Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 11

[Constance]

Here is a new paper put up at academia.edu that I think might help us clarify and recognize the physical and metaphysical issues that have blocked our progress so far in discussions of panpsychism:

Itay Shani, "Cosmopsychism: A Holistic Approach to the Metaphysics of Experience"

“A philosophy that tells us to explain things by breaking them into parts will not help us when we confront the question of understanding the things that have no parts.”
-- Lee Smolin, The Life of the Cosmos

Abstract: This paper introduces cosmopsychism as a holistic alternative to atomistic panpsychism, and as a general perspective on the metaphysics of consciousness. I begin with some necessary background details concerning contemporary panpsychism and the problems it faces, and then proceed to the theory itself. The starting point of the theory is the assumption that an all pervading cosmic consciousness is the single ontological ultimate. From this assumption, a panpsychist ontology of mind with distinct holistic overtones is developed. In particular, I argue that such universal consciousness serves as the ground for the emergence of individual conscious creatures. The result is a theory with significant conceptual resources which presents novel means for confronting some of the most recalcitrant problems facing contemporary panpsychism: in particular, the subject combination problem, and the problem of entailment associated with it. In so doing, cosmopsychism places itself as a viable alternative to atomistic varieties of panpsychism as well as to orthodox physicalist accounts of consciousness.

Cosmopsychism: A Holistic Approach to the Metaphysics of Experience

 

[Constance]

Here are two additional papers available at academia.edu that I offer for discussion if anyone is interested in pursuing them:

Michael A Schwartz et al, "The Gift of Insanity. The Rise and Fall of Cultures from a Psychiatric Perspective"

Abstract: "This paper argues in favor of two related theses. First, due to a fundamental, biologically grounded world-openness, human culture is a biological imperative. As both biology and culture evolve historically, cultures rise and fall and the diversity of the human species develops. Second, in this historical process of rise and fall, abnormality plays a crucial role. From the perspective of a broader context traditionally addressed by speculative philosophies of history, the so-called mental disorders may be seen as entailing particular functional advantages, and thus have a great impact on the course of human history. Nowadays, however, we live under a threat of cultural uniformity. While the diversity of the human species is cherished at the political level, it is being slowly eradi-cated through medical means. This paradox is a dangerous feature of contemporary globalized society that can lead to highly problematic consequences."

Extract: ". . . Human forms of self-relatedness are relatively plastic and ill-defined. In other words, compared to other animals, humans are much more flexible and underdetermined. This openness explains why culture must complement biology. Culture imposes human-made forms of existence and thus helps to close the world-openness left by biology alone. Culture determines and supplements what biology leaves undetermined and in that sense becomes a biological imperative. . . ."15

[15] Michael A. Schwartz and Osborne P. Wiggins, “Philosophical anthropology: Its relevance for psychiatry,” ASCAP 2, no. 1 (2001): 32–36.

NOTE: The paper referenced in note 15 provides further reflection on the thesis laid out in "The Gift of Insanity." Both papers are linked below.


The Gift of Insanity. The Rise and Fall of Cultures from a Psychiatric Perspective

Philosophical Anthropology: Its Relevance for Psychiatry

[NOTE: the latter paper is very thin, barely worth reading.]

 

[Randall]

Thanks for this pdf.

The following link goes to a lecture vid by Dean Radin, to point 43:49, going to about 46:49, where he gives a concise description of the alternative "Consciousness" theory of reality knowledge pyramid compared to the prevalent reductive materialism. Sound quality could have been better.

The sort of fundamentalness Radin talks about is markedly different from the type Chalmers talks about in that Radin proposes that awareness isn't emergent while Chalmers has suggested that it is. Chalmers approach is reasonable. Radin's might be reasonable in a certain context if a consciousness of some sort is responsible for creating our universe. However in the absence of an aware creator, there is no evidence that awareness came before minds and no evidence that minds came before matter. There is however a lot of evidence suggesting exactly the opposite.

Perhaps some highly evolved advanced species made of unknown energy exist someplace, but even if that's the case we'd still be dealing with something within the realm of the physical ( in its widest sense as a detectable phenomenon - not simply meaning material ). However, for a bit of counterpoint, here's another article that you might like: The Folly of Scientism

... Itay Shani, "C: A Holistic Approach to the Metaphysics of Experience" ...

Personally I don't see anything about cosmopsychism that deserves to be taken seriously. But I suppose that from a general information perspective, it's okay to be alerted to the fringe stuff.

 

[Constance]

Michael Wheeler, The Revolution will not be Optimised:
Enactivism, Embodiment and Relationality

Abstract: Optimising the 4E (embodied–embedded–extended–enactive) revolution in cognitive science arguably requires the rejection of two guiding commitments made by orthodox thinking in the field, namely that the material realisers of cognitive states and processes are located entirely inside the head (internalism), and that intelligent thought and action are to be explained in terms of the building and manipulation of content-bearing representations (representationalism). In other words, the full-strength 4E revolution would be secured only by a position that delivered externalism plus antirepresentationalism. I argue that one view in 4E space—extended functionalism—is appropriately poised to deliver externalism but not antirepresentationalism. By contrast, in the case of a competing 4E view—radical enactivism—even if that view can deliver antirepresentationalism, its pivotal notion of extensiveness falls short of establishing externalism. These conclusions are justified via an examination of, and by responding critically to, certain key arguments offered in support of their view (and against extended functionalism) by the radical enactivists.

doc.gold.ac.uk/aisb50/AISB50-S25/AISB50-S25-Wheeler-extabs.pdf

 

[Constance]

A paper responding to and critiquing the above paper ^^ by Michael Wheeler is presented in the table of contents of the current issue of the journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences at the Springer link below. Unfortunately the paper is behind a paywall and I have not yet found an online pdf of it. But it's one we should look for online until it turns up.

Mario Villalobos and David Silverman,
Extended functionalism, radical enactivism, and the autopoietic theory of cognition: prospects for a full revolution in cognitive science

Abstract: Recently, Michael Wheeler (2017) has argued that despite its sometimes revolutionary rhetoric, the so called 4E (embodied-embedded-enacted-extended) cognitive movement, even in the guise of ‘radical’ enactivism (REC), cannot achieve a full revolution in cognitive science. A full revolution would require the rejection of two essential tenets of traditional cognitive science, namely internalism and representationalism. Whilst REC might secure antirepresentationalism, it cannot do the same, so Wheeler argues, with externalism. In this paper, expanding on Wheeler’s analysis (2017), we argue that what compromises REC’s externalism is the persistence of cognitively relevant asymmetries between its purported cognitive systems and the environment. Complementarily, we argue that an antirepresentationalist ancestor of enactivism, the autopoietic theory of cognition, is able to deliver and secure externalism, thus offering the explosive combination (i.e., antirepresentationalism plus externalism) that Wheeler claims is needed for a revolution in cognitive science.

Extended functionalism, radical enactivism, and the autopoietic theory of cognition: prospects for a full revolution in cognitive science

 

[Randall]

Michael Wheeler, The Revolution will not be Optimised:
Enactivism, Embodiment and Relationality

Abstract: Optimising the 4E (embodied–embedded–extended–enactive) revolution in cognitive science arguably requires the rejection of two guiding commitments made by orthodox thinking in the field, namely that the material realisers of cognitive states and processes are located entirely inside the head (internalism), and that intelligent thought and action are to be explained in terms of the building and manipulation of content-bearing representations (representationalism). In other words, the full-strength 4E revolution would be secured only by a position that delivered externalism plus antirepresentationalism. I argue that one view in 4E space—extended functionalism—is appropriately poised to deliver externalism but not antirepresentationalism. By contrast, in the case of a competing 4E view—radical enactivism—even if that view can deliver antirepresentationalism, its pivotal notion of extensiveness falls short of establishing externalism. These conclusions are justified via an examination of, and by responding critically to, certain key arguments offered in support of their view (and against extended functionalism) by the radical enactivists.

Antirepresentationalism. Great find for the next time I'm playing the words with the most syllables game. If anyone asks me what it means I'll just say it's a philosophy best suited for aphantasiacs. Here's an attachment you might find relevant and interesting. Pragmatism, neo-pragmatism and sociocultural theory:

 

[Constance]

MERLEAU-PONTY AND THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE BODY∗
Russell Keat+

http://www.russellkeat.net/admin/papers/51.pdf


I don't think this paper has been taken up earlier in this multipart thread. I don't have time to read all of it now but I think it will be helpful to those not yet well-informed about phenomenological philosophy and MP in particular.

 

[Soupie]

Here is a new paper put up at academia.edu that I think might help us clarify and recognize the physical and metaphysical issues that have blocked our progress so far in discussions of panpsychism:

Itay Shani, "Cosmopsychism: A Holistic Approach to the Metaphysics of Experience"

“A philosophy that tells us to explain things by breaking them into parts will not help us when we confront the question of understanding the things that have no parts.”
-- Lee Smolin, The Life of the Cosmos

Abstract: This paper introduces cosmopsychism as a holistic alternative to atomistic panpsychism, and as a general perspective on the metaphysics of consciousness. I begin with some necessary background details concerning contemporary panpsychism and the problems it faces, and then proceed to the theory itself. The starting point of the theory is the assumption that an all pervading cosmic consciousness is the single ontological ultimate. From this assumption, a panpsychist ontology of mind with distinct holistic overtones is developed. In particular, I argue that such universal consciousness serves as the ground for the emergence of individual conscious creatures. The result is a theory with significant conceptual resources which presents novel means for confronting some of the most recalcitrant problems facing contemporary panpsychism: in particular, the subject combination problem, and the problem of entailment associated with it. In so doing, cosmopsychism places itself as a viable alternative to atomistic varieties of panpsychism as well as to orthodox physicalist accounts of consciousness.

Cosmopsychism: A Holistic Approach to the Metaphysics of Experience

If not this paper, I read and believe shared a similar paper of Shani's a while back. Very solid stuff.

I've been reading a bit lately about individuals functioning pretty much normally without a brain. Very fascinating stuff.

The scientific mystery of a man living with 90% of his brain missing

Theres several cases out there. Incredible stuff. The zombie issue raises its head bc even though this gentleman is acting normally is he really conscious? But then we have no reason to doubt he is... other than he's missing his brain!

And how can his behavior be essentially normal? Have we (the mainstream) been too mesmerized by the complexity of the brain? Given it too much credit for, well, everything? After all, animals evolved and lived for billions of years before human brains came on the scene.

Also stumbled upon this interesting paper:

This Parasite Drugs Its Hosts With the Psychedelic Chemical in Shrooms

I've perhaps been the most interested in the effect of hallucinogenic chemicals on subjective experience and whether there may be intelligence of some "alien" type involved (mostly on the part of the chemicals themselves in some way).

I think it's interesting that the fungi would deploy such chemicals to interact with the insects. Again, we (the mainstream) have this sense the subjective experience is correlated with brains. And maybe it is. The article gives a very mundane suggestion as to what the psilocybin may be "used" for that doesn't have anything to do with modifying any subjective experience of the insect. But it got me wondering anyhow.

 

[Randall]

MERLEAU-PONTY AND THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE BODY∗ http://www.russellkeat.net/admin/papers/51.pdf I don't think this paper has been taken up earlier in this multipart thread. I don't have time to read all of it now but I think it will be helpful to those not yet well-informed about phenomenological philosophy and MP in particular.

Looks to me like the usual wishy-washy flip-floppy content that results from conflating subjective and objective realities.

 

[Randall]

If not this paper, I read and believe shared a similar paper of Shani's a while back. Very solid stuff. I've been reading a bit lately about individuals functioning pretty much normally without a brain. Very fascinating stuff. The scientific mystery of a man living with 90% of his brain missing.

In the cases I've looked into, the degree of normality has bee exaggerated. The other thing is that hydrocephalus compresses brain tissue, which means that depending on the situation, destruction and loss of functional tissue isn't always as severe as it looks, because some percentage of the tissue is still functioning in a compressed state. Here's a reference to one bit: The Medical Chronicle The bottom line with respect to this thread is that there's no reason to believe that some paranormal force has taken over for the apparent loss of brain volume.

 

[smcder]

Here is a new paper put up at academia.edu that I think might help us clarify and recognize the physical and metaphysical issues that have blocked our progress so far in discussions of panpsychism:

Itay Shani, "Cosmopsychism: A Holistic Approach to the Metaphysics of Experience"

“A philosophy that tells us to explain things by breaking them into parts will not help us when we confront the question of understanding the things that have no parts.”
-- Lee Smolin, The Life of the Cosmos
...

I think he nails it here...

"This is where the combination problem has its bite. Critics of panpsychism argue that the problem of explaining how micro-phenomenal subjects, or states, or qualities, or processes combine to form macro-phenomenal subjects, or states, or qualities, or processes is just as formidable as the hard problem afflicting physicalism ..."

smcder: this is what I say too...

"...(see for example, Carruthers and Schecter 2006; Goff 2006, 2009; Van Cleve 1990). If the critics are right, this is bad news for panpsychism, or at any rate for constitutive panpsychism, in particular since given the dialectical context described above the attractiveness of the panpsychist alternative is largely dependent on its ability to succeed where (orthodox) physicalism seems to fail, namely, in avoiding making the reality of consciousness a hopelessly unintelligible fact."

"The good news, then, is that, strategically, there are many ways in which to approach the problem. The bad news is that there is more than one problem to solve…,"

... EDIT this one seems to end with a bit of a whimper, or at least a non-bang ... still he points in an interesting direction and to others pursuing these lines of thought.

...see the author's comments on "a distinguished venom"...

 

[smcder]

A paper responding to and critiquing the above paper ^^ by Michael Wheeler is presented in the table of contents of the current issue of the journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences at the Springer link below. Unfortunately the paper is behind a paywall and I have not yet found an online pdf of it. But it's one we should look for online until it turns up.

Mario Villalobos and David Silverman,
Extended functionalism, radical enactivism, and the autopoietic theory of cognition: prospects for a full revolution in cognitive science

Abstract: Recently, Michael Wheeler (2017) has argued that despite its sometimes revolutionary rhetoric, the so called 4E (embodied-embedded-enacted-extended) cognitive movement, even in the guise of ‘radical’ enactivism (REC), cannot achieve a full revolution in cognitive science. A full revolution would require the rejection of two essential tenets of traditional cognitive science, namely internalism and representationalism. Whilst REC might secure antirepresentationalism, it cannot do the same, so Wheeler argues, with externalism. In this paper, expanding on Wheeler’s analysis (2017), we argue that what compromises REC’s externalism is the persistence of cognitively relevant asymmetries between its purported cognitive systems and the environment. Complementarily, we argue that an antirepresentationalist ancestor of enactivism, the autopoietic theory of cognition, is able to deliver and secure externalism, thus offering the explosive combination (i.e., antirepresentationalism plus externalism) that Wheeler claims is needed for a revolution in cognitive science.

Extended functionalism, radical enactivism, and the autopoietic theory of cognition: prospects for a full revolution in cognitive science

Linking from Villalobos' Academia.edu page...a number of intetesting papers:

Mario Villalobos Kirmayr | Universidad de Tarapacá - Academia.edu

The Enactive Automaton as a Computing Mechanism

This paper addresses the discrepancy in Varela and Thompson's anti-computational enactivist theory...and their illustration of it by way of a simple cellular automata:

Varela, Thompson, and Rosch, the author argues, had a hidden assumption: "that computation requires representation, and that computational states must bear representational content."

From this view, the automaton example cannot be computational. But the author points to computational theories that do not assume that computation requires representation. Villalobos thus believes Varela and Thompson's enactive automaton is a non-representational computing mechanism and that they would not object to it...

 

[Randall]

Linking from Villalobos' Academia.edu page...a number of intetesting papers: Mario Villalobos Kirmayr | Universidad de Tarapacá - Academia.edu, The Enactive Automaton as a Computing Mechanism. This paper addresses the discrepancy in Varela and Thompson's anti-computational enactivist theory...and their illustration of it by way of a simple cellular automata:

Varela, Thompson, and Rosch, the author argues, had a hidden assumption: "that computation requires representation, and that computational states must bear representational content." From this view, the automaton example cannot be computational. But the author points to computational theories that do not assume that computation requires representation. Villalobos thus believes Varela and Thompson's enactive automaton is a non-representational computing mechanism and that they would not object to it...

It's all quite sensible, but care should be taken not to assume that simply because cognition arises through a dynamic interaction between an acting organism and its environment ( enactivisism ), that it must necessarily do so. If life is defined as having cognition to begin with, then the theory is self-validating and irrelevant for this discussion. However if cognition isn't assumed to be a part of living things, then it is possible for living and non-living things to interact with the environment in a manner that may or may not include cognition. Is the Mars rover a "living" thing or simply a complex tool that responds to our commands?

Simply because a collection of non-cognizant functioning switches exists doesn't necessarily mean it has cognition. At present, there's no substantial evidence that a working computer with all its millions of switches and computational power has any cognition whatsoever. In other words cognition appears to have arisen from a particular arrangement of materials that in addition to functioning computationally also facilitates the emergence of awareness. So far the only type of computational system known with reasonable certainty to be self-aware this is our own, in particular our working brain and sensory systems.

 

[smcder]

MERLEAU-PONTY AND THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE BODY∗
Russell Keat+

http://www.russellkeat.net/admin/papers/51.pdf


I don't think this paper has been taken up earlier in this multipart thread. I don't have time to read all of it now but I think it will be helpful to those not yet well-informed about phenomenological philosophy and MP in particular.

I think it's a good paper and will look forward to your thoughts. He examines Ponty's analysis of Schneider - a World War I veteran ... Ponty's early analysis of these cases is fascinating to me and I wonder what he would make of the sequelae to these examinations in all their forms ... you can see the basis of Dreyfus idea of "skilled coping" in Ponty's thinking - although I recognize Dreyfus' approach is peculiar to a certain analysis of Ponty. What stands out in the first half of the paper to me:

(top, page 7)

"Both in the case’ of specific performing skills, and in our everyday dealings with the world, says Merleau-Ponty, we cannot regard our bodies as the object-like instruments of a guiding, knowing, intending consciousness. Instead, we must recognize that it is our bodies which themselves understand what to do and how to do it, and that it is the body’s intentionality which directs us towards the world. The concepts of ‘meaning’ — of intention, aim, understanding, direction/directedness, significance, etc — are applicable directly and literally to the body, not indirectly or metaphorically via a dualistic view of the body-as-object linked to an intentional consciousness. In particular, our bodies can properly be said to possess knowledge, and we must not restrict the concept of knowledge to cases involving reflective intellectual processes, the explicit articulation of beliefs, principles, theories, goals, and so on."

 

[Constance]

I think it's a good paper and will look forward to your thoughts. He examines Ponty's analysis of Schneider - a World War I veteran ... Ponty's early analysis of these cases is fascinating to me and I wonder what he would make of the sequelae to these examinations in all their forms ... you can see the basis of Dreyfus idea of "skilled coping" in Ponty's thinking - although I recognize Dreyfus' approach is peculiar to a certain analysis of Ponty. What stands out in the first half of the paper to me:

(top, page 7)

"Both in the case’ of specific performing skills, and in our everyday dealings with the world, says Merleau-Ponty, we cannot regard our bodies as the object-like instruments of a guiding, knowing, intending consciousness. Instead, we must recognize that it is our bodies which themselves understand what to do and how to do it, and that it is the body’s intentionality which directs us towards the world. The concepts of ‘meaning’ — of intention, aim, understanding, direction/directedness, significance, etc — are applicable directly and literally to the body, not indirectly or metaphorically via a dualistic view of the body-as-object linked to an intentional consciousness. In particular, our bodies can properly be said to possess knowledge, and we must not restrict the concept of knowledge to cases involving reflective intellectual processes, the explicit articulation of beliefs, principles, theories, goals, and so on."

Yes, an excellent paragraph, which I want to respond to in detail later. In the meantime, these two paragraphs, earlier in the paper, are critical for understanding why MP locates prereflective consciousness in bodily knowledge gathered through sense perceptions, proprioception, and other affordances.

". . . The key move made by Husserl in The Crisis [The Crisis of the European Sciences] is to claim that Galileo’s mathematized nature is not a direct representation of the real, but an abstraction from it. Mathematically expressible matter in motion is not ‘all that there is’: it is only an abstract model that may be useful in aiding our encounters with the lived world, the world which we perceive and within which we act. Scientific theories necessarily take this lived world as both their starting and finishing points, and hence must not be understood, as the scientific realist maintains, as undermining the claims to reality of the lived world, replacing it with a ‘scientific’ one, and then re-locating the lived world within the subject as the internal conscious effects of a scientifically characterized externality. And Husserl then proceeds to criticize orthodox psychology for its acceptance of this dualistic picture based upon scientific realism’s misrepresentation of the status of scientific knowledge.

Scientific realism and Cartesian dualism are likewise central targets of Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception. Taking up Husserl’s conception of the lived world, he starts by exploring one specific aspect of this, the lived body: that is, he attempts to provide a phenomenological account of the human body, focusing primarily on the ‘first person’ standpoint, on what is involved for each of us in our bodily ‘existence’. The body that is thereby revealed is not the scientific object of Cartesian dualism, and its subjectivity is not that of a consciousness ‘inhabiting’ such an object. Further, the world as it is for the human subject is ‘for’ an embodied subject, not for a disembodied consciousness. Human ‘being-in-the-world’ is a bodily being or existence, and will require for its adequate description a breaking with traditional philosophical categories."

 

[Randall]

If we take the following:

. . . The key move made by Husserl in The Crisis [The Crisis of the European Sciences] is to claim that Galileo’s mathematized nature is not a direct representation of the real, but an abstraction from it.

And make an analogy using this:

Scientific realism and Cartesian dualism are likewise central targets of Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception ... The body that is thereby revealed is not the scientific object of Cartesian dualism, and its subjectivity is not that of a consciousness ‘inhabiting’ such an object.

Then I view the analogy as inaccurate in that it is not the body that is an abstraction of reality, but rather it is consciousness ( back again to Plato's Cave ), and it is not that consciousness "inhabits" the body as a person inhabits a dwelling. However using a dwelling as an analogy, it's more the case that a particular type of architecture will by the simple virtue of its existence give rise to a particular set of conditions in and around itself. We wouldn't say for example that a ray of sunlight streaming through a window "inhabits" the space ( other than poetically perhaps ).

So in this analogy the body is a particularly complex piece of architecture that by virtue of its design gives rise to consciousness as a natural part of its condition. In doing so its windows reveal the outside world to its inner space and change it accordingly, leading to a dynamic relationship between the inner and outer world.

 

[smcder]

Here is a new paper put up at academia.edu that I think might help us clarify and recognize the physical and metaphysical issues that have blocked our progress so far in discussions of panpsychism:

Itay Shani, "Cosmopsychism: A Holistic Approach to the Metaphysics of Experience"

“A philosophy that tells us to explain things by breaking them into parts will not help us when we confront the question of understanding the things that have no parts.”
-- Lee Smolin, The Life of the Cosmos

Abstract: This paper introduces cosmopsychism as a holistic alternative to atomistic panpsychism, and as a general perspective on the metaphysics of consciousness. I begin with some necessary background details concerning contemporary panpsychism and the problems it faces, and then proceed to the theory itself. The starting point of the theory is the assumption that an all pervading cosmic consciousness is the single ontological ultimate. From this assumption, a panpsychist ontology of mind with distinct holistic overtones is developed. In particular, I argue that such universal consciousness serves as the ground for the emergence of individual conscious creatures. The result is a theory with significant conceptual resources which presents novel means for confronting some of the most recalcitrant problems facing contemporary panpsychism: in particular, the subject combination problem, and the problem of entailment associated with it. In so doing, cosmopsychism places itself as a viable alternative to atomistic varieties of panpsychism as well as to orthodox physicalist accounts of consciousness.

Cosmopsychism: A Holistic Approach to the Metaphysics of Experience

And - how much fun is it to be able to talk about the "blobject"??

;-)

 

[Constance]

In the cases I've looked into, the degree of normality has bee exaggerated. The other thing is that hydrocephalus compresses brain tissue, which means that depending on the situation, destruction and loss of functional tissue isn't always as severe as it looks, because some percentage of the tissue is still functioning in a compressed state. Here's a reference to one bit: The Medical Chronicle The bottom line with respect to this thread is that there's no reason to believe that some paranormal force has taken over for the apparent loss of brain volume.

Who is claiming that consciousness is 'paranormal'?

 

[Randall]

Who is claiming that consciousness is 'paranormal'?

When there's a headline like someone being normal even though most of their brain is missing, there's the possibility that someone might interpret that as the brain not being necessary for consciousness, which could be construed as evidence for the possibility of paranormal phenomena like ghosts or reincarnation. So there's no claim that anyone in particular has claimed that consciousness is paranormal, just that the situation is one to be careful not to make that assumption about. Given that the name of the thread is Consciousness and the Paranormal, we're already oriented in that direction, so IMO it's a reasonable concern.

 

[Soupie]

Linking from Villalobos' Academia.edu page...a number of intetesting papers:

Mario Villalobos Kirmayr | Universidad de Tarapacá - Academia.edu

The Enactive Automaton as a Computing Mechanism

This paper addresses the discrepancy in Varela and Thompson's anti-computational enactivist theory...and their illustration of it by way of a simple cellular automata:

Varela, Thompson, and Rosch, the author argues, had a hidden assumption: "that computation requires representation, and that computational states must bear representational content."

From this view, the automaton example cannot be computational. But the author points to computational theories that do not assume that computation requires representation. Villalobos thus believes Varela and Thompson's enactive automaton is a non-representational computing mechanism and that they would not object to it...

I still don't understand why some have such an issue with "representation" as it now seems to be regarded in a very loose sense. In any case, the following popped into my stream a day or so ago:

Ecological Representations

"Abstract

Cognitive science has three main motivations for claiming that cognition requires representation; the need for intentional access to the world, poverty of perceptual access to that world, and the need to support 'higher-order' cognition. In addition to these motivations, all representational systems must address two major problems: symbol grounding and system-detectable error. Here we argue that James J Gibson's ecological information fits the basic definition of a representation, solves both problems and immediately addresses the first two motivations. We then develop an argument (begun in Golonka, 2015) that informational representations and the resulting neural representations can also support 'higher-order' cognition and provides an ecological framework for understanding neural activity. Ecological psychology can be a complete theory of cognition, and the key is the way that information represents the world."

It seems pretty clear to me that—while we don't know exactly how—computation*, cognition, perception, information, representation/intention, perception, and subjective experience have an intimate, if not direct, relationship.

*note that I'm not talking about programs and algorithms

Also note that I leave (phenomenal) consciousness out because it's a different beast.