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Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 6

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@Constance

Phenomenological Reduction, The | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

There is an experience in which it is possible for us to come to the world with no knowledge or preconceptions in hand; it is the experience of astonishment. The “knowing” we have in this experience stands in stark contrast to the “knowing” we have in our everyday lives, where we come to the world with theory and “knowledge” in hand, our minds already made up before we ever engage the world. However, in the experience of astonishment, our everyday “knowing,” when compared to the “knowing” that we experience in astonishment, is shown up as a pale epistemological imposter and is reduced to mere opinion by comparison.

This made me think of vispassana a form of Buddhist meditation. I did a search for vispassana and epoche and found this:

Artistic Detachment in Japan and the West

second paragraph on my screen, where it says the

"relationship between Husserl's epoche' and Buddhist samatha-vispassana ..."

this was helpful and it refers to a paper by SW Laycock (1994) which I am trying to run down. This comparison may help me take what I know from vispassana to understand the epoche'.

We'll see where it develops.
 
Well I'll join you both in throwing in the towel inasmuch as almost no productive communication takes place here lately. The terms 'experience' and 'phenomenology' have increasingly crept into posts by both Soupie [who adheres to reductive informational scientism] and Pharoah [adhering to the conceptualizations constituting his Hierarchical Construct Theory], but neither they nor Steve have actually read phenomenological philosophy, which is based in the philosophical analysis of experienced, lived, reality as the ground of consciousness. I'm tired of citing and quoting phenomenological philosophers and consciousness researchers and suggesting that y'all read enough of what they write to comprehend what they're talking about. Please message me if the discussion here actually begins to proceed on the basis of the essential reading I've recommended for two years now. I'll keep in touch even if that doesn't happen.

Btw Steve, one can't 'do' phenomenology without guidance found in the philosophy to what phenomenology is. We wasted a lot of time here last year attempting to understand phenomenology by reading extracts from Heidegger. I recommended then, and still recommend, that phenomenology is best clarified (and developed) by Merleau-Ponty.

Before I take a leave of absence, here is a link to an informed and detailed overview of the nature and development of MP's thought. I recommend it as an introduction.

“Maurice Merleau-Ponty,” encyclopedia entry


One last note: To argue on behalf of the "qualitatively represented character" of experience is to grab the wrong end of the stick. MP will show you why.
 
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It wasn't intended to be an insult, but I understand that it was insulting. I can be a bit dumb like that. I am very sorry.
I'm in aggreement with your dog comments.
"that prcoess, that sorting, is the neurophysiological processes or operations and you are saying when all that sorting reaches a certain point, phenomenal experience comes into being, "what it is like" emerges? as a brute fact? that is just what it is like to have all that processing going on? is that correct?"
I wouldn't say that.. and mine is not a computational theory.
You don't strike me as controntational.

Re my remarks to Soupie. I feel insulted when what I say is misrepresented. I get just as peed off when people misstate what Chalmers says is the HP. There are about 8 published reformulations of Jaxksons knowledge argument and that irritates me too. Regurgitation is seldom savoury. I said the wood and fire thing was silly. It's not silly... it is absurd. That is not an insult. It simply bears no relation to anything that I say in my theory.

I have probably over stepped the mark again. I am notoriously bad at judging these things—I usually keep to myself. I will take a passive role in the forum for a bit now because I am liable to put my foot in it more if I comment.

Thanks a lot for all the support and contributions.

I don't think its bad judgement, I think you get angry and frustrated and shoot things off and then regret them, like almost everyone else. And like almost everyone else, this is cyclical, I think I could pull posts out of this thread that show an essential repeat of this, thats how I knew it was coming. We all do this and its easier for others to see it than we can ourselves. And you do always come back and apologize.

However, I don't agree with you on Chalmers and the HP - and so what, why get peed off because people disagree? Maybe smart people? People who get your understanding of it and still don't agree with you? Or because there is repetition but with variation - , its not all regurgitation, if you come across regurgitaiton just keep on moving, no problem. But make sure you discern that from repetition with variation. A lot of the literature is very repetitive and you have to really look for the one little thing the person is saying that is new. So, if you often think "how could someone say something so stupid?" that may be a good marker that you are getting frustrated and shutting down before you see what they actually are saying. Now there are shortcuts to avoid wasting time on this, but it takes a lot of time nonetheless. You are creating and building and these kinds of things are characteristic of that mode and they come at the expense of other things. I look for patterns and interconnections and I want to know how an idea came out of other ideas and I want to be sure a new idea really is new. That's a problem I have with HCT because you write outside the academy - I keep running across all these things that HCT overlaps with but I can't place it and right now thats a good sign that it is something new and original.

I will have to go back and re-read the firewood thing, but from what I remember - I saw @Soupie's point and it wasn't absurd, I took it as rhetorical and highlighting the problem - but I also think I can see how you think it's silly, but I think thats a case in point of shutting down at something without a good look. Before I go any further, I will go back and look and make sure that is right.

A lot of what you call armwrestling a slug, you do that too -

(Here is a good example:

I wouldn't say that.. and mine is not a computational theory.

**I find myself thinking - but that's just what he said! And it doesn't answer my question ... what would you say?? That's where I do get frustrated, lol and where I keep expecting a clean answer but don't get it. You say that is the phenomenal experience but deny an identity - what is "is" for, then? And without a how or why, what are we left with but brute assertion - this one point is something I'd like to clear up in my understanding, ASAP.)

... but I dont see it as ultimately frustrating, for me I try to come back to not-quite-the-same-place with each cycle in my thinking - yes I wish I could do it more directly and I'm working on that - but my thinking has usually involved big looping circles that come back, with variation, with a little more understanding each time and a little more awareness of the cyclical process - Groundhog Day the movie captures this perfectly.
 
"The “knowing” we have in this experience stands in stark contrast to the “knowing” we have in our everyday lives, where we come to the world with theory and “knowledge” in hand, our minds already made up before we ever engage the world. However, in the experience of astonishment, our everyday “knowing,” when compared to the “knowing” that we experience in astonishment, is shown up as a pale epistemological imposter and is reduced to mere opinion by comparison."

I do not think one can understand Western phenomenology from Buddhist texts, but you should do whatever you think you need to do. It was in reading Heidegger's late essays collected in Poetry, Language, Thought by Albert Hofstaedter -- my third reading of that book -- that I had the 'astonishing experience/insight' referred to in the IEP article. In my experience, the texts will take you there and so I recommend reading them. From Husserl forward, the major texts of phenomenological philosophy demonstrate that and how our minds are glutted with presuppositions about the nature of reality. If bracketing the presuppositions embedded in 'the natural attitude' and in philosophically naieve science were a simple thing to do, we would not have needed a half-century and more of phenomenological analysis, which we (like contemporary phenomenologists) need to understand in order to carry it forward.
 
I do not think one can understand Western phenomenology from Buddhist texts, but you should do whatever you think you need to do. It was in reading Heidegger's late essays collected in Poetry, Language, Thought by Albert Hofstaedter -- my third reading of that book -- that I had the 'astonishing experience/insight' referred to in the IEP article. In my experience, the texts will take you there and so I recommend reading them. From Husserl forward, the major texts of phenomenological philosophy demonstrate that and how our minds are glutted with presuppositions about the nature of reality. If bracketing the presuppositions embedded in 'the natural attitude' were a simple thing to do, we would not have needed a half-century and more of phenomenological analysis, which we (like contemporary phenomenologists) need to understand in order to carry it forward.

I dont think so either and thats not what I am planning to do. I plan to read Husserl and MP and bracket all the other off.

Phenomenological Reduction, The | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

There is an experience in which it is possible for us to come to the world with no knowledge or preconceptions in hand; it is the experience of astonishment. The “knowing” we have in this experience stands in stark contrast to the “knowing” we have in our everyday lives, where we come to the world with theory and “knowledge” in hand, our minds already made up before we ever engage the world. However, in the experience of astonishment, our everyday “knowing,” when compared to the “knowing” that we experience in astonishment, is shown up as a pale epistemological imposter and is reduced to mere opinion by comparison.

That is a very good description of Zen "direct knowing" "direct pointing to reality".
 
Steve, it's hard to respond to your last two posts since I can't find a gravitational tendency or core in the succession of points of view you present. Maybe that's what you wanted to convey

I can respond briefly to your references to Eastern phenomenology and Western phenomenology not according with one another. Do you have a paper in which 'Eastern phenomenology' is contrasted with Western? I remember linking some comparative papers by Eastern philosophers interested in Western phenomenology, but that was way back in Part 1 or 2 of this thread as I recall. The only foundational reason I can think of for a divergence between Eastern and Western phenomenologies would be in the Eastern concept of Maya [as I understand it, the idea that all that we experience here is illusion]. Western phenomenology approaches consciousness and mind as they develop in contact with an actual world -- the natural world and varying historical 'worlds' shaped by human cultures and societies on earth. The dimensions and core conditions of human existence are understood to be shared in common among humans despite the differences obtained in our taking various perspectives on it. Given our individually and historically/culturally situated perspectives on this same actual world, our ideas about it will take different directions, but given a global multiplication of perspectives that can be understood and shared, we can (and should) build a world in which the maximum good can be approached and possibly, with enough intelligence, achieved.

I'd like to learn more about 'Eastern phenomenology'. Do you have a text you can recommend?

I'd like to learn more about 'Eastern phenomenology'. Do you have a text you can recommend?

Yes, the Dhammapada and then the Pali Canon.

I would suggest not thinking of it as eastern phenomenology. Just as I think I have to start with Husserl and MP and bracket off everything else, I would suggest starting with the the earliest written records of the oral tradition from the Buddha's teachings and from them, understand what Buddhism is.

www.accesstoinsight.org is an excellent source

I would suggest not thinking of it as eastern phenomenology - Buddhism is a reform of Indian philosophy - and its not unlike the Christian reformation of Jewish thought that had become so elaborate and legalistic.

It is very pragmatic and focused, it is not a philosophy, it is a path - a way to end suffering. So like you I am hesitant of direct comparisons with phenomenology, of tearing either out of its context. But if someone were familiar with both, then yes I expect to find comparisons that are valuable to understanding each one.

The sutras are an oral tradition and I think it can be argued that they are better understood orally, they are structured to be heard, understood and retained by the ears, not the eyes. Reading the sutras is a bit tricky - reading them out loud is good though and you can also find good recordings online of the Dhamma Pada (core text) and other sutras.

Finally, I think to understand the Buddhist texts, you have to practice meditation. I understand the epoche' to be essential to understanding phenomenology and I think you can't understand Buddhism without meditating.

And the *caveat here of course is to get some guidance in person from someone on how to do this. Second best would be to watch videos and listen to instructions and read about them as well as do a search for the possible negative effects.

Instructions are provided in the sutras and I can point to specific ones that would be good to start with.

The way traditional Buddhism is taught is oral and its in the form of dhamma talks which refer to the sutras and may have readings from the sutras. This is an excellent site:

Home | dhammatalks.org

with daily short morning and longer evening talks. There are also instructions and guided meditations on this site.

Some guidance on meditation is provided at the beginning of some of the talks but its good to know the basic posture and method of breath meditation.

From there the idea is to focus on the breath while the dhamma talk plays - so its unlike the western tradition of hard focused attention to what is being said in a lecture, instead the focus begins with the breath and the words are taken in by the whole body. The person giving the talk also can be heard to be coming from a place of response and spontaneity instead of just giving a lecture planned before hand so there are pauses and stops that take on a rhythm of their own that in time will seem to synch up (or does for me) with my meditaiton as I listen.
 
@smcder you're a darn good egg! You are right in your observations of the cycle and me being rude and why etc.
I'll look at your slug question tomorrow.
@Constance will take a look at that MP you linked.
 
@smcder you're a darn good egg! You are right in your observations of the cycle and me being rude and why etc.
I'll look at your slug question tomorrow.
@Constance will take a look at that MP you linked.

Thank you, Pharoah.

I apologize for being I think a bit enthusiastic in my criticisms ... ;-) I am one of those human people who get angry and frustrated and shoots things off ... if I were a dog I would have peed on your slippers or your copy of Being and Time. I also have a cycle and all that too, so maybe I am seeing myself in it.

And I think my frustration is also with myself, getting my mind tamed down to focus on the ideas, what am I missing?? Its not fair to put that all on you, thats why I rewrite things ... so let me in future try to put that frustration in terms of myself ... and in a more positive light, not as frustration but an opportunity to learn.

Anyway, I believe we can work through this - through HCT, if it is helpful to you, and I want to do that. The sticking point right now is the brute fact thing, let me work on that a bit.
 
@Pharoah

@smcder 's summary of my questions/concerns re HCT are correct. My intention was not to misrepresent anything you have said. When I have thought I understand what you say, your response is "I wouldn't say that..."

Since @smcder 's concerns with HCT are essentially the same as mine, and he is the superior communicator, I will allow him to continue the effort to suss out just how HCT accounts for the emergence of phenomenal qualities from physical processes.
 
[to Pharoah]Now isn't the above just an identity theory? When you say "it is what comes into being" that is saying "emerges" right? And then you say that (it (what comes into being because of the sorting) is individuated and qualitative and changing on a moment by moment basis)) -

I'd like to see this issue sorted out before I take my sabbatical. My understanding is that identity theory claims that 'we are our neurons'; that we do not experience the world directly, have any degree of free will, sense meaning in qualia, etc., but rather that what we think we experience and choose is the product of 'information' managed by neurons firing. That seems to be close to what Soupie argues, though I have seen recent changes in his expression of his thinking (but I'm not clear on exactly what those changes are).

One question to be pursued is to what extent information theory concerning consciousness is a theory of 'emergence'. As to what emerges from information theory, in what sense can it be described as the 'coming into being' of consciousness since that phrase signifies to me the recognition of one's own consciousness as operative in one's experience in the world? My impression of Pharoah's theory is that in his stage 3 consciousness is implemented as an operative and reflective moment-by-moment awareness of experience.

Look forward to seeing these terms and meanings clarified.
 
You aren't operating over my head. I understand what you are saying.

The first thing, is that you are thinking of phen exp from the human perspective. This is problematic because the human does not solely experience the qualitative nature of environmental features. You, as a human, frame or couch your experiences into a introspective, analysed, conceptual world-view. This is more than pure phen exp.

No ... I'm not. I disagree that the human experience is that separate from say my dogs experience - I think we have very ordinary, everyday access to pure phenomenal experience - I dont always couch or frame my experiences into an introspective, analysed, conceptual world-view - that is a very cerebral way of operating and I think some people do spend all or most of their time in this mode -

I can go back and look, I think in part 5, you made a stronger version of this - that humans couldn't relate to that kind of experience, but I disagree, I think we experience what other animals experience, I recently posted that I think "what it is like to be a bat" may not be all that different than I thought, although I think it still makes Nagel's point - we have a lot of non-conceptual experience, just every day - when we move around and do things and respond to our needs, we don't always live in our heads the way you describe. As I understand it, dasein is this kind of human way of being animal.

"But that evaluation assumes the experience in the first place! As the stimuli grow more complex and rapid ... an experience of them "emerges" in order to sort them all out - but what is the reason that that evaluation has to occur at the level of phenomenal experience?"
The phrase, "in order to sort them all out" is putting the horse and the cart the wrong way round. Experience doesn't emerge to sort out anything. Rather, it is what comes into being because of the sorting: it is individuated and qualitative and chaanging on a moment by moment basis... that is what experiencing the world is. That is the condition that Humans have given the 'phenomenal expeirence' label to, namely the thing that we are in that is individuated and qualitative... and then we humans label everything in this world-view as that thing with that quale, or this thing with this quale. I am saying phen consc is that process


OK, I got that wrong way around - but I get what you are saying here -

Experience doesn't emerge to sort out anything. Rather, it is what comes into being because of the sorting: it is individuated and qualitative and chaanging on a moment by moment basis... that is what experiencing the world is. That is the condition that Humans have given the 'phenomenal expeirence' label to, namely the thing that we are in that is individuated and qualitative... and then we humans label everything in this world-view as that thing with that
quale, or this thing with this quale. I am saying phen consc is that process


First off, I would say - then just say that in the first place! I read two different modes of communication from you - when you are on the forum you write very clearly, when you write formally, you are difficult to read. I want to say "affected" but not in an insulting way - there is a lot in what you say about philosophers writing to be difficult, if you wrote somewhere between the forum style (including the passion) and the formal stlye, I think you would hit it dead on - for me.

-----
Now isn't the above just an identity theory? When you say "it is what comes into being" that is saying "emerges" right? And then you say that (it (what comes into being because of the sorting) is individuated and qualitative and changing on a moment by moment basis)) -

phen consc is that process, ie nerves firing is phen consc? thats identity theory

that process, that sorting, is the neurophysiological processes or operations and you are saying when all that sorting reaches a certain point, phenomenal experience comes into being, "what it is like" emerges? and or just is a brute fact? that is just what it is like to have all that processing going on? is that correct?

@smcder @Soupie
re The slug argument response from smcder:

“phen consc is that prcoess, that sorting, is the neurophysiological processes or operations and you are saying when all that sorting reaches a certain point, phenomenal experience comes into being, "what it is like" emerges? as a brute fact? that is just what it is like to have all that processing going on? is that correct?”

The term “process” is fraught. It disguises what it is, so it is a word that I would generally try to avoid—I know I brought it up (perhaps I should not have). It also has computational connotations. Similarly, the term “sorting” sounds like computation and I am opposed to computational approaches. ‘The process’ is not a neurophyiological process because that expression does not reflect the hierarchical nature of the mechanisms involved. And there is not “a point” at which phen exp comes into existence. That is the way the question is not the way I would put it. So... How would I wrestle with the “brute fact” accusation. With some difficulty:

Below is a list of propositional stances from my paper. (my list of 21 questions, which died a death in the thread because each proposition got hacked to pieces. But the paper argues each propositional point. It is not that each point can be argued the toss, for I recognise that each point has counter arguments and deficiencies. Rather, the argument is, if you like, one of conceivability in the absence of proof)

1. innate physiologies are qualitatively relevant. Section 1

2. There is a representational correspondence between innately acquired biochemical mechanisms and the environment. Section 2

3. cells institute primal directives (through biochemical mechanisms) to maintain biochemical balances. Section 4 (how? ask the biochemist and biologist)

4. neurons act as transcellular conduits linking the motivations of primal directives with qualitative assimilations of the environment. This modulates the efficiency of the afferent–efferent relationship across an organism structure. Section 4

5. Points 1 to 4 are species specific only, and not individuated for each individual member of a species.

6. neural mechanisms have the potential to effect comparative evaluations of qualitative assimilations (how? ask the neuroscientist).

7. When this happens, everything about organisms tell us that these evaluations lead to responses to environment that are both individuated (individual not species specific) and therefore unique to the individual, and qualitatively relevant, and that the individuated behaviour is entirely dictated by that ongoing relationship between the quality of the environment (as represented) and its particular motivational needs.

8. If you take the field of view at t=0 to comprise numerous visual features that are weighted biochemically in terms of how much they instantiate excitement, interest, exploration, focus, attention (biochemically as per Section 3, and point 3 above), that view is weighted for its priority to satisfy primal directives through a feedback (again, a neuroscience question). At t=1 the behavioral response (e.g. a head movement changing the field of view slightly) may have negatively or positively reenforced the primal directive. t=3 thereby entails the modulation of the behavior to change the weighted distribution of visual motivations in favor of stabilizing the primal directive. This ongoing relation changes the individual’s relation to the visual field and their motivations in response, but importantly, creates a “moving landscape” of changing qualitatively motivated actions.

9.These qualitatively motivated actions are time sensitive: one might loosely describe them as requiring memory (or creating memory) in virtue of ‘comparative evaluation’. And they are space sensitive, describing a qualitatively relevant spatial landscape.

10. that this landscape is always changing and is spatiotemporally individuated, is to say, as a brute fact, that such an individual is phenomenally experiencing the world as a world of qualitative meanings. It has a qualitative spatiotemporal world-view (by whatever biochemical and neurological mechanisms maintain these cyclical functions).

11. This is all preconceptual representation and takes place in the absence of introspection. It does not incorporate the unique human perspective on phenomenal consciousness.

12. The biochemical and neurological mechanisms can vary substantially in their sophistication such that one might have increasing prereflexive stances and delineated (classifiable) affectations to particular stimulus types.
 
1. innate physiologies are qualitatively relevant. Section 1

2. There is a representational correspondence between innately acquired biochemical mechanisms and the environment. Section 2
It seems that it is at one of these points that phenomenal qualities are instantiated. For example, electromagnetic waves are perceived as (representational) phenomenal qualities such as red, green, blue etc.

If I have that correct—that according to HCT these processes (1) and/or (2) instantiate phenomenal qualities—then I'd like to understand how these processes instantiate phenomenal qualities.
 
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It seems that it is at one of these points that phenomenal qualities are instantiated. For example, electromagnetic waves are perceived as (representational) phenomenal qualities such as red, green, blue etc.

If I have that correct—that according to HCT these processes (1) and/or (2) instantiate phenomenal qualities—then I'd like to understand how these processes instantiate phenomenal qualities.
I know I used the term instantiate, but I'm not sure I know what it means (lol), which makes inderstanding what you mean by it a little tricky.
A lot of what gives environmental features their phenomenal flavour for any given species is the innate biochemistries which lead to autonomic responses (by responses, I am not meaning behavioural responses but homeostatic, vascula, ionic, chemical, neural firing changes) where they grant survival advantages by inciting effective motivatioal imperatives (which theoretically can be classified in like manner to Panksepp's affective classifications). Obviously, I don't know how this happens... I am speculating.
 
This discussion, is archived as 3,900 page pdf at
www.mind-phronesis.co.uk/Consciousness-and-the-Paranormal-Part-1-to-5.pdf
I haven't tested the link yet.
Combined as one document, you can search for keywords to locate discussed topics. From now on, if you want to make an archive search reference, place a memorable and unique searchable term in a post (e.g. ***fish***) That way, if you want to search that unique term's entry in the archive in the future, there it is and you locate that particular post
If you'd rather the archive be 5 separate pdf files, let me know
 
I know I used the term instantiate, but I'm not sure I know what it means (lol), which makes inderstanding what you mean by it a little tricky.
A lot of what gives environmental features their phenomenal flavour for any given species is the innate biochemistries which lead to autonomic responses (by responses, I am not meaning behavioural responses but homeostatic, vascula, ionic, chemical, neural firing changes) where they grant survival advantages by inciting effective motivatioal imperatives (which theoretically can be classified in like manner to Panksepp's affective classifications). Obviously, I don't know how this happens... I am speculating.
By instantiate, I mean how are objective, physical process (i.e. "innate biochemistries which lead to autonomic responses") identical to subjective, phenomenal qualities?

And at what point does an organism experience phenomenal blue? At steps (1) and/or (2), or only later when phenomenal qualities are evaluated?
 
By instantiate, I mean how are objective, physical process (i.e. "innate biochemistries which lead to autonomic responses") identical to subjective, phenomenal qualities?

And at what point does an organism experience phenomenal blue? At steps (1) and/or (2), or only later when phenomenal qualities are evaluated?
q1. Identical? no... that sounds like an identity type thesis. There is no fixed identity correspondence. Physiological mechanisms will evolve in a way that qualitatively delineate blue wavelengths comparatively to other wavelengths. So the physiology will be there. This delineation alone is not sufficient for phenomenal experience nor for subjectivity to 'exist'.
q2. I would say that the organism above, from q1., does not relate to a phenomenon of experience. The qualitative delineation to colours is there but the biochemistry is automated: there is no individuated relation to it that says, 'does blue, at this point in time, matter to me' (which equates to evaluating the qualitative pertinence of one colour's qualities over another). If it does this (with all its senses), it is experiencing the phenomenal content of the world (as represented by its inherited physiological makeup) as a moving landscape of qualitative impressions. With the caveate, that there are multiple impressions that are attenuated to ensure a uniform response—for survival reasons.
 
q1. Identical? no... that sounds like an identity type thesis. There is no fixed identity correspondence. Physiological mechanisms will evolve in a way that qualitatively delineate blue wavelengths comparatively to other wavelengths. So the physiology will be there. This delineation alone is not sufficient for phenomenal experience nor for subjectivity to 'exist'.

q2. I would say that the organism above, from q1., does not relate to a phenomenon of experience. The qualitative delineation to colours is there but the biochemistry is automated: there is no individuated relation to it that says, 'does blue, at this point in time, matter to me' (which equates to evaluating the qualitative pertinence of one colour's qualities over another). If it does this (with all its senses), it is experiencing the phenomenal content of the world (as represented by its inherited physiological makeup) as a moving landscape of qualitative impressions. With the caveate, that there are multiple impressions that are attenuated to ensure a uniform response—for survival reasons.
Before I respond to this, I want to clarify the phrase "blue wavelengths."

In the absence of consciously perceiving organisms/systems, there is no phenomenal blue.

Yes or no?
 
phen exp is a label
In a way it is a term used as a reference to the ineffable qualities of our awake conscious and delineated world. A theory that accounts both for quality and its ineffable character, is a serious theory. Moreover, an account that links into its evolution makes it more compelling. This is how HCT stands out from the theory crowd. Obviously, it can't account for everything and I havent all the answers.
Importantly, it is an observer-deoendent world HcT describes: wavelengths don't have intrinsic qualities; objects in the world don't have qualities in themselves. Rather evolution, due to replicative capabilities, allows qualities to become manifest for its individuals. Furthermoe, the way organisms relate to qualities becomes more and more sophisticated up the evolutionary tree; because qualitative representation is meaningful to replicative structures: it has a value.
 
Before I respond to this, I want to clarify the phrase "blue wavelengths."

In the absence of consciously perceiving organisms/systems, there is no phenomenal blue.

Yes or no?
I think i've just answered that.
Wavelengths don't even have numbers let alone qualitative colour. The numbers are human conceptual constructs about what wavelengths are comparatively, just as their phenomenal feel is a qualitative delineation. In themselves, outside of living representations, that have no quality and no number. They relate to oneanother in a physical way but our understanding of their intrinsic nature is biased by our observer dependent relation to the world
 
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