My work on consciousness

[Cosmin Visan]

I would like to present you my work on consciousness, which can be found here: https://philpeople.org/profiles/cosmin-visan
If one is interested in my main ideas, they can be found in my latest paper "Meaning and Context: A Brief Introduction". If at certain points the reader feels the need for more details, most likely my other papers contain them treated at length, as for example "The Quale of Time" focusing on how time itself is just an emergent level of consciousness like any other qualia.

It would be nice if we can discuss the ideas here.

[AshvinP]

I would like to present you my work on consciousness, which can be found here: https://philpeople.org/profiles/cosmin-visan
If one is interested in my main ideas, they can be found in my latest paper "Meaning and Context: A Brief Introduction". If at certain points the reader feels the need for more details, most likely my other papers contain them treated at length, as for example "The Quale of Time" focusing on how time itself is just an emergent level of consciousness like any other qualia.

It would be nice if we can discuss the ideas here.

Hello Cosmin,

I browsed through your paper on Meaning and Context. It looks fascinating and, from what I read, I didn't find any disagreement so far. Thank you for sharing it! I will try to go through it more carefully tonight or tomorrow.

That being said, when I searched for the word "thinking", only two instances came up and they both referred to your personal thinking about writing the paper. So I am wondering, what do you think is the relation between what you refer to as "consciousness" in the paper and what we refer to as "thinking" (but more broadly to include imagination and intuition)? Is it not the latter which always discerns meaning through relational context?

Also, I tried my hand at a more crude phenomenology of perception-cognition, mostly in relation to digital technology, in this essay and two subsequent installments.

For these thinkers above, the key to understanding the function of perceptions in our phenomenal experience is not what we find in the properties of the perceptual structure, but what we find missing. Take a look at the objects in your room right now. What you will not find, under any circumstances, is an isolated perceptual structure which does not present itself in the context of many other perceptual structures. The lamp does not present itself apart from the table or floor it is resting on. The door does not present itself apart from the walls it is situated between, and the computer monitor does not present itself apart from the wires through which electrical currents pass in order to make the display possible. What is the reason for this fact? As Hegel remarked above, a truly isolated property would be "reduced to mere meaning" and "involute into itself". Put more simply, the perceptual property would disappear, i.e. we would no longer perceive it with any outer quantitative structure. As long as a perceptual structure remains connected to other perceptual structures, and those structures to yet more structures, so on and so forth, the property we can isolate only in our thought is still serving a function in our experience. It is that function which explains its continued perceptual existence.

So what is this function? It is found within the complement of all perceptual structures -their conceptual meanings. Perceptions are like voids of meaning; they are negative images which invite us to fill their voids with our meaningful concepts. This negative image relates to Berkeley's quote above - if we are thinking about a "sensible thing", then we are perceiving it with our thought, and, if we are perceiving it with our thought, that means we have not yet exhausted that perception with our conceptual meaning. So there cannot possibly exist a thought about some-thing which we have never perceived. Such thinking would be perfectly united with its object and there would be no perception of the object as a distinct entity. Goethe points to this "holy secret" of Nature as well, because "each and every feature" she carries in her perceptions serve as a 'suction' on our conceptual cognition - what appears as an outer 'thing' in our perception is, in essence, an absence of inner conceptual meaning. She offers her appearances as "inside out and outside in" by presenting what is truly absent (meaning) as a perceptual structure. Nature, by presenting her appearances in this manner, invites (or demands) our thoughts to render her subtle meanings increasingly more transparent than opaque.

[Cosmin Visan]

That being said, when I searched for the word "thinking", only two instances came up and they both referred to your personal thinking about writing the paper. So I am wondering, what do you think is the relation between what you refer to as "consciousness" in the paper and what we refer to as "thinking" (but more broadly to include imagination and intuition)? Is it not the latter which always discerns meaning through relational context?

They certainly are related, but unfortunately I cannot say anything further. To me, the active powers of consciousness are too difficult to think about them, especially since they involve time which in my view is just a quale itself. Probably I would need to have some psychedelic experience in which to lose time in order to see how timeless consciousness feels like and only then I would be able to start thinking about the active powers.

[AshvinP]

That being said, when I searched for the word "thinking", only two instances came up and they both referred to your personal thinking about writing the paper. So I am wondering, what do you think is the relation between what you refer to as "consciousness" in the paper and what we refer to as "thinking" (but more broadly to include imagination and intuition)? Is it not the latter which always discerns meaning through relational context?

They certainly are related, but unfortunately I cannot say anything further. To me, the active powers of consciousness are too difficult to think about them, especially since they involve time which in my view is just a quale itself. Probably I would need to have some psychedelic experience in which to lose time in order to see how timeless consciousness feels like and only then I would be able to start thinking about the active powers.

Cosmin,

I would differentiate here between "thinking about" the active powers of consciousness and a reasoned conclusion that the active powers are "thinking-like" in their nature. Let's define the latter as any activity which unfolds according to a discernable logical structure. Based on your research papers, which are very thorough and I am greatly enjoying, it seems to me the active powers which discern meaningful context and precipitate it into perceptual structures unfold according to such a higher-order logical structure. Do you agree?

[Cosmin Visan]

I'm not sure what you mean by logical structure. Can you give an example ?

[AshvinP]

I'm not sure what you mean by logical structure. Can you give an example ?

For ex., the perceptual structure that we discern in the rhythm, melody, harmony of music. I would say that reflects to us a higher order logical structure which precipitates into richly meaningful musical beats, notes, and chords, which we can all appreciate due to the shared meaning.

[Cosmin Visan]

For ex., the perceptual structure that we discern in the rhythm, melody, harmony of music. I would say that reflects to us a higher order logical structure which precipitates into richly meaningful musical beats, notes, and chords, which we can all appreciate due to the shared meaning.

I wouldn't call it logic, because if it would have been logic, a blind person could have used that logic to see. Maybe it is possible from a God state to conjure never before experienced qualia, but from our limited consciousness we are not able to do such a thing. We can after the fact say "yes, the duck-rabbit image is a rabbit", but if we never experienced a rabbit before, we would not be able to emerge on top of that shape the experience of a rabbit.

[AshvinP]

For ex., the perceptual structure that we discern in the rhythm, melody, harmony of music. I would say that reflects to us a higher order logical structure which precipitates into richly meaningful musical beats, notes, and chords, which we can all appreciate due to the shared meaning.

I wouldn't call it logic, because if it would have been logic, a blind person could have used that logic to see. Maybe it is possible from a God state to conjure never before experienced qualia, but from our limited consciousness we are not able to do such a thing. We can after the fact say "yes, the duck-rabbit image is a rabbit", but if we never experienced a rabbit before, we would not be able to emerge on top of that shape the experience of a rabbit.

Cosmin,

Consider this analogy. I know that my own localized organism is 'made of' the same physical forces as those of the solar system. The gravitational, electromagnetic, strong/weak nuclear forces are the same in my localized organism as they are for the planet Jupiter. Yet I know that I simply cannot change the path of Jupiter's orbit around the Sun. Whatever would allow me to influence the orbit with my own will remains entirely subconscious. It seems to me that can only be due to a nested hierarchy of forces within the solar system that make certain ones more powerful than my own at this stage of Cosmic evolution. The same principle can apply to the idealist understanding of the Cosmos as fundamental forces of willing, feeling, and thinking activity. All worldviews logically necessitate this hierarchical framework of Cosmic evolution, assuming they don't introduce mind/matter hard problems via axiomatic dualism. So could not the same principle apply for the meaning of higher-order Logic which can make the blind see and the deaf hear, i.e. the Divine Word (Logos), which remains entirely subconscious for me at my current evolutionary stage?

[Cosmin Visan]

I'm answering you here from the reincarnation topic, so we don't be off-topic there.

In relation to our discussion on the other thread, would you agree that the examples you use above are referring to ideas which unite the particular letters and notes into a 'holistic entity'?

That's exactly what I think it happens. And I talk about this in my presentation at SAND: at minute 20:27. Obviously, English is not my native language.
Actually, I like Berkeley's use of the term "idea" by which he referred to all qualia. That's where also the term "idealism" comes from instead of "qualism", from the fact that all that exists are ideas/meanings. Because an animal when he sees objects around him, the colors of those objects are united holistically by the ideas of those objects, even though the animal might not have the same rational capacity of humans to talk about ideas in abstract ways. Yet the unification still happens, because ideas are not only what can be thought of by using human reason.

[Cosmin Visan]

Cosmin,

Consider this analogy. I know that my own localized organism is 'made of' the same physical forces as those of the solar system. The gravitational, electromagnetic, strong/weak nuclear forces are the same in my localized organism as they are for the planet Jupiter. Yet I know that I simply cannot change the path of Jupiter's orbit around the Sun. Whatever would allow me to influence the orbit with my own will remains entirely subconscious. It seems to me that can only be due to a nested hierarchy of forces within the solar system that make certain ones more powerful than my own at this stage of Cosmic evolution. The same principle can apply to the idealist understanding of the Cosmos as fundamental forces of willing, feeling, and thinking activity. All worldviews logically necessitate this hierarchical framework of Cosmic evolution, assuming they don't introduce mind/matter hard problems via axiomatic dualism. So could not the same principle apply for the meaning of higher-order Logic which can make the blind see and the deaf hear, i.e. the Divine Word (Logos), which remains entirely subconscious for me at my current evolutionary stage?

What I'm wondering is: given that extra sensory perception exists, why is not all perception extra sensory ? So in principle a blind could see even without eyes, but something is limiting him, I don't know what. But yes, probably there are states of consciousness in which one has access to the entire universe. But why the limitations then I wonder ? Just for God to have fun and put himself in all possible situations, including limitations and suffering ?