Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 7

[Soupie]

Hi all, I recently watched a documentary series called 'the brain' presented by David eagleman. It's the best presentation I have seen on how our brain works to construct our conscious experience.

It's not got a paranormal discussion on that series but when you are familiar with paranormal topics (as we all are here) you will see how it links in to possible paranormal experiences.

The shows main benefit I found is to explain how our conscious experience is built by the brain. E.g. we have sensers on our body that react to the external environment (ears, eyes etc) that translate this interaction into electrical signals. These signals feed in the brain where these signals are constructed into an experience we understand day to day as reality. I'm aware most of you already know that part, however what it highlights is how in this amazing capability of our brains it is not flawless. We are prone to errors, lots of them, all the time. And in our complex circuitry we can perceive things our brain believes are completely real but are not upon closer inspection. It also helps to explain how memories of events can change but your recall of it feels real when re telling an event.

When we discuss paranormal or ufo experiences we are really discussing our brains best interpretation of what our bodies senses are telling it and how the memort of the event is stored and may change over time, to that point it really helps to understand the processes going as we experience and how frustrating and un reliable human experience is to interpret an event at its fundamental reality.

Really well worth a watch for anyone who is interested in trying to understand more on the science of the paranormal, less recommend for a believer who doesn't want their hypothesis tested.

I watched that series as well. I too enjoyed it.

Re this interpretation of the paranormal. You'll want to engage in conversation with @Burnt State as he has been thinking about this approach to the paranormal for some time. You'll find little sympathy for that approach in this thread.

Re this approach to perception. I too accept that the organism essentially shapes perception in the way described above. However, you will find the other members in this discussion less accepting of this interpretation.

In any case, what we have mainly been discussing in this discussion is how it is that organisms have any experiences at all. It's one thing to describe the physiological processes that occur within an organism which shape their perception — obviously fascinating and complex — however how it is that an organism perceives/experiences anything in the first place is the "harder" problem.

Thanks for posting!

 

[Soupie]

It sounds to me as if you might be bringing Hoffman here as a last attempt to argue for an
'informational' source of consciousness, a hypothesis that, again, cannot provide either a definition of, or a demonstration of the origin of, this ostensible 'information'. Such 'thinking' invites fantasies of a 'Matrix' within which all reality is merely virtual -- nothing is real. What happens in a world in which a mass of humans uncritically accept such an ungrounded idea? That last is a question that philosophers ought to contemplate. Perhaps we should devote some time to it here.

Hoffman is not suggesting information is the source of consciousness. To reiterate, Hoffman is suggesting consciousness is fundamental. However, he suggests that just how consciousness differentiates into "contents of consciousness" can be modeled with maths.

Constance, you admit that phenomenology and direct realism cannot resolve the mbp but you remain firmly entrenched in these paradigms and appear unable to approach consciousness outside of them.

 

[Randall]

Nagel's Wiltbab is a rhetorical argument ... not sure if you and @ufology got that?

Sent from my LGLS991 using Tapatalk

Of course I don't get Nagel or anything else. You know I just blather on in a semi-conscious dream-state without actually putting any thought in or comprehending anything. Some days I'm lucky if my Thalamocortical loop kicks in at all ... LOL. How are you doing anyway?

 

[Soupie]

That the universe itself is conscious and individuation an illusory subset of such, is hardly a new idea. But it seems (to me at least) to be almost inescapable. Individuated self-awareness is an inherent property arising under special circumstances of the universe, and just happens to be where we live.

The attached is how I visualize this thesis.

@smcder You've offered panenpsychism for consideration; the idea that POV is fundamental. I dont think you endorse monism though; you seem to prefer a dualist approach to mind-body. In any case, what are the empirical and/or philosophical problems with the attached?

 

[Constance]

Hoffman is not suggesting information is the source of consciousness. To reiterate, Hoffman is suggesting consciousness is fundamental. However, he suggests that just how consciousness differentiates into "contents of consciousness" can be modeled with maths.

I'm unable to identify with the sheer abstractness of what Hoffman proposes -- a consciousness that operates beneath the particulars of individual experience in a sensible, palpable, world and somehow {how?} "differentiates into [varying] 'contents of consciousness'." It appears to be an imagined process in an imagined 'world', all of which can be "modeled with maths." It's sheer abstraction.

Constance, you admit that phenomenology and direct realism cannot resolve the mbp but you remain firmly entrenched in these paradigms and appear unable to approach consciousness outside of them.

I've said that phenomenology cannot resolve the mbp, but that in examining what we experience it enables us to get our feet on the ground of the physical, mental, and historically sedimented cultural mileau in which we find ourselves existing, feeling, thinking, and acting. Consciousness as we humans experience it is a product of the evolution of myriad species of life on this planet -- evolving physically and also mentally. Consciousness, again, is embodied in the body of the world, developed through experience in the world.

You, like Hoffman, might not want to identify the hypothesis you support as 'informational', but what else would you call it?

 

[Constance]

ps, why do you feel that the most important problem we confront is the mind-body problem?

 

[Constance]

Perhaps we should look at Chalmers's writing in support of what he calls, if memory serves, 'panprotopsychism'.

ETA this link:

http://consc.net/papers/panpsychism.pdf

 

[Constance]

I dont follow you here. What Hoffman seems to "desire" is a model for resolving the mind-body problem. He's probably got it wrong, but show me a model that has it right.

Perhaps they've reached a 'model' that has it right on Alpha Centauri. No telling how long it takes conscious beings to understand consciousness fully enough to 'model' it. We do have, however, various 'models' of perception and we have discussed them and disagreed about their validity. Perception is the 'without which nothing' [the sine qua non] on the basis of which protoconsciousness evolves toward consciousness in living beings. Perception is the opening -- the openness -- that links us to the natural world from which we and species preceding us in evolution have evolved situated perspectives on the world as we exist within it -- out of the natural affordances by which we sense, feel, and increasingly know our physical and temporal presence within it.

No. There is no projecting. Yes, there is a perceived duality between what-is and our perception of what-is; but only in the sense that we are one small part of the whole of what-is. And as I have been saying, we are our perceptions. There is no duality between the "I" and the perceptions the "I" is having.

That's a very mystical idea, and perhaps Steve (@smcder ) can identify it in one or more articulated texts of Eastern philosophy. I don't dislike the idea as an effort to understand what-is holistically. I do think that it is more interesting to explore the ways and means by which this idea becomes thinkable in Eastern mysticism and Western phenomenology.

We are made of what-is, but we are not all of what-is; what we are of what-is, constitutes our perception of what-is. There is no projecting, just perceiving, just being.

There is more to being than perceiving.

Re Hoffman going off the rails. Chalmers has said that the HP entails that either our conception of matter or our conception of consciousness is wrong. So in order to right things, we will have to go off the rails, so far as the rails are considered straight here in 2016.

As I read him, Chalmers was protesting both radical dualism and reductive materialism. What I meant by Hoffman's "going off the rails" is that he goes entirely off the rails of our empirical experience in and of the tangible and thinkable world in which we exist, which in my view (as in James and the phenomenologists) is what we have to work with in understanding the nature of 'what-is' as we confront it.

 

[Soupie]

I'm unable to identify with the sheer abstractness of what Hoffman proposes -- a consciousness that operates beneath the particulars of individual experience in a sensible, palpable, world and somehow {how?} "differentiates into [varying] 'contents of consciousness'." It appears to be an imagined process in an imagined 'world', all of which can be "modeled with maths." It's sheer abstraction.

Just how the noumenal differentiates or intra-acts with itself is imo an open question. I don't necessarily support Hoffman's idea that conscious agents are fundamental; I prefer the idea that undifferentiated consciousness is fundamental and deduce that it must subsequently differentiate into structure(s).

Just how and why the noumenal differentiates is currently a question for metaphysicians and theoretical physicists.

To say it is an "imagined" world is too harsh; it's a proposed metaphysics. A hypothesized model of the nature of what-is. Does it depart from human phenomenal experience? Absolutely, but this fact does not mean the model is wrong.

Also to say that consciousness operates beneath the particulars of individual experience is not completely accurate. The operation of consciousness just is the particulars of individual experience.

Just what the preconditions of these various operations are we cannot say.

You, like Hoffman, might not want to identify the hypothesis you support as 'informational', but what else would you call it?

He calls it Conscious Realism. The noumenal just is interacting conscious agents.

I'm not fully endorsing this model. There are parts of it I like, others I don't. In any event, it's new thinking worth discussing.

ps, why do you feel that the most important problem we confront is the mind-body problem?

I love reading about the neuroscience of perception, Neurophenomenology, psychology, neuropsychology, etc. However, my main interest in engaging in this discussion is to acquire and discuss new approaches to the MBP.

There is more to being than perceiving.

I agree. However, on my view, perception is ultimately no different than other aspects of being/experience. That is, differentiation of the noumenal.

While conscious realism entails that what we view as an organism differentiated from the matter/energy of the universe is in actuality a phenomenal "icon," it doesn't deny that there is something (the noumenal) that is differentiated.

We—conscious beings—are differentiated/structured noumenal. We—beings—just are noumena. Structured noumenal just is being. Perception is one small part of this structure.

We each are uniquely structured noumena and our unique being is constituted by our unique noumenal structure.

We can know the true nature of the noumenal in the sense that we are constituted of the noumenal (conscious realism); however, as we are but one small, differentiated aspect of the whole of the noumenal (what-is), we cannot know all of what-is.

Of course structure, interaction, and differentiation are human concepts, products of our experience and may not apply to the nature of what-is. But we've got to start somewhere. Thus what-is may not differentiate and/or interact in the ways we perceive and conceptualize physical matter to do. However, that experience/being has structure seems hard to deny, and thus some structure and preconditions for structure seem ontologically necessary.

 

[Constance]

I don't see how 'the noumenal' can be more than postulated from the point of view of human philosophy. Volumes of post-Kantian philosophy have struggled with this issue. Here is the opening section of an article that might clarify for you why I am unable to make sense of your generalizations about 'the noumenal' and your postulations about how it generates experience, consciousness, and comprehension of the nature of our existence.

"KNOWLEDGE/ METHOD/ PSYCHOLOGY
[1[a]. For Husserl the epoché provides a world which is nothing other than the intentional object of consciousness. Certainly Merleau-Ponty does not claim any knowledge of things-in-themselves (Kantian noumena). But he does argue that attempts at a philosophical description of the structures of consciousness show us not eidetically intuited essences but a world that transcends that consciousness and reveals itself in and to it. He thus rejects the Husserlian notion of 'reduction' and his account of a pure transcendental ego. At the same time Merleau-Ponty seeks to pass beyond what he sees as a return to dualism in Sartre's distinction between the in-itself and for-itself .

These views reflect Merleau-Ponty's affirmation of the primacy of perception [Part II] — by means of which we gain access to the world. But perception for him is not a mere reflection on passively received sensory data. The world we encounter in perception is a 'lived experience'. What transcendental reduction reveals is a 'body-subject' [Part I]. The body for Merleau-Ponty is much more than just an entity to be treated as an inert object whose behaviour is to be explained exhaustively in terms of science as a "second order expression of the world". But neither is it a pure, transparent subject. It exhibits 'ambiguously' both aspects or functions. He thus rejects the claims of behaviourism and naturalism. The body must be seen also as a conscious 'subject' actively situated in the perceptual milieu — the presupposition for all conceptual thinking, rationality, value, existence. The situation the body-subject finds itself thrown into is one of constant change: its relationship to the world and other persons — its dialogue with them — is thus dialectical, and the reduction cannot be completed on account of 'ambiguity' [c].

[2[a].

matter, life and mind must participate unequally in the nature of form; they must represent different degrees of integration and, finally, must constitute a hierarchy in which individuality is progressively achieved [Pt III, Introd.].


[3[a]. The body-subject is the key notion not only in his approach to perception but also to sexuality, language, freedom, and the cogito. He rejects the concept of body as a purely physical object. It is through attribution to it of intentional structures that we can understand how it functions. The body-subject is that which makes possible lived experience, that through which we perceive, feel, will, and act . From this starting point what is needed, he argues, is clarification of our "primary conception of the world". According to Merleau-Ponty there is a 'logic of the world' to which the body conforms, thereby supplying us in advance with a 'setting' for our sensory-experiences. He refers to this as the 'pre-objective' realm — the horizon of the cultural, human life-world, by reference to which a proper understanding of perception can be achieved [c]. "A thing is, therefore, not actually given in perception"; rather it is

internally taken by us, reconstituted and experienced by us in so far as it is bound up with a world, the basic structures of which we carry with us, and of which it is merely one of many possible concrete forms [PP, Pt II, 3].

Thus the way we perceive the world through the body follows from the fact that consciousness as the highest manifestation of the body is located in the world in a specific spatio-temporal context. He makes a distinction between 'bodily space' and 'external space' [Pt I, 3]. He seems here to be suggesting that one's awareness of one's body is a precondition of the consciousness that one has of being in the world and that the body provides a reference point for the attribution of spatiality between one's body and other similarly connected objects. Time likewise is understood in terms of one's occupation of it as a 'setting' in which both past and future, although belonging to being, are accessible only in the lived present of memory and agency [d]. The world, however, retains a unity independent of our changing knowledge of it and of our activity towards truth through appearance. Human beings are engaged in a dialogue with the world considered not only as a set of physical entities but also as containing other individuals or persons. And the 'other' is equally a 'body-subject'.It cannot be both a being-in-itself, belonging to the world of caused and determinate objects, and a consciousness, a being-for-itself which lacks an outside and parts. Both 'modes of being', he says, are presupposed in the concept of the body-subject — the living body as experienced. Body is "solidified or generalized existence", while existence is a "perpetual incarnation" [Pt I, 5]. We can see the other as human subject only when his subjectivity is embodied. To see him only as body leads to conflict as sometimes occurs in sexual relations. The gaze of another on my body causes me to experience shame. I am treated as an object and am depersonalized, become as a slave. Alternatively, through my own immodest display I may dominate the other, render him defenceless. Paradoxically, his desire for me and his consequent loss of freedom leads me no longer to value him. Sexuality, however, properly understood and utilized, is for Merleau-Ponty one more form of original intentionality. Moreover, it 'interfuses' with existence and is thereby 'ambiguous' [e] in that it is not possible to determine whether a decision or act is 'sexual' or 'non-sexual'.

Given Merleau-Ponty's account of embodied perception, it follows that for him a perceiver can be understood only as incarnated. What is discoverable through the cogito, he says, is neither psychological immanence, the inherence of phenomena in 'private states of consciousness', nor even a transcendental immanence where phenomena belong to a constituting consciousness. Rather what we find is a deep-seated momentum of transcendence which is the perceiver's very being — a simultaneous contact with his own being and that of the world [Pt III, 1]. Thus he in effect avoids both the view that the thinking self or ego is that in which thoughts, perceptions, and so on, inhere, and the view that the self is just the totality of sets or series of thoughts, perceptions. In perception the body-subject finds itself in and inseparable from its surroundings. Perception is 'lived'. There is no autonomous subject which can be separated from its objects. At the same time the subject is not a consciousness. We find ourselves, he says, in our performance or acts — that is the body-subject in its perceptual, sexual, linguistic engagement with the world. Thus, for Merleau-Ponty human beings do not exist in isolation from others [f]. (At the end of the book he quotes St Exupéry's observation, "Man is but a network of relationships, and these alone matter to him".) And to the extent that at the highest, most purposive conscious level man is free from causal determinism he is aware of the possibility of particular courses of action. But he goes on to argue that man is not free in a total or unlimited sense; he is constrained by the historical and cultural environment in which he has been born and nurtured [Pt III, 3] [g]. A theory of freedom must take account of what Merleau-Ponty calls a kind of 'sedimentation' of one's life. He means by this that we develop an attitude towards the world as we become moulded by repeated experiences of it which are in some sense favourable — meet our needs, interests. Choice is never absolute; it can not be exercised in a vacuum, out of nothing. But neither are we completely determined.

ONTOLOGY
[4[a]. Being made visible constitutes what Merleau-Ponty calls "the flesh [chair] of the world". Flesh is the element of Being which precedes and grounds the self and the other. It is the "anonymous visibility" — neither material nor spiritual, nor substantial. Rather it is "a sort of incarnate principle that brings a style of being wherever there is a fragment of being" [V&I]. Man, as himself grounded in Nature (he is not just a body-subject related to a specific historical-cultural situation), is a moment of instantiation of Being's self-revelation. Thus grounded man is perceptible. But as revealer of Being, able to render visible the 'perceptible structures' of the world, he is also the perceiver and contributes to its meaning. "One can say that we perceive the things themselves, that we are the world that thinks itself — or that the world is at the heart of our flesh" [ibid.]. Being as made visible is thus both that which "gives to us" and that which we give to it .

LANGUAGE
[5[a]. Thought is to the body's subjectivity as language is to its 'objective' corporality, the two dimensions constituting one reality. He also recognises that his concept of the body-subject is difficult to articulate in so far as our language has built into it a bias towards dualism. We must therefore struggle to create a new language in order to express this central concept . He later [CAL] draws on the structuralist view that the meaning and usage of language has to be grasped synchronically by reference to the relationship between signs and not diachronically by reference to the history of linguistic development; and he sees in this evidence or support for his own claim that the body-subject is involved in a lived relation with the world, because language here and now is, as it were, the living present in speech. Merleau-Ponty's emphasis is thus on parole, that is the 'signified' — meaning which is 'enacted', as opposed to 'langue' which refers to the total structure of 'signs' [c]— the meanings and words which parole, as a set of individual speech-acts (be they English, Chinese, or any other language), instantiates.

It is through language and its intersubjectivity that the intentionality of the body-subject makes sense of the world. And he makes it clear that language is to be understood in a wide sense as including all 'signs', employed not only in literature but also in art, science, indeed in the cultural dimension as a whole. Indeed the significance of a created work lies in this intersubjectivity — in the reader's or viewer's 're-creation' of it as well as in the work itself as originally created by the writer or artist. Moreover, in an era when science is increasingly alienating man from the real, language and the arts in particular are particularly suited to be the means for this revelation. Through the lived experience in which language is articulated — in our actions, art, literature, and so on (that is, in 'beings' as signifiers) — it opens up to the Being of all things [see The Visible and the Invisible]. Contemplated against the 'background of silence', language then comes to be seen as a 'witness to Being' [Signs] [d]. . . . ." (continues at the link)

Philosophical Connections: Merleau-Ponty

 

[Constance]

The following extract from the SEP article on MP might also clarify for you my inability to accept your characterization of the origin of consciousness in the noumenal. I'd recommend reading the whole SEP article, though, for an understanding of the coherence of MP's thought.

"2. The Third Dialectic
The human order opens what Merleau-Ponty calls a ‘third dialectic’. Tied neither to a fact, nor to a delineated type of situation, it institutes a domain of culture in which the object is in no immediate sense related to a biological function. This ‘third dialectic’ is characterized by “the Hegelian term ‘work’” (SB, 163). Following Kojève, Merleau-Ponty regards ‘work’ as instituting a delay between a biological stimulus and a response, thus opening a domain of culture. He argues that Language, as a domain of signification, radically transcends the domain of a singular fact. Then he shows that between these three structures there is no equality, inasmuch as the study of nature, inanimate or animate, is accomplished in language. It is at this point that he cites Hegel approvingly: “The mind of nature is a hidden mind. It is not produced in the form of mind. It is only mind for the mind that knows it.” Then Merleau-Ponty continues, “In reality, we have already introduced consciousness, and what we have designated under the name of life was already consciousness of life. The concept is only the interior of nature, says Hegel. And already it seemed to us that the notion of a living body could not be grasped without the unity of signification, which distinguishes a gesture from a sum of movements” (SB, 161–162). Between consciousness and nature there is not a relation of exteriority. At this period in Merleau-Ponty's thought, Husserl's notion of intentionalityhas not yet been integrated into his thinking. It could be said that the role Hegel played in The Structure of Behavior has, in his later work, been displaced by Husserl. Nonetheless, the quote from Hegel's Philosophy of Nature cannot but strike the reader of The Visible and the Invisible where Merleau-Ponty speaks of the Invisible as the Invisible of the Visible, as its lining.

In both the Phenomenology of Perception and The Visible and the Invisible, he elaborates a conception of the relationship between the body and the soul that both retains and transforms the conception presented in The Structure of Behavior. Against Descartes, he claims that this relation is not a relationship between two substances which would in some way connect with one another. On the contray, the three structures are integrated, one into the other, in such a way that it reminds the reader of Hegel's notion of sublation (Aufhebung) whereby the lower is both cancelled, as independent, and also retained. When this synthesis is accomplished, the autonomy of the lower is annulled; however, the synthesis can become undone, in which case the autonomy of the lower structure re-emerges. When this synthesis is effected, the lower structure does not exist as such. “The appearance of reason and mind does not leave intact a sphere of self-enclosed instincts” (SB, 181). Merleau-Ponty insists that when speaking of the physical, the vital and the human structures, one should not conceive of them as acting on one another in a causal manner. “Each of them has to be conceived as a retaking and ‘new’ structuralization of the preceding one” (SB, 184). Insofar as the ‘third dialectic’ has fully integrated the physical and the vital structures so that they no longer act as autonomous systems, one could say that “body and soul are no longer distinguished” (SB, 203). Nonetheless, when they disintegrate then they are experienced as distinct. Merleau-Ponty writes, “This is the truth of dualism” (SB, 209).

As we have seen, the Gestalt does not exist as a thing in nature, rather it is viewed as an object of ‘knowledge’ for a subject. Thus we see that Merleau-Ponty comes to the threshold of transcendental philosophy, however, it is his ‘interrogation of the subject’ which blocks his entry into critical philosophy proper. He views this subject as neither the substantialsubject of Descartes, nor the Kantian “I think” that can accompany any possible experience, rather it is a subject which has itself been constituted by a dialectic of physical and vital structures. He tells us that we must relativize the notion of body and soul, since each moment of the dialectic is “…soul with respect to the preceding one, and body with respect to the following one” (SB, 210). The subject for whom nature appears is itself the result of a dialectic which is, in the sense indicated above, a part of nature. Thus, to the question that forms the title of the last chapter of The Structure of Behavior, “Is there not a truth to naturalism?”, the answer is “Yes.” Merleau-Ponty's reflections on the being of the Gestalt led him to Hegel who claims that “Nature is the exterior of the concept” (SB, 210), but for Hegel, when the concept becomes conscious of itself, it comes to see that it has no exterior. On the contrary, for Merleau-Ponty the Gestalt must be conceived of as a unity of both nature and idea. This unity is intractable. There is in experience an “original text which cannot be extracted from its relationship to nature. The signification is embodied” (SB, 211). Thus we see that the consciousness for which the Gestalt exists is not an intellectual consciousness, rather it is a perceptual consciousness. According to critical philosophy, nature becomes a system of representations which exists for a consciousness whose activity is the condition of its possibility as appearance. Its unity is engendered by the synthesis which the subject effects of itself by its apperception and which it articulates in the “Table of Judgments.”

The movement from The Structure of Behavior to the Phenomenology of Perception is one in which critical philosophy, at whose threshold Merleau-Ponty hesitated in the last pages of the former book, becomes an object for critical reflection. As we have already noted, the philosophy of Husserl does not loom large in The Structure of Behavior. We note that The Structure of Behavior was published in 1941, and that beginning in 1939 Merleau-Ponty visited the Husserl Archives a number of times. Between then and 1945, the year in which the Phenomenology of Perception was published, the work of Husserl comes to exert a strong influence on his thinking; but in no sense can we argue that Merleau-Ponty uncritically absorbed Husserl's position. Although he often returns to the thought of Husserl and, towards the end of his life, writes a particularly brilliant article on him, “The Philosopher and his Shadow,” for our purposes here, the Preface to the Phenomenology of Perceptioncan serve as the place where Merleau-Ponty elaborates upon his encounter with the thought of Husserl. It begins with the question, “What is phenomenology?” (PP, vii) Then he evokes a series of antimonies which he refers to as contradictions in Husserl's thought. Phenomenology is both a knowledge of essences and also a philosophy which puts essences back into existence, insisting that man and the world can be understood only on the basis of facticity; it has both a static and a genetic moment. All these different tensions will be resolved in Merleau-Ponty's thought, but for the most part not in the direction that Husserl, at least as he is conventionally interpreted, would have approved.

3. Critique Of Transcendental Philosophy
The Phenomenology of Perception repeats and deepens Merleau-Ponty's critique of objective thought. As in The Structure of Behavior, this is not accomplished from an exterior epistemological perspective, rather he follows through the implicit critique of objectivism that was implied in the researches of empirical psychology and biology. In this brief introduction to Merleau-Ponty's philosophy, I will not pursue this thread of his thought further, but I must insist that he continues, to the time of his death, to remain in touch with the empirical sciences, particularly psychology but not absolutely excluding biology and physics. Nonetheless, there was on his part no attempt to found, or to prove, his philosophy on the basis of science, a project which for a phenomenological philosopher would be absurd. He writes, “The whole universe of science is built upon the world as directly experienced, and if we want to subject science itself to a rigorous scrutiny, and arrive at a precise assessment of its meaning and scope, we must begin by reawakening the basic experience of the world, of which science is the second-order expression” (PP, viii). Unlike Heidegger, he does not have a dismissive attitude towards science, namely, that it “does not think” or that it is merely calculation. On the contrary, in Merleau-Ponty's thought there is a constant dialogue with the sciences in the hope of a mutual clarification. ...."

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

 

[Randall]

... The Phenomenology of Perception repeats and deepens Merleau-Ponty's critique of objective thought ... He writes, v, and if we want to subject science itself to a rigorous scrutiny, and arrive at a precise assessment of its meaning and scope, we must begin by reawakening the basic experience of the world, of which science is the second-order expression ...

Claiming that "The whole universe of science" is one thing or another is a rather sweeping statement. Therefore it can probably be either disproven or rendered meaningless other than as an expression of MP's personal attitude, which will have more meaning for some people than others. In this case, there are plenty of examples where science involves experiments that cannot be directly experienced.

A simple and often misunderstood example is wave-particle duality and the double slit experiment. Certain purveyors of quantum woo try to prop up their belief that the experiment demonstrates that consciousness changes the outcome of the experiment, when in actual fact consciousness has nothing to do with it. The photons are not being directly experienced, and are often fired from inside a sealed chamber where they cannot be observed even we had the capacity to physically detect single photons.

There are many more examples in which the primary means of detection in scientific experiments is not a "direct experience" if for no other reason than because it would be impossible to do so. One might counter that the results still must be "directly experienced" in order to study them. However that argument renders the point meaningless because virtually all our "experiences" are "directly experienced", including our reflections on MP's philosophy. Therefore in the context of MP's claim, singling out science serves no useful purpose other than to convey his personal attitude about science.

MP's claim also implies that science is no more or less objective than our direct experience, which is not supportable. A simple machine detector may be prone to malfunctions and anomalous readings, but it is not prone to the biases humans impart on their "direct experience". So let's forget the idea that, “The whole universe of science is built upon the world as directly experienced." It's not, and even when direct experience forms part of the process, the aim is to factor bias into the experiment as accurately as possible so as to differentiate the objective results from personal bias.

All that being said, I am still a huge advocate for the validity of firsthand experience, and regardless of whatever some skeptic might try to claim, there is no question that it forms a significant part of the scientific method. When it comes to the paranormal, it seems more like the problems are in how such experiences are interpreted rather than whether or not some people are actually having such experiences.

 

[smcder]

The attached is how I visualize this thesis.

@smcder You've offered panenpsychism for consideration; the idea that POV is fundamental. I dont think you endorse monism though; you seem to prefer a dualist approach to mind-body. In any case, what are the empirical and/or philosophical problems with the attached?

I don't offer anything ... everything is on loan!
I do like the idea of POV being fundamental - it's the same kind of cheat Jaworskian high-low morphism offers in terms of structure being ontologically basic, my cheat means we get panpsychism without the combination problem.

I dont think you endorse monism though;
I would if the monist's offered me an edorsement - I would tatoo something on my left hemisphere.

you seem to prefer a dualist approach to mind-body.
Why does it seem I prefer a dualist approach to mind-body? And what other approach could someone take to what you are putting as "mind-body"? For a monist there wouldn't be a mind-body problem:

1. mind
2. body
3. m'body

I'll have a look at the attached from the following (fundamental) POVs:

1. empirical
2. philosophical
3. emposophical
4. philopirical

 

[Soupie]

@Constance You are obviously very influenced by MP, and I only causually understand his work.

My understanding is that he established among other things that (1) not all consciousness is intentional (representational), (2) that experience/perception is primal in human meaning-making, (3) consciousness is incarnate; that is, the phenomenology of human experience is corporeal, and (4) the body, mind, and world are fully enmeshed.

These are all powerful ideas that changed phenomenological thinking and have even informed cognitive science.

However, these ideas do not resolve the mbp, nor do they offer an explanation of how consciousness (ie feeling/experience) might emerge from non-conscious processes.

Indeed, it seems that MP was a naturalistic monist. Judging by your approach as an emergentist and the emergentist position of neurophenomenology, am I to suppose that this was MP's position or would have been?

I wonder if mp would have argued that non-conscious stuff was primal and consciousness derivative?

Either way, a model of consciousness as emergent from non-conscious processes has not been established. Its clear that you have an affinity for such a model, but such a model is not available.

I dont see anything in mp's thought that would preclude you from considering that consciousness is primal and what we perceive to be matter is derivative.

Hoffman's model does not contradict MP; Hoffmans model says that consciousness is embodied, but it says the body is noumenal, and when we—the perceiver—perceive the body, we perceive the body, as with all things, as a phenomenon, not as noumenon, the thing-in-itself. We can be the thing-in-itself, we just cannot see the thing-in-itself.

 

[smcder]

@smcder You've offered panenpsychism for consideration; the idea that POV is fundamental. I dont think you endorse monism though; you seem to prefer a dualist approach to mind-body. In any case, what are the empirical and/or philosophical problems with the attached?[/QUOTE]

Ontic Antics​

What do you mean when you say the boundary is not ontological? Which boundary - the circle? It would appear to be ontic ... ?

 

[Soupie]

What do you mean when you say the boundary is not ontological? Which boundary - the circle? It would appear to be ontic ... ?

Yes, Im not sure.

I mean the boundary is not ontological in the sense that structurally differentiated "pockets" of what-is are not truly distinct from the rest of what-is. (I would be open to using different terms than what-is and noumenal but I dont know if that would be more or less confusing.)

So, there is a "boundary" in so far as one might say that part of what-is is structurally different than another part, but these boundaries are arbitrary and scale dependent.

On the other hand, Im suggesting that individual minds correspond to these structurally differentiated pockets of what-is.

And I wanted to circle back to your suggestion that panenpsychism is a cheat for the combination problem. It might be, but then are you faces with the "differentiation" or "individuation" problem? If you start with one pov; how is it that it differentiates into multiple povs? For instance, the two povs of two people?

And the phenomenon of split brain patients as a potential empirical example of this is interesting here, no?

 

[smcder]

Yes, Im not sure.

I mean the boundary is not ontological in the sense that structurally differentiated "pockets" of what-is are not truly distinct from the rest of what-is. (I would open to using different terms than what-is and noumenal but I dont know if that would be more or less confusing.)

So, there is a "boundary" in so far as one might say that part of what-is is structurally different than another part, but these boundaries are arbitrary and scale dependent.

On the other hand, Im suggesting that individual minds correspond to these structurally differentiated pockets of what-is.

And I wanted to circle back to your suggestion that panenpsychism is a cheat for the combination problem. It might be, but then are you faces with the "differentiation" or "individuation" problem? If you start with one pov; how is it that it differentiates in to multiple povs? For instance, the two povs of two people?

And the phenomenon of split brain patients as a potential emperical example of these is interesting here, no?

The diagram to me suggests that individual consciousness is stamped out of a background consciousness ... ?

The POV being basic means that biology can adapt to it the way it adapts to other things - gravity or temperature, oxygen - energy requirements - another way is to think of it as a gradient that an organism can move toward - the brain then is formed/shaped according to physical constraints and this fundamental POV effect - the intersection of fundamental POV and the physical particularities of a brain result in an individual - I take this as something like what you are saying and also very much along the lines of some Buddhist thought, as I understand it.

 

[smcder]

Of course I don't get Nagel or anything else. You know I just blather on in a semi-conscious dream-state without actually putting any thought in or comprehending anything. Some days I'm lucky if my Thalamocortical loop kicks in at all ... LOL. How are you doing anyway?

"How are you doing anyway?"

As an objective measure, yesterday I licked my weight (85 kg) in alligators.

 

[smcder]

This thread is always so dynamically over my head. And yet I never have the good sense to just read and learn.

What we seem to see in observing brains at work in modeling and interacting with other "stuff", is a self-awareness emergent from protocols inherent in such stuff: the matter/energy of the universe embodied in the brain. What we miss, I think, in this model is twofold and probably more. What, other than neurophysiological filtering, distinguishes any one consciousness and the stuff from which it is supposedly emergent as individuated from a larger and more universal process ? I would say nothing. The brain's filters may thus themselves be illusion generators. Secondly, the relationship between consciousness and the matter/energy processes it models is as recursively interactive as linearly emergent. The mind is more than an isolated and independent algorithm. It is derived from and dependent on real time interaction with what would seem to be a larger order. That the universe itself is conscious and individuation an illusory subset of such, is hardly a new idea. But it seems (to me at least) to be almost inescapable. Individuated self-awareness is an inherent property arising under special circumstances of the universe, and just happens to be where we live.


And sends us back to the chicken or egg question of which is more fundamental: matter or consciousness? The question may in fact be a member of the "null" set. Incorporated within it are human notions of flow of time, cause and effect, and other things which may be a peculiar artifact of the human organism. Might we replace them both with some wider concept of "information"? (Don't ask me what.) A century of splitting matter into ever smaller particles which show themselves to be ghostly apparitions entangled with our own thoughts and behaviors, suggests a kind of a-causality with which the human brain is ill prepared to deal.

I throw out (hopefully) a thought teaser in the form of a question regarding the identity of a single electron. The musing was prompted by the fascinating work of Clifford Pickover. I emailed it to him with a smug but guarded hope that I might actually have been the first to propose it:

What differentiates any one fundamental particle--in this case an electron--from any other in the universe except information defining the speed and location of each? After all, a fundamental particle is a fundamental particle...etc. One cannot by definition be different from another. Might the notion that there is more than one in the universe therefore be a trick of human perception ?

Mr. Pickover very kindly responded to my email with a few observations and a link to articles on the web describing John Wheeler's "One-Electron Universe" theory brought to light in a telephone call to Richard Feynman in 1940. Darn! And I bet these guys were even able to to the math ! One-electron universe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If there is a point here, it is that this may (or may not) be evidence that information is in some sense as fundamental as matter and energy.

Pickover is an interesting guy - are you familiar with his question:

If an alien comes to you and asks:

"What is the most important question we can ask humanity and what is the best possible answer you can give?"

 

[smcder]

Of course I don't get Nagel or anything else. You know I just blather on in a semi-conscious dream-state without actually putting any thought in or comprehending anything. Some days I'm lucky if my Thalamocortical loop kicks in at all ... LOL. How are you doing anyway?

The first few pages of the Hoffman paper would be a good overview for you.