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Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 2

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" . . . if we can't trust introspection - phenomenological analysis, meditation, etc to return something true about the world, how can we trust our conscious experience in doing science or even everyday life?"

Why do you think that "we can't trust introspection -- phenomenological analysis, meditation, etc to return something true about the world"? It seems to me that all three of those resources enable an individual to resist and replace dominant assumptions and valuations about life, self, and others when those assumptions and valuations are found to be destructive and unfounded in personal experience and thought.
 
I agree that the Crane/Mellor paper is essential reading, Steve. You wrote:

"Clearly written and the argument/counter- argument on supervenience appears (feels!) exhaustive. ;-) hard to argue strict physicalism without going through this paper."

I wonder if anyone has tried to refute Crane and Mellor. I'll do a search to find out.
 
" . . . if we can't trust introspection - phenomenological analysis, meditation, etc to return something true about the world, how can we trust our conscious experience in doing science or even everyday life?"

Why do you think that "we can't trust introspection -- phenomenological analysis, meditation, etc to return something true about the world"? It seems to me that all three of those resources enable an individual to resist and replace dominant assumptions and valuations about life, self, and others when those assumptions and valuations are found to be destructive and unfounded in personal experience and thought.

I do too - it's a question for those who don't ...

If we can't look within without being told our inner world is an illusion 13 billion years in the making ... Then so go all hopes for objectivity, first and foremost through consensus reality - one imagines future humans Bandering what all this science nonsense was and glad they'd evolved to become Banderists (or whatever they would call it).
 
I agree that the Crane/Mellor paper is essential reading, Steve. You wrote:

"Clearly written and the argument/counter- argument on supervenience appears (feels!) exhaustive. ;-) hard to argue strict physicalism without going through this paper."

I wonder if anyone has tried to refute Crane and Mellor. I'll do a search to find out.

There are some responses ... And it's cited 99 times that I've found, reading something by Crane now ...
 
http://www.timcrane.com/uploads/2/5/2/4/25243881/inaugural.pdf

"We should reject the Cartesian conception of substance, then. If we want to continue talking in terms of substance, we should try and approach this notion (and therefore the notion of the soul) from another direction. But before getting to this, I would like to make one more comment about the Cartesian argument for dualism. If we reject the Cartesian view of substance, what should we say about the apparent fact that I can imagine being disembodied? Why doesn’t this carry some weight against the view that I am necessarily an embodied thing? Here I think the right thing to say is that although it may be true that I can imagine an experience (of a certain kind) existing without a body, all this could show – if it shows anything at all – is that experiences of some kind can exist independently of bodies. It does not show that my experiences can exist independently of my body. This conclusion, that disembodied experiences of some kind are possible, is innocuous: since few materialist philosophers think that materialism is a necessary truth, many of them will all allow that experiences of some kind can exist without a body, in some remote possible world. What they will not allow is that the experience I am currently having now could exist without a body; for this experience is dependent for its existence on me, and there are good reasons (for example, Kripke’s reasons just mentioned) for thinking that I am essentially embodied."
 
Same paper:

http://www.timcrane.com/uploads/2/5/2/4/25243881/inaugural.pdf


"Talk about the soul is really talk about the human mind. And in talking about the human mind, they will say, we are really talking about the human brain. Science has shown us that all so-called mental capacities reside in the brain, so if we want to understand these capacities, we should simply study the brain. Talk about ‘the mind’ as such, or ‘the soul’ is a relic of our pre-scientific age, and should be abandoned.
There are a number of sources of this idea. One is the doctrine known as physicalism, which is the contemporary version of the materialist view that everything is material, the version which gives the ultimate authority to physical science in telling us what there is. Physicalism can be understood in many ways. One extreme version is encapsulated in a famous phrase of Rutherford’s: ‘there is physics; and there is stamp-collecting’. A less extreme, and therefore more believable version, is that whatever facts there are, they have to be determined entirely by the purely physical facts (facts about atoms and molecules and so on). To use a theological image: all God would have to do to create this world, just as it is, is to create its physical nature. Everything else, including the mental realm, would come for free."

... what follows are body-blows to physicalism ...
 
From Aristotle to Strawson (PF ... and just how eminent do you have to be to go by your initials??? Hint: "Sting") by-passing Descartes in five paragraphs:

"These dogmatic remarks are intended merely as propaganda in defence of a more traditional, more Aristotelian conception of substances as the ultimate, unified subjects of predication. When it is mental capacities which are predicated, what is the substance which is the bearer of these capacities? The familiar Cartesian answer to this question is one answer; but what are the alternatives? The prevailing materialism of the day sometimes forces people to say that it is the brain which is the bearer of mental capacities (like the capacity for perception, for example). But when combined with the view that I am also a bearer of mental properties, this has the rather unsatisfactory consequence that I am my brain. Although some philosophers are happy to accept this way of talking, they are not forced to do so; even materialists can agree with Noam Chomsky’s commonsense observation that ‘people think, not their brains, which do not, though their brains provide the mechanisms of thought’.7 Distinguishing between subjects of thought and their underlying mechanisms allows us to say something which does not do much damage to something we normally believe: that persons are the fundamental subjects of mental predications. The tempting conclusion towards which we are moving is one which was defended by P.F. Strawson forty-five years ago: that persons are substances in their own right, among the basic entities in our world, to which we can add that they are items with their own principle of unity and principle of change."

( I think Heidegger makes an uncredited appearance ...)
 
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From Aristotle to Strawson (PF ... and just how eminent do you have to be to go by your initials??? Hint: "Sting") by-passing Descartes in five paragraphs:

"These dogmatic remarks are intended merely as propaganda in defence of a more traditional, more Aristotelian conception of substances as the ultimate, unified subjects of predication. When it is mental capacities which are predicated, what is the substance which is the bearer of these capacities? The familiar Cartesian answer to this question is one answer; but what are the alternatives? The prevailing materialism of the day sometimes forces people to say that it is the brain which is the bearer of mental capacities (like the capacity for perception, for example). But when combined with the view that I am also a bearer of mental properties, this has the rather unsatisfactory consequence that I am my brain. Although some philosophers are happy to accept this way of talking, they are not forced to do so; even materialists can agree with Noam Chomsky’s commonsense observation that ‘people think, not their brains, which do not, though their brains provide the mechanisms of thought’.7 Distinguishing between subjects of thought and their underlying mechanisms allows us to say something which does not do much damage to something we normally believe: that persons are the fundamental subjects of mental predications. The tempting conclusion towards which we are moving is one which was defended by P.F. Strawson forty-five years ago: that persons are substances in their own right, among the basic entities in our world, to which we can add that they are items with their own principle of unity and principle of change."


Bravo!!!
 
Same paper:

http://www.timcrane.com/uploads/2/5/2/4/25243881/inaugural.pdf


"Talk about the soul is really talk about the human mind. And in talking about the human mind, they will say, we are really talking about the human brain. Science has shown us that all so-called mental capacities reside in the brain, so if we want to understand these capacities, we should simply study the brain. Talk about ‘the mind’ as such, or ‘the soul’ is a relic of our pre-scientific age, and should be abandoned.
There are a number of sources of this idea. One is the doctrine known as physicalism, which is the contemporary version of the materialist view that everything is material, the version which gives the ultimate authority to physical science in telling us what there is. Physicalism can be understood in many ways. One extreme version is encapsulated in a famous phrase of Rutherford’s: ‘there is physics; and there is stamp-collecting’. A less extreme, and therefore more believable version, is that whatever facts there are, they have to be determined entirely by the purely physical facts (facts about atoms and molecules and so on). To use a theological image: all God would have to do to create this world, just as it is, is to create its physical nature. Everything else, including the mental realm, would come for free."

... what follows are body-blows to physicalism ...

Reading this inaugural lecture by Tim Crane I came across his reference to A.J. Ayer's NDE and searched for an account of it. Here is one statement Ayer made (don't know yet if there are others):

Ayer: http://www.commonsenseatheism.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Ayer-What-I-Saw-When-I-Was-Dead.pdf
 
... bear with me, I'll make this relevant (but it's gonna take a while ...)

Open Mind, Open Heart 20th Anniversary Edition:Amazon:Books

I'm Reading Father Thomas Keating's "Open Mind, Open Heart" on Centering Prayer (a pre-cursor to Contemplation) -

Keating studied Eastern meditation and helped revive the Christian contemplative tradition (with a little help from Vatican II) and bridge the Eastern appeal - what so many thought was missing from their Christian tradition ...

Below is a description of the Night of Sense which has been compared to the experience of ".. falling into the Pit of the Void" in Buddhism ...

However, the night of sense is considered common, the beginning of contemplation in fact - whereas the Pit of the Void is considered rare:

"... entails an authentic and irreversible insight into Emptiness and No Self."

and is considered a bad trip requiring guidance to fully process.

The difference I think comes in the concept of a relationship to God which lies behind it for the Christian and which is of course not present for the Buddhist (another topic for another post)

"Night of Sense

John of the Cross teaches that contemplation begins with what he calls the night of the sense. This is a no-man's land between one's own activity and the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit in which it becomes almost impossible to think thoughts that stir up sensible devotion.

This is a common experience among those who have practiced discursive meditation over an extended period of time.

**One reaches the point where there is nothing new to be thought, said, or felt.**

If one has no subsequent direction in the life of prayer, one will not know what to do except perhaps to get up and walk out.

The night of sense is a spiritual growing-up process similar to the transition from childhood to adolescence in chronological life.

The emotionalism and sentimentality of childhood are beginning to be laid aside in favor of a more mature relationship with God.

In the meantime, because God no longer gives help to the sense or to the reason, these faculties seem to be useless.

One is more and more convinced that one can no longer pray at all.

In a remarkable passage in The Living Flame of Love in which John of the Cross describes in detail the transition from sensible devotion to spiritual intimacy with God, he says that when one cannot reason discursively or make acts of the will with any satisfaction during prayer, one should give the situation a quiet welcome.

One will then begin to feel peace, tranquility, and strength because God is now feeding the soul directly, giving His grace to the will alone and attracting it mysteriously to Himself."

Note: Here a loss of sense and reason, an emptiness or non-experience is a sign of a deepening spiritual experience. Proof of this is in the fruits of the practice - i.e. the person is more patient, kinder, less anxious and has a more mature sense of spirituality despite a paucity of experience in their prayer life ...

(The fact that contemplation/meditation leads to the cultivation of these complex, positive qualities requires an explanation that goes beyond the "relaxation response" or a return to an animal state of awareness.)

"People in this state have great anxiety about whether they are going backward. They think that all the good things they experienced in the first years of their conversion are coming to and end, and if they are asked how their prayer life is, they will throw up their hands in despair. Actually, if questioned, further, they reveal

that they have a great desire to find some way to pray and they like to be alone with God even though they can't enjoy Him.

Thus, it is evident that there is a secret attraction present at a deep level of their psyche.

This is the infused element of contemplative prayer.

Divine love is the infused element. If it is given a quiet rest, it will grow from a spark into a living flame of love."

So one question is how to account for the sweep of meditative experience, how spirituality (or "spirituality" if you prefer) unfurls in stages from a simple practice, stages that are at least cross-culturally recognizable ... (If there is any unity in religion it's in the agreement of the mystics) ... Much like Keating's analogy with adolescence ... but where is the biological underpinning? The evolutionary impetus to develop spiritual qualities and further to experience an unquenchable and almost unbearable desire to do so that can lead one away from rational action in biological or selfish terms ... As love is wont to do!

Some will say such consistency has only one place to hide: the common evolution of the brain (see Austin's "Zen and the Brain" for such an attempt) ...

And then how this was discovered? Keating says 5% of cloistered religious (monks/nuns) have any mystical phenomena or experience - feel anything like the presence of God - but endure on the basis of pure faith and monastic discipline and support. Yet they practice without such feedback and gain the same fruits.

He says married (spell check put "martyred"!) persons and those with extremely active ministries have the richest interior prayer life - he feels because they need the most support - whatever the case - we also need an explanation of how, absent such phenomena (night of the sense, dark night of the soul) humans persevered? What conception drove them through these rigors? In my own experience, contemplation can lead one to some unpleasant places "hell realms" in Buddhism, in Christianity there is an experience of the "numinous" Rudolf Otto:

"Otto was one of the most influential thinkers about religion in the first half of the twentieth century. He is best known for his analysis of the experience that, in his view, underlies all religion. He calls this experience "numinous," and says it has three components. These are often designated with a Latin phrase: mysterium tremendum et fascinans.

As mysterium, the numinous is "wholly other"-- entirely different from anything we experience in ordinary life. It evokes a reaction of silence. But the numinous is also a mysterium tremendum. It provokes terror because it presents itself as overwhelming power. Finally, the numinous presents itself as fascinans, as merciful and gracious."

Mystery, terror and grace ... Oh my!

And yet the longing remains, the sense that more lies ahead. If it were only the void, surely nature would have equipped us with an "a-voidance" instinct or reflex?

...

What I'm getting around to saying is that I'm very wary of claims on theoretical bases of what the interior of the human mind should or can look like ...

That, I think is an empirical question ...

"When the bird and the book disagree ... Go with the bird." John Audobon.

Where I live, consult a map but ask a local, especially on the back roads.

So anyone who wants to engage in the study of consciousness should see some sort of introspection as fundamental - if they aren't temperamentally suited (I argue very few can't engage in some kind of introspection profitably) - a close acquaintance of the literature is desirable.

In phenomenology then we have a philosophy of consciousness built from the ground up on observation of the very thing itself ... and increasingly recognized and incorporated in consciousness studies.

What other area would we even consider studying without such first hand knowledge as a cornerstone or based merely on our everyday experience?

"I'm conscious so I know what The mind IS." equals "I've taken baths, swum in pools and drank glasses of the stuff ... so I'm a hydrologist!"

;-)
 
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Reading this inaugural lecture by Tim Crane I came across his reference to A.J. Ayer's NDE and searched for an account of it. Here is one statement Ayer made (don't know yet if there are others):

Ayer: http://www.commonsenseatheism.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Ayer-What-I-Saw-When-I-Was-Dead.pdf

Having a look now ... the link reminds me that earlier tonight I came across a web link

"Why atheists shouldn't leave Buddhists alone" ... this seemed to come from an aggressive site on how to proselytize for Atheism, including how to bait the religious ... I just thought it was funny because brother if you can't not pick on a Buddhist, then I just got one thing to say to you:

May you be happy
May you be healthy
May you be free of suffering and the cause of suffering ...

(Repeat 3x with prostrations and dedicate any merit to the enlightenment of all sentient beings)
 
Ayers:

"there it is. My recent experiences have slightly weakened my conviction that my genuine death, which is due fairly soon, will be the end of me, though I continue to hope that it will be.

They have not weakened my conviction that there is no god. I trust that my remaining an atheist will allay the anxieties of my fellow supporters of the Humanist Association, the Rationalist Press, and the South Place Ethical Society."

Some folks would rather be right than happy! My father works out the date of his death with ever-increasing actuarial accuracy ... My father in law is skeptical that he'll be right, as he thinks that's up to God ... but I figure it this way ... if my Dad wakes up on the designated day, the shock will kill him and they'll both be right!

CS Lewis in "The Great Divorce" portrays folks in Heaven who refuse to believe it and so who live on in a grimy reality where they think they belong ... Even the grass is so much more real, substantial than they are that they can not walk on it ...

I can see Ayers outside the Pearly Gates to this day, amidst an ever increasing crowd of skeptics ... explaining away each new comer and indeed, the totality of their experience with ever increasing sophistication and conviction! ;-)
 
This is not Pharoahs's theory specifically?

It seems to represent a general background to his hierarchical sytems theory of consciousness, now called hierarchical construct theory of consciousness I believe.


I came across this interesting paper concerning misunderstandings of developmental systems theory:

Discussion: Three ways to misunderstand
developmental systems theory
PAUL E. GRIFFITHS1,* and RUSSELL D. GRAY2

Abstract. Developmental systems theory (DST) is a general theoretical perspective on developmental heredity and evolution. It is intended to facilitate the study of interactions between the many factors that influence development without reviving ‘dichotomous’ debates over nature or nurture, gene or environment, biology or culture. Several recent papers have addressed the relationship between DST and the thriving new discipline of evolutionary developmental biology (EDB). The contributions to this literature by evolutionary developmental biologists contain three important
misunderstandings of DST.

http://paul.representinggenes.org/webpdfs/Griff.Gray.05.3ways.pdf
 
This is not Pharoahs's theory specifically?
No it is not.
This is one reason why I change from HST to HCT... because the term "HST" has been misappropriated by systems science. In the context used by systems science it has no relation to my HCT (HST) of consciousness. The other reason is related to a comment Dennett made to me after he looked at my review of his Intentional Stance.
 
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