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Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:
Cartesian Roots of Speculations about the interactions between consciousness and quantum physics View project
Currently working on a special kind of digital particles, i.e. operators on digital particles in complex space-time. View project
All content following this page was uploaded by Hans-Joachim Rudolph on 16 January 2019.
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Part I
Dan:
Hans-Joachim, I am glad that you posted this. I recently read this
piece in response to our conversations about the role of quantum
physics in explanations of consciousness. I found no indication in
there that Schrödinger felt that quantum phenomena offered a means
of explaining consciousness, or understanding the supposed "Hard
Problem". He rejects dualism early on, and without dualism there is no
"hard problem".
This should be the full set.
http://web.mit.edu/philosophy/religionandscience/mindandmatter.pdf
2
Hans-Joachim:
We could start a textual work, paragraph-by-paragraph?
Hans-Joachim:
It is interesting that he starts this essay with a psychological
statement, saying that "the world is a construct of our sensations,
perceptions and memories." Only in the second sentence he adds
what we would expect to hear from a physicist, i.e. that it can also be
regarded "as existing objectively on its own."
You might remember that I also maintained this simple truth. But here,
Schrödinger makes a subtle distinction: He says that the world "does
not become manifest by its mere existence."
Dan:
He goes on to say later that it makes no sense to speak of a world
that is not a world for a subject, and that goes back to his questioning
of the subject/object distinction. I'll be up to maintaining that there is
nothing "spooky" about the "observer effect". It just amounts to there
being no such thing as pure observation without any effect, at any
level of analysis, be it quantum, biological, sociological or cultural. We
are participants, not observers.
Hans-Joachim:
The same idea was caught by Heidegger without referring to quantum
physics: He spoke about the inexhaustibility of reality and the
astonishment over the fact that there are “open places”, where "nature
opens its eyes and notices that it is there". Without such testimony the
world would be a place of mere presence, closed in itself. So, we
might say that witnessing elevates simple presence to manifested
existence.
Dan:
"The nervous system is the place where our species is still engaged in
phyogenetic transformation: metaphorically speaking it is the
'vegetation top' of our stem. I would summarize my general
hypothesis thus: consciousness is associated with the 'learning' of the
living substance: its 'knowing how' is unconscious."
Hans-Joachim:
"consciousness is associated with the 'learning' of the living
substance"
Dan:
Hans-Joachim, those loops you speak of, which "lead to", "support"
consciousness: those are the structures Edleman emphasizes - the
cortico/thalamic networks of reenty. I might be off here, but I think
Damasio cites similar loopy structures critically involving the insular
cortex. Wherever you find that "loopiness" of reciprocal connections
and potential iterative processing of information, you find a potential
5
Dan:
I've been thinking about a question that you posed to me earlier in
regard to the "observer effect", the Zeno effect, and neural systems.
6
Hans-Joachim:
Dan, you ask "whether, on the one hand, that type of "loopiness"
occurs at the quantum level, and whether it is necessary to invoke it
(the quantum level), as there is ample support for self-reference in the
neurological structures themselves."
Of course, self-reference occurs on the level of neuronal circuitry, and
the connectome will provide not only a list, but even a map of it in the
near future.
The thing is that this "loopiness" doesn't provide any conscious
experience by itself. It's just an indicator of conscious activity
(depending on the Φ-value of IIT). Experiences occur exclusively on
the imaginary level; as we agreed earlier, all experiences (whatever
can be described phenomenologically) are imaginary. And it is only
the interaction between these two levels, where quantum theory
comes in.
Without such an openness, the loops would be places of mere
presence, closed in themselves. But remember, this is not a dualist
position.
7
Dan:
(depending on the Φ-value of IIT)
You loss me, Hans-Joachim, with expressions like this. Also, I do not
think all experiences are imaginary, but I think it may be possible to
model experience with the notion of imaginary and real number
spaces, as you have done. That is very different from saying that
experiences are imaginary in a mathematical sense. That would be to
confuse the model with what is modeled.
Hans-Joachim:
... to confuse the model with what is modeled.
You're right. That has been my problem since long. Excuse me for
having fallen into this trap again.
But IIT and the Φ-value: We'd discussed it earlier ( http://
journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003588),
and I'd referred to Tononi et al's Center for Sleep and Consciousness
at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in this thread.
And regarding the imaginary: I had Kauffman's article on my screen:
"Self-reference and recursive forms", which we had also discussed
earlier. Therein he concludes: Only the imaginary is real.
Hans-Joachim:
But I should return to Schrödinger's article, and particularly to the
second topic in chapter 1 - "a tentative answer". In the beginning he
8
Hans-Joachim:
Paramaprakrti and Paramapurush, the two aspects of Brahma, are
translated as the operative (doing or actional) and the cognitive
(knowing) principle.
Dan:
I'm partial to Emergentism. The problem with Panpsychism is that the
type of consciousness that is required to complete the system, as
something that is intertwined with matter at the deepest quantum level
and has existed through all eternity (or since the first Big Bang,
whichever came first) is so far removed from the notion of
consciousness that we usually employ in daily life that it is difficult, at
least for me, to see the two uses as referring to the same "thing".
What I like about Emergentism is not only it's naturalism, but - and this
is the part rabid spiritualists overlook - it's appeal to miracles, or
"singularities". Christian De Duve, in his account of the evolutionary
process, highlights "singularities". The development of Sex is a
"singularity". The development of the organelles, mitochondria and
chloroplasts, are "singularities" as was the emergence of the
Eukaryota from the Archea and Bacteria. Life is a line of very singular
events.
There is something suspicious in using the idea of "emergence" as an
explanation of origin. It just happened. In retrospect we could identify
the preconditions of the phenomena that "Emerged", but by definition,
we could not have predicted it. It is akin to the formation of a Gestalt.
Hans-Joachim:
I agree that our problem of understanding cannot be captured by the
dichotomy of Emergentism versus Panpsychism.
In an earlier thread, we already dealt with Aristotelian versus
11
Dan:
Interesting articles, Hans-Joachim. I only had a chance to glance
through them, but I'll take a closer look when I can. This caught my
eye:
Thomas Nagel (1979) influentially argued that adopting a view like
Panpsychism is the only way to avoid what he called “emergence”.
Crucially, close examination of the text reveals that Nagel is using the
word “emergence” slightly differently to how it has come to be used in
contemporary discussions of Panpsychism (discussed above). For
Nagel, “emergent” properties of a complex system are ones that
cannot be intelligibly derived from the properties of its parts. In
contrast, for the “emergentist panpsychists” discussed above,
“emergent” properties of a complex system are simply fundamental
macro-level properties, which may or may not be intelligibly derived
12
Hans-Joachim:
The sections of Schrödinger´s second chapter. are headlined as
follows: A biological blind alley? The apparent gloom of Darwinism.
Behaviour influences selection. Feigned Lamarckism. Genetic fixation
of habits and skills. Dangers to intellectual evolution.
In the fifties nobody talked about epigenetics, which has become a
focus of contemporary research meanwhile. I'm sure Schrödinger
would have cheered and supported it.
Dan:
"Quantum measuring is a built-in function of all matter."
That's pure speculation. Remember also that "Schrödinger's cat" was
a thought experiment set up by Schrödinger precisely in order to
highlight the shortcomings of the Copenhagen Interpretation,
particularly its lack of clarity in the notions of "measurement" and
"observer". So, in the eyes of Schrödinger, you've simply elevated a
lack of conceptual clarity into a fundamental principle of the universe.
14
_______________________________________________________
Hans-Joachim:
Today I found in our most renowned, national newspaper - the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) - a long article entitled "Wie
kommt der Geist in die Natur?" It's a translation from English, written
by the Norwegian philosopher Hedda Hassel Mørch, who is currently
at the NYU Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness as well as the
Center for Sleep and Consciousness of the University of Wisconsin-
Madison (which had been mentioned during our discussions
repeatedly). The original article was published April 6, 2017 in
Nautilus (=> http://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/is-matter-conscious).
All the questions & queries we were dealing with during our combined
efforts in this forum are specified therein. This means more or less
that Panpsychism and dual-aspect monism have reached mainstream
media.
Some weeks ago we discussed about Kant and the thing in itself. Now
this topic returns in the form of Arthur Schopenhauer’s succinct
response to Kant saying "We can know the thing-in-itself because we
are it" (you find it just after the headline "In order to give both
phenomena their proper due, a radical change of thinking is
15
required").
It's about consciousness in a very general and basic sense, not in the
sense we use the word when we speak about humans. Regarding
that difference, she argues that it should be easier to see how to get
one form of conscious matter (such as a conscious brain) from
another form of conscious matter (such as a set of conscious
particles) than how to get conscious matter from non-conscious
matter: The 'combination problem' should be less hard than the
original 'hard problem'.
Hans-Joachim:
I think most of us once thought for a while that the antagonism of
matter and energy might be related to the body-mind problem.
Schrödinger relates to this possibility; in chapter 3, page 123, he
writes:
“Let us, with all the knowledge we have about it, follow such a 'tender
look' inside the body. We do hit there on a supremely interesting
bustle or, if you like, machinery. We find millions of cells of very
specialized build in an arrangement that is unsurveyably intricate but
quite obviously serves a very far-reaching and highly consummate
mutual communication and collaboration; a ceaseless hammering of
regular electro-chemical pulses which, however, change rapidly in
their configuration, being conducted from nerve cell to nerve cell, tens
of thousands of contacts being opened and blocked within every split
second, chemical transformations being induced and maybe other
changes as yet undiscovered. All this we meet and, as the science of
physiology advances, we may trust that we shall come to know more
and more about it. But now let us assume that in a particular case you
eventually observe several efferent bundles of pulsating currents,
which issue from the brain and through long cellular protrusions, are
conducted to certain muscles of the arm, which, as a consequence,
tends a hesitating, trembling hand to bid you farewell - for a long,
heart-rending separation; at the same time you may find that some
other pulsating bundles produce a certain glandular secretion so as to
veil the poor sad eye with a crape of tears. But nowhere along this
way from the eye through the central organ to the arm muscles and
the tear glands - nowhere you may be sure, however far physiology
advances, will you ever meet the personality, will you ever meet the
dire pain, the bewildered worry within this soul, though their reality is
to you so certain as though you suffered them yourself - as in actual
18
Basically the same argument was brought forward some 300 years
before by G.F. Leibniz, who suggested a thought experiment that
involves walking into a mill, showing that material things such as
machines or brains cannot possibly have mental states. Only
immaterial things, that is, soul-like entities, are able to think or
perceive.
All this shows not only that our minds must be immaterial or that we
must have souls, but also that we will never be able to construct a
computer that can truly think or perceive.
Dan:
Notice, though, Hans-Joachim, that while Schrödinger's description
supports the impossibility of reducing awareness to physical
processes, thus maintaining them as separate domains, he also
speaks of there being no place for a subject/object distinction in
philosophy.
Hans-Joachim:
Dan - yes, he speaks of there being no place for a subject/object
distinction in philosophy. But he maintains that this is valid only for
philosophy! First he says that this distinction is deeply rooted in our
cultural heritage. Then he emphasizes that we have to accept it in
everyday life 'for practical reference'. And thirdly he maintains that this
19
http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?
pid=diva2%3A1046024&dswid=-6586
Hans-Joachim:
But let me come back to Schrödinger's "Mind and Matter", where he
describes in chapter 4 what he calls the arithmetical paradox. He says
"there appears to be a great multitude of (these) conscious egos, the
world however is only one." Further down he concludes. "There are
two ways out of the number paradox, both appearing rather lunatic
from the point of view of present scientific thought (...). One way out is
the multiplication of the world in Leibniz's fearful doctrine of monads:
every monad to be a world by itself, no communication between them;
the monad 'has no windows', it is 'incommunicado'. That none the less
they all agree with each other is called 'pre-established harmony'. I
think there are few to whom this suggestion appeals, nay who would
consider it as a mitigation at all of the numerical antinomy.
There is obviously only one alternative, namely the unification of
minds or consciousness. Their multiplicity is only apparent, in truth
there is only one mind."
Now, if I take these two propositions together, (1) that the multiplicity
of minds is only apparent, and in truths they are just one mind, and (2)
that energy and the experience of energy is one and cannot be
differentiated into its aspects - if I accept these propositions, I can
agree with Dan's position, which he has brought forward repeatedly.
But, before going into the details, I would like to ask you, Dan,
whether you agree that these two are essential for your philosophical
stance?
Dan:
Hans-Joachim - I hope that you don't expect a straightforward answer
to your question : ). I think it gets complex, and ties back to your
discussion about reconciling the Immanent and the Transcendent. I
22
read this chapter many years ago, and what I remembered of it, prior
to rereading it, was the notion of there being only one consciousness,
ultimately. When I reread it, what struck me was that Schrödinger
ends on a somewhat ambiguous note. He does not resolve the
antimony between the One and the many, and seems to suggest that
it is not resolvable:
"To me this seems to be the best simile of the bewildering double role
of mind. On the one hand mind is the artist who has produced the
whole; in the accomplished work, however, it is but an insignificant
accessory that might be absent without detracting from the total
effect."
"(2) that energy and the experience of energy is one and cannot be
differentiated into its aspects"
I'm not sure. I think our understanding of the concept of energy is
based on our experience of energy, in the same way that our
understanding of the concept of "life" is based on our experience of
being alive. To think conceptually is to differentiate, but the basis of
our conceiving is our own experience.
Hans-Joachim:
Indeed, chapter 4 doesn't provide a positive outlook. Rather it's an
account of paradoxes, antinomies and absurdities. Most of all he
complains that we have not yet succeeded in elaborating a fairly
understandable outlook on the world without retiring our own mind,
the producer of the world picture, from it, so that mind has no place in
it.
Nevertheless, I have two remarks:
Firstly, I think that Schrödinger’s „arithmetic paradox“ is actually
exactly the same as what Hedda Hassel Mørch calls „the combination
problem“. But while Schrödinger seems to be quite desperate, Hassel
Mørch has more hope to find a yet undiscovered solution.
Dan:
I don't see Schrödinger as desperate or hopeless, Hans-Joachim. I
may be reading more into what he said than is warranted, but the very
last paragraph describes both the necessary atheism of natural
science and the personal validity of an experience of the Divine. That
is a rich mixture. To me, it offers promise. The double roles of mind
and consciousness suggest that sense of Transcendence in
Immanence. I think the lack of reconciliation of the antinomies is a
fruitful paradox.
Hans-Joachim:
Dan - what you say is true, and there is hardly anything to add. Only
one thing: Leibniz's Monadology has been extended, and there is a
Quantum Monadology developed by Teruaki Nakagomi. His papers
can be found, next to other useful articles, in a periodical called
Neuroquantology (=> https://www.neuroquantology.com/index.php/
journal/index).
Also, even, if you would like to read these 20.000 letters, you would
not be able to do so, as most of them are still unpublished. They have
been kept for 300 years in various archives, withstanding wars,
famines, firestorms etc.; so it needs a lot of care to prepare them for
publication.
In 2016, Leibniz's 300th obit was celebrated in Hannover, and I went
there to get a glimpse of it (=> https://www.flickr.com/photos/
25
30954202@N05/31039335711/in/album-72157675343260882/).
In the 17th century, science and philosophy were not run in the way
as it is done nowadays. What I know about misconceptions and later
corrections on his Monadology is from Hubertus Busche's "Gottfried
Wilhelm Leibnitz: Monadology", Akademie Verlag, 2009 (https://
www.amazon.de/Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz-Monadologie-Klassiker/dp/
3050043369).
I don't think that you can be more knowledgable about Leibniz's
philosophy than Busche, particularly as he didn't write the book alone,
rather it's a compilation of various authors...
Dan:
Hans-Joachim - Did Leibniz correspond with Bach?
Hans-Joachim:
Dan - your intuition brought me to an interesting article, which
starts with the inscription:
"How Bach’s musical intervention into the thought-process of the
young King Frederick II continued Leibniz’s epistemological battle
against the oligarchical outlook of the Venetian-directed
‘Enlightenment’", and culminates in the following sentences:
"The American Revolution of 1776-1789, was made possible by the
growing political influence of a cultural revolution spreading
throughout Europe. This was the so-called Classical revolution, led by
the vowed defenders of the legacies of Gottfried Leibniz and Johann
Sebastian Bach, the leading cultural opposition to the French and
British Enlightenment of that time."
It presents lots of details, but also relates to the "Criss-Crossing Paths
of Leibniz and Bach", as well as the "Leibniz-Newton Conflict". You
can find it at
https://de.scribd.com/document/261568206/Bach-s-Musical-Offering
Dan:
Thanks, I'll take a look at the article.
Dan:
Have you had a chance to read the second chapter, Hans-Joachim?
That's the one I found particularly interesting as it includes an
argument for the role of consciousness in biological evolution.
Schrödinger describes what has come to be known as the Baldwin
Effect, but he never makes mention of Baldwin, and instead he
27
mentions Julian Huxley. The Baldwin Effect was dismissed for many
years in evolutionary theory because it was viewed as trivial or too
metaphysical, or both. The first time I came across a description of it
was in a book by Richard Dawkins, "The Ancestors Tale". That shows
just how close to mainstream the idea has come, because Dawkins
represents something close to the epitome of a materialist, non-
metaphysical position.
I want to separate this portion off from the rest because it is beautiful,
and it is a continuation of the above:
"In brief: consciousness is a phenomenon in the zone of evolution.
This world lights up to itself only where or only inasmuch as it
develops, procreates new forms. Places of stagnancy slip from
consciousness; they may only appear in their interplay with places of
evolution."
Hans-Joachim:
Yes, and I think that this position has reached mainstream thinking in
the form of epigenetics. Wikipedia says: The "Baldwin effect" is better
understood in evolutionary developmental biology literature as a
scenario in which a character or trait change occurring in an organism
as a result of its interaction with its environment becomes gradually
assimilated into its developmental genetic or epigenetic repertoire
(Simpson, 1953; Newman, 2002). And it add the words of D. Dennett:
Thanks to the Baldwin effect, species can be said to pretest the
efficacy of particular different designs by phenotypic (individual)
exploration of the space of nearby possibilities. If a particularly
winning setting is thereby discovered, this discovery will create a new
selection pressure: organisms that are closer in the adaptive
landscape to that discovery will have a clear advantage over those
more distant.
29
Dan:
I was going to mention Dennett's thought on the Baldwin Effect, but if I
had done that, I would have mentioned two of the "Four Horsemen" in
the same post, and that might have made some individuals nervous.
Just for fun, I want to suggest this rather academic and cognitive
description by Dennett:
"Thanks to the Baldwin effect, species can be said to pretest the
efficacy of particular different designs by phenotypic (individual)
exploration in the space of nearby possibilities,“ which means that can
“play“ in that space. Schrödinger might describe it as an encounter
with novelty, and use the metaphor of the growing top of a plant,
which, in some cases, when viewed with time-lapse photography,
appears to be actively exploring its environment.
Also, as in the schoolyard, "play" runs a continuum from "competitive"
to "cooperative".
Hans-Joachim:
Dan, I agree with that notion, but the question is whether such "plays"
need awareness, interiority, subjectivity - or whether they can run
simply externally, without witnessing their own standing?
At least that's what humans are doing: Before acting externally, we
can consider some consequences, playing with an action in our
mental space, checking for more possibilities with the help of our
imagination.
I don't mean that plants have a comparable richness of interiority, but
they should have something similar, in a rudimentary sense. And
that's where intelligence and the divine enter into the "play" of mere
chances.
Dan:
I think that you can equate that "play" with awareness, Hans-Joachim.
30
Hans-Joachim:
Here, we both agree.
Remarkably, this understanding also implies that what is unconscious
nowadays, must have been conscious once before.
Dan:
Hans-Joachim, It only occurred to me after I responded that you were
probably, at least in part, referring to Dennett's description of the
Baldwin Effect, which involved no "interiority" or "subjectivity". The
original idea advanced by Baldwin no doubt involved the ideas of
subjectivity and interiority. It was an explicit effort to highlight
consciousness as a driving force in biological evolution. Dennett's
description was the materialistic, "tamed" version.
31
Hans-Joachim:
But, let us return to Schrödinger's book. We already spoke about
chapters 1-4. Now chapter 5, which ends with the following words:
“To my view the 'statistical theory of time' has an even stronger
bearing on the philosophy of time than the theory of relativity. The
latter, however revolutionary, leaves untouched the un(i)directional
flow of time, which it presupposes, while the statistical theory
constructs it from the order of events. This means a liberation from the
tyranny of old Chronos. What we in our minds construct ourselves
cannot, so I feel, have dictatorial power over our minds, neither the
power of bringing it to the fore, nor the power of annihilating it. But
some of you, I am sure, will call this mysticism. So, with all due
acknowledgement to the fact that physical theory is at all times
relative, in that it depends on certain basic assumptions, we may, or
so I believe, assert that physical theory in its present stage strongly
suggests the indestructibility of Mind by Time.“
Dan:
"What we in our minds construct ourselves cannot, so I feel, have
32
dictatorial power over our minds, neither the power of bringing it to the
fore, nor the power of annihilating it."
"The ancient Greeks had two words for time: chronos (χρόνος) and
kairos. While the former refers to chronological or sequential time, the
latter signifies a proper or opportune time for action."
Hans-Joachim:
Very interesting!
Hans-Joachim:
On the other hand, the famous evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay
Gould, said: "When presented as guidelines for a philosophy of
change, not as dogmatic precepts true by fiat, the three classical laws
of dialectics embody a holistic vision that views change as interaction
among components of complete systems, and sees the components
themselves not as a priori entities, but as both products of and inputs
to the system. Thus the law of ‘interpenetrating opposites’ records the
inextricably interdependence of components; ‘the transformation of
quantity to quality’ defends a systems-based view of change that
translates incremental inputs into alterations of state; and the
‘negation of negation’ describes the direction given to history because
complex systems cannot revert exactly to previous states.” [An Urchin
in the Storm,1987, W. W. Norton, New York, pp. 153-154].
34
Dan:
That transformation of quantity to quality is not located between the
level of biochemistry and mental content. There are several
successive and interpenetrating levels of organization between those
two, and it's in that complex that the transformation occurs. You've got
the basic level of autopoiesis which defines the living system as such
in the environment, which defines it through its structure and function.
Right there, you have a transformation of quantity to quality through
the determination of what is relevant in the environment to the
organism, that is, the portioning of relevant "chunks" from the
quantitative continuum, which is the environment, carved out by the
organism as „meaningful", to the organism. You find that at the level of
the simplest unicellular organisms.
Each successive level of organization, from multi-cellularity on up
through social and cultural structures in us are but further refinements
of that basic partitioning of "self" and world, which is the
transformation of quantity to quality.
If you place the point of transformation from quantity to quality
between biochemistry and mental content, you put much more
explanatory weight on biochemistry than belongs there. It might in
theory be possible to conceive of biochemical structures that are
sufficiently complex to account for mental content or meaning, but that
complexity will be "borrowed" from the successive levels of
organization, the biological, organismic, neurological and ultimately
cultural. One could say that a sufficiently complicated biochemical
process occurring in a sufficiently complicated biological structure, set
within a sufficiently complex social and cultural context would
correlate with some mental content, but the organization of that
biochemical process would be better described in the terms of those
higher levels of organization.
The same issue comes up in descriptions of mind being the product of
35
Hans-Joachim:
I think that Emergentism is incompatible with the idea of an immortal
mind/soul. Emergentists argue that mental qualities emerge from
sufficiently complex brain activities. In the absence of brain activity,
however, mind cannot exist, therefore it must cease to exist when the
brain dies.
On the other hand, works of art can, indeed, survive thousands of
years, but they are certainly not immortal.
And mathematics? I don't think that it is produced by humans, rather it
is found by the human mind due to subtle similarities in our basic
conditions.
On page 142 of his book, E. Schrödinger writes: “A mathematical truth
is timeless, it does not come into being when we discover it. Yet its
discovery is a very real event, it may be an emotion like a great gift
from a fairy.“
Obviously, a higher degree of complexity is a necessary condition for
the emergence of mental qualities. The question is, however, whether
it is also a sufficient condition. In the context of dialectical materialism,
the answer would be a clear yes.
36
Dan:
I wonder what Schrödinger would say. He certainly seems
sympathetic to the notion of one consciousness, yet he doesn't
present any discussion of anything like a Universal Spirit in this work.
He suggests a kind of loose teleology, but it is open ended.
Hans-Joachim:
We already agreed that the belief in an Immortality of the Soul is not
identical with the belief in a Resurrection of Man. In that regard I'd
quoted the following passage:
"In the third century, the Platonic belief in immortality infiltrated the
Catholic Church, merged with the Christian faith in resurrection and
was raised to an ecclesial dogma not before the 5th Lateran Council
in 1515. ... Also the institution of requiems as well as the doctrine of
the purgatory can be understood only from this perspective",
which implies that in early Christianity this belief was not prevalent,
rather the followers thought that they will be reawakened at the time of
His second coming.
37
Dan:
Plato himself borrows the notion of an immortal soul from Orphism. I
find the idea a bit more appealing when I think of it as arising from
trance states induced by Orphic mystery rites. Plato gave rational
form to the insights of past shamans, in a way analogous to Descartes
giving rational justification to Church teachings about the soul.
38
Gotthard Günther
Hans-Joachim:
Before, I read about Gotthard Günther only once - in Peter Sloterdijk's
"Die Sonne und der Tod". Now, I can find more in a number of
interviews. It's very interesting - and it's directly related to our previous
topic, robots and AI.
Now I understand what was meant with "black box"! Rudolf Kehr
opened that thing, and it looks much "worse" than what I had
presented to my audience in 2012 (From imaginary Oxymora to Real
Polarities and Return). Here's Kehr's paper:
http://www.vordenker.de/rk/rk_Catching-Transjunctions_2010.pdf
It was written in order to present Günther's idea of transjunctional
operators!
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Hans-Joachim:
I understand that the whole becomes more than its parts only by
virtue of "transjunctional" operators, which allow correspondence
between otherwise inkompatible systems. In Google, I find
applications of such operators only on logics and sociology. Do you
have other references at hand?
I'm thinking of transjunctional operators to allow for multiple
correspondences between Nicolai Hartmann's four levels of reality, i.e.
the inorganic, the organic/biological, the psychical/emotional and the
intellectual/cultural level.
Dan:
One facile critique of Emergentism is that it is in fact materialism. Your
comment addresses that oversimplification.
Hans-Joachim:
In summary, Günther's polycontexturality theory represents a formal
theory that makes it possible to model complex, self-referential
processes, which are characteristic for all vital processes, non-
40
Hans-Joachim:
Now I understand what you meant with "black box"! Rudolf Kehr
opened that thing, and it looks much "worse" than what I had
presented to my audience in 2012 (From imaginary Oxymora to Real
Polarities and Return). Here's Kehr's paper:
http://www.vordenker.de/rk/rk_Catching-Transjunctions_2010.pdf
It has been written in order to understand Günther's idea of
transjunctional operators!
Hans-Joachim:
Gotthard Günther himself writes in "The consciousness of
machines" (1963):
After all, Wiener and his school questions, in an unprecedented way,
the millennial and time-honored distinction between spirituality and
materiality, as it has been handed down to us in its special classical
form. However, this must not be understood as if a new variant of
vulgar materialism has developed in the theory of "mechanical
brains", or as if the intention was to abolish the dichotomy of mind and
matter by means of new technical tools. Such an idea would be a fatal
41
mistake.
Dan:
Hans-Joachim - What type of information is Günther talking about
here? Information as defined by Shannon? If it is not Information from
"information theory", how is it different from meaning? Information as
meaning ties information to subjectivity.
The classic example of how meaning is handled in Apoha is: "a cow is
not a non-cow", and this is taken to be more than trivially true. It
involves double negation in a productive way. Somebody save me a
bit of work and reading by describing "transjunctional operators" and
the way they handle negation. It sounds very similar.
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Hans-Joachim:
Dan, this field is completely new to me; before, I never knew anything
about polycontexturality theory, Gotthard Günther, Heinz von Foerster
or Rudolf Kaehr!
Dan:
I have just a tiny bit of familiarity with von Foerster. I put down what I
had been reading of his because it seemed to relativistic, but I
probably jumped the gun in my judgement. The other two I have never
heard of. "Fuzzy logic" as a topic has gotten some airplay in this
group, as some major advancement. I never bought it. The space
between 0 and 1 is not some vague grey area between truth and
falsity. It seemed a gross oversimplification to say that a proposition
was .7628....true. That position on the continuum between 0 and 1 is
defined by a context. A proposition judged to be relatively true is true
in a particular sense, again, in a context. It sounds like Günther nailed
that down.
Hans-Joachim:
I didn't see fuzzy logic to play an important role in these papers. Yes, it
deals with the three-valued logic (with truth values 0, 1/2, 1),
developed by Jan Łukasiewicz in 1920. And it rejects the tertium non
datur of classical logic.
Dan:
But, what does Günther mean by "information"? Is this information as
defined by Shannon, or is it a more general use of the term?
subjectivity. No idealism which does not admit this can survive at the
present day."
I would like your thoughts about what Günther means by information. I
think that the first wave of cyberneticists kept faithful to Shannon's
definition, while the second wave played more loosely with the idea. I
think Wiener used the term ‘information' in the looser sense.
Hans-Joachim:
Günther wrote a few articles in English:
Dan:
"Also, he writes that in fundamental discussions about information,
one should conceive not only the immediate factum of information, but
the entire process of communication by which information is
conveyed."
Hans-Joachim:
Don't worry, Günther doesn't conclude that machines do have
consciousness. The title is more a kind of provocation, as people are
afraid of machines dominating mankind.
Let me quote from its last page, where he says:
“So nothing mythical happens in the robot brain, and actually it doesn't
have any consciousness of its own. If the ideas described in this book
can really be carried out, this would mean nothing but that man has
managed to detach some of his consciousness processes from his
organism and transferred them to another medium. A mechanism
doesn't generate consciousness, even if its working rhythm is trans-
classical.“
Dan:
45
Hans-Joachim:
I'm still reading "the consciousness of machines", and it's really
stunning... I would very much like to share it with you - Günther has
been called the "Einstein of philosophy", because he revolutionized
the logic foundation of philosophy, just like Einstein did in respect to
space and time.
On page 48 he says:
“Thus, the classical dichotomy between mind and matter, between
thinking and thought, resp. consciousness and thing should finally be
refuted. In a self-forgotten devotion to the object, classical philosophy
produced the theory of an irreflexive, self-sufficient and exclusively
with itself identical being. In this period, the problem of reflection was
hardly taken care of. It was tacitly accepted that reflection must be the
exact counterpart of being, and can therefore also be represented
self-sufficient, completely self-determined and fully identical with its
own inwardness.“
Dan:
It looks very interesting, Hans-Joachim. That triad, "I" "You" and "It",
has been coming up a lot in things I've been reading by he
Pragmatists, and it is also a central idea in the question of the
constitution of "objectivity" among some of the Phenomenologists.
Hans-Joachim:
These citations are basically about the fact that cybernetics is based
on semiconductor technology, which is again based on solid-state and
quantum physics. With the advent of such technologies, a new type of
machines has evolved, which cannot be compared to Leibniz's wind
mill. In his book, Günther doesn't say that such machines could
develop a consciousness as it is known to us; he says that they might
develop another type of self-reference, which will be new and
complementary to our consciousness.
Dan:
I haven't had any luck finding an English translation of "the
consciousness of machines". If you keep going, perhaps you will
produce one! What are you working from, a hard copy in German? I
did find a few articles by Günther in English which I've bookmarked.
Hans-Joachim:
I found the book at http://www.vordenker.de/ggphilosophy/
gg_bewusstsein-der-maschinen.pdf
There you can also find a complete bibliography:
http://www.vordenker.de/ggphilosophy/gg_bibliographie.htm
http://www.vordenker.de/ggphilosophy/gg_inf-comm-many-val-logic.pdf
There he writes:
“In fact, the success of the theory, which Shannon and his
collaborators developed, depends on a careful separation of the two
(information and meaning) and on the exclusion of the concept of
meaning from the formulas describing the laws that govern the
transmission of information from its sources to its recipient. It is
obvious that this approach is inadequate both for philosophic
anthropology and for the theory of culture which the Humanities try to
develop.“
Dan:
So do you have any access to German/English translation software?
Hans-Joachim:
I was using the Google translator, but it needs lots of amendments.
Page 60:
“Hegel's boldness entails in conceiving the materiality of being as
reflection itself - a materiality which precedes thinking and manifests
itself as such. According to him, substance and form are perfectly
equal to each other (at least as far as the foundation of dialectics is
concerned). They are logically the same. Reflection and irreflexivity
constitute a pure exchange ratio. This means that it makes no
difference whether we say: "matter has the property of
reflection" (dialectical Materialism) or whether we formulate "the mind
has the property of materiality" (objective Idealism). We deeply
believe that there is a very essential and fundamental difference
between the two statements. But this difference just imposes us on,
because when we reflect, that reflection is entrapped into an individual
consciousness, an Ego. To be an Ego means having taken sides
49
against the world, which is repelled from our own subjectivity as the
Other, as the embodiment of the object-domain. The fact that we can't
help otherwise is undoubtedly certain; because that would mean, to
give up one's own Ego, which can't be expected meaningfully. But if,
as Hegel says, the whole world and its history is, from the very
beginning, self-reflection, then we obviously are not entitled to take
our unilateral and biased state of reflection as the logical yardstick for
a worldview that wants to do justice to the nature of reality.“
Page 66:
“Western literature is full of petty fears that the machine will ultimately
enslave man.“ In contrast, the Russian scholar Novik explains:
"A kingdom of machines, even self-reproducing, cannot become
independent, self-contained, without depending on man as the prime
mover of cybernetic machines ... The automaton is no more than a
link in a close chain: man - nature. This link can become progressively
longer and more complicated, but it does not become the entire chain.
The automaton cannot occupy any other space in the universe except
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Page 71:
“It is perfectly possible to translate idealistic terminology into that of
intelligent dialectical materialism and vice versa. Unfortunately, our
eastern colleagues have not yet understood this fact! However, no
arrangement is possible between transcendental idealism and the
"stupid" materialism, which has not yet realized that the "material"
must have reflective properties as well.“
Page 72:
“Even the deadest, most "mindless" stuff is endowed with reflexivity. It
would be - remaining in the usual physical perspective - e.g. quite
impossible that on planet Earth self-organizing living beings emerge,
which call themselves in self-reflection "humans", and claim to have a
"mind", if not all reflection components of what we call consciousness
and mind are already in that hypothetical gas cloud and its
surrounding space-time dimension, from which our solar system was
supposed to have originated. Whether one calls that metaphysical X
God, soul, spirit or self-reflective matter, is totally irrelevant. Only
children are allowed to quarrel over words.“
Dan:
I'm still thinking about that quote, and what it might mean to broaden
the concept of information to include the processes of communication,
and not just the "message" or signal.
Hans-Joachim:
Regarding information, Günther says at the beginning of his article
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Dan:
Is that article available in English, Hans-Joachim?
Hans-Joachim:
It's this one: http://www.vordenker.de/ggphilosophy/gg_inf-comm-
many-val-logic.pdf
Page 83:
“What promises the peoples of the world a common future today is the
fortunate circumstance that this provocation will now be experienced
everywhere. It challenges Asians, as well as Europeans or Americans,
and does so in the same way in every sphere of civilization, in that it
exposes the mechanism of human existence everywhere and
releases no other choice but to deliver oneself to the mechanism and
then go bankrupt, even in the most blatant economic (let alone in a
deeper) sense - because the person ready only for mechanical
services will have no market value at all - or to develop a new creative
image of himself in which he conceives himself as so free that he can
fearlessly affirm the historical necessity of the machine, because he is
never in danger of being enslaved by it. Sonnemann rightly says:
‘Automation as the first process in the history of technology promises
52
Page 93:
“It is essential - and may serve as comforting powder to those who
need it - that the consciousness that cybernetic endeavors will one
day bestow on a machine, will historically always be at least one
epoch behind that of the constructor of the mechanism. This distance
of around one or more world-historical stages of reflection on
subjectivity is the decisive criterion of the difference between man and
machine. The difference is therefore a historio-metaphysical one.“
53
Hans-Joachim:
Coming back to Schrödinger's "Mind & Matter", I would like to
highlight his conclusion in chapter 6, where he says:
Scientific theories serve to facilitate the survey of our observations
and experimental findings. Every scientist knows how difficult it is to
remember a moderately extended group of facts, before at least some
primitive theoretical picture about them has been shaped. It is
therefore small wonder, and by no means to be blamed on the authors
of original papers or of text-books, that after a reasonably coherent
theory has been formed, they do not describe the bare facts they have
found or wish to convey to the reader, but clothe them in the
terminology of that theory or theories. This procedure, while very
useful for our remembering the fact in a well-ordered pattern, tends to
obliterate the distinction between the actual observations and the
theory arisen from them. And since the former always are of some
sensual quality, theories are easily thought to account for sensual
qualities; which, of course, they never do.
Dan:
In the way in which Günther states that we humans, and therefore the
type of consciousnesses we are, will always be a "generation or more
ahead" of what we take to be consciousness in machines,
consciousness is always ahead of whatever it takes as an object,
including any models, we as conscious beings make of it (or of
ourselves). It is what Schrödinger's talk of paintings with small
representations of the painter tucked away within them was about.
Hans-Joachim:
Indeed, we can't have consciousness, rather we are either conscious
or unconscious (Günther’s I-consciousness). Regarding others,
however, we can only assume that they are conscious; so we add
something to their existence, which we cannot experience, hence we
might loosely say that they have consciousness (Günther’s you-
consciousness). This is of special interest in cases of Coma vigile.
And regarding robots, we will never know - some might assume,
others won't - they might behave just like being conscious. The Turing
imitation game replaces the immeasurable by a measure how well
humans can distinguish the robot from a real human. Turing's
question was: How many of us how often and with what consistency
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cannot tell the human from the computer? In other words, rather than
measure whether a computer becomes sentient, or experiences
thoughts or consciousness, the test would measure whether others
believe that it does.
On page 72, Günther wrote that "it would be ... quite impossible that
on planet Earth self-organizing living beings emerge, which call
themselves in self-reflection "humans", and claim to have a "mind", if
not all reflection components of what we call consciousness and mind
are already in that hypothetical gas cloud and its surrounding space-
time dimension, from which our solar system was supposed to have
originated." Interestingly he doesn't speak only about the gas cloud,
rather he adds the surrounding space-time dimension. And this is, in
my view, the crucial point: Space-time has the potential to develop
sentience, provided that we accept it to have a complex structure.
Dan:
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Hans-Joachim:
Dan - that's beautifully said. And it corresponds to the basic reflectivity
(reflection components) mentioned above.
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