Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 8

[smcder]

Isn't that 'expectation' a reaction to Godel's Incompleteness Theorums and others named in the wikipedia article that have recognized the limitations of our tendency toward formalist thinking based in reified concepts of that which is experienced? Kafatos attempts to move us beyond that tendency.

["Gödel's incompleteness theorems are two theorems of mathematical logic that demonstrate the inherent limitations of every formal axiomatic system containing basic arithmetic.[1] These results, published by Kurt Gödel in 1931, are important both in mathematical logic and in the philosophy of mathematics. The theorems are widely, but not universally, interpreted as showing that Hilbert's program to find a complete and consistent set of axioms for all mathematics is impossible.

The first incompleteness theorem states that no consistent system of axioms whose theorems can be listed by an effective procedure (i.e., an algorithm) is capable of proving all truths about the arithmetic of the natural numbers. For any such formal system, there will always be statements about the natural numbers that are true, but that are unprovable within the system. The second incompleteness theorem, an extension of the first, shows that the system cannot demonstrate its own consistency.

Employing a diagonal argument, Gödel's incompleteness theorems were the first of several closely related theorems on the limitations of formal systems. They were followed by Tarski's undefinability theorem on the formal undefinability of truth, Church's proof that Hilbert's Entscheidungsproblem is unsolvable, and Turing's theorem that there is no algorithm to solve the halting problem."

Gödel's incompleteness theorems - Wikipedia]


Steve's post continues:



I'm impressed to learn that Feynman broached the qualitativeness behind/beneath mathematical expression [where most mathematicians and physicists evidently have not]. From the paper Steve linked we can follow the notes to read more of what Feynman said on that occasion.

Thought experiments are apparently all we have to work with at this point, having come up against the incompleteness of our understanding in both physics and mathematics and also regarding the nature of consciousness. But the prospects for more comprehensive thought experiments undertaken by Kafatos and the author of the paper linked by @Soupie are most promising. As often, Wallace Stevens provides a phrase that bubbles up for me from thirty years ago providing a sense of the scope of our inquiry at this point, in which we are sensing our approach to "the outlines of Being and its expressings."

@Soupie wrote in his first post today:

"If consciousness is fundamental and continuous (as we've been discussing), then we still need to understand how the structure of the organism/brain shapes consciousness into specific contents of consciousness. And if all processes are fundamentally conscious, why does it seem that some processes are conscious and some are not?"

What we need to explore is the spectrum of evolution/increasing complexity of living organisms developed from original 'awareness' to prereflective consciousness and the nature of subconscious mind that arises within it, as the phenomenologists have been arguing.

I'll be reading with interest both the paper @Soupie linked today and this additional Kafatos paper linked by Steve as soon as I finish reading the rest of the new posts in the thread today. It feels, to me, like we are now coming to the edge of a desert in our attempts to understand consciousness/mind and confronting an ontological mountain we will need to scale in order to understand more about the nature of 'reality'/what-is. It looks like there will five of us making the climb now that @william has joined us and @Pharoah has told me that he is rejoining the thread. Happy days.

the Kafatos paper takes a Platonist approach to mathematics (the paper about the qualitative interpretation of mathematical formulas) - the other paper I posted on the "reasonable" effectiveness of mathematics would not agree ... but it's an open question, what makes me uneasy is the move in the Kafatos paper from formula to reality. As I said, we haven't discussed the philosophy of mathematics much and it's not on the main subject line - so maybe we can come back to this later.

 

[Constance]

This one:

Exploring Consciousness Through the Qualitative Content of Equations | Narasimhan | Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy

I wanted to see what others think of the flow of logic ... not a focus area right now for us.

I read part of that paper yesterday shortly after you linked it and agree that we will want/need to understand what's described there as well. I think we should read both papers as soon as possible, however. I suggested the Awareness/Sentience paper as a first reading because it puts forth a whole theory of the evolution of being as What-Is from primordial nonduality in the 'quantum foam' to the level of being at which consciousness evolves from prereflective awareness in life, in living beings, and in reflective consciousness recognizes the interplay, interactivity, and interdepence of what we call 'subjective' and 'objective' poles of our own experience. The fork in the road in what our species' [Western] thinkers have subsequently thought leads/has led to either Cartesian dualism or to philosophies that overcome that radical, reified dualism.

The general movement of thought in Theise and Kafatos, as I understand it, moves from a) recognition of nonduality in primordial being, to b) the problem of apparent duality in our species' thinking about the structure of being/Being with the development of our minds, to c) the overcoming of dualism in a deeper understanding of the holistic nature of being/Being in both science and philosophy of consciousness/mind (prefigured in Buddhism and other Eastern approaches and practices). Processes of emerging interaction and integration in the evolution of being seem to be the key concepts foregrounded in the ontology put forward by Theise and Kafatos as contemporary systems theorists understand it in common with insights already achieved in ancient eastern schools of contemplation.

This video presentation by Theise, included in the link you provided to his own articulations of his work with Kafatos, provides a quick summary/overview of the ontological theory they are developing together:

Non-Dual Conscious Realism ~ Neil Theise | Science and Nonduality

ETA: Theise's oral presesntation in this video will be easier to follow if one has first read the Awareness-Sentience paper he wrote with Kafatos.

 

[Constance]

the Kafatos paper takes a Platonist approach to mathematics (the paper about the qualitative interpretation of mathematical formulas) - the other paper I posted on the "reasonable" effectiveness of mathematics would not agree ... but it's an open question, what makes me uneasy is the move in the Kafatos paper from formula to reality. As I said, we haven't discussed the philosophy of mathematics much and it's not on the main subject line - so maybe we can come back to this later.

I think we need to become aware of the evident shortcomings of our species' mathematics and 'logic' to date in representing the nature of what-is in our own experience and in the character of the evolution of nature as we increasingly comprehend it in systems thinking and phenomenology. My impression is that it has been increasingly clear that mathematical formulas have not yet been capable of representing the nature of lived experience in the world we live in at this stage of its evolution. {ETA: as you yourself wrote, "we don't expect reality to conform to the mathematics per se." So I ask 'why then should we look to mathematics to represent the nature of what-is?} I will read all of the paper "Exploring Consciousness Through the Qualitative Content of Equations" today.

 

[Constance]

I know, I kept cracking up every time I'd read SHAME ON HIM/HER ... I doubt it will keep any of them from attending ...

What's especially sad {inadequate} is Coyne's unwillingness {inability?} to interact with other scientists and thinkers in the forum the Chopak Foundation invited him to participate in.

 

[Constance]

This video presentation by Theise, included in the link you provided to his own articulations of his work with Kafatos, provides a quick summary/overview of the ontological theory they are developing together:

Non-Dual Conscious Realism ~ Neil Theise | Science and Nonduality

ETA: Theise's oral presesntation in this video will be easier to follow if one has first read the Awareness-Sentience paper he wrote with Kafatos.

Here is a short overview of the content of Theise's video provided at the link:

"We propose a generalized theory of “Non-Dual Conscious Realism” addressing the fundamental issue of consciousness. This theoretical framework posits the universing arising from an undifferentiated, non-dual field of pure conscious awareness. From within this universal consciousness emanate the complementary phenomena of Planck scale quantum vacuum and quantum foam, generating space and time, matter and energy.

Through successive, recursive, creative interactions, phenomena and entities at each level of scale self-organize into emergent phenomena and entities at each next higher scale, comprising the entire cosmos. These triadic principles of complementarity, recursion, and creative interactivity (wherein “sentience” is the special case of the biological) are reflected throughout all scales. Though emergentist/materialist positions predominate in contemporary discourse regarding consciousness, the primacy of this non-dual conscious reality, which we emphasize is the deepest possible “panpsychist” perspective, is not contradicted by any known scientific phenomena. Also, unlike most emergentist positions, it is inclusive of the inextricable linkage between observer and observed, subject and object, decisively revealed by quantum mechanics. Indeed, at all levels of scale above the quantum realm, quantum-like effects – such as uncertainty, complementarity, superposition, entanglement, non-locality – reflecting such interconnectivity are recognized. Corollaries of Non-Dual Conscious Realism include that: materiality is not implicit in the universe, but is entirely a scale dependent phenomenon; the “hard problem” of qualia is subsumed by confirmation that all phenomena of the universe are qualia within consciousness; neural correlates of consciousness are not how consciousness is created, but are, rather, the ways in which the nervous systems (human or other) transduce consciousness into adaptive, species-specific perceptions and behaviors. Individual consciousness and associated qualia are part of the universal, non-dual conscious reality."

 

[Soupie]

How Startling it is that there is a Mind-Body Problem

"My interest in the mind-body problem was not merely informative. It is that, to use a word from Leibniz, the problem is a radical one. (He uses the same word, for example, about “the origination of things” – the problem in which he is interested is the radical one.) The fact that there is a mind-body problem at all means that there is something wrong or inexplicable at the centre of our world view. Schopenhauer is said to have said that the mind-body problem is the “world-knot”, and this is a great idea. You have the picture of the physical world tying itself somehow into a knot, maybe. But Schopenhauer didn’t mean that at all. For him the world-knot was the identity of the self that knows things with the self that wills things. How can they be the same thing? Wittgenstein and Descartes had versions of this problem.

Well, of course, but there isn’t any such thing as “our world-view”. What I mean by the phrase though is physicalism. All the philosophers who introduced the problem in the seventeenth-century took the issue to be what kind of thing the physical world must be in order for there to be room for minds in the same world. That is, on our understanding of the physical world there is no room for minds. So what should our understanding be? One natural response is of course to say that our understanding of the physical world is right and that there isn’t any room for minds in the physical world.

Today the position is not so different. ...

OK, so you look at physics or the sciences, and unless you introduce the topic, as psychology does, without too much philosophically adequate discussion, there isn’t anything in the world of science corresponding to the mind. If you are doing psychophysical studies, say on the correlation between wavelength and hue, you have to assume that the people who match hues are matching something or other, and that we are not looking for gerrymandered classes of things to have behavioural responses to.

So let’s steal Schopenhauer’s phrase and call the mind-body problem the problem of the world-knot, to indicate that it is a radical metaphysical problem, in its way as radical as the radical origination of things, i.e. the origination of things ex nihilo. ...

I think we are still in the position of Leibniz, who imagines that the brain is a big mill into which we can enter, and see its workings. But we will see no evidence of mentality. This is a version of Chalmers’ “hard problem”, I think. But then I think that the hard problem is just a souped up version of the seventeenth-century mind-body problem as it presented itself to Princess Elisabeth, Gassendi, Descartes, Leibniz and others.

If the problem is that radical, we need a radical solution, one that disrupts our usual physicalist ways of conceiving things."

And I submit that "our usual physicalist ways of conceiving things" equates to Naive Realism, the assumption that reality is pretty much as we perceive it to be. As this author suggests, the Hard Problem gives us strong cause to question this assumption/assertion. And so too does Quantum Mechanics:

Physicists bid farewell to reality?

"There's only one way to describe the experiment performed by physicist Anton Zeilinger and his colleagues: it's unreal, dude.

Measuring the quantum properties of pairs of light particles (photons) pumped out by a laser has convinced Zeilinger that "we have to give up the idea of realism to a far greater extent than most physicists believe today."

By realism, he means the idea that objects have specific features and properties —that a ball is red, that a book contains the works of Shakespeare, or that an electron has a particular spin.

For everyday objects, such realism isn't a problem. But for objects governed by the laws of quantum mechanics, like photons and electrons, it may make no sense to think of them as having well defined characteristics. Instead, what we see may depend on how we look. ...

Experiments were done to test his prediction in the ensuing two decades, and results showed that Bell's equality was violated. Thus, either realism or locality, or possibly both of these ideas, do not apply in the quantum world.

But which is it? That's what Zeilinger, based at the University of Vienna in Austria, and his colleagues tried to find out.

They came up with a similar test to Bell's, to see whether quantum mechanics obeys realism but not locality. ... Like Bell's, Zeilinger's equality proved false. This doesn't rule out all possible non-local realistic models, but it does exclude an important subset of them. Specifically, it shows that if you have a group of photons that all have independent polarizations, then you can't ascribe specific polarizations to each. It's rather like saying that you know there are particular numbers of blue, white and silver cars in a car park — but it is meaningless even to imagine saying which ones are which.

Truly weird

If the quantum world is not realistic in this sense, then how does it behave? Zeilinger says that some of the alternative non-realist possibilities are truly weird. For example, it may make no sense to imagine what would happen if we had made a different measurement from the one we chose to make. "We do this all the time in daily life," says Zeilinger — for example, imagining what would have happened if you had tried to cross the road when a truck was coming. If the world around us behaved in the same way as a quantum system, then it would be meaningless even to imagine that alternative situation, because there would be no way of defining what you mean by the road, the truck, or even you.

Another possibility is that in a non-realistic quantum world present actions can affect the past, as though choosing to read a letter or not could determine what it says.

Zeilinger hopes that his work will stimulate others to test such possibilities. "Our paper is not the end of the road," he says. "But we have a little more evidence that the world is really strange."

 

[smcder]

I read part of that paper yesterday shortly after you linked it and agree that we will want/need to understand what's described there as well. I think we should read both papers as soon as possible, however. I suggested the Awareness/Sentience paper as a first reading because it puts forth a whole theory of the evolution of being as What-Is from primordial nonduality in the 'quantum foam' to the level of being at which consciousness evolves from prereflective awareness in life, in living beings, and in reflective consciousness recognizes the interplay, interactivity, and interdepence of what we call 'subjective' and 'objective' poles of our own experience. The fork in the road in what our species' [Western] thinkers have subsequently thought leads/has led to either Cartesian dualism or to philosophies that overcome that radical, reified dualism.

The general movement of thought in Theise and Kafatos, as I understand it, moves from a) recognition of nonduality in primordial being, to b) the problem of apparent duality in our species' thinking about the structure of being/Being with the development of our minds, to c) the overcoming of dualism in a deeper understanding of the holistic nature of being/Being in both science and philosophy of consciousness/mind (prefigured in Buddhism and other Eastern approaches and practices). Processes of emerging interaction and integration in the evolution of being seem to be the key concepts foregrounded in the ontology put forward by Theise and Kafatos as contemporary systems theorists understand it in common with insights already achieved in ancient eastern schools of contemplation.

This video presentation by Theise, included in the link you provided to his own articulations of his work with Kafatos, provides a quick summary/overview of the ontological theory they are developing together:

Non-Dual Conscious Realism ~ Neil Theise | Science and Nonduality

ETA: Theise's oral presesntation in this video will be easier to follow if one has first read the Awareness-Sentience paper he wrote with Kafatos.

I suggested the Awareness/Sentience paper as a first reading because it puts forth a whole theory of the evolution of being as What-Is from primordial nonduality in the 'quantum foam' to the level of being at which consciousness evolves from prereflective awareness in life, in living beings, and in reflective consciousness recognizes the interplay, interactivity, and interdepence of what we call 'subjective' and 'objective' poles of our own experience.

I'm fine to read the Awareness/Sentience paper first.

 

[Constance]

How Startling it is that there is a Mind-Body Problem

"The fact that there is a mind-body problem at all means that there is something wrong or inexplicable at the centre of our world view."


". . . but there isn’t any such thing as “our world-view”. What I mean by the phrase though is physicalism. All the philosophers who introduced the problem in the seventeenth-century took the issue to be what kind of thing the physical world must be in order for there to be room for minds in the same world. That is, on our understanding of the physical world there is no room for minds. So what should our understanding be? One natural response is of course to say that our understanding of the physical world is right and that there isn’t any room for minds in the physical world.

Today the position is not so different. You can look at the physical world as hard as you like, and not find the mind in it anywhere. We can assume that there is such a thing as a mind, which I think is something of a given, although what the English word “mind” means is not so clear – there are no equivalents, even distant, in German or French, and you just have to find different ways to say things. However, you do have the mind-body problem described using sentences from these languages. You have “la problem du corps et de l’âme” (body and soul) or “das Leib-Seele Problem” or “das Körper-Seele (or ‘Geist’) Problem”.

OK, so you look at physics or the sciences, and unless you introduce the topic, as psychology does, without too much philosophically adequate discussion, there isn’t anything in the world of science corresponding to the mind. If you are doing psychophysical studies, say on the correlation between wavelength and hue, you have to assume that the people who match hues are matching something or other, and that we are not looking for gerrymandered classes of things to have behavioural responses to.

. . .

So we have a paradox, four propositions any three of which imply the negation of the fourth.

(1) The mind is not physical, so it seems;

(2) The body is physical.

(3) The mind and the body interact.

(e.g. drinking too much beer produces confusion and blurred vision).

But

(4) Mental and physical things cannot interact,

since the latter have spatial locations and linear dimensions, and the former do not.

If the problem is that radical, we need a radical solution, one that disrupts our usual physicalist ways of conceiving things."


Well, after five centuries I'd say that this is obvious enough, and that we have two options: Colin McGinn's mysterianism or efforts such as Kafatos-Theise's to compose a theory of the evolution of the universe and of mind within it that takes account of the understanding we've reached at this point concerning interactive processes established in the q substrate ... leading to the development of complex dissipative systems in fields and forces ... leading to a) the evident fact that these systems interact (producing temporary chaos that is overcome in the accommodation of these systems to one another) producing a System of systems, and to b) the evolution of life in increasingly complex forms capable of consciousness and minds.

Granted that there might be some overarching other force/entity behind this evolution {God, or a universal computer, or something else) that we cannot know directly and that could account for how and why the world grows in complexity and develops minds that can ask the question of the relationship of mentality to physicality, we are at present left to work out the evolution of the universe and mind within it from the parts of the world we do understand. I think the Kafatos-Theise theory is the best approach available at present to resolving the 'mind/body' problem, and that it moreover leads to a sufficient understanding of the consequences of the existence in ourselves of both consciousness and minds capable of comprehending our relationship to the 'world' in which we find ourselves existing here in the 21st century and recognizing our obligations to conduct our lives and our societies, cultures, and nations ethically, morally, in the interests of sustaining (and enhancing) the lives of all living creatures, preserving the ecological system of systems that provides for their and our continuing life.

You add:

And I submit that "our usual physicalist ways of conceiving things" equates to Naive Realism, the assumption that reality is pretty much as we perceive it to be. As this author suggests, the Hard Problem gives us strong cause to question this assumption/assertion. And so too does Quantum Mechanics . . . . ."

No question that physicalism (objectivism) in modern science enables us to comprehend what-is in the 'world' we live in only in mechanical terms. No doubt that this approach is what needs to be overturned in our thinking about 'reality' in our present mileau on earth [a reality that is experienced from the inside out and from the outside in as entanglement of embodied consciousness with the natural/cultural 'worlds' we live in]. Beyond that, the K-T theory satisfies our need -- at least it satisfies my need -- for an ontological understanding of the nature of 'what-is' as-we-experience-it -- as an evolved part of What-Is as a Whole in the World in which we and our 'world' have evolved.

This may not be enough for you, Soupie, since you seek to know that which cannot presently be known by our species about the Origins and Nature of the Being of All-That-Is, i.e., that which might exist behind that which we can comprehend at present. But in my view the 'mind/body' problem is sufficiently resolved by K-T's theory for me to let it go and to live in the knowledge available to us of how we should live within the conditions of our existence at this stage, and this place, in the evolution of the 'known' universe's being. Heidegger expressed it best in his late philosophy: here and now our role, to which we are "appropriated" by the nature of Being in Time, is to be "the shepherds of being" in the 'world' in which we exist, in which we have achieved considerable power to shape the possibilities of our and others' existence for the general good on our planet.

 

[Constance]

We can assume that there is such a thing as a mind, which I think is something of a given, although what the English word “mind” means is not so clear – there are no equivalents, even distant, in German or French, and you just have to find different ways to say things. However, you do have the mind-body problem described using sentences from these languages. You have “la problem du corps et de l’âme” (body and soul) or “das Leib-Seele Problem” or “das Körper-Seele (or ‘Geist’) Problem”.

I want to come back to comment on that statement by the author of the blog linked by @Soupie. Phenomenology developed in German and French philosophy does far more than "find different ways to say things." But only those who actually read that philosophy will understand what it offers for comprehension of the existentially embodied experience out of which minds develop in our 'world'.

 

[Randall]

... Today the position is not so different. You can look at the physical world as hard as you like, and not find the mind in it anywhere. We can assume that there is such a thing as a mind, which I think is something of a given, although what the English word “mind” means is not so clear ... OK, so you look at physics or the sciences, and unless you introduce the topic, as psychology does, without too much philosophically adequate discussion, there isn’t anything in the world of science corresponding to the mind. If you are doing psychophysical studies, say on the correlation between wavelength and hue, you have to assume that the people who match hues are matching something or other, and that we are not looking for gerrymandered classes of things to have behavioural responses to ...

The relationship between science and mind and psychology is significant. Here's some free courses if anyone is interested: 29 Free Psychology Courses to Study the Mind

 

[smcder]

The relationship between science and mind and psychology is significant. Here's some free courses if anyone is interested: 29 Free Psychology Courses to Study the Mind

...and to think I paid for a degree in psychology ...

 

[Constance]

"... the idea that animals are conscious ... is a hypothesis that cannot be tested."

That just means it cannot be tested given the presuppositions of the testers, and we know by now, or should, what those presuppositions have been in materialist/objectivist science -- and that they cannot and have not been adequately scrutinized and supported, defended.

Yet we sense, and many of us know, that animals are conscious, which means they are on the way to developing 'minds'. Mind is immanent in consciousness, even in the 'awareness' that Kafatos-Theise and Panksepp et al recognize as existing primordially in the development of life (and even, in K-T, prior to the development of life).

A usage note that might be clarifying:

"EMINENT/IMMINENT/IMMANENT

By far the most common of these words is “eminent,” meaning “prominent, famous.” “Imminent,” in phrases like “facing imminent disaster,” means “threatening.” It comes from Latin minere, meaning “to project or overhang.” Think of a mine threatening to cave in. Positive events can also be imminent: they just need to be coming soon. The rarest of the three is “immanent,” used by philosophers to mean “inherent” and by theologians to mean “present throughout the universe” when referring to God. It comes from Latin manere, “remain.” Think of God creating man in his own image.

When a government exercises its power over private property it is drawing on its eminent status in society, so the proper legal phrase is “eminent domain.”

https://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/eminent.html


This Aeon paper at this link examines the situation in our time concerning the recognition of the degree to which animals are conscious:

Why won’t biologists say that animals might be conscious? | Aeon Essays

 

[Randall]

This Aeon paper at this link examines the situation in our time concerning the recognition of the degree to which animals are conscious: Why won’t biologists say that animals might be conscious? | Aeon Essays

The central question is what is meant by degrees of consciousness. It seems to me that one either is or isn't conscious. Therefore degrees of consciousness seem to be a reference to the range of experiences that a conscious being is capable of. I would submit that humans have a range unavailable to other creatures, and this is what gives us an unparalleled ability to contemplate moral questions. Other animals seem in this respect to be completely outside the loop. I am not aware of any convincing evidence that a lion feels remorse at chasing, killing and eating a gazelle alive, or that a gazelle is contemplating how unfair it is that it's about to become dinner.

 

[smcder]

I want to come back to comment on that statement by the author of the blog linked by @Soupie. Phenomenology developed in German and French philosophy does far more than "find different ways to say things." But only those who actually read that philosophy will understand what it offers for comprehension of the existentially embodied experience out of which minds develop in our 'world'.

I've heard it said that German has no word for mind, but that seems to me a little misleading - as far as I know there are words in German for every concept that we use "mind" to express* - I lived in Germany for a year and don't remember not being able to express a concept about mind ... so it's not as if they don't understand what we mean by "mind" they just don't have one word that assigns all of those meanings (but Google "(name of language) words that have no English equivalent" to see that other languages stand in the same relation to English) ... in fact, the word is of Germanic origin (English is a Germanic language) from an Indo-European root ... see also Sanskrit manas and Latin mens.

*Two interesting examples are "geistlich" and "seele" ...

if there is more to this, I would be interested to learn about it

 

[smcder]

"... the idea that animals are conscious ... is a hypothesis that cannot be tested."

That just means it cannot be tested given the presuppositions of the testers, and we know by now, or should, what those presuppositions have been in materialist/objectivist science -- and that they cannot and have not been adequately scrutinized and supported, defended.

Yet we sense, and many of us know, that animals are conscious, which means they are on the way to developing 'minds'. Mind is immanent in consciousness, even in the 'awareness' that Kafatos-Theise and Panksepp et al recognize as existing primordially in the development of life (and even, in K-T, prior to the development of life).

A usage note that might be clarifying:

"EMINENT/IMMINENT/IMMANENT

By far the most common of these words is “eminent,” meaning “prominent, famous.” “Imminent,” in phrases like “facing imminent disaster,” means “threatening.” It comes from Latin minere, meaning “to project or overhang.” Think of a mine threatening to cave in. Positive events can also be imminent: they just need to be coming soon. The rarest of the three is “immanent,” used by philosophers to mean “inherent” and by theologians to mean “present throughout the universe” when referring to God. It comes from Latin manere, “remain.” Think of God creating man in his own image.

When a government exercises its power over private property it is drawing on its eminent status in society, so the proper legal phrase is “eminent domain.”

https://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/eminent.html


This Aeon paper at this link examines the situation in our time concerning the recognition of the degree to which animals are conscious:

Why won’t biologists say that animals might be conscious? | Aeon Essays

Excellent article ... not only about consciousness, but about science - the crux of if for me was here:

• So why do my pets think, and my lab animals do not? The answer, potentially unsatisfying, but actually hugely effective, is because that is what works.

And I especially appreciated the author's final point.

Thank you for sharing this.

 

[smcder]

"... the idea that animals are conscious ... is a hypothesis that cannot be tested."

That just means it cannot be tested given the presuppositions of the testers, and we know by now, or should, what those presuppositions have been in materialist/objectivist science -- and that they cannot and have not been adequately scrutinized and supported, defended.

Yet we sense, and many of us know, that animals are conscious, which means they are on the way to developing 'minds'. Mind is immanent in consciousness, even in the 'awareness' that Kafatos-Theise and Panksepp et al recognize as existing primordially in the development of life (and even, in K-T, prior to the development of life).

A usage note that might be clarifying:

"EMINENT/IMMINENT/IMMANENT

By far the most common of these words is “eminent,” meaning “prominent, famous.” “Imminent,” in phrases like “facing imminent disaster,” means “threatening.” It comes from Latin minere, meaning “to project or overhang.” Think of a mine threatening to cave in. Positive events can also be imminent: they just need to be coming soon. The rarest of the three is “immanent,” used by philosophers to mean “inherent” and by theologians to mean “present throughout the universe” when referring to God. It comes from Latin manere, “remain.” Think of God creating man in his own image.

When a government exercises its power over private property it is drawing on its eminent status in society, so the proper legal phrase is “eminent domain.”

https://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/eminent.html


This Aeon paper at this link examines the situation in our time concerning the recognition of the degree to which animals are conscious:

Why won’t biologists say that animals might be conscious? | Aeon Essays

I live with six (and sometimes more dogs) ... if they aren't conscious (even Daniel Dennet (in an early book, written before he became a zombie) says that dogs would have the most human-like emotional structure of any animal) ... then they have sure evolved an elaborate scheme of deception! (and ... sure enough, at least one person has written a book on this thesis ... but I suspect they were influenced by their pet cat ;-)

P.S. I have two cats also ...

 

[smcder]

@Constance

are we focusing on:

• Fundamental Awareness: A Framework for Integrating Science, Philosophy and Metaphysics
  Neil D. Theise, MD1 Menas C. Kafatos, PhD2
  
  
• Sentience Everywhere: Complexity Theory, Panpsychism & the Role of Sentience in Self-Organization of the Universe
  Neil D. Theise*1 & Menas C. Kafatos2
1Departments of Pathology & of Medicine, Beth Israel Medical Center, Albert Einstein

... or both? I got a bit lost ...

I wish "Word" had a "marginalia" function ...

 

[smcder]

Reincarnation ends a sentience with a comma instead of a period.

 

[smcder]

I think we need to become aware of the evident shortcomings of our species' mathematics and 'logic' to date in representing the nature of what-is in our own experience and in the character of the evolution of nature as we increasingly comprehend it in systems thinking and phenomenology. My impression is that it has been increasingly clear that mathematical formulas have not yet been capable of representing the nature of lived experience in the world we live in at this stage of its evolution. {ETA: as you yourself wrote, "we don't expect reality to conform to the mathematics per se." So I ask 'why then should we look to mathematics to represent the nature of what-is?} I will read all of the paper "Exploring Consciousness Through the Qualitative Content of Equations" today.

Another Kafatos paper on Mathematics (perhaps for down the road, when we finish the papers we are reading now)

Fundamental Mathematics of Conciousness
http://www.menaskafatos.com/497-2257-1-PB.pdf

 

[Soupie]

Beyond that, the K-T theory satisfies our need -- at least it satisfies my need -- for an ontological understanding of the nature of 'what-is' as-we-experience-it -- as an evolved part of What-Is as a Whole in the World in which we and our 'world' have evolved.

I don't disagree. As I noted I had discovered this approach pre-Hoffman. I'd have to go back and look at my comments about it at the time, but what I recall is that addressed the issue of whether consciousness is continuous or discontinuous. For me, it provided a logical way to think about this by suggesting that while consciousness may be continuous, minds may be discontinuous.

But it wasn't until Hoffman and his interface theory that I was able to recognize my Naive Realism presuppositions. An insight I think every bit as powerful as the HP.

This may not be enough for you, Soupie, since you seek to know that which cannot presently be known by our species about the Origins and Nature of the Being of All-That-Is, i.e., that which might exist behind that which we can comprehend at present.

I am all things considered sympathetic to a physicalist approach to reality. If you recall I read Thad Roberts book in its entirety which is to date the most comprehensive attempt to describe reality in purely mechanical, physical terms. The notion the spacetime is quantized as a superfluid vacuum has great aesthetic and explanatory power and appeal.

But it is absolutely blind to consciousness.

Even if it can explain every physical phenomenon mechanistically (including magnetism!) in simple and elegant ways, it offers no model of how consciousness arises from physical processes. Indeed, it doesn't even address consciousness!

How could that be? How could we possibly completely explain every aspect of the physical world in completely mechanistic terms to the point where it is closed... and yet not include consciousness?

To me, this is yet another indicateor that "the physical" is but a subset existing within consciousness, which itself exists at a deeper causal level.

QM also points us to a conception of reality that transcends the physical. And I think not coincidentally QM runs counter to our experiences. We experience reality to be 3D, discrete/quantized, and determined whereas QM reveals a fundamental reality that is non3D, nondiscrete, and probabilistic.

As an aside, I do wonder that both perception and classical physics align with the former while QM aligns with the latter.