Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 6

[Soupie]

Regarding me "misrepresenting" you. We are having a conversation, @Pharoah. I've not published a paper or shared my questions/concerns about HCT with anyone but you. So I've I've misrepresented what you've said... I've misrepresented you... to you? Rather than become defensive, why don't you use my questioning and confusion as an opportunity to teach me?

In this post ( Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 6 ) you say:

The quality is represented. The phenomenon, is the quality as experienced—as a dynamic changing landscape.

Quality is a subjective concept. In Phil of Mind, the phrase "phenomenal quality" is typically used. I understood this statement to mean: It is blue, red, green, sweet, sour, etc. (i.e., qualities) that are represented.

My line of questioning was to then inquire about how these (phenomenal) qualities existed in the first place. That is, before they can be, as you say, represented, they must exist. To be clear, before qualities such as red, blue, green, sweet, sour, etc. can be represented, they must exist.

Edit: Or are you saying that the qualities (red, blue, green) are the representations?

In this post ( Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 6 ) you say:

because with replicqtion, qualitatively relevant survival improvements can be transmitted from generation to generation, transcending the life of individaul structures. Leqding to growth and evolutin of qualitatively relevant mechanisms.

Here you say it is the mechanisms that are qualitatively relevant. In my (admittedly confused) grasping at understanding, I took this to mean that it is the mechanisms--rather than the representations--which are are qualitatively relevant.

The questions I am asking are:

(1) What is qualitatively relevant: the physical mechanisms or the (phenomenal) representation (blue, green, sweet, sour, etc.)

(2) How does a physical mechanism come to have a phenomenal representation (blue, green, sweet, sour, etc.) associated with it?

Re: my "absurd" examples of the fire/wood and the flower/painting.

Something I fear about HCT (and your own thinking) is that you assume phenomenal qualities (red, blue, green) are just "out there." So when you use terms such as "qualitative relevancy" and "representation" that have a subjective connotation to them, I need to understand how these things can exist in the absence of organisms/systems capable of conceptual consciousness.

For example, only a 3rd party (and in my understanding a conscious, meaning-making 3rd party) can say whether (1) one thing "represents" another thing, and (2) whether one thing is "qualitatively relevant" to another thing. The things themselves have no such experience/understanding.

For what it's worth (and I happen to think it's worth a lot) @smcder understands my concern in this regard and seems to share it. Again, it seems to me that you are introducing subjective concepts (assuming consciousness) by indicating that things such as "qualitative relevancy" and "representation" are occurring at subpersonal levels well below the involvement of conceptually conscious entities.

Rather than become defensive, I would prefer that you attempt to teach me how and why "quality" and "representation" can occur sans conceptually conscious entities.

 

[Constance]

There is a correspondence between the qualitative relevance of mechanisms and the environment. This is how I get the concept of 'representation' into the model.

The qualitative relevance of particular environmental features is represented in the physiology of organisms.

Thanks. I now understand what you are claiming, and I think it's valid. But I don't think the term 'representation' is helpful in this context without your explaining how you're using the term -- i.e., that there is qualitative relevance between information processed in the brain and what the organism must cope with in its phenomenal environment. The question is the source of the information processed in the brain: does it magically exist in the neurons to begin with or is it received from the organism's body as it begins to become aware of its environment - as a body developed within a 'body' during gestation in the womb or the egg [in mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, etc] and subsequently as a body within the 'womb' of its ecological niche {or, writ large, the womb of the encompassing 'world'}? @Soupie says information is always embodied. That seems right to me when we are talking about living organisms and the development of consciousness in living organisms. I'm seeing information as boot-strapped up from the evolving biophysical conditions of organisms {as germinally experienced} to the evolving brain that organizes this information and enables bodily responses that are efficacious. Does this make sense? If so, 'representation' is a misleading term since it suggests the existence of a mind in nature as a whole, or a mechanical matrix of information, that contains the present and the future of life on the planet in addition to the memory of the past. So that living organisms are cogs in a computational machine or passive effects of a natural System that is closed and in which nothing new can develop.

 

[Constance]

Quality is a subjective concept. In Phil of Mind, the phrase "phenomenal quality" is typically used. I understood this statement to mean: It is blue, red, green, sweet, sour, etc. (i.e., qualities) that are represented.

I think the phrase "what it feels like" propagated by Chalmers following Nagel's "what it's like" has misled philosophers of mind for twenty years (except those who have studied phenomenology). The result is that in general the range of meaning involved in 'qualia' has been reduced to experiences of surface phenomena such as color, taste, smell, hearing, etc. Those categories of experience fall far short of recognizing what qualitative experience is for living organisms in the evolution of species including our own. Lived experience is what grounds the development of consciousness {and its forebears in affectivity and protoconsciousness} and produces the neural structures that enable living organisms to cope with the conditions in which they find themselves. And lived experience is more, much more, than sense data.

 

[Constance]

Something I fear about HCT (and your own thinking) is that you assume phenomenal qualities (red, blue, green) are just "out there."

They're not 'out there', nor is 'information' out there (coming into life as an organizing and defining set of instructions that can ever be considered to be complete as long as life and its evolution continue). Phenomenal qualities are experienced by living organisms in their changing situations in a changing environment, not preordained.

 

[Constance]

Phenomenal experience occurs prereflectively, without requiring the development of reflection and mind, in primordial organisms and in us. We, however, have reached a stage of evolution in which we can reflect on what we experience and think about it. As we see in the development of philosophy, we have developed many different ways of conceptualizing being, life, consciousness, and mind, not all of which are cognizant of the necessity to understand what is experienced by living organisms including ourselves if we are to understand ourselves and the humanly experienced world. The phenomenological turn in philosophy took place to correct this error, this failure, to recognize our place in nature and the consequent nature of being as we experience and think it..

 

[Pharoah]

Regarding me "misrepresenting" you. We are having a conversation, @Pharoah. I've not published a paper or shared my questions/concerns about HCT with anyone but you. So I've I've misrepresented what you've said... I've misrepresented you... to you? Rather than become defensive, why don't you use my questioning and confusion as an opportunity to teach me?

In this post ( Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 6 ) you say:


Quality is a subjective concept. In Phil of Mind, the phrase "phenomenal quality" is typically used. I understood this statement to mean: It is blue, red, green, sweet, sour, etc. (i.e., qualities) that are represented.

My line of questioning was to then inquire about how these (phenomenal) qualities existed in the first place. That is, before they can be, as you say, represented, they must exist. To be clear, before qualities such as red, blue, green, sweet, sour, etc. can be represented, they must exist.

Edit: Or are you saying that the qualities (red, blue, green) are the representations?

In this post ( Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 6 ) you say:


Here you say it is the mechanisms that are qualitatively relevant. In my (admittedly confused) grasping at understanding, I took this to mean that it is the mechanisms--rather than the representations--which are are qualitatively relevant.

The questions I am asking are:

(1) What is qualitatively relevant: the physical mechanisms or the (phenomenal) representation (blue, green, sweet, sour, etc.)

(2) How does a physical mechanism come to have a phenomenal representation (blue, green, sweet, sour, etc.) associated with it?

Re: my "absurd" examples of the fire/wood and the flower/painting.

Something I fear about HCT (and your own thinking) is that you assume phenomenal qualities (red, blue, green) are just "out there." So when you use terms such as "qualitative relevancy" and "representation" that have a subjective connotation to them, I need to understand how these things can exist in the absence of organisms/systems capable of conceptual consciousness.

For example, only a 3rd party (and in my understanding a conscious, meaning-making 3rd party) can say whether (1) one thing "represents" another thing, and (2) whether one thing is "qualitatively relevant" to another thing. The things themselves have no such experience/understanding.

For what it's worth (and I happen to think it's worth a lot) @smcder understands my concern in this regard and seems to share it. Again, it seems to me that you are introducing subjective concepts (assuming consciousness) by indicating that things such as "qualitative relevancy" and "representation" are occurring at subpersonal levels well below the involvement of conceptually conscious entities.

Rather than become defensive, I would prefer that you attempt to teach me how and why "quality" and "representation" can occur sans conceptually conscious entities.

First I am offensive, now I am defensive.

@Soupie In my opinion, I give the answers to these questions in my paper and have addressed them in the forum before.
For example, in the distant past i.e. my last post, I said,
"Any mechanism whose function is responsive to [those] harmful or beneficial conditions—either directly or indirectly—promotes survival. In this way these mechanisms are "qualitatively relevant" (or pertinent) to survival. There is a correspondence between the qualitative relevance of mechanisms and the environment."
Furthermore, my paper devotes about 1000 words solely to the concept of qualitative relevance (cf. section 1)
So when you ask, "What is qualitatively relevant", I have no idea what the f__k you want me to say and i have no idea why you have italicised the "is".
I find it rather difficult working out exactly what your questions are asking because when I answer what I think you are asking, you come back with the same questions.

 

[Pharoah]

@Constance
I am very much in accord with your last three posts. In fact, I have felt in harmony with much of what you have been writing recently, which is pleasing because of your contrasting background knowledge.

You are right about the term representation. But, to be fair, I do call for a revisionist attitude to the concept of representation: An expansionist stance.
I'll come back to your question earlier today. Need to reread it.

 

[Constance]

@Constance
I am very much in accord with your last three posts. In fact, I have felt in harmony with much of what you have been writing recently, which is pleasing because of your contrasting background knowledge.

Very glad to hear it.

You are right about the term representation. But, to be fair, I do call for a revisionist attitude to the concept of representation: An expansionist stance.

Yes. I have to read your paper once more at a single sitting rather than in pieces, as I did over the weekend..

I think the term 'representation' is a stumbling block for @Soupie because of the various ways in which the term is used in general and in philosophy of mind specifically. It may also be used without definition in some of the papers he has read in information theory. We are moving toward having terminology in which we can mutually understand one another here.

 

[Constance]

Phenomenal experience occurs prereflectively, without requiring the development of reflection and mind, in primordial organisms and in us.

What I mean by that is that the body 'knows' its situatedness in that in which it is situated, that which affects it, before there is any consciousness or mind present. This is true of our own experience half the time or more.

 

[Pharoah]

Very glad to hear it.



Yes. I have to read your paper once more at a single sitting rather than in pieces, as I did over the weekend..

I think the term 'representation' is a stumbling block for @Soupie because of the various ways in which the term is used in general and in philosophy of mind specifically. It may also be used without definition in some of the papers he has read in information theory. We are moving toward having terminology in which we can mutually understand one another here.

@Constance
I agree that representation is a stumbling block for the reasons you say.
Agree with #109
#102
I don't think I share your view on information. So then when you say,
"Does this make sense? If so, 'representation' is a misleading term since it suggests the existence of a mind in nature as a whole, or a mechanical matrix of information, that contains the present and the future of life on the planet in addition to the memory of the past. So that living organisms are cogs in a computational machine or passive effects of a natural System that is closed and in which nothing new can develop."
I can't say that it does.
I object to the notion that information can be transmitted. In communication theory, information is transmitted on the basis that both the transmitter and receiver are in accord with regard their coding and decoding such that meaning can be conveyed from one to the other. The signal is informational by virtue of some agreed protocol. That protocol does not exist in nature
For example, when a neuron receives 1 impulse per second and transmits 10 per second in response, information is not being transmitted from one neuron to the other. There is no meaning there, such that one might say 10 impulses equal 'red' or such that a neuron newly wired to the other 'knows' what the other neuron means by such and such number or frequency of pulses. Perhaps that is how we get the "is".

 

[Constance]

I object to the notion that information can be transmitted.

But something must be transmitted if information is to have a purpose or function in nature. Perhaps what's transmitted from neurones/neural nets in the brains of animals {or from whatever precedes them in organisms that have not yet evolved brains} is enablement of functional responses in organisms to that which impinges upon them, affects them, in their/our environments.

Thus information is not a 'representation' of the environment [as in a linguistic description or imagistic representation of the environment as we might respond to such a thing] but conveys an evolving facility to cope with, react to, what is present in the environment preconsciously in early stages of evolution and prereflectively at our stage of evolution, where prereflective experience gives way continually to reflective experience..

Make sense?

 

[Constance]

I object to the notion that information can be transmitted. In communication theory, information is transmitted on the basis that both the transmitter and receiver are in accord with regard their coding and decoding such that meaning can be conveyed from one to the other. The signal is informational by virtue of some agreed protocol. That protocol does not exist in nature.

Information theory constructed out of the development of computer processing can't account for information in nature, in my opinion. I think most biologists and even physicists and cosmologists would agree at this point. Information in nature [as we understand 'nature' within our universe] has evolved since the Big Bang {I think since before our Big Bang}, and evolved further with the appearance of life and its evolution of species. Nature's protocols are much deeper and more complex -- both more subtle and more direct -- than anything we have devised in our own recent 'digitalization' of the type of information we find useful.

 

[Soupie]

b) what do mechanisms "represent"? These mechanisms have evolved because they enhance survival potential. Why? because they are pertinent. What do I mean by pertinent? Some environmental conditions are harmful others beneficial to survival. Any mechanism whose function is responsive to those harmful or beneficial conditions—either directly or indirectly—promotes survival. In this way these mechanisms are "qualitatively relevant" (or pertinent) to survival. There is a correspondence between the qualitative relevance of mechanisms and the environment. This is how I get the concept of 'representation' into the model.
The qualitative relevance of particular environmental features is represented in the physiology of organisms.

Pharoah, here is the question I am asking and the question any theory of (phenomenal) consciousness must answer:

How does a physical mechanism come to have a phenomenal representation (blue, green, sweet, sour, etc.) associated with it?

You have got a model of consciousness with many virtues. I have great affinity for it. However, I do not think it answers the above question. I will try to explain why below.

You say above: "The qualitative relevance of particular environmental features is represented in the physiology of organisms [mechanisms]."

What does the term "qualitative relevance" mean? You say above: "Some environmental conditions are harmful others beneficial to survival. Any mechanism whose function is responsive to those harmful or beneficial conditions—either directly or indirectly—promotes survival. In this way these mechanisms are "qualitatively relevant" (or pertinent) to survival. There is a correspondence between the qualitative relevance of mechanisms and the environment. This is how I get the concept of 'representation' into the model."

What the above says, in my own words, is: Organisms have physiologies that have evolved to respond to environmental stimuli that are qualitatively relevant—that is, good or bad—to the organism.

What I (and @smcder) contend, is that most mainstream evolutionary biologists would agree completely with this. In fact, the above conclusion is at the essence of TENS.

Why do I think this does not answer the problem of phenomenal consciousness? For two reasons:

1) For an organism to possess physiological mechanisms that represent whether a stimuli is "good" or "bad" does not explain phenomenal qualities such as blue and green.

For example, say an organism has mechanisms that respond to EM wavelengths of the ranges 450-495 nm and 495-570 nm. Let's say 450-495 nm is negatively qualitatively relevant (ie, bad). Let's say that 495-570 nm is positively qualitatively relevant (ie, good).

Therefore, when EM waves in the 450-495 nm range strike the organism which possesses mechanisms which correspond to the EM waves, since the EM waves in the range are "bad," then if something is represented, it would be the phenomenal quality of "badness" that is represented.

Likewise, when EM waves in the 495-570 nm range strike the organism which possesses corresponding mechanics, since this nm range is "good," then it is the quality of "goodness" which is represented.

In reality, and what any theory of p consciousness will want to explain, EM waves in the 450-495 range are phenomenally experienced as blue and 495-570 nm experienced as green.

If HCT accounts for this, I don't see how.

2) I don't see why any phenomenal qualities need play a role in any of this. It seems to me that all the above could be carried out solely via physical processess a la below:

a) Say a neuron receives 1 impulse per second, and 10 impulses per second leaving it. This could be a functional mechanism because a signal input has been augmented. Another example: the regulation of hormone levels is by biochemical mechanisms. The maintenance of stable pH levels is a biochemical mechanism. They serve a function.

Both the mechanisms themselves and their functional capabilities are likely to be very complex. Needless to say, neuronal networks are connected with organs throughout the body, and with themselves. There are feedback, threshold, diminution and augmentation mechanisms. I am no expert. It is the principle that I run with.

 

[Constance]

I'm in the middle of reading a deeply informative paper that I think might help us reach common ground on the issues @Soupie continues to raise.

"The consciousness state space (CSS)—a unifying model for consciousness and self"
Aviva Berkovich-Ohana1* and Joseph Glicksohn2,3

• 1Department of Neurobiology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel
• 2Department of Criminology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel
• 3The Leslie and Susan Gonda (Goldschmied) Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel

ABSTRACT:

"Every experience, those we are aware of and those we are not, is embedded in a subjective timeline, is tinged with emotion, and inevitably evokes a certain sense of self. Here, we present a phenomenological model for consciousness and selfhood which relates time, awareness, and emotion within one framework. The consciousness state space (CSS) model is a theoretical one. It relies on a broad range of literature, hence has high explanatory and integrative strength, and helps in visualizing the relationship between different aspects of experience. Briefly, it is suggested that all phenomenological states fall into two categories of consciousness, core and extended (CC and EC, respectively). CC supports minimal selfhood that is short of temporal extension, its scope being the here and now. EC supports narrative selfhood, which involves personal identity and continuity across time, as well as memory, imagination and conceptual thought. The CSS is a phenomenological space, created by three dimensions: time, awareness, and emotion. Each of the three dimensions is shown to have a dual phenomenological composition, falling within CC and EC. The neural spaces supporting each of these dimensions, as well as CC and EC, are laid out based on the neuroscientific literature. The CSS dynamics include two simultaneous trajectories, one in CC and one in EC, typically antagonistic in normal experiences. However, this characteristic behavior is altered in states in which a person experiences an altered sense of self. Two examples are laid out, flow and meditation. The CSS model creates a broad theoretical framework with explanatory and unificatory power. It constructs a detailed map of the consciousness and selfhood phenomenology, which offers constraints for the science of consciousness. We conclude by outlining several testable predictions raised by the CSS model. "

The consciousness state space (CSS)—a unifying model for consciousness and self

While this paper concerns the neuroscience and phenomenology of human consciousness, it is also relevant to our understanding of the evolution of consciousness. Both Panksepp and Barrett are among the many neuroscientists, psychologists, and other researchers we've encountered before in our past discussions. This paper recognizes and combines various approaches to consciousness that have been supported in recent neuroscience. I think we can all learn a great deal from it. For example, I have learned that the paper @Soupie linked recently by AI Jack (which I was unable to appreciate at the time) reflects substantial progress in neuroscientific research and theory as recognized and detailed in this paper.

 

[Constance]

An extract from the above paper at the midpoint where I'm reading now:

"While the detailed ontogenetic development of CSS is presently beyond the scope of this paper, we nevertheless outline in short its development, based on Heinz Werner's (1978, p. 108–109) orthogenetic principle of development, that “wherever development occurs it proceeds from a state of relative globality and lack of differentiation to a state of increasing differentiation, articulation, and hierarchic integration.” This orthogenetic principle has been shown to be consistent with the genetic organization of the cortex (Chen et al., 2012). Akin to Werner's (1978) notion of increasing differentiation and hierarchic integration, CSS is proposed to manifest with development as a successively more complex structure. In support, Anokhin et al. (2000) report that EEG dimensional complexity increases with age between 7 and 17. Moreover, the two trajectories in the CSS should, early on in development, be indistinguishable (Werner's “relative globality”), and the corresponding CSS space should comprise one global sphere (and not two). Support for this proposition was given by a recent fMRI study showing that it is only from around 2 years that the antagonistic behavior between the cortical networks is first observed (Gao et al., 2013).

There could also be states where both trajectories are under the threshold for access awareness, for example dreaming, and states where both trajectories enable access awareness, where one attends to the activity of the intrinsic system, without being immersed in it, as an observer such as in meditation. Neuroscientific studies of the neural space support this intuition: during dreaming, most of the DMN deactivates, as well as the extrinsic system (Nir and Tononi, 2010). Similarly, activity in the intrinsic system may persist in parallel to extrinsic stimulation if external stimulation is not sufficiently challenging (Greicius and Menon, 2004; Wilson et al., 2008), or when one attends to the activity of the intrinsic system (Christoff et al., 2009), as is the case during meditation (Travis and Shear, 2010). Next, we describe cases of alteration in typical CSS dynamics. All these states, we suggest, involve an alteration in the regular sense of NS, as is the case in early childhood (Oatley, 2007)."

 

[Constance]

The two comments following the paper I linked just above are also interesting. The first concerns the questions we have about how consciousness arises from pre-consciousness (though the author of the comment thinks of this in terms of 'nothing' existing before consciousness). But we sense that there must be a seed from which consciousness develops as something that can evolve and become consciousness as we know it. Panksepp locates this in primordial 'awareness' and 'affectivity' in primitive organisms.

The second comment questions the paper's references to some residual state of consciousness possibly maintained in non-dreaming sleep, which of course finds a response in Evan Thompson's most recent book, Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy.

From both comments and Thompson's recent book, it's possible, I think, to contemplate consciousness as sleeping in being before and periodically, diurnally, after life appears, suggesting that mind is an essential part of the development of being and Being. What would Heidegger say? What would the Buddha say?

 

[Constance]

A few Stevens poems . . .

"A Child Asleep in Its Own Life"

Among the old men that you know,
There is one, unnamed, that broods
On all the rest, in heavy thought.

They are nothing, except in the universe
Of that single mind. He regards them
Outwardly, and knows them inwardly,

The sole emperor of what they are,
Distant, yet close enough to wake
The chords above your bed to-night.



This one contemplates a rabbit's sense of itself . . .

"A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts"

The difficulty to think at the end of day,
When the shapeless shadow covers the sun
And nothing is left except light on your fur—

There was the cat slopping its milk all day,
Fat cat, red tongue, green mind, white milk
And August the most peaceful month.

To be, in the grass, in the peacefullest time,
Without that monument of cat,
The cat forgotten in the moon;

And to feel that the light is a rabbit-light,
In which everything is meant for you
And nothing need be explained;

Then there is nothing to think of. It comes of itself;
And east rushes west and west rushes down,
No matter. The grass is full

And full of yourself. The trees around are for you,
The whole of the wideness of night is for you,
A self that touches all edges,

You become a self that fills the four corners of night.
The red cat hides away in the fur-light
And there you are humped high, humped up,

You are humped higher and higher, black as stone—
You sit with your head like a carving in space
And the little green cat is a bug in the grass.

 

[Pharoah]

Pharoah, here is the question I am asking and the question any theory of (phenomenal) consciousness must answer:

How does a physical mechanism come to have a phenomenal representation (blue, green, sweet, sour, etc.) associated with it?

You have got a model of consciousness with many virtues. I have great affinity for it. However, I do not think it answers the above question. I will try to explain why below.

You say above: "The qualitative relevance of particular environmental features is represented in the physiology of organisms [mechanisms]."

What does the term "qualitative relevance" mean? You say above: "Some environmental conditions are harmful others beneficial to survival. Any mechanism whose function is responsive to those harmful or beneficial conditions—either directly or indirectly—promotes survival. In this way these mechanisms are "qualitatively relevant" (or pertinent) to survival. There is a correspondence between the qualitative relevance of mechanisms and the environment. This is how I get the concept of 'representation' into the model."

What the above says, in my own words, is: Organisms have physiologies that have evolved to respond to environmental stimuli that are qualitatively relevant—that is, good or bad—to the organism.

What I (and @smcder) contend, is that most mainstream evolutionary biologists would agree completely with this. In fact, the above conclusion is at the essence of TENS.

Why do I think this does not answer the problem of phenomenal consciousness? For two reasons:

1) For an organism to possess physiological mechanisms that represent whether a stimuli is "good" or "bad" does not explain phenomenal qualities such as blue and green.

For example, say an organism has mechanisms that respond to EM wavelengths of the ranges 450-495 nm and 495-570 nm. Let's say 450-495 nm is negatively qualitatively relevant (ie, bad). Let's say that 495-570 nm is positively qualitatively relevant (ie, good).

Therefore, when EM waves in the 450-495 nm range strike the organism which possesses mechanisms which correspond to the EM waves, since the EM waves in the range are "bad," then if something is represented, it would be the phenomenal quality of "badness" that is represented.

Likewise, when EM waves in the 495-570 nm range strike the organism which possesses corresponding mechanics, since this nm range is "good," then it is the quality of "goodness" which is represented.

In reality, and what any theory of p consciousness will want to explain, EM waves in the 450-495 range are phenomenally experienced as blue and 495-570 nm experienced as green.

If HCT accounts for this, I don't see how.

2) I don't see why any phenomenal qualities need play a role in any of this. It seems to me that all the above could be carried out solely via physical processess a la below:

@Soupie This line of questioning is easier for me to understand where you are coming from.

1. In response to the following:
"What does the term 'qualitative relevance' mean? You say above:
'Some environmental conditions are harmful others beneficial to survival. Any mechanism whose function is responsive to those harmful or beneficial conditions—either directly or indirectly—promotes survival. In this way these mechanisms are 'qualitatively relevant' (or pertinent) to survival. There is a correspondence between the qualitative relevance of mechanisms and the environment. This is how I get the concept of 'representation' into the model.'
What the above says, in my own words, is: Organisms have physiologies that have evolved to respond to environmental stimuli that are qualitatively relevant—that is, good or bad—to the organism."

What the above says, in your own words, is not accurate to what I have said. I am finding it difficult coming up with the explanation why this is so.
It is not that organisms have physiologies that "have evolved to respond to environmental stimuli that are qualitatively relevant"
For organism A, environmental stimulus X may be bad. For organisms B, environmental stimulus X may be good. So the environmental stimulus X, has no qualitative identity i.e. It is not the stimulus that is qualitatively relevant. It is the dynamic complex mechanisms of A or B that determine what the qualitative nature of stimulus X is to be. This is why qualitative mechanism is observer-dependent not observer-independent. It is the mechanism that determines what the qualitative relevancy of the stimulus should be (through selective pressures over generations). This principle applies to all biochemical mechanisms.

Now to phenomenal consciousness, which is the thorn in your side (or HCT's side perhaps).
The qualitative mechanisms, as described above to some degree, are not sufficient to generate phenomenal consciousness. That's the first point.
So, a very complex organism—say, for example, a primitive fly—might have colour receptors. It might respond to movement and colour. But this is not to say it is phenomenally conscious (according to HCT).
However, this creature has evolved mechanisms that instantiate very complex valencies (attractive or unattractive affectations [this isn't the right terminology here but I am trying to make a point to illustrate something]) to stimuli. It doesn't think about them, but the biochemical mechanisms wired up to transcellular neural networks assimilate the qualitative relevancies of the environment. It's motivations, that follow from these assimilations, are hugely beneficial to survival. But there is no phenomenal consciousness. It sees colour; colours have qualitative relevancy, colours make the creature respond appropriately to those colours. Ultraviolet may get its "juices flowing", so to speak if its main source of food is from flowers that reflect these EMs. UV is excitatory to the mechanisms of this creature.

So where does phenomenal consciousness come in?
When a creature begins to evaluate what part of this qualitative milieu (going on in its neural/biochemical assimilations) is what it should be prioritising over others. This will require memory: to compare events for the qualitative merits. I try to argue that with the advent of evaluative capability (through even more complex neural mechanisms), emerges an individuate spatiotemporal qualitative world of changing experience. It is changing because evaluation is not taking the qualitative assimilations for granted, but reviewing them... all the time for their comparative merits. Consequently, there is a flow of experiences... one prioritised over another, over another... etc compared, prioritised, remembered, reassimmilated for efficacy. This is phenomenal consciousness. It is a greyscale, by which I mean that in primitive organisms (like drosophila) it has a minimal phenomenal consciousness. The advantages of phen cons mean, though that larger neural capacity is beneficial. Increasingly complex modes of evaluation are beneficial. Brains get bigger creating ever more sophisticated phenomenal consciousnesses. Increasing social capabilities, interactive behaviours etc etc.

@Constance:
"Something I fear about HCT (and your own thinking) is that you assume phenomenal qualities (red, blue, green) are just "out there."
They're not 'out there', nor is 'information' out there (coming into life as an organizing and defining set of instructions that can ever be considered to be complete as long as life and its evolution continue). Phenomenal qualities are experienced, not preordained. "
Correct.

 

[Constance]

". . . consciousness has a cognitive primacy that materialism fails to see. There's no way to step outside consciousness and measure it against something else. Science always moves within the field of what consciousness reveals; it can enlarge this field and open up new vistas, but it can never get beyond the horizon set by consciousness. Second, since consciousness has this kind of primacy, it makes no sense to try to explain consciousness in terms of something that's conceived to be essentially nonexperiential, like fundamental physical phenomena. Rather, understanding how consciousness is a natural phenomenon is going to require rethinking our scientific concepts of nature and physical being." from Evan Thompson, Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy

 

[Randall]

". . . consciousness has a cognitive primacy that materialism fails to see. There's no way to step outside consciousness and measure it against something else.

That depends on how one looks at the problem of "stepping outside consciousness and measuring it against something else". Because consciousness is consciousness of something, we can have our first person conscious experience of that something, and we can compare that experience to an objective measurement of that something. This is how, for example we can test people's vision. We can literally determine how good a person's conscious experience of vision is by comparing what they experience to known parameters e.g. eye charts or the results of other optical tools.