Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 2

[Constance]

Do you think there could be a correlative or even a causal relationship between life and consciousness?

While you didn't address the question to me I'd like to vote: Yes, I do.

That is, what, if any, is the relationship between living matter and conscious matter?

The three Panksepp papers linked here recently explore this relationship in detail. These papers cannot be summarized but I can say that they trace the development of consciousness from protoconsciousness in the evolution of species.

Note: But to my recollection Panksepp does not use the term 'conscious matter' or any synonym for that concept.

 

[Constance]

John Merryman has an interesting post in that FQXi discussion of the Tegmark paper:

John Brodix Merryman replied on Feb. 5, 2014 @ 03:02 GMT

Lorraine, Jason,
Another way to think of consciousness is to distinguish between the effect of being conscious and that which we are conscious of. The traditional theological assumption is of a universal intelligence, yet intelligence is a function of ordering. What we are conscious of naturally tends to be ordered, because it is the patterns by which we make sense of this kaleidoscope of energy pouring into our senses that have evolved to register it. Yet does this ordering create awareness, or does awareness simply tend to focus on that which is ordered?

Given we have yet to explain how ordering can create consciousness, wouldn't it be logical to try looking at it from the other direction, that consciousness is distinct from order, but attracted to it?

We might have to go back and start with a fairly fresh slate, but if it yields some useful insights, such as explaining the motivating influence apparent in all of biology and why such disparate organisms seem to manifest such varieties of perception, or even on the most basic terms, how a singular sense of being could simultaneously manifest such varieties of forms and willingly create and destroy them in such vast numbers, given the likelihood of truly distinct consciousnesses simultaneously emerging seems far less probable, it might be useful to consider.

 

[Constance]

Also worth contemplating from John Merryman:

"John Merryman wrote on Oct. 12, 2008 @ 00:58 GMT
This is from an article from NewScientist;

There has been an error - New Scientist
100-why-nature-is-not-the-sum-of-its-parts.html

Why nature can't be reduced to mathematical laws

ONE of the grand aims of science is to explain every aspect of nature in terms of simple, fundamental laws - but is this possible? A team of physicists claims to have found a hint that some things simply cannot be computed, and that nature could be more than the sum of its parts.

The idea of reductionism, a key tool in science for centuries, holds that everything in nature can ultimately be understood by gaining knowledge of its constituent parts. The laws of fluid flows, for example, can be derived from the deeper laws of atomic and molecular motion, which in turn follow from quantum physics.

In 1972, physicist Philip Anderson pointed out that there could be a problem with this approach. Anderson suggested that some systems may be more than the sum of their parts. He championed "emergence" - the notion that important kinds of organisation might emerge in systems of many interacting parts, but not follow in any way from the properties of those parts. If so, then even perfect knowledge of the physics at one level would be inadequate for understanding organisation at higher levels. This conjecture has been debated ever since.

Now Mile Gu at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and colleagues, claim that it may be possible to prove Anderson's idea. They studied a basic mathematical model called the Ising model, which is often used to study how magnetism arises in iron and other materials from the collective organisation of their atoms.

To picture the Ising model, imagine a 3D lattice of atoms. Each atom acts like a tiny magnet to those around it, and adopts a particular orientation depending on the forces between atoms. This mirrors what happens in real-world materials, where the atoms adopt different patterns of orientation depending on the atomic forces. In iron, for instance, the atoms will sometimes point in a similar direction - making the material magnetic overall - whereas in alloys the pattern is more complex.

Using the model, the team focused on whether the pattern that the atoms adopt under various scenarios, such as a state of lowest energy, could be calculated from knowledge of those forces. They found that in some scenarios, the pattern of atoms could not be calculated from knowledge of the forces - even given unlimited computing power. In mathematical terms, the system is considered "formally undecidable".

"We were able to find a number of properties that were simply decoupled from the fundamental interactions," says Gu. Even some really simple properties of the model, such as the fraction of atoms oriented in one direction, cannot be computed.

This result, says Gu, shows that some of the models scientists use to simulate physical systems may actually have properties that cannot be linked to the behaviour of their parts ([0809.0151] More Really is Different This, in turn, may help explain why our description of nature operates at many levels, rather than working from just one. "A 'theory of everything' might not explain all natural phenomena," says Gu. "Real understanding may require further experiments and intuition at every level."

Some physicists think the work offers a promising scientific boost for the delicate issue of emergence, which tends to get swamped with philosophical arguments. John Barrow at the University of Cambridge calls the results "really interesting", but thinks one element of the proof needs further study. He points out that Gu and colleagues derived their result by studying an infinite system, rather than one of large but finite size, like most natural systems. "So it's not entirely clear what their results mean for actual finite systems," says Barrow.

Gu agrees, but points out that this was not the team's goal. He also argues that the idealised mathematical laws that scientists routinely use to describe the world often refer to infinite systems. "Our results suggest that some of these laws probably cannot be derived from first principles," he says.

From issue 2676 of New Scientist magazine, 06 October 2008, page 12

I post this to make a point that science projects outward in seeking a finite whole with which to define reality, but that method of reductionistic projection could well have inherent finite limits. Both our monotheistic belief systems and our scientific models assume there is some first cause, singularity, initial condition, etc. which if known, could lead to theoretically calculating everything, but what if there isn't? What if these processes have been going on for infinity? For one thing, there would be unimaginable levels of complexity that would have been mostly lost, but seeded the next cycle with enough evolved structure to make unraveling the puzzle infinitely impossible. Even establishment cosmologists who think the universe is based on a singularity have been forced to consider multiple universes to explain the arbitrary, yet functioning nature of our own. As I point out in my theory of time, what if time isn't a specific dimension leading from a specified beginning to a determined end, but is itself is simply a consequence of motion? Then it would be meaningless to discuss time as having a beginning and end. This perpetual motion could be due to equilibrium being unstable and resulting in continuous cycles of collapse and expansion.

Information and energy are two sides of the same coin, as information defines the energy which manifests it, so it would be impossible to have one without the other. This precludes the existence of laws of nature which are not manifest, as that would be information without energy. The reason such definition is frequently repetitive and thus seemingly independent of circumstance is that identical cause yields identical effect, as the expanding energy and collapsing structure of this energy/information relationship interacts. Therefore laws are only a description of complex interactions as they expand, before they become unstable and collapse to a more stable level, with some of that complexity still imbedded. Energy is the hand of the clock, while structure is the face of the clock. We are intellectual complexity imbedded in that elemental energy. It carries us forward while we live, then deposits us in the past when we die."

FQXi Community

 

[Constance]

A paper I recently linked -- "Philosophy and Cognitive Science" by Serge Sharoff -- might be useful in discussing the issues raised concerning the Tegmark paper. Here is an extract:

"The history of artificial intelligence began with efforts to create thinking machines designed to cover the widest possible domain of human intellectual activity, and the declared objective of such program development was to exceed usual human reasoning, at least in certain fields. Programming served as a basis for these investigations. In practical terms, the relative failure of these early attempts--the discrepancy between their announced intentions and their real successes--has led to the creation of effective programs operating successfully in carefully constrained problem domains. Conceptually, the goal now of theoretical research in AI is to investigate the human mind, an end to which both psychological research and pure programming tricks have been put. But many AI problems also have a direct relationship to old philosophical problems: mental category determination, hermeneutic circle problems, the balance between empirical and a priori knowledge, the interrelations between abstract and specific knowledge, and so on. If we look at theoretical investigations in AI, we discover that they are always based on some philosophical background; this framework helps in large part to determine the structure of AI models as they are elaborated.

Dreyfus and Dreyfus offer one attempt to trace the links between classic philosophy and cognitive science and to interpret the former from the standpoint of the latter. As they describe the history of European philosophy, they identify a sequence of AI predecessors: Plato, Galileo, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, and Husserl. For example, they write:

Kant had a new idea as to how the mind worked. He held that all concepts were really rules. For example, the concept for dog is something like the rule: If it has four legs, barks, and wags its tail, then it's a dog.... Husserl, who can be regarded as the father of the information-processing model of the mind, [extended Kant's ideas and] argued that concepts were hierarchies of rules, rules which contained other rules under them. For example, the rule for recognizing dogs contained a subrule for recognizing tails. Husserl also saw that such rules would have to tell us not about any particular dog, or dogs in general, but about the typical dog. All the basic ideas used by Minsky and his students of artificial intelligence were in place.2

But even though many of the basic ideas of AI may be in place in classic philosophy, AI researchers must actively develop the particular philosophical systems they use: they must clarify obscure propositions and develop many lines of inquiry left out of the "frame" of the original philosophical systems. For example, in "On the Art of Combinations"(1666), Leibniz proposed that all reasoning can be reduced to an ordered combination of elements. If we could define such an algebra of thought, it would become possible for a machine to reason, like clockwork. Such a machine would be capable of resolving every philosophical controversy, as well as making discoveries by itself. Leibniz's thesis amounts to a theory of artificial intelligence for the seventeenth century. However, Leibniz did not have to develop many concrete questions about the correlation between his elements, about the problems of their sufficiency, or about ensuring right outcomes from right premises; that is, he never had to debug his program. The "General Problem Solver" (GPS) developed mainly by Allen Newell and Herbert Simon is one of the earliest and most general approaches in cognitive science. The GPS-style description of reasoning (in terms of simple algebraic symbols and operations that combine these symbols into expressions) directly follows from Leibniz's thoughts and "debugs" them. As far as I know, developers of AI systems have never emphasized just how much their work relies upon and develops related philosophical theories. So, for example, the discussion about interrelations between GPS representations and Leibniz's "combinations" is rather suggestive--and unusual.

a realization of philosophy
Another example from classic philosophy can serve as a metaphor for the interpretation of AI investigations as philosophy. Drawing on the distinction between the thing-in-itself and the phenomenon it presents to us, Kant wrote in his Critique of Pure Reason:

I cannot explore my soul as a thing-in-itself by means of theoretical reasoning (still less by means of empirical observation); hence, I cannot explore free will as a feature of a being.... Nevertheless, I can think about freedom, that is, the representation of it is at least without contradictions.3

To shift this Kantian example into the domain of AI: researchers, as conscious beings, probably cannot create artificial consciousness, but they can think about their own consciousness and express their thoughts in some language--in the language of philosophical concepts (in Kant's case), or in a programming language (in the case of AI researchers).

In order to develop cognitive science as rigorous philosophy, it is necessary to adopt the premise that a description of states of consciousness as representational states can be consistent.4 States of consciousness themselves, along with skills, emotions, and so forth, are not representations in themselves and do not belong to the realm of language; however, the fact that these states may find expression in verbal forms demonstrates that some kind of symbolic representation is possible. Moreover, states of consciousness have an inherent need for some kind of expression in order to be grasped, and language is the medium for symbolizing internal states. Schütz refers to this process as explication.5 Admittedly, explication is possible only for some part of consciousness, and it cannot be done to "absolute zero," to the nth degree. But interpreting situations is one of the main activities of consciousness, and explaining them through language is a necessary way of socializing and expanding the conscious "stock of knowledge." Schütz uses the phrase "taken for granted" to describe the seemingly natural attitude one adopts in everyday life towards phenomena such as the characteristics of the world and of other conscious beings. In fact, what this "natural" attitude takes for granted is precisely the possibility of describing consciousness. We may recall a quotation from Pascal that Dreyfus and Dreyfus use as the title for their book's prologue: "The heart has its reasons that reason does not know." Undoubtedly, there is a reason why the European philosophical tradition has for so long attempted to explicate the processes of consciousness. There is no reason to declare this attempt no longer valid.

basic concepts for computer phenomenology
Many of the primary phenomenological ideas of Husserl and the early Heidegger lend themselves to interpretation from the viewpoint of cognitive science: notions of the phenomenon, the constitution of meaning, readiness-to-hand (Zuhanden), intentionality, horizon, and internal time-consciousness.
For the purposes of this article, phenomenology may be described as the philosophy of dynamic representations. In Truth and Method, Hans-Georg Gadamer cites Schleiemacher's words as a slogan for this philosophy: "Blooming is the real maturity. A ripe fruit is only a chaotic surface that does not belong to the organic plant." The purpose of phenomenological description is to probe the thinking life hidden within us:

In contrast to an analytic philosophy that substitutes simplified constructions for the immediately given in all of its complexity and applies 'Ockham's razor,' phenomenology resists all transforming reinterpretations of the given, analyzing it for what it is in itself and on its own terms.6

Phenomenology's key concept is the notion of constitution, a description of the creative dynamics of the phenomena of consciousness. As Husserl wrote, "it is necessary to show in each concrete constituting act how the sense of the phenomenon is being created."7 Phenomenology uses a complex description of the phenomenon as "that which shows its selfness through itself." For our purpose--that of describing a computer phenomenology--it is sufficient to consider a phenomenon as a mental construct that is placed in consciousness, complies with other phenomena, and has the ability to reveal itself.

Husserl's methodological solipsism corresponds closely to the nature of computer representations. His descriptions deal exclusively with subjective phenomena. The external world is taken out of brackets; as Husserl says, epoché is committed. A mental act, as phenomenology describes it, is concerned not with material things but with itself. Husserl uses the notion of intentionality, the direction of consciousness toward a perceived object, to describe the interaction between consciousness and objects in the external world. Through intentionality, consciousness comes to represent the object as a phenomenon.

Intentionality expresses the fundamental feature of consciousness: it is always consciousness about something. Consciousness is not an abstract mechanism that processes raw data; its core structure correlates with and, therefore, depends on grasped phenomena. This ensures the impossibility of a description of consciousness which is separate from perceived objects.

Husserl wrote:
In all pure psychic experiences (in perceiving something, judging about something, willing something, enjoying something, hoping for something, etc.) there is found inherently a being-directed-toward.... Experiences are intentional. This being-directed-toward is not just joined to the experience by way of a mere addition, and occasionally as an accidental reaction, as if experiences could be what they are without the intentional relation. With the intentionality of the experiences there announces itself, rather, the essential structure of [the] purely psychical.8 . . . . .

Phenomenology and Cognitive Science

 

[Constance]

Cognitive phenomenology . . .

"Horgan and colleagues have argued that even if no purely functional or physical relation can underwrite the determinacy of thought, it doesn’t follow that the determinacy of thought is an illusion (Horgan and Tienson 2002; Horgan and Graham, in press). Rather than being grounded wholly in physical or functional relations, the determinacy of thought —they suggest—might be partly grounded in its phenomenal character. Given that what it is like to think that rabbits have tails is distinct from what it is like to think that collections of undetached rabbit parts have tail subsets, we can appeal to this difference in ‘what it’s likeness’ to explain why these two states have different intentional contents.More generally, the proposal is that we can appeal to the phenomenal character of a thought—together, perhaps, with facts about the environment in which the thinker is situated—to explain why it has the particular content that it does. And since we need to appeal to cognitive phenomenology in order to secure the determinacy of content, we have here an argument for the existence of cognitive phenomenology.

A second content-grounding argument can be found in Strawson (2008), who argues that cognitive phenomenology is needed in order to solve what he calls the ‘stopping problem’. Consider a subject, Lucy, who is perceiving or thinking about Mandy the moose. Assuming that Lucy has the appropriate causal connections to Mandy, how does Lucy’s experience or thought manage to be about Mandy the moose, rather than about the set of Mandy-caused photons impacting on her retinas, or certain other sets of causes on the causal chain leading to the experience? How does Lucy’s thought manage to stop precisely at Mandy rather than at some other location on the causal chain? Strawson rejects Dennettian ‘interpretationist’ solutions to this problem, and argues that the answer must appeal to cognitive phenomenology: Lucy’s experience contains a certain (fully internalistically specifiable) conception of what particular kind of thing her experience is about, and this conception, which is part of the cognitive-phenomenological content of her experience, is an essential part of what enables her experience (or thought) to be specifically about Mandy, given her causal relations to Mandy.

Grounding arguments have been subject to two lines of criticism. Some critics have raised concerns about just how phenomenal properties might ground intentional properties. After all, it is not entirely clear how phenomenal properties might underwrite the determinacy of thought or solve the stopping problem. Others have argued that the advocates of this argument have been too quick to dismiss the possibility that non-phenomenal properties might be able to ground the determinacy of thought. Dennett (1982) and others would argue that our interpretative practices and the behavioural patterns that underlie them can fully account for the kind of determinacy our thoughts possess. Millikan (1984) and others would argue that our evolutionary heritage bestows a sufficient degree of determinacy on thought. And Fodor has argued that the determinacy of thought can be secured by what he calls the strategy of ‘counterfactual triangulation’ (Fodor 2008). Just where these two lines of response leave the grounding argument is an issue for further discussion.

5.5 The ontology of thought
For the most part, the opponents of cognitive phenomenology have been on the defensive. Rather than provide positive arguments of their own, they have tended to focus on responding to the arguments of their opponents. However, it is possible to discern a couple of arguments against the existence of cognitive phenomenology in the literature.One such argument can be found in the contribution that Tye and Wright make to this volume.
11 Drawing on the work of Geach (1957) and more recently Soteriou (2007,2009), Tye and Wright argue that thoughts are not the kinds of entities that could enjoy phenomenal character.12 Their argument involves two claims. Firstly, anything that figuresin the stream of consciousness must ‘unfold over time’; in other words, it must be an eventor a process rather than a state. Secondly, thoughts are states, and as such they do notunfold over time. To use their example, in thinking the thought ‘The claret is delightful’ one does not first grasp the noun ‘claret’, and then the copula ‘is’, and finally the adjective‘delightful’ in a successive process. Instead, they claim, the entire thought arrives ‘all at once’. According to Tye and Wright, it is only the various phenomenal goings-on that accompany thoughts—for example, linguistic sub-vocalizations and images—that unfold over time. Thoughts themselves do not, and as a result they cannot, feature in the stream of consciousness.

There are two general lines of response that advocates of cognitive phenomenology might adopt in response to this argument. On the one hand they might argue that even if the stream of consciousness is limited to events and processes, it by no means follows that there can be no phenomenology of thought, for at least some thoughts do unfold over time. We certainly describe ourselves as thinking through a problem or deliberating about what to do, and it is far from obvious that such occurrences lack a temporal structure. A more‘confrontational’ response to the objection would be to take issue with the claim that the stream of consciousness is limited to events and processes. One way to put pressure on that assumption would be to argue that not all elements of perceptual experience are processive. Consider, for example, perceptual recognition. Although perceptual recognition might be (necessarily) embedded in processes that unfold over time, it is not clear that the ‘act’ of recognition itself unfolds over time. The experience of seeing an assortment of dots as (say) a Dalmatian or recognizing a sequence of notes as comprising a particular tune appears to arrive ‘all at once’. Whatever the merits of these responses, it is clear that there are important points of contact between the cognitive phenomenology debate and questions concerning the temporal structure and the ontology of consciousness. . . .

Cognitive Phenomenology: An Introduction | michelle montague - Academia.edu

Further developed in:

And in:
Phenomenology and Philosophy of Mind: David Woodruff Smith, Amie L. Thomasson: 9780199272440: Amazon.com: Books

-->SEE Table of Contents at
Phenomenology and Philosophy of Mind: David Woodruff Smith, Amie L. Thomasson: 9780199272440: Amazon.com: Books

And especially Galen Strawson's paper "Intentionality and Experience: Terminological Preliminaries" which begins on page 41 of the available text.

 

[Constance]

"Complex Experience, Relativity
and Abandoning Simultaneity"

Sean Enda Power

Abstract: Starting from the special theory of relativity it is argued that
the structure of an experience is extended over time, making experience
dynamic rather than static. The paper describes and explains
what is meant by phenomenal parts and outlines opposing positions
on the experience of time. Time according to he special theory of relativity
is defined and the possibility of static experience shown to be
implausible, leading to the conclusion that experience is dynamic.
Some implications of this for the relationship of phenomenology to the
physical world are considered.

Introduction
This paper presents an argument from the special theory of relativity
to what I call dynamic experience: that the structure of an experience
is extended over a period of time. Central to this argument is the
following claim: if a complex experience is (or correlated with) a spatially
extended physical entity, it is not what I call static experience:
it does not occur all at one moment.

The paper is structured as follows: I describe and explain what I
mean by phenomenal parts; I outline opposing positions in a current
debate in our experience of time; I briefly describe how the special
theory of relativity defines time; then I explore the possibility of static
experience. I find the resulting possibilities implausible and, thus, I
conclude that experience is dynamic. Finally, I briefly outline some
implications of this conclusion for what we may assume about the
relationship of phenomenology to the physical world.

Journal of Consciousness Studies, 17, No. 3–4, 2010.

Available online at:
Sean Enda Power, Complex Experience, Relativity and Abandoning Simultaneity - PhilPapers

Time and Illusion | Time's Structuring of Experience

 

[Soupie]

Information and energy are two sides of the same coin, as information defines the energy which manifests it, so it would be impossible to have one without the other. This precludes the existence of laws of nature which are not manifest, as that would be information without energy. The reason such definition is frequently repetitive and thus seemingly independent of circumstance is that identical cause yields identical effect, as the expanding energy and collapsing structure of this energy/information relationship interacts. Therefore laws are only a description of complex interactions as they expand, before they become unstable and collapse to a more stable level, with some of that complexity still imbedded. Energy is the hand of the clock, while structure is the face of the clock. We are intellectual complexity imbedded in that elemental energy. It carries us forward while we live, then deposits us in the past when we die."

I love this. I'd like to read more from this author. (@Constance do you know who the author is?)

I think this incredible paragraph speaks to the difference between the Information Philosophy of Mind and the Computation Theory of Mind.

The IPoM would agree that "Information and energy are two sides of the same coin, as information defines the energy which manifests it, so it would be impossible to have one without the other. ... Therefore laws are only a description of complex interactions as they expand. ... We are intellectual complexity imbedded in that elemental energy."

Whereas the Computation Theory of Mind posits that the brain is a static computer and the mind is a static program.

While I believe that consciousness/mind may be information, I am not suggesting it can be reduced to a static informational code that can be run by a computer.

 

[Soupie]

The paper is structured as follows: I describe and explain what I
mean by phenomenal parts; I outline opposing positions in a current
debate in our experience of time; I briefly describe how the special
theory of relativity defines time; then I explore the possibility of static
experience. I find the resulting possibilities implausible and, thus, I
conclude that experience is dynamic.

I too think that experience (consciousness) is dynamic. I think all of reality is a dynamic process; on both sides of the coin: energy and information. If all motion in reality were to stop, time and consciousness would stop as well.

 

[Soupie]

The profoundly hypothetical nature of what we talk about here lately is expressed in the vague terms to which we are reduced both epistemologically and ontologically as we attempt to explain consciousness in terrains and categories that can't contain it and which we cannot define. Thus the terms to which we have been reduced:

'stuff'

'information'

'patterns of information'

'shape'.

The fuzziness arises in our desire to unite two sensed and cognizable aspects of reality that we do not yet fully understand. Contemporary science cannot presently go farther than it has gone in the standard model of physical reality, and we should take from that progress (and its partiality) all that we can. The direction in which progress can still be made is the investigation of consciousness based in experience, including 'para-normal' experience (which physical science has so far refused to entertain let alone pursue).

Constance, I am not ignoring the para-normal evidence that you and @smcder have posted here regarding Psi, NDEs, reincarnation, and OOBs. I do think these are real phenomena that directly relates to consciousness, and they need to be explained in any theory/model of consciousness.

At the same time, from my pov, consciousness is clearly related to physical structures, namely organisms. For me, that the mind develops as the physical organism develops is undeniable. Furthermore, that the structure of a mind appears to correlate with the structure of an organisms, also cannot be denied. Additional evidence that the structure of the mind is affected by the structure of the brain can be seen in the affects of chemicals on the phenomenology of the mind, brain injury, and disease.

In short, it appears to me that the mind and body are directly, and intimately related. As I've shared, for these reasons, I feel that the mind is generated by the body-environment.

Thus, for me, I will try to understand para-normal phenomena (Psy, NDEs, OOBs, etc.) from within this framework. I am cognizant of the risks of doing so.

Now, you know that I am currently very partial to the information philosophy of mind. (Let me stress that this is not the same as the information theory or computation theory of mind; that is, I'm not suggesting that the mind is an algorithm that the computer/brain is running.)

I think there is plenty of room in the IPoM for phenomena such as Psy, NDEs, and OOBs. That is, if reality is a two sided coin with energy on one side and information on the other; I think there are a multitude of ways to explain how a dynamic pattern of information (mind) might relate to NDEs, reincarnation, OOBs, and other paranormal phenomena. The IPoM, in my opinion, does not rule out paranormal phenomena, but instead gives us a different model of thinking about them.

For example, if the mind is an information structure, can this information structure survive the death of the physical body? I think it is theoretically possible.

---

Regarding phenomenology:

Again, I do not think the IPoM makes phenomenology irrelevant in any way, shape, or form.

When I attempt to focus on my own mind and how it feels, I do not experience it to be made of millions of bits of information. On the other hand, when swimming in a pool, I do not experience it to be made of millions of molecules. This is why, in my opinion, phenomenology is limited in what it can tell us. How something feels and what something is are separate things, in my opinion.

Furthermore, when I do focus on my mind - or think about my mind - it does not seem to me to always be in the same state; that is, sometimes my mind is pure experience, sometimes thoughts, and sometimes self-awareness. You and @smcder have shared that in your experience, self-awareness is always present; that is not my experience.

Constance, you have said that you don't think consciousness can be reduced in any way, shape, or form. And yet you say that reality and consciousness have evolved together (as have organisms).

What we know (or think we know) about evolution is that - despite what the layperson thinks - it is not directed toward complexity. That is, evolution is not striving for complexity for the sake of complexity or superiority for the sake of superiority. Therefore, while reality and life has evolved, we know that there are different forms of life. Some more "basic" and some more complex than others.

I think it is the same with consciousness and minds. So, Constance, when you say that consciousness cannot be reduced, I disagree. (This is what I was getting at with my jellyfish question that you did not address.) In my opinion, not all forms of mind will be like the human form of mind. This means that consciousness/mind must needs be reduced/
differentiated, in much the same way that organisms are differentiated.

If you do not believe this is the case, then I submit that you do not think mind has evolved in the same way that organisms have evolved.

---

@smcder Regarding the combination problem.

I am currently reading a wonderful article about a model of consciousness derived by Carl Jung and a physicist. I will share it here with commentary once I'm done reading it. Their model is a dual-aspect model. It has been immensely helpful and insightful.

In it, they discuss the mind/body distinction as being "complimentary." That is, we can't get a full picture (jig saw puzzle) of reality without considering both sides. But perhaps rather than thinking of subject/object, mind/matter as two sides of reality, they are the same side... So I don't know if they "constrain" one another, or if they rely on one another.

(And I'll apologize in advance, but I am again reminded of the information/energy duality. I'm sorry, but I think it's unavoidable.)

 

[marduk]

Perhaps (likely) not within the quantum substrate of the classically defined reality in which we exist and think. But does it follow that in the classically evolved universe consciousness does not continually collapse the superpositions presented to it in experience and also in the variety of concepts concerning the nature of reality developed in our species' philosophy and science?

I have no idea what you just said.

If you're saying you collapse superpositions because you're thinking, I would say no, except that binding neurotransmitters may have a QM element that could be considered a measurement.

But saying this is consequential is like saying a butterfly hitting the windscreen of a 747 is consequential. Sure, in the philosophical sense, but in the practical sense no.

 

[marduk]

Also worth contemplating from John Merryman:

"John Merryman wrote on Oct. 12, 2008 @ 00:58 GMT
This is from an article from NewScientist;

There has been an error - New Scientist
100-why-nature-is-not-the-sum-of-its-parts.html

Why nature can't be reduced to mathematical laws

ONE of the grand aims of science is to explain every aspect of nature in terms of simple, fundamental laws - but is this possible? A team of physicists claims to have found a hint that some things simply cannot be computed, and that nature could be more than the sum of its parts.

The idea of reductionism, a key tool in science for centuries, holds that everything in nature can ultimately be understood by gaining knowledge of its constituent parts. The laws of fluid flows, for example, can be derived from the deeper laws of atomic and molecular motion, which in turn follow from quantum physics.

In 1972, physicist Philip Anderson pointed out that there could be a problem with this approach. Anderson suggested that some systems may be more than the sum of their parts. He championed "emergence" - the notion that important kinds of organisation might emerge in systems of many interacting parts, but not follow in any way from the properties of those parts. If so, then even perfect knowledge of the physics at one level would be inadequate for understanding organisation at higher levels. This conjecture has been debated ever since.

Now Mile Gu at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and colleagues, claim that it may be possible to prove Anderson's idea. They studied a basic mathematical model called the Ising model, which is often used to study how magnetism arises in iron and other materials from the collective organisation of their atoms.

To picture the Ising model, imagine a 3D lattice of atoms. Each atom acts like a tiny magnet to those around it, and adopts a particular orientation depending on the forces between atoms. This mirrors what happens in real-world materials, where the atoms adopt different patterns of orientation depending on the atomic forces. In iron, for instance, the atoms will sometimes point in a similar direction - making the material magnetic overall - whereas in alloys the pattern is more complex.

Using the model, the team focused on whether the pattern that the atoms adopt under various scenarios, such as a state of lowest energy, could be calculated from knowledge of those forces. They found that in some scenarios, the pattern of atoms could not be calculated from knowledge of the forces - even given unlimited computing power. In mathematical terms, the system is considered "formally undecidable".

"We were able to find a number of properties that were simply decoupled from the fundamental interactions," says Gu. Even some really simple properties of the model, such as the fraction of atoms oriented in one direction, cannot be computed.

This result, says Gu, shows that some of the models scientists use to simulate physical systems may actually have properties that cannot be linked to the behaviour of their parts ([0809.0151] More Really is Different This, in turn, may help explain why our description of nature operates at many levels, rather than working from just one. "A 'theory of everything' might not explain all natural phenomena," says Gu. "Real understanding may require further experiments and intuition at every level."

Some physicists think the work offers a promising scientific boost for the delicate issue of emergence, which tends to get swamped with philosophical arguments. John Barrow at the University of Cambridge calls the results "really interesting", but thinks one element of the proof needs further study. He points out that Gu and colleagues derived their result by studying an infinite system, rather than one of large but finite size, like most natural systems. "So it's not entirely clear what their results mean for actual finite systems," says Barrow.

Gu agrees, but points out that this was not the team's goal. He also argues that the idealised mathematical laws that scientists routinely use to describe the world often refer to infinite systems. "Our results suggest that some of these laws probably cannot be derived from first principles," he says.

From issue 2676 of New Scientist magazine, 06 October 2008, page 12

I post this to make a point that science projects outward in seeking a finite whole with which to define reality, but that method of reductionistic projection could well have inherent finite limits. Both our monotheistic belief systems and our scientific models assume there is some first cause, singularity, initial condition, etc. which if known, could lead to theoretically calculating everything, but what if there isn't? What if these processes have been going on for infinity? For one thing, there would be unimaginable levels of complexity that would have been mostly lost, but seeded the next cycle with enough evolved structure to make unraveling the puzzle infinitely impossible. Even establishment cosmologists who think the universe is based on a singularity have been forced to consider multiple universes to explain the arbitrary, yet functioning nature of our own. As I point out in my theory of time, what if time isn't a specific dimension leading from a specified beginning to a determined end, but is itself is simply a consequence of motion? Then it would be meaningless to discuss time as having a beginning and end. This perpetual motion could be due to equilibrium being unstable and resulting in continuous cycles of collapse and expansion.

Information and energy are two sides of the same coin, as information defines the energy which manifests it, so it would be impossible to have one without the other. This precludes the existence of laws of nature which are not manifest, as that would be information without energy. The reason such definition is frequently repetitive and thus seemingly independent of circumstance is that identical cause yields identical effect, as the expanding energy and collapsing structure of this energy/information relationship interacts. Therefore laws are only a description of complex interactions as they expand, before they become unstable and collapse to a more stable level, with some of that complexity still imbedded. Energy is the hand of the clock, while structure is the face of the clock. We are intellectual complexity imbedded in that elemental energy. It carries us forward while we live, then deposits us in the past when we die."

FQXi Community

I like this guy, but have no idea what your commentary has to do with what he said.

I would change the article slightly -- from "could not" to "difficult to actually do" in terms of computing how the subcomponents add up to the behaviour of the whole.

I see nothing stopping modelling the behaviour based on the subcomponents, except that it's really, really computationally difficult to do so. In fact, it's probably NP-hard. (NP-hard - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Take for example a pool table with balls on it. You can compute the first collision or two pretty accurately. By the seventh collision (if I'm remembering properly) you actually need to account for the gravitational force caused by the person next to the pool table. By something like the 10th, cosmic rays become relevant.

It's really really hard to simulate accurately in short, and I think that's what he's really getting at. This may be a difficult problem to overcome.

n-body problem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Constance]

I am currently reading a wonderful article about a model of consciousness derived by Carl Jung and a physicist. I will share it here with commentary once I'm done reading it. Their model is a dual-aspect model. It has been immensely helpful and insightful.

In it, they discuss the mind/body distinction as being "complimentary." That is, we can't get a full picture (jig saw puzzle) of reality without considering both sides. But perhaps rather than thinking of subject/object, mind/matter as two sides of reality, they are the same side... So I don't know if they "constrain" one another, or if they rely on one another.

That must be Jung and Pauli. Harald Atmanspacher and his colleagues have written at length about their productive relationship and the insights they obtained through their exchanges of ideas. I'll link some of those papers and a recent book on Jung/Pauli so we can explore their combined insights.

I want to respond this evening to the whole of your post, Soupie, which I think is very useful in developing discussions in this thread.[/QUOTE]

 

[Constance]

@Soupie, I've brought Atmanspacher et al into discussions of consciousness and mind in two previous forums. This is the second time I'm reproducing a post of mine from the original discussion, which includes an extract from one paper and some links to other relevant papers by the Primas-Atmanspacher group centered in Munich):

"Incanus wrote: I guess what the question we are asking is 'Is the mind a quantum computer?'. One justification to why you might say yes to this question (as you have done above) . . .


Thank you for the linked paper, which I've read once and will need to read again. I didn’t intend to say that I think the mind is a computer or even ‘just like’ a computer, though. Mind emerges out of consciousness and can’t be understood, in my opinion, without first comprehending all that consciousness is and all that it produces in reality, which is a project still underway. It seems obvious that computers as postulated by AI theory can already process many kinds of information far more quickly than humans can, but that kind of computational activity doesn’t exhaust the information that human consciousnesses both receive and add to in embodied experience. One of the most interesting questions being pursued by some contemporary philosophers and scientists is the question of how consciousness and mind participate with matter or energy in the production of ‘reality’, a question opened up by the major developments in physics following the discovery of the quantum substrate of reality that generates macroscopic processes in physical nature and, it follows, generates processes in embodied consciousness (given that the latter has likewise evolved out of nature).

For me the interesting issue is not that artificial intelligence can computationally outperform human intelligence, but rather the issue of the differences between AI and human (and also other animal) consciousness and what we can learn about nature [what-is] by understanding the nature of consciousness. I’ve been reading some papers by a research group incuding Hans Primas, Harald Atmanspacher, Hartmann Romer, and others who pursue insights into consciousness that open toward deeper insights into nature (from the recognition of two concepts/aspects of time as we understand it scientifically and philosophically). Some of their papers, including a few I’ve already linked here, are available at the second link below. The first link below is to a paper by Georg Franck, who cites some of those researchers, which I offer for your consideration at this point. Here is an extract:

Concreteness is a quality certainly not included by physics in the
real. Concrete existence means actual existence. Concrete things are
the objects that we perceive and deal with. Concrete things are three-dimensional sections out of four-dimensional trajectories. The cut that
singles out each individual stage of an object that we perceive and can
deal with is performed by the difference that actuality makes regarding
the stages that the object runs through during its lifetime. It is only
by selecting successively one of these stages after another – and making

[note 6Griffin (1998) is a remarkable exception: Following Whitehead, Griffin connects experience to the duration of the actual entity. He does not go as far, however, as to connecting actuality to the perspective of the third person.]

them to surface in the Now – that concrete things emerge. In the case
that actuality is a subjective mode of existing, concreteness, too, is to be
deemed a quale.

Strawson does not realize the opportunity he stumbles upon. Even
though he mentions, in passing, that “everything that concretely exists
is intrinsically experience-involving” (Strawson 2006, p. 8), he leaves the
point aside as an uninteresting detail. He overlooks – as does the debate
around panpsychism in general – that concreteness involves a mode of
existing that is neither purely subjective nor purely objective. On the
one hand, concreteness is a function of actuality. There are no concrete
things lacking actuality. On the other hand, concreteness is a matter of
degree. Concreteness varies with the intensity with which something is
present. There is nothing more concrete than the things that captivate
attention (see Franck 2004).

The mode of existing that varies with both the tenses of time and
with the attention bestowed is presence. Presence, however, is the mode
in which not only the objects of experience exist, but also the mind itself
that is the subject of experience. The mode the conscious mind exists in
is mental presence. If presence resists being reduced to a purely subjective
mode of existing, it offers a way to be tried out for making the postulate
of the proto-experiential operational.

2. Presence and Its Ways of Changing

Presence is the mode of existing that sentient beings cannot help being
familiar with. Sentience as such means presence realizing itself. Sentience
is either present or non-existent. If it exists, its way of existing implies
an immediate awareness of its own. This immediate self-awareness does
not imply a self, let alone a self conscious of itself. It may be as primitive
as the creature consciousness that Chalmers (2000) suggests as the
most primitive form of conscious experience conceivable. Creature consciousness amounts to nothing else than the coming forth of a sensation
without any differentiation as to a self that is sensing and a content that
is sensed. In creature consciousness, the sensation of what is present and
the self-sensation of presence are one. Nevertheless sensation implies manifestation, i.e. cognizance. This cognizance, to repeat it, does not mean
that there is a difference – and thus a relationship – between knower and
known. The relationship may collapse into self-knowledge without a self.
The presence of a sensation, how[ever] primitive and dim it may be, amounts to a feeling of one’s own being there: a feeling of “one-self” as it is implied in the very meaning of “being conscious”.

If physics is right, there is no presence to be detected independently
of its manifestation in experience. Even intuitively, it is hard to see what
remains of presence when the manifestations of conscious experience are
abstracted away. If, however, presence and the presence of experience
are one and the same, the temporal present finds itself fused with mental
presence. Considered from the viewpoint of creature consciousness, this
fusion may seem unproblematic. Considered from the viewpoint of the
experience that has realized the distinction, fusing mental presence with
the temporal present means to fall back behind a crucial achievement of
the self-knowledge of subjectivity.

The distinction between mental presence and the temporal present relies
on drawing a line between one’s own feeling to be mentally present and
the awareness of phenomena presenting themselves. This latter distinction
relies on realizing that there are, within mental presence, intensities
that vary independently of one another. Phenomena presenting themselves
come and go. Even though it takes a certain duration for the phenomenon
presenting itself to become manifest, this duration is very small
in comparison with the duration that mental presence needs in order to
come to itself. There is no feeling of one’s own presence if the intervals
during which the presence lasts are too short.

As soon as the distinction is drawn between one’s own presence and
the phenomena presenting themselves, another distinction can be drawn.
The intensity with which phenomena are present can change two different
ways. There is a way that is susceptible to being controlled and a way
that is plainly autonomous.

The feeling of being capable to control the intensity with which phenomena
are present is the feeling of controlling the focus of one’s attention.
The presence of phenomena is made to change when attention switches
between background and foreground. Switching between background and
foreground involves a feeling of agency. Agency, like sentience, implies
immediate self-awareness. In contrast to sentience, however, the feeling
of agency is a feeling also of resistance. Accordingly, the feeling of controlling the process of “presentification” never is without limits. Rather, the feeling of controlling the focus correlates with the awareness that there is an autonomous change in the presence granted to phenomena. Without
any attentional effort, the presence of phenomena changes in a constant,
regular and irreversible way. Expectations turn into perceptions, perceptions vanish and get lost if not re-presented in the mode of recollection.

This autonomous process of reshuffling presence is as objective as a process
can be. It is the process that the subject experiencing it will call the
passage of time once the conceptual means for doing so are available.
Manipulating the presence of phenomena in a controlled way lies at
the heart of whatever mental activity. Thinking starts with selectively
activating or suppressing the presence of phenomena. Disciplined control
over the focus of attention is called concentration. When concentrating
attention intentionally, the feeling of agency assumes the feeling of
exercizing effort. The effort needed to control the presence of phenomena
gives rise to the awareness of yet another way in which presence changes.
The presence of phenomena varies in the daily cycle of waking, getting
tired and sleeping and is called vigilance. It varies, that is, with the intensity
with which we are mentally present. This change of intensity is
highly, though not completely, autonomous. Vigilance can be influenced
by, e.g., changing the environment or using psychoactive drugs. In comparison with controlling the focus of attention it proves notoriously hard,however, to control the intensity with which we are mentally present. . . . .

http://www.mindmatter.de/resources/pdf/franckwww.pdf

Also see:

http://en.scientificcommons.org/hans_primas

The following paper in particular might provide a helpful orientation to the theories propounded by this research group:

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/938/1/cfvw.pdf

 

[Constance]

@Soupie, here is another relevant and penetrating paper concerning the difference between information and consciousness/mind:

How Not To Be A Reductivist*
William Hasker

Abstract: Some current positions in the philosophy of mind, while ostensibly non-reductive, are in fact reductivist in ways that are seriously problematic. An example is found in the “naturalistic dualism” of David
Chalmers: by maintaining the causal closure of the physical domain, Chalmers makes the rationality of conscious experience inexplicable. This can only be remedied by abandoning causal closure and acknowledging that micro processes in the brain go differently in the presence of conscious experience than they would without it. But this move has startling consequences: once it has been made, major objections to mind-body dualism disappear, and determinism is seen to be a theory that is completely lacking in empirical support. Thomas Nagel and John Searle are cited as examples of philosophers who make a serious effort to face up to the consequences of not being reductivists.

Link: link

 

[Constance]

I like this guy, but have no idea what your commentary has to do with what he said.

The commentary was not mine but John Merryman's. I've been bringing various perspectives into the present discussion in this thread.

 

[Constance]

I have no idea what you just said.

If you're saying you collapse superpositions because you're thinking, I would say no, except that binding neurotransmitters may have a QM element that could be considered a measurement.

But saying this is consequential is like saying a butterfly hitting the windscreen of a 747 is consequential. Sure, in the philosophical sense, but in the practical sense no.

Marduk, physical science and philosophy both work upon the same world. Science developed out of questions posed in philosophy which science still has not answered. Indeed, from a variety of perspectives developed in philosophy, science has 'forgotten' many of the questions that inspired science. In this thread we have explored perspectives on consciousness and mind developed in both disciplines. We're now approaching cross-disciplinary perspectives from science and philosophy developed in the recently active field of consciousness studies. You've as much as admitted that you reject philosophy itself out of hand, and it seems evident that you do not make an effort to entertain by reading them any philosophical contributions to consciousness studies brought forward here. I think this is because you apparently, even evidently, maintain the presupposition that only physical science can answer questions about the nature of reality. As in this post, your response to theories that challenge that presupposition is to submit them to what you (incorrectly imo) take to be a completely physical account of the world that in fact has not yet been achieved. So we talk at cross-purposes.

 

[Constance]

. . . We're now approaching cross-disciplinary perspectives from science and philosophy developed in the recently active field of consciousness studies. You've as much as admitted that you reject philosophy itself out of hand, and it seems evident that you do not make an effort to entertain by reading them any philosophical contributions to consciousness studies brought forward here. I think this is because you apparently, even evidently, maintain the presupposition that only physical science can answer questions about the nature of reality. As in this post, your response to theories that challenge that presupposition is to submit them to what you (incorrectly imo) take to be a completely physical account of the world that in fact has not yet been achieved. So we talk at cross-purposes.

continuing from the above: " . . . So we talk at cross-purposes."

But this doesn't have to continue. Like the rest of us, you too can read work originating outside your own disciplinary interests and purposes and jump into the discussion. You might start out with the papers I linked in posts to Soupie today.

 

[marduk]

The commentary was not mine but John Merryman's. I've been bringing various perspectives into the present discussion in this thread.

Perhaps you could help me understand what Merryman was trying to say?

I found it quite disconnected from the article.

 

[marduk]

Marduk, physical science and philosophy both work upon the same world. Science developed out of questions posed in philosophy which science still has not answered. Indeed, from a variety of perspectives developed in philosophy, science has 'forgotten' many of the questions that inspired science. In this thread we have explored perspectives on consciousness and mind developed in both disciplines. We're now approaching cross-disciplinary perspectives from science and philosophy developed in the recently active field of consciousness studies. You've as much as admitted that you reject philosophy itself out of hand, and it seems evident that you do not make an effort to entertain by reading them any philosophical contributions to consciousness studies brought forward here. I think this is because you apparently, even evidently, maintain the presupposition that only physical science can answer questions about the nature of reality. As in this post, your response to theories that challenge that presupposition is to submit them to what you (incorrectly imo) take to be a completely physical account of the world that in fact has not yet been achieved. So we talk at cross-purposes.

The whole point of the new scientist article was to come up with a new way of thinking about things that don't get into the kind of philosophical entanglements that I think are such a problem. Apparently this scientist feels the same way.

 

[smcder]

Do you think there could be a correlative or even a causal relationship between life and consciousness?

That is, what, if any, is the relationship between living matter and conscious matter?

The point I was making to @marduk is that emergence was applied to life when "vitalism" was the alternative theory.

Vitalism is the idea that something extra was required to explain life coming from matter - life moves and reproduces, etc. but it's easier to see now, with what we know of matter, that life can come from organizing matter ... and it may turn out to be that way with consciousness ... but with what we know now - getting consciousness, subjectivity, from matter seems different - consciousness doesn't appear to be anything like matter, it doesn't take up space, its relationship to time is unclear (I don't mean the relationship of the substrate - the brain, consciousness itself and that is where phenomenology comes in - more on this in another post) ... so now it seems like we don't need emergence to explain life, but some say we need emergence to explain consciousness, but emergence is on thin ground anyway and amounts to "then a miracle occurs". Again, that doesn't mean it won't turn out to be the case, but there are real challenges.

So, in my mind living matter and matter are a matter of organization - where that organization comes from, that organizing principle, could be from the flip side of the puzzle ... my analogy is that property dualism says we are putting two puzzles together at once - the phenomenal has to match the physical (and I want to explore what that means) and that could imply teleology, which from a strictly materialistic viewpoint, is a four letter word and that's where Nagel took a lot of heat, but turns out a lot of folks agree with him:

I've posted this several times, but this time it's especially for you, @marduk

Where Thomas Nagel Went Wrong - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

The odd thing is, however, that for all of this academic high dudgeon, there actually are scientists—respected ones, Nobel Prize-winning ones—who are saying exactly what Nagel said, and have been saying it for decades. Strangely enough, Nagel doesn't mention them. Neither have his critics. This whole imbroglio about the philosophy of science has left out the science.