Michael Frayn asks "Are the qualities (physical, moral, aesthetic) that distinguish one thing from another objective realities, or are they subjective imposition on things? Can we have real acquaintance with things outside ourselves at all, or does the knowable world consist purely of our experiences? Is the world in one way or another out there, or is it in here? Succeeding schools of philosophers have reached for one horn of the dilemma or the other , but it's impossible to seize both horns equally securely at the same time."
There is powerful evidence that a real physical world exists and that we are a part of the world. But we have no direct sensory experience of the world in which we exist. We are directly acquainted only with our phenomenal/subjective world. See "Evolution's Gift: Subjectivity and the Phenomenal World" on my Research Gate page.
I think we can know reality, but we have to first learn how reality relates to us. It might mean that we need to explore our subjective first in order to learn about the universalities contained therein, and then map the external objects later to see how they interact within this universal system. I believe that was what Husserl had intended.
hi Venkateshappa,
What we consider outer world doesn't exist in itself, because perceiver and perceived couldn't be separated, if it were to separate, perceiver would cease to exist. So Reality is subjective in it's nature.
Raja do you mean this in the sense that all Atman is Brahman, or are you saying this from some particular scientific perspective?
Bill Johnson,
No, I said using the logic of 'nothing', Nothing is not something to be perceived, but nothing is something referred against something, So perceiver can't be left with no thought, Otherwise perceiver is not perceiver. So outer side world doesn't exist in itself, that means objective reality doesn't exist. So Reality is subjective in it's nature. But strong evidence comes from belief, if we change our belief, universe re-organize itself according to your belief thereby we came to know our reality is completely fluid.
It has been a subject of debate for ages in fact., when subjectivity and objectivity
are inseparable to each other.
There is powerful evidence that a real physical world exists and that we are a part of the world. But we have no direct sensory experience of the world in which we exist. We are directly acquainted only with our phenomenal/subjective world. See "Evolution's Gift: Subjectivity and the Phenomenal World" on my Research Gate page.
Consciousness is the measure of all things.
One question that is sometimes overlooked relates to the particular stance that we adopt with respect to consciousness. If we assume that the brain is some sort of 'epistemological engine' then the question of 'knowing' is indeed important. However, what if the brain is a different sort of thing altogether.
It is only a metaphor, but I think that what best captures what the brain 'is' is the idea of a self focusing and adaptive 'ontological lens'. From this perspective the place that consciousness occupies is not the 'observer', where it is assumed that there is some higher perspective from where we may judge the validity of our own perspective.
The brain does not discover what was already there it brings forth the phenomenal world as a result of the way the brain forces interaction of the implicit spatio/temporal structures (invariance) in stimulus from the body and the senses. There is no chair that is not an aspect of consciousness - there is nothing to compare it to! There is no 'chairness' out there in the universe that is not in someones head.
Consciousness is the only game in town!
hi Venkateshappa Shrikanth,
isnt it similar to saying that i close my eyes and the world has vanished and exists no more ?? , true for you but for collective humanity not true !!
It's not there to vanish when you close your eyes, you are simply changing one focus to another focus. Outerworld can't exist It's because perceiver can't be separated from perceived. If he were to separate, he would need to perceive nothing, But nothing is not something to be perceived,nothing is reffered against something. If perceiver were to perceive nothing, then he would cease to exist. So even though such world exist, you are not experiencing that world, you can't be because perceiver is not perceiver if he perceives nothing because perceiver is act of perceiving.
Solipsism in all of its variations is most useful for some religions and some tenured philosophers. Otherwise it is a nice mental exercise without any practical significance.
Christopher,
Paul Davies has commented in his God and the New Physics:
"It was proposed by Kant that the human mind inevitably imposes order on the world so as to make sense of it, but I don’t believe many scientists are impressed by this argument. Kant knew nothing of atomic or nuclear structure, for example, yet the study of the atom revealed the same sort of regularities that occur in the organization of the solar system. This is surely a surprising fact, and has nothing to do with the way we choose to perceive the world. Moreover, we shall see that subnuclear matter is subject to some simple and powerful symmetry principles. It is difficult to be convinced that, for example, the left and right hand symmetry in the operation of some of the fundamental forces is of no significance except as a tribute to the tidy nature of the human mind."
Kolakowski asserted: "“We see certain characteristics in the objects we perceive because these objects have indeed been shaped by our minds.”
and Polkinghorne (I am aware of his religious convictions) has responded to that claim by saying:
"It is hard to explain how implausible such a view is. It assumes a strange plasticity in experience which we can mould to our reasoning will. The feel of scientific inquiry into the world is entirely different. The phenomenon encountered often prove extremely surprising and contrary to our intuition. They resist our attempts to bend them to our prior expectation…Those who suppose that we impose a structured grid of interpretation upon the world in order to cope with the flux of its phenomena have proved singularly inept at demonstrating the nature of this supposedly man-generated order.... We have no reason to suppose that the rational order of the world is a human artefact."
They are discussing implications of Quantum Uncertainty and the measurement problem which the Copenhagen Solution created for us. When I read what you say, I get the impression, as I did in your question on here about your Fractal Catalytic Model and the Industrial Revolution, that you are referencing some other fields or understandings of which I am unaware. I am a science "junkie" but not a scientist. Would you be willing to unpack what you mean a little further? I think you are addressing a different issue than the authors that I have cited above, and I am intrigued. On your other question I was genuinely trying to understand where and when you thought that the issues we face in dealing with technology may have been already dealt with.
- Bill
Ok Bill - I will give it a go.
I am a scientist and also a poet and writer of short stories. I have that compulsive sort of a mind that worries away and cannot stop until the pea is removed from beneath the mattress - sometimes I don't even know that there is a pea there - but, I worry away at it nonetheless.
I have an irrational belief that there is some purpose/meaning to it all and I also have an irrational belief that whatever the truth is, it is to be found in the physics - it isn't hiding anywhere.
I have one last confession - I have for a long time believed that there is a theme to living processes which, once understood, would collapse the modernist and post schism that has separated life and consciousness from the universe around us.
Romantic though I confess to be, I am not one to be satisfied with believing something and be done with it. I had to know!!!!!!
Luckily, I am also a handy analytical thinker and it didn't take me long to realize that what I was thinking about was a unified theory of living systems.
It took me a lot longer to realize that in order to achieve this I would have to show that metabolism and function in living systems were actually the same thing.
Thus - Function = Metabolism
Then, for a very long time I was stuck until I suddenly realized that if I could show that what united living systems was their robustness and if I could also show that all living processes achieve this robustness as a consequence of the way they interact with the environment – I would have it.
And then I had to wait far, far too long before I discovered catalysis and fractals.
Bill, I develop a model of living systems – the Fractal Catalytic Model that argues that any living process maintains its organization as a consequence of the way in which transitions are mediated in the environment. In other words – the brain is not treated as some sort of symbolic processor – but as a catalyst. From this perspective, the learning process is not a problematic question of how the brain ascends the ladder of complexity, learning is the result of the brain finding a state that can remain the same – a mediating axis.
In addition to simplifying our understanding of function/metabolism and robustness, the theory also brings living systems back into the fold of physics by arguing that the evolution of life is the evolution of catalysis – a fundamental physical process.
Function = Metabolism = Catalysis
If life is indeed a fundamental physical process we can now feel at home in the universe and also, consciousness can feel at home – a fundamental phenomenon that is fundamental to the way the universe is.
I am afraid that I have not been at all clear as you requested, but, I hope that I have said enough for you to see that, if these ideas are of any value – it is not what you know that counts, it’s what you ARE.
Davia, C.J (June 2006), "Life, Catalysis and Excitable Media: A Dynamic Systems Approach to Metabolism and Cognition", in Tuszynski, J.A,The Emerging Physics of Consciousness (The Frontiers Collection), Springer, pp. 255–292, ISBN 978-3540238904
Bill,
When I said that 'consciousness is the measure of all things', I had a particular finding in mind.
I wrote a paper together with Prof. Ram Vimal in which we addressed the problem of identifying the bio-metric responsible for determining the apparent rate at which time is experienced. Our analysis strongly suggested that the neural correlate of consciousness is a macroscopic coherent wave function in the form of a soliton. It is the uncertainty of time (delta 't') associated with this wave function that determines the rate at which time is experienced.
Although there may be an objective relative measure of a second - what a second 'means' in terms of phenomenal duration is completely dependent upon the coherent wave function of the experiencer.
Christopher I must admit that this was a bit over my head when I tried to read it. One thing puzzles me about all this before I even get out of the starting gate so to speak, and it seems to prevent me from being able to apply myself to understanding: How can one isolate the neural correlate of consciousness? Pinpointing the locus of consciousness in terms of neural circuitry is hard for me to conceptualize. Your paper begins by mentioning Bergson's claim that "that time could only be understood from the contemplation of the consciousness moment." That sounds a bit like Kant's epistemology to me, in that reality is there conforming to the mind rather than the mind to reality. How does one get from that order of things (time as the contemplation of the consciousness moment) to the reverse? How does one wind up with consciousness as the experience of time? For Kant this experience is an aspect of the synthetic a priori. Time and space are "built-in" aspects of human cognition. They are present in all human minds necessarily. How does an awareness of time and its elapse equal consciousness? It certainly seems like an essential aspect of consciousness to me, but not its locus. What am I missing in what you are saying?
I have not given up on your paper by the way. My mind functions in this manner: Unless I can see the applicability of a theory or even a set of facts I cannot seem to retain them. I don't know where to put them in my thought process. In something as simple as geometry I could not retain the theorems until I knew what they were for. In trigonometry it took a grasp of what one could do with trigonometry before I had any mental "glue" with which to hang on to its concepts. Where do I "file" consciousness as the experience of the elapse of time in my mental categories in order to be able to move forward in reading and understanding Time Presentation? Does this perhaps necessitate the creation of a new mental category that does not yet exist in my mind? If so, how does one "add" such categories? I can grasp (at a certain level anyway) concepts like quantum uncertainty because I have categories for a macro as well as a quantum level of being. That different laws should apply in different dimensions or levels of existence makes sense to me. But at present, that consciousness is the experience of the elapse of time doesn't "fit" in any conceptual scheme that I possess. Your advice and direction is wanted and welcome here - I want to understand what you are saying.
Bill,
First point - How can we isolate the neural correlate of consciousness? - Well, right there you have hit the nail smack bang on the head.
I am not a psychologist, I am a philosopher/cognitive scientist. My fundamental interest is consciousness. The phrase 'Neural correlate of consciousness.' is widely used by philosophers and cognitive scientists when they are asking 'How does consciousness come about?' It is a very general phrase that does not imply anything specific other than that there is something about brains that gives rise to consciousness - a something that can be described or named.
A philosopher might argue this way:- Let us assume (and it seems reasonable to do so), that not all of the brain is implicated in the conscious state that exists at this moment. If that is the case, we can remove this part of the brain and we may assume that the conscious state would be unaffected. We repeat the process until there is nothing left that we can remove that is not necessary for that conscious state. What is left is the neural correlate for that particular conscious state.
Now, I don't actually agree with the above method for a number of reasons. Basically, if I assume that whatever is left will just look like nerve impulses and neural relationships it seems I still do not have what it is I am interested in - consciousness!
As you pointed out, it also seemed to me that there was a problem in the attempt to put a boundary around a group of fantastically complex causal relationships and to be able to say that this is part of consciousness and this is not. Who draws the boundary?????? There is something wrong here.
Returning to your question - 'How can we isolate the neural correlate of consciousness? - perhaps the obvious, but absurd, answer, might actually be right! - Perhaps it is as simple as being able to SEE it. There would be something about it that would make it stand out in an obvious way.
My work suggests that the bit of the brain that is implicated in 'this' conscious moment, is that part of the brains structure that has'condensed' into a coherent state - a Bose Einstein Condensate. Now, this is most certainly something that CAN be pointed at.
Now, I have not yet addressed the rest of your question - but I will - soon - just as soon I have a cuppa and a sit down.
Later
I mention Bergson because, like me, he liked to use thought experiments to illustrate what he felt was wrong with something. Bergson felt that something was being ignored by the thinkers around him - there was something fundamentally strange about the way we experience time. He thought that time was somehow central to our being and this strangeness could only really be appreciated by examining the brief duration of he conscious moment - the moment between the past that has gone and the future that is yet to be - the 'now' that encompasses me (or anybody)!
The area where Bergson and myself seem to overlap is a discomfort with the fact that consciousness time or phenomenal time seems to flow at a uniform rate. At first this seems like no problem at all, but, in order to attempt to identify what it is that might determine the particular rate at which time is experienced - a horrible circularity seems constantly to creep into the equation. Try as you might it is difficult not to explain temporal flow in terms of temporal duration - it always leads to a tautology.
The only escape from the dilemma is to find a temporal quantity that is not a duration. The time paper is a painstaking analysis of the temporal flow problem that provides a lot of convincing evidence that it is the uncertainty in time of the neural correlate of consciousness that determines the apparent rate at which time is experienced.
So, the uncertainty in time (Delta 't') is not time that we observe - this quantity is an aspect of what we are - our ontology.
Consequent upon this uncertainty value the world appears to unfold to us at a particular rate - this is observed time. Although it is said to be 'observed' this does not put it in the same category as other things that may be observed (like cats). It is the point where what we 'see' and what we 'are' become indistinguishable - or confused or confusing - I don't know which - I don't pretend to have a complete grasp.
But anyway, the point is that the Delta quantities of which the coherent wave function is comprised are descriptions of conscious states - that is what we ARE.
So, the a-priori concepts are a-priori concepts because they spring directly from our very ontology - our very nature.
I like this public discussion of ideas! I'll join in later. And thanks for the papers, Christopher. You haven't mentioned Penrose by the way. Subsequent discussion of his ideas have ruled out his specific suggestion but raised other possibilities. These things are also the subject of a series of occasional seminars hosted by Jim al-Khalili and Jonjoe MacFadden at Surrey - you ought to turn up!
Christopher,
You say that "it is difficult not to explain temporal flow in terms of temporal duration - it always leads to teleology." What is it that is worrisome about there being an aspect of teleology to this discussion? I ask because, at least in the life sciences, teleology is a concept that is regularly employed, and without which we cannot really describe many living systems effectively (see Mark Perlman's The Modern Philosophical Resurrection of Teleology and also Michael Ruse's Philosophy of Biology). Is the notion of teleology especially problematic for cognitive science?
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