Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 9

[Constance]

Here is an excellent paper by Zahavi for us to read and discuss at this point:

http://cogprints.org/9173/1/A3 Theories of Consciousness as Reflexivity.pdf

 

[Constance]

What do you mean by "made to feel guilt"? Are you differentiating that from them simply feeling guilt as a result of their own actions and expressing it in outward behavior when confronted with the evidence of something they've done wrong?

I meant that while the man in the video thought he was informing his dogs that they should feel 'guilt', all he succeeded in doing was to make them anxious and unhappy. I think that guilt is a state of mind unlikely to be experienced by animals, who in the wild act on their natural inclinations and needs and in domesticated situations are influenced, even pressured, to adjust their instinctive behavior in order to achieve approval from their people. But I might be wrong about this and maybe we should all discuss the possibilities based on our own experiences with the types and range of feelings expressed by animals who live with us.

 

[smcder]

I meant that while the man in the video thought he was informing his dogs that they should feel 'guilt', all he succeeded in doing was to make them anxious and unhappy. I think that guilt is a state of mind unlikely to be experienced by animals, who in the wild act on their natural inclinations and needs and in domesticated situations are influenced, even pressured, to adjust their instinctive behavior in order to achieve approval from their people. But I might be wrong about this and maybe we should all discuss the possibilities based on our own experiences with the types and range of feelings expressed by animals who live with us.

I think it will be always controversial - the mental life of animals, the book on animal intelligence by De Waal that I believe you recommended @Constance (a while back) - I thought made a good point about comparing intelligence among species by considering the environment and the animal's adaptations, etc while still recognizing animal intelligence and complex emotions. I listened to a talk a while back that made a different point - suggesting that the gap between ape and Einstein wasn't maybe so great and that a human alone in the wilds might not look that much different than a chimpanzee, that our language enable social intelligence - that these were multipliers of intelligence, the way a lever is a force multiplier.

I have seven dogs, the most recent addition was rescued with quite a bit of trauma - as a result he has very little vision and it's been really interesting watching him go from refusing to move from one spot, to actually running outside with quite a bit of confidence, in only a few weeks.

In the photos you might be able to get a sense of the way his gait has adapted - he throws his paws up and out and has a kind of loping run with some sideways movement, I suppose because he doesn't have a clear view of the ground immediately in front of him (or maybe because he ONLY has a clear view of the ground in front of him) ... and the close-up you can see the dilated pupils due to damage to the optic nerve.

He is very, very sweet and his name is Lucky!

 

[smcder]

If you haven't read the stories by James Herriot (Alf Wight) about his experiences as a Veterinarian in the Yorkshire Dells, I highly recommend them - they are wonderful books.

Amazon.com: James Herriot: Books, Biography, Blog, Audiobooks, Kindle

 

[smcder]

We need to take note of @Soupie's use of the term 'representation' {and of its extension in the phrase 'perceptual representation'} and submit the term/concept 'representation' to a critique: how can 're-presentation' of anything take place except on the basis of a prior 'presentation' of that thing to the consciousness that is subsequently capable of 're-presenting' it?



Indeed, neither Idealism nor Physicalism can alone constitute the grounds for an ontology that takes account of, recognizes, what we and other animals experience transactually as beings in the world. @Soupie asserts that 'we don't have any reason for accepting the view that feeling is a property that emerges from physical processes. In fact, given the HP, we have reason to doubt this view'. I think, on the contrary, that we have many reasons to accept the view that 'feeling' -- sensation, awareness, and sentience -- emerge and evolve with life from formerly evolved and apparently unconscious, nonsentient, physical processes in the history of the universe.

I have to add that I too find the idea of panpsychism attractive. It might be the case that all physical processes forming what we consciously understand as our local 'universe' possess some germinal form of 'preconsciousness' that our understanding and knowledge cannot reach intellectually. If so, our own 'lived world' {shared with and lived by many types and forms of embodied consciousness in the animal and even the plant 'kingdoms'} might be a part or particle of a boundless World beyond our boundaries or any planetary boundaries, existing in what might be the Mind of God. In MP's philosophy, all living creatures "sing the world," each in and from their own experience of, perspective on and within, this selfsame planetary ecology. Many people throughout our species' history' have reported spiritual/paranormal experiences of revelation of a wider and deeper reality beyond that which is visible to most of us. It seems that we must attempt to work out our ontologies from the grounds of what we experience, and recognize that all such ontologies will be at best partial.

"Indeed, neither Idealism nor Physicalism can alone constitute the grounds for an ontology that takes account of, recognizes, what we and other animals experience transactually as beings in the world. @Soupie asserts that 'we don't have any reason for accepting the view that feeling is a property that emerges from physical processes. In fact, given the HP, we have reason to doubt this view'. I think, on the contrary, that we have many reasons to accept the view that 'feeling' -- sensation, awareness, and sentience -- emerge and evolve with life from formerly evolved and apparently unconscious, nonsentient, physical processes in the history of the universe."

I keep thinking of Lakoff's work on embodiment and metaphor - particularly "Where Does Mathematics Come From" that looks at the basis of abstract mathematical ideas in metaphor which is then rooted in the body - even abstractions like infinity, he argues, comes from our bodily experience - the diversity of our mental life is so often talked about in physical terms:

his thoughts were heavy with grief one moment then practically weightless the next
his mind crawled out of the fog toward the light of one brilliant idea
somewhere, deep in the recesses of his mind something lurked - something black and monstrous

In fact, it's hard to think of words or hold images in mind that don't somehow come from an experience of the world and the body - traditional schema and I am reminded of this when I read @Soupie's ideas - traditional schema of layers or sheaths, each increasingly ethereal - subtle bodies, astral bodies, etc ... come about by way of moving away from the body, meditation practice starts with breath and bodily awareness and moves from there - in Buddhism, imagery of the mind and consciousness is often tied to the breath and its movement and perception in the body as energy, in meditation a practitioner may try to become more and more subtle and still in this experience, in other esoteric practices, there may also be this move away from the physical - to the point, it seems that as this move in conception (setting aside any consideration of the "realities" of this experience - because although it is often recognized in these traditions, it is rarely emphasized) as this move in conception away from the physical is made, there aren't words for the experience - the metaphors are of breath and air and wind which would have been the immediate tangible experiences to refer to. We may think of "fields" now - the closest idea would have been ripples spreading in a pond - so the idea here is that our sense of consciousness and its qualities could as easily be argued to come from our bodily experiences - and there is this, that the experience of the body can be very subtle, as the body slows and time spreads out, sensations become softer, the breath gets finer and finer - so that the difference we ascribe in ordinary awareness variously to "the mental" and "the physical" may not appear so clear - not a blurring or confusion but a clear seeing that this line is perhaps not really there - which could be seen as either supporting the foundation in consciousness OR the foundation in the physical body ...

In Buddhism, of course the idea is the aggregates and recognizes both elements.

 

[smcder]

We need to take note of @Soupie's use of the term 'representation' {and of its extension in the phrase 'perceptual representation'} and submit the term/concept 'representation' to a critique: how can 're-presentation' of anything take place except on the basis of a prior 'presentation' of that thing to the consciousness that is subsequently capable of 're-presenting' it?



Indeed, neither Idealism nor Physicalism can alone constitute the grounds for an ontology that takes account of, recognizes, what we and other animals experience transactually as beings in the world. @Soupie asserts that 'we don't have any reason for accepting the view that feeling is a property that emerges from physical processes. In fact, given the HP, we have reason to doubt this view'. I think, on the contrary, that we have many reasons to accept the view that 'feeling' -- sensation, awareness, and sentience -- emerge and evolve with life from formerly evolved and apparently unconscious, nonsentient, physical processes in the history of the universe.

I have to add that I too find the idea of panpsychism attractive. It might be the case that all physical processes forming what we consciously understand as our local 'universe' possess some germinal form of 'preconsciousness' that our understanding and knowledge cannot reach intellectually. If so, our own 'lived world' {shared with and lived by many types and forms of embodied consciousness in the animal and even the plant 'kingdoms'} might be a part or particle of a boundless World beyond our boundaries or any planetary boundaries, existing in what might be the Mind of God. In MP's philosophy, all living creatures "sing the world," each in and from their own experience of, perspective on and within, this selfsame planetary ecology. Many people throughout our species' history' have reported spiritual/paranormal experiences of revelation of a wider and deeper reality beyond that which is visible to most of us. It seems that we must attempt to work out our ontologies from the grounds of what we experience, and recognize that all such ontologies will be at best partial.

"I have to add that I too find the idea of panpsychism attractive. It might be the case that all physical processes forming what we consciously understand as our local 'universe' possess some germinal form of 'preconsciousness' that our understanding and knowledge cannot reach intellectually. If so, our own 'lived world' {shared with and lived by many types and forms of embodied consciousness in the animal and even the plant 'kingdoms'} might be a part or particle of a boundless World beyond our boundaries or any planetary boundaries, existing in what might be the Mind of God. In MP's philosophy, all living creatures "sing the world," each in and from their own experience of, perspective on and within, this selfsame planetary ecology. Many people throughout our species' history' have reported spiritual/paranormal experiences of revelation of a wider and deeper reality beyond that which is visible to most of us. It seems that we must attempt to work out our ontologies from the grounds of what we experience, and recognize that all such ontologies will be at best partial."

To me, taking the ideas of Panpsychism seriously, or @Soupie's ideas about consciousness - means, the way I think about it, these spiritual/paranormal experiences should be taken seriously ... if consciousness is fundamental, if it underlies the physical ... BUT it also means, and this is a very interesting, to me, aspect of mystical, occult - Perrenial philosophies - that there will always be parallel explanations ... epistemic duality. Just as I noted above, mystical experiences could support either consciousness arising from the body or body arising from consciousness.

 

[smcder]

"Intentionality or representationalism holds that conscious awareness can basically be equated with representational activity as such. 1 However, as several critics have pointed out, 2 the assertion that conscious awareness and representational content are one and the same amounts to the claim that all intentional states are conscious as a consequence of their having intentional content, which in effect nullifies the distinction between conscious and unconscious representational states, and consequently fails as a distinguishing characteristic of the former."

Yes, please.

And he makes short work of Ned Block, Tye, etc.

 

[Soupie]

@Soupie asserts that 'we don't have any reason for accepting the view that feeling is a property that emerges from physical processes. In fact, given the HP, we have reason to doubt this view'. I think, on the contrary, that we have many reasons to accept the view that 'feeling' -- sensation, awareness, and sentience -- emerge and evolve with life from formerly evolved and apparently unconscious, nonsentient, physical processes in the history of the universe.

I would agree that we have very good reason to believe that 'feeling' evolves with life, but so far there are no good physical theories of how 'feeling' could emerge from a feeling-less, physical substrate.

Imho and one that I know you don't share, the best physical theories of the emergence of 'feeling' from a non-feeling substrate are information-based theories.

http://journal-cdn.frontiersin.org/article/250524/files/pubmed-zip/versions/1/pdf

"This article argues that qualia are a likely outcome of the processing of information in local cortical networks. It uses an information-based approach and makes a distinction between information structures (the physical embodiment of information in the brain, primarily patterns of action potentials), and information messages (the meaning of those structures to the brain, and the basis of qualia). It develops formal relationships between these two kinds of information, showing how information structures can represent messages, and how information messages can be identified from structures. The article applies this perspective to basic processing in cortical networks or ensembles, showing how networks can transform between the two kinds of information. The article argues that an input pattern of firing is identified by a network as an information message, and that the output pattern of firing generated is a representation of that message. If a network is encouraged to develop an attractor state through attention or other re-entrant processes, then the message identified each time physical information is cycled through the network becomes “representation of the previous message”. Using an example of olfactory perception, it is shown how this piggy-backing of messages on top of previous messages could lead to olfactory qualia. The message identified on each pass of information could evolve from inner identity, to inner form, to inner likeness or image. The outcome is an olfactory quale. It is shown that the same outcome could result from information cycled through a hierarchy of networks in a resonant state. The argument for qualia generation is applied to other sensory modalities, showing how, through a process of brain-wide constraint satisfaction, a particular state of consciousness could develop at any given moment. Evidence for some of the key predictions of the theory is presented, using ECoG data and studies of gamma oscillations and attractors, together with an outline of what further evidence is needed to provide support for the theory."

I've yet to see a biologically-based theory that came close to explaining 'feeling.'

 

[Soupie]

"Intentionality or representationalism holds that conscious awareness can basically be equated with representational activity as such. 1 However, as several critics have pointed out, 2 the assertion that conscious awareness and representational content are one and the same amounts to the claim that all intentional states are conscious as a consequence of their having intentional content, which in effect nullifies the distinction between conscious and unconscious representational states, and consequently fails as a distinguishing characteristic of the former."

Yes, please.

And he makes short work of Ned Block, Tye, etc.

I don't want to jump in front of the bullet if it's not aimed at me but (1) this doesn't mean that perception isn't "intentional, and (2) this doesn't challenge CR. Right?

 

[smcder]

Here is an excellent paper by Zahavi for us to read and discuss at this point:

http://cogprints.org/9173/1/A3 Theories of Consciousness as Reflexivity.pdf

Zahavi and Janzen, like van Gulick, recognize that a central characteristic of consciousness is reflexive awareness, but unlike van Gulick, they do not reduce reflexive consciousness to subjectivity. Rather, they hold that subjectivity intrinsically manifests or gives rise to self-awareness, to a Rosenthalian being aware that one is in the cognitive state. This position amounts to a kind of cognitive panpsychism. Where panpsychism proper insists that some minimal form of cognitive capacity is a fundamental property of the physical universe, s0 cognitive panpsychism would insist that a minimal form of conscious self awareness accompanies every subjective cognitive act because subjectivity entails more than simply being the cognitive state (a la Stubenberg and Searle), more than an implicit registration of the world in relation to self (as with Van Gulick). Subjective cognition, they claim, has self-awareness, at least in some minimal form, because self-awareness is simply a fundamental property of subjective cognition. As Gennaro suggests, 51 this is this is presumably Nagel’s position as well."

 

[Soupie]

"Intentionality or representationalism holds that conscious awareness can basically be equated with representational activity as such. 1 However, as several critics have pointed out, 2 the assertion that conscious awareness and representational content are one and the same amounts to the claim that all intentional states are conscious as a consequence of their having intentional content, which in effect nullifies the distinction between conscious and unconscious representational states, and consequently fails as a distinguishing characteristic of the former."

Yes, please.

And he makes short work of Ned Block, Tye, etc.

There is something that came up in an article I shared waaay back that I've wanted to revisit for a long time. Over at the philosophy of brains blog the author of the piece is guest blogging right now.

Essentially his theory is that consciousness (what he refers to as subjective experience) is tied to memory. And I think it's a strong argument.

It ties in with interesting things we've talked about with anesthesia and dreams where just because we don't remember them doesn't mean we weren't still conscious. (Which supports CR.)

That is we may always be conscious, but what we commonly think of as being conscious involves memory. So sleep and anesthesia distrutpt memory and we therefore assume we were not conscious.

In the article one individual with hippocampus damage is interviews. They argued that their damage was not related to memory but perspective. They said that no matter what angle they viewed a scene from, it looked the same. (So tilting their head from side to side did not change their stream of consciousness.)

Another thing that came up in the article was that if one neural hub was damaged, that the next one in line would become primary.

What this meant to me was that the damaged hub wasn't responsible for giving rise to 'feeling.'

This is all to say that it seems to me—as I have argued—that feeling is already always there and the brain/body is a process constituted of this feeling-substrate.

However, memory plays a major role in our subjective experience. (1) if there is no ego, no "I", then there is no centralized subject-ive experience, and (2) if there is no memory function, then there is no way to introspect and conclude that we are conscious.

 

[smcder]

There is something that came up in an article I shared waaay back that I've wanted to revisit for a long time. Over at the philosophy of brains blog the author of the piece is guest blogging right now.

Essentially his theory is that consciousness (what he refers to as subjective experience) is tied to memory. And I think it's a strong argument.

It ties in with interesting things we've talked about with anesthesia and dreams where just because we don't remember them doesn't mean we weren't still conscious. (Which supports CR.)

That is we may always be conscious, but what we commonly think of as being conscious involves memory. So sleep and anesthesia distrutpt memory and we therefore assume we were not conscious.

In the article one individual with hippocampus damage is interviews. They argued that their damage was not related to memory but perspective. They said that no matter what angle they viewed a scene from, it looked the same. (So tilting their head from side to side did not change their stream of consciousness.)

Another thing that came up in the article was that if one neural hub was damaged, that the next one in line would become primary.

What this meant to me was that the damaged hub wasn't responsible for giving rise to 'feeling.'

This is all to say that it seems to me—as I have argued—that feeling is already always there and the brain/body is a process constituted of this feeling-substrate.

However, memory plays a major role in our subjective experience. (1) if there is no ego, no "I", then there is no centralized subject-ive experience, and (2) if there is no memory function, then there is no way to introspect and conclude that we are conscious.

"It ties in with interesting things we've talked about with anesthesia and dreams where just because we don't remember them doesn't mean we weren't still conscious. (Which supports CR.)"

]What is the relationship or requirement of CR that being "still conscious" supports CR and how does that relate to the claim in the Zahavi article just above re: reflexive, autonoetic awareness as unique to the conscious state?

"What is the property in virtue of which a state is conscious rather than nonconscious? In the following, it will be argued that of the answers most frequently proposed intentionality, subjectivity, accessibility, reflexivity—only the final characteristic, reflexive, autonoetic awareness, is unique to the conscious state. Reflexivity can best be explained not as the product of a self-representational data structure, but as the expression of a recursive processing regime, in which cognition registers the properties of the processing state to a greater extent than properties of the content represented. And the principal characteristic of a reflexive processing state is cognitive reflexivity or autonoetic awareness."

 

[smcder]

https://sbinstitute.com/aw/Vacuum States Essay.pdf

bottom of page 6/top of page 7

Although we may believe in the existence of space independent of consciousness, all our concepts of such real, objective space arise within the space of consciousness. As for the relation between sensory images and their related objects believed to exist in the objective world independent of consciousness, neurologist Antonio Damasio acknowledges, “There is no picture of the object being transferred from the object to the retina and from the retina to the brain.”8 To generalize, the appearances to our senses are not replicas, or re-presentations, of phenomena in objective, physical space. They are fresh creations arising in the space of consciousness. Likewise, our concepts of space and the objects within it are not replicas of anything existing independently of the mind. In short, the brain believed by neuroscientists to exist in real, objective space is as devoid of consciousness as is the physical space conceived of by physicists. Neither the external space of the physical senses nor the internal space of the mind exists in the brain, nor are any of the contents of such external or internal space located inside the head. Within the context of the experienced world, the demarcation between external and internal space is one of convention, not absolute reality. We may experience mental images, for example, not only in our “mind’s eye,” with our eyes closed and our attention withdrawn from the physical world. We may also superimpose mental images on our sensory fields of experience. For example, we may imagine the face of a man on the moon or an archer outlined in a configuration of stars.

 

[smcder]

I don't want to jump in front of the bullet if it's not aimed at me but (1) this doesn't mean that perception isn't "intentional, and (2) this doesn't challenge CR. Right?

 

[Soupie]

What is the relationship or requirement of CR that being "still conscious" supports CR and how does that relate to the claim in the Zahavi article just above re: reflexive, autonoetic awareness as unique to the conscious state?

Because living humans can be in a phenomenological state of apparent non-consciousness (deep sleep, anathesia, coma, etc) it is assumed that the consciousness ceased.

In other words, because phenomenologically we sometimes are aware of being conscious and sometimes not, it is assumed that when we are not aware of being conscious, that there was no consciousness. This belief is used to support the notion that the brain produces ex nihilo consciousness.

I would argue that it is not consciousness (feeling) that ceases to exist but rather the mind that ceases to exist at these moments.

To clarify: my view is that minds are metaphorical streams that form with Lin consciousness. Streams of consciousness. Sometimes these streams dissipate, but consciousness does not.

The analogy would be like ripples in a pond ceasing; the ripples stop but the pond remains.

 

[Soupie]

Although we may believe in the existence of space independent of consciousness, all our concepts of such real, objective space arise within the space of consciousness. As for the relation between sensory images and their related objects believed to exist in the objective world independent of consciousness, neurologist Antonio Damasio acknowledges, “There is no picture of the object being transferred from the object to the retina and from the retina to the brain.”8 To generalize, the appearances to our senses are not replicas, or re-presentations, of phenomena in objective, physical space. They are fresh creations arising in the space of consciousness.

I would argue that this is indeed the case. Can you provide an argument otherwise?

The question then is whether we believe there really is an objective (i.e. Mind-independent) reality "out there."

I choose to believe there is. But I can't prove it.

Also, we can say that all is consciousness, but that two independent minds can form within this consciousness.

 

[Soupie]

Again, picture one pond (consciousness-as-substrate) within which distinct patterns of ripples form (distinct minds).

Or picture two distinct brains forming within physical reality.

 

[Constance]

...a clear seeing that this line is perhaps not really there - which could be seen as either supporting the foundation in consciousness OR the foundation in the physical body ...

Taken by the idea of this "line that is not there," a demarcation that we project rather than discover. The vacuum state paper you link later in this thread is extremely helpful to me as one who has not read the Buddhist texts or experimented with meditation.

I would agree that we have very good reason to believe that 'feeling' evolves with life, but so far there are no good physical theories of how 'feeling' could emerge from a feeling-less, physical substrate. Imho and one that I know you don't share, the best physical theories of the emergence of 'feeling' from a non-feeling substrate are information-based theories.

I still think that 'information-based theories' lack the ability to demonstrate the nature of 'information' in its expression in experiential, lived, reality. In this line of thinking, it seems to me, 'information' is a place-holder for a hoped-for explanation of phenomenological experience, consciousness, and mind.

The article argues that an input pattern of firing is identified by a network as an information message, and that the output pattern of firing generated is a representation of that message. If a network is encouraged to develop an attractor state through attention or other re-entrant processes, then the message identified each time physical information is cycled through the network becomes “representation of the previous message”.

The fundamental question is how such a biologically evolved neural 'network' becomes established and developed to a point at which 'information' that is input to the network generates 'representations' of the 'world'.

I don't want to jump in front of the bullet if it's not aimed at me but (1) this doesn't mean that perception isn't "intentional, and (2) this doesn't challenge CR. Right?

Re your point (1), it seems to me that 'perception' can only become intentional as a result of preconscious, prereflective, experience in the world. That is, the preconscious and protoconscious experience of being-in-the world {as being in/within a tangible physically experienced environment/environing gestalt} opens the way to an eventually evolved capacity to reflect on/think about the relationship of onesself to an environing world.

ETA: Re your point (2), it seems that both Steve and I still look for a clear definition of 'CR' [Conscious Realism?] from you. Would you try to summarize the premises and intended conclusions of this viewpoint?

Zahavi and Janzen, like van Gulick, recognize that a central characteristic of consciousness is reflexive awareness, but unlike van Gulick, they do not reduce reflexive consciousness to subjectivity. Rather, they hold that subjectivity intrinsically manifests or gives rise to self-awareness, to a Rosenthalian being aware that one is in the cognitive state. This position amounts to a kind of cognitive panpsychism. Where panpsychism proper insists that some minimal form of cognitive capacity is a fundamental property of the physical universe, s0 cognitive panpsychism would insist that a minimal form of conscious self awareness accompanies every subjective cognitive act because subjectivity entails more than simply being the cognitive state (a la Stubenberg and Searle), more than an implicit registration of the world in relation to self (as with Van Gulick). Subjective cognition, they claim, has self-awareness, at least in some minimal form, because self-awareness is simply a fundamental property of subjective cognition. As Gennaro suggests, 51 this is this is presumably Nagel’s position as well."

I think this conforms to the primary insight of phenomenological existentialism -- that "existence precedes essence" -- i.e., that cognitive capacities to form and ask questions about the essences of being that lie behind streams of experiential realities arise from a background state of preconsciousness that has reached the cusp of self-awareness/subjectivity. The primordial sense of 'self' felt/understood as present {as be-ing} is not yet the human 'ego', which becomes shaped by innumerable influences in social and proto-cultural environments produced in the working out of the sense of existence and the meaning of existence by humans.

However, memory plays a major role in our subjective experience. (1) if there is no ego, no "I", then there is no centralized subject-ive experience, and (2) if there is no memory function, then there is no way to introspect and conclude that we are conscious.

Memory, as I understand it, must be originarily based in experiences of living in the/a world, experiences that occur near the point at which preconsiousness passes into consciousness, and this passage cannot, it seems to me, be instantaneous (though when accomplished it might feel instantaneous). If we adopt the familiar representation of the relation of subconsciousness/preconsciousness and conciousness in the form of an iceberg {in which most of the complex of consciousness exists beneath the waterline of the iceberg}, we can think the nature of preconsciousness/subconsciousness as existing in a state unmarked by a firm 'line of demarcation' between subjective and objective 'realities' we arrive at in conscious reflection and the development of 'mind'. The outer edges of the submerged portion of the iceberg intermingle with the water out of which the ice of the iceberg is formed. As MP expressed it, "the fish is in the water and the water is in the fish." We have some understanding of how the fish and the human experientially relate to their tangible worldly environs, but very little understanding of the evolution of the affordances and capabilities by which/through which they can do so.

 

[smcder]

I would argue that this is indeed the case. Can you provide an argument otherwise?

The question then is whether we believe there really is an objective (i.e. Mind-independent) reality "out there."

I choose to believe there is. But I can't prove it.

Also, we can say that all is consciousness, but that two independent minds can form within this consciousness.

An argument otherwise ... I think maybe that is "sense datum"?

an immediate object of perception, which is not a material object; a sense impression

You might try "sense datum" for arguments otherwise.

 

[smcder]

Again, picture one pond (consciousness-as-substrate) within which distinct patterns of ripples form (distinct minds).

Or picture two distinct brains forming within physical reality.

But phenomenal feel "what it is like" is fundamental? Or I misunderstand? So consciousness-as-substrate within which distinct patterns of rippling minds form ... does what-it-is-likedness swim in the pond or only on the ripples? I'm trying to sort that along with the problem of sleep (and death) and continuing consciousness ... see also Zahavi up above about what consciousness means.