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January 2019

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Subject:
From:
Alexander Bard <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
tree of knowledge system discussion <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Thu, 31 Jan 2019 14:20:54 +0100
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Dear Friends

I agree 100% with Gregg here and would like to thank him for an excellent
presentation of the best current phenomenological and psychological
understanding of consciousness to my knowledge. I could not have done it
any better.

I would then like to add the following comments to John's speculative
presentation:

- To say that consciousness is the aggregate of physiology is to miss one
important blind spot. This is only the case when the body and mind are
alive (and awake). So the correct way of describing consciousness must then
be that it is dependent on and emergent from the aggregate of some
physiology (I can be conscious even if I use a leg, just slightly
differently so) where "life" is the crucial game-changer, the emergence
that makes it a consciousness. Otherwise the aggregate of physiology has
another name and that is - a corpse.

- It is perfectly feasible to be conscious without any cosmology involved.
But not without a relationship to a surrounding world as for the subject
there has to be an object as its dialectical counterpole. This is also why
we define ourselves as mind (subject) and body (object) simultaneously to
ourselves. No subject (self) without object (world). But that world can be
a mere mother's tit and does not have to be an entire cosmos.The cosmos
only arrives with memory after the self has reflected and it is even an
open question among philosophers as to whether a cosmos can even be said to
exist.

- So my objection is that I think John's ideas and work on epigenetics is
wonderful and incredibly insightful and creative. I just don't know why it
then has to throw "consciousness" and "cosmology" into the mix is some
theological manner when this merely distorts the beauty of the ideas. Maybe
John could record himself sleepwalking and then contemplate on that
occurence afterward? So why not user terms like "proto-consciousness" and
also "subconsciousness" more widely when these terms are more appropriate?
I do.

Best intentions
Alexander

Den tors 31 jan. 2019 kl 13:04 skrev Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <
[log in to unmask]>:

> IDWers,
>
>
>
> Per Alexander’s call, I will offer some brief thoughts on “what is
> consciousness”…
>
>
>
> Here is a blog I did on 10 problems of consciousness
>
>
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.psychologytoday.com_us_blog_theory-2Dknowledge_201812_10-2Dproblems-2Dconsciousness&d=DwIFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=9h8ohfpFmU0HT05jjhUP_14w9-KNGIsFl81YqSuRWuk&s=mZKh8O_dzJak8GCKY_Y0WfnjEj8qWoHu5nWWd5XaetQ&e=
>
>
>
> Here is a map/schematic from my “unified” approach
>
>
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.psychologytoday.com_us_blog_theory-2Dknowledge_201605_unified-2Dapproach-2Dhuman-2Dconsciousness&d=DwIFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=9h8ohfpFmU0HT05jjhUP_14w9-KNGIsFl81YqSuRWuk&s=6XW_BiZsGR5ltoQ1HdeESl9DNiOo7cqbz9B2t5qBupE&e=
>
>
>
> Here is the domains of human mind (although it is important to note ‘mind’
> and consciousness are different concepts in my language system):
>
>
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.psychologytoday.com_intl_blog_theory-2Dknowledge_201804_the-2Dhuman-2Dmind-2Dinformational-2Dinterface-2Dapproach&d=DwIFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=9h8ohfpFmU0HT05jjhUP_14w9-KNGIsFl81YqSuRWuk&s=Sy7asVLXsLjaL7Eo4A-4Nc-bwgl2tV1K6ST7o6UVhL0&e=
>
>
>
> With all due respect to John, despite learning much from him, I have not
> found his reductive physiological view terribly helpful to me in my work in
> human psychology/human consciousness. We psychologists have been dealing
> with this problem for a long time (although not quite as long as the
> philosophers) and although consciousness relates to awareness, things are
> not so simple. John’s language game, however insightful it is for
> physiology and the link between physics and biology, does not do the
> necessary discriminative work that someone in my field needs to deal with.
>
>
>
> I think that we need to differentiate the following:
>
> The biophysiological, functional awareness and responsiveness of a
> bacteria or a plant or my cells or organ systems as entities, which be
> observed via a third person (that is, it is, scientifically measurable
> behavior in a fairly direct way)
>
> The neurocognitive functional awareness of animals, like an insect or a
> rat, that also can be functionally observed via third person
>
> The subjective phenomenological experience of being (What is it like to be
> a bat or an insect, if anything? Or the part of me that disappears when I
> sleep?) Here there is a massive epistemological problem because
> phenomenological subjectivity cannot be objectively observed as behavior,
> only subjectively experienced as a positional view on the world, and
> indirectly reported on in humans)
>
> Explicit self-conscious awareness, which is behaviorally defined in terms
> of intersubjective access consciousness, meaning I am aware that I am
> typing this note to you and I can report to you that it is chilly and my
> fingers feel cold. Note explicit self-conscious CAN BE directly shared via
> language, unlike subjective phenomenology, which can only be indirectly
> shared.
>
> (For clarity where I am in my understanding of phenomenology, presumably
> my dog Maggie who was just outside with me also felt the cold like I did.
> She, of course, can never tell me that directly, and her feelings are
> inferred from behavior and other logical correlates, like her brain
> activity. I don’t think the grass outside feels/experiences cold in the way
> I mean it. I have no idea if insects feel cold in the way I mean it. If I
> was stuck outside and fell unconscious, I would stop feeling the cold, even
> as my body would still be reacting to it; that is, be physiologically aware
> of it).
>
> Finally, we need to deal with the varieties of relationships, such as
> nonconscious and subconscious processes, levels of attention and also
> psychodynamics, which are very much about the systematic relationship
> between subconscious and self-conscious awareness in humans.
>
>
>
> Best,
>
> Gregg
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* [log in to unmask] <
> [log in to unmask]> *On Behalf Of *JOHN TORDAY
> *Sent:* Wednesday, January 30, 2019 8:22 PM
> *To:* [log in to unmask]
> *Subject:* Re: What is consciousness? (was: Stigmergy galore - in
> relation to memory and intelligence)
>
>
>
> I'm coming from a position of consciousness as the aggregate of
> physiology, so in that sense consciousness exists as long as the
> organism/person is alive. I'm using the term consciousness in the sense
> that it is the process that links us to Cosmology. I honestly think that we
> have misunderstood what consciousness is because we don't understand what
> physiology is either. The physiologist Etienne Roux points this out in the
> attached, for example. Again, my way of thinking about physiology and
> consciousness comes from my empiric reduction of structure and function
> based on developmental mechanisms of cell-cell interactions for
> homeostasis, which is an unconventional way of thinking about evolution to
> start with, yet because it allows seeing the process in the forward
> direction I think more than justifies it in contradistinction to the
> conventional way of reasoning backwards, which by definition is illogical.
> So I'm just trying to see where that approach will take me. For example, as
> I had mentioned earlier, my take on Piaget's developmental stages is 180
> degrees out of sync with his, based on the affects of epigenetics on
> cell-cell signaling, as is my understanding of the life cycle, which now
> puts the zygote at 'noo' on the 'watch face'  instead of the adult. So I am
> not surprised that consciousness is not defined in the same way that you
> define it, arriving several months after birth. If a paramecium is
> conscious, a human fetus is also conscious, as is a zygote, at some level
> in the sense that I think the term actually refers to the relationship of
> life to the Cosmos. So this way of thinking explains why we return to the
> unicellular state, because we never leave it. The zygote is the primary
> level of selection, not the adult, based on epigenetic inheritance. It also
> explains Terminal Addition, which is necessitated by the cell-cell
> signaling that confers structure and function, the down-stream pathways
> interconnecting the 'additions' such that addition other than at the
> terminus won't work because of the interconnections with other structures
> and functions. Or the term phenotype, which is not just how the organism
> appears, but is actually 'agency', the phenotype having been modified
> during development by epigenetic marks so that the offspring will interface
> with the environment to optimize the further collection of epigenetic marks
> indicative of changes that must be adapted to. Or the cell itself, being
> the first Niche Construction, acting to integrate the organism with its
> environment. And most importantly, there is no experimental evidence for
> evolution at present other than the study we did showing how leptin
> stimulates lung development in frogs...... I'll stop here so you can
> respond.....With the Best of Intentions, John
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 30, 2019 at 4:47 PM Alexander Bard <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
> OK; but then consciousness is self-conciousness. So are you not mistaking
> sentinence for being consciousness when sentinence is really far more
> rudimentary?
>
> Even humans do not have self-consciousness until several months after
> birth, the so called mirror stage in psychoanalysis. Before then, the
> infant is convinced mother and child are one solid unit. But it is
> sentinent from the embyronic stage and forward.
>
> Besides humans possibly apes and whales may qualify for self-consciousness
> but hardly anybody else.
>
> Now you understand why I refer to panorganicism rather than panpsychism in
> post-Whiteheadian philosophy. Psyche is rare and complex and not all
> pervasive.
>
> Any third voices on this forum on the pertinent question: What is
> consciousness? And how does it differ from mere sentinence?
>
> Then we can discuss subconsciousness too.
>
> Best intentions
>
> Alexander
>
>
>
> Den ons 30 jan. 2019 kl 23:53 skrev JOHN TORDAY <[log in to unmask]>:
>
> Awareness of one's self and surroundings
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 30, 2019 at 2:22 PM Alexander Bard <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
> Dear John
>
>
>
> How do you define consciousness?
>
> I'm asking before I actually prefer to work away from any concept of
> consciousness and instead explain what I really mean.
>
> The term is simply too poetic and pluralistically used to be very useful
> anymore. So let's agree on a definition before we proceed, OK?
>
> It could also be worth noting that in the spirit of Peirce and Whitehead
> my philosophy does not recognize any laws of nature per se.
>
> Only habits of nature that merely come across as laws locally and
> temporarily in certain parts of The Universe.
>
> Law is simply a human all too human concept perhaps better left to
> theology and justice. But that's just my humble opinion.
>
>
>
> Best intentions
>
> Alexander
>
>

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