Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 11

[Constance]

Here is a pdf of another paper cited by @Pharoah's editor:

Kalevi Kull 2009. Biosemiotics: To Know, What Life Knows. Cybernetics and Human Knowing 16 (3/4): 81-88.

Abstract:
The field of semiotics is described as a general study of knowing. Knowing in a broad sense as a process that assumes (and includes) at least memory (together with heredity), anticipation, communication, meaningful information, and needs, is a distinctive feature of living systems. Sciences are distinguished accordingly into phi-sciences (that use physicalist methodology) and sigma-sciences (that use semiotic methodology). Jesper Hoffmeyer’s book Biosemiotics is viewed as an inquiry into the sigma-scientific approach to living systems.
Keywords: Biosemiotics, knowing, adaptation, Φ-sciences, Σ-sciences, Hoffmeyer

(PDF) Biosemiotics: To Know, What Life Knows. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233671346_Biosemiotics_To_Know_What_Life_Knows [accessed Aug 18 2018].

 

[Constance]

Here are some additional references offered by one of @Pharoah's reviewers:

References:
Cassirer, E. (1985). The philosophy of symbolic forms. vol 3.The phenomenology of knowledge. New York: Yale University Press.
Cassirer, E. (1996). The philosophy of symbolic forms, vol. 4. The Metaphysics of Symbolic Forms. New York: Yale University Press.
Ferreira, M. I. A. (2007). On Meaning: The phenomenon of Individuation and the Definition of a World view. University of Lisbon. Faculty of Arts. Lisbon. Portugal
Ferreira, Maria Isabel Aldinhas (2010). On Meaning: a biosemiotic approach. Biosemiotics 3. Springer. 107-130
Ferreira, Maria Isabel Aldinhas (2011). On Meaning: Individuation and Identity. Cambridge Scholars Publishers. England
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1968). The Visible and the Invisible. Northwestern University Press.

 

[Soupie]

Either 1) Dennett doesn't grok the hp, or 2) he assumes some type of strawsonian real materialism and just can't/doesn't convey it?

The following is the piece--which is actually a quote of another author--in Dennett's article which can be thunked of in a Strawsonian, Real Materialist way if you squint your eyes just right:

Facing up to the hard question of consciousness

"This is the conceptual scheme that we bring to internal representations, because it is the only one we have. But there is a huge difference. For external representations we can experience both medium and content, oil on canvas as well as people, trees, or whatever. But for internal representations, we do not experience the medium AT ALL. Only the content, along with some contextual features such as the time when the percept or imagining occurred. The idea of a spiritual consciousness arises from the illusion that we DO experience the medium of our internal representations, and that it is iconic.

…In short, we conceptualise the medium of our internal representations by abstracting some features from the content, and attributing them to some kind of spiritual or ghostly substance. That is the best we can do, because actually we cannot experience the medium at all and have to look for analogies in the external world. The idea that the medium is some state of the brain seems intuitively absurd, so powerful is the illusion that we are dealing with an iconic representation in a medium of spirit."

The problem with this, though, is that it's one thing to say that brain states just are the ground of consciousness. And the fact that some people, like perhaps Dennett, don't see a problem with making this claim does cause one to wonder if they simply don't (can't?) grok the HP. And thus it makes me wonder if they are a type of naive Real Materialist. Thus, they have no problem claiming that brain states are the ground of consciousness because a la Strawson, we don't know anything about matter that would suggest it couldn't be.

However, (raises finger) we do have the Combination Problem. I wonder if Dennett has ever tackled that problem? (Yes, I will google it haha.)

 

[smcder]

And yet brain-dead persons whose brain activity is being monitored and measured at 'zero' while they are being brought back to consciousness in emergency rooms remember the physicians and nurses who worked on them and details of their procedures. In one case in Europe, a man brought into an ER with his heart and brain activity shut down missed his dentures after he was eventually resuscitated. A few days later he encountered and recognized the nurse who had removed his dentures and placed them in the drawer of a nearby cart, preliminary to the resuscitation. She remembered doing so and led him to the cart, returning the dentures to him. There are numerous cases like this one, Randle. You really should read the NDE-consciousness literature before you make such sweeping claims.




Right.



No, I wouldn't, and haven't, said that, or the other thing about consciousness 'oozing from the brain like bile from the liver'. The hard problem of consciousness as Chalmers identified it still sits there blinking at us. It is a problem constituted for us by our experience of both subjectivity and mind.

@Soupie ... without Googling, can you say who did make this analogy?

 

[Randall]

And yet brain-dead persons whose brain activity is being monitored and measured at 'zero' while they are being brought back to consciousness in emergency rooms remember the physicians and nurses who worked on them and details of their procedures. In one case in Europe, a man brought into an ER with his heart and brain activity shut down missed his dentures after he was eventually resuscitated. A few days later he encountered and recognized the nurse who had removed his dentures and placed them in the drawer of a nearby cart, preliminary to the resuscitation. She remembered doing so and led him to the cart, returning the dentures to him. There are numerous cases like this one, Randle. You really should read the NDE-consciousness literature before you make such sweeping claims.

Your assumption that I haven't read about NDEs is incorrect, and it's a bit much to expect that I should know in advance what specific case you were going to mention, or for that matter that I should be able to recall the details of every case I've run across. However let's have a closer look at this one to see how well your assumptions about it stand up: https://netwerknde.nl/wp-content/uploads/jndsdentureman.pdf

The first thing we notice is that the report doesn't say the patient was brain dead. It describes the patient as "clinically dead", which is entirely different, and the criteria for clinical death vary from one jurisdiction to another. No EEG was applied but visual cues gave good cause to believe that the patient's heart had stopped and therefore no blood was getting to the brain when he arrived at the OR. Note however that no mention is made whether the ambulance crew attempted any resuscitation, however it's not unreasonable to expect that it was attempted.

At any rate, heart massage and resuscitation was begun at the hospital and it was only after that had been happening for some length of time that the patient experienced the OOBE, meaning that at the point when the OOBE happened, blood circulation was being delivered to the patient's brain. Prior to this the patient never reported an OOBE, e.g. floating above his body while lying outside in the field.

The above factors change the face of your original claim substantially. But they don't change the validity of the original point I'd made, which was that all cases of such stories are relayed after the fact by a conscious person with a functioning brain. Another factor to consider is that the brain doesn't instantly decompose into an incoherent mass when circulation ceases. It remains intact with a lot of potential happening below the surface that even an EEG cannot detect. You might want to refer to the interview I posted with Michael Persinger: Philosophy, Science, and the Unexplained

So for the record, the "sweeping claim" I've made appears to remain intact, while your example, although interesting, apparently doesn't. I thought that by now you might have caught on, but a gentle reminder that in the future, perhaps rather than making comments of a personal nature, you might make more of an effort to check your claims against the evidence and avoid making unfounded assumptions?

 

[smcder]

The following is the piece--which is actually a quote of another author--in Dennett's article which can be thunked of in a Strawsonian, Real Materialist way if you squint your eyes just right:

Facing up to the hard question of consciousness

"This is the conceptual scheme that we bring to internal representations, because it is the only one we have. But there is a huge difference. For external representations we can experience both medium and content, oil on canvas as well as people, trees, or whatever. But for internal representations, we do not experience the medium AT ALL. Only the content, along with some contextual features such as the time when the percept or imagining occurred. The idea of a spiritual consciousness arises from the illusion that we DO experience the medium of our internal representations, and that it is iconic.

…In short, we conceptualise the medium of our internal representations by abstracting some features from the content, and attributing them to some kind of spiritual or ghostly substance. That is the best we can do, because actually we cannot experience the medium at all and have to look for analogies in the external world. The idea that the medium is some state of the brain seems intuitively absurd, so powerful is the illusion that we are dealing with an iconic representation in a medium of spirit."

The problem with this, though, is that it's one thing to say that brain states just are the ground of consciousness. And the fact that some people, like perhaps Dennett, don't see a problem with making this claim does cause one to wonder if they simply don't (can't?) grok the HP. And thus it makes me wonder if they are a type of naive Real Materialist. Thus, they have no problem claiming that brain states are the ground of consciousness because a la Strawson, we don't know anything about matter that would suggest it couldn't be.

However, (raises finger) we do have the Combination Problem. I wonder if Dennett has ever tackled that problem? (Yes, I will google it haha.)

I think he gets it. He is at GOM status right now. In 20 yes it'll be Chalmers' turn. That should be fun!

Daniel Dennett: 'You can make Aristotle look like a flaming idiot'

I think he's fine (Dennett) but he's overall maybe too tied to a popular audience and too tied to what we know now. But that's GOM stuff...hard to avoid.

 

[Soupie]

@Soupie ... without Googling, can you say who did make this analogy?

I think I first read it with Searle. (Not saying he was arguing for this, though.)

 

[smcder]

I think I first read it with Searle. (Not saying he was arguing for this, though.)

I was surprised to learn:

Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis (according to Wikipedia), Frenchman, physiologist, pilosopher and early proponent of evolution, on or before May 5, 1808...which shows how long these ideas have been around.

 

[Soupie]

No, I wouldn't, and haven't, said that, or the other thing about consciousness 'oozing from the brain like bile from the liver'. The hard problem of consciousness as Chalmers identified it still sits there blinking at us. It is a problem constituted for us by our experience of both subjectivity and mind.

You're right. Sorry, that was an oversimplification. I only meant to highlight that you and @USI Calgary believe that consciousness originates in/at/within/from the body as something (ontologically) new in nature.

 

[Soupie]

I'm a dozen or so slides into this. Good overview/history.

https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~jfkihlstrom/ConsciousnessWeb/LectureIllustrations/mindbody3.pdf

 

[Soupie]

Indeed, as I outlined in previous posts, neuroscience has identified a number of regions that appear to be intimately associated with consciousness, not the least of which is the thalamocortical loop. The other issue is the nature of the term "transducer", which is something that converts one type of energy into another, and the evidence strongly suggests that if we consider sensory stimuli to be one form of energy, and consciousness as another form of energy, that the brain is instrumental in the process of converting one to the other, and therefore the label of transducer appears to be rather apt.

As noted above, Dennet is not arguing that consciousness—subjective experience—does not originate with brain activity.

He is arguing that there is no double transduction; he is arguing against dualism via emergence.

He argues that there is a transduction that takes place in the brain. Namely that environmental stimuli are 'transduced' into neural representations. He is claiming (if I read correctly [ @smcder? ] ) that there is an ontological identity between physical neural activity and the representations they constitute (such as the phenomena color green).

This is in direct contradiction to the view I understand you to hold that there is a double transduction:

Environmental stimuli transduced to (1) neural signals, which are then transduced to (2) consciousness.

Dennet doesn't argue against a double transduction on mechanical grounds—there is plenty of literature out there presenting the problems with weak and strong emergence.

Rather he argues against it on the grounds that thinking there is a double transduction is a mistake and it's not necessary.

Rather than suggesting that brain activity produces an ontologically new substance (which we call consciousness) he argues that brain activity constitutes representations, and it is these representations we refer to as consciousness.

I think this makes a lot of simple sense. Especially if we consider that double transduction just kicks the can down the road.

If consciousness is representational, then the double transduction just delays things.

For ex:

Environmental stimuli X (<FROG>) is transduced by the nervous system into neural activity X1 (a representation of a frog).

The double transducers (may) say brain activity X1 can't be consciousness because neural activity doesn't look like the representation as experienced from the 1st person perspective, the frog.

So, the double-transducers say there must be another transduction: from brain activity X1, something that looks like a green frog (and the rest of the phenomenal field) must spring from this neural activity, something we call consciousness.

It's not enough, they say, to say that neural activity constitutes a representation of a green frog; rather, a new substance that is iconically like a green frog must spring from the brain.

One of the many problems with this view that I like to point out is that even if there were such a double transduction—a substance that springs from brain activity that just is the perception of a frog—if we tried to observe this objectively, our perception of it would be a representation of this substance—and therefore, would not look like the consciousness substance either. So we'd be right back in the same boat that leads some to double transduction in the first place.

In other words, whatever consciousness is, it won't appear the way that we subjectively experience it.

Therefore, the fact that brain activity looks nothing like the experience of a green frog is no grounds to argue that brain activity doesn't constitute the experience of a green frog.

Having said all this, having finished Dennett's most recent article, he still doesn't account for the existence of phenomenal consciousness.

I largely agree with his argument against double transduction. I agree that brain activity can constitute 1st person representations.

I agree with Dennett that it's a mistake to expect consciousness to perceptually resemble its content.

Thus, the process that constitutes the experience of a green frog needn't—itself—look anything like the experience of green frog.

Ergo, the fact that brain activity doesn't look like the representational experiences it grounds is no reason to posit another transduction into a medium that does look like the representation.

There is a problem though: Dennett seems to be arguing that a non-phenomenal medium—physical brain activity—can ground phenomenal representations.

So I think Dennett is correct to say that brain activity needn't resemble the representations it constitutes, but I think it's problematic to suggest that a non-phenomenal system (the brain) can ground phenomenal representations.

My approach to this concern is along the lines of Strawson. Namely that it's a mistaken presupposition to suggest that brains are non-phenomal.

I suppose that Dennett would say perceptual representations are not truly phenomenal; and thus there is no reason to call for their ground (the perceptual system) to be phenomenal.

The fact that conscious representations seem phenomenal is itself the product of the perceptual system (the brain).

 

[Randall]

As noted above, Dennet is not arguing that consciousness—subjective experience—does not originate with brain activity.

Perhaps. It seems to hinge on how one interprets the meaning of the term qualia.

He is arguing that there is no double transduction; he is arguing against dualism via emergence.

That certainly appears to be the case. Although I suppose it's possible that he must also recognize that it happens anyway, but just doesn't know how the brain does it, and has used references to specific parts as his explanation for why he thinks it isn't happening.

He argues that there is a transduction that takes place in the brain. Namely that environmental stimuli are 'transduced' into neural representations. He is claiming (if I read correctly [ @smcder? ] ) that there is an ontological identity between physical neural activity and the representations they constitute (such as the phenomena color green).

That may be the case, but if it is, then it seems self-contradictory ( to me ) while it's not ( to him ), in which case I'm not sure if we can reconcile the issue without his direct input. But we can certainly try.

This is in direct contradiction to the view I understand you to hold that there is a double transduction: Environmental stimuli transduced to (1) neural signals, which are then transduced to (2) consciousness.

I would suggest that rather than a linear transduction that there is a simultaneous one. In other words it's not happening after the action takes place in the neurons, but as the action is taking place.

Dennet doesn't argue against a double transduction on mechanical grounds—there is plenty of literature out there presenting the problems with weak and strong emergence. Rather he argues against it on the grounds that thinking there is a double transduction is a mistake and it's not necessary.

If it is happening concurrently then there is no "double" transduction taking place. The entire process happens in a single step. However I'm not sure what Dennet would have to say about that.

Rather than suggesting that brain activity produces an ontologically new substance (which we call consciousness) he argues that brain activity constitutes representations, and it is these representations we refer to as consciousness.

That would seem to hinge on what we mean by the word "substance" e.g. Is a magnetic field a "substance"? I'll dig into the rest of your post later. It's very thoughtfully presented. In the meantime the above should provide some nuances to reflect on.

 

[Soupie]

Perhaps. It seems to hinge on how one interprets the meaning of the term qualia.

From the above article: "So, there is no place in the system for qualia, if they are conceived of as intrinsic properties instantiated by (as contrasted with represented by) some activities in the nervous system."

According to Google, instantiate can be defined as "represent as" so your guess is as good as mine as to the difference between the nervous system instantiating versus representing qualia. :shrug:

I suppose it's possible that he must also recognize that it happens anyway, but just doesn't know how the brain does it, and has used references to specific parts as his explanation for why he thinks it isn't happening.

He makes it pretty clear that he's not a dualist and that he doesn't believe there is a double transduction; it's all neural activity.

That may be the case, but if it is, then it seems self-contradictory ( to me ) while it's not ( to him ), in which case I'm not sure if we can reconcile the issue without his direct input. But we can certainly try.

I don't disagree that it seems contradictory on the face of it. But, if you could outline what you find to be contradictory, I can try to respond.

He seems to be aware of how hard it is to grok: "The idea that the medium is some state of the brain seems intuitively absurd, so powerful is the illusion that we are dealing with an iconic representation in a medium of spirit."

I would suggest that rather than a linear transduction that there is a simultaneous one. In other words it's not happening after the action takes place in the neurons, but as the action is taking place.

Interesting.

If it is happening concurrently then there is no "double" transduction taking place. The entire process happens in a single step. However I'm not sure what Dennet would have to say about that.

I'm not sure what Dennett would say, but it seems that it would indeed still be a double transduction.

1. Environmental stimuli - photon strikes the eye
2.a. transduced into neural activity
2.b. transduced into consciousness

Why would an organism need both, I wonder? Neural activity and consciousness?

That would seem to hinge on what we mean by the word "substance" e.g. Is a magnetic field a "substance"? I'll dig into the rest of your post later. It's very thoughtfully presented. In the meantime the above should provide some nuances to reflect on.

I've been meaning to ask you, what is a field?

 

[smcder]

Maybe there is nothing it is like to be Dan Dennett.

Knock knock
Who's there?

Eliminativist.

Eliminativist who?

Knock knock ...

 

[Randall]

I'm not sure what Dennett would say, but it seems that it would indeed still be a double transduction.

1. Environmental stimuli - photon strikes the eye
2.a. transduced into neural activity
2.b. transduced into consciousness

In the above set the phrase the "double transduction" ( 2.b. ) is something that is assumed to happen independently of "neural activity", however that particular view hinges upon what we mean by both phrases. So let's have a closer look. Right away we could say that a "double transduction" is taking place because neuronal activity isn't simply one thing, it's at least two ( electrical and chemical ), plus as with all forms of electricity there are associated EM fields, which could be considered a third type of "transduction". There is no reasonable scientific debate about these particular facts that I'm aware of. So why should it be so preposterous to propose that consciousness arises from it as well, particularly when it appears to be self-evident to any conscious being that the phenomenon exists ( at least for them )?

Why would an organism need both, I wonder? Neural activity and consciousness?

It seems that without neural activity we get no motor control, and motor control appears to be essential for the survival of most creatures. So neural activity appears to be a given whether consciousness is involved or not. Hypothetically an organism could evolve a purely reflexive autonomic ( non-conscious ) stimulus response and survive. We are in fact made-up at least in part, of such components. What seems to have happened with the rest is that by sheer virtue of neuronal design and function, we also got the ingredients needed for consciousness, which became a very efficient way of dealing with sensory input, which led to a great advantage in terms of survival.

I've been meaning to ask you, what is a field?

There are different ways to define a field. I'm not a mathematician, but the way they illustrate it is here: Field (physics) - Wikipedia. If I were to describe it broadly in layman's terms I'd simply call that sort of field a region of influence. So in the case of magnetism, a magnetic field is delineated by its region of influence and described by its strength and origin, e.g. The Earth has a very powerful magentic field. Naturally the word "influence" can also have different interpretive contexts, especially with respect to consciousness, and I suspect that's where a lot of the conflation that causes the confusion takes place.

As an aside, this might be a good time to point out that if consciousness isn't an emergent phenomena associated primarily with a functioning human brain, but is as some suggest, something independent or nonlocal, then that doesn't simplify or solve any of the problems. It just moves the same problems outside the skull where there's no reasonable explanation, leaving only faith in some sort of magic or mysticism.

 

[Soupie]

In the above set the phrase the "double transduction" ( 2.b. ) is something that is assumed to happen independently of "neural activity", however that particular view hinges upon what we mean by both phrases. So let's have a closer look. Right away we could say that a "double transduction" is taking place because neuronal activity isn't simply one thing, it's at least two ( electrical and chemical ), plus as with all forms of electricity there are associated EM fields, which could be considered a third type of "transduction". There is no reasonable scientific debate about these particular facts that I'm aware of. So why should it be so preposterous to propose that consciousness arises from it as well, particularly when it appears to be self-evident to any conscious being that the phenomenon exists ( at least for them )?

The double transduction refers to a transduction to a non-brain state substrate. So far, there is no known/identified consciousness substance that emanates from the brain, so claiming there is, for various reasons, is controversial.

It seems that without neural activity we get no motor control, and motor control appears to be essential for the survival of most creatures. So neural activity appears to be a given whether consciousness is involved or not. Hypothetically an organism could evolve a purely reflexive autonomic ( non-conscious ) stimulus response and survive. We are in fact made-up at least in part, of such components. What seems to have happened with the rest is that by sheer virtue of neuronal design and function, we also got the ingredients needed for consciousness, which became a very efficient way of dealing with sensory input, which led to a great advantage in terms of survival.

How does consciousness deal with sensory input in a way that is advantageous to survival? What work does it do? As far as I can tell, physiological processes do all the work.

(You still seem to be under the impression that consciousness is a purely objective phenomena; it's not.

We will never be able to observe our own or another persons consciousness objectively.

That's why the work consciousness does appears to be physiological processes.

We can keep looking for an emergent nonphysical processes but we will just keep finding physiological processes.)

There are different ways to define a field. I'm not a mathematician, but the way they illustrate it is here: Field (physics) - Wikipedia. If I were to describe it broadly in layman's terms I'd simply call that sort of field a region of influence. So in the case of magnetism, a magnetic field is delineated by its region of influence and described by its strength and origin, e.g. The Earth has a very powerful magentic field. Naturally the word "influence" can also have different interpretive contexts, especially with respect to consciousness, and I suspect that's where a lot of the conflation that causes the confusion takes place.

What are some properties that you think fields and consciousness share?

As an aside, this might be a good time to point out that if consciousness isn't an emergent phenomena associated primarily with a functioning human brain, but is as some suggest, something independent or nonlocal, then that doesn't simplify or solve any of the problems. It just moves the same problems outside the skull where there's no reasonable explanation, leaving only faith in some sort of magic or mysticism.

And if consciousness is representations constituted by brain activity, it avoids all the troubles with emergence, dualism, and mental causation.

 

[Soupie]

Switching between objective and subjective, or sub-personal and personal modes of description is complex. On the one hand they seem inseparable—without subjective consciousness there would be no objective science—and personal processes seem undergirded by sub-personal processes—but on the other hand, we can't account for subjective consciousness in objective, scientific terms. Why not?

I think the answer is somewhere in the following excerpts:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6074080/pdf/rstb20170342.pdf

"We know that our perceptions or imaginings of trees, faces, etc. are distinct from the objects themselves. They are internal representations, representations in our minds.

We understand the concept of representation from external rep- resentations, such as pictures, or verbal descriptions. For these representations we can have direct experience of both a represen- ter (e.g. portrait painting) and a representee (e.g. the person painted). Call these the medium and the content. Thus for the Mona Lisa, the medium is a painting that hangs in the Louvre; the content is an Italian woman who modelled for the artist cen- turies ago. Medium and content may have attributes in common, if the representation is iconic (as they say in Semiotics). Oval partly-brown patches in the painting resemble the oval brown eyes of the Italian lady. But usually medium and content are of different stuff: oil on canvas, in the case of the Mona Lisa, as against human flesh. And in many cases the representation is symbolic, so that medium and content share no features.

This is the conceptual scheme that we bring to internal represen- tations, because it is the only one we have. But there is a huge difference. For external representations we can experience both medium and content, oil on canvas as well as people, trees, or whatever. But for internal representations, we do not experience the medium AT ALL. Only the content, along with some contex- tual features such as the time when the percept or imagining occurred. The idea of a spiritual consciousness arises from the illusion that we DO experience the medium of our internal representations, and that it is iconic.

...In short, we conceptualise the medium of our internal rep- resentations by abstracting some features from the content, and attributing them to some kind of spiritual or ghostly substance. That is the best we can do, because actually we cannot experience the medium at all and have to look for analogies in the external world. The idea that the medium is some state of the brain seems intuitively absurd, so powerful is the illusion that we are dealing with an iconic representation in a medium of spirit."

The biosemiotics of emergent properties

"There seems to be an ambiguity in the biosemiotic sign concept which appears when the general Peircean sign notion (which may apply to basic endosemiotic processes within single cells such as molecular recognition) is brought together with the Uexküllian almost phenomenological idea of signs in an organism's subjectively experienced umwelt. The latter has some affinity to the vernacular notion of a sign as a consciously experienced event with a particular meaning ("that sound was a crucial sign to me to be more careful"). The ambiguity is that between on the one hand the sign conceived as something that can be determined from without (e.g., a triadic relation that we as scientists can discover in, say, a bacterium or in the nervous system of a humming bird, such as the sign functions realized by the neuropeptides of the neurons' synapses) and, on the other hand, the sign as something that is experienced directly (e.g., my perception of the sound of a bullet ricocheting from the wall beside me; or the humming bird's perception of the sweet smell of honey). In direct experience we are tempted to say that it is experienced `from within' which is in some sense right -- we are here dealing with the qualitative aspects of the semiotic function -- and in another sense wrong, because in direct experience we are suspended in signs, there is no inside or outside, only the `thisness' or `here and now' of the signifying event (haecceity). However, this ambiguity is not one between an `objective' peircean sign notion and a `subjective' Uexküllian one, because Peirce's general sign concept is not tied to be either objective or subjective; its triadic structure encompasses firstness (the qualisign) and thus has a phenomenal dimension, as well as the referential and the functional (final cause) dimensions. Rather, the ambiguity derives from the biosemiotic attempt to combine science and semiotics, that is, the use (e.g., in Hoffmeyer 1996) of scientific descriptions originally framed in the `objective' language of detached observers (observing, e.g., the neuropeptides of humming birds or the swarm behavior of ants, or brain cells, or whatever) transposed to a semiotic frame of description in which subjective qualitative experience are either the very focus of investigation (as in von Uexküll's Umwelt research) or a kind of presupposed phaneroscopic ground for the sign concept (in Peirce). We will not worry long about the metaphysical aspects of this problem, let us here just pragmatically say that this ambiguity may simply appear as a demarcation problem and an observation problem: First, how to identify, among the totality of signs which simply acts (biofunctionally) as part of the total endo- and exosemiotic process of an organism, those ones that passes above the threshold of experiential quality (or awareness, attention, etc.) and thus enter in the realm of the organism's umwelt? Second, how to observe (by some kind of participatory empathy?) the umwelt experienced by other species? (for some answers to the later problem, see Cariani 1998 and Kawade 1998). After all, it may not be so strange that, using objective methods of neurophysiology and ethology, we can establish that a bat's umwelt is based on a kind of sonar system, but we can never experience its umwelt. Similarly, by for instance PET scanning we have access to a lot of non-conscious semiosis in a human's brain which never enter into that human's umwelt."

 

[Soupie]

@USI Calgary is this how you conceive of the theoretical consciousness field emanating from the brain?

Everything in nature is made of atoms except for the Consciousness Field that emenates from the human brain—bringing with it colors, smells, textures, sounds, feelings, which can't be reduced to atoms?

Will we ever be able to observe the consciousness field emanating from a person's brain? If it's objectively real, we should? We should be able to see little trees, flowers, and suns inside a person's consciousness field, right?



*The pink things are the perception of the person's arms and hands.

 

[Randall]

The double transduction refers to a transduction to a non-brain state substrate. So far, there is no known/identified consciousness substance that emanates from the brain, so claiming there is, for various reasons, is controversial.

Yes, that is the big point of contention, but I think a lot of that has to do with not being clear on the contextual nuances between the physical makeup of a structure and and the properties of the structure as a whole. For example, personality could in theory be nothing more than specific behavioral patterns run by sheer mechanical processes, and yet one would never be able to look at the mechanical processes under a microscope and see personality any more than we can see someone's consciousness by looking at brain cells.

So with consciousness it may be the case that the physical component is the various measurable EM fields associated with brain function, but that unless those particular fields belong to us, we cannot experience them as consciousness because they require an intimate coupling with a host brain. EM fields are very strange things when one tries to get a definitive grasp of what exactly they're made of. In the past I've posted a couple of videos that get into theories such as "virtual particles". To me this idea seems to hold promise because of the work of Michael Persinger who has used EM fields to elicit various experiential phenomena in human test subjects.

How does consciousness deal with sensory input in a way that is advantageous to survival? What work does it do? As far as I can tell, physiological processes do all the work.

This is less mysterious than it seems. Just consider for a moment our various experiences resulting from sensory stimuli. Survival requires the our environment to be in a specific temperature range or else we'll either burn or freeze. Our experience of heat and cold guides us very efficiently to find a comfortably warm environment. Our experience of touch and taste help us to identify what is edible. Our experience of pleasure and beauty attracts us to our mates. The experience of consciousness makes very short work of identifying patterns that are useful for survival. These are all like shortcuts that would otherwise seem to require a whole other set of material processors to deal with as effectively. Consciousness is sort of like our brain's "virtual machine".

(You still seem to be under the impression that consciousness is a purely objective phenomena; it's not.

Not sure how I managed to impart to you that I think consciousness is a purely objective phenomena because I've consistently said that there are objective and subjective realities, and that the subjective ones represent our conscious experience. Perhaps you weren't seeing the contextual nuances I'd mentioned above. There is ( IMO ) a dualistic nature to consciousness, 1.) the physical nature and 2.) the experiential nature.

We will never be able to observe our own or another persons consciousness objectively.

That seems self-evident. We might however someday be able to experience it subjectively .

That's why the work consciousness does appears to be physiological processes. We can keep looking for an emergent nonphysical processes but we will just keep finding physiological processes.)

You seem to be using "physiological" in the same sense as I'm using "physical", in which case there logically must be that aspect of consciousness. @marduk made that point quite some time ago and expressed it in a way that makes perfect sense ( to me anyway ). At the same time, there is an experiential context, which is the "what it's like" part of the phenomenon.

What are some properties that you think fields and consciousness share?

As described in the way I look at fields earlier, consciousness as a field would encompass a region of influence and be subject to the physical conditions which facilitate its emergence. I wouldn't be surprised to find that it has some mathematically describable properties, like its strength being inversely proportional to the square of the distance from it's source, and that proximity to it's source is required for effective functioning.

And if consciousness is representations constituted by brain activity, it avoids all the troubles with emergence, dualism, and mental causation.

I guess that depends on how you're defining "brain activity". It seems to me that consciousness is as much a part of the system as a whole as it is a phenomenon unto itself. I don't have a problem accepting that. Lot's of systems are made up of interdependent parts and phenomena. Again I defer to the simple light bulb and electromagnet. Tired as you may be of those metaphors, they remain salient to the discussion because no counterpoint has yet been provided that nullifies their relevance to the question at hand ( only to certain individuals who are tired of hearing them . )

 

[Randall]

Will we ever be able to observe the consciousness field emanating from a person's brain? If it's objectively real, we should? We should be able to see little trees, flowers, and suns inside a person's consciousness field, right?

In the interview with Michael Persinger I posted in the Philosophy, Science, and the Unexplained thread, he mentions how he had two subjects connected via computer and EM transceivers, and when a flashlight was shone at one, the other experienced some sort of visual persception that seemed to be associated with it. The suggestion there is that EM fields are the responsible carrier, but to get clear resolution would require many more transceivers ( presumably roughly equivalent to the number of synapses involved in clear visual perception ). If that were possible we might be able to create a direct brain to brain Matrix like experience, in which case we could literally see in our own minds what is going on in someone else's.

Decades ago I remember commenting to my budy in the band I was in that someday they'd be able to create an echo machine that didn't use a tape loop by developing some sort of electronic circuit that stored and relayed the signal. He said it seemed impossible. A Matrix like interface should be possible, but there would be a lot of challenges to overcome. In the end however it may not be possible. We still don't know enough yet. My feeling about it is that the brain is too complex to accommodate the required neural sensors without seriously disrupting function. But with the right nanotechnology, who knows for sure?