[FRIAM] Self-Consciousness, experience and metaphysics

[Nicholas Thompson]

Glen and DaveW and all,

Ok, so I have cc'd in the last correspondence that occurred just before our
discussion about who and what is conscious [ness} got forked up. That
included comments from DaveW,and Glen.  Again, thank you, for helping me
along here.

I now see that we need some sort of a working distinction between
experiences and anecdotes.  Try this: An experience is something that
happens (to you).  An anecdote is the telling of a series of experiences
such that some principle has been established, if only inexplicitly, when
the anecdote is done.  So David, in his last post, is telling anecdotes and
Glen is citing experiences, for a first approximation.  This is interesting
to me because the line between citing an experience and telling an anecdote
seems so tenuous.  Intuitively, I want glen to put those experiences in a
broader context so I can see why, for him, they indicate self
consciousness  -- make them more like anecdotes, Glen! Intuitively, I want
Dave to anchor his anecdotes in some  experiences.   More ethology of
dragons, and less oneness with the Universe!  I think this latter intuition
may be based on a distrust of experiences generated the mysteries of
grammar.  One can say, but one cannot experience having been married to a
bachelor; one can say, but not experience the sound of one hand clapping;
one can say, but not experience, the experience of not having experiences.
To the extent that meditation involves the pushing away of experiences, I
am suspicious of it.

Please see larding below:

On Sat, Jul 20, 2024, 9:57 AM Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm> wrote:

dragon stories:



my very first experience with peyote, I was 12-13 and living on the Hopi
reservation with my aunt and uncle. A group of boys were given the peyote
as a reward for gathering cottonwood buds for use in a Hopi ceremonial
dance. Of the five of us only one other wanted to try the drug, so I
consumed roughly for doses. A massive thunderstorm was in progress. At some
point, a dragon coalesced from the lightning, thunder, filtered sunlight
and began speaking to me.



[important interjection: my brain was "making sense' of an overwhelming
number of sensations, some detected by nerve endings, others generated by
frantic neuron firings. Assumed/assuming this is the same kind of thing
that happens when the brain 'makes sense' of the bombardment of
sensations/neural firings that create the "illusion" of an external world.]



we engaged in an apparently long lasting conversation about my recent
experiences in Hopi-land, the various Hopi stories I had been told that
summer and how to interpret them. At some point the dragon used the phrase,
"alarums and excursions;" an idiom I had first encountered some 8 years
prior (pre-grade school) in a book called David and the Phoenix.



[interjection: till this point my interactions with the dragon were, as far
as I could tell, pretty much identical to the interactions I might have had
with another human being in the 'waking world'. This includes the implicit
assumption that I was interacting with a sentient, conscious, and
self-conscious being.]

*NST>>> I take that your experience was of a normal conversation with a
dragon. As you describe it, is seems just that. Because I agree with you,
uncontravertibly, that a conversation is evidence, I agree with you that
both your and the dragon were both conscious. Whether you both existed is a
whole 'nother matter. <<<nst*



Second story:



I was exploring the use of pain as a means of inducing an altered state of
consciousness. Four hours of enduring intense and varied pain administered
by a sadistic dominatrix in Salt Lake City, made me very self-aware with a
raspy voice. I began the 9 hour drive to Santa Fe to attend FRIAM. Along
the way my body went into shock and I dealt with that using meditative
techniques. I also was playing a CD of meditative Buddhist chants that I
began to hum out loud with my raspy voice. The result was the altered state
I had been seeking.



Somewhere in Arches National Park, I stopped, stripped naked and walked
down a dry wash where I 'encountered' a campfire and sat down. Brigham
Young was sitting at the periphery of the campfire and we began a long
conversation about Mormon theology and metaphysics, why blacks lost the
right to the priesthood (there were blacks in the priesthood in Nauvoo
while Joseph Smith was alive and that is one of the reasons the Mormons
were persecuted by Missourians), why religions like Christianity, Islam and
Mormonism changed from Feminism to misogyny, education, eternal
progression, and a host of other topics.  The conversation ended when I
realized I would be late for FRIAM unless I stopped and resumed my journey.

*NST>>> I  stipulate that experienced a conversation with BG and that
conversation is evidence of his consciousness. <<<nst*

[interjection: both the dragon and Brigham Young were 'illusions'
constructed "by the brain" just as the 'illusion' of ordinary reality.
While interacting with them, they were, to me, sentient, aware, and
conscious entities. I attributed sentience, intelligence, consciousness to
them precisely because of the perceived interactions- the verbal (in my
case) and the 'auditorialized' (neuron firings interpreted as sound) voices
(of dragon and Brigham).]

  *NST>>> To be blunt, this just seems  like physiobabble.   You have no
idea what  is going on in your brain nor is it relevant to the experience.
Becareful not to confuse explanations of experience with the experience
itself. <<<nst*

After the fact self analysis of the incidents conclude that in both cases,
the "conversation" was between 'my self' and 'my memories': of the David in
the book and his conversations with the Phoenix in the book; all of the
writings of Brigham Young I had read years before.



These stories do not, technically bear on where or not dragons are
conscious, but they most definitely bear on whether or not domestic animals
and Nick are conscious—by virtue of the fact that the 'data' and the
'interpretation of the data' are, evidently, the same.

*NST>>>On the contrary, if we collected a thousand such stories from
different people, I bet every one of them would be conscious, as we have
agreed to understand it.  <<<nst*



You might make an argument for 'faulty machinery' in my two stories, but
what is gained vis-a-vis our common understanding. *NST>>>Why on earth
would I make such an argument? how would that alter the fact of the
experience and our understaning of its relation to consciousness. <<<nst*


.

Prof David West



Jul 22, 2024, 11:41 AM (2 days ago)



to The, Shedd, me

We seem to have changed thread titles, but continuing the discussion ...



Nick said: "I’m not so clear concerning what our common understanding of
self-consciousness is. Might need some more anecdotes to flesh that out."
In that vein, some additional anecdotes.



I, is!

As a native speaker of English, I read, speak, write, and think as if this
assertion is inescapably true. Weak attempts to learn other languages have
not resulted in much difference, although Arabic created a wisp of an
impression that the assertion might be escaped, and Japanese (the Kanji,
not Hirigana or Katakana) definitely created a deep suspicion. But I was
never fluent enough to 'think' in either language, so I do not know."



I. Illusion.

Decades ago, I practiced the Zen Koan meditation, 'what am I'. Any answer
posed to the question is wrong and eliminated; as each answer is an
attribute of a physical organism or some kind of mental/social construct.
Eventually, "I" diminishes to "i" and ultimately to "Is." The last, however
is a property of existence/Reality not something 'apart from' or 'part of'.
Very difficult to put into words obviously as the experience is an absence
of something, not a thing itself.

*NST>>>Here is where I worry that a grammatical quandary is being confused
with anexperience.  That we can speak of a non-experience does not make it
an experience of nothingness. <<<nst*



Non-sensationalism

While a student at Macalester, some of us went over to the U of M to
experience the absence of sensations in a deprivation tank. Can the
"I"  experiencing
sensations be separated and directly apprehended? In my experience, and via
reports from others involved in the experiment, NO. Although greatly
diminished, sensations were still present. Perhaps nerve endings firing at
random, perhaps a passing neutrino triggering the release of a single
photon. Something, some vestige of "I-ness" was still there, still
interpreting (poorly) the paucity of stimuli. Time distortion, "I have been
in here for hours, did someone forget to let me out?"  Emotions, primarily
fear and panic. No glimpse of 'me', however.



Non-sensationalism on acid

Wow! Jung was correct; there is a vast and rich collective unconscious. "I"
am a growing body of all that "I have been." Both the collective and the
idiosyncratic is a joy to wander about, marvel at, and (re)experience."



Seeking Self Consciousness

On several occasions I have ingested 4-6 Hoffmans [a Hoffman is 150
microgams, the amount he took on Bicycle Day] of acid, with preparation
akin to that of practitioners of lucid dreaming, i.e., preparing the mind
to have a directed experience. Specifically, to "see," directly apprehend
and experience, one's Self. The journey begins with the same kind of 'tour'
of idio-self and collective-self as the previous story. Diving into one's
self, trying to find its locus, to situate it in relation to
everything/anything else becomes impossible. The dimensionless point being
sought constantly expands until it encompasses absolutely everything. A
feeling of omniscience, of ABSOLUTE AWARENESS, is there. But no "self."

  *NST>>> I agree that I fear there is something not-quite-coherent about
the concept of self. Why should I be startled when I catch myself in a
mirror? "That thing?!!"<<<nst*

  *  *  *  *

These are some of my anecdotes. From them, it might be concluded that I
have no experiences of self-consciousness and therefore may not be able to
participate in any effort to establish a "common understanding" of same.



davew

*glen via
<https://support.google.com/mail/answer/1311182?hl=en> redfish.com
<http://redfish.com> *

Jul 22, 2024, 12:25 PM (2 days ago)







to friam

Mine run a little more banal.


*NST>>> Glen, could you help me see why one or more of these are illusory
of self-awareness.  <<<nst*
Behaviors exhibiting/defining consciousness
• Cat grooming himself
• Dog doing circles for a full minute before lying down
• Cat reflecting on whether he wants to stay in or go out when I crack the
door
• Itch transfer (you have an itch somewhere, you scratch it, and you
suddenly itch somewhere else)
• Losing one's grip on, say, a glass on the table, dropping it, then
immediately catching it
• Tightening a nut just tight enough, but not too much (e.g. when you find
yourself without a torque wrench)
• Trying to deciding whether you've had enough to eat with food remaining
on the plate
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