Structio-energetic global workspace WAS: overview aspect of consciousness

Alfredo,

Thanks for links to recent papers. You and your group do a good job of threading through the many layers to get down to your 'hydro-ionic' flows and also Gerald Pollack's structured water descriptions of exclusion zones serving as boundaries and channels, and protein configurations.  I don't follow all of your perspective(s) but I get the sense that you observe or can measure and do focus on  calcium ion clouds and gradients and properties of astrocytes that differ from those of other types of aerobic cells. And, -- is it that you seek or have found 2-3 second long processes there to persist as or while a so-called 'conscious episode' resonates?  Or is that the elusive goal?

I'm wondering if you can clarify more on that goal or supposition, or point me directly to a page of yours where that is  more clearly laid out? 

Calf Roping

Serge,

Thanks.  By 'roped in', are you saying you empathize a bit with the wild-eyed rodeo calves who find themselves in the dirt with  three of their limbs tied together?  I see it more like those situations in math where one section or set of equations and expressions is discovered to fit inside another and there is an overall expansion of unity and generality.  Yes, one may still feel blind-sided initially, but the advantage long-term is a clearer picture and improved expressions and understanding.

More below...

---In jcs-online@yahoogroups.com, wrote :

-
Ralph Frost on June 14, 2017 wrote:
> In the instance of NSD that you  construct and  advocate, you
>choose to re-define for your own purpose or overload the terms:
>noumenal and phenomenal, different from Kant's or others' usages.
.
[S.P.] On hearing that I "construct and advocate some instance of NSD" I have a feeling that I was roped in without being consulted. :-) What I construct and advocate is my epistemological framework plus a set of applied theories I construct within the limits of that framework. This is enough for me to explain or to name what I do.

[rf] Ok, but I have also been saying for a few decades: 'pick a structure and pick one or more dualities and then build out to limits of those choices'.  That is  the underlying general principle and thus, that is how and why the generalization works and holds.  It is just the way things are. You, me, everyone  "construct and advocate some instance of NSD".

[sp..] The involvement of such a phrase as "the instance of NSD" adds nothing to understanding of my results. The "NSD" is definitely not a girl I have been ever married with or had any other relation to. :-)
.

[rf] On the contrary, the categorization adds quite a bit to people's assessment, understanding and consideration of your results. You have created an instance of nested structured~duality and to the extent that the layers of NSD you construct are extreme or  complex or arbitrary or ill-defined, given the generalization, one can identify  such problematic and/or illogical expressions and conditions.

Also, there is the situation where sub-conscious  inconsistencies in expressions do become more apparent.  (See below.)

Learning the *feel* of NSD Analog Math

---In jcs-online@yahoogroups.com, wrote :

 Ralph, you did not answer any of my questions; you never explain how your sugars, magnetic fields, fats, and proteins "has some *feel*". 

[rf] I believe I learn and appreciate *feel* via the tactile learning style.  If you are  predominantly, say,  a 'visual learner' you may not be able to 'understand' or appreciate my explanation.  Have you worked with wrenches and solved problems building physical things?  That is, your own gifts and proclivities may be in other areas -- as mine are.

To start out, either take, or remember playing with two rod magnets, one in each hand. Push /holdthem end to end.  Can you *feel* either the attraction or the repulsion?  Play around with resisting and imposing the attraction and repulsion. Notice that you can give magnets "one/half spin" -- 180 degree rotation, end for end, and still get the ~same *feels*.

Next, consider the five ways to align four rod magnets along the radii of a tetrahedron -- two ways to have all repulsion at the center [variable mass density] (n4, s4); one way to have balanced attraction (n2s2); and two ways to have more repulsion than attraction [weak attraction] (n3s, ns3).

Notice (on the image of the magnetic tetrahedron at the link below, for instance) that I refrain from pasting visual cues or N-S labels on the ends of magnets.  I do this on purpose so as to not blur or inject the map with the territory -- in essence, to NOT overlay secondary visual/intellectual categorizations with the primary tactile observation/measurement.  If you can follow this, you may understand that what this discipline does is prompt for periodic or 'on-call' checking with a probe magnet to determine or measure  (*feel*) -- 'observe from perturbation differences'  -- which of the three sets of states  one has in front of them as "an object of study'.  Then, after that assessment, IF it really matters, a participant could align the probe magnet end in the local field and thereby think they were sort of conscious of specifically WHICH of the five states one really had 'observed', assuming ALL fields are not oscillating wildly back-and-forth. 

Learning the underlying general principle.

The NSD principle that I communicate and advocate is really quite simple and obvious (once it is pointed out to someone who is or has been ensconced in the dominant scientific or another paradigm).

Learning the principle   is really just a matter of simple pattern recognition -- of observing the principle which is woven within  the entire fabric and history of science, et., al.  Rather than start out with the typical assumptions: "reality is space, time, energy, mass, space-time, energy-matter, etc.", and also lacking any model of ~consciousness, one can  look  inside those sets of dualities and notice that at the underlying, more unified level, "reality is structured~duality" -- starting out with the new fundamental generalization:  all things have some structure AND have and/or exhibit one or more dualities or differences.   Subsequent consideration shows that this feature is common to both physical and mental artifacts and categories.

Understanding the underlying general principle...

[Re: [jcs-online] How consciousness works 4/18/2017]

Serge,

In attempt to illuminate more of the underlying general principle of NSD, consider the metaphor that paradigm change is akin to taking a circular path. You and I begin at the 'top' of a circle (12 noon/midnight as on a wall clock face), and , your and many many other's  paths is, let's say, clockwise where the first leg, is ALL about just accepting the dominant physics/physical  model, say, almost all the way around to 11.   Then, the physical model fails and you/others come up with various separate extensions or adaptations to just add the missing clockwise segment from eleven back to closure at the point of beginning.

My analysis and approach, however, takes, let's say, the counter-clockwise route. Step into the void. Start with a different structure and duality (than the Cartesian cube/subject-object instance everyone on the clockwise trade route begins with) ... And having acquired the underlying general principle, instantly my route circles or spirals  counter-clockwise to the point of beginning while accounting for all of the various NSD instances along the way.

Yeah, my 'lucky guess' may seem like a lazy, cheap trick, but actually, I've taken the more principled  and thus efficient approach.

To get what I mean by this, let's go back to, or continue on with  your and/or let's say Hameroff-Penrose's or any of the other second-leg clockwise extensions. Let's grant that you ALL are successful in varying degrees and you end up back at the point of beginning where you have one model for physical reality, and then you all have some second-leg extension termed 'The science of consciousness'.   Don't get me wrong. These ALL are valuable contributions and parts of the puzzles -- wonderful accomplishments.  However, step back an look at the next task that faces folks who inherit the disjointed two-step models.

That's right -- how to come up with the coherent, more principled, more unified account for  'both' or 'all' the different parts of science? 

..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"

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.