Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 3

[Constance]

On your approach, the solution to the hard problem will be of little help. We may describe the relation of the physical to the phenomenal, but it would not follow, on your view, that we would know the ontology of this so-called experiencing self. It would certainly help though, yes.

This concise paper on Merleau-Ponty's 'ontology of sense' should be immensely clarifying. The author is the most brilliant exponent of MP's philosophy that I have encountered.

http://www.janushead.org/7-2/toadvine.pdf

The abstract and a few extracts:

To what extent can meaning be attributed to nature, and what is the relationship between such ‘natural sense’ and the meaning of linguistic and artistic expressions? To shed light on such questions, this essay lays the groundwork for an ‘ontology of sense’ drawing on the insights of phenomenology and Merleau-Ponty’s theory of expression. We argue that the ontological continuity of organic life with the perceived world of nature requires situating sense at a level that is more fundamental than has traditionally been recognized. Accounting for the genesis of this primordial sense and the teleology of expressive forms requires the development of an ontology of being as interrogation, as suggested by Merleau-Ponty’s later investigations.


“. . . If I engage in an expressive act, is it not the very being of the world with which I am inextricably intertwined that is ‘doing’ the expressing? Would we not more accurately say that expressing is happening, that it is a process around which one cannot draw distinct boundaries, since it includes, at least marginally, the activity of the entire world as this impinges on the situation and perspective that I call mine?

. . . Ex-pression presses world and life out of the cauldron of sense. And if sense is ontologically basic, the classical dilemma of teleology falls by the wayside: we no longer need choose whether nature’s telos is inherent or a projection of subjectivity, since the telos of sense lies at a level deeper than the separation of nature and subjectivity.”


ps, I think this single essay might go farther in clarifying phenomenology than any other article I've linked or set of ideas I've attempted to summarize.

 

[Constance]

@Soupie

"But it's not the mind, right? You seem to hold the position that the mind and phenomenal green are distinct things."

. . .Did you read the article Constance posted? It may answer your questions about sensation / perception

That article is also extraordinarily helpful. Here's the link again:

Taylor Carman, "Sensation, Judgment, and the Phenomenal Field"

http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~hdreyfus/188_s05/pdf/Carman_Sensation.pdf

{^in the above, read 'intellectualism' in M-P as 'rationalism', nowadays reduced to 'cognitivism'; see note 1 of the paper}

 

[Constance]

Heidegger in the New York Times. (@Constance, what do you make of the article author's take on Heidegger's thought?)

It's sketchy and to be blunt quite lame. A better student of Heidegger and a more skillful writer could perhaps have done better, but such short pieces can never hope to adequately introduce complex philosophies. The two papers I linked above concerning M-P's philosophy will give you worlds more insight into phenomenology.

 

[Constance]

I just ordered a hard copy of Mind in Life!

Also, ive been reading "the evolution of consciousness" by max velmans. Hes got a treasure trove of articles with amazing topics @

Max Velmans | Goldsmiths, University of London - Academia.edu

Excellent!!! I think Mind in Life will appeal to you greatly given your interest in neuroscientific and biological approaches to the investigation of consciousness. It's a big investment of time but worth it. And yes, Velmans is very productive. I looked up the paper you mention concerning the evolution of consciousness and will read it. Here's the link for others:

Evolution of consciousness | Max Velmans - Academia.edu

 

[Soupie]

@Soupie said: "(1) Consciousness emerges from objective processess. That is, objective processess generate subjectivity. (You reject this view.)"

@Constance said: "Actually I don't reject that view; what I reject is the assumption that consciousness is reducible to objective processes once it functions as consciousness. ..."

Constance, I've been reflecting on this exchange. It has been very helpful and thought-provoking for me. Thanks!

I'm in the process of finishing the commentary side of the Venn diagram. The whole exercise has been very helpful.

 

[Constance]

(responding to Steve) On your approach, the solution to the hard problem will be of little help. We may describe the relation of the physical to the phenomenal, but it would not follow, on your view, that we would know the ontology of this so-called experiencing self. It would certainly help though, yes.

I don't commit to a view ... I don't see a reason to as so far I haven't found a satisfactory view - there appear to me now to be multiple "hard problems" and even more than one way to describe the "original" ... I do challenge and question other views, but that doesn't mean I'm not sympathetic to them.

Perhaps we should read this paper alongside the paper "There are no easy problems of consciousness" by E. J. Lowe, which I linked earlier:

http://anti-matters.org/articles/46/public/46-41-1-PB.pdf

I want to sit down and list out several of the descriptions of the hard problems as well as the harder and hardest problem ... maybe put it in a table for reference ... this should include how words like experience are defined -

That would be helpful, Steve.

Have we read this?

https://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/papers/harder.htm

I sure I haven't because if I had I would have remembered "Commander Data". @Pharoah and Soupie might find this paper readable and interesting, as you apparently do as well. I hope someone can boil it down to a series of propositions that we can work through.

 

[Constance]

Coming back to @Soupie's post, cited in my post just above:

Soupie said: ↑
"(responding to Steve) On your approach, the solution to the hard problem will be of little help. We may describe the relation of the physical to the phenomenal, but it would not follow, on your view, that we would know the ontology of this so-called experiencing self. It would certainly help though, yes."

I still do not see why the individuality of the experiencing/experienced self is a harder problem than the hard problem as not-very-well-expressed by Chalmers, at least insofar as 'what it is like' is taken to constitute his characterization of the hard problem. I don't think that Chalmers' understanding of the hard problem can be reduced to that phrase 'what it is like'. I linked a paper by Chalmers some time ago that addresses phenomenological experience more fully (will look for and re-link it). As I see it the reduction of the hard problem to 'what it is like' has confused philosophical discussion of consciousness and I wonder if Chalmers might not also by now agree. Perhaps that's why he wrote the paper I'll be re-linking.

Moving on to the question of the 'self' that emerges through an individual's experience in the phenomenal world, the sense of self and the reality of integrated selfhood, in ourselves and others, seems unambiguously to be the product of the existential condition of embodied consciousness in humans and other animals developed over time -- i.e., temporality, which has long been understood in phenomenological philosophy to be a constant accompaniment to, even a condition of, the development of consciousness.

 

[Constance]

@Soupie said: "(1) Consciousness emerges from objective processess. That is, objective processess generate subjectivity. (You reject this view.)"

@Constance said: "Actually I don't reject that view; what I reject is the assumption that consciousness is reducible to objective processes once it functions as consciousness. ..."
Constance, I've been reflecting on this exchange. It has been very helpful and thought-provoking for me. Thanks!

I'm in the process of finishing the commentary side of the Venn diagram. The whole exercise has been very helpful.

I'm very glad to hear it.

 

[smcder]

Perhaps we should read this paper alongside the paper "There are no easy problems of consciousness" by E. J. Lowe, which I linked earlier:

http://anti-matters.org/articles/46/public/46-41-1-PB.pdf



That would be helpful, Steve.



I sure I haven't because if I had I would have remembered "Commander Data". @Pharoah and Soupie might find this paper readable and interesting, as you apparently do as well. I hope someone can boil it down to a series of propositions that we can work through.

I read it through once, looked interesting ... should go along with the listings of hard problems ... will probably be this weekend before I can sit down to put all this together.

 

[Constance]

Browsing the many papers and abstracts by Max Velmans at the link Soupie provided I came across this one, available only in the abstract at present. I clicked to request that Velmans put the whole paper up at academia.edu. Here's the title and abstract, which I've re-spaced to highlight the five individual steps Velmans identifies:

From West towards East in Five Simple Steps

• 
  Added byMax Velmans
• 14

Bookmark
Report Work


Abstract:
Drawing on aspects of Reflexive Monism, this talk suggests how one can move from a careful, Western analysis of ordinary conscious experience towards a more Eastern understanding of its transformative potential in five simple steps.

Step 1: accept that the boundaries of ordinary conscious experience encompass the entire phenomenal world, which requires an understanding of reflexivity and perceptual projection.

Step 2: accept that experiences arise from somewhere—that there is a chain of normally unconscious/preconscious causation that precedes the arising of each experience that one can investigate in both a third- and first-person way.

Step 3: accept that it is only when entities, events and processes are directly experienced that they become real-ized in the sense of becoming subjectively real, and that this applies not just to everyday conscious processes such as speaking, reading and thinking, but also to one’s conscious sense of Self.

Step 4: accept an expanded sense of Self that includes not just one’s conscious Ego but also the unconscious embedding and supporting ground of which it is an expression.

Step 5: accept that human consciousness is not a “freak accident of nature”; rather it is one natural expression of what the universe is like (although we have some way to go to discover the precise psychophysical laws that govern how conscious experiences relate to their associated material forms).

I then show how these aspects of Reflexive Monism take one in the direction of Advaita Vedanta and other forms of perennial philosophy—although the point of balance between Eastern and Western ways of understanding mind, consciousness and self may need to be somewhere midway between the two. This talk is available online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63QdHwnKf5I

Suggested readings: the book Understanding Consciousness Edition 2 (2009-particularly Chapters 12 and 14); online papers: How to arrive at an Eastern Place from a Western direction (2013); Reflexive Monism: Psychophysical relations among mind, matter and consciousness (2012); Reflexive Monism (2008)

Research Interests:
Buddhism, Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Philosophy of Mind, Perception, and 17 moreSelf and Identity, Consciousness (Psychology), Metaphysics of Consciousness, Theory of Mind, Phenomenology, Reflexivity, Consciousness, Eastern Philosophy, Metaphysics of Mind, Extended Mind, Philosophies of Human Nature, Advaita Vedanta, Reflexive Monism, Subjectivity Studies, Subjectivity, Self-Realization, and Perceptual Projection

 

[smcder]

Browsing the many papers and abstracts by Max Velmans at the link Soupie provided I came across this one, available only in the abstract at present. I clicked to request that Velmans put the whole paper up at academia.edu. Here's the title and abstract, which I've re-spaced to highlight the five individual steps Velmans identifies:

From West towards East in Five Simple Steps

• 
  Added byMax Velmans
• 14

Bookmark
Report Work


Abstract:
Drawing on aspects of Reflexive Monism, this talk suggests how one can move from a careful, Western analysis of ordinary conscious experience towards a more Eastern understanding of its transformative potential in five simple steps.

Step 1: accept that the boundaries of ordinary conscious experience encompass the entire phenomenal world, which requires an understanding of reflexivity and perceptual projection.

Step 2: accept that experiences arise from somewhere—that there is a chain of normally unconscious/preconscious causation that precedes the arising of each experience that one can investigate in both a third- and first-person way.

Step 3: accept that it is only when entities, events and processes are directly experienced that they become real-ized in the sense of becoming subjectively real, and that this applies not just to everyday conscious processes such as speaking, reading and thinking, but also to one’s conscious sense of Self.

Step 4: accept an expanded sense of Self that includes not just one’s conscious Ego but also the unconscious embedding and supporting ground of which it is an expression.

Step 5: accept that human consciousness is not a “freak accident of nature”; rather it is one natural expression of what the universe is like (although we have some way to go to discover the precise psychophysical laws that govern how conscious experiences relate to their associated material forms).

I then show how these aspects of Reflexive Monism take one in the direction of Advaita Vedanta and other forms of perennial philosophy—although the point of balance between Eastern and Western ways of understanding mind, consciousness and self may need to be somewhere midway between the two. This talk is available online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63QdHwnKf5I

Suggested readings: the book Understanding Consciousness Edition 2 (2009-particularly Chapters 12 and 14); online papers: How to arrive at an Eastern Place from a Western direction (2013); Reflexive Monism: Psychophysical relations among mind, matter and consciousness (2012); Reflexive Monism (2008)

Research Interests:
Buddhism, Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Philosophy of Mind, Perception, and 17 moreSelf and Identity, Consciousness (Psychology), Metaphysics of Consciousness, Theory of Mind, Phenomenology, Reflexivity, Consciousness, Eastern Philosophy, Metaphysics of Mind, Extended Mind, Philosophies of Human Nature, Advaita Vedanta, Reflexive Monism, Subjectivity Studies, Subjectivity, Self-Realization, and Perceptual Projection

Ahh ... I can listen to this tonight!

What is your understanding of #3?

 

[Constance]

Ahh ... I can listen to this tonight!

What is your understanding of #3?

"Step 3: accept that it is only when entities, events and processes are directly experienced that they become real-ized in the sense of becoming subjectively real, and that this applies not just to everyday conscious processes such as speaking, reading and thinking, but also to one’s conscious sense of Self."

It could be directed as a caution to third-person researchers, but I doubt it. Otherwise I can't make anything much out of it and guess that one needs to read or hear the whole paper/presentation to understand this step. Since you'll be listening to the yt lecture maybe you clarify it for us tomorrow.

 

[Soupie]

Just thinking out loud:

The subjective and objective are two levels of description of reality, 1st person and 3rd person respectively. As @smcder has noted often, we take both these perspectives through the 1st person perspective.

Science and particularly physicalist science uses the 3rd person perspective exclusively. This has led some to suggest that the 1st person perspective is an illusion.

However, since we directly experience (or as I would say, since we are) the 1st person perspective we can rest assured it exists.

Meaning, purpose, and teleology are 1st person qualities. As such science and physicalism can't incorporate them or describe them.

Many people recognize purpose in nature and experience non-human, non-physical seemingly intelligent entities.

Science would reject both these phenomena, but then again, science rejects 1st person experience (consciousness) as well.

When it comes to the potential for AI, the Turing test is noted. The reality is that even if/when a machine passes the test, we won't know for sure (via 3rd person methods) that the machine is experiencing. However, as noted, 3rd person methods don't allow us to know whether our coworkers and family members are experiencing.

This is all to say that I am really fascinated by Nagel's expansionist approach, and I agree it is the way to move forward. But how?

 

[Constance]

Meaning, purpose, and teleology are 1st person qualities. As such science and physicalism can't incorporate them or describe them.

It can't as long as it remains limited by the presupposition that 'what-is', what exists, is purely objective and can be measured and fully comprehended by objective means. That naieve faith should have been displaced by the recognitions and increasing understanding of how nature operates in the quantum substrate, operations and interactions increasingly seen to extend upward into macrophenomena
formerly described only by classical physics. The naieve faith in objectivist science has been challenged from within by some quantum theorists in recent years and by practitioners in other disciplines for much longer. The objectivist paradigm will eventually be modified if not displaced by a newer science that recognizes the subjectivity involved in every attempt to understand a physical reality to which we have access only through phenomena.

Thinking under the influence of physicalist/objectivist presuppositions in science, even philosophers (of the analytical persuasion) have been willing to think of "meaning, purpose, and teleology" as irrelevant in descriptions of 'what-is' because 'impossible to account for' by the limited lights of the objectivist scientific paradigm. Phenomenological philosophy provides another path to understanding 'what-is' through investigating empirically the nature of consciousness and mind evolved in nature as the point of encounter from which all thought about the nature of 'reality' arises. Phenomenology begins in the analysis of perception itself, which necessarily focuses on individual experience, but it does not stop there. Especially in Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, but also in Scheler, Levinas and others, phenomenology proceeds to disclose the intersubjectivity normally established between and among individuals living in groups and communities, a collective life toward which we are impelled for many reasons. The intersubjective and shared life of humans makes "meaning, purpose, and teleology" the common project of our species both consciously in the lived present and unconsciously in the lived past. The collective unconscious functions in us as a species, carrying memories of experiences lived far back in our evolution and in our species' prehistory and history. What our subconscious and unconscious minds carry into our experience of the world, as influences and insights, is a great mystery to be explored in understanding how we relate to others on multiple levels of contemporary lived experience in a social world/a collection of social worlds and to our difficulties in managing our planet's resources on the basis of intersubjectively understood values.

I think that both the recognition of the existential limits of our human knowledge (and our general physical frailty), and the sense of order and partially disclosed meaningfulness we derived from our observations of nature early in our species' thinking, led to the universal (or almost universal) idea of an existing higher power operating in the world we found ourselves in. Perhaps we can understand this in terms of a sense of wonder as well, wonder at our own sense of obligation to make sense of the world, and perhaps a spiritual sense of meaningful interconnection with nature as a whole and the others with whom we share in it. Anyway, while writing this I recalled this Psalm, which I think expresses the ontological impulse arising early in human consciousness and mind, expressing our need and desire to understand what we are and what the nature of reality is:

Psalm 8:4-6King James Version (KJV)

4 What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?

5 For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.

6 Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet: . . . . .

 

[Constance]

@Soupie, I must have missed a stitch along the way -- what is Nagel's "expansionist approach"?

 

[Soupie]

@Soupie, I must have missed a stitch along the way -- what is Nagel's "expansionist approach"?

I don't know that he himself has used that term, but somewhere I read an author who referred to "Nagel's expansionist" approach, or something similar. I haven't been able to find anything on "expansionism" but in reading some reviews of Nagel's books (which I hope to do next) and comments made by Smcder and Pharoah, Nagel seems to call for an approach to nature that incorporates both the subjective and objective perspectives. This may be the "expansionist" approach.

 

[smcder]

I don't know that he himself has used that term, but somewhere I read an author who referred to "Nagel's expantionist" approach, or something similar. I haven't been able to find anything on "expantionism" but in reading some reviews of Nagel's books (which I hope to do next) and comments made by Smcder and Pharoah, Nagel seems to call for an approach to nature that incorporates both the subjective and objective perspectives. This may be the "expantionist" approach.

@Pharoah I believe used the term and you asked him about it ... will search the thread for it.

@Constance - I will listen to the YouTube tonight or tomorrow, had to take some meds last night/

 

[smcder]

Nagel rejects reductionism and calls instead for an expansionist approach. The expansion is one that develops a new way of conceptualising about the objective/subjective relation

@Soupie
@Constance

Here is the beginning of the exchange

 

[smcder]

I havent been able to find anything regarding a so-called "expansionist" approach to philosophy of mind, but it does seem to very similar in spirit to neurophenomenology.

Does Nagel ever reference neurophenomenology?

Here is your first response, a couple of responses from @Constance before this.

 

[Constance]

I don't know that he himself has used that term, but somewhere I read an author who referred to "Nagel's expantionist" approach, or something similar. I haven't been able to find anything on "expantionism" but in reading some reviews of Nagel's books (which I hope to do next) and comments made by Smcder and Pharoah, Nagel seems to call for an approach to nature that incorporates both the subjective and objective perspectives. This may be the "expantionist" approach.

Thanks. I think Nagel is in many ways a phenomenological thinker, and that approach to nature, incorporating both subjective and 'objective' perspectives, coincides with the insights of phenomenology concerning subject and object interpenetrating in phenomenal experience.. I put 'objective' in what are called scare quotes in my first sentence to place the idea of 'an objective perspective' in question. I don't think we are capable of achieving an objective perspective on what-is in the world as discoverable by us, and of course objects themselves, the ding an sich (which we come closer to through analyzing the phenomenal appearances of things), cannot take perspectives on what-is (at least in most philosophical thought. We now have Graham Harmon's 'object-oriented ontology' lying unread before us.)

edited^