Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 3

[smcder]

what a dreadful piece of writing that was.

A better approach, in the interest of discussion, would be ...

I thought that was a dreadful piece of writing.

If you'd said it that way, you could even include an "!"

I thought that was a dreadful piece of writing!

 

[smcder]

This bit in particular:

More subtly, there are many who insist that consciousness just reduces to brain states - a pang of regret, say, is just a surge of chemicals across a synapse. They are collapsers rather than deniers. Though not avowedly eliminative, this kind of view is tacitly a rejection of the very
existence of consciousness, because the brain processes held to constitute conscious experience consist of physical events that can exist in the absence of consciousness. Electricity in the brain correlates with mental activity but electricity in your TV presumably does not - so how can electrical processes be the essence of conscious experience? If there is nothing happening but electrochemical activity when I say, "My finger hurts," or, "I love her so," then there is nothing experiential going on when I say those things. So reduction is tantamount to elimination, despite the reductionist's intentions (it's like maintaining that people called "witches" are nothing but harmless old ladies – which is tantamount to saying that there are no witches).

 

[smcder]

You've said something I think on this recently which I found interesting ... and of course Russell feels differently ... I'm not sure how McGinn knows that atoms don't have some kind of consciousness ... but he is right in that this is to think of consciousness as a quantifiable thing ... my bigger problem with Panpsychism is the combination problem - which I think of as just shifting the hard problem around.

The trouble with panpsychism is that there just isn't any evidence of the universal distribution of consciousness in the material world. Atoms don't act conscious; they act unconscious. And also, what precisely is on their microscopic minds - little atomic concerns? What does it mean to say that atoms have consciousness in some primitive form (often called "proto-consciousness")? They either have real sensations and thoughts or they don't. What is a tiny quantity of consciousness like, exactly? Panpsychism looks a lot like preformationism in biology: we try to explain the emergence of organic life by supposing that it already exists in microscopic form in the pre-life world - as if the just-fertilised egg has a little, fully formed baby curled up in it waiting to expand during gestation.

 

[smcder]

I like this bit too as it gives a bit of heft to the argument that he doesn't just think it's applicable to consciousness ... which would be a little suspicious:

Latterly, I have come to think that mystery is quite pervasive, even in the hardest of sciences. Physics is a hotbed of mystery:

space, time, matter and motion - none of it is free of mysterious elements.

smcder: the hard problem of matter!

The puzzles of quantum theory are just a symptom of this widespread lack of understanding (I discuss this in my latest book, Basic Structures of Reality). The human intellect grasps the natural world obliquely and glancingly, using mathematics to construct abstract representations of concrete phenomena, but what the ultimate nature of things really is remains obscure and hidden. How everything fits together is particularly elusive, perhaps reflecting the

disparate cognitive faculties we bring to bear on the world (the senses, introspection, mathematical description).

smcder: the homonculus is a kluge

We are far from obtaining a unified theory of all being and there is no guarantee that such a theory is accessible by finite human intelligence.

 

[smcder]

A bit more ... (and what's not to love?)

"This history shaped and constrained the form of intelligence now housed in our skulls (as the lifestyle of other species form their set of cognitive skills). What chance is there that an intelligence geared to making stone tools and grounded in the contingent peculiarities of the human hand can aspire to uncover all the mysteries of the universe? Can omniscience spring from an opposable thumb? It seems unlikely, so why presume that the mysteries of consciousness will be revealed to a thumb-shaped brain like ours?
The "mysterianism" I advocate is really nothing more than the acknowledgment that human intelligence is a local, contingent, temporal, practical and expendable feature of life on earth - an incremental adaptation based on earlier forms of intelligence that no one would regard as faintly omniscient."

Before I am misunderstood ... this argument cracks all the physicalist theories that I've seen so far ... which means if we want to come to our senses ... if we want to be green ... then our hope lies outside such theories.

 

[smcder]

"I" think ...


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[Pharoah]

That doesn't answer the question ... !

Did you see the eliminativist defintion by McGinn I posted? Yes... what a dreadful piece of writing that was.
Does it fit? Does it fit what? Not sure what you are getting at.

Silly me... that the tree at the end of my garden has always existed... even before the big bang... they have always been there along with the wood.
Not anymore, I'm going to chop it down tomorrow and laugh till it decays to nothing. Actually, to tell you the truth, I cut it down last weekend.

 

[smcder]

I'm glad you're telling the truth! If I'd known I'd have flown it across the pond and replanted it here ... I'm in a reforestation project now.

Currently I have the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

No more questions.


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[Pharoah]

I'm glad you're telling the truth! If I'd known I'd have flown it across the pond and replanted it here ... I'm in a reforestation project now.

Currently I have the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

No more questions.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Well... ok... I pruned the apple tree a bit severely.

 

[smcder]

I think I am understanding these perspectives fairly well now.
I do think differently however when thinking of nomenon. I do think of it as separate from the identity of personal phenomenal experience.
I was interested to read at the top, "...That might be the case, but, if it is, that 'noumenal self' is not, from available descriptions of it, exclusive to or idiosyncratic in the individual having the experience. The sense of 'self' virtually disappears in such experiences to reveal an apparently universal level of being beneath the existential level in which consciousness first finds itself standing apart from that which surrounds it in the local environment and having to negotiate its existence within that environment."
This universal level of being is one option on the table and is one that I have considered. Another option is to thinking solipstically (if there is such a word).
I don't like either of these alternatives although they are no less valid.
I prefer personal identity in the noumenon that is independent of phenomenal experience but linked... which is why I came up with my noumenon vs phenomenon paper which expresses a vector field stance for noumenon - it is utter fabrication but fun. It is the sense that there are an infinite of possibilities reduced by a probability which comes to define the 'I' and that the direction in life taken influences the direction of every other probability outcome.

That's funny - the forum came up with a "are you sure you want to like this post" ... I've never seen that happen?

I prefer personal identity in the noumenon that is independent of phenomenal experience but linked... which is why I came up with my noumenon vs phenomenon paper which expresses a vector field stance for noumenon - it is utter fabrication but fun. It is the sense that there are an infinite of possibilities reduced by a probability which comes to define the 'I' and that the direction in life taken influences the direction of every other probability outcome.

What is the best link to this paper? I am just now getting to it as we had kind of a rough weekend ... had to put one of our dogs to sleep following a stroke.

And one more question after all ...



... you said you weren't a physicalist but used physicalist methods exclusively ... I think that is correct ... can you expound on that? I've been curious ... I did ask before but I don't think I saw a reply, but I may have overlooked it.

 

[smcder]

Well... ok... I pruned the apple tree a bit severely.

Recent scholarship indicates it was a pear tree, not an apple ... and it was a gecko, not a serpent (the word for serpent in the original documentation contained some ambiguity in regard to legged things) and her name was June, not Eve. None of which is materially substantive.

 

[smcder]

Trying to find this:

mysteries of nature | orgtheory.net

... although I should respect the pay wall! This is referred to by McGinn in that dreadful, hereafter not to be mentioned article and looks more and more interesting the more and more I can't get to it.

 

[smcder]

Well... ok... I pruned the apple tree a bit severely.

That's better ... in future, you can lie to your momma for all I care ... but to me, you tell the truth.

 

[smcder]

I = Awareness Deikman

Experiment 2: Look straight ahead. Now shut your eyes. The rich visual world has disappeared to be replaced by an amorphous field of blackness, perhaps with red and yellow tinges. But awareness hasn't changed. You will notice that awareness continues as your thoughts come and go, as memories arise and replace each other, as desires emerge and fantasies develop, change and vanish. Now try and observe awareness. You cannot. Awareness cannot be made an object of observation because it is the very means whereby you can observe.

"Awareness may vary in intensity as our total state changes, but it is usually a constant. Awareness cannot itself be observed, it is not an object, not a thing. Indeed, it is featureless, lacking form, texture, colour, spatial dimensions. These characteristics indicate that awareness is of a different nature than the contents of the mind; it goes beyond sensation, emotions, ideation, memory. Awareness is at a different level, it is prior to contents, more fundamental. Awareness has no intrinsic content, no form, no surface characteristics — it is unlike everything else we experience, unlike objects, sensations, emotions, thoughts, or memories.

Thus, experience is dualistic, not the dualism of mind and matter but

the dualism of awareness and the contents of awareness.

To put it another way, experience consists of the observer and the observed. Our sensations, our images, our thoughts — the mental activity by which we engage and define the physical world — are all part of the observed. In contrast, the observer— the `I' — is prior to everything else; without it there is no experience of existence. If awareness did not exist in its own right there would be no `I'. There would be `me', my personhood, my social and emotional identity— but no `I', no transparent centre of being."

... and, if you do the experiments:

QED

 

[Pharoah]

That's funny - the forum came up with a "are you sure you want to like this post" ... I've never seen that happen?

I prefer personal identity in the noumenon that is independent of phenomenal experience but linked... which is why I came up with my noumenon vs phenomenon paper which expresses a vector field stance for noumenon - it is utter fabrication but fun. It is the sense that there are an infinite of possibilities reduced by a probability which comes to define the 'I' and that the direction in life taken influences the direction of every other probability outcome.

What is the best link to this paper? I am just now getting to it as we had kind of a rough weekend ... had to put one of our dogs to sleep following a stroke.

And one more question after all ...



... you said you weren't a physicalist but used physicalist methods exclusively ... I think that is correct ... can you expound on that? I've been curious ... I did ask before but I don't think I saw a reply, but I may have overlooked it.

lol
Just to warn you that Constance said after two readings it was still not understood. I haven't looked at it for ten years so I can't remember much about it:
Phenomenal vs Noumenal Consciousness | Personal Identity | Philosophy of Consciousness
I don't think there is any point not trying to find physical answers, us being in a physical world and all...
I also think that the search is going somewhere... it has purpose and meaning beyond our comprehension... which I find exciting.
Finally, the physical world can never make sense of me - and that makes me quite spiritual (however one would wish to take that)

 

[smcder]

lol
Just to warn you that Constance said after two readings it was still not understood. I haven't looked at it for ten years so I can't remember much about it:
Phenomenal vs Noumenal Consciousness | Personal Identity | Philosophy of Consciousness
I don't think there is any point not trying to find physical answers, us being in a physical world and all...
I also think that the search is going somewhere... it has purpose and meaning beyond our comprehension... which I find exciting.
Finally, the physical world can never make sense of me - and that makes me quite spiritual (however one would wish to take that)

I don't think there is any point not trying to find physical answers, us being in a physical world and all...

This:

I don't think there is any point not trying to find physical answers

implies all the physical answers are not known ...

but this:

us being in a physical world and all.

assumes they are! Circular! whoot whoot circular alert circular alert!!

Citizen's arrest!



I too, do not think that there is not any point in not trying to find physical answers ... but for different reasons.

I also think that the search is going somewhere... it has purpose and meaning beyond our comprehension... which I find exciting.
Finally, the physical world can never make sense of me - and that makes me quite spiritual (however one would wish to take that)

Tell me more about this!

I always apply the Golden Rule to spiritual beliefs ...

Believe unto others as they would Believe unto You

which means, how do you want it to be taken?

 

[smcder]

lol
Just to warn you that Constance said after two readings it was still not understood. I haven't looked at it for ten years so I can't remember much about it:
Phenomenal vs Noumenal Consciousness | Personal Identity | Philosophy of Consciousness
I don't think there is any point not trying to find physical answers, us being in a physical world and all...
I also think that the search is going somewhere... it has purpose and meaning beyond our comprehension... which I find exciting.
Finally, the physical world can never make sense of me - and that makes me quite spiritual (however one would wish to take that)

I am not a good reader ... working in a library has re-inforced that.

I have to re-write and sometimes read aloud, record and listen.

Phenomenal experience is the term used to describe the rather subjective ‘something it is like’ aspect of experience. Examples of phenomenal experience include what it is to experience depths and shades of colours, the variety in the subtlety of aromas, the character of sound clusters, or the pleasantness of tactile sensations. Whilst being a fundamental aspect of the way we relate to the environment, the phenomenon of our subjective experience has ineffable qualities that evade objective analysis. Phenomenal experience is the experience that individuals identify as the subjective experience of consciousness.

smcder "Phenomenal experience" refers to the 'something it is like' aspect of consciousness.

smcder I deleted "rather subjective" - because "something it is like" seems to be entirely subjective ... I could have written:

"Phenomenal experience" refers to the subjective, 'something it is like' aspect of consciousness.

Examples of phenomenal experience include what it is to experience depths and shades of colours, the variety in the subtlety of aromas, the character of sound clusters, or the pleasantness of tactile sensations. Whilst being a fundamental aspect of the way we relate to the environment, the phenomenon of our subjective experience has ineffable qualities that evade objective analysis. Phenomenal experience is the experience that individuals identify as the subjective experience of consciousness.

smcder Examples of phenomenal experience include what it is to experience depths and shades of colours, the variety in the subtlety of aromas, the character of sound clusters, or the pleasantness of tactile sensations. Whilst being a fundamental aspect of the way we relate to the environment, the phenomenon of our subjective experience has ineffable qualities that evade objective analysis. Phenomenal experience is the experience that individuals identify as the subjective experience of consciousness.

smcder this is confusing because

"the phenomenon of our subjective experience" isn't the same thing as "phenomenal experience"

and here:

the phenomenon of our subjective experience has ineffable qualities that evade objective analysis

we need an example of those ineffable qualities ... or some elaboration

2. The Phenomenon of Experience and the Phenomenon of Consciousness
Hierarchical Systems Theory claims to be a reductive explanation of phenomenal experience that uses principles in systems dynamics to illustrate and describe an evolving emergent system’s hierarchy. This dynamic hierarchy explains the behavioural and physiological characteristics, and evolutionary dynamic of creatures that possess phenomenal experience.

smcder illustrate and describe, yes, explain ... no ... I think throughout your writing this has caused me (and it may be just my problem) problems ... you asked a while back about if there are levels or kinds of explanations and I think there are. I wrote as clearly as I could that what I wanted out of an explanation was a step-wise progression from what I know to what is being explained ... so that the thing being explained has to be phrased using the same axioms ... a mathematical or logical explanation. The example I used is Newtonion physica - a handful of laws, particles and (later) fields describes the whole of classical mechanics (in this part of the universe, anyway).

Aquinas says:

Human intellectual knowledge is developed step by step; man advances from what he knows to what, at the start, is unknown.

The process of human learning is exampled in the manner in which we prove a theorem in geometry.

This way of thinking things out, step by step, is called discursive thinking or reasoning. Now, if, in the light of some master truth, we could see all that is implied in our thoughts, we should not need to work out knowledge by discursive thought. We should not, for example, need to work out the theorem in geometry, for we should instantly take in the whole demonstration and understand it thoroughly without effort.

Often I feel your writing has been written for an angelic audience:

An angel actually has this type of knowledge. An angel does not require discursive thinking. In whatever area of its natural knowledge the angelic intellect is employed, it sees the whole picture; it beholds the thing thought about together with its implications and consequences, and therefore has no need to move from point to point to round out knowledge.

And I think this is because you are the g-d of all your writing, you have "the light of some master truth" - but it needs to be shed more gradually on your humble reader!

I realized the piece if ten years old and you've said your writing has improved, but I think this may continue to be a problem. Which is why I think it's important to expose your writing to the light, to many lights!

 

[smcder]

And if this helpful, let me know - and if it isn't, let me know ... I am going to go through the process anyway because I am very curious to understand your idea of the noumenal and of spirituality.

 

[smcder]

James thought initially that the transmission theory was his own invention., but it certainly has a much longer history.

"The body would thus be, not the cause of our thinking, but merely a condition restrictive thereof, and, although essential to our senuous and animal consciousness. it may be regarded as an impeder of our pure spiritual life."

- Immanueal Kant

See also:

Phaedo, Phaedrus and Ion

 

[Pharoah]

View attachment 4515

I am not a good reader ... working in a library has re-inforced that.

I have to re-write and sometimes read aloud, record and listen.

Phenomenal experience is the term used to describe the rather subjective ‘something it is like’ aspect of experience. Examples of phenomenal experience include what it is to experience depths and shades of colours, the variety in the subtlety of aromas, the character of sound clusters, or the pleasantness of tactile sensations. Whilst being a fundamental aspect of the way we relate to the environment, the phenomenon of our subjective experience has ineffable qualities that evade objective analysis. Phenomenal experience is the experience that individuals identify as the subjective experience of consciousness.

smcder "Phenomenal experience" refers to the 'something it is like' aspect of consciousness.

smcder I deleted "rather subjective" - because "something it is like" seems to be entirely subjective ... I could have written:

"Phenomenal experience" refers to the subjective, 'something it is like' aspect of consciousness.

Examples of phenomenal experience include what it is to experience depths and shades of colours, the variety in the subtlety of aromas, the character of sound clusters, or the pleasantness of tactile sensations. Whilst being a fundamental aspect of the way we relate to the environment, the phenomenon of our subjective experience has ineffable qualities that evade objective analysis. Phenomenal experience is the experience that individuals identify as the subjective experience of consciousness.

smcder Examples of phenomenal experience include what it is to experience depths and shades of colours, the variety in the subtlety of aromas, the character of sound clusters, or the pleasantness of tactile sensations. Whilst being a fundamental aspect of the way we relate to the environment, the phenomenon of our subjective experience has ineffable qualities that evade objective analysis. Phenomenal experience is the experience that individuals identify as the subjective experience of consciousness.

smcder this is confusing because

"the phenomenon of our subjective experience" isn't the same thing as "phenomenal experience"

and here:

the phenomenon of our subjective experience has ineffable qualities that evade objective analysis

we need an example of those ineffable qualities ... or some elaboration

2. The Phenomenon of Experience and the Phenomenon of Consciousness
Hierarchical Systems Theory claims to be a reductive explanation of phenomenal experience that uses principles in systems dynamics to illustrate and describe an evolving emergent system’s hierarchy. This dynamic hierarchy explains the behavioural and physiological characteristics, and evolutionary dynamic of creatures that possess phenomenal experience.

smcder illustrate and describe, yes, explain ... no ... I think throughout your writing this has caused me (and it may be just my problem) problems ... you asked a while back about if there are levels or kinds of explanations and I think there are. I wrote as clearly as I could that what I wanted out of an explanation was a step-wise progression from what I know to what is being explained ... so that the thing being explained has to be phrased using the same axioms ... a mathematical or logical explanation. The example I used is Newtonion physica - a handful of laws, particles and (later) fields describes the whole of classical mechanics (in this part of the universe, anyway).

Aquinas says:

Human intellectual knowledge is developed step by step; man advances from what he knows to what, at the start, is unknown.

The process of human learning is exampled in the manner in which we prove a theorem in geometry.

This way of thinking things out, step by step, is called discursive thinking or reasoning. Now, if, in the light of some master truth, we could see all that is implied in our thoughts, we should not need to work out knowledge by discursive thought. We should not, for example, need to work out the theorem in geometry, for we should instantly take in the whole demonstration and understand it thoroughly without effort.

Often I feel your writing has been written for an angelic audience:

An angel actually has this type of knowledge. An angel does not require discursive thinking. In whatever area of its natural knowledge the angelic intellect is employed, it sees the whole picture; it beholds the thing thought about together with its implications and consequences, and therefore has no need to move from point to point to round out knowledge.

And I think this is because you are the g-d of all your writing, you have "the light of some master truth" - but it needs to be shed more gradually on your humble reader!

I realized the piece if ten years old and you've said your writing has improved, but I think this may continue to be a problem. Which is why I think it's important to expose your writing to the light, to many lights!

What you say is very useful. I am taking it onboard as best I can.

I would give you examples of ineffable qualities... but the words escape me.

When you and Constance say you don't understand a piece of my work, it does remind me of the kind of criticism one might get in a music-playing context:
Four musicians may play a movement from a quartet by Beethoven. On its conclusion one of the musicians turns to the others and exclaims, "you were rushing" or "you were out of tune".
This is invariably not true. On closer inspection it turns out that from bars 35 to 38 the relative speeds differed, and in bar 80 there was a grating intonation discrepancy.
What this analogy is intended to illustrate is that issues of comprehension can be usually tied down to parts of sentences (rather than the whole thing) i.e. usually one loses understanding at a particular bit; and that it is a reciprocal thing where one individual might not understand one section whilst another individual might find problems with a different section.

A single comment like, 'facts are generally metaphysical whereas information is epistemological' is good because it is a focused, accurate criticism that demands I re-examine my (sometimes) generic and idiosyncratic use of terminology.

If you can be exact in your criticism that would be very helpful. I can imagine that many people don't read like me i.e. they get a flavour from a text whereas I read every sentence on its merits. I think my difficulty with some phenomenology writing is that I drill into the efficacy of sentences rather than let the concepts wash over me. Most of my sentences are very carefully considered - they never flow but rather are the culmination of an arduous exacting process.

Noumenon short version:

My ideas about noumenon assume a valid reductive explanation of phenomenal experience - so you might have a problem with my noumenon ideas.
I think what the paper says is,
1. phenomenal experience is what we know through experience - what it is like.
2. Noumenal experience is everything else that could be experienced - which I think includes the phenomenal experience of every individual in all existence and every kind of experience presently realisable or otherwise not.
3. The 'thing in itself', the substance from which there is or can be experience and reality is beyond the noumenal and phenomenal - it is always unknowable.

How does one realise the noumenal? in other words, how and why does the noumenal become one's actual phenomenal?
As a speculation, I relate these questions to quantum mechanics via the vector wave ideas - Our phenomenal consciousness does not know what phenomenal consciousness is to be its path; likewise a photon does not know the shortest path between two points; how could it? The photon explores every possible path, (every noumenal potential) and ends up going, as probability would have it, the shortest distance. Thus phenomenal consciousness emerges from the noumenal as a probable of many possibilities (which are influenced by the actual path taken - what we do influences what noumenal potentials become realised in the combined pool of human possibilities).
I know it sounds abstract and bizarre (the terms are inexact), but I have not devoted much to this and I am making it up as I go along.