Consciousness and the Paranormal

[Soupie]

@smcder

I'm not sure how one "feels" about their mind and body follows from beliefs about what they are made of .... ?

It's the reverse: Beliefs about what our bodies and minds are made of follow from how we feel about our bodies and minds. (Or at least that's the concept I was conveying.)

@smcder

Can you describe more how this alienation feels for you?

Well, because it's a subjective feeling/experience, it's difficult to describe. I'm extremely introverted (resist reading that as "socially anxious" because I'm not socially anxious). I tend to view most physical needs/processes as a nuisance: eating, sleeping, defecating, talking, etc. I'm sure that sounds bizarre and creepy, haha. When I was in college, my apartment room looked like the inside of a shoe box. This was partly due to having no money, but also because I could generally give a damn about having pretty things around me. My typical outfit is jeans and a black t shirt.

In the one Peterson lecture, he asked the students to consider why they have Christmas trees. He said "You don't know why you do!" I had to chuckle: If I had my druthers, I wouldn't do anything for any "holiday." I don't want a Christmas tree.

I live in the world of ideas and concepts, not the world of objects and the sensations we have from interacting with them.

(Now, I'm trying to convey how I feel here. This is not to say that I don't enjoy certain physical experiences, but I clearly do not enjoy/seek them to the extent that most other people do. I am not a sensual person, I'm the polar opposite.)

@smcder

however, I don't think anyone has much of a clue about consciousness (in terms of a scientific explanation - see Peterson's video above) ... so I'm not caught up on substances and properties at this point.

I am interested very interested though in what people think are the consequences of their beliefs . . .

I am totally caught up on substance and properties! See, for me, that is the fun of it all. Trying to make sense of it and figure it out.

I have no formal training in philosophy of mind, metaphysics, or neurology. I haven't read any books on consciousness either. It has been a blast for me the past several weeks to read formal theories and terms which mirror my own ideas and intuitions about reality and consciousness.

I agree that humans don't have much of a clue - they have a clue, but not much of one - but for me, the joy is in discussing and developing my own views and the views of others, while fully realizing that I may be wrong. (I haven't gotten the point where Peterson talks about consciousness... but I have gotten through most of that lecture. It must be at the very end.)

I'm pretty much uninterested in what people think are the consequences of their beliefs, haha.

@smcder

... so, for you, what do you think the differences in the world are for a substance vs a property dualist? Does one view rule out certain religious beliefs for example that the other does not? Or are there moral consequences for one view vs another? Do you think certain things about free will and responsibility necessarily follow from one of these views vs another? In other words, what practical differences (if any) follow from holding these different beliefs about the mind?

I would say little to no practical difference must necessarily follow from being either a property or substance dualist. It would likely impact (not negate) religious beliefs though, such as beliefs about souls and heaven. For example, I'd imagine that a substance dualist would believe that the soul and heaven were made of a different substance than their body and the universe. A property dualist - while they could still believe in souls and heaven - would not believe these things were made of a different substance then their body and the universe, they would simply believe these entities/structures were made of a different form of the substance.

 

[Soupie]

@Constance

Mind and Life:

The scientific task is to understand how the organizational and dynamic processes of a living body can become constitutive of a subjective point of view, so that there is something it is like to be that body. ... [T]he guiding issue is to understand the emergence of living subjectivity from living being, where living being is understood as already possessed of an interiority that escapes the objectivist picture of nature, and living subjectivity is understood as already possessed of an exteriority that escapes the internalist picture of consciousness.

This is precisely the issue I am interested in pursuing. I'll be adding this book to my list of wants.

Mind and Life:

One of the guiding ideas of Mind in Life is that the human mind is embodied in our entire organism and in the world. Our mental lives involve three permanent and intertwined modes of bodily activity — self-regulation, sensorimotor coupling, and intersubjective interaction (Thompson and Varela, 2001).

Self-regulation is essential to being alive and sentient. It is evident in emotion and feeling, and in conditions such as being awake or asleep, alert or fatigued, hungry or satiated. Sensorimotor coupling with the world is expressed in perception, emotion, and action. Intersubjective interaction is the cognition and affectively-charged experience of self and other.

The human brain is crucial for these three modes of activity, but it is also reciprocally shaped and structured by them at multiple levels throughout the lifespan.

If each individual human mind emerges from these extended modes of activity, if it is accordingly embodied and embedded in them as a ‘dynamic singularity’ — a knot or tangle of recurrent and reentrant processes centred on the organism (Hurley, 1998)... you are a living bodily subject of experience and an intersubjective mental being.

This is essentially how I view the mind: it's the dynamic intersection of the body and the environment.

 

[Jeff Davis]

Sorry for misunderstanding some of your statements. As I noted in an earlier post to you, "it seems to me you are trying to integrate your own ideas about consciousness as founded in experiential presence to the sensible, palpable, world we live in locally with the worldview implied in Tononi's IIT and by others in computer science and neuroscience who think of consciousness as no more than an information processing system, a computer in which 'information' is abstract and digitized, not sensed, felt, endured, enjoyed, and ultimately problematized by mind . . . ." When you get back to the thread would you respond to that especially?

You wrote in this last post: "You must isolate my statements in and of themselves." I don't actually see why that's necessary or helpful in a conversation in which we're attempting to present to one another the coherence of our own theories concerning consciousness, brain, mind, and meaning. Perhaps you disagree; if so, why?

Constance,
I only meant that you must isolate those last statements as bullet points without associating them with what was written in the same response prior. That's why I prefaced those comments concerning my BELIEFS. I emphasize the word beliefs due to the fact that this is what we are dealing in with respect to consciousness. No one has the answers factually at this point in time with respect to the definition of consciousness. There is no question however that the majority of the findings support non-local consciousness. A property, or status, apart from the brain itself. I apologize for not being clearer, but this is why I created the separation between the last paragraph and this sentence: "I am going to lay out some belief derived points of conviction for you to keep from confusing my personal position on consciousness." Note the term "belief", and the term, "conviction". I am admitting that all my views are derived from my own personal philosophies and beliefs. It's my utter subjective opinion. Nothing more at this time. I just want you to be aware, that I am aware.

I am not honestly familiar with all these different consciousness researchers. Can you please (I would bet the link already exists in this thread, it's just that I am limited in search time, honestly) provide a link to watch or read on Tononi's IIT? That way I can relay if my views are in fact in line with this person's. I do not believe that the universe exists as raw information apart from our awareness of it. Consciousness is a natural medium in nature yet to be discovered. It is our cognition that is the computer doing the processing, not consciousness.

Have you ever heard scientists, especially physicists, proclaim that we understand how physicality works. The actions, the reactions, the mechanics of it all throughout the universe. However, the one thing that we do not understand is "order". What keeps everything from just flying apart in a million different directions. *That's*, IMO, CONSCIOUSNESS. It is an actual para physical realm that our cognition roots within, hosts, and perpetuates a local survival based relevance within. It's extremely difficult to comprehend, but the best example that I can give is a perception of perception wherein it is realized that everything "out there" within the physical universe itself, actually begins within us, as do all realized journeys anywhere. Isn't it fascinating to think that no matter how far off you train your eye, no matter how far away into our vast universe that we peer through telescopic eye, every awareness that we can attain is demonstrated cognitively between our ears in local fashion. It is my belief that within this embryonic juxtaposition of environmental awareness factors our evolutionary future lies wherein there will not be (not that I can imagine anyway) any "post biological" anything. We will simply come into what is our fullest and most potential environmental relationship orientation possible. One wherein all biological relevance will be maintained, or more so exactingly, retained, but just as certainly, one wherein our existential reality will be technologically altered be means of the manipulation of the universal order of consciousness. We will "tune" reality, by altering our localized fields of awareness so that we too can pull the stunts that these impossible flying machines demonstrate.

What does it mean when gravity, distance, and indeed locality, present no restrictive measure to our species? We become routine citizens of the universe instead of just the planet. The question is, what lies beyond that?

 

[Soupie]

@Soupie - this is the Jordan Peterson lecture with a fair amount about phenomenology - it helped me out, ... and this one is about conciousness and quite funny - he really seems frustrated by those who think we know anything at all about consciousness (in terms of a scientific explanation) and there is a good bit on free will too, a little more sharp or cutting than his usual stuff . . . eh?

Hm, I didn't note anything other than a bit of Phenomenology in this lecture...

In the Lion King lecture he does make a statement that "we have no idea what consciousness is," but other than maybe saying something similar in this lecture, he didn't elaborate.

 

[Jeff Davis]

This is precisely the issue I am interested in pursuing. I'll be adding this book to my list of wants.
This is essentially how I view the mind: it's the dynamic intersection of the body and the environment.

I agree. I view cognition as the determiner, and consciousness as the interfacial medium that our cognition completes circuit with. This act is a form of natural entrainment that we have been existentially evolving relative to since the beginnings of the animal human's sentient emergence.

 

[Soupie]

I agree. I view cognition as the determiner, and consciousness as the interfacial medium that our cognition completes circuit with. This act is a form of natural entrainment that we have been existentially evolving relative to since the beginnings of the animal human's sentient emergence.

I'm an especially visual person. Is there an analogy you can make that illustrates your conception of how the body/brain, environment, and mind relate to one another?

If I understand your conceptualizing properly (which I'm not sure I do) you seem to think of consciousness as a medium. Is it a medium in the sense that point-particles are a physical medium? So that, just as point-particles differentiate into physical objects, the consciousness-medium can differentiate into minds? And since all these minds are made of consciousness, they are all connected?

 

[smcder]

@Soupie - the Peterson lecture on consciousness is the short one "are we determined?" and the phenomenology one is Carl Rogers


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[Constance]

Really interesting posts today from Soupie and Jeff. I'm starting with the recent exchange between Steve [smcder] and Soupie, most of which I'll try to copy here:

smcder said: ↑I'm not sure how one "feels" about their mind and body follows from beliefs about what they are made of .... ?

Soupie: It's the reverse: Beliefs about what our bodies and minds are made of follow from how we feel about our bodies and minds. (Or at least that's the concept I was conveying.)

smcder: Can you describe more how this alienation feels for you?

Well, because it's a subjective feeling/experience, it's difficult to describe. I'm extremely introverted (resist reading that as "socially anxious" because I'm not socially anxious). I tend to view most physical needs/processes as a nuisance: eating, sleeping, defecating, talking, etc. I'm sure that sounds bizarre and creepy, haha. When I was in college, my apartment room looked like the inside of a shoe box. This was partly due to having no money, but also because I could generally give a damn about having pretty things around me. My typical outfit is jeans and a black t shirt.

In the one Peterson lecture, he asked the students to consider why they have Christmas trees. He said "You don't know why you do!" I had to chuckle: If I had my druthers, I wouldn't do anything for any "holiday." I don't want a Christmas tree.

I live in the world of ideas and concepts, not the world of objects and the sensations we have from interacting with them.

(Now, I'm trying to convey how I feel here. This is not to say that I don't enjoy certain physical experiences, but I clearly do not enjoy/seek them to the extent that most other people do. I am not a sensual person, I'm the polar opposite.)

A Constance comment: I can identify with much of what you say regarding your preference for "living in the world of ideas and concepts" since I've been doing that most of the time since I retired. On the other hand, I'm an extrovert and have always had big aesthetic responses to nature, poetry, art, and music (though I beg off going along to most of the current movies my friends trek off to see). You mentioned something about both Steve and me appearing to be body-mind unified, and I think that's true in my case, and would guess it's true in Steve's as well. Extroversion might be the reason in both our cases. I'd like to recommend a book for you and hear what you think of it if you read it. Of course it has a phenomenological base but it offers much more than that. It's one of the most beautiful and insightful books I've ever read: The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World: David Abram: 9780679776390: Amazon.com: Books

The value of it for this discussion in particular is that it will make phenomenological thinking come alive for you and may make sense of some of what I've posted here.

smcder : however, I don't think anyone has much of a clue about consciousness (in terms of a scientific explanation - see Peterson's video above) ... so I'm not caught up on substances and properties at this point.

I am interested very interested though in what people think are the consequences of their beliefs . . .

Constance: So am I, and so is phenomenology. This major 'turn' in 20th c philosophy was a reaction to Cartesianism still dominant in scientific and philosophical thinking about the nature of reality, dividing most thinkers between materialist objectivists and idealists. Neither could account for reality as it is experienced and altered by human beings; thus one of the primary goals of phenomenology was the overcoming of dualism through close analysis of phenomenal experience in the classical reality of the local world in which we find ourselves. Phenomenology also works in systems theory as developed in contemporary science, as Evan Thompson demonstrates in Mind and Life. In addition, phenomenological philosophy is a humanism, and a rebirth of humanism is deeply needed in the dire straits of our present earthworld (as characterized so well, and so hopelessly, by Wolfgang Giegerich).

Soupie: I am totally caught up on substance and properties! See, for me, that is the fun of it all. Trying to make sense of it and figure it out.

I have no formal training in philosophy of mind, metaphysics, or neurology. I haven't read any books on consciousness either. It has been a blast for me the past several weeks to read formal theories and terms which mirror my own ideas and intuitions about reality and consciousness.

I agree that humans don't have much of a clue - they have a clue, but not much of one - but for me, the joy is in discussing and developing my own views and the views of others, while fully realizing that I may be wrong. (I haven't gotten the point where Peterson talks about consciousness... but I have gotten through most of that lecture. It must be at the very end.)

I'm pretty much uninterested in what people think are the consequences of their beliefs, haha.

Constance: Being "caught up in substance and properties" is the general effect of living in a period dominated by materialist/physicalist/objectivist science and the mistaken meme that mind=brain and is merely computational in its operations.

smcder: ... so, for you, what do you think the differences in the world are for a substance vs a property dualist? Does one view rule out certain religious beliefs for example that the other does not? Or are there moral consequences for one view vs another? Do you think certain things about free will and responsibility necessarily follow from one of these views vs another? In other words, what practical differences (if any) follow from holding these different beliefs about the mind?

Soupie: I would say little to no practical difference must necessarily follow from being either a property or substance dualist. It would likely impact (not negate) religious beliefs though, such as beliefs about souls and heaven. For example, I'd imagine that a substance dualist would believe that the soul and heaven were made of a different substance than their body and the universe. A property dualist - while they could still believe in souls and heaven - would not believe these things were made of a different substance then their body and the universe, they would simply believe these entities/structures were made of a different form of the substance.

 

[smcder]

looks like I didn't put the link to the are we determined lecture?


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[smcder]

@Soupie

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[Constance]

I think Jeff was the one who asked today for a link to the discussion on Tononi's Integrated Information Theory in this thread. It began with the post at this link and developed over one or two weeks as I recall.

Consciousness and the Paranormal | Page 63 | The Paracast Community Forums

 

[smcder]

it sounds like we are all on a "jnannic" path - which if I understand correctly is a path if knowledge of the head ... there is a heart path and.a path of doing .... probably many others too! @Soupie - you might fit the old term "cerebrotonic" better than most -


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[Constance]

... metaphysics needs psychoanalysis because our metaphysical descriptions of the world are oftentimes driven by latent unconscious or unacknowledged priority schemes which restrict our metaphysical categories. According to Corrington, these can be rendered explicit through an ordinal psychoanalysis which understands that our metaphysical speculations about the world are always already embedded within the larger context of nature.

The extract above is from a review of the book linked below which appears to draw together and synthesize many perspectives on mind and nature that we've raised in this thread so far. There are four reviews at the amazon link that provide details about Corrington's philosophy that might interest several of us, perhaps even all of us. The book is pricey so might require the services of interlibrary loan for anyone, including me, who wants to pursue Corrington's aesthetic naturalism. Look for section or chapter 1 in the portions amazon makes available, entitled 'Selving', for an introduction to the book.

Nature's Sublime: An Essay in Aesthetic Naturalism: Robert S. Corrington: 9780739182130: Amazon.com: Books

{NOTE: The first section, "Selving" comes up in the reading screen after lengthy portions of the highly readable introduction by the author, so just scroll down to reach it. I also recommend the introduction, but I think "Selving" is a good place to start. For some reason, the table of contents does not provide access to the chapter entitled "Selving," but it's there in the available text.}

 

[Soupie]

@Constance

Being "caught up in substance and properties" is the general effect of living in a period dominated by materialist/physicalist/objectivist science...

That's true, and while the overemphasis is a problem, the focus on and understanding of substances and properties itself is a very powerful thing (as far as understanding the nature of reality... or at least our local portion of it (that is to say, our particular universe (or at least, our particular section of universe))).

In other words, in order to "understand the emergence of living subjectivity from living being" substances and properties will need to be considered.

Take spoken language for example. To reduce a language to sound waves, ears, the auditory cortex, syllables, diphthongs, semantics, tone, geographic region, dialects, stuttering, and on and on, would be a mistake. Language is all of these things, not just sound waves, syllables, or words. All these aspects of language can be studied in their own right. And each aspect will interest different people.

Consciousness is no different. When I ponder whether "mind" is made of matter, information, a property of some primal substance, or a dual substance, I'm not suggesting that's all there is to consciousness! That's the micro, and we live in the macro. I'm interested in all of it.

Again, to "understand" consciousness - as much as we understand anything - will require logic, experience, but also a good measure of objective science. It will require all three, and more.

Some may resist the very idea that consciousness/mind is made out of anything. However, I think this "feeling" is a product of experience, which occurs on the macro level. An interesting study I think illustrates this idea:

Study: Touch influences how infants learn language

Research from Purdue University shows that a caregiver's touch could help babies to find words in the continuous stream of speech.

Does speech occur in a continuous stream? No, but if you've ever heard someone speak in a language you didn't know, it certainly sounds like a stream.

So it is with consciousness: We experience it as a seamless stream, but like a stream of speech, it is composed of units - both on the macro level and the micro level.

And what is the relationship between information and qualia? Is Tonini on the right path or way off?

Michigan man among 1st in US to get 'bionic eye' | Health - WCVB Home

Diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa as a teenager, Pontz has been almost completely blind for years. Now, thanks to a high-tech procedure that involved the surgical implantation of a "bionic eye," he has regained enough of his eyesight to catch small glimpses of his wife, grandson and cat. ...

The artificial implant in Pontz's left eye is part of a system developed by Second Sight that includes a small video camera and transmitter housed in a pair of glasses.

Images from the camera are converted into a series of electrical pulses that are transmitted wirelessly to an array of electrodes on the surface of the retina. The pulses stimulate the retina's remaining healthy cells, causing them to relay the signal to the optic nerve.

The visual information then moves to the brain, where it is translated into patterns of light that can be recognized and interpreted, allowing the patient to regain some visual function.

While the mind/consciousness is vastly more complicated than a series of electrical pulses, many aspects of the brain do appear to create experience by - to some degree - processing information.

The brain <> the mind, but from conception to death, the brain and mind seem to develop together. Whether or not some aspects of mind exist prior to and after the brain, I don't know. While the material of which the brain is made dissipates after death, it doesn't cease to exist. I would assume the same about the material of which the mind is made.

 

[smcder]

Thanissaro Bhikkhu: Dependent Co-arising - Readings 13 to 23 - Consciousness - (9 of 10)

First section to quote - that I think is relevant here, and this is what I'm saying about caring about the condequences of what you believe - why I think this is important.

"What does make a person? One popular view comes from secular humanism. A person is a material object, the body, that exists in space and time and has consciousness as an epiphenomenon, a by-product of physical processes and this is one very dominant way of looking at a person . . . what this does though

Suppose you accept this idea … what this does, you are giving priority to you as it would be seen by somebody else – this is the way the world looks at you, they see you as a material object and they see you moving around behaving as if you have consciousness, now what this does, of course, is place a lot of limitations on what you can do, on what you can know
A lot of the post modern critique of modern views of personhood come down to this - (that) somebody outside is imposing their idea on you of what you are and all too often we accept it – many times without question

The Buddha’s critique goes even further – any way you are going to define yourself is going to put limitations on you.

"I am x – I am physical, I am not physical" – you are going to place limitations on yourself
Some of the limitations are what you can know ...
– if consciousness is the product of physical processes, that means death is the end of you, you have no way of knowing if there is anything that exists outside of space and time, this places severe limitations on what you can have objective knowledge of ... this consiousness you have, that you are experiencing, if it is a product of physical processes, what’s to tell you that an idea you have has any truth at all?

@Constance - here he talks about a TS Eliot poem where he writes of a great sense of oneness, unity with God – and asks if it was just that he had a good dinner?

I couldn't find the quote . . . but maybe you know it?

So how can you trust anything that comes up in this mind if it’s just the backside of a physical process?"

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[smcder]

He continues (obviously, this is a talk - a Dharma talk, so it's very much an oral tradition - these talks are done "mindfully" and he is very articulate, listening to it gives you a better sense, but if you read this, all formatting is mine added, sentence fragments, etc will make more sense if they are heard or at least imagined coming from a speaker)

"And how about this subjective side that you have of this process that’s result of physical things. Is your subjective thinking are there any laws that govern this at all or is it totally lawless is it totally subjective? i.e. Doesn’t have any basis in any objective reality at all? Are there however certain laws that govern the way cs works ? Or conciousness would work well?
Psychology tries to discover what those laws are by saying there are certain patterns of conciousness, certain patterns of being a subject that are true across the board. The problem is how many psychological laws have maintained true across the board for the last 50 yrs? They keep changing. And even if we did know psych laws whould they be able to tell you about what you should do. If you want a sense of oneness, a sense of belonging, if you need attachments – does that mean it’s a good thing or a bad thing or totally neutral – just because you have certain psychological needs, is it good to feed your psychological needs or is it morally neutral?
What are you gonna do with these psychological laws once you know them?"

*here he points to the example of one of the founders of “positive psychology” as someone who had been doing tests on torture – “learned helplessness” - that were then used for torture and I think he has to be referring to Martin Seligman, but he doesn’t name him in the talk*
"But this means you learn about psychological laws and there is all kinds of things you can do with them. Given that if your conciousness is just the product of physical processes, you can’t really trust anything that’s going on in your minds – there really are no oughts, there is no “should” at all.
But if you are described in this way – do you feel this covers everything that can be known about you?"

 

[smcder]

"If you allow yourself to be defined this way - what about your experience of your experience, are there things about your experience that nobody else can know? …

example: are we seeing the same blue?

There is no way of proving this one way or the other – this gives the sense that there is something in there that is totally yours, that no one else can share with you. That is a trivial example. The really important example of course is pain. Pain is a totally subjective experience, can’t be explained in terms of your consciousness is just a byproduct of the body – how you feel pain, what the pain feels like – nobody else can know … this is just your own personal knowledge.

The study of this side of consciousness is called phenomenology it comes from the Greek word phenomena “appearance” – how things appear to you. In the West penomenology has gotten involved in all kinds of intricate questions about how to describe reality.

From the Buddhist point of view – there is one important question: how do we put an end to pain, pain is something that only you experience, but you can put an end to it.
He wants you to look directly at the experience of pain, in one of the Buddha’s more radical teachings is that you don’t have to know anything about what lies out there or what lies in here – just look at the processes that you can see happening to your awareness and you will see enough that you can work with so that you can put an end to pain.

Dependent co-arising looking at causes as they are directly experienced this would be a kind of phenomenology – and with the purpose to put an end to suffering … when you see events simply as events or phenomena simply as phenomena – you develop a distaste for them, they lose their flavor – you look at the stuff you’ve been feeding on …”

 

[Jeff Davis]

I'm an especially visual person. Is there an analogy you can make that illustrates your conception of how the body/brain, environment, and mind relate to one another?

If I understand your conceptualizing properly (which I'm not sure I do) you seem to think of consciousness as a medium. Is it a medium in the sense that point-particles are a physical medium? So that, just as point-particles differentiate into physical objects, the consciousness-medium can differentiate into minds? And since all these minds are made of consciousness, they are all connected?

Such a bummer Soupie. I had worked on and had a really decent start to a response for this excellent post and it seems that unlike times past, the forum did not save my input in daft form like it typically does. It's just "gone". boo hoo. Oh well, will get back to it but it might take a few...

 

[smcder]

"(you're) ... going to have to assume there are mental functions that don’t depend on the body and this is where Buddhism really splits with the common materialistic view that everything in your consciousness has to come from some physical process, he says there are some mental processes that don’t depend on the body.
.. if you don’t believe that, (the Buddha says) its going to be hard to practice – it is possible for the body to exist in a formless realm, that doesn’t depend on physical processes at all . . .. and then finally he asks you to accept the possibility of awareness that would lie outside of space and time so you’re not just something in space and time, but there is a possibility of being aware of a dimension outside of space and time. These are some of the things he wants you to be able to accept as working hypostheses … (and) with the experience of awakening you will have verified these things."

So I think this is a very interesting way to look at some of the ideas we've shared on this thread - and their implications, that there are consequences to the views we hold - (and note what the Buddha is agnostic about) and that to move beyond what the Buddha calls papañca (conceptual proliferation - conceptualization of the world through the use of ever-expanding language and concepts) we are asked to take some positions about consciousness as being beyond the product of physical processes and that awareness may lie outside of space and time.

 

[smcder]

That's true, and while the overemphasis is a problem, the focus on and understanding of substances and properties itself is a very powerful thing (as far as understanding the nature of reality... or at least our local portion of it (that is to say, our particular universe (or at least, our particular section of universe))).

In other words, in order to "understand the emergence of living subjectivity from living being" substances and properties will need to be considered.

Take spoken language for example. To reduce a language to sound waves, ears, the auditory cortex, syllables, diphthongs, semantics, tone, geographic region, dialects, stuttering, and on and on, would be a mistake. Language is all of these things, not just sound waves, syllables, or words. All these aspects of language can be studied in their own right. And each aspect will interest different people.

Consciousness is no different. When I ponder whether "mind" is made of matter, information, a property of some primal substance, or a dual substance, I'm not suggesting that's all there is to consciousness! That's the micro, and we live in the macro. I'm interested in all of it.

Again, to "understand" consciousness - as much as we understand anything - will require logic, experience, but also a good measure of objective science. It will require all three, and more.

Some may resist the very idea that consciousness/mind is made out of anything. However, I think this "feeling" is a product of experience, which occurs on the macro level. An interesting study I think illustrates this idea:

Does speech occur in a continuous stream? No, but if you've ever heard someone speak in a language you didn't know, it certainly sounds like a stream.

So it is with consciousness: We experience it as a seamless stream, but like a stream of speech, it is composed of units - both on the macro level and the micro level.

And what is the relationship between information and qualia? Is Tonini on the right path or way off?

While the mind/consciousness is vastly more complicated than a series of electrical pulses, many aspects of the brain do appear to create experience by - to some degree - processing information.

The brain <> the mind, but from conception to death, the brain and mind seem to develop together. Whether or not some aspects of mind exist prior to and after the brain, I don't know. While the material of which the brain is made dissipates after death, it doesn't cease to exist. I would assume the same about the material of which the mind is made.

Some may resist the very idea that consciousness/mind is made out of anything. However, I think this "feeling" is a product of experience, which occurs on the macro level. An interesting study I think illustrates this idea:

I think this is a good illustration of a couple of points in the Buddhist talk I posted:

I think the Buddha would be agnostic on this point (what is consciousness made out of) - first, because we don't know (and we don't know if it's even a question that makes sense - it's hard to wrap our minds around someone who doesn't want to say that everything is made of something, but that is a materialistic assumption) so we truly don't know and good agnosticism says we should act like we don't know - agnosticism doesn't mean, I don't know, therefore I'll make an assumption ... and secondly the agnosticism makes sense because we don't have to know - it's not relevant (to the Buddha's point of view in terms of ending suffering) but also b/c making an assumption that it is (or isn't) made of something has consequences . . . in the case of it is made of something, consciousness (and therefore you) can now be objectified.

So this is why he asks:

But if you are described in this way – do you feel this covers everything that can be known about you?

It also places limitations on what you can know - if consciousness is the product of a physical process, then how can you trust anything that goes on in your head?