Consciousness and the Paranormal

[Tyger]

There's been a conversation about Kurasawa's film 'The Idiot' and it's resemblance to Somerset Maugham's 'The Razor's Edge'. How do we experience a truly good person? What is one doing with one's life?

Serendipity - I came across this today. Here is the testimony of someone who is doing the Path of Enlightenment. It's purely an example of some of what we have been talking about on this thread. An example, nothing more.

LINK: 환산스님과 함께 영어로 배우는 참선 제1강 /Chapter # 1. Son Meditation for the Modern World(현대인과 참선) - YouTube

TEXT: "Hwansan Sunim is anything but your typical Harvard grad. After college, he earned a post-graduate degree in psychology at NYU, and then rerouted his life to South Korea, where he became a Buddhist monk and spent 25 years in a monastery studying the principles of Seon Buddhism.

"A disciple of Korean Seon Master Songdam — the most respected Buddhist Zen master in Korea — Sunim has devoted his life to the Seon way. And despite his traditional lifestyle, Sunim — or Ted Park, as he is known in English — is anything but out of touch with the modern world: he now shares the teachings of Seon Buddhism with a global audience via his YouTube channel, “Hwansan Sunim: Son Meditation for the Modern World.”

“Seon meditation aims to eradicate the very roots of suffering, as well as awaken us to our infinite human potential,” Sunim explained in a recent video. “This, I believe, is what the Buddha’s teachings can do for us in the 21st century.”

"Sunim’s instructional videos are roughly 45 minutes long and conducted in English, and present the Seon teachings in an engaging, accessible manner. Watch the first chapter of Sunim’s video series in the clip above to learn more about the principles of Seon Buddhism."

 

[smcder]

@scmder

As you've got a smattering replies, I'll try to touch on some of your questions and comments at once.

I don't have a formal education in philosophy, nor pretend to be even an amature philosopher. So typically when I use a term, I tend to mean its standard dictionary definition rather than in reference to a formal philosophy. I apologize if that's confusing or even upsetting to some.

Re: reductionism: I simply mean it in the sense that man uses language, art, symbols, etc. to "isolate" or "make distinct" things, objects, ideas, states of being/feeling, etc. from the oneness of reality.

What is the "oneness of reality?" To me, that is the sea of quantum particles that CS tells us reality is composed of. I believe that all matter/energy is connected via this sea of particles; moreover, this sea of particles is in constant flux.

Humans use symbols to label what they feel are distinct "pieces" of this sea of particles, this oneness.

However, these things that we identify aren't really distinct.

Consider the idea of a "species" in biology. Have you ever tried to determine the criteria for a species? All species are one; they are life.

Re: Helen Keller: I do think her experience is non-typical, of course. However, having a mind is different from having consciousness. One definition of consciousness is "being aware that one is aware."

Helen Keller had a mind: she was aware of her surroundings and she experienced emotions. She wrote this in an essay about the day at the well:

She also says at one point that she did not "think" before she had language.

I believe that animals have minds and emotions, just as HK did before acquiring language; in other words, they are aware. However, like HK, they are not aware that they are aware.

Either an awareness of being aware allows one to use language, or language (symbolic thought) allows one to become aware that they are aware.

I tend to the think it's the latter: Once one has the capacity to represent in their mind (what are perceived as) distinct elements of reality via symbols, then they can formulate a symbol that represents their self: then they are aware that they are aware. Or, perhaps we can say: they are aware that they exist. Or that they are a something that exists and is distinct from other things that exist. (As stated previously, I do think some non-human animals are conscious; I think some non-human animals are aware that they are aware, though not to the same degree as humans.)

However, this does not mean that all our symbols which represent distinct elements of reality actually are distinct elements of reality. Categories help us make sense of reality but are not to be confused with reality.

OK - sorry, couldn't get the video to play - I tried several times but my internet connection is slow out here - it just buffers and buffers. I like Alan Watts though.

I don't have a formal education in philosophy, nor pretend to be even an amature philosopher. So typically when I use a term, I tend to mean its standard dictionary definition rather than in reference to a formal philosophy. I apologize if that's confusing or even upsetting to some.

It's the "-ism" that threw me, because that is a specific philosophical position and it's also the dictionary definition, but you define it above so that makes sense in the context. But I also think reductionism is your philosophic position - you noted in an earlier post that you go with the move from simple to complex (evolution and emergence) vs. the Traditionalist or Perennial school that follows the Great Chain of Being from greater to lesser . . .

And then from this:

What is the "oneness of reality?" To me, that is the sea of quantum particles that CS tells us reality is composed of. I believe that all matter/energy is connected via this sea of particles; moreover, this sea of particles is in constant flux.

(what does CS mean? Consensus Science?) . . . so your position is materialist, that that sea of quantum particles is reality and all of reality, correct?

Assuming so I think I'm good to go now with where you stand!

 

[Soupie]

It's the "-ism" that threw me, because that is a specific philosophical position and it's also the dictionary definition, but you define it above so that makes sense in the context. ...

(what does CS mean? Consensus Science?) . . .

so your position is materialist, that that sea of quantum particles is reality and all of reality, correct?

When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less. ~ Humpty Dumpty

Just joking, of course!

If pressed on whether I believed there was one fundamental element of reality or more than one, I'd say there was one. So, ultimately I am a monist, which, as you say, would make me a reductionist. However, I don't believe that makes me a materialist. We don't know what point particles are made of. Point particles are likely not the one fundamental element of which all of reality is composed.

I believe that matter/energy and "spirit" can be reduced to a more primitive element. What that element is, I don't know.

Ultimately though, I am agnostic. I simply don't know, and I am open to all possibilities regarding the nature of reality, consciousness, and the paranormal. However, when I make sense of my own experiences, I do use a reductionist philosophy and a quasi-materialist philosophy.

Yes, CS means Consensus Science.

Watch the first chapter of Sunim’s video series in the clip above to learn more about the principles of Seon Buddhism.

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing. While i don't care for the various dogmas of Buddhism, I do believe (like other religions) it has many good things to offer, meditation and self-control being two of them. (As a side note, the woman in the video wearing the green sweater in the front row is gorgeous.)

Two interesting articles to share:

The Power of Conscious Intention Proven At Last? - Neuroskeptic | DiscoverMagazine.com

The authors, Zschorlich and Köhling of the University of Rostock, Germany, are weighing into a long-standing debate in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience, concerning the role of consciousness in controlling our actions.

To simplify, one school of thought holds that (at least some of the time), our intentions or plans control our actions. Many people would say that this is what common sense teaches us as well.

But there’s an alternative view, in which our consciously-experienced intentions are not causes of our actions but are actually products of them, being generated after the action has already begun. This view is certainly counterintuitive, and many find it disturbing as it seems to undermine ‘free will’.

And another:

Filmmaker seeks people with sleep paralysis experiences - Boing Boing

Do you have experience with sleep paralysis? Many scientists believe that sleep paralysis is the biological answer to such mysteries as spirit visitations, alien abductions, incubi/succubi, and out-of-body experiences. My old friend Rodney Ascher, director of the excellent film Room 237 and other movies, is making a documentary about the phenomenon and would love to hear from you.

 

[Constance]

Steve [scmder] wrote:

It's the "-ism" that threw me, because that is a specific philosophical position and it's also the dictionary definition, but you define it above so that makes sense in the context. But I also think reductionism is your philosophic position - you noted in an earlier post that you go with the move from simple to complex (evolution and emergence) vs. the Traditionalist or Perennial school that follows the Great Chain of Being from greater to lesser . . .

And then from this:

What is the "oneness of reality?" To me, that is the sea of quantum particles that CS tells us reality is composed of. I believe that all matter/energy is connected via this sea of particles; moreover, this sea of particles is in constant flux.

(what does CS mean? Consensus Science?) . . . so your position is materialist, that that sea of quantum particles is reality and all of reality, correct?

Soupie replied:

If pressed on whether I believed there was one fundamental element of reality or more than one, I'd say there was one. So, ultimately I am a monist, which, as you say, would make me a reductionist. However, I don't believe that makes me a materialist. We don't know what point particles are made of. Point particles are likely not the one fundamental element of which all of reality is composed.

I believe that matter/energy and "spirit" can be reduced to a more primitive element. What that element is, I don't know.

Ultimately though, I am agnostic. I simply don't know, and I am open to all possibilities regarding the nature of reality, consciousness, and the paranormal. However, when I make sense of my own experiences, I do use a reductionist philosophy and a quasi-materialist philosophy.

Yes, CS means Consensus Science.

I'm not trying to complicate things, but unfortunately they get more complicated if we look into the varieties of interpretations of reality attached to the idea of 'neutral monism' in the history of philosophy. Consulting the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry on 'Neutral Monism' helps to sort out the issues and differences involved in the employment of this term by various philosophers. [see extract below] Chalmers has also provided a lengthy breakdown of various types of monism in an article I'll link to when I relocate it. All forms of monism are efforts to overcome Cartesian dualism, and they are all more or less 'reductive'. Since the discovery of the quantum substrate and the development of systems theory and information theory, there appears to be greater hope of identifying how consciousness and mind evolve/emerge in a fundamental interconnection and integration of all aspects of reality at the quantum (possibly the subquantum) level of physical reality, and Sayres seems to me to be one philosopher pursuing this path. My guess is that the more we learn about the quantum or subquantum substrate the more we will understand about how mind evolves in the universe.

5. Reduction and Construction
5.1 What Is it to Reduce?
Neutral monism was introduced as a form of reductionism. But a quick glance at neutral monist writings yields many passages that sound unabashedly eliminativist. Here is a sampling. Mach: “Both [object and ego] are provisional fictions of the same kind.” (Mach 1905, 9). Russell: “What I wish to do…is to re-state the relations of mind and brain in terms not implying the existence of either” (Russell 1956a, 135). Avenarius: “What I know is neither physical nor mental but only some third kind of thing.” (Approvingly quoted in (Mach 1905, 13)). James: “It seems to me that the hour is ripe for it [consciousness] to be openly and universally discarded” (James 1904b, 3). But these statements are misleading. The project is not to radically redraw the boundaries of our concepts. It is not being suggested that the concepts mind, matter, belief, desire, self, etc. fail to carve nature at her joints. The reconstructed concepts map onto the old ones. The difference is one of metaphysical depth only. Mach's declaration, say, that the ego is irredeemable, is directed only against Cartesian dualism and, to use Dennett's illuminating term, Cartesian materialism. Humean bundle selves are in no danger. And James would be surprised to learn how literally his advice to discard consciousness has been taken by some contemporary philosophers. He was merely urging us to adopt a relational definition of consciousness.

Even if it is granted that the proponents of neutral monism did not intend it as a form of eliminativism, the worry that it is eliminativist may persist. All reductionist doctrines give rise to this suspicion, as is evidenced by the ongoing debate about the place of the mind in reductive materialism. At the end of the day the reductive materialist hopes to be able to describe and explain the world in purely physical terms. The neutral monist has an analogous vision that “in a completed science, the word ‘mind’ and the word ‘matter’ would both disappear, and would be replaced by causal laws concerning ‘events’” (Russell 1927b, 226). This vividly raises the question how the distinction between explaining and explaining away is to be drawn. Some have argued that the boundary between reductionism and eliminativism a merely pragmatic matter. But it must be noted that the difficulties that neutral monism encounters on this front are no different from those that any reductionist doctrine has to face.

The neutral monists have employed various more or less clearly articulated strategies for the construction or reduction of mental and physical entities. Most neutral monists will agree with Sayre when he says that neither conceptual analysis nor empirical inquiry can establish the truth of neutral monism. Instead Sayre opts for a version of the best explanation strategy, here illustrated in its application to mental phenomena:

"The appropriate tactic, I believe, rather is to offer the thesis as an explication of how perceptual consciousness ought to be understood in the context of inquiry, and by way of support to show that commonly recognized features of perception gain intelligibility when conceived in terms of these informational processes." (Sayre 1976, 156)

Neutral Monism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

 

[Constance]

Here's an interesting paper by Max Velmans concerning "reflexive monism" --

http://cogprints.org/6103/1/Reflexive_Monism_final_version_December_2007.pdf

 

[Constance]

More light on neutral monism in the Stanford article:

8.3 Knowledge and the War against Introjection

The other main reason to [for] adoption of neutral monism was its promise to make the world cognitively accessible again. The epistemic motivation for neutral monism is particularly clear in James:

My thesis is that if we start with the supposition that there is only one primal stuff or material in the world, a stuff of which everything is composed, and if we call that stuff ‘pure experience,’ then knowing can easily be explained as a particular sort of relation towards one another into which portions of pure experience may enter. The relation itself is a part of pure experience; one of its ‘terms’ becomes the subject or bearer of the knowledge, the knower, the other becomes the object known. (James 1904b, 4)
Neutral monism tries to forge the tightest possible connection between the knower and the known—that of identity. James puts it as follows:

A given undivided portion of experience, taken in one context of associates, play the part of the knower, or a state of mind, or ‘consciousness'; while in a different context the same undivided bit of experience plays the part of a thing known, of an objective ‘content.’ In a word, in one group it figures as a thought, in another group as a thing. (James 1904b, 9–10)
Holt particularly emphasizes the numeric identity of thought with its object:

We have become wedded, or indeed welded to the phrase—my thought is of an object—when we ought to say and mean—my thought is a portion of the object—or better still,—a portion of the object is my thought:—exactly as a portion of the sky is the zenith. (Holt 1914, 149)
If, as Aristotle said, ‘thought and its object are one,’ so are sensations and perceptions one with their ‘objects.’ In fact, there are not sensations or perceptions and their objects. There are objects, and when these are included in the manifold called consciousness they are called sensations and perceptions. (Holt 1914, 219)

If thought and its object, percept and perceived, representation and represented are identical, then the mind must break out of the confines of the brain. The neutral monists happily acknowledge that “thoughts ain't in the head:” “the soul, so called, is extended in space” (Holt 1914, 153).

Avenarius was the most outspoken advocate of this idea. The original epistemic sin, as he sees it, is the “introjection” of mental states into the brain. He spends considerable time providing a genetic analysis of how the intellectual catastrophe of introjection could have happened. But he also presents straightforward arguments that are supposed to show the falsity of introjection:

The brain has ganglia and nerve fibers, has neuroglia and vessels, has different colors (is colored this way or that) and so on. But neither the most detailed anatomical dissection, nor an arbitrarily powerful microscope would reveal thoughts qua components of thinking, much less thinking itself as part or property of the brain. (Avenarius 1891, 67)
Considerations of this sort lead him to summarize his views about introjection in a remarkable paragraph:

The brain is not the dwelling-place, seat or producer of thought; it is not the instrument or organ, it is not the vehicle or substratum, etc., of thought.
Thought is not an indweller or command-giver, it is not a second half or aspect, etc., nor is it a product; it is not even a physiological function of the brain, nor is it a state of the brain at all. (Avenarius 1891, 76)
Mach approvingly quotes this passage and tells us that Avenarius conception seems “to approximate very nearly to my own.” (Mach 1886, 28) Rudolf Wlassak, whom Mach quotes as an authority on Avernarius, argues that the “discovery of the illegitimacy of introjection” reveals “all problems connected with the relation of our ‘sensations,’ ‘presentations’ and ‘contents of consciousness’ to the material things” as well as the “problems as to projection we meet in theories of space, the exteriorization of the space-sensations, etc.” as pseudo-problems. (Mach 1886, 54) And Petzoldt celebrates Avenarius for having done away with

the barbaric quid pro quo that lets the psychological sensations get into the brain together with the physiological stimulations, and which then have to be moved back out again, of course. (Petzoldt 1906, 170)
The radical externalism about the mental evidenced by these passages stands in the service of overcoming “the problem of the external world” by making it into the immediate object of our thought, or better, by making our thoughts be portions of it. That neutral monism allowed for this nonidealistic fusion of mind and world, thereby opening our cognitive doors onto the world, was what attracted most neutral monists to this doctrine in the first place.​

​

 

[Constance]

Helpful paper by Chalmers:

Consciousness and its Place in Nature

 

[smcder]

More light on neutral monism in the Stanford article:

​

. . . dang . . .

 

[smcder]

Helpful paper by Chalmers:

Consciousness and its Place in Nature

Yay Chalmers! . . . reading now . . .

 

[smcder]

When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less. ~ Humpty Dumpty

Just joking, of course!

If pressed on whether I believed there was one fundamental element of reality or more than one, I'd say there was one. So, ultimately I am a monist, which, as you say, would make me a reductionist. However, I don't believe that makes me a materialist. We don't know what point particles are made of. Point particles are likely not the one fundamental element of which all of reality is composed.

I believe that matter/energy and "spirit" can be reduced to a more primitive element. What that element is, I don't know.

Ultimately though, I am agnostic. I simply don't know, and I am open to all possibilities regarding the nature of reality, consciousness, and the paranormal. However, when I make sense of my own experiences, I do use a reductionist philosophy and a quasi-materialist philosophy.

Yes, CS means Consensus Science.

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing. While i don't care for the various dogmas of Buddhism, I do believe (like other religions) it has many good things to offer, meditation and self-control being two of them. (As a side note, the woman in the video wearing the green sweater in the front row is gorgeous.)

Two interesting articles to share:

And another:

If pressed on whether I believed there was one fundamental element of reality or more than one, I'd say there was one. So, ultimately I am a monist, which, as you say, would make me a reductionist. However, I don't believe that makes me a materialist.

Well, I wasn't going to - but after reading the Chalmers article @Constance posted, I feel I can and should. First, which type of pressed-materialist would you be? A, B or C? ;-)

OK, no, no - I'm not serious. I would need a lot more time to digest the article . . . but on first read it looks like Chalmers classifies the types of materialist positions on consciousness, answers their arguments and then moves ahead:

. . . If consciousness is not necessitated by physical truths, then it must involve something ontologically novel in the world: to use Kripke's metaphor, after fixing all the physical truths, God had to do more work to fix all the truths about consciousness. That is, there must be ontologically fundamental features of the world over and above the features characterized by physical theory. We are used to the idea that some features of the world are fundamental: in physics, features such as spacetime, mass, and charge, are taken as fundamental and not further explained. If the arguments against materialism are correct, these features from physics do not exhaust the fundamental features of the world: we need to expand our catalog of the world's basic features.

I don't want to spoil the ending - so that's all I'm going to reveal.

We haven't talked much here about what it means to hold a particular philosophical position - what follows from it . . . for example, if one is a Materialist then one doesn't have to answer Camus, one just has to hope he/she has enough serotonin!

I know I normally just go along upholding the Judeo-Christian values of my culture and you could argue philosophical beliefs have very little to do with how we behave . . . at least ones you're not sure about or don't fully understand and it's behavior we have to base responsibility on. (anyone want to tackle freewill and responsibility while we're at it?)

This also ties back in with @Tyger's article - which asserts that our brains have been physically shaped by culture.

But, if Chalmers is right and consciousness is added to the catalog of the world's basic features . . . are there necessary consequences and if so, what do we do about them? It's precisely here that philosophy becomes relevant. Science, by definition, can't answer these questions.

It strikes me too that, unless someone is certain, then:

1. the consequences of agnosticism and uncertainty themselves should be discerned, otherwise folks might be tempted to be agnostic to avoid the consequences of taking another position or being bothered to see what all the others options are (I'm certainly not putting you in this category!)

and then:

2. do we have an obligation to try and become more certain or at least to fully explore the options with some intention to become more certain?

I believe that matter/energy and "spirit" can be reduced to a more primitive element. What that element is, I don't know.

If all three are reducible to a more primitive element, should they all three be in ""s?

Which dogmas of Buddhism? Much of my recent knowing of Buddhism is from Zencast:

Zencast.org

. . . Buddhism is presented here in a pragmatic way - to end suffering and the Buddha was presented as ultimately pragmatic (see the Kalama Sutta) and agnostic.

 

[smcder]

Consciousness and its Place in Nature

One might also object that we do not have any conception of what protophenomenal properties might be like, or of how they could constitute phenomenal properties. This is true, but one could suggest that this merely a product of our ignorance. In the case of familiar physical properties, there were principled reasons (based on the character of physical concepts) for denying a constitutive connection to phenomenal properties. Here, there are no such principled reasons. At most, there is ignorance and absence of constitution. Of course it would be very desirable to form a positive conception of protophenomenal properties. Perhaps we can do this indirectly, by some sort of theoretical inference from the character of phenomenal properties to their underlying constituents; or perhaps knowledge of the nature of protophenomenal properties will remain beyond us. Either way, this is no reason to reject the truth of the view.[*]

*[[McGinn (1991) can be read as advocating a type-F view, while denying that we can know the nature of the protophenomenal properties. His arguments rests on the claim that these properties cannot be known either through perception of through introspection. But this does not rule out the possibility that they might be known through some sort of inference to the best explanation of (introspected) phenomenology, subject to the additional constraints of (perceived) physical structure.]]

An additional twist on the New Mysterianism position.

 

[Constance]

. . . dang . . .

Yes, I thought so too.

 

[smcder]

Yes, I thought so too.

Excellent to have all the positions, arguments and counter-arguments in one place . . .

from Broad:

Chapter 14

Chalmers does it in six:

In this paper I take my cue from Broad, approaching the problem of consciousness by a strategy of divide-and-conquer. I will not adopt Broad's categories: our understanding of the mind-body problem has advanced in the last 75 years, and it would be nice to think that we have a better understanding of the crucial issues. On my view, the most important views on the metaphysics of consciousness can be divided almost exhaustively into six classes, which I will label "type A" through "type F." Three of these (A through C) involve broadly reductive views, seeing consciousness as a physical process that involves no expansion of a physical ontology. The other three (D through F) involve broadly nonreductive views, on which consciousness involves something irreducible in nature, and requires expansion or reconception of a physical ontology.

 

[Constance]

Yes, this is all clarifying, esp. Chalmers. Thanks for the link to Broad. Btw, the paper I linked by Chalmers seems to be a later version of one in which there were several dozen perspectives distinguished, probably redundant. Do you know if McGinn has responded in writing to the Chalmers remark you quoted above?

 

[smcder]

Yes, this is all clarifying, esp. Chalmers. Thanks for the link to Broad. Btw, the paper I linked by Chalmers seems to be a later version of one in which there were several dozen perspectives distinguished, probably redundant. Do you know if McGinn has responded in writing to the Chalmers remark you quoted above?

I'll see what I can find . . . Nagel has changed his position since this was published.

 

[smcder]

here is a bit more on this idea:

http://consc.net/papers/five.pdf

4.
Is a science of consciousness possible?
8
Yes, I think that a science of consciousness is possible. In fact, I think that quite a few bits
of it are actual, in contemporary work on consciousness in neuroscience, psychology, and other
areas. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to help get the infrastructure for a interdisciplinary science
of consciousness o
the ground, through the “Toward a Science of Consciousness” conferences
and through the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, as well as through centres
devoted to consciousness at Arizona and ANU. It seems to me that the recent explosion in the
science of consciousness is one of the most interesting and important intellectual movements of
our time.
There are qualifications, of course. I don’t think that a successful science of consciousness
can be a wholly reductive science of consciousness, cast in terms of neuroscience or computation
alone. Rather, I think it will be a nonreductive science, one that does not try to reduce consciousness
to a physical process, but rather studies consciousness in its own right and tries to find
connections to brain, behavior, and other cognitive processes. If you look at the contemporary
neuroscience and psychology of consciousness, this is just what you find. Any attempts at reduction
of consciousness are extremely half-hearted. Instead neuroscience is largely engaged in
finding neural
correlates of consciousness, without making claims about reduction. Psychology
studies the connections between conscious processes, unconscious processes, and behavior. This
way, a lot of progress has been made.
I think that the science of consciousness also di
ers from many other sciences in that it gives
an essential role to subjective or first-person data. In a way, each of our own conscious experiences
provide the primary data that is distinctive to the science of consciousness. We cannot directly observe
the experiences of others, so our access to consciousness is largely mediated by introspection
(in ourselves) and verbal reports (in others). Assuming that we can take the deliverances of introspection
and verbal report at face value – which is by no means always the case—these can be
used to build up a store of first-person data about consciousness itself. One can then correlate this
data with third-person data about brain and behavior, and attempt to integrate all these data via
principles that connect them. I think that the principles of a satisfactory science of consciousness
will always make ineliminable reference to subjective experience, though.
Of course it is very early days at the moment. We’re greatly limited by what we know about
the brain. Brain imaging tells one only so much, and the invasive techniques that can tell one more
(such as single-cell recording) are largely limited to non-human animals and the occasional surgical
patient. We’re also limited by our methods for investigating states of consciousness. The sci-
9
ence typically uses rough-and-ready introspective reports, but these are extremely coarse-grained.
Ideally we would like to be able to use sophisticated and reliable introspective techniques, combined
with some sort of rich formal language for expressing and analyzing states of consciousness.
We don’t have anything like that yet, and it’s an open question whether these things are possible.
But again, it’s early in the day. After making a start on these topics in the nineteenth century, the
sciences have only recently been returning to them. The proof will be in the pudding.
Ultimately, the hope is for a set of fundamental principles connecting physical processes and
consciousness. If I am right about the metaphysics of consciousness, then these principles will
have a status akin to that of fundamental laws in physics. I’ve speculated a bit about what these
principles might be, but any theories that we come up with now will almost certainly be wrong.
The science of consciousness probably has a revolution or three to go through before it gets to anything
like its destination, and when it gets there, it may be quite unlike anything that we currently
imagine.
Given this, though, I think we should be open to all sorts of ideas. I’m always pleased to see
scientists and philosophers putting forward positive theories of consciousness. Even when they
are wrong, one learns something from the attempt. When I first got into philosophy, I was disappointed
by how little positive theorizing there was about consciousness. Philosophers seemed
to have the sense that theorizing about consciousness should be left to scientists, while scientists
seemed to have the sense that theorizing about consciousness should be led to philosophers. That
situation has improved to some extent, but I’d like to see more of it. Of course this work often
goes out on a limb, but sometimes one has to go out on limbs to get through the forest.

 

[Soupie]

I feel I can and should. First, which type of pressed-materialist would you be? A, B or C? ;-)

If we define materialism as believing that all things in reality are made out of one fundamental element, then I am a materialist.

If the definition of materialism hinges on that one element being matter/energy, then I am not a materialist, as I don't beleive matter/energy are the one fundamental element of which all things are made.

It seems that if one is a monist then they are a materialist by default. But if one is a dualist - like Chalmers - then they avoid the label materialist because they believe reality is composed of multiple fundamental elements.

Intuitively, the idea that reality consists of 2-3 fundamental elements is repugnant to me. (Doesn't mean it's wrong, just that it doesn't "feel" right to me.)

. . . If consciousness is not necessitated by physical truths, then it must involve something ontologically novel in the world:

I, like many others, am not convinced there is a "hard problem" of consciousness.

First of all, I think it should be called the hard problem of experience, because that is the phenomena Chalmers takes issue with: why and how do we have qualia?

I'm a not quite sure I understand the question/problem. One might ask: How couldn't we have qualia? I'm seriously left asking the question: Maybe I don't experience qualia!? Experience red!? How do I experience the color red? Well, my eyes see the color red... Does everyone see the same color red? I would think not exactly because we all have different eyes and different brains. Do animals "experience" red? Well, probabaly not the same way humans do because they have different eyes and brains as well. Do machines, such as cameras and camcorders experience red? Yes, they do.

It's possible that all information processing systems have experiences:

Is a camera or a camcorder aware that they experience red? No, that is an "ability" that only self-aware systems have.

Rather than assert that experience of qualia is a mystery, I'd like Chalmers to explain how information processing systems couldn't experience qualia. I understand that they might not be aware that they are experiencing qualia, but that doesn't mean they're not experiencing qualia.

In my mind, Chalmers hasn't made a strong enough case that subjective experience/qualia are as superfluous as he seems to believe. He implies that there is no reason for organisms to have subjective experiences. How does he know this? I think it's pretty bold to say, for example, that the experience of qualia is not adaptive. He offers the thought experiment of the zombies; but it's a thought experiment, not a real experiment. We don't know if zombies really would behave the same as humans experiencing qualia. It's one thing to say they would, it's quite another to actually do an experiment to find out for sure. (My guess is they wouldn't behave the same.)

At some level, this all seems absurd... I saw a recent headline about lobsters and crabs having the ability to feel pain, as if this is some huge surprise. (It probably was to Chalmers who believes subjective experience serves no purpose...)

I think that experience must be viewed in context. Chalmers is considering the experience of qualia out of context.

He is walking into the home a bald, elderly man and wondering why there are so many combs lying around... Context! I believe that subjective experience is adaptive. I believe information processing systems experience qualia as a byproduct of what they do, but I also believe this byproduct is adaptive.

Can organisms have reproductive sex without experiencing pleasure? Yes. Are they likely to have more sex because it is pleasurable? Yes. Subjective experience is adaptive.

How do information processing systems experience qualia; that is, what are the mechanisms? I am not sure.

Chalmers argues that consciousness may be a fundamental property of our reality. That it can't be reduced to more primitive elements that may also make up matter/energy.

However, this still doesn't explain why humans experience qualia. Whether consciousness is a fundamental property of reality, or a phenomena "made" of primal elements, humans must have it because it's adaptive.

This concept also does not explain how humans experience qualia. Even if consciousness is a non-reducible phenomena composed of completely non-matter/energy, it must somehow interact intimately with information processing systems (humans) made of matter/energy.

It strikes me too that, unless someone is certain, then:

1. the consequences of agnosticism and uncertainty themselves should be discerned, otherwise folks might be tempted to be agnostic to avoid the consequences of taking another position or being bothered to see what all the others options are (I'm certainly not putting you in this category!)

and then:

2. do we have an obligation to try and become more certain or at least to fully explore the options with some intention to become more certain?

For better or worse, most people wake up, go to work, go home, unwind, go to sleep, wake up, go to work, go home, unwind, go to sleep, wake up, etc.

Not everyone is a seeker. And that's okay.

@Soupie: I believe that matter/energy and "spirit" can be reduced to a more primitive element. What that element is, I don't know.

If all three are reducible to a more primitive element, should they all three be in ""s?

I put spirit in quotations because there isn't clear consensus on whether it exists and what it is, unlike matter/energy.

Which dogmas of Buddhism?

Karma.

 

[Constance]

Steve, I admire and appreciate the way you take the ideas we discussed yesterday further, with Chalmers, to the consequent questions these ideas and issues raise for us as a species and as individuals. I want to highlight several extracts from your responses to further foreground them for discussion of the pressure placed on us by the recognition of our experienced consciousnesses/minds and the extent to which we are obliged to use our receptive and reflective capabilities both to work more vigorously to comprehend the nature of 'reality' {'what-is'} and our own responsibilities in the world we live in that follow from these capabilities. Heidegger discusses these in terms of our 'Appropriation' by Being to be the beings that disclose what-is and to act in accordance with it by being the 'shepherds' of being in our world (a largely ecological task in his view, a more developed moral or ethical task in the view of other phenomenologists such as Max Scheler, Merleau-Ponty, and Emanuel Levinas).

. . . on first read it looks like Chalmers classifies the types of materialist positions on consciousness, answers their arguments and then moves ahead:

. . . If consciousness is not necessitated by physical truths, then it must involve something ontologically novel in the world: to use Kripke's metaphor, after fixing all the physical truths, God had to do more work to fix all the truths about consciousness. That is, there must be ontologically fundamental features of the world over and above the features characterized by physical theory. We are used to the idea that some features of the world are fundamental: in physics, features such as spacetime, mass, and charge, are taken as fundamental and not further explained. If the arguments against materialism are correct, these features from physics do not exhaust the fundamental features of the world: we need to expand our catalog of the world's basic features.

. . . We haven't talked much here about what it means to hold a particular philosophical position - what follows from it . . . for example, if one is a Materialist then one doesn't have to answer Camus, one just has to hope he/she has enough serotonin!

I know I normally just go along upholding the Judeo-Christian values of my culture and you could argue philosophical beliefs have very little to do with how we behave . . . at least ones you're not sure about or don't fully understand and it's behavior we have to base responsibility on. (anyone want to tackle freewill and responsibility while we're at it?)

. . . But, if Chalmers is right and consciousness is added to the catalog of the world's basic features . . . are there necessary consequences and if so, what do we do about them? It's precisely here that philosophy becomes relevant. Science, by definition, can't answer these questions.

 

[smcder]

If we define materialism as believing that all things in reality are made out of one fundamental element, then I am a materialist.

If the defiition of materialism hinges on that one element being matter/energy, then I am not a materialist, as I don't beleive matter/energy are the one fundamental element of which all things are made.

It seems that if one is a monist then they are a materialist by default. But if one is a dualist - like Chalmers - then they avoid the label materialist because they believe reality is composed of multiple fundamental elements.

Intuitively, the idea that reality consists of 2-3 fundamental elements is repugnant to me. (Doesn't mean it's wrong, just that it doesn't "feel" right to me.)

I, like many others, am not convinced there is a "hard problem" of consciousness.

First of all, I think it should be called the hard problem of experience, because that is the phenomena Chalmers takes issue with: why and how do we have qualia?

I'm a not quite sure I understand the question/problem. One might ask: How couldn't we have qualia? I'm seriously left asking the question: Maybe I don't experience qualia!? Experience red!? How do I experience the color red? Well, my eyes see the color red... Does everyone see the same color red? I would think not exactly because we all have different eyes and different brains. Do animals "experience" red? Well, probabaly not the same way humans do because they have different eyes and brains as well. Do machines, such as cameras and camcorders experience red? Yes, they do.

It's possible that all information processing systems have experiences:

Is a camera or a camcorder aware that they experience red? No, that is an "ability" that only self-aware systems have.

Rather than assert that experience of qualia is a mystery, I'd like Chalmers to explain how information processing systems couldn't experience qualia. I understand that they might not be aware that they are experiencing qualia, but that doesn't mean they're not experiencing qualia.

In my mind, Chalmers hasn't made a strong enough case that subjective experience/qualia are as superfluous as he seems to believe. He implies that there is no reason for organisms to have subjective experiences. How does he know this? I think it's pretty bold to say, for example, that the experience of qualia is not adaptive. He offers the thought experiment of the zombies; but it's a thought experiment, not a real experiment. We don't know if zombies really would behave the same as humans experiencing qualia. It's one thing to say they would, it's quite another to actually do an experiment to find out for sure. (My guess is they wouldn't behave the same.)

At some level, this all seems absurd... I saw a recent headline about lobsters and crabs having the ability to feel pain, as if this is some huge surprise. (It probably was to Chalmers who believes subjective experience serves no purpose...)

I think that experience must be viewed in context. Chalmers is considering the experience of qualia out of context.

He is walking into the home a bald, elderly man and wondering why there are so many combs lying around... Context! I believe that subjective experience is adaptive. I believe information processing systems experience qualia as a byproduct of what they do, but I also believe this byproduct is adaptive.

Can organisms have reproductive sex without experiencing pleasure? Yes. Are they likely to have more sex because it is pleasurable? Yes. Subjective experience is adaptive.

How do information processing systems experience qualia; that is, what are the mechanisms? I am not sure.

Chalmers argues that consciousness may be a fundamental property of our reality. That it can't be reduced to more primitive elements that may also make up matter/energy.

However, this still doesn't explain why humans experience qualia. Whether consciousness is a fundamental property of reality, or a phenomena "made" of primal elements, humans must have it because it's adaptive.

This concept also does not explain how humans experience qualia. Even if consciousness is a non-reducible phenomena composed of completely non-matter/energy, it must somehow interact intimately with information processing systems (humans) made of matter/energy.

For better or worse, most people wake up, go to work, go home, unwind, go to sleep, wake up, go to work, go home, unwind, go to sleep, wake up, etc.

Not everyone is a seeker. And that's okay.

I put spirit in quotations because there isn't clear consensus on whether it exists and what it is, unlike matter/energy.

Karma.

The hard problem (rhetorically) challenges physicalist claims with: How do you objectively describe the subjective?

It basically started with Nagels "What Is It Like To Be A Bat?" Which was just arguing that a physicalist account doesn't give all the information: namely what it is like to be the thing otherwise completely described in physical terms.

At the time Nagel didn't assume physicalism was wrong - he just pointed out you can't describe everything about a bat in purely physical terms. Recently though he wrote a book in which he argues consciousness as an irreducible part of nature.

Nagel is not a super-naturalist and neither is Chalmers.

What one thing do you think everything is made of? (Switch all that around if you don't like prepositions at the end)

Good short explanation of what Nagel was up to with his bat:

What is it like to be a bat?

 

[Constance]

If we define materialism as believing that all things in reality are made out of one fundamental element, then I am a materialist.

There's still some confusion between the terms 'materialism' and 'reductivism' implied in the above, stemming from the outset of the Stanford article on neutral monism, where the author refers to early expressions of neutral monism as having been seen as 'reductive'. Neutral monism, in its earlier philosophical development as traced in that article, was seen as 'reductive' only in the sense that it re-oriented thinking from the Cartesian dualism in which it had long been mired. Neutral and other varieties of monism are anything but reductive in the extent to which they reopen the questioning of how consciousness and mind can evolve/arise in a universe predominantly taken for several centuries now to be simply 'objective' and explicable purely in terms of materiality or physicality. The still influential materialist/physicalist paradigm is radically reductive, as demonstrated by the attempt to reduce conscious experience and mind to computation, mere information-processing. In the boldest statements of this position it descends to eliminativism.

If the definition of materialism hinges on that one element being matter/energy, then I am not a materialist, as I don't beleive matter/energy are the one fundamental element of which all things are made.

In half of what you write you do not appear to be a materialist. In the other half I sense a tendency toward a physical reductivism in which you expect that some unknown 'element' will be found in nature to solve the mind-matter problem. You refer to the quantum or subquantum substrate as the place where we should look for that 'element' but it might turn out to be a process operating in that substrate, a core relationship of interactivity, that ultimately generates the world we find ourselves living in, in which the existence of consciousness and mind cannot be denied.

It seems that if one is a monist then they are a materialist by default. But if one is a dualist - like Chalmers - then they avoid the label materialist because they believe reality is composed of multiple fundamental elements.

I think the above is a misunderstanding, resolvable by reading the whole of the Stanford article and the Chalmers paper.

Intuitively, the idea that reality consists of 2-3 fundamental elements is repugnant to me. (Doesn't mean it's wrong, just that it doesn't "feel" right to me.)

Nor to me, Soupie. Reality clearly includes the blooming, buzzing, proliferating world we experience continually in our existence. The problem may be your use of the phrase 'consists in' in the above sentence. I doubt anyone would say that the quantum substrate is the only 'reality', but we have reason to think that it somehow leads to, produces, constitutes reality as we experience it as well as ways in which reality might take form and be experienced in other parts of the universe.

I, like many others, am not convinced there is a "hard problem" of consciousness.

First of all, I think it should be called the hard problem of experience, because that is the phenomena Chalmers takes issue with: why and how do we have qualia?

'Experience', as contemplated critically by philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists and archaeologists, etc., is just as 'hard' a concept to account for by materialist scientists as 'qualia', a shorthand way of saying the qualitative nature of conscious experience. It comes to the same thing; Mach and James used the term experience; we use the term qualia.


You've made additional comments I'd like to respond to and hope to do so later.