Neil is one of our experts. In 2012, he gave us an excellent interview on complexity theory, and we've stayed in touch ever since. We do have some serious differences, however, in how we view consciousness. I am a strict materialist and he is an Idealist. This conversation began after I had revised the video I had made from Neil's interview.
https://vimeo.com/44013533
I informed Neil about the changes, and this conversation happened.
both of those answers make me happy. and, as i said, this convo has been exceptionally useful for me to understand better just what it is i hope to accomplish with my book AND making me think i need to do it in two steps (two books!) rather than one... that will be a decision for my editor/publishers no doubt! but i have a much better sense of what i am up against (cuz you ARE good audience for it!) and what i need to accomplish if it will be successful in any measure. thank you!! meanwhile, if/when i dig into the convincing OBE/NDE data i promise to prod you with it and see what you think. but clearly that needs to be stirred into my mix.
your base assumption is an assumption. it is not one you and i share. and i think that everyone who shares that base assumption is left with two options: insist on it ("extraordinary evidence can never be extraordinary enough" to convince you otherwise) or be open to the possibility of it being a falsifiable hypothesis. This is why i talk about your cultural training - its hard for you to see that your assumption is merely a hypothesis - and i suspect (just suspect, given this conversation), but would hope otherwise (why i'm having the conversation), that no amount of evidence for "mind beyond brain" can ever be sufficient to dislodge you from that assumption. Michael Lerner, famously: "what would be sufficient evidence to convince you that Psi phenomena are real?" "no evidence would be sufficient." So then it is a faith based system you are expressing, not a scientific program. your starting assumption needs further examination in the face of evidences to the contrary. of course its fine not doing that! but then at least acknowledge that you have these assumptions that do not form a persuasive argument on their own merits. that's fine. i have no problems with agnostics, just with atheists who insist they must be right (in a tangentially related kind of discussion <g>).
You are just giving me mechanics - you are not giving me awareness. you aren't leaping that gap for me. because, as i said, you think the data ARE the experience of the data. but i don't see how they can be that. AND there is evidence from meditation, OBEs, NDEs, etc (very selectively curated - not ALL those data) that awareness/experience of data can be independent of brain, independent of neural correlates of consciousness. stating that neural networks ARE experience of data doesn't make it so, no matter how elegant the system. the correlations are still merely correlations - they do not leap out to be anything but correlations - and, therefore, are not definitively explanatory as you would have them be. saying that mind arises from material doesn't make it so, no matter how convinced you are (by your cultural training i would say) that it does so.
i repeat: i think that you are conflating the perceived data with the experience of the perception itself. they are not the same thing.
lol we are looping!! you are, to me, conflating the perceived data with the experience of the perception itself. they are not the same thing. even if one is in a VR set up (like a dream) there is still something that is the awareness itself, the experience of the perception. doesn't matter if its false or true. i agree with you (and the likes of Don Hoffman for sure) that our perceptions are distortions and not "true" - but the experience of our perception is not explained by any of what you describe. it is a separate thing - that is where we are at logger heads: i see that experience of the perception as separate from the contents of the perception - you insist they are one and the same. back to chalmers! 😉
the awareness isn't fake or not fake. the contents of awareness are fake or not fake. the awareness is simply: awareness. back to the hard problem basics: you can take the quantum physics of red spectrum light, the reaction as it hits photoreceptors in the retina, the way those trigger nerves to fire into the visual cortex, and those in turn signal to other neurons, etc etc. none of those explain the experience of the color red. those mechanics don't translate to me feeling/seeing/experiencing REDNESS. they are just photons and chemicals and cells doing stuff. you keep substituing mechanics for your experience of REDNESS. the REDNESS of it is the mystery you don't answer for me. what is it that registers all that stuff as REDNESS - its not just more mechanics in the neocortex. all those things correlate with your experience of REDNESS, but they are only correlates - they are not that REDNESS, itself.
to me the awareness of dreams is no different than all other awareness - the information one is aware of is "fictitious" but the awareness of the information is no less awareness - particularly when one is lucid dreaming (my current hoped for route to better OBEs!)... 😉
lol there isn't a metaphor that can convince me, i suspect, matt. to me it all remains bits of information - information alone is not Awareness, is not Experience of Experience. this is the hard nut of the hard problem. you are describing a biological machine that springs into awareness - sentience: yes, that's fine, can be completely mechanical - as i describe in your video! but i no longer make the leap from sentience to awareness being just a more complex version of things. to me, awareness of experience, is something of a different order - not in the way emergence transcends the parts, but because it is its "own thing" - independent of brain, independent of "I", independent of self. it isn't an illusion. so i don't think a metaphor is going to do it for me what you've also made clear to me with this convo, though, is that my book may need to be TWO books. or a much longer first book - cuz i think to go where i want to go convincingly i have to dig deep into NDE's, OBE's - awareness without or beyond brain. and probably research from entheogen induced other states of consciousness. and a few other things. will have to see what my editor says! OY!!! 😉
all that true of course. and the OBE's i've had were in hypnogogic states - that's often necessary to potentiate the trip for adepts. i can't get into that state and stay there easily in order to try to travel. but there is a lot of literature on this stuff. but meanwhile, Mark just texted wanting to know where i am and i have 50 or so endoscopic biopsies to diagnosis - so this is for now! go ahead get (today's) last word in! its so nice spending time with you again! 🙂
but what about when OBE's leave the room? common reports. have experienced twice myself (very odd) being up and out and seeing/perceiving things elsewhere that have checked out when i spoke to the peeps i was "seeing" - and have a couple of friends who are adepts and can report to me things about my surroundings that they can't know from physical presence, but are true. likewise, some (i wish we could italicize here) some NDE's also occur long after brain function so diminished and/or they are from sites not within the sensory range of the near dead body. Peter Fenwick and... the dutch guy... (aging brain failure of memory recall on display) have cases of NDE that don't fit your criteria for being explainable by "failing input."
what about data from near death and after death and out of body experiences - where thought and awareness are happening independent of the brain you base everything upon? another vast welter of data that can't be explained by a hippocampal activity if the hippocampus isn't functioning. Mind without brain would be a monkey wrench in your works, no?
(i'm supposed to be looking at my GI biopsies, but i just don't want to - so i keep coming back to you - feel free to step away at any time and deprive me of an excuse to avoid my job and get myself home to dinner...) the "awareness" i am talking about IS profound - but also profoundly simple - its not a peak experience in meditation, but perhaps little exposures to "only awareness" make it possible for me to experience it within the experiences. it IS subtle. to me, its the necessary capacity that undergirds the biological mechanisms you describe for becoming something experienced, i.e. felt to be "real" (even though it is all empty of "realness" too)... i don't see how complexity of neuronal and other cell interactions leaps into this Thing of Experience. Computers are doing complex "things" but they aren't aware they are doing it - they are absent from the task even as the task procedes. I don't think they can be or ever will be for that matter (another debate, of course). I don't know how, in any piece of your hardward and software, we become present to the fact that something is happening.
lol we are in a not-so-strange loop! it feels to me like you are unaware of your own sense of awareness. maybe that's one of the differences between people who find this a Hard Problem and those that don't? maybe you aren't perceiving your own faculty of awareness, so it feels like the story your telling is more than mechanism, but the thing itself. the capacity to be aware isn't a bunch of cells firing. its the "what is it like to be a human with memories" like you describe. its: what is it like to be witnessing the process as one is participating in it. so i guess i have to surrender. if you ever have a really intense ajahuasca trip, let's speak again and see if something else occurs to you! 😉 and THANK YOU for having this convo with me! really has been very helpful to me, truly.