Pages

Monday, March 27, 2017

..Seeking a thought worthy of speech:


"The means of argument – the three Ls, language, logic and linearity – are all ultimately under left-hemisphere control, so that the cards are heavily stacked in favour of our conscious discourse enforcing the world view re-presented in the hemisphere which speaks, the left hemisphere, rather than the world that is present to the right hemisphere." -- Iain McGilchrist "The Master and His Emissary"

Sunday, March 26, 2017

Re: How consciousness works

Serge,
A 2nd reply to a part of your prior post... where you write: """By their nature, knowledge about Brownian motion does not differ from knowledge about the mechanisms of consciousness -- they both are knowledge, the elements of the given person's version of Phenomenal Reality. The difference between them is that to get knowledge about Brownian motion we use the methods and models which ignore the agency of informational factor (we use the methods, models, and laws of Physics), while to get knowledge about the mechanisms of consciousness we have to use the methods and models which take into account the agency of informational factor..However, as I see, your approach is different. You divide reality into "physical reality" and "mental reality". Is your "nested structured~duality" some modification of Cartesian dualism? """,
first,  I observe with my  tunnel vision that we use or take into account the 'agency of information factor'  in fabricating knowledge regarding BOTH Brownian motion AND consciousness. I think I vaguely see the distinction you are trying to make about 'information factor',  but I observe that where you say """(we use the methods, models, and laws of Physics)""",  ALL sorts of agencies of information factors are already involved and nested in the 'laws of Physics'.  If the audience is mesmerized into NOT seeing the nesting, then perhaps you should continue on to the cliff by the Sea. Otherwise, please consider what I am pointing out because it is another instance which arises naturally because  'Reality is NESTED structured~duality'.
Second,  I start out with "Reality is nested structured~duality." The divisions into 'physical and mental' or 'phenomenal and noumenal' are already present in the environment -- within the existing or dominant paradigm(s).    So I see that I am not dividing reality  but more accounting for the two pre-existing categories with the one new common denominator.  Thus, in saying, "Reality, both physical and mental realms", is nested structured~duality.",  I am respecting the existing distinction so that a believer of the dominant scientific paradigm can begin to migrate to the emerging, more unified understanding.   That is, things on the physical side are quite clearly nested stacks of NSD-like artifacts -- plus-minus arrangements of electrons, protons; wave-particle, electro-magnetic oscillations, etc.. And things in the mental realm are also some artifact which reflects, echoes, represents, etc., some other artifact. So, stuff  in both realms rides on the same, single, one underlying general NSD principle.
Thus, more correctly, the storyline I am advocating unifies rather than divides.