RE: evidence blindness
-Original Message- From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything- [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of David Nyman Sent: Monday, August 28, 2006 7:33 AM To: Everything List Subject: Re: evidence blindness [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We all (excuse me to use 1st pers form) are well educated smart people and can say something upon everything. It is a rarity to read: I was wrong you are right - period. John You're right! Every time I post on these topics I *know* I'm wrong: I just don't know how specifically, but I keep doing it in the hope that someone will show me. Trouble is, there's something about this area that resists us - we seem doomed to come at it all wrong (particularly in those moments when we think we've got it right!) It's the struggle that fascinates us, I suppose. David Yeah! I actually believe this is more fundamental to the whole process of creativity I have a saying (the only one I have ever coined!): Insight is the serendipity born of the failure to make a mistake i.e. ready fire (shite!...missed)... then aim. Eventually you hit the bullseye by failing to miss everything that is not the bullseye voila!an answer... btw...I'm thinking of writing a short paper on the long overdue death of the solipsism argument and the 'no evidence for subjective experience' dogma I'd like to erect a grave-stone here on the everything list! R.I.P. :-) cheers, colin hales --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: evidence blindness
Colin Hales writes: the fact that intelligent behaviour is third person observable but consciousness is not. Stathis Papaioannou OK. Let me get this straight. Scientist A stares at something, say X, with consciousness. A sees X. Scientist A posits evidence of X from a third person viewpoint. Scientist A confers with Scientist B. Scientist B then goes and stares at X and agrees. Both of these people use consciousness to come to this conclusion. Explicit Conclusion : Yep, theres an X! Yet there's no evidence of consciousness? that which literally enabled the entire process? There is an assumption at work SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE and CONTENTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS Are NOT identities. When you 'stare' at anything at all you have evidence of consciousness. It's what gives you the ability to 'stare' in the first place. It's blaring at you from every facet of your being. Without consciousness you would never have had anything to bring to a discussion in the first place. Yes, when you stare at a brain you don't 'see' conciousness but holy smoke you have evidence blaring by the act of seeing the brain at all! (a) I know I'm conscious (b) I know that you are intelligent, unless my senses are tricking me (c) I assume that you are conscious but I don't know this, even if I can be sure my senses are not tricking me, in the same way as I know (a) and (b). To give another example, we know that many animals are intelligent from observing their behaviour, but there is often speculation as to whether they are conscious and what their conscious experience might be like, even though we might understand and be able to predict their behaviour at least as well as the behaviour of fellow humans. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: evidence blindness
for perceptual psychologists to speak and think, but, moving on Anyway, a thing is known in its effects, and when those effects are apprehended with sufficient clarity, sureness, interactibility, etc., we say that we perceive the thing itself. Blind people do develop a phenomenal field in other ways in order to compensate for the lack of visuality, and recently there was a report that a few even use rapid clicks for echolocation. Actually all perception involves inbuilt reference to the perceiving subject -- perspectival distortion refers back to the subject as located within the scene, for instance. We see a thing as it figures and looms in our seeing. - Commonsense perception places you in individual, haecceitous circumstances. - Sensory modalities and qualia place you in a species; the trumpet vividness of the color red is your evolutionary past's note to you to pay attention to signs of vertebrate wounds, while _cultivated_ senses/intuitions/instincts place you in communities often of people with similar tastes; qualities are things sharable, general, but not universal. - Intellectual capacities and relations place you in and athwart universes. - Imagination goes everywhere, like 'pure' math it's more about the goings and transformabilities (which are the universals that _aren't_ universes) than about anything else. Paying attention to such subtle relationships, we may in a sense see seeing, be conscious of consciousness in its varieties (and I've been mentioning mostly cognitive ones). If we compare seeing to hearing, then we become aware of how things very differently lend themselves to being seen and being heard. In such comparisons we may in a sense see seeing, etc. But seeing a horse is very different from seeing such seeing. Without considering these variations in consciousness itself, to say that everything is consciousness is to turn the conception into something like a constant conversion-factor that doesn't actually add that much conceptually. Now, when one opens up a cranium one does see more things just like one sees outside the cranium, though one doesn't clearly see inside the cranium those very things which the cranium's owner sees; to me that just says that consciousness has two, at least two, very different sides. And the fact that I have experienced many gradations between full consciousness and dreamless sleep, says to me that there's no need for me to think of everything as consciousness. I tend to think of vegetable, material, and physical things as things that are very deeply, very dreamlessly, asleep all the time. That which is most mysterious about consciousness, and which I don't know how to describe, and am just glad that others notice it too, a rich and deep feeling of realness or not just the feeling, but the realness and aliveness itself -- I shouldn't even try to describe it, I might describe it differently tomorrow -- seems pretty hard to get at unless we start with the simpler things about consciousness. Again, it appears that the thing which is most familiar of all is also the strangest of all. I tend to think that there's some sort of philosophical necessity in that, some sort of far-reaching inverseness relationship involved. But, past a certain point, going over all these generalities stops advancing the point and makes me sound fuddy-duddy. It sounds like you have some further, and more-specific, ideas, which are the real energy source behind your argument. Best, Ben Udell - Original Message - From: Colin Hales [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Saturday, August 26, 2006 11:29 PM Subject: RE: evidence blindness Dear Benjamin and folks, Your words capture a whole bunch of valuable stuff. In a project to define a comprehensive standard for 'scientific method' it would be very useful input. The particulars involved here, however, are about the basic reality that all scientific behaviour is grounded in consciousness (phenomenal fields). Indeed this is literally _mandated_ by scientists. If we cannot introduce the studied behaviour into phenomenal fields (even via instruments and tortuous inference trails re causality) we are told in no uncertain terms that we are not being scientific, you cannot be doing sciencego see the metaphysics dept over there. This oddity in science is quite amazing and so incredibly obvious that I sometimes wonder about the sanity of scientists. Is it a club or a professional discipline? We: a) demand evidence _within_ consciousness on pain of being declared unscientific and then b) declare that no scientific evidence exists for consciousness because consciousness can't render consciousness visible within consciousness? when consciousness is the entire and only originating source of evidence! Once again I say: SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE And PHENOMENAL _CONTENTS_ Are not identities. There is more evidence for consciousness than anything
Re: evidence blindness
Colin Hales wrote: Most of the time I'm observing something else. When I try to observe consciouness, I find I am instead thinking of this or that particular thing, and not consciousness itself. Consciousness can only be consciousness *of* something. Got that? Brent Meeker Absolutely. Intrinsic intentionality is what phenomenal fields do. Brilliantly. but. That's not what my post was about. I'm talking about the evidence provided by the very existence of phenomenal fields _at all_. Blindsighted people have cognition WITHOUT the phenomenal scene. The cognition and the phenomenal aspects are 2 separate sets of physics intermixed. You can have one without the other. Consider your current perception of the neutrinos and cosmic rays showering you. I not only have no perception of them: I can't guess where they are either. That's what a blindsighted scientist would have in relation to visible light = No phenomenal field. They can guess where things are and sometimes get it right because of pre-occipital hardwiring. The phenomenal scene itself, regardless of its contents (aboutness, intentionality whatever) is evidence of the universe's capacity for generation of phenomenal fields!. phenomenal fields that...say... have missiles in them?...that allow you to see email forums on your PC?.that create problematic evidentiary regimes tending to make those using phenomenal fields for evidence incapable of seeing it, like the hand in front of your face? :-) If we open up a cranium, if the universe was literally made of the appearances provided by phenomenal fields...we would see them! We do not. This is conclusive empirical proof the universe is not made of the contents of the appearance-generating system (and, for that matter, anything derived by using it). That doesn't follow. It only shows that appearances are not things: but they may be processes or information which can be instantiated in different forms (e.g. jpeg, photo, gif,...) And anything derived by using it is so vague I don't know what it means. Brent Meeker It is made of something that can generate appearances in the right circumstances (and not in the vision system of the blindsighted). Those circumstances exist in brain material (and not in your left kneecap!). Consciousness is not invisible. It is the single, only visible thing there is. To say consciousness is invisible whilst using it is to accept X as true from someone screaming X is true!, yet at the same time denying that anyone said anything! That this is donewhen the truth of the existence of an utterance is more certain than that which was uttered. How weird is that?! I'd like everyone on this list to consider the next time anyone says consciousness is invisible to realise that that is completely utterly wrong and that as a result of thinking like that, valuable evidence as to the nature of the universe is being discarded for no reason other than habit and culture and discipline blindness. Is seeing visible? What does it look like? Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: evidence blindness
(a) I know I'm conscious (b) I know that you are intelligent, unless my senses are tricking me (c) I assume that you are conscious but I don't know this, even if I can be sure my senses are not tricking me, in the same way as I know (a) and (b). To give another example, we know that many animals are intelligent from observing their behaviour, but there is often speculation as to whether they are conscious and what their conscious experience might be like, even though we might understand and be able to predict their behaviour at least as well as the behaviour of fellow humans. Stathis Papaioannou As Bertrand Russel said... something like... everyone quotes the solipsism argument, but nobody actually believes it. None of a), b), c) matters. It's a completely specious misdirection premised on the existence of an objective view which does not actually exist. Discipline blindness at work again. That objective view is a mutually calibrated fictional device that enables multiple consciousnesses to cooperate to construct depictions of regularity that _any_ consciousness of the same type will be able to use to predict the contents of consciousness (how something appears). There are 2 sorts of truth here: a) The belief in a fictional 'objective view'. This is a view that is never had by anyone. b) The reality of a subjective view. This is a view I know I have. The invisibility of it to any other person is simply a situational invisibility. I get it because I am me. This reality (b) is far more cogent than the objective view (a). At lease ONE person really gets (b). NOBODY gets to see (a) scientists simply all get to act as if they did. Works great! But that's it. The solipsism argument contributes a sytemic delusion about the nature of evidence and we don't need it. I assume that you are conscious but I don't know this This assumes that knowing another person is conscious purely involves the use of phenomenal contents! The existence of any phenomenal contents at all proves that something generates them. Process X makes them in your head. Then you look (phenomenal contents) at the same process X in another headthen is it more or less reasonable to (a) posit the lack of existence of phenomenal contents in the other head is logically impossible or at least extremely unlikely given that every other indication is in support of the hypothesis that the other person has phenomenal content. or (b) posit that I can never 'know' because I can't 'see' what the other guy sees and then use that as an excuse to deny all scientific considerations of underlying causal mechanism?...which in effect declares the study of consciousness as 'unscientific' because you can't 'see it', when in fact all scientific 'objects' are never actually 'seen' (within an objective view) at all. We scientists are not being consistent. The existence of phenomenality at all in your own head is the start, middle and end of the story of knowing _anything_. A belief in an non-existent objective view changes nothing of this circumstance and should never be used to assert a belief about the nature and scope of scientific evidence Believe in OBJECTIVITY... that is a real behaviour. Do you see how this mess works? We're using a non-existent view to define what a view is! Everyone blurts out the same set of tired old delusions. When you analyse them they're a specious cultural mirage. Colin Hales --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: evidence blindness
culture and discipline blindness. Is seeing visible? What does it look like? Brent Meeker Seeing. Keep trying...you'll 'see it' It'll sink in eventually! It took a long time for me and I'm nowhere near as bright as all you folks. Colin Hales --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: evidence blindness
Colin, list, huge snip But, past a certain point, going over all these generalities stops advancing the point and makes me sound fuddy-duddy. It sounds like you have some further, and more-specific, ideas, which are the real energy source behind your argument. Best, Ben Udell Wow! Can you type! All good stuff. OK... all my views of science and a practical causal mechanism of a physics of phenomenal consciousness have been posted here in recent times. I couldn't tell you where! It's all there. Some clarity: The two types of consciousness are very well described and quite empirically well contrasted (through studies of brain patholoy..phantom limb, blindsight, synesthesia...strokes, accidents...a whole pile of aphasias etc). Read chalmers, ned block, searle... A) Phenomenal fields/scenes (hard problem): vision aural haptic (hot, cold, pressure, nociception...various including that which is propriocepted olfaction gustation situational emotions (mad bad sad glad) primordial emotions (hunger, thirst, orgasm...) internal mental dialog and imagery of all types (aove) including imagined, dreamed == ADD THEM UP = MIND = CONSCIOUSNESS == B) Non-phenonmenal consciousness(easy problem): Everything else is that demonstrated by behaviour. It could have been learned or innate but they can all be characterised as 'belief'. Reflex behaviours are innate beliefs. These beliefs may launch and be mediated by phenomenal fields, which may then cause the acquisition/alteration of beliefs. The best way to think of these things is as neuron configuration that survives (exists through) a period of UN-consciousness, where there was no phenomenal field. Dreamless sleep or maybe a coma. A zombie scientist has all B and no A A blindsighted scientist has no visual field as per A but some visually related behaviour through B An alzheimers scientist has whole pile of A and a dimishing/debilitated B The two types of consciousness are inside each other. It's pretty simple. If you stare at a brain with consciousness you get answers to (B). You get no answers (causal explanation) to A except correlated hearsay... and what's worse... because of the dodgy belief systems of scientists you get prohibited from scientifically investigating underlying mechanisms of A ( it gets called metaphysics), even though A delivers all evidence! Kuhn said that scientific knowledge is on the cusp of change when inconsistency emerges. If ever there was a case for inconsistency we have onethe tricky thing is that it's inconsistency _within_ science...not inconsistency in a set of laws produced _by_ science... If there was some sort of alarm button to press on this I'd be pressing it right now. :-) cheers, colin hales --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: evidence blindness
I have the feeling that we are discussing words. Everybody tries how to 'make sense' of them, in a personal taste. Colin expressed it in his usual sophisticated ways, Ben more comprehensively, in many more words. The fact is: we observe the observer (ourselves) and want to describe it to others. The American 'slang' comes to mind: Consciousness Smonciousness - do we get anywhere with it? whether a device 'looks at' or we see if somebody understands what he sees? During the early 90s I gave up thinking ABOUT consciousness, it seemed a futile task with everybody speaking about something else. Now I see a reasonable topic behind it: ourselves - the object with which I struggle lately to identify (for myself about myself, which is the crux of the problem). I see no point to explain it to others: they will not get the 'real' image (only the interpreted (their) 1st person view of me). We all (excuse me to use 1st pers form) are well educated smart people and can say something upon everything. It is a rarity to read: I was wrong you are right - period. (I cannot keep my mouse shut either). Happy debating! John M - Original Message - From: Benjamin Udell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Saturday, August 26, 2006 10:29 PM Subject: Re: evidence blindness Colin, Stathis, Brent, 1. I think we need to distinguish a cybernetic, self-adjusting system like a sidewinder missile, from an inference-processing, self-_redesigning_ system like an intelligent being (well, not redesigning itself biologically, at least as of now). Somehow we're code-unbound to some sufficient extent that, as a result, we can test our representations, interpretations, our systems, habits, and codes of representation and interpretation, rather than leaving that task entirely to biological evolution which tends to punish bad interpretations by removal of the interpreter from the gene pool. There's something more than represented objects (sources), the representations (encodings), and the interpretations (decodings). This something more is the recipient, to whom falls any task of finding redundancies and inconsistencies between the message (or message set) and the rest of the world, such that the recipient -- I'm unsure how to put this -- is the one, or stands as the one, who deals with the existential consequences and for whom tests by subjection to existential consequences are meaningful; the recipient is in a sense a figuration of existential consequences as bearing upon the system's design. It's from a design-testing viewpoint that one re-designs the communication system itself; the recipient role in that sense is the role which includes the role of the evolutionator (as CA's governor might call it). In other words, the recipient is, in logical terms, the recognizer, the (dis-)verifier, the (dis-)corroborator, etc., and verification (using verification as the forest term for the various trees) is that something more than object, representation, interpretation. Okay, so far I'm just trying to distinguish an intelligence from a possibly quite vegetable-level information processs with a pre-programmed menu of feedback-based responses and behavior adjustments. 2. Verificatory bases are nearest us, while the entities laws by appeal to which we explain things, tend to be farther farther from us. I mean, that Colin has a point. There's an explanatory order (or sequence) of being and a verificatory order (sequence) of knowledge. Among the empirical, special sciences (physical, material, biological, human/social), physics comes first in the order of being, the order in which we explain things by appeal to entities, laws, etc., out there. But the order whereby we know things is the opposite; there human/social studies come first, and physics comes last. That is not the usual way in which we order those sciences, but it is the usual way in which we order a lot of maths when we put logic (deductive theory of logic) and structures of order (and conditions for applicability of mathematical induction) before other fields -- that's the ordering according to the bases on which we know things. The point is, that the ultimate explanatory object tends to be what's furthest from us; the ultimate verificatory basis tends to be what's nearest to us (at least within a given family of research fields -- logic and order structures are studies of reason and reason's crackups; extremization problems in analysis seem to be at an opposite pole). Well, in the end, nearest to us means _us_, in our personal experiences. Now, I'm not talking in general about deductively certain knowledge or verification, but just about those bases on which we gain sufficient assurance to act (not to mention believe reports coming from one area in research while not putting too much stock in reports coming from another). We are our own ultimate points of reference. Quine talks somewhere about dispensing with proper names and using a coordinate system
Re: evidence blindness
Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote: a) The belief in a fictional 'objective view'. This is a view that is never had by anyone. I don't think the view metaphior is very helpful. There are more or less objective beliefs. What is subjective about 2+2=4 ? --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: evidence blindness
- Original Message - From: 1Z [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Sunday, August 27, 2006 12:14 PM Subject: Re: evidence blindness Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote: a) The belief in a fictional 'objective view'. This is a view that is never had by anyone. Peter replied: I don't think the view metaphior is very helpful. There are more or less objective beliefs. What is subjective about 2+2=4 ? JM: everything. First you had to learn and subjectively accept the meaning of the sign '+' and then the sign '=' without which subjective input you would consider 2 plus 2 as 22 - unless you are also missing the personally and subjectively absorbed meaning of a twoness , in which case you can frame the expression as an abstract picture. We are born naked and with a blank (almost) mind, not with a PhD in math. John M (I agree that the vie metaphor is not very informative.) --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: evidence blindness
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - Original Message - From: 1Z [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Sunday, August 27, 2006 12:14 PM Subject: Re: evidence blindness Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote: a) The belief in a fictional 'objective view'. This is a view that is never had by anyone. Peter replied: I don't think the view metaphior is very helpful. There are more or less objective beliefs. What is subjective about 2+2=4 ? JM: everything. First you had to learn and subjectively accept the meaning of the sign '+' and then the sign '=' without which subjective input you would consider 2 plus 2 as 22 - unless you are also missing the personally and subjectively absorbed meaning of a twoness , in which case you can frame the expression as an abstract picture. Learning hwat 2+2=4 means , means learnig what everyone *else* means by it. Subjectivity doens't stop me thinking 2+2=22. It might even make me. Subjective does *not* mean performed by a subject --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: evidence blindness
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We all (excuse me to use 1st pers form) are well educated smart people and can say something upon everything. It is a rarity to read: I was wrong you are right - period. John You're right! Every time I post on these topics I *know* I'm wrong: I just don't know how specifically, but I keep doing it in the hope that someone will show me. Trouble is, there's something about this area that resists us - we seem doomed to come at it all wrong (particularly in those moments when we think we've got it right!) It's the struggle that fascinates us, I suppose. David I have the feeling that we are discussing words. Everybody tries how to 'make sense' of them, in a personal taste. Colin expressed it in his usual sophisticated ways, Ben more comprehensively, in many more words. The fact is: we observe the observer (ourselves) and want to describe it to others. The American 'slang' comes to mind: Consciousness Smonciousness - do we get anywhere with it? whether a device 'looks at' or we see if somebody understands what he sees? During the early 90s I gave up thinking ABOUT consciousness, it seemed a futile task with everybody speaking about something else. Now I see a reasonable topic behind it: ourselves - the object with which I struggle lately to identify (for myself about myself, which is the crux of the problem). I see no point to explain it to others: they will not get the 'real' image (only the interpreted (their) 1st person view of me). We all (excuse me to use 1st pers form) are well educated smart people and can say something upon everything. It is a rarity to read: I was wrong you are right - period. (I cannot keep my mouse shut either). Happy debating! John M - Original Message - From: Benjamin Udell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Saturday, August 26, 2006 10:29 PM Subject: Re: evidence blindness Colin, Stathis, Brent, 1. I think we need to distinguish a cybernetic, self-adjusting system like a sidewinder missile, from an inference-processing, self-_redesigning_ system like an intelligent being (well, not redesigning itself biologically, at least as of now). Somehow we're code-unbound to some sufficient extent that, as a result, we can test our representations, interpretations, our systems, habits, and codes of representation and interpretation, rather than leaving that task entirely to biological evolution which tends to punish bad interpretations by removal of the interpreter from the gene pool. There's something more than represented objects (sources), the representations (encodings), and the interpretations (decodings). This something more is the recipient, to whom falls any task of finding redundancies and inconsistencies between the message (or message set) and the rest of the world, such that the recipient -- I'm unsure how to put this -- is the one, or stands as the one, who deals with the existential consequences and for whom tests by subjection to existential consequences are meaningful; the recipient is in a sense a figuration of existential consequences as bearing upon the system's design. It's from a design-testing viewpoint that one re-designs the communication system itself; the recipient role in that sense is the role which includes the role of the evolutionator (as CA's governor might call it). In other words, the recipient is, in logical terms, the recognizer, the (dis-)verifier, the (dis-)corroborator, etc., and verification (using verification as the forest term for the various trees) is that something more than object, representation, interpretation. Okay, so far I'm just trying to distinguish an intelligence from a possibly quite vegetable-level information processs with a pre-programmed menu of feedback-based responses and behavior adjustments. 2. Verificatory bases are nearest us, while the entities laws by appeal to which we explain things, tend to be farther farther from us. I mean, that Colin has a point. There's an explanatory order (or sequence) of being and a verificatory order (sequence) of knowledge. Among the empirical, special sciences (physical, material, biological, human/social), physics comes first in the order of being, the order in which we explain things by appeal to entities, laws, etc., out there. But the order whereby we know things is the opposite; there human/social studies come first, and physics comes last. That is not the usual way in which we order those sciences, but it is the usual way in which we order a lot of maths when we put logic (deductive theory of logic) and structures of order (and conditions for applicability of mathematical induction) before other fields -- that's the ordering according to the bases on which we know things. The point is, that the ultimate explanatory object tends to be what's furthest from us; the ultimate verificatory basis tends to be what's nearest to us (at least within
Re: evidence blindness
the fact that intelligent behaviour is third person observable but consciousness is not. Stathis Papaioannou OK. Let me get this straight. Scientist A stares at something, say X, with consciousness. A sees X. Scientist A posits evidence of X from a third person viewpoint. Scientist A confers with Scientist B. Scientist B then goes and stares at X and agrees. Both of these people use consciousness to come to this conclusion. Explicit Conclusion : Yep, theres an X! Yet there's no evidence of consciousness? that which literally enabled the entire process? There is an assumption at work SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE and CONTENTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS Are NOT identities. When you 'stare' at anything at all you have evidence of consciousness. It's what gives you the ability to 'stare' in the first place. It's blaring at you from every facet of your being. Without consciousness you would never have had anything to bring to a discussion in the first place. Yes, when you stare at a brain you don't 'see' conciousness but holy smoke you have evidence blaring by the act of seeing the brain at all! Cheers Colin Hales --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: evidence blindness
Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote: the fact that intelligent behaviour is third person observable but consciousness is not. Stathis Papaioannou OK. Let me get this straight. Scientist A stares at something, say X, with consciousness. A sees X. Scientist A posits evidence of X from a third person viewpoint. Scientist A confers with Scientist B. Scientist B then goes and stares at X and agrees. Both of these people use consciousness to come to this conclusion. Explicit Conclusion : Yep, theres an X! Yet there's no evidence of consciousness? that which literally enabled the entire process? There is an assumption at work SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE and CONTENTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS Are NOT identities. When you 'stare' at anything at all you have evidence of consciousness. A SIDWINDER missile 'stares' at the exhaust of a jet aircraft. Does that make it conscious? Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: evidence blindness
-Original Message- From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything- [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Brent Meeker Sent: Sunday, August 27, 2006 9:49 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: evidence blindness Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote: the fact that intelligent behaviour is third person observable but consciousness is not. Stathis Papaioannou OK. Let me get this straight. Scientist A stares at something, say X, with consciousness. A sees X. Scientist A posits evidence of X from a third person viewpoint. Scientist A confers with Scientist B. Scientist B then goes and stares at X and agrees. Both of these people use consciousness to come to this conclusion. Explicit Conclusion : Yep, theres an X! Yet there's no evidence of consciousness? that which literally enabled the entire process? There is an assumption at work SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE and CONTENTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS Are NOT identities. When you 'stare' at anything at all you have evidence of consciousness. A SIDWINDER missile 'stares' at the exhaust of a jet aircraft. Does that make it conscious? This is a mind-blowingly irrelevant diversion into the usual weeds that fails to comprehend the most basic proposition about ourselves by an assumption which is plain wrong. You presume that the missile stares and then attribute it to humans as equivalent. Forget the bloody missile. I am talking about YOU. The evidence you have about YOU within YOU. Take a look at your hand. That presentation of your hand is one piece of content in a visual field (scene). Mind is literally and only a collection of (rather spectacular) phenomenal scenes. Something (within your brain material) generates the visual field in which there is a hand. You could cognise the existence of a hand _without_ that scene (this is what blindsight patients can do - very very badly, but they can do it). But you don't. No, nature goes to a hell of a lot of trouble to create that fantastic image. You have the scene. Take note of it. It gives you ALL your scientific evidence. This is an intrinsically private scene and you can't be objective without it! You would have nothing to be objective about. PROOF Close your eyes and tell me you can be more scientific about your hand than you could with them open. This is so obvious. To say consciousness is not observable is completely absolutely wrong. We observe consciousness permanently. It's all we ever do! It's just not within the phenomenal fields, it IS the phenomenal fields. Got it? Colin Hales --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: evidence blindness
is testing them and even testing one's ways of generating them, testing oneself, aside from one's having some overriding purpose of verification -- one may have some very different purpose in the given situation. And it's really quite as if we have experience unconscious as well as conscious. Maybe there's a question of the definition of the word experience as including the idea of consciousness, but the point is that, when we look at the things that make for a genuinely intelligent process, we find in our own experience that consciousness is associated with its working very intelligently in some respects, but not associated in every case with its working. Indeed there are persistent cases of intelligent, inferential processing going on unconsciously. Even leaving aside the phenomenon of somewhat autistic musical prodigies, and leaving aside the complex and not entirely conscious dynamics of interpersonal relationships, I think most of us have heard of Poincare's discussion of unconsciously working on a problem till, in a moment of unexpected illumination, the solution came to him, as he stepped onto a bus. Well, I don't really know what to make of this distinguishability between consciousness and verificatory experience which may be conscious or unconscious, as regards what Colin is saying, but it does seem a real question. Best, Ben Udell (P.S. Also, there is perhaps more than one flavor of less-than-consciousness -- there's a difference between slowly, unconsciously working on a problem, and lightning-quick though sometimes iffy insights which one has, one knows not how. -- and while one can suppose that the latter are simply the outcomes of the former, I think that the latter can interact with each other in a darting and hard-to-follow way that's like the extreme opposite of the former. End of digressive postscript.) - Original Message - From: Colin Hales [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Saturday, August 26, 2006 9:09 PM Subject: RE: evidence blindness -Original Message- From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything- [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Brent Meeker Sent: Sunday, August 27, 2006 9:49 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: evidence blindness Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote: the fact that intelligent behaviour is third person observable but consciousness is not. Stathis Papaioannou OK. Let me get this straight. Scientist A stares at something, say X, with consciousness. A sees X. Scientist A posits evidence of X from a third person viewpoint. Scientist A confers with Scientist B. Scientist B then goes and stares at X and agrees. Both of these people use consciousness to come to this conclusion. Explicit Conclusion : Yep, theres an X! Yet there's no evidence of consciousness? that which literally enabled the entire process? There is an assumption at work SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE and CONTENTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS Are NOT identities. When you 'stare' at anything at all you have evidence of consciousness. A SIDWINDER missile 'stares' at the exhaust of a jet aircraft. Does that make it conscious? This is a mind-blowingly irrelevant diversion into the usual weeds that fails to comprehend the most basic proposition about ourselves by an assumption which is plain wrong. You presume that the missile stares and then attribute it to humans as equivalent. Forget the bloody missile. I am talking about YOU. The evidence you have about YOU within YOU. Take a look at your hand. That presentation of your hand is one piece of content in a visual field (scene). Mind is literally and only a collection of (rather spectacular) phenomenal scenes. Something (within your brain material) generates the visual field in which there is a hand. You could cognise the existence of a hand _without_ that scene (this is what blindsight patients can do - very very badly, but they can do it). But you don't. No, nature goes to a hell of a lot of trouble to create that fantastic image. You have the scene. Take note of it. It gives you ALL your scientific evidence. This is an intrinsically private scene and you can't be objective without it! You would have nothing to be objective about. PROOF Close your eyes and tell me you can be more scientific about your hand than you could with them open. This is so obvious. To say consciousness is not observable is completely absolutely wrong. We observe consciousness permanently. It's all we ever do! It's just not within the phenomenal fields, it IS the phenomenal fields. Got it? Colin Hales --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http
RE: evidence blindness
Dear Benjamin and folks, Your words capture a whole bunch of valuable stuff. In a project to define a comprehensive standard for 'scientific method' it would be very useful input. The particulars involved here, however, are about the basic reality that all scientific behaviour is grounded in consciousness (phenomenal fields). Indeed this is literally _mandated_ by scientists. If we cannot introduce the studied behaviour into phenomenal fields (even via instruments and tortuous inference trails re causality) we are told in no uncertain terms that we are not being scientific, you cannot be doing sciencego see the metaphysics dept over there. This oddity in science is quite amazing and so incredibly obvious that I sometimes wonder about the sanity of scientists. Is it a club or a professional discipline? We: a) demand evidence _within_ consciousness on pain of being declared unscientific and then b) declare that no scientific evidence exists for consciousness because consciousness can't render consciousness visible within consciousness? when consciousness is the entire and only originating source of evidence! Once again I say: SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE And PHENOMENAL _CONTENTS_ Are not identities. There is more evidence for consciousness than anything else. It's just not phenomenal _contents_. It's the phenomenal fields themselves. This is the only message I have here. I have a whole pile of suggestions as to what to do about it...but it's too huge to insert and won't make any difference if this basic reality is not recognised. This increase in scope of scientific evidence gives license for a change in scientific behaviour. Scientific behaviour includes more than is currently recognised. The net result is that we have permission as scientists to carefully go places previously thought 'unscientific'. Having done so those places should be able to predict mechanisms for consciousness consistent with the evidence consciousness provides... that's all. And remember this fact simply doesn't matter in normal day to day science until you try and do a scientific study of the scientific evidence generator (consciousness). Then all hell breaks loose and your busted beliefs about the nature of scientific evidence are exposed for what they are. We need to get used to the idea. This is a brute fact and there's nothing else to say on the matter... I just wish that I'd stop constantly coming across signs of the aberrant beliefs in scientific discoursenot just here on this list but all around meso pervasive and s wrong. Colin Hales --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: evidence blindness
Colin Hales wrote: -Original Message- From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything- [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Brent Meeker Sent: Sunday, August 27, 2006 9:49 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: evidence blindness Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote: the fact that intelligent behaviour is third person observable but consciousness is not. Stathis Papaioannou OK. Let me get this straight. Scientist A stares at something, say X, with consciousness. A sees X. Scientist A posits evidence of X from a third person viewpoint. Scientist A confers with Scientist B. Scientist B then goes and stares at X and agrees. Both of these people use consciousness to come to this conclusion. Explicit Conclusion : Yep, theres an X! Yet there's no evidence of consciousness? that which literally enabled the entire process? There is an assumption at work SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE and CONTENTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS Are NOT identities. When you 'stare' at anything at all you have evidence of consciousness. A SIDWINDER missile 'stares' at the exhaust of a jet aircraft. Does that make it conscious? This is a mind-blowingly irrelevant diversion into the usual weeds that fails to comprehend the most basic proposition about ourselves by an assumption which is plain wrong. You presume that the missile stares and then attribute it to humans as equivalent. Forget the bloody missile. I am talking about YOU. The evidence you have about YOU within YOU. Take a look at your hand. That presentation of your hand is one piece of content in a visual field (scene). Mind is literally and only a collection of (rather spectacular) phenomenal scenes. Something (within your brain material) generates the visual field in which there is a hand. You could cognise the existence of a hand _without_ that scene (this is what blindsight patients can do - very very badly, but they can do it). But you don't. No, nature goes to a hell of a lot of trouble to create that fantastic image. You have the scene. Take note of it. It gives you ALL your scientific evidence. This is an intrinsically private scene and you can't be objective without it! You would have nothing to be objective about. PROOF Close your eyes and tell me you can be more scientific about your hand than you could with them open. This is so obvious. To say consciousness is not observable is completely absolutely wrong. We observe consciousness permanently. It's all we ever do! It's just not within the phenomenal fields, it IS the phenomenal fields. Got it? Colin Hales Most of the time I'm observing something else. When I try to observe consciouness, I find I am instead thinking of this or that particular thing, and not consciousness itself. Consciousness can only be consciousness *of* something. Got that? Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: evidence blindness
Most of the time I'm observing something else. When I try to observe consciouness, I find I am instead thinking of this or that particular thing, and not consciousness itself. Consciousness can only be consciousness *of* something. Got that? Brent Meeker Absolutely. Intrinsic intentionality is what phenomenal fields do. Brilliantly. but. That's not what my post was about. I'm talking about the evidence provided by the very existence of phenomenal fields _at all_. Blindsighted people have cognition WITHOUT the phenomenal scene. The cognition and the phenomenal aspects are 2 separate sets of physics intermixed. You can have one without the other. Consider your current perception of the neutrinos and cosmic rays showering you. That's what a blindsighted scientist would have in relation to visible light = No phenomenal field. They can guess where things are and sometimes get it right because of pre-occipital hardwiring. The phenomenal scene itself, regardless of its contents (aboutness, intentionality whatever) is evidence of the universe's capacity for generation of phenomenal fields!. phenomenal fields that...say... have missiles in them?...that allow you to see email forums on your PC?.that create problematic evidentiary regimes tending to make those using phenomenal fields for evidence incapable of seeing it, like the hand in front of your face? :-) If we open up a cranium, if the universe was literally made of the appearances provided by phenomenal fields...we would see them! We do not. This is conclusive empirical proof the universe is not made of the contents of the appearance-generating system (and, for that matter, anything derived by using it). It is made of something that can generate appearances in the right circumstances (and not in the vision system of the blindsighted). Those circumstances exist in brain material (and not in your left kneecap!). Consciousness is not invisible. It is the single, only visible thing there is. To say consciousness is invisible whilst using it is to accept X as true from someone screaming X is true!, yet at the same time denying that anyone said anything! That this is donewhen the truth of the existence of an utterance is more certain than that which was uttered. How weird is that?! I'd like everyone on this list to consider the next time anyone says consciousness is invisible to realise that that is completely utterly wrong and that as a result of thinking like that, valuable evidence as to the nature of the universe is being discarded for no reason other than habit and culture and discipline blindness. Colin Hales --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
