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Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 6

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@Soupie, I began my exploration of the website where the linked paper is presented by looking at the 'Overview' of its conception of "Philosophy." There is for me a red flag in the first paragraph of that overview, copied below, that the website's concept of philosophy and theory of consciousness to be presented at your link are already theory-laden -- based in presuppositions about what Nature is, as if our species already comprehends the whole of Nature. I'm glad you called attention to this paper and this website because both, it appears so far, make it clear that 'nature' is one of the terms that requires definition in our conversations here.

"Available here are philosophical papers and commentary on various topics, all approached from a more or less naturalistic standpoint. Worldview naturalism is premised on a rational commitment to empiricism as its epistemology (one's method of knowing), which when applied using science generates the very plausible hypothesis that the natural world is all that exists. This naturalistic hypothesis raises fundamental questions about human agency, consciousness, and morality, among other topics, none of which are fully tractable without doing at least some philosophy. Plenty of work remains in all these areas, but there's no good reason to resort to non-empiricism and supernaturalism in seeking satisfying, defensible, and provisionally true answers."

We'll also need to define what we mean by 'empiricism' in the likely different ways we apply that term in our separate approaches to consciousness. Ambiguity in the way that term is used in various schools of philosophy is nothing new, but we need to become aware of this ambiguity if we are to achieve clarity and perhaps a common definition in our discussions here.
 
The ideological critique gets us back to continental philosophy (malabou) Zizek apparently also has something to say about Metzinger
 

Thanks Steve. The paper you link could not be more clarifying:

"He asserts that his theory claims that “no such things as selves exist in the world,” that there is no “unchangeable essence or …thing” but only a conceptual error in which a model of a self is mistaken for such a core essence or thing (3). And here is the problem. Who is making this mistake? What consciousness is making the error of falsely believing that a “representation” of a self is an actual self? If a mistake is being made, who is making it? This rhetorical sleight-of hand runs throughout Metzinger’s book and articles . . . ."
 
“unchangeable essence or …thing”

I wonder who or what Metzinger thinks he is arguing with [it seems to be religious ideas about 'souls' as essences of consciousness]. Phenomenologists certainly do not see consciousness and its self-aware and integrative activities in and with the world as supporting a view of consciousness, self, and mind in terms of "an unchangeable essence or ... thing."
 
I wonder who or what Metzinger thinks he is arguing with [it seems to be religious ideas about 'souls' as essences of consciousness]. Phenomenologists certainly do not see consciousness and its self-aware and integrative activities in and with the world as supporting a view of consciousness, self, and mind in terms of "an unchangeable essence or ... thing."

Could you say more about your views on empricism and on nature as you mention in your post above? And also on the just above about how phenomenologists see consciousness? I need a guide to think about these things.
 
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.

...

I found a second translation while searching for the one I found this morning, I hope they are both good ...

Poemas en ingles2: Wallace Stevens -A child asleep in its own life-
Palabras mal dichas: UN NIÑO DORMIDO EN SU PROPIA VIDA, Wallace Stevens

The poems make some interesting word choices on "brooding"

medita
rumia


which doesn't have an exact equivalent in Spanish (it comes to English from German) that I can find ... they are pretty different overall translations for a short poem, from what I can tell.

Un niño dormido en su propia vida

Entre los hombres viejos que conoces,
Hay uno, innominado, que medita
En todos los demás, con grave pensamiento.

No son nada, salvo en el universo
De esa única mente. Los contempla
Por fuera, y los conoce en su interior.

El solo emperador de lo que son, lejano.
Mas lo bastante cerca para pacer que despierten
Los acordes encima de tu cama esta noche.

Versión de Andrés Sanchez Robayna
Etiquetas: Wallace Stevens

Palabras mal dichas: UN NIÑO DORMIDO EN SU PROPIA VIDA, Wallace Stevens

UN NIÑO DORMIDO EN SU PROPIA VIDA

Entre los hombres ancianos que tú conoces
hay uno, anónimo que rumia
sobre todo el resto, meditabundo.

Ellos no son ninguna cosa, salvo en el Universo
de esa sola mente. Él los contempla
por fuera y los conoce por dentro,

único emperador de lo que son,
a la distancia y todavía cerca para despertar
los acordes encima de tu cama esta noche.
WALLACE STEVENS, Poemas tardíos, Lumen, Barcelona, 2010, p. 61.
 
Slavoj Zizek - The Buddhist Ethic and The Spirit of Global Capitalism

This is also a critique of "cognitive breakthrough" from an ideology view, a continental perspective ... Zizek comes from a psychoanalytic view and gets to the heart of it ... along the way he mentions Heidegger, Habermas and Metzinger.

there is also a youtube of the lecture

basically he breaks out the ways we have of dealing with the general acceptance of our being "neuronal puppets" - the Buddhist part is the main focus, but I excerpt here the parts before that which seem relevant to the discussion

extract

"Now more seriously, no no no, wait a minute, let me make one point, I cannot resist it, it’s in my nature to make so called bad taste jokes but I take buddhism extremely seriously, it’s absolutely an authentic, I don't like the term because it is itself western orientalist, let's called it subjective existential experience. So the other reason, for me at least much more interesting is what some people call the so called cognitivist breakthrough, the new stage of our understanding of our brain, our thinking, provided by whatever you called them, brain sciences, cognitivism and so on.
Now I don't want to deal with the problem like are they true or not? What I’m just saying is that more and more they are somehow generally received, even those who should resisted it most, psychoanalysts, you know? Often play the game of how you call this? If you can't beat them join them, you know? They like to claim “oh but you see how cognitivist scientists are arriving up, this is just a paraphrase of what already Freud knew and so on” you know?

This kind of a join the enemy. OK, but there is none the less one interesting point for me and here I agree with, ehm, we have many problems with me and Wolfgang, but at one point I agree with him and I will make this point that if we want to retain Martin Heidegger as a reference it’s crucial not to read Heidegger along the lines of some kind of anti-technological or romanticism, you know? Heidegger walking in his stupid forest up there and cursing all the technology bla bla. No, Heidegger was quite rational here, I read in one biography of Heidegger that like, OK it is nice that authentic Todtnauberg, but at the end he wanted air conditioning, full electricity and so on, you know? Ok, so what I'm saying is that the question we should ask in this spirit is is a very naive one, if we really accept, we don't have to but if the results of brain sciences which is ... but this already to be debated, but i don't want to enter it...

that our subjective freedom or the unity of our ego as a free and responsible agent is an illusion that in reality we are just a well functioning neuronal mechanism? Whatever you put it.
Ok, the problem is how to subjectivize this?
that is to say how should or does this affect your inner most, but not some deep metaphysical, even everyday sense of an agent engaging in social life and so on and so on? So here I think that buddhism to be vulgar is doing quite well without any irony because there are three main attitudes the way I can see it, I mean only I'm talking only about those who accept cognitivist breakthrough, and buddhism is the fourth one I think.

  • The first predominant attitude is simple to resign ourselves to the gap between the scientific view of ourselves as neuronal automata, whatever you want, and our everyday self experience as free responsible autonomous agents. The idea is that because off, you can be very materialist here, because of how we were produced through evolutionary choice and so on so on, it we can not but experience ourselves as free responsible agents and so on, so that we are simply condemned to live in the gap. Scientifically we know but in everyday life, you know? It’s like the same, some of them like to use this metaphor, as we know very well how big moon is but you cannot help perceiving moon as the small circle up there, that is the same, we cannot step out.
Habermas
  • The second attitude, the worst if you ask me, is the, I hope again we agree here we have many other reasons to kill each other so here we can agree, this is my declaration of love if you didn't get it, you know? is the habermasian position which is, he also fully asserts the duality but not as a necessary... but the non-naturalist aspects, is for Habermas not simply as an illusion we should tolerate, but a kind of a transcendental a priori which is necessary and even points to an immanent limitation of scientific knowledge. No, this Habermas's reasoning is here a very transcendental philosophical one, it’s that science is a certain social practice, intersubjective practice where, you know? we formulate universal statements, we confront them through experiments in a debate bla bla, and in this practice the transcendental a priori of this practice, is that we are free responsible being reasoning in a certain way and so on. So even if the result for example of our scientific investigation is we are neuronal puppets, whatever, we should not forget that this result is the result of an exercise of our transcendental freedom of scientific thinking which is a priori you know? we cannot say no! that is false, if you neglect that the result also disappears.
Metzinger
  • Then we have an even more naive but in a way sympathetic to me attitude, that of some radical brain scientists like the big couple from La Joya I think California, Patricia and Paul Churchland, they claim, I don't think it works what i'm saying, but it’s a beautiful position... They claim that no! they claim that our term among some brain scientists for this everyday attitude is as you probably know folk psychology, no? this spontaneous idea, my god, I do whatever I want, we are free and so on, OK. They claim that this folk psychology doesn't have such a deep status as some darwinists think, that it’s not a kind of a biological, evolutionary a priori but simply a reflection of our old naive ideologies. They say self like in old times when, I think this is even by Patricia Churchland, an example, when so called primitive people saw a lighting they thought God is sending us a message or there is a higher force behind and they claim when we act, I think 'oh! I have a free self in me' which is the true source of it it’s exactly the same type of superstition and in the same way that even if you are scared shit of a storm as I am I admit it, specially if you are in the plane when it happens, you know? nonetheless at least mostly I succeed not starting to pray and claiming you know? like you naturalize it, we no longer think like so called primitives … They, the Churchland couple, they think the same thing is possible with even with our freedom of the will and self and in a pretty naive way they described how such a society would had looked, that it wouldn’t be simply a society without punishment as some people think, mainly the idea being, if I’m an automaton and there is no freedom of the will what right do you have to punish me? I'm not responsible, no, for them punishment can nonetheless be a regulative mechanism which works and so on, just a more kind, less oppressive society and so on. The reason I don't agree with this solution is its implicitly naivety and the one who is my good guy here, the german brain scientist, maybe you should invite him, he didn’t want to come or what? Thomas Metzinger, it would be really nice to get him, maybe you can (refering to Wolfgang) if he has some son blackmail him like you know? mafia, everything is permitted to get good people here to Saas-Fee, you know? maybe your son will have an accident, who knows? if you don't come, no, he is very well how this type of simple acceptance ‘OK so what? we change our view’ still leaves, even if in works, it recognizes it ‘yeah I admitted it , what's the problem? OK I'm an automaton what the hell?’ but the de facto in your activity you still treat yourself as the good old free self, you don't really existentially accept it and here again we come to buddhism because Metzinger, who is a serious scientist not some kind of a shitty new ager like those who claim, you know? the tao of quantum physics, we are not talking about that, he is in but at the same time for very precise reasons, although he is also totally materialist, he is buddhist in the sense that he claims that although it may appear that we are, as the first position which I described claims, that we are condemned to this duality, that is to say scientifically we know we are neuronal automata but in your immediately self experience you experience yourself as free agent and so on and so on, that there is nonetheless possible as a limit case and this for him as you can guess would have been precisely when you arrive at enlightenment in buddhism, when you accept so called Anatman that your self does not have any substantial identity that... and this is beautiful thesis, I like it in a way... that, and again he is not in that sense a mysticist, he claims that he is totally a scientist, he just claims that if you go to the end in buddhist meditation where you arrive a stage of, this is one popular book on buddhism by John Epstein I think which is not so bad, the title is “Thoughts Without A Thinker”, that literally you arrived at a stage where you have thoughts but you no longer can say there is an I agent who is thinking this thoughts and that he claims, although for large majority of us, he puts it very nicely, we can't, he agrees with the first position, we can't scientifically objectively accept as an object of study our brain, OK, we are automata, but he puts this beautifully, his says we simply cannot really believe in it in our everyday life, even if you claim ‘OK, so what? I’m so kind off automaton’ in our innermost identity you cannot really believe this except if you come to the end of buddhist meditation.
 
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Libet

I love this position although, and Metzinger is aware of this, although, do you know that? and that is the beauty of all this debates: cognitive scientists, buddhism; because you know? many of them are idiots but some of them are really bright guys and they know it, for example... My God I forgot his name... there is a scientist jewish, because this affects his notion of free will, he is so well known in San Francisco, his name will come to me, who is the very author of the crucial experiment... his name will come to me, i'm sorry... Benjamin Libet, you know? the author of the crucial experiment demonstrating, allegedly, that there is no free will, you know? is that famous experiment where... don't ask me how, i'm giving you a Reader's Digest simplified version... that he wires your neurons and then he asks you to do some extremely elementary gesture, for example, grab this pen and he tells you just to say now drop it or whatever to somehow signal the moment you decided, OK you know the story, I don't know how much part of the second before you decide your brain already knows it, signals are already on the way,

  • but now comes the beauty, this is why I like this guy, a big shock to this common gang of morons stupid flat scientists is that they automatically took this as a proof of there is no free will, because when you think you decide you just, what's the term? take cognizance, assume what your brain has already decided it but this is not, you see?
this are intelligent guys, this is not Libet’s position and he has, that's why not of any anti-semitism or praising the jews, that is why I emphasises that he is a jew because he makes here a very nice theological, but he is a materialist just as spiritual point, reference to the ten commandments, prohibitions, and he claims, although it’s also very problematic topic, that we are looking for freedom of the will at the wrong point, that the basic, he is very hegelian here negativity that the basic form of freedom is not I do this, there we are overdetermined by neurons bla bla, but to stop it, in that split of a part of a second when I do this (drops the pen) I can stop it and that is the form of freedom, It’s beautiful, then if you want a more complex counter-argumentation, Daniel Dennett, who again he is like a mix, sometimes too stupid but sometimes bright, has also a wonderful attack on this primitive reading of Libet, his point is, very Derridean almost, a minimum of, he almost calls it differénce temporality of the brain, he says that there is no freedom only if you presuppose what he wrongly I think Daniel Dennett calls the so called central Cartesian self where ultimately things happen at the same point, you know? if this, if you presuppose this then you can say I decided this but it already happened, but you must first presuppose an homogeneous central agent with basic temporality, if you renounce this then this primitive conclusion doesn't work.

I'm telling you this why? just to let you know that I’m not as if I were totally bluffing, you know? that I know that things are more complex, but OK.
 
end of long excerpts - but the article from here goes into a critique of Buddhism - so if you are interested in that, continue on ... otherwise the above seems relevant as a different view on the current topics ... on metzinger
 
So at this point I am seeing more and more clearly two strands in the discussion - and we've exhausted the one, or it has exhausted me - which is the analytical - which is really more a technical and scientific discussion. Which is fine, but it gives only answers to scientific and technical questions and then only in direct relation to which questions you ask and how you ask them. So the critique isn't of science, but it's of what questions we've asked (and why) and how we ask them. That's Thompson and Varela's point wiin a call for reform of consciousness science.

So the other half of the conversation is the one about what we can know about consciousness because we are conscious ourselves and what we can do about being situated in the world with that consciousness, existentially. And that's all really supported by the science we have ... and its the philosophical part of the discussion, the one science doesn't say much about. Science seems to say we are the kind of organisms that ask endless and largely unanswerable questions and the one that needs things that science can't provide - so it can't be the science that tells us to put those things away?

To me this discussion then is also a much more courageous conversation - because it doesn't look to God or Science for an answer, so it's active into the unknown, rather than passive into the unknown and unknowable ... the actual situation is one of being untethered and free and we know it ... Zizk points to the fundamental hypocrisy of trying to live your life according to the first way - because it says nothing about living your life - a materialist, physicalist, determinist position doesn't differentiate life ... its one more process, there is only the one process ... now, you could respond back with something about the survival instinct and drives - but that is thin stuff, really.
 
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So at this point I am seeing more and more clearly two strands in the discussion - and we've exhausted the one, or it has exhausted me - which is the analytical - which is really more a technical and scientific discussion. Which is fine, but it gives only answers to scientific and technical questions and then only in direct relation to which questions you ask and how you ask them. So the critique isn't of science, but it's of what questions we've asked (and why) and how we ask them. That's Thompson and Varela's point wiin a call for reform of consciousness science.

So the other half of the conversation is the one about what we can know about consciousness because we are conscious ourselves and what we can do about being situated in the world with that consciousness, existentially. And that's all really supported by the science we have ... and its the philosophical part of the discussion, the one science doesn't say much about. Science seems to say we are the kind of organisms that ask endless and largely unanswerable questions and the one that needs things that science can't provide - so it can't be the science that tells us to put those things away?

To me this discussion then is also a much more courageous conversation - because it doesn't look to God or Science for an answer, so it's active into the unknown, rather than passive into the unknown and unknowable ... the actual situation is one of being untethered and free and we know it ... Zizk points to the fundamental hypocrisy of trying to live your life according to the first way - because it says nothing about living your life - a materialist, physicalist, determinist position doesn't differentiate life ... its one more process, there is only the one process ... now, you could respond back with something about the survival instinct and drives - but that is thin stuff, really.

I get, and take, your point far more readily than I can absorb what Zizek says (in his inimitable verbal stream of consciousness). And I think you have grokked (and made comprehensible to me) what Zizek attempted to express:

"Zizek points to the fundamental hypocrisy of trying to live your life according to the first way - because it says nothing about living your life - a materialist, physicalist, determinist position doesn't differentiate life ... its one more process, there is only the one process."

From some of his remarks in his disorganized stream of verbiage it seems that some of his students have suggested to him that he try Eastern philosophy and meditation to approach an understanding of consciousness beyond the technologizing of the brain in cogsci, to help him get beyond the materialist reductivism of current 'brain science' that he seems quite overwhelmed by and which he is struggling against.

I think he should follow the advice of his students, since what he needs to believe in again are the significations available to us in consciousness, and Eastern philosophy will get him there. So would a thorough reading of existential phenomenology, but from what I've seen his reading has not yet gone there. He's primarily a postmodern Marxist, well-versed in the philosophy and politico-economic critique developed in Marxism; thus he wants to believe that we possess 'free will' and a sense of obligation to others to a sufficient extent to take responsibility for the social world we now live in, a production of global capitalism following a history of colonialism, alienation, and exploitation. Had he read existential phenomenology, particularly Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, he'd be in a better position to cope intellectually with the current dominance of neuroscientific reductiviism, the cultural effect of which is to underwrite political passivity and tacit acceptance of the conditioned earthworld of our time.
 
Well said as usual, @smcder. Our models of reality are a work in progress. Ive learned via this discussion that science/physics has only just begun to consider how/why consciousness exists. As Nagel et al indicate, in order to account for consciousness, our models of reality will need to expand.

The following from Godfrey-Smith has really been resonating with me.

Here is the rest of Godfrey-Smith's review:

". . . The unpopularity of the view notwithstanding, Nagel is right that neutral monism is the best alternative to materialism. He thinks we have a clear idea of what the mental and physical are, that we can see neither can be reduced to the other, and that the only way to make sense of the situation is to say that all of nature, at bottom, contains a bit of both. A different and to my mind more promising version of the view has a more critical flavour. It holds that standard ways of thinking about the mind-body problem are dependent on crude conceptions of both the mental and the physical. We think we have a clear and definite idea of what a ‘purely physical’ or ‘purely mental’ process is like, but our grasp of both is so poor that we do a bad job of thinking about how they might be related, and see a gulf that isn’t really there. Nature gives rise to what appear to us as ‘physical’ processes and ‘mental’ processes, but both arise from something that fits into neither of these crude categories.
 
Constance said:

"I wonder who or what Metzinger thinks he is arguing with [it seems to be religious ideas about 'souls' as essences of consciousness]. Phenomenologists certainly do not see consciousness and its self-aware and integrative activities in and with the world as supporting a view of consciousness, self, and mind in terms of "an unchangeable essence or ... thing."

Could you say more about your views on empiricism and on nature as you mention in your post above? And also on the just above about how phenomenologists see consciousness? I need a guide to think about these things.

I'll start by quoting part of @Soupie's extract above from Godfrey-Smith's review of Nagel, Mind and Cosmos:

"A different and to my mind more promising version of the view [Nagel's/Velmans's "neutral monism"] has a more critical flavour. It holds that standard ways of thinking about the mind-body problem are dependent on crude conceptions of both the mental and the physical. We think we have a clear and definite idea of what a ‘purely physical’ or ‘purely mental’ process is like, but our grasp of both is so poor that we do a bad job of thinking about how they might be related. . . ."

The empiricism we need is James's "radical empiricism" along with his view of the "plurality" of perspectives that characterize the world as it is lived, by our own and other species. 'Objective' third-person descriptions are insufficient to capture the world as lived. This requires that we study first-person descriptions of experience in humans -- and, to the extent we can, understand experience as it is expressed in animals, alongside our third-person attempts to understand physical, biological, and neurological processes involved in how different organisms experience and understand the nature of their existence in an actual world. Phenomenology and the existential philosophy that grew from it have always recognized the way in which lived experience of being adds to the world's being and the ways in which reality -- to the extent we can comprehend it -- can be described. Everything that happens, in the physical world and in the lived worlds produced in experience of it, happens in an inescapable stream of temporal change in which the knowable world, consciousness of it, and thinking about it coexist and unfold. Nothing is ever finished in the natural physical world as we know it, including ourselves as long as we are creatures of it and residents of it.

Materialist/physicalist science and philosophy that attempt to approach an understanding of existence and reality from an imagined perspective outside of it have long misled us about the temporally changing nature of ourselves and the world we live in. Von Uexkull and thinkers like him (such as James, Merleau-Ponty, and Hans Jonas, whom we have not read here yet) have recognized this and have influenced phenomenologists and some biologists and ethologists in our time. I think that neurophenomenology and Panksepp's "affective neuroscience" are major steps in the direction we need to pursue, and so is Eastern philosophy and meditation since thinkers in the East have examined the experiential grounds of consciousness considerably longer than we have. We can probably learn a great deal by comparing Eastern perspectives with ours in the West, perhaps beginning with the paper on James and Nishida that I linked a few days ago.
 
Among the critiques of Metzinger's ideas at the link Steve provided earlier today, the most culturally significant come at the end:

". . . To offer just one contrasting position, Spinoza argues that emotions in fact are thoughts, they are simply thoughts which are “inadequate” or imprecise, and so lead to difficulty in acting in the world. Clear and correct thought, on the other hand, can both motivate our actions (we do things for reasons we have in mind, not only because of feelings in our “gut”), and can lead to more successful and correct action, provided we participate in a collective which produces correct ideas together (on this argument, see Balibar, Spinoza and Politics, particularly chapter 5). Metzinger’s naturalization of emotions and reduction of thought to epiphenomena functions, once again, to reify our existing ideology; more troubling yet, it suggests that only imprecise and inadequate ideas are motivating and “true” ideas, and therefore that we can only be motivated by an ideology which distorts reality. This particular point could be developed more rigorously, using Metzinger’s Being No-one, but I’m not sure it is necessary, seeing that Metzinger isn’t really taken that seriously by mainstream thought; I offer it here only to indicate the problem.

Atomist and private property: As I have already pointed out, Metzinger has a completely atomistic concept of human minds, in which each individual consciousness is produced by an individual body’s interaction with the “information” in the world, and only once the brain has produced a consciousness and a private language does the individual interact with other individuals.

Along with this absolute atomism, he assumes the completely natural and biological occurrence of the most important “phenomenal property” in the whole functionalist account of the subject: “The property of mineness (also often called the ‘sense of ownership’)” (19). The mistaken belief that we have a private consciousness which is not at all socially constructed is a central error of capitalist social formations, leading to frustration and suffering in our everyday lives. “The private consciousness and the mystified consciousness go hand in hand” Henri Lefebvre explains in Critique of Everyday Life, Vol. I, “reinforcing each other and becoming increasingly entrenched as a result of instabilities which have their origins in real life” (153). Metzinger places the concept of the atomistic consciousness in the category of scientific fact (it really is completely individually produced according to neurological necessity), and the ideological concept of “private property” becomes simply a necessary error, one we must have because it is necessary for the working of the entire model: it “bundles [the] differing forms of phenomenal content”(19). Lefebvre, again, explains the ideological importance of this pairing of our existence and ownership: “Under capitalist regimes, ‘to exist’ and ‘to have’ are identical…And this situation is not a theoretical one…it is an ‘absolutely desperate’ reality; the man who has nothing finds himself ‘separated from existence in general’” (155). Metzinger simply takes this capitalist social formation for an eternal scientific truth."


In this next section the author recognizes the impoverishment of societies when one disciplinary structure of research and interpretation comes to dominate discourse and weaken the open and free exchange of ideas originating in other disciplines.

"Structural Mystification: Perhaps most importantly, should Metzinger’s theory be widely accepted, it would produce a discipline which functions to produce a certain kind of “knowledge” while obscuring and preventing the production of other kinds of knowledge. Gary Potter uses the term “structural mystification” to name a particular pair of contradictory concepts concerning knowledge production: “1) the production and dissemination of knowledge is an essential characteristic of all educational systems; and 2) the obfuscation of the production of knowledge and the restriction (and sometimes outright prevention) of the dissemination of knowledge are essential characteristics of the educational systems” (134). The point is that mystification works not by preventing the production of knowledge, but by insisting that one kind of knowledge is the “right kind” to be produced, and thereby framing the problem in certain disciplinary ways that will function exactly to prevent the problem from ever being solved. If the study of the structure of the subject were pursued in the way Metzinger would have us pursue it, we would seek the “neural correlates” which he is sure, despite his own admission of an absolute absence of evidence, must some day be found. We would try to determine what kinds of perceptions and emotions a subject should be exposed to in order to produce the right kind of behavior in the world. But there would be no discipline in which we could consider the social formations which actually give rise to our “mind,” and so no way to examine how we might change those social formations to reduce suffering or, to put it more positively, to increase our capacity to interact with and enjoy the world and one another.

The ultimate goal of Metzinger’s project, I would suggest, is to frame the problem in such a way that it become completely impossible to see it clearly, much less to solve it. In this way, it works to ensure the reproduction of the existing relations of production, and to avoid any production of knowledge of those relations and their oppressive effects. And then we must, as Metzinger does, fall back on the assertion that “certain aspects of consciousness are ineffable” (The Ego Tunnel, 9)."


Not explictly expressed in the socioeconomic critique in this last section but I think inescapably related to it is the combined effect of the mutually supportive relationship between cognitive neuroscience and the economic (and by now ideological) drive to produce artificial intelligence with which to replace our own.
 
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Here is an interesting paper in which the author, Lynne Rudder Baker, clarifies Metzinger's position against her own:

". . . 2. Cognitive Conscious Self-Reference: Metzinger’s View

Metzinger writes sympathetically about my account of the first-person perspective. He writes that the conceptual distinction between merely having a perspective and conceiving of oneself as having a perspective—a distinction at the heart of my account of the first-person perspective—“is important for cognitive science in general, and also for the philosophical notion of a true cognitive subject.” (Metzinger 2003b, 396) However, when I say, “[A]ttribution of first-person reference to one’s self seems to be ineliminable” (Baker 1998, 331), Metzinger disagrees. He offers an alternative view that eliminates reference to any self or genuine subject of experience. On his view, “all that exists are conscious systems operating under transparent self-models.” (Metzinger 2003b, 397) On my view, I (me, the person, a first-personal being, a genuine subject of experience, a “self”) am an entity in the world. So, the issue between Metzinger and me is joined in a profound and intriguing way: When I affirm that there are persons with irreducible first-person perspectives in the world, I am affirming that there are genuine subjects of experience (essentially first-personal beings) in the world. When Metzinger denies that there are “selves,” he is denying that there are genuine subjects of experience in the world.4

Let me make two terminological points: (1) I follow Metzinger’s use of the word ‘phenomenal’ to apply to the qualitative contents of conscious experience; phenomenal experience is characterized by how it feels or “what it’s like” to have it. This leaves it open whether or not a phenomenal content represents anything real, or is, as Metzinger puts it, “epistemically justified” (Metzinger 2003b, 401).

Let me make two terminological points: (1) I follow Metzinger’s use of the word ‘phenomenal’ to apply to the qualitative contents of conscious experience; phenomenal experience is characterized by how it feels or “what it’s like” to have it. This leaves it open whether or not a phenomenal content represents anything real, or is, as Metzinger puts it, “epistemically justified” (Metzinger 2003b, 401). Phenomenal content may or may not depict anything in reality.

(2) Metzinger denies that there are any entities in the world that are “selves” or genuine subjects of experience. By the term ‘genuine subject of experience,’ I mean an entity that must be included as such in ontology—a first-personal entity that exists in the world and not just as an artifact of an information-processing system. Although I do not believe that there exist “selves” as distinct from persons, I do believe that there are persons, who are essentially first-personal, and are genuine subjects of experience (call them ‘selves’ if you’d like). I prefer the word ‘persons’ or ‘genuine subjects of experience’ to the word ‘self’, but I’ll use all of these locutions to mean the same thing.

Although Metzinger emphasizes the importance of the first-person perspective in the very terms in which I describe it, he argues that we can account for the first-person perspective without supposing that there are “selves” or genuine subjects of experience. The question, then, comes down to this: Can there be an adequate ontology—an inventory of what really exists—that includes no first-personal subjects of experience, but only information-processing systems and self-models that are understandable in wholly third-personal terms?

The portion of Metzinger’s argument that concerns me here has three parts: (i) a sub-personal, naturalistic account of subjective experience, (ii) an account of how it can seem to us that we are genuine subjects of experience, and (iii) an account of the (putative) fact that there really are no genuine subjects of experience in the world. Metzinger offers a theory both that denies that I am a genuine subject of experience and that shows what is really going on when it seems to me that I am a genuine subject of experience. . . . ."

This paper is superbly clear and well worth reading for anyone in doubt about exactly what Metzinger is claiming and where his theory becomes rationally untenable as well as dangerous.

http://people.umass.edu/lrb/files/bak07natM.pdf
 
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@Constance - i came across hans jonas the other day:

"Hans Jonas (1903-93) Martin Heidegger, one of the greatest twentieth-century philosophers, was largely blind to ethics and politics, as evidenced by his infamous sojourn into Nazism. Hans Jonas, one of his great students, joined with a Jewish brigade in the British army during World War II and returned as a conqueror to Germany, where he learned that his mother had been killed at Auschwitz. Taking up the insights of his great teacher, Jonas makes philosophy bear the weight of the Holocaust. In books like Morality and Mortality: A Search for the Good after Auschwitz and The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of Ethics for the Technological Age, he explores the crises of our time in light of his own tragic experience."

- i had the thought that Existentialism is the philosophy of the who survived. My exploration of phenomenology & existential ism is being helped by my looking at the histories they are situated in:

1. Hegel Kant (Nietzsche) Husserl Heidegger

2. Industrial Revolution Darwin and its -isms, Mechanized Warfare (parts 1&2) - and the process of unravelling our bases of knowledge in the 20th century: (Nietzsche) Freud, Godel, QM, ...

... along those lines, could you help me understand this?

"The same shrinking back from new conceptions of reality occurred across the humanistic disciplines [and also in the sciences] in universities across this country when Poststructuralism, Postmodernism, and Deconstruction challenged orderly categories of thought and practice that had been standard for several centuries."?
 
I'm still trying to grok meaning and information (and computability) ... on meaning and information, I came across this:

www.implicity.org/Downloads/Bohm_meaning+information.pdf

Meaning and Information
by
DAVID BOHM

In this book our specific aim is to explore the notion that meaning is a key factor of being, not only for human beings individually and socially, but perhaps also for nature and for the whole universe.

When we use the term 'meaning', this includes significance, purpose, intention and value. However, these are only points of departure into the exploration of the meaning of meaning. Evidently, we cannot hope to do this in a few sentences. Rather, it has to be unfolded as we go along. In any case, there can be no exhaustive treatment of the subject, because there is no limit to meaning.

Meaning is inseparably connected with information. The Operative notion here is that information has to do with form.

@Soupie Literally 'to inform' means ‘to put form into' something.
smcder @Soupie I remember your formulation information = "in formation" ...

Meaning is the activity of information"

smcder an eastern take might be:

"Form is emptiness - emptiness is form."

Could we playfully combine the two?

(in)form is emptiness - emptiness is (in)form?
 
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My technology no longer supports Weebly, so I've abandoned the C&P support website ... but I think there has to be something where on can just use basic HTML on ... a free (or inexpensive) site to host a blog or website - mostly it's to be a collection of links and key ideas from the thread, a reference for us on the thread ... if anyone knows of something, let me know.

In the meantime, I am copying them into a Word file.

Here's my rough sense of the current discussion:

Big Picture - two main approaches
  • contintental (phenomenology/existentialism) (vs) analytical (physicalism/materialism)
  • identity theories of mind vs phenomenology and existentialism as "first philosophies"
most recent ideas
  • phenomenology/existentialism (and for me, the history around them) - we as conscious creatures, what can we know about our own consciousness? And what does this mean for how we are to be in the world? How we are to live our lives in respect to the other lives around us
  • Velman's neutral monism
  • Thompson and Varela's call for subjectivity in science, first person reports, accepting consciousness as fundamental
  • vs the second narrative a la Metzinger and others (and the current Continental critique of this position - I think the Marxist critique from Zizek and Malabou are interesting, because they point out the consequences of Metzinger's ideas - their implications and how his support of these ideas may not be objective science - but is conditioned by his acceptance of global capitalism (however consciously))
  • information, meaning
  • computation/computability
  • preconscious reflection, pure consciousness
  • empiricism and pragmatism and their relationship to phenomenology
  • animal consciousness/origins of consciousness in the beginnings of life/autopoesis
????
 
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@smcder, this reply is not directed at you (in the sense that I expect you to defend the above views).

What purpose would it serve the organism for consciousness to "seem" like it was representational? If consciousness has indeed evolved as a generative representational process which guides the organism's behavior in the world, then it makes sense that this process is largely transparent.

I'm not clear whose ideas you're expressing there. Could you specify?

However, we know that our models [?] of the world are often inaccurate:

Hallucinations
False beliefs (I'm worthless)
Phantom limbs (congenital & amputee)
OOBEs generated in the lab

It seems rather that in such experiences as those you name it is not our 'model' of the world that is 'inaccurate' but rather that our accustomed sense of our and the world's reality is being radically challenged. But as MP pointed out, most of us past childhood know the difference between our misperceptions and our veridical perceptions. That's how we developed the concept of such things as hallucinations, which only become a permanent condition of life for humans afflicted by psychosis.


And we also have vivid experiences that we know are coming from "inner" space, not outer space:

Dreams
NDEs
Chemically induced visionary states

I don't think we can say that in any of those experiences we are drawing only on 'inner realities' and not also on objective aspects of the 'outer reality' of the world we have been living in. Even in chemically manipulated altered states, as I understand them, most people maintain the sense of their selfhood/lived identity and recognize aspects of the world they've been living in as represented in their 'visions'.

Also, the notion that mental images (phenomenal qualities) "intervene" between an observer and the world is erroneous. There are representational models which include the sense of self as a phenomenal quality; that is, as a phenomenal model itself. See the below article.

I agree that phenomenal qualities do not "intervene" between protoconscious and conscious creatures/beings and the environing world they exist in. I don't agree that phenomenal qualities can be understood as "mental images." Re "representational models which include the sense of self," are you including Metzinger's model?
 
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