I'll be speaking entirely through my particular worldview (acknowledge these are just my
beliefs, although I haven't laid them on too shaky grounds I can assure you)
mosassam said:
Once again, your clarity shines through. The Self is not 'central', it is just another 'semantical concept ABOUT reality'. OOOOUUUUCH! But what observes this state of affairs. Thought? Simple awareness?
This is exactly where we should divorce from the intuitive idea where some thing must be "observing this state of affairs" (or we quickly end up to dualism and/or homunculus argument and/or naive realism). This is intuitive idea precisely because the brain builds a worldview by classifying it into "things"; one of these things is "self". By inventing such an object as "self", the "rational" interpretation of the sensory data turns into a form of "self is perceiving". In a purely materialistic stance, this must be enough for a subjective experience to occur, i.e. we assume that reality is such a place where this kind of process causes subjective experience (albeit our understanding of that very process is quite shaky since it is based on us classifying that process into "sensible things", while reality is not quite like that -> our own ontological nature is still shrouded from our thoughts)
Let me offer you some material for wrestling that idea of "being no one" properly into your system. Consider a thought experiment where you undergo an adult mitosis. That is, every cell in your body is copied and you split into two; both into the exact same physical state. Which one is the one where the "old you" will go? (Whose "point of view" your current self will assume?) To up the ante, ask yourself if you would agree to undergo an adult mitosis, and have another one of the copies killed, and have the other given a million dollars.
If you find yourself baffled by this thought experiment, it can only be because you have traces of "non-physical self" ideas left in your thinking. In a materialistic stance, the contents of your subjective experience are caused by certain configuration of the brain. With two configurations in the exact same state, there will be two subjective experiences both having the same memories, and both being convinced they are the same self that existed before the split. From this you can derive how there is no metaphysical identity to yourself from one moment to the next either.
For further clarity, let's view this matter from the point of view of natural evolution.
Dawkins describes nicely in "The Selfish Gene" how intelligence as a survival method came to be. Rather than reacting to the changes in the environment merely by the natural selection of the genes, the animal branch of the survival machines begun reacting to their environment by learning meaningful reactions to certain stimulus. That is, mobile organisms became able to react to dangers immediately; this obviously improves their changes in the gene pool. In other words, first iterations of simple sensory systems & nervous systems turned up into the scene. These are basically relatively simple systems, with simple reactions to certain stimulus; hardly a case of something having a subjective experience.
We can see that it would be extremely beneficial for an organism to be able to predict events in its environment rather than to just react in a straightforward manner to certain stimulus. I.e. to be able to recognize a rock that is rolling towards it, and to be able to predict it is going to get hit unless it does something.
After many iterations, the nervous systems become able to do just that; to predict reality. For some system to predict some scene, it must model it, by classifying it into "sensible components" to which it assumes certain behaviour, and consequently it can "simulate" how those components behave together (Much like we perform weather simulations by modeling the weather system). In a sense, this is what the brain is; a machine that runs a simulation of reality, so to be able to make rational predictions.
The point to stress here is precisely that idea about the brain classifying reality into sensible components. I suspect this sounds very familiar to you, but it has to be understood precisely. When you are looking at a ball that flies through your field of view, the brain is basically receiving bunch of spatial/temporal patterns flowing into different parts of the cortex as the ball moves in your view. For the system to be able to interpret this avalanche of patterns as a "single ball in motion", quite a few things have to happen. At a sufficiently high abstraction level we can say simply refer to this processas a case of spatial/temporal patterns being interpreted against a worldview. It is that worldview which contains the information about what sorts of "things" exist and how they behave.
Note that at all times, this whole recognition process is done for predictive purposes. If the brain recognizes that avalance of patterns as a case of a ball in flight, and it has assumed certain behaviour to balls, it can immediately draw a meaningful prediction about where that ball is going to land. Basically any activity you do can be seen as a case of prediction through semantical model of reality.
Now, as the nervous systems kept improving and became capable of forming more and more sophisticated worldviews, the resulting behaviour of the organisms became "more intelligent". I.e. they could figure things out with greater accuracy, and use more complex reasoning and form more and more abstract concepts to their advantage. At some point when such a system becomes capable enough, and it forms concepts like "existence" and "reality", it cannot help but draw such an assumption about its sensory data, that it exists itself! This is basically a case of "self" becoming a semantical concept of that worldview (It requires quite a few assumptions about reality before assumptions about self come to exist). And this is basically how we all become aware of ourselves during the first years of our lives. Helen Keller has said that the first time she realized there is a reality out there, was the first time she also realized "she existed", and she says "that was the first time consciousness existed in me" (or something akin to that).
And like you noted, we regularly lose subjective experience for moments, when the brain just doesn't happen to interpret the situation in the form of "self experiencing" (or "self-reflection" might exist in very weak sense)
I suspect if you now take a look at the book description and the first pages of:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0262633086/?tag=pfamazon01-20
it will make a lot of sense to you.
(When I use the word 'observe' I literally mean it. Some things are reasoned constructs and some things can be just "seen".
You have gotten over naive realism though? There must exist an interpretation of the sensory data (that avalance of patterns) before it turns into a subjective experience. That interpretation is done against a worldview that is a semantical construction, in that it is built out of certain assumptions about reality.
The System (you mention) that makes the semantical concept of the Self needs some clarification (I certainly don't want to be getting into some meta-self. Or do I?).
Not really. The explanation can be as mundane as to just look at the physical functions of the brain and understanding them in an appropriate logical level. The reason I say "a system" rather than "a brain" is that the former implies less about the nature of ourselves. The brain is what we understand through our worldview. It is completely circular reasoning to say what I'm saying, since I am basing my arguments on the worldview whose existence I am trying to describe. Little bit tricky state of affairs :)
Thought seems to be the greatest obstacle in experiencing reality but when used correctly can provide the flash of insight that can almost allow one to glimpse the "fabric of reality" (perhaps).
Yeah. In that we can tell how some of our tacit ideas may be dead wrong.
Physical reality is, to a certain extent, created by Thought. What is the nature of reality without Thought? Quantum Theory seems very close to reaching this point, but there doesn't seem to be a way it can 'cross the line'. (Warning - oversimplification:) an electron has properties "only when we're looking" (ie: only when thought is used). What is happening when we're not looking because I'm betting THAT is reality
In a previous post I'm sure you said you were dubious about consciousness having an effect at a quantum level (ie: effecting certain experiments). From the little I understand, I still have the lingering feeling it does, somehow. If you can, please clarify.
This idea about subjective experience "collapsing" reality places some very specific constraints on the nature of that subjective experience (and reality). What I'm describing above for example, is directly contradicting such idealistic ideas.
A coherent idealistic worldview can be built, but the findings of quantum mechanics don't point at that direction very strongly, although these kinds of ideas are often spread to the general public (Probably because we are naturally drawn to mysteries). Copenhagen interpretation did not directly try to suggest that consciousness collapses wave function, but some people interpreted Copenhagen that way. This is because Copenhagen remained completely vague about what it means to observe something (so it is easy to interpret the idea as if only subjective experience is considered observation).
Anyway, in reality we don't have any observations that suggest that strongly towards idealistic schemes. There are mysterious observations, but it is by far more likely that they are mysterious because our model of reality is not the way reality really is; that some particularly sticky assumptions about reality are in fact dead wrong.
Which ones, who knows? Dr Dick is proposing a method for structuring our attempts.
Apologies for length
-Anssi
