Is the Mind Informed by the Infinite?
It being likely we live within an infinite universe, is it likely there's no nonlocal information, or action at a distance, which affects the body-mind whatever?
Physicalism as the most popular ontological orientation among intellectuals these days claims the mind is the brain. Assuming this is so, is it possible the brain is influenced by nonlocal information? It's possible to see ten miles away and what we see changes the brain as input. Gravity is arguably action at a distance. The sun's radiation mutates genes from a distance. Lightning has been said to be triggered by particles emanating from exploded suns in distant galaxies. It would seem from a position of material monism even, with a soupcon of open-mindedness, there could be some as yet understood way the body-mind is informed by everything. Could everything inform everything?
Quantum entanglement is the most obvious reason why this proposition may be true. A difference that makes a difference doesn't exist in time and space. Acausality (from the limited perception/conception of any embodied being) may be more real than we know on this string of thought. That it may be inconceivable is no good reason to write off the possibility of everything informing everything, of there being only one specimen of universe.
Our awareness of being aware (the greatest source of mystery for me), I've often wondered, may have something to do with the mind being kissed by infinite information. The infinite regress of consciousness may be infinite indeed.
Physicalism as the most popular ontological orientation among intellectuals these days claims the mind is the brain. Assuming this is so, is it possible the brain is influenced by nonlocal information? It's possible to see ten miles away and what we see changes the brain as input. Gravity is arguably action at a distance. The sun's radiation mutates genes from a distance. Lightning has been said to be triggered by particles emanating from exploded suns in distant galaxies. It would seem from a position of material monism even, with a soupcon of open-mindedness, there could be some as yet understood way the body-mind is informed by everything. Could everything inform everything?
Quantum entanglement is the most obvious reason why this proposition may be true. A difference that makes a difference doesn't exist in time and space. Acausality (from the limited perception/conception of any embodied being) may be more real than we know on this string of thought. That it may be inconceivable is no good reason to write off the possibility of everything informing everything, of there being only one specimen of universe.
Our awareness of being aware (the greatest source of mystery for me), I've often wondered, may have something to do with the mind being kissed by infinite information. The infinite regress of consciousness may be infinite indeed.
Comments (47)
What is a mystery anyway? It's simply the need to answer the 7 basic questions: who? what? when? where? which? how? why?
What is interesting is questions don't stop. Infinite regress. The mystery never ends.
Anthony does not know if we live in an infinite universe or not...
...and neither do you, Tim.
Thanks for the constructive feedback. Generically, I mean space may be unlimited. There's probably such a conception as space that's far enough away, we can think of it as infinite for our purposes, whether it really is or not. Pretty sure it's much bigger than most realize. Will humans ever travel one light year? Probably not.
Tim, this may come as a big shock...and may, in your opinion, disqualify me from commenting on matters like this...BUT...
...I actually do not know everything about every aspect of the "physical universe"...nor of existence itself.
There may be things that cannot be "counted"...in the sense I think you are using that word. And those "things"...in the sense that I think you are using that word, might be as out-of-touch to me (and other humans) as quantum mechanics is to a ferret.
The universe, Tim, may be infinite...or boundless or unlimited, if you want to play word-games...
...and it may be discrete or finite (as you choose to use those words.)
I do not know which it is.
I would bet big money that you do not either.
If you are asserting it is finite (or at least, not infinite)...the burden of proof is on you.
Have at it.
What about change. The universe is undergoing change so every description is limited and smaller then the universe plus the next instance of change
So...you think it is okay, reasonable, and logical for you to make a sweeping assertion about the nature of REALITY...and when called upon to meet the burden of proof that accrues...you can simply dismiss it out-of-hand.
Hummm.
That is an unusual position to take for someone participating in a discussion in an Internet forum.
But...if that is how you operate....go with it.
I would say it's continuous since the idea of turning off and on change (figuratively speaking) doesn't make sense, I am further arguing that it is a mechanism that always adds to the currently described view. Similar to Natural Numbers no matter what number you give there's always a bigger one. (If you want to view this as countable but not finite or not is up to you)
I am using it thusly:
extending indefinitely : ENDLESS
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/infinite
Limitless or endless in space, extent, or size; impossible to measure or calculate
Oxford Dictionary
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/infinite
American Heritage Dictionary.
Having no boundaries or limits; impossible to measure or calculate.
https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=infinite
There is the limits of the known anent what is possible (or what seem possible or not) on one hand, and the infinite on the other. Although, we could say that a signal requires measurement or a receiver for it to be a signal. Then we see a communication forming between concepts of measurability and infinity. Then it becomes a matter of whether we might be unaware of unknown signals being measured by something (say, the body-mind) in a way we are unaware of from a place too far (perhaps outside spacetime delimitation) to be understood by known physics that govern spacetime locality. Quantum physics points us in some really strange directions in our attempt to understand the wave nature of electrons. The wave nature of matter, and superposition, hint at types of communication quantum physicists truly don't understand as yet. Standing waves appear to be quasi-holographic. Holograms contain the whole in the part, like Indra's Net. Hence I'm wondering if everything informs everything, if so, our body-mind would be no exception.
Repeating creates infinity if it never stops. The nothing anyone has to worry about is just deflecting that this is the issue that we are discussing here and that it serves as counter argument against your position.
Quoting tim wood
Again stop dodging the point.
The point I was addressing is that the universe contains infinite's, not countability (a word you used but never explained what you meant, not upholding your own standards).
I made a case for continuous properties that I am aware are part of Real numbers and are not viewed as countable.
However I made a weaker case with the set of Natural numbers that are defined as countable but infinite.
I highlighted the infinite and let the interpretation if N is countable or not up to you since you seemed to link countability to infinity which conventionally is not done. So to not use a negative interpretation and let you freeroom with your seemingly incoherent connection of the two distinct concept I said
Quoting CaZaNOx
which highlights that I strictly purpose infinity and stick to the initial topic. With referring to your definition of infinity.
Quoting tim wood
The fun introduction you made was
Quoting tim wood
addressed by continuity. However since this doesn't matter I used a countable claim of infinity referring to N you endorse a incoherent usage of countability.
Quoting tim wood
So I could like you say regarding countability
Quoting tim wood
With the difference being that I A) didn't do what you accuse me of, B)Actually presented an argument (that isn't trivally self defeating) C) Actually addressed your post, instead of just derailing the conversation to you use "this term wrong" ergo your talking nonsense without backing up your claim.
I do not know if the universe is finite or infinite.
I suspect you do not either.
But if you are going to insist you do...then a burden of proof accrues.
Meet it or let's just end this thing.
Mystery is wonder renewing itself. Curiosity can be satisfied. Which is why the cat is killed. Wonder is a deep and peculiar well, that retains the ability to understand, while never making conclusions.
I feel like questions would stop for curiosity. One can only handle so many conclusive answers before his understanding starts to overflow. Verily, though, the mystery never ends.
There is some sort of hard to define infinite regress built into the primary process of consciousness that's a province of wonder. Curiosity, and its questions are part of a secondary process by comparison . Wonder will take us places curiosity can't enter, like trying to understand the infinite regress in our self-awareness...something is aware of something aware of something aware of something aware....self-similar, yet different, all the way down. We may find out the more we're staring infinite regress in the face, the less we can say what it is we're looking at.
This "somethings" would require qualification. Some what? Some electrons, maybe? Electrons apparently are exactly the same. So when you count one you count them all. Even though they make up matter as far as we know, of the totality, every one is the same. This points to something fishy going on. Not sure what. It definitely is relevant what is being counted, moreso than the numbers tacked onto the quality of the "what.".
Agreed on that.
Quoting tim wood
Disagree. I gave the example of the natural Numbers a countable infinite set.
Quoting tim wood
I am not objecting that finite sets are countable. I am saying countable does not imply finite since we know examples that are countable and infinite. One counterexample suffices to show that the implication you are trying to establish doesn't hold.
Quoting tim wood
Yes but we don't need it for N. We use it for Q and Q is diagonalizable, therefore counable but also infinite.
Are you saying the Natural numbers are
A) not countable
B) not infinite
Are you aware that this is your own position that basically no one holds?
Quoting tim wood
Just to get it strait. Are you saying that something that repeats (forever without stopping) is not infinite? (Correct me if I misunderstood you)
Quoting tim wood
How is this related to the concept of infinity (=without an end). Can't you just keep on counting without end if the thing you are counting is countable but infinite?
Quoting tim wood
I made this case with change (I admit it was briefly) See:
Quoting CaZaNOx
Note: The figuratively speaking is there because as it is written it would presuppose an agent which I am not doing.
You however are correct that I did not link it directly to real numbers. I only made a case for continuous change which I model (in my head) as Real numbers. I could however limit myself to a part of R that would contain more then one point and isn't discrete therefore still be infinite (in depth, not length).
In short I argue for continuous change, this in turn needs an continuous interval that is a subset of more then one points of R to be modeled. This would not be countable due to it being continuous.
Quoting tim wood
I disagree. I don't see change as a mathematical concept and rather a physical one. I model this however with math.
Also I have no trouble "keeping straight" that I use mathematical concepts. However I assumed this to be clear, like you assumed it to be clear that countability, or diagonalization refers to math.
disclaimer: I am no physicist and don't pretend to be an expert. I have never taken so much as a single physics course. I've only done some casual reading and thinking about physics. In the following, I might make mistakes. Take my position with a grain of salt. If you find an error, I'd be happy if you'd correct my misunderstanding.
Gravity as understood by Newton was sometimes thought to be spooky action at a distance. And Newton was notoriously unhappy with this state of affairs. His law of gravity only described mathematically how bodies move in relation to each other. It said nothing about why they attract one another. Newton on the matter:
But Einstein seems to have solved the problem. His way of understanding gravity restored locality and removed any action at a distance.
One way to get some sense of how it works is the old trampoline model of spacetime. Understand that this is a very flawed analogy because it involves another gravitational pull downward. But put that concern aside for the moment. Put a heavy bowling ball in the center of the elastic sheet. Now put some marbles on the trampoline some distance from the bowling ball. Because the bowling ball makes a depression in the trampoline right where it touches it, the surface of the trampoline under each marble is tilted. So the marble starts to roll, as it would on any tilted surface. The bowling ball isn't magically pulling on the marbles at distance, without contact. The motion of marble is determined by geometric orientation of the surface underneath it. And the bowling ball only has an effect on the trampoline surface it is touching. Each small part of the trampoline surface is affecting its neighboring parts. So by a chain of little things touching their neighbors, the bowling ball has an indirect influence on the marble. Nothing nonlocal. It is like having a dog on a chain. When you pull the chain and yank the dog's neck, this isn't spooky action at a distance. One link pulls the next, which pulls the next, and so on. It is all local contact action. In Einstein's actual theory, it is all strictly geometric and local.
Isn't it interesting that we think of Einstein's theories as weird and Newton's as non-weird? If you look closer, it would seem that Einstein made things agree better with our intuitions! He restored some sanity to our picture of things!
Now, suppose I shoot an arrow at a deer. Is this nonlocal? No. I physically touched the arrow, imparted momentum to it, which carried it across space, whereupon it touches the deer.
Particles from the sun mutating genes can be thought of as being like the arrow situation. Not nonlocal. Neither the particle nor wave manner of modelling such things as photons arriving from the sun to influence atoms in cells is nonlocal.
Quoting Anthony
Quantum entanglement is often misunderstood. It doesn't let you send information faster than light. You can't communicate with it. If you could, you could violate causality and introduce contradictions into the world, thus violating the law of non-contradiction. You could do things analogous to killing your distant ancestor and thus not existing to kill your ancestor, in which case, your ancestor lives, in which case, your ancestor doesn't live...
If information can travel faster than light, effects can precede their causes and thus influence them.
See such things as a no-communication theorem: link
We don't really understand deeply what is going on with quantum entanglement. For one thing, the Everett interpretation paints quite a different picture of what is going on with it than other interpretations. There, it really isn't one thing influencing another. Rather, it is more of a matter of how states of the universe are inherited from ancestor states. This happens according to certain rules that make it the case that certain correlations will naturally be observed.
It is similar to how, if you take a pair of gloves and put each in a box (you don't know which is in which) and you send one far away, if you open the one you have, you instantly know whether the distant glove is a left or a right one. The glove you have didn't affect the distant one in any spooky way. And you can't determine before you open the box whether your glove is left or right. And thus, you can't determine whether the distant one is left or right. Since you can't determine which glove you have, you can't determine which glove is found in the distant box. And thus, you can't use this system to communicate. The entanglement situation is somewhat like this.
In the Everett interpretation, you might think of it like the following. If you have an entangled pair of particles and you measure the spin of one, you simply are discovering that you happen to be in the branch in which your particle is spin up (another copy of you in another branch presumably finds his particle spin down), and the rules are such that in a given worldline, where one of the particles is spin up, by a law of symmetry, the other must be spin down. So you also know that the distant particle is spin down. But before you measure your particle, you don't know if your particle is spin up or spin down. From your standpoint, it is completely random. And you can't determine the state of your particle in order to determine the complementary state of the other. So this doesn't allow communication.
Disappointing, I know, right?
Things can only causally influence things in their light cone, and only by local means, via some kind of contact action, whether you are dealing with waves or particles, both of which are thoroughly local. The very nature of waves is that each part of the wave is affecting its neighbors. Consider imparting wave motion to a rope. What about EM radiation in a vacuum since people have dispensed with the aether? Unless we use the virtual particle model here, I don't know how to understand this, frankly. Maybe it has to do with the following curious possibility:
In Einstein's theories, as you approach the speed of light, distance contracts. At the speed of light, the distance crossed is zero. So when an electron drops to a lower energy level and emits a photon, the "distant" electron receiving that photon and jumping to a higher energy level isn't really distant! It is as if a certain quantum of energy is simply being passed directly, by touching, from one electron to another, perhaps not unlike one billiard ball losing momentum to another ball when striking it, the energy simply passing from one ball to another. It is as if the electron in the distant star has literally touched the electron in your retina when you see distant starlight. The star has touched your eye. But because of the way spacetime geometry is affected by speed, the star as it is "now" cannot touch your eye. But the star as it was long ago in the past can touch your eye. You must be in the light cone. Things outside of one another's light cone are causally isolated.
It basically got established to say f.e. infinity of N is smaller then infinity of R ect.
What do you think "trans"-finite means?
I just don't see how you can equate the process of counting with the claim that there will be an end to the counting or not.
I also don't understand what your answer means
Quoting tim wood
It seems that you view the Natural numbers as countable(correct me if I am wrong)
So, are you contesting the notion that the natural Numbers are infinite? If yes are you aware that no one else (I know of) holds this position?
Someone will mention how it takes time for signals to travel from light reflected from an object to the retina, and so on. If the mind and body are out of communication, as the mind-body paradox is extant, we can't say for sure whether or not matter and mind obey the same spacetime. It may take time for signals to travel in a physical environoment, while from the perspective of idealist monism (or that all is mind "stuff"), maybe it doesn't work that way. Spacetime itself, even for a physicalist, is seen as one thing. To the physical monist, then, perhaps spacetime is a little spooky. The mind could be a little closer to mere spacetime, or on a different frequency than matter.
I believe you are mistaken.
If Bob in a ship is moving relative to me at close to the speed of light, his ship will be length-contracted. At the speed of light, his length would be zero (I realize he has mass and can't reach that speed). But consider that from Bob's perspective, in his frame, it is as if the distance being crossed is moving relative to him. It is therefore similarly contracted. In the galaxy's frame, his length is contracted. In his frame, the galaxy is contracted.
video
So, if it makes sense to talk about what is happening from the perspective of a photon, since it is massless and travels at the speed of light, the distance contracts to zero.
So photons are never observed crossing space from some other frame of reference. What does this mean? I don't know. Combined with the length contraction from the photon's perspective, it suggests to me that photons perhaps don't cross space at all. We don't observe them travelling across space. And from their perspective, the distance is always zero. From a QM perspective, when unobserved, there are also uncertainties.
Maybe they aren't even travelling particles, but rather just packets of energy being transferred directly from one electron to another. This is pure speculation on my part. But it may have something to do with light not needing a medium like aether to travel through.
hmm, but wouldn't that mean that stars are invisible from a spaceship? what dust is there in outer space to de/reflect the sun's or other stars light?
You can see stars because photons are being emitted by them and then absorbed by electrons in your eye. The photon's "path", if such a thing makes sense, is directly between the star and your eye, directly toward you. Nowhere are you watching a photon fly, from the side, as for example you might watch a ball fly from the side. When you watch a ball fly, you can see it from the side as it travels because photons are leaving the ball and being absorbed in your retina. All the photons you have ever detected have come toward you.
Yes. That's in full agreement with what I said. Maybe I could have been more clear. Here is what I said:
Quoting petrichor
I should perhaps have been more explicit. In my frame of reference (implied by "relative to me"), Bob and his ship are length-contracted.
Quoting tim wood
Yes! I never said otherwise! In fact this is just the point I made to begin with!
From Bob's perspective, in his frame of reference, he is not length-contracted. But to him, I am! That also means that if he is travelling from Alpha Centauri to Earth, in his frame, from his perspective, that distance between Alpha Centauri and Earth is length-contracted, just like my body is. If he were to be able to travel at the speed of light, that distance would contract to zero.
Quoting tim wood
You are apparently reading me saying something that I am not saying. I never said that in Bob's frame, his ruler, his body, or his ship are contracted. They are not. Everything at rest relative to Bob, which would include his ruler, his ship, and his own body, all appear normal. I never said otherwise. What I was pointing out is that the distance between his origin and his destination is contracted in his frame as he moves relative to it. For Bob, Bob is not contracted. For Bob, Bob's journey is shortened.
Quoting tim wood
You think you are disagreeing with me but you aren't. :smile: I am either not expressing myself clearly or you are not reading me carefully. We agree. Yes.
But if you are having trouble with the idea that Bob's journey is shortened (I am not clear on whether you disagree with this or not), consider the following. If Bob is flying from Alpha Centauri toward Alice on Earth in a ship and Alice is holding a ruler such that it is aligned with the direction of Bob's travel, in Bob's frame, from Bob's perspective, the ruler will be shortened, yes? But what about the remaining distance between Bob and that same ruler? That too is contracted just like the ruler. There is no difference. The length of the ruler is just atoms arranged in space. The distance between Alpha Centauri and Earth is just like the distance between an atom on one end of that ruler and an atom on the other end.
For the moving object, in its own frame, from its own perspective, all distances traversed (moving relative to it) parallel to its direction of travel are shortened.
So, to return to the point I was making initially, from a photon's perspective, in the photon's frame of reference, since it is "traveling" at the very speed of light, the distance between its source and its destination is contracted to zero.
The nature of consciousness certainly isn't clear. And epiphenomenalism is a position with fatal defects.
I feel confident in saying that nobody understands consciousness. That includes scientists, materialist philosophers, idealist philosophers, dualists, spiritualists, Buddhists, Hindus, Protestants, New Agers, neuroscientists, psychologists, cognitive scientists, AI researchers, Daniel Dennett, Deepak Chopra, and all the rest! Nobody has a friggin clue. Consciousness as such hasn't even begun to be understood. And the fact that it isn't understood by materialists doesn't make spiritualists correct. The converse is also true. The truth is, we just don't know. Some people have a pretty good grasp on why consciousness is a problem. Those who don't take the "hard problem" seriously, I think, are experiencing a failure of insight. But those who think the hard problem is solved by spiritual stuff are also experiencing a similar failure. The existence of the hard problem doesn't clearly favor any of the usual available positions. It is often presented as a threat to materialism and presumably then a weapon that can be used by spiritualists, but it isn't. An immortal soul made of pure light or some such doesn't help us understand it either. It is just as hard to see why that would involve subjective experience as it is to see why a special arrangement of atoms would (not much different in fundamental substance than light anyway).
Quoting Anthony
I don't agree.
Quoting Anthony
When you see a distant star, the very star itself is in your mind? Or what? Your mind goes out and wraps around the star? If you are imagining something like that, I don't quite agree.
But consider what I said about photons. Perhaps, when you see light from a distant star, an electron in that star is maybe making a transaction with an electron in your retina. Maybe, to get what you seem to want here, you don't have to imagine that your mind somehow leaps out of your eyes to go touch a star. Maybe, instead, the star is just touching your eye and you haven't gone anywhere.
Disclaimer: I understand QM poorly and am likely to make mistakes. But if I understand correctly, in QM, any two particles that interact become entangled. And entanglement seems to mean that the two particles cannot really be understood properly as distinct things. They need to be treated together. So, in a moment of conscious experience, it might be that it isn't only your brain state that comprises it, as if there is some magical membrane around your brain that designates it as a separate entity, but also all those things influencing the state of the brain. Maybe it is the whole causal complex.
Maybe all of the "external" objects that you see are in some sense part of the "mental state". Let me explain. There are interactions and causal relationships between neurons in your brain, right? Nobody argues with that. And your mental state is often thought to be made up of these interactions somehow, as being in some sense the very complex of interactions itself. But why draw a line at the skull? There are also interactions and causal relationships that are involved in a mental state that are happening between the brain and the world. Somewhere in your brain, a chemical messenger is traveling from one side of a synaptic cleft to another, causing some effect. Elsewhere, something electrical is happening, perhaps mediated by virtual photons. Why is this any different than a photon coming from an electron in a flower, entering your eye, striking your retina, firing a neuron, generating a signal, and so on? That electron in the flower might be as much a part of the overall mental state as any neuron. So one neuron is receiving a signal from an upstream neuron. But that neuron might be connected to a retinal cone cell, which is receiving a signal from an electron in a flower. Is there some magical reason that one signal reception is part of the mental state while the other isn't?
And maybe each different mental state is a different complex of interaction between particles, which might be understood as an entangled system. A mental state could then be thought to span galaxies, since it might include parts of your brain and also parts of stars in distant galaxies.
But that doesn't require that anything exits your eye when you see a flower. For the flower itself to be part of your mental state doesn't require anything in addition to standard physics. And it doesn't require the causal influence to become bidirectional.
I would modify this statement by saying that if nobody understands consciousness then they don't understand materialism, physicalism and empiricism either. Because each is completely dependent and co-implied by the other. And I would assert that philsophers like Heicegger, Derrida and Merleau-Ponty have a better understanding of consciousness that realists, objectivists and physicalists do of empiricism.
As Evan Thompson puts it:
"Many philosophers have argued that there seems to be a gap between the
objective, naturalistic facts of the world and the subjective facts of conscious experience.
The hard problem is the conceptual and metaphysical problem of how to bridge
this apparent gap. There are many critical things that can be said about the hard problem
(see Thompson&Varela, forthcoming), but what I wish to point out here is that it
depends for its very formulation on the premise that the embodied mind as a natural
entity exists ‘out there’ independently of how we configure or constitute it as an
object of knowledge through our reciprocal empathic understanding of one other as
experiencing subjects. One way of formulating the hard problem is to ask: if we had a
complete, canonical, objective, physicalist account of the natural world, including all
the physical facts of the brain and the organism, would it conceptually or logically
entail the subjective facts of consciousness?
If this account would not entail these
facts, then consciousness must be an additional, non-natural property of the world.
One problem with this whole way of setting up the issue, however, is that it presupposes
we can make sense of the very notion of a single, canonical, physicalist description
of the world, which is highly doubtful, and that in arriving (or at any rate
approaching) such a description, we are attaining a viewpoint that does not in any way
presuppose our own cognition and lived experience. In other words, the hard problem
seems to depend for its very formulation on the philosophical position known as
transcendental or metaphysical realism. From the phenomenological perspective
explored here, however — but also from the perspective of pragmatism à la Charles
Saunders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, as well as its contemporary inheritors
such as Hilary Putnam (1999) — this transcendental or metaphysical realist
position is the paradigm of a nonsensical or incoherent metaphysical viewpoint, for
(among other problems) it fails to acknowledge its own reflexive dependence on the
intersubjectivity and reciprocal empathy of the human life-world.
Another way to make this point, one which is phenomenological, but also resonates
with William James’s thought (see Taylor, 1996), is to assert the primacy of the
personalistic perspective over the naturalistic perspective. By this I mean that our
relating to the world, including when we do science, always takes place within a
matrix whose fundamental structure is I-You-It (this is reflected in linguistic communication:
I am speaking to You about It) (Patocka, 1998, pp. 9–10). The hard problem
gives epistemological and ontological precedence to the impersonal, seeing it as the
foundation, but this puts an excessive emphasis on the third-person in the primordial
structure of I–You–It in human understanding. What this extreme emphasis fails to
take into account is that the mind as a scientific object has to be constituted as such
from the personalistic perspective in the empathic co-determination of self and other.
The upshot of this line of thought with respect to the hard problem is that this problem
should not be made the foundational problem for consciousness studies. The
problem cannot be ‘How do we go from mind-independent nature to subjectivity and
consciousness?’ because, to use the language of yet another philosophical tradition,
that of Madhyamika Buddhism (Wallace, this volume), natural objects and properties
are not intrinsically identifiable (svalaksana); they are identifiable only in relation to
the ‘conceptual imputations’ of intersubjective experience."
That is a thought-provoking post. Yes. I don't fully understand what Evan Thompson is saying as I am not familiar with his work and the context of what you quoted, but I think I get the gist of it.
Quoting Joshs
I agree. I don't think that anyone understands matter, time, or space, or even the deep underpinnings of mathematics any more than they understand consciousness. We don't even understand very well what it means to understand!
I am not sure the world is fully intelligible. I think we can relate some features of the world to others and say that such and such is like such and such, but to really get under it all and understand it deeply, understand it in a way that makes all of its features obvious why they should be there and have the qualities they do, is probably beyond what we are capable of. I think that to some extent, we can work out many of the structural relationships in the world. But I don't think we can go much deeper. In the same way that Chalmers points out that there are easy problems of cognition and whatnot that really deal with structural features of the brain, perceptual processes, and so on, I think there are easy problems of physics and also a hard problem. Maybe the hard problem of consciousness and the hard problem of physics are in fact the same hard problem.
Probably, if we were to understand deeply what matter is, we'd also deeply understand what consciousness is. But at present, we understand neither. And people who think that reducing one to the other and announcing all the problems solved are superficial thinkers.
But people that assume that non-conscious matter comes along first, that there is a third-person world out there with no mind-like qualities, and that only when certain parts of that world come to be arranged in a very, very special manner, POOF!, consciousness arises, and then go on to ask not IF this happens, but only HOW, are already hopelessly lost. It isn't hard to see why there is trouble trying to figure out how the brain produces the mind, as it probably doesn't. And that's where most of our academics are at the moment. We might improve our situation if academia can relax its anti-religion, anti-mystical knee-jerking for a moment and begin to question whether the brain produces the mind in the first place. And no, for you materialists, I am not even remotely suggesting some kind of soul-stuff in relation to the brain or anything that would allow me, as an individual, to survive my death.
But even if we come to a place where we look at the world in a way more along the lines of what Evan Thompson is suggesting, hard problems will remain. It still won't be obvious why there should be experientiality at all. Similarly, it still won't be obvious why there is anything at all rather than nothing. It still won't be obvious why there is time or any of it. These are probably different ways of talking about the same problem.
The problem is, to understand is to stand under. And you can't stand under yourself.
Where there are things standing in clear relation, we can make maps, note differences and similarities, and that's about it.
After all, what do our brains do but make associations? Neurons that fire together wire together. So impressions that activate the brain in ways similar to other impressions get associated, get connected, such that one might trigger the other. Such and such is like such and such. Materialists are just saying that everything is reducible to something like rocks that they've tossed, something familiar that is part of our primitive environment, something we incorrectly think we understand, something that seems obviously comprehensible, part of monkey's world. Spiritualists are saying it is all really like the invisible, ethereal, vaporous air that seems to leave a person when they die. Both views are obviously deeply flawed.
What is matter then? Little rocks. What are the little rocks made of? Little rocks. What is the deep nature of rocks? Rock-likeness. :roll: What is a gas?Little rocks bouncing off one another. What is light? Little massless rocks being thrown. What is space? Little rocks holding hands. (Yes, there are new particle/network theories of spacetime).
You can't understand rocks in terms of rocks. And that's the problem, isn't it? We are always stuck trying to understand one part of our experience in terms of other parts of it. It is like words in the dictionary ultimately being defined in a circular or oppositional or interdependent way.
How do you do this relating of one thing to another with experience itself or with the world itself? What in your experience do you compare experience with? How do you do this with the conditions for the possibility of making comparisons? How do you understand understanding?
Notice that any answer to a "What is X?" question is usually somehow saying that X is like Y and maybe unlike Z. And X, Y, and Z are all things in the world of our experience.
I find it curious that philosophers of mind have decided to talk about subjective experience by saying that it is the "something it is like-ness" of being some conscious being in the world. There is something it is like to be a bat. How does that really clarify anything? What is it like to be conscious?
Maybe some of these things are just what they are and can't be understood in terms of anything. Maybe we reach the end of the line. Maybe, in experiencing the flow of time, in its immediate qualities, we grasp all that there is to grasp, and trying to relate it to a river or something gets us further away from the direct experience of it and further from understanding what it is. Maybe you can't get deeper than that.
After reading your post and responding, I later listened to a talk by Evan Thompson while doing some yard work: link
Very interesting! I was rather impressed. I think I did actually come across him some years ago in my wanderings through podcast and video space.
I felt that he gives quite a good overview of the landscape. And he articulates it all very well. He understands a lot of the problems. I don't feel though, at least in what I heard, that he solves any of the deep problems. When he got around to criticizing panpsychism and talking about the combination problem, I don't feel like what he seems to present as a solution goes any distance toward actually providing any really satisfying answers on the matter. I've never found any argument that really puts my mind at ease with respect to the combination problem. Most people seem to wave their hands here, including me.
He seems to understand all the issues better than most, though.
"If my left hand is touching my right hand, and if I should suddenly wish to apprehend with my right hand the work of my left hand as it touches, this reflection of the body upon itself always miscarries
at the last moment: the moment I feel my left hand with my right hand, I correspondingly cease touching my right hand with my left hand. But this last-minute failure does not drain all truth
from that presentiment I had of being able to touch myself touching: my body does not perceive, but it is as if it were built around the perception that dawns through it; through its whole internal arrangement, its sensory-motor circuits, the return ways that control and release movements, it is, as it were, prepared for a self-perception, even though it is never itself that is perceived nor itself that perceives."(Merleau-Ponty, the Visible and the Invisible)
"Consciousness is removed from being, and from its own being, and at the same time
united with them, by the thickness of the world. The true cogito is not the intimate communing of thought with the thought of that thought: they meet only on passing through the world. The consciousness of the world is not based on self-consciousness: they are strictly contemporary.
There is a world for me because I am not unaware of myself; and I am not concealed from myself because I have a world. This pre-conscious possession of the world remains to be analysed in the pre-reflective cogito."(Phenomenology of Consciousness)
"..the identity of the thing with itself, that sort of established position of its own, of rest in itself, that plenitude and that positivity that we have recognized in it already exceed the experience, are already a second interpretation of the experience...we arrive at the thing-object, at the In Itself, at the thing identical with itself, only by imposing upon experience an abstract dilemma which experience ignores(p.162)." Merleau-Ponty
I agree, it is immediate existence that is of primary importance. And only the subject relates directly to existence. The direct relation is negated when it is rendered objectively - as a speculative explanation of what it is to exist in subjectivity. The more proof that is collected for determining the objective truth of subjectivity, the further one is led from the truth of subjective existence, which is simply existing as subject.