1

The mind-body problem in light of E. Schrödinger's


"Mind and Matter" (1958)



In 1958, Nobel laureate Erwin Schrödinger published a small book
entitled "Mind and Matter", wherein he provides a solution to the age-
old dualism of body and mind, which can be discussed in this thread.

Before entering one might read what has already been written in the
preceding threads on "mental causation“, “artificial intelligence“ and
"the hard problem":

https://www.linkedin.com/groups/4011660/4011660-6339202163360784388

https://www.linkedin.com/groups/4011660/4011660-6340564349463117826

https://www.linkedin.com/groups/4011660/4011660-6318195368953810945

A Discussion between Dan Hetherington and


Hans-Joachim Rudolph

Part II

Hans-Joachim:  

There is an interesting coincidence: The title of this thread is

"The mind-body problem in light of E. Schrödinger's "Mind and Matter"
(1958)". It employs the word "light"; but, although Schrödinger is a
renowned quantum physicist, I guess hardly anyone would assume
that it refers in this context to photons. Therefore, "light" has at least
two different meanings. 

It's not unusual that words have different meanings. We talked about
information and meaning before, and I had referred to Günther, who
showed the more than astronomical difference between Shannon's
definition of information, and the broader understanding, which
includes meaning: The concept of information derived from
2

information theory has no direct relation to semantics, meaning &

knowledge, as these can not be measured by information-theoretical
methods.

In philosophical discussions we can't do without semantics, meaning
& knowledge, which means that we always move in that more than
astronomical field of possibilities.

 

The word "light" is used in many contexts.

Let me give an example from http://www.neue-werkstatt.de/vortraege/
Vortrag_zur_Lichteinbringung:

Freemasonry is a cult of light. Which means that light plays a central
role in relation to knowledge, enlightenment and wisdom. Such light
cults are known to us since the Isis and Osiris cults of ancient Egypt:
the God Osiris, who was killed by his brother and brought back to life
by his wife Isis and his son Horus, is a symbol of the sun that appears
every day and disappears, comparable to the idea of dying and being
born again. At the same time, this dying and being born again is the
path, a candidate must take to be accepted and initiated by the priests
- a process of inner purification in the dark, before the light of
knowledge is given by an external force.



... This structure is encountered not only in ancient Egypt, but later in
the Eleusinian mysteries of ancient Greece, which worshiped the
earth mother Demeter, then, around 1200 BC, in the Thracian cult of
Dionysus with its intoxicating transformations of identity through wine
consumption, masks and costumes, all the way to the Mithras - cult in
Persia (whose well-known religious founder was Zarathustra), where
the central element is fire, light and the sun - in its dualistic interplay
with the dark and evil.



On the other hand, if a physicist talks about light, he or she usually
means an electromagnetic radiation within a certain portion of the
3

electromagnetic spectrum, i.e. that which is visible to the human eye

and is responsible for the sense of sight. Visible light is defined as
having wavelengths in the range of 400–700 nanometres (nm),
between the infrared (with longer) and the ultraviolet (with shorter
wavelengths). This wavelength means a frequency range of roughly
430–750 terahertz (THz). Sometimes, the term light also refers to
electromagnetic radiation of any wavelength, whether visible or not. In
this sense, gamma rays, X-rays, microwaves and radio waves are
also light. Like all types of EM radiation, visible light propagates as
waves. However, the energy imparted by the waves is absorbed at
single locations in the way particles are absorbed. The absorbed
energy of the EM waves is called a photon: it represents the quanta of
light.



When a wave of light is transformed and absorbed as a photon, the
energy of the wave instantly collapses to a single location, and this
location is where the photon "arrives." This is what is called the wave
function collapse. 

The dual wave-like and particle-like nature of light is known as the
wave–particle duality. 

So, a physicist uses the word light in a completely different context
than a priest or an antiquary, who speaks about light in various cults. 

Now, one of the many questions arising in this thread was, whether
the physical light, investigated by physicists, and the inner light,
experienced by mystics, is basically the same. The question was, in
other words, whether it is only the context which changes, whereas
the substrate remains what it is: light.



On the other hand, one might say that the word "light" has, like many
other words, multiple meanings, which are to be distinguished from
the context in which they are used. In linguistics, such words are
called homonyms: words that are spelled the same and sound the
4

same, but have different meanings, like pen, bank, book etc. 



Now, let's deal with the question why photons (light) are not a part of
everything in this universe. 

Because Information is neither energy nor matter. 

Three weeks ago, we were dealing with this topic here on this thread.
Let me copy and paste the related passages:

Norbert Wiener said "information is information, not matter or energy.
No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present
day." And Gotthard Günther added: "information is information, not
spirit or subjectivity." No idealism which does not admit this can
survive at the present day.



Regarding information, Günther adds that it is principally impossible to
reduce the cybernetic concept of information to purely material-
energetic categories. This is exemplified by the fact that information
can be conveyed by any means, which shows its independence from
specific carriers.



In other words: Those who think that photons (light) are part of
everything in this universe, they assume that information needs
carriers which cannot be subtler than light. So, suppose the
information is carried by some material, you could argue that this
material is nothing but condensed light. But if the information is
carried by space-time itself, this argumentation doesn't hold any
longer.



The concept is summarized in the venerable Sloka from

Chandogya Upanishad of the Sama Veda (7.25.21):

5

This outer space is nothing but Cosmic Soul.




So, I tried to show that photons (light) are not part of everything in this
universe (emphasis is on everything). First I derived from authorities
that information is neither matter nor energy (nor spirit nor
subjectivity), and that it is basically independent from specific carriers.
Second I argued that among many other possibilities, space-time itself
can be a carrier of information, wherefrom I conclude that there must
be a type of information which contains no photons (light).



Particle physics talks about 6 fundamental bosons, which are
photons, gluons, and W and Z bosons (the four force-carrying gauge
bosons of the Standard Model), as well as the recently discovered
Higgs boson, and the hypothetical graviton of quantum gravity. All of
them can be carriers of information. Additionally, quantum gravity
describes structures called spin foam/spin network, which describe
the quantum geometry of space and space-time respectively. They
can also be carriers of information. Nevertheless, information remains
a class of its own. The slogan is Wheeler's "it from bit" / "from it to bit".



In common parlance, Universal Consciousness is the term for
Brahman. But I'm sorry to say that I find this translation to be
misguiding: In Hinduism, Brahman connotes the highest Universal
Principle and the Ultimate Reality. In major schools of Hindu
philosophy, it is the material, efficient, formal and final cause of all that
exists. It is the pervasive, genderless, infinite, eternal truth and bliss
which does not change, yet is the cause of all changes. 

Its oldest meaning in the Vedas is, however, "holy word" or "holy
formula". So, in this sense it becomes crystal clear, that Brahman
stands for primordial information, i.e. that information which precedes
everything else. 

Consequently, instead of a credo for Universal Light, I would plea for
6

Universal Thought, Word or Formula.




However, it is impossible to translate Brahman into one term. It's the
ultimate ground of everything! 

Wrong translations automatically lead to lots of misconceptions. Lord
Buddha had to start a new movement => world religion due to faulty
understandings.



Brahman is not only the ultimate ground of everything, but also the
material, efficient, formal and final cause of all that exists.
Consequently, basic intelligence, primordial thoughts and words
emanate from Brahman. This is well beyond space, time and light,
which evolve as derivatives.



The advantage of translating Brahman as Universal Consciousness is
that you can easily conceive some imaginary content on various
stages (Tattvas). The basic concept is that reality has several layers of
subtlety, where the physical layer is the least subtle one; light is subtle
but not the subtlest. This fits with Max Planck's correct quote:

We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and
intelligent Spirit. This Spirit is the matrix of all matter.

 

So, why is the inner light 'not made of photons'? 

Well, just as our minds cannot see the brain structures, the neurons,
the synapses, the neurotransmitters and all the other molecules and
atoms in our heads (except they are opened by a surgeon), likewise
our minds also cannot see the photons, appearing randomly or in
synchronized patterns during mental/emotional activities. What we
see is a product of our imagination; imaginations, thoughts, ideas etc.
belong to the infosphere, they don't belong to the physical world.
7

There is, of course, a tiny overlap in mere sensation. But even there, it
was found that the physico-chemical nature of the environment is
transformed by sensory cells into neuronal activities, i.e. rhythmic
patterns of action potentials or spikes, which basically represents a
binary code (from it to bit). So, even mere sensation belongs to the
infosphere.

Consequently, I can say that assuming the inner light to be composed

of photons is a typical mistake of category.



Dan: 

"Even mere sensation belongs to the infosphere."

This is why I think there might be a minor disagreement. If I follow
your use of the term "infosphere", then sensation is already
interpreted. The attunement of the sensory cells to particular aspects
of the environment is an interpretation of the environment. An
organism constructs it's own environment by its selective attunement.
Transduction is interpretive.

So, I don't think there is any such thing as "mere sensation". All
sensation is cognitively mediated. "Raw sense data" is a theoretical
construct, a product of British Empiricism.



Hans-Joachim: 

Regarding „mere sensation“ I thought of the cellular level and what
we‘d learnt in physiology. My point was that even in a single cell, a
signal is transformed from analog to digital, I.e. from it to bit!



Hans-Joachim: 

Yes, I agree. And we might go one step further:

If light travels through space, it does so in the form of light waves. It's
a misconception to think that the wave-particle dualism means that we
have a free choice to use either the one or the other term. No, never!
8

Light behaves under certain circumstances like a wave, and in other

situations like a particle. So, while traveling through pure vacuum it's a
wave*. But when it interacts with fermions - may it be a measuring
device, an observer, or anything else - then the wave collapses and
becomes a photon. This process of wave collapse is somehow similar
to what we described before: the signal is transduced from an analog
to a digital form; the photon is either there or not there, which can be
expressed as 1 or 0. And in analogy to what we said before, we might
conclude that in the moment of wave collapse, light enters the
infosphere of our fermiotic world.



So, what information these photons and quantum waves might hold. 

Well, this very much depends on the circumstances. Suppose you
mean the signals transmitted by an optical fiber, they might hold
thousands of telephone calls plus quite a number of radio and tv-
programs (of course, the light alone won't do, you will also need the
proper decoders etc). But if you mean the light from some distant star,
it holds information about the nuclear processes on that star;
additionally it might hold information about our atmosphere. In special
experiments, it might even give information about gravitational effects
on the beam of light.

Regarding the information of a single photon, I would say that it is just
1 bit. On a micro-scale, the flow of information can be awfully
redundant. Nevertheless, and this was our point, it belongs to the
infosphere. 



Only, what I said about the informational content of a photon needs
some specification. 

In the retina, mammals have two types of photosensitive cells, the
rods and the cones. While the former produce b/w images, the latter
allow color vision. Rods are responsible for our vision in dim light, but
don’t function in bright light; they account for our night vision but
9

cannot distinguish color. The cones, on the other hand, are active at
high light levels and allow us to see colors and fine details directly in
front of us. There are three types of cones, each of them having a
different sensitivity for light: Their peak sensitivities are at blue, green
and red light respectively.

So, for rods, it is true what I said: the information of a single photon is
just 1 bit; cones need a bunch of them to produce 1 bit. And as we
have four different types of photosensitive cell, our minds are able to
synthesize the colorful pictures we see in front of our eyes.



Once more, these facts show that sensation is interpretation. Or, as
Dan said the other day: "the attunement of the sensory cells to
particular aspects of the environment is an interpretation of the
environment. An organism constructs it's own environment by its
selective attunement. Transduction is interpretive."



Dan: 

"This process of wave collapse is somehow similar to what we
described before: the signal is transduced from an analog to a digital
form; the photon is either there or not there, which means you can
write this as 1 or 0"

Hans-Joachim, I think you need to be careful with how "similar"
"somehow similar" is. You don't want to make the relationship an
identity, or else you will be at risk for making a category error. An
issue being discussed on another thread is whether or not it makes
sense to describe "wave-form collapse" as an act of perception. I don't
think it does, at least not without a whole lot of further discussion
about what it means to "perceive". I myself have been on the edge of
that same category error when I described transduction as
interpretive.



Hans-Joachim: 

10

Dan, I didn't intend to say that the wave-collapse produces perception.

What I wanted to say is that it produces information (in the most basic
form). Here, we are again confronted with the question of Shannon's
definition vs. lively information, which necessarily includes meaning.
So, couldn't we agree on a scheme like: the more meaning, the more
interpretation, the more perception, the more consciousness? Then,
on the level of particles, we would expect only mere information to be
exchanged (without meaning/consciousness); yet, that would be the
home base of infosphere.



Dan: 

But then we have "mere information", rather than "mere sensation". It
poses the same problem. The idea of "mere sensation" or "raw sense
data" has its appeal because it seems to provide some sort of
foundation to knowledge, something "objective", prior to any
interpretation, or apart from any perspective. In the way that sensation
apart from any subjective experience of it is not a coherent notion,
"information" without any conscious elaboration is not a coherent
notion. Information stripped of meaning doesn't have any meaning,
other than information in the Shannon sense.



Hans-Joachim: 

"In the way that sensation apart from any subjective experience of it is
not a coherent notion, "information" without any conscious elaboration
is not a coherent notion."

Dan, I agree as long as we are talking about living beings. But when it
comes to non-living materials, particularly those described in solid-
state physics, I doubt your proposition. Look, for example, at the
silicon-based technologies. They are fine with Shannon's definition of
information. Semantics, meaning and purpose, are added due to
human interaction. I remember Marco saying in one of our earlier
threads: "... the machine, where you are reading this, works in the
11

same way, because you are manipulating it, providing your sense of
consciousness to what you do with it." Wherefrom I derived:
"Computer systems have no cognition by themselves, but they
become 'quasi conscious' by virtue of people interacting with them
consciously." Which means that these machines process information,
although they are unconscious.



You might argue that solid-state physics is also a mental construct
which can't claim to be more real than other reasonable statements.
So, whatever we conceive would belong to the infosphere, nothing
could be said about that which is beyond, and there would be no
choice but to fall quiet about anything "objective", which would be
"prior to interpretation, or apart from any perspective".

12

Morphic fields



On the other hand, I saw a talk of Rupert Sheldrake yesterday, where
he presents a shortcut of his concept of the extended mind (https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YWiR6TRr4o). More generally he hinted
at morphic fields and morphic resonance. So, what do you think about
this approach? Do you think these fields could be measured with
physical means? Or could it be that they exist only in imaginary
space?



Dan: 

I don't put much stock in Rupert Sheldrake's ideas. Too "New Age" for
my tastes.



Hans-Joachim:  

But he also rejects the "Representational Theory" of perception and
mental functioning, and instead elaborates on the "Extended Mind
Hypothesis", which we'd discussed in our earlier thread on AI robots. 

In this context, you'd referred to the early forms of Enactivism, which I
regretfully missed to study up to now.



You mentioned Putnam and O'Regan, so, I looked through John
O'Regan's thesis published in 2010: Re-Thinking the Extended Mind -

Moving Beyond the Machinery. Only, therein I couldn't find a reference
to mental fields extending into the space around (http://
uhra.herts.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/2299/4824/
John%20O%27Regan%20-%20final%20PhD%20submission.pdf?
sequence=1). Sheldrake talks about mental fields again and again,
which I can accept and imagine easily, whereas the purely
psychological discourse is difficult for me to grasp. So, my question is
whether you would agree to a mental field, reaching out to our
environments, thereby allowing thinking as well as memorizing
13

processes beyond our brains/skulls (extracerebral/collective

memory)?



Dan: 

That is a very interesting point, Hans-Joachim. I did not know that
Sheldrake rejected Representationalism, nor endorsed Enactivism. I
probably should not dismiss Sheldrake so quickly, particularly since I
don't know much about him. 



The other day I was trying to explain G. H. Mead's idea of
consciousness to my friend. I'm coming to realize that the Extended
Mind hypothesis has a deep pedigree. Mead characterizes
"consciousness" in several different ways, but what ties those
characterizations together is a view of "consciousness" as interaction;
interaction between individuals and between individuals and the
world. He clearly denies that, for him, consciousness is in any sense
located in the brain. It is distributed in interactive behavior. In trying to
convey this, I realized that, for Mead, there isn't a "stuff" involved
which stretches between the individual and the environment. It makes
it difficult to describe his position on consciousness, if you assume
that consciousness is a substance. I think that difficulty is what you
encountered with what you referred to as the "purely psychological
discourse" in O’Regan.



Mead predates Enactivism by almost a century, but he speaks of
consciousness in a way very similar to O'Regan. You wouldn't find any
mention of "mental fields" in O'Regan's work, because O'Regan
rejects any view of consciousness as a substance. It is pure
interaction, pure "between". That is basically impossible to imagine, or
"picture". 



I don't know enough about Hegel to say, but I wonder if both
14

Enactivism and Mead take their conception of consciousness from

Hegel and his notion of "negativity". I do know that Enactivism is
rooted in the thinking of Merleau-Ponty, who in turn was influenced by
Hegel, and Mead also studied Hegel very closely. Both positions also
seem „dialectical“.



So, whether or not I agree to the existence of a mental field extending
from a subject into the environment depends on how you would define
a "field". The one example that I recall of "morphogenic fields" that
has stuck in my mind involved monkeys living on a group of islands
between which there could be no communication. As I remember,
monkeys on one of the islands began to wash a particular item of food
which they had not done previously. For that island, individual
innovation and the communication and imitation would explain the
phenomena. But what could not be explained, according to Sheldrake,
apart from the existence of "morphogenic fields" was the fact that
monkeys on neighboring islands, who had no contact with the first
population, began to do the same thing.



A morphogenic field is a potential patterning of physical and
behavioral processes, which is not strictly localized. One of my
concerns with the idea is that it makes it too easy to explain too much,
to explain things that might receive explanation through a systems
view, for example. The fact that so many forms in nature describe a
limited set of patterns seems to fall out of Dynamic Systems Theory.
Sheldrake's "fields" seem something like Platonic Forms, and I'm
suspicious of Platonic Forms. I'm skeptical of the idea of
"morphogenic fields", but I can't rule it out. It is one of those things
that seem to offer possible tentative explanations for marginal
experiences such as synchronicity, but I think we already have ample
resources to explain the repeated appearance of forms in nature.



15

Hans-Joachim: 

Thanks for your detailed reply. It is exactly as you say: my difficulty is
to imagine O'Regan's "purely psychological" reasoning, because he
rejects, as you say, any view of consciousness as a "substance"; he
takes it as pure interaction, pure "between", so it's basically
impossible to imagine, or "picture" his conception.



On the other hand, the concept of fields is quite different from that of
substances. Fields are understood to be dynamical, always changing,
in contrast to Platon's eternal, never changing ideas.

In physics, a field can be thought of as a "condition in space"
emanating from a point and extending throughout the whole of space.
In psychology, field theory i.e. topological and vector psychology,
examines patterns of interaction between the individual and the total
field, or environment. The concept first made its appearance in
psychology with roots to the holistic perspective of Gestalt theories.

It was developed by Kurt Lewin, a Gestalt psychologist, in the 1940s

=> http://www.wilderdom.com/theory/FieldTheory.html

From that text: "... We live in a psychological reality or life space that
includes not only those parts of our physical and social environment
that are important to us, but also imagined states that do not currently
exist.“ 

This is more or less what I meant with my notion of complex space-
time ...

He also said that concrete persons in concrete situations can be
represented mathematically; and that individuals participate in a
number of life spaces, which are constructed under the influence of
force vectors.

16

Which amounts to what I meant with the Microvita-tensor, connecting

the imaginary to the "real" (= physical) space.


Dan: 

I was thinking of Kurt Lewin when I replied to you, and I never really
followed that up. If you mean "field" as Lewin did, then I don't have a
problem with the idea. I do not believe, though, that Lewin thought of
the mathematic formulation of his concept of "field" as being in any
sense more than descriptive. The vectors did not exhibit some deeper
reality than lived experience. That is in contrast to how I understand
Sheldrake's "morphogenic fields", which suggest some "deeper
reality".



I want to suggest that the difficulty in imagining consciousness
according to O'Regan and Mead, among others, actually says
something positive about consciousness. It isn't merely a stumbling
block. If we are trying to get a sense of what is behind imagining,
there is no reason to assume that that can be imaged. The image is
always outstripped by the activity of imaging.



Hans-Joachim:
That's a subtle but remarkable difference indeed: Beholding
mathematical formulations as means to an end (i.e. descriptive), or as
agents of a "deeper reality".

Similar to the latter, the activity of imaging is, of course, one level
below the images themselves. What we usually do is to put abstract
mathematics first and construct space, time, entities, etc. therefrom.
So, using mathematics only for description, and, at the same time,
trying to get a sense of what is behind imagining, doesn't make sense
to me. 

17

Shaldrake writes about this (my) approach (https://www.sheldrake.org/

research/morphic-resonance/part-i-mind-memory-and-archetype-morphic-
resonance-and-the-collective-unconscious):



One of these traditions stems from Pythagoras and Plato, who were
both fascinated by the eternal truths of mathematics. In the 17th
century, this evolved into a view that nature was governed by timeless
ideas, proportions, principles, or laws that existed within the mind of
God. This world view became dominant and, through philosophers
and scientists such as Copernicus, Kepler, Descartes, Galileo and
Newton, it was incorporated into the foundations of modern physics.

Basically, they expressed the idea that numbers, proportions,

equations, and mathematical principles are more real than the
physical world we experience. Even today, many mathematicians
incline toward this kind of Pythagorean or Platonic mysticism. They
think of the physical world as a reification of mathematical principles,
as a reflection of eternal numerical mathematical laws. This view is
alien to the thinking of most of us, who take the physical world as the
"real" world and consider mathematical equations as man-made, and
possibly inaccurate, description of that "real" world. Nevertheless, this
mystical view has evolved into the currently predominant scientific
viewpoint that nature is governed by eternal, changeless, immutable,
omnipresent laws. The laws of nature are everywhere and always.

18

Phenomenology


Dan:
"Nature is governed by eternal, changeless, immutable, omnipresent
laws. The laws of nature are everywhere and always“ and yet there is
consciousness and agency, which seem to defy the determinism
implied by laws of nature. There is freedom. I take a different position
in regard to mathematics and natural laws. Husserl spoke at some
length about the effect of "mathematization" on our view of the world,
and he traced this to Galileo. Part of the effect of mathematization is a
conception of the world as being made up of "things in themselves",
and the subsequent division by Descartes between consciousness
and the rest of nature. Husserl ushered in Phenomenology as a way
to get to a level of experience that pre-existed formalizations of
experience, such as mathematics and geometry. He did an interesting
analysis of geometry as being rooted in the concrete practices of
humans, actual planning and building which through reflection was
formalized into geometrical principles.

Heidegger was a student of Husserl, and continued Husserl's efforts

to get at lived experience. That, in turn led to Existentialism, and the
recognition that we exist first in a human world, from which, through
abstraction and manipulation, we derive the "objective" world of
science.


Hans-Joachim:
So, that's what has been called the "phenomenological turn", isn't it.
And it amounts not so much to a solution of the mind-body problem as
to an announcement that the problem is ultimately a pseudo-problem.
You had said this several times before, but I always opposed you in
this respect. So we might conclude that my thinking is non- or pre-
phenomenological …
19

On the other hand, there seems to be an unresolved conflict between

natural sciences and phenomenological philosophy, particularly
because it was impossible up to now to come forward with a generally
accepted phenomenological theory of science.



In this situation, my suggestion has been to take space and time as
both, objective and subjective, expressed in real and imaginary
coordinates. This approach combines Bergson's distinction between
the mechanistic time of science, and time as we actually experience it
- lived time, which he called 'durée réelle' - with Merleau-Ponty's
distinction between space as the environment in which things are
(spatialized space), and the space viewed as a person's ability to
discover spatial relations (spatializing space).


Dan:
There's no conflict between natural science and Phenomenology,
Hans-Joachim. There is a conflict between Scientific Realism and
Phenomenology. There are many places in Phenomenology and
Existentialism in which the nature of science is discussed, and it is
generally discussed as a very human project, answering to human
needs and interests. The notion of "objectivity" in science from the
point of view of those alternatives to Scientific Realism is seen as an
operative assumption, a heuristic device, rather than as a
metaphysical claim. Science, since Galileo's time, has been an
attempt to remove as much of "subjectivity" as is possible from a
given phenomena. Subjectivity has been equated with error. The end-
point of this process would seem to be the absurdity of things in
themselves apart from any perceiver. That would be the mythical
"objectivity". That is the core of Scientific Realism.

20

Reasons for questioning the coherence of the Scientific Realism

position come from several directions. Phenomenology and
Existentialism are just two of them. You have also Quine's thinking, his
"Semantic Holism" which leads to an understanding of science as
structured by "conceptual schemes". He was responding to the
position of the Logical Positivists, whose truncated view of reality and
"objectivity" seems to set the stage for the Scientific Realists. Similarly
with Kuhn, and his notion of "paradigms" and a recognition of the
social character of scientific investigation. Polanyi, who had
completed a highly successful career as a physical chemist before he
turned to philosophy and the Philosophy of Science, thought along
these lines. Kuhn was in fact his student.

What ties these positions together, and in opposition to Scientific

Realism, is the recognition that science is a human practice, and is
structured by human assumptions and beliefs that not only haven't
been validated, but are incapable of complete validation. Complete
objectivity does not exist. 

You might want to take a look at Putnam. He studied under Quine,
and was originally a Scientific Realist. He did very rigorous and sound
work in Analytic Philosophy. Putnam was responsible for
"Functionalism", the conception of Mind which spawned the use of
computers to model the mind, and was a major inspiration for the AI
project. Putnam eventually let "Functionalism" go, seeing it's
shortcomings as an account of mental phenomena. He actually
moved into the "Anti-Realist" camp occupied by fellows like Richard
Rorty, then found a "middle ground" in the Pragmatist tradition. He
also found much inspiration in Husserl.


Hans-Joachim:
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says on Scientific Realism:

“... a general recipe for realism is widely shared: Our best scientific
21

theories give true or approximately true descriptions of observable

and unobservable aspects of a mind-independent world.“



On the basis of my experience, I can't imagine natural scientists to
deny this position. In the humanities - yes, of course - but in the
natural sciences?

Therefore Sheldrake, as a biologist, is practically bound to use the

notion of fields, rather than describing the effects of extended minds
just phenomenologically. 

There should be a causality, which is provided by that which is in
between (the field).


Dan:
That's a somewhat mild description of Scientific Realism. Here's this: 

Scientific realism is the view that the universe described by science is
real, regardless of how it may be interpreted. Within philosophy of
science, it is often an answer to the question "how is the success of
science to be explained?" (Wikipedia)

I assume you are familiar with Thomas Kuhn's work. While he isn't a
Phenomenologist, I think his approach illustrates a common theme in
the positions that oppose Scientific Realism. That theme is the
recognition of the role of human cognition and interpretation in
science, particularly as it constructs what are taken to be "objective
facts", and "data". In a way, analogous to there being no such things
as raw sense data, there are no theory-neutral observations. Theory
construction involves social processes, cultural presuppositions and
philosophical commitments (as well as simple "fads", what you might
call „memes").

If you carry this observation to an extreme, you end up with the "anti-
realist" positions. Both the realist and anti-realist positions in the
22

Philosophy of Science are extremes in my opinion, one leading to

complete subjectivity, and the other chasing complete objectivity.
Reality is both, and they are inseparable aspects, while being
distinguishable moments.

A nice piece of a description of Kuhn taken from the Stanford

Encyclopedia article on Scientific Realism.

“… paradigms function so as to create the reality of scientific
phenomena, thereby allowing scientists to engage with this reality. On
such a view, it would seem that not only the meanings but also the
referents of terms are constrained by paradigmatic boundaries. And
thus, reflecting an interesting parallel with neo-Kantian logical
empiricism, the idea of a paradigm-transcendent world which is
investigated by scientists, and about which one might have
knowledge, has no obvious cognitive content. On this picture,
empirical reality is structured by scientific paradigms, and this conflicts
with the commitment of realism to knowledge of a mind-independent
world.“


Hans-Joachim:
Dan - thanks for your detailed response to my proposition that there
seems to be an unresolved conflict between natural sciences and
phenomenological philosophy, particularly because it was impossible
up to now to come forward with a generally accepted
phenomenological theory of science.

You said that this conflict is not with natural science, but with scientific
realism only. Accordingly, you referred to Thomas S. Kuhn's work,
which was, however, questioned by many; particularly, I would like to
highlight an essay written in 1998 by Steven Weinberg (http://
www.physics.utah.edu/~detar/phys4910/readings/fundamentals/
weinberg.html), which gets to the heart of my concerns over Kuhn's
and other skeptic's attitude towards 'reality' and 'truth'. 

23

There, he writes for example: "I remarked in a recent article in The

New York Review of Books that for me as a physicist the laws of
nature are real in the same sense (whatever that is) as the rocks on
the ground.
A few months after the publication of my article I was attacked for this
remark by Richard Rorty. He accused me of thinking that as a
physicist I can easily clear up questions about reality and truth that
have engaged philosophers for millennia. But that is not my position. I
know that it is terribly hard to say precisely what we mean when we
use words like "real" and "true." That is why, when I said that the laws
of nature and the rocks on the ground are real in the same sense, I
added in parentheses "whatever that is." I respect the efforts of
philosophers to clarify these concepts, but I'm sure that even Kuhn
and Rorty have used words like "truth" and "reality" in everyday life,
and had no trouble with them. I don't see any reason why we cannot
also use them in some of our statements about the history of science.
Certainly philosophers can do us a great service in their attempts to
clarify what we mean by truth and reality. But for Kuhn to say that as a
philosopher he has trouble understanding what is meant by truth or
reality proves nothing beyond the fact that he has trouble
understanding what is meant by truth or reality." 


The discussion went on, and was even named 'science war'. A
response by Alex Levine as well as the following contradiction by
Steven Weinberg can be read at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/
1999/02/18/ts-kuhns-non-revolution-an-exchange/. 

So, I would maintain that there is a profound conflict between
phenomenological philosophy and natural science over the status of
reality and truth. I think that a scientist who believes/realizes that the
reality of scientific phenomena is not given, but man-made, will not be
able to continue his work. Such an attitude is possible only for those
who survey the whole scenery from a historical point of view -
24

comparable to a warrior who would hardly continue fighting, if he

could see the battle from a future point of view. On the other hand,
future would be quite different, if those battles would not have been
fought in the past…

This reminds me of the passage in Geeta Updesh, where Lord Krsna

counters Arjuna's objections. Lord Buddha's advice would have
probably been different (Dharma > Ahimsa vs. Dharma < Ahimsa). But
it's not only about this, it's also about the proper perspective in life.
That's what we are talking about.


Dan:
Hans-Joachim - I like what you say, and I still contend that there is no
intrinsic conflict between Natural Science and Phenomenology.
Phenomenology is not "ant-realism", and to be fair, I am not up to
defending Phenomenology. Kuhn's work isn't Phenomenology, but I
brought him in because he presents a clear challenge to Scientific
Realism. I get the point about "truth", and i do not accept Kuhn's
notion of "incommensurability". I think that later in his career he was
more careful about the need to maintain some idea of truth.


I appreciate this:

"I know that it is terribly hard to say precisely what we mean when we
use words like "real" and "true." That is why, when I said that the laws
of nature and the rocks on the ground are real in the same sense, I
added in parentheses "whatever that is." 

particularly the part about what he placed in parentheses.

I'm not sure that the Buddha would have counseled Arjuna any
differently than Krishna, but I do see the Buddha as "bucking the
system". I'll have to think on it.
25

Donald Davidson has a very nice response to Kuhn. I think the essay
is called "On the Possibility of a Conceptual Scheme". It is primarily a
critique of Quine, but also is a critique of the notion of "paradigms".


Dan:
I've been thinking about this: 

"the laws of nature and the rocks on the ground are real in the same
sense“ and just how problematic a statement it is. There is no way to
divide the "laws of nature" from theories of nature. Statements of "law"
are theoretical statements. Theoretical statements are by definition
open to revision, subject to falsification. None of that is true of the
rocks on the ground. The rocks on the ground are not "laws", and nor
are they theoretical statements that by definition are open to revision.
Rocks and natural laws are real in very different ways, as they are
very different entities.

The entities that play roles in the theories that describe "laws" of
nature change in the course of history due to a combination of
increased accuracy and sociological and cultural factors. That is the
truth of Kuhn's thought. He was no idiot. He recognized the continuity
between paradigms and recognized scientific progress.

While our understanding of rocks may change, the rocks themselves
don't change with our understanding of them. Our understanding of
the laws of nature do change and they are both 1. our understanding
of the laws and 2. the laws themselves. In other words, the laws of
nature do not exist independently from our understanding of them in
the same way that rocks exist independently of our understanding of
them. Laws of nature and rocks are real in different senses of the
word “real".

One important aspect of Scientific Realism is the assumption that the

findings of science are more real than our own experience of the
26

world, that the world is actually, "truly" composed of fields and forces
which we can not directly observe, and what we observe as true is
really just a very practical simulation. You can see this occurring with
Galileo when he divides reality into primary and secondary qualities.
The primary qualities are what can be mathematically modeled, and
are the "real", the secondary qualities are what we sense, and are
taken to be less real than what we can measure and quantify. The
same issue was noted by Schrödinger, when he spoke of the
argument described by Democritus between the senses and the
intellect:

"Galenus has preserved us a fragment (Diels, fr. 125), in which
Democritus introduces the intellect having an argument with the
senses about what is 'real'. The former says: 'Ostensibly there is color,
ostensibly sweetness, ostensibly bitterness, actually only atoms and
the void', to which the senses retort: 'Poor intellect, do you hope to
defeat us while from us you borrow your evidence? Your victory is
your defeat.' "

Scientific realism ends up playing havoc with epistemology. The
subject is removed, the very subject who is behind the observations
and inferences. The grounding facts as observations are merely
fictions and constructions. Epistemology can not get off the ground.

What Phenomenology does, and I think also Pragmatism, is to take

our experience of the world, the world as experienced, not as a
simulation or construction, but as real, both the arena of and the point
of departure for all our activities, including the activity of doing
science. The chair on which I sit is very real, it is not "really" a
conglomeration of atoms and molecules held together through
electromagnetic force, which just "seems" to be a chair. The chair and
the atoms and molecules that make it up are all real, but in the context
of their own different projects or ends.
27



Hans-Joachim:
What you say is convincing. Also, I had a vague intuition that our
conversation didn't depart too much from Schrödinger's book, which is
now confirmed by your quote of Galenus' fragment. It shows that our
thoughts are moving in a classical circle: What is real, what is true.
How to find a balance between the senses and the intellect. Which
perspective is supposed to be more suitable to our lives, the believer's
or the skeptic’s?

Nevertheless, I agree when Weinstein says in his response to Kuhn's

'Structure': "Kuhn did not deny that there is progress in science, but
he denied that it is progress toward anything. ... All this is wormwood
to scientists like myself, who think the task of science is to bring us
closer and closer to objective truth. But Kuhn's conclusions are
delicious to those who take a more skeptical view of the pretensions
of science. If scientific theories can only be judged within the context
of a particular paradigm, then in this respect the scientific theories of
any one paradigm are not privileged over other ways of looking at the
world, such as shamanism or astrology or creationism.“


Dan:
The "wormwood" is really something cooked up by an excessively
relativistic reading of Kuhn, which I don't subscribe to. That reading is
Kuhn's own fault, as it is there in the "Structure", but he did seek to
correct it, and never gave up the notion of truth. Weinstein can say
that Kuhn accepted that there is "progress" in science while denying
that the progress was toward anything, but Weinstein is then
attributing an incoherent position to Kuhn that I don't think Kuhn
actually ever embraced.
28

Kuhn's "Structure" is a critique of an unrealistic and idealized view of

the nature of science and scientific practice. That unrealistic view
involves assuming that observations, or data, are theory-neutral and
objective, and that the core of the method of science is induction from
those objective observables to laws. The method of induction is
implicitly modeled on deduction, but that is a fundamentally flawed
view of induction. Induction can not be modeled or formalized in the
way that deduction has been. Instead of a step-wise move from
observables to laws, each step having the type of self-evidence that
you find in a syllogism, induction makes leaps, and is an intrinsically
messy process. It is in that messiness that Kuhn finds a place for
Gestalt principles in scientific practice, and social and psychological
factors in general.

That implies that science is a constructive, human activity, but it

doesn't mean that science is "simply subjective", or purely whimsical.
What it does mean is that a full account of science and scientific
practice has to include the recognition that scientists are people living
in a human world. There are basic aspects of that human world that I
do not think that natural science is capable of accounting for or
explaining, aspects like values. Some of these values which are
outside the scope of natural science are critically involved in the
process of scientific activity, values like "honesty", and "free
communication", and „objectivity".

Science does progress, and that progression is a trajectory toward

something. If you can define the trajectory, it might make the
"towards-which" a bit clearer. So the question becomes "what is
science up to?". A way to address that question is through identifying
the values that constitute science, in addition to the general ones
above that apply to all pursuits of knowledge. There is an approach
that I find sometimes compelling, sometimes not, that is to take
29

science as "up to" increased prediction and control. Certainly from

that point of view science has been progressing. We can predict and
control much better now than we could 200 years ago what will
happen when we perform some physical operation on a piece of
matter, but I think this progress in the ability to predict and control is
restricted to isolated events, portions of the world cut out of the
broader fabric.

The cost is a missing of the forest for the trees, a losing sight of
broader contexts, and that is how we end up with human-generated
environmental problems, and ethically suspect uses of scientific
findings, like the atom bomb.
30

The Measurement Problem



Hans-Joachim:
You just said “there are basic aspects of that human world that I do
not think that natural science is capable of accounting for or
explaining, aspects like values“, and I agree, because these aspects
are beyond their scope, they usually neither know, nor mind about
them. My impression is that it's a kind of mental defense. 

If you would compel an experimentalist to rely more on observation
than on mathematical tools, he or she would be disabled to continue
working. The raw data can be so chaotic and confusing, and patterns
usually become visible only after sufficient data processing. That's
why Weinstein says that for him the laws of nature are real in the
same sense (whatever that is) as the rocks on the ground, where he
doesn't mean some abstract laws, but the very mathematical
formulas, which describe these laws.


Dan:
I don't think that it is true that mathematical formulas and rocks are
real in the same sense, Hans-Joachim, and that regardless of where
one places oneself in the debate over whether mathematics is a
human creation or a discovered real structure. I place myself
somewhere in the middle, by the way. If you are a Pythagorean, then
the reality of mathematics is deeper than the reality of rocks. If you
are a Phenomenologist, then human experience (of rocks, or anything
else) is prior to mathematics. In either case, formulas and rocks are
"real" in different senses. 



I also disagree that all laws of Natural Science can be recast as
mathematical formulas, but the issue does hinge on what one counts
as a "law". I have in mind biological evolution, and I am also thinking
about the social sciences.
31

Hans-Joachim:
I think he simply wants to say that these formulas are absolutely basic
for his work. Think of someone who does radioastronomy. The raw
Data don‘t say anything to him or her. Their meaning is derived only
after lengthy data processing. Likewise in many other fields.


Dan:
It sounds like he's trying to say more than that, Hans-Joachim. He's
making an existential claim. Also, what do you mean by "raw data"?
Uninterpreted information?


Hans-Joachim:
It's an endless stream of numbers pouring out of some receiver or
detector. In the early 1990-ies I did research on heart rate variability. I
had a prototype of a measuring device, and it produced such raw
data. They are uninterpreted, unprocessed and nearly ungraspable.


On the other hand, such measurements can also be understood as
acts of transformation. What is measured, c‘est une duree, and the
result is a number, provided by a device which contains the
information necessary for this transformation. So the data are not as
raw as generally assumed.

The process of measurement has similarities with what is called the

wave collapse. Before measurement, the object is obscure, thereafter
it’s unveiled.


Dan:
Hans-Joachim, yeah, that's what I'd say, but I'd be repeating myself.
For practical purposes, I understand your use of the phrase "raw
data", but philosophically speaking, when I hear "raw data" I can't help
32

but think of the old British Empiricist notion of "sense data", which has
no reality other than as a philosophical construct. We don't perceive
sense data and then interpret it. We perceive forms, patterns and
things. There is no point in the sensory system where it makes sense
to speak of "sense data". Even at the level of the primary receptors
the "data" is already interpreted through the motor pattern which
orients the receptor field in the environment. Perception occurs in the
midst of a sensory-motor loop. Perception is an active exploring of the
world, and not a passive receiving of impressions.


Hans-Joachim: 

I understand what you say, and I fully agree, having understood the
issue after thinking about your valuable comments for a sufficient
time. Yes, I didn't see the difference of "raw data", streaming out of
some measuring device, and the nature of what is being measured.



I think it's very important to always remember that "information"
usually involves some mind being informed. This sentence alone
comprised the impossibility of information processing with no mind
around. Even the most simple forms of live perform information
processing, so, which mind could have been involved in those cases?


Dan:
Hans-Joachim, no need to be apologetic. It is my privilege to be
discussing these things with someone who has experience as a
practicing scientist. As you've said, science can not proceed without
the notion of a mind-independent reality, and I think that "raw data" is
an attempt to capture that quality of mind-independence. It just raises
very interesting metaphysical questions.


Hans-Joachim: 

"Raw data" are quite close to that mind-independent reality, but they
33

must be distinguished from each other: Look for example (as I did in
1 9 9 2 : https://www.researchgate.net/publication/
2 3 1 5 7 5 4 1 3 _ I n c r e a s e _ o f _ H e a r t _ R a t e _ Va r i a t i o n _ a n d _ W e l l -
Being_After_External_Cold_Water_Application ) at the time period
between two heart beats. The measurement of that time produces a
number, and that number is considered as "raw data". But the time
between two heart beats has many other qualities, which don’t fit into
this number. Suppose you experience something shocking (it was a
thoracic cold wet sheet pack in my experiments), and you feel as if
your heart stops beating. That prolonged period of time will be
measured simply as a bigger number, whereas the experience is
complex, multilayered and profound.


So, the measurement captures only a particular aspect of that

complex reality. The term "wave collapse" signifies a similar process.
That's why it is relevant in the context of Schrödinger's book.


Dan:
I see that. Measurement makes something objective. Husserl talks
about the difference between objective and "lived" time, and sets lived
time as founding objective time. The thing I'm skeptical about is the
idea that consciousness directly causes the wave collapse, the von
Neumann-Wigner interpretation. It has been criticized due to its
reliance on ontological dualism. I'm more inclined to see the collapse
of the wave function as resulting from the experimental manipulation,
with a fully embodied scientist back there, rather than some direct and
occult interaction between disembodied consciousness and matter.



Hans-Joachim:

Setting lived time as founding objective time - that's exactly what I
tried to show with my 4 chamber model: Imaginary time is subjective
and equals lived time! It's more fundamental than objective time,
34

which might be called "real" or "dead". To derive it mathematically

from the former, it needs nothing but a multiplication with -i. The
objective becomes secondary, the subjective is primary!


This approach is clearly distinct from dualism, as objective and
subjective are not on equal footing. Rather, the objective is only
derived, it is secondary to the subjective.

Regarding “wave collapse” I must admit that I’m not knowledgeable

enough as to fully comprehend the differences between the various
models of quantum mechanics. But it’s also not really important, as I
simply stated a similarity, which is not essential for the basic process.
In my model the wave collapse is simulated by matrix multiplication,
and it doesn’t elaborate on who or what performs this operation.


Dan:
I think it's more than a similarity: specification through measurement
and wave form collapse. The von Neumann-Wigner hypothesis is the
one that seems to have sparked all the New Age excesses about our
consciousness, somehow bringing reality into being magical. It was
based on ontological dualism, and I think highlights the conceptual
binds that dualism leads to. I appreciate that your model does not
specify the nature of the agent that causes the wave collapse.
Personally, that is what I'm interested in, and I think it just comes back
to scientists performing their experiments, which is different from
scientists making observations. That's where the conceptual
confusion comes in, where the ideal of objective science, "neutral
observation", is taken up as being a real event. The real event is
interaction through experimentation, not "observation".


"Observation" suggests, as it should, a passive reception of the
structure of the world, with no "subjective" contamination. But that is
35

an ideal. As long as that ideal is taken as a real event, changes

brought about through experimental manipulation will appear magical.
That's what I was getting at through the Zeno Effect. The changes
observed were caused by the physical (in the sense that includes
quantum phenomena) interventions, not by the bare act of observing
itself. Observation was instantiated by particle beams, if I recall.


Hans-Joachim:
Now, you've got me there. On the one hand I said that my model
doesn’t elaborate on who or what performs this operation. But on the
other hand I must admit that, when it comes to the Zeno effect, there
should be someone whose attention is directed to something. That
someone is not defined, but it must be some entity, existing in "lived
time", in contrast to the object of focussed attention, existing in "dead
time" (as I concluded from Husserl's citation).

Regarding the mechanism of that interaction, we must be careful
about what we understand by particles. There are fermions and
bosons, and there are "real" and "virtual" particles; on top of that,
there are particles and quasiparticles. Also, the quantum Zeno effect
is not always described in relation to observation, it can also be found
in physical interaction. Henry Stapp uses the term in relation to
focussed attention, happening in a human brain. Particle physicists
use it when dealing with their physical experiments, happening in a
completely different environment.


Generally, the Zeno effect can be defined as a class of phenomena in
which some transition is suppressed by an interaction — one that
allows the interpretation of the resulting state in the terms "transition
did not yet happen" and "transition has already occurred", or the
proposition that "the evolution of a quantum system is halted, if the
state of the system is continuously measured by a macroscopic
device to check whether the system is still in its initial state". (Panov,
36

A. D.: Quantum Zeno effect in spontaneous decay with distant

detector, 2001).



There can be many types of interaction, and Stapp remained
extremely vague, when he was interviewed years after his 2008 panel
at the United nations (in this respect, Jeffrey Schwartz was just the
opposite).


Personally, I favored virtual bosons as the agents of interaction,

particularly bosonic quasiparticles like phonons in structured water.
But it seems better to stay aloft such fixings. The model doesn't
require a stipulation, but when it comes to verifying experiments, one
has to commit, naturally.


Dan:
"the evolution of a quantum system is halted if the state of the system
is continuously measured by a macroscopic device to check whether
the system is still in its initial state". 



That's it. The halting of the evolution of the quantum system occurs
through the measurement by a macroscopic device, behind which,
somehow or somewhere, there is an actual researcher.



Hans-Joachim:
So, it's a special mindset which halts the evolution of the system?


Dan:
No, it’s not a special mindset or state of consciousness that halts the
evolution of the system. It is experimental manipulation that does so.
The idea that the "mindset" directly influences the sate of matter is the
von Neumann-Wigner hypothesis, and that's what has led to all of the
New Age excesses.

37

Symmetry Breaking



Hans-Joachim:
AI is going to perform better than humans in all motor and rational
tasks. What remains to be done by humans? Some minority will be
able to keep pace with the technological developments, and they are
supposed to make sure that humans are always at least two
generations ahead of robots (Gotthard Günther). But what about
normal humans? Is it that they are going to live in reservations, like
native Indians in North-America? Or, even worse, like domestic
animals in modern farms? To avoid such scenarios, it is imperative to
develop specific human skills and talents, which can't be substituted
by robots: Our sense of beauty, our depth of understanding and
empathy, our individual consciousness, which can be experienced
only by ourselves. This introcendence is the source of all mental
activities, and it can, or better, must be developed by meditative
techniques. In order to avoid domestication, all should learn
meditation!

I'm also skeptical about the idea that experiments can be influenced
by mental activity. Recently, I received a paper dealing with this
question: The PEAR Proposition: Fact or Fallacy? by Stanley Jeffers,
Skeptical Inquirer, Volume 30.3., May/June 2006. It concludes that
"the answer to the question raised has to be no. There are reasonable
and rational grounds for questioning these claims. Despite the best
efforts of the PEAR group over a twenty-five-year period, their impact
on mainstream science has been negligible. The PEAR group might
argue that this is due to the biased and blinkered mentality of
mainstream scientists. I would argue that it is due to the lack of
compelling evidence."



Rather, I think that our minds can be considered as quantum systems,
38

where the state of our nervous systems is derived from the vastness
of subjective possibilities. So, whenever we come to some decision or
conclusion, a so-called wave collapse occurs in our mind, which
transforms the many-valued logic of subjectivity to a simple two-
valued logic of objectivity. But this doesn’t mean dualism, rather it’s a
co-existence of dualism and monism, where the former is derived and
the latter is primary.

To avoid misunderstandings, it must be emphasized that the vastness

of subjectivity cannot be confined to our brain or head. Rather it goes
far beyond our bodily limitations. However, when it comes to the wave
collapse - that is supposed to happen within our physical body.

What seems to be a contradiction is actually an effect that can be

simulated easily by matrix transformations: With this technique, you
easily map contents from a vast imaginary space to the narrow space
of our physical existence.


Dan:
I don't see any need for an opening for the mind to influence the brain
unless you conceive of the mind as a distinct type of "stuff" other than
matter, in other words unless you assume ontological dualism. If you
reject ontological dualism, you no longer have the „mind/body (or
brain)" problem.

That's not to say that quantum effects are irrelevant to neural

functioning, but it is to leave the relevance open.

Hans-Joachim - I can see "wave collapse" and making a decision as

having a metaphorical relationship, but I don't see those two
processes as being identical, and don't see the advantage of claiming
that they are identical. What would be the advantage of identifying
39

decisions with "wave collapse" rather than state change in the

dynamic system, which is the brain?


Hans-Joachim:
Dan, the decision might be as simple as using a particular word, or
taking a particular image as true or false. So, whenever the activity of
some neuronal assembly/assemblies stabilize(s), such a decision has
taken place, which means that the state of the dynamic system brain
has changed in that compartment from vague to distinct. This is the
metaphorical relationship, as you say.

On the other hand you maintained that the world is given to us once,
not twice (as in a representation). So, where should all the worldly
objects, we are dealing with, exist, if not in- and outside of our brain?
My answer is: they exist in the vastness of our subjectivity. That
subjectivity is not at all confined to our bodies, rather it is connected to
the subjectivity of all other creatures, which amounts to Husserl's
transcendental intersubjectivity.

This intersubjectivity exists in lived time, it provides direct experiences

and it is the result of active exploration. But what about the worldly
objects by themselves? All we know about them is by inference and
conclusion. Suppose we are sick. We feel uneasy, weak etc., but we
don't have any idea about what happens in the lower compartments of
our corporality. This has been unveiled only through experiments and
conclusions, which, in the end, produce a reality existing in "dead" =
physical time. With this reasoning we might conclude, that what we
call real is actually an illusion, whereas what we call imaginary is
actually the only reality given to us.

In contrast, our common sense says that the world is objective = real,
and our experiences are subjective = imaginary. In this dilemma, I
40

prefer to decline the stance of "either/or", and adopt the "as well as"
instead. The result is a coexistence of monism and dualism, where
the latter is, however derived: Derived in the macrocosmic as well as
in the microcosmic scenario (macrocosmically in the sense that the
world began as an imagination of a Being Divine, and then
flocculated/coagulated to become objective; microcosmically in the
sense that in early childhood, we know nothing about a world of its
own, and acquire this concept only in the course of our life).
Consequently, we are naive monists in early childhood, dualists in
adulthood, and eventually undeceived monists in the old age.

Regarding quantum mechanics and the wave collapse, there are

striking similarities, but I'm also unable to judge, whether they signify
metaphors or identity. Eventually, we can work it out in collaboration.


Dan:
Hans-Joachim, I have a lot of respect for Husserl and his idea of
transcendental consciousness as intersubjective, and I am very
sympathetic to the idea that in some sense immediate consciousness,
or what you are referring to as "subjectivity", is foundational. One
problem with Husserl though is his reliance on spatial metaphors of
consciousness. He speaks of the transcendental "field" of
consciousness as laid out before the intuitive gaze of the
phenomenological researcher, and that spatial metaphor carries the
risk of turning consciousness into what it is not: a static arena. I think
Husserl gets closer to the truth in his discussion of Internal Time
Consciousness, in which he conceives of consciousness in process
terms. It's no accident that Heidegger was working with Husserl during
the time when Husserl was wrestling with the concept of time, and
Heidegger went on to compose "Being and Time“.
41

That issue of spatializing consciousness also leaves me vaguely

uneasy with what you are up to, because the mathematical models
you use to describe consciousness are models of spaces. Sometimes
I wonder, if modeling may be inherently spatial, and that is just the
way cognition works.

If we are sticking with Husserl for the sake of argument, he would
never explain the process of making a decision with the physical
process of "wave collapse". The psychic processes are the processes
through which we come to perceive wave collapse, and so are
epistemologically prior to wave collapse. I don't think he made claims
about ontological priority, because the phenomenological reduction
begins with suspending all questions of actual existence.

The consequence of accepting ontological dualism is accepting

Cartesian dualism. They are pretty much the same thing: radical split
between mind and body, radical separation between self and other,
and between self and world. There is also much more variability
between the physical structures of individual brains than you allow for.
The structure of brains isn't strictly predetermined by the structure of a
person's DNA, the DNA more serves to provide rough parameters for
an inherently chaotic process of development. By chaotic I don't mean
"random". I mean the properties of chaotic systems; a significant
degree of lack of predictability. The interaction between DNA and
environment, which informs brain structure doesn't begin at birth. It
starts in the zygote, as the environment of the DNA is first the cell
itself.

I think that you are raising a similar issue that comes down to the
need to distinguish mind from brain. I agree that they are
distinguishable, but I don't believe they represent two radically
different substances. It might be that the distinction rests on our ability
to reflect, on the "raw datum" or given which is the fact that we are
42

embodied subjects. We "have" our bodies and we "are" our bodies,

and we can be conscious of ourselves.

I agree with you when you point out that the brain is a necessary
condition for mind, but I don't think it is a sufficient condition. We also
need language, bodies, history and culture.


Hans-Joachim:
Dan, I understood that spatializing consciousness might turn out to be
a problem; so I already changed my wording from "imaginary" vs.
"real" space-time (which is somehow confusing for those who are not
in the mathematical terms), to "lived" vs. "dead" time, substituting not
only "imaginary" and "real", but also reducing "space-time" to "time".
The core of the model works with time as well as with space-time.
And, you are right, there is a tendency in spatial imagination to arrive
at a "static arena“.


Dan:
Thanks for clarifying that, Hans-Joachim. Bergson is hovering not too
far away.


Hans-Joachim: 

It is a difference whether you conceive history, environment and
culture to contribute to the mindset of a person, or whether you take
the minds of individuals as being interconnected, forming large
networks, including all the history, environment and culture of these
people. Usually, we don't know how to accommodate such collective
spirits into our scientific worldview. Extra dimensions, however,
provide a practicable methodology. Only, once you add extra
dimensions, you are bound to show a way of interaction between
these and the ordinary frame. Without such a linkage the extra
dimensions remain meaningless. This is why I have to insist on
43

agents bringing about something like a wave collapse. Obviously, by

saying so, I don't mean a physical event. Mathematically, it's like a
wave collapse, but this doesn't mean that it's physical.

For a better understandability, I might use the term "monotone time"-

instead of "dead time" or "real time", both in contrast to "lived time" or
"imaginary time". And instead of "wave collapse", it might be better to
say "symmetry breaking", which is involved in the wave collapse, but
denotes the broader concept.

Let me reformulate the scenario: We have matter and mind. Either we

conceive them as two phases of some fundamental stuff in 4-
dimensional space-time, or we conceive them as two phases
belonging to different dimensions in a higher-dimensional complex
space-time. In both cases the former (matter) is derived from the latter
(mind) in a process of symmetry breaking, which is reversible,
comparable to water being melted and then being frozen again. And in
both cases, bosons will be released along the breaking of symmetry.
On the one hand, the process can be described as a phase shift,
produced by external conditions, like temperature freezing the water.
On the other hand, it can also be described by matrix or wave
mechanics on the level of particle interaction. The underlying question
is, whether mind is to be conceived, in principle, as a special quality of
matter or of space-time or of time alone.

As Günther wrote in the book cited repeatedly on this thread: "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
44

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:
"Symmetry breaking" is a very powerful concept. It suggests the move
from the Universal to the particular, and I think it has roots in old
spiritual and philosophical discussions. When I first came across the
idea in a discussion about the Big Bang, I couldn't help but think of the
division into darkness and light or earth and sky that you find in many
mythical accounts of creation, followed by further distinctions and
divisions leading to the existence we find ourselves in. It also
suggests the fall into samsara.


Hans-Joachim:
Yes, a sentient being can be aware of its own existence, but not
necessarily. Plants, for example, are probably not aware of their
existence, but they are sentient, feeling something and reacting
accordingly. Unicellular organisms are not at all aware of their
existence, but we can guess that they feel something when
confronted with some threat. So, the basis of sentience is a kind of
reflection, a reflection between the physical and the perceptible layer
of existence. This reflection might be dormant in a crystalline
structure, but at the time of crystallization, as has been pointed out
elsewhere, it should allow the atoms to find their proper positions in
space (as he said: they would feel "all the possible atom
configurations“… "as they remain in superposition, until the right one
is found“).

This goes all along, until we reach Günther's "hypothetical gas cloud
and its surrounding space-time dimension, from which our solar
45

system was supposed to have originated." So, the question at hand is:
Where does that state of superposition exist? Where are the
possibilities before they break into actualities. The equations say, as
far as I know, that they are in "the imaginary". But what does this
mean?


Dan:
Hans-Joachim - Do these possibilities need to be anywhere before
they are actualized? Isn't location itself a product of actualization? 



Hans-Joachim:
Dan, you are right, and I must concede that I didn't consider this
sufficiently. Location itself is definitely a product of actualization.

However, there is a hierarchy in symmetry breaking. The ultimate

symmetry is the unity of all, including all possible locations, all
possible times and all possible substances with all possible qualities
and quantities. This Grand Unity is the ultimate coincidentia
oppositorum, considered to be divine. But from there, down the
cascade of broken symmetries, the possibilities of location should be
limited to a few, finally arriving at the distinct location of the actual
event. So, for these intermediary steps, the question can arise as to
where these possibilities are?


Dan:
Hans-Joachim - Yes, Parama Brahman. It goes without saying that
there is a parallel between the idea of spontaneous symmetry
breaking in the early nanoseconds of the Big Bang and the
manifestation of Brahman as the unfolding of the universe. What I
wonder about is the nature of this parallel. There is what looks like a
general pattern of thought shared by creation mythology and
symmetry breaking in Cosmology, but I don't want it to be simply a
46

shared cognitive structure. I think that structure is access to reality.

The motif reappears because it is a reflection of a "something". At this
point, my metaphysical commitments are Buddhist, so what I see
going on is the unfolding of a lived moment in time, rather than the
history of a pre-existing superstructure, within which we exist in "dead
time". That unfolding occurs potentially in each moment, which makes
the transcendent immanent.
47

Sentience


Hans-Joachim:
By the way: The general term for describing the sentience of plants, is
tropism (=> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropism#Types). It works not
only with plants, but also with bacteria. Various environmental factors
have been tested, including the effect of music. As a reference you
might have a look at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/
PMC4830253/


Dan:
There are a few good documentaries on plant sentience on YouTube.
I think one is called "The Secret Life of Plants", and it uses time-lapse
photography (or videography, I guess) to show just how complex plant
behavior can be, and how responsive plants are to their surrounds.
One example I remember involved a particular vine which only grows
on tomato plants. One of these vines was planted between two plants,
one of which was a tomato. Using time-laps photography you see the
vine weaving back and froth between the two plants until it determines
which one is a tomato, and latches on to it. The "cues" the vine had
been using were airborne chemicals produced by the tomato plant. It's
only one of many examples. There are also examples of particular
plants producing toxins only in response to heavy grazing by animals:
self-defense.


Hans-Joachim:
Dan, I agree with your statement saying that the unfolding occurs
potentially in each moment, which makes the transcendent immanent
- meaning, and I think you will agree that the symmetry breaking
continues: it's not only a matter of the first nanoseconds of the
Universe; one level where this can happen, is the production and
annihilation of force particles in the vacuum. The following video
48

summarizes the starting point of my private investigations into this

field: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3xLuZNKhlY


Dan:
Hans-Joachim - I found this interesting. It is from the Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, out of a discussion about "continuous
creation" :



"Jonathan Edwards, for example, says, “God’s upholding created
substance, or causing its existence in each successive moment, is
altogether equivalent to an immediate production out of nothing, at
each moment…. So that this effect differs not at all from the first
creation, but only circumstantially…” (Edwards 1758, 402; emphasis
in the original). In other words, there is no real difference between the
act of creation and the act of conservation, though different words
may be used for them. Descartes, Malebranche, Leibniz, and
Berkeley all express similar views.“


Dan:
The idea of continuous creation holds with or without an agent behind
the act.
49

Complex space-time



Hans-Joachim:
Yesterday, I attended a meet up on attention economy. Among other
interesting topics, one speaker presented a reversible figure and
asked: where is the duck/rabbit? It's obviously not on the screen. Dan,
you are certainly familiar with such questions. What would be your
answer, keeping in mind our rejection of the Representational Theory?


Dan:
Nice question, Hans-Joachim. One thing we can say about the
location of the duck/rabbit is that it is not located in physical space, if
we take physical space to be objective space which contains objects
that are there, whether or not there is someone present to perceive
them. Obviously we need a subject present in order to talk about the
presence of the duck/rabbit. The location of the duck/rabbit is not
strictly a question of physical space. If you take location in a broader
sense than physical, running the risk of being accused of speaking
purely metaphorically, you could say that the duck/rabbit exists in
psychological space, or phenomenological space. We do experience
it as being in some sense "out there" on the page, but we are also
aware that it is "not really there" on the page, that is, we are aware of
it as a representation, not a physical reality, and more than that, we
are aware of it as an ambiguous representation that by it's nature
opens up "psychological space“.

It is through things like the duck/rabbit image that we become aware

of our role in constituting experience, that we become aware of the
differences between how we see and what we see, so objective and
psychological space are opened up simultaneously through
ambiguous images. 

The question is how metaphorical is the talk of "Psychological space".
50

Something very close to psychological space is what Husserl took to

be primary, the field of consciousness, phenomenal awareness. We
begin there, and through reflection on things like ambiguous figures
begin to draw the distinction between objective and psychological
space. What distinguishes psychological space from
phenomenological space is that the former invites naturalistic (read
„objective") explanations, and questions such as "where is the duck/
rabbit really?"), while the phenomenological space does not call for
explanations, it calls for an analysis of the ways in which the
phenomenological object is presented, "modes of presentation“.

I'd say that instead of the question "where is it", the question more
sensitive to it's nature is "how is it situated“. That is a question about
"location", but it includes cultural context.


Hans-Joachim:
Thank you, Dan, for this answer. I learnt so much in our
conversations. What helped me most was your benevolent
scepticism.


Dan:
Thanks for the vote of confidence, Hans-Joachim. I assume that the
reason you raised the question of the location of the "duck/rabbit" is
that the tempting response is that it is located in the mind, or in the
brain, as a representation. Where else could it be, and what else
could it be? That is among the classic moves in psychology conceived
as a natural science, which is other than the field of transcendental
consciousness which doesn't offer explanations. Psychology as a
natural science is all about explanations, and the explanation by
"representations" is a good example of the paradoxes that natural
science explanations end up in when it comes to psychology. You just
51

can not explain a first person process as if it were a third person

process. You can't eliminate subjectivity from psychology.


Hans-Joachim:
But, isn't it that this paradox can be dissolved by assuming a
coexistence of objective and subjective space? The objective space
would be that "which contains objects that are there, whether or not
there is someone present to perceive them." And the subjective space
would be the psychological space, which is "very close to what
Husserl took to be primary, the field of consciousness, phenomenal
awareness." Both could be accommodated in a complex space-time
with monotonous or "dead" time on the objective, and lived time on
the subjective side. 

Actually, watching the animation on vacuum fluctuations (https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3xLuZNKhlY ) one can experience
reversibility in time: You can see it from outside (like in "dead" time),
and you can experience it from inside, remembering that each and
every element of our environment - inside and outside of our bodies -
is undergoing such fluctuations (in lived time). The experience of
tilting is similar to that with reversible figures.

Also, the objective space is not necessarily given from the beginning,
rather it can be constructed in the course of lived time (mathematically
by multiplying its unit two times with itself), ensuring that subjective
space, the field of consciousness and phenomenal awareness,
remains primary.


But, I think you gave the answer already when you said that you are
more interested in "the unfolding of a lived moment in time, rather
than the history of a pre-existing superstructure within which we exist
in 'dead time'."
52

Sarkar’s four chamber model

Dan:
Hans-Joachim, I think whenever the concept of space is introduced
that also introduces a sense of objectivity. Subjectivity slips away. On
the other hand, I have to admit that I do not understand what it is that
you are ultimately up to with modeling the relationship between lived
time and dead time mathematically.


Hans-Joachim:
Many thanks for this question. 

When I started participating in the PhilosophyOfMind@LinkedIn-
discussions five months ago, my answer to this question would have
been less refined. But now, after almost 5oo pages of turning the
issue to and fro, I hope that the crucial point can be communicated
more efficiently.

Let me start with a general consideration: When we start counting, we
use our fingers to denote 1, 2, 3 ..., hence these numbers are also
called digits. It is generally understood that they indicate groups of
similar things in our external world. Later we learn, that all rational
numbers can be constructed from 1 and 0. We can use them to
describe our external world, and since Galileo Galilei, many believe
that "mathematics is the language with which God has written the
universe”. However, as soon as we close our eyes, we realize that
there is also an internal world. Some say it is unreal or imaginary,
drawing a line of demarkation between that which is real and can be
counted (res extensa), and that which exists in our minds and can
"only" be known (res cogitans). However, it remains completely
obscure with this approach how to overcome the barrier between the
two. 



At the times of Galileo Galilei and René Descartes, complex numbers
53

were already known, but they were regarded as useless. Actually, the
negative connotation of 'imaginary' goes back to Descartes, who
mocked about their crankiness. Leibniz was familiar with complex
numbers, but he couldn't find useful applications. It took another one
hundred years before Carl Friedrich Gauß discovered their diverse
applicability.



For us it is important to know that the imaginary unit "i" can be treated
like a "1", with the condition that it refers to another realm, i.e. to that
which is subjective, in contrast to "1", which is to be applied on the
objective world. "i" is the unit in the field of subjectivity, whereas "1" is
the unit in the field of objectivity.

If you start with objectivity (rational numbers), it looks like crazy to

introduce i = square root of minus one. That's the point where I
usually lost my audience. But if you start with subjectivity (imaginary
numbers), it's just reverse: Multiply i three times with itself and you get
the unit in the field of objectivity (+1). This can be applied to all
aspects of existence (space, time and substance). It shows that
objective space, time and substance are derivatives of their subjective
counterparts. The subjective is primary, the objective secondary.

But the objective is not only secondary, it is also influenced by the

subjective, just like the subjective is influenced by the objective.
Mathematically, these interactions are modeled by multiplications with
the imaginary unit i, which means that any set of elements can cross
that previously unsurmountable border by simply multiplying it with
some terms containing i. This is usually done by matrix multiplication,
which looks complicated, but is, in fact, only laborious, and can easily
be done by small computer programs.
54

Regarding time, the aforesaid means that we don't have to consider

time as an unidirectional arrow, but as a complex plane: at any
moment in objective time, we can be at a completely different time
subjectively. We can also switch from the regular mode of objective
time to the variable and sometimes erratic mode of subjective time.
And we can be at different times simultaneously.

However, these explanations refer only to the first version, as

presented in "From Imaginary Oxymora to Real Polarities and Return"
(2012). In contrast, the extended version, presented in "Microvita - A
New Science of Reality" (2017), deals with the four chamber model.
Therein, your (Dan's) objection can be accommodated conveniently,
which said:

"Whenever the concept of space is introduced that also introduces a
sense of objectivity. Subjectivity slips away."

Actually, I didn't realize this point before, but it's very important; and it
nicely fits into the general concept:



In the first chamber we have time indeterminacy

(oxymora in time, subjective),

in the second chamber time determinacy

(subjective),

in the third chamber we have space-time indeterminacy

(oxymora in space-time, objective), and

in the fourth chamber space-time determinacy

(objective).


The general formula is that you move from a complemented to a
polarized state (1), next to another complemented state (2) and then
to the fourth state, which is again polarized (3). The second move
involves a synthesis, which is to bring about a new element, i.e.
"space" in the example given above. The third chamber is called
55

"objectivated mind" or "Citta", which amounts to what you meant (I

hope you agree) when you said that "the concept of space ...
introduces a sense of objectivity". The difference to the fourth
chamber, however, is that it is yet indeterminate, where the
actualization occurs only with the last move (3).

So, indeterminacy in space obviously means "here as well as there".
But what should indeterminacy in time stand for? In the most
fundamental sense, it refers to time flowing forwards as well as
backwards: It's about a symmetry among entropic and syntropic
waves, Luigi Fantappié envisioned as early as 1942 (also see chapter
18 in "From Imaginary Oxymora to Real Polarities and Return“). Also
see Tab. 1 in 

https://prsnys.pressbooks.com/chapter/sadhana-and-interiority/

Last but not least a word about the relation between models and
reality. The models are not to be confused with reality. They are only
for a better understanding: If it is difficult to understand reality, we can
build a model and study its behaviour. As long as it complies with
factuality and is additionally able to predict its progression, the model
fulfills its purpose.

Additionally, I found the following reasoning:




Mathematical models are used because we try to understand and
predict naturally observed phenomena. It also helps us to manipulate
the world around us. Historically, we used several mathematical
approaches to reach this goal: numbers, algebra, geometry, calculus
including differential equations, statistics, dynamical systems & chaos,
and complex systems.

Mathematical modeling is used to cast the observed phenomenon into
a mathematical description. In general, the observed phenomena are
too complex to be described fully. Mathematical modeling gives us a
56

recipe how to simplify observed phenomena and to arrive at a

computationally tractable description.

However, we have to keep in mind, that the model is a simplification of
the reality. There is always a chance that results predicted by the
model deviate from the observed phenomena themselves.
Very often a model must be implemented computationally to enable its
evaluation. Very few sufficiently realistic models are solvable
analytically.

From this, it is easy to observe that mathematical modeling plays an
indispensable place among all tools used to describe, predict, and
manipulate natural phenomena. Mathematical modeling is in many
cases the only way how to experience a phenomenon.

Think about performing in silicon (computational) nuclear blasts,
predicting drug interactions in the human body, disaster evacuation
strategy development, doing any experiments unethical to do on
humans, etc. So, mathematical modeling enables humans to research
in scientific areas previously inaccessible to us.
Actually, there is one mathematical field which enables an even better
description of many so far indescribable phenomena: it is called
complex systems.



h t t p s : / / w w w . r e s e a r c h g a t e . n e t / p o s t /
What_is_the_importance_of_mathematical_modeling

Hans-Joachim:
Dan, I remember you saying that "whenever the concept of space is
introduced that also introduces a sense of objectivity. Subjectivity slips
away."

I agreed and I took this insight as a means to shed some light on the
transition from the second to the third chamber in P.R. Sarkar's model.

Now, I found two passages in Merleau-Ponty's works (cited in Noah
Moss Brender's essay "On the Nature of Space: Getting from Motricity
57

to Reflection and Back Again" (https://www.academia.edu/33771227/

On_the_Nature_of_Space_Getting_from_Motricity_to_Reflection_and_Bac
k_Again): In the first one he speaks about the difficulties when reading
a map or when orienting oneself on a plan. He elaborates that it
demands to "be capable of transcribing a kinetic melody into a visual
diagram, of establishing relations of reciprocal correspondence and
mutual expression between them." These "kinetic melodies" seem to
be the subjective counterpart of our mental images. 

However, kinetic melodies also need some space, isn't it? Just like
dancing with eyes closed: We are moving, but we hardly think about
our environment. Or in Noah Moss Brender's words: "This is the
experience of space as we live it through our bodies: the experience
of my body’s “knowing” where things are and how to move with
respect to them, without my being able to articulate this knowledge
explicitly or to say how I have come by it. This is the space of what
Merleau-Ponty calls “motricity [motricité]”, a space of movement and
action rather than contemplation and knowledge. It is organized
around my own body, and it orients my movements and perceptions.
Things have meaning in this space, not in terms of their objective
positions, but in terms of my bodily “I can” (Phenomenology of
Perception).
In the second one he writes: "The truth is that homogeneous space
can convey the meaning of orientated space only because it is from
the latter that it has received that meaning. In so far as the content
can be really subsumed under the form and can appear as the
content of that form, it is because the form is accessible only through
the content. Bodily space can really become a fragment of objective
space only if within its individuality as bodily space it contains the
dialectical ferment to transform it into universal
space." (Phenomenology of Perception).
58

I think this transformation into homogeneous or "universal space" is

meant and performed with the transition from the third to the fourth
chamber in P.R. Sarkar's model.

So, out of the four chambers, we get three analogues in Merleau-

Ponty's works: (2) la motricité, (3) orientated or lived space and (4) the
homogeneous or universal space of our natural sciences. And what
about the first chamber? What remains is "indeterminacy in subjective
time". But what does that mean? 

According to Jakob von Uexkull "Every organism is a melody which
sings itself". Regarding motricité, we might add: which sings and
dances on its own. And in return, that first chamber could signify a
realm, which is filled by sound without melody, a sound that doesn't
provoke movements, a sound that is pregnant with all melodies, all
meanings and all movements, but that has not yet delivered, a sound
before bifurcation, before polarization, a sound like the universal
AOUM.

Dan:
Hans-Joachim, the thing is that Merleau-Ponty was speaking of "lived
space". It is the ground of modeled, or "homogeneous space". The
"dialectical ferment" ontologically precedes universal space, which I
take to be a variation of homogenous space. None of this precludes
attempts to model the transitions between lived experience and
objectified experience, but it does highlight the fact that the models
depend on lived experience. I believe that that dependency
relationship is better captured by verbal descriptions than
mathematical models, but that might just be personal preference. In
either case, be it verbal or mathematical, the interesting things
happen where the model or the verbal description fail, which might be
the 4th and last aspect of the sound "Om", the silence on which the
articulation depends.
59

I need to familiarize myself with von Uexkull. He influenced several

major thinkers who contributed to both Phenomenology and
Enactivism. His conception of the "Umwelt" is deep, and led to views
of co-constitution of environment and organism.


Hans-Joachim:

> The "dialectical ferment" ontologically precedes universal space,

> which I take to be a variation of homogenous space. 



This sentence shows the advantage of a model: If you have to
prepare yoghurt from milk, you put some yoghurt into the milk,
because the yoghurt contains the bacteria needed for this
transformation. But if you prepare leavened dough, you add yeast,
which is the ferment. So, the yeast and the dough are two different
things. Likewise with space: You need operators to transform one
space into the other. And it works in a reciprocal or dialectical way,
back and forth, that's the model! In the model, such operators
transform orientated or lived space into homogeneous or universal
space (space with or without content, accordingly). But that's not all;
they also break symmetries - in many different ways.

All From: LinkedIn.com, 


Group: Philosophy of Mind

(https://www.linkedin.com/groups/4011660) =>

h t t p s : / / w w w . l i n k e d i n . c o m / g r o u p s /
4011660/4011660-6360502370413223940