Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 7

[Constance]

Going deeper into anthropologically and archaeologically informed research. {we might call it 'getting our feet on and into the ground wherein we can comprehend the bootstrapping of consciousness in and by protoconscious activities of our evolutionary predecessors}

 

[Constance]

I need to add a clarification to my response below to the comment you {@Soupie} made here:

You also wrote: "The features of the physical world are in actuality features of our perceptual system. Consciousness doesn't supervene on the features of our perceptual system, it supervenes on processes that occur on a level below the features of the perceptual system."

Let us know when Hoffman or someone else can actually prove that. In the meantime that hypothesis remains, as one critic of Hoffman wrote, merely "a framework for a hypothesis." The framework is an as-yet 'wild surmise' that everything evolved and developed in the physical world as we know it (not just on earth but increasingly far afield in the universe) can be accounted for by quantum mechanics, which remains a phenomenon not yet fully understood.

Your last sentence above opens the way to a potential meeting of our (your and my) minds in moving beyond the foregoing discussion of Hoffman's 'framework for a hypothesis'. So far it seems to me that Hoffman's model [and/or your interpretation of it] have tended to dismiss/erase the roles of physical evolution and developing affective experience in living beings along the road of evolution to our own experiential and expressive capacities, as Damasio recognizes those evolutionary developments in the lecture I linked above [and in the progress of his thinking as presented in his published books]. Damasio also claims in that lecture that awareness and affectivity as the bodily roots of consciousness in species of life goes even to the level of living cells, and seems potentially similar to what you suggest in the last sentence of your comment above:

"Consciousness doesn't supervene on the features of our perceptual system, it supervenes on processes that occur on a level below the features of the perceptual system."

Your own concept of those 'processes that occur . . . below the features of perception' seems to remain centered in the mechanics discernible in the quantum substrate. I can agree that interactive q processes do appear to influence the interactive orientation of the evolution and development of physical forces, systems, and attained structure constituting the physical universe as currently understood in physics and astrophysics. As I remember writing in one of the earlier 'parts' of this thread, quantum interaction might also play a germinal role at the level of life in instantiating the core autopoietic structure of interaction between living organisms and their physical environments, from which consciousness can be understood to evolve in 'lived experience' begun in primordial forms of awareness and affectivity. My objection to Hoffman's hypothesized 'interface' is that it leaves out any recognition of the actual and actualized experiences of evolving species' in their lived interface with the physical world in which they exist. In short, studying the evolution of these 'lived interfaces' enables us to comprehend consciousness as evolved out of the enabling provisions and affordances of nature itself. By contrast, the 'interface' proposed by Hoffman appears to originate in metaphysical speculations that somehow 'consciousness' pre-exists and constitutes a physical world that is not actual but instead an illusion generated in 'perception'.

 

[smcder]

Do watch/listen to this 20-minute lecture by Antonio Damasio. Note: the poor quality of the audio is corrected about a third of the way into the video.

"Evolutionary Origins of Art and Aesthetics: Art and Emotions"


CARTA: Evolutionary Origins of Art and Aesthetics: Art and Emotions - Antonio Damasio

Done

 

[smcder]

On epigenetics: we need both Darwin’s and Lamarck’s theories | Aeon Essays

 

[Constance]

Steve [@smcder] or @Soupie, to your knowledge has Chalmers progressed in his thinking about consciousness and substrate dependence beyond the paper Steve linked recently:

Sentient Developments: David Chalmers: Consciousness is not substrate dependent

 

[smcder]

Steve [@smcder] or @Soupie, to your knowledge has Chalmers progressed in his thinking beyond the paper Steve linked recently:

Sentient Developments: David Chalmers: Consciousness is not substrate dependent

I'm not sure. Chalmers is In think heading in behind Searle and Nagel to become the grand old man of PoM. I've mostly seen him as MC/host/referee in videos of panels and I think he's writing is on "scrutability" and meta-philosophical issues/the state of philosophy.

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[smcder]

https://g.co/kgs/ClvQaK

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[smcder]

"Constructing the World"

Reviews

David Chalmers develops a picture of reality on which all truths can be derived from a limited class of basic truths. The picture is inspired by Rudolf Carnap's construction of the world in Der Logische Aufbau Der Welt. Carnap's Aufbau is often seen as a noble failure, but Chalmers argues that a version of the project can succeed. With the right basic elements and the right derivation relation, we can indeed construct the world. The focal point of Chalmers' project is scrutability: the thesis that ideal reasoning from a limited class of basic truths yields all truths about the world. Chalmers first argues for the scrutability thesis and then considers how small the base can be. The result is a framework in "metaphysical epistemology": epistemology in service of a global picture of the world. The scrutability framework has ramifications throughout philosophy. Using it, Chalmers defends a broadly Fregean approach to meaning, argues for an internalist approach to the contents of thought, and rebuts W.V. Quine's arguments against the analytic and the a priori. He also uses scrutability to analyze the unity of science, to defend a sort of conceptual metaphysics, and to mount a structuralist response to skepticism. Based on Chalmers's 2010 John Locke lectures, Constructing the World opens up debate on central philosophical issues concerning knowledge, language, mind, and reality."



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[smcder]

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[Constance]

On epigenetics: we need both Darwin’s and Lamarck’s theories | Aeon Essays

Extract: "Since environmental epigenetics can promote both trait variation and mutations, it accelerates the engine of evolution in a way that Darwinian mechanisms alone cannot."

The question that arises for me is the possible, potential, ways in which epigenetic changes might have improved or enhanced the adapatation of organisms for survival in stressed environmental circumstances, such as on Mars. For the material signs of past civilizations and even continuing life on Mars have increasingly impressed citizen researchers and analysts studying JPL's rover images for a half-dozen years now, and I myself, after a year of following their analyses, now anticipate that we will learn at some future point that life, including intelligent life, persists there. Among the most fascinating questions raised at that point will be how such survival has been achieved biologically and practically.

 

[Constance]

Thanks to Steve for linking us to the NDPR review of Chalmers's latest book, Constructing the World. The table of contents, introduction, first chapter, and additional sections ['excursuses'] to appear in the next edition are available online at the link below, along with some suggestions for various kinds of readers on 'how to read the book'. The introduction refers to another book in progress, entitled The Multiplicity of Meaning, and a third book to follow.

Constructing the World

 

[Randall]

Extract: "Since environmental epigenetics can promote both trait variation and mutations, it accelerates the engine of evolution in a way that Darwinian mechanisms alone cannot." The question that arises for me is the possible, potential, ways in which epigenetic changes might improve or enhance the adapatation of organisms for survival in stressed environmental circumstances, such as on Mars?

This might be relevant: Radiation-induced epigenetic DNA methylation modification of radiation-response pathways. - PubMed - NCBI

 

[victimized]

The only reason that occult scientists want consciousness to be outside of their ownership as a human life is to reason the resource of it. A scientist only resources/invents by the applied human mind decision that their own person is safe to apply the science. Therefore the modern day occult scientist wants consciousness to exist beyond their own person so that they can reason a new attack upon the natural human life and Nature and think themselves safe in the inconsiderate excuse they have to resource energy.

Not one occult scientist can argue this review, for all of your advice and status has stated that you are aware that unnatural resourcing of Earth's nuclear will one day run out of its product, so you began to research what you believed the Creator concept was.......after you changed the Creator concept.

Your occult documents, being the basis of scientific reasoning stated that the Creator was God and the concepts of Satan relative to alchemical reasoning as relative to conversions. You believed that Christ was the consciousness of human life. This review was the consideration of the holiness of water as the main human descriptive percent review of their cellular self.

Your modern day research states that it is researching the aspect of consciousness as if consciousness as a human life exists in matter, only because you want to apply the reasoning that matter is consciousness........this reasoning came about from personal questioning, as to how a human mind could understand atomic and nuclear concepts....as if we personally owned atomic structures in our cellular bodies or DNA as a form of communication. You therefore want human consciousness to exist in matter, when human life as a concept does not even exist in these types of matter.

Yet you also know that atomic structures relate to nuclear products and converting of those products for resourcing. We know that you want to believe that our human spirit was created by the concept of God and Christ in the Earth's atmosphere only because you now want to resource the UFO effect you have seen in the atmospheric body. You therefore now want our spirit to be the alien presence as the beginning spirit state/advice and have been studying our natural consciousness in a mind contact program.

Yet mind contact is phenomena causation and is an evil practice....the human ability to coerce another's choice and to alter the will of the life. This is an artificial state for each human life owns their own person, personal body presence as an equal to the life/mind they consider to attack.

The reasoning of the human mind enabled scientific awareness only due to the fact of the photon. We are interacted in life with the photon as is all other matter.

Due to this condition the photon allowed the image/recording and stages of matter change to be advised to the human mind......not the atom and not the nuclear.

The alien attack upon our natural mind/brain state was artificially caused by altering the natural resource of dust, which the ancients advised was holy, as a life support on Earth. When you altered the nuclear dust, our consciousness was also altered into an unnatural awareness by increased photon feed back or fall out conditions caused by the burning UFO nuclear gas conversions.

The truth that the human mind has always been aware of is the fact that the light that created all matter is the same light that once supported the androgynous spirit......the reason for creation of our human spirit as an eventual manifestation......this status is origin light. Origin light lost a light sound of its mass, it became space and the sound became O all formed bodies. These light orbs burst when the surrounding light mass no longer supported them as light bodies. The light then burnt. This light state therefore became the reason for human awareness, for it communicated it burnt recordings and images as information existing as information.

This is why we know what we know as consciousness....for the human organic life first manifested as an androgynous light spirit.....innocent of all information/awareness. The life of the human consciousness was taught information via the condition of the photon interaction after it investigated information. This condition is real and true to our life mind for some of us are in total unawareness of any form of scientific identification or information status.

Therefore the condition of the photon being burnt light, is the light that once existed in total body of light mass with large androgynous spiritual beings. Light the status for communication by recording of sound and also image is how information was communicated from burnt light to the organic self.

The androgynous state is the higher state still existing in origin light that communicated the human awareness of its own spiritual journey and spiritual purpose, as the Creator concept....by mistake, not by knowing. The scientific state was a state that was personally sought, and it was sought by ancient human males for self status.

To argue this status is to review the life circumstance. Wisdom is sought, it was not given. Life by personal reasoning is an unholy act for we are born by a sexual act that causes us to suffer inherited illness and also mutative conditions. We are born to die. We already reasoned this conscious awareness about the human sexual conception being an act of evil for our origin parents who manifested, died and were saved from their manifestation. Due to their sexual act they procreated the life continuance for human suffering. If you were a human victim then you would agree.

This is the only reason why the human aware state argues about the condition of a spiritual Creator, for since when is human suffering considered to be an action of a loving, caring being? It is done unknowingly.

Therefore when a human life is caused to suffer it then reasons the conditions of its suffering, which is why our conscious aware status was enabled to reason its own evil choices........the incorrect status that it has given itself as a male. That it can create. The human male has never created, he has always converted the natural states of fusion and then destroyed our life with the cause and effects of the conversions. The results of his choices to convert are never known until they materialize in their unnatural statuses, as the origin state our consciousness owns......its mistake and ability to be unaware of its choice until it is too late.

Therefore as a conscious aware status we are supposed to have learnt from our past mistakes, and obviously our occultist scientist brother never learns.

 

[smcder]

Valentino Braitenberg's "Vehicles: experiments in synthetic psychology"

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[smcder]

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[smcder]

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[Soupie]

Soupie wrote: "So if consciousness doesn't supervene at the neural level—and it may not—why does it spend all its time hanging out there?"

What persuades you that it does? Or who so persuades you?

I am persuaded by neuroscience. Namely, the brain-based theory of perception.

Note: In saying that perception is brain-based, one can still hold that consciousness is not brain-based. And indeed, that may be the case.

But why do I believe that consciousness may not be brain-based, but that the perceptual, affectual, and conceptual correlates of the contents of consciousness are located, quite literally, in brain physiology?

Most neuroscientists believe that consciousness supervenes at the neural network level. The reason for this is likely due to the fact that, as I say above, the contents of consciousness—subjective emotions, perceptions, and cognitions—appear to correlate very, very strongly with physiological processes of the brain, specifically neural processes.

What I'm wondering is the following: Okay, lets say the contents of consciousness have their physiological origin in the neural processes of the brain, but consciousness itself originates at a deeper physiological or even non-physiological level.

Why do the contents of consciousness correlate to physiological processes of the brain?

Soupie also writes: "Why are we conscious of information in (physiological states of) the brain?"

We're not 'conscious of "information in our brain states"; we, like other animals, are conscious of the environing worldly mileau that we experience directly, including other beings and things within it whose existence and behavior we become better at interpreting and reacting to productively as we learn how to navigate, survive, and thrive in our given mileau.

And here we may, as I've noted before, simply need to agree to disagree.

As I say, I subscribe to the brain-based theory of perception. I've linked to several articles over the months (years now?) that support this position.

Here is the theory in a nutshell:

The brain is a black box located securely within our skull. The brain does not interact directly with the environment. Rather, the sensory organs of organisms are attuned via evolution to various energies within their environment. These organs send information (via physiological processes) about the environmental energies to the brain. This information about the environment is filtered, predicted, modulated, attenuated, integrated, and organized in the brain.

The contents of our consciousness are correlated not with the environmental energies (as those energies never directly interact with the brain) but rather with physiological states of the brain.

Let's use the example of the sound of an explosion:

A bomb goes off. A wave moves through millions of air molecules. Seconds later these air waves reach our ears. Little hairs in our ears vibrate. These vibrations are transduced into electrochemical signals. These electrochemical signals are transduced into neural firingings.

What we are conscious of is, technically, not the bomb that went off two minutes ago. We are conscious of the physiological processes that are taking place in our brain because of the explosion.

Soupie also wrote:

". . . perception is the process of the brain (or its equivalent in objective r) creating the most adaptive approximation of what's out there. This adaptive approximation will not capture all features of what's-out-there."

How can the neurons capture any features of what's out there since neurons, the physical brain itself, is never in contact with any of them?

Again, this is what our best science is telling us about perception (note: not necessarily consciousness).

it goes something like this:

State X of the environment leads to change X1 in our sensory organs which lead to state X2 in the neural networks of the brain.

Why also now know that the brain is actively making predictions about the flow of incoming information. Some preliminary work has shown that conscious perception correlates to these predictions in some cases, rather than the incoming information.

Why neural networks? This seems to be the location within the organism where all incoming information about the environment is predicted, integrated, and organized. Etc.

Soupie also wrote:

"we know that what's-out-there is unlike our experience/perception of what's-out-there."

How unlike can it be, though, since most animals coexisting with us are aware of the same physical structures [those produced by nature and those constructed by humans and by some other animals] and the same dynamic changes that take place in the weather systems in our shared environments [including electrical storms, hurricanes, earthquakes etc.] We know too that many animals possess more acute senses than we do about many impending dramatic changes, such as tsunamis. Animals also react to close approaches of ufos in ways similar to our reactions -- fear, confusion, backing away from the scene in most cases [and in some cases so shocked by the event that they won't leave the house they live in for days].

I think our perception of environmental energies and environmental energies are very unlike one another.

By all accounts, point particles are devoid of sound, smell, taste, feel, color, etc. Our perceptions of environmental energies on the other hand are not devoid of such things, but rather consist of such things.

Soupie also wrote: "Colors, sounds, smells, tastes, feels, etc. are properties of the perceptual system, not properties of what's-out-there.."

No indeed. These phenomenal experiences are combined 'properties' of both the environing physical world and the natural affordances of our and other living species' sensorial access to it. They are the hallmarks of the phenomenological recognition that our experience in the world is a confluence and integration of subjective and objective poles of 'reality' as we experience it. Theorists [and hypothesis generators such as Hoffman], following the ideas nurtured in cognitive neuroscience and computational information theory, reduce and ultimately attempt to erase lived experience, attempt to define it out of existence. People who don't attend to what they are experiencing, and who do not reflect on the nature of their own experienced consciousness and its multiple facets and levels, are vulnerable to taking neuro/techno/'informational' models of consciousness seriously.

Again, I think we will have to agree to disagree. And I don't think we need to bring Hoffman's Interface Theory into the mix. The brain-based theory of perception suffices here.

As noted, colors, smells, sounds, etc. are not properties of environmentsl energies. These properties are not intrinsic to photons nor molecules existing "out there." Rather they are properties of our perceptual systems.

The extent to which a human and a cat have the same perceptual experience when interacting with the environment would seem to be contingent on the similarity and differences between their perceptual systems, not the state of the environment.

You also wrote: "What neuroscientists have been increasingly discovering is that the contents of consciousness correlate with neurological processes."

I think, rather, that what they've long been engaged in is seeking evidence to support the presupposition that consciousness and mind can be reduced to brain activity, i.e., that in their discipline correlation amounts to causation. It's overreaching, and they should have known better. Meanwhile they have largely ignored the exploration, in biology and affective neuroscience, of correlations in protoconsciousness and consciousness as moving from bodily awareness and affectivity in primordial organism to the psychological tendencies in evolving species to react emotionally [at the level of feeling] to perceived events and situations, from threats by other animals to desires to exercise their individual aptitudes in obtaining what they need from a commonly shared environment [supportive niches, expanded territory, competition for mates, desires of various kinds]. The comprehension of what consciousness is absolutely requires the study and investigation of the evolution of consciousness in living species.

Again, note that while perception may be brain-based—and there's very good reason to believe it is—consciousness may not be. There's reason to believe it's not.

But if it's not, why does it seem to be anchored there. At least most of the time...

 

[smcder]

I am persuaded by neuroscience. Namely, the brain-based theory of perception.

Note: In saying that perception is brain-based, one can still hold that consciousness is not brain-based. And indeed, that may be the case.

But why do I believe that consciousness may not be brain-based, but that the perceptual, affectual, and conceptual correlates of the contents of consciousness are located, quite literally, in brain physiology?

Most neuroscientists believe that consciousness supervenes at the neural network level. The reason for this is likely due to the fact that, as I say above, the contents of consciousness—subjective emotions, perceptions, and cognitions—appear to correlate very, very strongly with physiological processes of the brain, specifically neural processes.

What I'm wondering is the following: Okay, lets say the contents of consciousness have their physiological origin in the neural processes of the brain, but consciousness itself originates at a deeper physiological or even non-physiological level.

Why do the contents of consciousness correlate to physiological processes of the brain?


And here we may, as I've noted before, simply need to agree to disagree.

As I say, I subscribe to the brain-based theory of perception. I've linked to several articles over the months (years now?) that support this position.

Here is the theory in a nutshell:

The brain is a black box located securely within our skull. The brain does not interact directly with the environment. Rather, the sensory organs of organisms are attuned via evolution to various energies within their environment. These organs send information (via physiological processes) about the environmental energies to the brain. This information about the environment is filtered, predicted, modulated, attenuated, integrated, and organized in the brain.

The contents of our consciousness are correlated not with the environmental energies (as those energies never directly interact with the brain) but rather with physiological states of the brain.

Let's use the example of the sound of an explosion:

A bomb goes off. A wave moves through millions of air molecules. Seconds later these air waves reach our ears. Little hairs in our ears vibrate. These vibrations are transduced into electrochemical signals. These electrochemical signals are transduced into neural firingings.

What we are conscious of is, technically, not the bomb that went off two minutes ago. We are conscious of the physiological processes that are taking place in our brain because of the explosion.


Again, this is what our best science is telling us about perception (note: not necessarily consciousness).

Just exactly how neural networks capture features of whats out there isnt know, but the theory is pretty simple:

State X of the environment leads to state X1 in the neural networks of the brain.

Why neural networks? This seems to be the location within the organism where all incoming information about the environment is predicted, integrated, and organized. Etc.


I think our perception of environmental energies and environmental energies are very unlike one another.

By all accounts, point particles are devoid of sound, smell, taste, feel, color, etc. Our perceptions of environmental energies on the other hand are not devoid of such things, but rather consist of such things.


Again, I think we will have to agree to disagree. And I don't think we need to bring Hoffman's Interface Theory into the mix. The brain-based theory of perception suffices here.

As noted, colors, smells, sounds, etc. are not properties of environmentsl energies. These properties are not intrinsic to photons nor molecules existing "out there." Rather they are properties of our perceptual systems.

The extent to which a human and a cat have the same perceptual experience when interacting with the environment would seem to be contingent on the similarity and differences between their perceptual systems, not the state of the environment.


Again, note that while perception may be brain-based—and there's very good reason to believe it is—consciousness may not be. There's reason to believe it's not.

But if it's not, why does it seem to be anchored there. At least most of the time...

What would a brain that interacted directly with the world look like?

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[Soupie]

What would a brain that interacted directly with the world look like?

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[smcder]

So you get my point?

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