Perception vs. Reason

Enrique

Based on some conversations with posters at this forum along with my own thoughts, the following seem apparent:

First, qualitative experience is a sort of quantum resonance intrinsic to matter, during which entangled molecules superposition (blend) into hybrid wavelengths, an additive effect comparable to the visible electromagnetic spectrum. This, loosely speaking, subjective "color" consists in both dimensionality and properties of fragmentary feeling, so that organic matter is infused with rudiments of consciousness. The large array of superposition forms results in the wide variety of perceptual types: visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactile, interoceptive and introspective.

Second, matter does not have to be in organic form to possess these rudiments, so that components of consciousness can exist beyond the body, a sort of collective soul suffused throughout the biosphere.

Third, these rudiments of collective consciousness (particles in entanglement, superposition, etc.) are the same physical materials proven to participate in retroactive causality during lab experiments, so it is logical to conclude that soul transcends the space and time parameters of physiology and traditional thermodynamics.

So perception is almost fundamental to matter, its basic elements active at the nanoscale, with our cognition and behavior largely organized for responding to these perceptions. But then we have reasoning, set apart somewhat as a further layer of functionality which assesses environments in predictive fashion. What is the relationship between perception and reason, how do these facets of the mind influence will and action? It has been shown that both can be explained in materialistic terms, but which has precedence and in what ways or situations, and where does the physical distinction between them reside?

Cuthbert

I think you're saying that one condition of perception is material interaction. True enough. No eyes or no light, then no seeing. Then you seem to say that because these material interactions are everywhere, then perception is everywhere - 'suffused'. But that doesn't follow. It's like saying your post is made of words and my post is made of words, so your post is the same as my post.

I'm not sure perception has been explained in material terms. You might explain fractions by drawing a cake and showing it cut up into segments. But if someone concludes that without cake there would be no fractions then they missed the point.

I like sushi

Gobbledegook

Can you rephrase?

Enrique

↪I like sushi

Let's talk about gobbledegook then, what isn't too legit to quit for you?

Then you seem to say that because these material interactions are everywhere, then perception is everywhere - 'suffused'. But that doesn't follow. It's like saying your post is made of words and my post is made of words, so your post is the same as my post. — Cuthbert

Its like saying quantum elements of perception are as richly varied as the English language, and all the sensations are analogous to combinations of words, technically entangled superpositions amongst molecules, though the concept of a molecule of course does not come close to exhausting the range of possibilities for embodied substance.

I like sushi

@Enrique I was referring to your OP. You don’t seemed to be saying anything concrete.

What seems apparent to me, if this is a reflection of posters on this forum, is that many posters on this forum are stringing together words that don’t really say anything of philosophical substance.

Can you reiterate the OP in plain English and/or expand on the terminology used and its context to the heading of ‘Perception vs Reason’ because I’m not convinced you’re using these terms - and others - in any context I’m familiar with.

Thank you

Enrique

Can you reiterate the OP in plain English and/or expand on the terminology used and its context — I like sushi

superposition: wave blending
entanglement: synchronous interaction, variously proximal or remote

All particles have wavelike properties, making them in actuality "wavicles".
These wavicles entangle into shapes and blend into superpositions as they interact.
Superposition states amongst wavicles are responsible for qualia, just as additive wavelength is responsible for variability in the characteristics of electromagnetic quanta.
Qualitative experience is an emergent property of these qualia when they inhere in entangled particles such that the structure of their superpositions are highly organized, coordinated and sustained.

I can't make it any simpler than that, vanquishing illusions of the nonphysical!

Joshs

↪Enrique

What is the relationship between perception and reason, how do these facets of the mind influence will and action? It has been shown that both can be explained in materialistic terms — Enrique

“Husserl showed that in order to reach the transcendental or foundational level, one must not rely on any of the areas of being or experience that one is trying to found or ground.

These areas that are founded but not foundational include psychology, anthropology, and the natural sciences, physics in a broad sense. Heidegger says the same thing in his Introduction to Being and Time. Therefore, if one claims that naturalism is foundational, then one is taking one of the founded areas of experience and making it foundational. But this move begs the question. It is a vicious circle. Naturalism refers to one region of being, the region of nature. As one region among many, like the human and the animate,
the ontological region of nature requires grounding. When one uses one of the things requiring grounding to be the ground, you are basically copying the foundation off the
founded. I have already alluded to this circular reasoning when we were discussing immanence and materialism.”
Leonard Lawler

Enrique

↪Joshs

Incisive quote. In my view no foundation exists, only positivistic evolution (hopefully progress), so the question of grounding is moot. Naturalism as the essence of our episteme is circular because problem-solving is a recursion towards successor theories (structural frameworks of explanation), and standard presentation of the scientific method succinctly conveys this.

Joshs

↪Enrique

In my view no foundation exists, only positivistic evolution (hopefully progress), so the question of grounding is moot. — Enrique

What they are arguing is that empirical nature is based on mathematicized objectivity, a concoction of Descartes and Galileo that amounts to a restricted view , a view with blinders on. It is an idealized scheme that doesn’t know it is a scheme, and instead thinks that it is without foundation. The fact that many scientists now say that they reject naive , metaphysical realism in favor of a representational realism indicates that they acknowledge science operates with foundational presuppositions which change over time. A number of social and psychological scientists are taking one step further and moving beyond the foundations guiding most in the hard sciences. The changes in philosophy of science over the centuries reflects changes in foundational scientific assumptions about objectivity , reality , subjectivity and their relations.

Tom Storm

↪Joshs

Interesting stuff, Joshs. I have a very limited understanding of phenomenology but that accords with what I have gleaned. I recently saw a couple of lectures by Evan Thompson, professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia who takes this perspective in his critique of scientific objectivism.

Is there a very basic summary, written simply and succinctly that careful lays out this essential position as a starting point? When it comes to language, I am in the Orwellian, plain English camp and I am allergic to the circumlocutions so often present in academic writing.

It seems to me that people are not understanding this perspective partly out of an internalized deference to the dominant culture but also because the ideas are hard to convey in a way that sticks in the mind of a newbie.

Joshs

↪Tom Storm

I highly recommend this recent book by Thompson. In it he shows the relevance of phenomenology for the understanding of organismic functioning as well as cognition.

https://dl1.cuni.cz/pluginfile.php/610970/mod_resource/content/1/09%20-%20Evan_Thompson_-_Mind_in_Life~_Biology%2C_Phenomenology%2C_and_the_Sciences_of_Mind.pdf

Tom Storm

↪Joshs

:up:

Wayfarer

Therefore, if one claims that naturalism is foundational, then one is taking one of the founded areas of experience and making it foundational. But this move begs the question. It is a vicious circle. — Joshs

:up:

recently saw a couple of lectures by Evan Thompson, professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia who takes this perspective in his critique of scientific objectivism. — Tom Storm

Have a read of this Aeon essay, The Blind Spot. Evan Thomson is one of the authors.

Banno

...qualitative experience is a sort of quantum resonance intrinsic to matter... — Enrique

If you read this and didn't flinch, you haven't adopted the critical approach that is the essence of rationality.

Tom Storm

↪Wayfarer

Thanks. And thanks too for the Michel Bitbol referral. I have watched a few of his lectures too. What a lovely man he seems.

Enrique

If you read this and didn't flinch, you haven't adopted the critical approach that is the essence of rationality. — Banno

Feel welcome to criticize, that's what I enjoy! This forum is like a small slice of heaven compared to my daily life lol

By quantum resonance, I mean waves waving, I thought it was fairly comprehensible.

Banno

By quantum resonance, I mean waves waving, I thought it was fairly comprehensible. — Enrique

That's nonsense. Non-sense; without meaning.

Enrique

That's nonsense. Non-sense; without meaning. — Banno

Maybe slice of scapegoat pseudopurgatory would be more accurate, don't lay into me too much.

Wayfarer

qualitative experience is a sort of quantum resonance intrinsic to matter, during which entangled molecules superposition (blend) into hybrid wavelengths, an additive effect comparable to the visible electromagnetic spectrum. This, loosely speaking, subjective "color" consists in both dimensionality and properties of fragmentary feeling, so that organic matter is infused with rudiments of consciousness — Enrique

Do you think this is a version of panpsychism?

In the philosophy of mind, panpsychism is the view that mind or a mindlike aspect is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality. It is also described as a theory that "the mind is a fundamental feature of the world which exists throughout the universe." It is one of the oldest philosophical theories, and has been ascribed to philosophers including Thales, Plato, Spinoza, Leibniz, William James, Alfred North Whitehead, Bertrand Russell, and Galen Strawson. In the 19th century, panpsychism was the default philosophy of mind in Western thought, but it saw a decline in the mid-20th century with the rise of logical positivism. Recent interest in the 'hard problem of consciousness' has revived interest in panpsychism. — Wikipedia

↪Tom Storm

:up: Also put http://michel.bitbol.pagesperso-orange.fr/Schrodinger_India.pdf on your reading list.

Banno

↪Enrique

There's no gentle way to say it. Trying to build perception and reason from quantum mechanics is like trying to fry fish with communism.

Wayfarer

↪Banno

Fair go, Banno. I too am sceptical but quantum biology really is a subject nowadays.

Banno

↪Wayfarer

Sure, but the OP is not quantum biology.

Enrique

Do you think this is a version of panpsychism? — Wayfarer

The most precise label for it I've come across is panprotopsychism, an unwieldy term that I think was invented by Bertrand Russell. Basically my view is that qualia (many types of superposition) are a feature of matter slightly more emergent than shape and size, but transient enough to not constitute consciousness at the most basic levels. In highly organized material systems such as Earth's organisms qualia conglomerate to give qualitative experience. The most novel aspect of this theory for science is that it distinguishes consciousness from the body while still regarding it as a material entity, providing possible avenues for mechanistically modeling the paranormal frontiers of psychology.

Joshs

↪Wayfarer

Thanks This piece should be trotted out every time someone begins a thread about the primacy of physicalism.

Banno

↪Joshs

The article contains several obvious confusions. There's an implied version of Stove's Gem; and mistaking a methodological assumption for an ontological one; "nothng-but-ism"; a bit of mumbling about "quantum", and so on.

It doesn't reach any conclusion, just hand-waving.

Kenosha Kid

If you read this and didn't flinch, you haven't adopted the critical approach that is the essence of rationality. — Banno

Haha I stopped reading at precisely this point, whoops!

The article contains several obvious confusions. There's an implied version of Stove's Gem; and mistaking a methodological assumption for an ontological one; "nothng-but-ism"; a bit of mumbling about "quantum", and so on.

It doesn't reach any conclusion, just hand-waving. — Banno

And so much special pleading and of-the-gaps fallacy. An article enumerating the problems with the article would be much longer than the article.

I like sushi

↪Enrique

Guess I’ll have to for the day when you can. Looks like you have an idea but are under the illusion it can make sense to others.

There is a sciencephilosophy forum where I believe you may find some guidance in terms of expressing whatever it is you’re trying to express.

GL

Enrique

Looks like you have an idea but are under the illusion it can make sense to others. — I like sushi

I'm sorry my model was so overwhelming to your intellect, it would be a scientific revolution if you could only see the truth lol

Mww

↪Wayfarer

“...quantum coherence lives as long as 300 femtoseconds at biologically relevant temperatures...”

Support for Penrose/Hameroff, “Orch-OR”, 1998, rejection of refutation by Tegmark, 2007?

I thought Tegmark nailed it, but apparently he didn’t. Our mental imaging is pretty damn quick, but still........femtoseconds??? YIKES!!!

Enrique

↪Mww

Youtube video claims scientists have determined that the phosphates in ATP molecules may be capable of superpositions lasting nearly a second.

Mww

↪Enrique

Are ATP molecules considered major neurotransmitters?

I only know enough about this stuff to get myself in trouble if I talk too much.

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