Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 4

[smcder]

New book by McGinn, available August 15:


Review by McGinn of a book by Ramachandran:
Can the Brain Explain Your Mind? by Colin McGinn | The New York Review of Books


Ramachandran's response and a further response by McGinn:
‘The Tell-Tale Brain’: An Exchange by V.S. Ramachandran | The New York Review of Books

From the link to McGinn's book:

The human species possesses language, rational thought, culture, and a specific affective capacity; but there was a time when our ancestors had none of these. How did we become what we so distinctively are, given our early origins? McGinn, following Darwin and others, calls the hand the source of our biological success. When our remote ancestors descended from trees, they adopted a bipedal gait that left the hands free for other work; they began to make tools, which led to social cooperation and increased brain capacity. But McGinn goes further than others in arguing for the importance of the hand; he speculates that the hand played a major role in the development of language, and presents a theory of primitive reference as an outgrowth of prehension.

Reminds me of this - I posted it a little while back:

Toronto Manifesto

 

[Constance]

Thanks. The Toronto Manifesto is eloquent. I'm interested in McGinn's new direction.

 

[Randall]

@ufology

I don't find your comparison to be relevant. Critical thinking is a tool that is adaptable to a wide variety of situations, not merely to a fixed set of circumstances like chess. The only situations that seem to be exempt from critical thinking are those that involve instinct and intuition, but thankfully we can still use critical thinking to save ourselves from the pitfalls encountered by acting on those impulses alone.

The chess comparison is about coming to the thread at this late stage.

As mentioned recently in other posts, just because I haven't been posting doesn't mean I haven't been observing, and I haven't seen anything that has provided a serious challenge since you introduced Chalmers. That was really a brain twister, and you and I ended up on seemingly opposite sides of the fence.

I agree, I don't think you are ... that's why I said:

One way in which you might be perceived, is to come in to a thread hundreds of pages long and presume to put it right with critical thinking. The term "naive" I think can be fairly applied - just as above the person with the highest IQ would be naive in chess.

And I've responded to your "might be" also "for the record" just to make sure it's clear for anyone who might have interpreted your comment as accusatory.

On the subject of chess, it should be noted that memorizing moves and games by the masters is essentially part of a "brute force" approach to the game, and that can only take a player so far. I play the game and I don't use that method. I couldn't tell you the name of any opening, but the other day I cleaned up on a player rated over 1800, and I've won against masters ( not often ), but it's happened. Right now I'm doing lousy. My rating is down below 1600, which is embarrassing. If you ever want to play, I'm on the BabasChess server as Lakeview.

 

[Constance]

This is well-done too:

CHAPTER ONE

The Mysterious Flame
Conscious Minds in a Material World

Conscious Minds in a Material World

 

[Randall]

This is well-done too:

CHAPTER ONE

The Mysterious Flame
Conscious Minds in a Material World

Conscious Minds in a Material World

Quote from the review:

"McGinn's central thesis is that the existence of consciousness in a material world is a deep mystery that we will never unravel. Consciousness, he says, is an entirely natural phenomenon; it is wholly based or ''rooted'' in the physical brain from which it ''emerges.'' The trouble is that we are incapable of understanding how this can be so, given the senses and the intellect with which evolution has equipped us."​

 

[smcder]

As mentioned recently in other posts, just because I haven't been posting doesn't mean I haven't been observing, and I haven't seen anything that has provided a serious challenge since you introduced Chalmers. That was really a brain twister, and you and I ended up on seemingly opposite sides of the fence.

And I've responded to your "might be" also "for the record" just to make sure it's clear for anyone who might have interpreted your comment as accusatory.

On the subject of chess, it should be noted that memorizing moves and games by the masters is essentially part of a "brute force" approach to the game, and that can only take a player so far. I play the game and I don't use that method. I couldn't tell you the name of any opening, but the other day I cleaned up on a player rated over 1800, and I've won against masters ( not often ), but it's happened. Right now I'm doing lousy. My rating is down below 1600, which is embarrassing. If you ever want to play, I'm on the BabasChess server as Lakeview.

It's not about memorizing moves and games, it's about building a vocabulary of positions, chunks of information ... just as we build a vocabulary of words (and at about the same rate, apparently) this is how a chess master can play several amateurs at a time ... blindfolded.

We don't use a "brute force" approach to language, yet we know thousands of words and phrases. When I lived in Germany, long before I could speak the language, I recognized key phrases over and over - at stores, at the train station, at the dinner table, etc ... and I even dreamt in German without being able to understand it! That was very strange ... now I can recognize this even in English, I work at the library and we use the same phrases hundreds of times and day and even have practically the same conversations with other employees and frequent patrons (but even that repetition communicates something - for example, that all is well - it's reassuring and it reinforces our sense of reality - we notice when someone breaks the pattern) ... but this is not what I would describe at brute force, just the opposite - it takes effort to recognize ... so let's go back to the blindfolded chess master now:

"ah, Guten Morgen Herr Bauer!" - he thinks and he sees just where he is headed in the chess game the same way I know what Mrs. Bower, my third grade teacher, will check out - and if it's something different, I will quickly figure out why (it's for her daughter or someone recommended it to her) just as the chess master will probably very quickly see what Herr Bauer has up his sleeve ... then he goes right along with Herr Bauer and Frau Frinkle and so on ... quickly countering each move and winning each game, all the while thinking about the lovely Pferdewurst he will pick up for dinner that evening, only turning his concentration up a notch when needed, but mostly playing in the same unconscious way we use language. When he plays another master, he will have to choose his "words" more carefully.

some of the key words to search for these ideas are:

expertise
differences in novice and expert (there are some interesting studies, one I remember compares novie and expert approaches to solving physics problems)
chunks (I think there is something like 10,000 of these - so an expert in any field knows about 10,000 relevant things or chunks of information in their field)
10,000 hours (about how long it takes to acquire expertise, with deliberate practice)
deliberate practice
ten years - about how long it takes to develop expertise and this correlates also with building an adult vocabulary in a language, so that is something we are expert at ... we are not all expert drivers, because we don't deliberatly practice being better drivers ... unfortunately

I understand that studying (as opposed to memorizing) chess openings and chess problems are considered good for increasing chess prowess ...

I've recently become interested in Go ... there are some good online tutorials. When I've finished those I'd like to find a good Go server.

 

[smcder]

Quote from the review:

"McGinn's central thesis is that the existence of consciousness in a material world is a deep mystery that we will never unravel. Consciousness, he says, is an entirely natural phenomenon; it is wholly based or ''rooted'' in the physical brain from which it ''emerges.'' The trouble is that we are incapable of understanding how this can be so, given the senses and the intellect with which evolution has equipped us."​

Do a search for McGinn across the whole forum ... page six of the results will take you all the way back to the philosophy, science and the unexplained thread ...

 

[smcder]

In October of 2013, I posted a link to the Wikipedia (those were the days!) article on New Mysterianism:

New mysterianism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ... this links to McGinn's article:

All Machine and No Ghost

All machine and no ghost?

(which I've also linked more than once in the C&P threads)

... in which he lays out the various positions on consciousness ... he contends there are five:

We can distinguish five positions on consciousness: eliminativist, dualist, idealist, panpsychist and mysterianist.

hmmm ... I note there are five fingers on each of my hands ... and McGinn has just written a new book on ... the hand! Coincidence??

This article was published in Feb, 2012 and McGinn tells us his origin-story:

So where does this leave us? The available options all seem to encounter fairly bone-crushing objections. Here is where I entered the picture, 25 years ago. I could see the problems with the standard theories but I couldn't accept that nature adores a miracle, or that it is simply unintelligible. Consciousness must have evolved from matter somehow but nothing we could contrive or imagine seemed to offer the faintest hope for explanation. Hence, it occurred to me that the problem might lie not in nature but in ourselves: we just don't have the faculties of comprehension that would enable us to remove the sense of mystery. Ontologically, matter and consciousness are woven intelligibly together but epistemologically we are precluded from seeing how. I used Noam Chomsky's notion of "mysteries of nature" to describe the situation as I saw it. Soon, I was being labelled (by Owen Flanagan) a "mysterian", the name of a defunct pop group, and the name stuck.

So ... that would put us at ... 1987? And he clearly states his materialist position in the paragraph above ... so ... it's not quite news here at the C&P! ;-)

What I find more interesting is the final three paragraphs, which is more recent thinking for McGinn (but I believe I have also noted this in previous posts on the forum)

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. 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). 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.
Some modern philosophers pride themselves on their "naturalism" but real naturalism begins with a proper perspective on our specifically human intelligence. Palaeoanthropologists have taught us that the human brain gradually evolved from ancestral brains, particularly in concert with practical toolmaking, ***centring on the anatomy of the human hand.*** whoop whoop whoop alert! alert! fore-shadowing!! 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. The current state of the philosophy of mind, from my point of view, is just a reflection of one evolutionary time-slice of a particular bipedal species on a particular humid planet at this fleeting moment in cosmic history - as is everything else about the human animal. There is more ignorance in it than knowledge.

That final bit is a re-statement of the old argument from naturalism, the theologian Alvin Plantinga is particularly skilled in its use.

 

[smcder]

I did a forum wide search for:

All machine and no ghost?

and got 11 hits

 

[smcder]

Comparison Between Chess And Go

note: Go consists of the first two letters of God ... coincidence?

Also, Google how computers play chess for more on the "brute force" vs human approach.

 

[smcder]

found here: Lovely brain! | Fotografía B/N | Pinterest

 

[smcder]

If a thread is started on critical thinking and the paranormal- this would be the sort of thing I'd like to consider:

Critical thinking is a tool that is adaptable to a wide variety of situations, not merely to a fixed set of circumstances like chess. The only situations that seem to be exempt from critical thinking are those that involve instinct and intuition, but thankfully we can still use critical thinking to save ourselves from the pitfalls encountered by acting on those impulses alone.

Where does synthesis fit in? Creative thinking ... one kind of example is Kekule's dream of the ouroboros ... or Dali and Edison who (independently) came up with the idea of using hypnogogic states to come up with new ideas.

I use a variation on this ... when I find something perplexing, I focus on only that and hang on to it as I fall asleep, as you lose consciousness of course your thinking moves from verbal/analytical to symbolic - pictures or feelings - I don't always wake up with a resolution, but if it's an emotionally charged situation, I usually feel better about it ... the same technique can be used in meditation ...

One time I had a painful crush on a forever-out-of-reach woman and I simply repeated her name and visualized her over and over and over - I was probably up most of the night, but the next morning, when I saw her, the pain was gone and the idea of wanting to be with her seemed ridiculous and since that time I've not had an intense "crush" ... unfortunately, a certain pleasant romantic sense seems to have died too. I don't know how I hit on this paradoxical idea of flooding my brain with the very thing I wanted to avoid, other than desperation ... but it is of course a very basic rule in meditation to turn into the very thing you find painful - as ignoring it makes it worse. I've used this during my current illness to deal with physical pain. When I can settle down and focus on the very discomfort, it proves to be less than solid and I get a more dependable relief than from pain medication. Now, of course, I'm in a position to use some of the techniques of analytical thinking to refine my meditation practice.

Intentional creative thinking, lateral thinking, brainstorming, etc also seems to be outside the purview of critical thinking ... in fact the point in brainstorming is to set aside the inner critic. That said, critical thinking comes right back into the picture with evaluation of the ideas generated but even then a soft touch is needed because sometimes it takes a while to see what is a good idea. Another technique I use is to point myself toward a particular state or feeling, I've learned that while I can't always immediately change how I am feeling, I can move toward it over time, merely by thinking about being in that state. A recent example is "feeling comfortable in my own skin". Having a lot of time where I have very low energy, I have to rest a lot, the body rebels at this and becomes achy and itchy - and I noticed I was growing alienated from the bodies needs by forcing myself to rest ... so I set an image of bodily comfort, of being comfortable in my skin ... and over the last few days I've become more and more able to relax.

Empathy also seems to be a kind of thing we do that doesn't involve critical thinking. Muscle memory, sports learning is also partly a matter of "feel" - again those feelings can be analyzed and trained over time, but the actual learning - for example, squatting with several hundred pounds on your back is done in something less than a critical state of mind - and yet the mind is furiously active!

Another situation is highlighted in your statement above:

The only situations that seem to be exempt from critical thinking are those that involve instinct and intuition, but thankfully we can still use critical thinking to save ourselves from the pitfalls encountered by acting on those impulses alone.

Situations in which we must act very rapidly ... Malcolm Gladwell talks about this in his book Blink ... prior training and experience are critical here, but perhaps the most decisive situations in life leave little room for either and we have to step off into the void on raw instinct or even perverse impulse ... some times to save our lives or our futues or those of the ones we love ... the diaspora of humanity, the decided restlessness (at least of the male of the species) has been said to be written deep into our very beginnings ... When the wild-eyed, snow covered mystic returned babbling of isthmuses (isthmii?) some decided, and quickly, it would be a good idea to follow him.

"Giant hairy elephants and cats with ridiculous orthodontic issues? This we gotta see!" vestiges of which can be seen in the oft repeated last words of the North-American Redneck:

hold my beer and watch this, y'all!

That's the sort of thing I'd like to see in a discussion of critical thinking. But that's for another thread ...

 

[smcder]

Go to sleep already, @ufology! ;-)

 

[Randall]

If a thread is started on critical thinking and the paranormal- this would be the sort of thing I'd like to consider:

Critical thinking is a tool that is adaptable to a wide variety of situations, not merely to a fixed set of circumstances like chess. The only situations that seem to be exempt from critical thinking are those that involve instinct and intuition, but thankfully we can still use critical thinking to save ourselves from the pitfalls encountered by acting on those impulses alone.

Where does synthesis fit in? Creative thinking ... one kind of example is Kekule's dream of the ouroboros ... or Dali and Edison who (independently) came up with the idea of using hypnogogic states to come up with new ideas.

I use a variation on this ... when I find something perplexing, I focus on only that and hang on to it as I fall asleep, as you lose consciousness of course your thinking moves from verbal/analytical to symbolic - pictures or feelings - I don't always wake up with a resolution, but if it's an emotionally charged situation, I usually feel better about it ... the same technique can be used in meditation ...

One time I had a painful crush on a forever-out-of-reach woman and I simply repeated her name and visualized her over and over and over - I was probably up most of the night, but the next morning, when I saw her, the pain was gone and the idea of wanting to be with her seemed ridiculous and since that time I've not had an intense "crush" ... unfortunately, a certain pleasant romantic sense seems to have died too. I don't know how I hit on this paradoxical idea of flooding my brain with the very thing I wanted to avoid, other than desperation ... but it is of course a very basic rule in meditation to turn into the very thing you find painful - as ignoring it makes it worse. I've used this during my current illness to deal with physical pain. When I can settle down and focus on the very discomfort, it proves to be less than solid and I get a more dependable relief than from pain medication. Now, of course, I'm in a position to use some of the techniques of analytical thinking to refine my meditation practice.

Intentional creative thinking, lateral thinking, brainstorming, etc also seems to be outside the purview of critical thinking ... in fact the point in brainstorming is to set aside the inner critic. That said, critical thinking comes right back into the picture with evaluation of the ideas generated but even then a soft touch is needed because sometimes it takes a while to see what is a good idea. Another technique I use is to point myself toward a particular state or feeling, I've learned that while I can't always immediately change how I am feeling, I can move toward it over time, merely by thinking about being in that state. A recent example is "feeling comfortable in my own skin". Having a lot of time where I have very low energy, I have to rest a lot, the body rebels at this and becomes achy and itchy - and I noticed I was growing alienated from the bodies needs by forcing myself to rest ... so I set an image of bodily comfort, of being comfortable in my skin ... and over the last few days I've become more and more able to relax.

Empathy also seems to be a kind of thing we do that doesn't involve critical thinking. Muscle memory, sports learning is also partly a matter of "feel" - again those feelings can be analyzed and trained over time, but the actual learning - for example, squatting with several hundred pounds on your back is done in something less than a critical state of mind - and yet the mind is furiously active!

Another situation is highlighted in your statement above:

The only situations that seem to be exempt from critical thinking are those that involve instinct and intuition, but thankfully we can still use critical thinking to save ourselves from the pitfalls encountered by acting on those impulses alone.

Situations in which we must act very rapidly ... Malcolm Gladwell talks about this in his book Blink ... prior training and experience are critical here, but perhaps the most decisive situations in life leave little room for either and we have to step off into the void on raw instinct or even perverse impulse ... some times to save our lives or our futues or those of the ones we love ... the diaspora of humanity, the decided restlessness (at least of the male of the species) has been said to be written deep into our very beginnings ... When the wild-eyed, snow covered mystic returned babbling of isthmuses (isthmii?) some decided, and quickly, it would be a good idea to follow him.

"Giant hairy elephants and cats with ridiculous orthodontic issues? This we gotta see!" vestiges of which can be seen in the oft repeated last words of the North-American Redneck:

hold my beer and watch this, y'all!

That's the sort of thing I'd like to see in a discussion of critical thinking. But that's for another thread ...

One might propose that the additional examples you have chosen fall under the umbrella of instincts and intuition in that activities like brainstorming, while possibly based loosely on critical thinking if applied are largely reflexive which is not a big stretch from instinctual or intuititive, but more importantly, the context of critical thinking was most recently brought up in the BS Detector thread and is in the context of a tool for evaluating various claims or hypotheses rather than to conjure up the next ad campaign or whatever else one might do in a brainstorming session. I would also say that there is certainly room for creativity in the critical thinking process.

 

[smcder]

One might propose that the additional examples you have chosen fall under the umbrella of instincts and intuition in that activities like brainstorming, while possibly based loosely on critical thinking if applied are largely reflexive which is not a big stretch from instinctual or intuititive, but more importantly, the context of critical thinking was most recently brought up in the BS Detector thread and is in the context of a tool for evaluating various claims or hypotheses rather than to conjure up the next ad campaign or whatever else one might do in a brainstorming session. I would also say that there is certainly room for creativity in the critical thinking process.

One certainly might and I anticipated that one almost certainly would and I almost included something to that effect, but figured I'd learn more by waiting to see what your response was ... (yes, maybe we should play chess sometime ... ;-)

I tried to send you a PM on symbolic logic, but the server informed me

You may not start a conversation with the following recipients: ufology.

I don't want to post it here, b/c it's not 100% on topic, I do think you will find it interesting.

 

[smcder]

I use the phrase, "beyond a reasonable doubt" as a descriptive term for the sake of convenience to impart the idea that the evidence is so substantial, that it far outweighs any competing evidence to the contrary. I am not using it in a legal sense.

That all depends on what you mean by the words "seen" and "mechanism". Sure, simply looking at the physical material that makes up the brain doesn't allow one to "see" consciousness, but that's also not relevant. Specific parts of the brain responsible for subjectivity have been identified and their workings studied in some detail using scientific tools and analysis. IMO this means that the "mechanism" has been identified. It is the brain, and the studies that lead us to this understanding are is what allows us to "see" this.

Sure, like I said, discuss whatever piques your interest and gives you enjoyment. If you find anything that is substantial enough to change the "status quo" or default position, the "null hypothesis" so to speak, by all means please try to get my attention so that I might consider it.

I haven't seen sufficient evidence to speculate beyond the idea that consciousness itself, from an external objective viewpoint, is composed of a physical field of some sort emanated by the brain. This field I would suggest is intimately linked with the energy output of the brain as seen in scans and which can be observed and measured scientifically. I have submitted for consideration in the past that this field is analogous to the magnetic field produced by electrical windings around iron cores. Within such fields information can be stored and manipulated. A simple example is a speaker crossover which stores the energy from audio signals inside a magnetic field, and then releases it again as electrical signals filtered to specific frequencies. Nowhere in the coil or the core can we "see" the music, or the magnetic field, and we don't understand with certainty what the root cause of a magnetic field is. Nevertheless we still assign the cause of the field to the crossover because it's obvious that's where it's coming from.

Although this theory is my best guess at what's going on, it's far from proven. But there have been attempts to figure it out, and we have even been able to get crude images of what someone sees by interpolating the readouts from brain scans: New brain scanning technique can visualize your imagination | ExtremeTech

So using an MRI we are actually getting a significant correlation between measurable magnetic fields and visual images. I strongly suspect that further research would eventually allow us to observe our internal visualizations with increasing clarity, perhaps someday to the same extent that we can map larger and simpler fields with great resolution.

@ufology states:

IMO this means that the "mechanism" has been identified. It is the brain, and the studies that lead us to this understanding are is what allows us to "see" this.

Does anyone want to do the particular counters to this?

@Soupie?
@Constance?
@Pharoah??

Buehler ... Buehler ...

 

[smcder]

So you are suggesting HCT bridges the explanatory gap? That is is quite an assertion, Pharoah. I don't think you have. I'll post comments/questions on your latest paper asap. Spoiler: My comments will be very similar to comments I've made in the past regarding HCT and the EG.


Intuitively, we want to say that both statements are false. The problem is that we have no models to support these intuitive feelings.

We pull our hand away from the flame because it hurts, right? The feeling of love causes more offspring to be born, right?

Those sound right. The problem is, there is no model of subjective, mental reality (pain, love) having causal influence in this way over objective, physical reality.

I don't disagree for one second that intuitively, it seems right. Which is why I have an affinity for Nagel's call for expantionism. But the reality is that there is currently no expantionist model.


Okay, but it's not my logic. It's an ancient problem.

Mental Causation (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

If you think HCT closes the explanatory gap and (therefore) solves the problem of mental causation, then you sir have made quite the contribution to philosophy and human knowledge. I think you're on the right path but have not accomplished either yet.


My god... I think you just solved the problem of mental causation! Get these two paragraphs published stat!

Haha, sorry, just being an ass. As noted, I do think you're on to something, but still fail to articulate a bridge between the objective and subjective poles. I'll quote and comment in the future.

I appreciate you bringing it back to the basics ... the hard problem and mental causation. We discussed it, ad nauseum, as you say - in the following terms:

• causal over-determination/causal closure over physics (objectivity)
• physical causation/emergence is a one way street - it can go "up" but not come back "down" ... causally

neurons fire ---> the finger writes
neurons fire ---> the "decision/awareness" (what it is like) to write

it's all neurons firing on this model ... there's no allowance for:

the "decision/awareness" (what it is like) ---> finger to write
(which equates to my experience of what it is like to write causes my neurons to fire ...)
there is no physical mechanism that we know of for this to happen

objective ---> subjective
but not
subjective ---> objective

 

[Randall]

One certainly might and I anticipated that one almost certainly would and I almost included something to that effect, but figured I'd learn more by waiting to see what your response was ... (yes, maybe we should play chess sometime ... ;-)

I tried to send you a PM on symbolic logic, but the server informed me

You may not start a conversation with the following recipients: ufology.

I don't want to post it here, b/c it's not 100% on topic, I do think you will find it interesting.

That's weird. I don't have anything set to ignore you. But personally, I'd just as soon avoid symbolic logic unless it's absolutely necessary. While I recognize the utility of pure logic, my brain prefers more creative exercises. It's like, sure I can repair my own car, and some people like getting the wrenches out and twisting bolts, but personally, I'd rather not get all greasy and end up with a sore back if I don't have to ... LOL.

 

[Constance]

A paragraph from Steve's post of extracts concerning McGinn's so-called mysterianism:

"Consciousness must have evolved from matter somehow but nothing we could contrive or imagine seemed to offer the faintest hope for explanation. Hence, it occurred to me that the problem might lie not in nature but in ourselves: we just don't have the faculties of comprehension that would enable us to remove the sense of mystery. Ontologically, matter and consciousness are woven intelligibly together but epistemologically we are precluded from seeing how."


As McGinn recognizes, we are not precluded from seeing that "matter and consciousness are woven together" in lived experience in and of the physical world. That understanding is implicit in the history of the so-far intractable mind-body problem in philosophy and is the ground out of which phenomenological philosophy has developed. I'm looking forward to reading McGinn's forthcoming book Prehension to see how much use he might be making at this point of phenomenology post-Husserl, of Panksepp's affective neuroscience, and of biology in general in tracing back through evolution to the seeds of consciousness in primordial organisms. Consciousness has an evolutionary history from which we can obtain a better grasp of what it is as experienced by our species and some others.

We haven't discussed the speculative realists lately, but this extract from a review of Tom Sparrow, The End of Phenomenology: Metaphysics and the New Realism, suggests we might well revive our earlier discussion of the 'speculative realists':

"So what of the rhetoric of concreteness? Sparrow notes that "the attachment to realism is palpable in phenomenology's rhetoric [of concreteness], but is this attachment philosophically justified?" (70). The answer is, of course, no. Methodological justification is what is forsworn by later phenomenology. I think we can say that later phenomenology has a method without a methodology. Concrete life must be lived through by the phenomenologist and each and every one of us in turn, not merely talked or theorized about. Similarly, carnal phenomenology poetically creates an atmosphere to evoke our embodied immersion in the elemental (78-79). Like all poetry, it can be read as an assemblage of rhetorical devices, but that is not how to read poetry poetically, and the question at hand is, if such poetry can be read philosophically, to give us an appreciation of the prereflective, prepersonal, preperceptual ground of all things. The difference between this approach to philosophy and Melville is that these descriptions are within a reduction, albeit an incomplete reduction; that is, a reduction of that very reduction and a discourse that must attune itself to the matter to be thought rather than dictate to the matter to be thought how it must be thought. As Heidegger puts it in "The End of Philosophy," "For it is not yet decided in what way that which needs no proof in order to become accessible to thinking is to be experienced.

Sparrow is right that if phenomenology sticks to the Husserlian project, it can only remain in an idealist orbit. Ironically, what his work makes clear by implication is that for this very reason we need to think of later phenomenology as not only rejecting the Husserlian project, but rejecting any sense that philosophy should rely on a fixed justified pre-given method. For that is the only way it can hope to escape idealism. Whether it is ultimately successful, or whether some version of the many speculative realisms will be more philosophically fecund, is, however, yet to be decided."

The End of Phenomenology: Metaphysics and the New Realism // Reviews // Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews // University of Notre Dame

 

[Constance]

I want to respond to McGinn's concluding remarks from "All Machine and No Ghost?". . .

"Some modern philosophers pride themselves on their "naturalism" but real naturalism begins with a proper perspective on our specifically human intelligence. Palaeoanthropologists have taught us that the human brain gradually evolved from ancestral brains, particularly in concert with practical toolmaking, centring on the anatomy of the human hand. 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?[/quote]

McGinn seems to be unaware of the theories developing in affective neuroscience and the importance of studying the evolution of consciousness for insights into how it begins and how it evolves. Stone tool-knapping was a major development, but before that primitive hominids surely made use of uncrafted tools available in the environment to fend off attacks and to take smaller animals to feed themselves and their children and companions (found and usable stones and rocks, clubs broken off from fallen tree limbs, etc.) . These are examples of human intelligence making use of "ready-to-hand" 'tools' lying about in the environment. What's significant is the recognition of the affordances of the mileau in which early humans found themselves, and the key gesture is the reaching out and selecting materials that can serve a purpose.

I like the focus on the hand, though, and it will be interesting to see what McGinn does with it. Merleau-Ponty locates the beginnings of language in gestures between ourselves and others (pointing, pointing out, gathering, touching, embracing). Gestures can be eloquent; we still use them to express what we mean. First the eye and then the hand connected us with, into, the world available to our needs and purposes -- a crossing, an intersection, of consciousness/mind with that which lies at a physical distance from our own being. We can and do by now understand a great deal about the relationship of our minds to the physical world in which we exist. But nature daunts and overflows us in its magnitudes and its own mysteries, and we also sense and study mysteries experienced within our minds. So much still to study. That the thumb has enabled us technologically does not mean that we still possess "thumb-shaped minds." Our ability to think about the mind and the physical world grows ever more subtle, and our species is still comparatively young.

I agree with McGinn's perspective in this last paragraph, but don't see why we should expect ourselves to become "omniscient." It seems that that's what McGinn had formerly hoped to become, though.

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. The current state of the philosophy of mind, from my point of view, is just a reflection of one evolutionary time-slice of a particular bipedal species on a particular humid planet at this fleeting moment in cosmic history - as is everything else about the human animal. There is more ignorance in it than knowledge.