No, I've never thought of it. Tell me briefly how a "surface semi-symmetrical in its continuity" would do what needs to be done here. — Constance

Let me call it Scientific Logos.

Consider the following parallel,

As a crystal chandelier is a workup (constructive metabolism) from a handful of sand, so a conversation between two humans is a workup (constructive metabolism) from a moon orbiting its planet (earth_moon).

Under the implications of the above parallel, consciousness is an emergent property of two (or more) interacting gravitational fields. Thus a conversation, such as the one we're having, is the deluxe version
(replete with all of the bells and whistles) of the moon orbiting the earth and causing the tides and global air currents that shape earth's weather.

Language, being the collective of the systemic boundary permutations of a context or medium, cognitively parallels the phenomena animating the material universe.

That we humans have language suggests in our being we are integral to a complex surface of animate phenomena via intersection of gravitational fields. Action-at-a-distance elevates the self/other, subject/object bifurcation to a living history with unified, internally consistent and stable points-of-view better known as the selves of human (and animal) society.

Under constraint of brevity, a good thing, let me close with a short excerpt from my short essay on the great triumvirate of gravity-consciousness-language.

There is a direct connection between human consciousness and the gravitational field.

Gravitation is the medium of consciousness.

One can say that the gravitational attraction between two material bodies is physical evidence that those material bodies are aware of each other.

Under this construction, consciousness is an emergent phenomenon arising from the gravitational field.

This tells us that the study of consciousness (and especially the hard problem of consciousness) begins with the work of the physicist.

Gravity waves, the existence of which has been established, can also be called waves of consciousness.

Since matter is the substrate of consciousness, one can infer that the material universe is fundamentally configured to support and sustain consciousness.

Just as there can be geometrization of gravitation through relativity, there can be geometrization of consciousness through gravitation. This is a claim held by astrologers dating back to antiquity.

The (material) universe itself is a conscious being.

that's not what you said I said. You said:

Your statement implies the belief commonplace subjective experiences should be easily accessible to the objectivist methodologies of science. It also implies the subjective/objective distinction is a trivial matter and should therefore be no problem for science.
— ucarr

I didn't say or imply either of those things. — T Clark

Don't confuse "easily accessible to the objectivist methodologies of science." with "easily solvable with the objectivist methodologies of science." I know you know neuroscience is hard work.

...As far as I can see, there's no reason to think that consciousness can't be understood in terms of principles we already are aware of. I don't see any hard problem. — T Clark

By my account, you trivialize the subjective/objective distinction when, firstly you declare the (objectivist) "principles we already are aware of" are good enough to cover both the objective and the subjective and secondly when you deny without argument the hard problem.

ad ho·mi·nem | ˌad ˈhämənəm |
adjective
(of an argument or reaction) directed against a person rather than the position they are maintaining: vicious ad hominem attacks.

Your insult, as I said, was directed against me, not against my argument. Your confirm the truth of this with your following statement,

...it was an insult. — T Clark

Well, an insult is a personal attack having nothing to do with a debate about ideas.

The fact you don't recognize the difference tells me everything I need to know about whether or not to take you seriously. — T Clark

You make a lot of declarations unsupported by arguments. In this conversation you refuse to answer a central question about your assumptions. I always support my declarations with arguments. Usually I answer honestly tough questions that threaten my argument with implosion. By these standards, I'm much more serious than your are.

Wayfarer has already done this on our behalf. — ucarr

:up:

I often wonder just how much of what we believe is arrived at through such personal processes - some ideas seem to neatly complement our existing aesthetics and values. I find Husserl, such as I have read, engaging too. — Tom Storm

In my case, the affinity I discovered with Husserl had a lot to do with the convergences between phenomenology and Buddhist abhidharma (philosophical psychology) which I learned about through Buddhist studies. That seminal book "The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience" by Varela, Thompson and Rosch, draws many parallels between them.

One is that both place a strong emphasis on the role of perception in our experience of the world. In Abhidharma, perception is seen as an active process of constructing meaning out of sensory data, and it is understood as being a fundamental aspect of the way that we make sense of experience. Likewise in phenomenology, perception is seen as foundational to experience, and the meaning that we attribute to the things that we perceive is central to our understanding. This ties in with the phenomenological idea of the 'lebenswelt' (life-world) and 'umwelt' (meaning-world), which is very different to the idea of the objective domain completely separate from the observer. It recognises the sense in which we 'construct', rather than simply observe, the world (which is also the understanding behind constructivism in philosophy.)

There's also a subtle convergence between the Buddhist principle of śūnyatā (emptiness) and the Husserlian epoché (suspension of judgement):

Emptiness is a mode of perception, a way of looking at experience. It adds nothing to and takes nothing away from the raw data of physical and mental events. You look at events in the mind and the senses with no thought of whether there's anything lying behind them.

This mode is called emptiness because it's empty of the presuppositions we usually add to experience to make sense of it: the stories and world-views we fashion to explain who we are and the world we live in. Although these stories and views have their uses, the Buddha found that some of the more abstract questions they raise — of our true identity and the reality of the world outside — pull attention away from a direct experience of how events influence one another in the immediate present. Thus they get in the way when we try to understand and solve the problem of suffering. — Thanissaro Bhikkhu, What is Emptiness

Epoché, or "suspension of judgment" likewise involves setting aside one's preconceptions and assumptions, and simply observing and describing phenomena as they present themselves to consciousness, without attempting to interpret or rationalise.

There are some similarities between these: both involve a type of detachment or non-attachment, and a willingness to suspend judgment and simply observe without trying to interpret or explain with the caveat that the two practices have developed within different philosophical traditions and have very different connotations and implications. (And it actually goes even further back, to the legendary origins of Pyrrhonian scepticism and it's purportedly Buddhist origins in Pyrrho of Elis' voyage to India).

. This ties in with the phenomenological idea of the 'lebenswelt' (life-world) and 'umwelt' (meaning-world), which is very different to the idea of the objective domain completely separate from the observer. It recognises the sense in which we 'construct', rather than simply observe, the world (which is also the understanding behind constructivism in philosophy.) — Wayfarer

Similar notions have long resonated with me too.

[

Let me call it Scientific Logos.

Consider the following parallel,

As a crystal chandelier is a workup (constructive metabolism) from a handful of sand, so a conversation between two humans is a workup (constructive metabolism) from a moon orbiting its planet (earth_moon).

Under the implications of the above parallel, consciousness is an emergent property of two (or more) interacting gravitational fields. Thus a conversation, such as the one we're having, is the deluxe version
(replete with all of the bells and whistles) of the moon orbiting the earth and causing the tides and global air currents that shape earth's weather.

Language, being the collective of the systemic boundary permutations of a context or medium, cognitively parallels the phenomena animating the material universe.

That we humans have language suggests in our being we are integral to a complex surface of animate phenomena via intersection of gravitational fields. Action-at-a-distance elevates the self/other, subject/object bifurcation to a living history with unified, internally consistent and stable points-of-view better known as the selves of human (and animal) society.

Under constraint of brevity, a good thing, let me close with a short excerpt from my short essay on the great triumvirate of gravity-consciousness-language.

There is a direct connection between human consciousness and the gravitational field.

Gravitation is the medium of consciousness.

One can say that the gravitational attraction between two material bodies is physical evidence that those material bodies are aware of each other.

Under this construction, consciousness is an emergent phenomenon arising from the gravitational field.

This tells us that the study of consciousness (and especially the hard problem of consciousness) begins with the work of the physicist.

Gravity waves, the existence of which has been established, can also be called waves of consciousness.

Since matter is the substrate of consciousness, one can infer that the material universe is fundamentally configured to support and sustain consciousness.

Just as there can be geometrization of gravitation through relativity, there can be geometrization of consciousness through gravitation. This is a claim held by astrologers dating back to antiquity.

The (material) universe itself is a conscious being. — ucarr

There is something here. but the language has to change. First, remove the science-speak, for you have stepped beyond this, for keep in mind that when consciousness and its epistemic reach is achieved by identifying object relations as gravitational in nature, and then placing the epistemic agency in this, as you call it, logos, you are redefining gravity as a universal, not law of attraction, but connectivity and identity, and I do remember thinking something like this was a way to account for knowledge relationships: identity. The distance is closed because there is no distance between objects that are not separated. And I mentioned that Husserl did hold something like this, but the "logos" was not scientific, it was a phenomenological nexus of intentionality. And since gravity is at this level of inquiry a strictly naturalistic term (to talk like Husserl), the description of what this unity is about has to go to a more fundamental order of thought, phenomenology. Gravity is now a phenomenon, an appearing presence. Ask a phenomenologist what a force is, what the curviture of space is, and you will first have see that these are conceived in theory and they are terms of contingency. One doesn't witness space or forces, but only effects from which forces are inferred and the names only serve to ground such things in a scientific vocabulary.

Not gravity, with its connotative baggage, but phenomena, for this is all that is ever witnessed, ever can be witnessed. If it is going to be a universal connectivity of all things, I do think you are right to note that there is this term gravity that abides in everything and binds everything. I would remove the term and realize this connectivity does not belong to a scientific logos. It must be a term that is inclusive of the consciousness in which the whole affair is conceived and the epistemic properties are intended to explain. And this consciousness is inherently affective, ethical, aesthetic, and so on. For the nexus that connects me to my lamp and intimates knowing-in-identity is always already one that cares, in interested, fascinated, repulsed, and so on. A connection of epistemology not only cannot be conceived apart from these, it must have then as their principle feature, because these are the most salient things in all of existence.

Of course, gravity sounds a lot like God, then. For God is, sans the troublesome history and narratives, a metaethical, meta aesthetic metavalue grounding of the world.

You may not agree with the above, but for me, I think you are on to something. Gravity, I will repeat, never really was "gravity", for this is a term of contingency, See Rorty's Contingency, Irony and Solidarity for a nice account of this. When the matter goes to some grand foundation of connectivity, are we not in metaphysics? Or on its threshold?

This sounds quite old fashioned and perhaps seven quasi religious. I'm not sure I have ever thought the world could be understood. The more time I spend on this site, the more this seems reasonable — Tom Storm

Curious. Did you really think philosophy was just talking about itself? What is responsible for this is analytic philosophy, which has gotten lost, endlessly trying to squeeze new meanings out of familiar mundane thinking. They have, as Kierkegaard put is, forgotten they exist. Philosophy should begin with encounter, not some entangled string of thought. This comes afterward.

There is something here. but the language has to change. First, remove the science-speak, for you have stepped beyond this, for keep in mind that when consciousness and its epistemic reach is achieved by identifying object relations as gravitational in nature, and then placing the epistemic agency in this, as you call it, logos, you are redefining gravity as a universal, not law of attraction, but connectivity and identity, and I do remember thinking something like this was a way to account for knowledge relationships: identity. The distance is closed because there is no distance between objects that are not separated. And I mentioned that Husserl did hold something like this, but the "logos" was not scientific, it was a phenomenological nexus of intentionality. And since gravity is at this level of inquiry a strictly naturalistic term (to talk like Husserl), the description of what this unity is about has to go to a more fundamental order of thought, phenomenology. Gravity is now a phenomenon, an appearing presence. Ask a phenomenologist what a force is, what the curviture of space is, and you will first have see that these are conceived in theory and they are terms of contingency. One doesn't witness space or forces, but only effects from which forces are inferred and the names only serve to ground such things in a scientific vocabulary.

Not gravity, with its connotative baggage, but phenomena, for this is all that is ever witnessed, ever can be witnessed. If it is going to be a universal connectivity of all things, I do think you are right to note that there is this term gravity that abides in everything and binds everything. I would remove the term and realize this connectivity does not belong to a scientific logos. It must be a term that is inclusive of the consciousness in which the whole affair is conceived and the epistemic properties are intended to explain. And this consciousness is inherently affective, ethical, aesthetic, and so on. For the nexus that connects me to my lamp and intimates knowing-in-identity is always already one that cares, in interested, fascinated, repulsed, and so on. A connection of epistemology not only cannot be conceived apart from these, it must have then as their principle feature, because these are the most salient things in all of existence. — Constance

Of course, gravity sounds a lot like God, then. For God is, sans the troublesome history and narratives, a metaethical, meta aesthetic metavalue grounding of the world.

You may not agree with the above, but for me, I think you are on to something. Gravity, I will repeat, never really was "gravity", for this is a term of contingency, See Rorty's Contingency, Irony and Solidarity for a nice account of this. When the matter goes to some grand foundation of connectivity, are we not in metaphysics? Or on its threshold? — Constance

I'm very grateful to you, Constance. Thank-you for you time, attention, knowledge and wisdom as applied to my thoughts about the mode of the phenomenon of consciousness.

I can see, in an early state of understanding, not yet in sharp focus, some of the truth of your claim consciousness is more at metaphysics than at physics. I therefore see value in developing my thinking towards effecting the transition suggested.

I'm supposing, tentatively, that physically grounded consciousness as metaphysics has for one of its essentials the phenomenon/noumenon relationship. This directs my research towards Husserl and, before him, Kant.

Encouragement such as you've given me motivates my presence here.

Maybe what makes consciousness so elusive is that we only regard elementary particles as real things. There aren't really any atoms, neurons or brains. Just elementary particles. Collections of elementary particles like atoms, neurons or brains don't seem to be real things, just useful fictions.

When you add up the masses of all elementary particles that make up a neuron, their total mass is the mass of the "neuron"; there is no additional mass provided by the "neuron" as a collection, as a whole. The absence of an additional mass provided by the "neuron" is the result of the fact that the locus of the gravitational force is only at the level of elementary particles, not at the level of their collections.

The locus of all known physical forces is at the level of elementary particles, and when you add up the forces of all elementary particles that make up a neuron, their total force is the force of the "neuron"; there is no additional force provided by the "neuron" as a collection, as a whole.

So it seems that a neuron doesn't really exist. And the same applies to collections of neurons. Consciousness seems to be somehow "generated" by collections of neurons, or seems to "emerge" somehow from collections of neurons. But what if consciousness actually is collections of neurons? What if qualia are collections of neurons? That would rid the metaphysical picture of mysterious "generation" or "emergence". But the fact remains that qualia as collections of neurons (or perhaps even as neurons themselves, which are collections of elementary particles) don't contribute their own mass and forces in addition to the masses and forces of their constituent elementary particles, and so qualia seem to be causally inert, epiphenomenal. Yet, if qualia are collections of elementary particles then qualia can exert causal influence indirectly, via their constituent elementary particles.

My point is that collections of elementary particles are not just useful fictions but real things, different from and additional to the elementary particles, even though the collections don't have a direct causal influence, only an indirect one via their parts. That may explain how qualia are seemingly nonexistent although we all know them to exist as contents of our own consciousness or parts of our own brain.

And by the way, elementary particles themselves may actually be collections of even more fundamental parts, which we have not discovered yet, or which cannot be physically probed even in principle. If collections are not real things and elementary particles are collections then even elementary particles are not real things. Then, are there any real things at all or is everything a fiction? Are only empty collections (non-composite things) real things - or would that be an arbitrary assumption?

The sources that @Joshs and @Wayfarer linked me to, which were written in mostly plain English, were interesting and helpful. As I noted in a previous post, they seem like psychology to me more than they do philosophy. — T Clark

I've been rethinking this. Strikes me that if what I say here is true, Taoism as presented in the Tao Te Ching is also psychology. Which it is, of course, but that doesn't stop it from being philosophy too.

What any DVD means depends on the content, whereas how it works has nothing to do with the content, to press the analogy. The hard problem is not about ’how the brain works’, it’s about the question of meaning. — Wayfarer

It's not just the question of meaning, nor just how it works. It's the question of how these two domains could ever be bridged. "How does it work, so that it gives rise to meaning?" But, I think this asks too much at once. You only need to answer, "How does it work, so that it gives rise to audio and video." And from there, you can answer "How does audio and video give rise to meaning?".

Similarly, "How does the brain give rise to qualia?" And "How do qualia give rise to the full features of the mind?"

Are you seeing the problem here? — hypericin

No. It seems you're saying that mechanisms cannot possibly bring about consciousness, but without giving any reason why not.

Yes, I see your point.

I've been reading up on biosemiotics and noticed this paragraph about intentionality at a cellular level:

What turns living creatures into semiotic systems is their ability to interpret the world, and single cells, according to Markoš, have this ability because their behaviour is context-dependent. This is why even single cells are subjects, not objects, and this is why we recognize them as living creatures, not machines. — Marcello Barbieri, A Short History of Biosemiosis

It makes the point that living beings are intrinsically interpretive, even on the most basic level, long before language and rationality have entered the picture. Whereas the strict mechanist/materialist view is that living beings can be understood simply as the sum of cellular transactions on a physical or biochemical level. This also seems to be the gist of your disagreement with Isaac.

My point is that collections of elementary particles are not just useful fictions but real things, — litewave

Isn't it just lumpen materialism? You still haven't allowed for intentionality other than as a byproduct or epiphenomenon of these essentially unintentional relations.

Isn't it just lumpen materialism? You still haven't allowed for intentionality other than as a byproduct or epiphenomenon of these essentially unintentional relations. — Wayfarer

Intentionality? That seems like an easy problem, not the hard one: a machine following a goal. For example a self-driving car is "intending" to get to a destination (without running over pedestrians). Or a killer robot is "intending" to kill someone.

Yes - well, when you can demonstrate a self-creating machine that follows goals, then I will accept the answer. Because machines are human artefacts, produced intentionally to deliver a result. They embody the intention of the agent who builds them.

Curious. Did you really think philosophy was just talking about itself? What is responsible for this is analytic philosophy, which has gotten lost, endlessly trying to squeeze new meanings out of familiar mundane thinking. — Constance

It's not analytic philosophy that's responsible for my view. It's the net product of reading all contributions. :wink:

Yes - well, when you can demonstrate a self-creating machine that follows goals, then I will accept the answer. Because machines are human artefacts, produced intentionally to deliver a result. They embody the intention of the agent who builds them. — Wayfarer

For organisms evolved by random mutations and natural selection, many goals seem to be derived from the primary goal of survival and replication. This primary goal originated when some purely unintentional (goalless) entities happened to have (by random strokes of luck) properties that sustained them in their environment, which resulted in the unsurprising fact that... they kept surviving and thus became more prevalent in the environment. And so it started to seem like they were following a "goal" of survival. Later some of these entities happened to replicate and thus kept on "surviving" in their offspring. After some time the environment was filled with entities that seemed to have the "goal" of not only surviving but also replicating. And as time went by and the surviving and replicating entities happened to acquire additional properties that made them do various things, the entities seemed to acquire additional goals, many of them supporting the primary goal of survival and replication while goals that hindered survival or replication tended to cause their unlucky carriers to die out. Sure enough, some of the new goals were more or less neutral with respect to survival or replication, and such goals were carried forward in the entities that survived and replicated.

Like I said - lumpen materialism. Yours is the very position for which the nature of consciousness is a hard problem, but there's no point in recapitulating the entire argument.

Maybe there should be a thread as per Kasturp - why materialism is baloney.

Well, I also suggested a solution to the problem of qualia, which is the hard problem.

This primary goal originated when some purely unintentional (goalless) entities happened to have (by random strokes of luck).... — litewave

You do see how the assertion that 'something just happened' does not actually amount to any kind of rationale?

You do see how the assertion that 'something just happened' does not actually amount to any kind of rationale? — Wayfarer

But things do happen, and this particular thing (survival) then tended to repeat itself and become more prevalent, simply because that is what surviving entities do.

Maybe there should be a thread as per Kasturp - why materialism is baloney. — Tom Storm

I've absorbed quite a bit of his work in the last few months but from experience this forum is generally hostile to his orientation.

I'm been immersed in his stuff too. I can't say if he is correct but he is compelling. His on line learning videos are a model of clarity and public education. His work on Schopenhauer very interesting too, along with his work on Jung. It never occurred to me (perhaps it should have) that Jung is an idealist - the collective unconsciousness and the way I had been taught it never suggested this to me clearly enough. I studied Jung and Joseph Campbell for a year as an elective in the 1980's.

I studied Jung and Joseph Campbell for a year as an elective in the 1980's. — Tom Storm

Kudos for that! I only encountered them tangentially in Comparative Religion, Jung was anathema in the psych department. (I’m listening to the audio book of Kastrup’s Idea of the World whilst working out. It’s pretty dry but all grist to the mill.)

Ah, the nothing. It is such a great, disturbing read. What thoughts have you here? — Constance

You were talking about being. It's a twin of the nothing.

between a science that recognizes that reality is inextricably tangled with human cognition and one that doesn't.
— T Clark

Any examples come to mind of sciences or scientists that do? — Wayfarer

You asked me a question and I spent significant time and effort providing a respectful response. You did not respond to that.

Didn't notice it, I'll go back through the thread.

Didn't notice it, I'll go back through the thread. — Wayfarer

@Wayfarer

Any examples come to mind of sciences or scientists that do?
— Wayfarer

As I noted, I've thought about this a lot and I'm not at all satisfied with what I've come up with. I'll just throw out some ideas. — T Clark