Brent, Just to clarify my position, this video gets into exactly the point I was making. It holds that, at the bottom of experience, there is a neuro-physicalist -> qualia one-to-one linkage. However, that is an assumption or claim that is highly debatable. Many scholars do believe that experience can be thought of as emerging out of layers of neurocognitive processes or an interpretive hierarchy that creates a field of experience that does not have a basic physicalist-qualia linkage. Indeed, the fact that after all these years, you still need to generate a hypothetical example (i.e., glutamate = redness) to make the point should be acknowledged. The difference in this framing about what constitutes consciousness is almost exactly the debate between the structuralists and the gestaltists in psychology back near the turn of the 20th Century. The structuralists thought that the essence of subjective experience had to be lego blocks of qualia that would plug into the some place of activation in the brain, just like the “redness=glutamate” argument that is woven throughout the presentation you shared. That might still be true, but that is not necessarily true. It is also plausible that actually redness IS the product of interpretation based on interpretation woven across neurocognitive fields and that redness is DETERMINED by the contextual interpretive central processing unit. Consider, for example, the fact that the process starts with cones. What are cones in the eye, but beginning processes of interpreting the wavelength, but that interprettive process happens early in the chain, way before qualia. This is my understanding of the frame given by global neuronal workspace. This is what the gestaltists said and they would point to things like illusions to make the point. For example, consider the classic “duck rabbit” illusion: [cid:image001.png@01D73104.1B98ADE0] Illusions such as these show that there is no obvious line between perception and “direct apprehension,” which is claimed by the video. Here are some other classics: [cid:image002.png@01D73105.0EC4B950] Many people would say they directly apprehend a triangle in the first shape. Is that accurate? If not, then we can say that people can actually be mistaken about “direct apprehension”. If, on the other hand, you say they directly apprehended the triangle, then I don’t think you are going to make a direct linkage between the negative white space and brain activity. The Triangle clearly is a perceptual interpretation, right? This is the Gestaltist critique of the position. I think we can shift and see similar problems with “basic qualia”. The redness example seems straightforward and it is easy to see why you choose it. But there are other qualia that are far less clear. Take what I think is actually a more basic “qualia” in an evolutionary sense, which is pain. Switch the video so that it reads, “Not a hard problem, but a pain problem”. Are you saying that “pain” does not involve perception, that it is directly apprehended? Many people would debate that argument. Moreover, the idea that there is a simple physicalist -> pain qualia jump is by no means a given. Indeed, many would see that pain emerges as a “connectdome” of activity of different brain centers making different interpretations or hypotheses about what is going on, and the experience we have is a result of some conglomerate of such “interpretations”. This is the basic position of a neurocognitive functionalist view, which is what John and I take in Untangling the World Knot. There we argued that qualitative properties like redness emerge from and are framed by what John called “adverbial qualia”. Adverbial qualia are the hereness-nowness-togetherness field of subjective awareness in which properties “appear” (what he called adjectival qualia). If that is the case, then the physicalist assumption being made that there is a base connection between adjectival qualia like redness and physical activity in brains everywhere is simply wrong. Now maybe we will find a more clear, clean, direct line between qualia and neurobiological causation, but that is unclear at this point. In my conversations with him, I think that John is more hopeful that a physicalist line will be found than I am (although as I type this, I am not sure). The point is that it should be made clear that this is hypothesis that you are advocating, not a scientific given that has been found. Best, Gregg From: tree of knowledge system discussion <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Brent Allsop Sent: Wednesday, April 14, 2021 7:31 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: TOK Three Meanings of Consciousness CAUTION: This email originated from outside of JMU. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. ________________________________ Hi Nicholas, You are failing to distinguish reality from knowledge of reality. See the chapter on this in our video: https://canonizer.com/videos/consciousness/?chapter=differentiate_reality_knowledge<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__canonizer.com_videos_consciousness_-3Fchapter-3Ddifferentiate-5Freality-5Fknowledge&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=O3k0pxtEF6kM1rgZInu0vy2aRv2Elm-sTwuhZRpp15Q&s=ZpIiggLXTmjKv87E1qKK4DMohe36zWgrMC0FBZvCaKI&e=>. On Fri, Apr 9, 2021, 6:09 PM Nicholas Lattanzio <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote: CAUTION: This email originated from outside of JMU. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. ________________________________ My question is, if we are conscious, and additionally conscious of ours and others consciousness, but not conscious of unconsciousness, are we not ourselves exactly what consciousness is? We directly apprehend our own consciousness, but the only way to be "conscious of others consciousness" is from afar, and to have our knowledge of others consciousness, in our brain. Others consciousness, like all things detected through the senses, is subconscious. It is only the knowledge, in our own brain, which we directly apprehend. When we stub out toe, the pain is not in the subconscious toe. It is in our knowledge of the toe, in our brain. Even though our toe is subconscious, it is still part of us. In this regard there is no use discussing hard or easy, physical or mental, red or green, these are all dualistic abstractions of consciousness attempting to find itself outside of itself, which is quite impossible. In this sense we can also see that consciousness is not a property of the body or brain as we are conscious of both. Yes we are conscious of our own brains, from many different epistemological frames. I know most don't (fully) agree with this, but I am not aware of any process by which I can exist at all without being both inside and outside of a "me" that "owns" consciousness. I don't know precisely what it is. But whatever it is, I am that, and that is the ground and the ceiling of being. I am that I am. And out of that nondual observer "Am-ness" the entire Tok arises and collapses in an infinitely entropic and negentropic process that allows for consciousness to experience, but effectively amounts to absolutely no thing at all. Regards, Nicholas G. Lattanzio, Psy.D. On Fri, Apr 9, 2021, 5:47 PM Joan Walton <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote: CAUTION: This email originated from outside of JMU. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. ________________________________ Dear All I'm not a regular reader of these emails, due to lack of time, not lack of interest. But I was attracted to the title of this 'Three meanings of consciousness'. I have been interested in the subject of consciousness for years, explored it as part of my PhD, and am in the process of creating the website www.scienceofconsciousness.com<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.scienceofconsciousness.com&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=W-9SbUWs995IgEGcIVng3kdHlMwBCmsLfjb59x0M3z8&s=wL48txZuKpY9ZYpJ5RR7r5PkRQWUdqye2xtYP2Q5w78&e=>. However, the overriding principle to me is quite simple. We will not be able to agree a meaning of consciousness, because we do not know what consciousness is. There are ontological, unprovable issues here, dependent only on beliefs, not evidence. To quote a short extract from my PhD: George Miller summarises the difficulty: Consciousness is a word worn smooth by a million tongues. Depending upon the figure of speech chosen it is a state of being, a substance, a process, a place, an epiphenomenon, an emergent aspect of matter, or the only true reality’. (1962:25) We only need to look at two of the possibilities that Miller mentions, – firstly, consciousness as an epiphenomenon (that is, in this context, a by-product of brain activity); and secondly, consciousness as the only true reality, to realise that to agree a definition is extremely problematic. People’s understanding of consciousness – and in a similar way, of the unconscious, will be influenced by the world view they hold. If a materialist, then consciousness has to be explained as an emergence from matter; if not a materialist, then the options widen in terms of there being a range of possibilities as to the exact nature of the relationship between consciousness and matter, including a question mark over whether consciousness can exist independently of matter. As far as I am concerned, consciousness is what we all experience. A prerequisite of reading and responding to these emails is consciousness. Without consciousness, that would not be possible. I know absolutely nothing about you, the person who is reading this email (age, gender, where you live, interests, beliefs, values, qualifications, personality, absolutely nothing), other than you experience consciousness. That is rock solid certain. (Oh - and that you speak English). But is this consciousness that we experience a by-product of the brain? Or is it the infinite, eternal source of all that exists? Or something in-between? There is no such thing as a consciousness monitor, which lets us know where consciousness is present, and where it is not. We may assume. We may think that we know. We may feel we are certain. But actually, we don't have a clue! However, what is clear is: we firstly have our experience of consciousness; and then, an aspect of that experience of consciousness is our ability to theorise about what consciousness is (or is not). Our definitions or meanings are an expression of our experience, as are our values, beliefs, assumed certainties, etc. But in the end, our definitions and meanings are completely speculative, with no means of providing evidence to support or negate any of them - because, to repeat, we actually don't know where, what we experience as consciousness, starts and ends. Having reached that conclusion a long time ago, and not having a particular need to continuously bang my head against a metaphorical brick wall, I'm actually more interested in exploring what consciousness is capable of, and the methods we can use to investigate its potential. Perhaps if we were to do that rather more, we may discover more about its potential. An important aspect of this, for me, is, how can we use our consciousness to prevent us conscious beings from destroying ourselves and our planet, and instead, doing what we can to contribute to the flourishing and wellbeing of all living beings and the world we live in? Getting bogged down in abstract theories about what consciousness is, or isn't, whether that is about the 'hard problem' or the 'easy problem', may be intellectually stimulating (rather like doing a crossword), but because of the ontological implications, not a particularly productive use of our scarcest resource - i.e. time. Best wishes Joan On Fri, 9 Apr 2021 at 23:06, Brent Allsop <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote: CAUTION: This email originated from outside of JMU. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. ________________________________ Hi Greg, On Fri, Apr 9, 2021 at 3:46 PM Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote: My general reply is no. I do see qualia as a key ingredient, but an isolated disembodied qualia? Not disembodied. Composed of whatever qualia are, like our consciousness, just a small amount of it. How would you define the minimum necessary to be considered conscious? Also, my journey with John oriented me more toward adverbial qualia (the hereness-nowness-togetherness) than adjectival qualia (properties like redness). Interesting. Can you help me understand what you mean by "adverbial qualia"? To be more specific, if consciousness was remaining static, except for one pixel on the surface of the brain changing between redness and greenness, what would the objectively observable change in the brain be like which was that awareness of only that one-pixel change? Adverbs are about verbs, and verbs are about things performing actions, more of a computation about the things doing such, and such and such an adverbial manner. What is it, that is representing the thing that is doing the verb action in that manner? To me, the knowledge of the thing doing something, is the qualia, the action computation meaning, and how all that is being done, is the computation done by the binding of all that. When redness is specified in Wikipedia, as THE example of a qualia most used, how is that redness adverbial? ############################ To unsubscribe from the TOK-SOCIETY-L list: write to: mailto:[log in to unmask]<mailto:mailto:[log in to unmask]> or click the following link: http://listserv.jmu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=TOK-SOCIETY-L&A=1 ############################ To unsubscribe from the TOK-SOCIETY-L list: write to: mailto:[log in to unmask]<mailto:mailto:[log in to unmask]> or click the following link: http://listserv.jmu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=TOK-SOCIETY-L&A=1 ############################ To unsubscribe from the TOK-SOCIETY-L list: write to: mailto:[log in to unmask]<mailto:mailto:[log in to unmask]> or click the following link: http://listserv.jmu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=TOK-SOCIETY-L&A=1 ############################ To unsubscribe from the TOK-SOCIETY-L list: write to: mailto:[log in to unmask]<mailto:mailto:[log in to unmask]> or click the following link: http://listserv.jmu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=TOK-SOCIETY-L&A=1 ############################ To unsubscribe from the TOK-SOCIETY-L list: write to: mailto:[log in to unmask] or click the following link: http://listserv.jmu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=TOK-SOCIETY-L&A=1