Is the human self nonexistent?

I strongly disagree about the value of rationality or rational thought.

My point was that whilst rationalising is a useful method/principle/tool, we wouldn't have attempted to shape the world the way we have if we'd applied it strictly. Flying was irrational until it wasn't (only birds can fly). Resuscitating dead patients was irrational but now it isn't. 

I'll pass on the other if I may.

I strongly disagree about the value of rationality or rational thought. The laws of thought are fundamental axiomatic rules on which rational discourse itself is often considered to be based. Laws of thought are rules that apply without exception to any subject matter of thought. These laws of logical thought, of reasoning, are the law of identity (everything is identical to itself) , the law of contradiction (no thing having a given quality also has the negative of that quality), and the law of excluded middle (every thing either has a given quality or has the negative of that quality).

If these laws aren't followed, the sequence of thoughts are incoherent and meaningless.

An outright attack aimed at the secure core of information science.  Evidence of structural relations having outcomes in reality - that are fixed - is proven by logical outcomes being real and natural.  Guess what, logic works predictably and as proof -- look at modern computation.  Logic has been found to be a natural outcome of quantum processes.  (citation avail if curious - by the way, Anton Z. just won the Nobel)

Modern information science has a very pragmatic and cohesive handle on all these issues.  There are logical configurations that handle real-world circumstances with excluded middles. (see S. Kauffman)  Same with identity.

 In first-order logic, identity (or equality) is represented as a two-place predicate, or relation, =. Identity is a relation on individuals. It is not a relation between propositions, and is not concerned with the meaning of propositions, nor with equivocation. The law of identity can be expressed as, where x is a variable ranging over the domain of all individuals. In logic, there are various different ways identity can be handled. In first-order logic with identity, identity is treated as a logical constant and its axioms are part of the logic itself. Under this convention, the law of identity is a logical truth.

In first-order logic without identity, identity is treated as an interpretable predicate and its axioms are supplied by the theory. This allows a broader equivalence relation to be used that may allow a = b to be satisfied by distinct individuals a and b. Under this convention, a model is said to be normal when no distinct individuals a and b satisfy a = b.

One example of a logic that rejects or restricts the law of identity in this way is Schrödinger logic.

wiki

If you fear logic relations are flawed for you in your personal environment, then reality has gotten away with you.

An outright attack aimed at the secure core of information science.  Evidence of structural relations having outcomes in reality - that are fixed - is proven by logical outcomes being real and natural.  Guess what, logic works predictably and as proof -- look at modern computation.  Logic has been found to be a natural outcome of quantum processes.  (citation avail if curious - by the way, Anton Z. just won the Nobel)

Modern information science has a very pragmatic and cohesive handle on all these issues.  There are logical configurations that handle real-world circumstances with excluded middles. (see S. Kauffman)  Same with identity.

wiki

If you fear logic relations are flawed for you in your personal environment, then reality has gotten away with you.

This allows a broader equivalence relation to be used that may allow a = b to be satisfied by distinct individuals a and b. Under this convention, a model is said to be normal when no distinct individuals a and b satisfy a = b.

Please elucidate. Let's establish as a premise that two distinct and different human persons a and b exist, and there are no other persons at all who are =, that is, absolutely identical, to person a. How does this violate the first principle of logic that a is necessarily, absolutely, = a? In fact, this is still true whether or not there is, against all probabilities, another person b who is absolutely identical to person a.

One example of a logic that rejects or restricts the law of identity in this way is Schrödinger logic.

I might point out that the behavior and properties of elementary particles may not relate much to the behavior and properties of macroscopic objects (especially living persons) in the macroscopic physical world, the world where the reasoning and logic of these discussions takes place.

Please elucidate. Let's establish as a premise that two distinct and different human persons a and b exist, and there are no other persons at all who are =, that is, absolutely identical, to person a. How does this violate the first principle of logic that a is necessarily, absolutely, = a? In fact, this is still true whether or not there is, against all probabilities, another person b who is absolutely identical to person a.

Two distinct people could be imagined to be physically identical.  Not possible for them to have identical states of mind and still be distinct.  This is so clear, when the phenomenal fact of an informational environment is used as a space for analysis.

Ps: I am only an unwashed fan of logic and have little formal background.

 I might point out that the behavior and properties of elementary particles may not relate much to the behavior and properties of macroscopic objects (especially living persons) in the macroscopic physical world, the world where the reasoning and logic of these discussions takes place. 

Surely a sensible claim if one is a materialist.  But in a different worldview perspective that is Psi friendly - the world of physicality is not where logic is sourced.  The informational structures determine and parse logical activity.  This why logical computation works out future outcomes, without the physical lead-up.  Information is enough.

You constantly doubt materialism - yet are still immersed with its false framework.  Matter doesn't have a property of logic - logic and intentional communication order and organize the events of materiality.

https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/featur...000219.pdf
I don't know if I should had put this here or in the Skeptic vs. Proponent thread.

https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/featur...000219.pdf
I don't know if I should had put this here or in the Skeptic vs. Proponent thread.

Without getting into the question of Psi and NDEs, seems to take some studies that are curiosities, then tries to assume way too much from them.

[Laird]

I foreshadowed about 3.3 years ago a response to this, @Ninshub, and, probably, the best that can be said is "Better late than never".

So, spurred on by the importance Bernardo puts on parsimony, John starts questioning, trying to understand and challenge Bernardo's ideas on consciousness as fundamental, the unconscious or the experience of "dual consciousness", the difference or not between consciousness and experience, metaconsciousness, his notions of dissociation and then "who reports to who", the self, and I think it all very much relates to questions in this thread. In some ways, I think John's questions wouldn't necessarily be entirely different from the sort of questions someone who believes in the immortality of the soul and having problems with Bernardo's One Mind might ask him to address.

Yes! I was very much in resonance with John's questions, especially in the first section you highlighted. In many cases, I would have asked essentially the same question, for essentially the same reason.

I can't claim to understand it all, I'll have to maybe listen to it twice or more, slowly, but @Laird, particularly, if you've got the time and interest, maybe this could further the discussion or clarify what Bernardo is saying and illuminate you and/or indicate where you think he goes wrong in his laying out of these issues.

I watched the full video, not just the sections you highlighted, and I wish I'd watched it earlier. It really is a very informed and intelligent discussion, not to mention cordial and even amicable - one of the best I've seen in this area.

It does very well illuminate some of the problems with Bernardo's theory. John points out in particular:

1. The subjectivity or relativity (my paraphrasing; John also suggests that parsimony is invoked "heuristically") of the nature of the appeal to parsimony on which it is premised, and, in particular:
   
   • The somewhat arbitrariness of claiming from parsimony that the apparently physical world outside ourselves is really mental, given that it could be claimed on the same basis (parsimony, in at least some relevant sense, such as "straightforwardness" or "commonsensicality"; my paraphrasing) to be exactly as it seems: physical.
     
2. The conflation of experiencer and experience. John actually uses "experienced" for the latter, but he's getting at the same distinction, I think. He notes (between 53:01 and 53:32) that "consciousness" as Bernardo uses it can refer to either, or both, and he also notes that using "consciousness" to refer only to the latter is problematic. Later (between 59:30 and 59:52), he spells out the problem: an experiencer is necessary to bind experience together, and on Kant's view that entailed experiencer is "transcendental"; it cannot be found within experience. This critique is essentially consistent with the primary problem noted in my own recent critique: that the effect of the conflation is that there is no real experiencer at all on Analytic Idealism, a problem that I consider to be fatal because real experience is contingent on a real experiencer. Bernardo attempts to respond to John's critique but his attempt falls very flat in my view.
   

The main attempted criticism that I think John misfired on was his pressing of the supposed inability to explain the emergence of intentionality in personal minds given that the universal mind from which they dissociate lacks intentionality. I also think, though, that Bernardo misfired in his responses - not that he was wrong (with the caveat below), just that he could have forestalled the lengthy, and unnecessary, back-and-forth by saying this: intentionality is latent in the universal mind; it simply has no opportunity to be actualised because there is nothing outside of that mind to be the object of its intentionality.

Here's the foreshadowed caveat: this assumes, as John rightly points out, that all the potential objects of intentionality are those of sensory perception, but they are not; there are other potential objects (e.g., abstract concepts and imagined entities; my examples not IIRC John's). Even though John is right about this, it doesn't win the broader argument for him, because it remains open to Bernardo to claim that while, yes, other potential objects of its (latent) intentionality are open to it, that potentiality is simply never actualised anyway; on this metaphysical schema it is only the objects of sensory perception that trigger the latent intentionality to begin to actualise itself, and then all the other potential objects of intentionality (such as abstract concepts and imagined entities) can become actual objects of intentionality (to the personal minds aka psyches aka alters).

I'm further along in this video, and they return to the topic of consciousness & meta-consciousness. This distinction seems key for Bernardo. A lot of stuff that we tend to associate with being "conscious" he associates with "meta-conscious". If I understand him right, then, the reverie that the driver is engaged in is metaconsciousness, the automatic driving is consciousness without the meta. If one becomes aware of it again, then it's "meta".

Yes.

Based on this video, I have updated my understanding of what Bernardo is saying here. Earlier in the thread, I had suggested that (editing brackets added):

Bernardo Kastrup [...] thinks that the driver while we're lost in thought is a "dissociated" part of our consciousness.

I had argued for this in my critique as follows:

Presumably, the idea is that a subset of the (primary) subset of experience which each of us comprises becomes more loosely coupled to (or within) that (primary) subset, making them unreportable by the (primary) subset due to the loose coupling.

This, though, is the same process by which individual selves (“psyches”) are said to come into being (to become differentiated; to “dissociate”) in the first place.

In this video though, Bernardo explicitly distinguishes non-meta-conscious experiences from dissociated experiences. I think I understand why. Based on all the examples he's provided, it seems that rather than the former being unreportable, the better term is that they are simply unreported, because they can be reported on when we choose to pay attention to them, e.g., if we break out of our reverie and pay attention to driving, or if somebody reminds us that we are breathing, and we then begin to pay attention to the experience of breathing.

If I am wrong though, then I hope that somebody provides me with a counter-example that Bernardo has used: some non-meta-conscious experience that we can't even in principle pay attention to. I notice in the video at 2:32:40 that he mentions the example of blindsight; here, the "in principle"ness of the possibility of paying attention is perhaps debatable, but not so much that I think it totally disqualifies my understanding of what Bernardo is generally getting at with this concept.

Otherwise, I will update my critique to remove the (argument for the) reduction of non-meta-conscious experiences to dissociated experiences, and instead point out that the idea that we are "really" experiencing these non-meta-conscious experiences even though we aren't but could be if we paid attention to them is incoherent when put like that, and I do think that that's a fair rendering of the idea, albeit one that Bernardo is unlikely to be comfortable with. [Edit: I have now updated the relevant section of that critique, The subconscious.]

I think his references in this context to "re-representing" experiences and even to "reportability" and "meta-"consciousness are a diversion and are essentially meaningless or at least irrelevant - all he's really talking about is simply that which is actually being experienced, not to "representations" of any experience(s) nor to "reports" of experience(s) nor even to a "meta" mode of experience - but I'm not accusing him of a deliberate diversion; rather, I think he's woven, out of explanatory necessity, a tangled web of confusion here that he's trapped himself - out of that explanatory necessity - into believing.

The solution to the conundrum (to the extent that it even is a conundrum as opposed to a confection) in my view remains as I put it earlier in the thread (in different words in a slightly different context): that those so-called "experiences that aren't being experienced" are in fact not experiences (which is why they're not being experienced) but mental states of a real mind. When the mind is real and not (as on Bernardo's view) (mis)defined as merely a set of phenomenal experiences, then it can have real states that need not be experienced when attention is not placed on them.

[Ninshub]

Very nice Laird! Damn, you should be a professional philosopher.

[Laird]

Is "professional philosopher" an oxymoron, or is that the sort of question only an amateur would ask? In any case, I appreciate the positive sentiments, Ian.