Announcing new course; interview with CSL

see: http://consciousnesscourse.blogspot.com/  for course details and to register online at: http://foundationsofmind.org/register.html

 Stuart Kauffman’s review of One Magisterium is now online at http://www.interaliamag.org/imagining-possibilities/one-magisterium-review-by-stuart-kauffman/

Stuart calls the book a "masterpiece"

I think this paper might be of interest as a prologue to the book as it explores emanation and eschatology from a standpoint that I realize only now is neoplatonic;

http://cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/262

So is this more technical article;

 http://cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/403

All these are free as is this extract;

 http://www.cambridgescholars.com/download/sample/61898

INTERVIEW is at http://consciouslifenews.com/search-consciousness-cynthia-sue-larson-interviews-sean-o-nuallain/

Cynthia: First, I'd love to thank you for organizing the Foundations of Mind conference and seminars that I've so greatly enjoyed attending this year. There's something truly extraordinary happening at this time in history, that I most keenly sense when reading your books and attending the Foundations of Mind events you've sponsored. I get a sense that we're on the verge of a great intellectual revolution having to do with a whole new way of comprehending consciousness. What most inspires you to explore the subject of consciousness, and how do you feel this subject is important at this time?

Seán:  About the times we live in, Jacob Needleman put it very well in his blurb for my new book, "one Magisterium" (CSP, Sept 2014); "From first page to the last, a sustained and dazzling burst of light illuminating the fundamental questions and the presumed “answers” within the scientific, philosophical and spiritual world now radically changing before our eyes." Consciousness is one way into this phenomenon of the "scientific, philosophical and spiritual world now radically changing before our eyes." Scientists in general are naturally uncomfortable with the subjective world; there is indeed a case that it is best left to artists and spiritual guides. Yet we can say some coherent and responsible things while remaining responsible scientifically.

Cynthia: You raise an important point that many scientists are reticent to publicly discuss subjective experience, even though their own subjective experiences are primary motivators behind the scientific research they do. There seems to be a difference of opinion by many people that if there is to be but "one Magisterium," or primary way of comprehending reality, it will be based on science, while others feel it should be primarily spiritual. Do you sense humanity is on the verge of finding a way to reconcile these differences, perhaps starting with saying some coherent, responsible things about consciousness?

Seán:Great question!

Of course, historically the magisterium is church teaching. The
Galileo incident put paid to that; not so much Galileo’s  contemporary
clerical opponents, who were actually quite sophisticated, but the
retards who were pushing biblical geocentrism well into the 19th
century.

After SJ Gould, there is a consensus that Galileo’s  contemporary
clerical opponents are correct; the magisterium of the Church is faith
and morals (“how to go to heaven”), and that of science external
reality (“how the heavens go”). As an Irish recovering Catholic, I was
particularly engaged in this debate; the fact that it still goes on is
attested by the recent movie “Cavalry” with Brendan Gleeson as a rural
Irish priest with nothing to offer eventually except his willingness
to die as an expiation for the rape of children by his church.

Ironically, it was a Belgian Priest (George le Maitre) who invented
modern cosmology with his notion of the singularity/ “primeval atom”.
Yet he vociferously protested against the Vatican’s adopting this as
proving the biblical account of creation………

On  the other side, we have “thinkers” like Dawkins and Harris who
argue that science has advanced enough to come to moral conclusions.
Dawkins’ autobiography is interesting; it looks like he had the
makings of a decent computational biologist before the “selfish gene”.
On the other hand, there are too many kludges in his early
experimental apparatus for his results to be credible. The Harris case
is simpler; after Ed Vul, who spoke at foM, we frankly do not have to
believe any fmri results of the kind Harris adduces.


I leave this answer with a few more trends the book addresses;

-       Why is it that the people who believe in a religious basis (from
Mother Teresa to Matthieu Richard to Fr Greg Boyle (G-Dog) toyes, Michelle Bachman) tend to
work hardest for others? The notion of an objective realm of morality
seems vital
-       What of subjectivism in the arts? Currently, young  Americans are
deserting the only sophisticated arts form created here ie jazz
-       What of the mess Google and others are making of natural language processing?


The book and course put a lot of these issues together

Cynthia: I am very much looking forward to reading your new book, "One Magisterium"! What I find personally most significant about your previous books, including "The Search for Mind" and "Being Human: The Search for Order" is the apparent ease with which you bring ideas together from a multitude of disciplines to create a cohesive holistic presentation of consciousness at a level that I've seen few other authors match. There appears to be a larger picture view of "how the heavens go" than some more narrowly focused scientists and authors recognize. How would you advise those interested in getting caught up to speed with new findings about the nature of consciousness to begin?

Seán Cognitive Science and the circle of explanation in the sciences

Cognitive Science completes the circle of explanation in the sciences.
It can also hint at solutions to moral and aesthetic dilemmas, often
explained away through postmodernism/subjectivism. It must obey laws
of inheritance of facts and constraints; just as biology inherits
facts and constraints from physics, so must Cognitive Science inherits
facts and constraints from biology. These include conservation laws
(physics), chaotic dynamics (both biology and physics); it is likely
therefore that concepts like harmonic oscillators and bifurcations
should be pervasive in Cognitive Science.

Yet the situation is more complex. For example, the concept
“information” in physics has an energetic dimension (Landauer), a
spatial dimension (Susskind) and, as quantum theory teaches us, it
determines to some extent what we considered objective reality.
Likewise, it is arguably impossible to continue discourse about
biology without granting that codes/syntax are intrinsic to the
subject. Cognitive Science also inherits these constraints.

We must go deeper still. We find that mathematics, the most elliptical
and precise language with which we describe reality, constrains us in
certain ways. Tensors of various orders, from scalars through vectors
to the Riemann and Ricci tensors, are distinct with the latter two not
describable in terms of the former. Our explanation patterns in
Cognitive Science must honour this. So fmri, which specifies a scalar,
cannot be an explanation of mind, nor can vectors; it is a category
error to suggest they can.

Our explanation patterns in Cognitive Science  must also honour what
we learned in the 20th century from Gödel, Church et al about the
limits of formal systems. This can paradoxically leave us open to
non-deterministic thought. So we can indeed, following Gödel,
Schrodinger and other greats, assert the existence of the spiritual
while remaining completely scientifically responsible. However, we are
not going to get a “solution” to the so-called “hard problem”, an
algorithm mapping all neural data to experience; that is also a
category error. We are going to be able to argue for a substratum of
subjectivity and indeed free will  in conscious experience while
remaining scientific.  The job of eliciting subjective states belongs
to great artists and spiritual leaders, of whom we have a decreasing
number.

Cynthia: I can see that you've accurately identified some rather serious shortcomings currently being made by many researchers and authors--that they are making category errors at critical junctures. I love the work you've been doing with your Foundations of Mind conference series and your new book, "One Magisterium" to help people realize the importance of building upon sturdy foundations of knowledge in philosophy, math, physics, biology, linguistics, and computer science. Clearly there is no need for a high-tech new-fangled version of phrenology to provide a solution to the so-called "hard problem" of why people have subjective experiences of consciousness using fMRI. And clearly there is a need to create and test scientific hypotheses for how free will and other cognitive functions operate. How important do you feel it to be that cognitive science and consciousness researchers adopt a common language, and how would you envision such a shared common language being formed?

Seán:  

In 1997 I published  the book "Two Sciences of Mind" (it precedes
Shambala's use of this phrase) to indicate the necessaity for a
distinction between what Needleman called "inner" and "outer"
(cognitive science ) empiricism

In my course, you'll find certain intersections; the
Noe/O'Regan/Freeman work on sensorimotor behavior, which is common to
cognitive science and
 consciousness research. Yet that does not extend into domains like
the arts, where artists are using a much larger palette precisely to
specify inner states.

Cognitive science  can tell us that jazz uses much more complex
computations than rap; in fact we can specify the stack in say
Beethoven's 5th, whose opening has a fractal structure. That may lead
us to suspect there is something more going on, the opening to
objective  reality that Beethoven felt he was doing. And at that note
of opening to reality of I'd like to end this interview; it is
precisely this sense of an objective world to which we must conform
and which can edify us that we in the west have lost. To regain the
respect of fundamentalists like ISIS, we might consider this instead
of just bombs

Cynthia: Thank you, Seán, for making time for this interview, and for sharing news of your new book and your course on consciousness, Neuroscience and Philosophy of Mind.  I’m glad to announce that this online course is available to students anywhere in the world, and it starts this September 2nd. For a cost of $75 US, this course is a bargain, since this is the same course taught for credit at Stanford University by the same instructor, and students who complete this course will receive certificates of completion. It includes video presentations from the entire proceedings of the 2014 Foundations of Mind conference, and  I encourage all interested to learn more at: http://consciousnesscourse.blogspot.com/  and to register online at: http://foundationsofmind.org/register.html

Criminality at DCU

(This post was acknowledged by the Minister for education in may 2014 and they acted on it in Aug, 2014, demanding the return of my possessions at DCU)

A Thaoisigh, a chara

I read the Guerin report with interest, noting the same sequence as
here; repeated complaints to the proper authorities by whistle blowers
being stonewalled, followed by incessant letters to the Taoiseach
finally bringing results. However, it is appropriate for me to say
that I do not ask you, nor have I ever asked any government official,
to bring influence to bear in my unfair dismissal case. That is still
being appealed.

I would, however, ask you to consider whether it is a good precedent
that DCU was allowed have an illegal disciplinary statute on its books
for a decade. This is particularly the case given the documented
illegal employment contracts issued by DCU post 1995, and its
compromised accreditation. Minister Quinn has been given documentation
of all of this. It is also worth noting that, post accreditation,
O'Hare made no attempt to appoint qualified people to key positions;
the “secretary” (chief admin) of DCU came from the local tech, and did
not have even a H.Dip; the head of HR was a lowly admin assistant. I
ask you to consider, in view of the many billions and the credibility
invested in DCU, whether this was in the interests of Ireland.

Nevertheless, it all pales into insignificance in the context of this
question, if a state body like DCU could use an illegal statute to
force citizens to come to meetings (as it did, sacking them when they
refuse to “arrange' those meetings), what is the status of any law or
other compulsion issuing from the Irish state? In short, is the claim
of Rialtas na hEireann on the Irish people no more valid than that of
the Real IRA and its political wing?

There is a growing perception among the Irish people that successive
governments are part of the same system and do not have the interests
of the Irish people at heart, instead serving a neoliberal elite.
While I leave this question open, after publishing two books
(2012-2013) exploring it, I do wonder at the rampant criminality you
have allowed at DCU. In particular, the practises at DCU made a
mockery of industrial relations itself, let alone social partnership.

Let me explain, though this is not my job, and the state should have
appointed a visitor to DCU (as the 1997 act demands) and suspended
governing authority there long ago.. There are of course illegal
contracts at DCU; there was no valid accreditation; there was an
illegal disciplinary procedure in place 2001-2011 which was replaced
by another illegal disciplinary procedure in 2011, inaccessible to the
public who paid for it on the website, and guaranteed to ensure more
litigation. The goal was always direct control of a state institution
through an executive allowed to act outside the law, and without
reference to the government. In pursuit of this end, summary dismissal
was introduced. None of this has been resolved; that is your job.

What I do have a right to do is seek a remedy for the numerous illegal
actions visited on my partner Melanie O'Reilly and myself with state
connivance. Please do not claim statute of limitations for the illegal
dealings of such as CBM “Ltd,” DCU, Record services “Ltd” – our
complaints were made in time and then delayed in the Irish state
bureaucracy.

In her case, that remedy should be a sizable cash sum as the Irish
authorities failed her and she had to take a case in 2 foreign
countries, both of which cases we paid for from our tiny resources. Of
course, we won; however collecting the money is another matter, and
the Irish state should help her and other musicians do this. It should
also compensate her and them for the refusal to act against dissolved
companies, despite many complaints in writing, and the aborted
prosecution.

Let us note that Melanie and myself have brought huge credit to
Ireland in many countries through our work and could bring much more
with state help or even neutrality as distinct from the opposition we
have felt. I most recently ran this conference (
http://foundationsofmind.org/)and follow-up workshop (including fri 9
mar 2014) at UC Berkeley, the premier public university in the world.
As I mentioned many times, we can resurrect my language engineering
degree to fill 1,000 job vacancies in Ireland at tiny state cost.

Melanie is world-famous as a Celtic jazz diva; you, the Taoiseach have
her latest CD and are in a position to know what she could do for the
image of Ireland abroad. Happily, aer lingus will have her “Jazz on
the Bay” program on transatlantic flights from June 1.

My own case is rather different, as I was a civil servant. I ask only
for a remedy for the many flagrantly illegal activities of DCU and
other state authorities and will proceed to the circuit court for the
unfair dismissal case if we get a court date; otherwise I will go to
the ECHR. I note they state;

““ARTICLE 13

Right to an effective remedy

Everyone whose rights and freedoms as set forth in this Convention are
violated shall have an effective remedy before a national authority
notwithstanding that the violation has been committed by persons
acting in an official capacity”

In the first place, I prepared a High court summons, only to hear from
the Tanaiste's office (042039TAN) that this conflicted with the unfair
dismissal case. As it turns out, that was incorrect; yet partly as a
result my unfair dismissal case case was held up for 12 years to date.

Secondly, in 2005, I wrote a letter to then minister for labor Killeen
showing that DCU's Smeaton, Pratt, Walsh and Conry had committed fraud
at the LRC. This is apart from their illegal disciplinary procedure,
thrown out at great expense at the supreme court. I got an
acknowledgment; no action. This is apart from my own complaint to
Whitehall Gardai at the end of 2001 (Det McCarrick I think) which
never got acted on even after a dail question in 2002.

Thirdly, I never got any of my personal possessions back from DCU
despite representations both from me and SIPTU. It included valuable
software suites written outside DCU that they had guaranteed in 2002
to return as my “personal effects”. They never did so, and members of
their staff used them to get personal advantage in my absence.

I shall therefore instruct my lawyer to prepare a case for the ECHR,
in the absence of a circuit court date, noting;

“3. Freedom to exercise the right of application

13.

The right to apply to the Court is absolute and admits of no hindrance. “

and

“14.

The domestic authorities must refrain from putting any form of
pressure on applicants to withdraw or modify their complaints. “

In particular, I note “The majority of Convention violations that the
Court finds today are excessive delays, in violation of the
"reasonable time" requirement, in civil and criminal proceedings
before national courts “. My DCU case has now taken 12 years and has
yet to see a real court. Melanie was not allowed criminal proceedings
against those who destroyed her career.

It is also worth pointing out that one of the allegations against me
by DCU was due to my whistle blowing on the failure rate in the 1999
computing degree intake at DCU. 305 started in first year in 1999;
only 91 made it though their exams in summer 2001. When I pointed out
in public that over 50% of the class had failed (it was actually more
like 70% ) I was told this clashed with the HEA figures. At the EAT,
Prondzynski admitted that he had faked the HEA figures. He also
admitted that the charges against me of hiding consultancies were
without foundation as I had met him, by his own account, in Jan 2001
and revealed all my activities, leaving him a CD and video.

As for the final, vexatious allegation – that of not being on campus –
the computing year 4 class rep gave sworn evidence at the EAT in 2009
that I was there. Not only that; my students won the prize for best
project that year with a software idea of mine, suggesting perhaps
that maybe my work pattern is to be emulated. That is particularly the
case as we had an NDA with Stanford, also lodged with the president of
DCU. Incidentally, the same computing year 4 class rep was bullied
egregiously by then had of computing, Joe Morris; Prondzynski giot the
complaint and refused to act.

Of course, there is money for Arthur cox law firm in continuing to
appeal. So what the state is countenancing is a public service in
which the mere fact of being accused of something, even using a
procedure that is illegal, guarantees summary dismissal with neither
right of reply to allegations that turned out to be both false and
absurd nor return of personal effects. A Czech called Kafka wrote a
book about that; as it happens, the Irish are less compliant than
Joesph K was

Is mise, le meas

Dr. Ó Nualláin

PS (DCU has just undertaken, after 12 years, to return the physical possessions that they stole from me. It turns out they had held them in "6 large boxes". This took an intervention from the govt and I am grateful

14 Aug/ Lunasa