User:Visarga/A philosophical system building attempt

consciousness, an unifying principle

 * notion of consciousness
 * awareness
 * sensory awareness
 * self-awareness
 * the self
 * experience of individuality
 * intentionality
 * free will
 * attentional modulation
 * unity of agency
 * integrative
 * qualia (phenomenal) unity
 * diachronic (moment-to-moment) continuity
 * holistic


 * unity of agency
 * Descartes and Kant: unity is a deep and essential feature of consciousness
 * ability to coordinate and integrate activities; consciousness as the "glue" that integrates all perceptions and relfections
 * conscious states are unitary, integrated; show intentionality; attentional modulation; experiences are unified in a single, encompassing state of consciousness on a deep level
 * parts of the body don't move by themselves; they act as a "team" under a single directive
 * the deliberative standpoint: when doubting or deliberating, the agent is "above" the options; acting like an arbiter
 * identification with past self and future self
 * the self cannot be defined by content


 * unified phenomenal (qualia) field theory
 * co-conscious states: multiple states can be objects of a single state of awareness
 * conscious perception is an integrative capacity of consciousness
 * type of unity
 * subsumtive unity: two experiences are subsumed in the same state of consciousness
 * access-conscious state: can be immediately accessed (information)
 * phenomenally-conscious: there is a subjective dimension to this state (qualia)
 * phenomenal unity of consciousness holds true (qualia of any number of objects perceived at once can be unified), but not necessarily access unity (information of a number of objects might not all be retained at once, there is an "access bottleneck")
 * a subject cannot have two phenomenal states symultaneously
 * "for any set of phenomenal states experienced at one time, there must be a phenomenal state that subsumes each state in that set"
 * the concept of consciousness and states of consciousness is rather holistic than atomistic (claim)


 * All activity inside consciousness necessarily must have a unitive aspect inside multiplicity of its states
 * The thread of self-identity through life; the common unitive experience in the simultaneous assembly of multiple sensations (or the formation of an image which is massively parallel as a unique synthetic experience in consciousness)
 * The contrasting unitive character of subjectivity as opposed to the multiplicity of objectivity
 * Consciousness is simple; it does not have parts; mental activity and exterior world are multiple
 * The multi-dimensional analogy: torus intersecting 2-d plane; how multiple entities could be one single entity on a higher level; also, the "elephant" story; the "sun reflecting in many pots" story


 * to read: Tim Bayne, David Chalmers,, Derek Parfit, Gestalt psychology

Reflection

 * Everything is an epitome of everything else; duality cum non-duality; holographic universe; unity in difference
 * Analogy with the house of mirrors; multi-level reflections; mirrors in mirrors; distortion; resolution of the mirrors
 * Consciousness can manifest in a system if it is like a clear-self-reflecting mirror
 * The universe and the mind are like that; they both have a holographic nature (EPR experiment, the rat's brain partial removal experiments, holographic principle); where consciousness exists, there must be unity; yet where creation exists, there is duality; thus in the middle-ground, we have duality-cum-nonduality, the nature of the mind
 * is our 3-d world just a holographicaly enabled 2-d universe? Gerardus 't Hooft; or  "Highly symmetric and empty 5-D anti-de Sitter universe"; article by Jacob Bekenstein
 * at the mental level: we can analyze reflection in the philosophical pursuit; how theories are connected to each other and influence each other; how a series of models, each slightly different is build; they are more like an organism than a series of discrete attempts
 * music can be described as the linear transposition of a higher order entity; with each measure, the pattern partially stays the same and partially changes; like scanning a higher dimensional structure line by line; each musical measure reflects in the other measures; they form a whole; it cannot be considered part by part; a single note or a small portion is nothing by itself; only the whole has meaning
 * human relationships (and especially the love relationship in a couple) are complex reflections of one's inner life in the other's; in fact we could say that all that is good and produces a sense of completeness, happiness and purpose is related to reflections between one person and another person, between one's conceptions and a culture, between the body and the mind, etc; reflection works on all levels, both horizontally - same level and vertically; in fact if we would want to select the most seminal, profound concept that describes the subjective world of consciousness it would probably be reflection (as in holographic reflection, or realizing unity in duality)
 * If consciousness exists in the quantum states of matter, in a state of all-pervasion and unity with all universe, then it would be more appropriate to say no that brain creates consciousness than that consciousness creates the brain

Creative power

 * Estimating the computational power of selfC : number of concepts, number of successive qualia, number of mental operations one can have in a lifetime; is this a measure of the entropy of the subject?
 * Impedance difference between the creative power of selfC and the complexity of the universe

Multi-layered model of consciousness

 * Analogy with the simulated computer
 * Ideas inside one's mind are like selfC inside godC (analogy: Matrix, Star Trek's Holodeck, VR)
 * Analogy with the modulation of AM waves
 * resonance as the method of transfer of information and energy between various units of the world

Metaphors for the non-dual, unitive, state of consciousness, turya

 * In the AM modulation analogy, when one focuses on the modulated wave, one sees a series of irregular signals; when one focuses on the carrier wave, one sees a continuous medium; in the same way, in turya, one sees the same information (wave form) but changer focus from the surface (the modulated wave) to its substance (carrier wave); the same information is recognized now as a new type of qualia - "non-dual qualia"
 * In an autostereogram, the same image can be perceived 1. as an unintelligible (almost chaotic) patch of dots, or 2. as a surprisingly realistic 3-d image encoded in a 2-d plane; in the same way, tuya can be attained by a change of focus in consciousness; what appeared divided and chaotic in normal view is seen as connected, part of a higher order in turya

Levels of qualia

 * Level 1. Primary sensory qualia: This scene is colored, This touch is soft
 * Level 2. Affective content: This scene is beautiful, This touch is gentle
 * Level 3. Subject-ification: This scene is my home, an extension of myself; This touch makes me one with the object
 * Level 4. Pure subjectivity (non-dual): describe the perception of a kind of noumenal-qualia in an object of perception: clear light of the mind (Buddhism), Rigpa of (Dzogchen), Turya of Kashmir Shaivism, Samādhi of yoga


 * Level 1. Most differentiated, qualia that are not particularly associated with the subject, but with the properties of the experience
 * Level 2. Affective content is thrust upon Level 1 qualia, thus the object starts to appear in subjective qualities
 * Level 3. Subject affinity is recognized in the object, but a certain differentiation subject object remains
 * Level 4. Non-dual self identity is seen in the object

Thus we can see qualia has layers of depth and the layers are disposed on an objective-to-subjective axe. At the extreme end of the subjective axe, there is the non-dual, noumenal experience of the object

Also we can observe it is common that subjective aspects like "lovely" or "sexy" are superimposed on objects. The perception of the object is modulated by this layer of affective qualia. There is a definite mechanism for infusing an objective perception with subjective content. This same route is used by the mystics when they develop the samādhi state; at the extreme end of this affective infusion into the objective, the objective is emptied completely of its original qualia, being replaced by noumenal-qualia (also poetically described as "light of consciousness" or "conscious light"). At some point all objective qualia (level 1) is "sucked out" of both sensory activity (amodal) and mental (modal) activity; the resulting state is "a state of oneness" because now there is only one single qualia on all levels