Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 10

[smcder]

You would have to imagine (1) a giant underwater mirro and (2) sonar that extends into the bowels of the sub in the way that our interoceptive and proprioceptive sensory systems work.

Re strawson and russel

i don't see a strong difference between saying p-consciousness is the intrinsic nature of matter/energy and saying that matter/energy are the physical (i.e. extrinsic) properties of p-consciousness.

i don't see a strong difference between saying p-consciousness is the intrinsic nature of matter/energy and saying that matter/energy are the physical (i.e. extrinsic) properties of p-consciousness.

The difference is that the first call themselves physicalists and the latter conscious realists ...

 

[Soupie]

The difference is that the first call themselves physicalists and the latter conscious realists

Nah. Most physicalists believe p-consciousness weakly or strongly emerges from the brain.

If they identify as a non-materialist physicalist or a Real Phaycialist, that's different.

 

[smcder]

No, I don't have any other response. I think chasing the origin of p-consciousness in physical processes is a red herring. Note that I am not saying trying to understand how mind emerges with life is a red herring. Apples to oranges. I do think mind emerges with life—indeed is life—and we are and will continue to make progress on understanding this.

No, I do not have any better response than the HP.

"The triumph of the Standard Model suggests the world can exhaustively be described by the equations of mathematical physics. Physicalism is true. With two big complications, no “element of reality” is lacking of from the formalism of quantum field theory, or more strictly, its M-theoretic extension.

And the two complications?

First, consciousness. Why aren’t we p-zombies?

Second, the intrinsic nature of the physical. We don’t know what “breathes fire into” the equations of physics and makes a universe for them to describe. Stephen Hawking doesn’t know. Ed Witten doesn’t know.
Despite our ignorance, “materialist” physicalists make a seemingly modest metaphysical assumption. The unknown essence of the physical is non-experiential. Quantum field theory is about fields of insentience. It’s an intuition I share." - Pearce

OK, so let's scratch a little at physicalism for a change - it's said we make so much progress with physicalism! But note that the kind of technology we happen to have - for historically contingent reasons - yes, it did come out of early physicalist theory but it also enabled the pursuit and support of physicalist theory - the great intellectual appeal (i.e. the game) in physicalism is to explain as much as possible with as few basic assumptions as possible - and technology/theory are in lockstep with one another now and that's to the good and the bad. I think a lot of our present condition (which we have it good in this country, so we say materialism works! but it costs the rest of the world) is the result of:

1. material success (overpopulation)
2. nihilism - see Nietzsche

So ... we do tend to evaluate any theory about the world in pragmatic terms - what does it get us? What technology will it "unlock"? etc.

So now let's come back and evaluate CR

• and we are and will continue to make progress on understanding this.

What progress are we making that "mind emerges with life-indeed is life"? You could show that by saying what we knew in the past about "mind emerges with life-indeed is life" and what we know today.

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And how do you know we will continue to make progress? What is it that you know when you say you know that? What will that progress look like? How will it change the way we see things? What are the ethical implications? Will there be technological differences?

It appears to me that only different in a CR world and a not CR world is the claim itself, i.e. that the true nature of reality is consciousness. - again, can you show me how we will ever know that is true?

My guess is that we will never know "true" reality and that a mind that could know true reality would find it the most banal of facts (due to the nature of that mind, not the nature of the facts) i.e. that things are as they are ... because might have no meaning to such a mind.

A more important question is what kind of world do we want to live in and how can we make it?

Finally,

In my recurring nightmare the aliens (who all look strangely like Leslie Nielson) come down and I hear them say

ALIEN SCIENTIST "HA HA they fell for the Conscious Realism ruse planted by our disinformation agent Donald Hoffman. HA HA."

ALIEN LEADER: "Put them in the zoo."

 

[smcder]

Nah. Most physicalists believe p-consciousness weakly or strongly emerges from the brain.

If they identify as a non-materialist physicalist or a Real Phaycialist, that's different.

 

[smcder]

You would have to imagine (1) a giant underwater mirro and (2) sonar that extends into the bowels of the sub in the way that our interoceptive and proprioceptive sensory systems work.

Re strawson and russel

i don't see a strong difference between saying p-consciousness is the intrinsic nature of matter/energy and saying that matter/energy are the physical (i.e. extrinsic) properties of p-consciousness.

That raises a good question - so I can ask why I can not intero and proprio all of my body (the brain feels nothing NOTHING) if CR is true and you say well (wavy handy) because conscious agents, mutter mutter, evolution ... BUT OK, so I accept that ... if CR is true, would it be possible to alter that? If it's all consciousness, why would we expect it to differentiate and interact according to our current physicalist theories - might CR permit telepathy or time travel (consciousness travelling through consciousness) or walking through "walls"? Meaning because we find these impossible on physics - and because our physics happens to match the world of CR, doesn't mean its an ultimate truth? Can consciousness be otherwise than what we happen to dictate by way of physicalist theories? Saying why not I think would say something very deep about CR.

Your answer here:

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[smcder]

That raises a good question - so I can ask why I can not intero and proprio all of my body (the brain feels nothing NOTHING) if CR is true and you say well (wavy handy) because conscious agents, mutter mutter, evolution ... BUT OK, so I accept that ... if CR is true, would it be possible to alter that? If it's all consciousness, why would we expect it to differentiate and interact according to our current physicalist theories - might CR permit telepathy or time travel (consciousness travelling through consciousness) or walking through "walls"? Meaning because we find these impossible on physics - and because our physics happens to match the world of CR, doesn't mean its an ultimate truth? Can consciousness be otherwise than what we happen to dictate by way of physicalist theories? Saying why not I think would say something very deep about CR.

Your answer here:

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Two things:
@Soupie

• please take a crack at the questions above before reading ...

1. humor

• I think humor can provide some serious (HA I originally wrote "sensor") intellectual tools - humor is cognitive and the humorous frame of mind, this is why satire works, works like a stain on a microscope slide - take being literal, humor will make anything literal in your thinking stand out IN BOLD RELIEF - classic examples:
  • "I refute you thus!"
  • You can't mean there is actually something it is like to be that rock?
• the downside is the exaggeration - you have to remember that you are looking at a stained slide, not an untreated specimen, the ridiculousness of a position is no guide to its truth - see "Crazyism" The Crazyist Metaphysics of Mind - Eric Schwitzgebel
• now, this is a very intelligent and sophisticated group - the intelligence isn't the problem, but the soph(o)stication sometimes is, humor keeps the intellect engaged and knocks the sophistication down a little (yes, sometimes everything goes down along with it for the sake of the joke - one's gotta watch that)
• finally, once the trick is shown - the trick becomes a "shtick" and nobody should speak softly if all they are carrying is a shtick ...

2. and if this surprises you, you haven't been paying attention (to the moon, but rather my finger) ... I think CR is intriguing. What makes it intriguing are possibilities like the above - that CR metaphysics goes beyond physicalism, that it might mean something for CR to be true - maybe not that I can walk through walls but maybe that there are very interesting consequences if it is true that all is mind.

​

 

[Soupie]

That raises a good question - so I can ask why I can not intero and proprio all of my body (the brain feels nothing NOTHING) if CR is true and you say well (wavy handy) because conscious agents, mutter mutter, evolution ... BUT OK, so I accept that ... if CR is true, would it be possible to alter that? If it's all consciousness, why would we expect it to differentiate and interact according to our current physicalist theories - might CR permit telepathy or time travel (consciousness travelling through consciousness) or walking through "walls"? Meaning because we find these impossible on physics - and because our physics happens to match the world of CR, doesn't mean its an ultimate truth? Can consciousness be otherwise than what we happen to dictate by way of physicalist theories? Saying why not I think would say something very deep about CR.

Your answer here:

____________________________
____________________________
____________________________
____________________________

Donald Hoffman is a CR but also has his Interface Theory and Conscious Agents.

We're talking about the former, not the latters.

Re not being able to feel the brain. All of reality is p-consciousness but not all of reality is (representational) mind.

If you're asking whether there are or can be phenomena that transcend p-consciousness and physical explanations. Sure.

 

[smcder]

Donald Hoffman is a CR but also has his Interface Theory and Conscious Agents.

We're talking about the former, not the latters.

Re not being able to feel the brain. All of reality is p-consciousness but not all of reality is (representational) mind.

If you're asking whether there are or can be phenomena that transcend p-consciousness and physical explanations. Sure.

'
Transcend both p-consciousness and physical explanations? I thought that was everything??

"Sure" - OK, what?

 

[Soupie]

'
Transcend both p-consciousness and physical explanations? I thought that was everything??

"Sure" - OK, what?

There are processes that are primary in relation to p-consciousness, self-interaction, and differentiation. And there are likely other properties beyond those that are beyond our ken. If p-consciousness is the intrinsic nature of the physical, it may have other non-physical properties.

I'm not really sure what you were asking above.

Are you asking if physics can fully explain the noumenon? I would say no. Or if physics can fully explain the mind? In principle it should but in practice no way. Can physics explain p-consciousness? No.

 

[Constance]

Life does not generate consciousness, rather life constitutes a process by which consciousness perceives itself.

Or perhaps core awareness [sentience], grounding the evolution of consciousness and mind through the evolution of species, is immanent in life at the inception of life. Thus life constitutes a difference that makes a profound difference in the grounds upon which we seek an adequate ontology of our 'world'/'reality'.

Right - it's circular. And we don't yet know that it does not emerge or that it is not the intrinsic nature of mind. As I've said, it's good to pursue many options - but the problem with CR as you present it, is there is never going to be a way to show that it is true? Do you see that? You can always just say, no you are seeing the mental because everything is mental.

Again, again ... what is it that we know about matter that it can't be conscious?

On the other hand, what do we know about matter that supports the notion that it is conscious?

Consciousness is not secondary to physical processes (Bitbol). Ergo, the brain does not generate consciousness. Why is it that consciousness seems to cease or "go away" when we undergo anesthesia?

I think it's rather the case that sentience/awareness is suppressed by anesthesia. Anesthetics are used to block the bodily experience of acute pain -- and also the mental trauma of realizing that one's body is being deeply cut into by the surgeon's instruments. Anesthetics are also administered to block the pain of childbirth. Hypnosis is sometimes an alternative to anesthesia. We need to find out what that's about.

I suggest that rather than consciousness going away, it is the brain's constitution of self-representation that goes away.

I think it's not just the brain but the body as a whole that is 'put to sleep' [its global connections, including neuronal synapses, suppressed] by anaesthesia. We might agree that 'representation' and 'self-representation' are reasonable terms for us to employ with regard to human consciousness at the reflective level, but the deep core of consciousness -- that which initiates its development over eons of evolution {ETA: and continues to ground consciousness in our species' own experience of it} -- is constituted in prereflective bodily consciousness of the living body's being, at first inchoately of the body's being in relation to the world's/the environment's being.

Within our species' present state of development, we exist in relation to a 'world' constituted of both objectively/physically present things/systems/processes and subjectively developed concepts, ideas borne out of our core experiential presence to ourselves as distinct/separate from our physical mileau. The brain's development helps us to sort out the types of what we experience and to in some sense 'integrate' them -- it facilitates our development of reflective consciousness and mind -- but the brain does not experience/does not 'know' lived presence -- lived being-in-the-world -- or comprehend its living meaning for us or for our evolutionary forebears, meaning which in itself is transcendental in the philosophical meaning of that term.

 

[smcder]

smcder
Right - it's circular. And we don't yet know that it does not emerge or that it is not the intrinsic nature of mind. As I've said, it's good to pursue many options - but the problem with CR as you present it, is there is never going to be a way to show that it is true? Do you see that? You can always just say, no you are seeing the mental because everything is mental.

Again, again ... what is it that we know about matter that it can't be conscious?

constance
On the other hand, what do we know about matter that supports the notion that it is conscious?

I think some of the articles you recently posted support the idea - they make a coherent argument or story of it:

The Transition to Minimal Consciousness through the Evolution of Associative Learning

Abstract
The minimal state of consciousness is sentience. This includes any phenomenal sensory experience – exteroceptive, such as vision and olfaction; interoceptive, such as pain and hunger; or proprioceptive, such as the sense of bodily position and movement. We propose unlimited associative learning (UAL) as the marker of the evolutionary transition to minimal consciousness (or sentience), its phylogenetically earliest sustainable manifestation and the driver of its evolution. We define and describe UAL at the behavioral and functional level and argue that the structural-anatomical implementations of this mode of learning in different taxa entail subjective feelings (sentience). We end with a discussion of the implications of our proposal for the distribution of consciousness in the animal kingdom, suggesting testable predictions, and revisiting the ongoing debate about the function of minimal consciousness in light of our approach.

smcder more so in that the first two paragraphs in the introduction tie this in with the transition from matter to life:

Introduction
One way to study a major evolutionary change, such as the transition to consciousness, would be to discover a trait that is necessary for the transition. This would make it possible to identify the evolutionarily most elementary form of consciousness that is free of the baggage of later-evolved structures and processes. The transition from inanimate matter to life shares interesting conceptual parallels with the emergence of consciousness. We use the approach of the Hungarian theoretical chemist Gánti (1975) and Gánti et al. (2003) to the study of minimal life as a heuristic for the study of the evolutionary transition to consciousness (for a detailed discussion of this heuristics see Ginsburg and Jablonka, 2015).

Gánti started by compiling a list of properties that jointly characterize minimal life and constructed a toy model (the chemoton) instantiating them. He suggested that one of the capacities of a minimal life system could be used as a marker of the evolutionary transition to sustainable minimal life. His specific suggestion, which was later sharpened and developed by Szathmáry and Maynard Smith (1995), was that the capacity for unlimited heredity marks the transition from non-life to sustainable life: only a system capable of producing hereditary variants that far exceed the number of potential challenges it is likely to face would permit long-term persistence of traits and cumulative evolution. Moreover, a system enabling unlimited heredity requires that the information-carrying subsystem is maintained by self-sustaining metabolic dynamics enclosed by a membrane – features like those exhibited by a proto-cell, an acknowledged minimal living system. Hence, once a transition marker is identified it allows the “reverse engineering” of the system that enables it.

Is that finally persuasive? No.

I agree with Bitbol that the stance to take is to put consciousness as primary methodologically and existentially.

Finally, I think I have to take into account the evidence - for example that Dean Radin has collected:

http://deanradin.com/evidence/evidence.htm

That does not fit into the physic(s)alism that we understand today and consider what that might mean for physicalism, HCT, CR, etc etc. For me, that is evidence that mind is non local and non physical as we currently understand it.

Finally, finally I think we draw consequences from the idea that mind is matter that aren't warranted - the primary one being mind is "nothing but" matter - when matter, as @Soupie has note, may be quite sufficiently ethereal to address any possible concern.

@Constance
What is your sense of the relationship of mind to matter?

 

[Soupie]

This Is What Happens To Your Brain During Anesthesia

"Brown agrees that for this merge, researchers have to consider overall neural circuits. “Anesthesiologists have tried for years to describe anesthetic mechanism solely in terms of pharmacology,” he says. “So as soon as you overlay the neuroscience, a lot of this simplifies dramatically and becomes extremely clear as to how the drugs work.”

Take propofol, for example—which is one of the most common anesthetics given intravenously. If he monitors how propofol enters the brain, Brown says it travels through a major blood vessel that passes through the brainstem, where it interacts with GABA receptors and turns off arousal centers. “Now we’re talking mechanism.”

Brown’s frequent collaborator, Patrick Purdon, a a bioengineer and neuroscientist at Massachusetts General Hospital an associate professor of anesthesia at Harvard Medical School says you might then guess that anesthetics worked by inhibiting the brain, via GABA receptors, and shutting down brain activity. “In the absence of what we know now, that’s a pretty good hypothesis,” he says. “But it ends up being a little more complicated. It ends up being a little more interesting.” " ...

 

[Constance]

@Constance
What is your sense of the relationship of mind to matter?

Are you asking whether I have an ontological hypothesis about the origin and nature of this relationship? I don't. I do think, however, that the question can only be posed by species such as ours that have developed mind out of the grounds of the evolution of conscious experience.

 

[Pharoah]

From @Soupie 's preferred notion of mind the noumenal cs could be a spill over from a multiverse maybe. Or an alternative dimension that interacts only when certain physical parameters present
Just a thought... Not what I think but just a suggestion

 

[Constance]

@Pharoah, have you read Prigogine and Stengers? Has anyone else here done so? Here is an extract from an amazon review on Prigogine's Order Out of Chaos:

". . . helpful in understanding the themata that have determined the form scientific development has taken: From Newtonian dynamics as the universal, deterministic fundamental level of description to equilibrium thermodynamics with the arrow of time toward heat death, to Relativistic physics with the important role of the observer, to quantum mechanics with randomness and indeterminacy, to non-equilibrium thermodynamics with irreversibility and dissipative structures as the crucible of creation of order from chaos. The book counters the New Age trend to ground human existence in quantum physics. Biology, let alone consciousness, though it is consistent with microphysics, can not be deduced from it. It's scale alone takes it out of the planck domain. The objects of study of physics are simple compared to the complexity of living systems. Even chemistry, characterized by irreversible process, is not reducible to physicspg. 136-137). Biochemistry with auto-catalytic and cross-catalytic processes creates far-from-equilibrium steady states that by virtue of being unstable, are therefore sensitive to the boundary conditions in which they exist, and therefore confer adaptability to changing environmental conditions. Crash goes the reductionistic freight train! Complexity theory is the foundational science of biology, and should be for medicine if it is to be redeemed from it's current abandonment of healing for pharmacologic symptom suppression."

I've had this book in my library for years and have not yet read it, but plan to do so now to the best of my ability.

 

[Pharoah]

@Pharoah, have you read Prigogine and Stengers? Has anyone else here done so? Here is an extract from an amazon review on Prigogine's Order Out of Chaos:

". . . helpful in understanding the themata that have determined the form scientific development has taken: From Newtonian dynamics as the universal, deterministic fundamental level of description to equilibrium thermodynamics with the arrow of time toward heat death, to Relativistic physics with the important role of the observer, to quantum mechanics with randomness and indeterminacy, to non-equilibrium thermodynamics with irreversibility and dissipative structures as the crucible of creation of order from chaos. The book counters the New Age trend to ground human existence in quantum physics. Biology, let alone consciousness, though it is consistent with microphysics, can not be deduced from it. It's scale alone takes it out of the planck domain. The objects of study of physics are simple compared to the complexity of living systems. Even chemistry, characterized by irreversible process, is not reducible to physicspg. 136-137). Biochemistry with auto-catalytic and cross-catalytic processes creates far-from-equilibrium steady states that by virtue of being unstable, are therefore sensitive to the boundary conditions in which they exist, and therefore confer adaptability to changing environmental conditions. Crash goes the reductionistic freight train! Complexity theory is the foundational science of biology, and should be for medicine if it is to be redeemed from it's current abandonment of healing for pharmacologic symptom suppression."

I've had this book in my library for years and have not yet read it, but plan to do so now to the best of my ability.

Yes I've read books by both. Got a nice reply from prigogine! I looked into his work because initially I thought it was important for hct
I got very irritated by stengers. Can't remember why

 

[Constance]

Yes I've read books by both. Got a nice reply from prigogine! I looked into his work because initially I thought it was important for hct
I got very irritated by stengers. Can't remember why

I've heard that Stengers is very difficult to read. I'll pick up something by her; have been curious about what she has to offer.

 

[smcder]

@Pharoah, have you read Prigogine and Stengers? Has anyone else here done so? Here is an extract from an amazon review on Prigogine's Order Out of Chaos:

". . . helpful in understanding the themata that have determined the form scientific development has taken: From Newtonian dynamics as the universal, deterministic fundamental level of description to equilibrium thermodynamics with the arrow of time toward heat death, to Relativistic physics with the important role of the observer, to quantum mechanics with randomness and indeterminacy, to non-equilibrium thermodynamics with irreversibility and dissipative structures as the crucible of creation of order from chaos. The book counters the New Age trend to ground human existence in quantum physics. Biology, let alone consciousness, though it is consistent with microphysics, can not be deduced from it. It's scale alone takes it out of the planck domain. The objects of study of physics are simple compared to the complexity of living systems. Even chemistry, characterized by irreversible process, is not reducible to physicspg. 136-137). Biochemistry with auto-catalytic and cross-catalytic processes creates far-from-equilibrium steady states that by virtue of being unstable, are therefore sensitive to the boundary conditions in which they exist, and therefore confer adaptability to changing environmental conditions. Crash goes the reductionistic freight train! Complexity theory is the foundational science of biology, and should be for medicine if it is to be redeemed from it's current abandonment of healing for pharmacologic symptom suppression."

I've had this book in my library for years and have not yet read it, but plan to do so now to the best of my ability.

PDF here:

https://deterritorialinvestigations...2DH8QFgglMAA&usg=AOvVaw0IfPWSXtX9LIlW-jdURpm3

 

[Constance]

Excellent find, Steve. Since I'm just beginning to read the book now, I can't claim {but am willing to bet} that we would benefit from a group reading of this work.

 

[Constance]

I've heard that Stengers is very difficult to read. I'll pick up something by her; have been curious about what she has to offer.

What text(s) by Stenger did you read @Pharoah? I've looked at samples from and reviews of her many books of recent years and am guessing that what makes her writing so difficult is that it straddles multiple topics and subject matters developing in significance for our contemporary 'earth civilization' and that her thinking is primarily theoretical and based in postmodern critical theory (Deleuze, Guattari, Derrida, Foucault, Latour) with which most of us are not familiar. Thus while her insights, with Lazlo's, into complexity approached within the disciplinary boundaries of scientific inquiry might be/likely are sound, her inclination is to move to a metaphilosophical 'theory-theory' inquiry based equally in the humanities. We'd probably have to read all the texts that she has read to follow her thinking.