The Emergent Structure of Consciousness - JCER

[za_w...@yahoo.com]

I wrote a paper in which I present how consciousness has an emergent structure, and then I show how present-day Physics is part of the emergent structure of consciousness. The paper can be found here:

http://jcer.com/index.php/jcj/issue/view/84/showToc

Later Edit: Now all my papers can be found for free on Scientific GOD Journal:

http://scigod.com/index.php/sgj/issue/view/80/showToc

Enjoy!

http://alicematters.web.cern.ch/?q=CosminVisan

[Scott Roberts]

Well, I read Part I, but Part II is behind a paywall, so it could be that some concerns I have are answered there.

The main concern I have is with the idea of 'emergence'. That suggests to me a bottom-up panpsychist model, which I don't agree with. For example, you have ideas being emergent from sense data (via text). I would hold that ideas are ontologically prior to sense perception, that senses are developed to present ideas in a physical setting.

Another thing I found strange is to consider memory as underlying experienced time. I fully agree that experienced time is different from physical time, but that just means that the model of time that physicists use is unsuitable for modelling consciousness. However, when you see memory as providing the "retention" of experienced time, it seems to me that this presupposes physical time, that some means is required to connect an immediate past with a point-like present.

I also disagree with the statement that because experienced time is not the same as physical time, then there is no change. Especially when you later bring up 'diversity' as a quale. Change just is temporal diversity.

On Monday, September 4, 2017 at 6:57:44 AM UTC-10, za_w...@yahoo.com wrote:

I wrote a paper in which I present how consciousness has an emergent structure, and then I show how present-day Physics is part of the emergent structure of consciousness. The paper can be found here:

http://jcer.com/index.php/jcj/issue/view/84/showToc

Enjoy!

http://alicematters.web.cern.ch/?q=CosminVisan

[Peter Jones]

I could only read the summary. The idea that consciousness is emergent will not go down well around here, but perhaps the idea is that the structure (mind) emerges. 

[za_w...@yahoo.com]

There is a "PDF" button, and then a "Download this PDF file" button in the top-right corner.

Regarding the syntagma "consciousness is emergent", it doesn't mean that it emerges from something else (like how one of the reviewer at the MDPI journal thought, probably without even reading my paper), but it means that it is structured on a hierarchy of levels. In short, "emergent" = "being structured on levels".

[Dana Lomas]

Cosmin ... Are you not just saying that Consciousness is fundamental, but the experience of qualia is emergent, and that that emergence occurs in a hierarchically structured way. I had some difficulty following your description of that structure, but there may well be something to it.

[za_w...@yahoo.com]

1) Indeed this is a problem that I am aware of. But I think it allows a resolution in the framework of emergence, if we allow a little stretch of imagination. Things might work like this: all the knowledge of the world is stored in the level of memory. Then from this, various qualia are being emerged, like colors, sounds, etc. Then, when we try to make sense of perception, what we are actually doing is demergence. We demerge our perceptions and we get to the level of memory, from where we get the ideas out of which sensory qualia are being made. I have another paper from a few years ago where I also talked about qualia being ideas, named "Is Qualia Meaning or Understanding?":

http://jcer.com/index.php/jcj/article/view/407

2) By being "no change", I mean being no change outside of the passage of time in consciousness. And passage of time is a quality, like any other quality, like color red. The difference lies in the content that each quality have, content which can be semantically expressed. For example, in my previous paper, I argue how red looks red because it has the content of "important" (or in your words: the idea of "important" is prior to color red).

The means by which the immediate past is connected to the present is presented in the paper, when I show how the quality of passage of time results from Time inheriting the quality of self-referentiality from the Self and the quality of memorizing from Memory.

Quote: "One interesting implication of the self-referential nature of the Self can be best seen inherited in the level
of the retentional passage of time. The way the retention is created is to keep in the present moment the
former present moment that has just passed. This is realized through 2 qualities that time inherits from
the lower levels. First, because of the level of memory, each moment is also a memory. Then, because of
the self-reference inherited from the Self, each moment that becomes a memory is fed back into the
present moment. This way, a sense of continuity, of passage is realized. Notice that all that exists is the
eternal present moment. But the present moment, inheriting qualities from the levels of memory and of
Self, acquires a quality of itself experienced as a memory fed back into itself as it is experienced directly
as the present moment. This quality of former present moment fed back into itself is realized continuously
(or better said: eternally). Because of this, a feeling of a continuous passage of time is realized, and a
feeling of actually travelling through an external time is obtained."

Perhaps what is hard to understand is that you expect this inheritance to happen in some kind of dynamical fashion. But this is not how it happens. The passage of time, being emerged from Memory and Self, just has the qualities of Memory and Self (in other words, Time is both Time, Memory and Self). Because of all these qualities, Time is inherently dynamic in its quality.

On Tuesday, 5 September 2017 04:08:27 UTC+3, Scott Roberts wrote:

Well, I read Part I, but Part II is behind a paywall, so it could be that some concerns I have are answered there.

1) The main concern I have is with the idea of 'emergence'. That suggests to me a bottom-up panpsychist model, which I don't agree with. For example, you have ideas being emergent from sense data (via text). I would hold that ideas are ontologically prior to sense perception, that senses are developed to present ideas in a physical setting.

2) Another thing I found strange is to consider memory as underlying experienced time. I fully agree that experienced time is different from physical time, but that just means that the model of time that physicists use is unsuitable for modelling consciousness. However, when you see memory as providing the "retention" of experienced time, it seems to me that this presupposes physical time, that some means is required to connect an immediate past with a point-like present.

[Peter Jones]

I have some sympathy with your general idea, if I understand it.

I went for walk yesterday and as various thoughts went by (it's hot, here's a tree, there's an ache in my foot etc) I noticed a vast sea of thoughts underneath these surface thoughts, and in there were the trees, the grass, the birds, the sky, the wind on my face and everything else. It's all thoughts. The idea that the thoughts preceed the qualia is interesting but I wonder whether it is not better to say that the thoughts simply are the qualia. 

Your idea of how time is created or experienced seems likely to be about right. There must be some sort of feedback using memory. Thus we can step out of time by an appropriate direction of our attention.

Just noodling.      

[Scott Roberts]

While you say "The way the retention is created is to keep in the present moment the former present moment that has just passed" I would say there is no creation involved, and just say that the present moment is extended -- a length, not a point. Memory does play a role in producing the ideas of past and future, and with the idea of continuity of self, but not in experiencing time. The present moment has time within it, as the awareness of change, though of course we only call it 'time' on reflection after having the ideas of past and future. (I would add that, on further reflection, the present moment also has the the character of timelessness, but that's another story, and in any case is not a quale, at least not for normal consciousness.)

[Peter Jones]

Hmm. In this case the 'present moment' is not a moment but a duration. I struggle with this idea.  

[Scott Roberts]

On Wednesday, September 6, 2017 at 12:56:26 AM UTC-10, Peter Jones wrote:

Hmm. In this case the 'present moment' is not a moment but a duration. I struggle with this idea.  

Well, 'moment' can mean either a point in time or a short interval. Anyway, if "now" is a point there can be no awareness of movement, not to mention one gets Zeno's paradoxes. So I'm puzzled why you struggle with the idea that it has duration. 

[Peter Jones]

On Wednesday, 6 September 2017 21:50:21 UTC+1, Scott Roberts wrote:

Well, 'moment' can mean either a point in time or a short interval. Anyway, if "now" is a point there can be no awareness of movement, not to mention one gets

Zeno's paradoxes. So I'm puzzled why you struggle with the idea that it has duration. 

Aha. Yes, this is exactly the idea. If 'Now' is a point then it has no duration and movement becomes impossible. Score one to Zeno. Movement IS impossible. The appearance of movement, however, is clearly possible. The appearance of movement is possible but if that which moves has no intrinsic existence then what is moving? It can only be Mind.  But Mind is emergent. In this case God 'moves and moves-not' as de Cusa says. 

Thus Zeno's paradoxes (not that they're his paradoxes, we all face them) are an argument for Buddhism. It would not be that there is a duration as opposed to a point, but that that there is no time. Thus the OPs idea that consciousness uses memory and anticipation to create a sense of time is necessary. Awareness as itself can have no sense of time.

Much the same idea comes up in physics, I believe, with the idea that time begins with diversity, with creation, with relativity, andd that before this the concept has no meaning.  

If we see time as being made up of moments or durations it is paradoxical so I'm not sure it helps to worry which it is. Best to say with Kant that it is a conceptual creation, something consciousness does to make the world possible.

Even if we don't buy into this view it would be highly unorthodox to define a moment as a duration. What would be the duration of the moments between the moments?  

It may be relevant that a buddha is said to be able to discern units of time orders of magnitude smaller than the rest of us, since he or she sees it in relation to stillness and can observe its arising.  .  

[za_w...@yahoo.com]

Indeed this is a problem. And if you have a look at the retentional model presented in this article about time in consciousness: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-temporal/ and you have a look at Figure 17, you see that they also talk that if you take the present moment as a duration, then you have a problem of how such durations follow one another. But I solved this in the quote that I also gave in a previous post. Because the emergent level of Time has the quality of self-referentiality inherited from the Self and the quality of memorization inherited from the Memory, then the problem is solved, because these 2 qualities work together to give birth to a Time that is eternally taking its current state and is feeding it back into itself as a memory. This way, the present moment is not only a duration, but is a special kind of duration, one that takes its present content and feeds-back it into itself as memory. Note that this is not a "process" or something dynamic. It is just a quality, a quality that is the way it is because it inherits other qualities from levels below it, and by using them, it emerges the quality of Time.

[za_w...@yahoo.com]

I think the best way to understand emergence is to pay careful attention to your experiences, to spot how levels emerge one from another. The best example to facilitate this understanding is this one that I gave on the section "Does it really emerge?":

Before going on with more difficult analyses, a natural question might arise at this moment: Does it really
emerge? Or in other words: Do the emergent levels actually have an ontological status? Or are they merely
convenient epistemic descriptions that we use to talk about a consciousness that only exists on one level
and all its qualia are just entities that allow for descriptions, descriptions that although expressible in a
hierarchical vocabulary, don’t actually imply any ontological hierarchy? Having now so many examples
that made us get a feeling for what emergence is, this question can be easily answered: the levels are
really ontological. To strengthen even more our intuition that we are indeed dealing with ontological
levels, let’s take some more examples. One would be again the duck-rabbit image. Even though the shape
is the same, the duck and the rabbit qualia are clearly distinct entities both between each other and as
compared to the shape from which they emerge. If the duck-rabbit image is too popular and its popularity
obscures its importance, we can take any inkblot shape. If we are given an inkblot shape, we just look and
see a shape. But if someone tells us: “Look, there is a butterfly there.”, all of a sudden, we see a butterfly.
Having now the experience of a butterfly, we can compare it with the previous experience of a shape that
we had, and clearly understand that seeing a butterfly is a totally different experience than seeing just the
mere shape.

If you reflect carefully on it, you will understand what emergence is.

[Scott Roberts]

On Thursday, September 7, 2017 at 12:20:57 AM UTC-10, Peter Jones wrote:

Aha. Yes, this is exactly the idea. If 'Now' is a point then it has no duration and movement becomes impossible. Score one to Zeno. Movement IS impossible. The appearance of movement, however, is clearly possible. The appearance of movement is possible but if that which moves has no intrinsic existence then what is moving? It can only be Mind.  But Mind is emergent. In this case God 'moves and moves-not' as de Cusa says. 

Well, I would say that it is our ordinary mind that "moves and moves-not", that is, our awareness is a tetralemmic polarity of stillness and change.

 

Thus Zeno's paradoxes (not that they're his paradoxes, we all face them) are an argument for Buddhism. It would not be that there is a duration as opposed to a point, but that that there is no time. Thus the OPs idea that consciousness uses memory and anticipation to create a sense of time is necessary. Awareness as itself can have no sense of time.

Here you seem to be assuming that one pole of the tetralemmic polarity has meaning "in itself", while I would say that awareness is always the interplay of stillness and change. If the sense of time requires memory and anticipation, one is faced with Bradley's Regress -- how can one relate a memory with the "now" without an endless regress of relations?

 

If we see time as being made up of moments or durations it is paradoxical so I'm not sure it helps to worry which it is. Best to say with Kant that it is a conceptual creation, something consciousness does to make the world possible.

Even if we don't buy into this view it would be highly unorthodox to define a moment as a duration. What would be the duration of the moments between the moments?  

I agree that it is paradoxical to think of time as being made up of successive intervals. Rather I would say that there is just one ever-changing interval (and so no moments between moments). As an analogy, consider the area of contact between a road and the tire of a moving car. That area is an interval, but it is ever-changing, plus there is change within the interval. Our direct sense of time is the changing within the interval. What disappears off the trailing edge of the interval can feed back into the on-going interval (as memories), but that just adds to the contents of the interval. It does not create the sense of time. After all, one can be experiencing change without memories.

 

It may be relevant that a buddha is said to be able to discern units of time orders of magnitude smaller than the rest of us, since he or she sees it in relation to stillness and can observe its arising.  .  

 This is why I say we (non-buddhas) are not fully self-aware. We are only aware of form, but are not aware of the stillness. But one cannot say that awareness is just the stillness (formlessness) since then one cannot account for awareness of form. Instead, the stillness is not other than change, change is not other than the stillness.

[Scott Roberts]

On Thursday, September 7, 2017 at 12:49:44 AM UTC-10, za_w...@yahoo.com wrote:

Indeed this is a problem. And if you have a look at the retentional model presented in this article about time in consciousness: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-temporal/ and you have a look at Figure 17, you see that they also talk that if you take the present moment as a duration, then you have a problem of how such durations follow one another. But I solved this in the quote that I also gave in a previous post. Because the emergent level of Time has the quality of self-referentiality inherited from the Self and the quality of memorization inherited from the Memory, then the problem is solved, because these 2 qualities work together to give birth to a Time that is eternally taking its current state and is feeding it back into itself as a memory. This way, the present moment is not only a duration, but is a special kind of duration, one that takes its present content and feeds-back it into itself as memory. Note that this is not a "process" or something dynamic. It is just a quality, a quality that is the way it is because it inherits other qualities from levels below it, and by using them, it emerges the quality of Time.

See my response to Peter. There is only one every-changing duration, so no problem of one following another. Of the diagrams, I would call my analogy (of tire meeting road) a more expressive version of the Extensional view. Where it would differ (and where the analogy fails) is that it denies independent reality to the road before and after the area of contact, or that there is a tire and a separate road.

The problem with the retentional model (and the cinematic) is that it requires the "now" to be relational -- somehow the bits (in your case, the immediate present related to memory) must be related, and as such falls victim to Bradley's Regress. Now the extentional model would also have this problem if one assumes that what is experienced exists independently of the experience of them (and so must somehow be put together by the experiencer), but as idealists we don't have that problem. Still, one does have to relate what changes to what doesn't change (the sense of continuity of self), which I do with the idea of tetralemmic polarity, which avoids Bradley's Regress by identifying what changes with what doesn't change. 

[Scott Roberts]

Yes, I understand this example, but what I am concerned with is using the word 'emergence' in the context of ontology. A painter has the idea of painting a tree, and to make the painting, works at the level of color splotches. If the painting is not very realistic, it may take a moment for me to discern that all the color splotches are meant to represent a tree, and so one can say that, psychologically, the tree emerges from the color splotches. But ontologically, the intended representation of a tree precedes the color splotches, so from that point of view, it is the color splotches that emerge from the intent to represent the tree.

[za_w...@yahoo.com]

That is "specification": the ability that from an emergent level to see the levels from which it emerged, and it is the tool that I used throughout the paper to go down in levels from the level of a visual image all the way down to the level of the Self. However, there are some problems with emergence and those are creativity and understanding. I mention them in the "Conclusions" section:

"Conclusions

Given the amount of ideas presented in this paper, a natural doubt arises regarding how many of them
are correct. Might this be the way the world is actually structured or is it just a paper full of speculations?
I think that the answer to this question depends a lot on the introspection of the reader. Being so
immersed in consciousness, the fact that consciousness has an emergent structure goes completely
unnoticed. But I think that careful introspection at the richness of phenomenology presented in this paper,
would make the case for emergence solid. Then from this to integrating Physics into consciousness is a
matter of careful thoughtfully processes. Of course, no testable predictions have been made in this paper.
But for the time being, I believe that just a familiarization with the fact that consciousness has an emergent
structure will be fruitful in setting the mindset of the reader in a different direction than the current
computational approach to Science, and so to open new ways of thinking about the world. If such a
realization in the part of the reader, that the emergent structure of consciousness is inescapable and so
the world itself must have an emergent structure, takes place, then until the apparition of testable
prediction is just a matter of time.

Are there any real objections against emergence? I would say that in fact there are, and we must mention
them here. There are in principle, at least two aspects of consciousness that seem to go against
emergence, and they are: creativity and understanding. Even though one of the properties of emergence
is that you cannot predict a higher level from a lower level, creativity seems to do exactly this. To create
a work of art for example, you need to take the levels of colors and shapes and emerge from them, at
your own will, new levels that have never been experienced before by any consciousness in the world.
How is creativity able to do that? A risky answer might be, as we saw in the section about the powers of
the agency, that the emergent level of predicting another level is emerged, so a sort of self-reference
upon the very nature of emergence being realized, this way emergence transcending itself. But I will be
very careful in putting forward this answer. Getting back to the second aspect of consciousness mentioned
above, understanding seems to also be able to advance in levels. For example, even though we might not
get from the levels of numbers and powers to the level of Fermat’s Last Theorem, it is still possible that
somehow, we are still able to prove and understand Fermat’s Last Theorem. However, even though
creativity and understanding seem to go beyond emergence, it still remains impossible for us to imagine
a new color or to experience a new sensory qualia domain altogether. So, even though there surely are
elements of phenomenology that challenge emergence, there are many other elements of
phenomenology that can be explained only by assuming that consciousness has an emergent structure."

[za_w...@yahoo.com]

There is no regress, because one of the qualities that time inherits is the self-referentiality from the Self (and memory from the Memory), so this will always make time to have a present moment that refers both to itself and to itself as itself-that-just-passed. This is an eternal static quality. But because of how it is built, it makes time seems dynamic, without stumbling into any regress problem.

The Bradley's Regress problem is a more general problem of misunderstanding of what self-reference is. When self-reference is thought as an external thing, paradoxes always appear, see Set Theory, or "This sentence is false.". The solution out of the paradoxes is to understand that self-reference is not external, but is what the Self is, is what each of us is. We are self-referential beings, and this is the only self-reference that exists: I. If you understand this, then there is no problem: there is just me experiencing things. Mathematics is just an impossible attempt to formalize the Self. Ø, {Ø}, {Ø,{Ø}} is the same as: "I am", "I am "I am"", "I am "I am "I am""". No matter how many "I am"s you try to formalize, there will always be one left out: The I that experiences the endless "I am" series. So because this original "I" is always left behind, Mathematics will always be paradoxical. The only way out of these problems is to acknowledge the unformalizable original I, and just live life. Living life is the only unparadoxical solution to the problem of self-reference. So just experiencing time doesn't fall into the problem of Bradley's Regress. Bradley's Regress only appears when you try to get outside of yourself, by inventing the concept of "relation" as an independent entity of yourself, which is impossible.

[Ben Iscatus]

When you say the missing "I", would this be the difference between Monism and Nondualism, between 1 and 0? Thus: 

Deriving Multiplicity from Unity under Monism

(Or Finitude from Infinity under Nondualism)

Awareness of self = 1 (0 if you prefer nondualism to Monism)

Awareness of (awareness of self) = 2 (first remove) (1)

Awareness of (Awareness of (awareness of self)) = 3 (second remove) (2)

Awareness of (Awareness of (awareness of (awareness of self))) = 4 (third remove) (3)

etc..recursively...

[za_w...@yahoo.com]

The missing "I" is the "I" that experiences everything. If you write down "Awareness of self = 1", trying to capture the "I", the "I" just slipped through your fingers, escaping your attempt at capturing it, and becoming the observer of that sentence. Then you try to capture it again and you write "Awareness of (awareness of self) = 2". But then again, he escapes again and becomes the observer of this new sentence. So no matter how many formalizations you try to make, the "I" will always escape and become the observer of the new formalization. So you just have to accept that the "I" is not to be formalized, but to be directly lived. When you accept this, you realize that there is no regress problem. The regress ends in letting the "I" be what it is: pure living.

[za_w...@yahoo.com]

Regarding the "recursive" bit, I think is more complicated than this. It is something like:

1) I am.
2) I am "I am" AND I am.
3) I am "I am "I am" AND I am." AND I am "I am" AND I am.

I'm not sure what is the exact way to look at it. The above is just a sketch, but I'm pretty sure is something along these lines, not pure recursion, but something that has to take into account the informalizability of the "I", so that each step must be such that it cannot be find out by a computer, but only written down by the "I".

The idea is that self-reference when it self-refers, must at each step self-refer all that it is. So if you make the first self-referential step: "I am", you just gave to self-reference a new thing to self-refer. So when it jumps to the second level and refers to itself, it first refers to the "I am", so it becomes "I am "I am".", but at the same time, it is also what was on the first level. So it is still also "I am". So in total, on the second-level, self-reference is: 2) I am "I am" AND I am.

So with each level you have to pay careful attention to take into account everything that self-reference will self-refer to.

[Larry Schultz]

I never understood the meaning of 'emergent' in this context.  For example, do we mean emergent as an idea or concept, or as a new substance or thing.  For example, does digestion emerge from processes in the gut . . . is this a proper use of the term emergent?   And, is digestion an idea or concept (ie human artifact), or is digestion a new substance or thing?

Or is an 'emergent' in this context a new process and neither an idea or a substance?

Or how about an 'atom' - does an atom emerge from sub-atomic particles and behavior?   Is an atom a concept or a new real thing - or a process?

Please help this grasshopper.

[Dana Lomas]

I'd say emergent in this case would mean arising as a natural or logical result. For example, speaking this language would be the emergent result of being raised as a child in America.

[Ben Iscatus]

yes, weak emergence is logical but strong emergence is iffy.

[za_w...@yahoo.com]

Those are bad examples of emergence. Since consciousness is all there is, the only emergent phenomena that can be are the qualia. An example of real emergence is the emergence of colors from black-and-white, or the emergence of music from sounds, or the emergence of the taste of chocolate from the taste of sweet. The reason that your examples are bad is because there is no such thing as ontological "digestion" or ontological "gut". These are only epistemic categories that you randomly invent. They don't exist in themselves as real "digestion" and real "gut". Ontologically, digestion is nothing but the gut, and the gut is nothing but the atoms, etc. (atoms which don't even exist, being just inventions of consciousness). But in the case of the real emergence: the emergence of qualia levels in consciousness, colors are NOT nothing but black-and-white. They cannot be reduced to black-and-white. They are something totally new. The same with the other examples. Music cannot be reduced to sounds. Music is more than sounds. The taste of chocolate cannot be reduced to the taste of sweet. Taste of chocolate is more than taste of sweet. And so on.

[Mark Robert]

Cosmin, I wonder if this is a fair statement: Emergence as you use it is not to be confused with the several ways it is used in materialist science: (1) indicating increasingly complex levels of self-organization (e.g., atom to molecule to cell), (2) as handwaving about consciousness (mind as epiphenomenon of brain), or (3) as phenomena existing at a macroscopic scale that does not exist at, but is derived from, a microscopic scale (e.g., temperature, pressure). Instead, you use it to mean, in the context of understanding reality as only mind, to show how diverse qualia (e.g., chocolate, a particular tune), which are whole in themselves at the moment of perception (or emergence), can be recognized to be built up of more primary building blocks of qualia. They “emerge” from those building blocks in a surprising, even acausal manner. But they retain a connection in terms of transcending, yet including. So it is a description of a nested hierarchy of whole perceptions/cognitions, where each transcends and includes others, and where, in seeking the ontological ground, one can follow the chain backward to the root. 

[za_w...@yahoo.com]

Yes, you understood it perfectly. :D

And you expressed it so much better. I didn't thought that in so few words you can capture so much of the essence of my article.

[Mark Robert]

Glad to hear it, and thank you. I assume that English is not your first language, so what you are doing with it is marvelous. I’ve had a chance to read the Emergent Structure paper and would like to read part two, especially if there is a way past the paywall :) I’m also looking at the Qualia paper, and in general I’m very impressed with your effort, in particular your methodology.

As I said elsewhere, I was a mediocre physics student (30 years ago). A professor I had for an optics class comes to mind, can’t remember his name but he was a Texan. I didn’t like him much because of his arrogant self-confidence and because of how he ripped into one student during a discussion about consciousness and quantum mechanics. Anyway despite my misgivings, I was having a great deal of trouble understanding Fourier transforms (I think), and had a lengthy homework assignment I couldn’t figure out, so I went to see him. He sat there for an hour with me going over them one by one and it was like watching a sharp knife cut through a ripe tomato, as he provided each little micro step I needed to understand it. That was quite a revelation for me, in teaching me that I was not going to become a physicist, and also that someone could have an incredibly sharp intellect but still be quite dense. But I give respect where it is due.

Since that time I’ve often wondered what it would look like if someone with a good physicist’s analytical mind of the type you are displaying, applied it to introspection. And I think the results speak for themselves. I see some things that I would like to comment about, but I would rather wait until I read more of your papers and anyway had a bit more time. But again, I salute the effort and think you are on the right track, even if it is a somewhat different track for example than BK, whose work I also respect for similar reasons. Like with physics, it seems there is room for different sorts of handles on the problem.

[za_w...@yahoo.com]

Thanks for the appreciations! You can send me an email on the email from the paper and I will send you the second part. I don't know if this is a moral thing to do, but I think the ideas should flow freely. Also, anyone that wants the second part should send me an email and I'll send it to you.

[za_w...@yahoo.com]

Now I'm trying to understand why emergence has this character of transcending and including. And I'm starting to think that this comes from the nature of self-referentiality. Because self-referentiality always reflects back to itself, a certain phenomenology will appear. For example, on the first level, self-referentiality would be just: "I am". Then, when self-referentiality will look again back to itself, will find the newly created object "I am", so self-referentiality will become "I am "I am"". You can spot here the phenomenology of emergence: self-referentiality just transcended itself (becoming more than "I am"), while at the same time keeping its old self within itself.

[Dana Lomas]

Hmm ... I wonder if this can somehow be related to the Mandelbrot set, an equation that perpetually feeds back into itself, to produce fractal variations on that theme, ad infinitum.

[za_w...@yahoo.com]

Is not. The reason is as follow, and I see that Bernardo is also understanding it wrong: There is only 1 self-referentiality: I/Self. The only self-referential entity is me directly experiencing things. The other so-called self-referential entities such as "This sentence is false" are paradoxically precisely because they try to apply the one and only self-reference (I/Self) to places where it doesn't belong. Ultimately, self-referentiality is not formalizable, so in the end no theory of consciousness will be possible. But until that road-block will be reached, we can still have lots of things to learn about ourselves. Mandelbrot is at most a recursive thing, not a self-referential thing. Self-reference is not to be confused with recursivity. They are 2 different things. Recursivity can be seen as something "ontological objective", while self-referentiality is the very nature of ontological subjectivity. Recursivity can be completely defined, while self-referentiality will always leave befind a Self that will observe and escape any attempt of formalizing it.

So, even though I drew a picture there that is supposed to capture self-referentiality, it actually doesn't, that picture never being complete, because it will always fail to capture the observer that is looking at the picture.

I think there is a beauty in this view, because it takes away any arrogance from anyone that tries to claim that they have absolute knowledge, while you don't. That person will never be able to have absolute knowledge, because he will not be able to capture your own experiences. Those experiences are yours forever, and they cannot be taken away by anyone that pretends to have knowledge of you. The only way to have knowledge of you is to unify with you, to become you. So anyone that pretends to be above you by having absolute knowledge, will have to get down to your level. So the nature of self-referentiality prevents anyone to be above anyone else (in terms of absolute knowledge).

[Dana Lomas]

Yes, I see what you mean ... At best it's a visual metaphor, or symbolic language, albeit a metaphor that Consciousness seems to use in its phenomenal self-display as Lila. If one could draw a picture of I am that, and that is That which I am, then what ideally would such a picture appear as? As BK posits, isn't that what the Cosmos is? The imaginal Self-reflection of its own ideated emanations. And isn't that what idealism entails?

On Friday, October 20, 2017 at 9:16:56 AM UTC-4, za_w...@yahoo.com wrote:

Is not. The reason is as follow, and I see that Bernardo is also understanding it wrong: There is only 1 self-referentiality: I/Self. The only self-referential entity is me directly experiencing things. The other so-called self-referential entities such as "This sentence is false" are paradoxically precisely because they try to apply the one and only self-reference (I/Self) to places where it doesn't belong. Ultimately, self-referentiality is not formalizable, so in the end no theory of consciousness will be possible. But until that road-block will be reached, we can still have lots of things to learn about ourselves. Mandelbrot is at most a recursive thing, not a self-referential thing. Self-reference is not to be confused with recursivity. They are 2 different things. Recursivity can be seen as something "ontological objective", while self-referentiality is the very nature of ontological subjectivity. Recursivity can be completely defined, while self-referentiality will always leave befind a Self that will observe and escape any attempt of formalizing it.

So, even though I drew a picture there that is supposed to capture self-referentiality, it actually doesn't, that picture never being complete, because it will always fail to capture the observer that is looking at the picture.
 

[Mark Robert]

I will send an email, and thanks for pointing out the moral question. I shouldn't have loosely suggested a paywall hack; I'd hoped you could just send a copy, so thanks. Since you are the author, I can't see there being an ethical problem with you offering your writing to whomever you wish. Then the onus is on the receiver not to publish it.

[Mark Robert]

Self-reference is not to be confused with recursivity. They are 2 different things. Recursivity can be seen as something "ontological objective", while self-referentiality is the very nature of ontological subjectivity. Recursivity can be completely defined, while self-referentiality will always leave befind a Self that will observe and escape any attempt of formalizing it.
So, even though I drew a picture there that is supposed to capture self-referentiality, it actually doesn't, that picture never being complete, because it will always fail to capture the observer that is looking at the picture.

I think there is a beauty in this view, because it takes away any arrogance from anyone that tries to claim that they have absolute knowledge, while you don't. That person will never be able to have absolute knowledge, because he will not be able to capture your own experiences. Those experiences are yours forever, and they cannot be taken away by anyone that pretends to have knowledge of you. The only way to have knowledge of you is to unify with you, to become you. So anyone that pretends to be above you by having absolute knowledge, will have to get down to your level. So the nature of self-referentiality prevents anyone to be above anyone else (in terms of absolute knowledge).

Cosmin, there is a lot of beauty in those three paragraphs, especially the last one. To add to your picture above, I want to add some more symbols to evoke meanings.


    

The first is a logarithmic illustration of the observable universe, with our solar system and us at the center. The next two are obviously black holes, also of course just illustrations of “matter,” which is itself symbolic. The last is the least “realistic” but the most evocative to me of the ontological ground. As symbols, I think black holes are actually quite good for contemplation. 

Regarding your question in the paper, Is the level of the Self the root of the emergent structure of consciousness? You point out, correctly in my view, that it has a quality of itselfness. And:

Such a quality of itselfness has a self-referential nature, is a quality that refers to itself. And this self-reference on a closer look has a peculiar property of generating its own existence. Itselfness, by referring back to itself, creates a logical loop that self-generates its existence.
This existence is then propagated higher in levels and is responsible for the existence of all the possible qualia. This is actually the final quality that we needed in our view of consciousness: the fact that it exists at all. And this quality of existence comes from the level of the Self, which by its self-referential nature has as quality the quality of existence. Before red having the quality of redness, it first needs to have the quality of existence. Before chocolate having the quality of sweetness, it first needs to have the quality of existence. And so on. So, this quality of the Self is propagated higher in all the levels and makes them to exist.

“Makes them to exist” is important here I think, because it may be a bias that skews the analysis. I wonder if there must be an "I" at the center? I've never been comfortable with "I am" as an ontological primitive, not because as a statement it is “incorrect" according to a Buddhist dogma -- but to introspection it seems redundant, a nervous add-on of "self-reflection," something fabricated, on top of, something else.

It seems impossible, but the nature of absolute pure empty nothingness, is: open, clear, pristine knowledge of that very condition. There is no self-reflection or refer-ence necessary because the emptiness is merely reflective, as itself. No loop arises, no "I am." Qualia are like the radiance or vividness of that profound intelligence, but which never touch it and never actually emerge from it. In a sense, since the nature is clarity and openness, that very nothing is expressed in the first qualia of vividness, which then leads, in the simplest way possible, to the universe, as you show.

What is the universe then? In some systems of understanding, it is called maya, an illusion. In my own tradition, along with what is called non-dual wisdom, or seeing things as they are, there is also what is called “co-emergent ignorance.” Essentially, this is what the self is—and what the universe is. (Of course to call the universe ignorance and to call nothing knowledge is to turn conceptuality on its head, but that’s the method.) And to see it that way does not decrease its vivid beauty, especially when that beauty is seen as the radiant effulgence of nothing whatsoever.

It's often said that it is not possible to pull oneself up by one’s own bootstraps. And this is what the self is, the creation of itself in a closed loop. But this is not effective in creating any sort of self – that’s why it’s ignorance. This mistake, propragated upward, is the cause of the reification of all the qualia. The dynamic of transcend and include still needs to be explained, but I think it can be, even with emptiness as the ground. Perhaps especially so.

Finally, I think that your tools of specifying and demergence arrive at these points. Specifying as the inherent intelligence of the ground, stops specifying as it relaxes into itself, and emerged forms also naturally demerge or relax into the nature, which is emptiness. So the ground of emergence is no emergence. Happily, I feel free in saying these things because I know very well that you will not take anyone’s word for anything but will see for yourself. And I’m looking forward to reading more about what you find!

[za_w...@yahoo.com]

There is no need for email now. All my papers have been published in "Scientific GOD Journal" by the same editor, and this time they are free:

http://scigod.com/index.php/sgj/issue/view/80/showToc

[za_w...@yahoo.com]

Now I'm starting to think that everything is a manifestation of self-reference. And I'm trying to find formulations for the first levels of consciousness in terms of self-reference. For example, a sketch would be:

Self: I am.

Vividness: I am "I am". (I am more of myself)

Diversity: I am "I am" and I am. (I am different manifestations of myself)

Memory: [I am "I am "I am" and I am"] and [I am "I am "I am""] and [I am "I am"]
<=> I am Diversity and I am Vividness and I am Self. (I am everything that I've ever been)

As you can see, each level respects the phenomenology of emergence: transcends and includes the previous levels. So there seems to be a way to make progress. A downside though is that the complexity of each level seems to grow exponentially, so it immediately becomes hard to follow. I'm fantasizing now writing my next paper in which 50 pages would be just: "I am I am I am I am I am I am I am I am I am I am I am I am I am I am I am I am", making the editors impossible to follow through.
One important consideration that I'm taking into account when I try to find the proper formalization is that each new level of self-reference that I'm writing down, becomes itself a self-reference. For example, the form of the formula that I wrote for Memory, must be applicable for any higher qualia whatsoever. For example, seeing a dragon and remembering the dragon must also take the form of Memory, but it will not be this elementary form that I wrote here, but would be another amazingly complex form that will remember all of the sub-levels of the dragon: shapes, colors, black-and-white, etc., not only the dragon. At the same time, the quale of seeing a dragon will also need to take the form of Diversity, and of Vividness, and of Self. So all of these elementary levels must be self-referenced in a higher-level quale, making the job of writing them down close to impossible.

[za_w...@yahoo.com]

Notice that all the levels are including all the previous levels, in the sense of being those levels.

VIVIDNESS:

I am "I am".

is also a form of <I am>, being itself a unity.

DIVERSITY:

I am "I am" and "I am".
is also a form of <I am "I am">, being itself a form of more of itself,
and is also a form of <I am>, being itself a unity.

MEMORY:

[I am "I am "I am" and I am"] and [I am "I am "I am""] and [I am "I am"].
is also a form of <I am "I am" and "I am">, being itself a form of diversity,
is also a form of <I am "I am">, being itself a form of more of itself,
and is also a form of <I am>, being itself a unity.

So a careful reflection on the nature of self-reference shows us the above manifestations, self-reference not being the trivial "I am", but being a very complex entity that self-refers itself and everything that it becomes by self-refering itself. It is a very rich and complex phenomenon.

[Cosmin Visan]

For completeness, I'm also adding here the presentation from Science and Nonduality conference in Italy 2018:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jMAy6ft-ZQ