Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 11

[Soupie]

What do you think should be said there that isn't being said?

It's not so much what should be said that isn't, but that I have to be careful not to suppose that these fields have (phenomenal) consciousness in mind (heh) in their models, when often they don't.

Sometimes psychology is strictly focused on behavior with no consideration of consciousness. When psychology does concern the (phenomenal mind) there seems to be an ignorance of philosophical problems such as the MBP, mental causation, and causal closure of the physical.

It's pretty much the same with neuroscience; when it does attempt to include p-consciousness, there is often a philosophical ignorance of MB Problems.

 

[Constance]

No, you've got it. If complex behavior can proceed sans consciousness, why do we have it and what does it do?

To wit:

>> resulting experiential phenomena

What makes you think experiential phenomena result from physical, perceptual processes?

I don’t see how they could not. Our day to day, hour to hour, even moment to moment sense of our existence in an actual world depends on our awareness of our interactions with others in our environing ‘world’, with the sustained sense of our being within this actual world. The fact that some of our behaviors can be 'unconscious' (such as driving our usual route to work with our mind elsewhere) does not mean that we are not simultaneously connected sufficiently to our moment-by-moment experience in the world to avoid crashing our cars into one another at every intersection, nicht wahr?

 

[Constance]

Sometimes psychology is strictly focused on behavior with no consideration of consciousness. When psychology does concern the (phenomenal mind) there seems to be an ignorance of philosophical problems such as the MBP, mental causation, and causal closure of the physical.

It's pretty much the same with neuroscience; when it does attempt to include p-consciousness, there is often a philosophical ignorance of MB Problems.

Indeed. And that is why both mainstream neuroscience and recent theories and practices of some psychologists following mainstream neuroscience are inadequate to deal with individual and intersubjective consciousness. Consciousness is not only a 'philosophical problem', as if we could think that philosophers merely sit in their offices and classrooms inventing ideas and seeking reasons why these might be thought to be valid irrespective of their application, their use, to our species in understanding the nature of reality and the full complement of what we are in the ways in which we comprehend reality.

Over the last 30-some years consciousness has become the primary focus of specialists in a wide range of disciplines; consciousness studies has had to become interdisciplinary, and that means that all participants in the investigation of consciousness have to give up the presuppositions built into their disciplines in the past. It has been philosophy, particularly philosophy of mind in both its analytical and phenomenological approaches, that has enabled the development of our understanding of what consciousness is in all its parts, levels, and aspects, an inquiry in which we have an f-ing long way to go yet.

 

[Constance]

What do you think should be said there [i.e., in psychology and neuroscience] that isn't being said?

The question of the century. I hope we, and the leading CS researchers we follow, get closer to answering it.

 

[Constance]

Yes, I will reread again [“Five Marks of the Mental”] as well. It does strike me that these marks are all marks of a subjective, perspectival view on what-is as well. Except in the case of consciousness (if defined as phenomenal consciousness, "raw feel").

"Raw feel" has never been an adequate description of the nature of phenomenal consciousness. The problem is that only those who have read and understood the major texts of phenomenological philosophy can grasp the reasons why. But I repeat myself, for going on three years now.

The strike-throughs are unintentional. Perhaps some tinkering is going on in the Paracast software. I don't have the patience to try to do undo this.

 

[Randall]

Try this...

http://www.abrg.group.shef.ac.uk/people/tony/teaching/articles/VanGelderDAC.html

Keep in mind it was written in 1994...basically the two models differ in where TAMO comes in...

The obvious question for me is what prevents computation from being dynamic? The other problem is that cognition is a collection of concepts that spans a range from the biological through the psychological including our philosophical discussions on consciousness. So attempting to find a one size fits all solution isn't going to work unless it leaves something out. I could elaborate on the idea of dynamics and computation using an analogy, but apparently it's forbidden to use certain analogies without upsetting certain people. Maybe that policy should be reviewed?

 

[smcder]

It's not so much what should be said that isn't, but that I have to be careful not to suppose that these fields have (phenomenal) consciousness in mind (heh) in their models, when often they don't.

Sometimes psychology is strictly focused on behavior with no consideration of consciousness. When psychology does concern the (phenomenal mind) there seems to be an ignorance of philosophical problems such as the MBP, mental causation, and causal closure of the physical.

It's pretty much the same with neuroscience; when it does attempt to include p-consciousness, there is often a philosophical ignorance of MB Problems.

Yeah...Raymond Tallis(?) and Ian McGilchrist...remember?

As @Constance says, the relevant literature is in consciousness studies.

 

[smcder]

Neural circuits as computational dynamical systems. - PubMed - NCBI

Neural circuits as computational dynamical systems.

Review article

Sussillo D. Curr Opin Neurobiol. 2014.
Show full citation

Abstract
Many recent studies of neurons recorded from cortex reveal complex temporal dynamics. How such dynamics embody the computations that ultimately lead to behavior remains a mystery. Approaching this issue requires developing plausible hypotheses couched in terms of neural dynamics.

@Soupie

So there could be a philosophical stance taken here - roughly physicalism: that neural activity embodies behavior...on the other hand that's not saying much that's incompatible with much because "embodies" (unless a term of art) is vague...but if we assume it's a physicalist stance, then this is interesting:

"How such dynamics embody the computations that ultimately lead to behavior remains a mystery."

One could point to the problem of making a claim that has a musterious how a la...

"How light travels through luminous aether remains a mystery."

Of course, it doesn't, as we later found out.

And no mention is made of consciousness, only behavior.

 

[Soupie]

I don’t see how they could not.

But no one can see how they could, right? Hence this years-long discussion. Of course it seems like consciousness originates in the body, but just how, why, and when is the question.

My own take is that consciousness is fundamental and it's subjective experience that originates with the body.

 

[Soupie]

This is a solid article by Dennet; it should provide a state of the art picture of the physicalist approach to consciousness. Although we may scoff at Dennet, there is a lot to appreciate in this article.

Facing up to the hard question of consciousness

I'm particularly interested in what @USI Calgary thinks about this first powerful point in light of his own quasi "physicalist" approach to consciousness:

"The causes of the misdirection can be uncovered by reminding ourselves of a few largely uncontentious but easily neglected discoveries of neuroscience:

• (i) There is no double transduction [5]. The various peripheral and internal transducers—rods and cones, hair cells, olfactory epithelium cells, stretch-detectors in muscles, temperature-change detectors, nociceptors and others—are designed by evolution to take the occurrence of physically detectable properties as input and yield signals—axonal spike trains—as output. There is no central arena or depot where these spike trains become recipes for a second transduction that restores the properties transduced at the periphery, or translates them into some sort of counterpart properties of a privileged medium. Vision is not television, audition does not strike up the little band in the brain, olfactory perception does not waft aromas in any inner chamber. (Nor, one had better add, are there subjective counterpart properties, subjective colours-that-are-not-seen-with-eyes, inaudible-sounds, ghost-aromas that need no molecular vehicles, for us to enjoy and identify in some intimate but unimaginable way.) Colour vision is accomplished by a sophisticated system of information processing conducted entirely in spike trains, where colours are ‘represented’ by physical patterns of differences in spike trains that are not themselves colours. The key difference between the transmission of colour information by a DVD and the transmission of colour information by the various cortical regions is that the former is designed by engineers to be a recipe for recreating (via a transduction to another medium) the very properties that triggered the peripheral transducers that compose the megapixel screens behind the camera lens, while the latter is designed by evolution to deliver useful information about the affordances that matter to the organism in a form that is readily usable or consumable [10] by the specialized circuits that modulate the behaviours of systems external and internal."

The first is something @smcder and I discussed intensely over the past couple months. Perception does not restore the properties transduced at the periphery.

After this Dennet writes:

"I have discovered that it is useful to pause at this point and invite readers to consider whether or not they actually agree with these two basic points, because their implications are highly destructive of commonplace presumptions."

The second point—the one I'd like to hear @USI Calgary 's response to if he'd like—is: spike trains are not themselves transduced into properties of a privileged medium (i.e. phenomenal consciousness).

I believe @USI Calgary 's stance is that spike trains (or some other brain activity) is transduced into some type of conscious field, akin to a magnetic field.

Dennet is arguing (and has for years) that consciousness just is the activity of the nervous system.

He says:

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

So, I agree with Dennet that processes of the nervous system don't instantiate a new medium (consciousness). But in saying this, it's not enough to say that phenomenal qualities are representations within the nervous system. I certainly believe that they are, but Dennet hasn't explained how. He argues that they aren't instantiated (emergent from) the nervous system. But he hasn't explained how physical spike trains can be phenomenal qualities.

I'll see if he addresses this in the rest of the article.

If he doesn't account for how physical spike trains can be phenomenal qualities, individuals will continue to argue that phenomenal qualities emerge from spike trains.

 

[Randall]

This is a solid article by Dennet; it should provide a state of the art picture of the physicalist approach to consciousness. Although we may scoff at Dennet, there is a lot to appreciate in this article.Facing up to the hard question of consciousness I'm particularly interested in what @USI Calgary thinks about this first powerful point in light of his own quasi "physicalist" approach to consciousness ...

As with all types of claims, Dennet's article begins with a premise, and this one requires the reader to take it for granted that neuroscience has discovered that specific workings of the brain aren't responsible for the experience we call consciousness. Perhaps that is true to the extent that the specifics he's talking about aren't solely responsible. However I don't think it's safe to jump from there to the conclusion that because specific individual parts of the brain aren't transducers, that larger regions of the brain don't work together as one.

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

With respect to the specific argument that things such as EEG readings or "spike trains" or whatever the case may be at the electrochemical level, are not consciousness, that is simply stating the obvious. What such readings are, are indicators of brain function that with respect to consciousness can be directly correlated. This is analogous to the readout on a voltmeter. The displayed number of volts isn't the electricity itself. It's simply a readout that indicates the presence of electricity within the circuit. Now one might argue that simple correlation doesn't prove the circuit is the source of the electricity, but can we provide a single example when it's not?

The situation is similar with consciousness. There are zero examples of brain dead patients who exhibit any signs of consciousness while brain dead. All examples to the contrary are from patients who have been revived, have a functioning brain, and claim after the fact to have memories of being conscious while supposedly brain dead. We touched on this briefly during a recent episode of The Paracast when I brought up the results of the AWARE study, which yielded zero confirmed visual perceptions during NDE experiences.

Some further comments on the issue of the brain as a transducer are the studies of Michael Persinger ( who we lost just this month ) which appear to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that EM waves are transduced by the brain into perceptual experiences. Simply because we don't know exactly how this happens doesn't mean it's safe to conclude that it isn't happening. Examples of other types of transducers like audio speakers might also serve as a warning not to draw certain types of conclusions.

For example in an audio speaker ( also called a transducer ), the electricity in the lead that is connected to the speaker terminals never makes any contact with the speaker cone ( the moving surface ). There is literally a gap between the electrical feed and the part that moves. One could therefore propose that because there's no connection between the electricity and the surface of the cone, that there's no way for an electrical impulse to be transduced into a sound wave. Yet it happens, and we can detect it on a decibel meter similar to the way we can detect electricity on a voltmeter and brain function on an EEG.

Similarly the brain has literally billions of tiny gaps between neurons and it is precisely at these gaps where the action takes place. Can we really be so sure that they don't play a significant role in transducing electrochemical phenomena into the phenomena of consciousness? Personally I don't think so. Maybe that's really the point of Dennet's artcle. Neuroscience shouldn't make negative assumptions about the role of the brain in consciousness any more than philosophers or theologians. Hopefully these thoughts provide some points for reflection and thanks for being interested in my opinion ( whether it's useful or not ).

 

[smcder]

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/03/09/is-consciousness-an-illusion-dennett-evolution/

I like that Nagel gives Dennett his due. It's striking that his response is so brief and so simple - but it is a book review.

The trouble is that Dennett concludes not only that there is much more behind our behavioral competencies than is revealed to the first-person point of view—which is certainly true—but that nothing whatever is revealed to the first-person point of view but a “version” of the neural machinery. In other words, when I look at the American flag, it may seem to me that there are red stripes in my subjective visual field, but that is an illusion: the only reality, of which this is “an interpreted, digested version,” is that a physical process I can’t describe is going on in my visual cortex.

I am reminded of the Marx Brothers line: “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?” Dennett asks us to turn our backs on what is glaringly obvious—that in consciousness we are immediately aware of real subjective experiences of color, flavor, sound, touch, etc. that cannot be fully described in neural terms even though they have a neural cause (or perhaps have neural as well as experiential aspects). And he asks us to do this because the reality of such phenomena is incompatible with the scientific materialism that in his view sets the outer bounds of reality. He is, in Aristotle’s words, “maintaining a thesis at all costs.”

Dennett always feels a bit klunky and strident to me. I suppose that's just style - contrast with Chalmers or Nagel himself ... both of whom feel a bit more "philosophy" to me.

Nagel took a lot of flack for his Mind and Cosmos...I've linked to articles on this before - but as in some other key cases of heresy, it might seem hard to see why:

There is no reason to go through such mental contortions in the name of science. The spectacular progress of the physical sciences since the seventeenth century was made possible by the exclusion of the mental from their purview. To say that there is more to reality than physics can account for is not a piece of mysticism: it is an acknowledgment that we are nowhere near a theory of everything, and that science will have to expand to accommodate facts of a kind fundamentally different from those that physics is designed to explain. It should not disturb us that this may have radical consequences, especially for Dennett’s favorite natural science, biology: the theory of evolution, which in its current form is a purely physical theory, may have to incorporate nonphysical factors to account for consciousness, if consciousness is not, as he thinks, an illusion. Materialism remains a widespread view, but science does not progress by tailoring the data to fit a prevailing theory.

It seems innocent enough ...

 

[smcder]

This is a solid article by Dennet; it should provide a state of the art picture of the physicalist approach to consciousness. Although we may scoff at Dennet, there is a lot to appreciate in this article.

Facing up to the hard question of consciousness

I'm particularly interested in what @USI Calgary thinks about this first powerful point in light of his own quasi "physicalist" approach to consciousness:

"The causes of the misdirection can be uncovered by reminding ourselves of a few largely uncontentious but easily neglected discoveries of neuroscience:

• (i) There is no double transduction [5]. The various peripheral and internal transducers—rods and cones, hair cells, olfactory epithelium cells, stretch-detectors in muscles, temperature-change detectors, nociceptors and others—are designed by evolution to take the occurrence of physically detectable properties as input and yield signals—axonal spike trains—as output. There is no central arena or depot where these spike trains become recipes for a second transduction that restores the properties transduced at the periphery, or translates them into some sort of counterpart properties of a privileged medium. Vision is not television, audition does not strike up the little band in the brain, olfactory perception does not waft aromas in any inner chamber. (Nor, one had better add, are there subjective counterpart properties, subjective colours-that-are-not-seen-with-eyes, inaudible-sounds, ghost-aromas that need no molecular vehicles, for us to enjoy and identify in some intimate but unimaginable way.) Colour vision is accomplished by a sophisticated system of information processing conducted entirely in spike trains, where colours are ‘represented’ by physical patterns of differences in spike trains that are not themselves colours. The key difference between the transmission of colour information by a DVD and the transmission of colour information by the various cortical regions is that the former is designed by engineers to be a recipe for recreating (via a transduction to another medium) the very properties that triggered the peripheral transducers that compose the megapixel screens behind the camera lens, while the latter is designed by evolution to deliver useful information about the affordances that matter to the organism in a form that is readily usable or consumable [10] by the specialized circuits that modulate the behaviours of systems external and internal."

The first is something @smcder and I discussed intensely over the past couple months. Perception does not restore the properties transduced at the periphery.

After this Dennet writes:

"I have discovered that it is useful to pause at this point and invite readers to consider whether or not they actually agree with these two basic points, because their implications are highly destructive of commonplace presumptions."

The second point—the one I'd like to hear @USI Calgary 's response to if he'd like—is: spike trains are not themselves transduced into properties of a privileged medium (i.e. phenomenal consciousness).

I believe @USI Calgary 's stance is that spike trains (or some other brain activity) is transduced into some type of conscious field, akin to a magnetic field.

Dennet is arguing (and has for years) that consciousness just is the activity of the nervous system.

He says:

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

So, I agree with Dennet that processes of the nervous system don't instantiate a new medium (consciousness). But in saying this, it's not enough to say that phenomenal qualities are representations within the nervous system. I certainly believe that they are, but Dennet hasn't explained how. He argues that they aren't instantiated (emergent from) the nervous system. But he hasn't explained how physical spike trains can be phenomenal qualities.

I'll see if he addresses this in the rest of the article.

If he doesn't account for how physical spike trains can be phenomenal qualities, individuals will continue to argue that phenomenal qualities emerge from spike trains.

1. What makes an article solid?

B. "state of the art" I question, because I'm not sure all physicalists are Dennetians.

 

[smcder]

for example, Searle, who is a pretty big boy himself:

a la Wikipedia:

"However, John Searle argues[9] that Dennett, who insists that discussing subjectivity is nonsense because it is unscientific and science presupposes objectivity, is making a category error. Searle argues that the goal of science is to establish and validate statements which are epistemically objective (i.e., whose truth can be discovered and evaluated by any interested party), but are not necessarily ontologically objective. Searle calls any value judgment epistemically subjective. Thus, "McKinley is prettier than Everest" is epistemically subjective, whereas "McKinley is higher than Everest" is epistemically objective. In other words, the latter statement is evaluable (in fact, falsifiable) by an understood ("background") criterion for mountain height, like "the summit is so many meters above sea level". No such criteria exist for prettiness. Searle says that, in Dennett's view, there is no consciousness in addition to the computational features, because that is all that consciousness amounts to for him: mere effects of a von Neumann(esque) virtual machine implemented in a parallel architecture and therefore implies that conscious states are illusory. In contrast, Searle asserts that, "where consciousness is concerned, the existence of the appearance is the reality."

Searle said further:

To put it as clearly as I can: in his book, Consciousness Explained, Dennett denies the existence of consciousness. He continues to use the word, but he means something different by it. For him, it refers only to third-person phenomena, not to the first-person conscious feelings and experiences we all have. For Dennett there is no difference between us humans and complex zombies who lack any inner feelings, because we are all just complex zombies. ...I regard his view as self-refuting because it denies the existence of the data which a theory of consciousness is supposed to explain...Here is the paradox of this exchange: I am a conscious reviewer consciously answering the objections of an author who gives every indication of being consciously and puzzlingly angry. I do this for a readership that I assume is conscious. How then can I take seriously his claim that consciousness does not really exist?[10]"

Nagel too uses the word "paradox". So again it seems to come down to a grasp of the hard problem, as something that discriminates at least two categories of people those who "get" it and those who "don't" - both sides claiming the get - I guess there's a third category that don't understand the problem at all.

I generally fall into the Chalmers/Searle category but I can slip into the other for periods of time - I think, like any good koan, the hard problem demands affirmation, negation, both, neither.

 

[Soupie]

As with all types of claims, Dennet's article begins with a premise, and this one requires the reader to take it for granted that neuroscience has discovered that specific workings of the brain aren't responsible for the experience we call consciousness.

I believe Dennet would say the workings of the brain are responsible for the experience we call consciousness. In fact, what he seems to be claiming is that the working of the brain are consciousness.

What he is not saying—what he is arguing against, in part—is the idea that consciousness oozes from the brain like bile from the liver.

And if I follow correctly, that seems to be the approach you and @Constance favor. (In Constance's case, she would say the body, as opposed to the brain only.)

@smcder

Solid in the sense that it hits on many topics we've discussed here.

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

 

[Randall]

I believe Dennet would say the workings of the brain are responsible for the experience we call consciousness. In fact, what he seems to be claiming is that the working of the brain are consciousness.

Hmm. Interesting. I suppose it could be interpreted more than one way depending on how one looks at the issue.

What he is not saying—what he is arguing against, in part—is the idea that consciousness oozes from the brain like bile from the liver. And if I follow correctly, that seems to be the approach you and @Constance favor. (In Constance's case, she would say the body, as opposed to the brain only.)

I would say something more like light from a light bulb or magnetism from a magnet because those metaphors also include the rise phenomena that unless we already knew about them would not be something that one would be expect to occur and are of a very different nature from the materials that give rise to them, while at the same time remaining fundamental in terms of their nature.

 

[Constance]

But no one can see how they could, right? Hence this years-long discussion. Of course it seems like consciousness originates in the body, but just how, why, and when is the question.

My own take is that consciousness is fundamental and it's subjective experience that originates with the body.

This paper by Zagavi has probably been linked here in the past. If not, or if what Zahavi writes has not been absorbed and remembered, here is a link to the paper:

Phenomenal consciousness and self-awareness: A phenomenological critique of representational theory
Article (PDF Available)  in Journal of Consciousness Studies 5(5) · January 1998 with 1,887 Reads

Dan Zahavi, University of Copenhagen
Josef Parnas, University of Copenhagen

Abstract: Given the recent interest in the subjective or phenomenal dimension of consciousness it is no wonder that many authors have once more started to speak of the need for phenomenological considerations. Often however the term ‘phenomenology’ is being used simply as a synonym for ‘folk psychology', and in our article we argue that it would be far more fruitful to turn to the argumentation to be found within the continental tradition inaugurated by Husserl. In order to exemplify this claim, we criticize Rosenthal's higher-order thought theory as well as Strawson's recent contribution in this journal, and argue that a phenomenological analysis of the nature of self-awareness can provide us with a more sophisticated and accurate model for understanding both phenomenal consciousness and the notion of self.

(PDF) Phenomenal consciousness and.... Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262956107_Phenomenal_consciousness_and_self-awareness_A_phenomenological_critique_of_representational_theory [accessed Aug 18 2018].

 

[Constance]

Y'all will have received @Pharoah's email including a letter from a journal editor concerning a paper of Pharoah's that we've read. I hope Pharoah will link the paper for us again now.

I wanted to post here for future reference the following citations by the editor:

* Claus Emmeche 1999. The biosemiotics of emergent properties in a pluralist ontology. In Edwina Taborsky, ed. (1999), Semiosis. Evolution. Energy: Towards a Reconceptualization of the Sign. Shaker Verlag, Aachen (pp. 89-108). (see: http://www.nbi.dk/~Emmeche/cePubl/99b.toronto.3.1b.html)

* Claudio Julio Rodríguez Higuera 2016. Just How Emergent is the Emergence of Semiosis? Biosemiotics 9(1): 155–167.

On issues of knowing, this might be useful:
* Kalevi Kull 2009. Biosemiotics: To Know, What Life Knows. Cybernetics and Human Knowing 16 (3/4): 81-88.

On ontology and biosemiotics, here are a couple of central publications by philosopher and biosemiotician Frederik Stjernfelt:
* Stjernfelt, F 1999, 'Biosemiotics and Formal Ontology' Semiotica, nr. 127-1/4, s. 537-566.
* Stjernfelt, F. 2007. Diagrammatology: An Investigation on the Borderlines of Phenomenology, Ontology and Semiotics. Springer.

 

[Constance]

There are zero examples of brain dead patients who exhibit any signs of consciousness while brain dead.

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

I believe Dennet would say the workings of the brain are responsible for the experience we call consciousness. In fact, what he seems to be claiming is that the working of the brain are consciousness.

Right.

What he is not saying—what he is arguing against, in part—is the idea that consciousness oozes from the brain like bile from the liver.

And if I follow correctly, that seems to be the approach you and @Constance favor. (In Constance's case, she would say the body, as opposed to the brain only.)

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

 

[Constance]

Here is the abstract for the Emmeche paper linked by the journal editor @Pharoah corresponded with, and the link to the paper itself:

ABSTRACT. Semiotic inquiry relating the natural sciences to an evolutionary philosophy of nature must address the relations between physical, biologic and psychic systems. This can be done in various ways that either emphasize substantial differences between extensional and intensional descriptions, or strive to bridge the gap between theories of mind and matter by means of semiotic notions. Biosemiotics can contribute to integrate our concepts of matter, energy and sign systems such as the notion of a basic molecular code, which is not merely a chemical notion. It is argued that a semiotics of biological systems is in harmony with a pluralist ontology of emergent levels of organization.

www.nbi.dk/~Emmeche/cePubl/99b.toronto.3.1b.html