What is Consciousness?

[chaz wyman]

What would enforce the conditions of normativity?

I think you might have defined Theology, but certainly not Philosophy.

Did I mention God somewhere? He can get f.....d.

You certainly have defined theology though. Philosophy is more about asking questions, less about making rules.


This is what you ACTUALLY said

a normative approach to assessing and responding to life and death, and inner and outer-space.

The conditions of normativity would be enforced by necessity. In the normal run of affairs for humans that means necessity bred mainly through war, pestilence and other general unspeakable sufferings.

Can you indicate which philosophers have pursued this course of action?
Philosophy does not seek to establish rules of behaviour. What do you think 'normative' means?


An example of such a necessity would be a necessity to localize infrastructures such as food distribution, medical care, etcetera. This in turn may directly or indirectly promote a new normative approach - perhaps through the fusion of several others that had become redundant, or which were simply hidden in abeyance.

I'm not sure what you are doing with normative.

[Bernard]

OOPs

[Bernard]

OOPS

[Bernard]

What would enforce the conditions of normativity?

I think you might have defined Theology, but certainly not Philosophy.

Did I mention God somewhere? He can get f.....d.

You certainly have defined theology though. Philosophy is more about asking questions, less about making rules.

As we know it in the west, yes, but is that only because theological impacts rule? Can philosophy be a love of wise solutions more than it is a love of asking questions? Isn't that how we evaluate whether or not a person has acheived a well rounded personal philosophy? Can an entire culture do the same - well round a philosophy for itself? Has any? The levant mess that the West plugged itself into during a weak moment millenia ago has bound it myopically to the laws of theology in increasing complexity; to the point where no other possibility of a mode that can bind it is a culture can be even considered as existing.


This is what you ACTUALLY said

a normative approach to assessing and responding to life and death, and inner and outer-space.

[/color]

The conditions of normativity would be enforced by necessity. In the normal run of affairs for humans that means necessity bred mainly through war, pestilence and other general unspeakable sufferings.

Can you indicate which philosophers have pursued this course of action?
Philosophy does not seek to establish rules of behaviour. What do you think 'normative' means?


War and suffering come of themselves. If any philosophers have sort it purposefully in order to establish new rules of behaviour they would more rightly be called political advisors.

Rules of behaviour may very well lay beneath many a philosophy, but of such are usually abstract; its for the societies within which philosophies arise to adapt the abstractions into normatives. These adaptations invariably fail, or so it would seem. A subtle example of such a normative is "Whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger". This is the popular adaptation into a normative from the original Nietzsche Maxim : "Out of life's school of war: What does not destroy me, makes me stronger." The original read in context of the author's thinking has within it the essense of one of Nietzsche's rules of behaviour: love of ones fate, one's solitude. The essense in the normative version however is that of courage amid worldy affairs. Which, of course, is subsequently pilloried, eg: http://wow-really.blogspot.com/2009/08/ ... onger.html

An example of such a necessity would be a necessity to localize infrastructures such as food distribution, medical care, etcetera. This in turn may directly or indirectly promote a new normative approach - perhaps through the fusion of several others that had become redundant, or which were simply hidden in abeyance.

I'm not sure what you are doing with normative.
Oh... you know... usual bendy me A new approach to normatives may have been a better way of expressing

[Izzywizzy]

Grim wrote

I also read an interesting book about Nietzsche as philosopher of mind. You may be interested in: The Surface and the Abyss. I highly recommend it (no small matter for me) as one of the better books I have had a chance to do a close reading of lately.

I must look this book up and thank you, although Nietzsche is one of those terrible philosophers who thinks the unfit among us need to be exterminated. From what I have read of him.

PS Grim don`t let Chaz put you off,,he is often irrational

[quote Grim wrote :No, I don't think you are applying the criticism of 'historical statem ents' properly to what was written.

Chaz wrote: You mean by you or Popper?

Grim wrote :I require further explanation from you...

Chaz retorts :plonk!][/quote]



Chaz wrote

Whoah!!! I think Popper is turning in his grave!

Chaz now thinks he can speak for Karl Popper! wow

[chaz wyman]

Grim wrote

I also read an interesting book about Nietzsche as philosopher of mind. You may be interested in: The Surface and the Abyss. I highly recommend it (no small matter for me) as one of the better books I have had a chance to do a close reading of lately.

I must look this book up and thank you, although Nietzsche is one of those terrible philosophers who thinks the unfit among us need to be exterminated. From what I have read of him.

PS Grim don`t let Chaz put you off,,he is often irrational

I'm sure he is quite capable of identifying those he are irrational and those who are not.

And if I thought you understood half of what happens on this forum I might even be insulted: I am not.
Pearls before Swine!



[quote Grim wrote :No, I don't think you are applying the criticism of 'historical statem ents' properly to what was written.

Chaz wrote: You mean by you or Popper?

Grim wrote :I require further explanation from you...

Chaz retorts :plonk!]

Chaz wrote

Whoah!!! I think Popper is turning in his grave!

Chaz now thinks he can speak for Karl Popper! wow[/quote]

I, unlike you, have actually read his works

[Izzywizzy]

Chaz wrote

I, unlike you, have actually read his works

but were you conscious? and Chaz please don`t even deign to speak for me nor put your ignorant words in my mouth , you have no idea how much Popper I have actually read to date. And re read..

[chaz wyman]

Chaz wrote

I, unlike you, have actually read his works

but were you conscious? and Chaz please don`t even deign to speak for me nor put your ignorant words in my mouth , you have no idea how much Popper I have actually read to date. And re read..

You are full of shit. You have not read ANY.

[Grim]

I also own copies of Popper's major work's that I can reference (including 'The Open Society and It's Enemies 1&2')if Chaz would be willing/capable of providing improved explanation and some supporting material.

Or does he simply name drop and defend as if that is supposed to impress? Disappointing, if I was admin of a philosophy forum I would probably ban for less.

[chaz wyman]

I also own copies of Popper's major work's that I can reference (including 'The Open Society and It's Enemies 1&2')if Chaz would be willing/capable of providing improved explanation and some supporting material.

Or does he simply name drop and defend as if that is supposed to impress? Disappointing, if I was admin of a philosophy forum I would probably ban for less.

Then you would be alone in your little Forum, because you have damned me for a thing for which you cannot possibly know the truth.

If you know the contents of Popper's Open Society, you would know why I mentioned him in the first place - or do you just use it as a book end?

PS: and judging by the confused comments you made Posted: 03 Jun 2011, 22:34, upon which I asked you for clarification that I am still waiting for, I can only assume that you find Popper (one of the easier philosophers to understand) too difficult.

[Izzywizzy]

Chaz Wyman wrote @me
"You are full of shit. You have not read ANY."

I decide to report this post only to find I get told "its already been reported", yet somehow the monitors here do nothing when it comes to chaz outlandish comments. so do tell me whats the point of a report button on here????

Grim said

Or does he simply name drop and defend as if that is supposed to impress? Disappointing, if I was admin of a philosophy forum I would probably ban for less

but with no monitors actually doing their job case closed eh lol and yes Chaz hasn`t read Popper to my satisfaction yet claims to speak for Popper without quoting Popper`s actual words which was MY point to him originally.. but whoops it went over his head.

[chaz wyman]

Chaz Wyman wrote @me
"You are full of shit. You have not read ANY."

I decide to report this post only to find I get told "its already been reported", yet somehow the monitors here do nothing when it comes to chaz outlandish comments. so do tell me whats the point of a report button on here????

Grim said

Or does he simply name drop and defend as if that is supposed to impress? Disappointing, if I was admin of a philosophy forum I would probably ban for less

but with no monitors actually doing their job case closed eh lol and yes Chaz hasn`t read Popper to my satisfaction yet claims to speak for Popper without quoting Popper`s actual words which was MY point to him originally.. but whoops it went over his head.

You don't understand the monitoring regime here.

[Izzywizzy]

You don't understand the monitoring regime here.

Chaz you obviously do

[Ramu]

I would like to consolidate here, the findings within science and evidencing the findings in neuro science about Memory, Consciousness and the entire Body being a thinking over mind of sorts, as opposed to reductionist science which fails to describe adequately what Consciousness actually means and is?

Ray Tallis wrote in New Scientist

You won't find consciousness in the brain

MOST neuroscientists, philosophers of the mind and science journalists feel the time is near when we will be able to explain the mystery of human consciousness in terms of the activity of the brain. There is, however, a vocal minority of neurosceptics who contest this orthodoxy. Among them are those who focus on claims neuroscience makes about the preciseness of correlations between indirectly observed neural activity and different mental functions, states or experiences.

This was well captured in a 2009 article in Perspectives on Psychological Science by Harold Pashler from the University of California, San Diego, and colleagues, that argued: "...these correlations are higher than should be expected given the (evidently limited) reliability of both fMRI and personality measures. The high correlations are all the more puzzling because method sections rarely contain much detail about how the correlations were obtained."

Believers will counter that this is irrelevant: as our means of capturing and analysing neural activity become more powerful, so we will be able to make more precise correlations between the quantity, pattern and location of neural activity and aspects of consciousness.

This may well happen, but my argument is not about technical, probably temporary, limitations. It is about the deep philosophical confusion embedded in the assumption that if you can correlate neural activity with consciousness, then you have demonstrated they are one and the same thing, and that a physical science such as neurophysiology is able to show what consciousness truly is.

Many neurosceptics have argued that neural activity is nothing like experience, and that the least one might expect if A and B are the same is that they be indistinguishable from each other. Countering that objection by claiming that, say, activity in the occipital cortex and the sensation of light are two aspects of the same thing does not hold up because the existence of "aspects" depends on the prior existence of consciousness and cannot be used to explain the relationship between neural activity and consciousness.

This disposes of the famous claim by John Searle, Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley: that neural activity and conscious experience stand in the same relationship as molecules of H2O to water, with its properties of wetness, coldness, shininess and so on. The analogy fails as the level at which water can be seen as molecules, on the one hand, and as wet, shiny, cold stuff on the other, are intended to correspond to different "levels" at which we are conscious of it. But the existence of levels of experience or of description presupposes consciousness. Water does not intrinsically have these levels.

We cannot therefore conclude that when we see what seem to be neural correlates of consciousness that we are seeing consciousness itself. While neural activity of a certain kind is a necessary condition for every manifestation of consciousness, from the lightest sensation to the most exquisitely constructed sense of self, it is neither a sufficient condition of it, nor, still less, is it identical with it. If it were identical, then we would be left with the insuperable problem of explaining how intracranial nerve impulses, which are material events, could "reach out" to extracranial objects in order to be "of" or "about" them. Straightforward physical causation explains how light from an object brings about events in the occipital cortex. No such explanation is available as to how those neural events are "about" the physical object. Biophysical science explains how the light gets in but not how the gaze looks out.

Many features of ordinary consciousness also resist neurological explanation. Take the unity of consciousness. I can relate things I experience at a given time (the pressure of the seat on my bottom, the sound of traffic, my thoughts) to one another as elements of a single moment. Researchers have attempted to explain this unity, invoking quantum coherence (the cytoskeletal micro-tubules of Stuart Hameroff at the University of Arizona, and Roger Penrose at the University of Oxford), electromagnetic fields (Johnjoe McFadden, University of Surrey), or rhythmic discharges in the brain (the late Francis Crick).

These fail because they assume that an objective unity or uniformity of nerve impulses would be subjectively available, which, of course, it won't be. Even less would this explain the unification of entities that are, at the same time, experienced as distinct. My sensory field is a many-layered whole that also maintains its multiplicity. There is nothing in the convergence or coherence of neural pathways that gives us this "merging without mushing", this ability to see things as both whole and separate.

And there is an insuperable problem with a sense of past and future. Take memory. It is typically seen as being "stored" as the effects of experience which leave enduring changes in, for example, the properties of synapses and consequently in circuitry in the nervous system. But when I "remember", I explicitly reach out of the present to something that is explicitly past. A synapse, being a physical structure, does not have anything other than its present state. It does not, as you and I do, reach temporally upstream from the effects of experience to the experience that brought about the effects. In other words, the sense of the past cannot exist in a physical system. This is consistent with the fact that the physics of time does not allow for tenses: Einstein called the distinction between past, present and future a "stubbornly persistent illusion".

There are also problems with notions of the self, with the initiation of action, and with free will. Some neurophilosophers deal with these by denying their existence, but an account of consciousness that cannot find a basis for voluntary activity or the sense of self should conclude not that these things are unreal but that neuroscience provides at the very least an incomplete explanation of consciousness.

I believe there is a fundamental, but not obvious, reason why that explanation will always remain incomplete - or unrealisable. This concerns the disjunction between the objects of science and the contents of consciousness. Science begins when we escape our subjective, first-person experiences into objective measurement, and reach towards a vantage point the philosopher Thomas Nagel called "the view from nowhere". You think the table over there is large, I may think it is small. We measure it and find that it is 0.66 metres square. We now characterise the table in a way that is less beholden to personal experience.

Thus measurement takes us further from experience and the phenomena of subjective consciousness to a realm where things are described in abstract but quantitative terms. To do its work, physical science has to discard "secondary qualities", such as colour, warmth or cold, taste - in short, the basic contents of consciousness. For the physicist then, light is not in itself bright or colourful, it is a mixture of vibrations in an electromagnetic field of different frequencies. The material world, far from being the noisy, colourful, smelly place we live in, is colourless, silent, full of odourless molecules, atoms, particles, whose nature and behaviour is best described mathematically. In short, physical science is about the marginalisation, or even the disappearance, of phenomenal appearance/qualia, the redness of red wine or the smell of a smelly dog.

Consciousness, on the other hand, is all about phenomenal appearances/qualia. As science moves from appearances/qualia and toward quantities that do not themselves have the kinds of manifestation that make up our experiences, an account of consciousness in terms of nerve impulses must be a contradiction in terms. There is nothing in physical science that can explain why a physical object such as a brain should ascribe appearances/qualia to material objects that do not intrinsically have them.

Material objects require consciousness in order to "appear". Then their "appearings" will depend on the viewpoint of the conscious observer. This must not be taken to imply that there are no constraints on the appearance of objects once they are objects of consciousness.

Our failure to explain consciousness in terms of neural activity inside the brain inside the skull is not due to technical limitations which can be overcome. It is due to the self-contradictory nature of the task, of which the failure to explain "aboutness", the unity and multiplicity of our awareness, the explicit presence of the past, the initiation of actions, the construction of self are just symptoms. We cannot explain "appearings" using an objective approach that has set aside appearings as unreal and which seeks a reality in mass/energy that neither appears in itself nor has the means to make other items appear. The brain, seen as a physical object, no more has a world of things appearing to it than does any other physical object.

Profile
Ray Tallis trained as a doctor, ultimately becoming professor of geriatric medicine at the University of Manchester, UK, where he oversaw a major neuroscience project. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and a writer on areas ranging from consciousness to medical ethics

Cellular memory hints at the origins of intelligence
Slime mould displays remarkable rhythmic recall.

Phillip Ball said in Nature News

Learning and memory — abilities associated with a brain or, at the very least, neuronal activity — have been observed in protoplasmic slime, a unicellular organism with multiple nuclei.

When the amoeba Physarum polycephalum is subjected to a series of shocks at regular intervals, it learns the pattern and changes its behaviour in anticipation of the next one to come1, according to a team of researchers in Japan.
Remarkably, this memory stays in the slime mould for hours, even when the shocks themselves stop. A single renewed shock after a 'silent' period will leave the mould expecting another to follow in the rhythm it learned previously. Toshiyuki Nakagaki of Hokkaido University in Sapporo and his colleagues say that their findings “hint at the cellular origins of primitive intelligence”.

It is well-established that cells receive, interpret and adjust to environmental fluctuations, says microbiologist James Shapiro of the University of Chicago, Illinois. But if the results stand up, he says, “this paper would add a cellular memory to those capabilities”.

The organism chosen by the Japanese team could scarcely seem less promising as a quick learner. Physarum polycephalum is a slime mould belonging to the Amoebozoa phylum. It moves at a steady rate of about one centimetre per hour at room temperature, but this changes with the humidity of its environment. It slows down in drier air, and Nakagaki's team used this sensitivity to stimulate learning. The team found that when the mould experienced three episodes of dry air in regular succession an hour apart, it apparently came to expect more: it slowed down when a fourth pulse of dry air was due, even if none was actually applied. Sometimes this anticipatory slow-down would be repeated another hour later, and even a third.
The same behaviour was seen when the pulses were experienced at other regular time intervals — say, every half hour or every 1.5 hours.


If the dry episodes did not recur after the first three, the amoeba's sense of expectation gradually faded away. But then applying a single dry pulse about six hours later commonly led to another anticipatory slowing in step with the earlier rhythm.

The same team has previously shown that these amoebae can negotiate mazes and solve simple puzzles2,3. So the new finding adds to “the cool things Physarum can do”, says applied mathematician Steven Strogatz of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

Like all living organisms, slime moulds have built-in biochemical oscillators, like the human body clock. In other kinds of slime mould, these oscillators can create periodic ripple patterns in response to environmental stress, helping the organism coordinate its movements. Nakagaki's group thinks that the versatile rhythmic sense of Physarum stems from many different biochemical oscillators in the colony operating at a continuous range of frequencies.

The team's calculations show that such a group of oscillators can pick up and 'learn' any imposed rhythmic beat, although the knowledge decays quickly once stimulus ceases. The calculations also show that a memory of the beat can stay within the system, and be released again by a single, later pulse — just as the researchers observed.

http://www.bioedonline.org/news/news.cfm?art=3750






Body Memory, is the theory that the body, as well as the brain, is capable of storing memories. Body memory is sometimes cited to explain certain claims of having memories for events where the brain was not in a position to store memories.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_memory

Dr. Candace Pert, a professor in the department of physiology and biophysics at Georgetown University, believes "the mind is not just in the brain, but also exists throughout the body." Dr. Pert is an expert in peptide pharmacology. "The mind and body communicate with each other through chemicals known as peptides," she claims. "These peptides are found in the brain as well as in the stomach, muscles and all of our major organs. I believe that memory can be accessed anywhere in the peptide/receptor network. For instance, a memory associated with food may be linked to the pancreas or liver, and such associations can be transplanted from one person to another."*

More On Cellular Memory. New Heart, New Personality,
Too?

I am not here to promote nor deny the existence of cellular memory I just find the topic fascinating especially because so many of my readers do. Not long ago The Discovery Health Channel aired a program titled “Transplanting Memories.” http://dsc.discovery.com/ In the show experts explained why they believe in the concept. Georgetown University Professor, Dr. Candace Pert, said she believes the mind is not just in the brain, but also exists throughout the body. “The mind and body communicate with each other through chemicals known as peptides,” she said. “These peptides are found in the brain as well as in the stomach, muscles and all of our major organs. I believe that memory can be accessed anywhere in the peptide/receptor network. For instance, a memory associated with food may be linked to the pancreas or liver and such associations can be transplanted from one person to another.”

Another expert, German neurologist, Leopold Auerbach, discovered over a century ago that a complex network of nerve cells, like those of the human brain, exist in the intestines. And — Professor Wolfgang Prinz, of the Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research, Munich, discussed the “second brain” in Geo, a German science magazine. Prinz said the digestive track is made up of a knot of about 100 billion brain nerve cells, more than found in the spinal cord. The article suggested the cells may save information on physical reactions to mental processes and give out signals to influence later decisions. It may also be involved in emotional reactions to events.



Perhaps all of this explains the many stories on the internet of transplant patients taking on the personalities of their donors.



If you really want to explore this phenomenon I strongly encourage you to read Knowing By Heart: Cellular Memory in Heart Transplants by Kate Ruth Linton in the MONTGOMERY COLLEGE STUDENT JOURNAL OF SCIENCE & MATHEMATICS

Volume 2 September 2003,



Several transplant surgeons have contributed to a theory for cellular memory essentially based on psychological and metaphysical conditions, which Dr. Paul Pearsall has pieced together. Pearsall is a psychoneuroimmunologist, or a licensed psychologist who studies the relationship between the brain, immune system, and an individual’s life experiences. Pearsall calls this theory the “Lowered Recall Threshold” Basically, it suggests that the immunosuppressive drugs that transplant recipients must take are what bring about associations to donor experiences in recipients. Immunosuppressive drugs minimize the chances of rejection of the new, foreign heart by suppressing the recipient’s immune system. Scientists believe these drugs could also possibly act as psychotropic, meaning “acting on the mind.”


http://bobsnewheart.wordpress.com/2009/02/17/more- on-cellular-memory-new-heart-new-personality-too/

Sorry but science will never find consciousness in the brain. Consciousness is first order. Its the only thing there is. Neuroscience is occurring within consciousness. You ARE consciousness itself.

[Eodnhoj7]

Replicating symmetry as directive movement.

Take for example I observe "x", I see the limits which form it and in turn apply further limits to either change or maintain "x" itself. A piece of wood, may be cut using a line of "x" length (ratios of a further line) with this cut mirroring as a line observing the same nature of the line used observed in the piece of wood itself as a plank or rough piece with jagged edges (angles composed of lines).

In these respects what we observe through the process of observation is a constant (line) folding through itself an ad-infinitum number of waves as the line which composes the cut is the same line which composes a portion of the rough edge, which is the same as the linear distance between me and the wood, etc.

In these respects the line as a constant, replicates itself in various directions under a constant state of movement where one line is the same as another line, but relative to itself it multiplies and changes various directions. Even the linear boundary of the wood itself observes a movement of the wood not just through time and space but relative to other objects.