Consciousness and the Paranormal

[Constance]

Steve wrote:

I want to explore that reduction to the primal substance - I think Nagel is saying that still carries over the problems of thinking of mind as a substance - so that you still end up with the problems of materialism . . . that's why he uses the word "subjectivity" I think - but this needs more thinking. ...

I agree. Tonini's IIT approach is a significant scientific effort to ground subjectivity in the interactions of information taking place in physical systems down to the q level and proliferating into the immensity of the universe as we are able to see it today. Is this q level the place where Soupie proposes that we will find the ultimate physical 'units' of a single primal substance to which everything can be broken down, including symphonies, the Acropolis, the poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Wes Anderson's newest film, "The Grand Budapest Hotel"? I'm at the point of wondering if his effort to define the bottom-most substance loosed at the Big Bang as a single 'thing' having dual properties [units] of physicality and mentality is not by now a moot question. Tononi's thinking is fully grounded in the materialist-reductive history of contemporary neuroscience; he groks all the systems involved in nature and brain processes, but he ends up with a panpsychist viewpoint (to the dismay of many reductionists), recognizing what Varela, Thompson, Chalmers and many other scientifically informed philosophers call protoconsciousness (though Tononi seems not to use that term). These thinkers recognize that the central issue is increasing complexity in nature leading to the evolution of consciousness and mind -- and the works of mind. Whether there was one substance having two aspects or two differentiated substances (one physical and one mental) at the Big Bang taken to generate the universe we now inhabit, it seems that interaction involving the exchange of information was there at the Big Bang, triggering the faster-than-lightspeed inflation of the universe. Subjectivity is just another word for receptiveness of information and reaction to and interaction with it, enabling the exchange of information in which increasing complexity is generated.

I want to explore that reduction to the primal substance - I think Nagel is saying that still carries over the problems of thinking of mind as a substance - so that you still end up with the problems of materialism . . . that's why he uses the word "subjectivity" I think - but this needs more thinking.

I'm not sure it is the same result, I think you use the two viewpoints for different things - what I am stuck on with reduction is that it seems that at some point you can't take even an infinitesimal bit more away without changing the situation drastically - (let's call this Shylock's dilemma) and the same with emergence - it appears to be a discrete change, not continuous, like a phase change of matter, this tendency to make transitions without intermediate steps . . . do we see this elsewhere in the world?

I think the distinction you've just pointed out is one we need to pursue if we are to understand the significance of emergence and its tenability as an explanation for consciousness as represented by materialist/physicalist neuroscience.

I'm also interested in the two basic world views being exact inverses of one another:

the lesser comes from the greater (traditional) - "creativity"
the complex comes out of the simple (modern) - "emergence"

Perhaps both could be valid if we think in terms of some causal agent producing the distinctly ramifying 'lesser' {smaller than a quark} instantiated at the supposed Big Bang which immediately began generating the complexity of the immense universe evolved to the point at which we are witness to it.


Soupie wrote:

The point I am arguing, though, in each case is that while things (properties?) such as songs, liquids, forests, and minds are things which cease to be when reduced to their fundamental building blocks, they are still composed of building blocks.

'Building blocks' is too vague a term to describe the intricacy of informational exchange and resulting changes in nature (see Tononi). Even if you could reduce everything in the physical system of systems constituting the universe today (including the complexity of thought about it here on little earth over the last several millenia) to single 'units' or 'building blocks', those units or blocks alone could not be said to 'compose' reality as we know it, which is the product of innumerable (and many unidentifiable) interactions based on developing information.

Now, Nagel may be saying that a mind does not emerge from the interaction of simple building blocks. I'm not sure he is. If he is, I (very) humbly disagree with him.

I doubt that he would put the issue in those terms, but I haven't yet read his most recent book, Mind and Cosmos. It's worth reading the review of Nagel's book in the Chronicle of Higher Education that Steve linked above to see the number of scientists and thinkers Nagel could have cited in support of his analysis.


A reviewer's comment on Nagel's Mind and Cosmos: "[This] troublemaking book has sparked the most exciting disputation in many years... I like Nagel's mind and I like Nagel's cosmos. He thinks strictly but not imperiously, and in grateful view of the full tremendousness of existence." -- Leon Wieseltier, The New Republic

 

[Constance]

Thanks to Steve and Tyger for bringing some of Hopkins's poetry into the thread. "God's Grandeur" is one of the greatest, most perfect, poems in the English language. I may post a few more because it does us good to see the world through the eyes and minds of poets, artists, prophets, and lovers.

 

[Constance]

As Kingfishers Catch Fire

As king fishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves -- goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.

I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is --
Christ. For Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.

~~~Gerard Manley Hopkins

 

[Constance]

Inversnaid

This darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

A windpuff-bonnet of fawn-froth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, fell-frowning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.

Degged with dew, dappled with dew,
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

 

[Constance]

Let me be to Thee as the circling bird

Let me be to Thee as the circling bird,
Or bat with tender and air-crisping wings
That shapes in half-light his departing rings,
From both of whom a changeless note is heard.
I have found my music in a common word,
Trying each pleasurable throat that sings
And every praised sequence of sweet strings,
And know infallibly which I preferred.

The authentic cadence was discovered late
Which ends those only strains that I approve,
And other science all gone out of date
And minor sweetness scarce made mention of:
I have found the dominant of my range and state -
Love, O my God, to call Thee Love and Love.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

 

[Constance]

Pied Beauty
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Glory be to God for dappled things--
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise Him.

 

[Tyger]

Since I linked to part of Ennio Morricone's brilliant piece: Gabriel's Oboe - here it is entire......such music comes from somewhere......

 

[Tyger]

From the film Anna and the King - the amazing music that accompanied the execution scene of Tuptin and her lover. The scene is not available on YouTube - but we can hear the music. In fact, I have been listening to the soundtrack of the film this week on my daily commute.

Again, such art gives one pause

From a poster - a gem - anyone know where this comes from? When I do a google I get Sir Walter Scotts' The Heart of Midlothian.......nothing definitive. The eighth line in this snippet puzzles me given the overall tone of the message. How can it be 'our hate'?

In some places where love is not at all
The executors sword may, with injustice, fall
Is it we who are wrong to love in that place
Of bigots, those who will not show their face
But will send us to our death with a contemptible sneer
They destroy us all, for it is we they fear
But in time they will fall, by the hand of our fate
They lived and ruled and fell by our hate
Love is the binding that will erase every trace
May all humanity live with that grace.

 

[smcder]

@smcder I want to explore that reduction to the primal substance - I think Nagel is saying that still carries over the problems of thinking of mind as a substance - so that you still end up with the problems of materialism . . . that's why he uses hte word "subjectivity" I think - but this needs more thinking. ...

since concepts reduce to words and words to letters, I will finish out the rest of this reply with the following two points (I leave the punctuation to you - and you won't need all the letters) . . .

abcdefghisjklmnopqrstuvwxyz
1 2

Haha, nice!

Yes, honestly, this is probably a case of me using terms/language incorrectly. (What I meant by cheating is that I could say 2 + 2 = 5, and if someone said I was wrong, I could say that while I said 5, I really meant 4. So from here on out, when I say 5 I really mean 4, and when I say 4 I really mean 1, 267, 700.597. Okay?)

I definitely get you on emergence/reduction.

H2O molecules combine together to create a new state of matter called liquid that did not exist previously. (Liquid can be formed from otehr molecules too of course.) This new state of matter - liquid - emerges from the interaction of H2O molecules. I don't know at what point "liquid" emerges from the interaction of H2O molecules, but it takes more than 2-3 of them.

If we reduce water to the molecules of which it is made, this state - liquid - ceases to be. So individually, H2O molecules don't have the state of liquid; however, when they interact with one another as an integrated whole, something new emerges.

[I am completely unsure of how/when to use terms like state, property, etc. For example, the concept of "property dualism" uses the term property, but in physics/chemistry, properties describe states of matter such as liquid, solid, gas.]



How do I think mind relates to emergence/reduction?

Like liquid, the mind emerges from the interaction of less complex units. However, like liquid, if these less complex units are taken individually, there is no mind. Back to the analogy of the song: the song emerges from the interaction of the notes; the notes must be considered as a whole or there is no song.

Another (weak) example is a tree and a forest. Two or three trees don't make a forest, but a forest does - at some point - emerge from a "whole" of trees.

The point I am arguing, though, in each case is that while things (properties?) such as songs, liquids, forests, and minds are things which cease to be when reduced to their fundamental building blocks, they are still composed of building blocks.

Now, Nagel may be saying that a mind does not emerge from the interaction of simple building blocks. I'm not sure he is. If he is, I (very) humbly disagree with him.

I haven't thoroughly read your post yet - so this isn't in direct response, but I listened to it today and it's good - they lay out the hard problem a couple of different ways that make it easier to understand (for me) and various positions on the mind/brain problem and the history. Worth the time:

Episode 21: What Is the Mind? (Turing, et al) | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog

... interesting ideas for me include the hard problem as aporia (meaning: we ain't never gonna figure it out!) Searle's idea that there is something about the brain necessary for consciousnss - it can't be duplicated in silicon, it is the stuff that dreams are made of - this is vs. substrate independent consciousness ...

 

[smcder]

@smcder I want to explore that reduction to the primal substance - I think Nagel is saying that still carries over the problems of thinking of mind as a substance - so that you still end up with the problems of materialism . . . that's why he uses hte word "subjectivity" I think - but this needs more thinking. ...

since concepts reduce to words and words to letters, I will finish out the rest of this reply with the following two points (I leave the punctuation to you - and you won't need all the letters) . . .

abcdefghisjklmnopqrstuvwxyz
1 2

Haha, nice!

Yes, honestly, this is probably a case of me using terms/language incorrectly. (What I meant by cheating is that I could say 2 + 2 = 5, and if someone said I was wrong, I could say that while I said 5, I really meant 4. So from here on out, when I say 5 I really mean 4, and when I say 4 I really mean 1, 267, 700.597. Okay?)

I definitely get you on emergence/reduction.

H2O molecules combine together to create a new state of matter called liquid that did not exist previously. (Liquid can be formed from otehr molecules too of course.) This new state of matter - liquid - emerges from the interaction of H2O molecules. I don't know at what point "liquid" emerges from the interaction of H2O molecules, but it takes more than 2-3 of them.

If we reduce water to the molecules of which it is made, this state - liquid - ceases to be. So individually, H2O molecules don't have the state of liquid; however, when they interact with one another as an integrated whole, something new emerges.

[I am completely unsure of how/when to use terms like state, property, etc. For example, the concept of "property dualism" uses the term property, but in physics/chemistry, properties describe states of matter such as liquid, solid, gas.]



How do I think mind relates to emergence/reduction?

Like liquid, the mind emerges from the interaction of less complex units. However, like liquid, if these less complex units are taken individually, there is no mind. Back to the analogy of the song: the song emerges from the interaction of the notes; the notes must be considered as a whole or there is no song.

Another (weak) example is a tree and a forest. Two or three trees don't make a forest, but a forest does - at some point - emerge from a "whole" of trees.

The point I am arguing, though, in each case is that while things (properties?) such as songs, liquids, forests, and minds are things which cease to be when reduced to their fundamental building blocks, they are still composed of building blocks.

Now, Nagel may be saying that a mind does not emerge from the interaction of simple building blocks. I'm not sure he is. If he is, I (very) humbly disagree with him.

So we should look at emergence / reduction more closely? Or telology? And clear up questions of terminology Soupie has raised - also I'd like to bring phenomenology in - if we are looking at all of this (and everything) necessarily from the subjective view using our consciousness, phenomenology engages this directly.

Also there is mental causation. Do mental states cause action? If so, how? If not - why do we have them?

And or other topics?

 

[Constance]

From a poster - a gem - anyone know where this comes from? When I do a google I get Sir Walter Scotts' The Heart of Midlothian.......nothing definitive.

Tyger, where did you initially find these lines of verse? I tried googling the first two and found no reference to the Scott novel on the first two pages of results. As for how to read the 8th line, I think one would have to read the whole novel to interpret it (if indeed these lines are from The Heart of Midlothian). I've never read this novel so cannot be of any help. Sorry.

 

[Constance]

So we should look at emergence / reduction more closely? Or telology? And clear up questions of terminology Soupie has raised - also I'd like to bring phenomenology in - if we are looking at all of this (and everything) necessarily from the subjective view using our consciousness, phenomenology engages this directly.

Also there is mental causation. Do mental states cause action? If so, how? If not - why do we have them?

And or other topics?

I think we could make solid progress on a number of the issues raised here by reading and discussing Tonini's paper on his Integrated Information Theory of consciousness. Below is an article by Christof Koch concerning the IIT that provides a good entree to Tonini's theory. The Tononi paper is complex (and technical in some parts) because it has to be in engaging the complexities in nature, brain processes, and consciousness that he illuminates for us.

http://www.klab.caltech.edu/koch/CR/CR-Complexity-09.pdf

 

[Tyger]

Tyger, where did you initially find these lines of verse? I tried googling the first two and found no reference to the Scott novel on the first two pages of results. As for how to read the 8th line, I think one would have to read the whole novel to interpret it (if indeed these lines are from The Heart of Midlothian). I've never read this novel so cannot be of any help. Sorry.

Funnily - as I mentioned - it was the text of a post to the video regarding Tuptin's execution in Anna and the King film. I was thinking it was the poster's poem at first - but as I look at it, I'm not so sure. Anyway, it speaks to the sentiment around that execution - and indeed - any execution rooted in fear of the person being put to death.

 

[Tyger]

"Time does not bring relief..."
by Edna St Vincent Millay -

​

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year's bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide!
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go - so with his memory they brim!
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, "There is no memory of him here!"
And so stand stricken, so remembering him!

 

[smcder]

From the film Anna and the King - the amazing music that accompanied the execution scene of Tuptin and her lover. The scene is not available on YouTube - but we can hear the music. In fact, I have been listening to the soundtrack of the film this week on my daily commute.

Again, such art gives one pause

From a poster - a gem - anyone know where this comes from? When I do a google I get Sir Walter Scotts' The Heart of Midlothian.......nothing definitive. The eighth line in this snippet puzzles me given the overall tone of the message. How can it be 'our hate'?

In some places where love is not at all
The executors sword may, with injustice, fall
Is it we who are wrong to love in that place
Of bigots, those who will not show their face
But will send us to our death with a contemptible sneer
They destroy us all, for it is we they fear
But in time they will fall, by the hand of our fate
They lived and ruled and fell by our hate
Love is the binding that will erase every trace
May all humanity live with that grace.

I put the first two lines in separate quotes:

"In some places where love is not at all" "The executors sword may, with injustice, fall"

and tried other lines in quotes in Google and duckduckgo and all I got back was the movie itself, must be from the script or just from that poster . . . all I can think on the right line is that they (the rulers or oppressors) live, ruled and fell all while being hated by the people . . . ?

 

[smcder]

I think we could make solid progress on a number of the issues raised here by reading and discussing Tonini's paper on his Integrated Information Theory of consciousness. Below is an article by Christof Koch concerning the IIT that provides a good entree to Tonini's theory. The Tononi paper is complex (and technical in some parts) because it has to be in engaging the complexities in nature, brain processes, and consciousness that he illuminates for us.

http://www.klab.caltech.edu/koch/CR/CR-Complexity-09.pdf

I read the Koch article, now I need to read the Tonini paper - only a couple of videos of Tononi on YouTube, will look for audio downloads elsewhere too, found this of Koch at the Skeptic's Society:

... searching YouTube, there is just a bewildering variety of talks out there on consciousness

 

[smcder]

@smcder I want to explore that reduction to the primal substance - I think Nagel is saying that still carries over the problems of thinking of mind as a substance - so that you still end up with the problems of materialism . . . that's why he uses hte word "subjectivity" I think - but this needs more thinking. ...

since concepts reduce to words and words to letters, I will finish out the rest of this reply with the following two points (I leave the punctuation to you - and you won't need all the letters) . . .

abcdefghisjklmnopqrstuvwxyz
1 2

Haha, nice!

Yes, honestly, this is probably a case of me using terms/language incorrectly. (What I meant by cheating is that I could say 2 + 2 = 5, and if someone said I was wrong, I could say that while I said 5, I really meant 4. So from here on out, when I say 5 I really mean 4, and when I say 4 I really mean 1, 267, 700.597. Okay?)

I definitely get you on emergence/reduction.

H2O molecules combine together to create a new state of matter called liquid that did not exist previously. (Liquid can be formed from otehr molecules too of course.) This new state of matter - liquid - emerges from the interaction of H2O molecules. I don't know at what point "liquid" emerges from the interaction of H2O molecules, but it takes more than 2-3 of them.

If we reduce water to the molecules of which it is made, this state - liquid - ceases to be. So individually, H2O molecules don't have the state of liquid; however, when they interact with one another as an integrated whole, something new emerges.

[I am completely unsure of how/when to use terms like state, property, etc. For example, the concept of "property dualism" uses the term property, but in physics/chemistry, properties describe states of matter such as liquid, solid, gas.]



How do I think mind relates to emergence/reduction?

Like liquid, the mind emerges from the interaction of less complex units. However, like liquid, if these less complex units are taken individually, there is no mind. Back to the analogy of the song: the song emerges from the interaction of the notes; the notes must be considered as a whole or there is no song.

Another (weak) example is a tree and a forest. Two or three trees don't make a forest, but a forest does - at some point - emerge from a "whole" of trees.

The point I am arguing, though, in each case is that while things (properties?) such as songs, liquids, forests, and minds are things which cease to be when reduced to their fundamental building blocks, they are still composed of building blocks.

Now, Nagel may be saying that a mind does not emerge from the interaction of simple building blocks. I'm not sure he is. If he is, I (very) humbly disagree with him.

[I am completely unsure of how/when to use terms like state, property, etc. For example, the concept of "property dualism" uses the term property, but in physics/chemistry, properties describe states of matter such as liquid, solid, gas.]

In property dualism - the way I understand the use of "property" in property dualism - is just that there is only one substance but with two properties: mental and physical.

I think Nagel is wanting to avoid thinking about mind as substance, there is some discussion around category mistake in the PEL podcast I linked. So for him and Chalmers and others, there is a mystery here - and they all acknowledge that we don't have a way to think about consciousness, but they argue that what it isn't isn't stuff, it's not material - it doesn't have any of the properties of material (and this is something that I think you can explore for youself phenomenologically - @Constance?)

Maybe that's why in the bat paper he spends so much time focusing on the "subjective" rather than using the word consciousness - that's why I was trying to say the "subjective" isn't a thing - but that's not like saying well, ideas and colors and experiences and lots of things aren't things - it's not like that b/c the subjective is an entire category itself, not just another concept, right? Or no?

The word consciousness lends itself to a picture of this thing that floats around above your head and so ok it emerges from the mind properties of this primal substance - but if you say well what is the "subjective"? at least to me, it's hard to think of that as a substance - and that to me is a little rhetorical trick of the argument - Nagel says to physicalists (and if I understand your stance - I think of you as a physicalist - for you everything is made of some kind of stuff ... so maybe I want you to be less stuffy! ;-) Nagel says OK you can explain everything in terms of matter? Then explain the subjective -

So the hard problem is not a problem to be solved in physical terms - rather, it is a problem, the problem for physical explanations. I think the only way to see the hard problem is to step outside the physical paradigm.

 

[smcder]

Steve wrote:


I agree. Tonini's IIT approach is a significant scientific effort to ground subjectivity in the interactions of information taking place in physical systems down to the q level and proliferating into the immensity of the universe as we are able to see it today. Is this q level the place where Soupie proposes that we will find the ultimate physical 'units' of a single primal substance to which everything can be broken down, including symphonies, the Acropolis, the poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Wes Anderson's newest film, "The Grand Budapest Hotel"? I'm at the point of wondering if his effort to define the bottom-most substance loosed at the Big Bang as a single 'thing' having dual properties [units] of physicality and mentality is not by now a moot question. Tononi's thinking is fully grounded in the materialist-reductive history of contemporary neuroscience; he groks all the systems involved in nature and brain processes, but he ends up with a panpsychist viewpoint (to the dismay of many reductionists), recognizing what Varela, Thompson, Chalmers and many other scientifically informed philosophers call protoconsciousness (though Tononi seems not to use that term). These thinkers recognize that the central issue is increasing complexity in nature leading to the evolution of consciousness and mind -- and the works of mind. Whether there was one substance having two aspects or two differentiated substances (one physical and one mental) at the Big Bang taken to generate the universe we now inhabit, it seems that interaction involving the exchange of information was there at the Big Bang, triggering the faster-than-lightspeed inflation of the universe. Subjectivity is just another word for receptiveness of information and reaction to and interaction with it, enabling the exchange of information in which increasing complexity is generated.



I think the distinction you've just pointed out is one we need to pursue if we are to understand the significance of emergence and its tenability as an explanation for consciousness as represented by materialist/physicalist neuroscience.



Perhaps both could be valid if we think in terms of some causal agent producing the distinctly ramifying 'lesser' {smaller than a quark} instantiated at the supposed Big Bang which immediately began generating the complexity of the immense universe evolved to the point at which we are witness to it.


Soupie wrote:



'Building blocks' is too vague a term to describe the intricacy of informational exchange and resulting changes in nature (see Tononi). Even if you could reduce everything in the physical system of systems constituting the universe today (including the complexity of thought about it here on little earth over the last several millenia) to single 'units' or 'building blocks', those units or blocks alone could not be said to 'compose' reality as we know it, which is the product of innumerable (and many unidentifiable) interactions based on developing information.



I doubt that he would put the issue in those terms, but I haven't yet read his most recent book, Mind and Cosmos. It's worth reading the review of Nagel's book in the Chronicle of Higher Education that Steve linked above to see the number of scientists and thinkers Nagel could have cited in support of his analysis.


A reviewer's comment on Nagel's Mind and Cosmos: "[This] troublemaking book has sparked the most exciting disputation in many years... I like Nagel's mind and I like Nagel's cosmos. He thinks strictly but not imperiously, and in grateful view of the full tremendousness of existence." -- Leon Wieseltier, The New Republic

The four points by Nagel below are of particular interest:

taken from a review of Nagel's book by Alvin Plantinga:
Plantinga Reviews Mind and Cosmos - Stand to Reason Blog
NOTE: Plantinga is a Christian philosopher - some of what he says may put folks off - but he has a formidable intellect and is scrupulous in his thinking.
----
Here are excerpts from the review listing the four areas where Nagel objects to materialist naturalism as being reasonable:

1. Mind and Cosmos rejects, first, the claim that life has come to be just by the workings of the laws of physics and chemistry…. As Nagel remarks, “It is an assumption governing the scientific project rather than a well-confirmed scientific hypothesis."

2. The second plank of materialist naturalism that Nagel rejects is the idea that, once life was established on our planet, all the enormous variety of contemporary life came to be by way of the [unguided] processes evolutionary science tells us about: natural selection operating on genetic mutation, but also genetic drift, and perhaps other processes as well….

(Nagel) “The more details we learn about the chemical basis of life and the intricacy of the genetic code, the more unbelievable the standard historical account becomes.”

3. [Nagel] thinks it is especially improbable that consciousness and reason should come to be if materialist naturalism is true. “Consciousness is the most conspicuous obstacle to a comprehensive naturalism that relies only on the resources of physical science.”

4. According to Nagel, materialist naturalism has great difficulty with consciousness, but it has even greater difficulty with cognition. He thinks it monumentally unlikely that unguided natural selection should have “generated creatures with the capacity to discover by reason the truth about a reality that extends vastly beyond the initial appearances.” He is thinking in particular of science itself.

 

[Soupie]

I haven't completely finished reading the brief on the ITT. It should come as no surprise that I like the theory, very, very much. Here is how the theory lines up with my music analogy:

The individual instruments = Elements of the brain

Instrument sections = Complexes of elements

All the instruments and instrument sections taken together = The brain (the main complex)

The mechanical instrumentalists = The environment/stimuli

The notes = Bits of information

The song = Integrated information/experience/mind

I haven't read the entire paper nor had time to read other commentary on the theory, so I don't know how the ITT accounts for self-awareness. However, as I said earlier, the more primitive the orchestra (the fewer instruments and instrument sections, the more primitive the song. In the ITT this primitive song would be analogous to protoconsciousness, I believe, however I haven't made it that far yet.

@smcder Maybe that's why in the bat paper he spends so much time focusing on the "subjective" rather than using the word consciousness - that's why I was trying to say the "subjective" isn't a thing - but that's not like saying well, ideas and colors and experiences and lots of things aren't things - it's not like that b/c the subjective is an entire category itself, not just another concept, right? Or no?

The subjective (integrated information/experience/mind) may indeed be an ontologically new/unique category. I think it is. Thus the term "mental property" may be appropriate. This seems to be what Chalmers believes. However, this does not mean that mind does not arise via physical processes.

Read the opening to Tonini's paper and it is extremely difficult to deny that the mind is not causally tied to the brain (i.e., difficult to deny the mind has physical causation).

@smcder The word consciousness lends itself to a picture of this thing that floats around above your head and so ok it emerges from the mind properties of this primal substance - but if you say well what is the "subjective"? at least to me, it's hard to think of that as a substance - and that to me is a little rhetorical trick of the argument - Nagel says to physicalists (and if I understand your stance - I think of you as a physicalist - for you everything is made of some kind of stuff ... so maybe I want you to be less stuffy! ;-) Nagel says OK you can explain everything in terms of matter? Then explain the subjective -

Ok... this is the crucial point I am trying to make that I don't think anyone has groked. I'm not sure if Tonini goes out of his way to mention it, but the ITT does explain it.

Integrated information = Mind. It is a thing unto itself.

So we wouldn't say:

The brain experiences qualia/mind. No, it doesn't.

We would say:

The brain emits qualia/mind.

This qualia/mind is ontologically new - it may be a new property of matter like liquid, solid, gas. Do we know what it's like to be liquid, solid, gas? No, because we aren't liquid, solid, gas. Do we know what it's like to be qualia? Yes, yes we do, because we are qualia. That's us. We are a form of matter called qualia.

When our brains go to sleep or they stop working, they stop emitting mind, and guess what, we stop being. When the qualia stop, we stop. That's because we are qualia.

@scmder So the hard problem is not a problem to be solved in physical terms - rather, it is a problem, the problem for physical explanations. I think the only way to see the hard problem is to step outside the physical paradigm.

The track record for those arguing for non-physical explanations of what-is is not good. Is mind ultimately non-physical? Perhaps. I don't think so: 1) because we don't know enough about what-is to say so, and 2) there's lots of empirical evidence that the mind is intimately - even causally - tied to the physical.

 

[Tyger]

I put the first two lines in separate quotes:

"In some places where love is not at all" "The executors sword may, with injustice, fall"

and tried other lines in quotes in Google and duckduckgo and all I got back was the movie itself, must be from the script or just from that poster . . . all I can think on the eighth line is that they (the rulers or oppressors) live, ruled and fell all while being hated by the people . . . ?

That's what I am thinking, too - it's the poster's poem. If so, quite good. Posted a year ago. Still, the eighth line puzzles.

It's a great film! Chow Yun-Fat as King Mongkut was brilliant in the part. He performed in English which at the time was a language he did not know. He learned his lines phonetically I understand. Impressive performance. Jodie Foster is amazing, too. Not to mention the actress who played Tuptin. All round great film.

P.S. Ah, I see what you mean about the script. I own the dvd so maybe I'll watch the film this weekend and see if that poem shows up.