum and--in some places--I start to sound like a broken record.

 

[Michael Allen]

I always like your reasoning Michael, but I apologize for being out of context here, that was not my intention. Via that emboldened statement above, I would point you to the quote in my signature. Pretty relevant, and indeed, crucial to any and all advancements. BTW, God is not a "he" IMO. God simply is.

I like mysteries too...

But I'd still like a description of what it means to know (anything) about "matter."

 

[Soupie]

My conception is that phenomenal experience is an object. It just so happens that that object is us.

So, for you, the subjectivity of objects is subject to the objection of the objectification of subjectivity?

"I" suppose it does no good to protest that, subjectively, "I" object to being subjected to the objectification of that very subjectivity?

E-Prime

Is there a specific concept that you are critiquing or challenging? Or are you saying that my ideas/concepts are too vague?

 

[smcder]

Is there a specific concept that you are critiquing or challenging? Or are you saying that my ideas/concepts are too vague?

neither ... it's just humor


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[Soupie]

Would you cite the passages/source from Chalmers where you find this most explicitly expressed so we can all get a fuller idea of what he is saying there?

Yes, I plan to provides quotes and comments from at least two of Chalmers' papers when I get a nice chunk of free time. Possible three papers if I get a chance to read the third.

Before an orchestra can perform a piece of music, a composer must first have composed it, not out of a collection of individual 'notes' or 'tones', but out of the phenomenon of harmonics and dynamics as expressed in the history of music up to his or her time (and in some cases beyond that expression). The marvel is the endless variety of human music created from a limited number of scales and harmonic relationships that our species seems attuned to...

I'm not sure exactly what you're arguing here but 1) the music analogy is just that, so it's not intended to mean consciousness is exactly like music, 2) I agree that music is produced by an intelligence and that consciousness - from a naturalistic pov - is not; one way of thinking about this is to say that autonomous organisms and the minds they generate are either a result of billions of years of adaptive evolution or were designed by another intelligence to do so. However, I do think the some minds (such as human minds) are able to affect the brain/body and thus themselves.

3) Chalmers himself says that understanding how our rich phenomenology could be constituted of of micro-experiences is difficult. I'm not saying it's not difficult, but to me the concept is no different than understanding how the richness of our physical world comes about via the micro-physical world. For example, how a complex, emotional, beautiful song can be constituted of vibrating air molecules...

Not 'false' but misleading. I follow MP's philosophy, which sought an overcoming of Cartesian dualism (still influential in science and some philosophy of mind) on the basis that radical dualism could not account for consciousness in and of the world.

I think of the body-mind as being dualistic in the sense that they are two separate objects/things which can exist independent of one another but which are intimately connected - like music is to an orchestra. I don't think of the body-mind as being constituted of dual substances.

Btw, I doubt that Chalmers would agree that he has reached 'conclusions' about consciousness. I think he considers himself to be still on the way to doing so, like all of us.

If by conclusions you mean "figured it all out" of course no. However, he does identify models that he believes have the best potential to help us describe consciousness - or at least have the least logical challenges as we currently understand the natural world.

 

[Soupie]

A random thought:

I continue to be influenced by Jordan Peterson's description of humans as living/creating an ongoing, dynamic narrative. His ideas of encountering the unexpected, the ensuing chaos, and personal sacrifice are life-changing ideas. It's not a wholly new concept, but his description of it made it clear to me like never before. This personal narrative encapsulates our world-view and our private logic or private sense.

However, I also think that the human race as a whole is living/creating a dynamic narrative as well. This common sense - or consensus sense - that the elders shared, or the religious leaders, or now the "scientific experts" share is just a story.

I'm not suggesting that there isn't an objective, consistent, external reality... but our common sense, collective narrative certainly doesn't fully capture objective reality and there's a very good possibility and reason to believe that minds have the ability to causally effect reality - though to what extent I'm not sure.

 

[Jeff Davis]

I like mysteries too...

But I'd still like a description of what it means to know (anything) about "matter."

I do not understand the question. Had you asked what does it mean to understand matter comprehensibly, that would be legit. Partial knowledge is just that. A falsehood awaiting completion. We can all know that if we wrap our bare knuckles too hard on a concrete surface, it's gonna hurt. That's called "knowing something" (anything) about matter. Is that what you were asking here?

 

[smcder]

A random thought:

I continue to be influenced by Jordan Peterson's description of humans as living/creating an ongoing, dynamic narrative. His ideas of encountering the unexpected, the ensuing chaos, and personal sacrifice are life-changing ideas. It's not a wholly new concept, but his description of it made it clear to me like never before. This personal narrative encapsulates our world-view and our private logic or private sense.

However, I also think that the human race as a whole is living/creating a dynamic narrative as well. This common sense - or consensus sense - that the elders shared, or the religious leaders, or now the "scientific experts" share is just a story.

I'm not suggesting that there isn't an objective, consistent, external reality... but our common sense, collective narrative certainly doesn't fully capture objective reality and there's a very good possibility and reason to believe that minds have the ability to causally effect reality - though to what extent I'm not sure.

I'm not suggesting that there isn't an objective, consistent, external reality... but our common sense, collective narrative certainly doesn't fully capture objective reality and there's a very good possibility and reason to believe that minds have the ability to causally effect reality - though to what extent I'm not sure.

I would like to hear more of your thinking on this!

" ... that minds have the ability to causally effect reality - though to what extent I'm not sure."




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[Michael Allen]

I do not understand the question. Had you asked what does it mean to understand matter comprehensibly, that would be legit. Partial knowledge is just that. A falsehood awaiting completion. We can all know that if we wrap our bare knuckles too hard on a concrete surface, it's gonna hurt. That's called "knowing something" (anything) about matter. Is that what you were asking here?

Matter is usually a label we fix to a black box existential from which we derive our notion of "knowledge" from the interactions between these black boxes and others. This knowledge is usually not about the thing itself, but that regarding the scenarios and situations for which the thing dwells. So by asking the question, I am really asking what it means to have "knowledge" about matter...but notice that the label changes when we've found its subcomponents, no longer dealing with a "black box" we subdivide our previous "??" into a bunch of other baby-?s--at this point we move our label "matter" down the scale and then fixate on new "black boxes" for which we continue to process and confuse our "knowledge" regarding their interoperations with others as well as potential divisions and relations within them (i.e. when they cease to become black...and are transparent).

So the knowledge label seems to be an artificial construct of the virtual machine...or GUI of consciousness.

The only thing we ever "know" about "matter" is the situations for which we can remove the label "matter"--in this way to "know" about "matter" is to really dissolve the question into smaller units.