Of course they're 'correlated'. That does not mean we know how and why they are correlated, or what else might be involved in the correlation.
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Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 6
- Thread starter Soupie
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Of course they're 'correlated'. That does not mean we know how and why they are correlated, or what else might be involved in the correlation.
smcder
Paranormal Adept
@Constance - Pharoah asks:
@Constance, is there some phenomenology text that attempts to objectify the language by digging deep into sensory phenomenal experience such that we might say "that is what we want explained in our experience of phenomenal content"?
But isn't what's in front of us - our experience here, now - the way the world shows up for us what we want explained? Any experience ... I'm not sure we need to "dig deep" or objectify the language - what am I missing?
@Constance, is there some phenomenology text that attempts to objectify the language by digging deep into sensory phenomenal experience such that we might say "that is what we want explained in our experience of phenomenal content"?
But isn't what's in front of us - our experience here, now - the way the world shows up for us what we want explained? Any experience ... I'm not sure we need to "dig deep" or objectify the language - what am I missing?
smcder
Paranormal Adept
I think I
Remember Braitenburg (sp?) something like that - his book "Vehicles" he starts with a simple mechanism and then goes up from there ... to the "then a miracle occurs" point ... so what I think you are asking of Pharoah is fair, except that it seems @Pharoah believes consciousness is fundamental and not open to conceptual analysis - which I also think is fair ... for my own part, I am playing with Panenpsychism - the idea that something more than what the Panpsychists assume is fundamental, this something more means there is no combination problem - in other words, if a point of view, if POV is inherent and primitive, then minds are the intersection of this, of POV and brains.
Remember Braitenburg (sp?) something like that - his book "Vehicles" he starts with a simple mechanism and then goes up from there ... to the "then a miracle occurs" point ... so what I think you are asking of Pharoah is fair, except that it seems @Pharoah believes consciousness is fundamental and not open to conceptual analysis - which I also think is fair ... for my own part, I am playing with Panenpsychism - the idea that something more than what the Panpsychists assume is fundamental, this something more means there is no combination problem - in other words, if a point of view, if POV is inherent and primitive, then minds are the intersection of this, of POV and brains.
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
http://consc.net/papers/representation.pdf
"The Representational Character of Experience" Chalmers
"Conclusion
I expect that the interface between consciousness and intentionality will be the central topic in the next decade of the philosophy of mind. I hope that the analysis I have given here helps to clarify some crucial issues in exploring this interface, and to open up some underexplored possibilities for making progress.
What of the issues mentioned at the start of the paper: is consciousness grounded in intentionality, or is intentionality grounded in consciousness? I have argued for a necessary equivalence between phenomenal and representational properties; but which of the phenomenal and the representational is more fundamental?
The nonreductive approach I have taken offers little prospect for grounding consciousness wholly in intentionality, where the latter is construed independently of consciousness. The representational analyses I have given all make unreduced appeal to phenomenal notions, and I think there is little hope of giving analyses that do without such notions altogether. So I think that a reduction of the phenomenal to the representational is not on the cards.
One might think that this approach offers more hope of grounding intentionality in consciousness. It is not implausible that there is something about consciousness which by its very nature yields representation of the world. One might hold that at least with perceptual experiences, representational content accrues in virtue of the phenomenology. One might further holds that something similiar holds for beliefs: their representational content accrues either in virtue of their phenomenal character, or in virtue of their connections to other beliefs and experiences whose content is grounded in phenomenal character.
Still, for this approach to provide a reductive grounding of the intentional, we would need to characterize the underlying phenomenal domain in non-intentional terms. And it is far from clear that this is possible. On the face of things, a characterization of my phenomenology that avoids intentional notions entirely would seem to be quite inadequate. Rather, intentional content appears to be part and parcel of phenomenology: it is part of the essential nature of phenomenology that it is directed outward at a world. If so, we cannot reduce intentionality to something more fundamental; at best, we can locate its roots in the intentionality of the phenomenal.
I think, then, the most attractive view is one on which neither consciousness nor intentionality is more fundamental than the other. Rather, consciousness and intentionality are intertwined, all the way down to the ground."
Pharoah
Paranormal Adept
@smcder
1. To clarify, it isn't what's in front of us that we want explained. Strictly speaking, "what is in front of us" is the view from somewhere not the view from nowhere. We want explained subjectivity from objectivity, not "your subjective existence".
But in another interpretation, what is in front of us is not simple. We might gaze at a star and think it simple: a shiny dot in the night sky.
2. "phenomenal experience, is incapable of conceptual analysis?" we and others, are incapable of conceptually analysing our own phenomenal experience.
3. I don't say consciousness is fundamental. Good grief.
@Soupie:
"So what (physical mechanisms) does the Roomba need in order to experience the edge of the stairs?
It has a mechanism for sending them. And a mechanism for moving away. What's missing?"
1. "a mechanism for sending them"? sending what? What is them?
2. There is nothing qualitative about what the Roomba "experiences" or does. Are you saying there is?
I say, if there is no qualitative relevancy, there can be no phenomenal experience (see 3. below). It does not matter how complex or responsive Roomba's relation to the environment is, it cannot have phen exp.
3. "What's missing?" We are onto AC here... which is a big subject.
Replication is a mechanism that makes one structural construction relevant to another over generations. Furthermore, any given replicated feature/function/mechanism passes on that feature, such that if it bears an environmentally correlative advantage that feature/function/mechanism is "meaningful". That meaning is what makes that feature/function/mechanism qualitatively pertinent to the survival of the replicant's future generations.
Now, Roomba's function has no meaning "for itself" or for anything related to its construct. Neither its mechanisms nor its future has any bearing on its construct such that we might say of it, that its structure and mechanism carries meaning. The meaning is absent from the construct, regardless of its attributed functional complexity. I think Searle is correct on this (Chinese Room Argument) and see http://virgil.gr/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/searle.pdf
Is it possible to artificially construct something that is qualitatively relevant to itself? Firstly, it must have a mechanism that makes its existence relevant to itself (in nature that mechanism is replication), the construction of the 'device' must have a bearing on its success in its environment (in nature that structural relevancy is made possible through mechanisms that bear environmental correspondence—senses), the construct must have a means of varying its construction (in nature that is mutation) so that an evolving meaningful correlation between the construct and the environment is possible.
The only way of making this happen is through simulation imo. Curiously, it creates the metaphysical problem of whether a simulation can create an ontologically unique realm of existence... which is what our universe might be relative to other potential universes. i.e. our universe could be a simulation. Who's simulation?!
smcder
Paranormal Adept
I didn't say you said consciousness is fundamental ...
smcder
Paranormal Adept
1. To clarify, it isn't what's in front of us that we want explained. Strictly speaking, "what is in front of us" is the view from somewhere not the view from nowhere. We want explained subjectivity from objectivity, not "your subjective existence".
It's always funny when someone tells you what you really want explained ... it used to be irritating, but after a lot of meditation - now it's just funny. ;-)
Pharoah
Paranormal Adept
And here is me thinking that for the last year we have all been trying to explain "my" subjective existence when instead we have been trying to explain yours! Silly me... But no worries... I'll just meditate on that for a bit and I'll be fine. ;-)
smcder
Paranormal Adept
Right ... yours, mine, anybody's, everybody's.
smcder
Paranormal Adept
pan en psychism
Sorry not to have responded earlier to @Pharoah's question. I left after my last post, went to the dentist, pursued the fulfillment of errands, etc. I don't know where @Pharoah 's question about 'objectifying language' comes from, especially not in terms of phenomenological understanding of what experience is and signifies. As Steve says, we don't need to seek for objectively existing systems that function outside of (or beneath) our awareness and experience in order to recognize our own and other's experiences and the questions our experience leads us to ask. It seems to me that both Soupie and Pharoah, in different ways (or anyway ways they cannot agree upon) look for explanations of experience and consciousness in places where consciousness is not experienced -- indeed where nothing can be said to be experienced. Instead of recognizing consciousness as grounded in contact with the sensible, tangible, 'world' in which we live our lives, they seem to see us as 'effects' of informational/mechanical systems that operate beneath the level of our awareness. Thus they understand the world only as 're-presentation' rather than 'presentation' -- i.e., direct presence in and to a world that presents itself on every side and in every circumstance. The physical world and the things and living beings in it constitute the context in which living organisms first become aware of their own existence prereflectively, and through increasing experience and awareness also reflectively. Prereflective consciousness is the ground out of which reflective consciousness and mind take root. We and other organisms/animals are already oriented to the world in which we exist long before reflective consciousness steps beyond prereflective consciousness in more evolutionarily advanced species.
Remember the paper I posted a few weeks ago on the subject of pointing? Pointing is perhaps the key gesture employed by consciousnesses on the cusp of moving from prereflective to reflective consciousness. Merleau-Ponty explored the terrain of gestures as the communicative medium used on the way to language. But language itself limits the expression of existential meaning (meaning concerning our open-ended relationship with the world and with others) because it does fix meanings, objectifies them, in symbols that also become fixed. Historically symbols stand for human attempts to order their social world according to a fixed interpretation, and, as existentials, conscious beings move beyond fixed interpretations of 'what-is', explore other possible interpretations of what-is and, more importantly, what they should do about the situations in which they find themselves and others existing.
Languages, as different from one another as they are alike, develop out of human interaction and the circumstances in which humans interact, circumstances that empower and disempower different individuals, genders, racial groups, and socio-economic classes; circumstances in which the means of production and the nature of what is produced change -- and what is taken to be important in a society or culture changes. Language is therefore a site of struggle for meaning as much as it is an attempt to provide grounds for communication. Certain words, concepts, styles of living, and styles of action gain aegis in a society, as, for example, materialist/physicalist science and technology have gained almost unquestionable aegis in modern Western society. Language not just influences but eventually controls what trickles down from the power brokers in a socioeconomic system to the mass of individuals living in, or in opposition to, it. So language is polluted, not a pure system representative of the pluralism of thought that existentiality enables and requires. It was Rousseau first and later Sartre who proclaimed that "man is free and is everywhere in chains."
To come back to Pharoah's question:
"is there some phenomenology text that attempts to objectify the language by digging deep into sensory phenomenal experience such that we might say "that is what we want explained in our experience of phenomenal content"?
Phenomenology is the last place to look for language that 'objectifies' existential- phenomenological experience. For phenomenological philosophy and its practice in a wide variety of disciplines recognize that neither humans nor the world are finished, summed up, subject to final interpretation or definition. Consciousness is radically temporal, and so is the world we live in. Both consciousness and the world we live in are open-ended, not closed. The universe itself is expanding outward and we have no idea of what it is expanding into.
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Or, as Wallace Stevens expressed it:
July Mountain
We live in a constellation
Of patches and of pitches,
Not in a single world,
In things said well in music,
On the piano and in speech,
As in a page of poetry--
Thinkers without final thoughts
In an always incipient cosmos.
The way, when we climb a mountain,
Vermont throws itself together.
smcder
Paranormal Adept
I know I am missing something, but nothing in the above explanation tells me why "qualitatively relevant" has to feel like anything. All of the above could happen without there being anyone home, so to speak.
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
Yes, that's my conclusion as well.
I had asked Pharoah what the Roomba was missing and therefore needed to have experiences of the stairs. I've tried to summarise in my own sentences his words above.
(1) Mechanisms that bear an environmentally correlative advantage are "meaningful" and are thus replicated.
(2) The environmentally correlative advantage of these replicated mechanisms makes them qualitatively pertinent to the survival of future generations.
(3) Here Pharoah seems to be saying that since the Roomba's mechanisms for sensing and avoiding destruction via the stairs have no bearing on the existence of future Roombas (?) these mechanisms have no meaning. However, in step (1) it was said mechanisms that bear an 'environmentally correlative advantage' were meaningful. I would say the stair-sensing mechanism is meaningful on this definition. And avoiding the stairs certainly has a bearing on the future of the current Roomba.
However, that fact that this 'meaningful' mechanism didn't evolve and cannot be replicated seems to disqualify it as meaningful in this case...
Conclusion: I think Pharoah has a ways to go in fine-tuning his theory. @smcder and I have asked him the same question (whence phenomenal consciousness) multiple times in multiple ways and we've yet to get the same answer twice and none of them conclusive. While features of a self-replicating organism may be "qualitatively relevant" to the survivial of the organism, it doesn't follow that the mechanism gives rise to an experience of phenomenal quality.
Honestly, I don't think Pharoah or HCT can explain how or why phenomenal consciousness exists, to be rather blunt.
That said, I like HCT and think it's got a lot to offer, just not a resolution of the Hard Problem.
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We're indeed likely never to reach "a resolution of the Hard Problem" and be able to "explain how or why phenomenal consciousness exists," but that certainly doesn't mean that there is nothing to be learned by the interdisciplinary investigation of consciousness and mind. HCT might not provide answers to the questions that drive your interest in CS, but it certainly makes a contribution to understanding the complex questions involved in addressing the evolution of consciousness and mind in the natural world. The length and scope of this thread testify to the complexity of consciousness and the difficulty of reducing it to physicalist/objectivist models.
I've urged several of you to research the contributions of phenomenology to the questions concerning what consciousness is several times. I realize that the primary works in phenomenological philosophy and its contributions to neuroscience are daunting, but I've just discovered that Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi have made their book The Phenomenological Mind: An Introduction to Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science available online now at no charge. It's an opportunity to understand the other side of the primary debates in the continuing development of CS. Here's an extract on one issue we've tangled over in the past, and most of the other issues we've discussed are represented as well. The link follows.
Extract:
"First-order and higher-order accounts of consciousness
The claim that there is a close link between consciousness and self-consciousness is less exceptional than might be expected. In fact, it could even be argued that such a claim is part of current orthodoxy since it is a claim defended by various higher-order theorists. Consider that in the current debate about consciousness it has become customary to distinguish between two uses of the term ‘conscious’, a transitive and an intransitive use. On the one hand, we can speak of somebody being conscious of something, be it apples, lemons, or roses. On the other, we can speak of somebody (or a mental state) being conscious simpliciter (rather than non-conscious). This latter use of the term ‘conscious’ is obviously connected to the notion of phenomenal consciousness, to the idea that there is something (rather than nothing) it is like to be in a certain mental state. Now, for the past two or three decades, a dominant way to account for intransitive consciousness in cognitive science and analytical philosophy of mind has been by means of some kind of higher-order theory (cf. Armstrong 1968; Carruthers 1996; Lycan 1987; Rosenthal 1986). According to these authors, the difference between conscious and non-conscious mental states rests upon the presence or absence of a relevant meta-mental state. As Carruthers puts it, the subjective feel of experience presupposes a capacity for higher-order awareness; ‘such self awareness is a conceptually necessary condition for an organism to be a subject of phenomenal feelings, or for there to be anything that its experiences are like’ (1996, p. 152).
One way to illustrate the guiding idea of this approach is to compare consciousness to a spotlight. Some mental states are illuminated; others do their work in the dark. What makes a mental state conscious (illuminated) is the fact that it is taken as an object by a relevant higher order state. It is the occurrence of the higher-order representation that makes us conscious of the first-order mental state. In short, a conscious state is a state we are conscious of, or as Rosenthal puts it, ‘the mental state’s being intransitively conscious simply consists in one’s being transitively conscious of it’ (1997, p. 739). Thus, intransitive consciousness is taken to be a nonintrinsic, relational property (ibid., pp. 736–737), that is, a property that a mental state has only in so far as it stands in the relevant relation to something else.
There have generally been two ways of interpreting this. Either we become aware of being in the first-order mental state by means of some higher-order perception or monitoring (Armstrong 1968; Lycan 1997), or we become aware of it by means of some higher-order thought, that is, the state is conscious just in case we have a roughly contemporaneous thought to the effect that we are in that very state (Rosenthal 1993a, p. 199). Thus, the basic divide between the higher order perception (HOP) and the higher-order thought (HOT) models has precisely been on the issue of whether the conscious-making meta-mental states are perception-like or thought-like in nature.2 In both cases, however, consciousness has been taken to be a question of the mind directing its intentional aim upon its own states and operations. Self-directedness has been taken to be constitutive of (intransitive) consciousness, or to put it differently, higher-order theories have typically explained (intransitive) consciousness in terms of self-consciousness.
But one might share the view that there is a close link between consciousness and self-consciousness and still disagree about the nature of the link. And although the phenomenological view might superficially resemble the view of the higher-order theories, we are ultimately confronted with two radically divergent accounts. In contrast to the higher-order theories, phenomenologists explicitly deny that the self-consciousness that is present the moment I consciously experience something is to be understood in terms of some kind of reflection, or introspection, or higher-order monitoring. It does not involve an additional mental state, but is rather to be understood as an intrinsic feature of the primary experience. That is, in contrast to the higher-order account of consciousness that claims that intransitive consciousness is an extrinsic property of those mental states that have it, a property bestowed upon them externally by some further states, phenomenologists typically argue that intransitive consciousness is an intrinsic property and constitutive feature of those mental states that have it. Moreover, not only do they reject the view that a mental state becomes conscious by being taken as an object by a higher-order state, they also reject the view – generally associated with Franz Brentano – according to which a mental state becomes conscious by taking itself as an object.
According to Brentano, as I listen to a melody I am aware that I am listening to the melody. He acknowledges that I do not have two different mental states: my consciousness of the melody is one and the same as my awareness of hearing it; they constitute one single psychical phenomenon. On this point, and in opposition to higher-order representation theories, Brentano and the phenomenologists are in general agreement. But according to Brentano, by means of this unified mental state, I have an awareness of two objects: the melody and my auditory experience: “In the same mental phenomenon in which the sound is present to our minds we simultaneously apprehend the mental phenomenon itself. What is more, we apprehend it in accordance with its dual nature insofar as it has the sound as content within it, and insofar as it has itself as content at the same time. We can say that the sound is the primary object of the act of hearing, and that the act of hearing itself is the secondary object.” (Brentano 1973, pp. 127–128) Husserl disagrees on just this point, as do Sartre and Heidegger: pre-reflectively, my experience is not itself an object for me. I do not occupy the position or perspective of an observer, spectator, or in(tro)spector who attends to this experience. That something is experienced, ‘and is in this sense conscious, does not and cannot mean that this is the object of an act of consciousness, in the sense that a perception, a presentation or a judgement is directed upon it’ (Husserl 2001a, I, p. 273). In pre-reflective or non-observational self-consciousness, experience is given, not as an object, but precisely as subjective experience. On this view, my intentional experience is lived through (erlebt), but it does not appear to me in an objectified manner, it is neither seen nor heard nor thought about (Husserl 1984, p. 399; Sartre 1957, pp. 44–45).
We have emphasized that pre-reflective self-consciousness is not a matter of taking an intentional or objectifying stance, and consequently it is neither some kind of inner perception, nor more generally a type of conceptual knowledge. David Chalmers has recently argued that having an experience is automatically to stand in an intimate epistemic relation to the experience; a relation more primitive than knowledge that might be called ‘acquaintance’ (1996, p. 197). The phenomenologists would concur. In their view, pre-reflective self-consciousness doesn’t amount to first-person knowledge; it is a necessary but not sufficient condition. This is, for instance, why Sartre carefully distinguishes self-consciousness (conscience de soi) from self-knowledge (connaissance de soi). Although, as pre-reflectively self-aware of my experience I am not unconscious of it, I tend to ignore it in favour of its object. In my everyday life, I am absorbed by and preoccupied with projects and objects in the world, and as such I do not attend to my experiential life. Therefore, it’s clear that my pervasive pre-reflective self-consciousness is not to be understood as complete self-comprehension. Thus, one should distinguish between the claim that consciousness as such involves an implicit self-consciousness and the claim that consciousness is characterized by total self-transparency. One can easily accept the first and reject the latter (Ricoeur 1966, p. 378).
If I am engaged in some conscious activity, such as the reading of a story, my attention is neither on myself nor on my activity of reading, but on the story. If my reading is interrupted by someone asking me what I am doing, I immediately reply that I am (and have for some time been) reading; the self-consciousness on the basis of which I answer the question is not something acquired at just that moment, but a consciousness of myself which has been implicit in my experience all along. To put it differently, it is because I am pre-reflectively conscious of my experiences that I am usually able to respond immediately, i.e. without inference or observation, if somebody asks me what I have been doing, or thinking, or seeing, or feeling immediately prior to the question.
Sartre emphasized quite explicitly that the self-consciousness in question is not a new consciousness (1956, p. liv). It is not something added to the experience, an additional mental state, but rather an intrinsic feature of the experience. Thus, when he spoke of self-consciousness as a permanent feature of consciousness, Sartre was not referring to what he called reflective self-consciousness. Reflection (or higher-order monitoring) is the process whereby consciousness directs its intentional aim at itself, thereby taking itself as its own object. According to Sartre, however, this type of self-consciousness is derived; it involves a subject–object split, and the attempt to account for self-consciousness in such terms is, for Sartre, bound to fail. It either generates an infinite regress or accepts a non-conscious starting point, and he considered both of these options to be unacceptable (ibid., p. lii).
On the view espoused by most phenomenologists, the weak self-consciousness entailed by phenomenal consciousness is not intentionally structured; it does not involve a subject–object relation. It is not just that self-consciousness differs from ordinary object-consciousness; rather it is not an object-consciousness at all. When one is pre-reflectively self-conscious one does not take oneself as an intentional object, one is not aware of oneself as an object that happens to be oneself, nor is one aware of oneself as one specific object rather than another. Rather, my first-person, pre-reflective self-experience is immediate and non-observational. It involves what has more recently been called either ‘self-reference without identification’ (Shoemaker 1968) or ‘non-ascriptive reference to self’ (Brook 1994).
What is the actual argument for these claims, however? When it comes to defending the existence of a tacit and non-thematic self-consciousness, the argument is occasionally an indirect argument by elimination and consists in a rejection of the two obvious alternatives. Phenomenologists first deny that we could consciously experience something without in some way being aware of or being acquainted with the experience in question. They then argue that this first-personal awareness of one’s own experiences amounts to a form of self-consciousness. Secondly, they reject the suggestion that we are attentively conscious of everything that we experience, including our own experience, i.e. they would argue that there are unnoticed or unattended experiences. For example, I may be driving my car in traffic and paying close attention to the car in front of me, which is weaving in and out of traffic lanes. By attending to that car, however, there are many things that I am not attending to, including the precise way that I am perceiving the car. I could start to do that by reflecting on my perceptual experience, although it might be dangerous to do so in this kind of circumstance. But the point is that, even if at some level I am aware that I am watching the car in front of me, I am not aware of it in the manner of paying attention to the watching. By rejecting these two alternatives, the notion of pre-reflective self-consciousness seems to be the only feasible way to explain how experience works. That phenomenal consciousness entails a minimal or thin form of self-consciousness doesn’t imply that I in daily life am aware of my own stream of consciousness in a thematic introspection, as a succession of immanent marginal objects.
Another indirect line of argument for the existence of pre-reflective self-consciousness has been that the higher-order account of consciousness generates an infinite regress. This is, on the face of it, a rather old idea. Typically, the regress argument has been understood in the following manner: if an occurrent mental state is conscious only because it is taken as an object by an occurrent second-order mental state, then the second-order mental state, if it is to be conscious, must also be taken as an object by an occurrent third-order mental state, and so forth ad infinitum. The standard reply to this argument has been that the premise – that the second-order mental state is a conscious one – is false and question begging. In other words, the easy way to halt the regress is to accept the existence of non-conscious mental states. Needless to say, this is precisely the position adopted by the defenders of a higher-order theory. For them, the second-order perception or thought does not have to be conscious. It will be conscious only if it is accompanied by a (non-conscious) third-order thought or perception (cf. Rosenthal 1997). However, the phenomenological reply to this ‘solution’ is rather straightforward. The phenomenologists would concede that it is possible to halt the regress by postulating the existence of non-conscious mental states, but they would maintain that such an appeal to the non-conscious leaves us with a case of explanatory vacuity. That is, they would be quite unconvinced by the claim that the relation between two otherwise non-conscious mental processes can make one of them conscious; they would find it quite unclear how a mental state without subjective or phenomenal qualities can be transformed into one with such qualities, i.e. into a subjective experience with first-personal mineness, by the mere relational addition of a nonconscious meta-state having the first-order state as its intentional object.
To sum up, higher-order theorists and phenomenologists all seek to account for intransitive consciousness in terms of some form of self-consciousness. But whereas the higher-order theorists view self-consciousness as a form of meta-awareness that obtains between two distinct non-conscious mental states, the phenomenologists argue that we best understand intransitive consciousness in terms of a primitive form of self-consciousness that is integral and intrinsic to the mental state in question.
The claim that intransitive consciousness (and by implication self-consciousness) is an intrinsic feature has come under attack by Rosenthal, who has argued that calling something intrinsic is to imply that it is unanalyzable and mysterious, and consequently beyond the reach of scientific and theoretical study: ‘We would insist that being conscious is an intrinsic property of mental states only if we were convinced that it lacked articulated structure, and thus defied explanation’ (1993b, p. 157). Although Rosenthal acknowledges that there is something intuitively appealing about taking intransitive consciousness to be an intrinsic property, he still thinks that this approach must be avoided if one wishes to come up with a non-trivial and informative account, that is, one which seeks to explain conscious mental states by appeal to non-conscious mental states, and non-conscious mental states by appeal to non-mental states (Rosenthal 1993b, p. 165; 1997, p. 735).
In our view, however, it is a mistake to argue that one puts an end to any subsequent analysis the moment one considers the explanandum intrinsic and irreducible. A good demonstration of this can be found precisely in the highly informative analyses of various aspects of consciousness provided by phenomenologists (see, for example, the analysis of time-consciousness in Chapter 4). But what about the issue of naturalization? Is a one-level account of consciousness committed to some kind of supernatural dualism? Not at all. One can defend the notion of pre-reflective self-consciousness while remaining quite neutral vis-à-vis the issue of naturalization. More specifically, there is nothing in the rejection of a relational account of consciousness that rules out that the emergence of consciousness requires a requisite neural substratum. One should consequently avoid conflating two different issues. One concerns the relation between the neural level and the mental level, the other the relation between different mental processes. The one-level account doesn’t address the bottom-up issue concerning the relation between brain processes and consciousness, it merely denies that a mental state becomes conscious by being taken as an object by a relevant higher-order mental state. From the perspective of naturalism, it might even be argued that the one-level account is simpler and more parsimonious than the relational higher order account, and that it is also in better accordance with a popular view in neuroscience, according to which consciousness is a matter of hitting a certain threshold of neural activity.
Phenomenologists, as we have seen, claim that pre-reflective self-consciousness is nonobjectifying (that is, not to be construed as a form of object-consciousness) and therefore not the result of any self-directed intentionality. It is true, however, that the plausibility of this claim to a large extent depends on what we mean by ‘object’ (cf. Cassam 1997, p. 5). In order to understand the phenomenological point of view, it is at this point crucial not to conflate issues of ontology with issues of phenomenology. The claim is not that the object of experience must always differ ontologically from the subject of experience, as if the subject and the object of experience must necessarily be two different entities. Rather, the claim is simply that the experience itself is not pre-reflectively experienced as an object. On our understanding, for something to be an object is for that something to consciously appear in a specific manner. More specifically, for x to be considered an object is for x to appear as transcending the subjective consciousness that takes it as an object. It is to appear as something that stands in opposition to or over against the subjective experience of it (cf. the German term Gegenstand). It is against this background that it has been denied that an experience is pre-reflectively given as an object. For whereas in reflection we are confronted with a situation involving two experiences, where one (the reflected upon) can appear as an object for the other (the reflecting), we are on the pre-reflective level only dealing with a single experience, and one experience cannot appear as an object to itself, cannot be experienced as transcending itself, cannot stand opposed to itself, in the requisite way.
An additional argument (found already in several of the post-Kantian German philosophers) for why an experience cannot pre-reflectively be an object, if, that is, the experience in question is to be considered my experience, was more recently revived by Shoemaker. He has argued that it is impossible to account for first-personal self-reference in terms of a successful object identification. In order to identify something as oneself one obviously has to hold something true of it that one already knows to be true of oneself. This self-knowledge might in some cases be grounded in some further identification, but the supposition that every item of self-knowledge rests on identification leads to an infinite regress (Shoemaker 1968, p. 561). This holds even for self-identification obtained through introspection. That is, it will not do to claim that introspection is distinguished by the fact that its object has a property which immediately identifies it as being me, and which no other self could possibly have, namely, the property of being the private and exclusive object of exactly my introspection. This explanation will not do because I will be unable to identify an introspected self as myself by the fact that it is introspectively observed by me, unless I know it is the object of my introspection, i.e. unless I know that it is in fact me who undertakes this introspection, and this knowledge cannot itself be based on identification, on pain of infinite regress (Shoemaker 1968, pp. 562–563).
Indeed, in complete support of Shoemaker’s point, the phenomenologist claims that this sort of intimate acquaintance that tells me that it is I myself who am introspecting, or more generally that it is I myself who am experiencing, is provided precisely by the pre-reflective self-consciousness that is implicit in experience.”
http://ir.nmu.org.ua/bitstream/hand...17ac14456bfe36abc08eb1dfe738c3.pdf?sequence=1
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Pharoah
Paranormal Adept
Well... I think you are all on a copout here.
According to @Constance there is no language that objectifies existential phenomenological experience... there is no language for the feel of existence (something like that anyway).
So "feel" is something beyond any kind of categorisation, definition, classification, language of analysis or description etc.
So, how are you all going to recognise any explanation of 'feel'.
It seems to me @smcder that you want to think that 'feel' is not qualitative. I might be wrong on that... either way, to think of feel as not qualitative is a very interesting proposition; to think of feel as qualitative is even more interesting: I'm not too bothered either way.
incidentally @smcder you said,
"it seems @Pharoah believes consciousness is fundamental" #743
When I replied,
"I don't say consciousness is fundamental. Good grief"
you replied,
"I didn't say you said consciousness is fundamental ..." #747
Strictly speaking, I suppose, believing and saying are two different things.
@Soupie and @smcder:
"I know I am missing something, but nothing in the above explanation tells me why "qualitatively relevant" has to feel like anything. All of the above could happen without there being anyone home, so to speak."
I am glad you are paying attention. Nothing in the explanation does say why qualitative relevance has a feel.
So two questions feed on from this:
What is qualitative relevance, or what are examples of qualitative relevance?
What is required to take qualitative relevance to 'feel'?
If there is no language that can explore these questions then I (at least) can give up now. If there is a language, you need to explore it... So, I am going to leave you two to figure out some answers to these questions, because I too have had enough of explaining it. I think this explain–understand relationship is not working because you are not thinking for yourselves creatively: you are thinking "why should it?" instead of "how could it?". I suppose what I am saying is that it is a lot harder understanding something if you don't believe in it. Furthermore, I don't think there is anything fundamentally incoherent in or incompetent about my explanations; After a lifetime of insecurities, I'm finally moving on from that sentiment.
I do appreciate all your efforts and encouragement but I need a break atm.
According to @Constance there is no language that objectifies existential phenomenological experience... there is no language for the feel of existence (something like that anyway).
So "feel" is something beyond any kind of categorisation, definition, classification, language of analysis or description etc.
So, how are you all going to recognise any explanation of 'feel'.
It seems to me @smcder that you want to think that 'feel' is not qualitative. I might be wrong on that... either way, to think of feel as not qualitative is a very interesting proposition; to think of feel as qualitative is even more interesting: I'm not too bothered either way.
incidentally @smcder you said,
"it seems @Pharoah believes consciousness is fundamental" #743
When I replied,
"I don't say consciousness is fundamental. Good grief"
you replied,
"I didn't say you said consciousness is fundamental ..." #747
Strictly speaking, I suppose, believing and saying are two different things.
@Soupie and @smcder:
"I know I am missing something, but nothing in the above explanation tells me why "qualitatively relevant" has to feel like anything. All of the above could happen without there being anyone home, so to speak."
I am glad you are paying attention. Nothing in the explanation does say why qualitative relevance has a feel.
So two questions feed on from this:
What is qualitative relevance, or what are examples of qualitative relevance?
What is required to take qualitative relevance to 'feel'?
If there is no language that can explore these questions then I (at least) can give up now. If there is a language, you need to explore it... So, I am going to leave you two to figure out some answers to these questions, because I too have had enough of explaining it. I think this explain–understand relationship is not working because you are not thinking for yourselves creatively: you are thinking "why should it?" instead of "how could it?". I suppose what I am saying is that it is a lot harder understanding something if you don't believe in it. Furthermore, I don't think there is anything fundamentally incoherent in or incompetent about my explanations; After a lifetime of insecurities, I'm finally moving on from that sentiment.
I do appreciate all your efforts and encouragement but I need a break atm.
smcder
Paranormal Adept
One of the underlying ideas of phenomenology is that the preoccupation with these metaphysical issues tends to degenerate into highly technical and abstract discussions that lose touch with the real subject matter: experience.
A phenomenally clear introduction! - and I read the Conclusion, re-reading the intro in depth now ...
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Soupie
Paranormal Adept
Yes, this is some of the clearest phenomenological writing I've read. Will read entire piece asap.
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
@Pharoah, you believe that HCT does resolve the HP, and you feel that you’ve articulated how HCT resolves the HP. After several sincere, effortful attempts to understand how HCT resolves the HP, I don’t see how it does. If I understand @smcder and @Constance, they don’t see how it does either.
However, not only do I fail to see how HCT resolves the HP, I fail to see how it attempts to resolve the HP.
For me, resolving the HP would entail:
Frankly, at times I wondered if you even recognize the HP. I was not aware of the HP until Smcder introduced it to me in this very discussion. Failing to recognize the HP and explaining why the HP is not actually a problem are two different things.
I think you now recognize the HP. But I’m not sure.
In any case, you seem, understandably, frustrated with my (our) insistence that HCT does not resolve the HP. With that in mind, I want to note here that while I do not see how HCT resolves the HP, indeed even addresses the HP, I have encountered a few theories that attempt to address/resolve the HP. I want to list them here so you can see just what I mean about addressing/resolving the HP. (@smcder, maybe you can add to the list?)
Pharoah, you hold a representational approach to phenomenal consciousness. Thus, I think the following definition of the HP will make sense to you:
Question (HP): Why is it that physiological representations give rise to phenomenal representations?
Answers:
One can of course reject these various attempts at resolving the HP, however, they are still attempts. In regards to HCT, I don’t see how it attempts to resolve the HP.
However, not only do I fail to see how HCT resolves the HP, I fail to see how it attempts to resolve the HP.
For me, resolving the HP would entail:
- Explaining why the HP is not actually a problem, or
- Explaining a process that resolves the HP
Frankly, at times I wondered if you even recognize the HP. I was not aware of the HP until Smcder introduced it to me in this very discussion. Failing to recognize the HP and explaining why the HP is not actually a problem are two different things.
I think you now recognize the HP. But I’m not sure.
In any case, you seem, understandably, frustrated with my (our) insistence that HCT does not resolve the HP. With that in mind, I want to note here that while I do not see how HCT resolves the HP, indeed even addresses the HP, I have encountered a few theories that attempt to address/resolve the HP. I want to list them here so you can see just what I mean about addressing/resolving the HP. (@smcder, maybe you can add to the list?)
Pharoah, you hold a representational approach to phenomenal consciousness. Thus, I think the following definition of the HP will make sense to you:
Question (HP): Why is it that physiological representations give rise to phenomenal representations?
Answers:
- Idealism - there is no external, objective, non-phenomenal reality
- Dualism - matter and consciousness are both fundamental
- Integrated Information Theory - phenomenal feel is an emergent property of neurons connected in an integrated, causal structure (as opposed to neurons connected in a feedforward causal structure)
- Phase Change - Phenomenal feel is an emergent property of specific system states, much like “systems” of H2O can phase change into liquid, solid, and vapor
- Archetypal Matrix - physical representations within a physical system are compared to an innate storehouse of prototypical physical representations. When a match is found between a newly formed physical representation and an innate, prototypical representation, a phenomenal representation manifests within the physical system.
- Isomorphic Dynamical System - Phenomenal representations share an isomorphic relationship with physical representations within the physical system. Ex., the phenomenal feel of anger is isomorphically related to the spatiotemporal shape of the neural representation of anger within the global brain system. ie, anger feels fast and powerful, and the neural patterns in the brain are fast and powerful. Peaceful feels like calmness and clarity of mind, and the neural patterns in the brain are medium and integrate (rather than dominate) the brain. etc.
One can of course reject these various attempts at resolving the HP, however, they are still attempts. In regards to HCT, I don’t see how it attempts to resolve the HP.
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