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WBraun
climber
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Dec 11, 2011 - 01:17pm PT
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a living being
Now you have to find the "living being"
Matter is not the "living being"
The motor car is not alive until the living being starts it.
Matter can not start without life first.
Thus mind must involve a higher reality, a reality that cannot be reduced to matter as it is under stood by modern science ....
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 11, 2011 - 02:03pm PT
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Yep, that pesky impenetrable qualian event horizon that just HAS to separate pristine minds from all those nasty bodies. And lowrdy, if it ain't a mystery how all dem cats and dogs gets da ideas in dar hayds.
Thank god more studied and nuanced 'souls' than myself also dismiss qualia and [separate] subjective experience as hokum with the sole purpose of erecting an impenetrable event horizon behind which one can sing and dance to pretty much any tune they like (oh, le mystčre joyeux...!)
''''
Damnation. Healyje is now Uncle Remus. And a space cowboy as well.
Letīs look at this last rant.
Now what does he mean by "mystery" if he does not mean he canīt measure it by normal means. Of course thatīs what he means and we keep going around and around on it.
And inpenetrable simply means he canīt fit a yardstick into his subjective flow. Oh shucks.
The part that he has entirely wrong, IMO, is that if a person is not measuring, he perforce is singing and dancing to some wu wu bullshit and making up all kinds of specious tommy rot as default for the measuring he has been done out of.
This, of course, is scientisism all over again. If itīs not quantifying, then it is, as Healyje has just show, Uncle Remus doing a negrto spiritual ībout all īdem mysteries in de heavens. So we have the quantifiers, and we have the ignoramuses. Now ainīt that munificient of old Healyje.
If fact the 1st person study of mind, if done with any discipline and reputable supervision, goes in exactly the opposite direction of wu wu and mystery.
But letīs look at this last statement which is a whopper of the first magnitude . . .
dismiss qualia and [separate] subjective experience as hokum with the sole purpose of erecting an impenetrable event horizon behind which one can sing and dance
Now what the hell does that really mean. Is Healyje saying he does not have subjective experience. This is most fantastic. If so, then who is living Healyjeīs life, if said life is being lived sans subject. Is Healyje saying he operates from an objective platform above and beyond the subjective bubble the rest of us live in. This can only mean that Healyje is a disembodied consciousness which is a hard stretch for someone who believes that the brain IS mind.
So Healyje might call his own experience hokum, and that the content of his experience, from his most beloved quantifications to his love for lybacking ae in fact qualia that do not exist, this changes noting in the real world.
At first I thought pčople were kidding when they said they didnīt have any 1st person subjective experience. Now Iīm beginning to believe that, like the flat earth theories of the past, people can actually believe that their lives are imagined or fake or hokum. But Iīm still not clear that if you believe you do not have 1st person subjective experience, what DO you have, and if you do not have mental content such as thoughts and feelings and memories and so forth (all qualia), what is going on in your life, and how do you know as much.
I suspect but do not know that the answer to this will be the same loop back to the belief that objective functioning is the only real thing, and that all else is hokum.
JL
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 11, 2011 - 02:10pm PT
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Werner brings up an interesting point of ancient wisdom, that life is what "animates" objects. We have relegated that thinking to "philosophy" since we now know that objects can move under the influence of forces without "intent." However, the idea that a "life force" of some sort causes things to move is still a strong image. It is also at the very basis of Largo's idea that "something more than 'just physics'" is required to understand "mind."
My thoughts lately regard the implications of the way physicists think about the world, and why there is such resistance to this manner of thinking. In particular, taking Newton's second law of motion, F=ma, which connects a force to an acceleration.
These forces can "animate" objects, but there is no "life" aspect about them. With Newton, it explained celestial mechanics and provided a very simple picture of the universe. Newton's view of the universe was that The Author of the Laws set the whole in motion. Newton sought to discover/uncover the laws. But in this Newtonian picture, the universe was a consequence of these laws, and the First Cause which started it all.
Interestingly, science has continued to be viewed as a unified whole, first in physics then expanding out to included chemistry, biology, etc... increasingly we find that the method is general, but also that the knowledge from one area of science can provide explanations for other parts of science. And that there is a general hierarchy of phenomena, which could be termed "reductionist" but also an appreciation of complex behavior arising from the simple interactions of more fundamental elements.
Science requires that the explanations be predictive in a quantitative sense, and this important feature is the source of technological innovation. While technology can be "invented" by many means, science based innovation seems to be a very effective way to do it. But that is another story.
The expansion of science is not a "program" to displace other forms of knowledge, but there is a sort of competition to provide understanding, and if the key to understanding is to be able to predict the outcome of a situation, science's "infrastructure" is designed to do it, it is part of the method. Using all of science together provides a powerful base from which to extend this understanding.
There are many alternative explanations to things, and many different ways to innovate technologies. They all compete to provide a useful view of the world. It is this usefulness, in its various forms, that forms the back story of this thread.
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part-time communist
climber
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Dec 11, 2011 - 03:16pm PT
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has anyone discussed consciousness within the evolutionary framework?
Ex.// maybe consciousness evolved as a way of becoming aware of and recognizing/reflecting/confronting ones death.
Death producing meaning have been thrown around considerably in the land of philosophy.
This might be a good way to merge phenomenology with the sciences, for instance: early ancestors who pondered their existence and being able to think at a higher order about their temporal being became more productive and ambitious in their lives to 'make the most of it' and in 'pursuit of meaning' which advanced civilization and the trait of consciousness was selected for.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 11, 2011 - 03:20pm PT
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evolutionary point of view has to do with success in reproduction... that is, how many progeny you have and subsequently, how many they havw, etc... it's a long drawn out process and it is not "directed" in the manner you suggest...
it's not clear how contemplating death helps in that case...
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part-time communist
climber
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Dec 11, 2011 - 04:33pm PT
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evolutionary point of view has to do with success in reproduction... that is, how many progeny you have and subsequently, how many they havw, etc... it's a long drawn out process and it is not "directed" in the manner you suggest...
it's not clear how contemplating death helps in that case...
Nah, what I mentioned increases fitness
Phenomenology, to put simply, is the study of how a human experiences things (with an emphasis on capturing human conscious experience).
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A community of hairless apes
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Dec 11, 2011 - 04:40pm PT
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Thanks for the reply.
So, as the newcomer to the thread, and as a basis for more conversation, tell us... what is YOUR model for the relationship between mind and brain, do you have one?
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Dec 11, 2011 - 04:57pm PT
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has anyone discussed consciousness within the evolutionary framework?
Multiple attempts to do so, because from my perspective looking at behavior across species from viruses to humans and across time in the evolution of individual genus is the best way to really understand how and why our own 'consciousness' came to be.
From (my own) evolutionary biology perspective I would suspect the roots of it lie in the progressive development of [bacterial] chemical signalling > motility > predation; that once motile predation occurred then 'consciousness' was essentially inevitable.
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part-time communist
climber
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Dec 11, 2011 - 05:03pm PT
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predation; that once motile predation occurred then 'consciousness' was essentially inevitable.
Is this kind of like my death hypothesis?
like..consciousness allowing one to become aware of death? Therefore increasing fitness.
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part-time communist
climber
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Dec 11, 2011 - 05:05pm PT
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hmmmm....
Donald Thompson's little blurb reminds me that perhaps consciousness is nothing more but memory triggering awareness.
"sitting around campfire recounting stories to increase survival, etc."
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part-time communist
climber
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Dec 11, 2011 - 05:08pm PT
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let me rephrase: consciousness as nothing more but the perception of memory
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part-time communist
climber
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Dec 11, 2011 - 05:14pm PT
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I quite like my writing style; it mimics my thought processes which are perceived, in my mind, as a continuous unfiltered stream. I am not a rule type of gal. LOL
I think perhaps consciousness has a lot to do with physical reality. (Objects, space, time)
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part-time communist
climber
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Dec 11, 2011 - 05:21pm PT
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Does it have to include the "nothing more but" part though?
Well, right now we are talking about the "shaping forces" through which consciousness arose. I would say death and memory are the two key players. Grasping death is purely based on observational/metaphysical components, while memory is based on brain wiring. Perhaps merging the death phenomenon with our memory based "early consciousness" brains was the tipping point in the emergence of a higher order consciousness that we as modern humans understand and perceive and talk about today.
If you think about it, memory has a lot to do with consciousness.
Which begs the question: Did consciousness arise suddenly and spontaneously or was it a gradual development?
As some of you might have learned in philosophy, any kind of "essence" talk is futile.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Dec 11, 2011 - 05:29pm PT
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Is this kind of like my death hypothesis?
like..consciousness allowing one to become aware of death? Therefore increasing fitness.
Hmmm, maybe take it way back down in terms of capability and species. Motile predation would require the development of:
a) an awareness of an external environment
b) enough 'self awareness' for an organism to place itself in that external context
c) enough perception to detect and identify prey
d) 'anticipation' or the ability to predict movement / speed
e) judgment around self and prey capabilities
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A community of hairless apes
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Dec 11, 2011 - 05:35pm PT
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Nicely put. Summed up.
Now integrate. Voila: Consciousness in its many and various forms across the Animal Kingdom.
Appreciate the new blood. ;)
Later...
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part-time communist
climber
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Dec 11, 2011 - 05:43pm PT
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has anyone properly addressed unconsciousness?
For all you science-loons, there have been recent studies that show "evidence" for the unconscious and how the brain is much more active than previously thought during "resting" awake periods.
Was the unconsciousness a precursor to consciousness or did it evolve as a response to consciousness or did both evolve simultaneously, kind of like a two sided coin?
Does there always need to be a PTC-hater like sullen sully, that keeps yapping at you and won't quit, kind of like one of those small dogs that keeps barking and nipping at your ankles?
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 11, 2011 - 05:43pm PT
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Well, right now we are talking about the "shaping forces" through which consciousness arose.
---
This presumes consciousness is limited to human beings, and that it is purely a function of mechanical processes.
Other questions include what are the differences between processing-functioning and raw awareness.
Also, and this is a big one, awareness does not operate in the manner of a signaling agent or camera or a function that captures or frames content. This is a concept based on vision, as though awareness scans the world so programmed instinctual responses can mechanically kick in and preserve the specie. But awareness does not function like that at all.
Whatīs more, while Iīm free associating, I think Jung was pretty comprehensive in illustrating that not only the past (evolution) pushes us along, but also the future pulls us. So while camp fire narratives have a survivalist meaning at some level, theyīre also a pean to the stars.
JL
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part-time communist
climber
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Dec 11, 2011 - 05:44pm PT
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Are you talking of (anatomically) modern human consciousness or consciousness in general? Remember advanced memory and the significance of death played a role in earlier hominids, such as Neanderthals.
No, I am talking about how consciousness arose in early ancestors....was it a spontaneous sudden emergence or was it a gradual development.
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part-time communist
climber
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Dec 11, 2011 - 05:54pm PT
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Part-time communist: Is this kind of like my death hypothesis?
like..consciousness allowing one to become aware of death? Therefore increasing fitness.
healyje: Hmmm, maybe take it way back down in terms of capability and species. Motile predation would require the development of:
a) an awareness of an external environment
b) enough 'self awareness' for an organism to place itself in that external context
c) enough perception to detect and identify prey
d) 'anticipation' or the ability to predict movement / speed
e) judgment around self and prey capabilities
Precisely something I pointed out just 2 or 3 or 4 posts up:
part-time communist: I think perhaps consciousness has a lot to do with physical reality. (Objects, space, time)
I think one of the problems here is there is a bias in the perception of consciousness. The bias is called the idea that I am an "acting agent"
Perhaps consciousness involves more passivity than anything else.
How would all this:
a) an awareness of an external environment
b) enough 'self awareness' for an organism to place itself in that external context
c) enough perception to detect and identify prey
d) 'anticipation' or the ability to predict movement / speed
e) judgment around self and prey capabilities
give rise to an internal awareness the "I" that we are talking about here, the "I" in the grander scheme of things, the "I wonder about myself, who am I? Is this all a dream?" Having information about yourself (anticipation caused by predator anxiety which may be understood as an intense feeling of anxiety)and having information about your environment equates to reflective self awareness? How do you make the jump from basic knowledge of the environment and inner sensations to reflective self awareness? Do the above a-e apply to animals? If so, how are we different than animals? There clearly is a difference, conventional wisdom says so.
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part-time communist
climber
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Dec 11, 2011 - 06:05pm PT
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If one holds to the Kantian definition of consciousness as arising from the perception of sensory input , rather than the sensory input itself, then consciousness does not play a role in the primary awareness of death. A deer is aware of impending death at some sensory level when being chased by a cougar. This reaction is encoded into the deer's DNA and is thoroughly automatic but it nonetheless qualifies as 'awareness'. This begs the question: "does the deer know his life is finished if the cat catches up to him?" My answer: he sure in the hell is running like it will.
We do not know if the deer is "aware of impending death". The thing is, a lot of consciousness does not equate to physical reality and observable, behavioral manifestations, or even common sense. It has its own rules. It's kind of like a large drifting cloud that slowly changes shape. Why is it there? Who knows? But its not just that, it has an additional component of being able to look back onto itself and see itself drifting along, it has the ability to create its own reality if it so wishes.
Talking about sensory input alone is nonsensical in the context of consciousness. The only sensory input I know of is the perception of sensory input.
Can you please explain what you mean by:
If one holds to the Kantian definition of consciousness as arising from the perception of sensory input , rather than the sensory input itself, then consciousness does not play a role in the primary awareness of death.
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