Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 3

[Constance]

Dear Mixed up in Montana,

I have a few responses to add to yours.

<Pharoah speaking to Soupie, as I recall> [Soupie: And the following should sound eerily familier, and by that I mean, "The mind is green."]

These observations suggest a different way of looking at the problem of consciousness based on distinguishing between two different states of mind, only one of which creates the appearance of the hard problem. We might want to call these the “thinking about consciousness” state and the “ordinary state of consciousness”, but I think they are better described as the “self-reflexive state” and the “scattered state”.

I disagree; there are not simply two 'states of consciousness', one 'on' and one 'off' in terms of self-awareness. We almost always have a background awareness of our experiences, activities, and thoughts as our own. It's certainly not the case that we are conscious only when our identity as a person or self is pointed out to us or foregrounded in a question such as Blackmore proposes. I think this much is generally understood by consciousness researchers and also by many philosophers of mind. I wouldn't expect more subtlety from Blackmore given her reductivist intentions.

So am I some kind of a freak to think that this is nothing extraordinary but rather a very ordinary fluctuation in awareness? @Constance - how does your awareness flow?

It flows continually. When I read your post a few minutes ago I reflected on what had gone through my mind over the preceding ten or fifteen minutes before I read Blackmore's proposal and your responses here. The stream of my consciousness had been focused on a sequence of ideas concerning reincarnation and the Kaspar Hauser case expressed in @Poltergeist's post at this link:

March 20th show | The Paracast Community Forums

My stream of consciousness was involved in responding in writing to his post concerning both Ian Stevenson's and others' reincarnation research, the desireability of Stevenson's successor, Jim Tucker, being interviewed on the Paracast, the significance of reincarnation research for the field of 'paranormal' and 'parapsychological' investigations, the case of Kaspar Hauser also mentioned by Poltergeist, my curiosity concerning books in English that Poltergeist might recommend that have investigated the Hauser case, and my experience watching the Werner Herzog film concerning Kaspar Hauser's life. My stream of consciousness relied on what I already knew about both subjects, my recollection of an article concerning 'subtle senses' having been developed by Hauser over 17 years of isolation in a dark outbuilding, and my vivid memories of the film by Herzog. My biographical 'self' was involved in all that I'd been thinking about and writing but 'present' only in the background given my focus on the subjects and what I wanted to add about them. When I came next to your post, Steve, and Blackmore's supposed insight into consciousness only being 'on' at times of self-referentiality, I asked myself in passing whether I had suddenly regained awareness of myself at the posing of her question. The answer is no. I had not forgotten who I was or what I was experiencing and doing during the time I was focused on the discussion with Poltergeist. I was not 'someone else' or absent during that period of time and activity. I think this is the way it is for most normal humans, with real exceptions occurring in states of amnesia and in those bearing multiple personalities unaware of one another.

Consciousness, without which mind could never develop, is multileveled, multilayered, and interactive among its layers. Selfhood is perhaps a more complex problem, as suggested in this paper I posted in this thread last week:

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11097-013-9332-0

note: that link goes to the abstract; I'm fairly sure I located the full paper online and will post the link to it.

 

[smcder]

Dear Mixed up in Montana,

I have a few responses to add to yours.



I disagree; there are not simply two 'states of consciousness', one 'on' and one 'off' in terms of self-awareness. We almost always have a background awareness of our experiences, activities, and thoughts as our own. It's certainly not the case that we are conscious only when our identity as a person or self is pointed out to us or foregrounded in a question such as Blackmore proposes. I think this much is generally understood by consciousness researchers and also by many philosophers of mind. I wouldn't expect more subtlety from Blackmore given her reductivist intentions.



It flows continually. When I read your post a few minutes ago I reflected on what had gone through my mind over the preceding ten or fifteen minutes before I read Blackmore's proposal and your responses here. The stream of my consciousness had been focused on a sequence of ideas concerning reincarnation and the Kaspar Hauser case expressed in @Poltergeist's post at this link:

March 20th show | The Paracast Community Forums

My stream of consciousness was involved in responding in writing to his post concerning both Ian Stevenson's and others' reincarnation research, the desireability of Stevenson's successor, Jim Tucker, being interviewed on the Paracast, the significance of reincarnation research for the field of 'paranormal' and 'parapsychological' investigations, the case of Kaspar Hauser also mentioned by Poltergeist, my curiosity concerning books in English that Poltergeist might recommend that have investigated the Hauser case, and my experience watching the Werner Herzog film concerning Kaspar Hauser's life. My stream of consciousness relied on what I already knew about both subjects, my recollection of an article concerning 'subtle senses' having been developed by Hauser over 17 years of isolation in a dark outbuilding, and my vivid memories of the film by Herzog. My biographical 'self' was involved in all that I'd been thinking about and writing but 'present' only in the background given my focus on the subjects and what I wanted to add about them. When I came next to your post, Steve, and Blackmore's supposed insight into consciousness only being 'on' at times of self-referentiality, I asked myself in passing whether I had suddenly regained awareness of myself at the posing of her question. The answer is no. I had not forgotten who I was or what I was experiencing and doing during the time I was focused on the discussion with Poltergeist. I was not 'someone else' or absent during that period of time and activity. I think this is the way it is for most normal humans, with real exceptions occurring in states of amnesia and in those bearing multiple personalities unaware of one another.

Consciousness, without which mind could never develop, is multileveled, multilayered, and interactive among its layers. Selfhood is perhaps a more complex problem, as suggested in this paper I posted in this thread last week:

[link to come]

Ahhhh .... so Blackmore is the freak! ;-)

 

[Constance]

Ahhhh .... so Blackmore is the freak! ;-)

You are a speedreader. No wonder it's so hard to keep up with all the directions and links you pursue in a single day.

ps: I wish I could pursue this thread further as it develops but I have to meet someone for dinner in 35 minutes. I'll be back to the thread later.

 

[smcder]

@Soupie @smcder concerning recent comments on paper.

I take your criticisms onboard: The link into phenomenal experience has been rubbish.
So, I have been editing sections 4, 5, 6(especially), 8, 10 and 11 to accommodate.
Importantly, none of the footnotes were in the previous version, so this is the latest as from today. Some of the footnotes are cool I think.
www.mind-phronesis.co.uk/Synthese-14-3-15.pdf
I have not had time to review it much myself.
Sorry I can't be more specific because I have to go now. I have addressed the issues in the re-draft though.
Will respond to specific queries tomorrow

I'm good with that ... I can look at it from here/

 

[smcder]

Dear Mixed up in Montana,

I have a few responses to add to yours.



I disagree; there are not simply two 'states of consciousness', one 'on' and one 'off' in terms of self-awareness. We almost always have a background awareness of our experiences, activities, and thoughts as our own. It's certainly not the case that we are conscious only when our identity as a person or self is pointed out to us or foregrounded in a question such as Blackmore proposes. I think this much is generally understood by consciousness researchers and also by many philosophers of mind. I wouldn't expect more subtlety from Blackmore given her reductivist intentions.



It flows continually. When I read your post a few minutes ago I reflected on what had gone through my mind over the preceding ten or fifteen minutes before I read Blackmore's proposal and your responses here. The stream of my consciousness had been focused on a sequence of ideas concerning reincarnation and the Kaspar Hauser case expressed in @Poltergeist's post at this link:

March 20th show | The Paracast Community Forums

My stream of consciousness was involved in responding in writing to his post concerning both Ian Stevenson's and others' reincarnation research, the desireability of Stevenson's successor, Jim Tucker, being interviewed on the Paracast, the significance of reincarnation research for the field of 'paranormal' and 'parapsychological' investigations, the case of Kaspar Hauser also mentioned by Poltergeist, my curiosity concerning books in English that Poltergeist might recommend that have investigated the Hauser case, and my experience watching the Werner Herzog film concerning Kaspar Hauser's life. My stream of consciousness relied on what I already knew about both subjects, my recollection of an article concerning 'subtle senses' having been developed by Hauser over 17 years of isolation in a dark outbuilding, and my vivid memories of the film by Herzog. My biographical 'self' was involved in all that I'd been thinking about and writing but 'present' only in the background given my focus on the subjects and what I wanted to add about them. When I came next to your post, Steve, and Blackmore's supposed insight into consciousness only being 'on' at times of self-referentiality, I asked myself in passing whether I had suddenly regained awareness of myself at the posing of her question. The answer is no. I had not forgotten who I was or what I was experiencing and doing during the time I was focused on the discussion with Poltergeist. I was not 'someone else' or absent during that period of time and activity. I think this is the way it is for most normal humans, with real exceptions occurring in states of amnesia and in those bearing multiple personalities unaware of one another.

Consciousness, without which mind could never develop, is multileveled, multilayered, and interactive among its layers. Selfhood is perhaps a more complex problem, as suggested in this paper I posted in this thread last week:

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11097-013-9332-0

note: that link goes to the abstract; I'm fairly sure I located the full paper online and will post the link to it.

I haven't seen Kasper Hauser, but I have seen several of Herzogg's films - and have that one on my short list to watch.

 

[Soupie]

First off - her analysis seems subject to the same criticism she applies to everyone else:

The major problem facing these attempts is that each explorer can proclaim their own discoveries to be right and other people’s to be wrong – their own minds to be typical and others’ aberrant – a problem tackled in different ways by these various disciplines. ...

Absolutely. She is cognizant of that as well. (By the way, I'm not endorsing her ideas. Merely noting that they're interesting, reflect some of my own introspections, and has obviously put a lot of time and thought into her work.)

In this state there seems to be a magic difference between conscious and unconscious processes; there seems to be a self who is separate from the conscious processes; and there seems to be a duality between the subjective world and an objective world.

Is that a rare state?? Can't we invoke it simply by pointing it out to someone?

No, I don't think it's rare. However, I would say that being in a state of--what I would call--meta-awareness is not the state that we are in a majority of the time. That is, most people do not move through a typical day thinking: I am aware that I am aware of the coffee, I am aware that I am aware of the car, I am aware that I am aware of my coworkers, I am aware that I am aware of my boss's breath, and so on. For large portions of the day and for a surprising number of fairly complex tasks, we are on "autopilot" if you will (which you might not).

I do remember your basketball experience description and find it the more interesting that you couldn't duplicate the "awareness without content" experiment ... again, it seems normal that we shift awareness like this to and from the self. In the course of our discussions and my own introspection, I may have lost the perspective to see these as extraordinary events or insights?

I do think some people are naturally more introspective than others; and I do think pondering consciousness on a regular basis will lead one to think about it, and experience, differently.

Contrary to @Constances experience, I do have moments throughout the day during which my sense of self dissipates.

Regarding Blackmore's idea of the reflexive and scattered state: I seem to have "moments" during which I am aware of the external environment, and moments when I'm aware that I am aware of the environment; similarly, I have moments when I am thinking, and moments when I am aware that I am thinking. In the former of each of those couplets my sense of self seems to dissipate and "I" become phenomenal experiences (the mind is green) or thoughts, and in the latter I have a sense of self--a subject--which is experiencing experiences or thinking thoughts.

I think the former mental state might correlate to the concept of being "absorbed" in something, an activity, movie, book, thoughts, conversation, etc. I think what Blackmore is saying is that this state of being absorbed in things is common throughout the day for many people. Whereas the latter state, a state of self-consciousness, is not as common throughout the day. I agree that she goes too far in saying the latter state is rare. And it may even be the case that people spend an equal amount of time in both states. Regardless, the distinction between the two states is one that I have--and do--experience.

 

[smcder]

There's an argument I think for the unity of self that makes as much sense as constructing a sense of self on the fly, is perhaps more parsimonious, and I suspect the neurological evidence could be interpreted as to either ... and maybe both are true or could be pursued ... pursued by cultivating constant awareness ...

Another case of "epistemic ambiguity".

 

[Constance]

There's an argument I think for the unity of self that makes as much sense as constructing a sense of self on the fly, is perhaps more parsimonious, and I suspect the neurological evidence could be interpreted as to either ... and maybe both are true or could be pursued ... pursued by cultivating constant awareness ...

Could you clarify what you mean by 'cultivating constant awareness'? If you mean trying to maintain a consciousness that is constantly monitoring itself, I think it would short-circuit experience itself, both physical and mental experience, which flow together continually. Consciousness is the stream of what is continuously experienced both in the world beyond one's skin and in the mind, a stream that meanders off in various directions and nevertheless maintains the unity -- the confluence -- of its flowing.

 

[Constance]

Contrary to @Constances experience, I do have moments throughout the day during which my sense of self dissipates.

So do I, Soupie. We all do. We all 'forget ourselves' or lose track of ourselves in focused activities or periods of mental concentration, and in listening to music, watching films, even day dreaming. But at the ends of those periods of time we are not shocked to return to self-awareness or alienated from our biographical selves because we maintain a background sense of self all along. Or so it seems to me.

 

[Constance]

What I said in my last two posts falls short of addressing the 'epistemic ambiguity' Steve referred to. I think my few comments above do apply to 'normal experience' of most humans most of the time, but there are dramatic exceptions to such experience that include OBEs, cases of multiple personality, and other forms of psychological 'dissociation' including cases of amnesia.

OBEs have been investigated in detail in the last several decades and I've located the link to the whole of the paper I referred to a day or two ago which reports on significant discoveries and distinctions in OBE phenomena: Glenn Carruthers, "Who am I in Out of Body Experience: Implications from OBES for the explanadum of a theory of self-consciousness in Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences."

https://www.academia.edu/4097980/_in_press_Who_am_I_in_Out_of_Body_Experience_Implications_from_OBEs_for_the_explanandum_of_a_theory_of_self-consciousness_in_Phenomenology_and_the_Cognitive_Sciences

I hope we can discuss the distinctions developed in the study of OBEs provided in this paper for they do demonstrate radical epistemic ambiguity in 'selfhood'.

 

[Constance]

While we are embodied, our consciousness develops out of our embodiment and is closely tied to it. But as the research reported in the Carruthers paper indicates, there are aspects of our consciousness that show up in some experiences that are not tied to the body or necessarily to the sense of 'self'. These OBEs have been reported since early in our written history. What do they tell us about who and what we are?

Preeminently they tell us that our normal personal experience of subjective consciousness is not completely tied to our sense of being in the body or necessarily to our sense of 'ownership' of our body, important distinctions foregrounded by Carruthers in results of OBE research. Nevertheless, the functioning of the brain seems to be required to support our continuing conscious experiences in out- of-the-body states experienced while we remain alive or are at the cusp of death. The problem he identifies is the need to understand how what he distinguishes as the 'sense of embodiment', the 'sense of ownership', and the 'sense of subjectivity' [subjective point of view] can be understood as inconsistently present together in human experience. What does that indicate about the source of consciousness and its actual nature?

Reincarnation research and past-life research are among the types of research that more than strongly suggest that human consciousness survives bodily death, and that at least some consciousnesses are reinserted (reinsert themselves) into other bodies and experience additional embodied lifetimes. These apparently reincarnated consciousnesses and their specific (and verified) memories of past lives show up for the most part in early childhood, beginning around the age of three and remaining vivid and accessible for several years. Ian Stevenson's research discovered that children remembering past lives sometimes carry physical disfigurations at the bodily sites of fatal wounds that ended the previous lifetime.** Psychological wounds in past lifetimes seem also to be carried from one lifetime to another. It was in the attempt to resolve such psychological wounds (producing physical and/or mental symptoms that could not be medically explained) that psychiatrists first began hypnotic regression therapy, looking for early childhood experiences of the patient that could account for the dysfunction. This kind of therapy began as early as the late 19th century and is more prevalent today given the discoveries of Brian Weiss and Michael Newton of their patients' access (under hypnotic regression) to remembering one or more past lives. The question concerning the nature of consciousness expands in complexity and significance when the complement of these types of research is included in consciousness research.

Carruthers distinctions concerning three separate categorically nonunified phenomena of consciousness in its relationship with the body in OBEs can ground further discussion encompassing the four types of anomalous experience I've just cited and can also be extended to take up further types of anomalous experiences investigated by F.W.H. Myers and further developed by Kelly and Kelly et al in Irreducible Mind*, including manifestations of multiple personality, psychic experiences including mediumship, and insights of geniuses in various walks of life, to which we can currently add recent research concerning remote viewing, savant syndrome, and deep meditative states accompanied by physically distinguishable and visible changes in brain activity and organization.

At last we may be at the point of finally making good on the promises of this thread's title: Consciousness and the Paranormal.

For now, let's start with the evidence provided in the Carruthers paper.


*re Myers and Kelly and Kelly et al, Steve provided near the beginning of this third part of our thread a summary breakdown of the types of anomalous experience treated by Kelly and Kelly carried forward from Myers' work.

** I should add the following data at this point in my post: skilled mediums have often been able to identify the sites of pain suffered in embodied life by discarnate entities, or describe the types of pain and disability they suffered due to incurable illnesses from which they most recently died. Children remembering past lives also remember the way they died and even who killed them in cases where that was the cause of death.

 

[smcder]

Could you clarify what you mean by 'cultivating constant awareness'? If you mean trying to maintain a consciousness that is constantly monitoring itself, I think it would short-circuit experience itself, both physical and mental experience, which flow together continually. Consciousness is the stream of what is continuously experienced both in the world beyond one's skin and in the mind, a stream that meanders off in various directions and nevertheless maintains the unity of its flowing.

I'll have to go back and look ... I was tired and knew it wouldn't be clear, but I wanted to come back to it - so I put the ideas down in a raw form

Unfortunately, I am not going to be gone a couple of days to take care of some family business.

It looks like you talk to my idea about a sense of self being present always, that states of unawareness aren't usually complete - do we go back and reconstruct them so that we experience them after they happen, etc ... it's like the problems @Soupie has with contentless awareness ... maybe we look at the words too closely, too literally - for me, there is a kind of "this is it" experience that then gets attached to the words and from there, when you read further descriptions or even better talk to someone face to face, you know you have the experience right.

That is true in athletic instruction - you know when you have it right, now how would you know that? Sometimes all it takes is a hand wave or some weird phrase or even a nod at the exact moment from the coach ... in Zen apparently a master can come behind you and whack! you into enlightenment, what is it that tells him you are on the verge?

What isn't it? For that matter.

Words should always be pushed against - if we stay inside their normal boundaries, we stay inside our normal ideas.

I know I have a feeling sometimes days or weeks out and if I stay with it - I know I can gestate it into a verbal event ... I can express. But now I am finding more and more that I am pregnant in a way that won't come into birth through words - now how do I convey that? Diagrammatics as in "What is Philosophy?" or do I try ESP? Or do I invent a language?

Synchronistically (and now I have synchronicities every day and often within a few minutes and I'm beginning to know when that will happen) I downloaded a Expanding Mind podcast on "alien languages" that turned out to be about some of these ideas - I'll finish listening to it on the way home tonight. They distinguish between natural languages (John Dees Enochian turned out to be a natural language) and "alien languages" that don't follow those rules and yet can convey meaning, at least to the one person.

When I think of the hard problem, I have representations in all the words I've used to try to convey it here on the forum but also kinesthetically and with imagery ... Gardner lists 7-9 intelligence modalities, I will try to sit down and see if I can list out what I have for each to represent the hard problem.

By the way I also have a kind of tone or sound or attitude that accompanies "the hard problem" when it is in " " that is different when it isn't - it's harder somehow but that is about all I can say.

As to constant awareness I know Tibetan monks will try to maintain this kind of awareness into sleep with lucid dreaming. Others say that isn't healthy for the mind.

I'll try to remember how I want to expand on the idea of constant awareness and come back to it.

Hope this all makes some kind of sense ...

 

[smcder]

@Sooupie in the Alien Languages Podcast

Alien Languages - 01.15.15 at Expanding Mind

They talk about how our languages may be the way they are because we live in a "gravity well" which just means we have gravity and that establishes a basic dichotomy:

up

and

down

so from that comes the natural dualism of languages.

"Alien languages" received during psychedelic and other extraordinary states of consciousness may lack this dualism, this subject/object structure of natural languages and seem to come from beings that "float" and that see 360 degrees (we discussed 360 vision a long time ago) ... that is very interesting to me - because if that is imagined, how would we explain that ability to imagine that ... from a Darwinian perspective?

And that's yet another topic: imagination? Why do we have so much of it?

NOTE: look at s/v structure of languages in terms of the hard problem ...

subject

and

object

are NOT opposites

 

[Pharoah]

http://mind-phronesis.co.uk/Synthese-24-3-15.pdf

Section 6 (page 9) has major changes that are intended to address how phenomenal experience comes into the equation with an extension of the argument in section 8 (page 13).

Would appreciate any response to these changes.

 

[Soupie]

@smcder

Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud. Hermann Hesse

Two languages offer two 'minds' for bilinguals

Thought processes can change even in the same people depending on which language they use.

As part of their investigation, the researchers asked German-English bilinguals to provide similarity judgments on video-clip triads depicting goal-oriented motion events (e.g., a woman walking towards a car).

"Speakers of German, Afrikaans, and Swedish, tend to mention endpoints, look at endpoints, and favor endpoints in similarity judgments, whereas speakers of English, Spanish, Arabic, and Russian, do so to a lesser extent."

What does all this "endpoint" talk mean? Nicholas Weiler, in News From Science, explained endpoints. "German speakers tend to specify the beginnings, middles, and ends of events, but English speakers often leave out the endpoints and focus in on the action. Looking at the same scene, for example, German speakers might say, 'A man leaves the house and walks to the store,' whereas an English speaker would just say, 'A man is walking.'" As important, bilingual speakers appeared to switch between perspectives "based on the language most active in their minds," wrote Weiler. If speakersof two languages put different emphasis on actions and consequences, then bilinguals stand to get the best of more than one world view; two languages may result in more flexible thinking.

Weiler illustrated this point quite clearly: Where did the thief go? Ask the question in German and you may get a more accurate reply. How did she get away? You may want to use English for that one.
​

The maps are not the territory. There is the idea that we only perceive a fraction of reality. And then, perhaps, we can only conceptualize a fraction of what we perceive.

@Burnt State might like the bilingual article as well. It is clear our language affects what we "see" and what we "saw."

 

[smcder]

@smcder

Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud. Hermann Hesse

Two languages offer two 'minds' for bilinguals

Thought processes can change even in the same people depending on which language they use.

As part of their investigation, the researchers asked German-English bilinguals to provide similarity judgments on video-clip triads depicting goal-oriented motion events (e.g., a woman walking towards a car).

"Speakers of German, Afrikaans, and Swedish, tend to mention endpoints, look at endpoints, and favor endpoints in similarity judgments, whereas speakers of English, Spanish, Arabic, and Russian, do so to a lesser extent."

What does all this "endpoint" talk mean? Nicholas Weiler, in News From Science, explained endpoints. "German speakers tend to specify the beginnings, middles, and ends of events, but English speakers often leave out the endpoints and focus in on the action. Looking at the same scene, for example, German speakers might say, 'A man leaves the house and walks to the store,' whereas an English speaker would just say, 'A man is walking.'" As important, bilingual speakers appeared to switch between perspectives "based on the language most active in their minds," wrote Weiler. If speakersof two languages put different emphasis on actions and consequences, then bilinguals stand to get the best of more than one world view; two languages may result in more flexible thinking.

Weiler illustrated this point quite clearly: Where did the thief go? Ask the question in German and you may get a more accurate reply. How did she get away? You may want to use English for that one.
​

The maps are not the territory. There is the idea that we only perceive a fraction of reality. And then, perhaps, we can only conceptualize a fraction of what we perceive.

@Burnt State might like the bilingual article as well. It is clear our language affects what we "see" and what we "saw."

Ja, das glaube Ich. Doch ... sicher ist klar!

Also, es gibt eine weitere Sache die ist interresant und das heisst auf Englisch schreiben wir "I" in Großbuchstaben. Sondern auf deutsche, "ich" ist mit kleinen Briefe geschrieben ... auf Deutsch und alle anderen Sprache. Weisst du das?

... y lo que si una persona habla tres idiomas ?

 

[Soupie]

http://mind-phronesis.co.uk/Synthese-24-3-15.pdf

Section 6 (page 9) has major changes that are intended to address how phenomenal experience comes into the equation with an extension of the argument in section 8 (page 13).

Would appreciate any response to these changes.

I'm still stuck on section four. I read through to section 8 amd beyond, but had to stop becuase there is (to me) a glaring problem: as early as section 4 you mention "colours," "colouration," and red, green, and blue specifically.

Red, green, blue, and color in general are not "objective side" things. You can't look inside someone's brain and see red, green, or blue. These are qualitative/phenomenal properities.

I fully follow you that certain THz frequencies will be qualitatively relevant to organisms and they will therefore have evolved physiologies that that are about these frequencies and related physiological mechanisms that motivate them toward or away from said frequencies.

The question, however, the hard question, is why qualitative/phenomenal properties (such as colors, smells, sounds, etc) are "mapped" onto these physical stimuli and/or physiological mechanisms.

I don't see this addressed in your paper. That is, I don't see the hard problem addressed in your paper.

 

[Burnt State]

As an English speaker growing up in a Germanic household and having read most of Hesse before I finished second year university I have to say I have always favored endpoints. Where things start and end are critical for me. So is saying things out loud, as that alters meaning in ways that appear to be limited, as if what you imagine to say contains all these other emotions and intentions that might not necessarily have specific or known words attached to them. Dewdney told me that was a failure of not knowing enough words.

Poetry on the other hand creates fields of meanings, and looks for multiplicity of concepts and ideas so that language becomes layered the way that memory is also stratified by our own personal geology of events. This kind of heightened language that situates phrases of meanings alongside constructed images through metaphor is a kind of apex of consciousness, as if something beyond words is being named, something my consciousness acknowledges but can not always translate.

Re: reconstructing consciousness
Most people who commute do so in the fairly automatic state of the automaton. At what point in the accident do I suddenly wake up out of a default auto pilot mode to notice the details and order of what really took place? I think that's probably impossible to negotiate and much of our life is like how the Quebecois feminist writers describe it, "the soul winks on, winks off." and I f I have to tell you the narrative of the day's events it will be a fabricated summary except for the parts that I was studying closely each step along the way. This could be quite mundane material, but for whatever reason the events were recorded 'accurately.'

Language offers me the opportunity to then negotiate the meaning I want to create, or that I imagined and this can happen as smcder said, by talking with other people, inventing your own code, writing in neologisms or in simply crafting the meaning of what you want to feel the way a poet would. Making images does this even better, so film then captures the experience of consciousness by being able to do what we do readily when we remember: it edits and manipulates time into a memory poem. Reality works this way.

And I can see how people who share codes of meaning together in communities freely invent languages according to the events & processes that are important to them. They make their poems and images of self expression too.

 

[Pharoah]

I'm still stuck on section four. I read through to section 8 amd beyond, but had to stop becuase there is (to me) a glaring problem: as early as section 4 you mention "colours," "colouration," and red, green, and blue specifically.

Red, green, blue, and color in general are not "objective side" things. You can't look inside someone's brain and see red, green, or blue. These are qualitative/phenomenal properities.

I fully follow you that certain THz frequencies will be qualitatively relevant to organisms and they will therefore have evolved physiologies that that are about these frequencies and related physiological mechanisms that motivate them toward or away from said frequencies.

The question, however, the hard question, is why qualitative/phenomenal properties (such as colors, smells, sounds, etc) are "mapped" onto these physical stimuli and/or physiological mechanisms.

I don't see this addressed in your paper. That is, I don't see the hard problem addressed in your paper.

@Soupie If you recall, I don't mention red, green, or blue until the end of section 4. Most of section 4 refers to THz
Note footnote #2:
"That these objects reflect light in these frequencies is objectively the case, whilst the frequencies attributed to them are a correlative concept that humans have determined by associating spectral frequencies (quantified oscillations per assigned incremental measures of time) with the particular qualitative experiential characteristics of colours."

What you get by the end of section 4 is physiological mechanisms that respond to the world in different ways. It is obviously not as simple as red= this and green=that because there are many conflicting subtle incarnations of worldy things in physiological mechanism.

The phenomenal nature of colour is dealt with in parts 6 and 8 not in section 4. Section 4 tells us that colours are represented physiologically because they are qualitatively relevant and that this representation evinces subtle evocations of attention, focus, mood and other such things

 

[smcder]

@Soupie If you recall, I don't mention red, green, or blue until the end of section 4. Most of section 4 refers to THz
Note footnote #2:
"That these objects reflect light in these frequencies is objectively the case, whilst the frequencies attributed to them are a correlative concept that humans have determined by associating spectral frequencies (quantified oscillations per assigned incremental measures of time) with the particular qualitative experiential characteristics of colours."

What you get by the end of section 4 is physiological mechanisms that respond to the world in different ways. It is obviously not as simple as red= this and green=that because there are many conflicting subtle incarnations of worldy things in physiological mechanism.

The phenomenal nature of colour is dealt with in parts 6 and 8 not in section 4. Section 4 tells us that colours are represented physiologically because they are qualitatively relevant and that this representation evinces subtle evocations of attention, focus, mood and other such things

@Soupie
"
6 & 8 don't seem to me to address the hard problem either. What you are describing is well understood by those who posit that there is a hard problem, they just point out that that

"there is something it it like to be"

doesn't seem necessary to the processes. If I understand you, you would claim that it is necessary - but you don't explain why.
"To possess phenomenal experience is ‘to assimilate and evaluate, and thereby to understand the qualitative relevancy of environmental experience’."

But the near reverse:

"to assimilate and evaluate, and thereby to assess the relevancy of environmental experience" does not imply "phenomenal experience"

again - strike the zombie, imagine a very advanced Mars rover that can do everything that say a dog can do ... but is organized along tranditonal computer lines, but with much more horsepower, we would not say there is something it is like to be that rover.

"I am not going to speculate how a qualitative assimilation might be cross-referenced or compared with another nor how neural networks institute organisational hierarchies, but few would doubt that they somehow do and am content to leave this research programme to the neuroscientists."

Few may ever doubt it - and it may be so ... but cross-referencing or comparing, or showing how neural networks institute oranisational hierarchies does not show that it's a "qualitative" assimilation.