Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 2

[Constance]

the fur coat . . . . .{whoops; I'd left that phrase in my reply screen hours ago to remind me to come back to your metaphor. Later.}

Yes. But it's important to note that consciousness is not constituted of the neurons, but of the pattern of information neurons create. Or at least that's the hypothesis of the information philosophy of mind.

It's a subtle, but important, difference.

Soupie, can you cite a formal explanation or description of this 'pattern of information'? What I've been looking for (for more than a hundred pages here and in many papers cited along the way) is a definition of 'information' that thinkers in science, philosophy, and other disciplines can agree upon. My sense of the essential role of information in the proliferation of the universe is that it originates in the quantum substrate (but drawing information from the zero point field, with apologies to marduk) and also having and generating its own energy, thus its proliferation of exchanges of information between and among quantum systems leading -- through increasingly complex and integrated systems -- to the production of fields, forces, and macro objects [planets, galaxies] in the natural world. {Any clarifications will be much appreciated.} Out of this complex interrelation of 'information' life is ultimately produced and then, in my view, protoconsciousness, consciousess, and mind. It seems to me that what happens in the evolution of the universe and of species arises in the expansion and evolution of information itself. It also seems to me that whatever information is, it is enormously productive, even inventive.

Except for us on earth (so far as we know) we are alone in developing a highly complex form of consciousness comprising many layers of information and out of it developing minds that can explore these layers, explore the tangible and visible world, and even reason our way to theorizing the nature of life, mind, and universe. Both complex consciousness and the flowering of mind have been required to produce all the works of art, culture, science, philosophy, and ethical thinking of which our history is the evidence. So it seems to me that the question we pursue here is not only what consciousness is and how it comes into existence in the world but also what should we do with our consciousness? What obligations are laid upon us by virtue of what we can understand, think, and do?

The above is just a way of expressing the viewpoint that 'information' so far as it's defined [?] and understood [?] in nature and mind is not equivalent to, nor can it be said to constitute, consciousness and mind and the works of mind for me. I also think that the energy required for active presence to the world and to others through conscious attendance to the world, while reliant on energy taken into and used by the body and brain, is not sufficient to account for the creativity of the mind -- which in my opinion draws energy from within itself in the inspiration it draws from its embodied presence to and attachments with the palpable world and with others we interact with. Phenomenology is a philosophy and method of inquiry into the experienced world -- the world as we and other creatures live and act in it, variously comprehend it, and change it -- and so is relevant and indeed necessary for obtaining answers to all the questions raised in these paragraphs.

 

[Constance]

I had written: "In the meantime, though, my first question is whether information theory as applied to consciousness by Tononi and by you does not seem to attempt to dissolve the layers of awareness that exist in consciousness and thus draw attention away from the project of distinguishing these layers to better understand the complexity of consciousness."

No, it does not attempt that.

Whether or not it attempts to dissolve the layers we know to exist in consciousess and mind, though, this seems to be its effect. I looked for and asked for the ways in which Tononi's IIT approaches and distinguishes these layers of information: not merely waking consciousness but the personal subconscious, the collective conscious and unconscious, meditative states, consciousness in dream states and other states during sleep, and other altered states (psi, especially precognition; mediumship, NDEs, OBEs, spiritual extasies, and more). All of these and further examples of anomalous reception of 'information' need to be investigated before we can provide an account of phenomena encountered through consciousness and mind. How, for example, do children who remember past lives actually know where they lived previously, with whom they lived, what language they spoke (and sometimes still can speak in a 'reincarnated' life), what food they preferred (and still desire in the reincarnated life), how they felt and what kinds of relationships they had with significant others in the previous life? In one of those cases investigated by Ian Stevenson the child also remembered 'waiting to be born' into the next family, observing their comings and goings for months from a position he maintained in the tree in front of the house. How much information do we all carry around in the layers of our consciousness without being aware of it yet being influenced by it, even learning from it when it wells up into waking consciousness? The intricacy and complexity of all these kinds of information is in itself mind-bending. A theory of how it is produced in lives experienced on this planet will require an equally complex and intricate theory and demonstration of how it can all be accounted for by 'information' -- the same information that, as marduk tells us, is also responsible for the complexity of the physical world.

Phenomenology is the study of self-awareness by self-awareness. It's a worthy pursuit, but as I've already said, I personally do not think it is the only nor the best approach for discerning the origin and nature of consciousness. For instance, try as it might, I don't see how phenomenology on its own could solve the hard problem.

It's much more than that, but you would have to be willing to read the necessary source material to see that. I've never said that phenomenology is "the only" or "the best" approach for understanding the nature of consciousness or its origins. I've said that it is a necessary component in consciousness studies, neglected until recently by neuroscientific, computational, and informational approaches to understanding consciousess and therefore mind. Re 'the hard problem', it was born in phenomenology and. as Chalmers and others have recognized, it's essential to the ongoing effort in consciousness studies and brain science.

Furthermore, I get the sense from the way you try to steer the conversation is that you're more interested in the forest than the trees.

I don't mean to "steer the conversation," only to keep phenomenological concerns and insights alive within it. Also, we can't understand the forest if we do not understand the tree, and vice versa. And we can't understand consciousness and mind if we don't understand them in the world and affecting the world. Or, as Merleau-Ponty expressed it, "the fish is in the water and the water is in the fish."

I get the sense that you feel I focus too much on the trees, while you want to talk about the forest, the canopy, and climate change, if you follow.

You should focus on and talk about whatever is important to you. I have sometimes felt and even said that I think that your informational theory of consciousness seems reductive, needs more bones and teeth and feathers on it.

I am interested in all those other exciting aspects of (human) minds, but so far in this thread, most of my attention has been on phenomenal experience and the hard problem.

You have most interestingly waxed eloquent about some papers having phenomenological underpinnings (most recently the one about 'extended consciousness'), and you have also expressed intense interest in monistic approaches such as panexperientialism. I think you hope to find some unifying principle in informational approaches such as Tononi's that will demonstrate profound integration of world and mind. But I haven't seen any indication yet that this is his goal or intent..

So it's possible that you perceive my current lack of interest in such topics to be a dismissal of them. It's not meant to be.

Don't worry about it. We all pursue most that which interests us most.

That is, discussion of the hypothetical informational constitution of consciousness is not to dismiss ethics, morality, free will, mental illness, and all that other good stuff you and smcder want to discuss.

I understand. We'll be getting on to all of the above and more.

 

[Constance]

Illogical.

This is akin to saying the solution to Sartre is more Sartre. As a metaphor, Bush-era geopolitics thought the solution to war was more war.

Illogical? I suggested the works I mentioned because they present a broader picture of Sartre's wide-ranging mind and his profound social consciousness, his highly developed but critical humanism, and his philosophical depth, which I thought you might appreciate. He is by far not my favorite phenomenological philosopher; instead I recommend Merleau-Ponty and Levinas. Anyway, let it go.

I'm pretty sure I've read almost everything he wrote that was translated into english, and as I thumb my dog-eared copy of The Age of Reason, I know I'm not going to make that slog again. At least so soon as I went through the page-turner that is Being and Nothingness.


My point is that there is no point. My point is that for all the pontification and back and forth, nothing has been done, no conclusions made, no satori.

Philosophy is far less about answers than it is about questions and critical dialectic. You surely won't find satori in Sartre. But you can find a philosopher who looked unflinchingly at innate human possibility and massive failures to live up to it interpersonally, socially, economically, and morally. He wrote fiction, plays, literary criticism, and social theory in addition to philosophy, all with the intent of shedding light on the core psychological and ideological problems besetting the human world in his time and pointing to ways toward the individual and social responsibility required for significant change.

No. I'm talking about the "in-itself" and the "for-itself."

But those aren't 'two modes of consciousness' for Sartre or for phenomenology and existentialism in general. The 'in-itself' refers to objects, material 'things' without consciousness (in his view). The 'for-itself' is consciousness, capable of freedom, thus responsible for its actions. Inauthenticity is the regard of and use of other consciousnesses, other subjectivities, as objects to be used and manipulated, including the denial of their personal and political freedom.

Where I'm with Sartre deeply is his assertion that existence precedes essence... by which I mean that we existed before we became aware of our existence, and we have nothing here to blame, and nothing here to look for except ourselves.

Right.

Where I'm still not 100% with him is free will.

Yes, his concept of freedom is 'radical', the view that we are free within our 'situations' to respond to them in one way or another.

For me, it was stopping reading philosophy and listening to Morrisey.

Different strokes.

I'm poking fun at myself there. I was that guy until I woke up one day realizing that although I felt deep, read heavy philosophical tomes, and got to date girls with very pale skin and pouty faces, that didn't actually make me deep, and I was getting nowhere and contributing to nothing.

Philosophy is a long haul, and not for everyone, and not for anyone all the time. Life calls.

To quote Sartre:

“I am alone in the midst of these happy, reasonable voices. All these creatures spend their time explaining, realizing happily that they agree with each other. In Heaven's name, why is it so important to think the same things all together. ”​

That's evokes one of the failures of consciousness and mind he struggled to illuminate for his readers -- the mindless satisfactions and security of conformity with consensual 'thinking', at any cost to personal integrity and the suffering of others.

​

Existentialism, and philosophy in general, has become the very system that it is claiming to undermine. And become circular and self-referential.

Mind explaining how?

And, to me at least, dead.

Pity.

They [AI] would get them [values] from us. And that scares the hell out of me.

As it should.

 

[marduk]

Mind explaining how?

Some philosophers argue that Sartre's thought is contradictory. Specifically, they claim that Sartre makes metaphysical arguments despite his claim that his philosophical views ignore metaphysics. Herbert Marcuse criticized Being and Nothingness for projecting anxiety and meaninglessness onto the nature of existence itself: "Insofar as Existentialism is a philosophical doctrine, it remains an idealistic doctrine: it hypostatizes specific historical conditions of human existence into ontological and metaphysical characteristics. Existentialism thus becomes part of the very ideology which it attacks, and its radicalism is illusory."
Jean-Paul Sartre - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If you're in it for the long haul, you have to admit that the process is taking a long time.

Like, 2500 years with little progress to say for itself.

 

[smcder]

OK, I'll drop the emergence problem for the moment and go and stew on it.

If consciousness is a fundamental property of matter, where is it? Is there a consciousnessiton that conveys it to matter and space-time just like there are particles and waves that transmit every other force in the universe?

A serious question, I'm not poking at you.

Further, as a thought experiment, does mass-energy conversion events (like nuclear weapons) convert consciousness to energy? Are we "killing" consciousness?

If we run mass-energy conversion events in the reverse, "freezing" mass out of energy, are we creating consciousness?

Are hyper dense objects like neutron stars hyper conscious?

If our brains are the seat of our consciousness, why aren't they more dense?

Is there a mass limit to consciousness like there may be a event horizon for black holes? Like, a critical mass for consciousness, or is a single quark conscious?

Since a bose-einstien condensate can be thought of as a single atom, is it less conscious than the equivalent mass that is trillions of atoms?

I don't expect you to have answers to these, of course, I'm just running thought experiments through my mind to understand the position.

The combination problem and phenomenal bonding solution are as close as I've seen to the "where is it" question.

I have a crude way of visualizing it but it hadn't been that helpful.

It seems to me the two properties have to constrain one another - the phenomenal "shape" of the brain constrains the physical and vice versa but I've not seen this discussed anywhere, I'm sure it is though.

 

[smcder]

Nothing, and that's one of the problems with free will.

I tend to agree - the world itself doesn't change when we learn something new but we do then tend to change the world with that knowledge - you can draw all the possible implications from that that you can depending on what we would then know about free will: simply that we have it (and what does that mean?) or we find out how much we have and under what circumstances and then of course is it the sort of "thing" we can manipulate? Is there a technology of free will or is it just a brute fact?

I tend to think free will isn't the limiting factor, that we have all the freedom we can use.

 

[Soupie]

The combination problem and phenomenal bonding solution are as close as I've seen to the "where is it" question.

I have a crude way of visualizing it but it hadn't been that helpful.

It seems to me the two properties have to constrain one another - the phenomenal "shape" of the brain constrains the physical and vice versa but I've not seen this discussed anywhere, I'm sure it is though.

Smcder, I agree with you completely, and I've been thinking about this over the past couple days. I haven't been able to devote too much time to it though. One thought is that natural (or otherwise) selection should be able to help in this regard, right? That is, the process of evolution is constantly producing phenomenal and physical shapes, and those that are adaptive go on to replicate the most. So, evolution is not just selecting for physical shape, but simultaneously phenomenal shape as well. (It strikes me that this concept might be helpful in understanding some observations in biology.)

I've also been thinking about your question regarding whether we can objectively determine which physical structures are experiencing/generating phenomenal shapes. Again, I haven't too much time to think about it, but I am.

 

[smcder]

Insightful, hadn't considered that.

I was thinking that our minds are bounded by our biology and it's information storage and processing ability. Take away that limit, and apply moore's law to it, and in a few cycles it could be 'contemplating' the whole planet at once.

That's what I meant.

I wonder, though, after considering your comment, if we aren't creating a tulpa with AI...

I've wondered before if we would run into constraints that meant intelligence was limited to a human level in this part of the universe ... if nature hasn't already optimized and we can't do any better with other materials ... if consciousness is a property of matter it may be the limiting factor - maybe AI falls apart consciously as intelligence increases and we get schizophrenia or some break down in identity ... I'm not making any analogies to mental illness in humans although the rates of mental disorders, all included, to me says nature is pushing the design specs of the brain now such as it is.

 

[smcder]

Oh, and a core problem with the "everything is conscious" position is entropy.

In short, consciousness needs structure to exist. At least how we understand it. To be self aware means that you need awareness and a self to be aware of. So, structure.

To maintain any kind of structure you need energy to do so, otherwise entropy takes it away. Our brains consume energy -- a lot of it in fact (20% of our metabolic energy). We can even show that thinking hard takes more energy than not thinking hard. And being conscious takes more energy than not (like, in a coma).

So, if all matter was conscious, it would need to consume energy to remain so. Where's it coming from? If it derived it from itself, soon it would cease to exist because it would be eating itself.

And don't say zero point energy. Please don't say that.

I think this hinges on how you are using consciousness ...

What Panpsychism says is that there is a phenomenal quality or property in the most fundamental pieces/particles of matter - to say "there is something it is like to be an electron" doesn't mean an electron has a brain or is self-aware, so it doesn't need extra energy - subjectivity is just a property of matter. By the way Bertrand Russell came up with this stuff (Panpsychism in it's modern form) , not me.

The combination problem is how to assemble these pieces of subjectivity into a larger complex subject like a person ...

As an aside, NDEs seem to happen when (as we measure it now) brain activity is low - but I don't know a lot about this ... @Constance?

I do know people who report knowing what's going on while in coma, it might be that consciousness takes very little energy. Sleep bad dream REM studies might tell us something too ... but this doesn't seem to me to have to do with the problem you raise above.


http://www.skeptiko.com/bernardo-kastrup-consciousness-research/

@marduk

Here is one mention of anomalous consciousness correlating with a dampening down of brain activity, I've actually seen the argument in NDEs that when the brain is clinically "dead" there may still be a small amount of energy we can't detect and that is enough for elaborate conscious experiences ...

Alex Tsakiris: You make some interesting connections between the “fainting game”, erotic asphyxiation and some new research with psychedelic mushrooms. You suggest that when we really look at what’s going on in the brain we actually see a dampening down of brain areas – the opposite of what we would expect. So what are the implications of this in terms of this idea of filtering of consciousness?

Bernardo Kastrup: The current paradigm says that conscious experience is an epiphenomenon, a by-product, of brain activity. So you should always be able to find a tight correlation between conscious states as reported by the subject and measurable brain states as measured, for instance, with an FMRI scanner. Usually this correlation is there, but there are instances, like this study you mentioned, where this correlation is not there in a very spectacular and repeatable way. What it suggests is that we have to find another model of reality, if you will, to accommodate this. A model that accommodates both the fact that normally, ordinarily, conscious experience is modulated by brain states, but also sometimes there is a lack of correlation in a spectacular way.

 

[smcder]

Hmm...
Do you mean quarks arranged into atoms a very specific way can give rise to a mind?

If so, sure. But I'm missing the point, because a quark wouldn't just be proto-mind, it would be proto anything. Proto-stapler, proto-Paris, proto-new Coke.

The problem gets raised in the first place because consciousness isn't anything like a stapler ... or anything else for that "matter" ... or doesn't seem to be. So folks don't wonder how you get staplers from matter or brains but they do say "hey, how do you get consciousness from matter?" that's why dualism came along ... and for the record dualism has fewer problems than is commonly thought ...

so far no one has answered that question without emergence (hand waving) and Panpsychism skirts that hard problem with the mental/phenomenal being fundamental so it's worth a look. Also life is much easier to see coming from matter than consciousness ... once you get rid of " vitalism "

 

[smcder]

Consciousness is a fundamental property of what? Matter?

And why can't it do anything if it emerges?

Life emerged, and does a whole hell of a lot. And life isn't a fundamental property of anything, but matter is a fundamental property of life. At least how we know it.

No, it does not attempt that.

Phenomenology is the study of self-awareness by self-awareness. It's a worthy pursuit, but as I've already said, I personally do not think it is the only nor the best approach for discerning the origin and nature of consciousness. For instance, try as it might, I don't see how phenomenology on its own could solve the hard problem.

Furthermore, I get the sense from the way you try to steer the conversation is that you're more interested in the forest than the trees.

I get the sense that you feel I focus too much on the trees, while you want to talk about the forest, the canopy, and climate change, if you follow.

I am interested in all those other exciting aspects of (human) minds, but so far in this thread, most of my attention has been on phenomenal experience and the hard problem.

So it's possible that you perceive my current lack of interest in such topics to be a dismissal of them. It's not meant to be.

That is, discussion of the hypothetical informational constitution of consciousness is not to dismiss ethics, morality, free will, mental illness, and all that other good stuff you and smcder want to discuss.

Furthermore, I get the sense from the way you try to steer the conversation is that you're more interested in the forest than the trees.

Hello pot! lol ...

Soupie, go back and have a look at the first posts in part one of this thread ... better yet, have a look at the title: Consciousness and The Paranormal ... not Monism and the Paranormal, not ITT and the Paranormal ... if you want to accuse anyone of steering the conversation, accuse me - I admit it! Take a look at my recent postings ...

I appreciate your interests, but they seem very narrow, repetitive and speculative to me, as you essentially admit - none are mortal sins, but there is a lot more to talk about!

 

[smcder]

Some philosophers argue that Sartre's thought is contradictory. Specifically, they claim that Sartre makes metaphysical arguments despite his claim that his philosophical views ignore metaphysics. Herbert Marcuse criticized Being and Nothingness for projecting anxiety and meaninglessness onto the nature of existence itself: "Insofar as Existentialism is a philosophical doctrine, it remains an idealistic doctrine: it hypostatizes specific historical conditions of human existence into ontological and metaphysical characteristics. Existentialism thus becomes part of the very ideology which it attacks, and its radicalism is illusory."
Jean-Paul Sartre - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If you're in it for the long haul, you have to admit that the process is taking a long time.

Like, 2500 years with little progress to say for itself.

I sort of cringe and then giggle (but only a little nervously) when you pronounce Philosophy is Dead!

First, a caveat (I'm just learning to issue caveats on this forum ...):

I am not an Apologist for philosophy (while I'm at it, if I've not said it before, I'm not a Panpsychist, a physicalist, a Buddhist, a dualist, a monist or or or ... I just don't think people are -ists, even if they claim to be).

Second, I think to say "little progress" is to misunderstand what philosophy is for ... you've been practicing Zen for twenty years, right? How much progress have you made? If I remember, you even said you weren't going to discuss the practice because you were just realizing what you didn't know ... but I'll wager you don't feel it's been a waste of time.

Third, you're like the man who realized suddenly he'd been speaking prose all his life ... you've been doing a lot of philosophy since you got on this thread! And you came to this thread with some very strong philosophical commitments. (which is fine)

Yes, I am poking at you and I expect you to take it well! ;-) We may as well have a little fun around here.

Now, I do get what you are saying and in general, I think academics as a whole has a lot of what you are critiquing, not just philosophy - I grew up in an academic environment and believe me, I get it.

But I also think in an interdisciplinary sense, philosophy is alive and well - @Constance has pointed to this in terms of consciousness studies and cognitive science and she is right, phenomenology continues to develop in some surprising ways.

The other thing and this is a big topic - but science doesn't proceed scientifically, it proceeds as a human activity and with underlying philosophical assumptions and commitments that aren't often articulated, much less examined ... how do we look at that? Philosophically ... Thomas Kuhn is the place to start, I'm guessing you've read Structure of Scientific Revolutions. So, you can't do everything scientifically and we want to avoid scientism if possible, because it's no better than any other -ism.

I've found this site to be a good place to see the sweep of philosophy:

List of Interviews

 

[Soupie]

Soupie, can you cite a formal explanation or description of this 'pattern of information'?

The following appears to be one of the more formal papers on the topic I have found; and it's one that I learned of from you! (You! I learned it from watching you! )

Why Physicists Are Saying Consciousness Is A State Of Matter, Like a Solid, A Liquid Or A Gas — The Physics arXiv Blog — Medium

Consciousness as a "state" of matter = Consciousness is information.

As I've noted, I believe that this model is a form of CPPP. It may not be "Russelian" as that will hinge on whether information is an intrinsic or extrinsic property of matter. ( @smcder @marduk any thoughts on that? )

Furthermore, this view is rejected out-of-hand by many for the same reasons PPP is rejected: namely, that it logically leads to a lot of physical systems having/generating consciousness (if only phenomenal consciousness) that we - as humans - would not intuitively believe have/are conscious. However, I think it's an error to discard/dismiss a model simply because it does not intuitively appeal to us. The origin and nature of consciousness is probably not intuitive.

Interestingly, although it was specifically in reference to IIT, both Chalmers and others have said it does not answer the hard problem. Now, IIT is a specific form of the "information philosophy of mind" model, so IIT may introduce an element I'm not aware of, but I think IPoM does answer some of the hard problem (in the same way that CPPP does).

An individual named Scott Andrews stated that: If the mind is information, and a human was said to generate this information, we can still conceive of the person as a zombie, i.e., having no consciousness.

To that I say, what!? How is that conceivable?

If a mind is information, and a human has mind/information, we can conceive of them as not having mind/information? I don't follow...

 

[Soupie]

I do know people who report knowing what's going on while in coma, it might be that consciousness takes very little energy. Sleep bad dream REM studies might tell us something too ... but this doesn't seem to me to have to do with the problem you raise above.

This excerpt from the Tegmark paper I linked above reminds me of your comment:

“This leaves us with an integration paradox: why does the information content of our conscious experience appear to be vastly larger than 37 bits?” asks Tegmark.

Re my narrow focus on phenomenal consciousness: Apologies. However, I don't feel that I can move on to speculation about other phenomenon related to consciousness without having a working hypothesis of its nature.

 

[smcder]

That's a great question. I would surmise that in the beginning, it wouldn't look like anything but some pixels on the screen and perhaps sound coming out of a speaker.

Are you talking about it's UI?

I would agree that we may find it more natural to interact with a human-like AI -- like something out of Ghost in the Shell. But maybe not.

In the movie Her, it was a smartphone with a voice. And it seemed pretty natural.

I'm not sure.

I think the difference is in the semantic layer. Chimps and dolphins and whales and such may be intelligent, but we lack the ability to semantically relate concepts -- if indeed they conceptualize like we do (which I suspect they do).

We evolved a certain way that gave us the ability to talk. I suspect we had great conversations with neanderthals, maybe. Chimps 'n dolphins, that's a big evolutionary divide.

If it were me, I'd approach it using math. Math is math. Math is universal.

Chimps can understand math. Dolphins can understand math. At least rudimentary stuff.

Wasn't there an ape that could talk via sign language?

I suspect it will start with a master/servant relationship, then I hope it evolves into a partnership.

Then, and I admit I'm reaching and hand waiving here, I hope we become one with our creation. By which I mean, we can abstract ourselves and exist directly in an artificial substrate.

Because then we could open up the universe.

This is known as the Uncanny Valley and a difficult UI problem.


I'm more in line with William Gibson's vision of AI. Where it's abstracted, online, and very much the other.

"Neuro from the nerves, the silver paths. Romancer. Neuromancer. I call up the dead. But no, my friend," and the boy did a little dance, brown feet printing the sand, "I am the dead, and their land." He laughed. "​

But only because I'm a romantic.

If it were me, I'd approach it using math. Math is math. Math is universal.

The bigger question isn't how you encode the message, it's whether the message is comprehensible to the recipient.

"as far as we know" ... it's the N of 1 problem - we're the only species we know that does it (math), so why assume another intelligent species would? ... have you ever read any of Stanislav Lem's books? Solaris? He was a mathematician and one of his themes was how alien alien life might be - living oceans or planets with a very alien kind of embodiment and mind ... depending on the form of life, they might not need math or value it if they do, it might be mostly an aesthetic pursuit - hive mind types that excrete their own buildings - ants can control the climate in the ant hill precisely without math or machinery - a form of life that could travel in space or spread its spores in space or some kind of V'ger entity from Star Trek that lives in space ... we say far-fetched, but what do we know? What kinds of life are we looking for? What kinds could we see?

If you Google "is math a language?" you get a variety of opinions.

But only because I'm a romantic.

Ok ... how do you say "I love you." in math ...? ;-)

Wasn't there an ape that could talk via sign language?

As you can imagine, that is controversial ... I don't know that it amounted to a scandal, but it does appear there are problems saying they "talked", I don't know enough about it.

I suspect it will start with a master/servant relationship, then I hope it evolves into a partnership.

Then, and I admit I'm reaching and hand waiving here, I hope we become one with our creation. By which I mean, we can abstract ourselves and exist directly in an artificial substrate.

Because then we could open up the universe.

Would we clean this place up before we left?

You mention 2,500 years of progress ... what is always interesting to me is that, in that time, our goals haven't changed. We still pursue immortality and power over nature, the power to create, the power to capture and direct energy, the power to reach the heavens ... it's easy to see, with these ambitions, why Atheism is a popular choice - it eliminates the competition!

We would laugh if someone were to suggest that we get this place looking like Eden first before we go somewhere else and make it look like Earth.

 

[smcder]

This excerpt from the Tegmark paper I linked above reminds me of your comment:


Re my narrow focus on phenomenal consciousness: Apologies. However, I don't feel that I can move on to speculation about other phenomenon related to consciousness without having a working hypothesis of its nature.

I thought you had one?? At any rate - no apologies necessary, nobody says you have to move on. I'm just saying I am moving on, for the time being, I'll keep an ear up for something interesting.

I will say this - there is a lot of evidence in the NDE, OBE, survival area that you either have to:

1) ignore
2) completely rule out
3) integrate into a working hypothesis

... it's possible that not taking that evidence into account is why we don't have a working hypothesis now ... and I don't mean any crazy thing someone says, but the kind of information report on Radin's page, which I will link to yet again:

http://www.deanradin.com/evidence/evidence.htm

 

[smcder]

I have a question for the consciousness research aware segment of this board. I know that there are several studies that bear out the theory that consciousness is represent of a zero point field state. I also know that there are also those contending that consciousness is at least partially synonymous with what is black matter. I am now starting to see much of what I have been hypothetically contending with respect to UFOs being bandied about in UFO discussions here and there. Especially the aspect of UFOs being operative environmentally relative field state "submarines". It's my opinion that what they enter or submerge into, is what I have referred to many times over the last several years as being environmental consciousness. The same field that we interact with cognitively to displace experience based in linear time. I have also contended for some time that UFOs are interactively utilizing consciousness to travel from "here to there", wherever that is. Now it seems, that this "thing" that I have been referring to as environmental consciousness is being referred to by some prominent guessers as being "dimensions" beyond the 4 that we routinely interact with. The bottom line, and the question that I have for those more so familiar with the various eccentric consciousness considerations, is which of these zero point relevant consciousness studies bares the most credulity? I cannot help but believe that this is the actual singularity, not the meshing of machine and mind to produce more "intelligence" (like we need that!), but rather the meshing of mind via machine with the environmental aspect of consciousness to bridge, or create navigational entry into, and out of, the realm of the distance and speed irrelevant universe. Most of what is discussed and hypothesized concerning UFO technology is basic to the physical state. That in and of itself does not seem possible. I get that it's how UFOs interact environmentally once "here" within the physical state of our routine existent environment, but it is meaningless with respect to space travel. There has to be a conversion from material to immaterial in order for this transcendence of field states/dimesnions to occur. This is where consciousness comes into the picture and the only reason that it's overlooked and confused more times than not, is like the electromagnetic spectrum, we know of no escape and existence apart from as much. The study of consciousness will bear out this awareness conversion or transcendence of personal consciousness. These UFOnauts are utilizing it on a technological level IMO.

I also know that there are also those contending that consciousness is at least partially synonymous with what is black matter.

I posted something a while back on "shadow matter" - not sure if that's along the same line ... I'll paste it here below, it's more on subtle bodies and OOBEs, entities, etc.

But this is also a chance to say that there is a challenge in terms of defining consciousness ... on the one hand, even if consciousness is an emergent property of the organization of matter "generated" (as @Soupie would say) by the brain - it is also not a thing, it is subjective experience and a purely private matter, that consciousness doesn't have mass, doesn't extend in space, so it's not matter - and that's why we have to be careful how we think about consciousness and what makes the hard problem, so hard (for physicalists) ... if we come up with machines that can project what you are thinking ... you may see and hear images and the person might say "yes, that's what I'm thinking" but what it is like to be that person doesn't convey - even if you hook the machine up directly to the brain, I know what you are thinking only as me ... now that could be very interesting, because I think people would quickly learn to hide their thoughts again and the technology would have to be upgraded, etc and the war for the mind would be on.

So while we might manipulate the brain and so alter consciousness (we do this all the time already), we would I think always be reliant on reports from the subject as to how consciousness was altered ... this is different from televisions, radios, computers were an outside observer can see the effects of changing the technology - as @marduk said (paraphrasing) from the outside all I see is your brain and I argue that's about as close as we may ever get.

But if you're saying though that consciousness is a thing and it can be manipulated transparently and objectively from the outside - then that is very interesting.

Shadow Matter

Earlier in this thread that idea was tied in to the idea of "shadow matter" by physicist John Hagelin, I’ll see if I can find the post where I transcribed that part of the conversation:

Consciousness and the Paranormal | Page 33 | The Paracast Community Forums

213. John Hagelin, Ph.D. - Buddha at the Gas Pump

Here you go, discussion of hidden sector matter and subtle bodies from the BATGAP interview #213 of John Hagelin

62:13

Hidden sector matter/shadow matter and subtle bodies


63:42 JH anyone who has for a variety of reasons and it can happen for a variety of reasons, finds themselves projected outside their physical body and are seeing and perceiving and functioning from a different place where you could literally turn around and observe your physical body sitting there, can’t deny the existence of levels of our human, say subtle physiology, that are independent of the gross physical physiology, connected to a degree, but more or less independent.

So I must say from a from a physics perspective that has been very hard to accept for physicists because What we know about the universe, what most physicists know about the universe is that its comprised of four forces, light, gravity, etc its comprised of known particles, like quarks and leptons, electrons, protons, neutrons and we pretty much know, nothing else. Whatever this subtle body’s made of – some kind of subtle matter - you can almost rule it out from the standpoint of physics and experiments that have been done.


But there’s a loophole and the loophole is there is a certain type of matter predicted by superstring theory, never predicted before superstring theory to exist. And its called “hidden sector matter” its, you’re starting to hear reference to it as shadow matter in the scientific literature, but it is a whole 'nother category of matter with its own set of forces and its own set of particles of a very different kind and that exists almost independently of us, fills this room, this is what had been thought - only interacting with us, by virtue of whatever gravitational mass it might have and due to its mass, any gravitational influence – but the gravitational influence between things of ordinary size, between you and me, even at this proximity is essentially zero, negligible – never measure it

RA You have a little bit more gravity than I do.

JH I’ve got twice the gravity you do, in every respect, um but the loophole in these calculations pointed out by I forget whom, but still relatively unknown fact is that this extra set of matter, extra forces, extra particles, and we don’t know a whole lot about the details of what those are like, but the caveat has now shown in most cases, in addition to its negligible gravity influence upon us and vice versa, there will be a weak electromagnetic tie a weak electromagnetic influence for reason that are comlex to go into and b/c of that electro-magnetic influence on us we could subtly see and feel the presence of these things.

But b/c that influence is rather weak its probably not something that the human eye is going to see well its not something that particle detectors have yet been able to discern although we’re looking the variety of tests looking mostly for what’s called dark matter in this hidden sector matter is in effect a form of dark matter a specific form predicted by superstring theory so were looking for dark matter we may find evidence of this stuff but the interesting thing about it is b/c it interacts with us electromagnetically it is really through a subtle, an alternate form of light that it could be perceived in principle . . . dimly perceived dimly perceived (sic) now the eyes, may be too dim for the eyes however through complicated mechanisms this stuff b/c its attraction to us electromagnetically it’s a little bit like cling-wrap.

It’s an electro-static attraction a faint electro-static attraction between this stuff and ourselves so for example its very easy, relatively easy to take a piece of glad wrap off of a cantaloupe even though it tends to cling its removable like that this subtle body if it were made of this HS matter or shadow matter could be removed from our physical body and could live quite independently of it – hidden sector matter would be very cold, cold is a relative thing, but it would be less than two degrees above absolute zero which is a good thing in a sense because it means it would be a deeply quantum mechanical world, a world that’s covered by quantum mechanics and if these HS particles happen to be bosons and there almost certainly would be some they would be super-fluid bosons and they would have all kinds of properties that would be very reminiscent of mind these bodies might be very much an aid to the physical human brain in the process of thinking maybe even in the process of transcending.

So could a body made of this stuff firstly cling together into a body and not just a pile of gas? Yes, it could. Could such a body be a vehicle of thought? That is it could think independently of the human brain if the human brain were to have a problem, maybe it even brings elements to the human brains ability to think that the human brain wouldn’t be very good at itself including possibly the ability to transcend? Yeah, so there’s very little known about it, very speculative area, not a lot of people thinking about it besides myself, but provided such people are seeing such things and for anybody who’s ever found themselves outside the physical body, as a physicist if you’re willing to admit such experiences exits, you kind of have to, as a physicist you should know right away this must be a body made of HS matter or shadow matter.

 

[Constance]

marduk said: ↑OK, I'll drop the emergence problem for the moment and go and stew on it.

You and a whole lot of other people. You added:

If consciousness is a fundamental property of matter, where is it? Is there a consciousnessiton that conveys it to matter and space-time just like there are particles and waves that transmit every other force in the universe?

Given that materialists have not been able to find a material explanation for consciousness, a 'consciousnessiton' would be the next best thing for objectivist thinkers to provide the hoped-for physical explanation of consciousness --> if/provided that we could find empirical evidence for the existence of a/the consciousnessiton in nature. Any candidates discovered yet? I chose the verb 'discovered' rather than 'imagined' to mark the distance (indeed the abyss) between what we can know based on evidence and what we freely speculate about here.

As Marduk asks: "If consciousness is a fundamental property of matter, where is it?"

The answer appears to be that we can't find consciousness in matter itself, in the 'in-itself'. What we find instead are efforts by scientists to describe matter through the application of their minds, relying on mathematical thinking and thinking within the constraints of human language, in both of which presuppositions are embedded. Philosophers are likewise constrained by human language in the expression of their thinking. What's the way out of this hermeneutic circle? Can we think our way out of it? If so, how? . . . {space provided for suggestions} . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

If we can't think our way out of the hermeneutic circle, we can at least think our way into it, recognizing it for what it represents: the existential limitations of what we know at any point in the temporality of a world we take to be real {on the basis of both what we can measure and what we experience).

The profoundly hypothetical nature of what we talk about here lately is expressed in the vague terms to which we are reduced both epistemologically and ontologically as we attempt to explain consciousness in terrains and categories that can't contain it and which we cannot define. Thus the terms to which we have been reduced:

'stuff'

'information'

'patterns of information'

'shape'.

The fuzziness arises in our desire to unite two sensed and cognizable aspects of reality that we do not yet fully understand. Contemporary science cannot presently go farther than it has gone in the standard model of physical reality, and we should take from that progress (and its partiality) all that we can. The direction in which progress can still be made is the investigation of consciousness based in experience, including 'para-normal' experience (which physical science has so far refused to entertain let alone pursue). Or so it seems to me

 

[Constance]

Re my narrow focus on phenomenal consciousness: Apologies. However, I don't feel that I can move on to speculation about other phenomenon related to consciousness without having a working hypothesis of its nature.

Steve replied to this post by saying he's thought you did have a working hypothesis concerning the nature of phenomenal consciousness. I think so too. The curious thing for me is that despite your interest in phenomenal consciousness you do not want to explore it with the tools of phenomenology. Another curious thing for me is that you insist that what you call 'phenomenal consciousness' is different from and seemingly in a world apart from [disjunct from] higher order forms of consciousness (reflection on experience, thinking). I'm not sure where you are getting this premise and would like to know.

My gut feeling is that both a) your disinterest in the phenomenological analysis of "embodied consciousness", which reveals the being-together of prereflective and reflective experience in humans, and b) your attempt to isolate these intermingling streams of consciousness from one another are prompted by your desire for an 'informational' account of consciousness reliant on neurological explanations, defining the brain as the location where all the activity of consciousness takes place.

As I noted in a long post to you last night, you also at times express personal enthusiasm for panexperiential ideas in which consciousness and world are intrinsically unified and inseparable {as expressed, for example, in the continuum of prereflective and reflective consciousness demonstrated in phenomenogical philosophy, most fully developed in the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty}.

There seems to be a significant discrepancy here which calls into question the strength of your commitment to the informational hypothesis concerning consciousness..

 

[Constance]

Some philosophers argue that Sartre's thought is contradictory. Specifically, they claim that Sartre makes metaphysical arguments despite his claim that his philosophical views ignore metaphysics. Herbert Marcuse criticized Being and Nothingness for projecting anxiety and meaninglessness onto the nature of existence itself: "Insofar as Existentialism is a philosophical doctrine, it remains an idealistic doctrine: it hypostatizes specific historical conditions of human existence into ontological and metaphysical characteristics. Existentialism thus becomes part of the very ideology which it attacks, and its radicalism is illusory."

Of course 'some philosophers' have criticized the philosophy of Sartre, also that of Heidegger and other phenomenological existentialists. That's philosophy for you -- a long disquisition and dialogue concerning the nature of reality, just as we find in science.

But you cite only one philosopher, Herbert Marcuse, in statement he wrote about Sartre's first philosophical text, published in 1938. And you cite only a brief extract [provided by wikipedia], whereas to understand Marcuse's mature evaluation of Sartre's thinking and writing over the next three or four decades we would need to read much further.

Rather than relying on what wiki coughs up re Sartre and what Marcuse said about Being and Nothingness in 1938, I suggest you'd do better to first gain a fuller understanding about Sartre by at least reading the article on his philosophical development provided in the Stanford Encyclopia of Philosophy at the link below. You might also read SEP's entry on Marcuse. From these beginnings you could proceed to find out more about the decades-long dialogue/debate revolving around Marxism, social theory, and existentialism.

Jean-Paul Sartre (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)


Extract:

"5. Politics

Sartre was not politically involved in the 1930s though his heart, as he said, “was on the left, like everyone's.” The War years, occupation and resistance made the difference. He emerged committed to social reform and convinced that the writer had the obligation to address the social issues of the day. He founded the influential journal of opinion, Les Temps modernes, with his partner Simone de Beauvoir, as well as Merleau-Ponty, Raymond Aron and others. In the “Présentation” to the initial issue (October, 1945), he elaborated his idea of committed literature and insisted that failure to address political issues amounted to supporting the status quo. After a brief unsuccessful attempt to help organize a nonCommunist leftist political organization, he began his long love-hate relationship with the French Communist Party, which he never joined but which for years he considered the legitimate voice of the working class in France. This continued till the Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1956. Still, Sartre continued to sympathize with the movement, if not the Party, for some time afterwards. He summarized his disillusionment in an essay “The Communists are afraid of Revolution,” following the “events of May,” 1968. By then he had moved toward the radical Left and what the French labeled “les Maos,” whom he likewise never joined but whose mixture of the ethical and the political attracted him.

Politically, Sartre tended toward what the French call “libertarian socialism,” which is a kind of anarchism. Ever distrustful of authority, which he considered “the Other in us,” his ideal was a society of voluntary eye-level relations that he called “the city of ends.” One caught a glimpse of this in his description of the forming group (le groupe en fusion) in the Critique. There each was “the same” as the others in terms of practical concern. Each suspended his or her personal interests for the sake of the common goal. No doubt these practices hardened into institutions and freedom was compromised once more in bureaucratic machinery. But that brief taste of genuine positive reciprocity was revelatory of what an authentic social existence could be.

Sartre came to recognize how the economic conditions the political in the sense that material scarcity, as both Ricardo and Marx insisted, determines our social relations. In Sartre's reading, scarcity emerges as the source of structural and personal violence in human history as we know it. It follows, he believes, that liberation from such violence will come only through the counter violence of revolution and the advent of a “socialism of abundance.”

What Sartre termed the “progressive/regressive method” for historical investigation is a hybrid of historical materialism and existentialist psychoanalysis. It respects the often decisive role of economic considerations in historical explanation (historical materialism) while insisting that “the men that History makes are not the men that make history”; in other words, he resists complete economic determinism by implicit appeal to his humanist motto: “You can always make something out of…”

If you're in it [philosophy] for the long haul, you have to admit that the process is taking a long time.

Like, 2500 years with little progress to say for itself.

Easy to say for those who haven't tried to read and absorb those 2,500 years of philosophy. Besides which the phenomenological/existentialist turn in philosophy began only about 75 years ago.