Third day TSC conference april 23

Plenary 2 session about “Attention and Consciousness”

This interesting session implicated already in the headline that it was more about perception and understanding and then describing consciousness by the way senses and brain works.

Speakers Michael Graziano, Alison Gopnik and Ned Block.

In the way Ned Blocks presented his research i came to think of brain´s limitation of consciousness that an illusionist might use to fool the perception of reality.

How attention affect awareness was a question to Graziano who answered that it was a two way process.
Childhood consciousness have a lantern (wider) observance while the adult has a spotlight focus.

Are feeling (consiousness) and thought (cognition) fundamentally different?
by Ned Block philosophy

Ned Block says his perspective is the opposit of Daniel Dennets “Consciousness is just a sort of judgement”.

meaning Cognition is sparse and Perception is rich.

Ned gave some amusing samples of this statement also reffering to where in brain the perception occurs.

Subliminal or unconsious perception
Percept vs Concept. You need concept to formalize perception.

Attention and broacasting
Youtube Ned Block on Consciousness as an Illusion

Afternoon

Subjectivity and Ojectivity

John Searle

Among his notable concepts is the “Chinese room” argument against “strong” artificial intelligence.

We should think of consciousness as perceiving…

We are in the early states of correlations and we don´t yet know what is significant.

There is a higher level that excludes the problem of cause and effect. On a lower level action can be described as neuron communication but that still don´t explain the question.

Rebecca Goldstein (born February 23, 1950) is an American novelist and philosopher. She has written six novels, a number of short stories and essays, and studies of mathematician Kurt Gödel and philosopher Baruch Spinoza.
Her speach was to explain that feature and fiction do the same thing namely externelize consciuosness that the scientist do but much richer. By using tricks to show that it is a subjective process in the brain.

“And then miracle occurs”

Deepak Chopra

Dr Chopra discussed different points of views regarding the hard problem that Chalmers introduced and stressed that he did not involve any of a long range of indian thinker, philosopher or yogis.

A good yogi can regulate inner organs of the body.

Comment: This is the first dimension in my theory named “Body consciousness”. You can compare this body controll with Archaean organism moving around DNA molecules without endangering its life just trying new solutions./end comment.

Then Chopra ask:

What is consciousness?
What is existense?
What is awareness of existens?

There is no explanation for any experience, mental or perceptual.

How do atoms and molecules buildup to a brain producing consciousness?

(My reflection: Cell consciousness? cell mind? cell intelligence?)

How do we explain intention, experience imagination?
Perhaps a top down approach is the answer?

Non Local Possibility Field (Comment: Term from Larry Dossey?
My term Independent or of material world consciousness)

Consciousness is non-local and acausal

It expresses itself as qualia gestalts, which are fundamental properties of mind: sensations, images feelings and thoughts

Consciousness agent are expressions of consciousness there are species and culture.

Chopra text

Plenar discussion

showed that there were two different levels of thinking and since they didn´t understand each other it led nowhere.
To use my terminology Deepak talked about Independent Consciousness and John about elemental mind.

Finally there was a question of creativity. I couldn´t find out what they ment. Att that point I guess they were to aggravated.

Well in my opinion Creativity is a fundamental force in every consciousness on any level down to mikroorganism.

Börje Peratt

Second day TSC conference and official start april 22

This day started at the breakfast table with a long meeting with my friend Jan Pilotti and saying hello to some i met earlier. You find photos and most meetings in gallery below.

Melody Hong from Taiwan was on the plan to Tuscon from SF and we had a long talk the whole trip. Then Graeme Breckon NZ turned up with a surprised look. To meet him even for a short second gives both energy and joy. So the breakfast continued until lunch and there was no seminar for me this morning.

Official start
Stuart Hameroff introduced the speakers starting with David Chalmers first giving a historical summery of what has happened the last 20 years. And also bringing up different views, pros and cons about The “Hard Problem” (note).
Second speaker Daniel Dennet representing not only a hard materialist but also the Four Horsemen of New Atheists opened with a statement that he had the only usefull statement.
What is the “Hard Question” and postulating that this conference haven´t reached anywhere during this 20 years.
Third speaker Donald Hoffman started up with a story about a lost beetle and i came to think of Darwins the surviving of the fittest or the ones who are not rigid but flexible. So when the numbers turned up I left. I´m not fit to follow consciousness in mathematical formulas.

Afterwards there were many discussions. Daniel Dennett were stopped and listened patiently to questions and defended his (professional) atheistic attitude. “Someone has to stand up for this discussion” he said. He also answered a few questions and admitted that he had seen that the group also has been called the Apocalypse Riders (on Swedish Wikipedia).

I then met Adarsh Deepak again with his wonderful wife they form a winning team but she is rather behind the camera than in front of it. It would be nice to develope our contact into a work this also Adarsh suggested. And that also goes for Dan Park. We have had several long ineteresting conversations.

At the evening it was a big feast with food and drinks and more meetings. Overall a fantastic panpsychic day.

If someone wants to fill me in the hard problem, feel free to do that 🙂

I have my Poster session (P1: 337) this Wednesday April 23, 2014, 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm at Arizona Historical Museum.

Börje Peratt

Melody Hong from Taiwan

Graeme Breckon from New Zealand

Stuart Hameroff introducing speakers

David Chalmers first speaker

David Chalmers The Easy Problems

David Chalmers, The Hard Problem

David Chalmers Combination Problem

David Chalmers Empiricist rational solution

Daniel Dennett and Stuart Hameroff

Daniel Dennett-The hard question

Daniel Dennett-The coffey machine theory

Donald Hoffman

Daniel Dennett_Boerje Peratt 22aprtsc

Henry Vyner about Healthy Mind and Jody Weiss already into meditation

Peter H. Psycho Therapist New Zealand

Adarsh Deepak Taksha University and BP

Daniel C. Park M.D., Ph.D and BP

Robert Rhodes, physicists

Penelope Rowlatt scientist and economist from London

Note Wikipedia
The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining how and why we have qualia or phenomenal experiences — how sensations acquire characteristics, such as colours and tastes. David Chalmers, who introduced the term “hard problem” of consciousness, contrasts this with the “easy problems” of explaining the ability to discriminate, integrate information, report mental states, focus attention, etc. Easy problems are easy because all that is required for their solution is to specify a mechanism that can perform the function. That is, their proposed solutions, regardless of how complex or poorly understood they may be, can be entirely consistent with the modern materialistic conception of natural phenomena. Chalmers claims that the problem of experience is distinct from this set, and he argues that the problem of experience will “persist even when the performance of all the relevant functions is explained”.