Consciousness and the Paranormal

[smcder]

It's not clear what is meant by existence and nonexistence in these schools of thought. Can you define that?



I agree that 'what we think we are' conditions how we think we should act during this embodied existence. I have not previously been drawn to study and practice Eastern mystical philosophy because it generally attempts transcendence of embodied life in the world through renunciation of the world we are living in. Phenomenological philosophy, esp as developed by Merleau-Ponty, Scheler, Levinas, and others, has attracted my attention because it reasons from the basis of what we can observe and learn about ourselves in this existence, i.e., our essential existentiality, that we have apparent obligations toward others and toward the ecology of this planet that supports all life on it. In others words, because we can take responsibility, it is incumbent on us to do so.

The problem with the two pre-Buddha schools of thought you describe -- both concluding from opposite metaphysical beliefs that we are under no obligation to conduct ourselves morally and responsibly -- is evidently that these ideas in both cases rest on knowledge we do not have -- in fact, on imponderables. We have no way of knowing whether the universe we live in might be infinite; we think we know that it will eventually collapse in entropy; we speculate that a Big Crunch might be followed by another Big Bang, etc., for awhile or ad infinitum. We also have no actual knowledge whether the universe we seem to exist in, or the whole extent of what might lie beyond it, has come from nothing or has come about by design or intention or influence on the part of purposeful lifeforms or beings whose scale and scope we cannot imagine. From the viewpoint of phenomenologists, those imponderables are irrelevant to the question of what we should do with our lives and with the planet whose destiny we now control to a considerable extent.

At the same time, there is obviously value in the value-generating perspectives of most mysticism, most religion, and all spirituality. These major streams of thought flowing forward from our ancient origins cannot be explained simply on the basis of 'fear of death'. They originated in human experiences of something existing beyond prosaic explanation, in our time beyond currently objective scientific explanation. If institutional science were genuinely curious about what can be learned about the nature of reality through human experiential consciousness, especially in manifestations of extrasensory perception, we would not be having this conversation. We would be observing progress being made by science in finally investigating and understanding what can be discovered by virtue of consciousness and mind -- subjects that science has only begun to study.

It's not clear what is meant by existence and nonexistence in these schools of thought. Can you define that?

Existence and nonexistence here refers to the existence of an immortal soul.

I have not previously been drawn to study and practice Eastern mystical philosophy because it generally attempts transcendence of embodied life in the world through renunciation of the world we are living in. Phenomenological philosophy, esp as developed by Merleau-Ponty, Scheler, Levinas, and others, has attracted my attention because it reasons from the basis of what we can observe and learn about ourselves in this existence, i.e., our essential existentiality, that we have apparent obligations toward others and toward the ecology of this planet that supports all life on it. In others words, because we can take responsibility, it is incumbent on us to do so.

Austin will deal with some of this in the last chapters of his book - I'll be interested to see what you think. Western Buddhism has been engaged from pretty much the get-go, it was one of the factors in its acceptance in the West. I think you will be generally pleased at the agreement between Buddhism and phenomenology. Buddhism is grounded in meditation and parallels can be drawn to mystical experience across all religions (perennial philosophy) - phenomenology, I wonder, is a Western "indigenous" form of contemplation, not a rediscovery, but it's own process and I'm fascinated by it from the outset ... I'll be interested to see if you feel like there are connections with meditation as you experience it or not. However, as I learn more about Buddhism, it is grounded and from the start in embodiment - breath and body awareness are usually where one begins, then emotions and thinking - Dependent Origination says consciousness is dependent on the Five Aggregates (physical and mental factors) - as @Soupie notes, this is compatible with ... well, many things! And it's why the Buddha rejects both schools of thought and why he refuses to say if there is a self or not - (the party line is that there is a self, but it's a dependent fabrication ... - we get into terminology and I don't want to err in drawing too closely to phenomenology, in fact I want to know how they differ as much as how they are similar) - but Buddhism does recognize that this "I" this construct has obligations and responsibilities, you can't let go of the self too early. Karma comes into play but that's another aspect I'm getting more knowledge about ... I think "spiritual thermodynamics" is not a too awful metaphor for what I understand about it right now. At the time of the Buddha I'm not sure there would have been the global/ecological awareness but in one of the Suttas the Buddha did talk about how the husband treats the wife, the employer the employee etc at a time when this would have probably been comparable to how Jesus broke things up with the way he treated prostitutes and thieves ... and certainly as Buddhism developed and moved around the world it has adapted and I think Buddhist practitioners are often at the forefront of social causes. On the other hand, it is taught that pursuing enlightenment at the individual level may be the best thing any particular individual can do - years of working in a helping profession tell me this is right - I always said "first your heart must be pure" - because I saw so much of a mess being made by the "well-intentioned" who would have been better served to clean up their own lives - and let me hold myself up as a first-rate example and it's one of the reasons I got out of the business.

The problem with the two pre-Buddha schools of thought you describe -- both concluding from opposite metaphysical beliefs that we are under no obligation to conduct ourselves morally and responsibly -- is evidently that these ideas in both cases rest on knowledge we do not have -- in fact, on imponderables. We have no way of knowing whether the universe we live in might be infinite; we think we know that it will eventually collapse in entropy; we speculate that a Big Crunch might be followed by another Big Bang, etc., for awhile or ad infinitum. We also have no actual knowledge whether the universe we seem to exist in, or the whole extent of what might lie beyond it, has come from nothing or has come about by design or intention or influence on the part of purposeful lifeforms or beings whose scale and scope we cannot imagine. From the viewpoint of phenomenologists, those imponderables are irrelevant to the question of what we should do with our lives and with the planet whose destiny we now control to a considerable extent.

This was somewhat the point of the Buddha (within historical context) - in that he said these things are irrelevant to ending suffering - at any rate, you'll have no argument I think from Western Buddhists today. (I don't think of myself as a Buddhist, by the way ... more of a perennialist if I have to have an -ism .. but at the end of the day, I'm just this guy.) I know you don't listen to a lot of things, but Peterson's last lecture I posted deals with phenomenology and the implicit moral dimension of existentialism, he has a knockout ending that argues that it is much easier to be a nihilist than face the idea that everything you do matters.

At the same time, there is obviously value in the value-generating perspectives of most mysticism, most religion, and all spirituality. These major streams of thought flowing forward from our ancient origins cannot be explained simply on the basis of 'fear of death'. They originated in human experiences of something existing beyond prosaic explanation, in our time beyond currently objective scientific explanation. If institutional science were genuinely curious about what can be learned about the nature of reality through human experiential consciousness, especially in manifestations of extrasensory perception, we would not be having this conversation. We would be observing progress being made by science in finally investigating and understanding what can be discovered by virtue of consciousness and mind -- subjects that science has only begun to study.

I'm thinking these days that mysticism, religion and spirituality probably cannot be teased apart ... I'm thinking that, contemplating it - not committed to it - but (G)od knows we have tried to pull them apart - so many people say I am spiritual, not religious (and, fairly, some of the most "religious" people I know are not at all spiritual) ... but I think in the end, there are deep interconnections, if not actually between these magisteria, then in where they connect to the human soul.

Research on meditation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

of course you can read this for yourself, but here's a few things I found interesting:

Herbert Benson "the relaxation response" did pioneering work in the 70s with Tibetan meditators (he was intrigued with how they would meditate in cold temperatures with a wet cloth wrapped around their torsos - they were able to raise their body temperature sufficiently to dry the towels in a few hours time)

Insight meditation[edit]
Main article: Insight meditation § Scientific studies
A study done by Yale, Harvard, Massachusetts General Hospital have shown that meditation increases gray matter in specific regions of the brain and may slow the deterioration of the brain as a part of the natural aging process.

The experiment included 20 individuals with intensive Buddhist "insight meditation" training and 15 who did not meditate. The brain scan revealed that those who meditated have an increased thickness of gray matter in parts of the brain that are responsible for attention and processing sensory input. Some of the participants meditated for 40 minutes a day while others had been doing it for years. The results showed that the change in brain thickness depended upon the amount of time spent in meditation. The increase in thickness ranged between .004 and .008 inches (0.1016mm – 0.2032mm).[22][23]

I find this one particularly fascinating:

Theoria[edit]
Fifteen Carmelite nuns came from the monastery to the laboratory to enter a fMRI machine whilst meditating, allowing scientists there to scan their brains using fMRI while they were in a state known as Unio Mystica (and also Theoria).[27] The results showed that far-flung parts of the brain were recruited in the sustaining of this mystical union with God.[27] The documentary film Mystical Brain by Isabelle Raynauld examined this study.[28]

Sleep need[edit]
Kaul et al. found that sleep duration in long-term experienced meditators was lower than in non-meditators and general population norms, with no apparent decrements in vigilance.[45]

Also note the section on "adverse effects" - persons with mental instabilities may have difficulties with meditation and depending on the practice - you will probably experience a period when all of your neuroses are amplified! This is one of the reasons why an experienced teacher is recommended.

 

[smcder]

Scientists discover plants that can learn and remember
The scientists are unclear on the exact biology of what makes Mimosa pundica plants learn and remember, but they suspect it has something to do with the plants’ calcium-based signally network in their cells. This sophisticated system works not unlike animals’ memory processes, giving the researchers cause to reconsider the difference between plants and animals. It just makes you wonder: Just how smart can plants get? Maybe Lord of the Rings isn’t such a fantasy after all.
Scientists discover plants that can learn and remember
The Mind Unleashed | Uncover Your True Potential

very cool ... looks like the link doesn't work though?

 

[Soupie]

@Soupie I wonder what this belief does for you.

@smcder What it does for me is bring me back to how little we know. I think it's very difficult (but very important) to keep the mind from making assumptions. I've quoted Chalmers and I think several others, most recently Peterson pretty much saying the same thing about not knowing what consciousness is ... here is Peterson again:

"Scientific presuppositions or what pass for scientific presuppositions are generally extremely reductionistic and they assume that consciousness is in some manner that has not yet been determined a secondary byproduct of fundamentally material processes and its a perfectly reasonable hypothesis but i wouldn't say there is any real evidence for it. Its hard to overstate how mysterious consciousness is - as a phenomena …"

Nagel's most recent book also tackles this problem. They are pretty clear in saying we don't know very much at all . . . so what answer would you give to these statements?

I think we know a great deal about what consciousness is and its relationship to the brain, body, and environment. However, there is a great deal we certainly don't know. I do wonder if people who insist "we don't know anything" have an agenda. That is, do they want us to not know anything about consciousness?

I'm personally not convinced consciousness is as mysterious as some philosophers want/make it to be. For example, the micro processes involved in photosynthesis and germination are still not understood. However, we certainly wouldn't say we don't know anything about either process. And if you think comparing those two processes to consciousness is absurd, I'd disagree. We don't understand how "green" becomes "Greenish" but it may be via some currently unknown/non-understood natural process.

A complex mapping of the interior sense: why Damasio’s theory of embodied cognition focuses on the brainstem and viscera | Neurophenomenology

Damasio, never one to shy away from big ideas and bold claims, sums up the state of his thinking in a 2010 interview:

Feelings, especially the kind that I call primordial feelings, portray the state of the body in our own brain. They serve notice that there is life inside the organism and they inform the brain (and its mind, of course), of whether such life is in balance or not. That feeling is the foundation of the edifice we call conscious mind. When the machinery that builds that foundation is disrupted by disease, the whole edifice collapses. Imagine pulling out the ground floor of a high-rise building and you get the picture. That is, by the way, precisely what happens in certain cases of coma or vegetative state.

Now, where in the brain is that “feel-making” machinery? It is located in the brain stem and it enjoys a privileged situation. It is part of the brain, of course, but it is so closely interconnected with the body that it is best seen as fused with the body. I suspect that one reason why our thoughts are felt comes from that obligatory fusion of body and brain at brainstem level.

Definitely a bold claim! But one - for all we know - that might be correct. Could it be that "simple!?" That subjective phenomenal experience - the "what it's like" - could emerge from the closely interconnected, bidirectional relationship of a brain region and a body? Could it be true that subjective phenomenal experience can be uniquely integrated information?

Some philosophers and mystics would say no, but we just don't know.

@smcder did you pursue the philosophy wheel/personality type connection ... ?

Yes, but I wasn't able to find an easy way to go from INTJ to a discussion/explanation of how this might influence my views. I spent about 20 min looking around the sites.

 

[smcder]

I'll bring this one up again -

What is mathematics about? – James Franklin – Aeon

In particular the last line of the opening paragraph:

People care about the philosophy of mathematics in a way they do not care about, say, the philosophy of accountancy. Perhaps the reason is that the certainty and objectivity of mathematics, its once-and-for-all establishment of rock-solid truths, stands as a challenge to many common philosophical positions. It is not just extreme sceptical views such as postmodernism that have a problem with it. So do all empiricist and naturalist views that hope for a fully ‘scientific’ explanation of reality and our knowledge of it. The problem is not so much that mathematics is true, but that its truths are absolutely necessary, and that the human mind can establish those necessities and understand why they must be so. It is very difficult to explain how a physical brain could do that.

I'm not sure what to make of that?

There are deep ties between pure mathematics and mysticism - possibly even in the way the minds of both work.

... the article continues -

Aristotelian realism stands in a difficult relationship with naturalism, the project of showing that all of the world and human knowledge can be explained in terms of physics, biology and neuroscience. If mathematical properties are realised in the physical world and capable of being perceived, then mathematics can seem no more inexplicable than colour perception, which surely can be explained in naturalist terms. On the other hand, Aristotelians agree with Platonists that the mathematical grasp of necessities is mysterious. What is necessary is true in all possible worlds, but how can perception see into other possible worlds? The scholastics, the Aristotelian Catholic philosophers of the Middle Ages, were so impressed with the mind’s grasp of necessary truths as to conclude that the intellect was immaterial and immortal. If today’s naturalists do not wish to agree with that, there is a challenge for them. ‘Don’t tell me, show me’: build an artificial intelligence system that imitates genuine mathematical insight. There seem to be no promising plans on the drawing board.

This would be a real Turing test! ... your Gauss is as good as mine -

 

[smcder]

@Soupie I wonder what this belief does for you.

@smcder What it does for me is bring me back to how little we know. I think it's very difficult (but very important) to keep the mind from making assumptions. I've quoted Chalmers and I think several others, most recently Peterson pretty much saying the same thing about not knowing what consciousness is ... here is Peterson again:

"Scientific presuppositions or what pass for scientific presuppositions are generally extremely reductionistic and they assume that consciousness is in some manner that has not yet been determined a secondary byproduct of fundamentally material processes and its a perfectly reasonable hypothesis but i wouldn't say there is any real evidence for it. Its hard to overstate how mysterious consciousness is - as a phenomena …"

Nagel's most recent book also tackles this problem. They are pretty clear in saying we don't know very much at all . . . so what answer would you give to these statements?

I think we know a great deal about what consciousness is and its relationship to the brain, body, and environment. However, there is a great deal we certainly don't know. I do wonder if people who insist "we don't know anything" have an agenda. That is, do they want us to not know anything about consciousness?

I'm personally not convinced consciousness is as mysterious as some philosophers want/make it to be. For example, the micro processes involved in photosynthesis and germination are still not understood. However, we certainly wouldn't say we don't know anything about either process. And if you think comparing those two processes to consciousness is absurd, I'd disagree. We don't understand how "green" becomes "Greenish" but it may be via some currently unknown/non-understood natural process.

Definitely a bold claim! But one - for all we know - that might be correct. Could it be that "simple!?" That subjective phenomenal experience - the "what it's like" - could emerge from the closely interconnected, bidirectional relationship of a brain region and a body? Could it be true that subjective phenomenal experience can be uniquely integrated information?

Some philosophers and mystics would say no, but we just don't know.

@smcder did you pursue the philosophy wheel/personality type connection ... ?

Yes, but I wasn't able to find an easy way to go from INTJ to a discussion/explanation of how this might influence my views. I spent about 20 min looking around the sites.

I think we know a great deal about what consciousness is and its relationship to the brain, body, and environment. However, there is a great deal we certainly don't know. I do wonder if people who insist "we don't know anything" have an agenda. That is, do they want us to not know anything about consciousness?

I don't know - if you meet someone like that, ask them! ;-) What would that agenda be?

I can Google up the quotes from Chalmers (I'm sure it was in one of the videos I posted) but he, Peterson and probably Nagel all have said something like not only do we not have a theory - we don't even have a theory about what a theory would look like (for the hard problem of consciousness) but I don't take any of them as not wanting "us" to know anything about consciousness. (who is "us" here?) ... in fact, Nagel and Chalmers have devoted a life time to it - McGinn might be more suspect, but I don't think so - he is making an argument for why we won't solve the hard problem, but he thinks there could be other types of minds out there (alien, I guess) that could understand it as easily as we learn to speak - beings with philosophical minds. I posted that article above too - it's very interesting.

I'm personally not convinced consciousness is as mysterious as some philosophers want/make it to be. For example, the micro processes involved in photosynthesis and germination are still not understood. However, we certainly wouldn't say we don't know anything about either process. And if you think comparing those two processes to consciousness is absurd, I'd disagree. We don't understand how "green" becomes "Greenish" but it may be via some currently unknown/non-understood natural process.

Definitely a bold claim! But one - for all we know - that might be correct. Could it be that "simple!?" That subjective phenomenal experience - the "what it's like" - could emerge from the closely interconnected, bidirectional relationship of a brain region and a body? Could it be true that subjective phenomenal experience can be uniquely integrated information?

These two statements make me think you might not understand the hard problem ... but I think you do, based on your metaphor of "liquidity" ... this is tricky, because I might not understand the hard problem - but I think we might even, very conceivably create some kind of "artificial" consciousness ... and still not have solved the hard problem of consciousness ... more and more I see Nagel's formulation of the problem as rhetorical - I don't see how we'll ever "get" consciousness the way we want to "get" it and this is all that McGinn is saying too ...

Maybe?

Yes, but I wasn't able to find an easy way to go from INTJ to a discussion/explanation of how this might influence my views. I spent about 20 min looking around the sites.

I wish the site had a self-scoring feature ... I found some other philosophy quizzes, mostly on ethics and not fine enough to discriminate the reflexive from the neutral monist, I'm sure - but clearly personality, neuro-diversity all come into play as to what we believe.

 

[Soupie]

@Constance Yes. [edit to add] Except to those who believe that we have direct contact with the visible world we live in.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/t...human-vision-is-a-mathematical-impossibility/

The perception of colour is absolutely central to our sense of vision; to our whole sense of how the world is. Entire industries exist around the best colours to put people in, and which colours go best with which. Statements like “the sky is blue” and “the grass is green” are so basic that they’re axiomatic, fundamental items of knowledge which you can assume to be true even if the rest of the world is turned on its head.

But they’re not true. Colour doesn’t exist. The grass is not green, and the sky is not blue.

That much might be obvious to some people, of course. But it’s worth discussing exactly what “colour” is, what it tells us about how we see the universe – or, more accurately, how we don’t – and how human eyes and brains are set up to interpret it. “Blue” is not a property of denim, or skies, or oceans, but of how our eyes interpret a particular set of wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation, which we call visible light. Red is not a property of blood or cocktail dresses but how our eyes interpret another, longer set of wavelengths.

That means that we only see a tiny, tiny fragment of the universe. The electromagnetic spectrum is huge. Radio waves can have wavelengths measured in kilometres; gamma rays, at the other end, have wavelengths measured in picometres, trillionths of a metre, smaller than the diameter of an atom. The light we see, the entire familiar rainbow, is only that between 390 and 700 nanometers – billionths of a meter. It is a sliver of a sliver, a fraction of a dot.

“What we see” is not “what is out there”. Bees can see a subtly different slice of the spectrum, into what we call the ultraviolet – what look like plain white flowers to us are riots of colour to bees. Sidewinder snakes have organs which can detect infrared, in the same way as a military nightsight, allowing them to see in the dark. We can see the bit that we can see because it was useful, in evolutionary history, for our ancestors to see that bit. “The grass is green” not because it’s green, but because we can’t see microwaves. ...

So we have this perspective on how humans interpret electromagnetic radiation to "produce" the phenomenal experience of colors.

But then there are cases like the following:

The Mostly Color Channel: The Colorful Blind Painter

Turkish painter, Esref Armagan (shown seated in the upper left panel), has been completely blind from the time he was born in 1953. Nonetheless, he has been drawing and painting since childhood. Not only is he able to produce images with the correct shape and perspective—more importantly for readers of this blog—he is able to produce correct colors that he has never seen . The astonishing accuracy of his work is shown here in the other three panels and, as a result, he has held exhibitions in Turkey, Holland and the Czech Republic.

This being the 21st century, naturally his brain has been probed using fMRI and written up in Harvard Medicine:

"As expected, as Armagan drew, the frontal–parietal region of his cortex became active—this area is known to transform perception into two-dimensional imagery and to coordinate sensory–motor information in sighted and nonsighted artists alike. What surprised the researchers was the robust activity in Armagan’s occipital cortex, a region devoted to visual processing."

Glad that's all sorted.

Outrageous!

 

[smcder]

@Soupie I wonder what this belief does for you.

@smcder What it does for me is bring me back to how little we know. I think it's very difficult (but very important) to keep the mind from making assumptions. I've quoted Chalmers and I think several others, most recently Peterson pretty much saying the same thing about not knowing what consciousness is ... here is Peterson again:

"Scientific presuppositions or what pass for scientific presuppositions are generally extremely reductionistic and they assume that consciousness is in some manner that has not yet been determined a secondary byproduct of fundamentally material processes and its a perfectly reasonable hypothesis but i wouldn't say there is any real evidence for it. Its hard to overstate how mysterious consciousness is - as a phenomena …"

Nagel's most recent book also tackles this problem. They are pretty clear in saying we don't know very much at all . . . so what answer would you give to these statements?

I think we know a great deal about what consciousness is and its relationship to the brain, body, and environment. However, there is a great deal we certainly don't know. I do wonder if people who insist "we don't know anything" have an agenda. That is, do they want us to not know anything about consciousness?

I'm personally not convinced consciousness is as mysterious as some philosophers want/make it to be. For example, the micro processes involved in photosynthesis and germination are still not understood. However, we certainly wouldn't say we don't know anything about either process. And if you think comparing those two processes to consciousness is absurd, I'd disagree. We don't understand how "green" becomes "Greenish" but it may be via some currently unknown/non-understood natural process.

Definitely a bold claim! But one - for all we know - that might be correct. Could it be that "simple!?" That subjective phenomenal experience - the "what it's like" - could emerge from the closely interconnected, bidirectional relationship of a brain region and a body? Could it be true that subjective phenomenal experience can be uniquely integrated information?

Some philosophers and mystics would say no, but we just don't know.

@smcder did you pursue the philosophy wheel/personality type connection ... ?

Yes, but I wasn't able to find an easy way to go from INTJ to a discussion/explanation of how this might influence my views. I spent about 20 min looking around the sites.

Definitely a bold claim! But one - for all we know - that might be correct. Could it be that "simple!?" That subjective phenomenal experience - the "what it's like" - could emerge from the closely interconnected, bidirectional relationship of a brain region and a body? Could it be true that subjective phenomenal experience can be uniquely integrated information?

One argument is that - if it were that "simple" ... wouldn't we know it? Wouldn't we say "hey, this solves the hard problem" - and so the hard problem starts to ravel back up for me now ... if all McGinn were saying is we don't and can't get it - but we can know everything else about it - then we could all just get over the feeling of not getting it and move on ... but clearly there is a sense that something much more important is in that not "getting" it - and this is based on a thought experiment:

I think about learning calculus, I took calculus and dropped it twice, then I read Boyer's History of the Calculus and Its Conceptual Development and I "got" it - I'm not sure know I could tell you what it was like not to get it - because everything changed once I got that concept - similarly for many other concepts ... but when I think about the hard problem, I can't even "get" how I might "get" it.

Some philosophers and mystics would say no, but we just don't know.

And here is where I think experience is important - I also think some minds/brains probably aren't wired to meditate - though I suspect it's a continuum, with only a very small percentage unable to have any kind of experience of this type.

 

[smcder]

@Constance Yes. [edit to add] Except to those who believe that we have direct contact with the visible world we live in.

So we have this perspective on how humans interpret electromagnetic radiation to "produce" the phenomenal experience of colors.

But then there are cases like the following:
Outrageous!

people with four cones:

The Humans With Super Human Vision | DiscoverMagazine.com

 

[smcder]

And this just in ... making the world safe for reductionism again:

http://www.savoerman.nl/pdf/reflexivemonism.pdf

 

[flipper]

very cool ... looks like the link doesn't work though?

My apologies Smcder. Try this:
Scientists discover plants that can learn and remember

 

[Soupie]

@Soupie Definitely a bold claim! But one - for all we know - that might be correct. Could it be that "simple!?" That subjective phenomenal experience - the "what it's like" - could emerge from the closely interconnected, bidirectional relationship of a brain region and a body? Could it be true that subjective phenomenal experience can be uniquely integrated information?

@smcder These two statements make me think you might not understand the hard problem ... but I think you do, based on your metaphor of "liquidity" ... this is tricky, because I might not understand the hard problem - but I think we might even, very conceivably create some kind of "artificial" consciousness ... and still not have solved the hard problem of consciousness ... more and more I see Nagel's formulation of the problem as rhetorical - I don't see how we'll ever "get" consciousness the way we want to "get" it and this is all that McGinn is saying too ...

Hard problem of consciousness - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining how and why we have qualia or phenomenal experiences — how sensations acquire characteristics, such as colours and tastes.

We don't know how phenomenal experience exists. (Apparently some philosophers don't think it does... a la Searle vs Dennett...) Since we don't know how it exists, I don't see how we can say that it's not Uniquely Integrated Information or the result of something novel and complex like:

Damasio: I suspect that one reason why our thoughts are felt comes from that obligatory fusion of body and brain at brainstem level.

Nagel, Chalmers, et al like to "mystify" phenomenal experience, but we simply don't know enough to say that it doesn't emerge from the insanely complex information processing/exchange going on between the body and the universe at large.

I too think we could possibly create an entity with the capacity for low quality phenomenal consciousness and still not completely understand how it arises. If a transhumanist singularity does come to fruition, man-macine hybrids might be able to provide insight as well.

But how information becomes subjective experience is currently a mystery. And may be for a very long time.

 

[smcder]

@smcder @Constance

It's interesting that you both feel that way, and I'd appreciate it if you both could elaborate on that perhaps. I've been reflecting on this excellent thread/discussion and in which ways it has influenced my thinking.

So far as I can tell, the only "change" in my thinking regarding metaphysics (the nature of what-is) and consciousness (the nature of mind) is a better understanding of the so-called hard problem of (phenomenal) consciousness. And that remains my main area of interest in this discussion: How does phenomenal consciousness (conscious experience) arise in our reality?

From where I stand, neither of you have presented ideas or beliefs that are incompatible with mine.

On @smcder's part, all he's offered - but not endorsed - is the idea of dependent origination. I don't believe this view is incompatible with reflexive monism.

On @Constance's part, she's offered phenomenology and the idea of embodied consciousness. The practice of phenomenology is clearly not incompatible with any of my views as it's the practice of describing consciousness, an endeavor that I clearly support and enjoy. Regarding embodied consciousness - while I hold that the brain is primary in producing the mind - I also recognize consciousness is reliant on and impacted by the body, the environment, and the social milieu in which the organism is situated.

In fact, I'm the one who has stated that we have no way to conceive of mind without the body and an ability to interact with the environment. I'm still no sure how @Constance can hold that consciousness must be embodied while at the same time hold that it can then exist in the absence of a brain, body, environment, and social milieu.

I'm not trying to challenge either of you, nor to have either of you expound on your views. My point is - as I mentioned weeks ago - that the two of you seem to believe that my views differ drastically from yours, but so far as I have seen, they do not. And in the case of @Constance, what she finds troublesome in my views may be in fact a reflection of her own views.

I was also interested/curious about this statement:

And in the case of@@Constance, what she finds troublesome in my views may be in fact a reflection of her own views.

2. what views would be incompatible with reflexive monism?

III - I'm curious about monism - you've said things like "I'm a monist at heart" and I think something like your gut feeling or intuition or feeling tells you the world is made of one primal stuff - that's interesting language first, (and that's not a criticism) I don't have that intuition - am I missing something? Other than parsimony, what principle says we shouldn't suspect this claim as being philosophical convenient? Why not 33 things?

With substance dualism, you already have two different aspects, then you add in forces, fields, waves, indices and the rules to run the whole thing - the cosmological constants (and as the Aeon article suggests- maybe certain mathematical realities) and so what is the point of only wanting one stuff then when you have to have so much other stuff to make it work?

 

[smcder]

@Soupie Definitely a bold claim! But one - for all we know - that might be correct. Could it be that "simple!?" That subjective phenomenal experience - the "what it's like" - could emerge from the closely interconnected, bidirectional relationship of a brain region and a body? Could it be true that subjective phenomenal experience can be uniquely integrated information?

@smcder These two statements make me think you might not understand the hard problem ... but I think you do, based on your metaphor of "liquidity" ... this is tricky, because I might not understand the hard problem - but I think we might even, very conceivably create some kind of "artificial" consciousness ... and still not have solved the hard problem of consciousness ... more and more I see Nagel's formulation of the problem as rhetorical - I don't see how we'll ever "get" consciousness the way we want to "get" it and this is all that McGinn is saying too ...

We don't know how phenomenal experience exists. (Apparently some philosophers don't think it does... a la Searle vs Dennett...) Since we don't know how it exists, I don't see how we can say that it's not Uniquely Integrated Information or the result of something novel and complex like:
Nagel, Chalmers, et al like to "mystify" phenomenal experience, but we simply don't know enough to say that it doesn't emerge from the insanely complex information processing/exchange going on between the body and the universe at large.

I too think we could possibly create an entity with the capacity for low quality phenomenal consciousness and still not completely understand how it arises. If a transhumanist singularity does come to fruition, man-macine hybrids might be able to provide insight as well.

But how information becomes subjective experience is currently a mystery. And may be for a very long time.

Nagel, Chalmers, et al like to "mystify" phenomenal experience, but we simply don't know enough to say that it doesn't emerge from the insanely complex information processing/exchange going on between the body and the universe at large.

How are you using the word "mystify" here? We may have another problem of terminology ...

Can you provide a quote where you feel Chalmers or Nagel mystifies phenomenal experience? I read the opening chapters of Mind and Cosmos - Nagel's most recent work where it seemed to me he actually takes great pains to differentiate his view from anything mystical and I skimmed the rest of the book and read the conclusion and see also his summary here:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.co...f-mind-and-cosmos/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

... and I've also not read anything by Chalmers that I would classify as mystification ... ?

McGinn is classified as a New Mysterian ... but I think that's unfair (and he does too) ... but you can read his essay here and decide for yourself:

New Statesman | All machine and no ghost?

and lots of McGinnlygoodness to be found here:

Home - Colin McGinn

But how information becomes subjective experience is currently a mystery. And may be for a very long time.

I agree!!! ;-)

 

[Constance]

@Constance Yes. [edit to add] Except to those who believe that we have direct contact with the visible world we live in.

So we have this perspective on how humans interpret electromagnetic radiation to "produce" the phenomenal experience of colors.

But then there are cases like the following:
Outrageous!

Very interesting. I’m familiar with the information in your first quote but the case described in the second quote is new to me. Tell me, what do each (or both) of these pieces of information mean to you? That is, how do you weigh the significance of each one, or integrate them if you do?

 

[smcder]

the agenda idea is interesting and can be used by either side - I don't know any groups that don't want us to know anything at all - to think its a complete mystery - Mysterians (a small number) argue we won't gain ultimate understanding but don't necessarily say we can't know anything, McGinn argues it's perfectly natural it's just that we aren't capable of understanding it - and religions all have some explanation for consciousness / Christianity is very copacetic with materialism - a perfect. brain will presumably reside in a perfect skull after resurrection, Buddhism has lots of ideas about consciousness - but on the other side - that consciousness is nothing but the brain I see lots of interesting possible agendas - mental health, advertising ( not to mention advertising for mental health "feeling sad? take our little pill) politics of consumerism ....
convince people they are just machines without choice and them program them to buy your stuff ...

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Soupie]

@smcder 2. what views would be incompatible with reflexive monism?

The view that the mind is made of a different substance than the rest of the natural world and thus can't be explained to arise/originate via natural processes.

@smcder Other than parsimony, what principle says we shouldn't suspect this claim as being philosophical convenient? Why not 33 things?

For me it does boil down to parsimony: 1) I see no reason for there to be more than one substance, and 2) I'm not sure how two different substances would interact unless they had a common origin. For example, information may have the dual properties of physicalness (mass) and mentalness (experience).

@smcder How are you using the word "mystify" here? We may have another problem of terminology ...

IS THERE ANYTHING IT IS LIKE TO BE A BAT?

P.M.S. Hacker

6. Thises and thuses

We noted above that although many philosophers and neuroscientists are taken with the
notion of qualia, and accordingly insist that every experience has a unique qualitative
character, none of them actually tells us, with respect to even one experience, what its specific
character is. But it is striking that it is natural to try to refer to the specific quality of a given
experience by means of an indexical expression, such as ‘this’ or ‘that’. So we find David
Chalmers asking ‘Why do conscious experiences have their specific character?’, in particular,
‘why is seeing red like this, rather than like that?’

24
And it seems evident that the ‘like this’ and
the ‘like that’ are intended to be ways of referring to the specific qualities experiences are
alleged to have.

So, human beings with normal visual capacities can see red (green, blue, etc.) objects
in their environment. Seeing a red object, we are told, has a particular ‘subjective feel’.
What is this ‘subjective feel’? Well, seeing red is like this, seeing green is like this, seeing blue is
like this — i.e. this is the way I see red, this is how I see green. It is interesting, and striking,
that Wittgenstein anticipated this confusion more than fifty years ago. He wrote:

The content of experience. One would like to say ‘I see red thus’, ‘I hear the note that
you strike thus’, ‘I feel sorrow thus’, or even ‘This is what one feels like when one is sad,
this when one is glad’, etc. One would like to people a world, analogous to the
physical one, with these thuses and thises. But this makes sense only where there is a
picture of what is experienced, to which one can point as one makes these statements.
25

His point is simple: it makes no sense to say ‘I see red like this’ or ‘I see red thus’ unless one can
go on to say like what or how I see red. We labour under an illusion that when we see a red
apple, we can, as it were, attend to our seeing, and say to ourselves ‘I see the red colour of the
apple like this’ and mean something intelligible, at least to ourselves, when we say this. But
nothing meaningful is said, either to ourselves or to others, by saying ‘like this’ or ‘thus’ unless
there is a this or a thus to which we can point, i.e. unless there is a this or a thus in terms of
which we can cash the sentence ‘I see red like this’ or ‘I see red thus’. It makes perfectly good
sense to say, ‘I see the colour of the apple like this L O’, pointing to a sample of red. Here the
sample pointed at is what Wittgenstein, in the above passage, means by ‘a picture’ — i.e.
something that can represent, both for oneself and for others, how one sees the colour of the
apple. But it is an illusion that one can, as it were, point inwardly (and for oneself alone) to the
experience one is currently enjoying, saying ‘I see red thus’, and thereby say anything
meaningful — one might just as well say ‘This is this’. It is ‘as when travelling in a car and
feeling in a hurry I instinctively press against something in front of me as though I could push
the car from inside.’
26

If one thinks of perceptual experiences as thises and thuses, it is tempting to go on to
ask ‘Why do conscious experiences have their specific character?’, in particular, ‘why is seeing
red like this, rather than like that? ... Why ... do we experience the reddish sensation that we
do, rather than some entirely different kind of sensation, like the sound of a trumpet?’
27

But now it should be obvious that the question, ‘Why is seeing red like seeing this L O [pointing to
a red sample]?’ is misguided. First, seeing red does not resemble seeing this L colour, it is seeing
this colour. Secondly, the only cogent answer to the confused question ‘Why is seeing red like
seeing this?’ is that seeing this L colour is seeing red, since this colour is what we call ‘red’.
Equally, the question ‘Why, when one looks at red roses, does one not have the
experience of seeing blue?’ is a muddle. For the only possible answer (assuming normal vision
and normal observation conditions) is trivial, namely ‘Because they are red, not blue’. What
else would a normally sighted person expect to see when he looks at red roses in normal light?
The concept of a normal sighted person is defined in part in terms of the ability to
discriminate coloured objects. The visual system of normal human beings gives a person the
capacity to discriminate between different colours, and normal human beings can distinguish
between red and blue objects. We can investigate what features of our brains endow us with
this capacity and what neural deficiencies deprive the colour blind of it, and that is precisely
what neuroscientists investigating colour vision do. There is no further question as to why
when one looks at a red object in normal light one sees a red object.

Even more misconceived is the question ‘Why does one then have a reddish sensation
rather than the sensation of the sound of a trumpet?’28 The eye and the rest of the visual
system evolved as a light-sensitive system endowing the animal with powers of
visual discrimination. There is no such thing as seeing sounds with one’s eyes. So there can be
no puzzle as to why, when one looks at a red rose, one does not see the sound of a trumpet.
Nor is it puzzling, that, when one looks at a red rose, one does not, at the same time, hear the
sound of a trumpet — given that no one blew a trumpet and hence that there was no trumpet
to hear.

So, what remains of the ‘qualitative character of experience’? We must distinguish.
With respect to any experience we can ask what it was. The answer will specify the
individuating character of the experience, e.g. whether it was feeling a twinge or a tickle,
seeing a red rose or hearing the sound of music, feeling angry with A or jealous of B, playing
cricket or going to the opera. We can also ask with respect to an experience what it was like
to undergo it, and the answer, if there is one, will specify whether one found it enjoyable or
unpleasant, interesting or boring, frightening or exciting, etc. None of this is mysterious,
surprising or baffling. Nor is it the key to unlocking the mysteries of consciousness. For there
are no mysteries — only empirical ignorance and conceptual mystification. Disentangling
one of the roots of the conceptual confusions that conjure qualia into being is a first step
towards the demystification of consciousness.29

One of the ideas that I've suggested is that the mental-self doesn't experience Greenish, but that the mental-self is Greenish.

I think that's from where some of the confusion and mysteriousness arises. "How does my mental-self experience Greenish?" That's the wrong question. Your mental-self isn't experiencing Greenish, your mental-self is composed of Greenish.

Now, there are other "parts" of our conscious mind that can "access" or "look at" the Greenish part of our mind, and this is what I consider our Reflexive Consciousness.

I believe Chalmers once remarked that they real problem isn't Mind-Body but rather Cognition-Phenomenal. That is, how can our cognition interact with our experiences? Back to good old monism for me: if cognitive consciousness and phenomenal consciousness are essentially made of the same stuff, that explains how they can see each other. To me, that's a clue that our mind - while modular - is all made of the same stuff. Currently, I believe the "stuff" is Uniquely Integrated Information which has the ontologically new property of subjective experience.

For all we know, the universe may be awash with systems experiencing subjective phenomenal consciousness who may lack the ability or desire to communicate with other systems.

 

[Constance]

@smcder 2. what views would be incompatible with reflexive monism?

The view that the mind is made of a different substance than the rest of the natural world and thus can't be explained to arise/originate via natural processes.

@smcder Other than parsimony, what principle says we shouldn't suspect this claim as being philosophical convenient? Why not 33 things?

For me it does boil down to parsimony: 1) I see no reason for there to be more than one substance, and 2) I'm not sure how two different substances would interact unless they had a common origin. For example, information may have the dual properties of physicalness (mass) and mentalness (experience).

@smcder How are you using the word "mystify" here? We may have another problem of terminology ...

One of the ideas that I've suggested is that the mental-self doesn't experience Greenish, but that the mental-self is Greenish.

I think that's from where some of the confusion and mysteriousness arises. "How does my mental-self experience Greenish?" That's the wrong question. Your mental-self isn't experiencing Greenish, your mental-self is composed of Greenish.

Now, there are other "parts" of our conscious mind that can "access" or "look at" the Greenish part of our mind, and this is what I consider our Reflexive Consciousness.

Soupie, I'm intrigued by your comments on 'greenishness', which I gather relate to some theoretical work you've read. Can you cite it? I've come across a set of papers exploring the way 'information' can be understood, one of which also cites 'greenishness'. I'll link the access page for all eleven papers at the bottom of this post, following an extract from one of the papers and a link to it. I found these papers by searching the terms 'matter, energy, information' in an attempt to understand the way the concept of information is related in physics to matter/energy.

This is the introduction to
"Extensional Information Articulation from the Universe"
by Makoto Yoshitake and Yasufumi Saruwatari

"Imagine an infant or a brand-new tabula rasa autonomous robot just thrown out into the physical universe. When such a system tries to gather and utilize information about its surrounding universe, how can it obtain the information? Suppose that there is a green apple. We, as experienced humans, can recognize that this fragment of the universe (the apple) is green. We have information that the apple is green. But how about the infant or the robot? They do not know what the green is, or, how green something is.

Many researches point out that essential relativeness of information (for instance, see the Locality Principle and other ontological principles in [1]). It is natural, especially in the physical view adopted in this study, because a system (part of the universe) inevitably interacts with surrounding systems (other parts of the universe) in its own way. But then, at the fundamental level, how can a system articulate a specific uniformity (e.g., the color of green) in a part of the universe? The meaning of the word articulate here is “to divide into fragments meaningfully arranged”. In principle, nothing other than the system itself can provide information on how to articulate the universe.

One may wonder if it is determined by the sensory system embedded in the system under consideration—our eyes, the retinae, the visual cortex, and other organs enable us to see the green. Yet this is not completely true. Yes, the visual system actually captures some optical stimuli from the surrounding universe. In general, the stimuli captured by the system that is gathering and utilizing information are actually restricted by the capability of its sensory subsystems. However, the way in which the information system articulates the stimuli is another matter. Although the stimuli may seem to be articulated selfishly, completely arbitrarily, by the information system, this is not the case. In the case of the color system for example, it is known that the color system differs from race to race, from language to language. Some may distinguish green from blue and others may not. However, they also have cognitive commonalities not only within a color system but also among different color systems [2]. So the answer for the question “what is green?” is unclear in the first place.

We consider such an issue in this paper. How does a system articulate and categorize its surrounding environment, and how does it assign an identifier for the properties of the part, i.e., a collection of attributes, to the articulated part of the environment? How can such information be obtained, or generated by a physical system? After all, this universe is a bunch of physical interactions. A system that is going to utilize information from the universe must extract the information through these physical interactions. In other words, if we borrow terminology from logic, we might be able to say that the system must extract the information fully extensionally.

To our knowledge, few studies have been conducted to investigate the fundamentals of information in such a view.

One might consider that, in physics, information is tightly connected to physical phenomena that are obviously extensional. The distinction between the physical phenomena and the informational phenomena is subtle. Even in the study of physics, the materiality or thinginess of nature has been pushed away in recent decades. Many authors have already declared that reality basically is an informational phenomenon (for example, [3,4,5,6,7,8,9]).

However, it may be also true that there is a certain spectrum of informational nature of physical interactions. A falling heavy body makes a dent on the surface of the floor. We, humans, tend to regard this as merely a physical consequence. The falling body or the falling may not be regarded as information for the floor. In contrast to this, let us consider a typical information phenomenon: in many countries, a change of a traffic signal to the red will make cars stopped. This situation may be intuitively informational. The change of the traffic signal may be regarded as information for the cars or the car-driver composite systems. An information theory may or may not distinguish these two situations. Anyway, a fundamental study of information should explain the differences among such information related phenomena in the view of information, even if the phenomena are not apparently causally related, that is, not well-suited to be studied in physics.

Thus, in the view of this paper, such an extensional approach to the fundamentals of information should cover broader scope than the information studies in physics.

In information theories, the approach developed by Alexander Chechkin (see [1]) might be regarded as one of such studies that have the nearest viewpoint.

His approach is based on two main notions: an object and information about object. In his theory, properties of objects are represented (and denoted) by subsets of those objects that has this property, i.e., each property is a subset of all objects and each subset is a property of objects. It is the classical set-theoretical approach to the concept of property [1].

To represent properties of objects extensionally, it seems natural to use the sets of objects, as Chechkin. Needless to say, in many studies in various disciplines, a property of objects, or equivalently in this paper, an attribute of objects, is treated as a set of objects. The attribute green is (represented by) all the green-ish objects. When someone asks “what is green?”, one may answer by indicating something greenish and saying “this is green”. Something green is one of the greenish objects one has ever met, and the attribute “green” can be defined by all the greenish objects one has ever met. Borrowing a term in linguistics, synchronically, this may be sufficient. That is, at a fixed point of time, all the greenish objects that one has ever sensed can represent the attribute green for him/her.

However, if one defines the attribute green by a certain (fixed) set of green-ish objects, there will be no room for a green thing newly accepted. Something newly accepted cannot reside in the set of green-ish objects, which is already fixed as “the definition of the attribute green”. Diachronically, an attribute is not merely that which is equivalent to a set of objects. There is a case in which modeling an attribute as a set of object is not appropriate.

This study addresses such a case. We will pursue the understanding of information as a universal structure that is fully extensionally obtained from finite physical interactions.

Note that, such an understanding may also demystify a kind of the bootstrapping process of information extraction from the universe. From the extensional viewpoint of this study, as already mentioned, information is naturally considered to be essentially relative to the (information receiving) system, the same as physical interactions are essentially relative. Information relative to the system implies the existence of the context, that is, another referred information within the system. But, then, how can a system articulate the universe without any contextual information (i.e., so to speak, criteria), at the most fundamental level of, or, at the very beginning of, information process? In other words, how can a system have information of its own without any presupposed another information? Though this study might be very focused and not general enough, it may be considered as an attempt to understand information from such an absolutely relative viewpoint.

Extracting/creating information from the universe via physical interventions has been discussed in the measurement theory in metrology (see [10], etc.). The theory is called the extensive measurement theory, which will be described in detail in Section 3. The purpose of the present study is to develop a general model of extensional information articulation process as a generalization of the extensive measurement theory.

In this paper, the authors

• present a model of the process of extensional information articulation as a generalized extensive measurement;
  
  
• provide a detailed example of a step of the extensional informational articulation process—a model of attribute creation.

The structure of this paper is as follows. Section 2 introduces some terms used in this article. In Section 3, the extensive measurement in metrology is explained in detail. Referencing the steps in the extensive measurement, a model for information articulation process as a generalized measurement is developed in Section 4. Section 5 exemplifies the concepts of the developed process by a model for attribute creation. Section 6 concludes this paper."

This paper is at: Information | Free Full-Text | Extensional Information Articulation from the Universe | HTML

The group of eleven papers is linked here, following this introduction:
Information | Special Issue : Information and Energy/Matter

"We stand on the edge of one more major leap in our understanding of the universe. One of many indications for the need of radical re-conceptualization is the fact that in our current understanding most of the universe seems to consist of something we know next to nothing about - dark energy and dark matter. All our knowledge about physics however is based on ordinary energy/matter which makes up less than 5% of what we know as the universe.

There are several strategies for attacking this problem of understanding of physical reality, and already today we can see the beginnings of the development of a new conception of the world, where physics is placed in a broader context of human knowledge. It goes via basic ideas of information and computation. This development is a consequence of the advances in information processing technologies which affect knowledge production and our grasp of the fundamental ideas of reality, human mind and cognition, knowledge, sciences, humanities, engineering and arts.

Many have already declared that reality basically is an informational phenomenon. To name but a few: Wheeler with IT FROM BIT; Floridi with Informational Structural Realism; Lloyd, Seife, Vedral with Decoding Reality; Frieden with Physics from Fisher Information and more. How does this information relate to energy/matter?

The essential for new approaches is closure - coming back to human which is the center of all knowledge production about the world. This self-reflective process has traditionally been avoided because of the practical problems in addressing it computationally. Nowadays we have tools at our disposal which help us understand self-reflective dynamical structures, so this does not present a problem for modeling anymore.

The idea is to explore how the framework for knowledge production relates to what can be known (and all of our knowledge is structured information so laws of physics are information about the informational structure of the world – a meta-information). It connects information with matter-energy as we find it in the world and in the observer of the world.

This special issue will explore all the different facets of the relationship between the world (physical world as we know it in form of energy/matter) and information.

Dr. Gordana Dodig Crnkovic
Guest Editor"

 

[Soupie]

Very interesting. I’m familiar with the information in your first quote but the case described in the second quote is new to me. Tell me, what do each (or both) of these pieces of information mean to you? That is, how do you weigh the significance of each one, or integrate them if you do?

I believe how we subjectively experience the world is not how it objectively is. I think our bodies (body-self) filter, integrate, and interpret the pure information of reality into a stream of consciousness (mental-self).

How the blind gentleman is able to correctly paint colors onto his paintings I don't know. From what I read, he uses his hands to feel what the trees "look" like. I wasn't able to find anything about how he determines what colors the trees are nor how he is able to mix these colors. Is it possible he can sense colors with his fingers? According to the article, his visual cortex is used to help with his tactile sense. Can he sense colors tactilely? Or does someone simply tell him what colors the tree is? It said in the article he makes the paintings himself.

@Constance Soupie, I'm intrigued by your comments on 'greenishness', which I gather relate to some theoretical work you've read. Can you cite it? I've come across a set of papers exploring the way 'information' can be understood, one of which also cites 'greenishness'.

It or derivations of it are used a few times in this excellent but inconclusive article:

What Phenomenal Consciousness is Like

[A]n example of a Blockean “experiential property” will be useful. Consider visual experiences (in good light) of cucumbers, limes, green peppers, grass, and so on. These experiences saliently resemble each other in respect of “what it’s like” to undergo them; they accordingly share an experiential property, call it ‘G’. ... Sometimes a property like G is called a ‘phenomenal character’, a ‘qualitative character’, or a ‘quale’. The last two expressions are used in this way in Levine 2001; in the additional terminology of that book, G is “greenishness”.

To me, Green vs Greenish, or g vs G, represents the distinction between objective and subjective, where Green represents the objective, physical radiation, and Greenish represents the subjective, mental experience of the objective, physical radiation.

The hard problem of consciousness, as I understand it, is understanding how objective radiation and organisms can produce subjective experiences. Some philosophers hold that subjective experience must be composed of a non-physical, dual substance, others think it's an illusion that doesn't really exist, and I think something along the lines of Tonini and IIT that subjective experience "emerges" from information that has been uniquely filtered, integrated, and interpreted by systems such as brains.

Perhaps asking why subjective experience emerges from information that is uniquely filtered, integrated, and interpreted is similar to asking why liquidity emerges from groups of H2O molecules. [Again, I believe the subjective experience that emerges from uniquely filtered, integrated, and interpreted isn't then experienced by a mental-subject, I believe it is a mental-subject.]

On the other hand, it's possible subjective experience is adaptive and that brains came to produce it via the long process of evolution. Chalmers doesn't seem to think subjective experience is adaptive, as he believes Zombies could function just like humans, but I'm skeptical of this.

 

[Soupie]

One may wonder if it is determined by the sensory system embedded in the system under consideration—our eyes, the retinae, the visual cortex, and other organs enable us to see the green. Yet this is not completely true. Yes, the visual system actually captures some optical stimuli from the surrounding universe. In general, the stimuli captured by the system that is gathering and utilizing information are actually restricted by the capability of its sensory subsystems. However, the way in which the information system articulates the stimuli is another matter. Although the stimuli may seem to be articulated selfishly, completely arbitrarily, by the information system, this is not the case. In the case of the color system for example, it is known that the color system differs from race to race, from language to language. Some may distinguish green from blue and others may not. However, they also have cognitive commonalities not only within a color system but also among different color systems [2]. So the answer for the question “what is green?” is unclear in the first place.

First of all, Constance, I am in awe of your ability to gather such incredible information!

I'm fascinated by this line of inquiry. I don't think systems such as humans are blank slates. I think our genotype - our collective unconscious - colors the way we experience the world. That is to say, because we are human organisms, we have human minds. Because bats are bat organisms, they will have bat minds.

I think this all relates to the article on perception that I posted above:

Things You Cannot Unsee (and What That Says About Your Brain) - Alexis C. Madrigal - The Atlantic

Much of this has been known for decades.2But here's where the science has gotten really interesting in the last five or ten years. When neuroscientists look at the connections between the cells, they don't just see information passing up the complexity chain. There is information running down from the neocortex's higher levels to the lower ones.

"For every axon coming from the retina into our thalamus before entering our 'consciousness' in the primary visual cortex, the primary visual cortex sends at least twice as many axons back onto the thalamus to modulate the raw signal," explained UC San Diego neuroscientist Bradley Voytek.3

Why is that significant? "Our cortex is already changing the raw visual information before that information gets into our consciousness," Voytek concluded.

We (our body-selves) don't just passively receive and integrate information, but the very "shape" of our body-selves influence how the received information is interpreted. When we look at a flower we see green because that is adaptive for us as humans, whereas a bee might see white and black because that is adaptive for them.

Chalmers might ask: But why is objective green experienced as subjective Greenish!? The answer might lie in the unique way information is integrated and interpreted. What I'm saying is that in the absence of integrated and interpreted data will be the absence of subjective experience.

 

[Constance]

@smcder 2. what views would be incompatible with reflexive monism?

The view that the mind is made of a different substance than the rest of the natural world and thus can't be explained to arise/originate via natural processes.

Soupie, I doubt that arguing in general terms about monisms and dualisms {especially when there are several varieties of each, as Chalmers has clarified} gets us nearer to understanding the problems and complexities involved in understanding consciousness, which is what we're attempting to understand better in this thread.

@smcder Other than parsimony, what principle says we shouldn't suspect this claim as being philosophical convenient? Why not 33 things?

For me it does boil down to parsimony: 1) I see no reason for there to be more than one substance, and 2) I'm not sure how two different substances would interact unless they had a common origin. For example, information may have the dual properties of physicalness (mass) and mentalness (experience).

It might, but it remains to be understood and demonstrated that it does. There are many scientists and philosophers at work (together) on how to understand how this might be thought to be the case. (I posted earlier today with links to some of them and have more links to post as we continue, if we continue, to explore this question.) Parsimony is a venerable long-standing scientific value especially beloved by materialists and physicalists, but its value is questionable when we attempt to deal with developmental systems and quantum effects in both the physical universe and in consciousness/mind.

@smcder How are you using the word "mystify" here? We may have another problem of terminology ...

One of the ideas that I've suggested is that the mental-self doesn't experience Greenish, but that the mental-self is Greenish.

I think that's from where some of the confusion and mysteriousness arises. "How does my mental-self experience Greenish?" That's the wrong question. Your mental-self isn't experiencing Greenish, your mental-self is composed of Greenish.

Now, there are other "parts" of our conscious mind that can "access" or "look at" the Greenish part of our mind, and this is what I consider our Reflexive Consciousness.

This is a novel theory so far as I know. What is the evidence and/or reasoning on which you make the above claim, highlighted in blue? How does the greenish part of the brain become greenish, and does it show up in fMRI? And what persuades you that a different -- conscious -- part of the brain contemplates the greenish part of the brain?

I believe Chalmers once remarked that they real problem isn't Mind-Body but rather Cognition-Phenomenal. That is, how can our cognition interact with our experiences? Back to good old monism for me: if cognitive consciousness and phenomenal consciousness are essentially made of the same stuff, that explains how they can see each other. To me, that's a clue that our mind - while modular - is all made of the same stuff. Currently, I believe the "stuff" is Uniquely Integrated Information which has the ontologically new property of subjective experience.

So you are convinced that Tononi has the full account of consciousness/mind/brain in his IIT theory? I'm wondering why Tononi refers to 'experience' when so far as I have seen he does not deal with experience in any ordinary sense of the term but rather as something that takes place in interactions of 'information' in the brain without any reference to the body. Maybe you can explain this to me, and if so I hope you will. Tononi also uses the term 'qualia', though it's not clear in his system how they arise as experienced qualities. By contrast, you seem to think of qualia as 'mystification', and you postulate that a quale such as greenishness literally colors part of the brain and that this quale is observed by another part of the brain. All this is very confusing.

For all we know, the universe may be awash with systems experiencing subjective phenomenal consciousness who may lack the ability or desire to communicate with other systems.

Could be. We could start with bees, whom we know to experience colors differently than we do given their access to EM frequencies other than those that produce the colors that humans (most of us, not all) see. @Steve posted a very interesting paper on some humans who are able to see many more colors than most of us do and about how that might be explained.

At this point in your post you quoted a lengthy and somewhat emotional extract from a paper reacting to Nagel's "What is it like to be a Bat?" It's not at all surprising that an analytical philosopher would take that stance and tone, for until recently the analytic school of philosophy was in general reaction against the phenomenological school. I wouldn't take that paper to the bank, btw, unless you are a committed physicalist and bank with physicalists. It's hard to tell sometimes how closely you adhere to physicalism because you also refer fairly frequently to experience, qualia, and consciousness. I personally think the most productive path for all of us to pursue would be one (or several) of those being cleared by scientists and philosophers cooperating in probing deeper into the interacting natural processes involved in the production of information.