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Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 10
- Thread starter Gene Steinberg
- Start date
- Status
smcder
Paranormal Adept
Constance, your position as clarified above is that consciousness/mind strongly emerges from life processes as an ontologically new and distinct entity. And that once emerged, evolves and unfolds presumably along side the physical but according to its own, non-physical processes. Though he may deny it, I think Smcder has an affinity for this non-local approach as well. However, please don't project this view onto my approach as that will create confusion for you.)
Non-local?
Strong emergence:
case 1: the emergent mind has no downward causal power, is "epiphenomenal" this is compatible with physicalism but is hard to distinguish from weak emergence.
case 2: the emergent mind has downward causal power, the problem here is denial of causal closure under physics - but we need that physics for the emergent mind in the first place. "interactionist dualism" - how can an "ontologically new and distinct entity" arising from an equally fundamental matter turn around and have causal efficacy over that from which it arose ... arose determinedly from a specific arrangement of that matter?
So yes, I deny it.
Last edited:
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
@Constance @smcder
Okay, my use of nonlocal seems to have created confusion. I'm not finding a definitive definition on the interwebs.
What I meant to capture with the term was the idea that the mind and body where only loosely related; that the mind can and does exist in the absence of the body; that the mind is not located (non local) at the body.
If this is not how the term is usually meant, then the confusion is on my part.
To clarify my approach: I do think that consciousness (feeling) is non local, but creature minds are "located" at the body. The mind and body are ontologically identical on my approach, only seeming to be distinct due to the nature of perception.
Okay, my use of nonlocal seems to have created confusion. I'm not finding a definitive definition on the interwebs.
What I meant to capture with the term was the idea that the mind and body where only loosely related; that the mind can and does exist in the absence of the body; that the mind is not located (non local) at the body.
If this is not how the term is usually meant, then the confusion is on my part.
To clarify my approach: I do think that consciousness (feeling) is non local, but creature minds are "located" at the body. The mind and body are ontologically identical on my approach, only seeming to be distinct due to the nature of perception.
smcder
Paranormal Adept
The meaning of "nonlocal" is irrelevant to my argument above.
@Soupie writes:
Okay, my use of nonlocal seems to have created confusion. I'm not finding a definitive definition on the interwebs.
Where did you find this definition of "nonlocal"?
What I meant to capture with the term was the idea that the mind and body where only loosely related; that the mind can and does exist in the absence of the body; that the mind is not located (non local) at the body.
...
If this is not how the term is usually meant, then the confusion is on my part.
Well, the fact that there is no "definitive definition" on the internet is evidence that there is not a "how" that this term is usually meant.
Last edited:
smcder
Paranormal Adept
From the above, you still seem to have the problem of "subjectless experience".
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
The whole "there must be a subject of experience" argument is admittedly lost on me (so, I need to read/think more about it) but on Itay Shani's model, the ocean of consciousness itself is the ultimate subject of experience.
smcder
Paranormal Adept
The whole "there must be a subject of experience" argument is admittedly lost on me.
That admission is helpful. (Set aside the ocean of consciousness for now.)
If you say that "there must be a subject of experience" is lost on you - do you mean that there can be, that it is possible to have experience without a subject?
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
To me, it seems conceivable for there to be qualitative feels sans a subject. Calling such subjectless qualitative feels "experiences" then would make little sense.
It is only when a qualitative feel is experienced by a subject that we refer to it as an experience.
If one is arguing that there cannot be qualitative feels without a subject when one says that there cannot be subjectless experience, then I don't follow. However, if one is merely saying that qualitative feels should not be called experiences in the absence of a subject, then I agree.
My current view is that the sense of being a subject is a qualitative feel itself.
Vittorio Gallese, The Inner Sense of Action:
Agency and Motor Representations
"I: Introduction.
We live in a meaningful world. Our capacity to deal with the ‘external world’ is constituted by the possibility of modifying the world by means of our actions; by the possibility of representing the world as an objective reality; and by the possibility of experiencing phenomenally this same objective reality, from a situated, self-conscious perspective. It is tempting to address these different articulations of the sense of ‘being related to the world’, of our intentional relation to the world, by using different languages, different methods of investigations, perhaps even different ontologies.
In the present paper I will start to explore the possibility of reconciling some of these different articulations of intentionality from a neurobiological perspective. I will confine my analysis to the relationship between agency and representation and I will show how representation is intrinsically related to action control. To that purpose, I will present a new account of action, arguing against what is still commonly held as its proper definition, namely the final outcome of a cascade-like process that starts from the analysis of sensory data, incorporates the result of decision processes, and ends up with responses (actions) to externally- or internally-generated stimuli. I will argue against this account of action by presenting and discussing recent findings from the investigation of neural mechanisms that are at the basis of sensorimotor integration. It will become clear that the so-called ‘motor functions’ of the nervous system not only provide the means to control and execute action but also to represent it. Actually, following this view, action control and action representation become two sides of the same coin.
One of the advantages of this approach is its empirical testability. If the results of this analysis turn out to be correct, we have, as philosophical pay-off, the possibility of overcoming the dichotomy between functional and semantic properties, by showing that causal properties are content properties. The neurophysiological and neuropsychological data that will be presented in the following sections provide preliminary, but very encouraging, evidence pointing in this direction. In sum, the overall goal of the present paper will be to convince the reader that — using the results of neuroscientific investigation as tools — representation can be naturalized.
II: Hierarchies: From Neurons to Behaviour.
Neuroscience, being part of the biological sciences, should share with them an evolutionary and monist1 foundational perspective. There is only one reality, organized — and therefore describable — along multiple levels of complexity. Each of these different levels of organization can be decomposed into other levels that are simpler, or at the very least endowed with different functional characterizations. The pay-off of this deconstructivist approach, when guiding empirical research, is that we can more easily trace an evolutionary path connecting all levels. Filling in the evolutionary mosaic of brain functions increases the heuristic power of our strategy of enquiry. Each of these different organizational levels requires an appropriate descriptive language. Which is therefore the appropriate level of enquiry of neuroscience?2
It is commonly held that we can devise a hierarchical model of the brain/mind in which we distinguish levels characterized by increasing complexity. Each of these levels of description (for example, ions, ion channel–receptor, neuron–synapse, neural assemblies–cortical circuits, brain–behaviour, cognition–consciousness) presupposes the possibility to delimit a system, characterized by principles of organization and functional mechanisms that can be defined as proper to that system. Each level of this hierarchy contains elements that we find also at the next ‘higher’ level, but framed within a more complex architectural and functional design. Our hierarchy is supposed to be topped by a level describing what is considered the distinctive hallmark of mankind: culture.
There is indeed an intuitive incommensurability when comparing the intrinsic features of levels of description such as neuron, behaviour, and experience. Neuro-science so far has almost exclusively explored the relation between neurons and behaviour, leaving any account of experience in the hands of philosophers. Let us focus first on the first of these levels, that of the neuron.
According to the classic neuroscientific model, each living organism is located within fields of energy — electromagnetic, mechanical and chemical energy. All these different forms of energy constitute the stimuli (visual, auditory, somatosensory, and the like) to which every organism is exposed. Energetic ‘stimuli’ are translated, or better, transduced into a common code; the action potentials of nerve cells. Action potentials express the electrochemical excitability of cells and constitute the ‘language’ spoken by the billions of neurons that make up the central nervous system. The receptors of the different sensory modalities are the agents of the transduction process: they translate the different types of energy into the common code of action potentials. This code is truly common; sensory pathways that, through receptors, receive information from the so-called ‘external world’, share the same code with motor pathways that, through different intermediate steps, activate neuro-muscular junctions that, in turn, determine3 our movements. (Following this line of argument one could object that nothing really prevents this common code from also ‘activating’ our consciousness,4 but we’ll come back to this point later on.)
So far, I have indicated that sensory and motor pathways share the same ‘language’ (incidentally, they also share it with the beating of our heart). This should warn us not to fall prey too easily to modularity mania, as when proposing strict dichotomies such as that between action and perception. Dichotomies have a very long historical record, and neuroscience in this respect is no exception. Today we are constantly exposed to the so popular mantric succession of dichotomies proposed as the state-of-the-art account of vision: where/what, how/what, pragmatic/semantic, egocentric/allocentric, and so on.
I hope to convince the reader with the arguments that will be presented in the following sections that these accounts leave many questions unanswered. From our neurobiological standpoint we then feel the urge to ask ourselves new questions, in part because we are not fully satisfied with many of the answers provided so far. A good starting point could be to explore the relationship that, at first sight, looks less problematic: that between neurons and behaviour.
III: How to Study Neurons: A Semantic Approach to Neural Computation
Each neuron elaborates and integrates excitatory and inhibitory influences that shape and define its final output. This process of integration that translates different inputs into a common output endows neurons with the properties of a ‘categorizing machine’. We can ask ourselves what are the mechanisms and the rules presiding over this particular level of integration. To this purpose we can study and model, for example, the dendritic spine as an integrative processing unit, like a little computer in the brain. In my opinion this amounts to an analogue approach to neural computation. But we should also ask ourselves what kind of content does the neuron transport? As soon as we have content, we have representation, and also the possibility of misrepresentation. This would then constitute a semantic approach to neural computation. The task of neurophysiology is to search for a reliable correlation between the number of action potentials produced by neurons of a given brain area (sampled either sequentially with the single neuron recording approach, or simultaneously by means of multiple recordings) within a given time unit, and a particular behaviour or chunk of behaviour of the organism whose brain is under investigation. A critical ‘off-line’ process of validation or confutation of the significance of the recorded correlation follows data acquisition. When describing correlations between neurons and behaviour we are forced to select a foundational perspective defining the broader context in which our investigation is supposed to be framed.
My personal view of this ‘broader context’ is that brain functions can be accounted for only by considering the dynamic interplay that occurs between the biological agent as a whole, and the ‘external world’ (see also Jarvilehto, 1998). Any attempt to characterize brain functions as the outcome of encoding devices whose final product is a symbolic ‘language’ totally remote from the acting body is bound to fail. The interdependence between brain and ‘world’ perhaps indicates, as will become clearer in the next sections, the necessity to question an absolute defining limit between these two realms.5
Furthermore, a critical aspect of neuroscientific investigation resides in the fact that the ‘answers’ we are getting from neuronal activity are strongly influenced by the way in which we pose our ‘questions’. For example, we can study brain functions by using a given behavioural paradigm and systematically apply it in different parts of the brain. The brain, however, isn’t equipotential, unless for its functional code that, as we have seen before, is ubiquitous. To say ‘different parts of the brain’ means distinct cortical areas and subcortical structures that can differ along many dimensions such as their cytoarchitectural features and/or the pattern of their anatomical connections. Unfortunately, when anatomical specificity is neglected, the simple correlation between a stereotyped behavioural paradigm and the neural activity of different cortical areas may induce very frustrating conclusions about the heuristic value of this experimental approach, leading one to conclusions that are, at best, too precipitous, if biased by such methodological flaws.
The ‘everything-is-distributed’ approach should be contrasted with a ‘naturalistic’ approach. This approach, when applied to neurophysiology, consists in choosing the most appropriate way of testing neural activity, by figuring out what are the stimuli or the behavioural situations that more closely approximate what the organism we are studying would experience in a natural environment. A second important tenet of the approach I am advocating consists in the systematic and preliminary functional characterization of the properties of a given, neural population. Only after this preliminary goal has been achieved6 can the most suitable paradigm be introduced. . . . ."
. . . continues at
http://old.unipr.it/arpa/mirror/pubs/pdffiles/Gallese/Gallese 2000.pdf
Agency and Motor Representations
"I: Introduction.
We live in a meaningful world. Our capacity to deal with the ‘external world’ is constituted by the possibility of modifying the world by means of our actions; by the possibility of representing the world as an objective reality; and by the possibility of experiencing phenomenally this same objective reality, from a situated, self-conscious perspective. It is tempting to address these different articulations of the sense of ‘being related to the world’, of our intentional relation to the world, by using different languages, different methods of investigations, perhaps even different ontologies.
In the present paper I will start to explore the possibility of reconciling some of these different articulations of intentionality from a neurobiological perspective. I will confine my analysis to the relationship between agency and representation and I will show how representation is intrinsically related to action control. To that purpose, I will present a new account of action, arguing against what is still commonly held as its proper definition, namely the final outcome of a cascade-like process that starts from the analysis of sensory data, incorporates the result of decision processes, and ends up with responses (actions) to externally- or internally-generated stimuli. I will argue against this account of action by presenting and discussing recent findings from the investigation of neural mechanisms that are at the basis of sensorimotor integration. It will become clear that the so-called ‘motor functions’ of the nervous system not only provide the means to control and execute action but also to represent it. Actually, following this view, action control and action representation become two sides of the same coin.
One of the advantages of this approach is its empirical testability. If the results of this analysis turn out to be correct, we have, as philosophical pay-off, the possibility of overcoming the dichotomy between functional and semantic properties, by showing that causal properties are content properties. The neurophysiological and neuropsychological data that will be presented in the following sections provide preliminary, but very encouraging, evidence pointing in this direction. In sum, the overall goal of the present paper will be to convince the reader that — using the results of neuroscientific investigation as tools — representation can be naturalized.
II: Hierarchies: From Neurons to Behaviour.
Neuroscience, being part of the biological sciences, should share with them an evolutionary and monist1 foundational perspective. There is only one reality, organized — and therefore describable — along multiple levels of complexity. Each of these different levels of organization can be decomposed into other levels that are simpler, or at the very least endowed with different functional characterizations. The pay-off of this deconstructivist approach, when guiding empirical research, is that we can more easily trace an evolutionary path connecting all levels. Filling in the evolutionary mosaic of brain functions increases the heuristic power of our strategy of enquiry. Each of these different organizational levels requires an appropriate descriptive language. Which is therefore the appropriate level of enquiry of neuroscience?2
It is commonly held that we can devise a hierarchical model of the brain/mind in which we distinguish levels characterized by increasing complexity. Each of these levels of description (for example, ions, ion channel–receptor, neuron–synapse, neural assemblies–cortical circuits, brain–behaviour, cognition–consciousness) presupposes the possibility to delimit a system, characterized by principles of organization and functional mechanisms that can be defined as proper to that system. Each level of this hierarchy contains elements that we find also at the next ‘higher’ level, but framed within a more complex architectural and functional design. Our hierarchy is supposed to be topped by a level describing what is considered the distinctive hallmark of mankind: culture.
There is indeed an intuitive incommensurability when comparing the intrinsic features of levels of description such as neuron, behaviour, and experience. Neuro-science so far has almost exclusively explored the relation between neurons and behaviour, leaving any account of experience in the hands of philosophers. Let us focus first on the first of these levels, that of the neuron.
According to the classic neuroscientific model, each living organism is located within fields of energy — electromagnetic, mechanical and chemical energy. All these different forms of energy constitute the stimuli (visual, auditory, somatosensory, and the like) to which every organism is exposed. Energetic ‘stimuli’ are translated, or better, transduced into a common code; the action potentials of nerve cells. Action potentials express the electrochemical excitability of cells and constitute the ‘language’ spoken by the billions of neurons that make up the central nervous system. The receptors of the different sensory modalities are the agents of the transduction process: they translate the different types of energy into the common code of action potentials. This code is truly common; sensory pathways that, through receptors, receive information from the so-called ‘external world’, share the same code with motor pathways that, through different intermediate steps, activate neuro-muscular junctions that, in turn, determine3 our movements. (Following this line of argument one could object that nothing really prevents this common code from also ‘activating’ our consciousness,4 but we’ll come back to this point later on.)
So far, I have indicated that sensory and motor pathways share the same ‘language’ (incidentally, they also share it with the beating of our heart). This should warn us not to fall prey too easily to modularity mania, as when proposing strict dichotomies such as that between action and perception. Dichotomies have a very long historical record, and neuroscience in this respect is no exception. Today we are constantly exposed to the so popular mantric succession of dichotomies proposed as the state-of-the-art account of vision: where/what, how/what, pragmatic/semantic, egocentric/allocentric, and so on.
I hope to convince the reader with the arguments that will be presented in the following sections that these accounts leave many questions unanswered. From our neurobiological standpoint we then feel the urge to ask ourselves new questions, in part because we are not fully satisfied with many of the answers provided so far. A good starting point could be to explore the relationship that, at first sight, looks less problematic: that between neurons and behaviour.
III: How to Study Neurons: A Semantic Approach to Neural Computation
Each neuron elaborates and integrates excitatory and inhibitory influences that shape and define its final output. This process of integration that translates different inputs into a common output endows neurons with the properties of a ‘categorizing machine’. We can ask ourselves what are the mechanisms and the rules presiding over this particular level of integration. To this purpose we can study and model, for example, the dendritic spine as an integrative processing unit, like a little computer in the brain. In my opinion this amounts to an analogue approach to neural computation. But we should also ask ourselves what kind of content does the neuron transport? As soon as we have content, we have representation, and also the possibility of misrepresentation. This would then constitute a semantic approach to neural computation. The task of neurophysiology is to search for a reliable correlation between the number of action potentials produced by neurons of a given brain area (sampled either sequentially with the single neuron recording approach, or simultaneously by means of multiple recordings) within a given time unit, and a particular behaviour or chunk of behaviour of the organism whose brain is under investigation. A critical ‘off-line’ process of validation or confutation of the significance of the recorded correlation follows data acquisition. When describing correlations between neurons and behaviour we are forced to select a foundational perspective defining the broader context in which our investigation is supposed to be framed.
My personal view of this ‘broader context’ is that brain functions can be accounted for only by considering the dynamic interplay that occurs between the biological agent as a whole, and the ‘external world’ (see also Jarvilehto, 1998). Any attempt to characterize brain functions as the outcome of encoding devices whose final product is a symbolic ‘language’ totally remote from the acting body is bound to fail. The interdependence between brain and ‘world’ perhaps indicates, as will become clearer in the next sections, the necessity to question an absolute defining limit between these two realms.5
Furthermore, a critical aspect of neuroscientific investigation resides in the fact that the ‘answers’ we are getting from neuronal activity are strongly influenced by the way in which we pose our ‘questions’. For example, we can study brain functions by using a given behavioural paradigm and systematically apply it in different parts of the brain. The brain, however, isn’t equipotential, unless for its functional code that, as we have seen before, is ubiquitous. To say ‘different parts of the brain’ means distinct cortical areas and subcortical structures that can differ along many dimensions such as their cytoarchitectural features and/or the pattern of their anatomical connections. Unfortunately, when anatomical specificity is neglected, the simple correlation between a stereotyped behavioural paradigm and the neural activity of different cortical areas may induce very frustrating conclusions about the heuristic value of this experimental approach, leading one to conclusions that are, at best, too precipitous, if biased by such methodological flaws.
The ‘everything-is-distributed’ approach should be contrasted with a ‘naturalistic’ approach. This approach, when applied to neurophysiology, consists in choosing the most appropriate way of testing neural activity, by figuring out what are the stimuli or the behavioural situations that more closely approximate what the organism we are studying would experience in a natural environment. A second important tenet of the approach I am advocating consists in the systematic and preliminary functional characterization of the properties of a given, neural population. Only after this preliminary goal has been achieved6 can the most suitable paradigm be introduced. . . . ."
. . . continues at
http://old.unipr.it/arpa/mirror/pubs/pdffiles/Gallese/Gallese 2000.pdf
Psychophysical Nature
Max Velmans
[from Recasting Reality: Wolfgang Pauli's Philosophical Ideas and Contemporary Science, Harald Atmanspacher, Hans Primas, eds.]
Recasting Reality - Wolfgang Pauli's Philosophical Ideas | Harald Atmanspacher | Springer
"Abstract. There are two quite distinct ways in which events that we normally think of as “physical” relate in an intimate way to events that we normally think of as “psychological”. One intimate relation occurs in exteroception at the point where events in the world become events as-perceived. The other intimate relationship occurs at the interface of conscious experience with its neural correlates in the brain. The chapter examines each of these relationships and positions them within a dual-aspect, reflexive model of how consciousness relates to the brain and external world. The chapter goes on to provide grounds for viewing mind and nature as fundamentally psychophysical, and examines similar views as well as differences in previously unpublished writings of Wolfgang Pauli, one of the founders of quantum mechanics.
Keywords. Physical, psychological, psychophysical, consciousness, mind, brain, reflexive model, reflexive monism, dualism, reductionism, dual-aspect, information, Pauli, psychological complementarity, physical complementarity, exclusive, nonexclusive, perception "
In the present chapter we examine two quite distinct ways in which events that we normally think of as “physical” relate in an intimate way to events that we normally think of as “psychological”. One intimate relation occurs in exteroception at the point where events in the world become events as-perceived. The other intimate relationship occurs at the interface of conscious experience with its neural correlates in the brain.
Normal exteroception involves an interaction between an event in the world (an event itself) and the perceptual/cognitive systems of an observer, which results in an event as perceived. Such perceived events are the phenomena that form the basis of empirical science. Taken together, such perceived events also form our everyday “phenomenal worlds”. Although we normally think of the world surrounding our bodies as the “physical world”, science makes it abundantly clear that this perceived “physical world” is an appearance, whose nature is dependent not only on the nature of the world itself, but also on how information relating to that world is preconsciously processed by sense organs, perceptual systems and cognitive systems in the brain. The world that we actually see results from such preconscious observer-observed interactions, and can be very different in its apparent properties to the world as described by Physics (in terms of quantum mechanics, relativity theory and so on). Given this, is the world that we perceive “physical”, “psychological” or somewhere in between?
And this, in turn, raises a second question. Given the dependence of the perceived world on its proximal neural causes and correlates within the brain (as well as on events in the external world itself), what exactly is the ontology of this phenomenal world and its relationship to what is going on within the brain? Is this perceived or experienced world nothing more than a brain state? Is it something quite different to a brain state? Or is it something in between? . . . . ."
http://cogprints.org/6105/1/Psychophysical_nature.pdf
Max Velmans
[from Recasting Reality: Wolfgang Pauli's Philosophical Ideas and Contemporary Science, Harald Atmanspacher, Hans Primas, eds.]
Recasting Reality - Wolfgang Pauli's Philosophical Ideas | Harald Atmanspacher | Springer
"Abstract. There are two quite distinct ways in which events that we normally think of as “physical” relate in an intimate way to events that we normally think of as “psychological”. One intimate relation occurs in exteroception at the point where events in the world become events as-perceived. The other intimate relationship occurs at the interface of conscious experience with its neural correlates in the brain. The chapter examines each of these relationships and positions them within a dual-aspect, reflexive model of how consciousness relates to the brain and external world. The chapter goes on to provide grounds for viewing mind and nature as fundamentally psychophysical, and examines similar views as well as differences in previously unpublished writings of Wolfgang Pauli, one of the founders of quantum mechanics.
Keywords. Physical, psychological, psychophysical, consciousness, mind, brain, reflexive model, reflexive monism, dualism, reductionism, dual-aspect, information, Pauli, psychological complementarity, physical complementarity, exclusive, nonexclusive, perception "
In the present chapter we examine two quite distinct ways in which events that we normally think of as “physical” relate in an intimate way to events that we normally think of as “psychological”. One intimate relation occurs in exteroception at the point where events in the world become events as-perceived. The other intimate relationship occurs at the interface of conscious experience with its neural correlates in the brain.
Normal exteroception involves an interaction between an event in the world (an event itself) and the perceptual/cognitive systems of an observer, which results in an event as perceived. Such perceived events are the phenomena that form the basis of empirical science. Taken together, such perceived events also form our everyday “phenomenal worlds”. Although we normally think of the world surrounding our bodies as the “physical world”, science makes it abundantly clear that this perceived “physical world” is an appearance, whose nature is dependent not only on the nature of the world itself, but also on how information relating to that world is preconsciously processed by sense organs, perceptual systems and cognitive systems in the brain. The world that we actually see results from such preconscious observer-observed interactions, and can be very different in its apparent properties to the world as described by Physics (in terms of quantum mechanics, relativity theory and so on). Given this, is the world that we perceive “physical”, “psychological” or somewhere in between?
And this, in turn, raises a second question. Given the dependence of the perceived world on its proximal neural causes and correlates within the brain (as well as on events in the external world itself), what exactly is the ontology of this phenomenal world and its relationship to what is going on within the brain? Is this perceived or experienced world nothing more than a brain state? Is it something quite different to a brain state? Or is it something in between? . . . . ."
http://cogprints.org/6105/1/Psychophysical_nature.pdf
smcder
Paranormal Adept
Soupie If one is arguing that there cannot be qualitative feels without a subject when one says that there cannot be subjectless experience, then I don't follow.
I understand Strawson, as I posted above, to be making that argument:
What is the relation between an experience, its subject, and its content
Soupie to me, it seems conceivable for there to be qualitative feels sans a subject.
First, to make sure we have a common vocabulary:
1. how do you define "qualitative feels"? examples?
2. how do you define "subject"?
3. (depending on how you answer 1) are all qualitative feels possible without a subject?
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@Soupie, what sources have you read that employ the term'qualitative feels'? I haven't yet read the Strawson paper that Steve links but will do so today.
Here is a report of research in the current issue of Science that might provide a path toward considering 'subjectless experience' in biological species. Unfortunately it's behind a paywall, but the description and abstract at this link suggest the ramifications of the research it reports for a deep exploration of what we might understand as the embodied roots of experience in protoconsciousness at the primordial level of 'affectivity', preceding but opening to/enabling the evolution of perception, awareness, and subjective experience.
The biology of color | Science
That page links to the following breakdown of the contents of the article:
NAVIGATE THIS ARTICLE
- Article
- In living color
- Structured Abstract
- Abstract
- Mechanisms of color production
- Genetics of color and evolutionary change
- Receptor processing and cognition
- Integrating color, pattern, and motion
- Color interactions with other sensory modalities
- Multiple functions of color
- Color in space and time
- Conclusion
- References and Notes
- Figures & Data
- Info & Metrics
- eLetters
4 August 2017
Vol 357, Issue 6350
- FEATURE
The stem cell skeptic - RISK ASSESSMENT
Estimating the health benefits of environmental regulations - HUMAN HISTORY
The perils of permanence - SCI COMMUN
News at a glance - APPLIED PHYSICS
Helicity—invariant even in a viscous fluid - WORKING LIFE
Fighting through the darkness
smcder
Paranormal Adept
I think it's critical to @Soupie's view that phenomenal consciousness, qualitative feel be fundamental - otherwise you get some form of the hard problem or combination problem. So if you say that "qualitative feel" is fundamental, then it seenms you have to say how you can have that without a subject (or a subject has to be fundamental) - pain for example, with no experience(r) of pain - on a physicalist view this doesn't make any sense, I think - so the question is does it make sense from a non-physicalist, a panpsychist or neutral monist view? What sort of thing is "qualitative feel" if it isn't the sort of thing that requires a subject? That's what I am asking @Soupie. He says he can conceive of this ... and I'm asking for some kind of run down on how you go about actually conceiving this and not just making a claim that it's so.
The other question for me is whether it's any easier to get matter from mind than to get mind from matter. If you say dual aspect monism - it's a matter of perception which you get - the brain is the mind looking at itself, you still have to resolve what we take to be mental vs. physical qualities - how do you look at one thing and get this duality? If you say neutral monism, you have to account for how one substance can differentiate into two different things.
I'm reading this right now:
Toward an Elegant Panpsychism: Leibniz's "Monadology" and the Combination Problem
He does a good job at the beginning of the paper laying out the various views and their problems, that's about as far as I've gotten, but I've found it helpful.
The other question for me is whether it's any easier to get matter from mind than to get mind from matter. If you say dual aspect monism - it's a matter of perception which you get - the brain is the mind looking at itself, you still have to resolve what we take to be mental vs. physical qualities - how do you look at one thing and get this duality? If you say neutral monism, you have to account for how one substance can differentiate into two different things.
I'm reading this right now:
Toward an Elegant Panpsychism: Leibniz's "Monadology" and the Combination Problem
He does a good job at the beginning of the paper laying out the various views and their problems, that's about as far as I've gotten, but I've found it helpful.
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
1. The contents of consciousness. Qualia.
2. A subject is a phenomenal POV in space and time.
3. No. It seems that many—but arguably not all—human conscious experiences include the phenomenal sense of being a subject.
I'll try to convey how I conceive of a stream of consciousness sans the sense of being a subject.
Imagine some ancient, primitive ocean creature (perhaps a cellular organism) floating in an ocean current. Imagine that when it is floating in a current that provides it with what it needs to maintain homeostasis this creature is in a state of phenomenal satiation, however, there is no sense of being located in a particular space or time. It just is. It just is satiated. There is no sense of "I am satisfied." It is satiation.
However, imagine that the ocean current changes temperature and this primitive creature is no longer in homeostasis. It is uncomfortable. Again there is no qualitative sense of self/other, past/future, here/there. It simply is [in] a state of phenomenal uncomfortableness.
Another thought experiment is to simply consider a fetus and even days old new borns. I think it's obvious that they are phenomenally conscious, but—especially in the womb—whether they possess a sense of self/other, past/present, here/there is questionable.
I imagine life begins with a chaotic swirl of phenomenal feeling that rapidly develops into a sense of self, a subject of experience.
smcder
Paranormal Adept
So 1 does not exist without 2? There is not a "what it is like to be" prior to creatures?
It seems to me that we have to examine the various ways in which the word 'subject' is used, and has been used, in language [for it seems obvious that languages express not only that which has been worked out by thinking but also that which has been known, understood, prereflectively, preconsciously, subconsciously, and even unconsciously.] Once we realize that consciousness as we experience it is a developmental product of the evolution of species from capacities for primordial 'affectivity' {the sense of being acted upon} to increasing capacities of 'self-awareness/self-other awareness propounded in experience in/of the environing world, we can think subjectivity as being primordially the sense of being acted upon/of being 'subject to' influences or pressures bearing on the organism from beyond its boundaries that underwrite the increasing capacity for awareness, protoconsciousness, consciousness, and mind. The world is there before awareness, consciousness, and mind become capable of recognizing its reality. And the traces of that increasing capability, over eons of evolution, remain present in the collective unconscious.
This paper explores the evidence concerning unconscious knowledge:
Unconscious knowledge: A survey
Luís M. Augusto
Abstract
The concept of unconscious knowledge is fundamental for an understanding of human thought processes and mentation in general; however, the psychological community at large is not familiar with it. This paper offers a survey of the main psychological research currently being carried out into cognitive processes, and examines pathways that can be integrated into a discipline of unconscious knowledge. It shows that the field has already a defined history and discusses some of the features that all kinds of unconscious knowledge seem to share at a deeper level. With the aim of promoting further research, we discuss the main challenges which the postulation of unconscious cognition faces within the psychological community.
Keywords: unconscious/implicit knowledge, unconscious mental processes (perception, learning, memory, thinking, decision making), measures of unconscious knowledge
Unconscious knowledge: A survey
This paper explores the evidence concerning unconscious knowledge:
Unconscious knowledge: A survey
Luís M. Augusto
Abstract
The concept of unconscious knowledge is fundamental for an understanding of human thought processes and mentation in general; however, the psychological community at large is not familiar with it. This paper offers a survey of the main psychological research currently being carried out into cognitive processes, and examines pathways that can be integrated into a discipline of unconscious knowledge. It shows that the field has already a defined history and discusses some of the features that all kinds of unconscious knowledge seem to share at a deeper level. With the aim of promoting further research, we discuss the main challenges which the postulation of unconscious cognition faces within the psychological community.
Keywords: unconscious/implicit knowledge, unconscious mental processes (perception, learning, memory, thinking, decision making), measures of unconscious knowledge
Unconscious knowledge: A survey
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
No, again, I think that the phenomenal sense of being a self/subject is a content of consciousness; a rather advanced one at that. Furthermore, I think that contents of (the ocean of) consciousness can exist in the absence of a sense of being a subject as I tried to illustrate with my example of a simple organism.
One could argue that there is something it is like to be Itay's ocean of consciousness.
I don't think that 'phenomenal consciousness' and 'qualitative feels' can be understood to be the same thing. I take it that 'qualitative feels' refers to 'qualia', inadequately defined in Chalmers's early work re the hard problem. I'd be surprised if Chalmers himself has not since extended his early description of qualia to include a greater range of qualitative human experiences than those he first cited (taste, smell, etc.) Some other philosophers we've linked here have done so. As I recall, Strawson himself has done so in his paper 'Cognitive Phenomenology'. There is something it is like to reflect on what one sees and otherwise senses, and on what one feels; there is something it is like to think, to fear, and to love. All of this constitutes an enormous area of CS that needs much more pointed discussion.
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smcder
Paranormal Adept
I think "subject of experience" and "sense of self" have some room between them. Nagel chooses a bat as his subject of experience carefully:
"I assume we all believe that bats have experience. After all, they are mammals, and there is no more doubt that they have experience than that mice or pigeons or whales have experience. I have chosen bats instead of wasps or flounders because if one travels too far down the phylogenetic tree, people gradually shed their faith that there is experience there at all. Bats, although more closely related to us than those other species, nevertheless present a range of activity and a sensory apparatus so different from ours that the problem I want to pose is exceptionally vivid (though it certainly could be raised with other species). Even without the benefit of philosophical reflection, anyone who has spent some time in an enclosed space with an excited bat knows what it is to encounter a fundamentally alien form of life."
On the other hand, I'm not sure what can be said, in an exact way, about the bat's sense of self.
"I assume we all believe that bats have experience. After all, they are mammals, and there is no more doubt that they have experience than that mice or pigeons or whales have experience. I have chosen bats instead of wasps or flounders because if one travels too far down the phylogenetic tree, people gradually shed their faith that there is experience there at all. Bats, although more closely related to us than those other species, nevertheless present a range of activity and a sensory apparatus so different from ours that the problem I want to pose is exceptionally vivid (though it certainly could be raised with other species). Even without the benefit of philosophical reflection, anyone who has spent some time in an enclosed space with an excited bat knows what it is to encounter a fundamentally alien form of life."
On the other hand, I'm not sure what can be said, in an exact way, about the bat's sense of self.
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