It seems every time I work up a draft and get it scheduled to publish, I see you've just published many of the same points. This time I just finished writing about problems with various definitions of consciousness, how you can't make the part stand in for the whole. Ah well, I'm happy to consider my stuff a supplement to yours. :) Nice work!
BTW, I just ordered your book and I'm looking forward to reading it.
Great text. Maybe a comment on the split-brain theory: it distinguishes two different perceptive approaches to reality: one holistic (right hemisphere), the other detail-focused (left hemisphere). This then gets misinterpreted into saying that the brain has two "consciousnesses" which is absurd, since consciousness is fundamental (or an "ontological primitive"), as you point out. Maybe part of the problem is also terminological as the term 'consciousness' is being used in different contexts with different meanings.
Are you familiar with the work of Federico Faggin and if so, what's your opinion?
Great article, Marco. Materialists often devolve into word salads due, I think, to confusing their metaphors with reality. Phrases like “causal power”, “consciousness is virtual”, and “software running on the hardware of the brain” do a lot of rhetorical work without proving anything.
I chatted with Koch privately, and he said he believes that something is operating below the level of physical events which contains the meaning. But then, this thing is below all sequences of physical causal events which are explained perfectly well without invoking a mind. Such concepts are applied in ad hoc ways whenever they get into a corner.
I’m giving a talk at TSC in Barcelona this summer that I hope will put materialism to bed once and for all. Will share the article when it’s ready.
“Consciousness observes the phenomena of the mind as content displayed on a 'mental screen' in the form of thoughts and concepts. In this way words can only stand for thoughts, concepts, meanings, that are modifications or excitations of consciousness themselves. Attempting to articulate consciousness using words amounts to explaining the nature of water with its own waves.”
I tend to agree, but isn’t this a problem? If words (or other forms of representations) are ineffective, how could we ever have meaningful science or philosophy of consciousness? Such efforts will forever remain in the realm of correlations and will never capture the essence of consciousness.
Words are not ineffective; rather, they are limited—mere approximations and shadows of reality. In fact, "words will forever remain in the realm of correlations and will never capture the essence of consciousness." One cannot fully grasp what H2O is by merely describing it in terms of water ripples. This does not mean they are useless. We can engage in meaningful conversation about consciousness, but true comprehension comes from a first-person perspective. I agree that achieving inner mental silence often provides a deeper understanding than an abundance of words (like mine... :)...).
But contemplatively trained scientists (see Alan Wallace's Samatha project) can BOTh master words, statistics, quantitative testing and direct first person contemplative experience.
I think anyone who has tried to convey insights about contemplative experience can tell the radical difference between talking to someone with relevant experience and someone who does not have that experience.
That's right. But my point was about conveying rather than mastering. If you have never experienced redness my words will never convey that experience, no matter how skilled I'm in mastering them.
And then, once you've experienced redness, there are vastly varying degrees of ability to articulate the experience of redness, from "it's nice" to "it's kind of a darkish, orange-yellow mixture that varies in its intensity depending on the nature of the light and shade surrounding it, the distance I am from it, my varying moods, perspectives, biases, and the quality of attention and awareness I bring to it."
'Objective definition of consciousness, as realities found in nature by natural sciences
Past and future situations only rise in the context of minds. They do not exist outside of psyches: extramentally, i.e. outside of consciousnesses or psyches, only present situations occur; not past and future ones. Past and future situations are only imagined, in a simplified way and diversely for sure. In this way – namely, by their being imagined now – their reality or ontic consistency is in fact a part of the present situation; in this it exhausts itself. In other words, past and future situations lack any other relevance for extramental reality, since they are neither found, nor do they cause effects, except as assemblages of mental contents envisaged by psyches. Thus, all nature is actual only at a given instant, and each present situation determines its own time transformation; nonexistent situations cannot causally determine any transformation whatsoever. In this context, a cornerstone of familiar-scale physics is that, because aside from quantum concerns any indeterminacy in it is found to apply to future events, when determining each next transformation the actual or last situation is tantamount to its entire preceding history.
In contrast, minds change quite differently: consciousnesses, existentialities or psyches are the realities that transform themselves only on a selection of their respective antecedents, not necessarily on all of them.' Mariela Szirko.
"However, a common misconception is that this matrix is merely a construction of the brain."
I doubt you have evidence that this is a misconception. It suits you to see it as such, whereas to me it seems overwhelmingly likely. I also lack evidence, but at least I acknowledge it.
It seems every time I work up a draft and get it scheduled to publish, I see you've just published many of the same points. This time I just finished writing about problems with various definitions of consciousness, how you can't make the part stand in for the whole. Ah well, I'm happy to consider my stuff a supplement to yours. :) Nice work!
BTW, I just ordered your book and I'm looking forward to reading it.
Thank you! Well, it might be synchronicity! :)
Great text. Maybe a comment on the split-brain theory: it distinguishes two different perceptive approaches to reality: one holistic (right hemisphere), the other detail-focused (left hemisphere). This then gets misinterpreted into saying that the brain has two "consciousnesses" which is absurd, since consciousness is fundamental (or an "ontological primitive"), as you point out. Maybe part of the problem is also terminological as the term 'consciousness' is being used in different contexts with different meanings.
Are you familiar with the work of Federico Faggin and if so, what's your opinion?
Yes, I align with Faggin. You can read my comments here: https://marcomasi.substack.com/p/consciousness-free-will-meaning-and
Great article, Marco. Materialists often devolve into word salads due, I think, to confusing their metaphors with reality. Phrases like “causal power”, “consciousness is virtual”, and “software running on the hardware of the brain” do a lot of rhetorical work without proving anything.
I chatted with Koch privately, and he said he believes that something is operating below the level of physical events which contains the meaning. But then, this thing is below all sequences of physical causal events which are explained perfectly well without invoking a mind. Such concepts are applied in ad hoc ways whenever they get into a corner.
I’m giving a talk at TSC in Barcelona this summer that I hope will put materialism to bed once and for all. Will share the article when it’s ready.
“Consciousness observes the phenomena of the mind as content displayed on a 'mental screen' in the form of thoughts and concepts. In this way words can only stand for thoughts, concepts, meanings, that are modifications or excitations of consciousness themselves. Attempting to articulate consciousness using words amounts to explaining the nature of water with its own waves.”
I tend to agree, but isn’t this a problem? If words (or other forms of representations) are ineffective, how could we ever have meaningful science or philosophy of consciousness? Such efforts will forever remain in the realm of correlations and will never capture the essence of consciousness.
Is silence the only possible answer?
Words are not ineffective; rather, they are limited—mere approximations and shadows of reality. In fact, "words will forever remain in the realm of correlations and will never capture the essence of consciousness." One cannot fully grasp what H2O is by merely describing it in terms of water ripples. This does not mean they are useless. We can engage in meaningful conversation about consciousness, but true comprehension comes from a first-person perspective. I agree that achieving inner mental silence often provides a deeper understanding than an abundance of words (like mine... :)...).
But contemplatively trained scientists (see Alan Wallace's Samatha project) can BOTh master words, statistics, quantitative testing and direct first person contemplative experience.
I think anyone who has tried to convey insights about contemplative experience can tell the radical difference between talking to someone with relevant experience and someone who does not have that experience.
That's right. But my point was about conveying rather than mastering. If you have never experienced redness my words will never convey that experience, no matter how skilled I'm in mastering them.
Yes, yes, absolutely so!
And then, once you've experienced redness, there are vastly varying degrees of ability to articulate the experience of redness, from "it's nice" to "it's kind of a darkish, orange-yellow mixture that varies in its intensity depending on the nature of the light and shade surrounding it, the distance I am from it, my varying moods, perspectives, biases, and the quality of attention and awareness I bring to it."
A 3rd person description of consciousness is indeed possible and was provided by Mario Crocco.
'Here we have notice that some dabblers even sustain that no objective definition
of mindfulness is possible, but, when not caused by unaquaintance with the foreign
literature, it owes to the Anglo-Saxon filter effect. Due to historic, cultural and
even sociological motives (not discussed here, but they include both the Puritan influence
and the lack of Aristotelian counterpoise), the Anglo-Saxon culture is peculiarized
by an infinitesimal notion of the physical momentariness. (Namely, the Chrysippus-
Newton-Sommerfeld notion of instant.) Thereby all the main English dictionaries,
as well as its discussions, suppose that the interval-like "thickness" of the present is
null. (This is a derivative of the notorious grasp of 'being' as a predication, which I not
either will discuss in the present commentary.) Thus undiscerning past, present, and
future situations intrinsically, this state of affairs, culturally, prevents to see nature as
vacating itself outside actuality ("the present situation"), and consequently also prevents
understanding mindfulness as the simultaneous availability of a selection of
non-simultaneous presences (which is the proper definition of mindfulness in general,
as a brute fact found in nature), while instead adolescent students here have no difficulty
in grasping that the difference between unmindful and mindful realities is that
the former enter time transformation with the totality of the antecedents (2) while the
latter just affirm a selected subset of them, what implies the gnoseological availability
of a reference to all them. 2
2. This is a common physical notion: namely, that the whole history of the supraquantum time relaxation of all past
states just yields causal determinations identical to that of the last instantaneous state. See it formally shown, e. g.,
by Sommerfeld, A., Mechanik (Engl. trans. Academic Press, N. York, 1943, p. 204)
See also:
http://electroneubio.secyt.gov.ar/a_palindrome.htm
'Objective definition of consciousness, as realities found in nature by natural sciences
Past and future situations only rise in the context of minds. They do not exist outside of psyches: extramentally, i.e. outside of consciousnesses or psyches, only present situations occur; not past and future ones. Past and future situations are only imagined, in a simplified way and diversely for sure. In this way – namely, by their being imagined now – their reality or ontic consistency is in fact a part of the present situation; in this it exhausts itself. In other words, past and future situations lack any other relevance for extramental reality, since they are neither found, nor do they cause effects, except as assemblages of mental contents envisaged by psyches. Thus, all nature is actual only at a given instant, and each present situation determines its own time transformation; nonexistent situations cannot causally determine any transformation whatsoever. In this context, a cornerstone of familiar-scale physics is that, because aside from quantum concerns any indeterminacy in it is found to apply to future events, when determining each next transformation the actual or last situation is tantamount to its entire preceding history.
In contrast, minds change quite differently: consciousnesses, existentialities or psyches are the realities that transform themselves only on a selection of their respective antecedents, not necessarily on all of them.' Mariela Szirko.
Sounds like a description of the contents of consciousness (citta) not Consciousness itself (Chit).
"However, a common misconception is that this matrix is merely a construction of the brain."
I doubt you have evidence that this is a misconception. It suits you to see it as such, whereas to me it seems overwhelmingly likely. I also lack evidence, but at least I acknowledge it.
Quibbles aside, interesting reading. Thanks.
Is there anything that isn't a brain's construction?
The brain?
😄