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Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 2

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You also wrote: "In any case, there was the paper posted a while back - with which I agreed - the described the (mental) self as a "thing" that existed for about, I believe, 30 seconds."

If so, how have we persisted over 138 pages here in developing our and others' ideas about the nature of consciousness and mind, one step at a time and rarely, if ever, losing the plot?.
 
You also wrote: "In any case, there was the paper posted a while back - with which I agreed - the described the (mental) self as a "thing" that existed for about, I believe, 30 seconds."

If so, how have we persisted over 138 pages here in developing our and others' ideas about the nature of consciousness and mind, one step at a time and rarely, if ever, losing the plot?.
This concept isn't directly related to IIT but I suppose it might be to monism.

In any case, it's no different than what happens each morning when we awake from non-conscious sleep (as noted in the paper).

Memories and experience (information) are hard encoded in the physical brain as well as in the external world (text, etc.). So while these things are "permanent" (although actually an ongoing process a la whitehead) our sense of self is a phenomena much more temporal. According to Strawson, it is something that is continually arising and dissipating in approximately 30 second spans of time.

My personal (phenomenological?) experience matches this description.
 
Regarding self-awareness:

@Constance you had noted that an organisms self-awareness is present in even the very "simplest" of living systems.

(I'm just thinking out loud) but there seem to be many "layers" of awareness. (As awareness is a mental/phenomenal thing, I think all layers of awareness constitute mind.) Is there a difference between phenomenal experience and awareness? I think there is.

There is the affectual phenomenal experience (awareness?) that arises with physical living systems seeking homeostasis within the dynamic environment.

There is the phenomenal experience when an organism internally represents the external environment. Does this happen at the homeostatic level? Is the process of homeostasis the process of internally representing external reality?

It does some to me that consciousness -- phenomenal experience -- emerges from proto-consciousness when an organism (or system) is able to internally, non-conceptually represent some aspect of external reality. (Internal and external are just terms; it might be more accurate to say: phenomenal experience arises when physical system A creates a representation of physical system B.

A poor example might be when a cell is chemically arranged one way when it senses sunlight, and is chemically arranged a different way when it does not sense sunlight. That's horribly vague, but the idea is that when physical systems begin to dynamically arrange themselves in ways that "represent" the "non-them" environment.

We might say that systems able to do this are "aware" (of external/non-them) reality.

This is the most basic awareness.

I'm also wondering about the difference in awareness of the body self, the mental self, and awareness of awareness.

That is, an organism can have an affectual (homeostatic) awareness of the body self and the surrounding non-body self.

But an organism can have a conceptual awareness of their body and their non-body.

An organism can have a conceptual awareness of their awareness of their body and their non-body. This might be the sense of self or self-awareness.

In other words, their is a body self-awareness and then there is a mental self-awareness.

Is mental self-awareness the same as awareness-awareness? We can be aware of the body, we can be aware that we are aware of the body, and we can be aware that we are aware that we are aware of the body. Or no?

Finally, one other idea I wanted to share:

In the beginning, a dynamic process began of physical reality differentiating (forming) into physical structures. Along with the formation of primitive physical structures were the formation of primitive informational structures. These primitive physical systems were inanimate, and thus the corresponding information systems were inanimate. These inanimate physical systems were slaves to causal, deterministic forces (although there was inherent randomness).

At some point, living physical systems/structures emerged and thus living informational systems/structures. The process of dynamic evolution continued.

Somewhere in this evolution of animate physical systems and corresponding informational systems (perhaps earlier than later), a "strange" thing began to happen. Whereas it had been that informational structures followed from physical structures, now informational structures (thoughts) began to exert causal influence on physical structures (organisms).

The above thought may be (a) horrible flawed, or (b) articulated much better by someone else, but I just wanted to share it.
 
This concept isn't directly related to IIT but I suppose it might be to monism.

In any case, it's no different than what happens each morning when we awake from non-conscious sleep (as noted in the paper).

Memories and experience (information) are hard encoded in the physical brain as well as in the external world (text, etc.). So while these things are "permanent" (although actually an ongoing process a la whitehead) our sense of self is a phenomena much more temporal. According to Strawson, it is something that is continually arising and dissipating in approximately 30 second spans of time.

My personal (phenomenological?) experience matches this description.


I think what you're talking about (and what Strawson referred to) was research concerning the alternations between short periods of attentive consciousness and what was referred to as a 'default state' of consciousness. What was the paper you refer to here and in your next to last post? Perhaps it goes into detail concerning the kind of stream of consciousness we experience frequently in the 'default state'. It would be good to have some specifics about this state. I don't think it indicates a state of unconsciousness. When awake we attend to a stream of experience that varies between attention to things occurring in our environment or to tasks of a mental or physical nature, apparently not maintained for long before our minds wander. That doesn't mean that consciousness and mind disappear.

Continuing . . .

Can you clarify what you mean in this post by your reference to Whitehead's Process Philosophy? I don't think there's a match or parallel there. Do you find in Whitehead the idea that information conceived as permanently stored in the brain and generally out of immediate awareness in consciousness is all always 'running' like a software program in a computer?

Re your statement that "our sense of self is a phenomena [phenomenon?] much more temporal," do you mean to say 'temporary'? Consciousness as a whole is radically temporal -- existential (see Husserl's Phenomenology of Inner Time Consciousness). And within the temporal stream of consciousness self-awareness certainly varies by degrees and probably does 'disappear' for periods of time in the 'default' state and also in many highly attentive and creative states as well. When we speak of 'self-awareness' as the sense of experience as one's own experience, I think we need to recognize Panksepp's argument that this sense begins in primitive organisms. Panksepp is distinguishing primordial forms of consciousness that are anoetic, and out of which noetic and autonoetic consciousness gradually evolve:


“At this level of the brain, therefore, homeostasis is inseparable from consciousness. Whereas the classical sensory modalities represent discrete external (knowledge-generating and objective) noetic happenings, affective consciousness represents diffuse internal (automatically evaluative and subjective) anoetic reactions to those happenings. Affectivity is, in this respect, a unique experiential modality. But that is not all it is; affectivity is an intrinsic property of the brain which is expressed in the emotions, and emotions are, above all, distinct forms of somatic motor discharge coordinated with supportive patterns of autonomic change. However, these emotional expressions also “feel like” something, in diversely valenced ways. The empirical evidence for the feeling component [is] simply based on the highly replicable fact that wherever in the brain one can artificially evoke coherent emotional response patterns with deep brain stimulation, those shifting states uniformly are accompanied by “rewarding” and “punishing” states of mind [2,4]."


Panksepp also writes:

“Contrary to LeDoux and the other corticocentric theorists: all the cortical varieties of consciousness depend upon the integrity of these subcortical structures, not the other way round. This in not to deny that higher cortical regions add much to consciousness. Of course they do. But the evolutionary “roots” of consciousness are to be found elsewhere, and they are probably affective [4,44]."

And this primordial ‘affectivity’

"gives rise to a background state of “being”; this aspect of the body is the subject of perception. We may picture this type of consciousness as the neurodynamic page upon which, or from which, exteroceptive experiences are written in higher brain regions. (This is also what binds experiences together; perception happens to a unitary, embodied subject; cf. the binding problem.)”
 
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Regarding self-awareness:

@Constance you had noted that an organisms self-awareness is present in even the very "simplest" of living systems.

I was quoting the Panksepp paper that @Pharoah linked.

(I'm just thinking out loud) but there seem to be many "layers" of awareness. (As awareness is a mental/phenomenal thing, I think all layers of awareness constitute mind.) Is there a difference between phenomenal experience and awareness? I think there is.

There is the affectual phenomenal experience (awareness?) that arises with physical living systems seeking homeostasis within the dynamic environment.

There is the phenomenal experience when an organism internally represents the external environment. Does this happen at the homeostatic level? Is the process of homeostasis the process of internally representing external reality?

It does some to me that consciousness -- phenomenal experience -- emerges from proto-consciousness when an organism (or system) is able to internally, non-conceptually represent some aspect of external reality.

Up to this point you're attempting to clarify for yourself Panksepp's line of thinking. Then you revert back to the language of your former 'computational systems' approach following Tononi:

(Internal and external are just terms; it might be more accurate to say: phenomenal experience arises when physical system A creates a representation of physical system B.

A poor example might be when a cell is chemically arranged one way when it senses sunlight, and is chemically arranged a different way when it does not sense sunlight. That's horribly vague, but the idea is that [when] physical systems begin to dynamically arrange themselves in ways that "represent" the "non-them" environment.

Wouldn't you say (be willing to say) that at that point -- wherever it occurs in the evolution of nature (in this universe at least) -- subjective and objective poles of reality can be discerned to arise unambiguously -- there is then a sense of the 'internal' in relation to the 'external' in which an organism is embedded yet set apart {the germinal form of Heidegger's description of Dasein as standing in a position of being 'ekstase'.} Internal and external are not "just terms" once 'affectivity', as Panksepp identifies it, appears in nature. The paper I linked over from the Death! thread in a post here last night (following the Dylan Thomas poem) is also relevant to the contemporary scientific effort to probe more deeply into evolutionary history for the natural roots of consciousness.

We might say that systems able to do this are "aware" (of external/non-them) reality.

This is the most basic awareness.

I'm also wondering about the difference in awareness of the body self, the mental self, and awareness of awareness.

That is, an organism can have an affectual (homeostatic) awareness of the body self and the surrounding non-body self.

But an organism can have a conceptual awareness of their body and their non-body.

An organism can have a conceptual awareness of their awareness of their body and their non-body. This might be the sense of self or self-awareness.

In other words, their is a body self-awareness and then there is a mental self-awareness.

Is mental self-awareness the same as awareness-awareness? We can be aware of the body, we can be aware that we are aware of the body, and we can be aware that we are aware that we are aware of the body. Or no?

I would say re-read Panksepp and read Varela and Thompson's books (and also the phenomenological philosophy, particularly that of Merleau-Ponty, that has inspired the investigations of all three).


Finally, one other idea I wanted to share:

In the beginning, a dynamic process began of physical reality differentiating (forming) into physical structures. Along with the formation of primitive physical structures were the formation of primitive informational structures. These primitive physical systems were inanimate, and thus the corresponding information systems were inanimate. These inanimate physical systems were slaves to causal, deterministic forces (although there was inherent randomness).

It rather seems that 'in the beginning' [as closely as science has yet approached it] was the quantum substrate of energetic interacting particles/waves emerging out of the energetic zero point field, expressed in the paper I linked most recently by Edgar Mitchell.

At some point, living physical systems/structures emerged and thus living informational systems/structures. The process of dynamic evolution continued.

Somewhere in this evolution of animate physical systems and corresponding informational systems (perhaps earlier than later), a "strange" thing began to happen. Whereas it had been that informational structures followed from physical structures, now informational structures (thoughts) began to exert causal influence on physical structures (organisms).

The above thought may be (a) horrible flawed, or (b) articulated much better by someone else, but I just wanted to share it.

The key to the evolution of the universe could be the energetic processes of interaction, integration, and entanglement operative in the quantum substrate, instantiating a habit of nature that eventuated in the emergence of life and consciousness of being.


Extract from the Mitchell paper:


“The point being argued here is that the internal feeling sense and the intuitive function is a basic mechanism in nature’s scheme of information management, that is to say –“knowing”. It evolved long before the left hemispheres and frontal lobes that seem to be responsible for language, reasoning and other high level mental functions upon which humankind has placed emphasis in the historic period. Thus examination of the more primitive brain functions in the human organism is most likely to yield clues as to the historic role of consciousness and mentality in the evolving pre-anthropic world."
 
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Hey Constance I'm trying to pick up what you're laying down but I can't figure it out.

Could you just say in simple terms without referencing someones paper or quoting or something and just hit me with the clue stick and tell me what your position is?

Maybe I'm the stupid one in the room but I'm not sure if I agree with you or not.
 
Soupie
HCT and dualism:
One can be an advocate of HCT and be a dualist. HCT has no bearing on the dualist/ monist questions.
Systems and information:
You say,
"But can't the information generated by... a physical system be subjective?"
Soupie... What justifies calling something a system?
Answer that prickly question and you will understand, that a true systems construct is an information construct. One that is not, is not. Just because people say something is a system (like a computer, or a complex integration of bits) doesn't mean it IS a system. This is the systems thinking fallacy. Alternatively, if you want to see how to integrate the idea of information into a theory of consciousness read my book (twice) because it is all there, as is an answer to your query about green. http://mind-phronesis.co.uk/On-the-Intentionality-of-life-consciousness-personal-identity.pdf
IIT:
integration: the qualitative aspect does not relate to environment. It relates to itself. It is not integrated to environment. It is integrated to itself.
Information: 2 stones in a jar might be informative... but 'it' isn't information.

Constance:
What would you say of my evaluation of your stance, that
You are confusing the problem of the 'first person perspective' with, the problem of 'your own perspective'?
 
I was asking for your position in your own words.

As in "consciousness is a quantum process that occurs only partly in the human brain" or something?

Marduk, the entire interdisciplinary field of consciousness studies [only a few decades into its development now] is devoted to the project of understanding what consciousness is and how it arises in evolution. No one has yet produced a 'definition' of consciousness that satisfies all perspectives, questions, and issues raised in the field. I would characterize consciousness as naturally embodied positional openness to the world, developed in the evolution of life. On the basis of its experience in and of the world, a conscious being is able to reflect on its own nature and the nature of reality, to ask the question 'what is?', and to recognize its own role in interpreting the phenomena it encounters.
 
What does naturally embodied positional openness mean?

It means that the proto-conscious organism senses its difference from its environment, a sense deepened in the development of consciousness in humans, who are able to reflect on their experience in the world as both grounded in nature and yet standing in a degree of separation from both nature and culture.
 
It means that the proto-conscious organism senses its difference from its environment, a sense deepened in the development of consciousness in humans, who are able to reflect on their experience in the world as both grounded in nature and yet standing in a degree of separation from both nature and culture.
OK I'm with you.

What does this have to do with QM or the brain?
 
OK I'm with you.

What does this have to do with QM or the brain?

Various consciousness researchers and quantum scientists theorize ways in which quantum processes must operate in the brain, and there is some experimentation being done by quantum mind theorists. The brain obviously facilitates consciousness and mind but cannot in itself account for either. Panksepp and Mitchell are particularly interesting because they seek origins and explanations for the evolution of consciousness and mind deep in nature and evolution, which makes sense to me.
 
Why can't it account for the mind?

What makes you think it can? Btw, you can refer me to papers explicating your position and I will read them (even though you see it as an imposition to read the papers I cite).

Why are QM processes relevant?[/QUOTE]

I think that's because qm processes are universally entangled, thus affect everything.
 
What makes you think it can? Btw, you can refer me to papers explicating your position and I will read them (even though you see it as an imposition to read the papers I cite).

I think that's because qm processes are universally entangled, thus affect everything.
If you're going to say classical physics can't explain something, you kind of have to say why.

And qm processes aren't universally entangled. If they were, we'd have a newtonian universe.

We have to fiddle with particles quite a bit to make them entangled, and they're hard to keep that way.
 
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I think that's because qm processes are universally entangled, thus affect everything.

If you're going to say classical physics can't explain something, you kind of have to say why.[/quote]

If classical physics can explain qm, why hasn't it done so in the last 100 years?

And qm processes aren't universally entangled. If they were, we'd have a newtonian universe.

A whole lot of physicists see entanglement as universal. Of course not all of them agree. What's new? But I wonder why after a century there are still more than a half-dozen interpretations of qm if it can be explained by classical physics.

We have to fiddle with particles quite a bit to make them entangled, and they're hard to keep that way.

Isn't that because they are further entangled in processes going on beyond the limits of the human experiment?
 
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