Rick Prescott:
First, on substance dualism, I don't see how consc. can exist outside of its instantiation in an experiencer. Consc. is a state that a physical object can be in and not a substance that is separate from its existence in an experiencer. This is what bothers me about Karl Popper's multiple worlds. I can see using these metaphorically, but I don't accept them as ontology.
Second, on Greg's *pure experience* and *knowing consc.*, presumably the latter is consc. with an object and the former is consc. without an object. I don't see how consc. can NOT have an object. If it doesn't have an object, it presumably just floats there, free, manifested by a human experiencer who is not aware of the state until it's over, at which time the state is remembered. Isn't this a type of substance dualism?
Why on earth (!) would this imply a dualism of substances? Consider, for example, a computer-with-taperecorder
(i) have a time-index for its sound tapes
(ii) have times when its tapes record inputs
(iii) have other times when its tapes recorded nothing (when there was no input or "object")
(iv) have memory functions such that it could note (and even, when directed, replay) the various recordings.
On this model, there would be "memories" of "experiences" (tapings) which were objectless (soundless) as well as memories which were objectful (with sounds recorded). It might even be programmed to attempt to generate a style of functioning in which soundless tapes (instead of background hiss, etc.) would be the normal response to taping in a soundless environment as a method to increase its recording fidelity. None of this purely physicalistic model, of course, implies any substance dualism. Furthermore, it may well be that such a model reflects the ontology underlying subjective experiences of "pure" objectless consciousness--as well as suggesting a mechanism for accounting for some of the widely reported beneficial effects for this "mystical" experience (replacing the machine with a brain/cns). If so, the only thing "mystical" about the pc experience would be a function of mystical traditions and/or mystifying conceptualizations with which it is often found associated.
As phenomenology, I don't want to denigrate the pure conscious experience (or any other altered states, for that matter) and the insight and ecstasy usually associated with it. But shouldn't the PCE, like other altered states, be viewed with just a little suspicion that they aren't real and just *seem* real (a tip of the hat here to Dennett and Hayes)?
There seems to me to be a basic conflation here. For there is a world of difference between *an experience* which isn't real, and an experience *the objects of which* aren't real. People *really have* illusions, the *objects* of which aren't real. (Similarly, people *truly* have *false* opinions.) Thus, in the pc case, one can *really have* such experiences (as I myself think, having had and remembered them often), without their being any "real" thing that they are "of." They (by their identifying characteristic) have no content suggesting that they are "of" anything at all, and, indeed, no internal intentional structure ("of-ness") even hinting at the possibility of object-orientedness. Thus the question of the reality of its *object* would seem on the face of it to be mis-taken. (Indeed, it is this very feature of the experience which has often made it seem so problematic.) Furthermore, while sophisticated theologians and philosophers (and even more simple-minded people functioning within a given tradition of interpretation) may, upon reflection conclude that the objectlessness or contentlessness of the experience somehow displays an undifferentiated ground (either, depending on one's intellectual context and inferences, of consciousness alone, or of consciousness and the objective world alike), such inferences are hardly necessary. (Compare, for example, many standard Buddhist scriptures, and the general position of Mahayana, as contrasted to Hinayana and Vedantans.) In short, the questions of whether the experience is of something "real," or even "of" anything at all, are obviously to be differentiated from questions of whether the experience can be "real" in the sense of really had.
It's true that many smarter than me have reported this state and expounded on it but maybe we genuflect in front of their reports a little too readliy. Maybe we should view the PCE as similar to a shaman's experience of becoming a jaguar, or a dreamer's soaring above the clouds. It really gets down to being able to tell someone "I know it seems real but it' not."
Again, all genuflecting aside (because, among other things, even quite stupid people, in my opinion, can have the PCE experience), we have here the same conflation between "real" as applied to an experience and as applied to its purported content. A shaman (presumably) can have a very real experience of something (whether a magical jaguar, or a soaring above the clouds) that doesn't exist and is therefore unreal. (It may be worth noting here that the logic of this kind of conflation has been exposed since the time of Plato's often amusing analyses.)
Jonathan Shear
jcs@richmond.infi.net
jcs-online
menu