On May 26, 11:57 am, Evgenii Rudnyi <use...@rudnyi.ru> wrote: > I have just finished reading Understanding Consciousness by Max Velmans > and below there are a couple of comments to the book. > > The book is similar to Jeffrey Gray's Consciousness: Creeping up on the > Hard Problem in a sense that it takes phenomenal consciousness > seriously. Let me give an example. Imagine that you watch yourself in > the mirror. Your image that you observe in the mirror is an example of > phenomenal consciousness. > > The difference with Jeffrey Gray is in the question where the image that > you see in the mirror is located. If we take a conventional way of > thinking, that is, > > 1) photons are reflected by the mirror > 2) neurons in retina are excited > 3) natural neural nets starts information processing > > then the answer should be that this image is in your brain. It seems to > be logical as, after all, we know that there is nothing after the mirror. > > However, it immediately follows that not only your image in the mirror > is in your brain but rather everything that your see is also in your > brain. This is exactly what one finds in Gray's book "The world is > inside the head". > > Velmans takes a different position that he calls reflexive model of > perception. According to him, what we consciously experience is located > exactly where we experience it. In other words, the image that you see > in the mirror is located after the mirror and not in your brain. A nice > picture that explains Velmans' idea is at > > http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2012/05/brain-and-world.html > > Velmans introduces perceptual projection but this remains as the Hard > Problem in his book, how exactly perceptual projection happens. > > Velmans contrast his model with reductionism (physicalism) and dualism > and interestingly enough he finds many common features between > reductionism and dualism. For example, the image in the mirror will be > in the brain according to both reductionism and dualism. This part could > be interesting for Stephen. > > First I thought that perceptual projection could be interpreted similar > to Craig's senses but it is not the case. Velmans' reflexive monism is > based on a statement that first- and third-person views cannot be > combined (this is what Bruno says). From a third-person view, one > observes neural correlates of consciousness but not the first-person > view. Now I understand such a position much better.
I look at it the same way, that first and third person views cannot be combined, but I go further to say that they are opposite. First person images are events in our lives. They are sense (feeling-image-meaning- story) in time. Third person is an inside out fisheye-view of first person stories that are not yours. The totality of their story thus far (up to the corresponding moment in your own story) appears to you collapsed as an object in space. Just as the entire unexpressed potential of infinite apple orchards is essentialized as an apple seed. The difference between an apple seed and seeds in general recapitulates the phylogeny of gymnosperms and the species of apple in particular. The seed of the entire dream of the human species universe is condensed as the brain when viewed from the outside. If you change someone's brain, you change not just how they feel but potentially the universe as they experience it, but likewise if you change the world you change everyone's brain who is aware of the change you have made. The brain is a character in our story, our story is all of the events in the brain. They are the same thing only involuted - time and sense on the inside, space and matter on the outside. In third person, space is literal and time is figurative. We understand that an object sits literally in a position relative to other objects. The phone is on the couch. Time, however is figurative. We turn the clock back in the Fall and say that it is now an earlier time. We understand that calendars and clocks are not literally changing the universe, only our interpretation of it. In first person, space is figurative and time is literal. We understand that a person can figuratively travel to other places in their minds but their body does not move. We use idioms like 'coming from a darker place in her soul' as a metaphor to describe a semantic quality of emotional tone, mood, themes. We talk about 'position' and 'placement' in relation to social status and political power, not literal position in 3-D space. Time, however is literal. We understand that we cannot turn the clock back on our lives. Our every thought or feeling is a literal event that happens to us 'here' and now. Now is always literally real, even in a dream or deep psychosis, the narrative of our experience continues. Here is a figurative location - somewhere behind our eyes or between our ears, or just near your body. 'Come over here' means what? near my body? near where my voice seems to be coming from? It's less specific than that, it just means 'Come to where I am. Join me'. The image in the mirror then, like any image, is not anywhere in third person. There is a silvered glass surface and that is all. To have an image through the mirror, you need a first person receiver of images. The image is a phenomenal sense experience in time, not in space. It is inside of the matter that we are, which imitates the matter of the mirror, which imitates the matter of the illuminated surfaces of the room. They are all synchronized events that overlap on the same range of inertial frames. They are all stories which occur within a particular range of frequencies and scales. The shadow of that staggeringly complex intersection of histories and rhythms is presented outside of us in a static slice, like a 3-D Flatland of objects. External realism. The inside is presented as subjects - characters, stories, settings, themes. None of these are representations, they are genuine presentations, however presentations can recapitulate other presentations and associations. They can conflict and confuse different levels. Think of consciousness as a book that you read and write at the same time but you can't see the pages and words, only hear them being read and feel them coming to pass. The universe is a vast library which you can only see the outside spines of the books, but which change your own story when you get close to them. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
