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Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 3

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While searching for that paper, Steve, I came upon this one, a potential tour de force probably in its first draft, too breathlessly expressed to allow even for paragraphing. See what you think about it:

CassirerHeidegger_01_20140806kdp02

I'll have a look ...

Now this one is interesting ... at times it sounds so familiar as to make me but wonder whether he's been reading the C&P thread ... he hits every note, even mentions Schopenhauer, Stanislaw Lem (Solaris) and poetry ... and ties it altogether with Jonathon Edwards, of all persons.

Does Consciousness Need to Be Explained? | Dennis Weiser - Academia.edu

The inability to conceive of humans as anything but behavioristic robots shows a marked - possibly a psychotic - failure of imagination.

... much neuroscientific research is hopelessly naïve, unnecessarily mechanistic, a kind of tinker toy approach to the brain that readily confuses metaphors from electrical engineering and computing ... with meaningful brain activity like mental states, intentions and desires or even consciousness, itself.

“Would computers ever be able to think?” Turing said “No,” then added that he would not be surprised if, by the end of the 20th century, language had changed so much that everyone had become accustomed to talking about computers “thinking.”
Though talk about the “soul” may be out of fashion, I would point out C. S. Lewis’ observation in The Discarded Image (1964) that the soul was something encased in a carcass of flesh is a fairly modern notion. Medieval man, Lewis argues, believed that the soul resided in everything outside him. “The soul is, in a manner of speaking, all things.” Let me suggest that this may be more closely connected with the idea of language as a social convention than it is to panpsychism. Relevant in this context is Wittgenstein’s notion that a private language (that is, a language in principle knowable by only one person) is impossible; since it commits one to a solipsism that explodes the very idea of what language is.


The idea that everything conceivable reduces to a description of underlying material stuff is indicative of a narrow, reductionist, false and overambitious understanding of science. Occam’s Razor and Plato’s discussion in his dialogue, Parmenides, precludes this option: if the number of ontological primitive existents is unlimited or infinite, explanation and knowledge are impossible.

It is not that we are “constitutionally incapable” of solving the problem of consciousness, any more than we “struggle to understand what it could possibly mean for the mind to be physical.” There is no problem of consciousness. The mind cannot be physical because it belongs to a different order of entity. Similarly, “we don’t know how the brains of mammals create consciousness” precisely because mammaIian brains don’t create consciousness. In all three cases the problem is ill-conceived in the first place.
The claim that any inanimate matter, if only properly organized, “anything at all could be conscious” reflects a failure to appreciate the insights expressed in the preceding paragraphs and a tendency toward materialist reductionism. I have already noted Alan Turing’s remark about this kind of construction of “consciousness” (“thinking”) in “Computing Machinery and Intelligence.” Giulio Tononi and Koch’s alleged test of this “integrated information theory” falls short of its goal. A device that “stimulates the brain with electrical voltage” is supposed “to measure how interconnected and organised–how “integrated”–its neural circuits are.” Sure enough, as people slip into unconsciousness, the device demonstrates that their brain integration declines, too. –As you fall asleep, your conscious awareness declines. Astounding! You call this science? Or philosophy?
 
lol... cool idea for the next one

I don't think we ever finished that discussion - what "fitness" means ...

I think survival of the survivaliest or survival of those that survive is a better motto than survival of the fittest or nature red in tooth & claw ...

using

"selection"

and

"chance and neccessity"

to see how far one can go.
 
My usual disclaimer: The dog ate my homework for this thread so I am responding in a limited way to a few of the most recent posts. Hoping this is relevant to the discussion:

It was drummed into me in reading work of the Sephen Jay Gould school that the notion of progress in biological evolution is a kind of anthropomorphic illusion. Inasmuch as the history of evolution seems to be not only one of ever increasing complexity, but an ever increasing rate of change thereof--I personally see a kind of "progress" as perceived by human standards. As humans would seem to be the only organisms qualified assess this question, we are left to agree or disagree only amongst ourselves. It would also seem difficult to conceive of any sentient being with no concept of relative complexity. But this is speculation.

So: Does HCT imply an overall increase in the complexity of nature, either locally or universally? Or is the path from supernova to human mind (and possibly further) offset or balanced by entropy in such a way that complexity/information has a net gain is zero?
 
My usual disclaimer: The dog ate my homework for this thread so I am responding in a limited way to a few of the most recent posts. Hoping this is relevant to the discussion:

It was drummed into me in reading work of the Sephen Jay Gould school that the notion of progress in biological evolution is a kind of anthropomorphic illusion. Inasmuch as the history of evolution seems to be not only one of ever increasing complexity, but an ever increasing rate of change thereof--I personally see a kind of "progress" as perceived by human standards. As humans would seem to be the only organisms qualified assess this question, we are left to agree or disagree only amongst ourselves. It would also seem difficult to conceive of any sentient being with no concept of relative complexity. But this is speculation.

So: Does HCT imply an overall increase in the complexity of nature, either locally or universally? Or is the path from supernova to human mind (and possibly further) offset or balanced by entropy in such a way that complexity/information has a net gain is zero?

This idea of "progression" in evolution is now regarded as misleading, with natural selection having no intrinsic direction and organisms selected for either increased or decreased complexity in response to local environmental conditions.

Although there has been an increase in the maximum level of complexity over the history of life, there has always been a large majority of small and simple organisms and the most common level of complexity (the mode) appears to have remained relatively constant.

There's another reference I posted above as to how we come to make this mistake - but it's basically overlooking the mode ...

Bonus question: what is the evolutionary history of anthropomorphism? Does it confer an evolutionary advantage or is it along for the ride with things that do?

Old age and death are evolutionarily advantageous too.

@Pharoah has an article on increasing complexity in information, see also my next post on this in the Burnt State thread and also the idea of the Ergod in the information philosopher and other articles on that site,

the defintive answer, by the way, is:

"maybe"
 
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I was going to post the following in the George Hanson "trickster" thread, but it connects with comments made by @Burnt State in this Paracast episode, and with LCs comments. Maybe at some point a single thread to discuss this approach will materialize.
Some of us have discussed in various forum threads the similarities between abduction, close encounter, NDE, hallucinogen/entheogen, meditative, psychotic/mystical, and dream experiences. Essentially, they are all altered states of consciousness.
Often, the Trickster is referred to a change agent. A mechanism that causes -- or perhaps manifests -- during times of system destabilization. During his Paracast session, Burnt State noted how historically individuals who entered these altered states were shaman; individuals who used their ability to access altered states for the good of their community. In general, historically, there seems to have been much more openness, acceptance, and value of altered states and the knowledge and insights that could/can be gained from them. (It might even be argued that the use of hallucinogens/entheogens was historically more integrated into human cultures.)
While it doesn't explain those cases in which external stimuli have been documented, it's possible that both exogenous and endogenous chemicals and the altered subjective states/experiences which they catalyze in humans may be an evolutionarily adaptive mechanism that brings novel information/knowledge into human culture. In other words, this noted capacity for humans to experience self-initiated and spontaneous altered states may be an adaptive mechanism.
Or, for those who disdain reductive explanations, it may be a mechanism that was bestowed upon humans by some Other(s) for the same purpose: to advance the species/culture.
With that in mind, I found the following commentary very interesting. It comes from a long read article from the New Yorker about recent psilocybin (Magic Mushroom) trials for treatment of anxiety in individuals with terminal cancer being conducted at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and New York University. Although the entire article is excellent and I recommend reading it, the comments of interest come from neuroscientist Carhart-Harris.
I've underlined the juicy bits for the tldr crowd.
If the only way we can access the unconscious mind is via dreams and free association, we aren’t going to get anywhere,” he said. “Surely there must be something else.” One day, he asked his seminar leader if that might be a drug. She was intrigued. He set off to search the library catalogue for “LSD and the Unconscious” and found “Realms of the Human Unconscious,” by Stanislav Grof. “I read the book cover to cover. That set the course for the rest of my young life.” ...
When, in 2010, Carhart-Harris first began studying the brains of volunteers on psychedelics, neuroscientists assumed that the drugs somehow excited brain activity—hence the vivid hallucinations and powerful emotions that people report. But when Carhart-Harris looked at the results of the first set of fMRI scans—which pinpoint areas of brain activity by mapping local blood flow and oxygen consumption—he discovered that the drug appeared to substantially reduce brain activity in one particular region: the “default-mode network.”
The default-mode network was first described in 2001, in a landmark paper by Marcus Raichle, a neurologist at Washington University, in St. Louis, and it has since become the focus of much discussion in neuroscience. The network comprises a critical and centrally situated hub of brain activity that links parts of the cerebral cortex to deeper, older structures in the brain, such as the limbic system and the hippocampus.
The network, which consumes a significant portion of the brain’s energy, appears to be most active when we are least engaged in attending to the world or to a task. It lights up when we are daydreaming, removed from sensory processing, and engaging in higher-level “meta-cognitive” processes such as self-reflection, mental time travel, rumination, and “theory of mind”—the ability to attribute mental states to others. Carhart-Harris describes the default-mode network variously as the brain’s “orchestra conductor” or “corporate executive” or “capital city,” charged with managing and “holding the entire system together.” It is thought to be the physical counterpart of the autobiographical self, or ego.
“The brain is a hierarchical system,” Carhart-Harris said. “The highest-level parts”—such as the default-mode network—“have an inhibitory influence on the lower-level parts, like emotion and memory.” He discovered that blood flow and electrical activity in the default-mode network dropped off precipitously under the influence of psychedelics, a finding that may help to explain the loss of the sense of self that volunteers reported. (The biggest dropoffs in default-mode-network activity correlated with volunteers’ reports of ego dissolution.) Just before Carhart-Harris published his results, in a 2012 paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a researcher at Yale named Judson Brewer, who was using fMRI to study the brains of experienced meditators, noticed that their default-mode networks had also been quieted relative to those of novice meditators. It appears that, with the ego temporarily out of commission, the boundaries between self and world, subject and object, all dissolve. These are hallmarks of the mystical experience.
If the default-mode network functions as the conductor of the symphony of brain activity, we might expect its temporary disappearance from the stage to lead to an increase in dissonance and mental disorder—as appears to happen during the psychedelic journey. Carhart-Harris has found evidence in scans of brain waves that, when the default-mode network shuts down, other brain regions “are let off the leash.” Mental contents hidden from view (or suppressed) during normal waking consciousness come to the fore: emotions, memories, wishes and fears. Regions that don’t ordinarily communicate directly with one another strike up conversations (neuroscientists sometimes call this “crosstalk”), often with bizarre results. Carhart-Harris thinks that hallucinations occur when the visual-processing centers of the brain, left to their own devices, become more susceptible to the influence of our beliefs and emotions. ...
In “The Doors of Perception,” Aldous Huxley concluded from his psychedelic experience that the conscious mind is less a window on reality than a furious editor of it. The mind is a “reducing valve,” he wrote, eliminating far more reality than it admits to our conscious awareness, lest we be overwhelmed. “What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive.” Psychedelics open the valve wide, removing the filter that hides much of reality, as well as dimensions of our own minds, from ordinary consciousness. Carhart-Harris has cited Huxley’s metaphor in some of his papers, likening the default-mode network to the reducing valve, but he does not agree that everything that comes through the opened doors of perception is necessarily real. The psychedelic experience, he suggests, can yield a lot of “fool’s gold.”
Nevertheless, Carhart-Harris believes that the psychedelic experience can help people by relaxing the grip of an overbearing ego and the rigid, habitual thinking it enforces. The human brain is perhaps the most complex system there is, and the emergence of a conscious self is its highest achievement. By adulthood, the mind has become very good at observing and testing reality and developing confident predictions about it that optimize our investments of energy (mental and otherwise) and therefore our survival. Much of what we think of as perceptions of the world are really educated guesses based on past experience (“That fractal pattern of little green bits in my visual field must be a tree”), and this kind of conventional thinking serves us well.
But only up to a point. In Carhart-Harris’s view, a steep price is paid for the achievement of order and ego in the adult mind. “We give up our emotional lability,” he told me, “our ability to be open to surprises, our ability to think flexibly, and our ability to value nature.” The sovereign ego can become a despot. This is perhaps most evident in depression, when the self turns on itself and uncontrollable introspection gradually shades out reality. In “The Entropic Brain,” a paper published last year in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, Carhart-Harris cites research indicating that this debilitating state, sometimes called “heavy self-consciousness,” may be the result of a “hyperactive” default-mode network. The lab recently received government funding to conduct a clinical study using psychedelics to treat depression.
Carhart-Harris believes that people suffering from other mental disorders characterized by excessively rigid patterns of thinking, such as addiction and obsessive-compulsive disorder, could benefit from psychedelics, which “disrupt stereotyped patterns of thought and behavior.” In his view, all these disorders are, in a sense, ailments of the ego. He also thinks that this disruption could promote more creative thinking. It may be that some brains could benefit from a little less order." ...​
Once again, humans may simply be reinventing a "technology" that nature has already perfected over millennia of evolution. Spontaneous, endogenously caused altered, tricksterish states may be an intrinsic mechanism of the human (and other) species that promotes change, survival, and potentially progress.

Once again, humans may simply be reinventing a "technology" that nature has already perfected over millennia of evolution. Spontaneous, endogenously caused altered, tricksterish states may be an intrinsic mechanism of the human (and other) species that promotes change, survival, and potentially progress.

No doubt, many would agree that altered states of mind are a result of evolutionary forces. Like old age, sickness and death.

Bones to pick in the way you said it
(but first, see also: Social Darwinism and Kipling: Just So Stories)

To me this boils down to saying "things are the way they are, because that's how they happened to come to be" or lies we tell to children (and ourselves, so we aren't afraid of the dark ... cf: looking for your car keys under the street lamp)

1. change and survival don't need to be promoted, they come along free in this universe (see Heraclitus or Buddha) or in classic Darwinian terms:

chance and necessity (think of How the Moose Got Its Antlers)
explain it all - that's no problem, the problem is attributing teleology, purpose, intention to the process ... as your wording above seems to do.

2. the idea that nature has perfected something, anything (or that an intrinisic mechanism promotes progress) should make conventional evolutionary theorists cringe ... nature will scrap it all at the drop of a hat (or a meteor) and see what makes it out alive
(See SJ Gould The Spread of Excellence as against the idea of progress in evolution)

spontaneous here seems to mean ex nihilo but I thought nature had perfected this technology ... ?

To make a standard evolutionary argument here - I think we do better to think of

survival of the survivaliest or
survival of those who survive

than to think in terms of "fitness" ... fit may be the short, pudgy guy who consoles the athlete's wife after he falls off a cliff in his latest adventure ...

So, if you are promoting a reductionist explanation of these phenomena in the terms above, you may need more than Darwinism at your side.

Bonus question: is Darwinism evolving ... ?
 
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Waltzing with (Leo) Strauss - The American Interest

"The first part of Philosophy Between the Lines is a simple chronicle of evidence of just how widespread the use of esoteric writing really was from the pre-Socratics through the 18th century.

Melzer presents an impressive litany of important (and not-so-important) thinkers across the centuries, including Cicero, Alfarabi, Aquinas, Erasmus, Machiavelli, Montaigne, Montesquieu, Bacon, Hobbes, Diderot, and Rousseau, who either pointed to hidden meanings in their own writings, or acknowledged esotericism in their reading of other writers. He also presents some clear examples of esotericism in practice ..."

"his section of the book is wonderfully erudite and leaves no uncertainty that esotericism was indeed a major art that is now all but lost. Melzer points to four reasons for past uses of esotericism. First, it served as protection from prosecution; he notes its widespread use in totalitarian countries like the former Soviet Union and contemporary China. Second, it served to protect the political community from dangerous truths, such as philosophical skepticism about the city’s gods and traditions; third, it served a pedagogical purpose by forcing readers to engage on a deeper level; and fourth, it was used as a transitional strategy for modern writers seeking to undermine dogmatism."
 
"If Philosophy Between the Lines were simply a book that reestablished the fact of widespread premodern esotericism, it would still serve a very important purpose.

I am much struck today by the total disarray of the humanities in American academia. The job market prizes quantitative skills far higher than qualitative ones; there is also a widespread feeling that while anyone can become an English or classics major, learning a “hard” skill like statistics or physics is far more difficult.

The humanities as taught in many contemporary universities have only themselves to blame for the latter view: Under the influence of postmodernism and deconstructionism, textual interpretation has become lazy, arbitrary, indulgently expressive, and scornful of the idea that books have anything true to teach their readers. Esoteric reading reestablishes a discipline that has been lost, for it requires close and slow reading, and it restores an assumption that there is in fact a “true” interpretation reflecting the author’s intent that is not simply the whim of the interpreter."
 
"[P]hilosophy has a natural tendency to decay over time—to turn into a tradition, to “historicize”—because people tend to accept too passively and unquestioningly the conclusions of the great philosophers of the past. This tendency is deadly to genuine philosophy, which requires that one always think everything through from the beginning and for oneself. In the modern period, this dangerous natural tendency to rely on the findings of others was artificially strengthened by the idea of progress, which turns this very tendency into a virtue, into a philosophical method."
 
My usual disclaimer: The dog ate my homework for this thread so I am responding in a limited way to a few of the most recent posts. Hoping this is relevant to the discussion:

It was drummed into me in reading work of the Sephen Jay Gould school that the notion of progress in biological evolution is a kind of anthropomorphic illusion. Inasmuch as the history of evolution seems to be not only one of ever increasing complexity, but an ever increasing rate of change thereof--I personally see a kind of "progress" as perceived by human standards. As humans would seem to be the only organisms qualified assess this question, we are left to agree or disagree only amongst ourselves. It would also seem difficult to conceive of any sentient being with no concept of relative complexity. But this is speculation.

So: Does HCT imply an overall increase in the complexity of nature, either locally or universally? Or is the path from supernova to human mind (and possibly further) offset or balanced by entropy in such a way that complexity/information has a net gain is zero?

So many dogs eat so much homework that I suspect there must be an evolutionary advantage in it.
 
My usual disclaimer: The dog ate my homework for this thread so I am responding in a limited way to a few of the most recent posts. Hoping this is relevant to the discussion:

It was drummed into me in reading work of the Sephen Jay Gould school that the notion of progress in biological evolution is a kind of anthropomorphic illusion. Inasmuch as the history of evolution seems to be not only one of ever increasing complexity, but an ever increasing rate of change thereof--I personally see a kind of "progress" as perceived by human standards. As humans would seem to be the only organisms qualified assess this question, we are left to agree or disagree only amongst ourselves. It would also seem difficult to conceive of any sentient being with no concept of relative complexity. But this is speculation.

So: Does HCT imply an overall increase in the complexity of nature, either locally or universally? Or is the path from supernova to human mind (and possibly further) offset or balanced by entropy in such a way that complexity/information has a net gain is zero?
Very interesting questions that can be explored...
1. In the early years of HCT - late 80s early 90s (when there was no internet) I spent a good deal of time in the science library in London trying to work out the importance of entropy to HCT. I came to the conclusion that it was not particularly relevant to the hierarchy (interestingly something Schrodinger had problems coming to terms with c.f. his book, "What is Life?" pdf available) because, of course, the tendency of entropy to increase applies only to "closed systems". Whilst we might assume the universe is closed, the environments from which life and minds emerge is open: the sun feeds the earth with energy thereby enabling the hierarchy to develop states far from equilibrium. So the hierarchy is local and the complexity and the type of complexity is increasing...

2. also in the early years I was very much preoccupied with the dangers of thinking about the hierarchy as "progress" or of implying the assignation of some value to the hierarchies - of thinking one superior to the other in some way etc. There are profoud dangers in the impending revolution of the #5 construct (yet to emerge). If I were not so preoccupied with trying to convince people of the validity of HCT, a good deal of my efforts would be focused on #5 and its dangers... So "progressive"? not really.

3. not sure what you're driving at with, "It would also seem difficult to conceive of any sentient being with no concept of relative complexity"
 
Very interesting questions that can be explored...
1. In the early years of HCT - late 80s early 90s (when there was no internet) I spent a good deal of time in the science library in London trying to work out the importance of entropy to HCT. I came to the conclusion that it was not particularly relevant to the hierarchy (interestingly something Schrodinger had problems coming to terms with c.f. his book, "What is Life?" pdf available) because, of course, the tendency of entropy to increase applies only to "closed systems". Whilst we might assume the universe is closed, the environments from which life and minds emerge is open: the sun feeds the earth with energy thereby enabling the hierarchy to develop states far from equilibrium. So the hierarchy is local and the complexity and the type of complexity is increasing...

2. also in the early years I was very much preoccupied with the dangers of thinking about the hierarchy as "progress" or of implying the assignation of some value to the hierarchies - of thinking one superior to the other in some way etc. There are profoud dangers in the impending revolution of the #5 construct (yet to emerge). If I were not so preoccupied with trying to convince people of the validity of HCT, a good deal of my efforts would be focused on #5 and its dangers... So "progressive"? not really.

3. not sure what you're driving at with, "It would also seem difficult to conceive of any sentient being with no concept of relative complexity"

"So the hierarchy is local and the complexity and the type of complexity is increasing..."

So you claim that the overall complexity of life is increasing?

What does it mean for the type of complexity to increase?
 
C.S. Lewis on reading the primary sources | Esgetology

"There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books. Thus I have found as a tutor in English Literature that if the average student wants to find out something about Platonism, the ver last thing he thinks of doing is to take a translation of Plato off the library shelf and read the Symposium.

He would rather read some dreary modern book ten times as long, all about “isms” and influences and only once in twelve pages telling him what Plato actually said. The error is rather an amiable one, for it springs from humility. The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. he feels himself inadequate and things he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator.

The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism. It has always therefore been one of my main endeavours as a teacher to persuade the young that first-hand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than second-hand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire."

-C.S. Lewis, Introduction to On the Incarnation by St. Athanasius
 
"So the hierarchy is local and the complexity and the type of complexity is increasing..."

So you claim that the overall complexity of life is increasing?

What does it mean for the type of complexity to increase?
Well, when I say type, I am referring to HCT's idea that there are 4 distinct types of hierarchically related construct (I describe these on the infographic as "transcendentally distinct"). There was only 1 type for the first 10 billion years of the universe's existence (if we questionably assume no other alien equivalents). Then there were 2, then 3, then—about 3.5 million years ago—there were 4 types. Each type, evolve complexities that are distinct from the other (incidentally this is relevant to questions concerning upward/downward causation and free will, interestingly). They are: material, replicating physiological, phenomenal, and conceptual complexities - alternatively they can be thought as informed ways that environmental interactive influences can be represented in a manner that is qualitatively relevant to complex constructs [but that throws up more questions no doubt]). Theoretically there can be more than these distinct four 'types of complexity'. By extrapolation, I think type #5 relates to ideology and/or morality.
 
While I'm waiting for your rewrite of your paper, Pharoah, I will listen today to the remaining podcasts. But for me the pen is always mightier than the podcast.
 
While I'm waiting for your rewrite of your paper, Pharoah, I will listen today to the remaining podcasts. But for me the pen is always mightier than the podcast.
always? a pen in a capable hand, most definitely... not in mine however.
 
always? a pen in a capable hand, most definitely... not in mine however.

I think it's merely that you've been constrained in the way you express yourself by following the style as well as the premises of most analytical philosophers. I take your point about the difficulty of your, or your dog's, digesting Being and Time, which won't give you the whole of Heidegger anyway. Maybe start with some of his later essays, or better yet with Sartre and especially Merleau-Ponty. :)
 
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