> [Case] > Sensation is a private experience it can not be described because it > can not be shared. It can be understood through examples and analogies > but we do not share each other's direct experiences.
[Ham] Yes, this describes the thoughts I had expressed about the proprietary nature of awareness, although you didn't use the word "awareness". You also didn't use the word "consciousness." Yet conscious awareness is what your description presupposes. One does not experience "sensations" without being consciously aware. [Case] I don't use the words awareness or consciousness above because that is explicitly NOT what I am talking about at this point. Sensation does not require awareness or consciousness. Sensation is the pre-intellectual cutting edge of reality. It only becomes "real" through perception and integration. We receive sensory input while asleep or sedated but we are not aware of it. People in comas have sensory input that registers in the brain but they are not aware or conscious of it. Sensation is prior too awareness, perception or consciousness. In fact when doctors tell us that sensory input has ceased to register in the brain we call a person brain dead and family members squabble over whether to let loved one go in peace or preserve them as animated corpses. Remember Terri Schiavo? As James said, the term consciousness, if it has any meaning at all, means that sensations, nervous impulses are being process in the brain. This point was also made by the empiricists when they asked if a brain without sensory input could have anything like experience or awareness. There was been a bit of research on this in which normal people are deprived of sensory input to the extent possible. What is found is that after a period of time, sensory deprived individuals begin to hallucinate. They manufacture present experience totally out of memories. [Ham] The remainder of your analysis deals with what I call the "circuitboard" of consciousness -- an organic system comprised of nerve bundles and synapses, gray matter, and electro-chemical activity. All the functions of this system could conceivably be replicated by a complex machine with sensory inputs as you describe them: [Case] So you think nerve bundles and elector-chemical activity are irrelevant to "consciousness"? Try removing them or altering them and see what happens to "consciousness." [Ham] The point you're missing is the sensible locus of these "qualia", without which there is no cognizant sensibility. You don't want to acknowledge it because it's subjective and can't be objectively defined. But at the same time you can't ignore it because it's the seat of all awareness. [Case] You are totally missing my point. I not only acknowledge that sensation is subjective I am saying it defines what the term subjective means. Sensation can not be defined in objective terms because it is the opposite of objective. [Case]: > This is the many becoming one. This is where differences are united. [Ham] I submit that the reverse is true. Proprietary awareness is where difference begins. Pure sensibility is value-awareness; everything that follows is relative and differentiated, including the sense receptors and "integrative" neuro-cerebral channeling. [Case] Pure sensation is excitation of nerve tissue by the external environment. We have nerves that respond differentially to the environment. The nerves in our eyes are excited by light; the nerves in our finger to pressure and so on. Some sensation arises internally as with hunger or that annoying sense that tells us we are low on oxygen and need to breathe. The process of valuating sensation begins in the brain when we have collected enough of these impressions to begin comparing them. But pure sensation can have no value until the sensations we pick up from the outside can be compared to how they impact sensations produced on the inside. Does the taste of this food relieve the nagging of hunger? [Ham] Becoming aware is a differentiating process resulting from the finite limitations of the brain. The "integrated" sense data are selectively and incrementally filtered in the process of cognition. The brain and nervous system reduce the whole of essential value to the fractional appearance of finitude. [Case] You have this completely backwards. Sensations arise from within and without through the nervous system. The kinesthetic senses of touch and balance are truly three dimensional as they arise from a body that is distributed in three dimensions. Our primary sense is vision. It arises totally from the two dimensional surfaces of our retinas. Consciousness and awareness arise from our ability to integrate these modalities. The filtering process you refer occurs as we discard sensations that are irrelevant so as to focus on those that are. Determining relevance requires learning and memory. It is discernment. As Bob Segar said it is a matter of knowing "what it leave in and what to leave out." As we struggle against the wind. But to illustrate further. Dolphins brains are larger than human brains both in absolute size and as a ratio of brain weight to body size. And yet while dolphins are among the smartest animals on the planet they do not seem to be as smart as us. It has been suggested that the fact that dolphins primary sense is hearing can account for this. It requires more sensory processing to convert sound waves into three dimensional awareness than it does to convert vision. Dolphins' auditory cortex is much larger than ours as a result. Light carries more relevant information than sound and so we can do more with less gray matter than dolphins can. [Case]: > The process of integrating the five senses with our memories involves > making new associations and strengthening old ones. Memories grow > stronger when stories are told and retold. The process of reflection > on memory and making of plans involves slurring time. It is higher > order of mental processing because it involves moving back and forth > in time. This can be defined in terms of electrochemical activity in the > nerves and chemical balances in the synapses. Searles says > consciousness is a property of this activity in the same way that > solidity is a property of atoms of iron. [Ham] Physical reality does not create the mind, it is objectivized by mental processing. Time and space describe the finite limitations of cognizant awareness. The "gaps" between all of these phenomena represent the nothingness that limits human perception. [Case] This is a point you should seriously rethink. The mind can not by definition create objectivity. Objectivity arises when we compare notes with someone else. All sensation, integration of sensation into perception, all awareness occurs inside the individual. It is subjective through and through. This is the sense in which I take solipsism very seriously. I am trapped in this world of my own making. I accept the existence of things that are not a part of me even through everything I "know" about them IS a part of me. As I have said I can not justify this rationally. The existence of anything outside of me can not be proved in a formally logical sense. Acceptance of an objective reality arises as an axiom from outside of the system just as Gödel said certain statements in any proof must do. [Ham] I leave you with a paragraph by Robert Lanza that should interest you. He's vice president of research and scientific development at Advanced Cell Technology and a professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. (I plan to run more of his essay on my Values Page in a couple of weeks.) [Case] I skimmed over Lanza's article and while he seems to be an interesting guy he is deeply confused on a number of points. Chiefly he confuses our internal reconstructions of reality with reality itself. Micah does the same sort of thing. It is like claiming that a photograph of a flower is a flower. It confuses the distinction between what IS and what we think about what is. These are not strictly speaking connected. The act of perception is the act of integrating sensation into memory. Individuals only have access to reality as it is represented internally. There is a hard distinction between the world inside and the world outside our skins. The world inside is composed of matter and the interactions of substance but consciousness arises from these interactions like steam from a kettle or radio waves from a transmitter or red light from a hot body. The experience of sensation and perception are unique to the organism that produces them. Lanza says this: "The mystery is plain. Neuroscientists have developed theories that might help to explain how separate pieces of information are integrated in the brain and thus succeed in elucidating how different attributes of a single perceived objectsuch as the shape, color, and smell of a flowerare merged into a coherent whole. These theories reflect some of the important work that is occurring in the fields of neuroscience and psychology, but they are theories of structure and function. They tell us nothing about how the performance of these functions is accompanied by a conscious experience; and yet the difficulty in understanding consciousness lies precisely here, in this gap in our understanding of how a subjective experience emerges from a physical process. Even Steven Weinberg concedes that although consciousness may have a neural correlate, its existence does not seem to be derivable from physical laws." No explanation of anything can provide what he is asking for. The plans for a building are not a building. What he and Chalmers and sometimes you and others seem to be looking for is nonsensical. All of our theories and descriptions and explanations of anything you can think of are aimed at producing a conscious experience, an understanding, an awareness of relationship. The subjective experience of awareness is what theories strive to produce. No further speculation, articulation or explanation is needed when what you seek through explanation is already there. All that speculation and theorizing can do is tell us what structures and functions need to be in place for experience to arise. They can tell us how consciousness can be manipulated, altered, enhanced or silenced. We have very good theories in this regard. But an explanation of "consciousness" would be both redundant and absurd. The only things we could ever explain would be the outward manifestation of consciousness. I might want some explanation of why you say the things you say or do the things you do. But I need no such account for my own consciousness. My own consciousness is its own explanation. It is what I seek from all explanations. Throughout his article Lanza fails to make this distinction. He falls into the trap of concluding that our internal representations are reality. Niels Bohr put it this way "It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature." This also applies to "consciousness" I can never tell you what my experience of green is. I can only tell you what it is like; what associations it has in me that might be similar to those in you. All you can ever know of my experience of green is whatever I can say about it. Lanza bases much of what he says on his understanding of physics both relativity and quantum mechanics. I am not qualified to speak to his errors in these matters but they have been spoken to. Astrophysicist David Lindley goes over these in a response to Lanza published in USA Today. I suggest a careful reading before you hitch your cart to this wagon. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2007-03-09-lanza-response_N.htm This article in Forbes raises pros and cons: http://www.forbes.com/home/opinions/2007/03/09/lanza-theories-physics-biotec h-oped-cx_mh_0309lanza.html This has been my initial response to a somewhat casual reading of Lanza' article. I would recommend it to others however and would be interested in their responses. The article is available in full at: http://www.theamericanscholar.org/sp07/newtheory-lanza.html moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
