Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 9

[Constance]

Has anyone ever told you you have fabulous taste in music? I hit the play button, sit back with a cup of tea, read through your posts, and it becomes a whole other experience.

Glad you like the music.

Something I'm wondering, if you might feel like commenting, with respect to the NDE episode from CBC's Ideas that I posted for you. There's the interpretation that the experience represents some sort of perceptual experience that is independent of the person's material brain, to the extent that it doesn't need a brain at all to have the experience. There's no explanation for how that is possible, but setting that aside for the moment, and assuming that is the case, why do you think that normally we are unable to have that experience at will?

Can you link me to that post? I've haven't been here much lately and must have missed it. Re your last question about being able to 'will' such experiences, I have no answer to offer. But many people, do have extraordinary experiences as vivid as NDEs while not close to death (mystics, for example), and others have mind-altering experiences opening to other realities while not taking psychedelics. Somewhere on the internet there is a site describing numerous such extraordinary experiences had by scientists.

It seems to me that if disembodied consciousness is our default, that embodied consciousness would be unnecessary and pointless, just a long sequence of material needs and physical and mental suffering that most of us would want to avoid.

Reincarnation research by Ian Stevenson and others, and also past-life regression therapy, suggest that core consciousness continues to exist in between embodied lifetimes. That might just be the way it is.

Is there some sort of mechanism that locks us into this embodied state that can be unlocked with psychedelics or Persinger's God Helmet? Is the hallucination the reality? Or what is going on when people have these same kinds of experiences while healthy and alive? Are they literally seeing into this other realm? How might we know?

I don't know. But combined with the evidence from mediumship, psi, and spontaneous OBEs, the above types of experiences strongly suggest to me that consciousness is nonlocal as well as local.

 

[smcder]

How should neuroscience study emotions? by distinguishing emotion states, concepts, and experiences | Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience | Oxford Academic

Rate your position. Which applies to emotions? Indicated are my own (blue), my take on Lisa Barrett’s (Barrett, 2006; Wilson-Mendenhall et al., 2011) (pink) and my take on Jaak Panksepp’s (1998) (gray), to provide three different views (any errors are of course mine). Many of the terms have unclear meanings, and the figure is intended only to give a rough starting point for discussions, not to quantify theoretical frameworks. Lisa saw a prior version of this figure and sent some corrections to my original take on her view. My original depictions of her positions are indicated by circles; the corrected positions from Lisa are denoted by triangles.

 

[smcder]

How should neuroscience study emotions? by distinguishing emotion states, concepts, and experiences | Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience | Oxford Academic

Affective neuroscience, and cognitive neuroscience more generally, requires a close interplay between the vocabularies and frameworks of two different scientific disciplines: psychology and neuroscience. When they study emotions, these two disciplines are trying to describe the same states or processes (I use these terms interchangeably here), but often on the basis of different kinds of data, methods, and theories. Some views suppose one discipline has priority over the other, often that neuroscience trumps psychology: if we can’t find evidence for a psychological construct from brain data, then the psychologists were wrong about that construct.44

• I want to resist such a view, in large part because we really have very little idea about how to interpret neuroscience data,

so whatever evidence it does or does not provide for a psychological theory should be considered extremely preliminary. So while I believe that emotions are brain states, I also believe that we need to begin by understanding them as psychological states.

 

[smcder]

What Are Emotions, Even?

“The only thing certain in the emotion field is that no one agrees on how to define emotion,” Alan Fridlund, an associate professor of psychological and brain sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara, wrote to me in an email. Many modern articles on the topic start off by referencing “What Is An Emotion?”, an 1884 article by the influential psychologist William James, and go on to bemoan that science has still not answered that question. If a researcher does propose a working definition in a study, it’s unlikely that anyone but the author will use it or agree with it. The author might be categorizing emotions based on behaviors, physiological responses, feelings, thoughts, or any combination thereof.

Classics in the History of Psychology -- James (1884)

 

[smcder]

The pleasure and cognitive phenomenology of reading James ...

"In the earlier books on Expression, written mostly from the artistic point of view, the signs of emotion visible from without were the only ones taken account of. Sir Charles Bell's celebrated Anatomy of Expression noticed the respiratory changes; and Bain's and Darwin's treatises went more thoroughly still into the study of the visceral factors involved,- changes in the functioning of glands and muscles, and in that of the circulatory apparatus. But not even a Darwin has exhaustively enumerated all the bodily affections characteristic of any one of the standard emotions. More and more, as physiology advances, we begin to discern how almost infinitely numerous and subtle they must be. The researches of Mosso with the plethysmograph have shown that not only the heart, but the entire circulatory system, forms a sort of sounding-board, which every change of our consciousness, however slight, may make reverberate. Hardly a sensation comes to us without sending waves of [p.192] alternate constriction and dilatation down the arteries of our arms. The blood-vessels of the abdomen act reciprocally with those of the more outward parts. The bladder and bowels, the glands of the mouth, throat, and skin, and the liver, are known to be affected gravely in certain severe emotions, and are unquestionably affected transiently when the emotions are of a lighter sort. That the heart-beats and the rhythm of breathing play a leading part in all emotions whatsoever, is a matter too notorious for proof.

*And what is really equally prominent, but less likely to be admitted until special attention is drawn to the fact, is the continuous co-operation of the voluntary muscles in our emotional states. Even when no change of outward attitude is produced, their inward tension alters to suit each varying mood, and is felt as a difference of tone or of strain. In depression the flexors tend to prevail; in elation or belligerent excitement the extensors take the lead. And the various permutations and combinations of which these organic activities are susceptible, make it abstractly possible that no shade of emotion, however slight, should be without a bodily reverberation as unique, when taken in its totality, as is the mental mood itself."

 

[smcder]

How should neuroscience study emotions? by distinguishing emotion states, concepts, and experiences | Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience | Oxford Academic

Rate your position. Which applies to emotions? Indicated are my own (blue), my take on Lisa Barrett’s (Barrett, 2006; Wilson-Mendenhall et al., 2011) (pink) and my take on Jaak Panksepp’s (1998) (gray), to provide three different views (any errors are of course mine). Many of the terms have unclear meanings, and the figure is intended only to give a rough starting point for discussions, not to quantify theoretical frameworks. Lisa saw a prior version of this figure and sent some corrections to my original take on her view. My original depictions of her positions are indicated by circles; the corrected positions from Lisa are denoted by triangles.

What interests me about the conflicting work by Barrett and Panksepp is that it's a case of being able to see a (possible) paradigm shift in science.

There are a number of articles by Panksepp and Barrett critiquing each other's work - a back and forth scientific "he said/she said" - the above article shows the range between Barrett and Panksepp's views and the ground in between and importantly seeks a starting point on the different ways we experience and interpret and talk about emotions which has clinical/therapeutic and philosophic implication. I think we'll see a lot of work and growth in this field. It seems to me the various human abilities to experience and interpret and manage emotions has to be taken into account and explored in the science and this article addresses that -

I picture early progress in a new field as a kind of wavering line - damped oscillations - swinging one way and another, correcting excesses but converging over time ... and ideal version of this:




... much messier in real life!

 

[smcder]

Of Mice and Men: Natural Kinds of Emotions in the Mammalian Brain? A Response to Panksepp and Izard

"For almost 5 decades, the scientific study of emotion has been guided by the assumption that categories such as anger, sadness, and fear cut nature at its joints. Barrett (2006a) provided a comprehensive review of the empirical evidence from the study of emotion in humans and concluded that this assumption has outlived its usefulness. Panksepp and Izard have written lengthy papers (published in this issue) containing complementary but largely nonoverlapping criticisms of Barrett (2006a). In our response, we address three of their concerns. First, we discuss the value of correlational versus experimental studies for evaluating the natural-kind model of emotion and refute the claim that the evidence offered in Barrett (2006a) was merely correlational. Second, we take up the issue of whether or not there is evidence for “coherently organized neural circuits” for natural kinds of emotions in the mammalian brain and counter the claim that Barrett (2006a) ignored crucial evidence for existence of discrete emotions as natural kinds. Third, we address Panksepp and Izard’s misconceptions of an alternative view, the conceptual act model of emotion, that was briefly discussed in Barrett (2006a). Finally, we end the article with some thoughts on how to move the scientific study of emotion beyond the debate over whether or not emotions are natural kinds."

This seems to me a good starting point - next we'd need to look at Panksepp and others response to this article, but this seems crucial to me:

Second, we take up the issue of whether or not there is evidence for “coherently organized neural circuits” for natural kinds of emotions in the mammalian brain and counter the claim that Barrett (2006a) ignored crucial evidence for existence of discrete emotions as natural kinds. Third, we address Panksepp and Izard’s misconceptions of an alternative view, the conceptual act model of emotion, that was briefly discussed in Barrett (2006a). Finally, we end the article with some thoughts on how to move the scientific study of emotion beyond the debate over whether or not emotions are natural kinds."

... these early "debates" then, I think, called forth the latest papers which seem to recognize and call for clear defintions and clear delineations of the subject matter -

 

[smcder]

What Are Emotions, Even?

"According to Ekman, the evidence for universality is “extremely strong and robust, statistically.” In a meta-analysis of similar photo-matching experiments, people across cultures were able to correctly categorize emotion expressions an average of 58 percent of the time—higher for some emotions, lower for others. That is significantly greater than chance. The question is, is it enough?"

Barrett swings wide on the other side ...

"As Barrett sees it, emotions are totally made up. Not that they aren’t meaningful—it’s just that words like “joy,” “shame,” and “rage” describe a whole host of complex processes in the brain and the body that aren’t necessarily related. We’ve just lumped some of these things together, and named them. She compares the concept of emotion to the concept of money.

“The only thing that holds that category together is that humans agree,” she says. “Currency exists because we all agree something can be traded for material goods. Because we agree, it has value. One of the remarkable things humans can do that no other animal can do is that we can make stuff up and make it real. We can create reality.”

Ekman pioneered work in "micro-expressions" which we've also looked at and was the basis for a television show "Lie to Me" a while back but which was also controversial as to its effectiveness.

"But for the most part, it’s Ekman’s fundamental idea—that emotions are the same for all humans across cultures—that tends to provoke the most criticism. Decades before either Barrett or Russell criticized his model, he was catching flak from the famous anthropologist Margaret Mead, who believed emotions were a product of culture. “[Mead] treated me rather shoddily,” Ekman says. In a 1975 issue of The Journal of Communication, Mead wrote a disparaging review of Ekman’s book Darwin and Facial Expression, calling it “an example of the appalling state of the human sciences.”

The article goes on to explore the various problems in methodologies and the assumptions made on each side and is a good summary of the problems in studying something as complex as human emotion - especially something that seems to involve pretty much everything involved in "being human".

 

[smcder]

"LeDoux, the NYU neuroscientist, is somewhere in the middle. He thinks responses to stimuli are hardwired into the brain, which lines up with Ekman and Panksepp. But like Barrett, he thinks that the conscious brain and the analysis that goes on there are necessary for the experience of emotion. By this logic, since we can’t know what animals are experiencing, there’s no way to know if animals have emotions.

He emphasizes the role human consciousness plays in studying things like emotion. (What consciousness is, and how it works, is a whole other contentious question.) “In physics, it doesn’t matter whether people believe the sun rises or not,” he says. “That has no impact on the movements of the planets and stars. Whereas in psychology, people’s ideas about how the mind works influence the subject matter. Our folk psychology, in other words, can’t be divorced from the science.”

 

[Soupie]

Edit: I would replace "conscious agents" with consciousness, being, or pure experience.

I'm not sure it makes sense to say that "consciousness, being or pure experience" is all that's required to explain behavior. Or even to talk about pure experience - is there such a thing as "pure behavior"? consciousness, being and experience are defined in terms of other concepts - I think you need something like Conscious Agents and as soon as you do, you have an abstraction that is going to get modeled and will then look a lot like conscious agents or neurons (mathematically). There's just a basic structure that has to be there to account for reality, I think that's what Hoffman's theory may show us - except that's where physics already is - trying to offer the simplest abstract model of reality.

I'm not sure where to jump into, so I'll just do so here.

Of course "consciousness" is not all that's needed to explain behavior. But you know that's not what I'm suggesting. We're obviously very deep into this discussion of consciousness, so I'm disheartened by this tact.

You keep pulling Hoffman's CAs into the discussion which is fine but I've no interest in them at this point.

What I've repeatedly said is that what is of interest is that consciousness (feeling) is primary in relation to matter.

The mainstream conception of consciousness (feeling) is that it emerges from neural processes. As has been well beat to death in this thread, such a position faces one with the Hard Problem.

An alternative view is that consciousness (feeling) does not emerge from neural processes, but is in fact more primary than neural processes.

My assertion is that existence and consciousness (feeling) are one and the same.

Again, my main focus is on how this existence/consciousness relates to matter.

I don't want to invent yet another new term to refer to this conception of consciousness (feeling), but on the other hand I realize that using the common term consciousness will lead to confusion.

We're so used to thinking of feeling as something that emerges from neural processes that it's difficult to grok how it could be the substrate of which neural processes consist.

Indeed, the notion that consciousness (feeling) can even be a substrate like matter or energy will be a none starter for many. Again, because they conceive of feeling as something which emerges from neural processes.

The other critic you've had @smcder is how structures could form within such a consciousness-as-substrate.

But dualists must answer the same question. If consciousness is an ontologically distinct substance from matter, how does it form into such structures as emotions, thoughts, perceptions, etc? What properties allow this non-physical substrate to evolve and differentiate?

My answer is that this consciousness-as-substrate does have properties that allow it to self-interact.

You might object that as soon as I assert that this consciousness-as-substrate has properties which allow it to evolve and differentiate that I am materializing it.

But I think as I've shown with the dualist example, the fact that consciousness can evolve, change, and differentiate is self-evident.

A physicalist will want to identify physical mechanisms to explain this quality of the mind.

My response would be to say that the perceived physical mechanisms correlated with the stream of consciousness or merely perceptual representiations of more fundamental mechanisms/processes taking place within the consciousness-as-substrate.

I'm not sure how a dualist would explain the changing stream of consciousness.

Your retort that this is a just-so story until empirical evidence is presented is valid. But one response is that we don't have any reason for accepting the alternative view: that feeling is a property that emerges from physical processes. In fact, given it a HP, we have reason to doubt this view.

 

[Constance]

Classics in the History of Psychology -- James (1884)

Thanks so much for providing the link to this penetrating paper by James -- and also for the many additional links, extracts from papers, and commentaries you've provided in your current posts. I think that all the sources and references you've brought in need to be read and contemplated in our discussions here.

The James paper you linked reminds me of WS's statement that "the spirit comes from the body of the world," in which Stevens meant 'spirit' in the same sense as Schopenhauer's concept of 'Will' (or perhaps 'desire' arising from sensed or felt 'need') at or as the germinating core of consciousness. I think that we know by now that the roots of emotion, of feeling, are in the body, and are strengthened or weakened, functional or dysfunctional, depending on their nurturance and support early in life -- indeed by the 'emotional intelligence' that somehow evolved in the primates that preceded us. I like James's phrase "organic sounding-board" to refer to the necessary access to the bodily springs of emotion in order that the individual consciousness can thrive and find 'satisfactions' {one of Whitehead's key terms} of needs (not merely survival) in existence. I think the basic question concerns the motivations for the activities of life, of living beings, in an environing, obviously actual, world.

It increasingly appears that the brain itself is emotional -- and why wouldn't it be, since it evolves within bodies that sense and feel their subjective existence far back in primordial evolution. The 'emotional brain' is now a subject of intense investigation by neuroscientists. Here is a relevant paper:

Seven Glimpses into the Emotional Brain


Now, if we come to understand the nature of feeling (sensation and need) as generated with life, and how these capacities influence the development of brains, we still have an immensely long way to go in understanding the nature of our own species' development of consciousness and mind. For we are motivated not only by what we feel emotionally but also by what we think. If we follow this thread of inquiry we must turn to the history of philosophy of mind and psychology, to the problems of ego [influenced and shaped by social and cultural pressures] and of the 'spirit' by which we transcend our individual desires in the interests of others, indeed of life itself recognized as needful. So in time we should take up Sartre's The Transcendence of the Ego:

"The Transcendence of the Ego: An Existentialist Theory of Consciousness
By Jean Paul Sartre | Go to book overview
Save to active project

For most philosophers the ego is an "inhabitant" of consciousness. Some affirm its formal presence at the heart of Erlebnisse, as an empty principle of unification. Others--psychologists for the most part--claim to discover its material presence, as the center of desires and acts, in each moment of our psychic life. We should like to show here that the ego is neither formally nor materially in consciousness: it is outside, in the world. It is a being of the world, like the ego of another."

 

[Constance]

@Soupie, your last post does a good job of clarifying your hypothesis. Can you verify whether the substitutions I highlight in blue below clarify the meaning of the selected sentences?

My response would be to say that the perceived physical mechanisms correlated with the stream of consciousness or [are?] merely perceptual representiations of more fundamental mechanisms/processes taking place within the consciousness-as-substrate.

I'm not sure how a dualist would explain the changing stream of consciousness.

Your retort that this is a just-so story until empirical evidence is presented is valid. But one response is that we don't have any reason for accepting the alternative view: that feeling is a property that emerges from physical processes. In fact, given it a [the?] HP, we have reason to doubt this view.

Thanks.

 

[Randall]

Glad you like the music. Can you link me to that post? I've haven't been here much lately and must have missed it.

It's over on the mars video thread. I just dropped there because I happened to have it handy and saw you there. Just look in your replies to that thread and you'll find it. Or Google it. CBC Ideas NDE.

 

[Randall]

I didn't see it at the time you posted it but followed the link and watched it just now. No, I don't like it. I don't think that dogs and other domesticated animals can be made to feel guilt, but they can easily be made to feel very bad by their people, as we see with these two dogs. I think that kind of human behavior toward animals is inexcusable.

What do you mean by "made to feel guilt"? Are you differentiating that from them simply feeling guilt as a result of their own actions and expressing it in outward behavior when confronted with the evidence of something they've done wrong?

 

[smcder]

An alternative view is that consciousness (feeling) does not emerge from neural processes, but is in fact more primary than neural processes.

• 
  
  My assertion is that existence and consciousness (feeling) are one and the same.

(feeling) could be the substrate of which neural processes consist.

Indeed, the notion that consciousness (feeling) can even be a substrate like matter or energy

There is a cluster of terms or concepts that may be at work here: substrate, emergence, illusion and identity that it might be helpful if you could clarify their use in terms of the relationship between consciousness(feeling) and matter in your view?

 

[smcder]

The other critic you've had @smcder is how structures could form within such a consciousness-as-substrate.

It's a question, the critique lies in the lack of an answer ... ;-) It seems to me exactly the same problem (meaning it is just as hard) as the hard problem - how do you get matter from mind? For you, is getting matter from mind easier than getting mind from matter?

But dualists must answer the same question. If consciousness is an ontologically distinct substance from matter, how does it form into such structures as emotions, thoughts, perceptions, etc? What properties allow this non-physical substrate to evolve and differentiate?

It's no answer to note that some other view can't answer the question either! ;-)

"consciousness is an ontologically distinct substance from matter" - that describes "substance dualism" and I think that's a fairly rare position among contemporary philosophers - so that would be interesting to look at what they would say.

A physicalist that sees consciousness as emergent and epiphenomenal would not say consciousness is ontologically distinct, nor would an identity theorist - so the properties of consciousness would "follow" or just would be the material properties - as brain states change, mental states change.

My answer is that this consciousness-as-substrate does have properties that allow it to self-interact.

The question was "how?"

You might object that as soon as I assert that this consciousness-as-substrate has properties which allow it to evolve and differentiate that I am materializing it.

Maybe you are "substance"-izing it.

But I think as I've shown with the dualist example, the fact that consciousness can evolve, change, and differentiate is self-evident.

What isn't self-evident is whether consciousness is something distinct from the physical - either as all that there is, or existing as a substance alongside the physical.

A physicalist will want to identify physical mechanisms to explain this quality of the mind.

My response would be to say that the perceived physical mechanisms correlated with the stream of consciousness or merely perceptual representiations of more fundamental mechanisms/processes taking place within the consciousness-as-substrate.

The fact that you can always say that, makes it intellectually unsatisfying for some.

Your retort that this is a just-so story until empirical evidence is presented is valid. But one response is that we don't have any reason for accepting the alternative view: that feeling is a property that emerges from physical processes. In fact, given it a HP, we have reason to doubt this view.

I agree! So why chose one view over another if both seem to face equally difficult problems? You don't have to take a view, you could say that no view is currently adequate.

 

[smcder]

Thanks so much for providing the link to this penetrating paper by James -- and also for the many additional links, extracts from papers, and commentaries you've provided in your current posts. I think that all the sources and references you've brought in need to be read and contemplated in our discussions here.

The James paper you linked reminds me of WS's statement that "the spirit comes from the body of the world," in which Stevens meant 'spirit' in the same sense as Schopenhauer's concept of 'Will' (or perhaps 'desire' arising from sensed or felt 'need') at or as the germinating core of consciousness. I think that we know by now that the roots of emotion, of feeling, are in the body, and are strengthened or weakened, functional or dysfunctional, depending on their nurturance and support early in life -- indeed by the 'emotional intelligence' that somehow evolved in the primates that preceded us. I like James's phrase "organic sounding-board" to refer to the necessary access to the bodily springs of emotion in order that the individual consciousness can thrive and find 'satisfactions' {one of Whitehead's key terms} of needs (not merely survival) in existence. I think the basic question concerns the motivations for the activities of life, of living beings, in an environing, obviously actual, world.

It increasingly appears that the brain itself is emotional -- and why wouldn't it be, since it evolves within bodies that sense and feel their subjective existence far back in primordial evolution. The 'emotional brain' is now a subject of intense investigation by neuroscientists. Here is a relevant paper:

Seven Glimpses into the Emotional Brain


Now, if we come to understand the nature of feeling (sensation and need) as generated with life, and how these capacities influence the development of brains, we still have an immensely long way to go in understanding the nature of our own species' development of consciousness and mind. For we are motivated not only by what we feel emotionally but also by what we think. If we follow this thread of inquiry we must turn to the history of philosophy of mind and psychology, to the problems of ego [influenced and shaped by social and cultural pressures] and of the 'spirit' by which we transcend our individual desires in the interests of others, indeed of life itself recognized as needful. So in time we should take up Sartre's The Transcendence of the Ego:

"The Transcendence of the Ego: An Existentialist Theory of Consciousness
By Jean Paul Sartre | Go to book overview
Save to active project

For most philosophers the ego is an "inhabitant" of consciousness. Some affirm its formal presence at the heart of Erlebnisse, as an empty principle of unification. Others--psychologists for the most part--claim to discover its material presence, as the center of desires and acts, in each moment of our psychic life. We should like to show here that the ego is neither formally nor materially in consciousness: it is outside, in the world. It is a being of the world, like the ego of another."

"The James paper you linked reminds me of WS's statement that "the spirit comes from the body of the world," in which Stevens meant 'spirit' in the same sense as Schopenhauer's concept of 'Will' (or perhaps 'desire' arising from sensed or felt 'need') at or as the germinating core of consciousness. I think that we know by now that the roots of emotion, of feeling, are in the body, and are strengthened or weakened, functional or dysfunctional, depending on their nurturance and support early in life -- indeed by the 'emotional intelligence' that somehow evolved in the primates that preceded us. I like James's phrase "organic sounding-board" to refer to the necessary access to the bodily springs of emotion in order that the individual consciousness can thrive and find 'satisfactions' {one of Whitehead's key terms} of needs (not merely survival) in existence. I think the basic question concerns the motivations for the activities of life, of living beings, in an environing, obviously actual, world."

"Now, if we come to understand the nature of feeling (sensation and need) as generated with life, and how these capacities influence the development of brains, we still have an immensely long way to go in understanding the nature of our own species' development of consciousness and mind. For we are motivated not only by what we feel emotionally but also by what we think. If we follow this thread of inquiry we must turn to the history of philosophy of mind and psychology, to the problems of ego [influenced and shaped by social and cultural pressures] and of the 'spirit' by which we transcend our individual desires in the interests of others, indeed of life itself recognized as needful. So in time we should take up Sartre's The Transcendence of the Ego:"

Beautifully said @Constance - a reminder that our philosophy has consequence and that we are responsible for how we think about ourselves, with what we shall do with our minds - to paraphrase Malabou's statement. It seems to me that the very capacity to ask about our limits and abilities itself means that can never finally assert to what extent our actions are determined or specify what the limits are of our ability to "transcend our individual desires in the interests of others, indeed of life itself recognized as needful" - this defines our freedom and our responsibility.

 

[Soupie]

There is a cluster of terms or concepts that may be at work here: substrate, emergence, illusion and identity that it might be helpful if you could clarify their use in terms of the relationship between consciousness (feeling) and matter in your view?

Substrate: a substance or layer that underlies something, or on which some process occurs, ... (Google)

When I refer to consciousness (feeling) as a substrate, I mean it in the sense above, as a layer that underlies the processes of mind and mind-independent processes that we perceive.

Emergence is not a term that is central to my argument, except to say that consciousness-as-substrate must have properties that allow complex processes to emerge within it.

Often the concept of emergence is invoked to explain how consciousness (feeling) could be a property of physical processes. I'm not making that argument.

Illusion, like emergence, is not a term that is central to my argument. What is central to my argument is the role perspective plays in the challenge of understanding how consciousness relates to matter (which I will refer to as the Mind Body Problem [MBP]).

Perspective: a particular attitude toward or way of regarding something; a point of view. (Google)

All perception involves such perspective. When an organism perceives a stimulus, the relationship is X & X1, where X is the stimulus and X1 is the corresponding state of the organism.

There will always be a dissociation between the stimulus and the corresponding state of the organism. They are not identical.

Rather than refer to this relationship as an illusion, we can refer to is as a matter of perspective.

For example, given stimulus X, two different perceiving organisms will assume two different corresponding states, say, X1 and X2.

Thus, each organism will have a unique perspective on any given stimulus. Even a brief review of the literature outlining the physiological state changes associated with perception will provide one with a sense of their immense complexity.

Identity. This one is very tricky because it is a conceptually loaded term. So, I will try clarify here what I mean when I argue that the organism and the mind are "identical."

Imagine that you--a perceiving organism--perceive three objects (stimuli). Let's refer to these three objects as X, Y, and Z. As outlined above, the process of perception involves you--the organism--undergoing state changes as you perceive each of these three objects. Your state changes will correspond with each of these objects, allowing you to perceive them.

However, since we know that there remains a dissociation between each of the corresponding state changes and the objects themselves, we know that your perceptions will be perspectival.

X & X1
Y & Y1
Z & Z1

Let's imagine that X is actually a banana. What we need to understand is that our perception 'banana" is not identical to the corresponding stimulus in front of us in mind-independent reality. There remains the dissociation noted above. And again, as noted, different organisms will have different perspectives on stimulus X.

Let's imagine that Y is actually a flower. Our perception of Y as a 'flower' will differ from a butterfly's perception of Y. There really is stimulus Y out there in mind-independent reality, but there will remain a dissociation between our's and the butterfly's perceptions of stimulus Y.

Now, what if I say that when a human perceives stimulus Z they see a human. We know there is a dissociation between stimulus Z and our perception 'human.' Stimulus Z and the perception 'human' are not identical.

A 'human' is merely our human perspective on stimulus Z. What is stimulus Z? Stimulus Z is the mind.

What I am suggesting is that the Mind Body Problem is a problem of perspective, not ontology.

The mind and body seem to be two distinct "things" only because when we perceive the mind, we see a body.

The body is the mind viewed from the 3rd-person perspective.

The other critic you've had @smcder is how structures could form within such a consciousness-as-substrate.

It's a question, the critique lies in the lack of an answer ... ;-) It seems to me exactly the same problem (meaning it is just as hard) as the hard problem - how do you get matter from mind? For you, is getting matter from mind easier than getting mind from matter?

Yes, getting matter from consciousness-as-substrate is easier than getting consciousness (feeling) from matter.

How do you get matter from mind?

The answer is that we already do. All 3rd person knowledge comes directly through 1st-person experience (and intersubjective experience).

Said differently: How the mind (consciousness) relates to the body (matter) is an open question, but it is a fact to say that matter is only ever known within (a) the mind.

In other words, we already know that consciousness can contain matter.

Another response is that while consciousness-as-substrate just is feeling, that does not mean that consciousness-as-substrate doesn't have other properties or that other properties cannot or do not emerge from consciousness-as-substrate.

Again, the MBP is an open question. However, via introspection, we know that consciousness (aka the stream of consciousness) is diverse, dynamic, structured, patterned, and differentiated.

So it is self-evident that consciousness (and therefore my theoretical consciousness-as-substrate) is not homogeneous.

Therefore, consciousness (no matter its relation to the body) must have properties which allow it to be heterogenous.

My answer is that this consciousness-as-substrate does have properties that allow it to self-interact.

The question was "how?"

I can't answer that question. But as outlined above, it seems that consciousness (feeling) does indeed have properties that allow it to differentiate.

To answer this question "how," researches will need to continue using the scientific method coupled with phenomenology, while continuing to tease apart (as far as we are able) mind-dependent properties and mind-independent properties.

You might object that as soon as I assert that this consciousness-as-substrate has properties which allow it to evolve and differentiate that I am materializing it.

Maybe you are "substance"-izing it.

Due to the differentiated nature of the mind, it's logical to deduce that consciousness has properties which allow such differentiation.

A physicalist will want to identify physical mechanisms to explain this quality of the mind.

My response would be to say that the perceived physical mechanisms correlated with the stream of consciousness or merely perceptual representiations of more fundamental mechanisms/processes taking place within the consciousness-as-substrate.

The fact that you can always say that, makes it intellectually unsatisfying for some.

I agree. I will continue to think of ways of empirically testing this hypothesis. Obviously, that's going to be problematic considering we can't even empirically prove that anyone is conscious.

Your retort that this is a just-so story until empirical evidence is presented is valid. But one response is that we don't have any reason for accepting the alternative view: that feeling is a property that emerges from physical processes. In fact, given it a HP, we have reason to doubt this view.

I agree! So why chose one view over another if both seem to face equally difficult problems? You don't have to take a view, you could say that no view is currently adequate.

I agree that no view is currently adequate. However, the above view seems to me to have the most going for it at the moment.

 

[Constance]

[quoting @Soupie] "My response would be to say that the perceived physical mechanisms correlated with the stream of consciousness are merely perceptual representations of more fundamental mechanisms/processes taking place within the consciousness-as-substrate."

The fact that you can always say that, makes it intellectually unsatisfying for some.

We need to take note of @Soupie's use of the term 'representation' {and of its extension in the phrase 'perceptual representation'} and submit the term/concept 'representation' to a critique: how can 're-presentation' of anything take place except on the basis of a prior 'presentation' of that thing to the consciousness that is subsequently capable of 're-presenting' it?

"Your retort that this is a just-so story until empirical evidence is presented is valid. But one response is that we don't have any reason for accepting the alternative view: that feeling is a property that emerges from physical processes. In fact, given the HP, we have reason to doubt this view."

I agree! So why chose one view over another if both seem to face equally difficult problems? You don't have to take a view, you could say that no view is currently adequate.

Indeed, neither Idealism nor Physicalism can alone constitute the grounds for an ontology that takes account of, recognizes, what we and other animals experience transactually as beings in the world. @Soupie asserts that 'we don't have any reason for accepting the view that feeling is a property that emerges from physical processes. In fact, given the HP, we have reason to doubt this view'. I think, on the contrary, that we have many reasons to accept the view that 'feeling' -- sensation, awareness, and sentience -- emerge and evolve with life from formerly evolved and apparently unconscious, nonsentient, physical processes in the history of the universe.

I have to add that I too find the idea of panpsychism attractive. It might be the case that all physical processes forming what we consciously understand as our local 'universe' possess some germinal form of 'preconsciousness' that our understanding and knowledge cannot reach intellectually. If so, our own 'lived world' {shared with and lived by many types and forms of embodied consciousness in the animal and even the plant 'kingdoms'} might be a part or particle of a boundless World beyond our boundaries or any planetary boundaries, existing in what might be the Mind of God. In MP's philosophy, all living creatures "sing the world," each in and from their own experience of, perspective on and within, this selfsame planetary ecology. Many people throughout our species' history' have reported spiritual/paranormal experiences of revelation of a wider and deeper reality beyond that which is visible to most of us. It seems that we must attempt to work out our ontologies from the grounds of what we experience, and recognize that all such ontologies will be at best partial.

 

[Constance]

...continuing from the above post:

The philosophy that best examines and interrogates the nature of lived experience as we know it (and recognize it in other living creatures) is phenomenology, and it seems to me that @Soupie is rearticulating the major propositions expressed over the history of philosophy that led [by virtue of their dead ends] to the development of phenomenological philosophy. I think that at this point @Soupie will/would find the major works of the phenomenologists to respond to many of his questions.

ETA: I recommend MP's Phenomenology of Perception as likely the best book to take up first. I recommend this work based on the following extract from @Soupie's post today:

"All perception involves such perspective. When an organism perceives a stimulus, the relationship is X & X1, where X is the stimulus and X1 is the corresponding state of the organism.

There will always be a dissociation between the stimulus and the corresponding state of the organism. They are not identical.

Rather than refer to this relationship as an illusion, we can refer to is as a matter of perspective.

For example, given stimulus X, two different perceiving organisms will assume two different corresponding states, say, X1 and X2.

Thus, each organism will have a unique perspective on any given stimulus. Even a brief review of the literature outlining the physiological state changes associated with perception will provide one with a sense of their immense complexity."

I want to respond to this sentence in particular:

"There will always be a dissociation between the stimulus and the corresponding state of the organism. They are not identical."

I think 'dissociation' is a misleading term/concept for what is instead a difference between that which is phenomenally encountered [the elusive ding an sich] and the embodied consciousnesses that encounter things in the world from and through the affordances and capabilities of their own perspective(s) on them. 'Perspectives' must be plural since each living organism capable of motion encounters given things in its environment from a variety of achieved perspectives on them, by moving around them and sensing [in its naturally given sensorium] aspects of these things. Similarly we humans "multiply our perspectives" [MP] on the things and gestalts we encounter, both individually and in company with human others sharing the same environment and attempting together to make sense of the world. It also seems apparent that other creatures {bees, birds, dolphins, wolves, beavers to name a few} somehow communicate among those in their social groups knowledge of aspects of the local worlds in which they exist and thrive together. WS has a line in one of his poems referring to individual minds as constituting awareness "in which hundreds of eyes see at once." We have no idea of, only suggestions about, the degree to which consciousness in living beings is both individual and collective.