Glen and DaveW and all, Ok, so I have cc'd in the last correspondence that occurred just before our discussion about who and what is conscious [ness} got forked up. That included comments from DaveW,and Glen. Again, thank you, for helping me along here.
I now see that we need some sort of a working distinction between experiences and anecdotes. Try this: An experience is something that happens (to you). An anecdote is the telling of a series of experiences such that some principle has been established, if only inexplicitly, when the anecdote is done. So David, in his last post, is telling anecdotes and Glen is citing experiences, for a first approximation. This is interesting to me because the line between citing an experience and telling an anecdote seems so tenuous. Intuitively, I want glen to put those experiences in a broader context so I can see why, for him, they indicate self consciousness -- make them more like anecdotes, Glen! Intuitively, I want Dave to anchor his anecdotes in some experiences. More ethology of dragons, and less oneness with the Universe! I think this latter intuition may be based on a distrust of experiences generated the mysteries of grammar. One can say, but one cannot experience having been married to a bachelor; one can say, but not experience the sound of one hand clapping; one can say, but not experience, the experience of not having experiences. To the extent that meditation involves the pushing away of experiences, I am suspicious of it. Please see larding below: On Sat, Jul 20, 2024, 9:57 AM Prof David West <profw...@fastmail.fm> wrote: dragon stories: my very first experience with peyote, I was 12-13 and living on the Hopi reservation with my aunt and uncle. A group of boys were given the peyote as a reward for gathering cottonwood buds for use in a Hopi ceremonial dance. Of the five of us only one other wanted to try the drug, so I consumed roughly for doses. A massive thunderstorm was in progress. At some point, a dragon coalesced from the lightning, thunder, filtered sunlight and began speaking to me. [important interjection: my brain was "making sense' of an overwhelming number of sensations, some detected by nerve endings, others generated by frantic neuron firings. Assumed/assuming this is the same kind of thing that happens when the brain 'makes sense' of the bombardment of sensations/neural firings that create the "illusion" of an external world.] we engaged in an apparently long lasting conversation about my recent experiences in Hopi-land, the various Hopi stories I had been told that summer and how to interpret them. At some point the dragon used the phrase, "alarums and excursions;" an idiom I had first encountered some 8 years prior (pre-grade school) in a book called David and the Phoenix. [interjection: till this point my interactions with the dragon were, as far as I could tell, pretty much identical to the interactions I might have had with another human being in the 'waking world'. This includes the implicit assumption that I was interacting with a sentient, conscious, and self-conscious being.] *NST>>> I take that your experience was of a normal conversation with a dragon. As you describe it, is seems just that. Because I agree with you, uncontravertibly, that a conversation is evidence, I agree with you that both your and the dragon were both conscious. Whether you both existed is a whole 'nother matter. <<<nst* Second story: I was exploring the use of pain as a means of inducing an altered state of consciousness. Four hours of enduring intense and varied pain administered by a sadistic dominatrix in Salt Lake City, made me very self-aware with a raspy voice. I began the 9 hour drive to Santa Fe to attend FRIAM. Along the way my body went into shock and I dealt with that using meditative techniques. I also was playing a CD of meditative Buddhist chants that I began to hum out loud with my raspy voice. The result was the altered state I had been seeking. Somewhere in Arches National Park, I stopped, stripped naked and walked down a dry wash where I 'encountered' a campfire and sat down. Brigham Young was sitting at the periphery of the campfire and we began a long conversation about Mormon theology and metaphysics, why blacks lost the right to the priesthood (there were blacks in the priesthood in Nauvoo while Joseph Smith was alive and that is one of the reasons the Mormons were persecuted by Missourians), why religions like Christianity, Islam and Mormonism changed from Feminism to misogyny, education, eternal progression, and a host of other topics. The conversation ended when I realized I would be late for FRIAM unless I stopped and resumed my journey. *NST>>> I stipulate that experienced a conversation with BG and that conversation is evidence of his consciousness. <<<nst* [interjection: both the dragon and Brigham Young were 'illusions' constructed "by the brain" just as the 'illusion' of ordinary reality. While interacting with them, they were, to me, sentient, aware, and conscious entities. I attributed sentience, intelligence, consciousness to them precisely because of the perceived interactions- the verbal (in my case) and the 'auditorialized' (neuron firings interpreted as sound) voices (of dragon and Brigham).] *NST>>> To be blunt, this just seems like physiobabble. You have no idea what is going on in your brain nor is it relevant to the experience. Becareful not to confuse explanations of experience with the experience itself. <<<nst* After the fact self analysis of the incidents conclude that in both cases, the "conversation" was between 'my self' and 'my memories': of the David in the book and his conversations with the Phoenix in the book; all of the writings of Brigham Young I had read years before. These stories do not, technically bear on where or not dragons are conscious, but they most definitely bear on whether or not domestic animals and Nick are conscious—by virtue of the fact that the 'data' and the 'interpretation of the data' are, evidently, the same. *NST>>>On the contrary, if we collected a thousand such stories from different people, I bet every one of them would be conscious, as we have agreed to understand it. <<<nst* You might make an argument for 'faulty machinery' in my two stories, but what is gained vis-a-vis our common understanding. *NST>>>Why on earth would I make such an argument? how would that alter the fact of the experience and our understaning of its relation to consciousness. <<<nst* . Prof David West Jul 22, 2024, 11:41 AM (2 days ago) to The, Shedd, me We seem to have changed thread titles, but continuing the discussion ... Nick said: "I’m not so clear concerning what our common understanding of self-consciousness is. Might need some more anecdotes to flesh that out." In that vein, some additional anecdotes. I, is! As a native speaker of English, I read, speak, write, and think as if this assertion is inescapably true. Weak attempts to learn other languages have not resulted in much difference, although Arabic created a wisp of an impression that the assertion might be escaped, and Japanese (the Kanji, not Hirigana or Katakana) definitely created a deep suspicion. But I was never fluent enough to 'think' in either language, so I do not know." I. Illusion. Decades ago, I practiced the Zen Koan meditation, 'what am I'. Any answer posed to the question is wrong and eliminated; as each answer is an attribute of a physical organism or some kind of mental/social construct. Eventually, "I" diminishes to "i" and ultimately to "Is." The last, however is a property of existence/Reality not something 'apart from' or 'part of'. Very difficult to put into words obviously as the experience is an absence of something, not a thing itself. *NST>>>Here is where I worry that a grammatical quandary is being confused with anexperience. That we can speak of a non-experience does not make it an experience of nothingness. <<<nst* Non-sensationalism While a student at Macalester, some of us went over to the U of M to experience the absence of sensations in a deprivation tank. Can the "I" experiencing sensations be separated and directly apprehended? In my experience, and via reports from others involved in the experiment, NO. Although greatly diminished, sensations were still present. Perhaps nerve endings firing at random, perhaps a passing neutrino triggering the release of a single photon. Something, some vestige of "I-ness" was still there, still interpreting (poorly) the paucity of stimuli. Time distortion, "I have been in here for hours, did someone forget to let me out?" Emotions, primarily fear and panic. No glimpse of 'me', however. Non-sensationalism on acid Wow! Jung was correct; there is a vast and rich collective unconscious. "I" am a growing body of all that "I have been." Both the collective and the idiosyncratic is a joy to wander about, marvel at, and (re)experience." Seeking Self Consciousness On several occasions I have ingested 4-6 Hoffmans [a Hoffman is 150 microgams, the amount he took on Bicycle Day] of acid, with preparation akin to that of practitioners of lucid dreaming, i.e., preparing the mind to have a directed experience. Specifically, to "see," directly apprehend and experience, one's Self. The journey begins with the same kind of 'tour' of idio-self and collective-self as the previous story. Diving into one's self, trying to find its locus, to situate it in relation to everything/anything else becomes impossible. The dimensionless point being sought constantly expands until it encompasses absolutely everything. A feeling of omniscience, of ABSOLUTE AWARENESS, is there. But no "self." *NST>>> I agree that I fear there is something not-quite-coherent about the concept of self. Why should I be startled when I catch myself in a mirror? "That thing?!!"<<<nst* * * * * These are some of my anecdotes. From them, it might be concluded that I have no experiences of self-consciousness and therefore may not be able to participate in any effort to establish a "common understanding" of same. davew *glen via <https://support.google.com/mail/answer/1311182?hl=en> redfish.com <http://redfish.com> * Jul 22, 2024, 12:25 PM (2 days ago) to friam Mine run a little more banal. *NST>>> Glen, could you help me see why one or more of these are illusory of self-awareness. <<<nst* Behaviors exhibiting/defining consciousness • Cat grooming himself • Dog doing circles for a full minute before lying down • Cat reflecting on whether he wants to stay in or go out when I crack the door • Itch transfer (you have an itch somewhere, you scratch it, and you suddenly itch somewhere else) • Losing one's grip on, say, a glass on the table, dropping it, then immediately catching it • Tightening a nut just tight enough, but not too much (e.g. when you find yourself without a torque wrench) • Trying to deciding whether you've had enough to eat with food remaining on the plate
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