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Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 5

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If anyone has read AI Jack's paper - does he say why the networks evolved separately?

@Pharaoh - how do you see the paper in terms of HCT? It claims to show evidence for a network that handles phenomenal experience and a separate one that handles mechanical, physical experience.
 
If anyone has read AI Jack's paper - does he say why the networks evolved separately?

@Pharaoh - how do you see the paper in terms of HCT? It claims to show evidence for a network that handles phenomenal experience and a separate one that handles mechanical, physical experience.
@smcder I haven't read it... I am on other things at mo.
 
In his talk, Jack switching between the networks and differentiates (philosophically) "sophisticated" vs "naive" subjects (the kind he uses in his experiments) - he talk sabout seeing the switch between the rabbit and the lady and this is in the Q&A that we can do this and remember both and make some comparisons, then I found this:

Alternatively, it has been shown that different forms of meditation tend to either increase (focused meditation) or decrease (non-dual awareness meditation) anti-correlations between the DMN and TPN (Josipovic et al., 2012). The former should increase leadership flexibility (i.e., the ability to switch between different roles and perform well in both), the latter decrease it. Exploring these and other potential manipulations of neural processing is an important area for further research.

Which may be the basis of meditators' claims to see "what-is" and might be suggestedvas having the potential close the gap for the individual, anyway.
 
but of an a-side, I've posted this before:

Why Talking to Yourself Might be The Highest Form of Intelligence

but realized I've been using it ever since starting on the forum, I've tried editing offline, but it never works - I have to be in the reply box on the forum or I lose track of my train of thought - something like the cardboard man in the link above ... as if being in the box connects me to who I have in mind when writing, that's why I post up rough drafts of my stories, by getting it out there - even if no one reads it - I break the tyranny of the empty page and I'm writing for someone, an audience and then I can take that draft and edit it offline

just an interesting thing to think about
 
What AI Jack (Anthony I Jack) is getting at in his talk is that we have two networks in the brain, the analytic and the empathic. The one sees matter and understands it, the other sees minds and understands them. He says the explanatory gap is in our heads - literally - because when one network fires up - the other dampens down, so he argues we won't be able to merge these two views and close the gap.

That might work for Jack as a person who wants to understand life and consciousness as ‘virtual’, but it doesn't work for me. In my opinion he's grabbed the wrong end of the stick, like most cognitive neuroscientists.

He claims his studies support the idea of these two networks and his experimental work confirms what he says about the networks not being able to work together.

That's what he claims. Do others in his field agree? Do others who study consciousness and are not in his field agree?

The first question after his talk is to ask him to compare his theory with McGilchrist and he says for McGilchrist the gap is out there, in nature, for him it is in our brains, in the gap between the two networks.

Both nature and consciousness are too complex – immensely and intricately complex -- to be accounted for by incompletely understood processes of neural networks. The integrations accomplished in nature -- and in the relationship of consciousness to nature and human culture – require investigations far broader and deeper than those postulated by neuroscience to explain us to ourselves.

@Constance you ask:

1. The object-oriented school of recent philosophical vintage will deny that the world's being is raised to the level of understanding, even if only in the temporal existence of conscious beings here or anywhere in the universe. What do you think?

The way I understand OOO is that everything is an object and no object has a privileged status - our relationship to other objects is no more important or special than any other object interaction - and that they wanted to get back to a world beyond man and his perceptions - and away from our idea that we are only relating to a construction in our heads, not the world as it is.

I can buy the statement in red, that in the long view of the history of the universe {a view no one of us can achieve -- a view from far outside the temporality of our existence}, our consciousness has no ontologically 'privileged status'. But within our temporal lifetimes our consciousness has an unblinkable significance for us as individuals and as a species, and indeed (given our control over what happens on this planet) for the temporal balance and health of our planet's life and ecosystem within the temporality of our planet's existence.

Re the statement in blue, that the OOO philosophers wanted to "get away from . . . [the] idea that we are only relating to a construction in our heads, not the world as it is," that idea itself is false from the point of view of phenomenological philosophy since Kant. If our consciousness and the capabilities of our minds that grow out of consciousness did not interact with the world as we experience it in our local environment we would not have been capable of surviving in our local environment and in the cultural environments we have constructed on the earth. We cope existentially with nature and the cultures we create, with what they provide and what they deny in terms of possibility. It seems to me that the OOO philosophers cannot accept the conditions of the given existentiality of human experience and the recognition that the meanings we find and produce in existence are also existential -- taking place in the time being.

To me, it seems right that we look at the world beyond us spatially and temporally and ourselves in it - and that we should question the idea that we are only relating to a model in our heads, to me it doesn't seem like that would work - there has to be an out there, out there that we respond to - the mind is externalized in that sense, but it also makes sense that we don't see or know everything of course, although I don't think we only see what is strictly necessary to our survival based on our genes and evolutionary history - we are capable of noticing new things and doing novel things and we aren't the only species, this may well be a characteristic of life itself - that's where I questioned @Pharoah's division of individuated responses.

I generally agree with what you've said in that paragraph [provided that we recognize the distance between what we can think and what we can know], but I don't understand what you mean by @Pharoah's "division of individuated responses." Can you clarify that?

2. Also, do you think that being as we experience it in ourselves and recognize it in physical nature is a 'virtual being'? Has AI Jack read enough phenomenological philosophy to understand the import of the question? I'll read the paper in an attempt to find out.

You may well know more about Anthony Jack by now than I do! I'm not sure what "virtual being" is or how it could have meaning without there being a real being?

I doubt that I know more about Jack than you do. I read half his paper and then only skimmed the rest.

I too would like to understand what is meant by the term 'virtual reality' and, by implication (as you extend it; ETA: actually as I first extended it) the concept of 'virtual being'. Maybe someone will come along and articulate what's meant to be understood by those concepts.

ETA: Do those who promote the notion that we live in a 'virtual reality' actually understand the concept of 'being' in the first place?
 
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has anybody else started looking for the "like" button on items in real life?

nice doggie, (where's the LIKE button?)

hi honey, I'm home …

etc etc
 
@Pharoah, I forgot to respond to this post of yours yesterday:
Can I not tell you <what> by now? Not groking your meaning.
I am surprsied you don't know how i would answer the question.
Firstly, my recent paper is a detailed exposition on the subject.
Second, Panksepp does not, to my knowledge, say what you are saying here. When I quizzed him about affectivity in insects, he was noncommittal. Why? well he is quite an anti theorist really. He will not hold a view unless it has been supported by research... and on this basis, I don't think he would say what you are saykng he wouod aay.
But I am happy to be shown otherwise...
 
I am surprsied you don't know how i would answer the question.
Firstly, my recent paper is a detailed exposition on the subject.

I'm still reading your most recent version of the paper (I stopped and wasted time trying to understand what AI Jack was on about, and some other stuff).

Second, Panksepp does not, to my knowledge, say what you are saying here. When I quizzed him about affectivity in insects, he was noncommittal. Why? well he is quite an anti theorist really. He will not hold a view unless it has been supported by research... and on this basis, I don't think he would say what you are saying he would say.
But I am happy to be shown otherwise...

I would say that Panksepp is a theorist as well as a research scientist. His development of the new discipline of "affective neuroscience" is inherently based on a strong hypothesis which has major theoretical significance. Anyway, we can talk about that later if anyone but me really wants to pursue the papers Panksepp has continued to publish since we moved over (how long ago?) to your google forum and then soon moved back here. I've posted multiple links to, and ramifying extracts from, more than a half-dozen subsequent papers by Panksepp and his colleagues and no one besides me has wanted to pursue discussion of them.

Btw, I never saw transcript of the emails in which you quizzed Panksepp back then. Is it available?

Getting back to the previous two versions of your paper, you'll recall that in both cases I suggested that you explore protoconsciousness and prereflective consciousness as developed in phenomenological philosophy and in Panksepp's current thinking in stage 2 of your hierarchical construct description. This is a gray area that is in fact most in need of exploration in HCT (in my opinion) if you want it to be supported by evolution. The sense of the 'self'-relevance of experience in primordial organisms (and even in the primordial cell as shown by Maturana and Varela) does not require reflection or a concept of a 'self'. That primordial sense of 'self-relevance' is the inchoate sense of being separate from or 'different from' {standing out from} one's environment. It operates in living organisms long before evolution leads to minds facilitated by the evolution of brains like ours.

Once before when we talked about all this here you said that you avoid the term and concept of 'protoconsciousness', but I don't think you can. Evolution is a very long walk through the passage to human consciousness and mind, the point at which we can conceptualize the question of our situation in being and the possible nature of Being as a whole. The passage to consciousness has to begin somewhere and Panksepp is attempting to trace it back to the earliest forms it takes in living organisms. I, following Panksepp, think this evolutionary process begins earlier than you do. Exactly where is the question that it seems both you and Panksepp are attempting to answer.
 
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@smcder The "conceptual dualism" article presents a very interesting hypothesis at the end of section 3.1. It involves psychopaths and the Hard Problem...
 
I'm still reading your most recent version of the paper (I stopped and wasted time trying to understand what AI Jack was on about, and some other stuff).



I would say that Panksepp is a theorist as well as a research scientist. His development of the new discipline of "affective neuroscience" is inherently based on a strong hypothesis which has major theoretical significance. Anyway, we can talk about that later if anyone but me really wants to pursue the papers Panksepp has continued to publish since we moved over (how long ago?) to your google forum and then soon moved back here. I've posted multiple links to, and ramifying extracts from, more than a half-dozen subsequent papers by Panksepp and his colleagues and no one besides me has wanted to pursue discussion of them.

Btw, I never saw transcript of the emails in which you quizzed Panksepp back then. Is it available?

Getting back to the previous two versions of your paper, you'll recall that in both cases I suggested that you explore protoconsciousness and prereflective consciousness as developed in phenomenological philosophy and in Panksepp's current thinking in stage 2 of your hierarchical construct description. This is a gray area that is in fact most in need of exploration in HCT (in my opinion) if you want it to be supported by evolution. The sense of the 'self'-relevance of experience in primordial organisms (and even in the primordial cell as shown by Maturana and Varela) does not require reflection or a concept of a 'self'. That primordial sense of 'self-relevance' is the inchoate sense of being separate from or 'different from' {standing out from} one's environment. It operates in living organisms long before evolution leads to minds facilitated by the evolution of brains like ours.

Once before when we talked about all this here you said that you avoid the term and concept of 'protoconsciousness', but I don't think you can. Evolution is a very long walk through the passage to human consciousness and mind, the point at which we can conceptualize the question of our situation in being and the possible nature of the Being as a whole. The passage to consciousness has to begin somewhere and Panksepp is attempting to trace it back to the earliest forms it takes in living organisms. I, following Panksepp, think this evolutionary process begins earlier than you do. Exactly where is the question that it seems both you and Panksepp are attempting to answer.
As I understand it, Panksepp's theories are constructed on the research.. The research was not designed to prove theory.
I probably have read all the papers you have linked by Panksepp. Have you read Barrett's of mice and men paper on Panksepp? I have to say, her paper critiquing Panksepp made a lot of sense to me.
I feel that I have an account for prereflexivity in HCT... you may think otherwise.
As for protoconsciousness... not sure I know what it means. Theoretically HCT indicates a greyscale in the extent of phenomenal consciousness sophistication. It comes with survival advantages whose potential can only be realised through the continuing development of neural mechanisms. The increase in brain size is largely to facilitate the benefits of increasingly sophisticated phenomenal accuity. I'm not sure where protocs comes into it... but tell me what I am missing if I am missing something
 
I finished the article on conceptual dualism by Jack. It was a very good, quick read. His central premise is:

"This question speaks to a central and theoretically significant aspect of the account I offer, namely the idea that our neural structure constrains our cognition and gives rise to the perceived problem of consciousness."

I don't think he provides compelling evidence for this hypothesis... at all, but the paper is extremely interesting and makes some interesting observations along the way.

And while he doesnt imo confirm his hypothesis, I think we do have to take seriously the possibility that our neurology (or nature) restrains us from fully experiencing and forming coherent conceptions about what-is.

The following senstence almost caused my head to explode:

"According to this view the explanatory gap is genuine, but it isn’t a feature of the world, it lies in our heads."

Let me re-write this phrase:

According to this [conceptualization] the explanatory gap [between subjectivity and the concept of objectivity] is genuine, but it isn't a feature of the [concept of an objective] world, it [is subjective].

In other words, the Hard Problem exists because of the concept that there exists an objective reality "out there." Furthermore, this concept is accompanied by the concept that this objective reality is causal and deterministic.

It's a very robust concept. But at the end of the day, it's a concept. As Nagel, Chalmers, etc. have pointed out, if our concepts can't account for subjectivity, or worse, deny subjectivity, then the solution is to develop even more robust concepts (not the elimination of subjectivity—the very thing allowing one to possess a concept in the first place).

It's easy to see how concepts could be wrong; they do not cohere with our experiences.

But what of the concept that it is our concepts that our correct and our subjective experiences that are "wrong?"

For example, if we hold to a concept that there exists an external, objective, deterministic what-is "out there," how do we square that with our subjective experience of a sense of free will?

One can't deny that they have a sense of free will (unless of course, as is apparently the case for some individuals, one does not experience a sense of free will).

I think that these "senses," sense of free will, sense of self, include elements of conceptual thinking — perhaps innate, instinct-like, human senses.

Thus, I think these senses, like abstract concepts, may be "wrong." That is, not all subjective experiences can currently be explained via a coherent conceptual worldview.

Circling back around, the concept that the explanatory gap is a feature of subjectivity and not objective reality is correct but only because objective reality is also a feature of subjectivity.

Our concepts (narratives) are, among other reasons, maintained and modified in an effort to make sense of our subjective experiences and in this way anticipate future subjective experiences. Concept formation occurs unconsciously as well as consciously.

One could argue that—for the purposes of historical survival—a conceptual worldview needed not include a concept of how concepts exist.

However, for reasons of cultural, moral, and technological sophistication, such concepts are now needed.

Cultural: What are the causes of mental illness and therefore the most effective treatments? What are the causes of anti-social behaviors and therefore the most effective responses?

Moral: Which organisms/systems have experiences and how shall they be treated? Are people in vegetative states with minimal brain function having experiences? Is it more humane to keep them alive with machine or allow them to die?

Technological: Can we/should we create systems capable of having experiences? Can we/should we — and to what extent — merge with our technologies?
 
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@smcder You had noted that some of the paper seemed familiar.

"To remedy this omission, we developed a model which built on Dennett’s work. Using his language and framing, we introduced a new construct, the phenomenal stance (Figure 2)."

In Robin Faichney's paper he introduces his concept he called the "empathic stance." It is the same as Jack's phenomenal stance.

I will be forwarding a copy of each paper to each author.
 
@Pharoah I've heard of Kahneman's work but have yet to read it myself. Conceptually, it seems to match your model of why/how consciousness emerges. Interesting.

"According to classic dual-process theory (Kahneman, 2003), numerous decision-making phenomena may be seen as reflecting a fight between evolutionarily primitive, unconscious and automatic processes on the one hand, and on the other a conscious deliberative general-purpose type of reasoning which is more amenable to education."

HCT posits that when a system transitions from a stimulus-response capacity to a stimulus-deliberate-choose-response capacity it can be said to be having experiences. Yes/no?
 
@Pharoah I've heard of Kahneman's work but have yet to read it myself. Conceptually, it seems to match your model of why/how consciousness emerges. Interesting.

"According to classic dual-process theory (Kahneman, 2003), numerous decision-making phenomena may be seen as reflecting a fight between evolutionarily primitive, unconscious and automatic processes on the one hand, and on the other a conscious deliberative general-purpose type of reasoning which is more amenable to education."

HCT posits that when a system transitions from a stimulus-response capacity to a stimulus-deliberate-choose-response capacity it can be said to be having experiences. Yes/no?
Yes... but what i think is the key is the notion of innate mechanism being qualitatively differentiating: one might say that they have flavours—in the way they modulate primal motivation, attentiveness etc. When these affectations are then evaluated every millisecond, an organism is effecting its individuated experiential landscape. What it does affects what it perceives affects what it does moment by moment, all because of the character of its qualitative evaluation. This is the phenomenal experience.
 
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