DRFseven

That seems to be just pushing the problem back. How does the "immaterial entity" use the neurology of memory to produce thinking? We don't know how thinking comes to seem like thinking to us, but we can observe, through fMRIs, that thinking depends upon a physical process that informs the mental.

Right, we can't do it at this time; maybe we never will, or maybe we will. But if neurobiological phenomena are not reducible all the way to include thought, we can still determine cause and effect.

John Page

DD:

I think the problem is not self-reference, but the confusion of the observer is assuming self-reference is occuring. Language describes the object. Where language is used to describe itself (as in the Epimenides paradox) it does not and cannot do so "literally". The object described is perceived by the mind, not by the language itself!

Finally, there are many self-referencing sentences from which paradoxes do not arise. Ergo, self-referencing cannot be the sole and exclusive cause of the paradox.

Cheers, John

phaedrus

chalmer

Koyaanisqatsi

Pardon my dyslexia, everyone. It's apparently in full swing tonight...

I'll try and edit as best I can, but no promises. All part of the Thrill Kill Kult of Koy

Anyway, I think things go deeper when one considers such things as shizophrenia as opposed to MPD. I've personally known at least three people with clear "multiple personalities" (only one of which was clinically diagnosed as such) and fully contend that we are all "multiples," just with a certain "psyche filter" in place that allows us the illusion of merging all experince into a central "I," where one does not actually, necessarily, exist. More on that latter, perhaps....

Freud touched upon it first, of course, with his Id, Ego and Superego and it is still a prevalent, if controversial field in modern pyschology (and one could, of course, say that it goes back even farther than that and accounts for such things as the Trinity nonsense being so innately accepted regardless of its inherent ludicrousness...sy....ism....).

Regardless, the interesting part is the implications of a more "metaphysical" view of things, if you will (and I wouldn't ), since the implication is that our "meat" is little more than a car and there are many "drivers" (along with, of course, the implication that it's all just seriously f*cked brain chemistry).

Taking the computer analogy for an example, however, where the computer hardware is analogous to our physical bodies and the human "user" is analogous to a "soul" or the "consciousness." the problem comes in the fact that these are necessarily independent of the physical qualities of either, which isn't found in humans. Our brains are our minds and vice versa (if one limits one's self to that perspective....ahem...bear with me, I haven't completely lost it....).

The mechanist/materialist states that action induces thought and the animist/spiritualist (for lack of better terms) posits that thought induces action.

I spent a long time on this seeming dichotomy (even tattooing my forearms with the Greek symbols denoting "psi" and "phi"--for "psyche" and "physus," or mind/matter) and a friend of mine came up with an interesting answer to the whole thing. He saw it as necessarily symbiotic; that consciousness gives rise to form at the same time that form gives rise to consciousness. Similar to what Einstein did with space and time, mind you, so don't sluff it off too glibly .

In the case of my girlfriend with the MPD, she described it in the textbook fashion; that there was a "room" or "stage" where the other personalities "hung out" waiting to go "on the spot" (meaning in control of the body). I asked her years later (after she had been diagnosed and called me to tell me about it; some five to six years after we had parted) and she described it literally like the restaurant we were in. Surrounding us were all of these people waiting and otherwise engaging themselves in their own activities.

When I asked her if it were "literally" like the restaurant, in that these people were all at verifiably markable distances and had distinctly unique "external" qualities to coincide with their spatial relationships, she said, "Yeah. Of course. I see everyone in the same way you see all of these people."

This, of course, floored me. I had read, ironically, about MPD for a part I was playing in a college production at the same time I was dating her (though neither of us knew she was MPD at the time);s a book called, "The Many Lives of Billy Milligan," which was the first non-fiction account of a rapist who was acquitted for having MPD (or, not necessarily acquited, but sentenced to therapy rather than jail, whatever that's called; not guilty by reason of insanity, I suppose??).

Anyway, the similiarities were astonishing in their subsequent stories. They both described the "environment" of their "inner" personalities as being a physical, three dimensional "room" or "waiting area" with seats and people in clothes, some reading, some doing things that no one knew about. And, of course, there were the "prisons" that kept "undesirable" or otherwise detrimental personalities at bay.

Now, granted, when this is described by somebody else, I naturally imposed my own imagination as to what this place physically looked like, but the fact is that both my ex-girlfriend and the book on Milligan described roughly the exact same "place" existing as a very real spatial dimension; just as tangibly real to them as that restaurant was to us. They also both described the other personalities in the exact same manner that one would describe the other patrons in a restaurant; they all were distinct individuals and would get verbally as well as physically pissed off if you did not respond to them as if you were literally responding to any other person in front of you.

They even had subtly distinct physical attributes, which I personally witnessed in the case of my ex. Her face did, in fact, physically alter in subtle, but alarmingly detailed ways, which, of course, was all part of my, at that time, documentary about MPD.

Some were older than she was and several, in Billy Milligan's case, spoke languages fluently that the "real" Billy Milligan could not have possibly learned at any point in his childhood (the personality was a middle aged "protector"who spoke fluent Serbo-Croatian). This is actually documented and in the public record, no less), so, you know, take it with a grain of salt ).

Now, again, I'm not positing any "metaphysical" explanation at all here; quite the opposite. From my studies of theoretical "multiverses" and loop quantum gravity theory and string theory, the notion of "higher" (or, perhaps better, "different") dimensions is not just plausible, but likely. Does that therefore necessarily mean that "consciousness" is constrained to any one particular dimension?

Well, judging from our own three dimensional (actually, four dimensional) world, that doesn't play out. And lest I start sounding like Malai, what I mean is, that our consciousness clearly does "span" at least three, if not four dimensions.

I don't know if any of you understand any HTML coding, but there is a simple phrase that is a good analogy, and that's "TD Colspan=X."

Inside joke.

Anyway... The point is, that to my then girlfriend, these "internal" personalities were as real and as diverse as anybody in that restaurant, the convenient exception being, of course, that they clearly represented aspects of her "overall" personality. But, the question I raised was, who was to say?

Her therapist's goal (I had set out to do a documentary, but could only get permission from my exe's personalities for an audio recording) was to integrate all of the personalities (which was also the goal and temporary success of the therapists in the Billy Milligan book, btw), by, get this, getting all of the personalities to enter the "spot" together.

This would be considered a "fused" individual.

All of this made my head reel, of course, but nothing made me more confused than when I asked her for examples of what it was like in her head at any given moment when we were driving back to her house after the therapy session. She told me about a time when she was driving to work (keep in mind, by the way, that the "she" I was talking to varied depending upon circumstances, so that the story I was getting was from the personality whose typical "job" was to drive) and had to "leap off the spot" in order to break up a fight between two of her personalities who hated each other.

I said.... "What?"

"Yeah, I was driving to work and suddenly had to leave the spot because one of the 'undesireables' had gotten loose and was picking on one of the children."
"Wow," I faltered. "Who took over driving?"
"Oh, I don't know. Somebody. That's the way it works."

Now, is she entirely the prisoner of brain chemistry? Possibly. Her "dissorder" was the result of (as so many are) both physical and verbal abuse as a child; extreme trauma, as a matter of fact, that I won't go into.

Suffice it to say that it was intense enough to cause what her therapist referred to as "dissociation." What I found interesting (and was to be the thrust of my documentary) is why the bias toward a "disorder" and not a glimpse into "psyche evolution" (as I was referring to it)?

Her therapist (and others I've read of) saw it/see it as a chemical misfiring due to the trauma that causes some sort of theoretical mobius loop, I assume, within whatever mechanism accounts for "self-identity" and that her personalities simply reflected the jobs they were assigned by the shattered consciousness, but this struck me as a horse-after-the-cart-rationalization.

I have said on numerous occasions, "I'm just not myself" and I'm sure all of us have at one point or another said, "I'm not in the mood" (and no, I'm not referring to sex, though that could factor in as well; apparently, as I learned years later, I was having sex with three distinct personalities; a five year old, a seventeen year old and a thirty nine year old, eventhough at the time we were dating, "she" was only eighteen).

Now, I grant as a card carrying atheist, that this speaks of "metaphysical" musings, but that is not my contention in the slightest; I merely posit that our physical surroundings may indeed hold a sort of Freudian projectionist clue to our "true" identities; i.e., that consciousness is not necessarily tied directly to the hardware in the same way that a computer user is not necessarily tied to the computer, until such a tool is needed.

In this regard, it's nothing to do with an "after life" in the slightest, but has more to do with a "dynamic" life that is simply symbiotic with whatever dimensional tools and/or rules that are specific to that paradigm.

After all and again, we span at least three dimensions, if not four, as well as the span of abstract thought such as dreams that certainly seem (note the unsure emphasis) to be in some manner transcendent of mere prima facia "reality."

I know, I know, lot's of seemingly "mystical thinking," but not when you thoroughly break it down, which is why I think cults so miss the mark while at the same time offering the grains of "truth" that entice so many.

In other words, I think it's a mistake to view consciousness and matter as an either/or proposition; as a "one gives rise to another or vise versa" dichotomy. I think it's much more complicated than that and see it more as a mutually dependent necessity, no matter what the typically physical qualities measured necessitate.

I see the typical view of "what is physical" to be nothing more than a tool of "what is conscious" and would expect that this relationship is non-existence; that they are entirely the same thing. Thus, when I think "pick up the bong" I am picking up the bong .

A glib ending to a nonetheless thoughtful post, IMO.

John Page

Koy:

Thought provoking post. So ironic about the MPD play. Do you think that actors are especially skilled in giving themselves a "personality makeover" and that there are inbuilt mechanisms in the brain that allow us to "adopt" personas. Clearly, if the mechanisms that focus/control personality traits go awry the brain activity could bring about an MPD.

I'm curious, though, how you arrive at the number of dimensions of reality. I propose that the number of dimensions perceived is limited by our ability to perceive them.

Now, I am not proposing that there is an arbitrary number of dimensions dependent on the mind, I am proposing that while we directly perceive objects, distances between them and change over time we might not be directly aware of gravity (until the Newtonian apple hits one on the head) - in this case we can build instruments that help us perceive gravity.

I offer, therefore, the conceptual model of limited human mind (both process and knowledge) and the instruments it has developed to gain a fuller picture of reality. Acceptance of this model admits there may be dimensions as yet unknown to us, although we can only talk with empirical authority of what we do know.

What say you and what are the names of your four dimensions?

Cheers, John

mhc

Mechanistic thinking process?
What's a thinking process?
An activity in the brain?
If that's so, then of course it can't be denied because it begs the question. You already assume that thought is identical brain activity. I think Descartes' question still stands here. Especially in the problem of subjective experience as illuminated so well in Nagel's "What It Is Like To Be A Bat" link:Nagel

Marvin Minsky's functionalist account, as entertainingly portrayed in a paper on his website here is close to a materialist view, but even then relies on imagery and emotion and narrative and the whole subjective experience to explain itself.
I mean, we don't communicate in binary code, and we can't understand what it would mean to do so with language. To make thought identical with brain activity is regressive, and leaves out the whole *cosmos* that is created in the culmination of experience.

John Page

Please, tell me more about this *cosmos*.

mhc

Well, the way I see it, there are things, and then there is our understanding of things, an understanding which is predicated on experience.
By cosmos, I mean, literally, everything that comprises intellectual experience.
I'm with Kant, that we can't know the *ding en sich*.
There's no way to translate from electrical impulses in the brain to an understanding of the Moon, or what it is like to experience the color green.
It's like trying to explain the experience of moving down the freeway at 70mph, by writing out an account of the internal combustion engine. The understanding is limited to a mechanistic process which can't relate what it is like to be in that fast-moving car.
The physicalist account leaves out the realm of subjective experience, which is what is *really* happening to us.

I don't think (my) atheism requires a mechanistic view of reality. To allow the noumenal world is just to admit of cognitive limitations, and we have no reason to fill that unknowable space with a God. To do so is false, really. Belief in God is unwarranted.
To say there are limitations on what we can understand needn't be mysticism. And, it seems just as unwarranted to believe that our understanding can know no bounds.

It seems no matter how precisely we explain neuro-physiological functions, they can't explain what it is like to be the "recipient" of those functions, and a reductionist account fallaciously ignores real human experience.

I'm not dogmatically attached to this view, this has just been my experience of it so far.

{edited to add:}

Taken further, a political problem comes up:
All religions attempt to "corner the market" on fundamental human experiences, often forcing their adversaries into defending less-than-cogent positions. We flatly cannot allow this to happen, and must regain these areas (morality, subjective experience, etc.) from them. Christianity is infamous for overlaying existing truths with Christian interpretations, and thereby usurping them. The most important thing we can do to fight religion is to take back the humanities. THey would love to corral us all into a group of equation-spouting Borg. The dichotomy between science and religion is false, because religion is false. God has no more a seat in philosophy, literature, and art than he does in physics or molecular biology.

John Page

So if it can be shown how intellectual experience occurs we're done on the OP?

mhc

Not necessarily. I just think that in order to have a mechanistic thinking process, we need to be able to indicate the mechanism, which, in the OP, I take it is not entirely semantical, or psychological, but has to do with particular brain states. And I think that there's an obvious correspondence there, but no more than is shown in a supervenience-like relationship; what consciousness is remains unexplained.