Backing up here to reply to something from days ago. Leave for a few days and the forum is a different animal.
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <jstein@...> wrote: > > Gonna take little bites off this dissertation... > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Xenophaneros Anartaxius" <anartaxius@> > wrote: > <snip> > > Judy (authfriend): > > > Let's not forget that for all science has discovered about > > > the brain, it hasn't yet begun to solve the "hard problem" > > > of the nature of consciousness itself. There are lots of > > > theories but no consensus, not even on a definition of > > > consciousness. As long as that most fundamental of all > > > issues remains a mystery, I don't think science is in a > > > position to claim to have trumped metaphysics. > > > > The hard problem, is a kind of odd problem. I suspect it is > > because of the way we define the situation that the problem > > exists. The hard problem: a) how does a physical system > > interact with a non-physical system, because these two > > aspects are like oil and water. How can any theory bridge > > the gap between something that has definite properties, and > > one that has no properties whatsoever. How can I prove to > > you that my invisible, fire-breathing (but heatless) > > metaphysical teddy bear exists, having no physical > > properties at all? Then there are these two sub questions b) > > does consciousness cause the brain, or c) does the brain > > cause consciousness. > > I'd like to quote my favorite formulation of the "hard > problem," and then ask you to relate it to what you just > wrote (and go on to write). > > It comes from Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the structure > of DNA, who became fascinated by the question of the nature > of consciousness. In an article in Scientific American, he > recounted this anecdote: > > "Recently I was trying to explain to an intelligent woman > the problem of understanding how it is we perceive anything > at all. And I was not having any success. She could not see > why there was a problem. Finally, in despair, I asked her > how she herself thought she saw the world. She replied that > she probably had somewhere in her head something like a > little television set. 'So who,' I asked, 'is looking at it?' > She now saw the problem immediately." > > (Please overlook the fact that Crick felt it necessary to > specify that the woman was intelligent.) This looks like a bit of feminism on your part in response to a perceived inequality of the sexes engendered by Crick's remark. I think this is a difficult concept for many people to understand, that is, go through the conceptual steps involved in a theory of perception. I wonder what you would have said if Crick had said, 'I was talking to a realy dumb broad'? So Crick obviously categorises people as intelligent versus something else. Probably most of the people he worked around were intelligent, in which case, most of the women he intereacted with would have been intelligent rather than stupid. My guess it was just an unconscious utterance. And he is from a previous generation (a couple of previous generations in fact), where characterisations like this were more common, when they were 'politically correct' at that time. > That may seem a simplistic way to state the problem, but > in my observation, we start out thinking about it on too > complex a level and end up not actually dealing with the > most basic level, where the problem is hardest. Crick's > formulation above is brilliant, IMHO, because it forces > us (as it forced the woman) to confront the problem > head-on (so to speak). > > Ironically, Crick ultimately became enamored of a highly > reductionist view that, in essence, got rid of the > problem by explaining consciousness away. He wrote a book > titled "The Astonishing Hypothesis," that hypothesis being: > > "'You,' your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your > ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, > are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly > of nerve cells and their associated molecules." This is a bundle theory as I mentioned in another post (#2851279). It gets rid of the problem by making consciousness an attribute of the physical world. A good way to create a scientific theory that is testable. Neuroscientists are kind of all over the map with regard to consciousness. All the way from mysterious woo, to this kind of bundle theory that Crick proposes. > > Yeah, but *who's watching that assembly*? This is the very point brought up in his discussion with the woman of apparently more than ordinary intelligence. 'Who is watching' is the Cartesian duality theory. Like there is a little person in your head watching a TV screen. It can be expressed more abstractly, there is 'consciousness' in your head watching stuff like on a TV screen. Except the way the brain functions, it is impossible to believe it can happen like this. There is no place in the brain where all the impulses appear to come together to somehow be observed. This observer, the self, is how it seems subjectively, but in a bundle theory this is just an illusion. The bundle theorists make the process of the brain to be consciousness, without a second entity that watches, the process itself is the watcher, the seer. It eliminates the middle man so to speak and makes experience completely direct without a hypothetical soul or inner person. This is like the explanation Buddha gave - there is no self. Try it this way. In waking consciousness, we have a sense of being a person, separate from the rest of the world, living in that world. In cosmic consciousness there is the experience of internal wakefulness being separate from the changing sensory experience like the wall of separation between church and state Jefferson worked so hard to convince people the utility of. It really is like that. This is probably the best experiential analogue of Cartesian duality, as an experience goes rather than as just a hypotheical intellectual construct. But eventually all this experience unifies and that separation goes away, consciousness is no longer experienced as separate from anything, everything is basically the same thing, is experienced as a single coherent process. There is no longer a need to think that there is some separate entity, spirit, or watcher because because you experience that as a false notion, one that you may have had sometime, but no longer. Consciousness and the material world have an identity, it is not a relationship, it is an equivalence. In a way the various scientific and spiritual theories of reality are a reflection of how spiritually connected a person's experience is, and how a person logically connects the pieces intellectually. There is no scientific consensus about what consciousness is, but the mystery is more in how the question is being asked than a specific answer. Bundle theory explains consciousness away because it unifies the concept of consciousness with the concept of material world. In some spiritual traditions, doing away with the separation between spirit and materiality is a no no, at least as it is interpreted by the distant followers of the original starting point of the tradition. This is what a bundle theory like proposed by Crick does. He was mostly working with visual perception. Philosophers that pay attention to the discoveries of science also propose bundle theories, for example, Daniel Dennett. > I have a sneaking suspicion that the key to the "hard > problem" is what Maharishi called "self-reference," but > I'm at a loss to verbalize how that works. There is no way to verbalise how this works that makes sense. Another way to say it is self identity where all existence is one's identity. > > One way of putting it (dunno the source): > > "The universe is like a safe with a lock to which there > is a combination. But the combination is locked inside > the safe." > > That's surely self-reference. Change "universe" to > "consciousness," and you've got the hard problem. The intellect bifurcates experience. It divides experience conceptually. Maharishi said 'diversity is conceptual, unity is real'. For everything the intellect can fabricate, it can fashion an opposite value. It is impossible to not do this. The answer to the question of consciousness will always have a contradiction if the intellect is involved on its own value. Experience can be wider than this, and the much abused word 'transcendence' applies to this situation. Transcending everything while you are awake and fully experiencing all the senses is what unity is, so to speak, except nothing is happening when this occurs, because there is nowhere for anything to go, everything just is. There is no transcendence. What you see is what you get. It is that obvious. See, a contradiction. The experience is beyond the ability to fashion a statement about it that makes sense. There is the universe. Everything about the universe is in the universe. The concept of 'outside' the universe is misleading, it is meaningless. What we think we are is in the universe. All we can imagine is in the universe. Even thoughts which we characterise as being about being outside the universe, still are inside. If the universe is like a safe with a lock that is locked, then it is locked. But we are in the universe, so we are not locked out. So the combination is where were are. If we find the combination and read it, we can unlock the safe. We have never been locked out however. So when the combination is successfully read, nothing happens. It was this way all along.
