Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 6

[Soupie]

Right!! I've got it.
Well... HCT does not address this question although I could chuck some ideas into the mix.
And for what it is worth, this question is not the Hard Problem as I understand it. Chalmers' list of the easy problems:

• the ability to discriminate, categorize, and react to environmental stimuli;
  
  
• the integration of information by a cognitive system;
  
  
• the reportability of mental states;
  
  
• the ability of a system to access its own internal states;
  
  
• the focus of attention;
  
  
• the deliberate control of behavior;
  
  
• the difference between wakefulness and sleep.

I agree that it's not the HP (I wasn't suggesting it was) but surely they're related?

HCT argues that phenomenal consciousness just is qualitative evaluations of environmental energies, but there is plenty of empirical evidence that qualitative evaluations of environmental energies can occur in the absence of phenomenal consciousness.

As you note, Chalmers refers to this as a relatively easy problem by comparison:

• the ability to discriminate, categorize, and react to environmental stimuli;

Thus, qualitative evaluations /= phenomenal consciousness.

So why are some states conscious? That is, why are some qualitative evaluations conscious but not others?

 

[Soupie]

It's possible that I don't understand what you mean by "qualitative evaluations." I've tried to clarify my understanding in the past with no success.

 

[Constance]

It's possible that I don't understand what you mean by "qualitative evaluations." I've tried to clarify my understanding in the past with no success.

I too am not fully clear about the meaning intended in this term/phrase 'qualitative evaluations'. It makes reference to 'qualia' -- experienced, felt, qualities -- but also to 'evaluations,' indicating that @Pharoah is drawing a connection with Panksepp's theories based in primordial feelings and emotions. But P's using the word 'evaluations' clearly raises the bar regarding how we need to understand consciousness in terms of prereflective 'sens'/sense as incorporating meaning. Merleau-Ponty is the philosopher one needs to read, in depth in both the Phenomenology of Perception and The Visible and the Invisible, in order to recognize that sense is already meaning in perception -- and grounds the development of reflective consciousness, i.e., mind.

Note: This phenomenological insight in itself overcomes Descartes' radical dualism, and moreover enables phenomenologically-based comprehension of the meaning of the 'hard problem'.

 

[Constance]

Reading the paper by Zahavi and the related reviews and papers linked to it at this page should provide the grounds needed for a penetrating discussion at this juncture in our thread:

First-personal self-reference and the self-as-subject. - PubMed - NCBI

 

[Constance]

This paper might help enable the opening to a phenomenologically grounded understanding of prereflective experience. An extract:

". . .In his Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness (1964) Edmund Husserl uses the famous example of sound to illustrate how the tones of a piece of music present themselves in the instant of the now; and how the successive retention and protention of melody gives us the experience of time past, present, and future. In Husserl's epistemological language it is the primal impressional consciousness and its retentional and protentional aspects that make our lived experiences potentially available in the form of intentional objects for our reflection. On the one hand, primal impressional consciousness is prereflective and thus it manifests itself as an inexhaustible deposit of primordialities that constitute our experiential existence. On the other hand, the experiences that we live through present themselves to us as accessible to reflection and language, according to Husserl:

"We must distinguish: the prephenomenal being of experiences, their being before we have turned toward them in reflection, and their being as phenomena. When we turn toward the experience attentively and grasp it, it takes on a new mode of being: it becomes "differentiated," "singled out." And this differentiating is precisely nothing other than the grasping; and the differentiatedness is nothing other than being-grasped, being the object of our turning-towards (Husserl 1991, p. 132)."

So when reflection lifts up and out from the prereflective stream of consciousness the lived experiences that give shape and content to our awareness, reflection interprets what in a prereflective sense already presents itself as a primal awareness. Obviously, there are many philosophical issues associated with these distinctions. For example, is the prereflective stream of consciousness already a conscious experiential awareness? And what is the relation between the passive reflection by which consciousness becomes aware of itself as world, and the more active reflection of thinking? Is prereflective experience already experience of meaning, lived meaning? Or does meaning and intelligibility only emerge at a linguistic or more reflective level of the practice of living?

For Husserl the ultimate source of intelligibility seems to be the primal impressional stream of preconscious life that becomes interpretatively available to our understanding as lived experience. In Husserl's words, "the term lived experience signifies givenness of internal consciousness, inward perceivedness" (Husserl, 1964, p. 177). To say that primal impression-retention-protention is preconscious does not mean that it precedes consciousness, but rather that it is conscious in a primal prereflective sense. It points to the realm that for Husserl is the source and the condition for intelligibility of the experience or practice of living.

Husserl's notion of primal impressions should not really be seen (as is sometimes done) as some kind of elemental building blocks or the contents of our perceptions or cognitions. Rather, one should think of the primal impression-retention-protention as that form of consciousness that presents itself as time—time as we live through it—as the living present before it has been appropriated by reflection. Primal impressional consciousness points to the corporeal and temporal nature of existence. At the level of primal consciousness there is not yet objectification of self and world. Lived experience is simply experience-as-we-live-through-it in our actions, relations and situations. Of course, our lived experiences can be highly reflective (such as in making decisions or theorizing) but from a Husserlian phenomenological point of view this reflective experience is still prereflective since we can retroactively (afterwards) subject it to phenomenological reflection. Only through reflection can we appropriate aspects of lived experience but the interpretability of primal impressional life is already in some sense given by its own givenness.

Husserl's introduction of primal impressional consciousness is attractive in that it provides a context for conceptualizing the notion of the phenomenological reduction and how phenomenological reflection is possible in relation to the everyday practices of the lifeworld. But not all phenomenologists subscribe to the distinction of primal impressional consciousness. From the perspective of Heidegger's ontology, Husserl's primal impressional consciousness is already an abstraction of how we find ourselves in the world. Heidegger says that we are always already practically engaged in the context of life. For Heidegger the origin of meaning is not found in some primal realm but right here in our actions and in the tactile things of the world that we inhabit.

In contrast with Husserl's explication of the temporality of tone and music, Heidegger emphasizes the meaning of the sound we hear: “We hear the door shut in the house and never hear acoustical sensations of mere sounds” (1975, p. 25). When we hear the sound of a car, we hear it in the way in which it breaks in onto our world. To hear “bare” or pure sounds we would have to listen “away from things” in other words, “listen abstractly” (p. 26). Maurice Merleau-Ponty makes a similar point in the Phenomenology of Perception. Pure impressions are not only imperceptible but undiscoverable (1962, p. 4). We don't hear a pure sound sensation or "sense impression" but the barking of the dog or the ringing of the phone, Or as Alphonso Lingis says, “The sounds we hear are chords, melodies, calls, cries, rattlings. We hear them in the midst of hum, rustling, rumble, static, clatter, or racket” (1996, p. 54).

Even if we hear a sound that we do not recognize we nevertheless recognize it as nonrecognizable and we may orient to its origin or nature. The point is that we are already engaged in a world where this sound acquires a particular meaning and significance. For example, I am driving my car and a familiar song comes on the radio; then suddenly I hear a strange rattling that makes me wonder if it originates in the engine or the tires on the road. Or I am having lunch in a coffee shop and the cell phone rings; I reach for the phone and then realize that it is not mine that rings. In such examples it is the meaningful context or the sense of our world in terms of which things come to our attention. For Heidegger, the source of intelligibility is more mundanely the context of meaning in which our practices are embedded.

Still, one could ask: how does the context gets its meaning? From Heidegger's perspective one cannot really account for the context since we already live it, before we make sense of it in an interpretive manner. We live out that context by constantly actualizing and realizing our understandings that already inhere in our practices and that cannot necessarily be explicated. In his reading of Heidegger's Being and Time, Dreyfus repeatedly uses the term "practice" to interpret the interpretive structure of Heidegger's notion of being. He discusses Heidegger's notion of meaning or "sense" in terms of "the background practices on the basis of which all activities and objects are intelligible or make sense" (Dreyfus, 1990, p. 223). We first of all understand the world through the equipment and practices within which we dwell. This understanding is preontological. We understand our world without noticing the background practices in terms of which our understandings are experienced as being in the world in a certain way.

If we now ask how the pragmatic notion of practice can be brought into the discussion of how our everyday life experiences can be understood then it appears that a phenomenological descriptive (rather than a deterministic cultural structuralist) view of practice can actually
mediate the epistemology of Husserl and the ontology of Heidegger. At a primal level of originary existence, our practices too are tacit, prereflective, preconscious, and thus inaccessible or elusive to objectivistic observation.

Practice theorists have invested founding significations in the concept of practice. But in their theoretical explications practice ultimately remains an elusive notion. For example, the French anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu gives a Heideggerian account of the noncognitive and corporeal nature of everyday practices:

'Principles embodied … are placed beyond the grasp of consciousness, and hence cannot be touched by voluntary, deliberate transformation, cannot even be made explicit; nothing seems more ineffable, more incommunicable, more inimitable, and, therefore, more precious, than the values given body, made body by the transubstantiation achieved by the hidden persuasion of an implicit pedagogy, capable of instilling a whole cosmology, an ethic, a metaphysic, a political philosophy, through injunctions as insignificant as "stand up straight" or "don't hold your knife in your left hand" (Bourdieu 1977, p. 94).'

From a phenomenological perspective these supposed imitated or learned practices are not "rules" in an ethnomethodological sense, but rather a kind of corporeal in-being: a preontological understanding of being. Whereas ontology concerns itself with the being (intelligibility) of beings, preontology is concerned with the modes of being of Dasein. But this corporeal knowing that inheres in our everyday practices is not something that can be easily made explicit by phenomenology either. And yet, we can see how human beings live through the practices in a mimetic and formative relation to their others. Bourdieu says,

'The child imitates not "models" but other people's actions. Body hexis speaks directly to the motor function, in the form of a pattern of postures that is both individual and systematic, because linked to a whole system of techniques involving then body and tools, and charged with a host of social meanings and values: in all societies, children are particularly attentive to the gestures and postures which in their eyes, express everything that goes to make an accomplished adult—a way of walking, a tilt of the head, facial expressions, ways of sitting and of using implements, always associated with a tone of voice, a style of speech, and (how could it be otherwise?) a certain subjective experience (Bourdieu 1977, p. 87).'

The question of the meaning of practice raises primarily an issue of intelligibility. Practice, in its social constructionist version, is not only meant to mean something, practice is supposed to make it possible to explain, interpret or understand the nature of the phenomena within its scope. But from a phenomenological perspective, constructionist approaches to practice too easily involve reifying what escapes reification, thematizing what cannot be thematized, and bringing practice within the reach of objectivistic technological thought.

The pervasiveness of technological and calculative practice

In professional fields such as pedagogy, psychology and nursing, the dominance of technological and calculative thought is so strong that it seems well-nigh impossible to offer acceptable alternatives to the technocratic ideologies and the inherently instrumental presuppositional structures of professional practice. The roots of this technologizing of professional knowledge have grown deeply into the metaphysical sensibilities of western cultures. There is a certain irony in the fact that even the increasing popularity of qualitative inquiry has actually resulted in professional practice becoming cemented ever more firmly into preoccupations with calculative policies and technological solutions to standards of practice, codes of ethics, and perceived problems.

On the basis of an onto-theological reading of Heidegger's writings on technology and metaphysics, Iain Thomson (2005) traces the historical Heideggerian account of the present hegemony of technological and calculative thought. Since the early days of Western thought, being (the being of entities) has been interpreted as the metaphysical foundation in which the reality and meaning of every entity is grounded. The Real has been understood in terms of the existence of the world and the things (existents) that make up the real. Ontology establishes and shapes our understanding of being or what "is" — ti estin and hoti estin. Ti estin is the question of whatness: what something is. And hoti estin is the concern with thatness: that something is. Since Plato and Aristotle, Western metaphysics has been understood in terms of this distinction between whatness and thatness, essence and existence. It is strange, perhaps, that the enigma of existence tends to be passed over in our quest to understand the whatness of things. But even more puzzling is the question wherein the difference of the distinction between whatness and thatness resides.

Heidegger shows how with Friedrich Nietzsche's notion of the "eternally recurring will-to-power," our (post)modern sensibility of reality has become a metaphysics of nihilistic enframing that treats all entities (including human beings) instrumentally, available for our use. This last historical Western epoch of being is the declared end of metaphysics, and, according to Heidegger, it has led to a thoughtless nihilism that reduces all intelligibility to technological sensibility: viewing anything that exists as infinite, and thus without end, meaning, or purpose. However, in Heidegger's view, Nietzsche's philosophy of will-to-power is still based on a metaphysics — a metaphysics that has forgotten its own forgetfulness of being. Instead, the being of entities is pervasively viewed within a calculative rationality. Even our interest in quality and qualitative concerns tends to become reduced to and absorbed by the instrumental and quantitative preoccupations. In Thomson's words, "our technological understanding of being produces a calculative thinking that quantifies all qualitative relations, reducing entities to bivalent, programmable ‘information'" (Thomson, 2005, p. 56).

The consequences of the present onto-theology has led to a practice of living that is profoundly affected by technological sensibilities. Thus, Thomson observes how in educational contexts, terms such as "excellence," "potential," and "quality" have lost their substantive and normative content. Striving for a higher pedagogical quality of education becomes a quantitative concern with what can be measured in terms of outcomes, observables, and standards. Presently, the meaning of purpose and human potential is merely seen in terms of "empty imperatives" such as: "Get the most out of your potential!" (Thomson, 2005, p. 22). Our Nietzschean rejection of reflection on being and ground lets us forget our forgetfulness. At present it is fashionable to level the charge of "foundationalism," the supposition that we can ground our practices in something certain, unchanging or absolute. But the real danger, says Thomson, is not the search for a sense of foundation or ground, but the predicament that we forget that something has been forgotten. According to Thomson shallow antifoundationalism merely surrenders us to a thoughtless and inattentive onto-theology 'that preconceives all entities as intrinsically meaningless.'** . . . . ."

http://www.maxvanmanen.com/files/2011/04/2007-Phenomenology-of-Practice.pdf

{** Or, I would add, attempts to replace 'meaning' with 'information' the generation of which can be conceived as a matrix that operates without consciousness or freedom.

 

[Pharoah]

I agree that it's not the HP (I wasn't suggesting it was) but surely they're related?

HCT argues that phenomenal consciousness just is qualitative evaluations of environmental energies, but there is plenty of empirical evidence that qualitative evaluations of environmental energies can occur in the absence of phenomenal consciousness.

As you note, Chalmers refers to this as a relatively easy problem by comparison:

• the ability to discriminate, categorize, and react to environmental stimuli;

Thus, qualitative evaluations /= phenomenal consciousness.

So why are some states conscious? That is, why are some qualitative evaluations conscious but not others?

@Soupie I am glad we seem to have identified, more concretely, where clarity is absent.

To recap, physiological mechanisms evolve that are capable of delineating the merits of environmental characteristics as befit the survival needs of a species. Over time these mechanisms evolve increasingly complex means for assimilating environmental characteristics qualitatively: for any given species, certain environmental characteristics have qualitative relevancies that others do not and these differences ultimately become reflected in biochemical mechanism.
This is why I have recently come to the realisation that replication facilitates the emergence of a novel 'qualitative ontology' that does not otherwise exist in aggregate or compound atomic structures.
Qualitative assimilations do not make an individual 'phenomenally conscious' because the mechanism are innate/automated. Nevertheless the biochemistries can be extremely complex and subtle.

Moving onto evaluation, in any given instance in time, your body assimilates a billion environmental characteristics (outside of consciousness). 99.9% of those assimilations will be filtered out as irrelevant 'noise'... I suppose this constitutes a part of the evaluation process. Then there is the filtering, augmentation, diminution, and feedback of assimilations whose outcome is intended to focus attention most economically and mediate responses most appropriately. This also would entail actioning the most suitable affective orientation.
But, of course, this is a gross over simplification. Because, it is not really "any given instance" where stuff is evaluated by direct comparison. It is much more sophisticated than that. Every instance has relevance to the moments preceding and following, and they relate to an environmental landscape that is evincing a spatial world that is seemingly qualitative to the individual and populated by contrasting options and affective consequences: it presents as a changing qualitative milieu that is, like oil on water, a heterogenous qualitative fluid in flux with contrasting options competing for focal attention. This, then, is a individuated spatially qualitative and temporally qualitative world that thereby determines a unique subjective ontology, which did not previously exist in simpler organisms.
The term 'evaluation' is a weak expression for what goes on. Much of the evaluation has to happen prior to attentive conscious experience for it is a multifaceted process that mediates temporal mood, immediate affective states, reactive motor activity... and this, before you have even noticed you are phenomenally conscious of anything. And then, as attention is finally focused on one unitary point in this time and this space, there is the notion that that very moment is in the past and the next present experience phenomenon of existing requires your renewed attention.
But note, this is not the same as human awareness... this is only phenomenal consciousness that I am talking about here. And it is all founded on the complex innate qualitatively relevant physiology.

 

[Pharoah]

@Constance I can see how both neuroscience and phenomenological language could make sense of"evaluation" by making the term more expansive, for it is a sophisticated and complex notion...what do yu think?

 

[Constance]

I agree that it's not the HP (I wasn't suggesting it was) but surely they're related?

HCT argues that phenomenal consciousness just is qualitative evaluations of environmental energies, but there is plenty of empirical evidence that qualitative evaluations of environmental energies can occur in the absence of phenomenal consciousness.

As you note, Chalmers refers to this as a relatively easy problem by comparison:

• the ability to discriminate, categorize, and react to environmental stimuli;

Thus, qualitative evaluations /= phenomenal consciousness.

So why are some states conscious? That is, why are some qualitative evaluations conscious but not others?

@Soupie, before responding to Pharoah's response to this post I want to respond to it myself. First I want to ask whether Pharoah agrees with (and possibly disagrees with) your characterization of HCT's relation to the hard problem:

"HCT argues that phenomenal consciousness just is qualitative evaluations of environmental energies, but there is plenty of empirical evidence that qualitative evaluations of environmental energies can occur in the absence of phenomenal consciousness."

Next I want to ask you to provide a definition (or a working definition) of what you mean by "environmental energies."

And next I want to suggest that your reliance on Chalmers in this passage --

"As you note, Chalmers refers to this as a relatively easy problem by comparison:

• the ability to discriminate, categorize, and react to environmental stimuli;

Thus, qualitative evaluations /= phenomenal consciousness."

-- attempts to place him in the category of higher-order theorists among whom you feel comfortable. The following link should take you directly to Shaun Gallagher's clarifying analysis of higher-order theories vis a vis phenomenological analysis in Brainstorming: Views and Interviews on the Mind and show you why your conclusion above {"Thus, qualitative evaluations/=phenomenal consciousness"} confuses the issue by failing to recognize that phenomenal experience also takes place in prereflective consciousness. Only the recognition that the ground of reflective consciousness lies in prereflective experience can enable us to address the actual source of the hard problem.

Brainstorming

Your attempt to distinguish "phenomenal consciousness" as solely the result of evaluations taking place in higher-order thought misses the seamlessness of consciousness as it spans prereflective and reflective experience in the world. What we need to explore is in fact prereflective knowing.

 

[Constance]

@Constance I can see how both neuroscience and phenomenological language could make sense of"evaluation" by making the term more expansive, for it is a sophisticated and complex notion...what do yu think?

I think that some neuroscientists have read and understood phenomenological philosophy and neurophenomenology and are thus in a position to recognize how deep the analysis of consciousness must become. I also want to respond to your post to @Soupie preceding your comment and question to me.

 

[Constance]

Moving onto evaluation, in any given instance in time, your body assimilates a billion environmental characteristics (outside of consciousness). 99.9% of those assimilations will be filtered out as irrelevant 'noise'... I suppose this constitutes a part of the evaluation process. Then there is the filtering, augmentation, diminution, and feedback of assimilations whose outcome is intended to focus attention most economically and mediate responses most appropriately. This also would entail [actioning] the most suitable affective orientation.

'Actioning'? What would Fowler say if he wrote a new edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage for our time? For contemporary responses to words such as 'actioned' and 'actioning', this link is helpful:


Is "actioned" a valid word?


My impression is that the reason why you resort to this (sorry to say, grammatically barbaric) neologism is that it ambiguates the question of the agent that is acting. Panksepp has showed us that both affectivity and seeking behavior are present even in primitive organisms. Thus felt need and desire for certain conditions, nutrients, and so forth motivate seeking behavior -- an activity on the part of the organism rather than the effect of purely remote determination by a system of information that 'evaluates' the environment on behalf of the organism and 'focuses its attention'.


Consciousness will never be understood until the interdisciplinary inquiry into consciousness has breached the assumed impasse between prereflective and reflective consciousness and recognized the roots of mind and spirit in the body of the natural world. We have to trace those roots as Panksepp and his colleagues attempt to do, and you have placed yourself in the center of that demanding project in your own hierarchical construct theory. I think it would be more efficacious for you to confront and point out the nexus of the problem perpetuated by the conflict between analytic/positivist approaches on one side and phenomenological approaches on the other than it is to skirt around the latter by in effect forcing the active voice embedded in our language and thought into mechanistic passivity. Living organisms increasingly act as much as they are acted upon in the evolution of species, and this difference-that-makes-a-difference emerged early in the emergence and evolution of life.

 

[Pharoah]

@Constance The idea of "action" is that some 'thing', namely a subject, does 'it'. To use such a term would be to fall prey to the modern day homunculitic word speak that I doubly deplore.
The alternative to actioning would entail a verbose narrative off point. A simple solution is to use the term system, as in 'the system does the action' but this would be equally dodgy.

Similarly, I didn't want to be pedantic and take @Soupie to task with "environmental energies" seeking instead to try to address the essence of his questioning.

Actually, thinking of this whole thing in terms of energy transference is very interesting.

 

[Soupie]

Similarly, I didn't want to be pedantic and take @Soupie to task with "environmental energies" seeking instead to try to address the essence of his questioning.

I mean it to be synonymous with the phrase "environmental stimuli."

Signal transduction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In single-celled organisms, the variety of signal transduction processes influence its reaction to its environment.[citation needed] In multicellular organisms, numerous processes are required for coordinating individual cells to support the organism as a whole; the complexity of these processes tend to increase with the complexity of the organism.[citation needed] At the cellular level, Sensing of environments relies on signal transduction; modeling signal transduction systems as self-organizing allows one to explain how equilibria are maintained,[20] many disease processes, such as diabetes and heart disease arise from defects or dysregulations in these pathways, highlighting the importance of this process in biology and medicine.

Various environmental stimuli exist that initiate signal transmission processes in multicellular organisms; examples include photons hitting cells in the retina of the eye,[21] and odorants binding to odorant receptors in the nasal epithelium.[22] Certain microbial molecules, such as viral nucleotides and protein antigens, can elicit an immune system response against invading pathogens mediated by signal transduction processes. For example, plant-pathogen resistance in Arabidopsis thaliana. This may occur independent of signal transduction stimulation by other molecules, as is the case for the toll-like receptor. It may occur with help from stimulatory molecules located at the cell surface of other cells, as with T-cell receptor signaling. Unicellular organisms may respond to environmental stimuli through the activation of signal transduction pathways. For example, slime molds secrete cyclic adenosine monophosphate upon starvation, stimulating individual cells in the immediate environment to aggregate,[23] and yeast cells use mating factors to determine the mating types of other cells and to participate in sexual reproduction.[24]​

I much prefer either phrase to Pharoah's "environmental characteristics." I'll stick with environmental stimuli if the word "energies" creates too much confusion. (However, I think environmental energies is the more accurate phrase.)

Actually, thinking of this whole thing in terms of energy transference is very interesting.

What!? You mean you haven't been? This is where the whole notion of data/information enters the discussion. It's at the core of perception. Sensing and perceiving involve the organism receiving, making-meaning-of, acting on, and reacting to environmental energies. Including their own internal energies.

 

[Pharoah]

@Soupie
I was once convinced to endeavour to avoid the terminology of physicists e.g., force, energy etc.

Gamma, ultra violet, and infra red rays may 'have' energy, but are not stimuli to you or me: to us, they are informationally sterile environmental energies. This links to your last point:
I prefer you using the phrase "receiving... environmental energies" than, for example, "receiving environmental information". The former is fine, the latter would be wrong. Which is why alluding to 'data/information' in one breath, in your last point, and then to 'energies' in the next, is treading on rocky foundations.
And on information... I think I have sufficiently covered it in my 7000 word submission. I don't think there is a grey area. Either I am wrong or right. The essay is largely a response to your extended contributions in this forum @Soupie

 

[Soupie]

@Soupie
I was once convinced to endeavour to avoid the terminology of physicists e.g., force, energy etc.

Gamma, ultra violet, and infra red rays may 'have' energy, but are not stimuli to you or me: to us, they are informationally sterile environmental energies. This links to your last point:
I prefer you using the phrase "receiving... environmental energies" than, for example, "receiving environmental information". The former is fine, the latter would be wrong. Which is why alluding to 'data/information' in one breath, in your last point, and then to 'energies' in the next, is treading on rocky foundations.
And on information... I think I have sufficiently covered it in my 7000 word submission. I don't think there is a grey area. Either I am wrong or right. The essay is largely a response to your extended contributions in this forum @Soupie

Pharoah, I follow you. Technically, to say that environmental energies are information is false.

However, there is a school of thought—which not all agree with—in which organisms receive environmental energies and "make sense" of them. That is, that certain patterns of environmental energies "inform" the organism. Ie EM waves of a certain type "inform" the organism about the past, current, or future status of their local environment.

In the sense, these environmental energies are information about the environment. But I wholeheartedly agree with you that the environmental energies are objectively neutral and their status as "information" are contingent on the physiology of the organism.

I haven't read your latest paper. I plan to when I have time. I will also respond to your last long reply. Cheers.

 

[Soupie]

Yes, I completely agree with your stimuli comment which is why I prefer environmental energies.

 

[Constance]

@Constance The idea of "action" is that some 'thing', namely a subject, does 'it'. To use such a term would be to fall prey to the modern day homunculitic word speak that I doubly deplore.

Hmm. I'm not at all clear what you mean by "homunculitic word speak." Do you think the phenomenological description of consciousness refers to a 'homunculous' of some kind? Or do you think analytical philosophers of mind following materialist/physicalist premises also engage in "homunculitic word speak"? It would perhaps help if you provide some examples of what you're referring to.

The alternative to actioning would entail a verbose narrative off point.

As you saw in the stack exchange link I provided, 'actioning' is a term coined and used in contemporary business-speak and is not standard English. Even my computer's spell-check program underscores it in red. 'Actioned', also underscored in red by spell-check, was used earlier in 'memoing' by attorneys but not to my knowledge yet accepted in formal legal briefs or in other legal writing, in legislation, and in published statutes. We could check Black's Law Dictionary to see if it has crept into formal legal writing of any kind. I left my copy of Black at the Florida Senate when I retired after fifteen years as a legislative editor there. The point is that such usages are not standard English, and it is easy to see why. 'Actioning' and 'actioned' verbalize nouns in illegitimate ways given the traditional distinction between acting and being acted upon. By using the term 'actioning' to signify that protoconscious and conscious beings do not make choices in the world but merely express behaviors determined for them from an informational or 'energetic' system at large you are making a claim for which you have provided no argument or evidence, and in the process twisting the deep grammar embedded in English and most other languages to mark the difference between the transitive (a subject acting) and the intransitive (a subject being acted upon).

A simple solution is to use the term system, as in 'the system does the action' but this would be equally dodgy.

Yes, the claim that "the system does the action" is indeed equally dodgy. Philosophers as well as scientists need to educate themselves on the differences between linear and nonlinear systems, the nature of dissipative systems, and the complex interactions and changes between and among physical systems in themselves (as explained by Rovelli) as well as interactions and changes involving consciousness/mind and world. I think you need to provide a more detailed description of what you understand to be the relationship between consciousness and environment, mind and world, rather than blinking the entire question (which is the primary question posed in CS and POM) with the mystifying neologism 'actioning'.

Similarly, I didn't want to be pedantic and take @Soupie to task with "environmental energies" seeking instead to try to address the essence of his questioning.

I don't think it's "pedantic" to ask that we all define the terms we use in this discussion.

 

[Soupie]

@Soupie I am glad we seem to have identified, more concretely, where clarity is absent.

In all honesty, I'm not sure we are clear. But for certain core ideas, we do seem to be on the same page. Regarding the following questions, i hope you can interprete them as sincere efforts by me to comprehend hct and the mind-body problem in general. Not as an attack or attempts to catch you out.

To recap, physiological mechanisms evolve that are capable of delineating the merits of environmental characteristics as befit the survival needs of a species. Over time these mechanisms evolve increasingly complex means for assimilating environmental characteristics qualitatively: for any given species, certain environmental characteristics have qualitative relevancies that others do not and these differences ultimately become reflected in biochemical mechanism.

This is why I have recently come to the realisation that replication facilitates the emergence of a novel 'qualitative ontology' that does not otherwise exist in aggregate or compound atomic structures.
Qualitative assimilations do not make an individual 'phenomenally conscious' because the mechanism are innate/automated. Nevertheless the biochemistries can be extremely complex and subtle.

In the above, you seem to be saying:

(1) Species have evolved physiological mechanisms that are capable of deliniating the merits of certain survival-relevant environmental energies in an automated process.

Moving onto evaluation, in any given instance in time, your body assimilates a billion environmental characteristics (outside of consciousness). 99.9% of those assimilations will be filtered out as irrelevant 'noise'... I suppose this constitutes a part of the evaluation process. Then there is the filtering, augmentation, diminution, and feedback of assimilations whose outcome is intended to focus attention most economically and mediate responses most appropriately. This also would entail actioning the most suitable affective orientation.

But, of course, this is a gross over simplification. Because, it is not really "any given instance" where stuff is evaluated by direct comparison. It is much more sophisticated than that. Every instance has relevance to the moments preceding and following, and they relate to an environmental landscape that is evincing a spatial world that is seemingly qualitative to the individual and populated by contrasting options and affective consequences: it presents as a changing qualitative milieu that is, like oil on water, a heterogenous qualitative fluid in flux with contrasting options competing for focal attention. This, then, is a individuated spatially qualitative and temporally qualitative world that thereby determines a unique subjective ontology, which did not previously exist in simpler organisms.

In the above , you seem to be saying:

(2) The organism evaluates the millions of automatic assimilations it is making of environmental energies. The millions of qualitative assimilations and the evaluation process evince a subjective, phenomenal spatiotemporal world populated with value, color, smells, sounds, emotions, etc.

In short, it is during the evaluation process that phenomenal consciousness emerges.

The term 'evaluation' is a weak expression for what goes on. Much of the evaluation has to happen prior to attentive conscious experience for it is a multifaceted process that mediates temporal mood, immediate affective states, reactive motor activity... and this, before you have even noticed you are phenomenally conscious of anything. And then, as attention is finally focused on one unitary point in this time and this space, there is the notion that that very moment is in the past and the next present experience phenomenon of existing requires your renewed attention.
But note, this is not the same as human awareness... this is only phenomenal consciousness that I am talking about here. And it is all founded on the complex innate qualitatively relevant physiology.

Here you clarify that much of the evaluation process, like the assimilating process, occurs prior to the emergence of phenomenal consciousness.

You then seem to suggest that "attentive conscious awareness," or "attention," becomes focused on a point in the phenomenal landscape.

But you note that this attentive, phenomenal conscious awareness is not the same as "human awareness," perhaps meaning conceptual awareness? That is, phenomenal consciousness/awareness is distinct from conceptual consciousness/awareness.

Some questions/comments:

(1) You describe an automated process of qualitative assimilations (QA), and a (largely automated) process of evaluation of qualitative assimilations.

(2) It seems to be during the evaluation process that phenomenal consciousness emerges according to hct. Evaluation of QAs seems to evoke a phenomenal landscape.

(3) On your view, do QAs need to emerge as a phenomenal landscape in order to be evaluated?

(4) Is the evaluation process entirely mechanistic and automated? If not, how would you describe it then? I believe in the past you've described the evaluation process emerging along with the evolution of neurons.

(5) If the evaluation process is not mechanistic and automated (as the QA process is), how does such a non-mechanistic, non-automated process evolve/emerge?

Finally, when reading your description of the evaluation process, it recalled for me the way in which a "movie" emerges from quickly flipping through the static pages of a book. Taken individually, the pages are lifeless, unmoving, but taken together in quick succession, the pages come alive.

 

[Pharoah]

@Constance
You are right. I will never use the word "actioning" ever again.
I was making fun of myself, a bit... in referring to Orwell's 1984—in the use of language... but was also trying to point out that I fell into the trap of using the word for good reason.

 

[Pharoah]

@Soupie #1037

My goodness. I have no quibbles with anything you say. You have nailed it (as far as I can make out)
re your questions:

(2) It seems to be during the evaluation process that phenomenal consciousness emerges according to hct. Evaluation of QAs seems to evoke a phenomenal landscape.
Sounds about right, yes.

(3) On your view, do QAs need to emerge as a phenomenal landscape in order to be evaluated?
In a way, the term "phenomenal landscape" is not a definitive thing that begins at a certain point during a certain process. QAs determine the qualitative context of environmental energies (for a given species' individuals) and the evaluation then individualises the assimilated. world spatiotemporally—the world becomes, necessarily and individualistically, qualitatively differentiated (only) four-dimensionally! The term "phenomenal consciousness" is used as a descriptive reference to the kinds of characteristics (various, ineffable, and mysterious) that arise from these processes.

(4) Is the evaluation process entirely mechanistic and automated? If not, how would you describe it then? I believe in the past you've described the evaluation process emerging along with the evolution of neurons.
Second point first: Yes cognitive complexities deepen the evaluative sophistications.
First question: This is the problem question I am tackling in my third paper. It is a profound and complex issue to address because it relates to causation, epiphenomenalism, emergentism, "downward causation" etc. The process is, as far as I am willing to explore, physical. But, I regard the hierarchy as transcendentally distinct (if that is the right way of expressing it... I then have to explain why, and what the significance of that distinction is in terms of causation and so forth etc). I know the explanation is there, I just have not been able to articulate it yet. See below.

(5) If the evaluation process is not mechanistic and automated (as the QA process is), how does such a non-mechanistic, non-automated process evolve/emerge?
One way to look at this is to say that in the early universe qualitative relevance did not exist. In this earlier universe, cause and effect happened, as we understand it, mechanistically. Time and space existed in a different way to how we understand it now which is by way of a (complex) concept and as an experienced phenomenon.
What I am inferring is that, with replication and other evolutionary transitions, the character of causal agency changes. Undoubtedly, it is 'the quality' of my experience that helps determine my behaviour. To this extent, quality is a causal agency. Qualitative relevancy exists no less than matter exists. And we say that matter is energy. But specifically, its solidity, as a defining and causally efficacious characteristic, is misleading. So what I am saying is that consciousness exists no less than matter exists... (you could say, consciousness is no less solid than matter)... and it has a causal mechanism to it. It is no less an 'dynamic energy construction' than is matter. importantly, it exists and is causally efficacious. There is no downward or upward causation... it is more nuanced than that. [work in progress]

 

[Soupie]

Soupie said: So why does [Velmans say that] the phenomenal cat exists outside the brain?

Constance said: Because the cat exists outside the brain, and we know of the cat's existence -- and our own existence -- through the phenomenal appearances of the cat, just as we share the recognition of the world in which we exist through its phenomenal appearances.

Velmans claimed that the statement "the real skull is larger than the phenomenal sky" was absurd. Having read Velmans approach to consciousness, I don't see anything in his view that would allow him to claim that statement is absurd. @smcder went so far as to say that Velmans is an identity theorist, ie, that the mind just is the brain.

If Velmans is an identity theorist, then on this view, the mind is the brain, and the brain is inside the skull, and the skull is therefore bigger than the phenomenal sky (which just is the brain). Likewise, if the mind just is the brain, then the phenomenal cat just is the brain, and is therefore inside the real skull, ie, the phenomenal cat is inside the real skull.