hypnagogue said:
//jamaica.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/papers/nature.html . . . . A much more detailed account expanding on this basic argument can be found at chapter 2 of Gregg Rosenberg's online book . . .
I hope you don’t mind that I mixed up your comments a bit to help my own response make more sense.
I originally challenged you to see if I could introduce another way to look at consciousness, which is a method I’ve often used at PF to test how my views hold up to scrutiny. I took a few days to consider my answer to you partly because I have problems fitting something I’ve learned about consciousness into your approach to consciousness studies (as best I comprehend it). I finally decided to simply express my concerns straightforwardly here, and then start a new thread to discuss my own views.
One problem I have is relating to Chalmers’ reasoning alone as authoritative, and therefore accepting his theories about the nature of consciousness as necessarily deserving any more weight than what someone else thinks (you do seem to believe he is authority). The reason I don’t accept what you’ve quoted from him as authoritative is because so far that “science” is mostly rationalism.
Your references to both Chalmers and Rosenberg, in the end, are to rationalistic arguments, not science. The “conceivability” argument is entirely rationalistic, and I predict it will end up the way all rationalistic debates seem to – nowhere. The thread where selfAdjoint suggested a strong counterargument to conceivability had been advanced at (
http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Philosophy/homepages/weatherson/dave.htm) I thought made valid points. But it too was rationalistic, which is exactly the kind of response we should expect to rationalist propositions. If the philosophical aspect of the “science” of consciousness continues this way, some number of years in the future we will find paper after paper rationalistically blasting holes in the other side’s reasoning, with little reference to experience, and nothing definitively decided. I believe that is why a lot of people prefer physicalism -- because at least you can test many of the propositions.
So my question is, how is a non-physicalistic consciousness “science” going to be established if it can’t find a way to get empirical? Chalmers himself admits, “In general I think we have much less introspective access to the self than to its properties.”
If the experiential aspect of his science is to be first person reports combined with third person observation, but if he believes we have little introspective access to the self, then it seems to me he is stuck. That’s why although some of his ideas are interesting to me, particularly panpsychism, I cannot yet accept him as an authority on consciousness, especially since I seem to have a lot more faith (and experience) than he does in the potential of introspective experience.
Because I believe rationalistic arguments prove nothing except the logical integrity of their own structure, what I would prefer if we debate the nature of consciousness, is that Chalmers or anyone else lacking sufficient experience to confirm their assumptions, not be treated as authorities, but rather cited as merely another person speculating about what consciousness is (by the way, I like Chalmers’ thinking, I am just objecting to treating him as an “authority”).
hypnagogue said:
If we then equate subjective experience with awareness of awareness, we are essentially espousing a functionalist theory of mind, which I don't think is the move you want to make given your preferred notions of metaphysics. . . . the physicalist position appears to be wholly inadequate for explaining consciousness.
I am not using aware as you say; neither am I implying functionalism or physicalism (even though I don’t have a problem acknowledging the mind’s functional and physical aspects). I will explain my semantics in another thread (mainly I was using aware as a synonym for “detect” or consciousness’s raw sensitivity).
However, just so you know, I wouldn’t mind if physicalism were correct. I would rather know what is true than maintain my pet theories. The problem for me with physicalism is that it doesn’t make sense to me because of certain of my experiences with consciousness, and because physical processes alone seem to be missing something that would allow them to evolve into either life or consciousness. If physicalism can be demonstrated to be true, then I will accept it.
hypnagogue said:
. . . it may be possible via meditation to achieve a state such that one has subjective experience (it is like something to be in this state), and yet has no subjective experience of anything . . .
Another problem I have is that people’s concepts/assumptions about “meditation” often prevents the introduction of genuine introspective evidence into consciousness models. Currently people involved in consciousness studies are citing the results of “meditation studies,” but what is the standard for expertise when it comes to meditation?
The term “meditation” is applied to quite a variety of practices, so that term alone doesn’t tell us what someone is doing when they practice. For example, some think stilling the mind is meditation, some say “concentration” is meditation (such as what it takes to stare attentively at a candle), some learn to calm their heart rate, others learn not to feel pain or to hold their breath for extended periods, a Christian friend of mine claims studying scripture is meditation, some repeat mantras, others chant, some gaze at walls, etc.
If all that is to be called meditation, then let’s give another name to a very specific practice which there is nothing else like. This practice has one purpose, and one purpose only. There is no ambiguity about the goal, the attainment of which is 100% the measure of one’s success in the practice. That practice is
union.
If I sound a bit anal about describing it, that’s because of how difficult it can be to get people to distinguish the potential of consciousness for union from all the other inner stuff people do with the mind. Let me use an analogy to help explain the difficulty of singling out union from other sorts of “meditation.”
Say a group of scientists land on a planet whose population is still in the tribal stage, and where superstition, sorcery, and magic are accepted as real. They spend a year there studying the population before leaving, never to return. While they are there, some of the local inhabitants become apprentices of the scientists with aspirations of learning science. With only a year to learn, only the most adept actually “get it.” A hundred years later, something called “science” has been absorbed into the superstitious and magical mentality of the population, but it’s nothing any of the original scientists or their adept students would recognize as science. That’s because it has been “adjusted” to fit into the culture, which has also rendered it all but ineffective. However, a few descendents of the original adepts still maintain, almost secretly, the genuine scientific standard and teach it to those few who will swear to master it. In between the watered-down understanding of the general population and the serious practitioners is another class of “semi-scientists” who understand snippets of the method. Some semi-scientists practice hypothesizing only, some set up experiments only, some observe things only, and some practice deduction only. Each branch claims they are doing science, and that the branches are simply different paths to the same end (science); they also all claim they benefit greatly from what they do (which might be true). Of course, the practitioners who have sworn to learn
all of science view semi-scientists with disdain because they know semi-scientists are stopping short of the full realization of science.
Similarly, there are those who understand that the most powerful introspective experience ever attained is union, that union is the goal, and that in working toward union there are various lesser skills which also need to be learned, such as concentration, calmness, sense withdrawal, devotion, etc. Because union is truly their objective they never make the mistake of stopping to master just one of the approach skills, and then call that “meditation.” Unfortunately, the meditation that the public hears about, and what scientists tend to study (mostly physiological effects), is primarily those who’ve learned to concentrate or calm themselves, or who practice bits and pieces of some past meditation discipline.
hypnagogue said:
. . . knowledge can't be more fundamental than consciousness. At best, we can equate knowledge with consciousness by saying that all subjective experience must necessarily be a subjective experience of something (e.g. a subjective experience of blueness, of straightness, of vagueness, etc.)
If I rely on what I’ve learned from the experience I described above, I can’t agree you are correct about knowing. While experiencing union, it isn’t as you suggest that “that one has subjective experience . . . and yet has no subjective experience
of anything.” Quite the contrary, somehow present is a “generalized” knowledge, which is why I’ve come to believe that knowing is built into the fabric of consciousness; in fact, I suspect the main differences between the awarenesses of all life forms (with nervous systems) is the degree of generalized "knowing" their awareness starts out with. Rather than hijack this thread, I’ve decided to present an alternative model of consciousness to help explain myself. I should post it in a few days, and will probably call it something like “A Panpsychism Model of Consciousness.”
What about Rodin's The Thinker? 
