Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 2

[smcder]

@smcder

Can you illustrate more clearly how Chalmers'/Tonini's conception of consciousness may be different from, say, a phenomenologist?

I'm still unclear on their core differences. :dunce cap:

Go back and have a look at Goff's talk

... just the very first few minutes where he says that physics restricts itself to what can be mathematically described (I imagine a sieve when I hear this) and it's been very successful at doing what it does ...that success, combined with how badly metaphysics has gone, led to the temptation in the 20th century to think that physics could explain everything (physicalism) that physics would be able to provide a complete picture of reality.

Goff rejects this as he does not think there is a physicalist account of consciousness.

The key point is at 2:55:

"We shouldn't be surprised that physicalism is destined to fail, because physics begins with Galileo and Descartes putting the mind (qualitative mentality) outside the scope of inquiry."

Now, and Constance please correct me where I am wrong - I think of phenomenology starting in just the other way - recognizing that all we know about the world is from consciousness.

 

[smcder]

As I understand it, Chalmers's and Tonini's views are quite different, so while you might think both are reductive and oversimplified, they are not equal.

As far as Chalmers' view (type-F) being "reductive," in the strict sense of the word, it's certainly not. That is, the type-F view is that mental/consciousness cannot be reduced to physical processes i.e. consciousness does not and cannot emerge from physical processes.

Here is a crude illustration of how I understand Constitutive Russellian Panprotopsychism:

At the most fundamental level of reality (whatever that is) the mental exists; however this does not mean the same rich/complex qualitative experiences that humans experience exist at the micro level. For (crude) example:

Quark - May have primitive experience, but does not experience greenish

Electron - May have primitive experience, but does not experience greenish

Molecule - May have primitive experiences, but does not experience greenish

Cell - May experience lightness and darkness, but does not experience greenish

Multicellular Organism - May experience greenish

Human - Most experience greenish

On this view, experience goes the whole way down, but the complexity, type, and variety of experience is contingent on the complexity of the physical-mental object.

Re: Tonini and IIT

I'm not sure where his theory stands; however, I believe the transferring and processing of information (states) are fundamental to reality and thus to consciousness. Whether qualititative experiences can be reduced to integrated information, I don't know. I certainly don't think we can dismiss it as being simplistic. Even if we agree that consciousness is "embodied," the physical body interacts with the physical world by essentially exchanging and processing information (albeit non-passively like a computer).

Chalmers himself says that the techniques of phenomenology (combined with neuroscience) are the best tools we have for exploring consciousness.

What can phenomenology teach Chalemrs and Tonini that they may be missing?

@Soupie writes:

Chalmers himself says that the techniques of phenomenology (combined with neuroscience) are the best tools we have for exploring consciousness.

I think they are the only tools we have ... and again, neuroscience, doing neuroscience, falls in the domain of "Cognitive Phenomenology" - it's just another experience.

As I understand it, Chalmers's and Tonini's views are quite different, so while you might think both are reductive and oversimplified, they are not equal.

As far as Chalmers' view (type-F) being "reductive," in the strict sense of the word, it's certainly not. That is, the type-F view is that mental/consciousness cannot be reduced to physical processes i.e. consciousness does not and cannot emerge from physical processes.

Here is a crude illustration of how I understand Constitutive Russellian Panprotopsychism:

At the most fundamental level of reality (whatever that is) the mental exists; however this does not mean the same rich/complex qualitative experiences that humans experience exist at the micro level. For (crude) example:

Quark - May have primitive experience, but does not experience greenish

Electron - May have primitive experience, but does not experience greenish

Molecule - May have primitive experiences, but does not experience greenish

Cell - May experience lightness and darkness, but does not experience greenish

Multicellular Organism - May experience greenish

Human - Most experience greenish

On this view, experience goes the whole way down, but the complexity, type, and variety of experience is contingent on the complexity of the physical-mental object.

Re: Tonini and IIT

I'm not sure where his theory stands; however, I believe the transferring and processing of information (states) are fundamental to reality and thus to consciousness. Whether qualititative experiences can be reduced to integrated information, I don't know. I certainly don't think we can dismiss it as being simplistic. Even if we agree that consciousness is "embodied," the physical body interacts with the physical world by essentially exchanging and processing information (albeit non-passively like a computer).

Chalmers himself says that the techniques of phenomenology (combined with neuroscience) are the best tools we have for exploring consciousness.

What can phenomenology teach Chalemrs and Tonini that they may be missing?

@Soupie says:

Chalmers himself says that the techniques of phenomenology (combined with neuroscience) are the best tools we have for exploring consciousness.

The only tools we have ... in fact, we really only have phenomenology - Cognitive Phenomenology subsumes neuroscience, as far as any one of us are concerned. The way it seems to me to play out is we (including great philosophers) pay lip service to phenomenology/introspection, "well sure all we have is our conscious experience, but you know, come on now, there is a real world out there and then we go ahead with what we are good at doing ... because neurology is "stuff" ultimately and we're good at stuff, consciousness is very squishy, we're not good at it - we sit down and look inside, look at what comes up for us and its just everything and every thing, how do you classify everything?

Meditators are good at achieving certain mind states for certain goals (to end suffering for example) in accordance with the religious/cultural structures they practice in ... and then some people even achieve extraordinary states that are inevitably indescribable and then everyone says "well that was just a trick of the mind or could be, you can't prove it isn't" and then the mystic avers as to how it was more real than sitting here now and talking about it and how you're going to have a hard time proving this isn't a trick of the mind and then we get all squirmy and uncomfortable and look around for some stuff to play with, something to get our hands on. And so no one seems to be very good sat the whole thing - no one masters consciousness, no one builds things from it, I started to say no one buys and sells it, but that's not true. I think phenomenology, doing it ... is well worth a try.

So if consciousness is fundamental, it seems to me that it could be the whole thing ... not something you build up from particles, because thats stuff - and consciuousness doesnt seem to be stuff, my experience sure doesnt feel stuffy!

Youre not going to get "falling in love" from "greenish" because as soon as you Google falling in love and quote psychological studies or root it in the medieval conception of courtly love, your going to have to explain how not everyone experiences it and how no one completely agrees on its definition - youre not even going to get from greenish to "staring at my pencil, a slightly sinister aura seemed to exude from its yellowish, number 2ishness ..." and yet, you just had an experience reading that sentence, no matter how little sense it made or how hard it would be to classify, I think this is where McGinn comes in - we're good at stuff and classifying it ... how things are for us, consciousness, we're not good at - we aren't that sort of creature, in fact, we may be the laughing stock of several Universes and dimensions ... the "hard problem" may be a cosmic IQ test and our loneliness means we haven't yet passed.

 

[Constance]

What can phenomenology teach Chalmers and Tonini that they may be missing? - maybe to look at something more than "greenish".

Just a couple excerpts from Strawson:
Cognitive Phenomenology: Real Life | Galen Strawson - Academia.edu

"In analytic philosophy there is considerable resistance to the idea that anything rightly called ‘cognitive experience’ or ‘cognitive phenomenology’ exists. This is remarkable for many reasons, one of which is that it’s doubtful that sense/feeling experience ever occurs without cognitive experience in the experience of an ordinary adult human being."
...
"Phenomenology incorporates all-out realism about experience (experience is its whole subject matter). But by ‘realism about experience’ I mean real realism about experience. The pleonasm would be unnecessary if a number of analytic philosophers hadn’t in the last eighty years or so tried, more or less covertly, to ‘reduce’ the experiential to the non-experiential, continuing to speak of the experientialin a seemingly realist way while holding that, really, only the non-experiential exists. A good way to convey what it is to be a real realist about experience is to say that it’s to continue to take colour experience or taste experience, say, or experience of pain, or of an itch, to be what one took it to be wholly unreflectively—what one knew it to be in having it—before one did any philosophy, e.g. when one was five. However many new and surprising facts they learn about experience from scientists, real realists’ basic grasp—knowledge—of what experience is remains exactly the same as it was before they did any philosophy. It remains, in other words, entirely correct, grounded in the fact that to have experience at all is already to know what experience is, however little one reflects about it. I think this way of specifying what I mean by ‘experience’ is helpful because it guarantees that anyone who claims not to know what I mean is being disingenuous."

Wow, Steve. This Strawson paper is invaluable -- clear, incisive, and immensely helpful for analytic philosophers, neuroscientists, physicalists and information theorists in general, who have not read phenomenological philosophy or -- apparently ever reflected attentively on their own consciousness. The paper should have answered the question Soupie asked me earlier today. I'm just catching up now on what's been posted since late this morning. Thank you for calling attention to this critically important paper.

 

[Constance]

@smcder

Can you illustrate more clearly how Chalmers'/Tonini's conception of consciousness may be different from, say, a phenomenologist?

I'm still unclear on their core differences. :dunce cap:

If you don't gather the difference from the Strawson paper, try returning to Part I of this thread and reading our earlier discussions of, and extracts from, the phenomenological philosophers, especially Merleau-Ponty. Summaries won't do the job adequately though. To understand this school of philosophy, one has to actually read a significant amount of the major texts. Once having done so, it becomes impossible not to think, or at least to be able to think, in terms of the phenomenology of consciousness in all its aspects.

 

[Constance]

. . .

"We shouldn't be surprised that physicalism is destined to fail, because physics begins with Galileo and Descartes putting the mind (qualitative mentality) outside the scope of inquiry."

Now, and Constance please correct me where I am wrong - I think of phenomenology starting in just the other way - recognizing that all we know about the world is from consciousness.

Or perhaps best expressed as through embodied consciousness in its experience in and of the world, from the basis of which any thought about the world, nature, consciousness, mind, and being becomes possible in the first place. No thoughts without things; no things without thoughts.

 

[Constance]

Soupie wrote: "Chalmers himself says that the techniques of phenomenology (combined with neuroscience) are the best tools we have for exploring consciousness."

But he doesn't use them, so far as I have seen, in his papers and books on consciousness. Moreover, phenomenology is more than 'techniques' and 'tools'; it is the working out of a major theory of mind and reality based in empirical human experience and upon which social, political, aesthetic, and other values can be rationally developed.

Tononi and Koch also use the word 'phenomenology' without understanding what it is. I doubt that either of them has read phenomenological philosophy or begins to understand what it has brought to the understanding of consciousness. In the case of Tononi's outlines for IIT, it becomes apparent that he has not yet begun to appreciate the immense task before him if he wishes to demonstrate how information exchange at the microphysical level has produced the evolution of the universe, life, consciousness, and mind. These people pay lip service to phenomenology because by now no one in the interdisciplinary field of Consciousness Studies can avoid recognizing its significance and influence in the field. They need to do more than that -- to understand why it is significant and why consciousness cannot even be approached as an object of study without a grounding in phenomenological philosophy.

 

[Constance]

I want to add a note that @Pharoah's online book-length study of Intentionality is well-grounded in philosophy of mind, phenomenology, cognitive neuroscience, systems theory, and information theory -- all involved in consciousness studies -- and in its first section builds on Strawson's insights in particular. Pharoah's work is impressive and we can learn a great deal from reading it, not just because of his interdisciplinary preparation but because he brings new insight, original thought, to the complex issues of this field.

 

[smcder]

Soupie wrote: "Chalmers himself says that the techniques of phenomenology (combined with neuroscience) are the best tools we have for exploring consciousness."

But he doesn't use them, so far as I have seen, in his papers and books on consciousness. Moreover, phenomenology is more than 'techniques' and 'tools'; it is the working out of a major theory of mind and reality based in empirical human experience and upon which social, political, aesthetic, and other values can be rationally developed.

Tononi and Koch also use the word 'phenomenology' without understanding what it is. I doubt that either of them has read phenomenological philosophy or begins to understand what it has brought to the understanding of consciousness. In the case of Tononi's outlines for IIT, it becomes apparent that he has not yet begun to appreciate the immense task before him if he wishes to demonstrate how information exchange at the microphysical level has produced the evolution of the universe, life, consciousness, and mind. These people pay lip service to phenomenology because by now no one in the interdisciplinary field of Consciousness Studies can avoid recognizing its significance and influence in the field. They need to do more than that -- to understand why it is significant and why consciousness cannot even be approached as an object of study without a grounding in phenomenological philosophy.

I got the same sense from Goff's talk (lip service)- he says we have to use phenomenology but that he won't get into that right now ... and I get the sense that maybe he wishes we had some kind of phenomenoscope (tm) to ease his physics envy - but that is exactly where the point that phenomenology is a theory of mind and reality needs to be held to otherwise I can see it being to easy to say, ok we can flesh that out with a little phenomenology at some point, let's keep moving for now ....

 

[Constance]

@Soupie writes:

Chalmers himself says that the techniques of phenomenology (combined with neuroscience) are the best tools we have for exploring consciousness.

I think they are the only tools we have ... and again, neuroscience, doing neuroscience, falls in the domain of "Cognitive Phenomenology" - it's just another experience.

The only tools we have ... in fact, we really only have phenomenology - Cognitive Phenomenology subsumes neuroscience, as far as any one of us are concerned. The way it seems to me to play out is we (including great philosophers) pay lip service to phenomenology/introspection, "well sure all we have is our conscious experience, but you know, come on now, there is a real world out there and then we go ahead with what we are good at doing ... because neurology is "stuff" ultimately and we're good at stuff, consciousness is very squishy, we're not good at it - we sit down and look inside, look at what comes up for us and its just everything and every thing, how do you classify everything?

Meditators are good at achieving certain mind states for certain goals (to end suffering for example) in accordance with the religious/cultural structures they practice in ... and then some people even achieve extraordinary states that are inevitably indescribable and then everyone says "well that was just a trick of the mind or could be, you can't prove it isn't" and then the mystic avers as to how it was more real than sitting here now and talking about it and how you're going to have a hard time proving this isn't a trick of the mind and then we get all squirmy and uncomfortable and look around for some stuff to play with, something to get our hands on. And so no one seems to be very good sat the whole thing - no one masters consciousness, no one builds things from it, I started to say no one buys and sells it, but that's not true. I think phenomenology, doing it ... is well worth a try.

So if consciousness is fundamental, it seems to me that it could be the whole thing ... not something you build up from particles, because thats stuff - and consciuousness doesnt seem to be stuff, my experience sure doesnt feel stuffy!

Youre not going to get "falling in love" from "greenish" because as soon as you Google falling in love and quote psychological studies or root it in the medieval conception of courtly love, your going to have to explain how not everyone experiences it and how no one completely agrees on its definition - youre not even going to get from greenish to "staring at my pencil, a slightly sinister aura seemed to exude from its yellowish, number 2ishness ..." and yet, you just had an experience reading that sentence, no matter how little sense it made or how hard it would be to classify, I think this is where McGinn comes in - we're good at stuff and classifying it ... how things are for us, consciousness, we're not good at - we aren't that sort of creature, in fact, we may be the laughing stock of several Universes and dimensions ... the "hard problem" may be a cosmic IQ test and our loneliness means we haven't yet passed.

So well said. We seem, in the modern era, to be in flight from consciousness (and the responsibility it reveals for what we do in the world). And as Heidegger said, also 'living in the forgetfulness of being'.

 

[Constance]

I got the same sense from Goff's talk (lip service)- he says we have to use phenomenology but that he won't get into that right now ... and I get the sense that maybe he wishes we had some kind of phenomenoscope (tm) to ease his physics envy - but that is exactly where the point that phenomenology is a theory of mind and reality needs to be held to otherwise I can see it being to easy to say, ok we can flesh that out with a little phenomenology at some point, let's keep moving for now ....

Exactly. They do not understand yet why phenomenology is foundational, and no doubt they're reluctant to drop out of the lab for a year to read and comprehend it. The same thing happened in the Humanities and Social Sciences when French and German Critical Theory and Cultural Theory came on the scene in US universities in 70s; great numbers of established scholars in those fields resisted it at first, not wanting to have to rethink the foundations of their disciplines.

 

[smcder]

So well said. We seem, in the modern era, to be in flight from consciousness (and the responsibility it reveals for what we do in the world). And as Heidegger said, also 'living in the forgetfulness of being'.

This is a great topic for discussion - "the responsibility it reveals for what we do in the world" - the consequences of our ideas about the world - part of the little discussed history of philosophy are these consequences ... how do we keep ourselves honest in philosophy? How do we know it's the truth we're seeking and not a secondary gain, not supporting a predilection or a prejudice? How many great philosophers also knew themselves well? Who knows themself well enough to avoid these blind spots? It's a full time job keeping up with our sneaky little minds.

We have enormous abilities to rationalize our actions and the more intelligent we are in a verbal, rhetorical and analytical sense - in an IQ sense - the more we have to watch ourselves, the harder it is to become like little children.

A peculiar relevancy of McGinn's philosophy is if we can't solve certain problems - if we knew for sure that we couldn't determine whether our will was free - then what is the responsibility of the philosopher in developing his theories? Do certain philosophical questions need extra pains to seek out counterarguments and to say "look, this could all be rubbish, so don't go out there and start a war based on what I'm saying?" Or is it all in service to the truth regardless of the consequences?

One can't account for misuse of course - but I'm not sure there is ever a case of pure misuse. At any rate there is still a peculiar gap when I hear Strawson claim "naïve moral realism". Notice this is for very basic things like causing harm intentionally to another sentient being. But he says this is just wrong in the same way that mathematics is true - he uses this as an argument against physicalism even. That is how strongly he asserts it. I'm no expert on Strawson but I sometimes wonder if he really believes that or if it's "lies we tell children" so as not to be the next Nietzsche with Nazis carrying Also Sprach Zarathustra in their rucksacke. And as for Nietzsche, he is on record (Ecce Homo) as writing to be misunderstood. Horrified at the Nazi misuse he would be, he would also I think bear some responsibility because a basic ethic of not misreprenting the truth may have been violated.

And back to Strawson ... you can throw in Oedipal considerations on top of everything else.

 

[smcder]

@Soupie
Might be of interest:

The Mental Universe Debate | Podcasts | Philosophy Now

Grant Bartley from Philosophy Now (and author of The Metarevolution) is joined by members of London philosophy groups Philosophy For All and the Philosophical Society of England to debate an argument advanced by PFA member Kieran Quill that according to quantum mechanics the universe is mental in nature. Join us to hear the fallout. First broadcast on 29 June 2014 on Resonance FM.

A key point comes up almost immediately:

the fact that you can't alter reality at will - that because I tap this table and it's solid, and you tap the table and it's solid and other things in our experience follow the "laws of nature" doesn't in itself mean there is a material reality separate from that experience. In dreams for example, things often follow a set of rules or laws - they may change from dream to dream or within a dream and for no apparent reason - on the other hand, I've had dreams I couldn't distinguish from reality. I spent a bad hour one morning thinking the police would be coming for me because I punched someone out at the grocery store - I finally convinced myself that memory was from a dream. (although I don't remember having the dream)

 

[Pharoah]

The key point is at 2:55:

"We shouldn't be surprised that physicalism is destined to fail, because physics begins with Galileo and Descartes putting the mind (qualitative mentality) outside the scope of inquiry."

Physicalism is destined to fail? Sounds like a vitalist.
"Galileo and Descartes put the mind outside the scope of inquiry"... so we just put it back.
Does anyone on this forum take Goff seriously? If so, could you tell me what is wrong with the views expressed at:
Panpsychism & Emergentism | Similarities & Differences | Philosophy of Consciousness

 

[smcder]

Physicalism is destined to fail? Sounds like a vitalist.
"Galileo and Descartes put the mind outside the scope of inquiry"... so we just put it back.
Does anyone on this forum take Goff seriously? If so, could you tell me what is wrong with the views expressed at:
Panpsychism & Emergentism | Similarities & Differences | Philosophy of Consciousness

Within the context of my post it was to illustrate what I understood to be the difference in a phenomenological approach.

As for taking Goff seriously, I just now found out about him.

Philip Goff Philosophy - Home

 

[smcder]

Physicalism is destined to fail? Sounds like a vitalist.
"Galileo and Descartes put the mind outside the scope of inquiry"... so we just put it back.
Does anyone on this forum take Goff seriously? If so, could you tell me what is wrong with the views expressed at:
Panpsychism & Emergentism | Similarities & Differences | Philosophy of Consciousness

Quite honestly, I can read your work and be impressed and convinced and then I can go read someone else's stuff and think "Oh, I can see that." Or I can immerse myself in Chalmer's world and then read a critique and it all falls apart - this is the persuasive aspect of making a living in philosophy - needing to get stuff published because another hazard to the inner sense of truth (I'm not directing this at you or anyone in particular - it's a hazard of the job) but I don't have any strong predilection for things to be a particular way, no intuitions that keep bringing me back to say - "ok, for all your pretty words I just know it has to be that way" and that being materialism or idealism or neutral monism or whatever - I don't have that gene, in fact I have a sneaking suspicion we've all got it wrong and how can anyone be so sure except they have a body of work to defend? so I'm a hard sell and my attention tends to wander to the next shiny thing.

What I do tend to come back to is experience - you wouldn't think I'd put my trust in that, but if I sense bedrock anywhere, it's there - and that's my attraction to Buddhism - because I can try it out and see if it works and I suspect it's behind my interest in phenomenology too. So, for just right now I suppose I take Goff as seriously as anyone. But I reserve the right to change my mind without notice! ;-)

 

[smcder]

Oh, I did read that article you linked to and at the time I remember thinking "brilliant stuff!"

 

[smcder]

@Soupie - the paper mentioned in the first part of the podcast above:

http://physics.csuchico.edu/kagan/435A/problems/QMTransparent.pdf

 

[Constance]

Physicalism is destined to fail? Sounds like a vitalist.
"Galileo and Descartes put the mind outside the scope of inquiry"... so we just put it back.
Does anyone on this forum take Goff seriously? If so, could you tell me what is wrong with the views expressed at:
Panpsychism & Emergentism | Similarities & Differences | Philosophy of Consciousness

I haven't read enough of Goff to make a judgment on the value of his output as a whole.

I've read the material you linked re Panpsychism & Emergentism once through and at this point am not confident that I could summarize your argument. I'd have to read it again more slowly and also focus on some sentences/statements in it that I questioned. Then compare Goff on panpsychism and emergentism. Then evaluate your opposing points of view. Why not just tell us where you think Goff is off-base and how your approach corrects him?

 

[smcder]

I vote this as "shiny object of the day" - a quantum mechanic who says Idealism is just good physics:

Henry asserts that physics strongly supports metaphysical idealism (these speculations were published in Nature) he argues that the mainstream wants to reconcile QM with a 19th century vision of physics. He says this is wrong.

Quantum Mechanics, he says, deals with nothing but observations, observations have the courage of numbers, numbers are nothing but mental, thus all things are mental and the universe does not exist at all except as mind.

"Mind is fundamental, matter is merely an illusion and that is physics, not philosophy or religion."

Richard Conn Henry | Henry A. Rowland Department of Physics & Astronomy | Johns Hopkins University

And I think this has been posted on the thread (part 1) before:

http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/The.mental.Universe.pdf

"The 1925 discovery of quantum mechanics solved the problem of the Universe’s nature. Bright physicists were again led to believe the unbelievable — this time,t hat the Universe is mental. According to Sir James Jeans: “the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the Universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter... we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.” But physicists have not yet followed Galileo’s example, and convinced everyone of the wonders of quantum mechanics. As Sir Arthur Eddington explained: “It is difficult for the matter-of-fact physicist to accept the view that the substratum of everything is of mental character.”

"Discussing the play, John H. Marburger III, President George W. Bush’s science adviser, observes that “in the Copenhagen interpretation of microscopic nature, there are neither waves nor particles”, but then frames his remarks in terms of a non-existent“ underlying stuff ”. He points out that it is not true that matter “sometimes behaves like a wave and sometimes like a particle... The wave is not in the underlying stuff; it is in the spatial pattern of detector clicks... We cannot help but think of the clicks as caused by little localized pieces of stuff that we might as well call particles. This is where the particle language comes from. It does not come from the underlying stuff, but from our psychological predisposition to associate localized phenomena with particles.”

 

[smcder]

Exactly. They do not understand yet why phenomenology is foundational, and no doubt they're reluctant to drop out of the lab for a year to read and comprehend it. The same thing happened in the Humanities and Social Sciences when French and German Critical Theory and Cultural Theory came on the scene in US universities in 70s; great numbers of established scholars in those fields resisted it at first, not wanting to have to rethink the foundations of their disciplines.

1927 Brittanica article on Phenomenology by Husserl and Heidegger, introduced by Thomas Sheehan ... A good starting point?

http://religiousstudies.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/PHENOMENOLOGY-ENCYCLOPAEDIA-BRITANNICA.pdf