[FRIAM] Unmediated perception - sheldrake

[Prof David West]

A longer attempt to address issues raised by Nick and Steve Smith - separate threaded so those not interested can quickly bypass.

Crude metaphor follows.

Consider this description of an ensemble: a "signal" and a "crystal." The signal has an attribute, say frequency, and the crystal has an attribute, say structure (arrangement of atoms perhaps) such that the crystal in the presence of the signal exhibits a behavior, say vibrates, and that vibration is expressed as an output, say emission of an electrical current. If  the signal is variable in some dimension, the behavior of the crystal echoes that variation as does the output.

The ensemble is a crudely described crystal radio. Is there, in this description, anything that is perceiving? experiencing?

Make some suppositions: First, a mechanism of some sort (absorption of energy from the signal by crystal?) such that an attribute of the crystal, its structure, is altered a bit, and its behavior (vibrating) is modified a bit, as is the output. Second, the output is not otherly directed as in the crystal radio, but is feedback to the signal itself and modifies that signal but the same tiny bit.

The ensemble is closed and although inside the ensemble there are two things (signal and crystal), hence a dualism, from the outside we see something not inconsistent with a Leibniz -ian monad.

Perceiver / Experiencer still absent.

Assemble and organize a bunch of these monads to create a more interesting ensemble, something resembling a computer. We still have a "signal," its frequency limited to a sequence of square waves (a program expressed ordered 1s and 0s); and a "crystal" with the the attribute of structure (more complicated than an arrangement of atoms, but still nothing more than a structure). Assume the same feedback mechanism, something like a binary string in, the same string, with a bit or two flipped, out.

Because this is a closed system, there is a hidden assumption, that signal "loops" in some fashion: Turing's infinite tape with its ends spliced together. [For reasons not important here, it can be assumed that the length of the tape is infinite only because it is circular, but the diameter of the circle expands in parallel with the age of the Universe.]

Still no Perceiver / Experiencer.

Now, using these descriptions to address questions of Nick and Steve Smith, Steve first.

If you have a lot of ensembles each of which has a crystal with the same structure, they will respond to the same signal (frequency).

Both Sheldrake and Hoffman assert that the "crystal's" structure is determined by morphology. All entities with similar morphology will have a similarly structured "crystal" and therefore respond/react to the same signal.  Both assume a single signal. — as if there was but one global (universal) radio station broadcasting on frequency Y and all crystals with structure X vibrate in the presence of that sole signal.

For Hoffman it pretty much ends there - and only accounts for the commonality of the interface among those with the same morphology.

Sheldrake goes further, and asserts the existence of the feedback mechanism describe earlier. Since there is one signal, all of the crystals responding that signal, modify the signal with their individual outputs; such that the looping signal, with its modifications, is common input to all crystals to behave in the same, signal determined, alternate manner.

Sheldrake's model is nothing other than a model of culture, where shared culture predisposes individual behavior, but variations in individual behavior can feedback and alter the probabilities of behavior X and X' given the same context. This allows culture to evolve - most of the time slowly, but occasionally quite dramatically.

Sheldrake simply wants his mechanism to be grounded in physics or metaphysics.

Now Nick,

When the ensemble described reaches some degree of scale (perhaps complexity) an epiphenomena, "self awareness" emerges. You now have a named thing - an Experiencer and the ensemble, the Experienced.

This is the dualism of which you stand accused: two things, Experience and Experiencer. This may very well be a dualism that is imposed, by language, and not intrinsic to belief/philosophy. 

Many times your words, and those of Peirce, suggest that it is merely language causing the dualism problem, but then the "program" the reason for thinking and talking about experience and truth and convergence of experience, etc. suggests that the dualism is integral to the ideas.  Still trying to figure that out and love to have it explained to me so that I can see IT>

But the question of unmediated experience — the mediator is the Experiencer.

There is not some kind of Hoffmann-ish Interface that is mediating perception — it is the epiphenomonological [Ego | Observer | Perceiver | Self | Aware Entity] that is absent.

Of course there is no way to describe or speak of or talk about this "state of existence" except when "It" is not extant. They mystic's eternal dilemma.

davew