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Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 13


You are so right. I'm in the middle of recording the ATP show with Kevin Killen right now. If you have any questions I'll ask him. Welcome Kevin Killen - His Life With Ghosts

You can ask him what he makes of this statement:

"True, the assumed fact that some physical event-structures are identical with phenomenality means ex hypothesi that the physical does not cause the qualitative nature of experience."

Or ... ask WHY do we have cosciousness?

:)
 
You can ask him what he makes of this statement:

"True, the assumed fact that some physical event-structures are identical with phenomenality means ex hypothesi that the physical does not cause the qualitative nature of experience."

Or ... ask WHY do we have cosciousness?

:)
I actually got your question in ( sort of ). We didn't have a lot of time to go into it in depth. But we'll pick-up on it next time Kevin is on. You would be welcome to join us on a listener roundtable in the future if you're interested.
 
"Edmund Husserl: Formal Ontology and Transcendental Logic"
Husserl: Formal Ontology and Transcendental Logic


This page provides insight into the meaning of the 'transcendental' in philosophy. Here is an extract from the first, introductory entry, and further insights succeed it, providing necessary foundational insight into phenomenological philosophy as distinguished from analytical philosophy.

"Husserl's work includes lengthy treatment of universals, categories, meanings, numbers, manifolds, etc. from an ontological perspective. Here, however, we shall concentrate almost exclusively on the Logical Investigations, which contain in a clear form the ontological ideas which provided the terminological and theoretical basis both for much of the detailed phenomenological description and for many of the metaphysical theses presented in Husserl's later works.

The ontology of the Logical Investigations is of interest first of all because of its clear conception of a formal discipline of ontology analogous to formal logic. (Here Husserl's thinking parallels Meinong's development of ontology as a general 'theory of objects.). Formal disciplines are set apart from 'regional' or 'material' disciplines in that they apply to all domains of objects whatsoever, so that they are independent of the peculiarities of any given field of knowledge.

Logic, as Husserl sees it, is concerned in the first place with meanings (propositions, concepts) and with associated meaning-instantiating acts. Most importantly, it is concerned with that sort of deductively closed collection of meanings which constitutes a scientific theory. For Husserl, as for Bolzano, logic is a theory of science. Only where we have an appropriate unity and organization also on the side of the objects (states of affairs, properties) to which the relevant acts refer, however, will we have a scientific theory, so that the unity which is characteristic of the latter must involve both (1) an interconnection of truths (or of propositional meanings in general), and (2) an interconnection of the things to which these truths (and the associated cognitive acts) are directed.

Where formal logic relates in the first place to meaning categories such as proposition, concept, subject and predicate, its sister discipline of formal ontology relates to object categories such as object and property, relation and relatum, manifold, part, whole, state of affairs, existence and so on. Logic in a broader sense therefore seeks to delimit the concepts which belong to the idea of a unity of theory in relation to both meanings and objects, and the truths of logic are all the necessary truths relating to those categories of constituents, on the side of both meanings and objects, from out of which science as such is necessarily constituted (including what we might think of as bridge-categories such as identity and truth which span the division between meanings and objects).

Husserl's conception of the science of logic is not an arbitrary one.

For formal-ontological concepts are like the concepts of formal logic in forming complex structures in non-arbitrary, law-governed ("recursive") ways. And because they are independent of any peculiar material of knowledge, we are able to grasp the properties of the given structures in such a way as to establish in one go the properties of all formally similar structures." (pp. 27-29)

From: Barry Smith Barry & David Woodruff Smith, The Cambridge Companion to Husserl, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1995. . . . .


Read on though the rest of the introduction and the subsequent sections, all by different philosophers and scholars, for more nuanced understanding of Husserl's thought and many interconnecting insights in the history of philosophy. Maybe two or three sections per day would be best; done by a week.
 
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I think you should read the paper. But this is taking up a lot of time and technically, it can be answered from the sentence itself:

"True, the assumed fact that some physical event-structures are identical with phenomenality means ex hypothesi that the physical does not cause the qualitative nature of experience."

What is the causal relationship in an identity?

My brain just seg faulted.

If a physical event is the causal relationship for you perceiving something, and then causes you to react to that stimulus and give rise to the experience of perceiving it, then the physical does indeed create experience, qualitative nature and all.

You can even time it. Stimulus/response times in the brain are well understood, and correlate to people perceiving things. It's what makes Radin's work so interesting.
 
My brain just seg faulted.

If a physical event is the causal relationship for you perceiving something, and then causes you to react to that stimulus and give rise to the experience of perceiving it, then the physical does indeed create experience, qualitative nature and all.

You can even time it. Stimulus/response times in the brain are well understood, and correlate to people perceiving things. It's what makes Radin's work so interesting.

The paper is about identity theory.

What is the causal relationship between identical things?
 
I'm reading a paper by Shaun Gallagher entitled "When the problem of intersubjectivity becomes the solution," first published in M. Legerstee, D. Haley and M. Bornstein (eds.), The Infant Mind: Origins of the Social Brain (48-74). Toronto: Guildford Press, 2013, which provides an inherent counter-argument to the 'neuronal representation' theories we have been discussing here. The paper challenges the standard description of how mirror neurons function and clarifies the inadequacy of both 'theory of mind' [TOM] and 'simulation theory' [ST] to account for how consciousness and mind develop in the very young members of our species. I think this paper is fascinating in itself, but more importantly contributes to our own critical thinking about 'representation' in general and particularly proposals that representations are generated by our neurons and manipulate what we think, foreclosing on the phenomenological openness of what we experience as foundational for what we think and believe. Gallagher is always thorough in his research and clear in his presentations of its results. I hope others here will take this paper up so that we might discuss it.

https://www.academia.edu/20554581/G...to_Guildford_Press?email_work_card=view-paper


1-145d9bb38b.jpg
 
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I'm reading a paper by Shaun Gallagher entitled "When the problem of intersubjectivity becomes the solution," first published in M. Legerstee, D. Haley and M. Bornstein (eds.), The Infant Mind: Origins of the Social Brain (48-74). Toronto: Guildford Press, 2013, which provides an inherent counter-argument to the 'neuronal representation' theories we have been discussing here. The paper challenges the standard description of how mirror neurons function and clarifies the inadequacy of both 'theory of mind' [TOM] and 'simulation theory' [ST] to account for how consciousness and mind develop in the very young members of our species. I think this paper is fascinating in itself, but more importantly contributes to our own critical thinking about 'representation' in general and particularly proposals that representations are generated by our neurons and manipulate what we think, foreclosing on the phenomenological openness of what we experience as foundational for what we think and believe. Gallagher is always thorough in his research and clear in his presentations of its results. I hope others here will take this paper up so that we might discuss it.

https://www.academia.edu/20554581/G...to_Guildford_Press?email_work_card=view-paper


1-145d9bb38b.jpg

Having a look....
 
A many-splendored paper that, to my recollection, we have not yet taken up in this forum:

"Naturalizing Subjective Character"
URIAH KRIEGEL

". . . The problem of subjective character is the problem of understanding how a mental state may include within it an awareness of itself. How can a mental state be both a bluish experience and an awareness of that very bluish experience? More specifically, how can we make sense of this possibility within a purely naturalistic, or physicalistic, conception of the mind? We may call the latter problem the problem of naturalizing subjective character. It is this problem that I will address in the remainder of this paper. . . ."

One of the exceptionally helpful elements of this paper is that Kriegel refers to and cites many if not most of the philosophers of mind whose theories we have considered here over these last four years.

http://uriahkriegel.com/userfiles/downloads/KriegelPPR.pdf
 
A many-splendored paper that, to my recollection, we have not yet taken up in this forum:

"Naturalizing Subjective Character"
URIAH KRIEGEL

". . . The problem of subjective character is the problem of understanding how a mental state may include within it an awareness of itself. How can a mental state be both a bluish experience and an awareness of that very bluish experience? More specifically, how can we make sense of this possibility within a purely naturalistic, or physicalistic, conception of the mind? We may call the latter problem the problem of naturalizing subjective character. It is this problem that I will address in the remainder of this paper. . . ."

One of the exceptionally helpful elements of this paper is that Kriegel refers to and cites many if not most of the philosophers of mind whose theories we have considered here over these last four years.

http://uriahkriegel.com/userfiles/downloads/KriegelPPR.pdf

My laptop is kaput. It's hard reading papers on the phone...I hope to remedy soon.

Here's a link to a video on Tarkovosky - it's one of the better things I've seen in terms of understanding his work...though I think he gets speculative in the end.

 
On Malick's translation of "The Essence of Reason".

 
On Malick's translation of "The Essence of Reason".


I'd like to read Malick's translation if I can find a copy. Hope there's one online. Will post a link if I find it. :)
ps, good luck with your laptop.
 
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