255 Matching Annotations
  1. May 2021
    1. What particularly worried him about dreams of sexual acts was their vividness, as well as the feeling of pleasure and seeming acquiescence or consent on the part of the dreamer. He concluded, however, that the transition from sleep to wakefulness involves a radical chasm, enabling the dreamer to awaken with a clear conscience and absolving them from taking responsibility for their dream actions.

      Augustine on wet dreams?

    2. She proposes this is because dreams are also weakly functionally embodied states, in which the specific pattern of bodily experience reflects altered processing of bodily sensations (as in the illusion view). She also analyzes instances of bodiless dreams, in which dreamers say they experienced themselves as disembodied entities, to argue that self-experience can be reduced to pure spatiotemporal-self-location (Windt 2010); she proposes these cases can help identify the conditions for the emergence of minimal phenomenal selfhood (Blanke & Metzinger 2009; see also Metzinger 2013b).

      Dreams are weakly embodied bodily experience.

    3. Such dreams are superficially similar to cases in which we imagine being another person, but according to Rosen and Sutton require a different explanation: in the case of dreaming, the imagined person’s thoughts are not framed as diverging from one’s own and one does not retain one’s own perspective in addition to the imagined one; in nonlucid dreams, only the perspective of the dream’s protagonist is retained.

      Vicarious dreams inolve a different person (identity's) perspective, but the thoughts are still the actual dreamer's/

    4. We almost always have a self in dreams, though this self can sometimes be a slightly different (e.g. older or younger) version of our waking self or even a different person entirely. Dreams therefore raise interesting questions about the identity between the dream and waking self.

      But there is always a "self"!

    5. Perception is the attempt to model the hidden external causes of sensory stimuli; action involves keeping the internal model stable while changing the sensory input. Clark argues that on such a model,

      Perception is internalizing sensory stimuli, while our sensory action is required to stabilize the perception we have Without tangible action (i.e., in dreams) our perception has no sensory anchor to stabilize it.

    6. Windt (2015a, 2018) argues both internalism and externalism mistakenly assume dreams to be isolated from external sensory input and own-body perception; she believes both the phenomenology of dreaming and its correlation with external stimuli are complex and variable. She argues the analysis of dreaming does not clearly support either side in the debate on internalism vs externalism

      Dreams are not wholly disconnected from our external sensory faculties. Assuming so disregards the granularity of how our bodies relate to our internal experiences.

    7. This latter claim is also contentious. Noë (2004: 213) argues that phenomenological differences between dreaming and waking (such as greater instability of visual dream imagery) result from the lack of dynamic interaction with the environment in dreams. He proposes this shows that neural states are sufficient for dreaming but denies they are also sufficient for perceptual experience.

      Examining neural states is only sufficient to determine dreaming, not enough for perceptuality. We are embodied begins after all, the lack of interactibility with the environment makes dreams feel unstable.

    8. the dreaming brain brings out the phenomenal level of organization in a clear and distinct form. Dreaming is phenomenality pure and simple, untouched by external physical stimulation or behavioural activity. (Revonsuo 2006: 75)

      Dream is purely phenomenal!

    9. Dreams are a global state of consciousness in which experience arises under altered behavioral and neurophysiological conditions as compared to standard wakefulness; unlike other altered states of consciousness (such as drug-induced or deep meditative states) and pathological wake states (such as psychosis or neurological syndromes), dreams occur spontaneously and regularly in healthy subjects.

      Dreams are regular and healthy states of global consciousness in which experience arises under altered behaviour and neurophysiological conditions. This makes them distinct from other alteredd states of consciousness such as in drug induced sleep or from pathological wakefulness such as in psychosis.

    10. Due to a loss of the muscular atonia that accompanies REM sleep in healthy subjects, these patients show complex, seemingly goal-directed outward behaviors such as running or fighting off an attacker during REM sleep. Retrospective dream reports often match these behaviors, suggesting that patients literally act out their dreams during sleep.

      There seems to be some level of goal-oriented-ness in dreams, so this suggests we literally act out our dreams when we are asleep. We are not just floating in images and thoughts.

    11. Eye signals can also be used to measure the duration of different activities performed in lucid dreams; contrary to the cassette theory, lucid dreams have temporal extension and certain dream actions even seem to take slightly longer than in waking (Erlacher et al. 2014).

      Cassette theory may not apply... Lucid reports seem to suggest that dream phenomena are temporal with soem actions seemingly taking longer than in waking states.

    12. A second line of evidence comes from lucid dreams, or dreams in which one knows one is dreaming and often has some level of dream control (Voss et al. 2013; Voss & Hobson 2015; Baird et al. 2019). The term lucid dreaming was coined by van Eeden (1913), but Aristotle (On Dreams) already noted that one can sometimes be aware while dreaming that one is dreaming.

      Lucid dreaming is known a long, long while ago, but is an intriguing evidence which supports dreams are genuine experiences.

    13. The alignment between conscious experience on the one hand and wake-like brain activity and muscular paralysis on the other hand would seem to support the experiential status of dreams as well as explain the outward passivity that typically accompanies them.

      The brain activity is similar to wakefulness but the muscles are paralyzed to where there is apparent outward passivity.

    14. A first reason for thinking that dreams are experiences during sleep is the relationship between dreaming and REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. Researchers in the 1950s discovered that sleep is not a uniform state of rest and passivity, but there is a sleep architecture involving different stages of sleep that is relatively stable both within and across individuals (Aserinsky & Kleitman 1953, 1955; Dement & Kleitman 1957).

      Advances in neurobiology led us to find that there is a "sleep architecture" Dreams are related to REM sleep which has EEG similar to walking!

    15. Dennett’s (1976, 1979) cassette theory says dreams are the product of instantaneous memory insertion at the moment of the awakening, as if a cassette with pre-scripted dreams had been inserted into memory, ready for replay. Dennett claims the cassette theory and the view that dreams are experiences can deal equally well with empirical evidence for instance on the relationship between dreaming and REM sleep. The cassette theory is preferable because it is more parsimonious, positing only an unconscious dream composition process rather than an additional conscious presentation process in sleep.

      Dreams are an unconscious process (in REM sleep) that instantly inserts a memory of experience at the moment of awakening (like a cassette!)

    16. It is an observation about our use of the word “experience”, and no more. It does not imply that nothing goes on in our minds while we dream. (Nagel 1959: 114)

      The investigation of experiential authenticity in dreams is more of a linguistic one?

    17. To ask about dream experience is to ask whether it is like something to dream while dreaming, and whether what it is like is similar to (or relevantly different from) corresponding waking experiences.

      The ontology of dream asks if the experience of dreams is relevantly distinct from wakeful experiences such as in the case of qualia.

    18. This is still epistemologically worrisome: even though some of his sensory-based beliefs might be true, he cannot determine which these are unless he can rule out that he is dreaming. Doubt is thus cast on all of his beliefs, making sensory-based knowledge slip out of reach

      We sense and perceive in dreams; if we do so (and we assume dreams are "deceptive") then that mean we can never rule out the possibility of dreaming! We can never rely on ur senses!

    19. By contrast, dreams suggest that even in a seemingly best-case scenario of sensory perception (Stroud 1984), deception is possible. Even the realistic experience of sitting dressed by the fire and looking at a piece of paper in one’s hands (Descartes 1641: I.5) is something that can, and according to Descartes often does, occur in a dream.

      Descartes, motivated by his uber rationalism, suggests that dreams show how even in best case scenarios sensory perceptions are fallible to deception. Therefore, senses are always to be doubted.

    1. we need to live with a healthy dose of agnosticism concerning theodicy.

      The aporia is evident and it is difficult to maintain all points (God is benevolent and omnipotent, but evil exists). Being a bit agnostic may be helpful.

    2. The New Testament boldly proclaims what is no less a mystery for all the boldness of the proclamation, that God has personally known the darkness. “God was in Christ,” asserts the apostle (2 Corinthians 5:19), poured out in compassion on behalf of the world, suffering with us and for us—bearing the weight of our own evil.3

      Suffering God? A mutable Deity? Nonetheless, a Suffering Anointed King who understands that we are in pain.

    3. This is true both in the Old Testament and in the New. For as the Gospels tell it, Jesus prayed on the cross a psalm of lament: “My God, my God, why have you for- saken me?” (Matthew 27:46; Psalm 22:1) In the words of the Apostles’ Creed, he “suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, buried, he descended into hell.” The passion of Jesus, as portrayed in the New Tes- tament, was a spiraling descent into the abyss of abandonment and suf- fering. And from the abyss Jesus, like the psalmists before him, looked to God. And three days after his lament—his cry of abandonment on the cross—God acted decisively, defeating the power of death and raising him from the grave.

      Jesus lamented. Jesus cried from the abyss, from inside the abyss he has spiraled into, he cried. And God answered.

    4. But the hope intrinsic to lament is found in the fact that even at the extremity, the psalmist refuses to give up on God. Having looked fully into the abyss, the psalmist now looks to God—/rom the abyss. Lament thus combines, paradoxically, both uncompromising honesty about evil—in- cluding the suspicion that God, because God is sovereign, might be at fault—and trust in that same God.

      Biblical lament has intrinsic hope. The supplicant uncompromisingly is honest about the evil experienced, suspects the sovereign God allowed this suffering, yet trusts in that God. The psalmist weeps from the abyss, not just dance around it.

    5. Whereas in classi- cal theodicy God is discussed abstractly in the third person and the apolo- gist is expected to answer to others about God, in biblical theodicy God is addressed in direct second person speech and is expected to answer the supplicant. Whereas classical theodicy results, I have argued, in decep- tion about the nature of evil and leads to passivity vis-a-vis the status quo, biblical theodicy is radically honest about evil, is rooted in passion, and questions the present social arrangements in the world.3

      Classical theodicy defends God, biblical theodicy talks to God.

    6. his is not to say that there is no continuity whatsoever between the Bible and classical theodicy. One point of overlap which they do share (and that distinguishes them from process theodicies) is that in both the om- nipotence or sovereignty of God is affirmed. The genre of lament is predi- cated on the expectation that God can and will rescue the supplicant.

      Classical theodicy and the Scriptures affirm that God is sovereign or omnipotent. After all, lamenting expects God to rescue the supplicant who laments in the first place.

    7. he second problem, therefore, with the greater good defense is that it does not take the Scriptures seriously enough. At least it does not take seriously that strand within Scripture which articulates and embraces pain and is ruthlessly honest about suffering.?

      GGD does not take seriously the phenomena of suffering that is embedded in Scripture.

    8. Indeed, if there is an aesthetic correspondence of form and content here, the very length and repetitiveness of the dialogue may indicate that the book of Job is about the torturous process of moving from the disori- enting shock of experienced evil, through its articulation in lament (with its dimensions of grief and complaint), to a new orientation that neither denies. nor forgets evil, yet does not allow it to have the final word.

      The lon form, of digesting the evil experiencd, of lamenting is to admit evil is experienced, but to not let it have the final word, not let it conquer us.

    9. Although this is a notoriously difficult verse to inter- pret, it has been suggested that its meaning is that Job changed his mind about his stance of dust and ashes, that is, about his complaining or la- ment, and moved on to praise and thanksgiving—though only after a pro- foundly personal, yet numinous encounter with God.2

      Lament gives way to thanksgiving … Is this the GGD again?

    10. The way of wisdom, however, is the way of lament. Far from being condemned here, prayerful struggle with God about perceived injustice is vindicated—even if it means persistently questioning God’s justice in the context of a faithful relationship of trust. The question of Job, as Gustavo Gutierrez frames it in his insightful commentary on the book, is “the ques- tion of how we are to talk about God. More particularly: how we are to talk about God from within a specific situation—namely, the suffering of the innocent” (Gutierrez 1987:xviii; his emphasis).

      Lamenting is the way of wisdom. Lamenting is crucial in how we talk about God, especially from a mode of being in suffering. This is crucial to a faith relationship of trust Trust, not certainty.

    11. While it is clear that the option of curs- ing God is illegitimate and therefore not much attention is paid to it, the book of Job makes the profound statement that a rationalistic orthodoxy which seeks to have the relationship of God’s justice to suffering and evil neatly packaged is also inappropriate.?3 Could the greater good defense be considered a variety of this rationalistic folly?

      We cannot rationally understand and package our orthodox beliefs about God. In fact, we are not supposed to. Is this what the GGD is doing?

    12. In most Christian circles it would not be regarded as theologically cor- rect to ascribe such deception and terror (in other words, evil) to God, yet such ascriptions are typical of the so-called “complaints” or “confes- sions” of Jeremiah which intersperse his prophetic oracles throughout the middle part of the book. These complaints fall into the literary genre of lament, a genre common also in the book of Job and in the Psalter. In- deed, more that one-third of all biblical psalms are either entirely or largely constituted by this genre.2

      Lamenting, questioning God, is very much biblical.

    13. hat these two prophets have done is first to affirm, respectfully, what is true about the God with whom they have to do, and then Seon that experience of evil

      We can try to think about who our God is, but our imaege and understanding of God can be questioned in light of the evil right in front of us.

    14. The case against actively opposing evil is similar. If evil is necessary to some good, from whence would the motivation to oppose it come? If I really believed the greater good defense, what would generate the sort of holy dissatisfaction with the way things are that is the sine qua non of redemptive action? Believing the greater good defense would result in nothing less than ethical paralysis.

      GGD "answers" the problem of evil. Why bother confronting evil or finding dissatisfaction with the world?

    15. f the greater good defense were truly believed, it would undercut motivation for both petitionary prayer and redemptive opposi- tion to evil by generating a self-deceptive apathy instead of a biblically in- flamed passion for justice and shalom. My question about the greater good defense, therefore, is not whether you can preach it, but whether you can believe it.

      GGD can be a self-deceiving apathy. It undercuts the struggle with evil, and thus, much of theology in general.

    16. “That's all well and good, but can you preach it, brother?’”!

      Preach, brother!

    17. This criticism concerns, in other words, the inner logic of the po Hon. The greater good defense simply cannot account for human experiene of irreducible evil.

      There is a lot of reduction in the syllogism. Not all GGD invokers are insensitive, but they are using an argument which fails to account the phenomena of irreducible evil.

    18. She said after some hesitation: “Yes.” He said, “Fuck you,” picked up his knapsack, and walked out.

      Well, that hits.

    19. But, further, if we were to interrogate contemporary proponents of the greater good defense, the claims become quite explicit. Yandell, for ex- ample, grants the psychological forcefulness of appeal to infant mortal- ny and geriatric disability,” yet he maintains that this detracts in no way rom the logic . his theodicy. In fact, the problem with such appeals, he Tgues, 1s that they obscure clear philosophi inki 1 (Yandell 1974:13)48 p ophical thinking on the matter

      These evils, to which it is very difficult to find any balancing good if at all, are but haze for a clear path towards theodicy? Middleton disagrees.

    Annotators

  2. Apr 2021
    1. To put it rather bluntly, the greater good defense, in Augustine or elsewhere, requires us to affirm as good (all things considered) not just Christ’s death, an amputation to save a life or parental discipline, but also three hundred years of the West Afri- can slave trade, ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, tribal slaughter in Rawanda, and the ovens of Auschwitz and Dachau. If the greater good defense is true, although we might feel sorrow over these events when viewed in isolation, nevertheless we ought ultimately to praise God for them, since seen in their proper perspective they are necessary to some greater good which could not be accomplished without them.

      GGD means we have to raise God because of evil (that will be counter or overbalanced)... What of these atrocities? Must we praise God regardless?

    2. Without denying Jesus’ suffering or taking away any of the pain of his death, the Christian tradition has judged that, .in view of what his death accomplished (the reconciliation of the world to God), Christ’s death was ultimately good.

      Prima facie evil's "pain" (sorrow, fear, etc.) must be acknowledged, but it is nonetheless ultimately good.

    3. Note, however, that in the case of a merely prima facie evil, although sorrow might be quite appropriate, we ought not attempt to prevent it from occurring. This is illustrated in Jesus’ rebuke of Peter for suggesting that he try to avoid the cross, notwithstanding his own agony over his ap- proaching death, or the weeping of the women at the foot of the cross.

      Since prima facie evil is ultimately good, we should not prevent it. Recall Jesus rebuking Peter.

    4. hereas the motivation of the greater good defense is admirable in that it attempts to retain an orthodox doctrine of God as both good and provi- dentially sovereign in the face of evident evil, it is the strategy that is prob- lematic. For to claim that every evil in the world contributes to some equal or greater good which would be otherwise unattainable means quite sim- ply that there is no genuine evil.

      The motivation of GGD is noble, especially for the orthodox theist, but its strategy is problematic in how it seems to deny genuine evil.

    5. Building explicitly on both Plantinga and Hick, (and also Richard Swinbourne) Stump argues that the significant exercise of free will is logi- cally necessary for the process of being redeemed from one’s own evil and thus for attaining union with God. The required sort of exercise of free will, Stump asserts, the sort that results in union with God, “is of such great value that it outweighs all the evils of the world”

      Multiple theodicies from contemporary thinkers still draw upon the GGD strategy as proposed by Yandell.

    6. In both cases, however, no actual instance of evil in the world can in fact make the world worse, since either it will be “counterbalanced” by an equal good which results from it (Augustine’s position in De Libero Arbitrio) or it will be sometimes counterbalanced and sometimes “over- balanced” by a surpassing good which results from it (the later Augustine of the Enchiridion).

      Augustine is the fountainhead of many modern theodicies. Counterbalancing or overbalancing goods come from his work.

    7. What is crucial to Augustine’s argument in De Libero Arbitrio is not simply that he appeals to human freedom as the “cause” of evil (De Libero Arbitrio, TI1.22.63). Rather, central to Augustine’s early theodicy is his claim that the misuse of freedom (a putative evil) is bal- anced by God’s retributive punishment, resulting in the “just” suffering of the soul (De Libero Arbitrio, 11.16.43), which guarantees a good outcome overall in God’s providential ordering of the cosmos. It is the punishment of evil by the imposition of suffering that serves, in Augustine’s theodicy, to rectify this evil and thus to justify God.

      Putative evil, as caused by misuse of free will, is overbalanced by God's redemption (the Christ) and thus rectifies the problem of evil and "justifies" God. Classic Augustinian Theodicy.

    8. Epicurus’ old questions are yet unanswered. Is he [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil? (Hume 1947:198)

      The Epicurean problem of evil. Recall the discomfort we have between Yandel's (1) and (2)

    Annotators

    1. I grant the psychological forcefulness of appeal to infant mortality and geriatric disability. Perhaps it is just that forcefulness which not only often prevents us from looking at such matters clearly but makes any such attempt seem crass. It might indeed be crass (and that is charitable) to offer philosophical reflection to a bereaved parent or a grieving child when their need is so clearly for simple kindness. But no good is done by confusing appraisal of putative evidence with counsel to the griefstricken, and each has its proper place.

      Hmm, concerning rationalization of grief..

    2. his view of moral agency, of course, assumes (what seems to me true) that moral agents are necessarily free agents, and that free agents are necessarily not determined.

      This argument (at least starting from 4's entailment of moral maturity) assumes that moral agents re necessarily free beings.

    3. As we have seen, other fears or pains might have served as well, and other equally lamentable stimuli might have produced other equally valuable virtues, quite compatibly with the truth of (A) or (B)

      Implying evil is "lamentable stimuli" (for moral maturity)

    4. Nonetheless, as we noted, (1) entails (3) but not (3'). That (3') is false says nothing about (1). But if (3) is false, (1) is also false. Put differently (3) is entailed by orthodox theism, while (3') is certainly not. Thus while use of (3) in showing that (1) and (2) are logically compatible is perfectly legitimate, the theist is committed to (3) in a stronger sense than that in which (3) is one of various propositions he may adopt for legitimate logical manoeuvres, and I think this is worth emphasizing.

      (3) is consistent and entailed by (1), (2).

    5. 5) Every evil that God allows is logically necessary to some at least counterbalancing good state of affairs, and some evil is overbalanced by the good to which it is logically necessary, where one applicable criterion for a state of affairs being good is that it furthers the growth to moral maturity of some moral agent, and where the evils occurring to each agent are so arranged as to provide him maximal opportunity for moral maturity.

      God is thus praiseworthy or not blameworthy because of (3), (4).

    6. 4) Every evil is logically necessary to some good which either counterbalances or overbalances it, and some evil is overbalanced by the good to which it is logically necessary.

      Necessary is evil is necessarily counterbalanced by a good. The second-order good idea.

    7. Every evil is such that God has a morally sufficient reason for creating or allowing it.

      The theist must argue that any and every evil that exists must be allowed by God (for some higher purpose...?)

    8. As I understand the theistic tradition, (2)-that there is evil in the world-is what gives point to talk of repentance and forgiveness, judgement and mercy, damnation and redemption, and hell and heaven. Central, then, if not exhaustive among the evils with which this tradition is concerned are those which seem to frustrate, or actually do frustrate, man's attaining the greatest good available to him, for it is after all the forgiveness, redemption, and attainment of heaven by men which is most in view in theistic thinking and preaching.

      Evil is crucial to theology, especially the Christian faith with its central themes of forgiveness and repentance. Theodicy is this reasoning which allows us to answer why evil which frustrates what seems to be God's plan exists in God's world.

    9. God controls the course of history so that each man has maximal opportunity to attain his greatest good.

      Entailed by an omnipotent, benevolent (tacitly assumed: Creator) God.

    10. The orthodox theist is committed to the truth of at least these claims: (1) God exists, and is an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good Creator and Providence; (2) There is evil in the world

      The orthodox theist's commitment: 1) Omnipotent and benevolent God and 2) Evil exists

    Annotators

    1. We pro-pose that neurophenomenology of dreaming is a nascent discipline that requires rethinking the relative role of third-, first- and second-person methodologies, and that a paradigm shift is required in order to investigate dreaming as a phenomenon on a continuum of conscious phenomena as opposed to a break from or an alteration of consciousness

      We may need to think of dreams not as a break form consciousness, but as a unique continuation of our wakeful conscious state.

    Annotators

  3. Local file Local file
    1. Prominent phenomenologists have offered an extremely valuable interpretation of the dream asan inten-tional process, stressing its relevance in understanding the complexity of the mental life of subject, the continuous interplay between reality and unreality, and the possibility of building parallel spheres of expe-rience influencing the development of personal identity.

      Dreams enrich our understanding of personal identity, it relates how we interaact with reality and unreality, and dreams themselves are possibly distinct experiences crucial to building our identity.

    Annotators

    1. Our adaption of the GW model dichotomizes consciousness into conscious perception of the external environment (PE = percep-tual environment) and the conative aspects of conscious cognition (CC). This diagram illustrates potential pathways of information flow operating at either conscious or unconscious levels of neuro-cognitive processing. See text for details

      The unconscious processes flow into the Global Workspace which allows for interactions between the cognitive self and the perceptual environment.

    2. Memory systems a. episodic memory b. semantic memory c. action/skill memory d. working memory

      Our memories contribute to our sense of self, but much of it is usually unconscious or is unconsciously going on.

    3. The conscious output of the perceptual and cognitive generators is mediated by a host of unconscious neurocognitive processes.

      Our conscious experiences, be they of the self or of perceptual environments, require a lot of unconscious functions.

    4. The “stream of consciousness” is clearly a compos-ite of many facets including perceptions, imaginings, recollections, attention, emotions, thoughts, metacogni-tions and volitions. Baars suggests that conscious opera-tions can be divided into three areas. Conscious ex-periences are perceptual or “quasi-perceptual” and are the direct, immediate content of our consciousness: sen-sory-based perceptions, internal imagery, emotions, thoughts, recollections and so forth. Consciously-mediated access involves access to contents that are not currently conscious, but can be made so readily. This suggests a type of “penumbra” surrounding focal consciousness, an area of “preconsciousness” to which consciousness can immediately shift (Baars, 1996a; La-Berge & Rheingold, 1990). Conscious access opera-tions are closely associated with voluntary attention, voluntary memory access, and imagery operations (Baars, 1997b). Conscious-mediated control is, es-sentially, volition, the ability to consciously initiate ac-cess and action operations

      Three stuff: conscious experiences are perceptual, consciously mediated access requires us to consciously reach into to access, and then conscious mediated control is volition or will or agency.

    5. CASE 2: DREAMING

      Dreaming has: first-person perspective or awareness and a perceptual environment that our brain generates. No sensory input is necessary, unlike in wakeful state where the senses mediate the two generators.

    6. Fig. 1. The structures of sleep conscious experiences in terms of a dual representation of the dreamer (self) and the dream perceptual environment (PE). [A]. The normative types of sleep experience. The transition from thought-like mentation to dreamer-as-actor dreams shows a series of increasing activity in both generators in terms of the com-plexity of the representations and their interactions. [B]. Illustration of changes in consciousness during a wake-initiated lucid dream (WILD). See text for details

      Self and perceptual environment illustration of waking and dreaming

    7. A consequence of our thinking is that dreaming results in a “mental recombination” of cerebral information networks, which contributes to the ability of waking consciousness to generate novel and adaptive responses.

      Dreams use the information network in our brain, and it contributes to our waking consciousness' ability to generate novel and adaptive responses.

    Annotators

    1. REMsleep

      REM sleep can be understood as having a higher degree of conscious contents than, say, a full on comatose state, but still have less wakefulness than, say, being drowsy or drunk.

    2. Ourcentralaiminthispaperhasbeentoarguethatthenotionofalevelofconsciousnessisill-suitedforthisfunction,foritimpliesthatglobalstatesofconsciousnesscanbeorderedintermsofasingledimension–animplicationthatwehavearguedisatbestuncertainandatworstfalse.Globalstatesofconsciousness,wehaveargued,arebestunderstoodasregionsinamultidimensionalspace.Thetaskofidentifyingthedimensionsofthisspaceisanurgentandnecessaryonethatwillleadultimatelytoabetterunderstandingofconsciousnessitself

      Global consciousness probably cannot be described on just a single ordinal scale; it must be multidimensional.

    3. Instead,theyaretypicallydistinguishedfromeachotheroncognitive,behavioural,andphysiologicalgrounds.

      Global states are comparative to each other, a sort of ordinal scale for consciousness.

    4. Localstatesofconsciousnessincludeperceptualexperiencesofvariouskinds,imageryexperiences,bodilysensations,affectiveexperiences,andoccurrentthoughts.Inthescienceofconsciousnesslocalstatesareusuallyreferredtoas‘consciouscontents’,fortheyaretypicallydistinguishedfromeachotheronthebasisoftheobjectsandfeaturesthattheyrepresent.

      Local consciousness or conscious contents are basically qualia which represent something in the world.

    Annotators

    1. Indeed, in theConfessions,Augustine’s relation to God is both the source of hisrestlessness and the ground of his philosophical inquiry. Far from being a‘lullingnarcotic’, openness to the judgment of God prepares the space of self-reflection thatAugustine’s philosophical questioning inhabits, indeed it compels that questioning.

      Augustine is an example of how an intimate relationship with God leads not to a lulled sense of flight from the questionable-ness of authentic Dasein, but towards a questioning philosophical inquiry that is his way of life.

    2. There are, however, theological objections to this phenomenological project thatdeserve to be mentioned. The most obvious worry, which will occur to any studentof Karl Barth, is that it might tip over into an anthropological reduction of theologyas a whole. This would be the case if the phenomenological analysis is taken to yieldall there is to say about religion, eliminating any need to posit a God who truly exists(or a God‘beyond’or‘without’being, if you prefer) as the origin and end of thereligious life.

      A God-less phenomenological treatment of religion risks reducing faith to an anthropological level.

    3. At the same time, insofar as Heidegger’s entire career is occupied with thecritique ofmetaphysical theismin its various guises, his work has every right to becalled philosophy of religion. The question of God re-enters into Heidegger’sthinking via the destruction of the history of Western metaphysics as‘onto-theology’. As a whole, it represents a caseagainstthe God of onto-theology. Andthis, in turn, has bequeathed to philosophers after Heidegger a rather unexpected andno doubt controversial way of thinking the phenomenon of religion, and especiallymetaphysical theism, namelydestructively, from the perspective of the question ofbeing or ontological difference.

      Heidi does not believe in a philosophy of religion, but hs career's focus on destroying the god of philosophy squares him in that circle. By the end of it, it places Heidi in a thoroughly controversial position.

    4. Heidegger’s philosophy,therefore, cannot be properly described as theistic, atheistic or agnostic; it suspendsall doxastic attitudes. Its atheism is methodological.

      Heidi's philosophy does not comment on God's existence or essence. It does not wish to treat God at all.

    5. Moreover, Heidegger is evidently more reticent than Schleiermacher aboutconstructing a general account of‘the essence of religion’; he stays close to theparticularity of his Christian sources. To the extent that his phenomenology ofreligious lifedoesprepare the way for the account of human Dasein offered inBeingand Time, nothing essentially‘religious’remains in it. The existential analyticpresaged by the 1920/21 lectures will be rendered by Heidegger in 1927 in entirelynon-religious terms. Schleiermacher’s‘intuition of the infinite’will be re-interpretedas‘transcendence’towards the being of beings (‘being-in-the-world’); and, as wehave seen, the latter, for Heidegger, is emphatically not to be confused with God orwith a religious intuition of any kind. Heidegger’s existential analytic appropriatesall the main structures of Schleiermacher’s theological anthropology without seeingany need to think of these structures as a‘being towards God’.

      Heidi renders Schleiermacher's religious anthropology in wholly non-religious terms by 1927, but shares its structure.

    6. A Christian modeof being is of course still possible, but only because it is made possible by theexistential structures of being-in-the-world as such, structures which bear nonecessary reference to the divine.

      Christian-ness does not need Christ the Son of God?

    7. Religious experience discloses something that is essential if theory and praxis are tobe properly oriented: a sense of theinfinitewhole, and of our human being as afinitepart of this whole. Without it, morality is stale and metaphysics is empty.

      A well-ordering of theory and praxis, of theology and religious ethics(?), leads to the paradoxical consciousness of the infinite whole and the finite self. Without this, morality and metaphysics cannot really be lived.

    8. ut to correlate belief in God with practical reason is tointroduce a new distortion and reduction of faith. As an existential modality, faith issomething more primordial than either theoretical or practical reason

      Objectifying faith as truth is reductive to the existential quality of faith!

    9. This connection between proclamation and factical life experience, Heideggerargues, is often missed by theologians and philosophers of religion who insist onabstracting away from the factical-lived stratum to isolate what they consider to bethe essential content or object of faith. In truth, the existential stratum itselfistheessential content of faith; or, put more precisely, faith is nothing other than anexistential modality.

      To Heidi, faith is no object. Instead, it is an existential modality, a way of being, a Dasein.

    10. Paul’s letters are aimed at heightening the consciousness of this existential situation,not lessening it. His articulation of self, world and others, as they are disclosed to faith, isintended to form the same‘mind’in his auditors (and not merely to communicate facts)so that they too willenactorperformthe faith

      Performative, not just informative, faith.

    11. Such faith is what Heidegger elsewhere calls a‘believing-understanding mode ofexisting’. It has intelligible content that can be expressed; but it is not, he stresses,‘some more or less modified type of knowing’. Faith is, rather,‘an appropriation ofrevelation that co-constitutes the Christian occurrence, that is, the mode of existencethat specifies a factical Dasein’s Christianness as a particular form of destiny.Faith isthe believing-understanding mode of existing in the history revealed, i.e., occurring,with the Crucified’(Heidegger1998,pp.44–45). Through the appropriation of theChristian revelation (i.e. the cross), this faith discloses being as a totality, as acontext, as a situation.

      The Christian faith is a believing-understanding mode of existing. This is not just some more or less modified epistemology.

    12. Heidegger emphasizes therestlessness of this mode of being; it is troubled, tempted, and fragile. The hope ithas is not certitude; it is not a guarantee but a challenge to be found faithful. Thus thehope that it possesses is as much a provocation as a comfort—acalltowakefulness.Itis a mode of‘becoming’and of appropriating one’salready‘having-become’what onewas not

      Life of fragile hope... becoming a self one is not yet... Sounds a bit like the questionable-ness of authentic Dasein!

    13. e looks first to how Paul expresses his own Christian existence.Heidegger highlights in Paul’s writings the theme ofstruggleandsuffering:thewayofPaul’s existing is not one of quiet contemplation but of tension and struggle to achieveand maintainmetanoia(repentance or conversion) from the life of the law to the life offaith. The life of the law and the life of faith denote, according to Heidegger, twodistinctexistentiellmodes of being; the‘how’of living-according-to-law is opposed tothe‘how’of living-according-to-faith (just as the‘how’of philosophy and the‘how’offaith are opposed, as we observed above)

      Heidi finds in these Pauline epistles of Paul's search for his Dasein, one towards faith rather than the law. Russell points to a parallel conflict with faith versus philosophy.

    14. In the Winter Semester of 1920/21, Heidegger delivered a lecture course entitled‘Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion’. In it, he followed the lead ofSchleiermacher and Kierkegaard by redirecting philosophical study of religion away fromquestions concerning God (the object of faith) and towards religious experience (faithitself).

      Away with God who is invoked as Being, but is an Object of Being, Heidi wishes to focus on the phenomenology of faith instead, focusing on the lived experience (facticity) of what it means to be faithful.

    15. In 1927 he even defends the possibility, legitimacy and dignity of theology as a‘science of faith’(Heidegger1998,pp.43–50)14; and as late as 1949 he continues toplead:‘Will Christian theology one day resolve to take seriously the word of theapostle [Paul] and thus also the conception of philosophy as foolishness?’(Heidegger1998, pp. 287–88). Texts such as these intimate that, while he evidently regards someforms of theology as little more than bad philosophy, there is for Heidegger a‘scienceof faith’that does engage in a well-founded form of thinking, a form of thinking that isnot only non-philosophical but even necessarily (and legitimately?)anti-philosophical.In these remarks, the spirit of Luther abides, albeit tenuously.

      The positive science of theology is legitimate in its thinking of faith when it belongs and admits its domain. A stance similarly taken by Luther before Heidi, though Heidi's agreement with Luther is tenuous.

    16. What is‘prior’is precisely the opposition between the radical self-disclosingquestionableness of authenticity and the commitment of lived faith—an antagonismwritten into the constitution of philosophical questioning and Christian faithrespectively. The attitude of primordial faith is a non-philosophical attitude; theattitude of philosophy is non-faithful

      Self-disclosing questionable-ness authenticity vs. commitment to lived faith. Primordial faith (i.e., Augustine) is non-philosophical and philosophy is non0faithful.

    17. Faith, as a specific possibility of existence, is in its inner most core the mortalenemy of theform of existencethat is an essential part ofphilosophyand that isfactically ever-changing. Faith is so absolutely the mortal enemy thatphilosophy does not even begin to want in any way to do battle with it. Thisexistentiell oppositionbetween faithfulness and the free appropriation of one’swhole Dasein is not first brought about by the sciences of theology andphilosophy but ispriorto them.

      Faith in a metaphysical mode is the antithesis to the freedom that philosophy should grant the Dasein.

    18. First, we must not overlook the crucial fact that authenticity inBeing and Timeisnot a‘formalization’of the structure of Christian faith, since it is itself anexistentiellpossibility of Dasein, just as faith is anexistentiellpossibility of Dasein. This isHeideggerian jargon meaning that authenticity and Christian faith are two alternativeways to be. Though they may share a family resemblance, they are nonethelessdiscrete possibilities that cannot both be enacted at the same time.

      Heideggerian authenticity is an alternative of Dasein to Christian faith, but it is not a "formalization" of it, nor can both be enacted simultaneously.

    19. God and being are not the same; God is a being, not being

      God is an object with property "being", not the property of Being itself(?).Philosophizing about Being should consider Being itself, not just objects of it.

    20. In both contexts, the comportment inquestion is interpreted as a form of inauthenticity, a falling away, insofar as it abstractsfrom the temporality and facticity of existence (Da-sein; later,das Ereignis), and servesto distract us from the concrete horizon of our historical situation, our temporal having-to-be. This is the existential motive for the‘forgetting of being’that Heideggerfamously takes to be native to Western philosophy and philosophical theology.

      ...while in fact, to Heidi, that fluidity of life is what the Dasein is, a historical, facticity or "to-be"-ness in our context.

    21. The first matter that requires reflection is this: if it is such a trap for metaphysics, whyis the theological pseudo-answer to the question of being so appealing? Heidegger locatesthe root cause in the‘inauthenticity’of everyday Dasein. The positing of a first cause, astable ground, anunc stans(standing‘now’), is seen by Heidegger as a reactivemechanism of flight, calculated to curb the anxiety of life, to secure ourselves againstthe contingency and fluidity of life itself

      Invoking onto-theology comforts the Dasein as a form of coping mechanism against "the contingency and fluidity of life itself".

    22. lulling narcotic

      Very Marx-like of Heidi!

    23. highest object of thought is only a dream, an illusion—not necessarily because thereis no God, but because the desire to contemplate the absolute, to achieve absoluteknowledge, is a chimera and an idol

      Heidi does not wish to propose atheism, but that implementing theism as the object of thought to be inauthentic, and using God in such a manner makes them an idol.

    24. Nonetheless, Heidegger’s critical reflections on this tradition lead him to the viewthat the entanglement of ontology with theology has only served to obscure the mostfundamental meaning of being. For Luther, the theological tradition that attempted tothink the meaning of Christian faith via philosophical theology systematically failed tounderstand the meaning of Christian faith; conversely, for Heidegger, the philosophicaltradition that attempted to think the meaning of being via the idea of God systematicallyfailed to think the meaning of being in an authentic fashion.

      The incompatibility of intertwining ontology and theology goes both ways; Luther finds a philosophical pursuit of God to be disingenuous to the Christian faith and Heidi found that invoking God in philosophy failed to authentically account for Being (due to its over-reliance of a "convenient god"?)

    25. God isdefined(paradigmatically in Aristotle)asthe highest being and theground of being; God is thus understood by reference to being. (ii) But equally, beingisaccounted forby appeal to the highest being and the ground of being. The reason,ground or account (logos) for being (on) is found in the highest being (theos); hencethe description of metaphysics as‘onto-theologically constituted’.7

      Being is referenced to and accounted by the god of philosophy. It relies on the god to explain being, thus, onto-theology. This is the Western construction of metaphysics after Aristotle as brought back into the philosophical discourse.

    26. From the time of the ancient Greeks at least until the Enlightenment, Heidegger asserts,Western philosophy has treated the question of being in such a way that it enfolds andappeals to the idea of God—whether in the guise of‘the good’,‘the first cause’,‘theself-caused cause’,‘the eternal’,‘the absolute’, or any number of other philosophemes

      God of the philosophers, in its many guises, names, and syllogistic uses.

    27. ‘forgetting of being’

      Loss of embodiment of the human person? Like how the god of philosophy ignores factice experience of faith?

    28. One of Heidegger’s most readily demonstrable debts to Luther is the idea thatphilosophy should take the form of a destruction ordestructio(Luther’s term) of thehistory of Western metaphysics, that it should break through the crust of an ossifiedtradition to reveal a hidden, pulsating core.

      Heidi's investigation of the "un-thought", with respect to Western assumptions of metaphysics was influenced by Lutheran destructio principle of theology.

    29. Did his renunciation of the Catholic faith in fact represent a Protestantconversion of sorts? The answer to this question is complex, as we shall see below.

      Renunciation of Catholic faith nonetheless led to Heidegger engaging with theological work, which Russell claims to be of significant influence in Heidi's later works.

    30. ‘extra-philosophical allegiances’.

      Dogmatic commitments felt like a burden to Heidegger's philosophical pursuits.

    31. calling them to do without God in an unfettered pursuit of the question of being (throughhis‘destruction of onto-theology’); and, second, that this exclusion nonetheless leavesroom for a form of philosophical reflection upon the nature of faith and discourseconcerning God, namely for a philosophy of religion in aphenomenological mode

      Heidegger's critique of onto-theology nonetheless leaves room for a philosophical examination of faith from the phenomenological perspective.

    Annotators

  4. Mar 2021
    1. AI has had little to tell us about thinking,since it has nothing to tell us about machines. By its own definition,it is about programs, and programs are not machines.

      Ey holup what now?

    2. Unless you believe that the mind is separable from thebrain both conceptually and empirically -- dualism in a strong form --you cannot hope to reproduce the mental by writing and running programssince programs must be independent of brains or any other particularforms of instantiation. If mental operations consist in computationaloperations on formal symbols, then it follows that they have nointeresting connection with the brain; the only connection would bethat the brain just happens to be one of the indefinitely many types ofmachines capable of instantiating the program.

      We would need to invoke dualism to divorce mind from brain so that we can have Strong AI. Searle really does not like dualism.

    3. Ifthe latter, then, though the computer does information processing, itis only doing so in the sense in which adding machines, typewriters,stomachs, thermostats, rainstorms, and hurricanes do informationprocessing; namely, they have a level of description at which we candescribe them as taking information in at one end, transforming it, andproducing information as output.

      If we construe information processing and ascribe it to things without intentionality, we discover that these things present an in/out state of information with some kind of transformative property in between, but it requires an observer to get that processing done (said observer/interpreter would be the entity with intentionality)

    4. That is all the computer has for anything it does. To confusesimulation with duplication is the same mistake, whether it is pain,love, cognition, fires, or rainstorms

      Simulation is distinct from duplication

    5. Third, as I mentioned before, mental states and events are literally aproduct of the operation of the brain, but the program is not in thatway a product of the computer

      Mentality emerges from the brain, but the program does not emerge from a computer.

    6. Second, the program is purely formal, but the intentional states arenot in that way formal. They are defined in terms of their content, nottheir form. The belief that it is raining, for example, is not definedas a certain formal shape, but as a certain mental content withconditions of satisfaction, a direction of fit (see Searle 1979), andthe like. Indeed the belief as such hasn't even got a formal shape inthis syntactic sense, since one and the same belief can be given anindefinite number of different syntactic expressions in differentlinguistic systems

      Belief is about the content, not from, of thought.

    7. First, the distinction between program and realization has theconsequence that the same program could have all sorts of crazyrealizations that had no form of intentionality. Weizenbaum (1976, Ch.2), for example, shows in detail how to construct a computer using aroll of toilet paper and a pile of small stones. Similarly, the Chinesestory understanding program can be programmed into a sequence of waterpipes, a set of wind machines, or a monolingual English speaker, noneof which thereby acquires an understanding of Chinese. Stones, toiletpaper, wind, and water pipes are the wrong kind of stuff to haveintentionality in the first place -- only something that has the samecausal powers as brains can have intentionality -- and though theEnglish speaker has the right kind of stuff for intentionality you caneasily see that he doesn't get any extra intentionality by memorizingthe program, since memorizing it won't teach him Chinese.

      Memorizing is not the same as intentionally understanding. Moreover, some sustances cannot gain intentionallity, according to Searle.

    8. I see no reason in principle why we couldn't give a machine thecapacity to understand English or Chinese, since in an important senseour bodies with our brains are precisely such machines. But I do seevery strong arguments for saying that we could not give such a thing toa machine where the operation of the machine is defined solely in termsof computational processes over formally defined elements; that is,where the operation of the machine is defined as an instantiation of acomputer program. It is not because I am the instantiation of acomputer program that I am able to understand English and have otherforms of intentionality (I am, I suppose, the instantiation of anynumber of computer programs), but as far as we know it is because I ama certain sort of organism with a certain biological (i.e. chemical andphysical) structure, and this structure, under certain conditions, iscausally capable of producing perception, action, understanding,learning, and other intentional phenomena. And part of the point of thepresent argument is that only something that had those causal powerscould have that intentionality.

      Searle articulates Biological Naturalism of Consciousness.

    9. VI. The many mansions reply (Berkeley). "Your whole argumentpresupposes that AI is only about analogue and digital computers. Butthat just happens to be the present state of technology. Whatever thesecausal processes are that you say are essential for intentionality(assuming you are right), eventually we will be able to build devicesthat have these causal processes, and that will be artificialintelligence. So your arguments are in no way directed at the abilityof artificial intelligence to produce and explain cognition."

      Current context and tech capacity objection. Maybe later, machines can produce causal powers within themselves.

    10. V. The other minds reply (Yale). "How do you know that other peopleunderstand Chinese or anything else? Only by their behavior. Now thecomputer can pass the behavioral tests as well as they can (inprinciple), so if you are going to attribute cognition to other peopleyou must in principle also attribute it to computers.

      You do not have the conscious experience of others, how can you say the same of computers?

    11. The combination reply

      Uh... The amalgam makes it practically like a human, so until proven otherwise, it is an artificial human?

      Kinda defeats the interest of Strong AI

    12. III. The brain simulator reply (Berkeley and M.I.T.). "Suppose wedesign a program that doesn't represent information that we have aboutthe world, such as the information in Schank's scripts, but simulatesthe actual sequence of neuron firings at the synapses of the brain of anative Chinese speaker when he understands stories in Chinese and givesanswers to them. The machine takes in Chinese stories andquestions about them as input, it simulates the formal l structure ofactual Chinese brains in processing these stories, and it gives outChinese answers as outputs. We can even imagine that the machineoperates, not with a single serial program, but with a whole set ofprograms operating in parallel, in the manner that actual human brainspresumably operate when they process natural language. Now surely insuch a case we would have to say that the machine understood thestories; and if we refuse to say that, wouldn't we also have to denythat native Chinese speakers understood the stories? At the level ofthe synapses, what would or could be different about the program of thecomputer and the program of the Chinese brain?"

      Replicate the brain's neural system into a computer architecture, and now the machine's processes are identical to brain processes. thus, at some level, we need to say that the machine understands in the same way that the Chinese native understands.

    13. Now in this case I want tosay that the robot has no intentional states at all; it is simplymoving about as a result of its electrical wiring and its program. Andfurthermore, by instantiating the program I have no intentional statesof the relevant type. All I do is follow formal instructions aboutmanipulating formal symbols

      Embodiment of a program does not change their capacity to understand or have intentionality, according to Searle.

    14. II. The Robot Reply (Yale). "Suppose we wrote a different kind ofprogram from Schank's program. Suppose we put a computer inside arobot, and this computer would not just take in formal symbols as inputand give out formal symbols as output, but rather would actuallyoperate the robot in such a way that the robot does something very muchlike perceiving, walking, moving about, hammering nails, eatingdrinking -- anything you like. The robot would, for example have atelevision camera attached to it that enabled it to 'see,' it wouldhave arms and legs that enabled it to 'act,' and all of this would becontrolled by its computer 'brain.' Such a robot would, unlike Schank'scomputer, have genuine understanding and other mental states."

      Embodiment similar to the human grants mental states?

    15. stomach

      Gut-brain connection?

    16. Furthermore, the systems reply would appear to lead to consequencesthat are independently absurd. If we are to conclude that there must becognition in me on the grounds that I have a certain sort of input andoutput and a program in between, then it looks like all sorts ofnoncognitive subsystems are going to turn out to be cognitive.

      Noncognitive functions are, by definition, cognitive, according to this reply?

    17. But, I want to reply, not only do they have littleto do with each other, they are not even remotely alike. The subsystemthat understands English (assuming we allow ourselves to talk in thisjargon of "subsystems" for a moment) knows that the stories are aboutrestaurants and eating hamburgers, he knows that he is being askedquestions about restaurants and that he is answering questions as besthe can by making various inferences from the content of the story, andso on. But the Chinese system knows none of this. Whereas the Englishsubsystem knows that "hamburgers" refers to hamburgers, the Chinesesubsystem knows only that "squiggle squiggle" is followed by "squogglesquoggle." All he knows is that various formal symbols are beingintroduced at one end and manipulated according to rules written inEnglish, and other symbols are going out at the other end.

      The subsytems behave in a qualitatively distinct manner.

    18. The systems reply (Berkeley). "While it is true that the individualperson who is locked in the room does not understand the story, thefact is that he is merely part of a whole system, and the system doesunderstand the story. The person has a large ledger in front of him inwhich are written the rules, he has a lot of scratch paper and pencilsfor doing calculations, he has 'data banks' of sets of Chinese symbols.Now, understanding is not being ascribed to the mere individual; ratherit is being ascribed to this whole system of which he is a part.

      We cannot ascribe "understanding" to a part of a system. In Searle's Gedankenexperiment, Searle the English speaker is just a part of the system, the room.

    19. I understand stories in English; to a lesser degree I can understandstories in French; to a still lesser degree, stories in German; and inChinese, not at all. My car and my adding machine, on the other hand,understand nothing: they are not in that line of business. We oftenattribute "under standing" and other cognitive predicates by metaphorand analogy to cars, adding machines, and other artifacts, but nothingis proved by such attributions. We say, "The door knows when to openbecause of its photoelectric cell," "The adding machine knows how)(understands how to, is able) to do addition and subtraction but notdivision," and "The thermostat perceives chances in the temperature."

      Understanding is ordinal, but there seems to be a plain qualitative difference in domains (the business of) between the human and the artificial computer.

    20. One of the claims made by the supporters of strong AI isthat when I understand a story in English, what I am doing is exactlythe same -- or perhaps more of the same -- as what I was doing inmanipulating the Chinese symbols. It is simply more formal symbolmanipulation that distinguishes the case in English, where I dounderstand, from the case in Chinese, where I don't.

      "Understanding" a language is just like formally manipulating symbols (or sounds), so Searle.exe is just doing more of the same with English as he was with the Chinese portions.

    21. Let us also suppose that my answers to the English questions are, asthey no doubt would be, indistinguishable from those of other nativeEnglish speakers, for the simple reason that I am a native Englishspeaker. From the external point of view -- from the point of view ofsomeone reading my "answers" -- the answers to the Chinese questions andthe English questions are equally good. But in the Chinese case, unlikethe English case, I produce the answers by manipulating uninterpretedformal symbols. As far as the Chinese is concerned, I simply behavelike a computer; I perform computational operations on formallyspecified elements. For the purposes of the Chinese, I am simply aninstantiation of the computer program

      Formally interacting with the Chinese symbols as a non-Chinese speaker/writer is like the instantiation of a computer program. Quite distinct from the "thought" Searle puts in when he does the English portion of the problem.

    22. Gedankenexperiment

      German: thought experiment.

    23. I have no objection to the claims of weak AI, at least as far as thisarticle is concerned. My discussion here will be directed at the claimsI have defined as those of strong AI, specifically the claim that theappropriately programmed computer literally has cognitive states andthat the programs thereby explain human cognition.

      Searle's objection: Strong AI are capable of cognition if they are programmed correctly. He does not believe the conditional to be sufficient to establishing a system which produces intentionality.

    24. In strong AI, because the programmedcomputer has cognitive states, the programs are not mere tools thatenable us to test psychological explanations; rather, the programs arethemselves the explanations.

      Weak AI helps us understand the mind by giving us tools to test it. Strong AI is mind.

    25. This article can be viewed as an attempt to explore theconsequences of two propositions. (1) Intentionality in humanbeings (and animals) is a product of causal features of the brain Iassume this is an empirical fact about the actual causal relationsbetween mental processes and brains It says simply that certainbrain processes are sufficient for intentionality. (2)Instantiating a computer program is never by itself a sufficientcondition of intentionality The main argument of this paper isdirected at establishing this claim The form of the argument is toshow how a human agent could instantiate the program and still nothave the relevant intentionality. These two propositions have thefollowing consequences (3) The explanation of how the brainproduces intentionality cannot be that it does it by instantiatinga computer program. This is a strict logical consequence of 1 and2. (4) Any mechanism capable of producing intentionality must havecausal powers equal to those of the brain. This is meant to be atrivial consequence of 1. (5) Any attempt literally to createintentionality artificially (strong AI) could not succeed just bydesigning programs but would have to duplicate the causal powers ofthe human brain. This follows from 2 and 4

      1) Intentionality is a causal feature of the brain, certain brain processes are sufficient for intentionality.

      2) Computational program instantiation is insufficient to establish intentionality.

      3) 1,2, MP: The intentionality produced by the brain cannot be explained by instantiating a computer program.

      4) Any mechanism which can produce intentionality must have the same causal power of the brain (trivial consequence of 1)

      5) 2,4 MP: Strong AI cannot be built from just programs, but require the duplication of the human brain's causal powers.

    1. Molina, Ainsworth, and Wittig’s (2003) Feelings of Threat vs. Opportunity

      Other interethnic engagement instrument

    2. Peer prosocial norms. This 5-item measure asked youth to report the prevalence of prosocial behaviors among their peers at school; for exam-ple, “How many students in your school help other kids even if they don’t know them well?” and “How many students in your school help resolve arguments between other kids?” Students responded on a 5-point scale(1 =almost all the students, 3 =some, and 5 =hardly any). Items were reverse coded prior composite scores being calculated, with higher scores indicating prosocial behavior as more normative among peers (α= .79, range .75–.81 across ethnic/racial groups).

      Peer prosocial items

    3. Phinney’s (1992) Other Group Orientation and Ethnic Identity scales:

      Interethnic engagement instrument

    4. “I stand up for kids who are made fun of or bullied,” “I help other kids even if I don’t know them well,” and “I help resolve arguments between other kids.” The 3 items were based on focus-group findings that measured the prosocial behav-iors that diverse early adolescents (11- to 13-year-olds) reported as impor-tant and valuable (Bergin, Tally, & Hamer, 2003).

      Likert scale prosocial behavior items

    5. Youths’ prosocial behavior was marginally associated with their perceptions of greater representation of same-ethnicity peers at school but not associated with their perceptions of school support of ethnic diversity. Furthermore, prosocial behavior was significantly related to adolescents’ reported engagement in and valuing of cross-ethnic contact in circumstances of relatively lower and average school diversity but not relatively higher school diversity. The significant associations were found even when controlling for the contribution of prosocial peer norms at school, which as expected were associated with youths’ prosocial behavior.

      Prosocial behaviour marginally linked to same-thnic representation, not affected by perception of school support for diversity.

      Prosocial behaviour effects only apply to lower and average diversity schools. Higher diversity may even suffer.

    6. Dpc

      Formula for diversity value

    7. School Interracial Climate scale developed by Green, Adams, and Turner (1988)

      School Interracial Climate survey instrument.

    8. For the current analyses, 2,369 participants met the selection criteria. The racial/ethnic composition of the subsample was 45% Latino(n= 1,065), 20.5% White (n= 485), 20.1% Asian (n= 478), and 14.4% Black/African American (n= 341). Approximately half of the participants were girls (52%)

      Sample composition

    9. Participants in this study were drawn from a larger sample of 5,085 sixth-grade students taking part in a 3-year longitudinal study of peer relations in 20 diverse urban public middle schools in the Greater Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay areas.

      Sample description

    10. Prosocial peer norms. The degree to which adolescents engage in prosocial behavior is likely influenced by the prosocial norms of their peers. Peers provide information regarding behavioral expectations by communicating, modeling, and reinforcing norms for how to treat oth-ers and thereby serve as guides for prosocial behavior (

      Prosociability begets itself, and prosociability socializes more of itself.

    11. Advancing a more balanced perspective, perhaps the presence of more same-ethnic peers in schools with diversity offers a secure base and provides comfort when crossing ethnic boundaries. Same-ethnic peers may provide social support, protect against discrimination, and shift the balance of social power (Felix & You, 2011). It has been suggested that a critical mass of same-ethnicity/race peers might mitigate the challenges of fitting in within a school community (Graham, Taylor, & Ho, 2009).

      Diversity's problems can be attenuated through same-ethnic communities, which is "protective" against such troubles.

    12. Although studies conducted with child or adolescent populations have not explored the relationship of engagement in and receptiveness to ethnic diversity with prosocial behavior, research with older samples suggests such a relationship. Empirical investigations have found that the actual experiences that university students have with diverse peers affect learning and democracy outcomes such as increased citizenship engage-ment (e.g., helping others in difficulty)

      Uni students show the hoped outcome. Adolescents and children should be researched for the same effect.

    13. nteracting with people from another cultural group exposes individuals to diverse perspec-tives and beliefs. This valuable cognitive exercise can provide youth the opportunity to see similarities between themselves and demographi-cally dissimilar individuals. As a result of these self–other experiences, perspective-taking skills are likely to mature as well as lead to better understanding of and empathy for others who are different

      Diverse experiences can lead to future benefits, such as stronger empathy in cross-cultural contexts.

    14. School support of ethnic diversity. It also may be that schools with a positive diversity climate that fosters pluralism and inclusion enhance stu-dents’ positive behavior and psychosocial adjustment. Theory in this area suggests that the degree to which schools support a culture of respect, equal-ity, and diversity plays a key role in influencing students’ positive social and emotional adjustment, particularly for ethnic minorities

      School plays crucial role in creating inclusin. Benefits of diversity and inclusion most prominent for minorities.

    15. We focus on two dimensions of youths’ perceptions of ethnicity-related context variables—how experiences of ethnic similarity and diversity are perceived. While perceptions of expe-riences of similarity and diversity do not necessarily go hand in hand, and potentially there might be tension between them, we suggest that both may have significance for prosocial behavior. Briefly, we turn next to research and theory that support the links between some subjective experiences of similarity and diversity and prosocial action.

      Possible conflicts between experience of ethic similarity versus diversity. Will still be crucial in understanding prosocial behaviour development.

    16. It is equally important to bear in mind that experiences that emphasize communalities (e.g., shared/similar values, beliefs) and inclusiveness may reduce the salience of ingroup–outgroup distinctions.

      Inclusion reduces social categorization's force.

    17. Yet, at the same time, research suggests benefits of attending diverse schools, such as lower levels of perceived social vulnerability (Juvonen, Nishina, & Graham, 2006) and more diverse social ties in later life

      School diversity correlated to broader relationships and lower vulnerability socially later on. Mixed findings present challenges.

    18. Tensions also may arise from social categorization processes (Tajfel & Turner, 1986) that impact social behaviors of early adolescents in eth-nically/racially diverse contexts. For instance, social and psychologi-cal connections with others in ethnically/racially diverse settings may be attenuated. Studies show that adolescents report a lowered sense of school belonging and more discrimination in diverse schools

      Diverse schools have students report more discrimination

    19. Furthermore, prosocial behavior may beget more prosocial behavior: Research on peer-group processes suggests that there is a propensity for patterns of social behaviors and interactions to become synchronized in a context

      Prosocial behaviour begets itself more in the community.

    20. Quintana’s (1998) research

      Already at an early age, ethnic diversity lowers prosocial behaviour.

    21. The emerging salience of ethnicity in intergroup and intragroup social relations in early adolescence suggests that it is a critical developmental period in which to examine how perceptions of ethnicity relate to prosocial behavior.

      Adolescence is a crucial formative period to examine inter-ethnic prosocial behaviour.

    22. Social identity theory proposes that individuals are likely to perceive differences between themselves and others and classify themselves and oth-ers into different social categories. These self–other categories may shape the way individuals interact with others such that to enhance their social identity people will be more likely to behave prosocially toward members of their own social group than toward members of other groups (Tajfel & Turner, 1986). Ingroup preference in prosocial behavior may extend to cat-egorizations of ethnicity/race. Some studies, for example, show that adults are more likely to help members of their own racial group than members of a different racial group (Benson, Karabenick, & Lerner, 1976; Brigham & Richardson, 1979; Wegner & Crano, 1975).

      Prosocial behaviour is more prevalent in in-group relationships. Cross-racial relationships may see less prosocial behaviour.

    23. In early adolescence, sociocultural contexts outside the home, such as peer groups, ethnic/racial groups, schools, and communities, become especially important influences on attitudes and behavior (Lerner, 2005). This influence shifts in part because youth are forming their social identi-ties and developing a greater awareness of social norms and perspectives of others (Erikson, 1968).

      Peers as crucial factor for influencing adolescent prosocial behaviour

    24. Moreover, prosocial relationships may serve as protec-tive factors for youth at risk for social and academic difficulties (Catalano, Haggerty, Oesterle, Fleming, & Hawkins, 2004). Prosocial behavior may not only be beneficial to the helper and recipient but may also be a source of social harmony (Twenge, Baumeister, DeWall, Ciarocco, & Bartels, 2007).

      Prosocial behaviour protects those in difficulty (racial discrimination included?), and contributes to the community's harmony.

    25. Prosocial behavior represents a broad category of voluntary acts intended to help or benefit others (Eisenberg & Mussen, 1989). The results of many studies suggest the importance of identifying factors that relate to ado-lescents helping their peers and engaging in other prosocial behaviors.

      Crucial to improve adolescent prosociability. benefits lsited below.

    26. ultilevel analyses indicated that prosociability in a sample of 2,369 sixth-grade students in 20 ethnically/racially diverse middle schools was associated with student engagement in and valuing of cross-ethnic contact in circumstances of relatively lower and average school ethnic/racial diversity but not higher diversity. In addi-tion, prosocial behavior was marginally associated with greater representation of same-ethnic peers at school but not associated with school support for ethnic diversity.

      Benefits of ethnic diversity tapers off as diversity increases?

    Annotators

    1. Another plausible explanation isthat being a student in a more diverse school setting couldraise White students’ awareness of and sensitivity toinequitable treatment when it is present.

      Diverse schools allow Whites to see inequality, making them aware of the issue.

    2. As with perceivedteacher caring, we found that Black students reported sig-nificantly lower equity on average as compared with Whitestudents and furthermore observed that the Black–Whitegap was most discordant in schools that were majorityWhite or majority Black (i.e., the most racially and ethni-cally homogenous schools), however, the disparityreversed depending on the majority race of the school.Specifically, Black students had less favorable perceptionsof equity in majority White schools relative to White stu-dents, whereas White students had less favorable percep-tions of equity in majority Black schools relative to Blackstudents.

      n homogeneous schools, the minority race (White or Black) feel less equity than the majority race.

    3. However, it ispossible that student-reports of teacher expectations areless informative in addressing research questions on deficitthinking relative to teacher-reports or observational mea-sures, as teachers’ success expectancies may be less easilydiscerned by students (which could explain why we foundgaps for caring and equity, but not high expectations).

      Use teacher reports for expectations? Because student report of expectations seem the same across racial lines.

    4. The significant finding of lower perceived teacher caringamong Black students is noteworthy in this study because itwas found even when accounting for maternal education (aproxy for socioeconomic status) and regardless of changesin school socioeconomic context or diversity, suggestingfurther exploration of potential contributing factors ismerited.

      Blacks "universally" feel less care.

    5. however, we did findthat this dimension of support decreased for both Black andWhite youth as the diversity of the student body in theirschool increased. Consistent with our hypotheses, we foundlower levels of perceived equity among both Black andWhite students in more racially and ethnically diverseschools.

      Diverse schools have lower expectations and perceived by students to have less equity.

    6. Our findings demon-strated that racial disparities were present in Black andWhite students’ perceptions of caring, such that Blackstudents perceived significantly lower caring relative totheir White peers. This gap did not vary significantly by thediversity of their peers or school socioeconomic context.

      Blacks feel less care than Whites. Not associated significantly with diversity or socioeconomic context.

    7. Supportive school contexts in which adults are caring, fair,and set high expectations have been recognized as essentialto adolescents’ healthy cognitive, social, and emotionaldevelopment (Eccles and Roeser2011). Persistent racialdisparities in students’ school outcomes (e.g., academicperformance, school discipline; Aud et al.2012; Skibaet al.2011) mirror the available research on youth per-ceptions of school support by race, which show that Blackyouth perceive lower levels of supportive relationshipswith adults and connectedness at school relative to theirWhite peers (Furlong et al.2011; Hamre and Pianta2001;Hughes and Kwok2007).

      Supportive schools are crucial to healthy development. Discrimination to Blacks in school support help explain the academic and social gap relative to White peers.

    8. Twelve survey items using a four-point Likert scale wereselected from the California Healthy Kids Survey (Hansonand Kim2007) and the School Development School Cli-mate Survey

      Survey items for school support: California Healthy Kids Program, School Development School Climate Survey.

    9. To advance our knowledge of whether racial disparities instudents’ perceptions of school support are influenced by theracial and ethnic diversity and socioeconomic status of theschool, this study employed multi-level and multiple grouplatent variable approaches to model school equity, caring, andhigh expectations as a 3-dimensional model of school support.

      Equity, caring, and expectations as dimensions of school support.

    10. In schools marked by higherpercentage of students on free and reduced price meals andhigher concentration of Black youth, staff burnout and stresslevels are likely elevated (Bottiani et al.2014; Collie et al.2012); stress, in turn, has been linked to expression ofimplicit prejudicial biases (Kang et al.2014). Therefore, it isplausible that student report of equity may be lower overall inthese schools and that disparities in students’ report of schoolsupport might be larger in such school settings

      Schools with students of lower socioeconomic backgrounds and Black concentration see higher taff stress and burnout. Suggests that prejudice is strong here, and may suggest further lower school support reported by students.

    11. Although research examiningthe role of school diversity in inequalities in Black boys’report of school support is scant overall, a handful of studiessuggest that youth of color perceive poorer racial climate andgreater discrimination in more racially/ethnically heteroge-neous schools

      Blacks may suffer more in heterogenous school contexts

    12. yet alsosuggests that Black students experience less supportiverelationships with their teachers and less school connected-ness relative to their White peers

      Blacks are observed to have received less school support.

    13. Although school support is linked with positive outcomesacross diverse racial and ethnic groups (e.g., Garcı ́a-Reidet al.2005; Tyler and Boelter2008), educators have theo-rized that Black students in particular may benefit fromteacher support to help navigate sociocultural boundariesbetween school, home, and neighborhood and to cope withexperiences of discrimination at school

      Blacks stand to benefit the most from school support, accounting for the sociocultural boundaries they suffer from in other contexts.

    14. Existing conceptualizations of school support suchas the dynamic model of motivational development(Skinner and Pitzer2012) and the youth development andresiliency model (Hanson and Kim2007) have not inclu-ded dimensions reflecting students’ perceptions of equity.

      Previous conceptualizations have lacked equity.

    15. Among Black students,perceived discrimination is inversely associated withvaluing of education and academic persistence (e.g., Dot-terer et al.2009; Smalls et al.2007; Wong et al.2003).Conversely, research on school climate suggests that per-ceived school equity, which includes dimensions of fair-ness and inclusiveness

      Racial discrimination reduces desire to study well and staying in school. Observed in Blacks.

    16. Adolescents’ perceptions of fairness in the school envi-ronment can enhance both students’ sense of competence(Elliot and Dweck2005) and connectedness

      Equity increases both personal confidence and social solidarity.

    17. School support is an emerging construct theorized to fulfillyouth needs for belonging, competence, and autonomy(Hanson and Kim2007; Skinner and Pitzer2012) andconceptualized as an aspect of school climate shaped bystudents’ relationships with adults at school. Researchindicates that supportive relationships with adults at schoolpredict students’ academic engagement and social-emo-tional well-being (Roeser et al.2000), particularly forbehaviorally at-risk Black youth (Decker et al.2007)

      Supportive adult interactions are crucial to student academic and social growth, especially for Blacks.

    18. mul-tilevel, latent variable methods

      Applicable research instrument?

    19. The results indicated that Black students perceived lesscaring and equity relative to White students overall, andthat equity and high expectations were lower in diverseschools for both Black and White students. Nonetheless,racial disparities were attenuated in more diverse schools.The findings point to the need for intervention to improve

      Blacks feel less cared for, thus perceive less equity, relative to White students. Diverse schools are still crucial in attenuating racial disparities.

    20. Supportive relationships with adults at schoolare critical to student engagement in adolescence. Addi-tional research is needed to understand how students’ racialbackgrounds interact with the school context to shape theirperceptions of school support.

      Equality perceptions of school may change if each racial group is treated differently by social support groups, especially adults.

    Annotators

  5. Feb 2021
    1. This leads to a natural hypothesis: that information (or at least some information) has two basic aspects, a physical aspect and a phenomenal aspect.

      Some information can be physical or phenomenal (inclusive or)

    2. The double-aspect principle stems from the observation that there is a direct isomorphism

      Isomorphism between physical information space and phenomenal space

    3. 3The double-aspect theory of information. The two preceding principles have been nonbasic principles. They involve high-level notions such as “awareness” and “organization”, and therefore lie at the wrong level to constitute the fundamental laws in a theory of consciousness. Nevertheless, they act as strong constraints. What is further needed are basic principles that fit these constraints and that might ultimately explain them

      Information Theory as a basic principle that does not require higher level notions.

    4. 20appealed to inexplicitly. It is so familiar that it is taken for granted by almost everybody, and is a central plank in the cognitive explanation of consciousness.The coherence between consciousness and awareness also allows a natural interpretation of work in neuroscience directed at isolating the substrate (or the neural correlate) of consciousness. Various specific hypotheses have been put forward. For example, Crick and Koch (1990) suggest that 40-Hz oscillations may be the neural correlate of consciousness, whereas Libet (1993) suggests that temporally-extended neural activity is central. If we accept the principle of coherence, the most direct physical correlate of consciousness is awareness: the process whereby information is made directly available for global control. The different specific hypotheses can be interpreted as empirical suggestions about how awareness mightbe achieved. For example, Crick and Koch suggest that 40-Hz oscillations are the gateway by which information is integrated into working memory and thereby made available to later processes. Similarly, it is natural to suppose that Libet’s temporally extended activity is relevant precisely because only that sort of activity achieves global availability. The same applies to other suggested correlates such as the “global workspace” of Baars (1988), the “high-quality representations” of Farah (1994), and the “selector inputs to action systems” of Shallice (1972). All these can be seen as hypotheses about the mechanisms of awareness: the mechanisms that perform the function of making information directly available for global control.Given the coherence between consciousness and awareness, it follows that a mechanism of awareness will itself be a correlate of conscious experience. The question of just whichmechanisms in the brain govern global availability is an empirical one; perhaps there are many such mechanisms. But if we accept the coherence principle, we have reason to believe that the processes that explain awareness will at the same time be part of the basis of consciousness.2The principle of organizational invariance. This principle states that any two systems with the same fine-grained functionalorganization will have qualitatively identical experiences. If the causal patterns of neural organization were duplicated in silicon, for example, with a silicon chip for every neuron and the same patterns of interaction, then the same experiences would arise. According to this principle, what matters for the emergence of experience is not the specific physical makeup of a system, but the abstract pattern of causal interaction between its components.

      The abstract pattern of causal interactions for consciousness is organized in such a way that it is consistent with all its components.

    5. 1The principle of structural coherence. This is a principle of coherence between the structure of consciousness and the structure of awareness. Recall that “awareness” was used earlier to refer to the various functional phenomena that are associated with consciousness.

      Awareness and consciousness are structurally coherent with each other. Recall that awareness is a function, but consciousness is the phenomenal feature.

    6. (A technical note: Some philosophers argue that even though there is a conceptual gap between physical processes and experience, there need be no metaphysical gap, so that experience might in a certain sense still be physical (e.g., Hill 1991, Levine 1983, Loar 1990).

      No metaphysical gap...

    7. This position qualifies as a variety of dualism, as it postulates basic properties over and above the properties invoked by physics. But it is an innocent version of dualism, entirely compatible with the scientific view of the world. Nothing in this approach contradicts anything in physical theory; we simply need to add further bridging principles to explain howexperience arises from physical processes.

      Innocent dualism: the bridging materials is rather disticnt from physicality, but is compatible with physical laws. Nothing spiritual or soul-like here.

    8. We know that experience depends on physical processes, but we also knowthat this dependence cannot be derived from physical laws alone. The new basic principles postulated by a nonreductive theory give us the extra ingredient that we need to build an explanatory bridge

      We come from admitting that physical laws are a given, a fundamental, and that the theory of consciousness is supplemental.

    9. I suggest that a theory of consciousness should take experience as fundamental.

      Experience as a given?

    10. The vital spirit was put forward as an explanatory posit, in order to explain the relevant functions, and could therefore be discarded when those functions were explained without it. Experience is not an explanatory posit but an explanandum in its own right, and so is not a candidate for this sort of elimination

      The vital spirit and the consciousness are distinct problems.

    11. The moral of all this is that you can’t explain conscious experience on the cheap. It is a remarkable fact that reductive methods—methods that explain a high-level phenomenon wholly in terms of more basic physical processes—work well in so many domains.

      Overreliance on reductive methods has made the had problem woefully unexplored.

    12. But when it comes to the explanation of experience, quantum processes are in the same boat as any other. The question of why these processes should give rise to experience is entirely unanswered.

      Quantum mechanics has similarly funky proeprties of consciousness and both have mysteries surrounding them, but QM does not explain why experience should exist.

    13. A fifth and reasonable strategy is to isolate the substrate of experience.

      Isolate what allows experience to emerge. Suggests how the bridge can be built, most likely using materials we have on the sciences' side, but does not bother building the bridge.

    14. A fourth, more promising approach appeals to these methods to explain the structure of experience.

      Assumes or takes experience for granted, and theories about its structure instead. Like hopping to the other side without bothering to build much of a bridge.

    15. In a third option, some researchers claim to be explaining experience in the full sense.

      SpoWoky explanations of consciousness, but at least admits the need for a bridge.

    16. he second choice is to take a harder line and deny the phenomenon.

      The "there is no other side" technique. Deny the need for a bridge.

    17. The first strategy is simply to explain something else.

      Researching the "easy" part of the problem, that which the sciences can account for, but not developing the bridge towards experiential qualities.

    18. According to this theory, the contents of consciousness are contained in a global workspace, a central processor used to mediate communication between a host of specialized nonconscious processors. When these specialized processors need to broadcast information to the rest of the system, they do so by sending this information to the workspace, which acts as a kind of communal blackboard for the rest of the system, accessible to all the other processors.

      Global Workspace Theory of Consciousness, or The World Soul.

    19. Binding is the process whereby separately represented pieces of information about a single entity are brought together to be used by later processing, as when information about the color and shape of a perceived object is integrated from separate visual pathways.

      Unity of consciousness (at least of sensory information) is done through binding

    20. Why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience? A simple explanation of the functions leaves this question open.

      The hard problem of consciousness is that pehnomenology, of why and how these functions are accompanied by experience.

    21. All of these are questions about the performance of functions, and so are well-suited to reductive explanation.

      Performance of function is susceptible to reductive explanations. Once the performance and the functions are accounted for via scientific method, the bulkd of the work is done.

    22. Another useful way to avoid confusion (used by e.g., Newell 1990; Chalmers 1996) is to reserve the term “consciousness” for the phenomena of experience, using the less loaded term “awareness” for the more straightforward phenomena described earlier.

      Consciousness is a loaded term. Use awareness for more straightforward cognizant phenomena

    23. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience.

      The quality of being a "self". Experiencing as being.

    24. Although we do not yet have anything close to a complete explanation of these phenomena, we have a clear idea of how we might go about explaining them. This is why I call these problems the easy problems.

      "Easy" means we have an almost surefire methodology of explaining these problems, even though it will take a lot of work.

    25. The easy problems of consciousness are those that seem directly susceptible to the standard methods of cognitive science, whereby a phenomenon is explained in terms of computational or neural mechanisms. The hard problems are those that seem to resist those methods.

      Can be captured or explained by neuroscience or not. Could extend to "can be understood using scientific methods or not"

    26. a nonreductive theory based on principles of structural coherence and organizational invariance and a double-aspect view of information

      Chalemrs' proposal for naturalist nonreductive account. Damn, this looks complicated.

    27. Consciousness poses the most baffling problems in the science of the mind. There is nothing that we know more intimately than conscious experience, but there is nothing that is harder to explain.

      Most intimate and inexplicable

    1. It's boom and gloom, a housing market that reflects America's increasing inequality. Ugh, that's a super-depressing way to end this. On the bright side, 2020 has fewer than four months to go?

      Fuck no. 2021 is shaping up to be just as wacky.

    2. When Tucker, the economist at Zillow, looks at the lopsided housing market, he sees more evidence for a "K-shaped recovery." The rising, top-right part of the K is the America that is buying new homes or that already owns one and is seeing its value increasing. Those Americans have stock portfolios and retirement accounts that have been doing shockingly well. And they have good jobs that they can remote into with safety and flexibility. The descending, bottom-right part of the K is the America that is showing up in record-high unemployment numbers and mounting bankruptcy statistics. It's the America that rents, has huge student loans, doesn't have retirement savings and is now dependent on the government or family for an affordable place to live.

      The Two Americas begin to diverge due to housing market implications.