Ham, I find this post indescribably disappointing. It is as though you glanced over what I said, found it disturbing and desperately scoured the internet looking for something to retort.
Here is a list of grievous factual and conceptual errors in your post: 1.) Sensation and perception at least as I use them are among the earliest and most studied subjects of experimental psychological. Wilhelm Wundt is regarded as the first experimental psychologist and it was in his lab in the 1870s that many of the techniques of psychophysics were developed. The term sensation is not subject to the whims of your choices. 2.) Turning your computer off in analogous more to killing and resurrecting it rather than putting it to sleep. The lights on your DSL modem mean that the modem is on and have nothing to do with the computer. If you look closely you will notice a light on the modem that indicates that the PC is on. That light goes off when you turn the computer off. The lights that blink indicate that signals are coming into the modem from the DSL network. 3.) William James was a psychologist and philosopher NOT a psychiatrist. His essay "Does Consciousness Exist?" is among the first writings on the subject and is mentioned in nearly every serious work on consciousness since his time. 4.) The quote you give for Steven Weinberg did not come from Steven Weinberg. It is a post from the MSN discussion group "Star Children" by a guy names Derek Jones. He quotes Steven Weinberg then goes on with what you quoted. What Weinberg is actually quoted as saying is this: "Religion is just the primitive hangover from a time when everything that happened to man from a rainstorm to a forest fire, was blamed on a God or Deity. Science tells us the universe is not governed in any central way by external beings." Here is the page in question: http://groups.msn.com/StarChildren/yourwebpage2.msnw I put a lot of thought into that post. I am very interested in what might actually be wrong with it because I think it sketches out an answer to the "hard problem". And this is how you respond? I am not trying to be angry or sarcastic in the least here, Ham. I am flatly disappointed but I invite you to reread the post and respond thoughtfully this time and when you do I will respond in kind. Case [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. > > 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. I thought we had surmounted the word definition problem by 'standardizing' our terminology. We are both using words derived from the verb "sense", including sensibility, sensation, and sentience. I don't know about "cutting edge of reality", which is Pirsig's phrase, but what you assert (above) about "sensation" is what I've been saying about primary Sensibility, which is that it is the pre-intellectual awareness of Value. While I could have described the Self as "value-sensation", I chose "sensibility" because it suggests the "act" rather than the passive "state" of sensation implied by "sentience". However, the real difference between us is that our reality perspectives are on opposite sides of the subject/object dichotomy. That is, the essence of your reality is physical, whereas mine is subjective or sensible. So, it's not surprising that we see each other's epistemology as "backwards". [Case]: > 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. If we are not "aware of it" the inputs are not sensible to us. When I shut down my computer at night, it continues to receive inputs through a DSL modem that are not registered on the main drive. (I know this because indicator lights on the modem flash periodically during the night.) But the computer is off. By your analogy it is not in a "sensation-capable" state. It is "unconscious". [Case]: > As James said, the term consciousness, if it has any meaning at all, > means that sensations, nervous impulses are being processed in the brain. I do not accept this definition. Consciousness is "the quality or state of being aware" (Webster's Collegiate). Inputs (sensations?) are not made sensible merely by charging up neurons in the brain, You can remove the brain, wire it up to energy sources in the lab, and cause physiological changes comparable to "processing". But it will not produce consciousness. As a psychiatrist, James should have known better. [Case]: > So you think nerve bundles and electro-chemical activity are irrelevant > to "consciousness"? Try removing them or altering them and see what > happens to "consciousness." I didn't say they were irrelevant to consciousness. I said they were the "instruments" (circuitboard) of consciousness. Look at it this way: Created things are secondary to the creator. All finite entitities are constructs of the intellect whose primary input is Value. Therefore the physical body, including the brain and its associative nerve networks, is the PRODUCT of intellection, not its cause. Beingness is objectivized by the differentiation of value by the finite subject. In order for being to become aware it must have a locus of sensibility. The biological organism provides that locus, and the cerebro-neural system is the objective "correlate" of subjective awareness. [Ham, previously]: > 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]: > 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 though > 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. Not that I expect you to accept my concept of experiential differentiation, but you should at least understand it. Again, consider how Lanza and Steven Weinberg explain the emergence of conscious awareness: "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 object-such as the shape, color, and smell of a flower-are 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." -- [Robert Lanza: "A New Theory of the Universe"] "Consciousness, because of the poor understanding by the scientific and physics community, is generally thought of as a 'fragmented' phenomenon. It is the understanding of some scientists within the scientific circle that consciousness is a manifestation brought into fruition by the chemical reactions of the brain - humanity, to these scientists, are therefore 'solitary conscious bubbles', each surrounded by a nothingness. It is this poor understanding regarding the nature of consciousness by science, that creates problems when trying to explain the universe and it's beginnings. In some areas of science, when explaining the emergence of energy and the universe, they talk of 'fields' or 'waves' clashing together and creating a kind of 'pulse' - the word scientists use is 'Soliton.' This 'soliton' being the elementary energy particles - gluons, protons, electrons etc.. But with the idea of consciousness being a fragmented phenomenon, and all theories about the nature of the universe being based on this assumption, then the truth of the universe and it's nature will forever be incomplete." -- [Weinberg: Professor of physics and astronomy, at the university of Texas at Austin] Cheers, Ham 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/ 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/
