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://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/theory-knowledge/201812/10-problems-consciousness

 

Here is a map/schematic from my “unified” approach

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/theory-knowledge/201605/unified-approach-human-consciousness

 

Here is the domains of human mind (although it is important to note ‘mind’ and consciousness are different concepts in my language system):

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/theory-knowledge/201804/the-human-mind-informational-interface-approach

 

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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