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Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 5

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@Constance you are as obsessed about the view from somewhere, as I am of the view from nowhere in particular.

Because as Stevens says, "we live in a place that is not our own, and much more, not ourselves," and yet "we are natives of this world." Sounds just like Heidegger to me. We don't live 'nowhere', but we can entertain that imagined perspective.
 
@Constance I am quite surprised that you came out with the blue underlined #912. I can't say that I recall you laying your cards on the table like that before.
To tell you the truth, I don't have a problem with your beliefs at all. I just think that, as of my footnote 1 in the paper, the view from nowhere is explainable (HCT explains why there is subjective introspective existence... why it had to evolve in the universe, in little pockets of places like earth), whilst the view from somewhere is an all altogether different class of problem (whose solution I will never witness in my lifetime... but I like the idea that all of time, is like space, in that you can journey through it like a map whose entirety is there, laid out on the floor, and that in some way we probably exist in all of it, as one).
 
@smcder @Constance

Here is the abstract to an article I have been trying to find. I believe the article details a model of consciousness that was referred to in the anesthesia/consciousness article smcder posted a while back. Incidentally, this model seems to jive really well with my (limited) understanding of neurophenomenological dynamic systems approach to the brain (and consciousness).

REM sleep and dreaming: towards a theory of protoconsciousness

J. Allan Hobson

Abstract

Dreaming has fascinated and mystified humankind for ages: the bizarre and evanescent qualities of dreams have invited boundless speculation about their origin, meaning and purpose. For most of the twentieth century, scientific dream theories were mainly psychological. Since the discovery of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, the neural underpinnings of dreaming have become increasingly well understood, and it is now possible to complement the details of these brain mechanisms with a theory of consciousness that is derived from the study of dreaming. The theory advanced here emphasizes data that suggest that REM sleep may constitute a protoconscious state, providing a virtual reality model of the world that is of functional use to the development and maintenance of waking consciousness.
 
@Constance I am quite surprised that you came out with the blue underlined #912. I can't say that I recall you laying your cards on the table like that before.
To tell you the truth, I don't have a problem with your beliefs at all. I just think that, as of my footnote 1 in the paper, the view from nowhere is explainable (HCT explains why there is subjective introspective existence... why it had to evolve in the universe, in little pockets of places like earth), whilst the view from somewhere is an all altogether different class of problem (whose solution I will never witness in my lifetime... but I like the idea that all of time, is like space, in that you can journey through it like a map whose entirety is there, laid out on the floor, and that in some way we probably exist in all of it, as one).

I'll go back and read your footnote 1 again. Leaving out the term 'introspective' from your phrase "subjective introspective consciousness" {for 'introspective voyages' surely don't take place before we begin to think in organized ways}, can you not see subjective experience germinating in the affectivity of primordial organisms as Panksepp observes it? Felt qualities of experience and an inchoate sense of self-reference and 'ownness' precede the evolution of reflection (in the evolution of species and in the individual organisms that constitute species, as in the individual human infant and child) and orient us toward -- and in their accumulations ground -- reflection and thinking.

This reminds me that you used the word 'mindfulness' in one of your posts today. Experience of ourselves in the world must be sensed, we must become acquainted with it, before we can become 'mindful' of it. What did you mean by using the term?
 
@smcder @Constance

Here is the abstract to an article I have been trying to find. I believe the article details a model of consciousness that was referred to in the anesthesia/consciousness article smcder posted a while back. Incidentally, this model seems to jive really well with my (limited) understanding of neurophenomenological dynamic systems approach to the brain (and consciousness).

REM sleep and dreaming: towards a theory of protoconsciousness

J. Allan Hobson

Abstract

Dreaming has fascinated and mystified humankind for ages: the bizarre and evanescent qualities of dreams have invited boundless speculation about their origin, meaning and purpose. For most of the twentieth century, scientific dream theories were mainly psychological. Since the discovery of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, the neural underpinnings of dreaming have become increasingly well understood, and it is now possible to complement the details of these brain mechanisms with a theory of consciousness that is derived from the study of dreaming. The theory advanced here emphasizes data that suggest that REM sleep may constitute a protoconscious state, providing a virtual reality model of the world that is of functional use to the development and maintenance of waking consciousness.

I'll read the article you cite, and I hope we have all read the excellent article on consciousness and anesthesia that Steve linked about a week ago.
 
I'll read the article you cite, and I hope we have all read the excellent article on consciousness and anesthesia that Steve linked about a week ago.
I havent been able to find a full, free version of the article.mif you are able to, please share it with me. :)
 
I will find it for you, Soupie. On the way to doing that just now I tracked back far enough to see an extract I'd posted from Carman's paper "On the inescapability of phenomenology," which I'm reposting here because it is relevant to the discussion today:

"from Taylor Carman, "On the Inescapability of Phenomenology":

"What are ‘sensorimotor contingencies’, after all, and what is it to ‘know’, ‘grasp’, or ‘master’ them? They are, according to O’Regan and Noë, ‘the structure of the rules governing the sensory changes produced by various motor actions’ (O’Regan and Noë 2001: 941). There is, they continue, ‘a lawful relation of dependence between visual stimulation and what we do’, and ‘our brains have extracted such laws’ (O’Regan and Noë 2001: 944). Again, O’Regan and Noë do not mean that we, or any other animals for that matter, have a theoretical grasp of rules or laws explicitly articulated in the form of propositions, but that ‘the animal, or its brain, must be “tuned to” these laws of sensorimotor contingencies. That is, the animal must be actively exercising its mastery of these laws’ (O’Regan and Noë 2001: 943).

I take it that, notwithstanding their talk of rules ‘governing’ sensorimotor interactions, O’Regan and Noë mean by ‘rule’ and ‘law’ something more like causal pattern or regularity. But this is crucial, for once we understand that the laws in question are mere regularities, and not intelligible forms or structures of experience with normative import for the agent, we see that, although the organism’s ‘mastery’ of them may be practical and nonpropositional, as opposed to theoretical and explicit, nevertheless what an agent thereby grasps is just a complex web of causal relations.

In this respect, I want to argue, the account is wrong—wrong phenomenologically, and so too therefore wrong at the personal level of description. The theory might be correct as an account of the neurological and ecological conditions that make perceptual experience possible. What it cannot account for, however, is the intentionality of perception, including above all the intentional aspects of our proprioceptive sense of ourselves and our bodies. Indeed, O’Regan and Noë might themselves be guilty of conflating the personal and the subpersonal, or the phenomenological and the neurological. Is it, after all, ‘the animal’ or ‘its brain’ that must be ‘tuned to’ the laws of sensorimotor contingency? If it is the brain or nervous system, then what O’Regan and Noë call its ‘grasp’ of those laws looks less like a form of understanding than simply an additional set of emerging regularities, namely the neurological processes induced or generated by the organism’s interaction with its environment. This is ‘understanding’ in an attenuated Humean sense, at best. If, however, it is the animal or agent as a whole that is supposed to respond to the sensorimotor contingencies, then it seems to me O’Regan and Noë have misdescribed the character of that responsiveness. More precisely, they describe it in such a way as to eliminate the normativity, hence the intentionality that, as I said at the outset, characterizes our grasp of the structures and contents of our own experience. . . .

". . . the kind of motivation suited to an account of the bodily structure of perception must be neither fully rational nor merely causal, but rather something intermediary between the two.¹⁶ Merleau-Ponty writes,

'the phenomenological notion of motivation is one of those ‘fluid’ concepts that must be formed if we want to get back to the phenomena.One phenomenon releases another, not by some objective efficacy, like that which links events in nature, but by the meaning it offers—there is a raison d’être that orients the flux of phenomena without being explicitly posited in any one of them, a sort of operant reason. (Merleau-Ponty 2002: 57)'" (pp.83-84)


Constance, Sep 16, 2015
#608
 
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This was a further extract I posted from the same paper and repost now for its clarity:

". . . It is not just that the environment presents me with sensory input that I know as a matter of fact to be correlated in various ways with the movements of my body, even granting that I master that fact in a skillful way without calculating or thinking about it propositionally. Rather, insofar as my environment is not just a structured domain of objects and relations with which I skillfully interact, but an intelligible world that I inhabit, it always confronts me with a field of possibilities and likewise imposes demands on me. A world qua world affords, invites, and facilitates, just as it obtrudes, resists, thwarts, eludes, and coerces. Things present themselves to me with positive and negative valence of all kinds, primordially and inextricably fused with my own bodily needs and capacities.¹⁷

This fusion is what Merleau-Ponty, following Heidegger, calls our ‘being in the world’ (être au monde). It is what he would later more colorfully describe as the ‘intertwining’ (entrelacs) or ‘chiasm’ of body and world, which always belong to one and the same ‘flesh’ (chair) (Merleau-Ponty 1968: ch. 4). The crucial point here is that our intertwinedness with the world is not just a ‘coupling’ of discrete things, say, sensory stimuli and bodily movements. Moreover, the difference is a phenomenological difference. That is, although the causal relation between our sensory systems and the environment may well involve precisely the sort of interconnections O’Regan and Noë describe, our intentional orientation in a meaningful world does not show up for us as a merely contingent interdependence of formally discrete elements. We experience our embeddedness in the world not as contingent but as necessary, indeed as definitive of us, for it constitutes not just what we can do and what will happen, but moreover what we need, hence what we must do."
 
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@Soupie, still looking for the link Steve posted to what can be learned about the deep structures of consciousness from studying recovery from anaesthesia. I've asked Steve to find it again if he can.

Meanwhile, I want to call attention again to the paper at this link, which I discovered through a link on the PubMed page at which the consciousness/anaesthesia article appears in full:

Information processing, computation, and cognition

I can probably find the link to the anaesthesia paper by going to the link I just set.
 
100% as predicted. This is a classic example of passive aggressive behavior: provoke and withdraw ..."
Actually, it really is fall here, and those are two of my favorite fall tunes, and I really don't see how I can make any further progress here at this time, and other things in my life really have taken priority. But given your comment, I'm sure you must have also predicted I would try to find something actually passive aggressive ... hmm ... Official funny stuff
 
Here's the paper you want, @Soupie:

Evolution of consciousness: Phylogeny, ontogeny, and emergence from general anesthesia
George A. Mashoura and Michael T. Alkireb,1

This article has been cited by other articles in PMC.

ABSTRACT
Are animals conscious? If so, when did consciousness evolve? We address these long-standing and essential questions using a modern neuroscientific approach that draws on diverse fields such as consciousness studies, evolutionary neurobiology, animal psychology, and anesthesiology. We propose that the stepwise emergence from general anesthesia can serve as a reproducible model to study the evolution of consciousness across various species and use current data from anesthesiology to shed light on the phylogeny of consciousness. Ultimately, we conclude that the neurobiological structure of the vertebrate central nervous system is evolutionarily ancient and highly conserved across species and that the basic neurophysiologic mechanisms supporting consciousness in humans are found at the earliest points of vertebrate brain evolution. Thus, in agreement with Darwin’s insight and the recent “Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness in Non-Human Animals,” a review of modern scientific data suggests that the differences between species in terms of the ability to experience the world is one of degree and not kind.

________

Evolutionary biology forms a cornerstone of the life sciences and thus the neurosciences, yet the emergence of consciousness during the timeline of evolution remains opaque. As the theory of evolution began to eclipse both religious explanations and Enlightenment doctrines regarding the singularity of human consciousness, it became clear that consciousness must have a point of emergence during evolution and that point likely occurred before Homo sapiens. “How,” Darwin questioned, “does consciousness commence?” His post-Beagle research on this question evidently caused him violent headaches. One such headache can be expressed as the 20th century philosophical distinction of phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness (1). Phenomenal consciousness relates solely to subjective experience, whereas access consciousness includes (among other processes) the ability to report such experiences verbally (other distinctions related to consciousness can be found in Table 1). Thus, the scientist looking for objective indices of subjective events is primarily limited to humans manifesting access consciousness, an obstacle in studying the evolution of consciousness antecedent to our species. We could, however, take solace in the dictum that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny and search for clues in developing humans. Unfortunately, Haeckel’s theory of recapitulation is not scientifically sound and, even if applicable in this case, we would still be constrained by the high probability that babies develop phenomenal consciousness before access consciousness. To overcome the limitations in identifying the birth of consciousness, we need a reproducible experimental model in which (i) consciousness emerges from unconsciousness at a discrete and measurable point, (ii) phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness are closely juxtaposed or collapsed, and (iii) assessment of neural structure and function is possible. In this article, we consider top-down and bottom-up approaches to consciousness, nonhuman consciousness, and the emergence of consciousness from general anesthesia as a model for the evolution of subjectivity.


Table 1.



The whole paper is available at this link:

Evolution of consciousness: Phylogeny, ontogeny, and emergence from general anesthesia
 
I'll go back and read your footnote 1 again. Leaving out the term 'introspective' from your phrase "subjective introspective consciousness" {for 'introspective voyages' surely don't take place before we begin to think in organized ways}, can you not see subjective experience germinating in the affectivity of primordial organisms as Panksepp observes it? Felt qualities of experience and an inchoate sense of self-reference and 'ownness' precede the evolution of reflection (in the evolution of species and in the individual organisms that constitute species, as in the individual human infant and child) and orient us toward -- and in their accumulations ground -- reflection and thinking.

This reminds me that you used the word 'mindfulness' in one of your posts today. Experience of ourselves in the world must be sensed, we must become acquainted with it, before we can become 'mindful' of it. What did you mean by using the term?
@Constance
"can you not see subjective experience germinating in the affectivity of primordial organisms as Panksepp observes it? "
? Can you not tell me by now?
 
Here's the paper you want, @Soupie:

Evolution of consciousness: Phylogeny, ontogeny, and emergence from general anesthesia
George A. Mashoura and Michael T. Alkireb,1

This article has been cited by other articles in PMC.

ABSTRACT
Are animals conscious? If so, when did consciousness evolve? We address these long-standing and essential questions using a modern neuroscientific approach that draws on diverse fields such as consciousness studies, evolutionary neurobiology, animal psychology, and anesthesiology. We propose that the stepwise emergence from general anesthesia can serve as a reproducible model to study the evolution of consciousness across various species and use current data from anesthesiology to shed light on the phylogeny of consciousness. Ultimately, we conclude that the neurobiological structure of the vertebrate central nervous system is evolutionarily ancient and highly conserved across species and that the basic neurophysiologic mechanisms supporting consciousness in humans are found at the earliest points of vertebrate brain evolution. Thus, in agreement with Darwin’s insight and the recent “Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness in Non-Human Animals,” a review of modern scientific data suggests that the differences between species in terms of the ability to experience the world is one of degree and not kind.

________

Evolutionary biology forms a cornerstone of the life sciences and thus the neurosciences, yet the emergence of consciousness during the timeline of evolution remains opaque. As the theory of evolution began to eclipse both religious explanations and Enlightenment doctrines regarding the singularity of human consciousness, it became clear that consciousness must have a point of emergence during evolution and that point likely occurred before Homo sapiens. “How,” Darwin questioned, “does consciousness commence?” His post-Beagle research on this question evidently caused him violent headaches. One such headache can be expressed as the 20th century philosophical distinction of phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness (1). Phenomenal consciousness relates solely to subjective experience, whereas access consciousness includes (among other processes) the ability to report such experiences verbally (other distinctions related to consciousness can be found in Table 1). Thus, the scientist looking for objective indices of subjective events is primarily limited to humans manifesting access consciousness, an obstacle in studying the evolution of consciousness antecedent to our species. We could, however, take solace in the dictum that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny and search for clues in developing humans. Unfortunately, Haeckel’s theory of recapitulation is not scientifically sound and, even if applicable in this case, we would still be constrained by the high probability that babies develop phenomenal consciousness before access consciousness. To overcome the limitations in identifying the birth of consciousness, we need a reproducible experimental model in which (i) consciousness emerges from unconsciousness at a discrete and measurable point, (ii) phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness are closely juxtaposed or collapsed, and (iii) assessment of neural structure and function is possible. In this article, we consider top-down and bottom-up approaches to consciousness, nonhuman consciousness, and the emergence of consciousness from general anesthesia as a model for the evolution of subjectivity.


Table 1.



The whole paper is available at this link:

Evolution of consciousness: Phylogeny, ontogeny, and emergence from general anesthesia
Thanks, but I've got that one. It's excellent. One of the clearest descriptions of what we know neurophysiologically about consciousness.

The paper I'm looking for is:

REM sleep and dreaming: towards a theory of protoconsciousness


The "rem" model of a consciousness is notes in the anesthesia paper. I think the above article articulates that theory.
 
I came across this whilst looking for something by Velmans:

Anthony I. Jack, hereinafter referred to as

AI Jack


A scientific case for conceptual dualism: The problem of consciousness and
the opposing domains hypothesis.

http://tonyjack.org/files/2013 Jack A scientific case for conceptual dualism (1).pdf

Has anyone else seen this? (notice his initials are A.I.)

Abstract
In recent years, a number of scientists and philosophers have suggested that the psychological and neural sciences provide support for, and are committed to, reductive physicalism – the view that all aspects of the mental are best explained by the physical processes of the brain. Here I suggest a different view. Emerging research in neuroscience and psychology suggests a dualism in human understanding. Our capacity for understanding physical processes appears to be in fundamental tension with our capacity for thinking about the inner mental states of others. In this essay, I first review evidence for a divide in our neural structure which maps onto thinking about minds versus thinking about the mechanical properties of bodies. This divide is intriguing; however it falls short of actually explaining why we perceive difficulties for integrating these two types of understanding.

I then introduce a bold hypothesis

– that our neural structure constrains our thinking in a way that limits our ability to integrate these two types of understanding.

This hypothesis was generated to explain one perceived problem, the apparent existence of an explanatory gap, and makes novel and falsifiable predictions. I then review behavioral and neuroscientific evidence which confirms these predictions and extends the model to address other related issues, including motivational factors associated with belief in ontological dualism. By demonstrating that this theoretical framework yields testable predictions, these findings lend support to the bold hypothesis. I conclude by exploring some theoretical and practical implications of the hypothesized dualism in human understanding.

Jack, A.I. (2013) A scientific case for conceptual dualism
 
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I came across this whilst looking for something by Velmans:


A scientific case for conceptual dualism: The problem of consciousness and
the opposing domains hypothesis.

http://tonyjack.org/files/2013 Jack A scientific case for conceptual dualism (1).pdf

Has anyone else seen this? (notice his initials are A.I.)

Abstract
In recent years, a number of scientists and philosophers have suggested that the psychological and neural sciences provide support for, and are committed to, reductive physicalism – the view that all aspects of the mental are best explained by the physical processes of the brain. Here I suggest a different view. Emerging research in neuroscience and psychology suggests a dualism in human understanding. Our capacity for understanding physical processes appears to be in fundamental tension with our capacity for thinking about the inner mental states of others. In this essay, I first review evidence for a divide in our neural structure which maps onto thinking about minds versus thinking about the mechanical properties of bodies. This divide is intriguing; however it falls short of actually explaining why we perceive difficulties for integrating these two types of understanding.

I then introduce a bold hypothesis

– that our neural structure constrains our thinking in a way that limits our ability to integrate these two types of understanding.

This hypothesis was generated to explain one perceived problem, the apparent existence of an explanatory gap, and makes novel and falsifiable predictions. I then review behavioral and neuroscientific evidence which confirms these predictions and extends the model to address other related issues, including motivational factors associated with belief in ontological dualism. By demonstrating that this theoretical framework yields testable predictions, these findings lend support to the bold hypothesis. I conclude by exploring some theoretical and practical implications of the hypothesized dualism in human understanding.

Jack, A.I. (2013) A scientific case for conceptual dualism
Is reductive physicalism the view that all aspects of the mental are best explained by the physical processes of the brain?
Nagel: "We have good grounds for believing that the mental supervenes on the physical -- i.e. that there is no mental difference without a physical difference. " He is not a reductionist
 
Is reductive physicalism the view that all aspects of the mental are best explained by the physical processes of the brain?

More than that - according to (source: the internet) it is a doctrine stating that everything in the world can be reduced down to its fundamental physical, or material, basis.
 
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