Monday, September 09, 2024

The Disunity of Consciousness in Everyday Experience

A substantial philosophical literature explores the "unity of consciousness": If I experience A, B, and C at the same time, A, B, and C will normally in some sense (exactly what sense is disputed) be experientially conjoined. Sipping beer at a concert isn't a matter of experiencing the taste of beer and separately experiencing the sound of music but rather having some combined experience of music-with-beer. You might be sitting next to me, sipping the same beer and hearing the same music. But your beer-tasting experience isn't unified with my music-hearing experience. My beer-tasting and music-tasting occur not just simultaneously but in some important sense together in a unified field of experience.

Today I want to suggest that this picture of human experience might be radically mistaken. Philosophers and psychologists sometimes allow that disunity can occur in rare cases (e.g., split-brain subjects) or non-human animals (e.g., the octopus). I want to suggest, instead, that even in ordinary human experience unity might be the exception and disunity the rule.

Suppose I'm driving absentmindedly along a familiar route and thinking about philosophy. Three types of experience might occur simultaneously (at least on "rich" views of consciousness): visual experience of the road, tactile and proprioceptive experience of my hands on the wheel and the position of my body, and conscious thoughts about a philosophical issue. Functionally, they might connect only weakly: the philosophical thoughts aren't much influenced by the visual scene, and although the visual scene might trigger changes in the position of my hands as I adjust to stay in my lane, that might be a causal relationship between two not-very-integrated sensorimotor processes. (Contrast this with the tight integration of the parts of the visual scene each with the other and the integration of the felt position of my two hands and arms.) Phenomenologically, that is to say experientially, must these experiences be bound together? That's the standard philosophical view, but why should we believe it? What evidence is there for it?

One might say it's just introspectively obvious that these experiences are unified. Well, it's not obvious to me. This non-obviousness might be easier to grasp if we carefully separate concurrent introspection from retrospective memory.

In the targeted moment, I'm not introspecting. I'm absorbed in driving and thinking about philosophy. After I start introspecting, it might seem obvious that yes, of course, I am having a visual experience together with a tactile experience together with some philosophical thoughts. But this introspective act alters the situation. I am no longer driving and thinking in the ordinary unselfreflective way. It seems at least conceptually possible that the act of introspection creates unity where none was before. Our target is not what things are like in (presumably rare) moments of explicit self-reflection, but rather in the ordinary flow of experience. Even if experiences are unified in moments of explicit reflective introspection, we can't straightaway infer that ordinary unreflective experiences are similarly unified. To move from one type of case to the other, some further argument or evidence is necessary.

The refrigerator light error is the error of assuming that some process or property is constantly present just because it's present whenever you check to see if it's present. Consider a four-year-old who thinks that the refrigerator light is always on because it's on whenever she checks it. The act of checking turns it on. Similarly, I suggest: The act of checking to see if your experience is unified might create unification where none was before. It might, for example, create a higher-order representation of yourself as conscious of this together with that; and that higher-order representation might be the very thing that unifies two previously disparate streams. Concurrent introspection cannot reveal whether your experience was unified before the act of introspective checking.

[illustration by Nicolas Demers, p. 218 of The Weirdness of the World]

Granting this, one might suggest that we can check retrospectively, by remembering whether our experiences were unified. However, this is a challenging cognitive task, for two reasons.

First, you can't do this easily at will. Normally, you won't think to engage in such a retrospective assessment unless you're already reflecting on whether your experience is unified. This ruins the test; you're already self-conscious before you think to engage in the retrospection. If you reflect retrospectively on your experience just a moment before, that experience won't be representative of the ordinary unselfconscious flow of experiences. Alternatively, you might reflect on your experiences from several minutes before, when you know you weren't thinking about the matter. But retrospective reflection over such an extended time frame is epistemically dubious: subject to large distortions due to theory-ladenness, background presupposition, and memory loss.

The best approach might be to somehow catch yourself off-guard, with a preformed intention to immediately retrospect on the presence or absence of unity. One might, for example, employ a random beeper. Such beeper methodologies are probably an improvement over more informal attempts at experiential retrospection. But (1.) even such immediately retrospective judgments are likely to be laden with error; and (2.) I've attempted this myself a few times over the past week, and the task feels difficult rather than obvious. It's difficult because...

Second, the judgment is subtle and structural. Subtle, structural judgments about our own experience are exactly the type of judgments about which -- as I've argued extensively -- people often go wrong (and about which, in conscientious moments, many people appropriately feel uncertainty). How detailed is the periphery of your visual imagery, and how richly colored, and how is depth experienced? Many introspectors find the answers non-obvious, and the answers vary widely between people independently of cognitive performance on seemingly-imagery-related tasks. Another example: How exactly do you experience the bodily components of your emotions, if there are bodily components? That is, how exactly is your current feeling of (say) mild annoyance experienced by you right now (e.g., is it partly in the chest)? Most people I've interviewed will confess substantial uncertainty when I press them for details. Although people seem to be pretty good at reporting the coarse-grained contents of their experiences ("I was thinking about Luz", "I was noticing that the room was kind of hot"), regarding structural features such as the amount of detail in our imagery or the bodily components of emotion, we are far from infallible -- indeed we are worse at such introspective tasks than we are at reporting similar mid-level structural features of ordinary objects in the world around us.

To get a sense of how subtle and structural the unity question is, notice what the question is not. The question isn't: Was there visual experience? Was there tactile/proprioceptive experience? Were there conscious thoughts about philosophy? By stipulation, we are assuming that you already know that the answer to all three is yes.

Nor is the question about the contents of those visual, tactile/proprioceptive, and cognitive experiences. Maybe those, too, are readily enough retrospectable.

Nor is the question even whether all three of those experiences feel as though they belong among the immediately past experiences of my currently unified self. Presumably they do. It doesn't follow that at the moment they were occurring, there was a unified experience of vision-with-hands-on-the-wheel-with-philosophical-thoughts. There's a difference between a unified memory now of those (possibly disunified) experiences and a memory now of those experiences having been unified then. Analogously, from the fact that there are three balls together in your hand now it doesn't follow that those balls were together a moment ago. Your memory / your hand might be bringing together what was previously separate.

The question is whether those three experiences were, a moment ago when you were engaged in unselfconscious ordinary action, experienced together as a unity -- whether there wasn't just visual experience and tactile experience and philosophical thought experiences but visual-experience-with-tactile-experience-with-philosophical-thoughts in the same unified sense that you can presumably now hold those three experience-types together in a single, unified field of consciousness. What I'm saying -- and what I'm inviting you to set yourself up (using a beeper or alarm) to discover -- is that the answer is non-obvious. I can imagine myself and others going wrong about the matter, legitimately disagreeing, being perhaps too captured by philosophical theory or culturally contingent presuppositions. None of us should probably wholly trust our retrospective judgments about this.

Is there a structural, cognitive-architecture argument that our experiences are generally unified? Maybe yes. But only under some highly specific theoretical assumptions. For example, if you subscribe to a global workspace theory, according to which cognitive processes are conscious if and only if they are shared to a functional workspace that is accessible to a wide range of downstream cognitive processes and if you hold that this workspace normally unifies whatever is being processed into a single representational whole, then you have a structural argument for the unity of consciousness. Alternatively, you might accept a higher-order theory of consciousness and hold that in ordinary cognition the relevant higher-order representation is generally a single representation with complex conjoined contents (e.g., "visual and tactile and philosophical-thought processes are all going on"). But it's not clear why we should accept such views -- especially the part after the "and" in my characterizations. (For example, David Rosenthal's higher-order account of phenomenal unity is different and more complicated.)

I'm inclined to think, in fact, that the balance of structural considerations tilt against unity. Our various cognitive processes run to a substantial extent independently. They influence each other, but they aren't tightly integrated. Arguably, this is true even for conscious processes, such as thoughts of philosophy and visual experiences of a road. Even on relatively thin or sparse views of consciousness, on which only one or a few modalities can be conscious in a moment, this is probably true; but it seems proportionately more plausible the richer and more abundant conscious experience is. Suppose we have constant tactile experience of our feet in our shoes, constant auditory experience of the background noises in our environment, constant proprioceptive experience of the position of our body, constant experience of our levels of hunger, sleepiness/energy, our emotional experiences, our cognitive experiences and inner speech, etc. -- a dozen or more very different phenomenal types all at once. You adventurously outrun the currently available evidence of cognitive psychology if you suggest that there's also constantly some unifying cognitive process that stitches this multitude together into a cognitive unity. This isn't to deny that modalities sometimes cooperate tightly (e.g., the McGurk effect). But to treat tight integration as the standard condition of all aspects of experience all the time is a much stronger claim. Sensorimotor integration among modalities is common and important, yes. But overall, the human mind is loosely strung together.

Here's another consideration, though I don't know whether the reader will think it renders my conclusion more plausible or less. I've increasingly become convinced that the phenomena of consciousness come in degrees, rather than being sharp-boundaried. If we generalize this spirit of gradualism to questions of phenomenal unity, then it's plausible that there aren't only two options -- that A, B, and C are either entirely discretely experienced or fully unified -- but instead a spectrum of cases of partial unity. Our cognitive processes of course do influence each other, even disparate-seeming ones like my philosophical thoughts and my visual experience of the road (if there's a crisis on the road, for example, philosophy drops from my mind). So perhaps our ordinary condition, before rare unifying introspective and reflective actions, involves degrees of partial, imperfect unity, rather than complete unity or complete disunity. (If you object that this is inconceivable, my reply is that you might be applying an inappropriate standard of "conceivability".)

The arguments above occurred to me only a week ago. (As it happened, I was absent-mindedly driving, thinking about philosophy.) So they haven't had much time to influence my phenomenological self-conception. But I do find myself tentatively feeling like my immediate retrospections support rather than conflict with the ideas expressed here. When I retrospect on immediately past experiences, I recall strands of this and that, not phenomenologically unified into a whole but at best only loosely joined. The introspective moment now strikes me as a matter of gathering together what was previously adjacent but not yet fully connected.

If you know of others who have expressed this idea, I welcome references.

[for helpful conversation, thanks to Sophie Nelson]

38 comments:

Anonymous said...

The criticism on the supposed unity of the object of perception in Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception seems like may rhyme with your argument for the disunity of consciousness. The "local" aim of his criticism is different, but the passages may be interesting to compare. I appreciate how you write without subjecting us to too much academic reference, so apologies for this quote, but since you were wondering about related discussions, here's Merleau-Ponty arguing that simultaneous sensory experiences may not be unified: "When, in the concert hall, I open my eyes, visible space seems to me cramped compared to that other space through which, a moment ago, the music was being unfolded, and even if I keep my eyes open while the piece is being played, I have the impression that the music is not really contained within this circumscribed and unimpressive space."

Mike Anderson said...

I’m sympathetic. And working on something adjacent (the binding problem). Let’s chat if you have a minute.

Arnold said...

"unity might be the exception and disunity the rule.":...
...Is consciousness only the appearance of disunity towards unity...

Arnold said...

Chancing!...read the forward of "Exchanges Within", published 1997, representing 110 years of others work toward 'consciousness' in everyday living ...

Eric Schwitzgebel said...

Thanks for the comments, folks!

Anon 11:52: Interesting! Thanks for that reference and quote.

Mike: Sure, let's chat. Very relevant to binding, of course!

Arnold: Thanks for the reference. I'll check it out.

Anonymous said...

Just some questions:

Might we distinguish between having something in mind and experiencing something? So we might say: I didn't have them both in view simultaneously, or on my mind or in view or in my mind or something like that simultaneously, but they were part of the same experience?

Might this also create a new puzzle: if they are disunited, how can we put them together again? How could introspection do this? It would mean this is always illusory, wouldn't it?

Is there some distinction to be made between the occurrent flow of the attending of attention of consciousness, and experience as a whole (both what we are aware of and what we are not aware of), or is this nonsensical?

Marco Masi said...

Why can't it go the other way around? Every experience is always a phenomenal unity, and it is our introspection that fragments it into phenomenal disunity. Seems to me more in line with my experience.

David Duffy said...

This recapitulates a few of the arguments in Charles Tart's _States of Consciousness_. His idea of "discrete states of consciousness" included examples such as the people only being able to remember where their full bottles are hidden when they are drunk, and inter-individual differences in conscious access (let's say constitutive or acquired) to faculties such as visual imagination. That is, for example (this is me not him), some individuals reporting aphantasia merely lack access - consider blind sight as a model.

Paul D. Van Pelt said...

Fascinating. I will turn this over some more and try to decide if anything I have read offers more clues. Am reminded of material read, years ago. I mentioned Sheldrake before. Books by the late Oliver Sacks may also have relevance. Preliminary assessment, as suggested in posted remarks: disconnections in our brains are nearly (equally?) as important as connections.

Paul D. Van Pelt said...

So, Dr. Sacks wrote on many things One which interested me, dealt with some people who live in the South Pacific. Sacks discovered these particular folks were color-blind. He also learned they chewed seeds from a primitive plant---there was an illustration. The condition appeared to be an irrevrersible psychotropic adaptation, and, from what the doctor wrote, the people did not KNOW they were color-blind. Or did know, yet, could not care, in any constituative sense. We lost Oliver to degerative ocular cancer., not color-blindness.

Those color-blind islanders have it better. I could talk about Temple Grandin.
Sacks spoke with her, too...different sort of cognitive dissonance---I think ir is called autism now. Her skills, around animal husbandry, are renowned.

Paul D. Van Pelt said...

An Anthropologist on Mars. That was one book I read. All good, though. Miss him...

Eric Schwitzgebel said...

Thanks for the continuing comments, folks!

Anon Sep 9: Yes, it might be possible to distinguish between "having something in mind" and experiencing it. I'm aiming to explore the latter. Introspection putting things together wouldn't be an illusion: It might *really* bring things together. The only mistake, on the view I'm suggesting, would be inferring retrospectively that they were together *before* the act of introspection.

Marco: Interesting! Most people don't seem to report that, but your divergent opinion suggests that the matter is non-obvious and/or differs among people.

David: Thanks for the suggestion of Tart. I'll look again at that book with this question in mind.

Paul: Yes, Sacks is wonderful! One of my favorite all-time writers and observers of the human condition.

Michael Kubovy said...

See my Lives as Collections of Strands: An Essay in Descriptive Psychology https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/nqq5ti4v79tbjpd7ac69s/Kubovy2019.pdf?rlkey=b8j9lu03co9h3mzifa6r2z3de&dl=0

Jenelle Salisbury said...

I have very similar intuitions re: the introspective data being misleading! In my dissertation I focused on split-brains but I just found them helpful as a test case to motivate the conceptual possibility of partial unity - in reality I agree with what you’re saying that it’s likely the norm. The tricky thing is that while me (the organism, the human) might very clearly have only a partially unified experience, it is a more difficult case when we start talking about *I*, qua subject rather than organism. If such a thing exists and if all my experiences are had by that same subject there is also a trivial sense in which they are unified in virtue of that. But most conceptions of conscious Unity in the literature seem to want something beyond this trivial thing. Also I think that Nagel really hit on something deep when he talked about the conception of minds according to which they seem to need to be countable in whole numbers. I have a lot to say here that a blog comment can’t do justice to, but I enjoyed reading your post!!

Paul D. Van Pelt said...

Had not read Nagel on this matter. Thanks for the tip!

Eric Schwitzgebel said...

Michael: Thanks for the link. I'll check it out!

Jenelle: Interesting project. I'm inclined to think that even the "trivial" sense in which subjects must be unified might collapse upon the thorough consideration of non-human, AI, and atypical-human cases. (I'm working on a paper on this right now.) Feel free to send me material from your dissertation or other work if you think it might be relevant and of interest.

Arnold said...

I was right to wait for a reply to JS by ES; about '*I*, qua subjectivity'...
Why are intuition and perception subjects unrelated to an object...
...isn't belonging to a human being here an object for them...

Paul D. Van Pelt said...

Well. We create the world, based on OUR IMPs. If one argues the world as constituative product, all good there, as well. But, wait. Hmmmm...had we never emerged, or, evolved, there would never been a world, as we know it.
So, would Bonobos be, uh, us? That could mean an over-population problem, long ago resolved...or, exaggerated, one-hundred fold?. History is long, and though we worry about a tentative future, we rarely think of an alternate past. Of course, if we conclude Bonodos are kin, then we are back where we started. The worm turns. The dog keeps chasing its' own tail...


Jenelle Salisbury said...

Oh, that sounds super interesting, I would love to read the paper you are working up about the collapse of subject-type unity in atypical cases. I am not sure whether we are on the same page but it’s possible.

I had basically argued that partially unified phenomenal experience within an organism is conceptually and empirically plausible, and it challenges some traditional conceptions of the subject. It was surprising to me how underexplored partial unity seems to be so I’m glad you’re working on this.

Kaj Sotala said...

You may also enjoy this piece: https://www.susanblackmore.uk/articles/there-is-no-stream-of-consciousness/

Excerpt:

> For many years now I have been getting my students to ask themselves, as many times as possible every day “Am I conscious now?”. Typically they find the task unexpectedly hard to do; and hard to remember to do. But when they do it, it has some very odd effects. First they often report that they always seem to be conscious when they ask the question but become less and less sure about whether they were conscious a moment before. With more practice they say that asking the question itself makes them more conscious, and that they can extend this consciousness from a few seconds to perhaps a minute or two. What does this say about consciousness the rest of the time?

> Just this starting exercise (we go on to various elaborations of it as the course progresses) begins to change many students’ assumptions about their own experience. In particular they become less sure that there are always contents in their stream of consciousness. How does it seem to you? It is worth deciding at the outset because this is what I am going to deny. I suggest that there is no stream of consciousness. [...]

> I want to replace our familiar idea of a stream of consciousness with that of illusory backwards streams. At any time in the brain a whole lot of different things are going on. None of these is either ‘in’ or ‘out’ of consciousness, so we don’t need to explain the ‘difference’ between conscious and unconscious processing. Every so often something happens to create what seems to have been a stream. For example, we ask “Am I conscious now?”. At this point a retrospective story is concocted about what was in the stream of consciousness a moment before, together with a self who was apparently experiencing it. Of course there was neither a conscious self nor a stream, but it now seems as though there was. This process goes on all the time with new stories being concocted whenever required. At any time that we bother to look, or ask ourselves about it, it seems as though there is a stream of consciousness going on. When we don’t bother to ask, or to look, it doesn’t, but then we don’t notice so it doesn’t matter. This way the grand illusion is concocted.

Kaj Sotala said...

(I also argue somewhat against Blackmore's interpretation here: https://www.lesswrong.com/s/ZbmRyDN8TCpBTZSip/p/AhcEaqWYpa2NieNsK )

Arnold said...

Understanding seeing listening sensing feeling observing are simply phenomenal subjects in the object of being....

Eric Schwitzgebel said...

Thanks for the continuing comments, folks! Kaj: Yes, Blackmore is interesting on these issues (though more radical than I am in some respects) -- thanks for the reminder about her 2002 paper and the link to your reply!

Howie said...

The first thing to come to mind is: is consciousness a thing? Even things like a car, though they work in unison, are made up of separate bits and pieces. If you see consciousness as an extension of the mind or the brain, one part of the brain might be dumb to the other part of the brain. Let's compare consciousness to a fire and not a light. No matter what size the fire there will always be light, but the different parts of the fire have different hues and different temperatures and so on

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the write up. Unexpectedly relevant.

One thought popped up while reading this. It links consciousness, unity and memory.

I find this a common “predicton” or “framing” error in judgement when I infer some predictions from a situation that does not consider an important factor of this part experience. Classic examples are my own emotions at the moment and influence of other factors during the day.

If at the moment of the original experience I am conscious of an additional factor, I can account for it, but even then It almost always is with a bit of a delay, like the deeply learned worldviews react first and only then with power of consciousnes I can remind myself that there are more factors at play.

So even ordinary everyday events are experienced kind of “in parallel to” my whole background and experience in this world. And uniting them often requires conscious effort in each case and is not learned easily.

This feels like the mind is a big reservoir with water and external events strum some strings inside it that starts all kind of waves that happen at the same time and the whole body oscillates as a whole. Some events or their combination lead to “familiar music”, which might be caught by consciousness as a feeling of familiarity.

At this point the brain might want to “explain” familiarity by bringing up relevant memories. Memories are bound by our emotional readiness to relive the past experience. Sometimes they are surface level and only reveal analogy to recent events, some techniques might lead the memory to dig up more deeply rooted experiences that are relevant and are reverberated through life otherwise and their origin is never actually known.

Anonymous said...

I love the idea that people are coming to the same way of thinking via different routes. I came across this concept via. a few things, some of them quite early considerations, such as Norbert Weiner's Cybernetics and Marvin Minksy's Society of Mind, which are older references. The one that really stuck with me was Kevin Kelly's "Out of Control" which, despite being a very 'temporal' book - it was of the technology of the moment and potential outcomes, it did cover his memory of being on the back of truck somewhere looking up the stars at night and the fallibility of memory and that his memory has been altered over time and acknowledges the experience as remembered is not the same as the experience was itself. If you ever experience alternate states of consciousness via whatever method be it lucid dreaming to psycho-active substances, you can experience the fragility of the concious identity of self, and become open to shared memory/experience etc. and blow open all of the Freudian conecepts which while somewhat applicable are themselves fragile and easily transcended given the right circumstances.

The most wonderful thing about this is we're considering arriving at approximately the same destination. Not so much we are taking the path less travelled in as much as we are building new paths!

Arnold said...

My question, what is consciousness, what does it provide...
...is consciousness object experience from subjectivity...

AI Gemini, while consciousness is inherently subjective, it seems to provide a framework for understanding and interacting with an objective world...

Gordon said...

You mention plausible cases in which synchronic states of consciousness may not be as unified as we (or I at least) tend to pre-suppose. But are there not other cases in which positing a certral unified consciousness is, at the very least, the most parsimonius explanation of how we can function. Think of all the various distinct conscious states--visual, audio, intellectual.. that is involved in even the simplest conversation

Eric Schwitzgebel said...

Thanks for the continuing comments, folks!

Anon Sep 15: Interesting description of your sense of things. I think that's consonant with the view I describe in the post.

Sai Gaddam: Thanks for the link to the stimulus and suggestion of Grossberg's work. I confess that I am skeptical of all positive theories of consciousness; I don't think we're in a good epistemic position to resolve several of the major disagreements that such theories will have to commit on (including: the sparseness/richness of human experience; what animals are conscious; unity/disunity). The general framework you describe does resonate with me. I'll look into it more.

Anon Sep 16: Yes, and I agree that altered states of consciousness -- while I don't necessarily see them as particular insightful -- at a minimum show that our brain and consciousness can work very differently than in typical waking consciousness, and thus deserve more attention from consciousness researchers.

Arnold: What the function of consciousness is, is very much up for dispute!

Gordon: Yes, certainly in conversation we bring several elements together informationally/functionally and probably in consciousness too, perhaps through a unified attention stream. If there's also an experience of your feet in your shoes, or a passing irrelevant thought, or an experience of hunger, those *might* not be part of that same unity, though -- or at least that's my thought in this post.

Gordon said...

So then the thesis is not that there are no good grounds for supposing a unity of consciosness, but just that we cannot assume all synchronic conscious states are included in this unity. Wonder how this would affect those of us who might want to make philosophical hay about the unity of consciousness as a premise for bigger and better things.
On a related note, I was reminded of Sartre's treatment of the 'transencendence of the ego" which is just a fancy way of say of saying that the self is constituted upon reflection as an object for consciousness, not in any sense "inside" consciousness, whatever that would mean. the process is easy to see via example.
(1) I see peter and feel repulsion
(2) then i say to peter "I hate you"
(3) Peter, no I did not mean it, i said it only in anger
How is this possible? it is possible because, on Sartre's account, when we reflect on the momentary feeling of repugnance, we constitute a self with a persisting property "hating peter" but to hate someone is not just to feel repugnance at this or that moment, it is a persistent state of mind (he has various existentialist reasons for the motivation... we like to think our actions come from persistent states of us, b/c it helps escape accountability.) Be that how it may, isn't there a clear sense in which how we understand ourselves is a construct, at best an informative weaving together of sundry mental states but also and perhaps often weaving together misleading patterns. the self as object, S. says is a the result of layered reflective processes from immediate conscious state, to relatively persistent emotional states "I hate peter" to even more general states of myself in general ("I am a spiteful person") this is not exactly what you are talking about, but perhaps related

Arnold said...

If 'everyday experience' is consciously expressed in the evolution of life, at different times as necessary for evolution to exist...
...then is it, our world is like a cat in a sealed box, unobservable till consciousness is needed by evolution-again...

And isn't it consciousness can appear for exchanges of energy in any study...

Paul D. Van Pelt said...

Lots of luck, there. When one alludes to **exchanges of energy*, one remains in a realm of physics---not metaphysical spirituality. All right. I do not know. I am neither cleric or mathematician. Not sure either, or both help much, insofar as they are, IMHO, and after Gould, NOMA...Look it up...few, if any, cared for his view. I paid, or is that payed?---attention. I do not pay more than I must. "neighbours" are annoying, in a barrio or ghetto. Well.The rent is not bad.

Arnold said...

I 'looked up'-energy...energy comes to us in many forms; it is just a physical sense and "must" receive and transform like all biological entities...

Paul D. Van Pelt said...

Ok. Several notes, here: Energy from, say, the sun, is experienced by us as a physical sensation. There are, of course, other benefits. The sun does not care....it has no intention around us or any other living things.As an energy source, sun will proceed until it burns itself out, asking no permission; offering no forgiveness. Any other interpretation relies on belief(s) and /or metaphysics. One can argue energy as emanating from more than direct sun. That assertion is valid enough. Creatures live, and abound, in the darkest caverns of earth. Life finds a way. Earth is a heat sink, and we don't know how residual that might be, after the sun goes out.

Paul D. Van Pelt said...

BTW, my reference to Gould's NOMA notion was unanswered earlier. I asked about a matter that has always troubled me. And, for which Gould was thrashed when he brought it up. Professor Gould's notion claimed, or asserted, there were studies and disciplines which had no obvious connection(s) with one another. This was somewhere around the turn of the millineum, shortly before he died---way to young. I don't know what this means, now. I DO think interdisiplinarianism has not been helpful, in any pragmatic way. It has, I think,led us to further doubt certainty and embrace skepticism, which would make James and Rorty shiver. Was SJG right? I don't know. But, IMPs are insatiable, in asmuch as they are interests, motives and preferences. Sorry if my point(s) was/were missed. This is hard work. I have no patience with fallacy flingers...

Arnold said...

Eastern and Western thought are Entangling today and may be a benefit...
...to our learning inner-outer-between living are forces in movement...

Paul D. Van Pelt said...

Inasmuch as consciousness seems beyond unity, maybe we should *throw in the towel* on any understanding of it. Some good minds have done so. I am privileged to know one of them. What was the term, Neo-Scholastic Metaphysics? I would like a bottle of Chalmers' winnings on that old bet. Guess I can "go fish" on that wish. Maybe DISunity is an essential, steady state---forcing us to admit a reality *we never made*¿ Howard, the Duck was not the only one confused. Yeah, the inverted question mark, a feature of Spanish, is intentional here. On reflection, perhaps infinity is nearer than we think? Or, not. Go fish.

Paul D. Van Pelt said...

Wrote something different, today, on another blog, after digesting material here. Yes. I realized my Spanish comments were distraction. No problem. All done with that.