Pharoah
Paranormal Adept
I agree etc
-
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Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 4
- Thread starter Gene Steinberg
- Start date
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Soupie
Paranormal Adept
I'm (mostly) with you. I really like what you are doing here. It makes a great deal of sense.
I'm wondering again if you need to be careful with your use of the term/concept qualitative (as ive noted before).
Its one thing to say that red berries are "qualitatively relevant" to an organism, and quite another to say a physiological process is "qualitatively evocative."
I think you have potentialy found a "mechanism" for connecting physical processes to phenomenal consciousness, but you haven't quite bridged the gap just yet. You could be close, but there is still a missing ingredient.
How do we go from a physiological process attuned to "qualitative relevancy" to a physiological process that evokes "qualitative feel," or "something its like."
I think there is smoke there, but we havent found the fire yet.
Re function. Are you suggesting phenomenal consciousness is epiphenomenal? Or is it more nuanced than that?
Pharoah
Paranormal Adept
"Its one thing to say that red berries are "qualitatively relevant" to an organism, and quite another to say a physiological process is "qualitatively evocative." "
Yes. this is true... and is a point that I address in my latest submission to JCS.
I also address the epiphenomenal query too, which smcder originally questioned me about.
I think I will post the submission, with a password, on my website again. I don't want to make it publicly available because of the submission. Can't do it till tomorrow though.
Incidentally, on the possibility of an objective-subjective bridge Nagel says:
(p.51 The View from Nowhere) "What is needed is something we do not have: a theory of conscious organisms as physical systems composed of chemical elements and occupying space, which also have an individual perspective on the world.... An integrated theory of reality must account for this, and I believe that if and when it arrives, probably not for centuries, it will alter our conception of the universe as radically as anything has to date."
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
The Gestalt description of isomorphism between physiology and perception (phenomenal consciousness) is a bit "stronger" than I conceive, but I do essentially see the relationship as an isomorphism. Thompson notes on that page (I believe 84 or 85) that the notion of isomorphism is complex, and that he addresses it in depth later on in the book. Anxious for that.
I actually conceive of a loose three way isomorphism:
Environment <-> Nervous System <-> Phenomenal Consciousness
That is, they three are one isomorphism. The nervous system is a mirror of the (qualitatively relevant) environment, and phenomenal consciousness is a mirror of the nervous system.
All three are dynamic (characterized by constant change) processess and must be to constitute an isomorphism; that is, the nervous system (and therefore phenomenal consciousness) must be rich and flexible enough to mirror—the qualitatively relevant aspects of—the environment.
However, the isomorphism between the nervous system and phenomenal consciousness is much tighter.
The quote above: "mind-body dualism is replaced by a single isomorphism" (sameness of form).
Nervous System —> meaningful, dynamic pattern <— Phenomenal Consciousness
That fact that it is ultimately the forms/patterns that are relevant, rather than the physical substrate per se (which is always turning over), is what leads me to using the term "information." However, despite what you may think, I never lose sight of the fact that all is physically embodied. Furthermore none of this need involve computation or determinism.
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S
smcder
Guest
This is from the end of
On Becoming Aware
http://morephilosophystuff.pbworks.com/f/Depraz-Varela-Vermersch-2002-ON-BECOMING-AWARE.pdf
Postface
While this work was in gestation one of its authors was seriously ill: his decline in health was slow and expected, yet at the same time brutal and
shocking.
This gives the book its specific emotional tone: through long periods of discussion and then at the different stages of writing, we shared the imminence of the possible disappearance, at any moment, of one of our group. This gave each of our meetings an unparalleled intensity: the quality of our exchanges
was intensified to a degree that is rare in theoretical discussions.
Between us there was a complicity, a tacit, but often explicit sharing of the approaching loss. This resulted, surprisingly, in an infinite lightness, a grace and plasticity in our interactions that, in my opinion, is never attained in ordinary moments.
For here, we had the gift of sharing this extraordinary time, a time whose density was equal to the gravity of the experience one of us was going through: the radical state of expectation, between life and death, when awaiting a liver transplant; the absolute expectation of the end, between death and life. One question haunted me: would we be able to finish this shared exploration before Francisco gave “death back its rights”, as he wrote a year before his death in a magnificent and troubling account of his experience of the transplant, entitled “Intimate distances. Fragments for a Phenomenology of Organ Transplantation”
(available here: Francisco Varela, Intimate Distances for personal use only)
- Natalie Depraz
On Becoming Aware
http://morephilosophystuff.pbworks.com/f/Depraz-Varela-Vermersch-2002-ON-BECOMING-AWARE.pdf
Postface
While this work was in gestation one of its authors was seriously ill: his decline in health was slow and expected, yet at the same time brutal and
shocking.
This gives the book its specific emotional tone: through long periods of discussion and then at the different stages of writing, we shared the imminence of the possible disappearance, at any moment, of one of our group. This gave each of our meetings an unparalleled intensity: the quality of our exchanges
was intensified to a degree that is rare in theoretical discussions.
Between us there was a complicity, a tacit, but often explicit sharing of the approaching loss. This resulted, surprisingly, in an infinite lightness, a grace and plasticity in our interactions that, in my opinion, is never attained in ordinary moments.
For here, we had the gift of sharing this extraordinary time, a time whose density was equal to the gravity of the experience one of us was going through: the radical state of expectation, between life and death, when awaiting a liver transplant; the absolute expectation of the end, between death and life. One question haunted me: would we be able to finish this shared exploration before Francisco gave “death back its rights”, as he wrote a year before his death in a magnificent and troubling account of his experience of the transplant, entitled “Intimate distances. Fragments for a Phenomenology of Organ Transplantation”
(available here: Francisco Varela, Intimate Distances for personal use only)
- Natalie Depraz
S
smcder
Guest
Francisco Varela, Intimate Distances
III: Frame, Paradox
As I peer inside me (but which me?) at the other’s liver, the medical gesture explodes
into a hall of mirrors. These are the points where the transplantation situation can be
carried to the sentimental extremes of either having being touched by ‘a gift’ (from
somewhere, from ‘life’ or ‘god’), or else the simplicity of the doctors who remain set
at the level of their technical prowess.
In between lies the lived phenomenon, that must be drawn out otherwise, in other parameters.
Transplantation creates and happens in a mixed or hybrid space. There are several
subjects that are decentred by exchanging body parts; or decentred as the ‘team’ that
makes the technical gesture, or even further, as the distributed network of the
National Graft Centre who that fateful day decided it was my turn. At the same time
this is an embodied space, where my body (and his/her now dead) are placemarkers,
experiencing the bodily indicators of pain and expectation. As if the centre of gravity
of the process oscillates between an intimate inside and a dispersed outside of donor,
receiver and the ‘team’.
We can start with the embodied sentience of the organism, the ‘natural’ basis for
the study of lived events. Sentience, in this sense, has a double value or valence: natural
and phenomenal. Natural because sentience stands for the organism and its structural
coupling with the environment, manifest in a detailed and empirical sense. It
thus includes, without remainder, the biological details of the constitution and explanation
of function, an inescapable narrative. Phenomenal, because sentience has as its
flip side the immanence of the world of experience and experiencing; it has an inescapably
lived dimension that the word organism connotes already.
Moreover, that the organism is a sentient and cognitive agent is possible only because we are already
conscious, and have an intrinsic intuition of life and its manifestations.
It is in this sense that ‘life can only be known by life’ (Jonas, 1966, p. 91).
This intertwining can be grounded on the very origin of life and its world of meaning by the self-producing
nature of the living. Given that the scientific tradition has construed the natural as the
objective, and thus has made it impossible to see the seamless unity between the natural
and the phenomenal by making sure they are kept apart, no ‘bridging’ or ‘putting
together’ would do the work. The only way is to mobilize here a re-examination of
the very basis of modern science. But this gets, all of a sudden, too ambitious.
Exploring the phenomenal side of the organism requires a gesture, a procedure, a
phenomenological method, contra the current prejudice that we are all experts on our
INTIMATE DISTANCES 261
own experience. Little can be said about this lived dimension without the work that it
requires for its deployment. ( In a basic sense, this is also close to the recent interest in
‘first-person’ methods in cognitive science.) And therein resides its paradoxical constitution:
our nature is such that this gesture needs cultivation and is not spontaneously
forthcoming. This is why it is appropriate to reserve the name of feeling of
existence
(sentiment d’existence, a term I borrow from Maine de Biran)
as the core phenomenon here, the true flip side of sentience.
The feeling of existence, in itself, can be characterized as having a double valence
too. This is expressed as a tension between two simultaneous dimensions: embodied
and decentred. Embodied: on the one hand examining experience always takes us a
step closer to what seems more intimate, more pertinent, or more existentially close.
There is here a link between the felt quality or the possible depth of experience, and
the fact that in order to manifest such depth it must be addressed with a method in a
sustained exploration. It is this methodological gesture which gives the impression of
turning ‘inwards’ or ‘excavating’. What it does, instead, is to bring to the fore the
organism’s embodiment, the inseparable doublet quality of the body as lived and as
functional
(natural/phenomenal; Leib/Körper).
In other words, it is this double aspect
that is the source of depth (the roots of embodiment go through the entire body and
extend out into the large environment), as well as its intimacy (we are situated thanks
to the feeling-tone and affect that places us where we are and of which the body is the
place marker).
Decentred: on the other hand, experience is also and at the same time permeated
with alterity, with a transcendental side, that is, always and already decentred in relation
to the individuality of the organism. This defies the habitual move to see mind
and consciousness as inside the head/brain, instead of inseparably enfolded with the
experience of others, as if the experience of a liver transplant was a private matter.
This inescapable intersubjectivity (the ‘team’) of mental life shapes us through childhood
and social life, and in the transplantation experience takes a tangible form as
well. But it is also true in the organism’s very embodiment, appearing as the depth of
space, of the intrinsically extensible nature of its sentience, especially in exploring
the lived body.
III: Frame, Paradox
As I peer inside me (but which me?) at the other’s liver, the medical gesture explodes
into a hall of mirrors. These are the points where the transplantation situation can be
carried to the sentimental extremes of either having being touched by ‘a gift’ (from
somewhere, from ‘life’ or ‘god’), or else the simplicity of the doctors who remain set
at the level of their technical prowess.
In between lies the lived phenomenon, that must be drawn out otherwise, in other parameters.
Transplantation creates and happens in a mixed or hybrid space. There are several
subjects that are decentred by exchanging body parts; or decentred as the ‘team’ that
makes the technical gesture, or even further, as the distributed network of the
National Graft Centre who that fateful day decided it was my turn. At the same time
this is an embodied space, where my body (and his/her now dead) are placemarkers,
experiencing the bodily indicators of pain and expectation. As if the centre of gravity
of the process oscillates between an intimate inside and a dispersed outside of donor,
receiver and the ‘team’.
We can start with the embodied sentience of the organism, the ‘natural’ basis for
the study of lived events. Sentience, in this sense, has a double value or valence: natural
and phenomenal. Natural because sentience stands for the organism and its structural
coupling with the environment, manifest in a detailed and empirical sense. It
thus includes, without remainder, the biological details of the constitution and explanation
of function, an inescapable narrative. Phenomenal, because sentience has as its
flip side the immanence of the world of experience and experiencing; it has an inescapably
lived dimension that the word organism connotes already.
Moreover, that the organism is a sentient and cognitive agent is possible only because we are already
conscious, and have an intrinsic intuition of life and its manifestations.
It is in this sense that ‘life can only be known by life’ (Jonas, 1966, p. 91).
This intertwining can be grounded on the very origin of life and its world of meaning by the self-producing
nature of the living. Given that the scientific tradition has construed the natural as the
objective, and thus has made it impossible to see the seamless unity between the natural
and the phenomenal by making sure they are kept apart, no ‘bridging’ or ‘putting
together’ would do the work. The only way is to mobilize here a re-examination of
the very basis of modern science. But this gets, all of a sudden, too ambitious.
Exploring the phenomenal side of the organism requires a gesture, a procedure, a
phenomenological method, contra the current prejudice that we are all experts on our
INTIMATE DISTANCES 261
own experience. Little can be said about this lived dimension without the work that it
requires for its deployment. ( In a basic sense, this is also close to the recent interest in
‘first-person’ methods in cognitive science.) And therein resides its paradoxical constitution:
our nature is such that this gesture needs cultivation and is not spontaneously
forthcoming. This is why it is appropriate to reserve the name of feeling of
existence
(sentiment d’existence, a term I borrow from Maine de Biran)
as the core phenomenon here, the true flip side of sentience.
The feeling of existence, in itself, can be characterized as having a double valence
too. This is expressed as a tension between two simultaneous dimensions: embodied
and decentred. Embodied: on the one hand examining experience always takes us a
step closer to what seems more intimate, more pertinent, or more existentially close.
There is here a link between the felt quality or the possible depth of experience, and
the fact that in order to manifest such depth it must be addressed with a method in a
sustained exploration. It is this methodological gesture which gives the impression of
turning ‘inwards’ or ‘excavating’. What it does, instead, is to bring to the fore the
organism’s embodiment, the inseparable doublet quality of the body as lived and as
functional
(natural/phenomenal; Leib/Körper).
In other words, it is this double aspect
that is the source of depth (the roots of embodiment go through the entire body and
extend out into the large environment), as well as its intimacy (we are situated thanks
to the feeling-tone and affect that places us where we are and of which the body is the
place marker).
Decentred: on the other hand, experience is also and at the same time permeated
with alterity, with a transcendental side, that is, always and already decentred in relation
to the individuality of the organism. This defies the habitual move to see mind
and consciousness as inside the head/brain, instead of inseparably enfolded with the
experience of others, as if the experience of a liver transplant was a private matter.
This inescapable intersubjectivity (the ‘team’) of mental life shapes us through childhood
and social life, and in the transplantation experience takes a tangible form as
well. But it is also true in the organism’s very embodiment, appearing as the depth of
space, of the intrinsically extensible nature of its sentience, especially in exploring
the lived body.
S
smcder
Guest
Thanks @Constance for the tip on Eric Wargo, I have several of his writings lined up to read.
"The question of sentience is really nothing more than a permutation of the most basic philosophical question:
Why is there something and not nothing?" - Eric Wargo
Mysterianism and the Question of Machine Sentience @ The Nightshirt
Reasoning is an activity that, like any other activity, springs from an impulse, a desire. An AI can certainly be built or programmed with motives or a mission, which would then serve as the motor of its reasoning, but I’m doubtful they will produce novel, malicious motives, even as an emergent property, for the precise reason that there is no substrate of sentience.
smcder: This idea that novel (malicious or otherwise) motives require a substrate of sentience may support the idea that mindedness, intention, etc are funda-mental
"The question of sentience is really nothing more than a permutation of the most basic philosophical question:
Why is there something and not nothing?" - Eric Wargo
Mysterianism and the Question of Machine Sentience @ The Nightshirt
- technology has its self-balancing, homeostatic mechanisms, like everything else.
- Mysterians do not believe that consciousness can be completely reduced to or explained by brain processes.
(smcder: not sure I had understood Mysterianism this way - The Inner Touch: Archeology of a Sensation
- Because of its felt, qualitative nature, philosophers have used the term “qualia” to describe it, but I’ll stick with the term sentience—the capability of sensing.
- Saying sentience is an illusion and an attribution sidesteps the problem: The very fact of being aware at all is what we are talking about, and this problem is neither an illusion nor is it reducible to any kind of causal explanation—it is the most silent yet self-evident given there is.
Reasoning is an activity that, like any other activity, springs from an impulse, a desire. An AI can certainly be built or programmed with motives or a mission, which would then serve as the motor of its reasoning, but I’m doubtful they will produce novel, malicious motives, even as an emergent property, for the precise reason that there is no substrate of sentience.
smcder: This idea that novel (malicious or otherwise) motives require a substrate of sentience may support the idea that mindedness, intention, etc are funda-mental
- how we choose to think of these machines may actually prove decisive in our fate. (smcder: how we choose to think of ourselves)
- AI think a more plausible future political conflict is one between those who are prepared to attribute humanlike sentience to computers that act intelligently and those who, from one or another perfectly respectable philosophical or religious positions, resist making such an attribution.
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S
smcder
Guest
I found I was able to stream some videos - a rare event out here - and went back to have a look at this:
I had been checking out some NLP sites and they talk about watching and mimicing to attain the state of mind (roughly) of someone else, maybe that's pretty ordinarily what we do when we watch intently - but I was trying to be very conscious of it as I watched the video ... even mimicking hand and facial gestures etc. I also ran it a bit without sound to focus even more on the non-verbals and then freeze framed several points to see what I could make of "micro-expression" (what do I know about micro-expression? let's just say I tried to study it as many ways as possible) - very interesting and may be this will facil(l)itate as I read your posts ... visualizing you saying them, etc ... we'll see but an interesting experience, I think a way maybe to understand someone's POV.
I noticed you were a bit camera shy at first and then began to looking increasingly at the camera after a few minutes - this was definitely more engaging than the in profile look. Your profile does remind me of someone, an actor, I think ... can't put my finger on it. I did think with the British accent and the black turtle neck, you would make a good Bond mastermind.
PS. I listened to G. Strawson at the London Philosophy club directly after - but only because he was in the suggested videos links column just to the right.
I had been checking out some NLP sites and they talk about watching and mimicing to attain the state of mind (roughly) of someone else, maybe that's pretty ordinarily what we do when we watch intently - but I was trying to be very conscious of it as I watched the video ... even mimicking hand and facial gestures etc. I also ran it a bit without sound to focus even more on the non-verbals and then freeze framed several points to see what I could make of "micro-expression" (what do I know about micro-expression? let's just say I tried to study it as many ways as possible) - very interesting and may be this will facil(l)itate as I read your posts ... visualizing you saying them, etc ... we'll see but an interesting experience, I think a way maybe to understand someone's POV.
I noticed you were a bit camera shy at first and then began to looking increasingly at the camera after a few minutes - this was definitely more engaging than the in profile look. Your profile does remind me of someone, an actor, I think ... can't put my finger on it. I did think with the British accent and the black turtle neck, you would make a good Bond mastermind.
PS. I listened to G. Strawson at the London Philosophy club directly after - but only because he was in the suggested videos links column just to the right.
Quoting highlights from Steve's extracts from Varela in his last writing:
Francisco Varela, Intimate Distances
III: Frame, Paradox
As I peer inside me (but which me?) at the other’s liver, the medical gesture explodes
into a hall of mirrors. . .
It is in this sense that ‘life can only be known by life’ (Jonas, 1966, p. 91).
. . . Exploring the phenomenal side of the organism requires a gesture, a procedure, a
phenomenological method, contra the current prejudice that we are all experts on our
own experience. Little can be said about this lived dimension without the work that it
requires for its deployment. ( In a basic sense, this is also close to the recent interest in
‘first-person’ methods in cognitive science.) And therein resides its paradoxical constitution:
our nature is such that this gesture needs cultivation and is not spontaneously
forthcoming. This is why it is appropriate to reserve the name of feeling of
existence
(sentiment d’existence, a term I borrow from Maine de Biran)
as the core phenomenon here, the true flip side of sentience.
The feeling of existence, in itself, can be characterized as having a double valence
too. This is expressed as a tension between two simultaneous dimensions: embodied
and decentred. Embodied: on the one hand examining experience always takes us a
step closer to what seems more intimate, more pertinent, or more existentially close. . . . Decentered: experience is also and at the same time permeated
with alterity, with a transcendental side, that is, always and already decentred in relation
to the individuality of the organism. This defies the habitual move to see mind
and consciousness as inside the head/brain, instead of inseparably enfolded with the
experience of others, as if the experience of a liver transplant was a private matter.
This inescapable intersubjectivity (the ‘team’) of mental life shapes us through childhood
and social life, and in the transplantation experience takes a tangible form as
well. But it is also true in the organism’s very embodiment, appearing as the depth of
space, of the intrinsically extensible nature of its sentience, especially in exploring
the lived body.[/QUOTE]
Francisco Varela, Intimate Distances
III: Frame, Paradox
As I peer inside me (but which me?) at the other’s liver, the medical gesture explodes
into a hall of mirrors. . .
It is in this sense that ‘life can only be known by life’ (Jonas, 1966, p. 91).
. . . Exploring the phenomenal side of the organism requires a gesture, a procedure, a
phenomenological method, contra the current prejudice that we are all experts on our
own experience. Little can be said about this lived dimension without the work that it
requires for its deployment. ( In a basic sense, this is also close to the recent interest in
‘first-person’ methods in cognitive science.) And therein resides its paradoxical constitution:
our nature is such that this gesture needs cultivation and is not spontaneously
forthcoming. This is why it is appropriate to reserve the name of feeling of
existence
(sentiment d’existence, a term I borrow from Maine de Biran)
as the core phenomenon here, the true flip side of sentience.
The feeling of existence, in itself, can be characterized as having a double valence
too. This is expressed as a tension between two simultaneous dimensions: embodied
and decentred. Embodied: on the one hand examining experience always takes us a
step closer to what seems more intimate, more pertinent, or more existentially close. . . . Decentered: experience is also and at the same time permeated
with alterity, with a transcendental side, that is, always and already decentred in relation
to the individuality of the organism. This defies the habitual move to see mind
and consciousness as inside the head/brain, instead of inseparably enfolded with the
experience of others, as if the experience of a liver transplant was a private matter.
This inescapable intersubjectivity (the ‘team’) of mental life shapes us through childhood
and social life, and in the transplantation experience takes a tangible form as
well. But it is also true in the organism’s very embodiment, appearing as the depth of
space, of the intrinsically extensible nature of its sentience, especially in exploring
the lived body.[/QUOTE]
"This inescapable intersubjectivity . . . is also true in the organism’s very embodiment, appearing as the depth of space, of the intrinsically extensible nature of its sentience, especially in exploring the lived body."
What Varela understood about intersubjectivity is borne out in the unexplained experiences of transplant recipients who experience and express different desires, tastes, preferences, motivations, and behaviors, and changed attitudes toward others and toward existence itself, after receiving organ transplants from others. This is a compelling phenomenon that we should explore in our own reading and then discuss here as we attempt to understand the nature of human consciousness.
What Varela understood about intersubjectivity is borne out in the unexplained experiences of transplant recipients who experience and express different desires, tastes, preferences, motivations, and behaviors, and changed attitudes toward others and toward existence itself, after receiving organ transplants from others. This is a compelling phenomenon that we should explore in our own reading and then discuss here as we attempt to understand the nature of human consciousness.
I think we should also discuss the pressing issue of AGI -- artificial general intelligence -- toward which our technological civilization is now being driven in the apparently wide-awake understanding that it will 'replace' our own intelligence with self-directed machine intelligence. Steve quotes @Eric Wargo above as follows:
"To Fundamentalists skeptical of machine sentience, artilects will be the incredibly brilliant but “empty” ventriloquists of their ambitious materialist makers. While everyone else is focused on the machines and what they can (or can’t) do, the Fundamentalists will discern that it is the machines’ human builders and masters (the 21st Century’s Edward Tellers) who remain the real threat to our freedom and our future."
Eric's characterization of the contemporary argument beween what he calls 'Fundamentalists' and the proponents of our replacement of our species by AI is accurate. Let's explore the grounds upon which both sides debate the significance and anticipated results of this 'singularity' and take into consideration Varela's and others' insights into the intersubjective nature of consciousness and what it makes possible, enables in the world, which the technologists do not seem to possess any awareness of.
Let's start by reading Eric's essay "Mysterianism and the Question of Machine Sentience" at this link:
Mysterianism and the Question of Machine Sentience @ The Nightshirt
"To Fundamentalists skeptical of machine sentience, artilects will be the incredibly brilliant but “empty” ventriloquists of their ambitious materialist makers. While everyone else is focused on the machines and what they can (or can’t) do, the Fundamentalists will discern that it is the machines’ human builders and masters (the 21st Century’s Edward Tellers) who remain the real threat to our freedom and our future."
Eric's characterization of the contemporary argument beween what he calls 'Fundamentalists' and the proponents of our replacement of our species by AI is accurate. Let's explore the grounds upon which both sides debate the significance and anticipated results of this 'singularity' and take into consideration Varela's and others' insights into the intersubjective nature of consciousness and what it makes possible, enables in the world, which the technologists do not seem to possess any awareness of.
Let's start by reading Eric's essay "Mysterianism and the Question of Machine Sentience" at this link:
Mysterianism and the Question of Machine Sentience @ The Nightshirt
Apropos of Pharoah's HCT theory, Soupie's interest in the physical means by which consciousness emerges and develops, and Steve's and my interest in a wider spectrum of human philosophy concerning the grounding of consciousness in the natural world, I think all of us will be interested in Ergo Wargo's references to 'convergent evolution' which led me to post links to four books developing that subject in the Wargo thread last night:
Coincidence, Chaos, & Archetypes: Eric Wargo will be our GUEST | Page 3 | The Paracast Community Forums
Coincidence, Chaos, & Archetypes: Eric Wargo will be our GUEST | Page 3 | The Paracast Community Forums
I found I was able to stream some videos - a rare event out here - and went back to have a look at this:
I had been checking out some NLP sites and they talk about watching and mimicing to attain the state of mind (roughly) of someone else, maybe that's pretty ordinarily what we do when we watch intently - but I was trying to be very conscious of it as I watched the video ... even mimicking hand and facial gestures etc. I also ran it a bit without sound to focus even more on the non-verbals and then freeze framed several points to see what I could make of "micro-expression" (what do I know about micro-expression? let's just say I tried to study it as many ways as possible) - very interesting and may be this will facil(l)itate as I read your posts ... visualizing you saying them, etc ... we'll see but an interesting experience, I think a way maybe to understand someone's POV.
I noticed you were a bit camera shy at first and then began to looking increasingly at the camera after a few minutes - this was definitely more engaging than the in profile look. Your profile does remind me of someone, an actor, I think ... can't put my finger on it. I did think with the British accent and the black turtle neck, you would make a good Bond mastermind.
PS. I listened to G. Strawson at the London Philosophy club directly after - but only because he was in the suggested videos links column just to the right.
"PS. I listened to G. Strawson at the London Philosophy club directly after - but only because he was in the suggested videos links column just to the right."
View attachment 4882
I tried to link through to the original location of that video with Strawson but couldn't reach it. Would you link it directly Steve? Thanks.
Never mind, I was able to find it by clicking it from YT's list of videos related to Eric's video. Here it is, along with another list of videos discussing Strawson's 'panpsychist materialism':
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Pharoah
Paranormal Adept
Thanks for this. Who is he quoting on the second page near the bottom?
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
Monsieur Merleau-Ponty.
Vital = living
Physical = non-living
PS Let us know if/when you share your latest JCS submission that you mentioned.
Yes, I wonder where Wargo has seen this term used in the brain/mind/consciousness literature. Is it possible that he's taking it from Colin McGinn, who uses the term in a different way.
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Yes. We need to realize that Thompson (and Varela before and with him) are already immersed in investigating the nexus of mind and nature in the evolution of life. Panksepp does not argue that consciousness or even protoconsciousness exist in the pre-neuronal primordial organisms in which he recognizes 'affectivity' and 'seeking behavior', but he does see affectivity and seeking behavior as the seeds of consciousness, the germination of what will become protoconsciousness and consciousness in the evolution of species. A few days ago I quoted earlier this statement from the last paper by Panksepp I cited:
"There are reasons to believe that affective experience may reflect a most primitive form of consciousness (Panksepp, 2000b and Panksepp, 2004b), which may have provided an evolutionary platform for the emergence of more complex layers of consciousness."
Neurophenomenology moves philosophically beyond (and scientifically deeper into the examination of nature) than cognitive neuroscience was equipped to do given its presuppositions about the brain as a biological computer. Many neuroscientists who were formerly satisfied with the presuppositions of cognitive neuroscience have followed Varela and Thompson's lead.
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