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How does a dissociative boundary work?

Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2021 12:27 pm
by j.joerg@posteo.de
I did not read too much of Bernardos books. I heard hours and hours of interviews though. It never came across to me, that I heard him explaining dissociative boundaries in detail. So my question is how does a dissociative boundary work and can it be described it scientifically?

BK argues that living beings have it. He grants it do single-celled organisms but not so to single cells of multicellular organism. In my opinion these statements do not hold up if you go into the details. Firstly there is no scientific agreement on what live even is. Secondly there is no discrete boundary between a living being an its umwelt, so at what point exactly becomes the air that you breath in part of the living being? Thirdly there are heaps and heaps of examples where organisms combine, just to being able to be regarded as single form of life. There are single-celled bacteria that live solo but unite in certain conditions to behave like a multicellurar organism. Cell organells evolved as endosymbiontic cells within other cells (symbiogenesis). Lichens are composite organism that arises from algae and fungi species in a mutualistic relationship. Apart from that multicellular organisms in general can be interpreted as a highly specialized and organized society of single-celled organisms. And how could one ever say a single cell of a multicellular organism does not have the property of life?

So how exactly can the relationship between an experienced image of consciousness (mind at large) and an experiencing, dissociated part of consciousness (mind) be described?

Re: How does a dissociative boundary work?

Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2021 12:33 pm
by Eugene I
You are thinking about the boundaries in the space of the material world, but those are indeed illusory and have nothing to do with dissociative Markov boundaries that BK is talking about that occur in the space of the MAL consciousness.

Re: How does a dissociative boundary work?

Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2021 1:18 pm
by j.joerg@posteo.de
Eugene I wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 12:33 pm You are thinking about the boundaries in the space of the material world, but those are indeed illusory and have nothing to do with dissociative Markov boundaries that BK is talking about that occur in the space of the MAL consciousness.
So the image of consciousness that we experience has no relationship what so ever with consciousness itself? How come then, that there are very specific and predictable changes in the experience of human consciousness when we manipulate the image of consciousness (brain) in very specific ways?

Re: How does a dissociative boundary work?

Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2021 2:15 pm
by Eugene I
j.joerg@posteo.de wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 1:18 pm So the image of consciousness that we experience has no relationship what so ever with consciousness itself? How come then, that there are very specific and predictable changes in the experience of human consciousness when we manipulate the image of consciousness (brain) in very specific ways?
Imagine you are playing a "surgeon" computer VR game which shows an image of "you" lying on a surgeon table with am image of surgeon manipulating the image of your brain, and certain manipulations on the image of you brain cause some changes in your mental states. But your mental states are also part of the VR because you have electrodes from the VR helmet connected you your "actual" brain. So how come the image of manipulations on the image of your brain causes certain changes of your mental states? Simply because this is how the computer code of the VR game was programmed to make an "impression" that some changes in the image cause some changes in the mental states. This is an analogy of course, in the BK's model there is no "actual" brain, but the changes in the image of the world in our individual minds are correlated with the changes in our mental states because both are coming from the same "code" of this VR generated in the MAL mind. In other words, we can compare the MAL to a massive simulation computer generating the "Matrix", and we alters, as "islands" in the MAL mind isolated by dissociative boundaries, perceive this Matrix, but also actively participate in it, because there are in- and out- information flows and interaction channels through the boundaries.

Essentially, the BK model is a variant of the simulation hypothesis with the difference that in the BK's model the simulation is running in consciousness rather then in some "physical" computer in a "base" reality.

Simulation hypothesis
Do We Live in a Simulation? Chances Are about 50–50

But Elon Mask believes that chances are 100000000:1
Elon Musk: Are We Living in a Simulation?
Here is another longer one
The Simulation Hypothesis

Re: How does a dissociative boundary work?

Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2021 3:14 pm
by j.joerg@posteo.de
Eugene I wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 2:15 pm
j.joerg@posteo.de wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 1:18 pm So the image of consciousness that we experience has no relationship what so ever with consciousness itself? How come then, that there are very specific and predictable changes in the experience of human consciousness when we manipulate the image of consciousness (brain) in very specific ways?
Imagine you are playing a "surgeon" computer VR game which shows an image of "you" lying on a surgeon table with am image of surgeon manipulating the image of your brain, and certain manipulations on the image of you brain cause some changes in your mental states. But your mental states are also part of the VR because you have electrodes from the VR helmet connected you your "actual" brain. So how come the image of manipulations on the image of your brain causes certain changes of your mental states? Simply because this is how the computer code of the VR game was programmed to make an "impression" that some changes in the image cause some changes in the mental states. This is an analogy of course, in the BK's model there is no "actual" brain, but the changes in the image of the world in our individual minds are correlated with the changes in our mental states because both are coming from the same "code" of this VR generated in the MAL mind. In other words, we can compare the MAL to a massive simulation computer generating the "Matrix", and we alters, as "islands" in the MAL mind isolated by dissociative boundaries, perceive this Matrix, but also actively participate in it, because there are in- and out- information flows and interaction channels through the boundaries.

Essentially, the BK model is a variant of the simulation hypothesis with the difference that in the BK's model the simulation is running in consciousness rather then in some "physical" computer in a "base" reality.

Simulation hypothesis
Do We Live in a Simulation? Chances Are about 50–50

But Elon Mask believes that chances are 100000000:1
Elon Musk: Are We Living in a Simulation?
Here is another longer one
The Simulation Hypothesis
Does that mean we can not say anything about MAL at all because we can only know the illusory dissociations and images? And thus we can not describe the relationship between MAL and dissociations and images? There is no deeper theory of a dissociative process or boundary in BKs model?

Re: How does a dissociative boundary work?

Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2021 3:30 pm
by Eugene I
Right, it's similar to simulation hypothesis where the simulation is indistinguishable from "reality" so you can not study the simulation code or the "boundary" interface as long as you are "within" the Matrix. But some physicists argue that we can still test whether we are in simulation by studying certain properties of the universe (such as variations in the cosmic background radiation etc). That is why so far both simulation hypothesis and BK idealism in general rather belong to philosophy, not to science. Science only studies phenomena and models/theories that can be experimentally verified and falsified.

Re: How does a dissociative boundary work?

Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2021 3:52 pm
by j.joerg@posteo.de
Eugene I wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 3:30 pm Right, it's similar to simulation hypothesis where the simulation is indistinguishable from "reality" so you can not study the simulation code or the "boundary" interface as long as you are "within" the Matrix. But some physicists argue that we can still test whether we are in simulation by studying certain properties of the universe (such as variations in the cosmic background radiation etc). That is why so far both simulation hypothesis and BK idealism in general rather belong to philosophy, not to science. Science only studies phenomena and models/theories that can be experimentally verified and falsified.
Thanks for clarification!

Re: How does a dissociative boundary work?

Posted: Tue May 11, 2021 1:19 am
by JustinG
j.joerg@posteo.de wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 12:27 pm I did not read too much of Bernardos books. I heard hours and hours of interviews though. It never came across to me, that I heard him explaining dissociative boundaries in detail. So my question is how does a dissociative boundary work and can it be described it scientifically?

BK argues that living beings have it. He grants it do single-celled organisms but not so to single cells of multicellular organism. In my opinion these statements do not hold up if you go into the details. Firstly there is no scientific agreement on what live even is. Secondly there is no discrete boundary between a living being an its umwelt, so at what point exactly becomes the air that you breath in part of the living being? Thirdly there are heaps and heaps of examples where organisms combine, just to being able to be regarded as single form of life. There are single-celled bacteria that live solo but unite in certain conditions to behave like a multicellurar organism. Cell organells evolved as endosymbiontic cells within other cells (symbiogenesis). Lichens are composite organism that arises from algae and fungi species in a mutualistic relationship. Apart from that multicellular organisms in general can be interpreted as a highly specialized and organized society of single-celled organisms. And how could one ever say a single cell of a multicellular organism does not have the property of life?

So how exactly can the relationship between an experienced image of consciousness (mind at large) and an experiencing, dissociated part of consciousness (mind) be described?
I agree that setting the 'metabolising organism' as the most basic level of alter dissociation, as BK does, is problematic. FYI cellular consciousness has been discussed before in this forum in these threads:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=264
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=200

Re: How does a dissociative boundary work?

Posted: Fri May 14, 2021 12:00 am
by AshvinP
j.joerg@posteo.de wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 12:27 pm I did not read too much of Bernardos books. I heard hours and hours of interviews though. It never came across to me, that I heard him explaining dissociative boundaries in detail. So my question is how does a dissociative boundary work and can it be described it scientifically?

BK argues that living beings have it. He grants it do single-celled organisms but not so to single cells of multicellular organism. In my opinion these statements do not hold up if you go into the details. Firstly there is no scientific agreement on what live even is. Secondly there is no discrete boundary between a living being an its umwelt, so at what point exactly becomes the air that you breath in part of the living being? Thirdly there are heaps and heaps of examples where organisms combine, just to being able to be regarded as single form of life. There are single-celled bacteria that live solo but unite in certain conditions to behave like a multicellurar organism. Cell organells evolved as endosymbiontic cells within other cells (symbiogenesis). Lichens are composite organism that arises from algae and fungi species in a mutualistic relationship. Apart from that multicellular organisms in general can be interpreted as a highly specialized and organized society of single-celled organisms. And how could one ever say a single cell of a multicellular organism does not have the property of life?

So how exactly can the relationship between an experienced image of consciousness (mind at large) and an experiencing, dissociated part of consciousness (mind) be described?
The entire concept of "dissociative boundary" is misleading at best - it implies some sort of hard boundary, outside of our control, which separates our perception-thinking from that of all other 'alters'. That is simply not the case in reality and we can see this intellectually by reflecting on our activity of Thinking. That is discussed in much more depth in the Metamorphoses of the Spirit essays in the general discussion section (Transfiguring our Thinking: Part II can be read by itself and still get most of what was written before).

Summary of conclusion - there are no hard limits to perceiving-thinking built into the structure of Reality. Kantian divide is an artifice of flawed assumptions about the phenomenal world. Thought-forms are perceptions of our Thinking organ, and their ideal content (concepts-ideas) are what allow us to reunify the phenomenal-noumenal world. All limits to such reunification are self-imposed. Seek and ye shall find.

Re: How does a dissociative boundary work?

Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2021 9:33 pm
by SanteriSatama
j.joerg@posteo.de wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 12:27 pm I did not read too much of Bernardos books. I heard hours and hours of interviews though. It never came across to me, that I heard him explaining dissociative boundaries in detail. So my question is how does a dissociative boundary work and can it be described it scientifically?

BK argues that living beings have it. He grants it do single-celled organisms but not so to single cells of multicellular organism. In my opinion these statements do not hold up if you go into the details. Firstly there is no scientific agreement on what live even is. Secondly there is no discrete boundary between a living being an its umwelt, so at what point exactly becomes the air that you breath in part of the living being? Thirdly there are heaps and heaps of examples where organisms combine, just to being able to be regarded as single form of life. There are single-celled bacteria that live solo but unite in certain conditions to behave like a multicellurar organism. Cell organells evolved as endosymbiontic cells within other cells (symbiogenesis). Lichens are composite organism that arises from algae and fungi species in a mutualistic relationship. Apart from that multicellular organisms in general can be interpreted as a highly specialized and organized society of single-celled organisms. And how could one ever say a single cell of a multicellular organism does not have the property of life?

So how exactly can the relationship between an experienced image of consciousness (mind at large) and an experiencing, dissociated part of consciousness (mind) be described?
In analytical idealism the dissociative boundaries are formally stated as the mathematical form of Markov blanket. I'm not sure where and how Bernardo picked that concept and hypothesis, I've suspected from "Me and my Markov blanket" by Karl Friston. See e.g.



A new search brought up this article:

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/ ... .2017.0792