Consciousness and the Paranormal

[smcder]

@Constance - re-read the Stevens poem ... lovely, so much to play with - papanca is the Pali ... pa pa papaya punch ... meaning conceptual proliferation ... pro life aration

proliferation (n.)
1859, "formation or development of cells," from French prolifération, from prolifère "producing offspring," from Latin proles "offspring" (see prolific) + ferre "to bear" (see infer). Meaning "enlargement, extension, increase" is from 1920; especially of nuclear weapons (1966).

... and words do this all the time, the manic the schizophrenic mindset produces tantalizing word salad ... or witness Joyce's Wake o' Finnegan ... and how it begins again!

I suppose poetry and the paranormal would be a stretch??

I picked up a book of Rilke's poems yesterday ... I'm learning Spanish and found my German was getting in the way so now when I work on Spanish I try to think and translate in Getman too and also to read some German as it seems to help keep things straight ... funny how the mind works or this mind anyway!




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[smcder]

"It can never be satisfied, the mind, never."

(from "The Well-Dressed Man with a Beard," by Wallace Stevens)

... in my practice I try to turn toward suffering, turn into it ... anger, fear, urges ... Buddhism thinks of the basic quality of a being as feeding, so hear the mind is a being, a"hungry ghost" in fact - I think about how to bring mindfulness to conceptual thinking - combining stabilizing techniques (following the breath, body awareness and relaxation) with analytical techniques ... the discipline of the Western tradition which Huston Smith recognizes as a world religion reaching toward the transcendent (Soupie's primary materia! instead of the Ein Sof of the Kaballa we have the Ein Stuff) ... what are we up to here that the fine shades of meaning that separate us, separate us? clearly we've spent lots of energy that should have been spent hunting gazelles and looking out for lions and tigers and bears (or at least lines and triggers and bares) ... so why does how it really is matter so much to us? Soupie says consequences of beliefs hold no interest - so it's not pragmatism ... and Constance and I have rejected any attempt to water down the hard problem or settle for description or correlation, if there's an answer in there , I for one feel we should have It - and it's this intuition that leads me to reject ideas of evolutionary beliefs that are useful but not true (and the fact that you could argue that is one of them tells me the hypothesis may be unfalsifiable) and instead feel that we can somehow get at actual truth.


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[smcder]

and here I ask myself WWZD? what would Zajonc do??


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[Soupie]

Here's a thought I just wanted to share, but which is probably misunderstood.

Chalmers suggests that "phenomenal consciousness" or at least proto-phenomenal consciousness may be a fundamental property of the primal material (?). He compares it (I believe) to mass, which is also a fundamental property of the primal material.

Mass seems related to gravity, such that when a massive body bends spacetime, it attracts/pulls other objects with mass towards it. It can be said to have a gravitational field. Everything with mass - no matter how small, exerts a gravitational pull on other objects with mass.

Chalmers posits that particles also have a "mental" property. Thus, even an electron has some "mental" just as it has some "mass." (I know, you're cringing that I am "materializing" this non-material property...)

Perhaps just as a large collection of particles, via its collective mass, generates a gravitational field, it will likewise create a "phenomenal" field via its collective "mental."

Obviously, it's not. that. simple. I'm just thinking out loud.

 

[smcder]

Yes. The concept of "beauty" is subjective, but I wanted to keep the focus on subjective experience, not cognition per se.

(Been painfully busy lately. Hope to engage more soon.)

the millihelen has been suggested as a unit of beauty sufficient to launch one ship ....

 

[smcder]

Here's a thought I just wanted to share, but which is probably misunderstood.

Chalmers suggests that "phenomenal consciousness" or at least proto-phenomenal consciousness may be a fundamental property of the primal material (?). He compares it (I believe) to mass, which is also a fundamental property of the primal material.

Mass seems related to gravity, such that when a massive body bends spacetime, it attracts/pulls other objects with mass towards it. It can be said to have a gravitational field. Everything with mass - no matter how small, exerts a gravitational pull on other objects with mass.

Chalmers posits that particles also have a "mental" property. Thus, even an electron has some "mental" just as it has some "mass." (I know, you're cringing that I am "materializing" this non-material property...)

Perhaps just as a large collection of particles, via its collective mass, generates a gravitational field, it will likewise create a "phenomenal" field via its collective "mental."

Obviously, it's not. that. simple. I'm just thinking out loud.

... who's cringing? I posit the cuticle as the primal unit of cuteness ... therefore, kittens are composed of more cuticles than puppies ... these statements well very likely be misunderstood and even used against me ... (I'm a dog person - still there is Nermal...)

 

[Constance]

Another article on Tononi's IIT, this one from New Scientist at

Sentient robots? Not possible if you do the maths - physics-math - 13 May 2014 - New Scientist

 

[Constance]

"IS INDEED INFORMATION PHYSICAL ?
Elemer E Rosinger

Abstract
Information being a relatively new concept in science, the likelihood is pointed out that we do not yet have a good enough grasp of its nature and relevance. This likelihood is further enhanced by the ubiquitous use of information which creates the perception of a manifest, yet in fact, rather supercial familiarity. The paper suggests several aspects which may be essential features of information, or on the contrary, may not be so. In this regard, further studies are obviously needed, studies which may have to avoid with care various temptations to reductionism, like for instance the one claiming that "information is physical".

http://vixra.org/pdf/1202.0075v1.pdf

 

[boomerang]

"IS INDEED INFORMATION PHYSICAL ?
Elemer E Rosinger

Abstract
Information being a relatively new concept in science, the likelihood is pointed out that we do not yet have a good enough grAasp of its nature and relevance. This likelihood is further enhanced by the ubiquitous use of information which creates the perception of a manifest, yet in fact, rather supercial familiarity. The paper suggests several aspects which may be essential features of information, or on the contrary, may not be so. In this regard, further studies are obviously needed, studies which may have to avoid with care various temptations to reductionism, like for instance the one claiming that "information is physical".

http://vixra.org/pdf/1202.0075v1.pdf

Apologies f0r another of my "drive by" posts. But it's interesting to note that Jacques Vallee and certain other high level thinkers regard the study of information in the context of nature as largely neglected but essential to unifying our understanding of the physical universe with mind and consciousness. This viewpoint possibly relegates traditional physics' preeminence of dimension as the frame in which we construct our models of reality to a role that is inferior to, or even an emergent property of information.

 

[Polterwurst]

The initial Ouija group was formed by myself and some other women as teens. I was extremely interested in trying to prove whether or not there actually was something on the other side. The initial contact spirit on the board identified herself as Heather, a seven year old girl who had been burnt alive along with her family by the father. I was a major local history buff and spent many hours on microfiche desperately trying to understand the history of the crazy northern Ontario town I was growing up in. I scoured for hours trying to find house fire stories from the mid-30's when the spirit said it happened. I could not prove one bit of it.

Ouijaing with Heather and the group became an obsessin for many of the core members and related friends. Because of a love triangle in the middle of it all there was always an extra intensity and surrealness to our sessions. The contact was always strong and we trained Heather to double spell all letters and use identification signals upon appearing on the board. In short it became a group ritual, more powerful than religion. When I found the gold charm with her name on it, we were already five months into the sessions. Like other synchronisitic events it felt like the universe was talking to me.

A very memorable session included me ouijaing with my younger brother and my father asking questions. So aside from id-ing the name of his friend that recently suicided, it correctly identified birth dates of relatives I knew nothing about. It also knew illicit info about group members, but that was just our subconscious talking.

Earlier on the forum I posted the grand finale part one where Heather revealed she was actually her father and he was coming to kill us all. That was quite a night.

Thanks for sharing these experiences. I have to admit I gave up on the "Consciousness and the Paranormal" thread a while ago, and of course that's what I get, missing the good stuff.

It's really good to hear from someone who had these things happening and kept looking at them sceptically nonetheless.

I still wonder, and that's why I asked the question in the Lloyd Auerbach guestions thread, why virtually all these stories of teenies trying the ouija board end with death threats and/or other "dark prophesies", or claims to be some malevolent spirit or hell dweller.

Maybe Mr Auerbach is right in that the trickster might often be one or two of the teeners themselves, but I've heard that from too many credible people, who were sceptical, who have no doubt that none of their friends would be so cruel as to spell out these threats or claims.

If it's the collective unconscious of the participants, why would it turn on them quite viciously instead of telling them things they would like to hear? Self-destructive tendencies or just watching too many bad horror movies? Repressed fear forcing it's way out, maybe religiously motivated, for committing the sin of playing with the board?

What made me come up with the "trickster" is that they probably were looking for the willies, and that's what they got, double and threefold. It's like someone saying "careful what you wish for".

 

[smcder]

Here's a thought I just wanted to share, but which is probably misunderstood.

Chalmers suggests that "phenomenal consciousness" or at least proto-phenomenal consciousness may be a fundamental property of the primal material (?). He compares it (I believe) to mass, which is also a fundamental property of the primal material.

Mass seems related to gravity, such that when a massive body bends spacetime, it attracts/pulls other objects with mass towards it. It can be said to have a gravitational field. Everything with mass - no matter how small, exerts a gravitational pull on other objects with mass.

Chalmers posits that particles also have a "mental" property. Thus, even an electron has some "mental" just as it has some "mass." (I know, you're cringing that I am "materializing" this non-material property...)

Perhaps just as a large collection of particles, via its collective mass, generates a gravitational field, it will likewise create a "phenomenal" field via its collective "mental."

Obviously, it's not. that. simple. I'm just thinking out loud.

it seems now you think our ideas/positions are very different? earlier you said you thought they were compatible.

would we be, should we in theory be able to build a detector ... ? does this field, it would have to I think - effect matter physically .,,

because

if a mind is structurally dependent, if it has to be a brain and the phenomenal/ the subjective / mental is basic ... then it in some way shapes matter, shape the mind ... ? the brain across evolutionary forces? the basic forces constrain matter and the mental is a basic force or field ...

thus has also a tie in with psi and other paranormal experiences - matter carrying psychic imprints, the psychic simply being part if it's arrangement but that should be measurable?


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[smcder]

a jumble of thoughts I'm tired but just trying to think about one stuff and two properties, bury properties must constrain one another, nicht wahr? the mental affecting the physical, the physical shaping the phenomenal -


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[smcder]

a jumble of thoughts I'm tired but just trying to think about one stuff and two properties, bury properties must constrain one another, nicht wahr? the mental affecting the physical, the physical shaping the phenomenal -

... we should be able to test this both
ways physically and mentally ...

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[Constance]

Here's a thought I just wanted to share, but which is probably misunderstood.

Chalmers suggests that "phenomenal consciousness" or at least proto-phenomenal consciousness may be a fundamental property of the primal material (?). He compares it (I believe) to mass, which is also a fundamental property of the primal material.

Mass seems related to gravity, such that when a massive body bends spacetime, it attracts/pulls other objects with mass towards it. It can be said to have a gravitational field. Everything with mass - no matter how small, exerts a gravitational pull on other objects with mass.

Chalmers posits that particles also have a "mental" property. Thus, even an electron has some "mental" just as it has some "mass." (I know, you're cringing that I am "materializing" this non-material property...)

Perhaps just as a large collection of particles, via its collective mass, generates a gravitational field, it will likewise create a "phenomenal" field via its collective "mental."

Obviously, it's not. that. simple. I'm just thinking out loud.

My impression from a range of theoretical writing in physics, endophysics, complexity theory, and information theory is that we need to move our thinking through our conception of particles and waves to the ‘information’ they produce in their interactions with one another, which yield increasingly complex information in interacting fields and forces and eventually enable the appearance of life/autopoesis (the ‘self-other’ sense) in the single-celled organism evolving to consciousness and mind in the complexity of the brain. Does protoconsciousness arise with life or is it already contained in the first quantum interactions and their entanglement, eventually producing nature as we encounter it and contemplate it in the classical macrolevel of local being? Is information itself ‘physical’, then, or something else evolved in interactions and entanglement in the quantum substrate as the ‘ground’ of the proliferating complexity that constitutes a universe such as ours in which life and mind such as ours emerge? Information might be ‘physical’ only in the most abstract sense in which we can think the physical, very far now from what we’ve formerly thought the ‘physical’ to be. Cartesian dualism still haunts thinking in our time; phenomenology overcomes dualism at the classical macrolevel of being in which we experience (and also generate) a ‘world’ out of consciousness, mind, and bare earth {Heidegger}. There may be no ground for dualistic thinking in the quantum substrate that generates the universe we live in and the location in it from which we struggle to understand nature and ourselves.

 

[Constance]

Thanks for sharing these experiences. I have to admit I gave up on the "Consciousness and the Paranormal" thread a while ago, and of course that's what I get, missing the good stuff.

It's really good to hear from someone who had these things happening and kept looking at them sceptically nonetheless.

I still wonder, and that's why I asked the question in the Lloyd Auerbach guestions thread, why virtually all these stories of teenies trying the ouija board end with death threats and/or other "dark prophesies", or claims to be some malevolent spirit or hell dweller.

Maybe Mr Auerbach is right in that the trickster might often be one or two of the teeners themselves, but I've heard that from too many credible people, who were sceptical, who have no doubt that none of their friends would be so cruel as to spell out these threats or claims.

If it's the collective unconscious of the participants, why would it turn on them quite viciously instead of telling them things they would like to hear? Self-destructive tendencies or just watching too many bad horror movies? Repressed fear forcing it's way out, maybe religiously motivated, for committing the sin of playing with the board?

What made me come up with the "trickster" is that they probably were looking for the willies, and that's what they got, double and threefold. It's like someone saying "careful what you wish for".

Or perhaps "be careful what ideas you entertain." What random stew of ideas and motivations did these youngsters carry with them into their experimentation? Should we be surprised with the chaos they received and/or generated? I don't think the collective unconscious bears a single intent (or any intents) toward humans acted out or expressed in cases like this one, or that it can be presumed to be the source of the extensive variety of paranormal exchanges of information recorded in the SPR's extensive archives. We should be studying the volumes of archived reports and analyses of psychical and paranormal experiences and abilities accomplished by the SPR's capable psychical investigators over the last 130 years rather than trying to make sense of cases such as this 'Arthur' case.

 

[Soupie]

Can we divide what we think from what we feel?

Hm, my intuition is that we can. For one, I personally believe [some] organisms can feel but not think - create/manipulate symbols. Thus, I think feeling and thinking are distinct mental abilities. Second, I think for most of us, separating thinking and feeling is not possible, but some - such as yogis - can do so via much practice.

 

[smcder]

from my meditation/mindfulness practice - I've gained mostly awareness of my emotions - with anger for example it seems to be important to catch it as it arises and note it ... this dissolves some of the energy - instead of the anger feeding itself - it tends to dissipate often in a few seconds. I also spend time cultivating positive emotion such s gratitude and loving kindness. but the emotions still arise ... only I'm more aware ... and deliberate in how I engage them and what story I tell myself about them.

what a yogi could do, I can't imagine.


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[Soupie]

@smcder ... who's cringing? I posit the cuticle as the primal unit of cuteness ... therefore, kittens are composed of more cuticles than puppies ... these statements well very likely be misunderstood and even used against me ... (I'm a dog person - still there is Nermal...)

Ha! I think of the "primal units" of our mental stream of consciousness as "bits" of integrated information. I can't conceive of anything as complex as a stream of consciousness not being composed of simpler building blocks.

One analogy that keeps popping into my mind which I haven't mentioned goes like this:

How do you sculpt an elephant out of a block of marble?

Chip away everything that doesn't look like an elephant.

In some way, I think this is analogous to how an organism makes a phenomenal representation out of reality. Objective reality is a foam of particles out of which organisms create a subjective reality.

@smcder it seems now you think our ideas/positions are very different? earlier you said you thought they were compatible.

would we be, should we in theory be able to build a detector ... ? does this field, it would have to I think - effect matter physically .,,

because

if a mind is structurally dependent, if it has to be a brain and the phenomenal/ the subjective / mental is basic ... then it in some way shapes matter, shape the mind ... ? the brain across evolutionary forces? the basic forces constrain matter and the mental is a basic force or field ...

thus has also a tie in with psi and other paranormal experiences - matter carrying psychic imprints, the psychic simply being part if it's arrangement but that should be measurable?

I want to pull some quotes from the Chalmers article to clarify, but my position hasn't changed. I still think consciousness is directly contingent on physical organisms/brains, and I still think the mind is essentially uniquely integrated information. It's the old Cartesian dualism: body/mind or body/information.

However, if Chalmers is right about the hard problem - that phenomenal consciousness cannot be emergent - then I think his "solution" is feasible: that "mental" must be a fundamental aspect of reality. However, in order to avoid dualism (and thus causation problems) this "mental" is a dual property, rather than a dual substance.

Yes, I do think this concept ties in with psi and other "paranatural" events. Sure, we could theoretically create a detector; how do some dogs "know" when their owners have decided to head home after being away from home for a time? If, as Chalmers says, consciousness is directly related to brains, but consciousness is also directly reliant on this fundamental "mental" property, then this mental property is and always was present but only becomes apparent when a phenomenally conscious mind becomes a reflexively conscious mind. For all we know, the universe is awash with subjective experience, just as it is awash with star light.

How far can the comparison between mass and mental be taken? For something to have a gravitational pull, for example, all it needs is a large amount of collective mass. Does the mental property work similarly? Mass works by bending spacetime; perhaps "mental" has a similar effect, perhaps not. Based on phenomena such as psi, I do wonder if mental/consciousness does operate in a field-like substrate...

Unlike mass/gravity, phenomenal consciousness seems to require more than simple accumulation to have an effect, but perhaps not. I like to think that phenomenal consciousness is contingent on something like integrated information that can only be generated by physical systems such as brains, but maybe any accumulation of matter - and thus an accumulation of "mental" - has a greater capacity for mentalness or phenomenal consciousness? Thus the moon is more conscious phenomenally than a rock? That doesn't work for me.

I believe that the mind is - in large part - information which is generated between the interaction of an organism and the environment. Where is this generated information located? In the brain? In the body? Around the body? Can it extend out from the body? I think so.

What is information!? Re the article - which I haven't read yet - that Constance posted about a traffic light turning red and a driver/vehicle seeing it. The light turning red is the raw information but it needs to be received by a physical system before it can be "processed" information. As Searle says, can it even be called information before that? Information and mass are reliant on one other. Is it possible that one cannot exist without the other?

 

[smcder]

how does causation work under property dualism ?


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[smcder]

interesting ...

Thomas Breuer in 1994 had proven[69] that physical theories valid for the whole universe are impossible. Any theory will be wrong when applied to a system which contains the observer himself due to self-reference.[dubious ] This proves that the observer's own body does not follow the same physical laws as the rest of the universe. But other people from the observer's point of view will obey the usual physical laws, so conducting experiments on them would not indicate any divergence from the physical predictions.


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