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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