I'm unsure if other view, minus eliminitavism are explanations as opposed to ways of thinking about experience. But, the list is rather comprehensive.
:up:
Julian MalekAugust 20, 2021 at 21:03#5821510 likes
Coenesthesia replicates and assimilates the pataphysical constellations that constitute the bulk of the perceptible but, because of a strained echopraxia that adheres to aleatory mathesis, the subconscious imprint of permutations of an integrated reality differ by capacities of percolation of the corporeal through the lavaderos of limit and the strain of hypertrophy or atrophy. Consciousness is like a shattered mirror that is corrugated through spatiotemporal circumjacent boundaries that constitute the psychogony of complexion rather than reflection. It is a comprehensive if beleaguered sentience that caresses the subliminal and accentuates the caprice of esemplastic tentacles that span variable gamuts that are ultimately subordinated by a celation that borrows from girouettism to create a shared approximation that circumducts around the babeldom of conclamation that is a categorical mutualism which becomes the nomothetic girdle of differential gradients of idiosyncrasy meeting the normative constraints of algedonic psychogony that deviates greatly from geotechnic optimum and even greater from geotechnic pessimum (by the necessity of dampened Brownian Motion which is defied by the congenital syntax of learned organization). And because the sum of conscience results in ecclesiarchy hobbled by impetuous purpresture of habit we can similarly conclude that the sum of consciousness is the percolation of both intrinsic valor and inane echopraxia into a contempered emancipation of the compounded breadth of learned cathexis and the depth of innate gangues that embody a flash of literacy augmented by flexible subroutines of habit that are the motatory rebhibition of sociocracy flimsy but inveterate to success and forgetful of frustraneous debacles if never in enantiodromia.
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The concatenation of idioglossia (instinctive childlike communication; gabble) for example reflects a shared orbit of personas that share different gradients of volatility as the ludic fouter of the quintessential protoplasm is an origami of perception magnified by an inherited caprice that is the mandate for a terpsichorean but sympatric sphere of contraplex vectors of category intersected with the mutiny of syntax to abridge and simultaneously expand the protensive durative process of cohesive bricolage prone to the intuitive tenacity to absorb and then manufacture a farrago that abides by evolved awareness and churns a consequent solidarity found in definition but beyond the surmised threshold of the callow retread. I conclude, therefore, that consciousness depends on the superorganism of the macrobian and lively interaction between shared experience which centuples only if by a cultural imprint that is either hobbled by uniformity to result in a reductive certainty or a blandished flummery of the hackneyed (when collectivism is imperious draconian conformity) or an expansive tug of idiosyncrasy to sublimate in divergent imagination that is the stew of redintegrated ingenuity. Therefore consciousness began as an insular nesiote that is the primitive primogeniture of the canvass of circular dynamism but evolved into a superlative and supernal field of variable constitution that embodies both self and other but neither in totality.
I believe, therefore, consciousness began with an insular awareness incapable of anything but instinct which became the primipara for an advenient conjuration of language hobbled by the nomadic sprites of the protensive fouter with aimless lunarist siderism and eventually into an ethereal medium hypostatizing a replication that with virulent force and vehement conviction motivated fractured piecemeal dirigismes that confound boundaries of raw uniformity and ideal ipseity of the individuation of seminal rather than frustraneous ideas that collapse on algedonic ritualization. Consciousness, therefore, is both the measure of the collective weight and gravity of contraplex ideas differing their orbits but remaining reconstituted as unitary forms that achieve both sprawl and speed and simultaneously the constrained sphere of self-aware reticulation that bowdlerizes (depending on the age and capacity of intellect) the axiomatic and outmoded procedures such that what remains requires is somewhere between the conversant and the ineffable. Consciousness is more unitary than dualistic but it requires the projection of the known and the communication of the obvious to form the bulwark of the arcane and the degrees of the metemperical are actually an apagoge of academicism and acatalepsy because in good fortune we find that the reach of culture is the replication of stratified and replete originality contempered by the necessary politics of skeletonized frameworks of vulcanized but inflexible models to become the mainsail paragons of traction. Therefore consciousness is replicable and idiosyncrasy is unmistakable but the divergent imagination is intractable but rarely ever untethered to the humanity of culture rather than the mechanics of dehumanization.
Reply to Julian Malek Very interesting hypothesis. Do you have any resources or reading materials for me to look at because your theory sounds really interesting.
Reply to Ghost Light Other. These are not "theories" (i.e. falsifiable good explanations), just methodological speculations (NB: I find non-reductive physicalism the least problematic) for the most part. I find the phenomenal self model (PSM) conjecture more plausible and insightful than any other (positions) on "consciousness" (i.e subjective intentional agency).
Posted an article I wrote about a kind of panprotopsychism based on quantum biology that is the OP of this thread: Matter and Qualitative Perception. It's a form of physicalism with panpsychist inclinations, so does not fit neatly into any of those categories. You might be interested in giving it some contemplation.
‘Theories of consciousness’ suffer from the circularity of being the products of the very thing they’re wanting to explain. That differentiates them from, for example, theories as to why there’s only two beers left in the fridge.
Reply to Wayfarer I guess that could make you a Mysterian. :razz: Coming from this perspective of science's blind spot - is it even worth considering this question, or do we just meditate?
Reply to Tom Storm NO! Crucial to understand why the question is such a difficult one, and not kick the can down the road by thinking ‘oh well, we will solve it one day’. There was some famous philosopher, name escapes me, who always said that he knew that he didn’t know. It is not a ‘research program’. Look at the solid block of verbiage and neologism a few posts up, and beware.
I would have checked IDEALISM, but I’m sure that it would be misconstrued.
Reply to Wayfarer Of course. Given I am not a philosopher or a some other appropriately qualified expert, it is of almost no consequence what I understand or think about this 'hard problem'. Like most people, I'm better off doing the dishes or finding a suitable can...
Reply to Tom Storm You keep saying you’re not a philosopher but I’m not convinced.
There are theories of consciousness that I believe are credible, chief amongst them Buddhist abhidharma. I won’t try and explain it or summarise it, although if it had been given as an option I would have checked it without hesitation.
I find the phenomenal self model (PSM) conjecture more plausible and insightful than any other (positions) on "consciousness" (i.e subjective intentional agency).
Reply to Wayfarer First, because it's a scientific conjecture / research program and not just a mere philosophical speculation (or woo). Second, because of the work of Thomas Metzinger (neuroscientist, physicalist & Buddhist) as well as, in recent decades, that of other scientist-philosophers like S.Dehaene, A. Damasio, S. Seung, D. Kahneman, P. Churchland and also contemporary philosophers such as O. Flanagan, D. Hofstadter, D. Dennett, D. Parfit, R.S. Bakker ... thinking which follows consistently from the naturalistic reflections on "self as an illusion" (i.e. avatar of subpersonal embodied systems) by e.g. Hume, Spinoza, Epicurus & Buddha.
Of course, if you acquaint yourself with Metzinger's work on the PSM, Wayf, you may appreciate why someone of my philosophical persuasion finds it more informative and insightful than other more speculative, less evidence-based / defeasible alternatives. If you have more than a passing interest, I recommend Being No One (or the popularized, less technical, summary The Ego Tunnel) by T. Metzinger. (video lecture)
Anyway, I don't really see the circularity, not a vicious one anyway. Consider an analogy with DNA. Our knowledge of DNA is a product of the activities of DNA. *shrug*
EDIT: you might have an interesting insight here. But I'm not sure you've brought it out.
and not kick the can down the road by thinking ‘oh well, we will solve it one day’.
Mysterianism would say we don't have the capacities to understand the answers to these questions. We just don't know. It's not that someday down the line we will know, it's that we can't know.
Similar to saying a Dog will never understand English or Japanese. Or that a blind person will understand color vision.
if you acquaint yourself with Metzinger's work on the PSM
He's on my reading list, as is Antonio Damasio.
When I asked 'what compelled you?' it was more an attempt to highlight the irony implied by your questioning of 'subjective intentional agency' i.e., if you, the subject, did not intend to write that post, then.... But, as they say, a joke explained is a joke lost.
Speaking of idealism, there's a formidable German philosopher I read about last year, named Sebastian Rodl, who is Professor of Practical Philosophy at Liepzig. He's regarded as a foremost expert in Kant and Hegel. His most recent book is called Self-Consciousness and Objectivity, you can read about it here. (I tried to read some of his shorter essays last year but he's a very difficult writer.)
When I asked 'what compelled you?' it was more an attempt to highlight the irony implied by your questioning of 'subjective intentional agency' i.e., if you, the subject, did not intend to write that post, then.... But, as they say, a joke explained is a joke lost.
I don't know, I think in this case I'm finding it funnier and funnier. There's layers to it now.
Reply to Wayfarer I appreciate the recommendation. From your link and brief reviews of the book, Rodl seems to propose a solution in search of a problem. "Absolute idealism"? Really. How anachronistic in this post-Kantian era. Like all flavors of idealism "self" "mind" "self-consciousness" "subjectivity" etc are reified fallaciously, or without warrant, and contribute nothing to a scientific understanding (or reflective experience) of anything. It appears Rodl just offers more antiquated folk psychologism and obscurant pseudo-epistemology yet in analytical terms (neat trick).
My recommendations (above) are realist rather than idealist and therefore complementary with natural sciences. Check out the video lecture given by Metzinger I linked at the end of this prior post. His brief synopsis of the PSM, etc demonstrates why Rodl's thesis cannot even get off the ground either logically or neuroscientifically. I'm still trying to get over the idealist wunderkind of a decade ago Markus Gabriel. Absolute effin' idealism?! :rofl:
Reply to 180 Proof I found Graham Harman's take on Metzinger's PSM to be interesting. I read The Ego Tunnel a while back, and while I know it's not his magnum opus, I found parts of it to be puzzling. Certainly an intriguing/baffling/horrifying theory nonetheless.
Reply to darthbarracuda Graham Harman, from the abstract you've linked, sounds like he's not read a word of Metzinger or understands Metzinger's thesis / conjecture if he has biothered to read any of it. Yes, though, the PMS is an esteem-shattering counter-intuitive model that has a lot of circumstantial, corroborating evidence in its favor – still, I think, it's a very dense work in progress.
I think the most pressing alternatives here are idealism/materialism/neutral monism vs. eliminitavism. That's substantive, but easy to decide on, I think.
The differences between idealism vs materialism vs anything else is mostly terminological.
I will reduce the question of consciousness (C) to its basic form without the use of obscure jargon.
Questions:
(1) How do we know that the brain produces C?
When the body is infused with certain chemicals (which are material and tangible) unconscious (un-C) results. Blunt impact to the head can cause un-C. If a surgeon damages a certain part of the brain a predictable effect can be un-C or else the elimination of certain kinds of conscious experiences. C is part of the physical world, because, when we walk about, we do not leave our C behind. If C were a different order of existence from the physical, it could not attach itself to a physical object.
(2) How does the brain, a physical object, produce C, something that is experienced as purely intangible?
This is the “hard problem” of C. No one has thus far given a convincing answer to this question. I might add that it is a problem for science and not philosophy.
Some Features of Consciousness
(1) C cannot exist independently of a human or animal brain.
(2) Free will cannot exist without C; for, to act freely, one must be aware of what he is doing. However, one can consciously experience a reflex action while, at the same time, being aware that the action was not the product of his will.
(3) No conscious experience can have a duration of nil. Indeed, any experience without some duration, however brief, is no experience at all. Events outside the body similarly must have some duration, else they would not exist.
(4) Accordingly, every perception must be spread over time in order to provide an experience of external reality. If it were otherwise, one would “forget” the beginning of an event before he got to the end. The faculty that allows the extension of an experience over time is called memory.
(5) A bit of reflection will reveal that C is itself a special kind of memory.
(6) Conscious experiences, like all of reality, are temporally continuous in the ontological sense. That is, there are no temporal points in either reality or the perception of it and consequently no perfect intervals; for time is not a series. [McTaggart
notwithstanding]
(7) The contents of C are subjective in the sense that they are more or less limited to the spatial extent of the brain and can really only be known by a subject who experiences them. This makes the contents of C private, in that they are not directly accessible by others.
(8) However, we have every reason to believe that C is experienced the same by all humans. C is not empirical, because it does not necessarily require the intercession of the senses. When one uses the expression, ”conscious,” everyone knows what it means. Indeed, one cannot communicate with another unless both are conscious. In this sense, C may be called objective.
(9) C was naturally selected because it is necessary for the will, and the will has great value in the struggle for existence, for it allows deliberation and planning.
(10) One cannot be conscious without being conscious of something, whether it be a current perception, a more distant memory, a feeling such as pain or joy, a language, a mathematical formula, a plan, a musical composition, and so forth.
(11) One can properly say that a perception does not correspond to some external reality [whatever that may be] but one cannot properly say that C itself is illusory, for an illusion presumes a conscious subject who experiences the illusion—just as a deception requires someone who is deceived. In other words, a deception or an illusion cannot exist independently of a conscious mind.
Comments (36)
I'm unsure if other view, minus eliminitavism are explanations as opposed to ways of thinking about experience. But, the list is rather comprehensive.
:up:
.
The concatenation of idioglossia (instinctive childlike communication; gabble) for example reflects a shared orbit of personas that share different gradients of volatility as the ludic fouter of the quintessential protoplasm is an origami of perception magnified by an inherited caprice that is the mandate for a terpsichorean but sympatric sphere of contraplex vectors of category intersected with the mutiny of syntax to abridge and simultaneously expand the protensive durative process of cohesive bricolage prone to the intuitive tenacity to absorb and then manufacture a farrago that abides by evolved awareness and churns a consequent solidarity found in definition but beyond the surmised threshold of the callow retread. I conclude, therefore, that consciousness depends on the superorganism of the macrobian and lively interaction between shared experience which centuples only if by a cultural imprint that is either hobbled by uniformity to result in a reductive certainty or a blandished flummery of the hackneyed (when collectivism is imperious draconian conformity) or an expansive tug of idiosyncrasy to sublimate in divergent imagination that is the stew of redintegrated ingenuity. Therefore consciousness began as an insular nesiote that is the primitive primogeniture of the canvass of circular dynamism but evolved into a superlative and supernal field of variable constitution that embodies both self and other but neither in totality.
I believe, therefore, consciousness began with an insular awareness incapable of anything but instinct which became the primipara for an advenient conjuration of language hobbled by the nomadic sprites of the protensive fouter with aimless lunarist siderism and eventually into an ethereal medium hypostatizing a replication that with virulent force and vehement conviction motivated fractured piecemeal dirigismes that confound boundaries of raw uniformity and ideal ipseity of the individuation of seminal rather than frustraneous ideas that collapse on algedonic ritualization. Consciousness, therefore, is both the measure of the collective weight and gravity of contraplex ideas differing their orbits but remaining reconstituted as unitary forms that achieve both sprawl and speed and simultaneously the constrained sphere of self-aware reticulation that bowdlerizes (depending on the age and capacity of intellect) the axiomatic and outmoded procedures such that what remains requires is somewhere between the conversant and the ineffable. Consciousness is more unitary than dualistic but it requires the projection of the known and the communication of the obvious to form the bulwark of the arcane and the degrees of the metemperical are actually an apagoge of academicism and acatalepsy because in good fortune we find that the reach of culture is the replication of stratified and replete originality contempered by the necessary politics of skeletonized frameworks of vulcanized but inflexible models to become the mainsail paragons of traction. Therefore consciousness is replicable and idiosyncrasy is unmistakable but the divergent imagination is intractable but rarely ever untethered to the humanity of culture rather than the mechanics of dehumanization.
Ah! Good to know! It's sometimes looked down upon, but I always thought it was an obvious position to take.
But, in philosophy, I guess nothing is obvious.
Here are some good books on the subject.
Rita Carter-Exploring Consciousness
Steven Pinker-The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
Posted an article I wrote about a kind of panprotopsychism based on quantum biology that is the OP of this thread: Matter and Qualitative Perception. It's a form of physicalism with panpsychist inclinations, so does not fit neatly into any of those categories. You might be interested in giving it some contemplation.
I would sound quite platonist but yes, my bet goes to idealism as a theory of conciousness.
I would have checked IDEALISM, but I’m sure that it would be misconstrued.
There are theories of consciousness that I believe are credible, chief amongst them Buddhist abhidharma. I won’t try and explain it or summarise it, although if it had been given as an option I would have checked it without hesitation.
What compelled you to say that?
Of course, if you acquaint yourself with Metzinger's work on the PSM, Wayf, you may appreciate why someone of my philosophical persuasion finds it more informative and insightful than other more speculative, less evidence-based / defeasible alternatives. If you have more than a passing interest, I recommend Being No One (or the popularized, less technical, summary The Ego Tunnel) by T. Metzinger. (video lecture)
He was supposed to say 'consciousness' wasn't he?
Anyway, I don't really see the circularity, not a vicious one anyway. Consider an analogy with DNA. Our knowledge of DNA is a product of the activities of DNA. *shrug*
EDIT: you might have an interesting insight here. But I'm not sure you've brought it out.
Seconded. And agreed.
Mysterianism would say we don't have the capacities to understand the answers to these questions. We just don't know. It's not that someday down the line we will know, it's that we can't know.
Similar to saying a Dog will never understand English or Japanese. Or that a blind person will understand color vision.
But Idealism is also a good option. ;)
That would have been presumptuous of my conscious self, now wouldn't it?
He's on my reading list, as is Antonio Damasio.
When I asked 'what compelled you?' it was more an attempt to highlight the irony implied by your questioning of 'subjective intentional agency' i.e., if you, the subject, did not intend to write that post, then.... But, as they say, a joke explained is a joke lost.
Speaking of idealism, there's a formidable German philosopher I read about last year, named Sebastian Rodl, who is Professor of Practical Philosophy at Liepzig. He's regarded as a foremost expert in Kant and Hegel. His most recent book is called Self-Consciousness and Objectivity, you can read about it here. (I tried to read some of his shorter essays last year but he's a very difficult writer.)
I don't know, I think in this case I'm finding it funnier and funnier. There's layers to it now.
My recommendations (above) are realist rather than idealist and therefore complementary with natural sciences. Check out the video lecture given by Metzinger I linked at the end of this prior post. His brief synopsis of the PSM, etc demonstrates why Rodl's thesis cannot even get off the ground either logically or neuroscientifically. I'm still trying to get over the idealist wunderkind of a decade ago Markus Gabriel. Absolute effin' idealism?! :rofl:
It's a sound option.
I think the most pressing alternatives here are idealism/materialism/neutral monism vs. eliminitavism. That's substantive, but easy to decide on, I think.
The differences between idealism vs materialism vs anything else is mostly terminological.
Questions:
(1) How do we know that the brain produces C?
When the body is infused with certain chemicals (which are material and tangible) unconscious (un-C) results. Blunt impact to the head can cause un-C. If a surgeon damages a certain part of the brain a predictable effect can be un-C or else the elimination of certain kinds of conscious experiences. C is part of the physical world, because, when we walk about, we do not leave our C behind. If C were a different order of existence from the physical, it could not attach itself to a physical object.
(2) How does the brain, a physical object, produce C, something that is experienced as purely intangible?
This is the “hard problem” of C. No one has thus far given a convincing answer to this question. I might add that it is a problem for science and not philosophy.
Some Features of Consciousness
(1) C cannot exist independently of a human or animal brain.
(2) Free will cannot exist without C; for, to act freely, one must be aware of what he is doing. However, one can consciously experience a reflex action while, at the same time, being aware that the action was not the product of his will.
(3) No conscious experience can have a duration of nil. Indeed, any experience without some duration, however brief, is no experience at all. Events outside the body similarly must have some duration, else they would not exist.
(4) Accordingly, every perception must be spread over time in order to provide an experience of external reality. If it were otherwise, one would “forget” the beginning of an event before he got to the end. The faculty that allows the extension of an experience over time is called memory.
(5) A bit of reflection will reveal that C is itself a special kind of memory.
(6) Conscious experiences, like all of reality, are temporally continuous in the ontological sense. That is, there are no temporal points in either reality or the perception of it and consequently no perfect intervals; for time is not a series. [McTaggart
notwithstanding]
(7) The contents of C are subjective in the sense that they are more or less limited to the spatial extent of the brain and can really only be known by a subject who experiences them. This makes the contents of C private, in that they are not directly accessible by others.
(8) However, we have every reason to believe that C is experienced the same by all humans. C is not empirical, because it does not necessarily require the intercession of the senses. When one uses the expression, ”conscious,” everyone knows what it means. Indeed, one cannot communicate with another unless both are conscious. In this sense, C may be called objective.
(9) C was naturally selected because it is necessary for the will, and the will has great value in the struggle for existence, for it allows deliberation and planning.
(10) One cannot be conscious without being conscious of something, whether it be a current perception, a more distant memory, a feeling such as pain or joy, a language, a mathematical formula, a plan, a musical composition, and so forth.
(11) One can properly say that a perception does not correspond to some external reality [whatever that may be] but one cannot properly say that C itself is illusory, for an illusion presumes a conscious subject who experiences the illusion—just as a deception requires someone who is deceived. In other words, a deception or an illusion cannot exist independently of a conscious mind.
Panpsychisms says all is psyche, soul. Neutral monism says creation and creation are the same, being neutral about mind and matter.