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Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 11
- Thread starter Gene Steinberg
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Moran also has a paper by this title but I'm not having any success finding it available online without a paywall. I hope Steve will succeed in finding a copy somewhere online without a paywall as he has done so wonderfully many times before.
In the meantime here's another paper that turned up in my search for Moran's. I haven't read it yet so cannot yet say whether it will be helpful here.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/sjp.12211
In the meantime here's another paper that turned up in my search for Moran's. I haven't read it yet so cannot yet say whether it will be helpful here.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/sjp.12211
Found the Moran paper after all, downloadable from his web bibliography:
http://dermotmoran.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/A_2013_Lets-Look-at-it-Objectively.pdf
http://dermotmoran.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/A_2013_Lets-Look-at-it-Objectively.pdf
smcder
Paranormal Adept
Physics just is what can be dealt with in a certain way.
What sets the terms for a "full explanation"?
"So an explanation, in that sense, will continue to elude us."
That assumes its the sort of thing to which explanation applies.
More stuffiness! ;-)
smcder
Paranormal Adept
"Phenomenology cannot be naturalized because it tells the story of the genesis and structure of the reality that we experience but in so doing reveals subjective stances and attitudes which themselves can never be wholly brought into view, cannot be objectified. Constituting subjectivity and intersubjectivity cannot be included within the domain of nature. Indeed, the very notion of ‘nature’ especially as that which is the object of the natural sciences is itself—as Husserl’s analyses in his Ideas II5 and in the Crisis of European Sciences6 makes clear –is itself the product of a particular distillation of scientific method."
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
The question was can a monist/dualist agnostic make the claim that perception understood objectively is perception experienced.
Since perception 'understood' objectively can't provide an explanation of conscious perception, I suppose the question is pointless, ha.
The spirit of the question however was perception understood extrinisically is perception experienced intrinsically.
I think a monist could say our language is a stumbling block and there isn't a clear dividing line between intrinsic and extrinsic qualities. Indeed that is what I'm saying. But I don't think a dualist can say this. There will be a clear diving line.
?
An explanation, in that sense, will elude us because an explanation in that sense doesn't apply.
Re more stuffiness
If matter is the ground of consciousness, there will be stuffy elements. If we assume minds have evolved along with species and that the mind develops and grows as each individual develops and grows in its lifetime, then we understand that mind and its elements exist on a continuum and is not something that originates and exists wholly formed set apart from nature.
smcder
Paranormal Adept
stuffy stuffy stuffy!
smcder
Paranormal Adept
Constituting subjectivity and intersubjectivity cannot be included within the domain of nature. Indeed, the very notion of ‘nature’ especially as that which is the object of the natural sciences is itself—as Husserl’s analyses in his Ideas II5 and in the Crisis of European Sciences6 makes clear – is itself the product of a particular distillation of scientific method. In his Cartesian Meditations, Husserl makes clear that nature and culture are constituted together – along with the very being of the subject or ego.
Husserl believes very strongly that naturalism – which he associated with a parallel commitment to physicalism and, in his day, to sense-data positivism – was a betrayal of the very essence of science.
Husserl believes very strongly that naturalism – which he associated with a parallel commitment to physicalism and, in his day, to sense-data positivism – was a betrayal of the very essence of science.
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How can we actually distinguish -- even within our current knowledge about the interacting forces and fields driving the expansion of the?/our universe -- that which is extrinsic from that which is intrinsic. It seem to me that David Bohm came closest to theorizing the manifold interactions that move toward chaos and then regain balance in dissipating and expanding integrated systems as an unfolding and enfolding that we ourselves sense and participate in.
Michael Allen
Paranormal Adept
Symmetry can greatly reduce the amount of information and effort needed to create an organism. With bilateral symmetry you get 2 for 1...with more axes (metaphorically speaking) you can end up with many to one.
I would say, with phenomenologists, that perception cannot be understood in solely objective terms. I think that this insight remains a stumbling block for you in your flight from any taint of 'dualism' or duality in your thinking.
If it were a pointless question, why are we talking about it past the third year here by now? And why does the interdisciplinary field of Consciousness Studies continue to expand exponentially year by year?
That seems to be your provisional position. What if we are never able to separate the 'extrinsic' from the 'intrinsic' in our actual empirical experience of being-in-the-world, a world whose extent and depth we are so far from understanding? Recall Stevens's lines concerning our "first illustrious intimations" --
". . . These are not
The early constellations, from which came the first
Illustrious intimations -- uncertain love,
The knowledge of being, sense without sense of time."
{the whole poem follows in my next post}
There is no clear dividing line between subjectivity and objectivity in phenomenology. It is their confluence and intermingling that calls, begs, for understanding. Re human language, whatever and wherever and whenever it takes forms, language is certainly a 'stumbling block'. Our languages (human and other-than-human), wherever and whenever they begin and develop, always inadequately capture and express even what we can currently claim to 'know' about our own temporal existences and the world's inherently temporal unfolding and expansion.
I like this paragraph, especially the last sentence. We think within a continuum of experienced, experiential, being, and thus we never reach "final thoughts," as in this short poem by WS:
July Mountain
We live in a constellation
Of patches and of pitches,
Not in a single world,
In things said well in music,
On the piano, and in speech,
As in a page of poetry --
Thinkers without final thoughts
In an always incipient cosmos,
The way, when we climb a mountain,
Vermont throws itself together.
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Wallace Stevens, Late Hymn from the Myrrh-Mountain
Unsnack your snood, madonna, for the stars
Are shining on all brows of Neversink.
Already the green bird of summer has flown
Away. The night-flies acknowledge these planets,
Predestined to this night, this noise and the place
Of summer. Tomorrow will look like today,
Will appear like it. But it will be an appearance,
A shape left behind, with like wings spreading out,
Brightly empowered with like colors, swarmingly,
But not quite molten, not quite the fluid thing,
A little changed by tips of artifice, changed
By the glints of sound from the grass. These are not
The early constellations, from which came the first
Illustrious intimations -- uncertain love,
The knowledge of being, sense without sense of time.
Take the diamonds from your hair and lay them down.
The deer-grass is thin. The timothy is brown.
The shadow of an external world comes near.
Unsnack your snood, madonna, for the stars
Are shining on all brows of Neversink.
Already the green bird of summer has flown
Away. The night-flies acknowledge these planets,
Predestined to this night, this noise and the place
Of summer. Tomorrow will look like today,
Will appear like it. But it will be an appearance,
A shape left behind, with like wings spreading out,
Brightly empowered with like colors, swarmingly,
But not quite molten, not quite the fluid thing,
A little changed by tips of artifice, changed
By the glints of sound from the grass. These are not
The early constellations, from which came the first
Illustrious intimations -- uncertain love,
The knowledge of being, sense without sense of time.
Take the diamonds from your hair and lay them down.
The deer-grass is thin. The timothy is brown.
The shadow of an external world comes near.
This article re certain recent sub-audible 'attacks' on US diplomats in Cuba and more recently in China is tremendously interesting in itself and also potentially for us, here, as we contemplate 'mind' and 'matter/materiality'. It raises the question of the materiality of sound itself, both that which we can hear and that which we cannot hear.
Extract:
"...We note that interpretation of neuropsychological test results is somewhat more nuanced than a simple counting of scores that are lower than a conventional percentile cutoff point,” Smith wrote in an email. Instead, the researchers considered how much each person’s performance on a particular test differed from what is normal for the individual. In some cases, test scores in one aspect of brain function fell far below that person’s normal — down to the bottom 10 percent of the person’s average brain function. That low level of function counts as impairment, says Smith, who directs the Center for Brain Injury and Repair at the University of Pennsylvania’s medical school.
The researchers are currently trying to determine if the people felled by the attacks have changes in the structure of their brains that could account for the symptoms, Smith says...."
Here’s why scientists are questioning whether ‘sonic attacks’ are real
Extract:
"...We note that interpretation of neuropsychological test results is somewhat more nuanced than a simple counting of scores that are lower than a conventional percentile cutoff point,” Smith wrote in an email. Instead, the researchers considered how much each person’s performance on a particular test differed from what is normal for the individual. In some cases, test scores in one aspect of brain function fell far below that person’s normal — down to the bottom 10 percent of the person’s average brain function. That low level of function counts as impairment, says Smith, who directs the Center for Brain Injury and Repair at the University of Pennsylvania’s medical school.
The researchers are currently trying to determine if the people felled by the attacks have changes in the structure of their brains that could account for the symptoms, Smith says...."
Here’s why scientists are questioning whether ‘sonic attacks’ are real
Michael Allen
Paranormal Adept
Ironically the taint of dualism may be required in an organism to help it grok the world as non-dualistic
". . . Both Husserl and Heidegger rejected the classical Enlightenment view of philosophy as a universal possession of humankind, one that emerges at the mature stage of every culture. Instead, both saw the emergence of philosophy as a distinctly fortuitous historical event, brought about as Husserl put it by a “few Greek eccentrics,” and attributed the “breakthrough” to (Durchbruch) or “break-into” (Einbruch, Hua VI, 273) philosophy and the transcendental attitude to a unique Greek “origin” or “primal instituting” (Urstiftung). Moreover, both maintained that understanding the meaning of philosophy requires that its “original” sense be retrieved and run through over again (although how this was to be done remained a matter of difference between them). Both believed that the fortuitous breakthrough to philosophy had world-shattering consequences—and deeply unsettling ones. Husserl, for instance, speaks of what is “inborn in philosophy from its primal establishment” (Husserl 1986, par. 56, 192; Hua VI, 195).
Both believed that something profound about the Greek passing on of philosophy to the West had been deeply misunderstood (Husserl: “subject to a falsification of sense”), overlooked, forgotten (Heidegger) or ignored. The Greeks, moreover, at least according to Heidegger, did not understand the nature of their own breakthrough and indeed they bear responsibility for themselves essentially misconstruing it. The Western Christian adoption of philosophy simply confirmed and reified a distortion already present at the heart of classical Greek philosophy. For Husserl, on the other hand, it is less a matter of the classical Greek understanding of their own discovery of the purely theoretical attitude as the manner in which this attitude became distorted in modernity through its being deracinated and atrophied.
For both Husserl and Heidegger the urgency of understanding the Greek origination of philosophy is driven by the crisis of the present. Thus in the famous Galileo section of his Crisis of European Sciences, § 9 (l), Husserl speaks of the “task of self-reflection [Aufgabe der Selbstbesinnung] which grows out of the ‘breakdown’ situation of our time” (aus der “Zusammenbruchs” Situation unserer Zeit, Husserl 1986, 58; Hua VI, 59). Since the end of World War I, in fact, Husserl had been increasingly preoccupied about what he calls in the Vienna Lecture the spiritual rebirth of Europe, which, for him, involves the “rebirth (Wiedergeburt) of Europe from the spirit of philosophy" (Husserl 1986, 299; Hua VI, 347). The parallels with Heidegger are unmistakable.2 In the 1930s Heidegger too recognized a crisis of spirit in Western civilization and also linked this with the question of the essence of science. Heidegger believes science cannot simply be allowed to run its course unquestioned. Rather the sciences’ origin in philosophy and the origin of philosophy itself have to be questioned. For instance, Heidegger proclaims in his Rektoratsrede of 1933:
". . . Only if we place ourselves under the power of the beginning of our spiritual-historical existence. This beginning is the departure, the setting up of Greek philosophy. Here, for the first time, Western man rises up, from a base in a popular culture [Volkstum] and by means of his language, against the totality of what is, and questions and comprehends it as the being that it is. All science is philosophy, whether it knows it and wills it—or not." (Heidegger 1990, 6–7; 2000b, 108)3
Leaving aside the question of origin, both Husserl and Heidegger believed that the practice of philosophy had an essentially disruptive and uprooting consequence. Both have their own parallel accounts of how philosophy essentially disrupts the fundamental mood of (inauthentic) self-secure everydayness and suspends the habits of the natural attitude in order to gain some kind of privileged (authentic) stance (Husserl’s “non-participating spectator”) on naïvely lived worldly life. For Heidegger, especially in Being and Time (Heidegger 1967a, 1993) § 404 and in his 1929 Antrittsrede “What is Metaphysics?” (1998; 1967b), it is the fundamental “state of mind” of anxiety (Angst) that somehow makes visible the essential transcendental “homelessness” of Dasein and reveals its status as revealing Being. For Husserl, on the other hand, the rigorous application of what he increasingly began to call the “universal epoché” achieves more or less the same result; overcoming the “natural” experience of life in order to achieve a new and not to be relinquished form of insight into existence.
Finally, in terms of the parallels we are exploring here, in their accounts of human existence or subjectivity Husserl and Heidegger emphasize that human existence is essentially “being in the world” (In-der-Welt-sein) and that we are, in Husserl’s word, “world-children” (Weltkinder), whose existence is necessarily temporal, fi<...TEXT MISSING.> Being and Time strongly emphasizes that human existence (Dasein) is “factical” (faktisch), and also points out that the supposedly natural horizon from which our usual inquiries start actually contains hidden assumptions and masks deep riddles: “The ‘natural’ horizon for starting the existential analytic of Dasein is only seemingly self-evident” (1967a, § 71, 423; 1993, 371). Similarly, the essentially paradoxical manner in which the historically conditioned and fi <...TEXT MISSING> dental transformation of culture is one of the major preoccupations of Husserl’s Crisis of European Sciences (see especially par. 52–4). . . ."
Extracted from Dermot Moran, "Husserl and Heidegger on the Transcendental Homelessness of Philosophy," a book chapter in a book entitled Epistemology, Archaeology, Ethics: Current Investigations of Husserl’s Corpus
edited by Pol Vandevelde and Sebastian Luft, here:
http://dermotmoran.com/wp-content/u...Transcendental-Homelessness-of-Philosophy.pdf
Both believed that something profound about the Greek passing on of philosophy to the West had been deeply misunderstood (Husserl: “subject to a falsification of sense”), overlooked, forgotten (Heidegger) or ignored. The Greeks, moreover, at least according to Heidegger, did not understand the nature of their own breakthrough and indeed they bear responsibility for themselves essentially misconstruing it. The Western Christian adoption of philosophy simply confirmed and reified a distortion already present at the heart of classical Greek philosophy. For Husserl, on the other hand, it is less a matter of the classical Greek understanding of their own discovery of the purely theoretical attitude as the manner in which this attitude became distorted in modernity through its being deracinated and atrophied.
For both Husserl and Heidegger the urgency of understanding the Greek origination of philosophy is driven by the crisis of the present. Thus in the famous Galileo section of his Crisis of European Sciences, § 9 (l), Husserl speaks of the “task of self-reflection [Aufgabe der Selbstbesinnung] which grows out of the ‘breakdown’ situation of our time” (aus der “Zusammenbruchs” Situation unserer Zeit, Husserl 1986, 58; Hua VI, 59). Since the end of World War I, in fact, Husserl had been increasingly preoccupied about what he calls in the Vienna Lecture the spiritual rebirth of Europe, which, for him, involves the “rebirth (Wiedergeburt) of Europe from the spirit of philosophy" (Husserl 1986, 299; Hua VI, 347). The parallels with Heidegger are unmistakable.2 In the 1930s Heidegger too recognized a crisis of spirit in Western civilization and also linked this with the question of the essence of science. Heidegger believes science cannot simply be allowed to run its course unquestioned. Rather the sciences’ origin in philosophy and the origin of philosophy itself have to be questioned. For instance, Heidegger proclaims in his Rektoratsrede of 1933:
". . . Only if we place ourselves under the power of the beginning of our spiritual-historical existence. This beginning is the departure, the setting up of Greek philosophy. Here, for the first time, Western man rises up, from a base in a popular culture [Volkstum] and by means of his language, against the totality of what is, and questions and comprehends it as the being that it is. All science is philosophy, whether it knows it and wills it—or not." (Heidegger 1990, 6–7; 2000b, 108)3
Leaving aside the question of origin, both Husserl and Heidegger believed that the practice of philosophy had an essentially disruptive and uprooting consequence. Both have their own parallel accounts of how philosophy essentially disrupts the fundamental mood of (inauthentic) self-secure everydayness and suspends the habits of the natural attitude in order to gain some kind of privileged (authentic) stance (Husserl’s “non-participating spectator”) on naïvely lived worldly life. For Heidegger, especially in Being and Time (Heidegger 1967a, 1993) § 404 and in his 1929 Antrittsrede “What is Metaphysics?” (1998; 1967b), it is the fundamental “state of mind” of anxiety (Angst) that somehow makes visible the essential transcendental “homelessness” of Dasein and reveals its status as revealing Being. For Husserl, on the other hand, the rigorous application of what he increasingly began to call the “universal epoché” achieves more or less the same result; overcoming the “natural” experience of life in order to achieve a new and not to be relinquished form of insight into existence.
Finally, in terms of the parallels we are exploring here, in their accounts of human existence or subjectivity Husserl and Heidegger emphasize that human existence is essentially “being in the world” (In-der-Welt-sein) and that we are, in Husserl’s word, “world-children” (Weltkinder), whose existence is necessarily temporal, fi<...TEXT MISSING.> Being and Time strongly emphasizes that human existence (Dasein) is “factical” (faktisch), and also points out that the supposedly natural horizon from which our usual inquiries start actually contains hidden assumptions and masks deep riddles: “The ‘natural’ horizon for starting the existential analytic of Dasein is only seemingly self-evident” (1967a, § 71, 423; 1993, 371). Similarly, the essentially paradoxical manner in which the historically conditioned and fi <...TEXT MISSING> dental transformation of culture is one of the major preoccupations of Husserl’s Crisis of European Sciences (see especially par. 52–4). . . ."
Extracted from Dermot Moran, "Husserl and Heidegger on the Transcendental Homelessness of Philosophy," a book chapter in a book entitled Epistemology, Archaeology, Ethics: Current Investigations of Husserl’s Corpus
edited by Pol Vandevelde and Sebastian Luft, here:
http://dermotmoran.com/wp-content/u...Transcendental-Homelessness-of-Philosophy.pdf
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smcder
Paranormal Adept
Did you watch this?
During the introduction but did not stay with it until they began to transmit photos obtained by various telescopes as the moon moved across the sky. I gathered from the intro that many cultures have the concept of and a similar name for a 'full flower moon' based on the appearance of the first full moon of June at a time when vegetation and flowers are in bloom. Sorry I don't know more and haven't located any images obtained that night at the site broadcasting the phenomena.
". . . Meanwhile, philosophers interested in questions about individuality have moved the target of analysis. What began as the question “what is an organism?” has shifted to “what is a biological individual?”, to “what is an evolutionary individual?”, and in some of the most recent work, “what is a Darwinian individual?” This shift helps make inquiry more tractable. It is much easier to construct a universal answer to a question if it is reframed in terms of a theory. Trying to answer “what is an organism?” might force one to analyze the incredibly messy world of life, a world that resists essentialist analyses. Trying to answer the question, “what is a Darwinian individual?” leads one to analyze abstract principles, which are constructed in a tidy theoretical framework. One is much more likely to find an answer that appears universal, that seems to get at the essentials, if one moves from the question “what is an organism?” to the question “what is a Darwinian individual?”
Take, for example, Peter Godfrey-Smith’s primary work on individuality (2009). Godfrey-Smith answers the question about Darwinian individuality by carrying out a careful examination of important elements of contemporary Darwinian theory. The details of his analysis do not matter for the purposes of this chapter and I will not examine them here. I am not interested in joining the lively debate about what it is to be a Darwinian individual.4 My interest is to advance a form of pragmatism by proposing that we shift attention away from seeking an analysis of individuality, as if it could be read off the best scientific theories, to seeking an understanding of individuation practices in science with respect to the purposes they serve in scientific inquiry. . . ."
The author of the above characterizes his approach as 'pragmatic'. What do y'all think?
"'Ask Not “What is an Individual?'"
C. Kenneth Waters
Department of Philosophy
University of Calgary
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/14743/1/Waters_2018_Ask Not %22What is an individual_%22pdf.pdf
Take, for example, Peter Godfrey-Smith’s primary work on individuality (2009). Godfrey-Smith answers the question about Darwinian individuality by carrying out a careful examination of important elements of contemporary Darwinian theory. The details of his analysis do not matter for the purposes of this chapter and I will not examine them here. I am not interested in joining the lively debate about what it is to be a Darwinian individual.4 My interest is to advance a form of pragmatism by proposing that we shift attention away from seeking an analysis of individuality, as if it could be read off the best scientific theories, to seeking an understanding of individuation practices in science with respect to the purposes they serve in scientific inquiry. . . ."
The author of the above characterizes his approach as 'pragmatic'. What do y'all think?
"'Ask Not “What is an Individual?'"
C. Kenneth Waters
Department of Philosophy
University of Calgary
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/14743/1/Waters_2018_Ask Not %22What is an individual_%22pdf.pdf
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