Cell consciousness in BK's model

[Justin]

This thread follows on from the discussion in another thread (with an unrelated subject heading, hence I am creating a separate post).

To my mind, the real issue regarding what sort of cells are conscious under BK's model is not the combination problem but the issue of whether different dissociated alters can overlap in the same spatial region (for example, whether the possibility that my own consciousness can overlap with other alters means that it is therefore possible for my neurons to have their own distinct consciousness).

BK suggests 'metabolizing organisms' as the defining characteristic of alters, yet this focus on metabolism seems arbitrary. When I think of the distinctiveness of my own consciousness, the workings of my digestive system in metabolizing food is not what springs to mind. Rather, it is my perceptual apparatus and boundaries, which engender a distinction between 'me' and 'not me', that seems relevant. So, a better criterion for an alter might be whether it has a perceptual boundary that distinguishes it from the outside world (like cells do). Metabolism may be a related but secondary feature.

Further, whilst under a physicalist conception of space it might be impossible for two entities to occupy the same space, I don't see why this has to be the case under an idealist conception of space. Empirical support for alters overlapping can be found through things such as:

- In Dissociated Identity Disorder as many as 4,500 different identities have been reported. I don't think that anyone suggests that each identity occupies a separate area of space or brain matter.

-  the existence of putatively conscious  bacteria within our own bodies.

- The aggregation of slime mold slugs from separate amoeba suggests separate alters can come together and be influenced by and exist within a coordinating alter

Alternatively, if alters cannot overlap perhaps they are a bit like 'swiss cheese' with other alters existing in variable spaces within an alter (like bacterial cells in a body). 

So, in my view,  if one's metaphysics leads one to infer that bacteria are conscious, then there is not much reason not to also infer that things like white blood cells and neurons are conscious.

[River Heraclitus]

Spot on with your reasoning. 

It's good to have supporting evidence for an ontological position but what a lot of folks lose track of is those examples are just metaphors. 

ALL the metaphors are within the space-time framework. 

Alters or agents existing in the same space or time for that matter are only issues for a physicalist, and so it is with the nature of organisms, whether they metabolize or not etc is irrelevant. 

If you postulate that life is the image of dissociation then any rational reductionist argument leads to the conclusion that every distinct unit of life has inner life. 

[beheren...@gmail.com]

Interesting points and examples.

I think life is the most obvious demarcation point. When I think of myself as an alter and of a rock as not being an alter, it is very much the fact that I am alive and the rock isn’t that seems most pertinent. Metabolism in and of itself is simply a way to more precisely define what is alive and what isn’t.

I don’t think considerations of space are particularly relevant. With Disassociated Identity Disorder the separation is temporal and each alter is represented by the same living body - but with changes that reflect that alter, for example, the blind alters in Bernardo’s example.

[Dana Lomas]

The Seth communications (I know, it has its skeptics) speaks of 'units of consciousness' (a term that Tom Campbell borrows), which are also described as having the capacity to combine in infinitely creative ways. I once envisioned such units as being like discrete monads within some spatial contour, but I now wonder if they would be more like dissociated aspects of the primordial irreducible Consciousness, discrete 'subjects' that have no spatial contours at all, albeit that's how they phenomenally appear within this spacetime construct. And if that is the case, what would prevent them from 'overlapping'? Some 'frequency' unique to each?

[Ben Iscatus]

And if that is the case, what would prevent them from 'overlapping'? Some 'frequency' unique to each?

Going back to the excitation metaphor - the ripples produced by interacting individuals produce "interference patterns"-  communication between them.  

[T S]

I think Bernardo's position would be that blood cells and neurons are not discreet entities, but nominal subdivisions of on original entity with an inner life. That inner life undergoes experiential changes that PRESENT as anatomical sub-division.

But there may be a way to think of these subdivisions as independent and yet also artifacts of the primary dissociation . A metaphor that maybe helps. 

If we picture universal consciousness as a ray of light, the first set of alters are equivalent to prisms of light that diffract that light into different colors.

As newton's 2 prism experiment showed, any isolated color cannot then be broken into another color. it merely projects the color of the initial diffraction into new space and time.

Returning to the organism, cells could be both separate alters and at the same time, merely refractions or iterations of a primary dissociation.

[David Sundaram]

On Sunday, October 11, 2020 at 5:57:43 AM UTC-7, Ben Iscatus wrote:

And if that is the case, what would prevent them from 'overlapping'? Some 'frequency' unique to each?

Going back to the excitation metaphor - the ripples produced by interacting individuals produce "interference patterns"-  communication between them. 

Data from studies of Identical twines reared apart (who therefore didn't 'know' they were twins) supports such 'overlapping and 'frequency communication; hypothesis. Beacuse of psychic communication (which takes place across space and time all the way down to the cellular level, and who knows maybe down to the atomic wave-particle level as well!), it ain't just a simple discreet-alter's exercise-ing 'mind over matter' world that we are 'in'carnated in.

From https://www.apa.org/monitor/2015/01/double-life (there's additional data there):

Media coverage of the Minnesota study has often focused on some wild coincidences, like the "Jim twins," who were identical twins separated at birth who didn't meet until age 39. Both were named Jim, had first wives named Linda and second wives named Betty. Both chain-smoked, drove Chevys, served as sheriff's deputies and vacationed on the same beach in Florida. These are fascinating coincidences, but are they scientifically interesting? What is the line between fun anecdote and scientific data?

And, from my book:

The nature of such influence is well illustrated by
studies of genetically identical twins reared apart, having
been adopted into separate families. More so even than twins
reared together, who consciously choose to differentiate in
ways, separated twins develop parallel interests and make
similar choices, quite uncannily.* This is because, like open-
channel, two-way radios, though objectively unaware of the
process, each is telepathically tuned into the other’s thought
and feeling energies. Likewise, just with degree varying
according to constitutional kinship and emotional receptivity,
everyone is psychospiritually affected by every other in Life’s
vibrant stream. Whether or not immediately adjacent to
and, therefore, sensorially interactive with particular others
at any given point, we are all partners in the same dance—at
all times intertwined and co-involved with everyone else,
‘inwardly’.

Footnote *: If you are not familiar with the amazing variety of the kinds
of ‘coincidences’ that take place in this regard, see S. Farber,
Identical Twins Reared Apart, A Reanalysis; Basic Books, New York
(1980).

[Aeringa Voyno]

I agree with Justin and River. Equating the cells of a multicellular organism with mere pixels feels unnecessarily arbitrary to me. They do display a level of autonomy, even if they cannot survive outside the organism for long (although apparently, sometimes they can); are we humans that different, though? Many of us could hardly survive outside a human settlement, let alone beyond our planet's atmospheric bubble. Personally, I do not see any conceptual problems with allowing alters to overlap with each other (or to associate/identify with one another to different degrees, horizontally and vertically, for example "my body", "my neurons", "my community", "my Source of origin" etc.).

[David Sundaram]

Touching on issues being discussed, from Seth Speaks:

I am not comparing personality to an orange or an onion, but I want to emphasize
that as these things grow from within outward, so does each fragment of the entire self.
You observe the outside aspect of objects. Your physical senses permit you to perceive
the exterior forms to which you then react, but your physical senses to some extent
force you to perceive reality in this manner, and the inside vitality within matter and
form is not so apparent.
I can tell you, for example, that there is consciousness even within a nail, but few of
my readers will take me seriously enough to stop in midsentence, and say good morning
or good afternoon to the nearest nail they can find, stuck in a piece of wood.
Nevertheless, the atoms and molecules within the nail do possess their own kind of
consciousness. The atoms and molecules that make up the pages of this book are also,
within their own level, aware. Nothing exists - neither rock, mineral, plant, animal, or
air - that is not filled with consciousness of its own kind. So you stand amid a constant
vital commotion, a gestalt of aware energy, and you are yourselves physically composed
of conscious cells that carry within themselves the realization of their own identity, that
cooperate willingly to form the corporeal structure that is your physical body.
I am saying, of course, that there is no such thing as dead matter. There is no object
that was not formed by consciousness, and each consciousness, regardless of its
degree, rejoices in sensation and creativity. You cannot understand what you are unless
you understand such matters.
For convenience's sake, you close out the multitudinous inner communications that
leap between the tiniest parts of your flesh, yet even as physical creatures, you are to
some extent a portion of other consciousnesses. There are no limitations to the self.
There are no limitations to its potentials. You can adopt artificial limitations through
your own ignorance, however. You can identify, for example, with your outer ego alone,
and cut yourself off from abilities that are a part of you. You can deny, but you cannot
change, the facts. The personality is multidimensional, even though many people hide
their heads, figuratively speaking, in the sand of three-dimensional existence and
pretend there is nothing more.

[River Heraclitus]

Yes Aeringa, I agree with your post completely

BK was insturmental in my belief in Idealism but I go with the rationality of a belief. BK states consciousness is the only thing I can know, everything else is inference.

But in analysing that, yes there is consciousness, but not necessarily an alter, agent, individual self or whatever else you want to call it. From the POV of our metacognitive thoughts we develop a concept that we are discreet alters, that there is something it is like to be (X) but that may be just as much an illusion as it is when we dream our dream alters. 

I personally dislike the idea that my sense of self is just a conceptual illusion. I philosophically argued against this position for years, I thought we were independentally discreet alters that would hopefully survive our personal deaths. All that is still possible but the combination theory seems support the idea that conscious alters or agents are actually fictions or divisions that our metaconsciousness has conjured up. Alters or agents are just a part of a "cosmic dream" that Universal Consciousness is experiencing. 

If ths is correct , the irony of it all is that materialist atheists who are diametricially opposed to Idealism  (as they assume it is a spiritual/religious philosophy) are in full agreement with "combination idealists" that on our physical death personal consciousness is extinguished. 

[Dana Lomas]

Alters or agents are just a part of a "cosmic dream" that Universal Consciousness is experiencing.

Yes, there's the rub. If all apparent 'subjects' are reducible to a sole irreducible non-dissociated Awareness, then any apparency of a discrete subject perceiving the apparency of a discrete object, and pondering whether or not that object represents another subject, is all part of the grand apparency of dissociation. Absent that what remains? Alas, language being a function of the apparency of dissociation, any descriptor is inadequate. One seems left with Thou art That, no more, no less.

[River Heraclitus]

Dana - very well said !!!

[Aeringa Voyno]

I personally dislike the idea that my sense of self is just a conceptual illusion. I philosophically argued against this position for years, I thought we were independentally discreet alters that would hopefully survive our personal deaths. All that is still possible but the combination theory seems support the idea that conscious alters or agents are actually fictions or divisions that our metaconsciousness has conjured up. Alters or agents are just a part of a "cosmic dream" that Universal Consciousness is experiencing.

I can certainly relate to that ;). I prefer to think of us alters as branches of a tree - deeply connected and of the same nature as the whole Tree while still possessed of some more or less enduring individuality - rather than as inconsequential bubbles fizzling in and out of existence. The conceptual illusion, I believe, lies in reifying alters or selves - treating them as "things", "substances", nouns, instead of seeing them for what they are: processes, verbs (Given your moniker, I suppose you're no stranger to this line of thought ;) ). And I don't see why it should be impossible for these processes to "run" at different speeds or piggyback on each other.

To be fair to Bernardo, in his recent book club chat he said his Analytic Idealism didn't rule out personal survival a priori.

[Eugene I]

The conceptual illusion, I believe, lies in reifying alters or selves - treating them as "things", "substances", nouns, instead of seeing them for what they are: processes, verbs

Exactly! 

[Dana Lomas]

Indeed, whatever this 'subject' is in essence, it surely doesn't feel limited to this corporeal form that lately seems pretty much like a transitory object of one's attention, the dissolution of which may be like changing channels. :)

[Lou Gold]

Ditto!