I don't know if Kant nor the Tao Te Ching have specific any bearing on the question.

The argument I was making was specifically about the assumptions behind modern scientific method, and how it tends to construe the world in certain terms - namely as something mind-independent and inherently existent (sorry for the jargon). The hard problem then arises because despite the astonishing reach of modern science, it can't really find, or account for, the nature of mind. And then, that 'eliminativism', typified by Daniel Dennett and his colleagues, tries to explain this away by positing the mind as an illusion (regardless that illusions themselves can only occur in minds.)

Now, if scientists generally were more aware of Kant, then the whole situation might be different. But I think awareness of Kant's philosophy is pretty minimal amongst mainstream scientists. On the whole they tend to favour cognitive realism.

As for the Tao Te Ching, it is a statement from that particular source of the perennial philosophy - you could find comparable aphorisms in Christian mystical theology, but again, for those who understand the world that way, there is no hard problem (or any problem :-) )

David Chalmer's original essay, Facing Up to the Hard Problem of Consciousness, really is addressed to 'scientism'.

Scientism is the belief that the scientific method is the best or only way to understand the world and solve problems. It is often associated with the belief that science can or should be applied to all areas of knowledge, including those that are traditionally outside the scope of science, such as morality and the meaning of life. Some people view scientism as a positive approach that can lead to new discoveries and insights, while others see it as a narrow-minded or reductionist way of thinking that oversimplifies complex issues. — ChatGPT

Daniel Dennett is 'Professor Scientism'. His book Darwin's Dangerous Idea lays it all out. He says that Darwinian evolution is a 'universal acid' that eats through everything it touches. And the very first thing it touches is philosophy!

This is the topic of my two first (and possibly only) essays on Medium.

I'm very grateful to you, Constance. Thank-you for you time, attention, knowledge and wisdom as applied to my thoughts about the mode of the phenomenon of consciousness.

I can see, in an early state of understanding, not yet in sharp focus, some of the truth of your claim consciousness is more at metaphysics than at physics. I therefore see value in developing my thinking towards effecting the transition suggested.

I'm supposing, tentatively, that physically grounded consciousness as metaphysics has for one of its essentials the phenomenon/noumenon relationship. This directs my research towards Husserl and, before him, Kant.

Encouragement such as you've given me motivates my presence here. — ucarr

I have every confidence you will be better at this than I am.

Consider, if you will, the one abiding thought that dominates my thinking: The world is phenomena. Once this is simply acknowledged, axiomatically so, then things fall into place. The brain is no longer the birth of phenomena, phenomena issue forth from phenomena, and what phenomena are is an open concept. Conscious open brain surgery shows a connection between brain and experiences, thoughts, emotions, memories, but does not show generative causality. Indeed, and this is an extraordinary point: If the brain were the generative source of experience, every occasion of witnessing a brain would be itself brain generated. This is the paradox of physicalism. What is being considered here, in your claim about gravity and its phenomenal universality (keeping in mind that gravity is not, of course, used in phenomenology's lexicon. But the attempt to bridge phenomenology with knowledge claims about the world of objects that are "out there" and "not me" is permitted {is it not?} to lend and borrow vocabularies with science. An interesting point to consider) is a "third perspective". Recall how Wittgenstein argued that we cannot discuss what logic is, for logic would be presupposed in the discussing. You would need some third perspective that would be removed from that which is being analyzed; but then, this itself would need the same, and so forth. This is the paradox of metaphysics, I guess you could call it, the endless positing of a knowledge perspective that itself, to be known, would require the same accounting as that which is being explained. An infinite regression.

But if you follow, in a qualified way, Husserl's basic claim that what we call appearances are really an ontology of intuition (though I don't recall he ever put it like this), whereby the givenness of the world IS the foundation we seek, the "third perspective" which is a stand alone, unassailable reality, then, while the "what is it?" remains indeterminate, for language just cannot "speak" this (see above), we can allow the scientific term "gravity" to be science's counterpart to the apparent need for an accounting of a transcendental ego in order to close the epistemic distance between objects and knowledge.

Just a thought.

Conscious open brain surgery shows a connection between brain and experiences, thoughts, emotions, memories, but does not show generative causality. — Constance

Are you referring to Wilder Penfield's research here?

You were talking about being. It's a twin of the nothing. — frank

But how is this to be taken? I remember reading Hegel once, and he, as I recall, placed the nothing in dialectical opposition to being, thereby producing becoming, which God works out through our historical progress. That is pretty out there, but I have to look again to see how he spells it out.

I guess calling it the "twin" of being lies here: For Heidegger, being is not just entangled with language; rather, language is being, part and parcel of human dasein, so when we talk about what we are, our existence, we face language constructions, open to interpretative historical conditions, and there is no finality to interpretation. I like the way he puts it in The Origin of the Work of Art as he acknowledges that art can only be defined by the artwork, but the art work needs a definition to do the defining: He writes:

Thus we are compelled to follow the circle. This is neither a makeshift nor a defect.
To enter upon this path is the strength of thought, to continue on it is the feast of
thought, assuming that thinking is a craft. Not only is the main step from work to art a
circle like the step from art to work, but every separate step that we attempt circles in
this circle.

the strength of thought and a feast of thought, this is where the nothing comes in, for there is this impossible "outside" of the "unhiddenness" of what we deal with that we face when we encounter a creative moment: the nothing of an unmade future possibility. Our freedom is the nothing.

I don't know if Kant nor the Tao Te Ching have specific any bearing on the question. — Wayfarer

Your question was "Any examples come to mind of sciences or scientists that do?" I can see I didn't answer that question very well, although I think my answers were relevant to how science might examine consciousness effectively. As I said in a previous post:

Phenomenology isn't really philosophy at all. It's psychology. So much of it makes definitive statements about phenomena and processes that can be verified or falsified using empirical methods. — T Clark

I wouldn't be surprised if psychologists have completed studies that are relevant to those questions, but I can't name any. I have set a new task for myself. On the other hand, if I'm right that the phenomena phenomenologists describe are subject to empirical verification or falsification, phenomenologists have made factual statements without evidence. I've been wondering whether the insights they describe are based on introspection, but I haven't seen acknowledgement that that is the case. I consider introspection a valid form of evidence, at least potentially.

As for the Tao Te Ching, it is a statement from that particular source of the perennial philosophy - you could find comparable aphorisms in Christian mystical theology, but again, for those who understand the world that way, there is no hard problem (or any problem :-) ) — Wayfarer

I think the Tao Te Ching, as well as Kant and Heidegger, make statements that are, at least potentially, empirically verifiable.

Are you referring to Wilder Penfield's research here? — Wayfarer

I think he is fascinating. And one must, I think, though this is something philosophers would find insulting to their dignity, consider near death experiences. Now, I am a committed skeptic, and it is hard for me to be impressed by personal narratives that tend to be careless and wandering and ridiculous. But I have taken the time to listen to these nde accounts and I must say they are not liars. Nor are they mistaken in the intuitive encounters they talk about. Some are simply astounding.

Of course, I'm looking for trouble bringing something like this up here.

Of course, I'm looking for trouble bringing something like this up here. — Constance

Not with me, you're not. :wink:

I think the Tao Te Ching, as well as Kant and Heidegger, make statements that are, at least potentially, empirically verifiable. — T Clark

I think you're stretching the definition of empiricism. Heidegger Heisenberg is an especially interesting case, though, because he was an atomic physicist, not just a philosopher, but, you know, his philosophical stance was very much influence by Plato. But then you're getting into the whole 'philosophical interpretations of quantum mechanics', which is a whole other rabbit hole. That book I often mention, Quantum, by Manjit Kumar, is an excellent source, though, with a lot about Heidegger.

But anyway, I think if you judge the original Chalmer's essay on its merits, it makes a pretty clear-cut case. It's about something very specific - without having to refer to Taoism or Kant or quantum physics.

//amended to reflect misreading in my first response.//

But anyway, I think if you judge the original Chalmer's essay on its merits, it makes a pretty clear-cut case. It's about something very specific - without having to refer to Taoism or Kant or quantum physics. — Wayfarer

I've read it, but I'll read it again. You say "without having to refer to Taoism or Kant or quantum physics." I don't have to refer to Taoism or Kant. I refer to them because I think they are relevant. As for quantum mechanics, I have often said the so called "weirdness" of QM has nothing to do with consciousness.

I think you must be referring to Heisenberg, not Heidegger.

BTW the mention of the Dao De Ching reminded me of a book I'm currently reading, which I've found to be the closest thing to my own preoccupations and ways of thinking I think I've ever come across. It deals primarily with different aspects of non-dualism in Advaita Vedanta, Daoism and Buddhism and also gives some consideration to Heidegger and Derrida in that context..

You've probably heard of it or even read it (if not, I highly recommend it, it brings together strands of thought I've been pondering for years): it's titled Non-Dualism by David Loy.

I think you must be referring to Heisenberg, not Heidegge — Janus

Yes silly me. I was just reading something about him. :yikes:

Oh yes, David Loy is one of my favourite authors in that space. I saw him speak and introduced myself to him at Science and Nonduality a few years back. I think Non-duality was adapted from his PhD thesis if I remember rightly. I frequently peruse his Articles page https://www.davidloy.org/articles.html

Cheers :smile:

Indeed, and this is an extraordinary point: If the brain were the generative source of experience, every occasion of witnessing a brain would be itself brain generated. This is the paradox of physicalism. — Constance

I don't see any paradox here. Can you explain?

when you can demonstrate a self-creating machine that follows goals... — Wayfarer

machines are human artefacts, produced intentionally to deliver a result. They embody the intention of the agent who builds them. — Wayfarer

Then your challenge is self-immunised. If you define a 'machine' as human-made and then declare that anything human-made, by definition, has in it the intention of the human manufacturer, you couldn't possibly identify such a machine.

If I built a machine which genuinely had intention, there'd be no way to tell since, by your definition, it would always have my intention too.

Do I have my parent's intention? Or does the 'building' have to take place in a workshop?

If you define a 'machine' as human-made... — Isaac

"Machine: an apparatus using mechanical power and having several parts, each with a definite function and together performing a particular task."

Are there machines that are not made by humans?

You yourself, and humans generally, are not machines, but organisms, and also intentional agents, I would have thought.

You can define 'machine' however you like. The point was that you can't, in the same breath, say that machines have no intention empirically (we haven't found any which do yet) and say that machines can't have their own intention by definition.

If you're defining 'machine' such that it cannot, by definition, have its own intention, then the failure to find any such machine in the real world carries no epistemic weight. Of course there aren't any, you just defined 'machine' as being those things without intention of their own.

Its like me saying that Jabberwockies are monsters with red fangs and then saying "if you think I'm wrong, find me a Jabberwocky without red fangs" whatever you find, I'll just say "that's not a Jabberwocky, I said Jabberwockies were monsters with red fangs"

You can define 'machine' however you like. — Isaac

No I can't. A machine is not bucket of water, or a fruit-bearing plant, or an animal. I'm not going to engage in pointless arguments.

No I can't. A machine is not bucket of water, or a fruit-bearing plant, or an animal. I'm not going to engage in pointless arguments. — Wayfarer

I meant within reason, obviously. The definition (using the one you provided) does not specify whether such an object has intentions, must be created by humans, must be non-organic,... All these nuances are what's meant by the colloquial expression 'you can define X however you want', as well you know.

When was the last time you responded to someone who says "you can be whatever you want" with "no I can't, I can't be a zebra"?

Deliberately uncharitable readings are a poor substitute for actual argument.

So, within the range of possible definitions of 'machine' (if that's clearer) it remains the case that you've chosen to define it in such a way as to self-immunise any response against your argument.

If you define 'machine' as something made by humans and as such containing human intention, then every example given meeting your definition will, by definition, contain human intention. It's therefore not evidence that we haven't yet found any 'machines' with intents of their own. By your own definition, any such object would automatically cease to qualify as a 'machine'.

for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, — Nagel/Chalmers

We prepare to point appropriate symbols at the stimulus: pictures of just the right shade, words selecting the right pictures. And we prepare to point other symbols at the biological activity that we infer effects the process of preparation. We find it useful, and generally harmless, to equivocate (in talk and in thought) between word, picture, stimulus, associated stimuli, and neural process. Unsurprisingly we often have to unpick an apparently reliable (because habitual) account alleging that a picture glows, somewhere inside our head.

the experience of dark and light, — Nagel/Chalmers

The need to prepare to select pictures having the right luminosity when illuminated, so as to associate the stimulus with an appropriate range of stimuli, and of words and of objects.

the quality of depth in a visual field. — Nagel/Chalmers

Pictures satisfying learnt pictorial conventions of perspective.

Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, — Nagel/Chalmers

Not another experience in the sense of another wonderful ghostly correlate of neural activity, but another (wonderful) physical process of readying to select among sounds to associate with the presented sound, thereby contributing to an ongoing classification and ordering of the world of sound events. A process soaked in the same multiple confusion of use with mention: reference to stimulus with reference to symbol; symbol with neural readying for use of symbol; stimulus with neural readying for use of symbol.

the smell of mothballs. — Nagel/Chalmers

Where the associations may be especially deep and cross-modally disruptive.

Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; — Nagel/Chalmers

There is physiological trauma and convulsions, and there is interpretation of these through language and other symbol systems. And with the interpretation, endemic intellectual confusion, and habitual implication of an internal observer.

mental images that are conjured up internally; — Nagel/Chalmers

In a manner of speaking, which benefits from translation into literal analysis, in terms of preparation to manipulate and interpret diagrams and visual talk.

the felt quality of emotion — Nagel/Chalmers

The physiological turbulence, and then the interpreting it through language and other symbol systems, especially (and usefully and often truly) with respect to social and physical threats and opportunities.

and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. — Nagel/Chalmers

The tendency to confuse the continuity of actual scenery with the continuity of an internal picture show.

what unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. — Nagel/Chalmers

There is a topography of more and less appropriate linguistic (and otherwise symbolic) interpretations and reactions to the situation in which the organism finds itself.

All of them are states of experience. — Nagel/Chalmers

But not of a ghost in the machine.

Unsurprisingly we often have to unpick an apparently reliable (because habitual) account alleging that a picture glows, somewhere inside our head. — bongo fury

Do you think that's what Chalmers and Nagel are suggesting? That a picture glows in the head?

It seems you're saying that mechanisms cannot possibly bring about consciousness, — Isaac

I'm not saying that mechanisms can't bring about consciousness. I'm saying that the mere classification of signals is, obviously, not consciousness.

for there is this impossible "outside" of the "unhiddenness" of what we deal with that we face when we encounter a creative moment: the nothing of an unmade future possibility. Our freedom is the nothing. — Constance

Maybe so. But the first awareness of the concept of being accompanies recognition of nothingness. Nothingness is the background that allows being to appear to the intellect.

But how is this to be taken? I remember reading Hegel once, and he, as I recall, placed the nothing in dialectical opposition to being, thereby producing becoming, which God works out through our historical progress. That is pretty out there, but I have to look again to see how he spells it out. — Constance

I thought Hagel said becoming is primal and being and nothing emerge from it on analysis.

I'm not saying that mechanisms can't bring about consciousness. I'm saying that the mere classification of signals is, obviously, not consciousness. — hypericin

In your DVD example you ended...

These 0s and 1s are then translated on the player into a format amenable to the display device, which produces audio and video. — hypericin

It doesn't. It produces changes in the state and momentum of fundamental particles. We just 'classify' those particular states and momentums as 'audio' and 'video'.

Do you think that's what Chalmers and Nagel are suggesting? That a picture glows in the head? — frank

Pretty much. Do I slander them?

mental images that are conjured up internally; — Nagel/Chalmers

Like those, but delivered from outside.

How would you paraphrase

the felt quality of redness, — Nagel/Chalmers

?

Do you think that's what Chalmers and Nagel are suggesting? That a picture glows in the head?
— frank

Pretty much. Do I slander them? — bongo fury

They're talking about experience. Remember that pan-psychism is on the table as a possible explanation. I've never heard of the glowing picture theory.

How would you paraphrase

the felt quality of redness,
— Nagel/Chalmers

? — bongo fury

I wouldn't. I'd say that if you aren't willing to read an essay or book by Chalmers, you probably aren't really interested in the issue.

Consider, if you will, the one abiding thought that dominates my thinking: The world is phenomena. Once this is simply acknowledged, axiomatically so, then things fall into place. The brain is no longer the birth of phenomena, phenomena issue forth from phenomena, and what phenomena are is an open concept. Conscious open brain surgery shows a connection between brain and experiences, thoughts, emotions, memories, but does not show generative causality. Indeed, and this is an extraordinary point: If the brain were the generative source of experience, every occasion of witnessing a brain would be itself brain generated. This is the paradox of physicalism. What is being considered here, in your claim about gravity and its phenomenal universality (keeping in mind that gravity is not, of course, used in phenomenology's lexicon. But the attempt to bridge phenomenology with knowledge claims about the world of objects that are "out there" and "not me" is permitted {is it not?} to lend and borrow vocabularies with science. An interesting point to consider) is a "third perspective". Recall how Wittgenstein argued that we cannot discuss what logic is, for logic would be presupposed in the discussing. You would need some third perspective that would be removed from that which is being analyzed; but then, this itself would need the same, and so forth. This is the paradox of metaphysics, I guess you could call it, the endless positing of a knowledge perspective that itself, to be known, would require the same accounting as that which is being explained. An infinite regression.

But if you follow, in a qualified way, Husserl's basic claim that what we call appearances are really an ontology of intuition (though I don't recall he ever put it like this), whereby the givenness of the world IS the foundation we seek, the "third perspective" which is a stand alone, unassailable reality, then, while the "what is it?" remains indeterminate, for language just cannot "speak" this (see above), we can allow the scientific term "gravity" to be science's counterpart to the apparent need for an accounting of a transcendental ego in order to close the epistemic distance between objects and knowledge. — Constance

Rather than saying "the world is phenomena", I say "the world is noumena" and phenomena, via the agency of the brain, is a higher-order feedback loop i.e., a two-tiered construction.

The world as noumena entails the axiom plane, a parallel to the critical line of Riemann's zeta function.

Later for these things. Let me return to some basics of gravity_consciousness_language.

Note - cons = consciousness

The trick of cons might be that it's permanently inter-relational. I can't be fully reified.

Subjective mind with its sustainable personal POV is higher order feedback looping with vertical stacking. Let me elaborate.

Consider the world of the story in a printed novel. As we travel about with the book, does the world of the story travel about with us?

The world of the book examples insuperable context. Where is that world?

It’s not in the black ink marking the letters, nor in the words imaging the letters, nor in the white spaces of the pages contrasting the words-sentences-paragraphs-chapters of the novel, nor in the neural networks of the memory circuits and other cognitive circuits of the reader’s brain-mind, nor in the interplay of the reader’s life amidst the circumambient material universe, but rather in the vast micro-synchro-mesh of all of these things.

Where is the world of our conscious experience?

Just as a material object perceived through the lens of relativity presses down upon the stretchy fabric of spacetime, creating a gravity well of curved space, likewise a sentient being presses down upon the stretchy fabric of physically real inter-relatedness.

Inter-relatedness perceived through the lens of gravity-based cons becomes the curved space around the presence of a sentient being. In everyday language we call this personality and the influence of personality. Picture the super-fine linen of inter-relatedness of the everyday world of material things and human society, for example.

A person like you, Constance, or a person like me, or any person, exhibits being (to use some language of Heidegger) as a gravity well pressing down upon the micro-synchro-mesh of (physically real) inter-relatedness, thus making your presence felt as a warpage of the physical inter-relatedness. This is a kind of fluid dynamics, but the flowing is of physical-gravitational cons, instead of water.

The trick to understanding how sentience connects to its physical substrate, in this case, gravity, might be understanding that sentience is permanently interstitial. An interstice is a gap of empty space separating two material things. As an example, superfine linen is a mesh of cotton fibers separated by empty spaces. Well, the linen is no less empty space than it is cotton fibers. Where is the empty space of the linen? It’s defined by the cotton fibers as the interstices. Importantly, the interstices only exist inter-relationally. Remove the cotton fibers, arranged precisely, and the interstices cease to exist.

In parallel, remove the gravity-based micro-synchro-mesh of sentience grounded in the physical, and POV, the self of sentience, vanishes.

This is why the radiant presence of sentience is wholly missed by reductive materialism.

This is what David Chalmers, in different words, refers to in his exposition of the hard problem. The hard problem is all about the extreme softness, or subtlety of the physical presence of sentience.

Let’s take a look at the soft physicality of sentience.

The feedback looping of a memory circuit contains subjective-mind, POV-of-the-self content. Its presence, however, is not simply in the electro-magnetic current flow of the feedback loop, the gravitationally-modulated physical medium of cons. It’s a feedback loop precisely because the first pass of the cognitive circuit is the noumenal part, the thing-in-itself of physical cons. Noumenal cons is the collective cons of the sentient universe. Once noumenal cons feeds back upon itself as a memory loop, the phenomenal part of physical cons propagates. Memory resides in the echo or interstices separating noumenal cons from phenomenal cons. The feedback process is the second pass wherein a sampling rate via comparison captures some (not all) of the noumenal part of cons as memory.

Phenomenal cons is rooted in memory, or the sampling rate of the second pass. Intuition = low sampling rate (gut reaction). Full cognition = high sampling rate (reflection).

The trick of understanding cons is that it is an echo of what has already happened in the noumenal part. Our cons experience of our existence is a memory.

Where is the world of existence? We must ask ourselves “Where is memory?”

Memory resides in the interstices of the modulations of higher-order cognition i.e., first pass_second pass EM current. It’s the ghostly memory within the mesh of inter-relatedness. It’s a cloud-like distribution of the modulations of interwoven empty spaces.

It’s the ghost misting within the feedback looping of memory.

They're talking about experience. — frank

So am I.

Remember that pan-psychism is on the table as a possible explanation. — frank

So experience has to mean a ghostly extra layer, in the first place? Seems presumptuous.

I've never heard of the glowing picture theory. — frank

Really? Dennett's Cartesian picture show?

How would you paraphrase

the felt quality of redness,
— Nagel/Chalmers

?
— bongo fury

I wouldn't. — frank

I imagine they would be disappointed. Negotiating paraphrases is an obvious tool of constructive debate.

if you aren't willing to read an essay or book by Chalmers, — frank

Oh, you.

Chalmers is pretty rigorous. Check him out.

I consider introspection a valid form of evidence, at least potentially. — T Clark

There's a big difference between saying that introspection is potentially a valid form of evidence, and having actually accepted any incidences of introspection as valid evidence. The former is a statement meant to imply an open mind, the latter provides proof as to whether the person's mind really is open.