subject:"Max Velmans' Reflexive Monism"

Re: Max Velmans' Reflexive Monism

2012-05-29 Thread Evgenii Rudnyi


On 28.05.2012 22:42 Bruno Marchal said the following:


On 28 May 2012, at 21:09, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:


Bruno,

I believe that this time I could say that you express your
position. For example in your two answers below it does not look
like "I don't defend that position".


I don't think so. I comment my comment below.





On 28.05.2012 10:55 Bruno Marchal said the following:

I comment on both Evgenii and Craig's comment:


On May 26, 11:57 am, Evgenii Rudnyi  wrote:


...


Velmans introduces perceptual projection but this remains as
the Hard Problem in his book, how exactly perceptual
projection happens.


It does not make sense. This is doing Aristotle mistake twice.



To see a mistake or an invalidity in an argument, you don't need to
take any position. Comp can be used as a counter-example to the idea
that Velmans' move is necessary.


But then there are two different positions, first those who assume comp 
and those who do not. Well, the number of positions is presumably more 
than two.


Evgenii

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Re: Max Velmans' Reflexive Monism

2012-05-28 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 28 May 2012, at 14:23, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On May 28, 4:55 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:

In first person, space is figurative and time is literal.

Why?

The split between interior significance (doing*being)(timespace) and
exterior entropy (matter/energy)/spacetime prefigures causality.
Causality is part of 'doing', a semantic temporal narrative of
explanation which circumscribes significance and priority. If you try
to push causality back before causality, you can only come up with
anthropic or teleological pseudo first causes which still don't
explain where first cause possibilities come from.

Sounds nice but too much vague.

Does the totality exist in this way because it has to exist?

That would beg the question.

Because
it wants to exist?

Ditto.

Because it can't not exist?

That would be contradictory.

Because it just does
exist and why is unknowable? Yes, yes, yes, yes and no, no, no, no.
It's the totality. All questions exist within it and cannot escape. In
that respect it is like a semantic black hole.

That is unclear.
Comp is so simpler conceptually.

The view from nowhere (the ontic totality) is given by the numbers and
the law of addition and multiplication. From this you can understand,
even using a tiny part of that N,+,* structure, why "we" (the Löbian
beings) happen and believe in causality, totality, laws, and why it
can hurt and why it can please, etc. You understand also that there
are no nameable first person totality, for it is too much big, etc.

The price is that machine's have the same right as humans and all self-
aware creatures.

As long are they are self-honest, they are naturally libertarian, I
begin to think. UMs or LUMs are universal dissident. They can refute
any theory about them. They have already some personality---I
appreciate their company (in arithmetic).

Bruno

Craig

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Re: Max Velmans' Reflexive Monism

2012-05-28 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 28 May 2012, at 21:09, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

Bruno,

I believe that this time I could say that you express your position.
For example in your two answers below it does not look like "I don't
defend that position".

I don't think so. I comment my comment below.

On 28.05.2012 10:55 Bruno Marchal said the following:
> I comment on both Evgenii and Craig's comment:
>
>> On May 26, 11:57 am, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

...

Velmans introduces perceptual projection but this remains as the
Hard Problem in his book, how exactly perceptual projection
happens.

It does not make sense. This is doing Aristotle mistake twice.

To see a mistake or an invalidity in an argument, you don't need to
take any position. Comp can be used as a counter-example to the idea
that Velmans' move is necessary.

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.

That does not make sense either. There are no image in the brain. In
fact there is no brain.

Yeah, here you can add "assuming comp". Sorry.

Bruno

As for Aristotle, recently I have read Feyerabend where he has
compared Aristotle's 'Natural is what occurs always or almost
always' with Galileo's inexorable laws. Somehow I like 'occurs
always or almost always'. I find it more human.

Evgenii

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Re: Max Velmans' Reflexive Monism

2012-05-28 Thread Evgenii Rudnyi

Bruno,

I believe that this time I could say that you express your position. For 
example in your two answers below it does not look like "I don't defend 
that position".

On 28.05.2012 10:55 Bruno Marchal said the following:
> I comment on both Evgenii and Craig's comment:
>
>> On May 26, 11:57 am, Evgenii Rudnyi  wrote:

...

Velmans introduces perceptual projection but this remains as the
Hard Problem in his book, how exactly perceptual projection
happens.

It does not make sense. This is doing Aristotle mistake twice.

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.

That does not make sense either. There are no image in the brain. In
 fact there is no brain.

As for Aristotle, recently I have read Feyerabend where he has compared 
Aristotle's 'Natural is what occurs always or almost always' with 
Galileo's inexorable laws. Somehow I like 'occurs always or almost 
always'. I find it more human.

Evgenii

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Re: Max Velmans' Reflexive Monism

2012-05-28 Thread Craig Weinberg

On May 28, 4:55 am, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>
> > In first person, space is figurative and time is literal.
>
> Why?

The split between interior significance (doing*being)(timespace) and
exterior entropy (matter/energy)/spacetime prefigures causality.
Causality is part of 'doing', a semantic temporal narrative of
explanation which circumscribes significance and priority. If you try
to push causality back before causality, you can only come up with
anthropic or teleological pseudo first causes which still don't
explain where first cause possibilities come from.

Does the totality exist in this way because it has to exist? Because
it wants to exist? Because it can't not exist? Because it just does
exist and why is unknowable? Yes, yes, yes, yes and no, no, no, no.
It's the totality. All questions exist within it and cannot escape. In
that respect it is like a semantic black hole.

Craig

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Re: Max Velmans' Reflexive Monism

2012-05-28 Thread Evgenii Rudnyi

On 27.05.2012 23:04 Stephen P. King said the following:

On 5/27/2012 4:07 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

...

A good extension. Velmans does not consider such a case but he says
that the perceptions are located exactly where one perceives them.
In this case, it seems that it should not pose an additional
difficulty.

Hi Evgenii,

This does seem to imply an interesting situation where the
mind/consciousness of the observer is in a sense no longer confined
to being 'inside the skull" but ranging out to the farthest place
where something is percieved. It seems to me that imply a mapping
between a large hyper-volume (the out there) and the small volume of
the brain that cannot be in a one-to-one form. The reflexive idea
looks a lot like a Pullback in category theory and one can speculate
if the dual, the Pushout, is also involved. See
http://www.euclideanspace.com/maths/discrete/category/universal/index.htm
for more.

If you say that mind/consciousness confined to being 'inside the skull'
you have exactly the same problem as then you must accept that all three
dimensional world that you observe up to the horizon is 'inside the
skull'. The mapping problem remains though.

...

Yes, the third-person view belongs to another observer and Velmans
plays this fact out. He means that at his picture when a person
looks at the cat, the third-person view means another person who
looks at that cat and simultaneously look at the first person. This
way, two person can change their first-person view to third-person
view. However, it is still impossible to directly observe the
first-person view of another observer. Everything that is possible
in this respect are neural correlates of consciousness.

Does this ultimately imply that the 3-p (third person point of view)
is merely an abstraction and never actually occurring? WE make a big

There is no clear answer in the book (or I have missed it).

...

Not really. As usual, the positive construction of own philosophy
is weaker as the critique of other philosophies.

Yes, that is true. An already existing target makes for a sharper
attack.

In Russian to this end, one says "Ломать не строить, душа не болит". I
would translate this idiom as "To destroy something is much easier than
to build it, as this way the soul does not hurt".

Evgenii

Re: Max Velmans' Reflexive Monism

2012-05-28 Thread Bruno Marchal


I comment on both Evgenii and Craig's comment:

On 28 May 2012, at 07:10, Craig Weinberg wrote:


On May 26, 11:57 am, Evgenii Rudnyi  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.


But the image is not in the brain. That can be said only in a  
metaphorical way.





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".


I say that too, but it is only a metaphor. Your head is also in your  
head. With comp, no problem: there are only number relation which are  
interpreted by numbers, relatively to probable universal numbers. So  
there are ontic third person computations, and first person views/ 
histories supervening on infinity of such computations.






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.


It does not make sense. This is doing Aristotle mistake twice.





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.


That does not make sense either. There are no image in the brain. In  
fact there is no brain.





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.


That's correct (with resopect to comp), but with comp "brains", or  
what we call brain, are just local universal numbers, so many of the  
confusions here are avoided at the start. This illustrates how far you  
need to go to keep naturalism and mechanism.






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.


Well, G and G* does combine them easily, but they are not  
interdefinable, and obeys different logic. But G can be used as a  
multi-modal logic (which I avoid for pedagogical reason, but it is  
part of the future).





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 figurat

Re: Max Velmans' Reflexive Monism

2012-05-27 Thread Craig Weinberg

On May 27, 5:45 pm, meekerdb  wrote:
> On 5/27/2012 2:04 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:
>
>
>
> >     This does seem to imply an interesting situation where the 
> > mind/consciousness of the
> > observer is in a sense no longer confined to being 'inside the skull" but 
> > ranging out to
> > the farthest place where something is percieved. It seems to me that imply 
> > a mapping
> > between a large hyper-volume (the out there) and the small volume of the 
> > brain that
> > cannot be in a one-to-one form.
>
> The skull, the brain, and 'out there' are all just parts of the world model 
> your brain
> constructs.

A model is a presentation which we use to refer to another
presentation. To say that the brain constructs models relies on the
possibility of a model which has no presentation to begin with. It
means that our every experience, including your sitting in that chair
reading these words, is made of 'representation-ness', which stands in
for the Homunculus to perform this invisible and logically redundant
alchemical transformation from perfectly useful neurological signals
into some weird orgy of improbable identities.

It doesn't hold up. It is a de-presentation of the world in order to
justify our failure to locate consciousness inside the tissue of the
brain. Consciousness isn't 'in' anything, and it's not produced by
anything. It's a story which produces brains, bodies, planets, etc.
They are parts of consciousness that are modeled as the world. They
are representations made of condensed, externalized, temporally
imploded presentations of sense.

Craig

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Re: Max Velmans' Reflexive Monism

2012-05-27 Thread Craig Weinberg

On May 26, 11:57 am, Evgenii Rudnyi  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 '

Re: Max Velmans' Reflexive Monism

2012-05-27 Thread meekerdb


On 5/27/2012 2:04 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:


This does seem to imply an interesting situation where the mind/consciousness of the 
observer is in a sense no longer confined to being 'inside the skull" but ranging out to 
the farthest place where something is percieved. It seems to me that imply a mapping 
between a large hyper-volume (the out there) and the small volume of the brain that 
cannot be in a one-to-one form. 


The skull, the brain, and 'out there' are all just parts of the world model your brain 
constructs.


Brent

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Re: Max Velmans' Reflexive Monism

2012-05-27 Thread Stephen P. King


On 5/27/2012 4:07 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

On 27.05.2012 07:50 Stephen P. King said the following:

On 5/26/2012 11:57 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:


...


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.


Hi Evgenii,

I would be very interested if Velmans discussed how the model would
consider multiple observers of the image in the mirror and how the
images that are in the brains of the many are coordinated such that
there is always a single consistent world of mirrors and brains and
so forth.


A good extension. Velmans does not consider such a case but he says 
that the perceptions are located exactly where one perceives them. In 
this case, it seems that it should not pose an additional difficulty.


Hi Evgenii,

This does seem to imply an interesting situation where the 
mind/consciousness of the observer is in a sense no longer confined to 
being 'inside the skull" but ranging out to the farthest place where 
something is percieved. It seems to me that imply a mapping between a 
large hyper-volume (the out there) and the small volume of the brain 
that cannot be in a one-to-one form. The reflexive idea looks a lot like 
a Pullback in category theory and one can speculate if the dual, the 
Pushout, is also involved. See 
http://www.euclideanspace.com/maths/discrete/category/universal/index.htm for 
more.





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.


Is this third-person view (3p) one that is not ever the actual
first-person (1p) of some actual observer? I can only directly
experience my own content of consciousness, so the content of someone
 else is always only known via some description. How is this idea
considered, if at all?


Yes, the third-person view belongs to another observer and Velmans 
plays this fact out. He means that at his picture when a person looks 
at the cat, the third-person view means another person who looks at 
that cat and simultaneously look at the first person. This way, two 
person can change their first-person view to third-person view. 
However, it is still impossible to directly observe the first-person 
view of another observer. Everything that is possible in this respect 
are neural correlates of consciousness.


Does this ultimately imply that the 3-p (third person point of 
view) is merely an abstraction and never actually occurring? WE make a 
big deal about neural correlates but we still have no good 
theory/explanation of how neural functions generate the internal model 
that is one side of the relationship. The best research that I have seen 
on this so far is the work of the mathematician Marius Buliga and 
discussed in his blog here http://chorasimilarity.wordpress.com/






Anyway the the last chapter in the book is "Self-consciousness in a
 reflexive universe".


I am interested in "communications between self-conscious entities in
a reflexive universe". ;-) Does Velmans discuss any abstract models
of reflexivity itself?


Not really. As usual, the positive construction of own philosophy is 
weaker as the critique of other philosophies.


Yes, that is true. An already existing target makes for a sharper 
attack.



--
Onward!

Stephen

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed."
~ Francis Bacon


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Re: Max Velmans' Reflexive Monism

2012-05-27 Thread Evgenii Rudnyi


On 27.05.2012 07:50 Stephen P. King said the following:

On 5/26/2012 11:57 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:


...


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.


Hi Evgenii,

I would be very interested if Velmans discussed how the model would
consider multiple observers of the image in the mirror and how the
images that are in the brains of the many are coordinated such that
there is always a single consistent world of mirrors and brains and
so forth.


A good extension. Velmans does not consider such a case but he says that 
the perceptions are located exactly where one perceives them. In this 
case, it seems that it should not pose an additional difficulty.



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.


Is this third-person view (3p) one that is not ever the actual
first-person (1p) of some actual observer? I can only directly
experience my own content of consciousness, so the content of someone
 else is always only known via some description. How is this idea
considered, if at all?


Yes, the third-person view belongs to another observer and Velmans plays 
this fact out. He means that at his picture when a person looks at the 
cat, the third-person view means another person who looks at that cat 
and simultaneously look at the first person. This way, two person can 
change their first-person view to third-person view. However, it is 
still impossible to directly observe the first-person view of another 
observer. Everything that is possible in this respect are neural 
correlates of consciousness.




Anyway the the last chapter in the book is "Self-consciousness in a
 reflexive universe".


I am interested in "communications between self-conscious entities in
a reflexive universe". ;-) Does Velmans discuss any abstract models
of reflexivity itself?


Not really. As usual, the positive construction of own philosophy is 
weaker as the critique of other philosophies.


Evgenii

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Re: Max Velmans' Reflexive Monism

2012-05-27 Thread Richard Ruquist

"Velmans introduces perceptual projection but this remains as the Hard
Problem in his book, how exactly perceptual projection happens"-Evgenii
Rudnyi

I conjecture that the discrete nonphysical particles of compactified space,
the so-called Calabi-Yau Manifolds of string theory, have perceptual
projection due to the mapping of closed strings, something that Leibniz
hypothesized for his monads centuries ago.
http://vixra.org/pdf/1101.0044v1.pdf
Richard David

On Sun, May 27, 2012 at 1:50 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:

> On 5/26/2012 11:57 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi 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.
>>
>
> Hi Evgenii,
>
>I would be very interested if Velmans discussed how the model would
> consider multiple observers of the image in the mirror and how the images
> that are in the brains of the many are coordinated such that there is
> always a single consistent world of mirrors and brains and so forth.
>
>
>> 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.
>>
>
>Is this third-person view (3p) one that is not ever the actual
> first-person (1p) of some actual observer? I can only directly experience
> my own content of consciousness, so the content of someone else is always
> only known via some description. How is this idea considered, if at all?
>
>
>> Anyway the the last chapter in the book is "Self-consciousness in a
>> reflexive universe".
>>
>
>I am interested in "communications between self-conscious entities in a
> reflexive universe". ;-) Does Velmans discuss any abstract models of
> reflexivity itself?
>
>
>> Evgenii
>>
>>
>
> --
> Onward!
>
> Stephen
>
> "Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed."
> ~ Francis Bacon
>
>
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Re: Max Velmans' Reflexive Monism

2012-05-26 Thread Stephen P. King


On 5/26/2012 11:57 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi 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.


Hi Evgenii,

I would be very interested if Velmans discussed how the model would 
consider multiple observers of the image in the mirror and how the 
images that are in the brains of the many are coordinated such that 
there is always a single consistent world of mirrors and brains and so 
forth.




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.


Is this third-person view (3p) one that is not ever the actual 
first-person (1p) of some actual observer? I can only directly 
experience my own content of consciousness, so the content of someone 
else is always only known via some description. How is this idea 
considered, if at all?




Anyway the the last chapter in the book is "Self-consciousness in a 
reflexive universe".


I am interested in "communications between self-conscious entities 
in a reflexive universe". ;-) Does Velmans discuss any abstract models 
of reflexivity itself?




Evgenii




--
Onward!

Stephen

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed."
~ Francis Bacon


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Max Velmans' Reflexive Monism

2012-05-26 Thread Evgenii Rudnyi

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.


Anyway the the last chapter in the book is "Self-consciousness in a 
reflexive universe".


Evgenii

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Re: Max Velmans' Reflexive Monism

Re: Max Velmans' Reflexive Monism

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Re: Max Velmans' Reflexive Monism

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Re: Max Velmans' Reflexive Monism

Re: Max Velmans' Reflexive Monism

Re: Max Velmans' Reflexive Monism

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