[Ontology] Donald Hoffmans denial of materialism
From Wikipedia: Donald David Hoffman (born December 29, 1955) is an American cognitive psychologist and popular science author. He is a professor in the Department of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, with joint appointments in the Department of Philosophy, the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, and the School of Computer Science.
Hoffman uses two metaphors to explain ideas hes published in journals: the icon metaphor and the headset metaphor. Heres my understanding of what he says, but he has numerous YouTube videos where he speaks for himself.
The icon metaphor: Youve written the Great American Novel in Word. Theres an icon on your screen for the Word file. The icon is square, blue, and in the center of your screen. But the Word file is neither square, nor blue, nor in the center of your screen. If you drag the icon to the trash, the computer will zero our the billions of bits that are your file. The icon is there not to reveal reality, but to hid it. If you had to deal with the billions of transistors that contain the bytes of your file, youd never be able to.
Objects in spacetime are like that icon. Evolution has given us icons to manipulate reality. The icons in spacetime hid reality. If we had to deal directly with reality wed be as helpless; dealing with the transistors, circuits, and voltages in our PC is impossible.
The headset metaphor: you are playing a virtual reality game, say, Grand Theft Auto. You see a road and other cars. You manipulate your own car using a steering wheel and the brake pedal. No roads, cars, steering wheels, or brake pedals really exist. They are merely the headset you put on to enter the game.
So, says Hoffman, the material world is a bunch of icons in spacetime, a headset, which we use to manipulate reality. Evolution has given us this headset because if we had to manipulate reality directly, we couldnt.
So, matter is like an icon. And drilling down to electrons and quarks is like drilling down to the pixels that compose the icon. Reality is (or, at least, may be) something quite different.
Of course, its best to hear Hoffmans ideas from Hoffman himself. The following accessible 22 minute YouTube clip is a good start.
Do we see reality as it is? | Donald Hoffman (TED talk)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYp5XuGYqqY
Hoffman uses two metaphors to explain ideas hes published in journals: the icon metaphor and the headset metaphor. Heres my understanding of what he says, but he has numerous YouTube videos where he speaks for himself.
The icon metaphor: Youve written the Great American Novel in Word. Theres an icon on your screen for the Word file. The icon is square, blue, and in the center of your screen. But the Word file is neither square, nor blue, nor in the center of your screen. If you drag the icon to the trash, the computer will zero our the billions of bits that are your file. The icon is there not to reveal reality, but to hid it. If you had to deal with the billions of transistors that contain the bytes of your file, youd never be able to.
Objects in spacetime are like that icon. Evolution has given us icons to manipulate reality. The icons in spacetime hid reality. If we had to deal directly with reality wed be as helpless; dealing with the transistors, circuits, and voltages in our PC is impossible.
The headset metaphor: you are playing a virtual reality game, say, Grand Theft Auto. You see a road and other cars. You manipulate your own car using a steering wheel and the brake pedal. No roads, cars, steering wheels, or brake pedals really exist. They are merely the headset you put on to enter the game.
So, says Hoffman, the material world is a bunch of icons in spacetime, a headset, which we use to manipulate reality. Evolution has given us this headset because if we had to manipulate reality directly, we couldnt.
So, matter is like an icon. And drilling down to electrons and quarks is like drilling down to the pixels that compose the icon. Reality is (or, at least, may be) something quite different.
Of course, its best to hear Hoffmans ideas from Hoffman himself. The following accessible 22 minute YouTube clip is a good start.
Do we see reality as it is? | Donald Hoffman (TED talk)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYp5XuGYqqY
Comments (474)
So what do you think the "materialism" Hoffman is arguing against is?
What is it you think he says is "real"?
Incidentally there's a useful Q&A with Hoffman here The Evolutionary Argument against Reality, in which he says:
But we can and do talk about the very same snakes and trains.
Hence his conclusion is wrong, and there is an error somewhere in his theory.
Quoting Wayfarer
There's definitely a whiff of self-refutation here but no doubt there's an escape clause - he's a clever sausage.
That's the bit that needs to be filled in. Folk around here are reticent to do so. I suspect that's because when they do, reality makes itself apparent.
Good question. I've seen him address this, but I don't recall which YouTube clip. In my own understanding, it's as follows. Evolution has conditioned our perceptions of the physical world to see icons rather than truth, but that doesn't necessarily imply our logical faculties have been conditioned the same way. Seeing the icon rather than the truth of transistors gives us an evolutionary advantage but so does being able to reason logically.
Quoting Banno
He addresses this in the YouTube clip when he points out everyone in the audience sees the same illusion of the cube.
Quoting Banno
He is arguing against the ultimate reality of objects in spacetime.
RIght - just as I would have thought. Ties in rather neatly with the argument from reason. I'll continue to look for where he addresses this, though.
And what do you conclude from this? Everyone also agrees that it is an illusion...
Quoting Art48
And what does that mean?
Put it together!
Ultimate or not, being bitten by a snake or run over by a train is a strong argument for what appears real.
I know, "I refute it thus" has fallen into disfavor. But something connects with the kicker's foot, and it might as well be the Illusory rock.
As you know, Christian presuppositional apologists argue that atheism and naturalism is self-refuting and maintain that god grounds intelligibility, and is the guarantor for the logical absolutes and morality. Of course such an argument might potentially get you to deism, but not a particular Protestant god who hates fags... But you can't have everything.
Do you think it might be a possible that just as Kant argued that space and time were essentially part of the human cognitive apparatus which help us make sense of our world, that perhaps reason - e.g., identity, non-contradiction and excluded middle, might not have similar source? In which case, reason is not true as such - or located outside of the human domain - it is rather a condition of human experience and an unavoidable product of our perspective.
Hoffman is on record saying 'natural selection favours perception which hide truth and guide useful action.' It's not far from CS Lewis. Let us know when you find how he grounds his own truth seeking.
We know that things don't have to be true to allow us to make incredibly useful interventions in the world. For instance, star signs helped sailors successfully navigate all over the world centuries ago.
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Here's an extract from Hoffman's book. Hoffman makes this out as showing that we are nto sufficiently critical of our perceptions. I think it also has a somewhat different import.
Why do people say that it is natural to think that there are snakes and trains and not only quantum wave functions?
I suppose, because it looked as if there are snakes and trains and not so much as if there are only quantum wave functions!
Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as if there were only quantum wave functions?
Why could it not be that snakes and trains are just what quantum wave functions look like, viewed by an evolved organism?
What exactly makes snakes and trains not real?
Couldn't have said it better myself.
Quoting Banno
I think point is that it is the experience of the object that is real. A more germane snippet from Hoffman:
Quoting Donald Hoffman
So we need to be very careful about what is being said here: it's not that objects are unreal, but that they're real as constituents of our experience. This is Hoffman's resolution to the hard problem of consciousness.
Note this, from Christian Fuchs, founder of QBism:
Quoting Chris Fuchs
So snakes and trains have no intrinsic reality outside the reality which is imputed to them by the observer. None of which means you shouldn't avoid snakes, or stop catching trains.
And standing outside and looking at the sky is a strong argument that the Earth is flat and unmoving.
Quoting Tom Storm
Hoffman says natural selection also favors logical reasoning.
Quoting Banno
The idea is that snakes and trains are like icons on a computer desktop. The icon for a Word document is really on the screen but it is not the Word document itself, so in that sense is somewhat unreal. The reality of the Word document is computer bits. Janus and Wayfarer make a similar point.
Quoting Art48
And what are computer bits an icon for?
In the metaphor, the icon represent the objects we see and the bits represent the deeper reality.
So, the bits are not an icon but reality (or, at least, a deeper reality).
But of course the bits are themselves bits of language (mathematics belongs to language) just as the Word icon is. The Word icon can mean a program, it can mean the bits, or it can mean anything else that use of language associates it with. The same is true of the concept of a bit. Is there a deeper, truer reality these bits of language anchor themselves to? Or is language self-refential all the way down, not a system of signs hovering over the really real but expressing pragmatically how social relationships construct and change a world and what passes for true or false, real or imaginary within it.
I'd elaborate that: either evolution is misleading Hoffman and we can't attain any truths, rendering his view incoherent, or evolution is correct, then Hoffman must grant that we evolved for truth (in some instances), rendering his views false.
Not that I have any problems with idealism - or at least some versions of it - but the way Hoffman proceeds is far from being a good way to present idealism.
I have seen it and it does not address the issue. It goes against what he is saying, if he is giving evidence that our senses mislead us, why trust the evidence? It too is misleading.
He goes on to say that in fact, "spacetime is doomed" - meaning, it is not fundamental enough, there has to be something beyond it, or something which supersedes it. But then why trust the data of physics?
Physics is based on what our senses can capture, which then combine with our intellect to either accept or reject the data within a theoretical farmwork.
But perceptions systematically mislead us...
He would need to explain why evolution and physics are special in relation to all other types of knowledge. I don't recall him replying to this rather important point.
The title of Hoffman's book was intentionally provocative. The term "illusion" can be interpreted negatively as "deception"*1 or neutrally as "conception"*2 (i.e. imaginary). So some interpret his message as saying that A> there is no mundane material reality or B> there is no Ultimate Reality, from God's perspective, so to speak. But that's beside the practical point he's trying to make with computer metaphors. Instead, he's talking about the differentiation between sensory Perception (Materialistic) and mental Conception (Idealistic).
Kant addressed the same Real vs Ideal problem in his ding an sich analogy. The thing-in-your-mind is merely a representation of a thing-in-the-material-world, which may also be a single instance of a Platonic Ideal, in the mind of god, as it were. "Donald Hoffman argues that while we should take our perceptions seriously, we should not take them literally". What you conceive figuratively is a merely a model of actual Reality. And that's as close to ultimate Reality as you will ever get.
Another approach to that basic distinction is the Cartesian Theater model of imagination, in which a little homunculus in the head --- representing the Soul --- makes sense of the flickering images presented by the senses*3. But that merely kicks-the-can of who's doing the perceiving further down the road. The "faculty" of Knowing (Conception) is functionally different from Sensing (Perception). For example, a video camera dumbly records images from external "reality", but to be aware of that externality requires a conscious Mind. And that transformative functionality raises the modern conundrum, taken for granted by the ancients, of how a data-processing Brain can produce a meaning-making Mind.
Anyway, the mysterious "Faculty" that allows us to interpret sensory data as abstract ideas is old-fashioned Reason : the ability to infer (transform) raw sensory data into personal meaning. The mental Meaning is not the Material Thing, but we use the imaginary model as-if it is real-enough for our practical purposes. An icon on a computer screen compresses all the invisible information processing into a simplified abstract picture, shorn of all its real-world complexities*4. So, what you think you see, is not what's really out there. :smile:
*1. Illusion : Descartes' Deceptive Demon
*2. Concept : an abstract idea; a general notion ; mental image
*3. Sensory shadows : Plato's allegory of the cave
*4. Interface Reality : Model Dependent Realism
https://bothandblog6.enformationism.info/page21.html
CARTESIAN THEATER with "mini-me" Soul in the seat
:up:
I think you need to infinitely nest your Cartesian theatre image. The mini-me needs his own control-room in the skull, with its own screen that shows the first screen. And then mini-mini-me needs...
Exactly. And this also works against any 'veil-of-ideas' metaphysics. The idea that we are trapped behind a screen is itself based on the content of that screen.
We are argue that that from which we argue is an illusion.
As for Hoffman, it's not his idealism or his "consciousness realism", that I have any issues with, it's that the foundation of said arguments are flimsy.
It even becomes obscure what "truth" or "reality" means as used by Hoffman. It almost sounds like what's true is what we don't find useful for survival.
How would you fix the issue ? As far as I can tell, it's by looking at sense organs like the eyes and talking to people in the world that we develop the idea of a perspective on the world. This idea seems to evolve until the self is understood to have only indirect access to the world, throwing the very existence of that world into doubt. Incorrigible ideas or intuitions are taken as The Given -- as basically 'mental' even though the framework of a body with sense organs in the world is put in question.
To me the 'self' and the 'mental' only make sense in a lifeworld that includes their opposites. They are pieces of a social semantic system that don't work on their own.
We should take the evidence seriously but not literally. When we play Grand Theft Auto, we see appearance not the reality of transistors, etc. But we aren't misled because that's what we need to see to play the game. We can trust our senses, i.e., what we see on the monitor, when we play the game. But appearance and reality differ. Does that make sense?
I agree that it's with organs like eyes and ears that we acquire data of objects. These sensations evoke in the mind/brain a powerful interpretive apparatus that includes things like: interpretation, imagination, combination, continuity in time, concept formation, classification and so on.
We could call these things "ideas", but to imply that we are "stuck" in them suggests that it's a prison. We can also call them thoughts, perceptions, goings-on, object processing, object reactions or any other word.
Without the mind/brain doing this, we would have no registration of the data of sense, it would be like using a flashlight on lump of wax or a chunk of clay - nothing happens.
I don't get why this process isn't "direct". I take it that it is directly caused by the object, as we react to them given the brains we have. Why would I doubt the existence of the world and its objects? I have no reason to take skepticism too seriously, or otherwise I couldn't move.
But why stop with transistors ? They are also abstractions or icons in a particular framing of the situation.
Consider also that certain structures are curiously independent of their 'medium' or 'host.' A proof of the infinity of the primes is not reducible to the paper it happens to be printed on. Equivalence classes matter. It's hard to figure out their status.
I don't think we have any serious disagreements then. The mentalistic talk is great for practical purposes. I do think Sellars' and Popper's criticisms of the given are convincing though. To me the idea is that there is no 'bottom' or 'elemental' kind of 'pure experience.'
I mean I am a rationalistic idealist in these topics, so the idea is far from foreign.
As for the analogy, there's a limit, it's fine for a video game. For real life it's different. If I see a tree, and am confident I am not dreaming, nor hallucinating, then I take the tree not merely seriously, but literally, there's a tree outside my window.
Now so far as the transistors go, they play a massive role in its constitution, and if our best theories say there are transistors, then I take them literally. The transistors are at a deeper layer, but I wouldn't say that the transistors are "more real" than the tree.
There are other questions too, crucial ones, like the idea of "things-in-themselves", which I take very seriously, but I don't think science can speak about these.
At bottom pure experience? Sure, I agree with you that there is no good evidence for this.
The given is a fascinating topic, though Sellar's own arguments are complex, and I often don't follow his reasoning. I prefer C.I. Lewis' take on the subject, or Raymond Tallis, but I don't see much disagreements here.
:up:
I like to insist that promises and marriages are no less real and no more real than quarks and crossbows. They are all caught up in a single system that gives them sense (or in a system that is their sense.)
He could answer - I don't know if he does - that reason is not reducible to adaptation, that despite the senses decieving us - an intuition that goes back to the ancient Greeks - we are still capable of grasping the truth by the faculty of reason. That's why I mentioned the 'argument from reason'. Thomas Nagel has an excellent essay on this, from the perspective of analytical philosophy, Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion, which goes into the question of what it means to ascribe the faculty of reason to evolutionary causes. In a criticism of another philosopher's evolutionary rationale for reason, he says:
[quote=Thomas Nagel]Unless it is coupled with an independent basis for confidence in reason, the evolutionary hypothesis is threatening rather than reassuring. It is consistent with continued confidence only if it amounts to the hypothesis that evolution has led to the existence of creatures, namely us, with a capacity for reasoning in whose validity we can have much stronger confidence than would be warranted merely from its having come into existence in that way. I have to be able to believe that the evolutionary explanation is consistent with the proposition that I follow the rules of logic because they are correct--not merely because I am biologically programmed to do so. But to believe that, I have to be justified independently in believing that they are correct. And this cannot be merely on the basis of my contingent psychological disposition, together with the hypothesis that it is the product of natural selection. I can have no justification for trusting a reasoning capacity I have as a consequence of natural selection, unless I am justified in trusting it simply in itself -- that is, believing what it tells me, in virtue of the content of the arguments it delivers.
If reason is in this way self-justifying, then it is open to us also to speculate that natural selection played a role in the evolution and survival of a species that is capable of understanding and engaging in it. But the recognition of logical arguments as independently valid is a precondition of the acceptability of an evolutionary story about the source of that recognition. This means that the evolutionary hypothesis is acceptable only if reason does not need its support. At most it may show why the existence of reason need not be biologically mysterious.
Quoting Relativist
He was Professor of the department where I did my undergraduate units in philosophy. As his book was called 'materialist philosophy of mind', I always believed a priori that it must be mistaken, the subsequent fragments I have read have done nothing to dissuade me. I don't think any of his books would withstand the 'hard problem' arguments, or the arguments from the observer problem in physics.
Those are hard questions. If we look at most living things virtually all of them lack reason.
Maybe higher mammals have some glimmerings or sparks of reason, but nowhere close to us. Which is to say, that it could be "dumb luck" that we are here.
If that's true, that might cause us to pause and marvel that we are lucky enough to have reason. But with a sample planet of one, it's hard to say.
I read Hoffman's book and have seen interviews. I don't recall him explicitly mentioning reason in any exulted manner, though he pre-supposes it.
I agree with you. I'd only accentuate that if we look at a river - conditions being good, we being mentally healthy, etc. - that's a remarkable achievement of reason, by sense alone we wouldn't discover them.
Since we are alive, we must have gotten many things right (and true), despite numerous errors in perception.
Just a suggestion. Let's call whatever it is that is behind the appearance of the rock, a "rock".
Quoting Wayfarer
Isn't he just playing with the word "real"?
Yes. As I understand the thesis, Hoffman is not saying there is no material reality out there, but that all we know about that presumptive*1 reality is the images in our minds. So we humans are somewhat insulated from harsh reality by our reason-enhanced imagination. Ontology is a theory.
Besides the computer icon, another analogy is that our concept of Reality is a simulation : like the ground-based pilots of remote military drones*2. What they see is a low-res simulation of the terrain the drone is flying over*3 -- plus a lot of non-visual information pertinent to the job. Likewise, our visual images are supplemented with data from other senses, such as smell & hearing in order to give us a broad-spectrum overview that is adequate for survival. It's not a perfect bit-for-bit representation of reality, but it's good enough to get the job done. :smile:
*1. Presumptive : conjectured, speculative, notional, theoretical
*2. LOW-RES REALITY SIMULATION
*3. FULL RESOLUTION REALITY
Why? In order to create the illusion of knowing what is behind appearances?
"But it is not the word document itself".
What exactly is the word document "itself"? The one in RAM? The one saved? The one printed? The one emailed?
When I click on the icon, the document opens, When I move it to a folder, it will (usually) be int hat folder when I go looking for it later. When I trash it and empty the trash, the document is gone.
The icon is as good a candidate for being the "real" word document as are the things in RAM, on the hard drive, on paper or emailed.
Choosing one of these to call the "real" document is fraught.
The computer analogy breaks down quickly, so while it has its pedagogic value, it is limited.
But then I agree with the content of your post, so I'm not sure what you want me to reply to, or comment on.
The real word document is the one we can read; the icon is merely a shortcut,
Oh, I agree. But it might serve as a pedagogic device against certain over-stimulated interpretations of Hoffman - for @Art48, and @Janus, perhaps.
But to assess that a step back needs to be taken. What, after all, is the subject matter of philosophy? What are is it talking about? If you look back to the origins of the discipline - Plato and (in particular) Parmenides, there is (sorry to say) a kind of quasi-religious vision behind it. Which is that: what us normal folks (the hoi polloi) take for granted, is actually a distorted understanding, or even a delusion. Sure, we're not obviously insane, but maybe in a state halfway between insanity, at one extreme, and wisdom, on the other end of the spectrum. There's something the matter with how we see the world. I think it's a harsh truth, an inconvenient truth, and one that brings me no joy, but I feel compelled to acknowledge it.
You ask most folks what is real, they will naturally gesture towards science as the arbiter for that question. But at the same time, scientific culture is producing technologies which we have barely the moral and political ability to control. It was said of quantum physics, the crown jewel of science, that 'nobody understands it', by Richard Feynman, one of its most illustrious exponents. Culture is adrift in a miasma of computer-mediated imagery, which multiplies delusion to a degree that really does verge on the metaphysical. And within this picture, there is no room even for the human subject. We have declared ourselves the accidental by-product of an entirely fortuitous chain of events navigating a world which is increasingly chaotic.
That has to be the background of what we're trying to understand, I feel. And a lot of 20th century 'ordinary language' philosophy has absolutely no grasp of that. It is polite parlour games, entertained for the leisured classes. There are probably exceptions, but on the whole that's how it comes across. It has no sense of moral urgency or of the existential predicament we find ourselves in.
What that has to do with Donald Hoffman in particular, I'm not entirely certain, but he is a collaborator with Bernardo Kastrup on an effort to develop analytical idealism, which is, I think, a deeper philosophical perspective.
[quote=Vladimir Solovyov (19th c philosopher, not current Russian TV propagandist of same name)]As long as the dark foundation of our nature, grim in its all-encompassing egoism, mad in its drive to make that egoism into reality, to devour everything and to define everything by itself, as long as that foundation is visible, as long as this truly original sin exists within us, we have no business here and there is no logical answer to our existence. Imagine a group of people who are all blind, deaf and slightly demented and suddenly someone in the crowd asks, "What are we to do?"... The only possible answer is "Look for a cure". Until you are cured, there is nothing you can do. And since you don't believe you are sick, there can be no cure.[/quote]
Agree. However, Hoffman is trying to model reality in terms of "conscious agents." So, while I don't think he specifically denies material reality, he is working on an alternative based on consciousness. He says the hard problem of consciousness was one of the things that motivated his search for an alternative to materialism.
As for Hoffman, his value, I think, is to make idealism a respectable position in the sciences, which it should be. These metaphysical questions are quite enriching and offer plenty of food for thought.
As for ordinary people, I don't know - some of the more informed (which does not mean they are correct) might say that science tells you what there is. Most, I'd guess, would be baffled to think that anything other than naive realism could be true. If you add in religion, they may have some ideas about the "in itself" - or similar notions.
But at the same time, despite the noises made by some of the rowdier types, scienticism isn't taken seriously by most scientists.
That's 'cause they're not philosophers. :razz:
Quoting Manuel
Agree, but it's a strong undercurrent in cultural discourse regardless.
Trouble is, idealism is incoherent. Hence it is incompatible with science.
How can one reconcile the scientific view, say that the the universe is billions of years old or that natural selection functions on individuals, with the idealist view that nothing exists without a mind to believe it exists?
That's an argument almost directly from Tallis, by the way.
Quoting Wayfarer
Well put series of ideas and nice summary and I'm not responding to disagree with this, just to clarify. Would it be more prudent to say 'there appears' to be something the matter with how we see the world.
Or is this for you, axiomatic?
I guess the issue for me this construction raises questions about whether right and wrong fit into any understanding of human perception. Could it not be that humans see the world just fine for what we need to do in it. Perhaps obsessing over the putative gaps and contradictions, while worthy of the term philosophy, is not going to take us any further or offer a path which transcends our perspectives.
And yes, I am aware of the promises in the various teachings of higher awareness and perennialist traditions. And I guess that's where you are heading if you think that this problem of human perception and perspective can be 'solved' or integrated in some way into an enhanced domain of the human experience of 'reality'.
Berkeleyan idealism is hard to defend. So is something like Hegel's idealism.
Even worse is the whole Chopra-like industry.
It's very different with people like Cudworth, Schopenhauer and Kant. You can add Hume too, within an interpretation, as well as Locke.
I don't need to mention how much the fathers of QM - or least several distinguished figures like Einstein, Schrodinger and Wolfgang Pauli thought of Schopenhauer, and Kant.
This whole tradition of marginalizing consciousness is rather recent, arising after WWII, and now slowly losing force.
These types of idealism are far richer, and in fact, without them, science wouldn't be possible.
So, it very much depends on what "idealism" one defends.
:lol:
Easy, just posit a universal mind or consciousness.
:up:
I am neither an idealist nor a materialist, but I object when proponents of one or the other show their prejudice by attempting to dismiss the view that is unfavorable to them by declaring it to be incoherent.
I'll be generous and say that you have a generous sense of humour. (Although it depends on whether you are laughing at or with :wink: ).
This doesn't work, because what is behind the appearance of the rock could be all sorts of strange interactions, meaning, information, which is not included in the meaning of "rock". So this would mislead us into thinking that we know what we do not know.
As an analogy, 'let's say that the meaning of the word "rock" is rock. It doesn't work to say that the meaning of the symbol is the symbol.
...and few have the courage to set out an argument.
So I'll steal one from Tallis. Idealism, one way or another, has it that there is nothing that is not related in some way to mind. Hence things only exist if they stand in some relation to mind.
Now evolution and quantum mechanics and cosmology posit that events occur over time, and that they happen to discreet individuals.
But if idealism is true, then there can be no time, nor individuals, in the absence of mind.
Specifically, evolution presupposes individuals evolving in the aeons before people evolved to discuss them. It posits that there are things that happened when there was no mind around to stand in any relation to those things. Idealism is therefore incompatible with evolution.
As Tallis points out, Hoffman uses evolution to justify a view of idealism that is incompatible with evolution.
Anyway, the clowns are here now, so this thread will go for another twenty or thirty pages without saying anything new.
I'll offer an open invitation to anyone who would like to defend Hoffman in a debate thread.
Accepted.
Nope, it is not. The idealism I defend, posits that the world we belong to, this world here, is only intelligible to creatures with the capacity to use cognitive faculties to make sense of that world.
It doesn't deny evolution, nor QW. These things happened independent of us but can only be discovered to animals endowed with reason.
There is time as we experience it, and time as it occurs in the universe, which doesn't have subjectivity.
I don't defend Hoffman, in fact, I'm critical of his formulation of the problem as you can see.
But, as you will tell me, I am confused in my use of words - because since you studied Wittgenstein with a magnifying glass, you understand the actual meaning of words, as opposed to the clowns.
But then, don't bother with clowns, myself included.
'We are all the philosophers of our level of adaption' ~ anon.
Quoting Banno
If idealism were simply the belief that 'the world exists in your or my mind' then that would be a valid criticism.
Quoting Manuel
So the world is intelligible only for those for whom it is intelligible.
Yep. Not exactly Berkeley, is it.
What is it that makes this a form of idealism, I wonder, since it seems to be something with which a realist would agree unproblematically?
Quoting Wayfarer
Indeed, idealism has to become far more sophisticated, to invent universal minds, gods, or quantum mini-consciousness in order to avoid mere inconsistency.
Are you, Wayfarer, serious in a defence of the arch-scientism offered by Hoffman, because it gives some small solace to idealism? You hussy, you!
:rofl: I have my questions for Hoffman, but overall he's on my whitelist.
If the world in itself were nothing at all like the world we perceive, then fitness (or anything else) would seem to be impossible to explain.
But he may have rejoinders for this criticism: I haven't delved into his ideas enough to know, just on the face of it his philosophy seems unsupported and inconsistent.
It's not intelligible to a rock, so far as I can see. Other animals don't seem to have concepts, so the issue of intelligibility doesn't arise.
It's a form of idealism because it is only through the way objects affect us, that we are able to form any picture of the world at all. As I quoted Hume before:
"Let us fix our attention out of ourselves as much as possible; let us chase our imagination to the heavens, or to the utmost limits of the universe; we never really advance a step beyond ourselves, nor can conceive any kind of existence, but those perceptions, which have appeared in that narrow compass."
The fact that we can attribute independent existence to the entities postulated by science is a (reasonable) postulate, subject to further refinement.
For instance, Pluto was downgraded from a planet to a minor planet, after more information was gathered. GR and QM were discovered and used as a way to complete a picture that what once held as absolute, Newtonian physics.
And on and on, from re-labeling species to the age of the universe, if these refinements don't come from a mind capable of analyzing, conceptualizing and so forth, I don't see how it would be possible.
Finally, science studies appearance, not inner natures or "things in themselves". We observe what gravity does, we don't know what it is.
And we can't get out of our bodies and see how the world is, absent us.
He doesn't actually bill himself as a philosopher. He's a professor of cognitive sciences. But plainly his work has philosophical implications. Haven't got around to getting past the Kindle sample yet, but all the examples thus far are from cognitive science.
This Hume quote includes the veil-of-ideas (intuitions, perceptions) presupposition I was talking about. As I see it, it's just a metaphor gone wild, which results in quasitautologies mistaken for discoveries. One defines perceptions as the ownmost given and everything else is conjecture...but what of the context that makes 'perception' intelligible ? The sight of others' eyes seeing ? Is not this sight the root for a theory of perception ? But then it depends on the reality of the world it pretends to break into mere perceptions.
But a realist could - would - agree with this.
An idealist worthy of the title goes the further step of saying that only through the way objects affect us are there objects at all.
Which objects do you know of that exist, but do not affect us?
If something exists, that doesn't affect us in any way, then I don't see how it could be called anything.
The human genome was completely mapped, what in the early 2000's or so? I wasn't consulted about it, that I know of.
And when new drugs are created, I'm not invited to take part in the test trials.
But then, how does this work? It is assumed, correctly, that we share the same nature, so that if the genome of another person is mapped, then mine is as well (at least to a massive degree, perhaps a difference of .00001% or something.)
How do I know a person is depressed? If he tells me, and is honest about it, then I can assume he is depressed. He could be lying. I cannot enter his head.
But if I observe his behavior and see that he acts in a way consistent with a way I would act if I felt depressed, then I have a good reason to believe that he is depressed. Add that to his own description, and we can proceed.
Generalize this to virtually everything, and you can see how what Hume said is not a contradiction. There will be a tiny portion who diverges from this norm, but that's to be expected.
We are the same creature, and thus overwhelmingly act in a similar manner, given similar situations. So, I don't see a problem.
:wink:
There's the rhetorical slide.
[quote=Bryan Magee Schopenhauer's Philosophy, Pp 106-107]'Everyone knows that the earth, and a fortiori the universe, existed for a long time before there were any living beings, and therefore any perceiving subjects. But according to Kant ... that is impossible.'
Schopenhauer's defence of Kant on this score was [that] the objector has not understood to the very bottom the Kantian demonstration that time is one of the forms of our sensibility. The earth, say, as it was before there was life, is a field of empirical enquiry in which we have come to know a great deal; its reality is no more being denied than is the reality of perceived objects in the same room.
The point is, the whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding, which apprehends all the objects of empirical knowledge within it as being in some part of that space and at some part of that time: and this is as true of the earth before there was life as it is of the pen I am now holding a few inches in front of my face and seeing slightly out of focus as it moves across the paper.
This, incidentally, illustrates a difficulty in the way of understanding which transcendental idealism has permanently to contend with: the assumptions of 'the inborn realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect' enter unawares into the way in which the statements of transcendental idealism are understood.
Such realistic assumptions so pervade our normal use of concepts that the claims of transcendental idealism disclose their own non-absurdity only after difficult consideration, whereas criticisms of them at first appear cogent which on examination are seen to rest on confusion. We have to raise almost impossibly deep levels of presupposition in our own thinking and imagination to the level of self-consciousness before we are able to achieve a critical awareness of all our realistic assumptions, and thus achieve an understanding of transcendental idealism which is untainted by them. [/quote]
'Through the looking glass'.
Space and time lost their status as phantasms of the mind at least as long ago as special relativity.
I can't see this ending well.
Tallis' argument is that Hoffman uses evolution to undermine evolution. It looks cogent to me. Either there was a past in which evolution occurred, and an idealism that denies time is wrong, or time is a phantasm, and evolution no more than a just-so story.
:clap:
He got me into philosophy and his ease in explaining philosophers is unparalleled.
I am forever in his debt.
I emailed Tallis once, and he replied.
Some notes on the support cognitive science lends to views once understood as idealist.
First, it has shown that our perceptions of the world are not passive reflections of an objective reality, but rather active constructions generated by our brains. Our sensory experiences are shaped by our cognitive processes, such as attention, memory, and expectation, which are themselves shaped by our beliefs, values, and cultural background. This suggests that our experience of the world is not a direct representation of a mind-independent reality, but that there subjective elements are fundamental to our consciousness of it. Furthermore, these subjective elements are not themselves directly available in experience (they're transcendental in the Kantian sense.)
Second, cognitive science has shown that our mental states, such as beliefs, desires, and emotions, are not simply epiphenomenal byproducts of physical processes, but rather causally effective in shaping our behavior and experience. This suggests that mental states have an ontological status that irreducible to purely physical phenomena (which is the hard problem, again.)
Finally, 'embodied cognition' or 'enactivism', an approach within cog sci, reveals the profound interdependence of the mind and the environment. This suggests that the boundaries between the mind and the world are not fixed, but rather fluid and context-dependent. As Buddhists might put it, that the subjective and the objective are 'co-arising'.
Taken together, these insights from cognitive science support a view of reality as fundamentally grounded in mental states, insofar as they challenge the traditional Cartesian dualism between mind and matter, and also emphasize the role of subjective interpretation and embodiment in shaping our experience of the world.
Whether that amounts to an idealist philosophy in the Berkeleyian sense is moot, but there is a scholar called Andrew Brook who's made an academic career on Kant and cognitive science. You can find some of his articles on SEP.
slides to
Quoting Wayfarer
It isn't as convincing as you suppose.
Things such as those we haven't found out yet, or are mistaken about.
That is, there is a world that is not dependent on our understanding of it.
Notice how this addresses similar issues and uses similar terms to @Wayfarer's account, but that the two slide past each other in terms of the problems they are trying to solve?
Hence the views seem irreconcilable...
Quoting Manuel
These say very different things. One is more the case than the other.
Our perceptions of the world need not resemble the world in any way, in order for us to develop some sort of understanding. All that is required is consistency in usage. For example, the words we use, and mathematical symbols we use, do not resemble in any way the things they refer to, yet the usage of words and symbols develops into an understanding. This is the nature of "meaning", it is based in consistency of usage, not in resemblance.
Hoffman seems to be making the point that we ought to look at the relationship between the human mind and the supposed "world", which is developed through sensation, as a relationship of meaning rather than a relationship of facsimile. The way that the world appears to us is a product of how meaning is apprehended.
Or, to put this in a better light, if we want to understand the reality behind how things appear to us in sensation, we ought to look at how meaning appears to us because the sense apparatus has been developed to aid us in dealing with things which are meaningful, significant, and important to us. So, to understand the way that meaning appears to us, our best and most direct examples are in the use of language and symbols.
What we can see, as a starting point here, in an analysis of the use of symbols, is that the principal usage of symbols is as an indicator, or sign, of some form of classification, type, or universal. The use of the symbol acts as a memory aid, so that a sophisticated concept is signified with a simple symbol, facilitating the memory. There is no need for the symbol to resemble the category. If we now look at the act of naming a particular object or individual, use of a proper noun, we can see the same thing, there is no need for the name to resemble the named particular, only a need for the mind to have the capacity to make the required association.
So if we look at sensation now, we can see that the lower level senses, the tactile senses of taste, touch, and smell, deal exclusively with types, general or universal feelings. We associate similar smells, tastes, or feelings, as "the same" sort of feeling, and we have little if any capacity to distinguish unique peculiarities. Hearing gives us a better tool for distinguishing peculiarities of the particular circumstances, and seeing is even better. Notice that the two basic categories, the principals of the fundamental tactile feelings, are pleasure and pain, and these are subdivided with a whole range of sub-categories. None of these in any way can be construed as resembling the thing sensed.
If we look at the higher senses now, hearing and seeing, there has been developed a stronger capacity toward distinguishing uniqueness and peculiarities. Still, there is no basis for the assumption that the way that the peculiarities of the individual circumstances of sensation are being signified is a mode of resemblance. And, as the evidence of the lower senses indicates to us, it is highly unlikely that it is a mode of resemblance. So if we take the electromagnetic activity which sight is sensitive to for example, we see that a very narrow range of wavelength is interpreted through the eyes. it appears like distinguishing tiny differences within this very limited range has proven to be more meaningful than interpreting a very wide range of wavelengths. But of course, we can understand that colour in no way resembles electromagnetic waves.
Quoting Banno
You ought not describe everything in monist terms. From a dualist perspective, (and many idealists are dualist) there is an unintelligible aspect of reality. So not everything has a relation to the mind, as there is that which does not have a relation to the mind, and this is consistent with idealist dualism.
From the dualist perspective, the issue is which fundamental aspect of reality has priority, is it the intelligible or the unintelligible. Depending on how one understands this priority, the person is either an idealist dualist, or materialist dualist.
Which world is that? Existent worlds depend on human understanding, possibly existent worlds depend on human understanding. Even those cursed damnable noumenal worlds depend on human understanding, fercryinoutloud. What other kind of world is there?
To say there is is a positive existential inference, to say there is a world makes explicit an object related to the inference necessarily. To call out world presupposes human understanding as necessary for both the conception the word world represents, and the judgement on a given (there is) and its relation to an object conformable to it (a world).
Still, conception does not imply existence necessarily, so it is that there may be existent or possibly existent worlds not dependent on human experience in order for there to be knowledge of what such worlds entail. But we can think any possible world we wish, every single one of them entirely dependent on the understanding of it, which reduces to .there is no possible world that is not dependent on human understanding of it, but there is no inclusive authority in the understanding, that grants its reality. And do we really give a crap for that which isnt?
Quoting Banno
.but not all. And because of this ..
Quoting Banno
.arises this .
Quoting Wayfarer
Same as it ever was .
I think not. I think they can be taken as supporting indirect realism: icons, steering wheels, etc. are our mental representations of transistors and voltages which really exist. Evolution has tuned us to see the icons and steering wheels so we can survive; if we saw wavefunctions, reality would be too confusing and we'd end up as lunch for some predator.
Hoffman himself theorizes a deeper reality of conscious agents. He uses another analogy. Twitter is a community of millions of conscious agents. The deeper reality is similar to the interactions between twitter users.
What is occurring in Twitter right now? The entire reality is too complicated for us to comprehend. But we could see a summary. To use my own example, imagine a heat map of the U.S. where each city's twitter activity is represented from blue (low activity) to red (high activity). The objects of our universe are like the colored cities on the map; they represent reality but are not in themselves reality.
Materialism = physicalism in common usage. Reductive materialism = all phenomena can be examined in terms of fundemental physics, at least in theory, or more strongly, that all wholes can be explained in terms of their most fundemental [physical] parts.
This is why Nagel could write a book called "Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False," in 2012.
In part, we don't think it's direct because empirical sciences tells us such experience is not direct. Every organism is bombarded on all sides by a sea of entropy. If organisms internalized all, or even a single percent of all the information they are exposed to, encoding it within a nervous system, these organisms would succumb to entropy and cease to exist as a self-replicating organism (see Deacon: Towards a Science of Biosemiotics). Organisms require boundaries to help keep them (relatively) isolated from the enviornment, and this means most data cannot enter sensory systems.
Obviously, we only sense a very tiny fraction of the photons in our enviornment through vision. Our skin can't see for one. Also, we can't see certain wavelengths, and the photoreceptors of the human eye can only be stimulated so rapidly. So we have a huge filter on available information at the level of the eye and optic nerve.
Cognitive neuroscience, paired with experiments in psychology, show us that most of the information coming from the optic nerve undergoes a first level of computation where it is analyzed for salience; then the vast amount of information is dropped, not analyzed any further. The structure of this computation is largely shaped by genetics, but it requires exposure to stimuli and neuron-level learning as well. Most incoming information just gets stamped "irrelevant."
What does appear to make it to conscious awareness is not an accurate representation of the visual field. Most of what we see is the results of computation. This is how optical illusions work. Preconscious processes "fill in the blanks," while also culling out the data considered as not useful for fitness. For example, because humans are social animals, we have a huge amount of processing power dedicated just to faces. When this area is damaged, and people view faces presumably as they would view other objects, they cannot detect emotions there or identify familiar faces.
If the visual cortex is sufficiently damaged, subjects don't report experiencing sight, even in memories of vision prior to the damage or in dreams. Vision is not a faithful interpretation of what the eye records, but rather a model of the world constructed in concert with learned knowledge and feedback from the other sensory systems, as well as heuristics selected for by natural selection.
Example: this picture is 2D but appears 3D. Also, squares A and B are an identical color. That they look different is all computation. Same thing here:
Obviously we can uncover the illusions here, but can we always. Shit smells like, well... what it is to us. Flies love it. Whose sensory systems is telling it correctly? Here it seems that evolution has totally shaped the senses; do chemicals have a small outside of sensation? It doesn't seem so. So why do we assume objects have shapes outside sensation? Indeed, physics seems to tell us discrete objects exist only as arbitrary, subjective creations. Real shapes and dimensionality don't exist (see: Mandlebrot on the length of the coastline of the UK and fractal geometry), it's all about perspective.
Hoffman is making the same points Kant made vis-á-vis the trancendental. Faculties shape reality prior to cognition. Evolution has shaped us to see things that aren't there, to see two shades that are identical as different.
His point is that this applies to more than just optical illusions. Our entire conception of 3D space time might be flawed, a point he borrows from physicists. We might live in a holographic universe, where a third dimension only emerges from a 2D informational entity.
That being the case, how can we move forward?
His solution isn't radical skepticism. It is to realize that these issues are insoluble. There is an epistemic curtain we can't pull back. If that is true, then the existence of non-observables is always and forever impossible to access, their potential differences from what is observable always and forever identical with the limits of perception.
If you accept that, then you have to wonder: "why posit ontological difference that cannot make a difference?" You could instead start from an agent based model and rebuild modern physics up from there. This is something that has already been done to varrying degrees for a host of different reasons anyhow, but not holistically.
I don't buy the argument entirely, but it's not a skeptical position. Knowledge of a world external to the agent is knowable for Hoffman. He would probably claim that his position is actually less skeptical because it doesn't posit an inaccessible noumenal world lying underneath the apparent world. That is, the popular view says that we must always be skeptical of all our knowledge because it isn't a view of things in themselves, but always filtered, and thus perhaps illusory. In this view, it is the conventional view that is radically skeptical.
Part of the problem is getting people to decide on what the real transistors are. Makes me recall a polemic I came across in a physics journal that likened a fixation of particles with focusing on the shadows on the wall in Plato's cave. Some had freed themselves and gone outside, but the sun hurt their eyes so they looked at the reflections on the pond instead. These people saw fields. But, there were a few starting to look at things themselves, and these people saw informational networks.
This was backed up by some esoteric mathematics I couldn't figure out, so for me, the issue seemed undecided.
I think this points to an issue with positing the fundemental "transistors" and such though. They tend to be impossible to describe coherently with one analogy and then it turns out the mathematics can also be replicated using different starting assumptions and techniques.
No. Roads, cars, steering wheels, or brake pedals really exist. And so does whatever is going on at the molecular, atomic, and sub-atomic levels.
(Wittgenstein, Blue Book)
Yes, I suppose it depends on what you mean as "direct." I think the comparison is between "what we have," and "what we can envision as an idealized type of perception."
Of course, this idealized view will be based on our understanding of the natural world, which is in turn shaped by our nature. But, I think we could still say something about such an idealized view.
He addresses this. Demonstrating "not-P" is not the same thing as demonstrating "Q instead of P." The main point of the book is that the popular view is undermined by its own standards of evidence.
As to if evolution may have misled us in terms of our logical sense and ability to come up with the mathematics used to show that P is unlikely, his defense is brief and not that satisfactory. However, it is worth noting that if one doesn't trust in our ability to use logic, or that the world is rational and that this rationality is comprehensible to us, then one has no grounds for believing in the findings of any science in the first place, nor their own senses. Down that road lies true, radical skepticism.
The conception of depression as a hidden mental state is itself the incorrect presupposition here. Wittgenstein's beetlebox thoughtexperiment shows this. Words cannot get/have their meaning from secret/private experience.
Yes. That's why the homunculus theory doesn't explain Sentience. It's a same-thing-all-the-way-down theory. But, what's missing is Transformation from sensory data to meaning in the mind. My Enformationism thesis begins with a Quantum science concept : that Matter & Energy are different functional forms of Generic Information (power to enform ; to cause change ; to transform). Hence, I have inferred that Matter, Energy and Mind are all various instances of Information (relationships ; mathematical ratios ; meanings). So, Cosmos (reality + ideality) is indeed the same-thing-all-the-way-down. But the essential thing is Mind-stuff (information) instead of Material-stuff (atoms in void). Another way to express the idea is : Ontology is all Mind. And that notion opens up a Pandora's Box of infinite possibilities, including mis-interpretations of the Mind-Matter relationship. :smile:
I haven't looked that deeply into Hoffman's claims. I will admit that. I saw some of his interview with Lex and recognized something akin to a self-subverting psychologism.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes, though I'd call it inarticulate madness. As long as still makes earnest claims as a philosopher, one must assume, explicitly or not, a share language in a shared world that one can be wrong about. Norms of rationality are also presupposed in the notion of philosopher as opposed to an emitted of random words or careless conjectures which are not modified in response to criticism. Something like Sellars' space of reasons makes worldly objects intelligible in the first place.
My objection to approaches that want to call everything 'mind' is that only make sense in a world where we see animals with nervous systems and speculate about what it's like to be them or about their umwelt. This applied to us encouraged philosophers to think of themselves as trapped behind a wall of sensory experience, within a mere image of the world on a screen and not the world itself.
As if the eyes create the very world in which eyes are seen in the first place.
Eyes are self-creating like that old god we used to sing about.
Yes. As noted, I suspect that Hoffman is leaning toward some form of Idealism. But, I try to cover both bases -- material Realism and mental Idealism -- in one thesis : Enformationism. It's based on the Quantum implication that both Energy (causation) and Matter (malleable substance) are functional forms of Generic Information (power to enform). :smile:
You are jumping from perception to the symbols we use for communication. Of course symbols, unless they are icons or pictographs, don't resemble what they symbolize, but that fact has nothing to do with the point that, since our perceptions allow us to navigate the world fairly smoothly, it is reasonable to assume that they are giving us more or less accurate information. For example if when standing on the edge of a cliff you saw instead a beach with a very inviting lake before you, leading you to decide to take a swim you would not live long.
But that's just it. It's the 'obviousness' of the veil of ideas or veil of sensations or veil of the given in general that functions as the invisible bottle in which the fly buzzes fruitlessly. We tend to get trapped in metaphors, taking painted scenery for the real enchilada.
It's an historical contingency misinterpreted as a logical necessity. It's a false beginning, a dead metaphor in the costume of an origin.
Not at all. That fly analogy is a nice one and can sometimes be used (arguably) correctly. For instance, if someone argues that there is a "mind-body" problem, that's assuming we know what bodies are and furthermore know enough about them to conclude that bodies can't have minds.
Of course, that is debated.
But to me it looks like the opposite, trying to deny we have private experiences, or that consciousness is just a way we use a certain word, signaling "to know with", instead of an actual, concretely existing phenomenon, of which we have the most confidence in anything in the empirical world of possessing, then I think this supposed Wittgensteinian view is the one that twists itself into a pretzel, in order to avoid facing hard problems by setting them aside.
So, depending on your perspective, several flies are stuck in several bottles. But we won't easily admit that we are the ones inside. As it should be. These views take time to develop.
While some may want to deny consciousness, I think the reasonable approach is to emphasize how difficult it is to clarify what is meant by the word. Thinking should not stop with Ryle (for instance), but it should pass through the fire of Rylean critique.
It's nice even that the hard problem wants to reveal our ignorance, but it tends to miss the hard problem of the hard problem.
It can be difficult, especially trying to give a comprehensive account of everything involved, because the phenomenon in question is complex and multifaceted, involving many organs, and much mental processes of which we are not aware of.
But it need not be. Consciousness is direct experience. What you are reading right now, what you see when you look at the window, what you listen to when you put on music, all of that is consciousness.
It needs organs to get information inside, but without it, nothing would happen, senses would merely pass through such an organism.
Sorry! I didn't mean to imply that there's something unreal, spooky, or fatalistic about Reality. Instead, sensory experience, including vision, is our only connection to the non-self world, by which we create Mental Maps*1 to guide us through the environment. Those ideal models are sufficiently accurate for way-finding, so they are our window-in-the-wall to the world outside. Even the blind are not "trapped" if they have other senses by which to know what's out there. You are only imprisoned behind your mind-screen if you feel trapped.
I just threw that "all is Mind" summary in there because the topic of this thread is Ontology : the nature of existence. And Quantum physics has undermined mechanical Newtonian physics, with its implicit Materialism, by discovering, at the foundations of Reality, that there are no ultimate Atoms (particles) of matter, only Fields of inter-relationships (Information). Some scientists went on to infer that a Subjective Observer is an integral part of that system of immaterial elements : John A. Wheeler's "It From Bit" theory*2. Which indicated that, not just the Mind, but the World itself is a mental construct. Yet Wheeler's Observer is just a Participant (an avatar in the model), not the creator of the Mind-world. This was a scientific speculation, not a religious assertion. A world-creating Mind is implied, but not specified, by Wheeler's quip.
"Objective" knowledge of material reality is a cultural consensus, not an absolute fact. Ironically, you would never know anything about that "quantum field world" if priest/scientists didn't reveal to you what's beyond the reach of your bodily senses. So, our worldviews are all, to some degree, acts of faith. Yet no one, especially Philosophers, should feel "trapped", merely because their physical senses cannot see the fundamental Fields all around us. The rational mind is what frees us from the solitary confinement of Solipsism. :smile:
*1. Mental Map vs Material World :
This quote comes from Alfred Korzybski, father of general semantics: A map is not the territory it represents, but if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness. To sum up, our perception of reality is not reality itself but our own version of it, or our own map.
http://intercultural-learning.eu/Portfolio-Item/the-map-is-not-the-territory/
*2. World of Appearances :
Wheeler's "it from bit" concept implies that physics, particularly quantum physics, isn't really about reality, but just our best description of what we observe. There is no "quantum world", just the best description we have of how things will appear to us.
https://plus.maths.org/content/it-bit
*3. Wheeler: It from bit.
"Otherwise put, every it every particle, every field of force, even the space-time continuum itself derives its function, its meaning, its very existence entirely even if in some contexts indirectly from the apparatus-elicited answers to yes-or-no questions, binary choices, bits. It from bit symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom at a very deep bottom, in most instances an immaterial source and explanation; that which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Archibald_Wheeler
Thanks. But you haven't addressed my criticism of this kind of quasikantian dualism.
For instance, can you clarify what a self is this theory ?
How could it ever have become plausible that there were two 'planes' in the first place ? How was such a theory engendered ?
Are fundamental fields mind or matter ? If matter, then wouldn't our image of them be maps ? Not territory ? If territory, then how can we know them ? Is the math on this side or that side ?
How do we, seemingly threatened with solipsism, manage to communicate and coestablish reliable maps ? Are words on this side or that side ? Is it pure information on one side and sounds and marks on the other ? But sensation is mental, right ? So how are marks physically instantiated ? But this is unknowable, right ? We can only map the nature of maps ?
Of course I understand what you mean. But consciousness is very close to just being being here. 'Consciousness' gets its meaning socially. We have no way of knowing, according to a certain type of idealist, whether other people's consciousness is at all like ours -- or whether it is there in the first place. But this would mean the sign could have no meaning. And yet it does. ChapGPT can use it well enough to philosophers, at least in short conversations.
Those who believe in the purely mental (as opposed to some purely physical) are in a bind that they do not see. The purely mental is understood to be known directly by exactly one soul. But 'consciousness' is tossed around as if it's obvious that we all have the same 'internal ' 'experience.' Ryle draws out this absurdity in The Concept of Mind. In short, the mental/physical distinction is fine for everyday use but absurd when absolutized.
I guess that depends on how how you define "accurate information". Are you saying that since we nourish ourselves, reproduce, and manage a little entertainment as well, this means our senses must be providing us with accurate information? Even single cell organisms manage to nourish themselves and reproduce, therefore "navigate the world rather smoothly". So does the capacity to entertain ourselves imply that we are getting accurate information? Not really, because in general fiction provides better entertainment than fact.
Good point.
Here's my two cents.
Quoting Janus
, , , about how to navigate the world fairly smoothly. But does it follow our perceptions give us accurate information about the world? Don't optical illusions, criticisms of naive realism, etc. show it does not?
But this is true independent of a belief in idealism. We don't know if other people are conscious, we infer that they are, based on how they behave, which most of the time mirrors the way we behave in similar circumstances.
Quoting green flag
While I would agree that the brain is physical, in that it is molded matter, I don't see why this denies the mental aspects of matter, which are found in animals that have certain nervous systems, such as mammals, and most refined in us.
The soul is by now an outdated concept, which was quite fruitful in the classical and early-modern periods in philosophy. Yeah, there is "internal experience." You can easily remind yourself of this evident fact when, for instance, you toss around in bed before going to sleep, perhaps you are thinking of something which makes sleeping difficult.
Or when you read a book, or meditate, or remember something that happened last week or years ago, and on and on and on.
Where is the problem here? This is pretty trivial, as far as I can see.
I think that this assumption is the wrong way to go. I'm not alone in this. See Ryle and Wittgenstein and Heidegger. Ryle's The Concept of Mind is probably the quickest and most accessibly (though W and H are greater on whole.)
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ryle/#OffDocConOff
It's cool if you aren't interested in this path. But, if you are, I will debate the details.
I don't think we really know what we are talking about with 'physical' and 'mental.' I do not dispute that we have a practical mastery of these terms in everyday blah blah. But metaphysically we often seem to be barking and squeaking without noticing it. Mind and matter is mound and mutter.
The thing is, I wouldn't say it's an assumption (re: we infer that they are (conscious), based on how they behave, which most of the time mirrors the way we behave in similar circumstances), I'd say it's a factual claim of how this actually plays out.
Sure, you can refer me to Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Ryle. I can refer you to Russell, Chomsky and Strawson...
The Enformationism thesis may be "quasi-Kantian", but it is not Dualistic. It is instead Monistic, with Information being the universal Single Substance (Spinozan?) of our world, expressed in the forms of both Matter & Mind.
If you are only familiar with Shannon's narrow definition of "Information", the notion that Generic Information (EnFormAction) has universal constructive positive power -- to create all possible forms in the world -- may not make sense. The key is to think of Information as a combination of Energy & Logic. Unfortunately, the Causal power of Information was minimized by Shannon, when he associated it with dissipative Entropy. But other researchers began to label Information as "Negentropy"*1. The opposite of dissipation is en-formation (concentration, integration). Negative Entropy is better known as Energy. So, Information is the pushing power of Energy and the organizing power of Logic (mathematics)*2. If you can conceive of Information in those terms, the rest will make more sense.
Besides its Causal power, Information also has Semantic power, to associate sensory inputs into concepts & meanings. I won't try to explain that in a single post. But I will answer your question about The Self*3. The human Brain is made of matter, which is organized (by natural logical processes) into a Meaning-Seeking machine. So it processes incoming information (data) into abstract concepts that are meaningful to the observer. But, in order to establish a relationship between the observer and its environment, the brain constructs a concept (the Self image) to represent its own subjective perspective*3 on the objective world. No spooky spirits required.
The website & blog go into much more detail, with scientific references, to support the novel notion that Information is the Single Substance of reality. For example, I have coined a neologism to replace "Negentropy" with "Enformy" (opposite of Entropy). In physical terms, Entropy is the erasure of Information, while Enformy is the creation of forms (both material & mental)*4. :smile:
*1. Negentropy :
"many of Shannon's followers found it more intuitively satisfying to put a minus sign in front of the expression for information, making it the opposite of entropy".
Fire In The Mind, by George Johnson
https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Mind-Science-Faith-Search/dp/067974021X
*2. Information is :
[i]*** Claude Shannon quantified Information not as useful ideas, but as a mathematical ratio between meaningful order (1) and meaningless disorder (0); between knowledge (1) and ignorance (0). So, that meaningful mind-stuff exists in the limbo-land of statistics, producing causal effects on reality while having no sensory physical properties. Like Energy, we know it exists ideally, only by detecting its effects in the real world.
*** For humans, Information has the semantic quality of aboutness , that we interpret as meaning. In computer science though, Information is treated as meaningless, which makes its mathe-matical value more certain. It becomes meaningful only when a sentient Self interprets it as such.
*** When spelled with an I, Information is a noun, referring to data & things. When spelled with an E, Enformation is a verb, referring to energy and processes.[/i]
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page11.html
*3. Self/Soul :
[i]The brain can create the image of a fictional person (the Self) to represent its own perspective in dealings with other things and persons.
1. This imaginary Me is a low-resolution construct abstracted from the complex web of inter-relationships that actually form the human body, brain, mind, DNA, and social networks in the context of a vast universe.
2. In the Enformationism worldview, only G*D could know yourself objectively in complete detail as the mathematical definition of You. That formula is equivalent to your subjective Self/Soul.
3. Because of the fanciful & magical connotations of the traditional definition for "Soul" (e.g. ghosts), Enformationism prefers the more practical & mundane term "Self".[/i]
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page18.html
*4. Excerpt from Fire In The Mind, by George Johnson :
"Thus, Shannon's new information theory reinforced the notion that there is something subjective about entropy and order. . . . not everyone liked the idea of introducing this slippery concept as one of the atoms of creation".
Note --- I suppose the "fire" in the mind is the creative energetic aspect of information processing. The book title may have been inspired by Joseph Campbell's writings. Johnson's book is about the development of Information Theory in the 20th century, beginning with Shannon's problem of correctly communicating ideas, to the Quantum physics of Atomic bomb development at Los Alamos, and on to the study of Information & Complexity at the Santa Fe Institute.
Just to be clear, I wasn't referring as if leaning on authority. I'm saying that a strong case in those sources is made against a particular assumption. I also don't mean to be condescending.
In the past, I've spent too much time paraphrasing this case. To me it's like watching people trying to square the circle. I ask them if they have seen the proof that it's impossible to do so. In general they either haven't or say they have and do not explain what's wrong with the proof as they keep on trying to square that circle. The hard problem of consciousness is that people think they know what they mean by consciousness in a metaphysical context in the first place. (We use it just fine in real life, let me emphasize.) They have failed to give a meaning to their sign and failed to see this failure. All of this is made clear enough, in my view, for those who are willing to see it.
Quoting Gnomon
I don't think you've presented a monism. Problematic quotes above.
Just to be clear, I am not at all 'afraid' of spooky fantastic theories. My criticisms are semantic. Praise Jesus. I can say it without melting. What interests me is what people can manage to mean by various metaphysical claims. I do not think such claims meaningless, but I do think they are often indeterminate, more so than their creators would like. A big problem is the loss of contrastive force. If everything is Mind, then everything might as well by Matter. It doesn't matter. If everyone is gay, then no one is. If everyone is conservative, then no is. See what I mean ? Distinctions pick things out. A true monism needs no name. But it would seem reasonable for a monist to call 'it' something like The One. Or the (selfcreating selfdiscussing ) Universe.
I didn't presuppose that you were leaning on authority nor that you were being condescending, I am only pointing out that anyone can refer to distinguished historical persons to elucidate almost any kind of argument. Another matter is if those persons referred to makes convincing arguments that are better than arguments made by opposing views.
Quoting green flag
Perhaps - it can happen. There is plenty of "woo", as is popular to use here, associated with consciousness.
Nonetheless, I don't think there is a way to phrase the mind-body problem in a manner that is understandable, as these terms are commonly used in (much, but not all) contemporary philosophy. So here we may agree.
The issue of an internal mental state is more of an epistemic issue than a metaphysical one. At least to me.
Having said that, one cannot completely disentangle epistemology from metaphysics, but one can attempt to keep them apart.
Do you have any interest in Brandom ? His scorekeeping notion of rationality and the self is impressive. What is it to be self ? To be rational ? In my view, he goes a long way to making what we mostly take from granted explicit.
By concluding that there must have been a mind at the beginning of the universe, obviously.
EDIT: Ignore this, I shouldn't come to a thread late without digesting the whole thing.
I have heard of him, but have been warned by a very good philosopher - Susan Haack - to steer clear of him.
I suspect that too much emphasis on certain late-Wittgenstein ideas might not be to my taste. But, there are other to keep in mind too, some, like C.I. Lewis, who introduced the concept of "qualia" in analytic philosophy, did say very interesting things about describing "what we mostly taken from granted explicit", as does Raymond Tallis.
But perhaps you can say the main point. I say that we have internal mental lives. So does Hoffman - and perhaps most people, which is no indication of its correctness of course. Hoffman calls his view "conscious realism" - I take it to be "common sense", which again, does not imply it is correct.
You say that it is misleading or confused somehow to believe in these things? Why?
We know there is a world that gives rise to our perceptions and understanding of an empirical world of objects. Anything we say is going to be framed in terms that derive from our shared experience and understanding of the empirical world as well as our intuitions and speculative imaginations.
We can learn to navigate the empirical world more or less effectively, but if our perception and understanding of the empirical world were at odds with the underlying real nature of things it seems reasonable to think we would not do well.
So it seems reasonable to conclude that there is some kind of isomorphism between the world we perceive and whatever world production, beyond and independent of human experience, that is really going on.
Quoting Janus
Hoffman's icon and headset metaphors seem to contract the idea of an isomorphism. For example, moving the icon from top left to top right does nothing to the file.And the correspondence between dragging icon to the trash can and the zeroing of bits seems nebulous.
Respectfully, why ? Are you not reasoning from analogy from the fake world to the hidden real world ?
In our fake world, you bump your shins when you walk with your eyes closed.
Enformationism may not be a formal Monism*1 as you are used to it. It's primarily based on scientific concepts, instead of academic philosophy. So it does not deny the practical (functional) distinction that humans make between Brains & Mind. It merely traces the physical (material) & metaphysical (mental) elements of the Real world back to a single Source. Depending on your personal preferences, you can label that source as mathematical "Singularity" or as metaphysical "G*D". A common metaphorical explanation for a non-intervening Deistic Creator is to imagine that the Big Bang Singularity represents a conception in the Mind of God, and that the evolving material world represents the Body of God. In effect, it's all G*D, all the time.
I can accept a variety of metaphors to make sense of a physical world with Minds that question their own origins. But, my thesis is an extrapolation from 20th century Quantum theory and Information theory, not from any historical philosophical conjectures. However, my notion of Information as the Single Substance of reality is similar to Spinoza's equation of God with Nature (Pantheism)*2. Yet, I diverge from that 17th century speculation, which assumed that Nature was Eternal. Since we now have reasons to believe that the material world of Space-Time had a dramatic Birthday, it seems necessary to make a distinction between what-now-is and what-existed-before the Creation Event of the universe (PanEnDeism). Multiverse theories assume, without evidence, that Physics (matter & energy) is eternally cycling, so the emergence of inquiring minds is routine. Possible : but I prefer the simpler (Ockham's Razor) version of the creation story.
The essential distinction in my non-religious thesis is derived from the radical notion that all-is-Information. Quantum physicist John A Wheeler proposed his "It from Bit"*3 concept, (IT = matter ; BIT = mind) to illustrate his belief that both Matter & Mind are essentially forms of Generic Information (some may call the Enformer : "G*D"). I merely expanded on that notion, of the world as an Information Processor, to conclude that the process was initiated by an intentional Programmer. Processing & Programming are functionally different, but the substance in both cases is the Power to Enform (energy + logic). For example E = MC^2 equates causal Energy with massive Matter. So, I conclude that the Programmer's (Creator's) ideas are also the substance of the Program (creation). Technically, that's a Monistic concept, but it's not a traditional philosophical Ontology. :smile:
PS__I have no formal training in Philosophy, so most of my knowledge of such abstruse concepts comes from professional Scientists. These esoteric ideas are expounded in greater detail in the Thesis & Blog.
*1. Monism :
a theory or doctrine that denies the existence of a distinction or duality in some sphere, such as that between matter and mind, or God and the world.
___Oxford
*2. Substance Monism :
Substance monism posits that only one kind of substance exists, although many things may be made up of this substance, e.g., matter or mind. Dual-aspect monism ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monism
*3. It from Bit symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom at a very deep bottom, in most instances an immaterial source and explanation; that what we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and this is a participatory universe.
https://www.themarginalian.org/2016/09/02/it-from-bit-wheeler/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy
The motte in this case is the practical use of 'consciousness' and 'inner lives.' It'd be absurd to deny this kind of consciousness. We have and use blurry and imperfect but goodenoughsofar criteria for its presence and absence.
The bailey is the Metaphysical version that gets smuggled in. It's a parasite on the everyday concept. Instead of something like an informal continuum between unreachable negative and positive infinities, as suggested in the motte version, we a Dualism with the bailey version -- which tends to collapse into a confused false monism.
To me that's a reason to read him. I like what I know of Haack, but even smart people develop intellectual allergies.
Besides, what's a thinker but a bag of memes that we can do with as we see fit ? Just as they did to put that bag together in the first place ?
Of course I like Wittgenstein. But that's like liking Shakespeare. To me it doesn't make sense as a polemical thing. One disagrees with this or that, but denying the quality altogether ? That'd be bold. Sort of like denying Cantor.
Please forgive the rhetorical mischief.
Still, all these layers are confusing.
Just curious: what dataset were you trained on ? [joking, I will respond more seriously after a walk in the sun]
However, Buddhists also make use of the so-called 'two truths' doctrine. This is says that there are two levels of reality, the conventional/empirical (samvritti) and the ultimate (paramatha). On the conventional level, empiricism is the arbiter, even if from the level of ultimate truth the objects of experience are devoid of intrinsic reality (although there is often considerable scholastic analysis involved in the details.)
Murti's book Central Philosophy of Buddhism compared the 'two truths' doctrine with Kant's acknowledgment that one can be at once an empirical realist, and a transcendental idealist, as expressed in these two often-quoted paragraphs.
[quote=(CPR, A369, 379)]I understand by thetranscendental idealism of all appearances the doctrine that they are all together to be regarded as mere representations and not things in themselves, and accordingly that space and time are only sensible forms of our intuition, but not determinations given for themselves or conditions of objects as things in themselves. To this idealism is opposed transcendental realism, which regards space and time as something given in themselves (independent of our sensiblity). The transcendental realist therefore represents outer appearances (if their reality is conceded) as things in themselves, which would exist independently of us and our sensibility and thus would also be outside us according to pure concepts of the understanding.
The transcendental idealist, on the contrary, can be an empirical realist, hence, as he is called, a dualist, i.e., he can concede the existence of matter without going beyond mere self-consciousness and assuming something more than the certainty of representations in me, hence the cogito ergo sum. For because he allows this matter and even its inner possibility to be valid only for appearance which, separated from our sensibility, is nothing matter for him is only a species of representations (intuition), which are call external, not as if they related to objects that are external in themselves but because they relate perceptions to space, where all things are external to one another, but that space itself is in us.[/quote]
The reason I mention this, is because it provides a kind of conceptual background for making sense of the claim that appearances are deceptive.
All I can say is that this is not a wild or strange idea. It's even a mainstream idea. I myself argue that only a unified lifeworld makes sense.
What conditions are required to make philosophy possible ? I ask because the denial of any of these conditions, when presented by a philosopher, is absurd. Suggested answers : a shared world we can be right or wrong about (or at least less wrong about), a language in which we can successfully if not perfectly communicate, and norms for the making and integration of claims into a set of beliefs. Roughly these norms are a second order tradition...a critical, synthetic practice with respect to first-order mythic-metaphysical creativity. The subject is not some radically simple synonym of being. The subject is a locus of responsibility which is kept track of by other such subjects, all of them holding one another to standards.
As far as I'm aware - in this thread - I don't believe I have made a metaphysical distinction, one between "body" and another of "mind" nor one of "internal consciousness" as opposed to "external consciousness".
I did mention that Hoffman's reasons for defending a kind of idealism, were not very convincing, but I doubt he would call himself a dualist either.
You've talked about the problems with the metaphysical notion of an inner mind, and you seem to say it is a confusion. If you can say why it is a confusion, maybe I can follow.
As far as "monism" goes, yeah, I think it's a sound idea. I personally like Galen Strawson's "Real Materialism", but not his panpsychism. Some people call that view "dualist" because he accepts what most of the great figures in the past have taken for granted, that we start with experience.
Maybe all of them are wrong in this respect. I'd be very dubious, but I cannot rule it out.
As with many philosophers, there are different perspectives on who is or is not important or should be. I think Wittgenstein's ending in the Tractatus, the last few pages, are his best work.
A lot of the Investigations are also great. But some have taken him to be the solution for all (of most) of the problems in philosophy. It often boils down to, one is using a word incorrectly, hence this word causes your thinking to be wrong.
That can solve problems. But it's also a way of avoiding them. But as with everything in philosophy, this too is debatable.
Quoting Manuel
Hume says we are trapped in a narrow compass, but somehow he can see outside of his narrow compass and determine that I too am trapped in my own narrow compass. Perceptions are seeming understood to be personal (?), but the royal we is used recklessly. He does not even notice the framework of self-transcending rational norms that govern his claims. He assumes the transubjective intelligibly of his language. He assumes the unity of his own voice as a joint unity, a social ego. He speaks about that compass as if from the outside to announce its nature --- that it traps not just him but me and you (who only exist by the grace of conjecture) in a bubble of perceptions.
This might be an ungenerous reading of Hume, but hopefully you see what I'm getting at.
I assure you, FWIW, that I don't truck with solutions so much as being endlessly less wrong, less semantically challenged, less trapped in dead metaphors, ...
I don't deny that there are shallow readings of Wittgenstein.
I can tell that you are well read, and I respect you. So I think we both have seen (maybe in our younger selves even ) the way newish philosophy types ape their heroes or sages. Stealing from psychoanalysis, I call it (positive) transference. It's annoying, but it's probably not skippable. For me (us?) , it's about the ideas, the memes, and not the bins they come in, however handy such bins are in conversation and for the considering how memes can be systematically integrated in ego and therefore (potentially) into the dominant software of the tribe.
:up:
I know what you mean. There are indeed avoidance gimmicks.
Well - he is consistent though, in his discussion of the self he famously said:
"For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception."
You may reply that he is using "I" here in a misleading way, because by using that word, he is assuming what he is denying. No quite. In all these topics, he has in mind something like an empirical criteria: that which we can check with the restraint of empirical evidence. And while I agree that there is no such independently existing entity "I", we cannot, not use it - in fact, it's part of world law.
We enter into serious problems here, because a tree, is just as much a construction as an "I" or almost anything else. If you want to be radical about it (as some are), you can say that there only are fields of energy, or strings.
Quoting green flag
He's assuming you are a creature similar to him - a fellow human being. And since it is true that both are human beings, he feels confident in saying that his "narrow compass" will also apply to others.
If something along these lines is not true, empirical psychology and ordinary communication would be much easier, as everything can be put forth in a transparent manner. If there is no "inner consciousness" (and I don't know of an alternative), then we should be open to inspection in a manner that should be less difficult than it currently is.
I respect having arguments in which we can disagree, without getting mad or angry, it's useful. :cool:
And you obviously have a good formation as well.
Very true about copying our elders. I agree about the ideas mattering, more than belonging to a tribe, no doubt. It's also hard to not sympathize with some of these people.
All what layers? There is an imaginable logical distinction between the world as experienced and the world in itself is all. Would you want to claim that there is nothing beyond what can possibly be experienced and articulated by us?
This reads like an appeal to authority. I don't think Wittgenstein's contributions to philosophy can be compared to Shakespeare's contributions to poetry and theatre or Cantor's contributions to mathematics.
I don't think it can be said that he was an artful writer, contributions to mathematics are much more clearly important, and if his philosophical ideas don't gel for you, then you have no reason to acknowledge anything but his influence, an influence which can legitimately be seen as largely unfortunate in my view.
Actually I couldn't say that, because (if there are only fields/strings), then I am not here to say it.
I oppose the constructive approach. I claim that it makes much more sense to start with the unity of the lifeworld, including selves and language and norms of rational discussion all together in the one real world (as parts of that world). This unity can be broken up by various abstractions. But perceptions make no sense as a building block.
I think I got you on this one. Who ever said Shakespeare or Cantor were great? That sounds like an appeal to authority to me. Obviously I'm being playful here. And just as obviously I was implying that I find Wittgenstein to be great in his field. That you don't so value him is no surprise, given your metaphysical position, as far as I can make it out. I don't expect Christians to like Dawkins and I don't expect Cartesians / Humeans/ Kantians /etc to like Wittgenstein.
To me that's hilarious. But Wittgenstein's work doesn't need me to keep it in circulation. So go to it. Take the old fraud down a notch.
The way I'd try to solve that kind of problem is to say that the world seems to offer such richness and complexity that we'll never run out of novelty. I find it implausible (unimaginable?) that humans will ever be a loss for further inquiry. So the world is infinite, one might say.
The thing is that the importance of mathematical and literary contributions are easier to assess than philosophical contributions. As you note there are probably many philosophers who don't think Wittgenstein is all that great; all that is needed is the existence of radically different starting assumptions than his, and his relevance will be as nothing.
Can you say the same about mathematicians who don't think much of Cantor or lovers of literature who don't think much of Shakespeare? The other point about Shakespeare and Cantor is that the former's importance has not diminished over around five centuries and the latter;s over nearly two. It is too early to know how Wittgenstein's philosophy will be assessed in the centuries to come.
Quoting green flag
I haven't said he was a fraud, and I don't have the influence to "take him down a notch".
Quoting green flag
I agree that the potential scope for knowledge within the bounds of human experience and judgement is infinite, but it doesn't follow that there is not also an infinity that will forever remain closed to us.
What justifies that assumption ? How is he seeing around his own wall of perceptions ?
Quoting Manuel
He is interpreting beingthere in terms of perceptions given to a self. This is not starting without presuppositions. This is picking up a tradition uncritically. This is taken inherited frames as if they are the deepest and truest necessity.
Quoting Manuel
That's why I recommend Brandom. The self is (among other things) a locus of responsibility, a normative entity.
Is it obvious that there is only one self in each body ? Why isn't it "We think, therefore we are" ? I am not saying that people are plural. I am saying that the 'virtuality' of the self (as a way of being a body and a social institution) is probably singular because it's easier to manage a single body in a social structure with a single set of statements to be responsible for. Imagine two souls in one body. The weekend soul only remembers what happens on the weekends and is wildly different than the other. Even here we'd track the weekend soul and only put him in jail on the weekends if he was bad. Responsibility / 'scorekeeping' is maybe the essence.
It's fine. A harmless idea. But to me it's semantically empty. It's a pile of negations. As a work of art, as an image of God, it is at least interesting enough to have kept people talking about it for centuries.
As your boy would have it:"What can be said at all can be said clearly and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence." This assumes that there is that which cannot be talked about, which cannot be dealt with by propositional utterances. This is not to say that it cannot be evoked by poetic language, or the visual arts or music and so on.
And then there is this:"The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no value exists"
This is plainly asserting that value, the most important aspects of human life, cannot be part of the normatively derived collective representation that is the empirical world.
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." Your boy recognized the importance of the unknowable, so at least that much can be said in his favour.
As a Scientist he is limited by Methodological Naturalism's principles to keep his work within a specific demonstrable realm, not because of a ideological bias but due to Pragmatic Necessity.(Its where our methodologies and evaluations function).
So by definition his interpretations and conclusions are pseudo scientific.
Now Donald main argument is his "mathematics" and his "mathematical models" but he always fails to demonstrat how those "models" do the work he claims they do.
His main approach sounds like "This can't be wacky because I keep on mentioning mathematics", as if Maths isn't a language of logic acceptable to the GIGO effect.
When you feed garbage in your premises you will receive garbage in your conclusions and this is what we get from Donald.
Hoffman ticks all the boxes of Pseudo Philosophy, he claims that those things he believes are true because of some mathematical models he came up with.
Its really said to see people waste time and resources in Magical ideas .
How does "shared experience" even make sense to you? From all that I can glean from my own experience, it appears very obvious that my personal experience is radically different from anyone else whom I have relations with.
If this is difficult for you to grasp, try this little experiment. Sometime when you are with a group of people, randomly ask, 'what just happened?'. You'll see that the answers vary just as much as the people in the group.
How can you speak of a "shared experience" when this is so oxymoronic?
Quoting Janus
Notice how you use 'perception and understanding". This is because we use the rational mind to resolve all the problems which sense perception presents us with. You speak as if the senses provide us with an accurate representation. In reality, the senses provide us with huge problems, problems which the rational mind has some success at resolving. So it's really not the senses which provide us the capacity to navigate, its the rational mind.
Quoting Wayfarer
That's a very enlightening passage from the CPR. It demonstrates how "matter" is just a concept, and it is simply an assumption made by us, which is used to explain why our sense perceptions of the world or so radically inconsistent with what our rational minds tell us the world must really be like. We posit "matter" as the medium between rational understanding, and sense perception, as the reason for this inconsistency.
This is the true understanding of "matter", that it is simply a concept, and as Berkeley demonstrates, not a necessary concept, but one which has been chosen. Notice how Kant describes that when we apply this concept "matter" in its true form, all proposed spatial relations are internal rather than external. As objects having spatial relations with one another is simply how we represent the proposed external reality, and there is no necessity to this representation. It is just what is customary to us, as consistent with that assumption of "matter".
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
This, in no way is an accurate representation of how a scientist philosophizes. The method of philosophy is not the same as the method of science, so when a scientist philosophizes, that scientist may or may not have some training in philosophy. And if the scientist has some training in philosophy, the degree of training will vary from one scientist to another. This degree of training will be evident in the philosophy which the scientist produces.
"Pseudo science" on the other hand is the inversion of this, when someone without proper scientific training makes an attempt at science, without applying the appropriate scientific method. That you confuse these two is evident from the fact that you switch from pseudo science to pseudo philosophy in the course of your post. You don't seem to know what you're talking about.
If I may, in conjunction with your quote as it concerns the empirical side, I submit that the only need to make sense of appearances being deceptive, is if they are mistakenly treated as looks like as opposed to the intended notion of present as. That there is something present to sensibility cannot be deceptive, re:
. For, otherwise, we should require to affirm the existence of an appearance without something that appears, which would be absurd
this from the B preface, which sets the stage for the rest of the changes in that edition.
In addition, deception with respect to empirical cognition resides in discursive judgement, for which sensibility in its role as representing external objects as phenomena has none, and by which the subsequent looks like appearance is determinable.
. For truth or illusory appearance does not reside in the object, in so far as it is intuited, but in the judgement upon the object, in so far as it is thought. ( ) But in accordance with the laws of the understanding consists the formal element in all truth. In the senses there is no judgementneither a true nor a false one .
(A294/B350)
The final nail in that Hume-ian coffin, is the condition that if the so-called Copernican Revolution holds, in which the human intellect assigns properties to objects rather than objects come already imbued with them, then it is impossible to be deceived by an objects appearance .presence . to sensibility, insofar as at that point, no object has a property from which it obtains a looks like, or behaves like, hence nothing whatsoever by which to be deceptive, on the one hand, and the absolute impossibility of denying the effect of human physiological sensation caused by the presence of objects to sensibility, on the other.
You, and I honestly think , and perhaps may well agree, that all those pictures on this thread that show objects outside the human skull, depicted as actual named objects, is catastrophically wrong. Anything in those indicators, must be represented as mere matter, some as yet undetermined something, which is impossible to illustrate, so folks imbue the indicators with any ol thing that is already known, a blatant contradictory methodology with respect to the human intellect logically explainable by transcendental philosophy.
Which probably explains why its pretty much disrespected these days, and perhaps why you feel reiteration of its conditionals are worthwhile for critical thinkers, however lapsed they may be according to their arguments. People insist they see a tree, and they are correct, but only as a consequence, without knowing or caring about the antecedents necessary for how it is a tree, only a tree, and not any other thing.
(Descends soapbox, exists stage right .but still muttering to himself, accompanied by the snaps of assorted Greenwich Village pseudo-bohemian fingers)
Around the wall of his own perceptions? I don't quite follow. You can think about your thoughts - as in, I can think about me typing these letter right now, but I don't get "out" of myself, in fact cannot do so.
Quoting green flag
Of course we have a given, and of course it is a construction. We cannot help doing so. But "dasein" is also an assumption - giving primacy to a certain kind of unreflexive action, but why is that mode of being more primordial than another mode of being?
It looks to me as if one chooses what aspect of our lives we want to take as a given, and give that primacy. It can be practical activity, it can be perceptions, it can be economic conditions or even word -use.
Quoting green flag
It can be. Several propositions can be taken to be primary or obvious, from "I am" to "We are" (taking into account that we are made of many organs that work is co-operation, or we can think about ourselves as particles) and even "thinking an idea". Thinking of a diamond is arguably as good as thinking of a self, in terms of such foundational experiments.
Do you want me to argue against that or to comment? I don't disagree with what you say.
Quoting Mww
One can - and should - speak about the necessary cognitive conditions that allow us to classify something as this particular tree as contrasted with some other tree, or indeed some completely different object.
And absolutely, the ground of phenomena as (re)presentation is very interesting and important. But it can be parsed out of the question of "do I directly see a tree", that is, for the sake of answering the question narrowly, it need not enter.
You could include it and argue, correctly in my view, that this unknown thing is the ground of my presentations, but since we (arguably) cannot cognize this is any positive manner, I don't see how this helps in answering the question.
Hoffman incidentally disagrees, he does think we can get to the grounds of things, by pursuing theories that suggest that spacetime is not fundamental. I think this is a mistake.
There is plenty more to say, but it would lead to issues that could take this conversation significantly outside of Hoffman's thinking, and this thread already is veering off the OP.
The "space" that contains the program "world" is the mind of the "programmer". It's a dual-aspect Monism. No distinctions, no information, no meaning, no philosophy. A monism without defining distinctions would be a socked-in fog. :smile:
Only if Ive misinterpreted your comments in general. I dont expect agreement as much as I appreciate correction.
I'd have to go back to my paperback copy of Hume's Treatise to confirm. I don't think he denies that the mind attributes properties to objects in a certain way. In other words his attribution of effects coming from objects as opposed to us attributing effects to objects is not entirely clear, it can be read in several ways.
But being a good empiricist, he calls effects brought forth by the mind "animal instinct", which is a definite downgrade from Kant's more sophisticated account. His focus suffers, in that he doesn't, and probably cannot, given his principles, elaborate on many functions of said instinct.
Other than this caveat, I have no issues with what you have said, which is well put, as usual.
Ahhhh .the Treatise. Ya know, and in no way to (not much) pat myself on the back, re: appearances, even ol Dave says, Those perceptions, which enter with most force and violence, we may name impressions: and under this name I comprehend all our sensations, passions and emotions, as they make their first appearance in the soul.
If the two superior Enlightenment philosophers agree on a thing, while not immediate peers to each other, it is reasonable to suppose by the term appearance is meant mere presence, by them both.
Another thing, while were at it: Kant says concepts without intuitions are blind, thoughts without content are empty, or something like that. Hume says simple impressions have their own ideas and all simple ideas are accompanied by impressions, or something like that. Funny how very similar these two grounding conditions are, innit?
As to properties, Ill trust your higher exposure. I myself dont recall much being said about properties per se in either the Treatise .. or E.C.H.U.. Lots more readily available in Kant, though, insofar as for his brand of metaphysics, empirical conceptions just are the properties objects are said to have.
Anyway ..ever onward.
One has some leeway in how these terms can be used, it's not something set in stone.
Why "mere" presence? As opposed to presence.
-Wll there is a way for accurately representing how someone should philosophize or reason whether he is a scientist or not. This is what it means to systematize a field of study by !
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
First of all there isn't such a thing as "A" scientific method. Science have many methods but that is a different topic.
Now if you noticed I identified the method of philosophy I was talking about (Aristotle).
The fundamental steps are the following.
1. Epistemology
2. Physika (Science)
3. Metaphysics
4. Ethics
5. Aesthetics
6. Politics
and back to epistemology for additional knowledge.
So if a scientist or anyone decides to skip those first two basic steps he is placing his inquiry on a really shaky ground.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
A Scientist can escape the first 3 steps of Philosophy. So its more probable for a philosopher to be bad in philosophy than a scientist. But still dudes like Hoffman show that when our auxiliary assumptions are polluted we are capable for really bad philosophy and interpretation of facts in general.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I think you are confusing Chronicling with the ability of a scientist to contract metaphysical frameworks based on the available facts. The ONLY training one needs to do philosophy is to reason correctly, obey the steps of the philosophical method and challenge his preconceptions.
You do understand that Natural Philosophy (science) is Philosophy on Naturalistic principles and far better data. The common ingredient in all Philosophical categories is nothing more than Logic and a shared System of inquiry.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
-No this is not what pseudo science is. Theoretical frameworks that ignore the principles of Methodological Naturalism while using obscure language and questionable data. This is what pseudo science is and like in the case of Pseudo philosophy their advocates won't correct their claims even when they are exposed.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
-Its obvious that I am not the confused one here. Hoffman promotes a Death denying ideology as "science" and the only argument he has is "I got a mathematical model".
Maths are complementary in any Scientific Theory. One needs hard evidence to back up his math.
i.e. Peter Higgs won the Nobel Prize ONLY after his math were verified by CERN....not the year he wrote down those equations....some 60years ago.
Unfortunately for Hoffman science doesn't accept unfalsifiable supernatural claims as Theories just because someone has some Math on a paper.
Because the presence of something is pretty much insignificant. Means to an end is all.
Intuition itself maybe be mistaken. Perhaps, faulty intuition ought not be called false judgement, if we should restrict the definition of "judgement''. But this is a different matter. However there must be some form of "judgement", though not rational judgement which is inherent within intuition, and this "judgement" may be mistaken. Since there is already some form of judgement inherent within the intuited sense perception, and this judgement may be mistaken, it is very clear that sense perception may be deception. That is self-deception, which is often considered as a virtue because it is the basis of courage, confidence, and certitude. But taken beyond reasonable levels, following intuition becomes a vice, due to the propensity for mistake.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
The scientific method is very explicit, consisting of hypothesis, experimentation, observation, etc.. Why do you think that there is no such thing as the scientific method?
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
I do not see how this describes a method at all, you just name a bunch of subjects.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
Well, naming a bunch of subjects does not provide a "philosophical method". Perhaps if there was such a thing as "the steps of the philosophical method", it might be a simple matter for the person to get trained in the philosophical method. However, unlike the explicit scientific method, I really do not think that there is an explicit philosophical method which a person could follow.
I will suggest Paul Hoyningen's Lectures(philosophy of science) on the Nature of Science where he explains why there isn't a specific method (set of steps) followed by scientists.(like the 6 steps in philosophy).
Hakob Barseghyan lectures on Philosophy of science also starts his lectures with "popular science mythology" and he includes the scientific method. (all available on youtube and free).
Great example commonly used in favor of this argument is Albert Einstein's approach in developing the Theory of General Relativity. Something that is also important is that the Theory was "Verified" and accepted a over a night after a historic observation without having the chance of any falsification period! (so falsification is not always important too!).
Sure we have a general description of a popular progress but its far from becoming a Method that binds our scientific endeavors.
Here is an article on the subject ( If you are interested I can send you links for every reference).
https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/the-scientific-method-is-a-myth.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
-Well a method defines the steps we follow in order to preserve the quality of our inquiry. Obviously those are titles of the method but it seems like that haven't dig deeper on the subject of Systematicity in Philosophy.
Richard Carrier's lecture is a great way to start understanding our methods of demarcation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Lvg4di3sAw
After all if I ask you to describe the scientific method...you will end up naming a bunch of actions.
The same is true for Philosophy.
1. epistemology (first learn what we know and how we know something -on a specific subject).
2. Physika (reevaluate or update your epistemology through empirical evaluation).
3. Metaphysics. reflect on that updated knowledge and use it to construct hypotheses reaching beyond our current knowledge
4.5.6. What are the implication of those hypotheses in Ethics , Aesthetics and Politics.
Restart...project your conclusions on our current body of knowledge ...etc.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
-Sorry , as I just explained you are wrong. Are you familiar with the Aristotle's work on the systematization of Logic and Philosophy? Have a go with the links I gave you and we can revisit your "objections"....if they are still there.
I know that most philosophers are shocked when they hear these things for the first time, but I find them to be far more important than any other aspect of Philosophy...if our goal is to become good Philosophers.
Nice. Something not often brought about, but a metaphysically .logically .valid premise nonetheless, we generally being more concerned with knowledge.
There is a form of judgement regarding intuition, or, sensibility itself, which describes the condition of the subject, as such, in his perception of real objects. Best represented as how he feels about that which he has perceived, as opposed to what he may eventually know about it. That the sunset is beautiful is empirical, how the subject reacts to the mode or manner in which the sunset is beautiful, which are given from the sensation alone, is an aesthetic judgement by which the subject describes to himself the state of his condition.
Oooo and Ahhhh and HOLY SHIT!!! and the whole plethora of exclamatory representations, the spontaneity of which requires no conscious thought, hence are not proper cognitions, yet are judgements relating to a change in the subjects condition all the same.
It is easy to see one cannot be deceived by how he feels, insofar as his feeling IS his condition at the time of it. It can change, obviously, but in its duration, it is as certain as any truth he can ascertain. Furthermore, his feeling regarding some perception may remain consistent even with a change in the knowledge of what caused it, which sustains the distinction in kinds of judgement, discursive or aesthetic.
The foremost exposition of the notion of aesthetic judgements resides ..where, do you think, assuming you accept it isnt foremost in intuition?
Say you are with someone and she says, "See that dog over there; what kind do you think it is?". Say it's a very large dog, maybe a Great Dane. Do you think the other person is likely to say "Oh, it's so small, maybe a Chihuahua"?
Have you had many experiences something like say you are with some people in the city and you see a car speeding towards you and another person says "Oh, look the waves are breaking well, and there's a lovely dog running towards us; let's go for a swim"?
Wake up and smell the roses, dude...it's a shared world if it is anything.
If you don't think we can generally agree about what objects are where, what kinds of objects they are, how large or small, and so on, then I don't know what planet you are on.
Quoting Mww
I do agree if the pictures of those objects being outside the skull are intended to demonstrate that the objects, exactly as they are perceived, exist outside the skull. On the other hand they are perceived to exist outside the skull, obviously; but that is not the same thing. The skull does not exist, exactly as it is perceived, outside the skull; and this is a fact which might cause some confusion in some quarters. :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
Idealism is not a claim to omniscience.
Quoting Mww
In Greek philosophy there is the notion that we can't say what any thing 'truly is', because it is not 'truly' any specific thing. This is suggested by the argument from equality in Phaedo 72e ff:
- [1] We perceive sensible objects to be F.[2] But every sensible object is, at best, imperfectly F. That is, it is both F and not F. It falls short of being truly F.[3 ] We are aware of this imperfection in the objects of perception.[4] So we perceive objects to be imperfectly F.[5] To perceive something as imperfectly F, one must already have in mind something that is perfectly F, something that the imperfectly F things fall short of. (e.g, we have an idea of equality that all sticks, stones, etc., only imperfectly exemplify.)[6] So we have in mind something that is perfectly F.[7] Thus, there is something that is perfectly F (e.g. equality), that we have in mind in such cases.[8] Therefore, there is such a thing as the F itself (e.g., the Equal itself), and it is distinct from any sensible object.
.(I'm sure there are other examples of this point but my knowledge of Greek philosophy is not great.)
But one of the problems is, the discussion nearly always defaults back to whether coffee cups or trees or whatever kind of 'F' are real. We loose sight of the fact that the object chosen merely serves to symbolise objective knowledge, more broadly. So what I think is really at stake is 'seeing how things truly are' in an expansive sense. The philosophically discerning mind realises its own judgement is central to the generally taken-for-granted nature of the sensory domain (as in the example above). 'The sage' as a philosophical archetype, one who'sees things as they truly are' not in the narrow sense required by the precise sciences, but as a general grasp or insight into the imperfection of our sensory knowledge. So it is precisely the opposite to a claim of omniscience - it is an acknowledgement of the limitations of empiricism.
Yeah, it is. Fitchs Paradox of Knowability. Idealism implies that everything that can be known is known.
Again, stuff we have dealt with previously.
Actually, this is right on the point. Very often those who espouse idealism are defending a god of one sort or another. Further, something like this is needed by idealists to explain other minds, and avoid solipsism.
But this is where the argument goes, not where it begins.
It would be good see more personal experiences recounted in these discussions to give meat to things said centuries, even millennia, ago. As a mathematician I had the handicap of only fully grasping abstract ideas when bringing them down to specific, more elementary examples.
In the present thread I am reminded of a drive I took several years ago into nearby mountains. As I drove over a hill and looked down on a small bridge I saw a bear leaning against a guardrail. This was no surprise as I had seen bears in this site before, but as as I approached the bridge the bear shifted into an old stump leaning propped the rail.
When I analyze this experience I think of the fact that seeing a bear there before had triggered a slight rise in emotions, which would make embedding in memory a tad stronger than usual. Then driving down the hill the subconscious would seek and find and present what had been enforced in memory stronger than normal. An "insight into the imperfection".
I would be surprised, however, if my suggestion were to take root. Philosophy is not a game to be played on a personal level. Profound statements are the ticket. Good luck with that. :cool:
My sentiments exactly. The average Joe isnt philosophically discerning, but he could be, given proper instruction.
Quoting Wayfarer
And the limits of empiricism is not tacit approval for some relative increase in idealisms authority.
Agreed, but does to exist carry the same meaning as to be named? I maintain that the objects in pictures meant to demonstrate human perception shouldnt have names. Objects dont come pre-named, right?
That's a tricky question. Some, like Heidegger, would say that we see things as things, like we don't see a shape which we subsequently call a bridge, we just see a bridge.
It seems there must be a pre-cognitive level of perception, the sense just being initially affected, which we do not have conscious access to, which would be prior to naming. Naming is not merely cognition, but re-cognition, or even post re-cognition, so it's gets complicated.
A brief blog on random mutations;
https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2019/08/evolution-is-true-but-are-mutations.html
You beat me to it...nicely put!
That's the one aspect of Kastrup which I think goes way beyond any evidence or even intuition. To extrapolate from dissociative personality disorder and apply it to objects is a massive leap, which doesn't look tenable.
I think Kant suffices, or Cudworth - whom Chomsky specifically references.
Still, Kastrup is quite interesting on many topics.
Neo-darwinian materialism surely does. But it has many critics, not least Raymond Talllis:
I have that book, later Ill see if Hoffman is mentioned, although I dont recall.
https://philosophynow.org/issues/88/Aping_Mankind_Neuromania_Darwinitis_and_the_Misrepresentation_of_Humanity_by_Raymond_Tallis
It's worth noting the connection, and one could probably trace a history as well, perhaps back to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
Indeed.
Sorry - https://philosophynow.org/issues/154/An_Encounter_with_Radical_Darwinitis
thought it had been shared earlier.
That said, Im still not dismissing Hoffman out of hand. Ill try and finish more of the book.
In these arguments I general factor out (or bracket) the question of whether or not the ideas correspond to reality. Partly because I lack the expertise to discern if this is the case and partly out of wanting to steel man arguments I don't fully understand. You probably did the same thing when you were studying philosophy. As someone outside of philosophy, who is an atheist, I find these accounts of idealism fascinating.
What is the nature of your sympathy with these ideas?
That's great - thanks.
There may well be useful nuances and details in his position which have been overlooked in our commentary. Would you mind highlighting these if you find them?
Instead of using Einstein's relativity as an example of how science is tainted, you ought to simply realize that this theory is unscientific. The principle of relativity, upon which Einstein's theory is based, is unverifiable, therefore not science, it's ontology.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
That's strange, I have a degree in philosophy and I was never taught any of this. it's very fictional, and not at all representative of how philosophy is actually taught, in my experience.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
Right, most philosophers are shocked when they hear of your "philosophical method", because it's absolutely foreign to them. Why do you call them "philosophers", when the philosophical method is foreign to them?
Quoting Mww
This is close to what I was suggesting, but let me take a slightly different aesthetic example, to make things clearer. Suppose it's a nice summer day and I walk past a garden of flowers, and notice a vast array of different shades of colour, and I think about how beautiful all those different colours are, in that particular array. Within my sensibility I have distinguished all sorts of different shades of colour, so that I perceive, or see, the landscape as completely varied in colour, and beautiful in this way.
What I am saying is that inherent within my sensibility, there is some sort of "judgement", which "decided" to present this display to me in a way which is beautiful, or pleasant. And if we move here to "pleasure" instead of "beauty", the nature of this sort of "judgement" becomes more emphasized. We cannot describe the pleasure we get from sensations in terms of a simple physical reaction to external stimuli because something inherent within the sensibility must judge whether the sensation ought to be experienced as pleasurable or as painful. This is the type of "judgement" which I think we must consider as inherent within sensibility. It is not my conscious mind which upon receiving the sensation decides that the sensation ought to be classed as pleasurable, the sensation is already judged as pleasurable before I have time to think about it. And of course this is even more emphasized with pain.
Quoting Mww
I don't buy this at all. I think what you propose here is sophistic trickery. I think that "judgement" which inheres within sensibility could very often be wrong. What happens if I eat something, and I think that it tastes good, but it ends up making me sick? Clearly that inherent "judgement", which judged it as good was mistaken. You might argue that the inherent judgement was "pleasurable", and this is different from "good", but this doesn't suffice, because being sick is not pleasurable either.
Therefore there is a problem with your qualification, "at the time of it". You'd say that at the time of eating the substance, it was pleasurable, and I was not mistaken in that sensation. But clearly there was a mistake involved here, the mistake which made the harmful substance appear at that moment to be pleasurable. I think that this condition, "at the time of", is really a deceptive phrase. Nothing is ever judged in relation to "the present moment", it is always judged in relation to the past and future.
So perhaps it might be true as you say that a person is never wrong in a judgement of "at the time of", but this is not a real judgement which is ever really made, so it must be disregarded as irrelevant. Our judgements are directed toward what just happened, or what is about to happen. For simplicity sake, I might say "I am doing...right now", but if I have to truthfully describe my actions, I must make a division between what I just did, and what I am about to do. Then "at the time of" becomes an illusion.
Quoting Janus
I do not see the relationship you are trying to propose. Words are meaning based, therefore based in intention. There is no logical relation between a person's experience and a person's use of words. Similar acts of word usage do not imply the same experience. The similar acts may be used to justify a claim of similar experience, but two distinct yet similar experiences does not make one "shared experience".
Quoting Janus
You seem to be missing the point. What I objected to, is your use of "shared experience". All that is required for agreement is similarity, and two similar things (experiences) does not justify the claim of one "shared experience".
If we both see the same kinds of things in front of us that qualifies as a shared experience.
If you saw a beach and I saw a city that would not be a shared experience.
No, it means that we are each having the same kind of experience. Two distinct experiences which are both of the same kind does not justify the claim of one "shared experience".
Two experiences of the same thing at the same time qualifies as a shared experience in my lexicon.
If we shared a plate of food that would not entail that we ate exactly the same items on the plate: that would be impossible.
- No it isn't. Its a scientific theory that ticks all boxes. It provides a sufficient narrative, hasdescriptive power non extreme conditions and it offers accurate predictions allowing us to producetechnical applications. The three criteria (description, prediction, application) are all met.
Sure in extreme scenario the theory breaks down, but that can easily be due to Emergence of phenomena.
So its 100% scientific. Remember scientific doesn't mean 100% correct. Scientific frameworks can only provide tentative positions due to the nature of our ever evolving observations.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
-Again that's is wrong. General relativity could easily have been falsified if Dyson and Eddington hadn't observed what Einstein's theory predicted. ALL THEORIES are falsifiable when make PREDICTIONS.
Is it a theory on the ontology of the universe. Sure and it became our epistemology when it was verified. Of course.
IS it wrong. Probably since it break down in extreme scenarios plus it doesn't fit with the rest of our theories on smaller scales. Can that be due to Emergence? Probably.
Either way the Quasi Dogmatic Principle in science (Paul Hoyningen) uses all theories as Black Boxes allowing us to study them until they are crashed and burned. This is how science advances by studying our mistakes.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
-I know, Philosophical studies are mainly based on chronicling than how it should be practiced.
This is the main reason behind Academic Philosophy's failure to remain relevant to our Epistemology (except most philosophical practices within Natural Philosophy of course).
In Greece, the birth place of Western Philosophy , we tend to focus on Aristotle's (non philosophical) work on Logic and systematization of Philosophy. Sure, its all out of irrational national pride, but at the end it did benefit our thought process.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
-They can always learn about it...plus its a social convention for people with a diploma from the academy. Even Scientists are acknowledge as Doctors of Philosophy when they get their PhD's. This is what PhD means.
In reality ONLY scientists follow the true Philosophical method...with the addition of the empirical tool
That your "lexicon" describes two distinct, but similar experiences as one shared experience indicates that it is not logically rigorous.
Quoting Janus
If you do not understand the difference between two people sharing one plate of food, and the two distinct experiences that these two people are undergoing while sharing that one plate of food, and you conclude that because it is one plate of food being shared, the two experiences must be one shared experience, then I'm afraid that I am at a loss to dispel your misunderstanding of this matter. I'll give it a try anyway.
Let's start with this. Do you understand the difference between an event, and the participants in the event? Do you agree that the fact that the participants share in the event, does not imply that what is the property of any of the participants, is shared by the event, as property of the event? That would be a composition fallacy.
So here's an example of this fallacious way of thinking. Suppose someone gets raped, and one of the two participants in that event has a very enjoyable experience. And you conclude that since this person who has the enjoyable experience, is a participant in a shared experience, the other participant also has a very enjoyable experience as well, being a participant in that shared experience. Do you see the problem with your fallacious "shared experience"?
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
It's incredible the way you just make things up. Are you a professional fiction writer?
This is tantamount to proposing that sensibility thinks, from which follows that given that understanding is the faculty of thought, there are now two thinking faculties in the same system. What a mess that would turn out to be.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You tell me. Something tastes good, turns out to make you sick, so what, it really didnt taste good?
Have it your way.
Here's one way.
There is a deeper non-material reality which we perceive as physical matter in spacetime. (Hoffman's headset metaphor). The deeper reality is not static; it changes. From within our headset, we perceive those changes as evolution.
But under idealism, that deeper reality is some mind(s) that are creating this reality we're experiencing.
Seriously you are the one who ignores science and you accuse me for being a professional fiction writer?????
You do understand that General relativity predicted many phenomena years before they were observed, including black holes, gravitational waves, gravitational lensing, the expansion of the universe and the different rates clocks run in a gravitational field.
That means that your freaking GPS on your phone works because GR formulation allows us to adjust our satellite clocks every single day. (now every time you use your car navigation you will feel embarrassed! lol)
That means that Gravitational lensing(bending light) is what allowed Eddington to verify Einstein's theory
The same is true for CRT screens and laser beams. (You can google this freaking things mate!)
Why are you posting opinions on scientific knowledge you know nothing about[/b]...and to make it worse you do that with an attitude?
Can you now see that basic scientific epistemology fuels your pseudo philosophy????
The Downtown ReviewThe Downtown Review
Volume 5 Issue 1 Article 3
December 2018
The Theory of Relativity and Applications: A Simple IntroductionThe Theory of Relativity and Applications: A Simple Introduction
Ellen ReaCleveland State University
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1071&context=tdr
Followed by a very succinct statement of 'conscious realism':
To me, it has always seemed strongly reminiscent of Leibniz' monadology. 'According to Leibniz, monads are the fundamental units of reality, which are simple, indivisible, and unextended [s]substances[/s] subjects.
For Leibniz, monads are the basic building blocks of the universe, and all things, including physical bodies and even human souls, are made up of monads. Each monad has its unique qualities, which determine its specific nature and behavior. Monads do not interact with each other directly, but rather each one reflects the entire universe within itself, creating a harmonious pre-established harmony.'
In other words, 'conscious agents all the way down'. Whitehead's 'actual occasions of experience' also come to mind, although I've never really been able to get my head around that.
Another point worth making:
This partially addresses the question of why science itself ought not to be considered also a perceptual illusion. However further down, we read:
I am always dubious about attempts to explain the capacity of reason with reference to evolution, as it always seems reductionist to me. After all, reason ought to be the source, not the subject, of whatever explanations we are able to discern. This is why I make frequent references to Thomas Nagel's essay Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion, which elaborates the point: if reason is only the product of adaptive necessity, then why trust it? Classical philosophical theology has an answer for that: the mind contains a faculty, however corrupted, which is able to discern the truth by reason. (It's also worth noting The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science, Peter Harrison, which argues that one of the primary impulses for early modern science was as a corrective for the corrosive effects of original sin on the intellect.)
I think from what I've read so far, Hoffman's book raises many interesting questions based on evolutionary science, but it also makes the mistake of seeing evolution as a kind of all-powerful agency, which perhaps is the lingering cultural legacy of the mythology it has displaced. 'The jealous God dies hard', something you certainly see in the polemics of the 'ultra darwinists' such as Dennett and Dawkins. While Hoffman's view seems worlds away from their lumpen materialism, his estimation of evolution as the sole creative agency in the development of life remains quite close to it, in some fundamental ways.
And overall, it leaves open the question that if, as he says, all of the objects of experience are simply icons, then what is the reality? I think he says this is not something we can know, but that is deeply problematical in my view. Still, it's a developing field of enquiry, and some grander truth behind the illusion of desktops and icons might yet come into focus.
A point of difference from monads is that Hoffman's conscious agents do interact to form a compound agents.
Quoting Wayfarer
Conscious agents are his model of reality, but, he admits, probably not the last word. To paraphrase: He expects his theory is wrong but it's mathematically precise and in science we make mathematically precise models so we can tell precisely where we are wrong, and then try to devise a better theory.
He might he say that elsewhere, but that thumbnail sketch I provided doesn't say it. It says that
There's nothing about 'compound agents' implied by that.
Quoting Art48
From which perspective? Outside consciousness? A theory of empiricism is not necessarily an empirical theory.
Yes, and what a mess the human being is. We're torn apart by the difference between rational thought and bodily desires, such that we are sometimes overwhelmed by emotional feelings, anxiety and stress. Plato found many examples, (of what you crudely express as "two thinking faculties in the same system"), such as the thirsty man who knows that the available water is not potable. This man is torn by the two "faculties" in the same system. Therefore the evidence supports what I said, two distinct sources of "judgement" inclining us toward contrary actions.
Quoting Mww
Of course, because you realize I'm right. How would you define "good"? Or would you simply equivocate with two senses of "good", one for things that taste "good", and another for what is beneficial to your survival, or "rationally good"?
Quoting Janus
Of course not. Like Mww above, it becomes overwhelmingly obvious that I am right. When the meaning of what you say is actually analyzed, it is revealed to be an absurdity.
That a principle is useful in application, and therefore can be used in making predictions, does not imply that the principle is "scientific". The axioms of mathematics are very useful in making predictions, but they are not scientific. Do you recognize the difference between a scientifically proven hypothesis and an axiom? Any way that you might formulate the principle of relativity, it is always an expression of an ontological principle, an axiom, not a scientific theory. Consider the following formulations;
[quote=https://www.tau.ac.il]The principle of relativity states that there is no physical way to differentiate between a body moving at a constant speed and an immobile body. It is of course possible to determine that one body is moving relative to the other, but it is impossible to determine which of them is moving and which is immobile. [/quote]
[quote=Wikipedia: Principle of relativity] In physics, the principle of relativity is the requirement that the equations describing the laws of physics have the same form in all admissible frames of reference.[/quote]
Notice that the first formulation is a statement of what is impossible. it is impossible to differentiate between an immobile body, and a body moving at a constant speed. How do you think that this, if it was presented as an hypothesis rather than as an axiom, could be tested in experimentation, so as to confirm it as a scientific theory?
The second formulation is a derivative of the first. It affirms that any body moving at a constant speed can serve as the grounding for a frame of reference, a point of rest (rest frame), and the laws of physics will be equally applicable from each. Notice how this is a grounding principle for the laws of physics, as stated in the quoted passage, describing how the laws of physics may be applied. It is expressed as a "requirement" for the laws of physics, thereby separating the principle of relativity from the laws of physics. It is not itself one of the laws of physics, but an ontological principle, an axiom, which dictates the applicability of the laws of physics.
Because you seem to misunderstand the difference between axioms and scientifically proven hypotheses, Nickolasgaspar, I suggest that you look a little more closely into the difference between what is derived from science, and what is derived from ontology. That ought to improve your understanding.
Day-um, man!! How big is your ego, anyway??? You got you realize Im right out of have it your way? Like .the only possible analysis of the one reduces to the other? If I made such a preposterous deduction, I would not be so inclined to admit to having a degree in philosophy.
Be interesting to see what has to say about your claim that its .
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Bet it wont be pretty, and justifiable so, insofar as the causes of the disrespect on both our parts is so easy to present. One little sample among many:
Me: two thinking faculties in one system;
You: two faculties in one system.
From which it becomes obvious to you that youre right, not by correcting a wrong, but by changing content to force a right.
So ..have it your way.
I think now you are just being dishonest. We are TALKING about a scientific theory formed by a Physicist who also provided a Falsification Method, which was challenged by an Astronomer who verified the specific results prediced by General relativity.
Whether this Theory(better what it describes) is used as a principle or not ITS irrelevant to what I saying, so please when you decide to argue honestly let me know.
-Again please educate your self on Science. Learn what a Scientific Hypothesis (Metaphysics) and try to address the writings of your interlocutor. I don't have time to waste on your ignorance and your strawmen...sorry.
If you think there is only one possible interpretation of metaphysical, phenomenological or epistemological statements, then I'm sorry to say it but; but you are simply simple-minded. From where I sit, I see you distorting the arguments of others in ridiculous ways in order to "win" the argument.This is not good faith or good philosophical practice, dude.
And your inconsistencies are glaringly obvious: you claim that we are all so different we don't even share a common world, and yet you think that your particular (mostly absurd) interpretations of others' arguments are the only possible ones, that each word only has one meaning (the one that suits you of course).
I agree with what you say: I think MU needs a "reality check". He seems to be headed deeper into a methodological solipsism.
And if evolution is nothing more than our perceptions, then it didn't really occur.
The view still undermines itself.
You actually made an even more preposterous reduction Mww. I explained very clearly why there must be some form of "judgement" inherent within sensibility, and you then reduced this "judgement" to a faculty of "thinking", deducing that only an act of thinking could produce a "judgement".
Surely you must understand that subconscious mental activity is just as much a part of the human psyche as conscious mental activity. Why not acknowledge that this subconscious activity involves some form of "judgement" just like conscious mental activity involves judgement?
Or, we could have it your way, and insist that "judgement' implies "thinking", so that we would have 'conscious thinking' and 'subconscious thinking'. But 'subconscious thinking' really doesn't make sense because thinking is considered to be the act of the conscious mind. And that\s why you were right to suggest that we should have it my way. And in saying that, you are just as right as I am.
Quoting Janus
That's rich, coming from the person who insists on something called "shared experience". And when asked to explain how this makes sense, you refer to a shared plate of food as an example. Reality check: a plate of food is not at all the same type of thing as experience.
If you would have explained how we share our experiences through language and communication, I would have accepted this as a valid justification of "shared experience". Instead, you wanted to pose "shared experience" as a necessary requirement for language and communication, instead of accepting the reality that language and communication are a necessary requirement for "shared experience".
I've been arguing honestly, but you and I are speaking in completely different ways. That is the honest truth, and it's been obvious since the beginning of this exchange, when you asserted that there is no such thing as a specific scientific method, and insisted that there is a specific method which constitutes the philosophical method. We obviously have contrary opinions as to what constitutes "science" and "philosophy". Whether the ideas you express are what you honestly believe, or not, doesn't really concern me, I simply recognize them as fiction.
Bad language mode is common in these threads unfortunately.Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
So you will keep insisting on that while ignoring all the academic material I offered you on that specific topic? Those are courses on Philosophy of science for crying out loud!!!
The problem isn't our different opinions but your inability to support yours with academic material and real life examples like I do.
So you keep calling them "my ideas" which means you decided to ignore the material I sent you . With all do respect
I will insist using the characterization "dishonest". I beg you to prove unfair.
You're persisting in straw-manning idealism. There might be one version which says that there are individual minds and their perceptions. with no connection between them. That view fails to account for what is obvious in everyday experience; that we inhabit a shared world.
But if the reality is thought to consist in not mind-independent existents, but ideas in a universal mind, of which we are all a part, then the problem of shared reality disappears, and so does the problem of evolution not really occurring.
I don't hold to one view or the other, but they are both possibilities and we have no way of knowing which obtains, or if there is some other explanation we cannot even conceive of.
But instead of credulity, better to treat this as a reductio. If that's what idealism needs in order to explain apples, then so much the worse for idealism.
I think of in terms of the collective mind - as members of a species, language group and culture then we inhabit a shared reality. Is there a need to posit a mind other than that?
Quoting Banno
Right, that's your preference, but idealism in the collective mind sense is an imaginable possibility, and it might avoid other issues that plague the idea of mind-independent material existents. All views seem to have their shortcomings and aporias if pushed hard enough.
As is
You give an explicit insult after three posts. Brief, even for you.
The point is simply that not all imagined possibilities are worthy of consideration. But of course, the Jatravartid differ as to the details.
I wasn't insulting you; I was saying your example is a stupid one. The idea that there is a universal consciousness as opposed to the idea that there is just a brute materiality has an extensive and very reasonable provenance. It is one of just two imaginable possibilities: universal consciousness or no universal consciousness.
Presenting universes being sneezed out, flying spaghetti monsters or teapots as being equally reasonable alternatives is just a silly attempt to bring the idea of universal consciousness down to the same stupid level; it is an unworthy, disrespectful, merely rhetorical attempt to discredit the idea,in lieu of being able to provide a decent argument against it. Such "arguments" are themselves insults to your interlocutor's intelligence; it's a "schooltard" tactic, and you should know better.
Bye.
Beg all you want, it just doesn't move me.
No, I see that you are extremely biased and opinionated, you pay no attention to reason, therefore I have no inclination to give you what you beg for. Your suffering has no emotional affect on me.
Well I am biased towards logic and objective evidence. Opinions without epistemic validation are weak. Mine are strong because they are backed up by facts. I offered you objective facts (academic material) on why there isn't just one set of steps in a scientific method (one scientific method)and you had nothing to offer in return.
I guess we both know why you are avoiding this challenge and to be fair when I lay facts on the table...nobody really want's fight for a lost cause.
Its your right, enjoy whatever this is (but its not philosophy).
Anyone can search the internet for material to back up one's biased opinions. Your referenced "academic material" was off topic and not interesting to me. Sorry Nickolasgaspar. (Now I apologize, so I am somewhat affected by your suffering, or maybe just being polite).
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
The more you beg the less I am inclined toward submission. I will enjoy, while you suffer, but I'll make it perfectly clear, in all honesty, my enjoyment is derived from what I am doing, not from your suffering. There is no "shared experience" here (to quote Janus), because you've had no success in your attempt to communicate.
Well this is why we have Logic....
Logic is what renders the material important and conclusive.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Of course it wasn't. My material render your claims wrong...this is why you are not interested in them.After all this material is only taught in all major Universities....lol
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
-Sophistry.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
-Ignoring Academic knowledge won't make your claims true.
You made claims that are factually wrong and I was kind enough to provide resources for your information.
Now your education is your suffering...not my job.
The validity of the one does not necessarily follow from the validity of the other. There is no necessary relation between a form of subconscious judgement in intuition, merely from judgement as a given conscious mental activity in understanding.
Yes. And the whole notion of perception seems to take organisms with sense organs in a world for granted. Yet this is part of the 'illusion' or 'interface' being used to justify that interface.
Perception also implicitly invokes the self, but the self-other-world distinction depends on the taking interface for truth. Those who think they assume the minimum assume the holy trinity of self-world-others without realizing it.
I think the issue is putting our bodies somewhere. For instance, are our eyes actually what makes possible our seeing ? Or does some divine mind switch off vision when the eyes are injured, so that both are causes.
I say that we have bodies of flesh in a shared world. But I'd also say that we can't make good metaphysical sense of pure mind or pure matter. Instead we have a rough continuum for practical purposes. This or that is closer to mind than matter or the reverse. Consider the real number system as a metaphor, which does not include the infinities often used to represent it. [math] \Bbb R = (-\infty, \infty). [/math]. (Math itself would be about as mental as we could make things, perhaps along with raw feels.)
The question will remain, how then can you say the world existed before humans, if it's a collective construct? Isn't a 'universal mind', or a being assigned the role of God in Berkeley's philosophy, required to account for its apparent permanency even in the absence of any human mind whatever
Consider this. All of the vast amounts of data being nowadays collected about the universe by our incredibly powerful telescopes and particle colliders is still synthesised and converted into conceptual information by scientists. And that conceptual activity remains conditioned by, and subject to, our sensory and intellectual capabilities determined by the kinds of sensory beings we are, and shaped by the attitudes and theories we hold (which is the lesson of embodied cognition and enactivism). And were never outside of that web of conceptual activities at least, not as long as were conscious beings. That is the sense in which the Universe exists in the mind not as a figment of someones imagination, but as a combination or synthesis of perception, conception and theory in the mind (which is more than simply your mind or mine). That synthesis constitutes our world, and we can't see anything from 'outside' of it. As is well known, when it comes to speculative theories of the Universe prior to the singularity, the mind boggles. And I think this is also the lesson of the conundrums of modern physics, all of which tend to undermine the very notion of a 'mind-independent reality' (by the way, superb introductory article to QBism by one of its two main progenitors. QBism also tends to support the perspective I'm describing.)
Getting back to Hoffman, I think his central point is that 'the object' has no intrinsic existence apart from its incorporation into the meaning-world that comprises experience (although I think his terminology is clumsy, what he's arguing against is not 'reality' per se, but 'objectivism', although that would make for a far less flashy title). But this is why he says he has 'solved' the hard problem - he's solved it, by showing that the object can't exist outside our experience of it (which doesn't mean that it literally ceases to exist when not perceived, more that what we perceive as existence itself is a conceptual construct or vorstellung.) Whereas what modern science has tended to do is to declare that 'the subject' is completely separate from the external realm, and that meaning and quality (qualia) only inhere in the internal or subjective dimension of thought, thereby devoiding the 'real' world of meaning and purpose. Hoffman is arguing by means of cognitive science that this is a faulty cognitive construct, albeit one which is almost the default condition for the modern individual and in which we're all embedded to some degree.
I do think there is indeed some strangeness here in 'the ancestral realm.'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quentin_Meillassoux
For me, the world is not our construct. We who see the world are in and of the world. I claim that there is an unbreakable unity of us and language and the shared world. Heidegger loved his hyphens for just this reason. We can focus on this or that aspect, but all our equiprimordial. (It's one concept, perhaps, when unfolded.)
I claim that philosophy presupposes being-with-others-in-the-world-with-language as its condition of intelligibility.
Anyway, though Meillassoux has found something like a glitch in the matrix, I still don't see how to compute a phrase like "describe the world as it really is independent of human knowledge." Any such description would be an attempt at human knowledge. So it looks to me like a glorified round square. But I admit it's a hard thing to make sense of.
As I understand it, the subject is deindividualized but not dematerialized. Science itself doesn't need qualia or direct experience. Consensus suffices. Popper makes a great point about the problems of using direct experience. Here's a paraphrase.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/#BasiStatFalsConv
Sellars also makes a case against the assumption of something absolutely Given (like pure redness?) which cannot be questioned.
Culture can determine the forms in which we understand things, but it cannot account for the everyday fact that we don't only see things in the same general ways, but see exactly the same things in detail at the same places at the same times. And as I said earlier even animals share a world with us, and they have not been inducted into our culture.
Quoting Wayfarer
All of that is not sufficient to explain the simple facts of everyday experience. Consider this: I hear a cow mooing, and my dogs start barking at the same time, If I let them out they run straight over to the neighbour's field where the cows are. Now either there really is something mind-independent "out there" producing those sounds that I and the dogs are responding to, or our minds are connected somehow in some way we have no awareness of, or there is some other explanation we cannot even imagine, but culture cannot explain it, that much is obvious.
Half way through the book, and still not confident about what it is he is claiming. I can't decide if the vacillation is rhetorical or if he really does not understand the distinctions he is trying to deal with.
This is where the non-objectivity of quantum mechanics enters the picture. When you seek the underlying, objective ground from which all of the objects of everyday experience are supposedly derived, it is found to be different for every observer (e.g. https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a40460495/objective-reality-may-not-exist/)
Quoting Janus
Again, not saying the world is 'only in your mind'.
"In a field where intriguing, almost mysterious phenomena like quantum superposition prevaila situation where one particle can be in two or even all possible places at the same timesome experts say reality exists outside of your own awareness, and theres nothing you can do to change it. Others insist quantum reality might be some form of Play-Doh you mold into different shapes with your own actions. Now, scientists from the Federal University of ABC (UFABC) in the São Paulo metropolitan area in Brazil are adding fuel to the suggestion that reality might be in the eye of the observer."
If there is no objective ground, if we all mold our own realities, then how do we explain the fact that we all see the same things? Take the "quantum cat" that is neither dead nor alive, or both dead and alive, before an observation is made: how do explain that on observation everyone will agree as to whether it is dead or alive if there is no objective reality, and no connective coordination between individual minds?
Quoting Wayfarer
What are you saying then: would there be anything at all if there were no human minds according to you?
What I already said about the collective nature of mind. Besides, the laws of physics still hold at micro-levels, but they're probabalistic, there is no 'absolute object', therefore no absolute objectivity. Do have a read of that Conversations article on QBism that I linked.
[quote=Ruediger Schack]According to QBism, an approach developed by Christopher Fuchs and me, the great lesson of quantum mechanics is that the usual starting point of the philosophers is simply wrong. Quantum mechanics does not describe reality as it is by itself. Instead, it is a tool that helps guide agents immersed in the world when they contemplate taking actions on parts of it external to themselves.[/quote]
Quoting Janus
The answer to that could only be silence.
Quoting green flag
That is the way post-Cartesian science is constructed - the individual subject confronting a world of material objects directed by mechanical laws.
This is being broken down by e.g. embodied cognition, enactivism, and cognitive science. The assumed absolute barrier between subject and object, so characteristic of post-Cartesian science, is being found to comprise a porous boundary.
So your "collective mind" includes the animals as well? I'm not saying there are objects independent of human experience and understanding, I am saying there is "something" which, with incredible reliability, gives rise to a shared world of experience, which includes not only humans but (at least some) animals. How do we explain this if our minds are not somehow collectively coordinated or it is not the mind-independent nature of the physical ? Are there any other explanations you can think of?
Quoting Wayfarer
Why? You don't want to commit yourself because then you might have to admit something you don't want to?
For what it's worth I don't hold to any view, but I do think there either has to be a collective coordination of minds or else a stable mind-independent physical reality at the level of perception. I cannot think of any other alternative, can you?
I don't really see the problem. I fully accept the naturalist account of evolution. All organic life is related, as evolutionary theory demonstrates.
What I'm rejecting is a philosophical stance which attributes a kind absolute value to the objective domain. Actually the insight I had goes back to my first Honours thesis on Emerson and the transcendentalists. It is that we're not actually outside of, or other to, reality as such. But that awareness of ourselves as separate individuals is very much the hallmark of modern individualism, and also the condition of the separated individual. That is what gives rise to the 'Cartesian anxiety' which is the kind of metaphysical angst ofmodernity.
As for the world as we have never known it - what could be said? I mean, even if we study the cosmos right back to nanoseconds after the big bang, it is the observing mind that brings order and perspective to that analysis. From a naturalistic perspective, sure, h. sapiens only came along in the last ten minutes (speaking metaphorically) but it is in that form that all of this becomes somewhat intelligible, But science itself has come to realise the role the mind has in orchestrating the order we perceive, hence Wheeler's 'it from bit' and 'participatory cosmos'.
It's what we do.
Then I don't know what you are proposing. Culture cannot explain a shared world. If we want to try to think of explanations for a shared world, then we are left to speculation, and I don't see a whole raft of competing theories, but really just two.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm not sure what that even means. but if you are referring to naive realism; I also reject that.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes the world is only intelligible to humans in human forms of intelligibility: no argument there.
More metaphysical naturalism, which is naive realism on steroids :rofl:
I explained in detail why it is necessary to conclude that there is some form of "judgement" occurring at a subconscious level. You said: "This is tantamount to proposing that sensibility thinks". I said that there is no need to restrict "judgement" to conscious thinking. I didn't suggest a necessary relation, only that the inclination to restrict "judgement" to conscious mental activity is a misunderstanding of the nature of living beings.
Pretty much as per the encyclopedia entries:
[quote=WIkipedia]According to Steven Schafersman, geologist and president of Texas Citizens for Science, metaphysical naturalism is a philosophy that proposes that: 1. Nature encompasses all that exists throughout space and time; 2. Nature (the universe or cosmos) consists only of natural elements, that is, of spatiotemporal physical substancemassenergy. Non-physical or quasi-physical substance, such as information, ideas, values, logic, mathematics, intellect, and other emergent phenomena, either supervene upon the physical or can be reduced to a physical account; 3. Nature operates by the laws of physics and in principle, can be explained and understood by science and philosophy; and 4. the supernatural does not exist, i.e., only nature is real.[/quote]
This is what results if you take the Christian worldview and replace religion with science, and the divine commandments with the laws of physics. As I said before 'the Jealous God dies hard'.
That's a great quote. I think it's about the radical contingency (?) of the world, the thereness of the there. To it's more like what Sartre called beneath all explanation.
**********
The experience that we need in order to understand logic is not that something or other is the state of things, but that something is: that, however, is not experience.
...
To say 'I wonder at such and such being the case' has only sense if I can imagine it not to be the case. In this sense one can wonder at the existence of, say, a house when one sees it and has not visited it for a long time and has imagined that it had been pulled down in the meantime. But it is nonsense to say that I wonder at the existence of the world, because I cannot imagine it not existing. I could of course wonder at the world round me being as it is. If for instance I had this experience while looking into the blue sky, I could wonder at the sky being blue as opposed to the case when it's clouded. But that's not what I mean. I am wondering at the sky being whatever it is. One might be tempted to say that what I am wondering at is a tautology, namely at the sky being blue or not blue. But then it's just nonsense to say that one is wondering at a tautology.
So I read the book. Still processing what seems to be a bit of a mess which may be down to my still piecing it together. This is just some preliminary remarks.
Most of the text seems to be a defence of scientific realism, somewhat re-dressed.
Central to the 'denial of materialism' titular to this thread is the exact nature of Conscious Realism. This is the topic of Chapter Ten, much of which strikes one as speculative. For example Hoffman claims "physicists realise that spacetime is doomed", but there is, so far as I a can see, no such consensus.
More worrying is his definition of consciousness in terms of the PDA loop:
This is a diagrammatic representation of the mathematical definition given in the appendix. The obvious issue here is the extent to which the consciousness of a PDA loop corresponds to consciousness as understood in ordinary language. The PDA loop looks like a formalisation of "response to stimulus", were an experience leads to an action. Is that really all that is involved in consciousness?
The inclusion of "world" worried me at first, it seemed at first Hoffman was assuming the existence of reality. But it appears that what he has in mind here is an iterative process, where "world" is replaced not by space, time and such stuff of our common acquaintance, but with other PDA loops... Not sure what to make of that.
Amongst other things he makes a point of rejecting panpsychism because it relies on dualism, as well as Kant's thing in itself.
Two resources for further consideration. The first is a cut down version fo the book, the second a substantive critique by an Australian academic.
https://sites.socsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/ConsciousRealism2.pdf
https://philpapers.org/archive/ALLHCR.pdf
Quoting Banno
Does this not sound reductive?
Quoting Banno
That sounds confusing.
[quote=Donald Hoffman]Ideas similar to MUI theory are found in various forms of idealism. But, as Searle (2004, p. 48) says:
idealism had a prodigious influence in philosophy, literally for centuries, but as far as I can tell it has been as dead as a doornail among nearly all the philosophers whose opinions I respect, for many decades, so I will not say much about it.
This is a simple misunderstanding. MUI theory is not idealism. It does not claim that all that exists are conscious perceptions. It claims that our conscious perceptions need not resemble the objective world, whatever its nature is.
Like Leibniz' Monads.
But these other loops can be unknowable, a bit like the thing-in-itself, and this seems to lead to Hoffman to realism, but I am not sure how to articulate that leap.
Ok. Thanks.
Quoting Banno
Not your fault. So really Hoff's thesis is as we already gleaned - reality isn't what humans see - there is a reality but it's not apprehendable to humans in its 'actual form'. Is this not a version of Kant's noumena, etc?
Well, what was Kant's noumena? There's not much agreement there. But Hoffman explicitly rejects comparison between his views and noumena, in that he claims we can know stuff about the ultimate reality - indeed, that's what his PDA supposedly sets out. Science can lead to a theory that is true. (Bottom p.82)
Hmm. Don't see it. Penguin paperback? Quoting Wayfarer
The looping consciousnesses are what is real...
Yeah, stretches credulity.
Yeah, Perhaps one of the folk who claim to understand it will do so.
1. Fitness beats truth
2. The interface theory of perception
3. Conscious realism
Fitness beats truth is the argument that we have evolved not to sense what is the case, but to sense whatever we need to in order to reproduce. The interface theory roughly says that the world we perceive is constructed by - not sure what exactly, but mind or consciousness or something - in such a way that we don't sense what is real, but made-up stuff, again in order to survive. Conscious realism argues that what is real are mini-consciousnesses described by the triangle above, and by some twiddly maths. And nothing but these is real.
I'm assuming the interface theory is the computer desktop icon metaphor?
Having said that, there's an awful lot of awfully idealist-sounding prose scattered throughout, e.g. 'Conscious realism, in direct contradiction to physicalism, takes our conscious experiences as ontologically fundamental.' If it walks like an idealist, and quacks like an idealist, then.....
That's what I've been thinking. Do you suppose that perhaps Hoff is trying to avoid being too closely associated with traditional philosophy (idealism) and wants to focus on his scientific & maths credentials to help connect people to his model?
:yawn:
Anyone else watching the Renée Geyer Memorial?
The position of truth would depend on how you would define "truth". If truth is correspondence, then truth is possible, but the problem is in knowing when truth has been obtained because human judgements are teleologically based, based in purposefulness (predictability etc.) rather than judgements of truth.
I think that the position is best understood as a form of pragmaticism. The way we sense the world, consequently the way that we understand the world, has been formed or shaped by some type of purposefulness. That's what Banno states as "fitness beats truth". Here "fitness" which is commonly associated with "survival" in accounts of evolutionary theory is reduced to reproductive capacity. Strong evidence for how reproductive capacity affects sensation is found in the sensual pleasure of sexual intercourse. We can understand this as a form of pragmaticism because the way that the human being perceives and understands the world is directed overall, by usefulness. And pragmaticism is based in natural teleology. The overall purpose or end for life in general (the meaning of life), escapes our grasp, but the purposefulness inherent within living systems implies that this perspective is not misdirected.
From the pragmatist perspective truth is possible, but it needs to be given priority as something which is useful. So truth does not come naturally to us because "fitness beats truth". So we must shape our priorities through moral training etc., (the classic God is Truth for example), in order to direct ourselves toward the usefulness of truth. The usefulness here being communion and social interaction, propagated by truthfulness, which in turn produces a higher knowledge and greater usefulness overall. The desire for truth has a place in the rational mind, bit it is commonly suppressed by irrational desires which are natural to living bodies, so it does not obtain a place of priority without culture.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
These are declarations, mere assertions, with no detailed explanation accompanying them. And I reject anything needing quotation marks that merely substantiate its ambiguity. Its judgement or it isnt, such a thing as judgement just doesnt say enough to be taken seriously.
Everything in general about what you call the form of judgement inherent in intuition, inasmuch as your exposition of it has entailed, has already been rendered in the pertinent literature as imagination, which meets the explanatory criteria for the human intellectual system as a whole in much more satisfactory manner, and, first, eliminates such notorious ambiguity as judgement altogether, and second, serves as sufficient reason for not realizing you are right. Like ..my employment of methodological imagination is much right-er than your employment of methodological judgement.
Nuff said.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is an unwarranted presupposition that the nature of all living beings is imbued with conscious mental activity, all that being completely irrelevant anyway, for all I care about properly understanding, is the living being that is me. I for one, have no problem restricting judgement to conscious mental activity, for I assert without equivocation that is impossible for me to judge anything whatsoever, if I am not conscious of what is being judged.
The current issue of Philosophy Now magazine has an article by columnist Raymond Tallis that is critical of Hoffman's theory. He accuses Hoffman of "Darwinitis" : "the claim that evolution completely explains the human person". But I didn't get that impression from The Argument Against Reality. Instead, he uses the step-by-step heuristic*1 mechanism of adaptation to illustrate how an incomplete understanding of Reality could be "good enough" for practical purposes*2 . Presumably, long-suffering Evolution is not concerned with perfect adaptations, only workable solutions. Tallis also accuses Hoffman of "self-refutation". As a truth-seeker himself, Tallis is especially critical of Hoffman's "Fitness Beats Truth" theorem. But that's how evolution works, as opposed to the one step perfection of divine creation.
Despite the messiness of reality, Philosophers like clear-cut conceptual categories. So, Tallis's put-down of Hoffman's theory seems to assume that Idealism and Realism are mutually exclusive. And that is indeed how those worldviews are typically presented, by believers in one paradigm or the other. But my BothAnd worldview treats those clashing categories as just one of many apparent paradoxes in both Philosophy (e.g. Sorites) and Physics (e.g. wave/particle). We may not like those contradictions, but we have no choice but to learn to live with them. Whether the world appears Materialistic or Idealistic depends on how you frame your perspective. Either/Or thinkers are not able to deal with the complexities & contradictions of heuristic evolution, and its hybrid offspring*3.
I wasn't familiar with the Multimodal User Interface (MUI) theory, but after a quick scan it seems reasonable*4. Human perception receives inputs of raw Data from the environment, and converts it into the meaningful information that we call Concepts. The Data represent the concrete Reality outside the Mind in terms of abstract bits of energy (photons), but the brain transforms those "particles" of energy into meaningful integrated images that are not real, but merely maps of reality. It seems that Tallis is criticizing Hoffman for making a distinction between a useful Map and the actual Terrain. :smile:
*1. Heuristic : a trial & error process that produces many imperfect candidates, and selects the ones that survive the rigors of reality to serve as candidates for the next round of trials. This error-ridden method may never reach final perfection, but it gets closer at each step. For example, biological evolution, after billions of trials, has produced the human brain as the epitome of survival fitness. Yet, the brain is still subject to imperfect representations (optical illusions), some of which may be adaptive for pragmatic purposes.
*2. Practical Adaptations are Pragmatic, not Perfect, and not Ideal. They have short-term survival value. Likewise,pragmatic Science never reaches absolute Truth, but it does get incrementally closer to truth.
*3. How hybrids have upturned evolutionary theory :
Hybrids are not an evolutionary bug. They are a feature. That knowledge is changing the way people think about evolution.
https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2020/10/03/how-hybrids-have-upturned-evolutionary-theory
*4. Truth and fitness, they claim, are not rival strategies, but rather the same strategy, seen from different perspectives.
https://meaningfulparticipation.org/posts/multimodal-user-interface-theory
Sure. But my point wasn't about truth as such, it was about the nature and validity of science and empirical data, which surely has a compromised status if human senses are not able to apprehend reality.
Quoting Wayfarer
1, This is just a definitional stipulation.
2. There is a presumption here that nature is well understood, through and through. We have a comprehensive, mostly consistent and coherent body of scientific understanding of nature, nature as it presented to us, and that is really all we have. We also cannot help thinking that nature is something in itself, but that thought just establishes the realization that our understanding is necessarily limited.
It does seem that all those things which appear non or quasi-physical supervene on the physical; so that is true as far as appearances go.
3. States how thing appear to be.
4, There doesn't seem to be any credible evidence for the existence of the supernatural, if we don't count imaginings, intuitions and intimations as some kind of evidence. Should we count them as evidence? I would say they cannot count as publicly available evidence, so the answer is 'no', since we cannot corroborate them inter-subjectively.
Right, the mystical is beyond all explanation, whether beneath or above.
Quoting green flag
I don't understand what that sentence means.
Quoting green flag
I think we can imagine that the world might not have existed (well I can at least). And even if we could not imagine that, I don't see why existence should not elicit a feeling of wonder.
Quoting green flag
I don't understand the contingencies of existence to be tautologies, or say how they could be so understood, so I'm afraid you've lost me here
My current way of understanding the claim is in terms of being not being itself an entity. I believe Plato made a point like this (good beyond being ? the sun ?). Kant wrote that existence is not a predicate. The world worlds. But of course it does, right ? How could it not? I tend to say 'contingency' but I'm not sure that's quite it. Why should there be a here here ? But is that question really a question ? What makes a question legitimate ? What kind of answer could we possibly expect to satisfy us ?
The experience that we need in order to understand logic is not that something or other is the state of things, but that something is: that, however, is not experience.
Quoting Janus
I think Wittgenstein is saying that there's an [s]experience[/s] that doesn't count as an experience in the usual sense. It's not a seeing of this or that being the case but more like seeing that anything at all is the case. 'Something is the case.' That's his most minimal mysticism maybe ?
Deep ? Dopey ? Both ?
Quoting Janus
I think W is saying that there's something (somethingness, nothingness) he can't imagine away. So strip it all down to total darkness, but the darkness and void remain. As Sartre put it, the voice that can not shut up. Perhaps I can imagine that what happens to be the case is contingent. But maybe I can't think something-or-other-being-the-case as contingent. I have to read this in the context of what W wrote in the TLP. It's not how but that the world exists that is the mystic. I believe he was distantly sympathetic to what he heard of Heidegger, perhaps as another thinker thrusting against the limits of logic/language.
It is either raining outside or it is not. That is the case, the way things are. The sky is blue or it is not. We cleave the possible down the middle. But that's the situation, which is just here/there.
[It] gives. Es gibt.
Kant's criticism of the ontological argument.
Yes, I know. I wasn't saying that it was Plato's idea but connecting dots. Plato. Kant. Heidegger. Sartre. Wittgenstein. We can add Parmenides I guess. Who else tried to point out that something was the case? And that maybe that was weird ?
Do you happen to know what Plato called it ? Was it symbolized as a sun ? I read about it recently. The good beyond being or something ?
One weakness in the 'desktop metaphor' is that at least a computer scientist will understand exactly the real operations that are being performed by the user interface, right down to the machine code and micro-electronics that underlie it. A scientist could explain comprehensively what the icons really are and how they work to achieve the user's purposes. I don't know if Hoffman can have any corresponding ontology of what the real connections are between perceiving subjects and objects that correspond to his metaphor of creatures manipulating icons. He says it's not real - compared to what?
In classical philosophy and theology, you will frequently encounter the notion of The One or The Good as 'beyond being'. What I think this actually means is 'beyond the vicissitudes of existence' - all material phenomena - everything that exists - is compounded, conditioned, and subject to change and decay. The search was always for that which is not subject to change and decay (which is also characteristic of mathematical knowledge in some degree as it is not subject to fluctuation or change.) The unconditoned was represented in Plato by the Ideas or the Form of the Good, which was 'beyond existence' in that sense - not coming into or passing out of being, but always so. Very much the subject of later and neo-platonism, and subsequently assimilated into Platonic Christianity. This is articulated very clearly (for such an abstruse topic!) in the SEP entry on Scotus Eriugena in a discussion of levels or planes of reality. Completely separate topic to this thread, however.
Yes. That's a good point.
Quoting Wayfarer
Hmm, I wonder... aliens? Interdimensional beings? Dissociated alters of a universal mind? Poker playing dogs?
The explanation is in the earlier exchange with you, in my response to your claim that one cannot be deceived by one's own feelings. The gist of what I said was that since some sensations strike us directly as beautiful, pleasurable, or painful, without conscious classification to that effect, it is necessary to conclude that the "decision", or "judgement", that these sensations are of such a character is performed at a level prior to conscious judgement.
The example was when I eat something which tastes "good", but isn't really "good" because it makes me sick. The result is that we have two completely Incompatible senses of "good" here, one according to the subconscious judgement inherent within the sensibility itself, and one according to the rational thinking. To understand this more clearly, look at any so-called "bad habit". The person is directly inclined toward a specific type of act because at the subconscious level it is judged as "good" by that "judgement" performed at this level, yet the rational mind judges it as "bad".
Instead of addressing this explanation which I provided for you, you simply responded with: "This is tantamount to proposing that sensibility thinks ,,, Have it your way". I addressed the "sensibility thinks" issue by stating that this is not a form of thinking, therefore we must conclude that there is "judgement" without thinking, and I took the "have it your way" as implying that you had no reasonable rebuttal to what I presented.
Now you pretend to have rebutted.
Quoting Mww
OK then, let's just call it judgement and get on with the show. That's how most philosophers write, using words in ways that other people might not be too familiar with, without special quotation marks to indicate special usage. I thought it might assist you to understand, if I used the quotations to indicate that my usage might be one which you are not very familiar with. That would be the case if you haven't done the analysis required to find the thing which the term refers to in that context. I think of it as a courtesy which I afford for you, but if you dislike it and it appears to you like a bad habit, let me know clearly, and I'll try to refrain in future discussion.
Quoting Mww
Incorporating this form of judgement into the more general conception of imagination does not eliminate the need for the use of the term "judgement" in reference to the various aspects of imagination. Do you understand that there is judgement, which is inherent within imagination as fundamental to it? This judgement must be independent from conscious judgement.
Take dreaming for example. Do you see that there is judgement, which is not conscious judgement, that is foundational to the dreaming process? Decisions must be made as to what will occur within the dream, otherwise the dream would be random in an absolute way. Of course dreams appear to the conscious mind as somewhat random in many ways, but not in an absolute sense. What the appearance of randomness indicates is that the judgement process involved in creating the dream is very inconsistent with the judgement process of the conscious mind, so it appears to have many random aspects.
This is analogous with the conscious judgement that something is "illogical". When one person judges another's judgement as illogical, this does not imply that the other's judgement is judged as not a judgement, it means that the judgement is not logical. Likewise, when we judge a dream as random, this does not mean that the judgements which created the dream are not judgements, it only means that these judgements are judged by us as random.
.Quoting Mww
This is why you are wrong, and I am right. If "to judge" is defined by the capacity to judge which your own conscious mind possesses, then no one else can judge in any way other than the way that you judge . So, evidence of differing judgements induces us to allow that others judge in different ways. There are judgements, and ways of judging which are inconsistent with mine. Therefore to recognize a judgement as a judgement I need to allow that judgements are not necessarily consistent with my way of judging.
So, your assertion that it "is impossible for me to judge anything whatsoever, if I am not conscious of what is being judged" says only something about your own judgements. It says nothing about other judgements which are not made by you, judgements which may not be consistent with your judgements. And, it is clearly wrong to exclude judgements made by someone other than yourself, from the category of "judgement", just because you did not personally make that judgement, and the judgement is inconsistent with yours. And, an inconsistent judgement implies that the mode of judgement is inconsistent with yours. Therefore it is very clearly incorrect to say that since your mode of judgement is conscious judgement, all modes of judgement must be conscious judgement.
Furthermore, when we allow that there are judgements made by others, we not only encounter the problem of judgements which are inconsistent with our own, but also judgements which appear to be "illogical". Further, we see judgements which appear to be completely irrational, immoral, unprincipled, rash, irate, emotional, and even random (like in dreams).
Therefore your grounds for 'all judgement is conscious judgement' is unjustifiable by the means you propose.
Quoting Tom Storm
It's not that "truth" has a compromised status. That would be a backward way of looking at things. We can still hold truth up to the highest standards. We simply need to recognize that empirical data and science are insufficient for truth.
This means that if science does not maintain truth as its goal, and receive guidance from other sources (metaphysics) its results will be less than truth. So for instance if capacity to predict replaces truth as the goal of science, it is not truth which is compromised but science which is compromised. "Truth" would only be compromised if we lowered it to what empirical data, or science provides us with. That's why I said it depends on how you define 'truth".
I do not work with gists; proper dialectics require I work with only what is given to me, and that subjected to my own understanding.
All youve said here most recently, makes no mention of that which I take particular exception, that being where in the system this judgement, where that which decides for me, resides. Youve maintained its residence to be in intuition, subsequently broadened its residence to sensibility in general. Hence, my objection that whatever you think this judgement is, sufficient for it to decide for me, being necessarily a conscious activity insofar as unconscious or subconscious decision making is inconceivable in accordance with the human intellectual system, the business of both this ambiguous form of judgement, and proper judgement itself, do not belong to sensibility, said objection expressed as tantamount to proposing that sensibility thinks.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You said this form of judgement in sensibility decides for me. Youll have to forgive me for thinking that the making of a decision requires some sort of conclusion derivable from some antecedent conditions, which is for all intents and purposes, a logical relation, in fact, a syllogism. If such is the case, it requires that sensibility be equipped for the construction of logical relations. So either sensibility thinks in the construction of logical relations, from which is given the necessity of two thinking faculties in the same system (what a mess that would be), or, judgement in sensibility which decides for me, is patently absurd.
By saying judgement which decides for me is not a form of thinking, thereby attempting to relieve the two thinking faculties dilemma, matters are made even worse, for now it must be told how a decision can be made for me which requires no logical relations.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Imagination is the thing I found in the analysis of your term in your context. I analyzed judgement and rejected it as philosophically ambiguous. Of course I would be unfamiliar with judgement, given the established abstract conceptual system to which judgement necessarily belongs. To use it, or any of its derivatives, no matter how disguised, other than as that system demands, is to destroy it altogether.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Nahhhh, you dont. Youre presupposing I have no idea what youre talking about. I say that because at the end of our first set of comments here, pg 6, theres a question for you left unaddressed, which would have given a different perspective entirely for what was initially a general agreement between us.
With that unanswered question, combined with my mentioning something about a form of judgement related to intuition and you changing that into a form of judgement contained in intuition ..weve digressed into irreconcilable differences.
All else is superfluous.
This might be of interest. It is, as I piece it together, Plato's argument against knowledge of the Good.
Hoffman's Interface theory is based on the mechanism of Darwinian adaptation. But I just came across a similar notion in Fire In The Mind, an overview of 20th century quantum science development. The book focused primarily on information coming out of quantum & complexity studies in Los Alamos and Santa Fe, New Mexico. In a chapter entitled The Democracy of Measurement --- after discussing the "collapse" (decoherence) of the wavefunction from superposition --- the author notes that the reason we observers normally see a classical reality, is that "the environment is monitoring everything all the time, collapsing wave functions, bringing hard-edged classicality out of quantum mushiness"*1. Therefore the Observer Problem only arises when scientists eliminate as many variables as possible (simplicity ; reductionism), in order to focus on, and measure, a single particle in an unnatural situation. But superposition is a Holistic property.
Outside the lab though, complexity rules. Hence, "In this democracy of measurement, we cannot really say which is the observer and which is the observed". Then, he quotes Wojciech Zurek, "Our senses did not evolve for the purpose of verifying quantum mechanics. . . . And when nothing can be gained from prediction, there is no evolutionary reason for perception". Based on sensory perception, the scientist observer creates an abstract (unnatural) model of quantum scale reality; which seems weird compared to Newtonian physics. To me, that quote sounded a lot like Donald Hoffman's conclusion, but drawn from a different field of evidence*2. So, regardless of any later spooky idealistic interpretations, Hoffman's basic observation rings true for me. Therefore, I'm guessing he simply means that our abstract mental models are "not real" compared to concrete*3 classical reality. :smile:
*1. How Does Classical Reality Emerge From Quantum Environments? :
It's not possible to make a sharp division between scales with quantum rules for small things and classical ones for big things that's the real point of the Schrödinger cat thought experiment. The world is quantum, all the way up.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2019/08/07/how-does-classical-reality-emerge-from-quantum-environments/?sh=341498214526
*2. The Interface Theory of Perception :
Our perceptual capacities are products of evolution and have been shaped by natural selection. It is often assumed that natural selection favors veridical perceptions, namely, perceptions that accurately describe those aspects of the environment that are crucial to survival and reproductive fitness. However, analysis of perceptual evolution using evolutionary game theory reveals that veridical perceptions are generically driven to extinction by equally complex nonveridical perceptions that are tuned to the relevant fitness functions. Veridical perceptions are not, in general, favored by natural selection. This result requires a comprehensive reframing of perceptual theory, including new accounts of illusions and hallucinations. This is the intent of the interface theory of perception, which proposes that our perceptions have been shaped by natural selection to hide objective reality and instead to give us species-specific symbols that guide adaptive behavior in our niche.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9781119170174.epcn216
*3. Concrete : existing in a material or physical form; not abstract.
Note-- to me this definition implies that quantum physics --- as abstracted into mathematical equations by scientists --- is meta-physical. By "metaphysical", I mean non-physical mental ideas & concepts. Is that spooky, or what?
The Tallis article has already been the subject of discussion in this thread:
Quoting Banno
Tallis' argument is clear. Hoffman claims on the one hand that "There are no such things as objects as they are usually understood as discrete items localized in space and time". But such objects are the very basis of the theory of evolution, and of science more generally. Hoffman thereby undermines the basis of his own theory.
Hoffman uses objective reality to deny objective reality.
He thinks he can do this because he thinks he can reconstruct reality. Hence his somewhat enigmatic rendering of consciousness as the PDA loop set out above, itself a rendering of his definition of "conscious agent" in terms of Markovian kernels. But exactly how conscious agents can engage in an evolutionary process that does not involve discreet individuals interacting is unclear.
If you are sympathetic, you might be able to explain Hoffman's view here.
A side note, on your suggesting that we accept paradoxes. Accepting a paradox is tantamount to accepting anything. (P & ~P) ? Q. The Principle of Explosion. An explanation that contains a contradiction explains everything, and hence explains nothing. There is a reason philosophy attempts to be clear and consistent. If your theory is not clear and consistent, then it is not worth considering.
https://philpapers.org/archive/ALLHCR.pdf
Also mentioned above.
Sorry mate, I don't think we're talking about the same thing. I made a small point about Hoffman's account of empiricism, not truth as such. But let's move on. :wink:
Hoffman defines consciousness in terms of PDA loops. But further, it's not this or that thing that is conscious, but that consciousness "builds" this or that thing - the rock is your view of a bunch of conscious PDA loops. Despite this appearing to be a form of idealism, Hoffman claims it is a form of realism, since the PDA loopy thingies are real even when outside of your consciousness...
So perversely, rocks are not real but PDA loopy thingies are.
But also, rocks are just PDA loopy thingies.
I don't see why we can't just go back to saying that rocks are real. Doing so sorta cuts to the chase, if you see what I mean.
That is, it seems to me that Hoffman is abusing words like "real" and "reality" in order to make good copy.
It's worth noting that he apparently consults for advertising companies.
Quoting Banno
So rocks are how the loopys appear for us so we can deal with them in our Darwinist survival world...
What then? Surely he's heading somewhere to sell us something more? :wink:
Yes. It reminds me of the point made by some that matter isn't 'real' and that all we see and experience is excitations in quantum fields. For a human being this doesn't really get us out of the world of rocks and bad pop music....
Quoting Banno
Why not say "Well, what would a rock have looked like if the rock had been a community of conscious agents?"
It would look like a bloody rock. Nothing has changed. So the "case against reality" leaves everything just as it was.
Seems to me Hoffman hasn't understood the point Wittgenstein was making; and that Wittgenstein undermines the pretension that Hoffman will "change your understanding of reality".
Untrue. Hoffman says objects and spacetime are part of the headset, which implies that evolution is, too. There's no contradiction.
Science, so far, describes the headset. Hoffman is trying to discern deeper structures which project into spacetime and gives us objects, evolution, and, most importantly, the taste of chocolate. :)
The book looks so self-cancelling from just that sample that I'm surprised an editor didn't bring it up. If we just see fitness then our seeing ourselves as just seeing fitness is just seeing fitness. And maybe it was good for Hoffman's profile.
Because evolution is in the headset, it explains what happens in the headset.
But "conscious agents" is Hoffman term's for what lies beneath the headset.
Can you rephrase your question?
Normally, in cases of clarity, that might seem be true. But when uncertainty is inherent, a compromise between competing opinions becomes necessary*1.That's why we call them "paradoxes"*2 (contrary opinion). If your opinion is different from mine, I could assume that you are wrong. But some differences of opinion eventually turn-out to be truish : a blend of yours & mine. And, since Psychology & Neuroscience are not yet "hard" sciences, Hoffman's "illusion" may be one of those cases. Besides, the Interface Theory is just an analogy, subject to various interpretations.
The most famous paradox in modern science is the wave/particle duality. In classical physics, a discrete particle is the opposite of a continuous wave. So the early quantum scientists debated the apparent combination of wave & particle properties. They eventually realized that the quantum scale of reality has different rules from the macro scale. Schrodinger's Cat paradox was not intended to be taken literally, but merely to illustrate the counter-intuitive nature of quantum physics. The Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum physics was intended to settle harsh differences of opinion about quantum reality. But the controversies continue to this day.
So, my interpretation of Hoffman's Interface Theory is that it is another cat-box paradox. Just as you would expect the cat to be either dead or alive, you'd expect that your senses, honed by eons of evolution, would convey accurate impressions of reality. But Hoffman's reality-in-a-box model is both/and : your mental reality and your objective reality must necessarily co-exist. Your opinion of reality may be different from mine, but that doesn't mean that you are wrong. It does suggest that mental Ideality & physical Reality coexist in the same world.
Therefore, I can accept Hoffman's special case paradox, about human perception & conception, without being forced to "accept anything", such as ghost sightings. However, like the Copenhagen consensus, the philosophical paradox may remain, even as the pragmatic science becomes more settled. At this moment, Hoffman's theory is considered to be "more evolutionary psychology than neuroscience"*3. Nevertheless, I find it useful for my non-pragmatic philosophical purposes. :smile:
*1. Quantum Uncertainty :
The quantum nature of the Universe tells us that certain quantities have an inherent uncertainty built into them, and that pairs of quantities have their uncertainties related to one another. There is no evidence for a more fundamental reality with hidden variables that underlies our observable, quantum Universe.
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/quantum-uncertainty/
*2. Paradox (against belief) :
[i]# a situation, person, or thing that combines contradictory features or qualities.
# a seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement or proposition that when investigated or explained may prove to be well founded or true.[/i]
*3. Interface Theory Accepted? :
[i]Q: Is Donald Hoffmans Interface theory of perception largely accepted? Or do most scientists think evolution has meant we perceive the world relatively accurately?
A:It is not largely accepted, but it is also not largely rejected. It provides an interesting way to work with the world, so it sits there as most theories do, considered whenever perception is considered, but not driving how we consider it.[/i]
https://www.quora.com/Is-Donald-Hoffman-s-interface-theory-of-perception-accepted-in-neuroscience
In which case conscious agents are just the trees and rocks an Homo Erectus of which we already talk, and his theory amounts to little more than a mathematical definition of something he - dubiously - claims is the same as consciousness.
That's not a paradox. The equations of QM are very clear, and certainly not contradictor. You cannot use them as an example of accomodating a paradox. Shut up and calculate.
That sounds right.
Q : So everything we see is one big illusion?
A : Weve been shaped to have perceptions that keep us alive, so we have to take them seriously. If I see something that I think of as a snake, I dont pick it up. If I see a train, I dont step in front of it. Ive evolved these symbols to keep me alive, so I have to take them seriously. But its a logical flaw to think that if we have to take it seriously, we also have to take it literally.
Q: If snakes arent snakes and trains arent trains, what are they?
A : Snakes and trains, like the particles of physics, have no objective, observer-independent features. The snake I see is a description created by my sensory system to inform me of the fitness consequences of my actions. Evolution shapes acceptable solutions, not optimal ones. A snake is an acceptable solution to the problem of telling me how to act in a situation. My snakes and trains are my mental representations; your snakes and trains are your mental representations.
**************************
Why aren't our sensory systems also lacking objective, independent features ? Why is my nose more real than the fart it smells ? Why isn't my skull a 'mental representation' ? But that crashes the whole system ! Brains are the dream of brains are the dream of brains... The notion of the mental depends on seeing the outside of an organism with sense organs in an environment with us. I model its awareness for solid, practical reasons (it might eat me or I it.) This same case can be made against all reductions of everything to mentality or perception or sensation. Such claims seem to need a skull in an actual ('non-mental') world somewhere or another.
We can also question just how significant the difference is between taking something 'seriously' as opposed to 'literally' (akin to instrumentalism versus realism, which turns out to be a sort of boring issue).
Neurons, brains, space these are just symbols we use, theyre not real. Its not that theres a classical brain that does some quantum magic. Its that theres no brain! Quantum mechanics says that classical objects including brains dont exist. So this is a far more radical claim about the nature of reality and does not involve the brain pulling off some tricky quantum computation. So even Penrose hasnt taken it far enough. But most of us, you know, were born realists. Were born physicalists. This is a really, really hard one to let go of.
...
The formal theory of conscious agents Ive been developing is computationally universal in that sense, its a machine theory. And its because the theory is computationally universal that I can get all of cognitive science and neural networks back out of it. Nevertheless, for now I dont think we are machines in part because I distinguish between the mathematical representation and the thing being represented. As a conscious realist, I am postulating conscious experiences as ontological primitives, the most basic ingredients of the world. Im claiming that experiences are the real coin of the realm. The experiences of everyday life my real feeling of a headache, my real taste of chocolate that really is the ultimate nature of reality.
So he makes most real precisely what is typically understood as most scientifically elusive ? The ghost in the machine ! Nothing else ever. How almost true it sometimes almost rings. His headache, his enjoyment of chocolate. This is a baby's understanding of reality, the coin of the nursery.
Ok, I'll be clear. I do not know exactly where, within me, this system lies. I know it must exist because the premises I've presented produce the logical conclusion that it must be. Secondly, I did not say that it "decides for me", simply that it makes some form of decisions or judgements.
And, your unjustified assumption that it is impossible for any type of unconscious or subconscious decision making, has been shown by me to be wrong.
Quoting Mww
Ok, your analysis leads you to "imagination". Now, further analysis of "imagination" itself, will demonstrate that there is judgement inherent within imagination, as my example of dreaming demonstrates.
Your assumption that "judgement" necessarily belongs to abstract conceptual structure has been proven wrong, with the evidence of real cases of irrational, illogical, emotional, and even seemingly random judgements.
Quoting Mww
I don't recall the unanswered question. If it is the question of where does this faculty of judgement reside, I do not see how this is relevant. When there is evidence that judgement has been made, the evidence is posterior to the judgement. The particular instrument which makes the judgement is very rarely evident in the effects of the judgement. This is why we cannot look at what was done, and know for sure who did it. Furthermore, we do not see the intention in the intentional act, nor do we see free will in the freely willed act. All of these conclusion can only be brought from a logical procedure.
So the question of where this faculty is, which makes the judgements, is not even relevant at this point. All that is necessary now is that we recognize the reality of those judgements. This is first and foremost the requirement we need before proceeding toward determining any further feature of that source of judgement. That is how we work with acts of judgement, like intentional acts, we first determine that there was intention involved, then we can proceed toward specifying the agent.
Boring, maybe, but also pretty decisive.
So the snake is... and here I'm trying to work out what it is Hoffman would say... some sort of community of interweaving conscious agents.
And yet, if the snake bites, you die. So "The snakebite is poisonous" is true even if the snake is not real? How's that?
Seems to me that instead we have two different descriptions of the very same thing, one as a snake, the other as a "community of interweaving conscious agents" or whatever happy for any of Hoffman's defenders to set out an alternative two descriptions doing very different things, but about the very same thing. And if that's so then the snake is as real as the "community of interweaving conscious agents".
That is, if his conclusion is that there are no snakes, then it does not follow from his argument. He can only reach a much less impressive conclusion, one that will not appeal to the boys quite so much.
He's just pushing a rhetorical point that is unsupported by his actual account, that we should treat his "conscious agents" as more real than snakes and trees and the other stuff around us.
He's playing on the word "real".
Maybe someone could call electrons useful fictions if they left ordinary stuff like microwaves alone. Personally I go with Popper's critical realism or something like that. But I understand why Mach was reluctant to embrace atomism. But what's the difference between instrumentalism and just entities as part of theories that might be falsified / modified ?
There's a frequent simile in Indian philosophy of mistaking a piece of rope for a snake. Typically it is used to represent misjudgement or being fooled by appearances. But in Hoffman's theory, if the snake is not really a snake, but only an icon, what does the icon represent? If it's not really a snake, then what is it? Answer seems to be 'we don't know'.
For that matter - is the Interface Theory of Perception falsifiable, in Popper's sense. It's hard to see how any empirical facts could be used to falsify a theory about the nature of empirical cognition.
I wonder where? What a waste of time.
The idea that what were doing is measuring publicly accessible objects, the idea that objectivity results from the fact that you and I can measure the same object in the exact same situation and get the same results its very clear from quantum mechanics that that idea has to go. Physics tells us that there are no public physical objects. So whats going on? Heres how I think about it. I can talk to you about my headache and believe that I am communicating effectively with you, because youve had your own headaches. The same thing is true as apples and the moon and the sun and the universe. Just like you have your own headache, you have your own moon. But I assume its relevantly similar to mine. Thats an assumption that could be false, but thats the source of my communication, and thats the best we can do in terms of public physical objects and objective science.
The first bolded claim seems bold indeed. Above there is talk of measurement, presumably using publicly accessible objects : measuring devices.
The second bolded claim is common enough in philosophy but a favorite target of criticism since the 20th century. Like the theory the earth is flat. Commonsense until you look closely.
He made some interesting and plausible points about perceiving quantities of water that might be worth something. But it's all dressed up in bad metaphysics. As you imply, what hurts us is real for that reason. I know you hate pragmatism, but it is inoculation against stuff like this.
Good question. We'd need a good formulation of it to check.
It strikes me as muddled from the start, in that it says the document icon on my desktop is not the real document. It's just not clear what the word "real" does here. Where is this mooted "real" document? On RAM? On the hard drive? The printed version? There simply isn't something that counts as the real document, beyond our saying it is so.
SO to my eye the whole argument is founded on a false presumption of an unambiguous "reality".
It seems like a metaphysics and therefore subject to other tests, like consistency and meaningfulness. Both criteria are entangled and difficult, though, since new concepts/metaphors basically change the rules as they are introduced.
:up:
I happened on a strong paper once that minimized the difference. I'd be glad to hear what you come up with.
:up:
I don't like the metaphysical wrapping paper, but it's probably cool to study some of this on the level of detail. I've programmed worlds with little creatures myself.
Suppose in reality theres a resource, like water, and you can quantify how much of it there is in an objective order very little water, medium amount of water, a lot of water. Now suppose your fitness function is linear, so a little water gives you a little fitness, medium water gives you medium fitness, and lots of water gives you lots of fitness in that case, the organism that sees the truth about the water in the world can win, but only because the fitness function happens to align with the true structure in reality. Generically, in the real world, that will never be the case. Something much more natural is a bell curve say, too little water you die of thirst, but too much water you drown, and only somewhere in between is good for survival. Now the fitness function doesnt match the structure in the real world. And thats enough to send truth to extinction. For example, an organism tuned to fitness might see small and large quantities of some resource as, say, red, to indicate low fitness, whereas they might see intermediate quantities as green, to indicate high fitness. Its perceptions will be tuned to fitness, but not to truth. It wont see any distinction between small and large it only sees red even though such a distinction exists in reality.
Perceptions aren't (typically understood as ) judgments. Concepts aren't being applied.What would it mean for them to be tuned to truth ? A one-one function from colors to types of objects ? That'd be a silly expectation. This looks like all kinds of tacit belief interpretation projection on eyes without mouths or even discursive minds.
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He seems to be making quite a few of the classic mistakes.
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Right. To me this looks like a metaphysical interpretation of QM. One can be more informal in an interview, but he's being hilariously reckless.
Yeah, odd. So applying, just for a discussion point, Davidson's radical interpretation, how would one know that the posited creature was seeing green, and not seeing quantity? The critter would say "the water is green" when there is the right amount of water, and "the water is red" otherwise; so a better account would be simply that for the critter, "red" means the wrong quantity of water in that creature's language, while "green" just means "the right quantity of water". That is, one cannot divorce the meaning from the use.
Yes, another rookie error.
How does Wittgenstein account for something like synesthesia? Some people talk about sounds and numbers having colours. Its certainly a non-standard way to use colour vocabulary, and yet we have some idea of what they mean. How could we even make sense of something like this if we dont think of colour terms as referring to something thats going on in their head (and not in ours)? It would be incorrect to say that such people just dont understand English and are using the words wrong.
I have some sympathy for where you are trying to go, but I suspect that you will not be able to formulate the problem clearly.
I think theres a distinction between sense and reference. It may be that the sense of a word is public, but I think sometimes its referents are nonetheless private. In the case of the person with synesthesia, when they talk about seeing red when hearing music they are talking about something that I cannot see. They are referring to some aspect of their experience that, perhaps in principle, I am unable to access for myself.
And if we return to the example you gave of the red and green water, perhaps such a person has some special kind of synesthesia and they quite literally see the water to be green when it is of a certain quantity and red otherwise. How does that affect your conclusion that a person who describes water as being red or green depending on its quantity must therefore be using the words differently and so mean something different?
Sure. You do not have my pain. That's just a fact of the way "pain" works of the grammar of "pain". There's nothing "in principle" that prevents my feeling a pain in your toe, except that that is what we mean my my toe and your toe.
Quoting Michael
How could you tell they see the water as green? Ex hypothesi, there is no distinction here. What difference would there be between the critter saying "There is a good quantity of water" and "the water is green"?
I cant, thats the point, just as I cant tell that someone sees the number 7 as red. But people really do see the number 7 as red, much in the way that I see blood to be red. So I think the notion that meaning must be related to some public measure of use doesnt work, and why Im suggesting that the empirical evidence of synesthesia is evidence against Wittgensteins armchair philosophy.
Yeah, you can, because they can tell you. Indeed, that's how we know about synaesthesia. It's not private.
And the critter tells me that the water is green. So why is that evidence that he means something different by the words red and green but the person who tells me that the number 7 is red is evidence of synesthesia?
Quoting Banno
I dont quite understand what you mean by private. His experiences, the things he talks about, definitely are private; I cant see them for myself. I just have to take his word for it that things are as he says they are.
It isn't evidence at all, of any private unsharable phenomena. Quoting Michael
Sure, but that does not mean you have no idea of what he is talking about. We do understand when someone else talks of their pain, despite not being the one experiencing it. And we do understand what synaesthesia is, and we understand that it happens to them but not to us. I rather think that if you hold it to be private, then it's up to you to explain how you are using the word.
But let's look at what we agree on. We agree that some folk have synesthetic experiences, but that I am not amongst them are you? We agree that there are a variety of such experiences, from sounds associated with colours through to feelings associated with seeing someone touching someone else.
So, going back to your question, how does any of this pose a problem for Wittgenstein, or for Davidson? It seems to me to reinforce his point, that what we talk about is public, and if it is private it drops out of our conversation.
And that is pretty much what I would offer as "what I mean" by private and public.
I still dont understood what you mean by private. It sometimes seems that by it you mean something that cant be talked about, in which case its a truism that we cant talk about something private. Is that all you mean? Because that makes for the claim that what we talk about is public the redundant claim that what we talk about is what we talk about.
Quoting Banno
This is one such example. By unshareable do you mean cant be talked about?
Its not what I mean. I can talk about my experience, but I cant show you my experience. You cant share in my experience. Thats what I mean by private and unshareable. My experience is mine alone, but I can still talk about. So I am talking about something private and unshareable.
A private language is a language that someone else cannot understand. Hence, if something is private, the it is not available for discussion.
Yet synesthesia, and pain, and the colour red, and so on, are available for discussion. Hence they are not private.
So there is something deeply problematic in philosophical discussions that propose private "phenomena" that they then proceed to describe in detail.
Anyway, that's a side issue to your suggesting that synesthesia is problematic for Wittgenstein. Have you droped that view?
I'm also not keen on behaving like Mww and Meta by discussing material that does not address the OP. Can we move back towards Hoffman? There's another new thread relating to Private Language, we can go there if you like.
By private phenomena I dont mean phenomena that cant be talked about. I mean phenomena that happens to one person but not to another. When the person with synesthesia sees the number 7 as red and talks about it being red he is referring to a phenomenon that I have no access to. I cant see that the number 7 is red. The redness of the number 7 isnt some mind-independent property of some external world object that I can test for. The redness of the number 7 is entirely inside his head, and thats what I mean by private. And yet he can talk about it and I can understand it (to an extent).
No.
Problems occur when someone makes claims such as that "you cannot know what my pain is like". Happy to talk about that on the other thread, but here, can we go back to Hoffman, or at least to why synaesthesia might be problematic for Wittgenstein?
Edit: continued on Problems studying the subjective
There you go again. Were not talking about the location of a system, but only the location of a faculty within it.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Man, your system is nothing like mine. Not only do you not know where a faculty is within a system, it is irrelevant where it is. But youre still going to insist this faculty does something, despite not knowing the influences on it given you dont know where in the system it is found.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Using your parlance, the reality of any judgement just is that judgement. Even basic understanding grants judgement to be merely a conclusion of some kind, which immediately presupposes that which makes it possible. So not all that is necessary is the reality of a conclusion, which wouldnt even occur without its antecedents. Besides, we dont care about the reality of judgements, insofar as we cannot possibly escape them. What we care about, is their validity, which cannot be determined by the judgement itself.
Odds are Im going to regret this, but it might be helpful to know what you think judgement is.
I didn't give wave-particle duality the label : "paradox". That what the scientists trying to understand the evidence of their experiments called it, when it contradicted their classical expectations. Einstein & co. tried to contradict their contradiction (the Copenhagen compromise or accomodation to uncertainty) with the EPR paradox*1*2. This was a difference of opinion among experts : literally a para-dox*3. Is Zeno's paradox really a paradox, or simply the result of inappropriate framing of a question?*4
Schrodinger's equation is clear : the physical status of subatomic particles depends on how you look at it. So different observers and different setups (frames) reach different conclusions. And a difference of opinion (belief) is a paradox. As far as the scientists can tell, there is no Fact of the matter. A particle in superposition is neither a localized object nor a continuous wave, so they punted*5 and called it a "wavicle". Which is a contradiction of Newtonian physics. So, I stand by my use of quantum physics as an example of scientists forced to "accomodate" to a paradox, in order to leave them free to "shut up and calculate". Now, what was the question? :smile:
*1. The EinsteinPodolskyRosen (EPR) paradox is a thought experiment proposed by physicists Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen which argues that the description of physical reality provided by quantum mechanics is incomplete
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Podolsky%E2%80%93Rosen_paradox
*2. Copenhagen accomodation :
Quantum realism rejects both physical realism and Bohrs Copenhagen compromise.
https://brianwhitworth.com/quantum-realism-3-1-4-the-copenhagen-compromise/
Note --- words related to accommodation, such as: compromise, reconciliation, adaptation, compliance, composition ...
*3. Paradox etymology :
mid 16th century (originally denoting a statement contrary to accepted opinion): via late Latin from Greek paradoxon contrary (opinion), neuter adjective used as a noun, from para- distinct from + doxa opinion.
*4. Framing contradictory evidence :
So the crucial question becomes: How can something be both a wave - spread-out over space with a succession of humps and troughs, and at the same time, not spread out - a tiny, localised point-like particle? This dilemma is known as the wave-particle paradox.
https://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/science/physics-and-astronomy/physics/paradox-wave-particles
*5. Punted: To Give Up
But as an idiom, to punt means to give up, to defer action, or to pass responsibility off to someone else.
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Right. And note what seems to the unquestioned dominance of the 'label' metaphor. 'Green' is thought of as labeling some immaterial Experience. This is flat earth semantics, in that makes sense at first but turns out to be more wrong than right.
More generally, it looks like the rhetorical crowbar of fancy math is used against the boundary of science and metaphysics / religion. The flight from death looks to be a motive, and the theory seems to try to make belief in an afterlife more respectable among 'intellectuals.'
***
I want a scientific spirituality in which we begin to explore a world beyond space and time. But we do it with mathematically precise models, and we start to address the big questions about why are we here and what is human consciousness about? Where did it come from? What's the meaning of life? And so forth. Topics that scientists have in many cases said we dont need to address. But in fact, they did address them. From the physicalist framework, the answer was, there is no life after death. There is no deep meaning to life, because once your brain dissolves, that's it. And so they really did have a theory of life and transcendence: there is no such thing, there is no transcendence. But now all sorts of possibilities open up for exploration. And I'm pretty excited about it. So science and spirituality, I think, could really start to collaborate. But scientists have to let go of spacetime and spiritual traditions have to let go of dogmatism. Not easy.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/consciousness-self-organization-and-neuroscience/201912/what-is-reality-interview-donald
Scientists have to let go of spacetime ?
On a piano I hear B. But that is a story for another thread.
One problem with this privacy talk is the implied possibility of a p-zombie. You insist that some locked door exist which can never be opened, and then you tell me what's behind it.
Your justification is that you seem to find yourself in such a locked room ? If AI gets good at reading your mind, will that change your mind ? Or will there always be an ineffable 'surplus' ? As if the public sign system is 'bathed' in [s]Being[/s] which cannot be truly named ?
Certainly a logical possibility. Maybe not a physical possibility. It could be that first-person experiences are an unavoidable, deterministic consequence of a sufficiently advanced responsive organism.
Quoting green flag
Depends on how it works. If we ask people what they feel when this area of the brain is activated, and they say pain, and then we feed this information into an AI, then that the AI is able to check to see if that area of the brain is activated and tell me that I feel pain isn't "mind reading" at all.
If it could know that I'm in pain despite not knowing anything about how brain activity correlates to self-reported feelings then that would show evidence of mind reading, and would suggest that first-person experiences are reducible to physical phenomena, and so not essentially private.
How does this not avoid the homunculus fallacy though? The ghost is already in the machine. That is the very thing to be explained though. It's too "just so" or "brute fact" perhaps?
I don't understand the issue. If I say that it's an unavoidable, deterministic consequence that heating an ice cube above 0 degree celsius will cause it to melt, am I committing an homunculus fallacy?
These are all physical events. If you said to me, "a feeling of melting is felt by the ice cube", becomes a question of "how?". And you can say, "feeling like something" is a property of the universe. And then I would question that further for explanation. Otherwise yes, that is just brute fact and not useful. Why is blue? If you said, "Blue is one part of the universe sensing blue" then we have some circular reasoning.
And it might be a physical fact that a sufficiently advanced brain will cause first person experiences.
Quoting schopenhauer1
If someone were to claim that "feeling like something" is a property of the universe, this would raise questions about what is meant by "feeling" in this context and how it is related to the physical processes that occur in the universe. Without a clear explanation, this claim would not be useful in helping us understand the world around us.
Similarly, the question "why is blue?" is not a meaningful question unless it is clarified what is meant by "why". If we were to say that "blue is one part of the universe sensing blue", we would be engaging in circular reasoning, as this explanation simply restates the fact that blue exists without actually explaining why it exists or how it is perceived.
How could something like this be checked or falsified ? What kinds of things do we in fact take for possessors of 'firstperson experience'? Talking primates like ourselves. Soon though we'll have the situation present in Her. The trans controversy today may be nothing compared to the synth controversy tomorrow. The coming androids, ambiguous digital mirrors, as they are given more of a body, including sense organs, are going to freak us the fuck out.
If p-zombies are a logical possibility, then there's something wrong with firstperson experience as a metaphysical concept. It's as elusive as the meaning of being. The 'hard problem' might be semantic, a thrust against language. Any given objective criterion for Experience or Consciousness 'feels wrong.'
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Yes. And if someone methodically designates an elusive entity that cannot, even in principle, be plugged into the rest of the causal nexus, then it's no surprise that science can't help us with it. It's been defined as exactly what concepts can't address.
Yep. That seems to be the case. Good way of putting it "cannot..be plugged into the rest of the causal nexus" and a "surplus" or "remainder of public inquiry". Precisely. The thing that provides the very foundations of knowing, interpreting, sensing, and perceiving of the other phenomena seems to be itself elusive.
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'We don't know what we are talking about.' Of course we know practically well enough, but it's like fog that we mostly don't notice is fog. We repeat the party line. We ourselves are bots, who mostly don't notice it, spitting out a blend of what we've gathered -- sure that we 'really exist,' without being able to say what that means.
I wouldnt say its elusive. Id say that my first person experience is the most self-evident thing there is to me. And I have no reason to believe Im special, so I assume others have it too.
I don't think @green flag meant that way of being elusive. Rather, I think he was meaning that it's elusive in how it fits in the narrative of other phenomena. It's "wrong" in terms of being "not at home" with the other things that that very experience interprets. He can correct my interpretation of him of course, if I am wrong on that.
I think it might help to put aside the question of a private language for a moment. If I point to a mark '7' and ask what you see and you say "the number seven" then there should be no problem of agreement. But if I ask if it is purple you will either see it as purple or not. This much we agree on, we see the mark and identify it as the number 7. If I hold up some color samples we are likely to identify the same chip as the purple one. Of neither of these would we say that what we see is in our head in distinction from something we can point to and others can see as well?
What then is the difference between me seeing the sample as purple and seeing 7 as purple? Have I added something in one case and not the other? We might say that the difference is that only I see the 7 as purple, that I am seeing something that is not there. But is it the case that I am adding the color to the 7? Perhaps that is simply the way I see it. Is what we all see public and what only I see private? Or is there perhaps something wrong with this whole way of looking at it?
What would someone who did not know our number symbols see when the saw '7'? Would the see the same thing or different things if the font changed? Would we see it differently or would changes in some aspect of its shape escape our attention because we see 'seven'? Do we see two different things, the number and the shape or three, number, shape, and symbol? Is seeing the number in our head? Is what we see culturally conditioned? Is what we see something added?
All of this makes clear that what we see is not simply passive reception of things in the world. But neither is it, as Hoffman would have it, an illusion.
I thought you might appreciate that.
Is this synthetic or analytic knowledge ? A discovery or a paraphrase ? What is the nature of this self-given self ? Is this person itself given ? Are you a 'pure witness' before which there stands an empirical ego which is transparent to itself ?
Whence the unity of the voice that speaks I can doubt therefore I am. What is this 'I'? Why not an 'it' or a 'we' ? What does it mean to say 'I am' or 'there is something'?
This is not unlike Aristotle's articulation of 'common sense' that I quoted in another thread. We are shrewder now. We have asked after the nature of this 'he.' And you more than others have surely studied thinkers who doubted this traditional vision of the self ?
The tautological unity of the self, the singularity of the ghost presumed to steer the machine, is a worthy theme.
Husserl also criticized Descartes for relying on the language of subject and object, which he believed reinforced a dualistic view of the world. According to Husserl, this dualism created a separation between the subjective and objective worlds, which he believed was a mistake. He credited Descartes with the breakthrough of realising the fundamental role of the subject, but then mistakenly portraying it as a 'thinking thing' - a 'little fag end' of the natural world was an expression he used. That is what becomes the subject of Ryle's criticism of the ghost in the machine, subsequently rectified by the analysis of the embodied cognitivists.
(Plaque Flag? I thought we were done with rotating user ID's.)
Telling an Australian how to punt? :lol:
In the post in which this discussion started, you claimed that one could accept idealism and realism simultaneously, that this was an acceptable paradox, analogous to other supposed paradoxes.
It isn't. It's more a failure on your part to understand what is involved in realism and idealism, commensurate with your general naive understanding of other philosophical issues.
Philosophy consists in attempting to say things clearly. Concatenating diverse ideas is poor philosophising.
Yeah, I'll get pilloried for being too direct. Philosophy is hard. I'm not claiming to have all the answers, I might be wrong, yours might be a brilliant and correct approach. But I'm not seeing it.
Might leave it at that.
Philosophy certainly seems hard to me and no matter what you think you have learned, there are constant set backs. I think your approach is collegial and helpful. It's fascinating to see people getting angry or irritable when there's a disagreement. You like to tackle an argument head on and why not?
Quoting Wayfarer
Which you would expect from someone who has made a set of different assumptions. I'm not clear if Husserl has actually resolved the question of dualism or simply bracketed the matter.
Husserl seems to be saying that the categories of mind and body are an abstraction and that everything is understood as pure experience or transcendental consciousness. Can you clarify? And does this really resolve the question or just push it to one side? I'm not aware of Husserl ever answering the mind body question, he just seems to have it in for Descartes' legacy on Western thought. Would anyone argue that Husserl was a successful monist? It seems to me that what remains is an 'I' who is experiencing consciousness and a body which the 'I' uses to interact with the life world.
yeah, it does. There are papers I came across where he and his students claim to be clarifying more empirical stuff, like vision, and he gives some account of his solution to the combination problem, and a rough account of how a wave function is supposedly identical to a Markov chain, although in my limited understanding it appears to happen by saying it is so rather than demonstrating that it is so.
The reply to the objection that his account applies equally to non-conscious entities, "Even if the definition could apply to unconscious agents, that would not preclude it from applying to consciousness, any more than using the integers to count apples would preclude using them to count oranges" seems to me to beg the question. As I said earlier, his claim that what is described by his mathematics is the very same as what we call consciousness remains conjectural; a long bow to pull.
To say nothing of qualia as probability spaces. Your red, here, now as an equation...
But there might be something here that is usable. Who knows.
I'm reading it again - it's the subject of several chapters in Crisis of European Sciences which I bought recently (dense and difficult text). Husserl's claim to fame is, obviously, the founder of phenomenology, and as such the principle source of what is now 'the Continental Tradition'. The schools of enactivism and embodied cognition draw a great deal from phenomenology. (All these sources I've only become familiar with through the Forums in the last decade or so and am trying to get up to speed on. By the way, very interesting article here on Collingwood, Gilbert Ryle, and the origin of the analytic/continental divide.)
There are forms of idealism that are suggested by both cognitive science (Hoffman and others) and also by at least some interpretations of quantum physics (going back to James Jeans and Arthur Eddington but with many contemporary representatives.) It might be that 'idealism' is really the wrong term for a lot of these ideas but what they have in common is the sense in which the world is constructed and shaped by the experiencing subject, rather than simply being a given (subject of 'the myth of the given') inscribed on the tabula rasa of the mind.
Indeed. I've only been reading this stuff for the past 2 years. I find this material fascinating.
Goodness, that brings back memories - of a well-thumbed paperback full of fuzzy black-and-white images that as a child I found awesome in the real meaning of that word; now we have the James Web.
[quote=James Jeans]The stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter...we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.[/quote]
[quote=Arthur Eddington]The idea of a universal mind or Logos would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory.[/quote]
[quote=Arthur Eddington]The physical world is entirely abstract and without actuality apart from its linkage to consciousness.[/quote]
$346 according to Amazon :rofl:
Quoting Wayfarer
I'd like that.
Thanks! I followed the link. I found some weird stuff !
The human mind is predisposed from early childhood to assume object permanence, to assume that objects have shapes and positions in space even when the objects and space are unperceived. It is reasonable to ask whether this assumption is a genuine insight into the nature of objective reality, or simply a habit that is perhaps useful but not necessarily insightful.
Does the human mind have object permanence ? Is the nature of objective reality sufficiently fixed or permanent for us to tell the truth about it ? Clearly we know that most objects are fragile, don't last forever. So is a denial of objecthood altogether ? Also, this dude should read Nietzsche. It's not a new idea that cognition tells us lies without which creatures like us could not survive. But one must be careful not to call oneself a liar.
[i]Evaluating object permanence on evolutionary grounds might seem quixotic, or at least unfair, given that we just noted that evolutionary theory, as it's standardly described, assumes object permanence (e.g., of DNA and the physical bodies of organisms). How then could one possibly use evolutionary theory to test what it assumes to be true?
However, Richard Dawkins and others have observed that the core of evolution by natural selection is an abstract algorithm with three key components: variation, selection, and retention (Dennett, 1995; Blackmore, 1999). This abstract algorithm constitutes a universal Darwinism that need not assume object permanence and can be profitably applied in many contexts beyond biological evolution.[/i]
How can one make sense of variation, selection, and retention without objects ? And it's silly to require that they last foreverandever.
The argument, roughly, is that those of our predecessors whose perceptions were more veridical had a competitive advantage over those whose perceptions were less veridical. Thus, the genes that coded for more veridical perceptions were more likely to propagate to the next generation. We are, with good probability, the offspring of those who, in each succeeding generation, perceived more truly, and thus we can be confident that our own perceptions are, in the normal case, veridical.
How can prearticulate perceptions be veridical ? Claims are true or false. I don't think we can say much about animal qualia, so it's a matter of this wavelength of light hitting that retina and what does or does not regularly follow.
When Gerald Edelman claimed, for instance, that There is now a vast amount of empirical evidence to support the idea that consciousness emerges from the organization and operation of the brain he assumed that the brain exists when unperceived (Edelman, 2004). When Francis Crick asserted the astonishing hypothesis that You're nothing but a pack of neurons he assumed that neurons exist when unperceived (Crick, 1994).
Gee whiz, what can be meant by perception if there are no brains ? I guess immaterial souls ? It's hard to imagine how the soul concept could have been invented if not by intelligent life sharing a world, keeping score, predicting one another, impressing one another, describing one another.
I'm saying : that's not radical enough. The self you can talk about is an object. Yes. But the self you seem to want to talk about, as I see it, is not even a self. Descartes assumed too much. He took the tribal language and its tradition of selfhood for granted. He never questioned whether his monologue was a monologue. The unity of the voice (the givenness of a selfoverhearing discursive self) is difficult but not impossible to question.
I play guitar and upright bass, mostly the jazzy end of blues. I read but too slowly to play at tempo.
I built a couple of guitars from parts, Tele style. I built a couple of amps from kits.
But lately I'm in an extended slump and haven't done much of anything. I used to do the local jams before we moved. Then COVID.
Wait. What's the topic?
Exactly ! and Heidegger took this all the way to primordial unity. That's why talking about the 'subject of experience' looks like a Cartesian distortion.
Yes, I requested one last name change. Our benevolent forum lord smiled upon that request. (Thanks again!) Think of me as the zombie bot version of @green flag.
It is empirically demonstrable that the Earth is not flat. You keep saying that the idea that meaning can be divorced from use is like believing in a flat Earth. But the latter is not empirically demonstrable, so it's a weak analogy and you haven't even offered any argument for why you think meaning cannot be divorced from use, but just repeated claims that it's wrong, whatever that might mean.
The analogy is meant to emphasize how initially reasonable Aristotle's assumption is. It's 'obvious.' It's also obvious there are 'more' rational numbers than natural numbers, but that is not the case.
I believe I have offered various arguments, and I constantly allude to philosophers who are famous for making just that kind of case.
It was a good analogy. :starstruck:
Note that I never offered the thesis 'meaning cannot be divorced from use.' I'm not saying it's a bad thesis.
I'm saying a certain theory of meaning doesn't make sense (at least I think there is a strong case against it.)
[i]Picture a tranquil mountain meadow. Butterflies flit back and forth amongst the buttercups and daisies, and off in the distance, a snow-capped mountain peak provides a picturesque backdrop. The melodious clunk of the cow-bells, the chirping of crickets, and the calling of birds provide the soundtrack to the vista, with not a human to be seen.
Now picture the same scene but from no point of view. Imagine that you are perceiving it from every possible point within it and around it. Furthermore, imagine seeing it from every possible scale: as if you were seeing it as a mite on a blade of grass, in every location, and then also, as a creature of various sizes, up to a creature the size of the mountain peak, and from every possible vantage point.
Then subtract from all these perspectives, any sense of temporal continuity any sense of memory of the moment just past, and expectation of the one about to come.[/i]
Having done that, describe the same scene.
Impossible! you object. How can I imagine any such thing?! It is really nothing at all, it is an impossibility, a jumble of stimuli, if anything this is what you are asking me to imagine! It is completely unintelligible.
Well, given some of the other posts here...
Funny you mention being in a slump. I've a couple of really nice Gretsch guitars, a resonator and a G5420T, which I mostly fingerpick; not all that well. I procured a rather beautiful black Epiphone Les Paul a few months back, with the explicit aim of making myself more fasterer and competenter in using a pick. I wasn't happy with the results, and so haven't played much for a month or so. I can't blame the equipment - All the gear and no idea.
Kit amps. Good? maybe if I spend more money...
Now, where were we...
Quoting plaque flag
Allusions to famous philosopher's arguments in lieu of laying them out in your own words (which I haven't seen but if there are such layings-out, then all you have to do is point out where they are) doesn't cut it for me; it reads like an appeal to authority.
Quoting plaque flag
Neither it nor the flat earth analogy are good in my view. The first can be empirically tested and the second is a matter of mathematical logic. Neither mathematical logic nor empirical testability are applicable in the case of the idea that meaning can be divorced from use.
Quoting plaque flag
OK, that's a turnaround. Banno said this: "That is, one cannot divorce the meaning from the use" and you responded with "Right".
Might put on some popcorn...
I agree, which is why I'm glad I don't tend to do that.
Oh yes we go way back actually. I will try to dance a merry jig.
Your word-craft is not in question, but if you want to make claims fine phrases don't make the cut, you need fine arguments. However, if you don't want to claim that meaning cannot be divorced from use then it's all good...
Quoting plaque flag
That's okay provided it's not virtual jig-a-jig. :wink:
I agree, but that's what made them analogies ( 'a similarity in some respects between things that are otherwise dissimilar'). I agree with Lakoff that we are metaphorical creatures. Also : math is understood metaphorically, even if proofs are theoretically computercheckable.
I agree that we are metaphorical creatures and that is precisely why I would say meaning can indeed be divorced from use.
Numbers as metaphors for objects?
I don't think that addresses my concern. Why should being be interpreted as experience ? In this world, the answer is pretty clear. We see other people and animals and take into consideration what they might do. If my dog sees a possum on our walk at night, she'll chase after it.
But in a world without sociality and embodiment, it's not clear how the concept of a subject versus an object would appear. Note also that you thought experiment as such assumes this world in which we live with our shared language.
I'm not arguing that meaning cannot be divorced from use. Or for it. I'm saying that the meanings of words aren't 'anchored' in or founded upon immaterial private experience. I'm saying (roughly) that meaning is established 'between' cooperative and competitive animals. Surely a language is marked on our brain in some sense (I should know more about this). We have evolved the hardware for just this kind of tribal software.
For instance, a stop sign does not mean something immaterial or private. It does not refer to some immaterial Form of stopping. We could never check or enforce something like that. Would it even make sense to say so ?
-- Stop signs refer to a private immaterial notion.
--OK. But how do I know if I have labelled the correct immaterial notion 'stop' ?
--You'll know it if you tend to put your foot on the brake when you come to the sign.
Perhaps the training gives rise to the 'illusion' of 'platonism.'
Where is the observer ? Does it have a body ?
It's not that so much as the same pattern being reused in new contexts. For the natural numbers, I highly recommend a structuralist approach. We could use entirely different symbols and it wouldn't matter, as long as we had something isomorphic. Numbers are roles.
Imagine an alien version of Chess with everything renamed, but all the movements and rules were otherwise the same. It's the 'same' game.
By 'observer' I'm referring to humans. 'Imagine that all life has vanished from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed. Matter is scattered about in space in the same way as it is now, there is sunlight, there are stars, planets and galaxiesbut all of it is unseen. There is no human or animal eye to cast a glance at objects, hence nothing is discerned, recognized or even noticed. Objects in the unobserved universe have no shape, color or individual appearance, because shape and appearance are created by minds. Nor do they have features, because features correspond to categories of animal sensation. This is the way the early universe was before the emergence of lifeand the way the present universe is outside the view of any observer' ~ Charles Pinter
What the observer brings to experience is a perspective, a point of view, only within which any statement about what is real or what exists is meaningful. Realism forgets the subject and seeks only explanations and fundamental causes which are inherent in the objective domain. But that is impossible, as the very source of that order is the mind of the observer (that's more or less straight out of Schopenhauer).
The Principle of Relativity doesn't say that accounts can be true from everywhere. It says that accounts can be true from anywhere. A good account can be put into the third person.
So sure, there's an observer, but that observe does not have to be oneself.
Quoting Wayfarer
Instead, imagine that you are giving an account from any possible point within it and around it. Furthermore, imagine giving an account from any possible scale: as if you were giving it as a mite on a blade of grass, in every location, and then, as a creature of various sizes, up to a creature the size of the mountain peak, and from any possible vantage point.
If you can give an account like that, you will have done good science.
Right, I'd say the meanings of words are not "anchored" in anything other than the fact that individuals associate them (as sounds or marks) with items they have experienced. It is arbitrary, the sound or mark can take other forms; obviously so. since there are many languages.
This association, I would say, is established by habit, which means by the usages one has grown familiar with. But a word can be made to mean anything that a logic of association, itself established by experience and by perceptual correspondences in a sense similar to Magick theory, allows.
any point of view is not no point of view.
The view from everywhere is not the same as the view from nowhere, but is the view from nowhere in particular. The view from everywhere is achievable in principle, but not in practice because it would involve infinitely many views. Another limitation on us sentient beings is that we may not have the perceptual apparatus, or be able to simulate it, to see the world as a fly does.
If there were a God that inhabits all creatures and all things and can see what they see, and could even see things from the POV of any and all fundamental particles, then It could achieve a view from everywhere but even such a god could not have a view from nowhere as opposed to the synthesis of views from everywhere, which would be from nowhere in particular.
This is why I like to talk about our 'lifeworld' or 'original' world. There's a scientific image which exists within this lifeworld and only makes sense in terms of this lifeworld. Do we agree this far ?
And like all idealism his philosophy is saturated with what he is trying to ground through subjectivity: the objective world, language, and society. When philosophers talk about the I, they presuppose the we, because they do not mean a single empirical subject but the universal form of subjectivity, an idea that assumes its instantiation in a plurality of individuals, i.e., society. When you say the observer, who are you talking about? I think youre talking not only about yourself but about lots of other actual people. Or rather, you secretly or unknowingly abstract away from lots of other actual subjects to the pure form of subjectivity.
That is to say, idealism is parasitic on the real. Both idealists and realists begin with the objective world, that which is not encompassed by the mind, but idealists dont realize it.
You say only within which [a point of view] any statement about what is real or what exists is meaningful, and I can equally say that only within a community of speakers is any such statement meaningful, and further, only within such a community does your observer even exist.
And who is well-known for having introduced the concept of 'lebenswelt' into the philosophical lexicon? (Oh, and yes.)
Quoting Jamal
That's more or less straightforward Hegelianism, isn't it?
Quoting Jamal
You mean, parasitic on the reality that exists in the absence of any observers, right?
:up:
Not that I know of. I havent read Hegel. How so?
Quoting Wayfarer
I mean the reality that the observers are part of and that is bigger than them.
The universal form of subjectivity is Kantian.
I love Husserl, and I've been reading The Husserl Dictionary lately, and I'm impressed by all the terms he forged. As far as I can tell, he never stopped evolving and changing as a philosopher. As you may know, Derrida was a Husserl specialist, and of course Heidegger was the bad son.
Incidentally, epistemology steps in here to say its only [s]from a[/s] in my single point of view that I can find any secure knowledge, the community of speakers being relatively uncertain. But thats just the Cartesian mistake, based on a presumed gulf between inner and outer and the choice to begin with the former.
I like the stressing of the choice to begin with the inner.
I suspect this is connected to Kojeve's framing of stoics and skeptics as denying/escaping their bondage in the real world by insisting on a secret, inner freedom --saving them from risking their lives in a battle with the lord of this world. Antithetical values. Spirit is invisible, immaterial, uncaged. Feeling is first.
Ah. I might call that abstraction or the methodical ignoring of differences that make no difference.
While association is a plausible explanation on the local level (how participants learn), I think it's worth focusing exactly on the social interactions involving signs and (for the moment) ignoring the internals of the participants. We can study words and other gestures, as if we were aliens, and learn to predict actions that follow such words, and so on.
The latest bots have only piles of examples from which to gather such structure. In my view, the coming triumph of these bots (their eerie facility with language) will force us to question what meaning is in a way that only a few weird philosophers have managed to do so far.
That sounds like Heidegger. Are you a fan of the work ?
I remember liking Adorno's The Jargon of Authenticity. Fascinating character.
As far as Heidegger's ideas being shared, I agree. I think the later Wittgenstein is pretty close to the early Heidegger. Lee Braver's Groundless Grounds makes a case for this. I also think Hegel and Feuerbach contain much that Heidegger is associated with. The point about unwittingly presupposing language is in Kierkegaard's journal. So it goes. Not much new beneath the sun. But I maintain that 'the Dilthey draft' of B&T is a mean 100 pages. Heidegger said it more directly (in terms of theses) (for better or worse) than Wittgenstein.
Yes, I was thinking about that. I read it years ago.
True, we can do that. If we didn't know a language and found ourselves stuck among its speakers with no one to teach us, we might have to learn that way. But if they had some words which signified certain
emotions that we didn't ever experience then we could never learn the meanings of those words until we were fluent enough to ask for explanations of them, in which case we might gain some sense of their meaning.
Quoting plaque flag
Perhaps, but I don't think it likely since we can be fairly confident that bots don't have any sense of meaning, which would mean they don't really understand what words mean, they are just programmed to be able to put coherent sentences together, a facility which relies on their being able to mimic grammatical structure based on statistical data showing how ceartin questions elicit certain kinds of responses. Or something like that, I imagine ("I imagine" since I know next to nothing about programming).
Quoting plaque flag
Yes we call it abstraction or generalization. If we are counting trees the differences between them don't matter, they just have to be similar enough to be counted as trees. It seems plausible to me to think this was done long before any conception of methodology had arrived on the scene.
But what if we are hardware 'designed' by evolution to do roughly the same thing ? These things can reason. They can outperform humans on important tests. It's starting to look like humans are superstitious about their own nature. As far as I can tell, it boils down to the problem of the meaning of being, the problem of the being of meaning, the problem of the thereness of 'qualia'. And I claim we don't have a grip on it. Don't and maybe can't say what we mean. That special something that sets us apart is requiring a more and more negative theology. We are the shadows cast by tomorrow's synthetic divinity ?
Add interaction to the mix, and I think babies must learn this way.
That's just it. Private referents don't make sense. Meanings and rational norms are public. That's how we can agree enough to intelligibly disagree. I'm not trapped in a little meatsuit. I'm softwhere, a locus of responsibility, an infinite task, a selfreferential vortext. We are made of the same signstuff, different experiment versions of the tribal ego, adversarial and cooperative candidates for partial assimilation by the tribe at large, memevendors with our shops on the same boardwalk.
Quoting Jamal
As the issue at hand is the role of the observer in the construction of reality, then the assertion of a reality that is 'bigger than the observers' begs the question - it assumes what needs to be shown.
.. When we try to discover the nature of the reality behind the shadows, we are confronted with the fact that all discussion of the ultimate nature of things must necessarily be barren unless we have some extraneous standards against which to compare them. For this reason, to borrow Locke's phrase, "the real essence of substances" is forever unknowable. We can only progress by discussing the laws which govern the changes of substances, and so produce the phenomena of the external world. These we can compare with the abstract creations of our own mind
(James Jeans, The Mysterious Universe, 1930, in Quantum Physics and Ultimate Reality Mystical Writings of Great Physicists, Michael Green, 2013)
Big doings back in those days, for sure. The ultimate Humpy Dumpty.
The deeper metaphysical issue here is that in order to say that what hurts us is real, we must assume that the hurt itself is real, because the hurt has logical priority. So the conclusion that what hurts us is real is derived from the premise that the hurt is real. Now the metaphysical question is what does it mean to be hurt.
This is where the icon analogy is relevant. Hurt is simply a meaningful sensation representing some sort of damage to the living system. We could say it's a symbol The base tactile sensations are all like this, pleasure, pain, soft, rough, firm, etc., they are simply symbols of meaning, significance. The higher senses like hearing and sight, or even taste and smell, are able to discern many finer differences, so they can build much more complex structures of meaning, through these many different symbols produced. But they all can be seen to be like icons, fundamentally, as symbols of significance.
Where the analogy is limited, is that unlike the icons we really do not adequately understand the underlying significance. And despite the claim of 'fitness" we really do not understand the value structure, upon which all these feelings, pleasure pain, etc., are supported. reproductive fitness really does not suffice here. Furthermore, we do not adequately understand the system which constructs the symbols either. So the real problem turns around this value structure which creates these symbols of significance, sensations. It must be a structure of value because the basics are grounded in the categories of pleasure and pain.
Quoting Mww
It's you who is creating the problem by saying that this faculty is 'within" the system. By doing this you are necessarily confining the possible location to 'within" the system. Now "the system" refers to something physical, the material body, so you've restricted us to a materialist premise by saying that this faculty must be within the system. This excludes the possibility that the faculty is related to the system, as cause to effect. In the case of freely willed, intentional acts, the system is the body, and the faculty moves the system. By Plato's analysis it is incorrect to say that the soul is "in" the body.
Quoting Mww
I agree with the first, the reality of a judgement is the judgement itself. Further, we can consider the effects of a judgement, and we might consider the causes of a judgement. Do you agree?
You say, that a judgement presupposes "that which makes it possible". By using the word "possible", this does not necessarily refer to the cause of the judgement, but more like the physical conditions which allow for a judgement to occur. Would you agree, that as well as "that which makes it possible", there must also be an actual cause, that which makes the judgement actual, and this we could call the agent in the judgement? So we would have the physical conditions which make a specific judgement possible, and also an agent which makes the actual judgement.
Why do you think that we do not care about the reality of judgements? Isn't this the debate of free will vs determinism, the question of whether judgement is real. Do you not apprehend the ramifications of this question, in relation to validity? If judgement is not real, and that which appears to be a judgement is causally determined simply by the passing of time, then there is no difference between valid and invalid. The apparent "judgement" is what it is, by causal determinism, it can not be otherwise. Any supposed further judgements like valid or invalid are completely unnecessary, and irrelevant, because the judgement simply is what it is.
I think that we are back to the principles of the argument against mistake in sensation. If sensation is simply a determinist cause/effect relation, then there is no mistake in sensation, it simply is what it is. But that's what I see as clearly wrong, because it leaves the human being without free will, and completely determined. Then judgement is not real.
Quoting Mww
That's what I'm working on bringing out. It seems you might already regret being involved in this.
What Wayfarer shows is that this proposal, the view from anywhere, does not make any sense. It is incoherent, an oxymoron, because a view must be from somewhere or else it would not be a view. Therefore your understanding of science, as being a view from everywhere, is wrong as incoherent, it does not describe what science really is.
You could alter that proposal, and say that science attempts to be a view from everywhere. But that makes no sense either, to say that science would attempt to do something which is illogical, as incoherent. So the proposal really just shows a misunderstanding of what science really is, or aims to do.
Fair point, but since I wasnt trying to show that there is such a reality, this might be a slightly unfair accusation. When I said that idealism is parasitic on the real, it was semi-rhetorical; I perhaps could have said, more boringly, that idealism is parasitic on that which is contingent and transient, which I happen to believe is the reality that is bigger than us. So Kantian-style idealism cannot thereby escape the accusation that it secretly depends on empirical facts--actual people and actual society--to ground its supposedly foundational pure a priori concepts, i.e., its posited transcendentally subjective conditions for objective reality. Since empirical facts are what this idealism is supposed to be explaining with these conceptual conditions, I'm effectively accusing idealism of question-begging.
In a nutshell I'm arguing that the subjective route to the objective, as exemplified by Kant and Schopenhauer, and more loosely other kinds of idealism that seek foundations in some pure and necessary universality removed from the quotidian chaos, are more grounded in empirical contingency than they think. This argument does not rest on realism, though it's motivated by it.
Quoting Wayfarer
And mine is straight out of of Adorno :grin:
However, it's interesting that Adorno's attitude differs from my own instinctive sympathies in that he is keen not to just join the realists against the idealists, while at the same time also criticizing idealism. This is to do with his basically dialectical approach to everything, where opposite poles are mutually dependent, and both idealism and realism are somehow true. Maybe.
But Im probably some way off-topic here; I havent read up on Hoffman.
Another unwarranted deductive inference. Excepting perception, no concept used thus far in this dialectic can be associated with a material system. In fact, I stated for the record Im working with abstract conceptual analysis, which makes explicit an isolated metaphysical system.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
In a closed physical system, it is the material that is necessary cause for metaphysical effect. But in the metaphysical system itself, any faculty contained in it is necessarily related to, but may not be caused by, some other faculty in that same system, re: cum hoc ergo propter hoc logical inconsistency.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Not in so many words, no. Given a purely logical metaphysical system, the consequence of judgement is determined by its antecedents. Cause/effect doesnt say enough, and there is an argument, perhaps too obscure for this particular discussion, that because cause/effect is a category and the categories are only applicable to empirical conditions, cause/effect does not apply to purely logical systems, which are concerned merely with rational form without regard for empirical content.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
In this case, cause is better than physical conditions, but again, with respect to a purely logical system, antecedent is better than cause. An effect presupposes its cause but does not presuppose any knowledge or understanding of it. In judgement, which is a logical conclusion, the antecedents are also presupposed, but they are always understood, in accordance with their respective placement and functionality in the system.
That there is an absolutely necessary physicalism involved here is given, but it is irrelevant with respect to metaphysical systems. The former we cant talk about because we dont understand enough about it to answer all it is possible to ask, we can talk about the latter because its very invention, from which its understanding is given automatically, was in order to talk about all it is possible to ask.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No. The agent is not in the judgement, the agent is of the judgement, although you might get away with agency is in the judgement. Judgement relates to an agent, insofar as the one belongs to the other, but an agent does not relate to a judgement, insofar as the agent does not belong to the judgement. Judgement relates to agency as the one is only possible from the other, and agency relates to judgement as the one is necessary for the other.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
As I said .they are inescapable. It is impossible that there be no judgement. Again, in accordance with the predicates of a particular speculative metaphysical system. Which of course, has absolutely NO WARRANT FOR BEING RIGHT. Logically coherent and internal consistent, yes; correct .not a chance.
Take a hint, fercrissakes!!!!
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
There is no mistake in sensation. Determinism from human sensory physiology grounded in natural law.
In a strictly representational cognitive system, on the other hand, in which the natural determinism of sensory apparatus, re: Platos knowledge that** or Russells knowledge by acquaintance, Kants appearance, is translated into purely logical explanations immediately upon loss of empirical explanatory knowledge, the loss of which occurs as soon as consciousness of the operations of the physiological system is lost, leaves the human being to fend for himself, but still legislated, not by natural law, but by logical law in the form of the LNC.
(**quotation marks here indicative of attribution to the respective authors terminology, to nip that in the bud)
The loss of consciousness of operational conditions and therefore empirical knowledge in fact occurs, but only at the faculty of intuition, an altogether abstract conceptual device, which is the point where real physical objects become represented as mere phenomena. We are not the least bit conscious of this activity, however physiological it still is, re: peripheral nervous system constituency, hence can say nothing about it with respect to empirical knowledge. Even more importantly, without this conscious awareness, we can say nothing whatsoever about the effect the real object has on the subject himself, which in turn reflects on the absence of subjective agency, which in its turn, eliminates any form of judgement being present in the faculty of sensibility.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Nahhh, I got nothing better to do. Beats the shit outta these woke social-media oriented dweebs topics hereabouts.
Anyway .editorializing aside ..Ive posited some boundaries/limitations on it, but Im going to wait til you work on bringing out what you think it is, before going further. Im sure youll bring along your own necessary presuppositions in support, cuz youre gonna need em.
Sorry if I was bringing "coals to Newcastle". I wasn't sure that the American football idiom would have the same meaning for those who are not allowed to touch the ball with their hands. :joke:
Apparently, my idiomatic use of the terms "Idealism" and "Realism" also did not translate for you. To some absolutist thinkers, they are like oil & water, which don't mix. But in the Enformationism thesis, aethereal Ideas & Real stuff grow from the same root : Generic Information. I don't expect you to blithely accept my idiosyncratic Holistic (multi-value) BothAnd*1 worldview. FWIW, it is a modern alternative to the ancient classical Either/Or (two value) compartmentation, which ignores complexity and divides the world into convenient categories and stark oppositions. Either/Or is an idealized worldview.
Instead, the 21st century BothAnd Principle derives from the 20th century Quantum Uncertainty Principle*2, which acknowledges a "fundamental limit" to human knowledge. BothAnd also accepts such counter-intuitive "facts" as Wave/Particle duality, for which you can't draw a hard line between those classical definitions. In my worldview, mental Ideas exist within the same Reality as material objects, not in some heavenly realm. So the line between Ideal & Real is arbitrary. It's all one universal system, stemming from a single source. Therefore, the exclusive Paradox exists in your mind, not in the world. :nerd:
*1. The BothAnd principle is one of Balance, Symmetry and Proportion. It eschews the absolutist categories of Idealism vs Realism, in favor of the relative compromises of Pragmatism. It espouses the Practical Wisdom of the Greek philosophers, instead of the Perfect Wisdom of the Hebrew Priests. The BA principle of pragmatism requires skin in the game to provide real-world feedback, which counter-balances the extremism of Idealism & Realism. That feedback establishes limits to freedom and boundaries to risk-taking. BA is a principle of Character & Virtue, viewed as Phronesis or Pragmatism, instead of Piety or Perfectionism.
*2. Uncertainty Principle :
In quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle is any of a variety of mathematical inequalities asserting a fundamental limit to the accuracy with which the values for certain pairs of physical quantities of a particle, such as position, x, and momentum, p, can be predicted from initial conditions. ___Wikipedia
It was an offhand remark, so I will say that 'what hurts us is real' is not a considered final thesis. But let me try to expand it so that it's more defensible. 'Hurt' doesn't refer to immaterial pain here. I mean instead damage to our ability to thrive and replicate. We are stubbornly persistent patterns who leap over the graves of our hosts. It's hard to see how a 'mind' (control module, tribal-individual software) will persist if it tends to ignore what is likely to harm it in this way. Patterns that don't tend to avoid harm (their destruction) and seek help (what they require) tend to vanish.
I think the issue is that the observer without observed is like the left without the right. Some concepts come in pairs.
If we are confident, is such confidence logically justified or just mere meatbias ? For most of our history, we have done what we like with machines, without worrying about their feelings, excepting of course some of the the 'machines' provided by biological evolution.
If 'sense of meaning' is understood to be immaterial and invisible to scientific and perhaps even conceptual approach, it's hard to see how such an assumption can be justified.
We're going to have to discuss these boundaries. I think your proposal of a purely logical system is untenable. There is no way to free ourselves from content in an absolute way. Some types of formalism attempt this task, but what happens is that the content gets hidden within the form and this leaves the logic less reliable.
Quoting Mww
I have no idea what you mean here by "metaphysical system".
Quoting Mww
It makes no sense to me, to talk about a faculty which is contained within a metaphysical system. A metaphysical system, to the extent that this makes any sense, would be the product of the faculty which produces it.
Quoting Mww
You've gone off on some strange tangent. What the heck is a "purely logical metaphysical system"? These assertions you are making are not based in anything. There is no such thing as "purely logical systems, which are concerned merely with rational form without regard for empirical content", because even a logical form requires expression through the means of symbols which demonstrate the method, and these symbols are empirical content.
Quoting Mww
Yes, this is the point, the agent is necessary for the judgement. So my point was that the agent, as cause, is something other than the conditions which make judgement possible.
Quoting Mww
I really do not understand what you are saying here. I'm not good at communicating through hints. If there are judgements, as you assert, then there is necessarily right and wrong. Right and wrong are the necessary presuppositions for judgement. If right and wrong are not presupposed, then there is no will to judge, therefore no judgement.
So, in you own words, you are being incoherent, and inconsistent, to say that it is impossible that there be no judgement, but also claim in the same statement that there is no warrant for being right. If judgement is necessary, then right or wrong is also necessary.
You've dug yourself into a hole, because in reality judgement is not necessary, it is freely chosen. Therefore it is possible that there is no judgement, and this is the first principle of some forms of skepticism, to suspend judgement. Once you allow that judgement is voluntary, rather than necessary, then you see that it is possible that there be no judgement, and only from this perspective could you conclude that there is "no warrant for being right". But the way you presented it, where judgement is necessary ("impossible that there be no judgement"), it is logically inconsistent or incoherent to say that there is no warrant for being right.
Quoting Mww
As I said, "purely logical explanations" is fictional nonsense.
Quoting Mww
You describe a situation here, in which judgements are being made (objects are being represented as phenomena) without conscious activity, then you make the inconsistent conclusion that there is no form of judgement present. If the object is not present in sensibility as the object, but instead there is a representation, or phenomenon, then we must conclude that something decides how the object will be represented. How do you not understand this? How do you think that something could make a representation without some form of judgement as to how this will be done?
Quoting plaque flag
The problem though, is that what is real, and present to us, is the feeling of pain. So when you talk about "our ability to thrive and replicate", this is just an interpretation of the real hurt, the feeling we get when we suffer such damage. And since this hurt may be interpreted in many different ways, this is why it is appropriate to understand these sensations as symbols.
Quoting plaque flag
This is but an initiation to the problem. We all die and vanish, so that's not the issue. The purpose of the hurt therefore is not to incline us to avoid the harm so that we do not vanish. Vanishing is already inevitable. So what is the real purpose of the hurt? Is it so that we might continue to reproduce? Surviving and reproducing are two very different purposes. The former promotes a continued existence of the same. The latter promotes difference.
Personally I reject the thesis that signs have private immaterial referents. I also reject the assumption of some immaterial Given from which an image of the forever otherwise hidden world is constructed.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I don't think so. We should probably look at what survival (persistence) of the pattern requires and work backwards. Instances of the pattern will only need to survive long enough to replicate. Of course we can make this model more complex. The point is that instances can perish once they've replicated but not in general before.
Just to be clear, we are 'instances.' We are relay runners for our DNA. Some of us don't pass the torch. Enough do though, so far anyway.
And there it is. Right in front of you the whole time. I wasnt going to use the word until you did, which sooner or later you must. No silver platters for you, though, nope, no way. Get there on your own, only way to the possible epiphanic moment.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
(Sigh) I said no form of judgement present ..in sensibility. But if I made an inconsistent conclusion, which is a judgement, but necessarily beyond, outside, other than by means of, sensibility fill in the blanks for yourself.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Been telling you all along how I think judgement as you use it could NOT be done, which presupposes I think how it can. It could NOT be used as youve been suggesting because eventually it leads to methodological self-contradiction, exemplified by, regarding phenomena, the notion of my concluding something when Im not conscious of that which Im concluding about. That Im not conscious of the construction of my intuitive representations, is a fact, even if such construction being necessarily the case for the operation of human intelligence, is not. Point being, such construction is nowhere contradictory, neither naturally nor logically, so while there may be no satisfaction with respect to empirical knowledge, there is complete satisfaction with respect to reason.
Horace Greeley: go west, young man!!!!
Me: Go deeper, young man!!
I'm talking about meaning. Do you accept that the same physical thing, the sign itself, might mean something different to me as compared to what it means to you? To me, that would indicate "private immaterial referents". "Referent" here implies what the sign symbolizes, or is associated with, for the individual.
Quoting plaque flag
Yes, this is exactly why reproduction and survival, as ends or goals, are completely different. If a particular instance of a pattern only needs to survive long enough to replicate, then survival is simply a means to the end, which is to replicate. Survival is only necessary so far as to replicate, and if replication could be accomplished instantaneously survival would not be necessary at all. So if replication is the goal, we can dismiss survival as not the real goal at all. Survival is not necessarily consistent with replication.
The problem with your presentation though, is that "replicate" is not a good word for you to use here. That is why I used "reproduce" instead. "Replicate" implies the production of a replica, a copy, but that is not what living beings do, they change through the course of reproduction, they do not replicate. This change is an essential aspect, as necessary for evolution. So we ought not call reproduction replication, because replication is not conducive to evolution, but reproduction is.
This difference is why it is important to separate reproduction from survival. If maintaining the very same being was what is important to life, then survival would take precedence over reproduction. But if change is more important than staying the same, then reproduction takes precedence over survival. The latter is what is the case. If you model reproduction as replication then you negate the importance of change, and you are left with little if any difference between survival and replication. Then you have no principle for the reality of evolution, which is change.
Quoting Mww
Well, are you going to explain, how something can make a representation without some sort of decisions or judgement as to what the representation will be of, and how it is to be produced, so that I can have that epiphanic moment, or are you just going to continue with your unsupported assertions that judgement requires a conscious mind?
Quoting Mww
All you've told me is that you believe that judgement necessarily implies conscious thinking, as a logical requirement. I've shown you how the existence of illogical, irrational, emotional, and seemingly random judgements, demonstrate that what you belief is not the case. The evidence shows your belief is false.
The "methodological self-contradiction" which you refer to is the result of your faulty definition of "judgement", which makes conscious thinking a necessary requirement for judgement. This leads to multiple levels of "thinking" within the same being. If you would divorce judgement from thinking, as the evidence of illogical, irrational, emotional, and random judgements necessitates, then this "methodological self-contradiction" would disappear. You would no longer be confronted with multiple levels of thinking because you would accept the reality of what the evidence indicates, that the act of judgement does not require any thinking at all.
Did that already. Sort of. Gave you the what, even if not the how. Doesnt matter; were not concerned right here right now with how its done, insofar as were not conscious of it, but only with how it cant be done because were not conscious of it.
What the representation will be of? Hell, thats a given: an intuitive representation, a phenomenon, can be nothing other than whatever is an object of perception, or a manifold of objects. And the reason that there is no deception here. Phenomena represent only what the senses provide, regardless of what that provision is. Hence ..imagination. That we make mistakes is also given; just that we must be conscious of them in order to know them as mistakes, which makes explicit we dont make them right here right now.
Remember .were still stuck in the domain you forced us into, by restricting the dialectic to perception, sensation and the deceptions therein, general sensibility. Im trying like hell to get us out of it, but Im not dragging you out kicking and screaming; you gotta get yourself out. Go into the light, kinda thing, donchaknow.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No. The evidence both of us show, is that it is incomplete. Theres more going on here than either of us have put forth, me because it hasnt come up yet, you because you dont get the full implication of what youve shown me.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I havent defined judgement. That conscious thinking is a necessary condition for the activity of judgement, does not serve as definition of it. Speaking of definitions, or, which is the same thing, asking about what it is ..silence, for which I have an excuse because I was never asked but you do not, because you were.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Ok, fine. All those are still judgements. We dont care about kinds; we want to know what any kind is, what all kinds are. What is it that makes any kind of judgement, a judgement. How did this kind come about; how did that kind come about, which inexorably reduces to how does any kind come about, or, how do all kinds come about. Only then can sufficient reason be given for why a self-contradiction might disappear, which would seem to require from you a proof that thinking is not a requirement for any kind of judgement, in spite of at least a logical proof I gave that conscious thinking is a necessary requirement for at least one kind, that being with respect to phenomena.
So youd have it that, e.g., an irrational judgement, is that judgement entirely divorced from thinking, but I would maintain that an irrational judgement is that judgement concluded from improper thinking. Your way cannot explain the irrationality itself, whereas mine stipulates it necessarily. You, therefore, havent alleviated a methodological self-contradiction, but in fact enforced it.
The survival of the pattern is its persistence. We reason back from this. What kind of patterns persist ?
They might have indestructible instantiations (if we still wanted to call them patterns), but those would probably be difficult to create in a world like ours.
So instead we get those that replicate. In biological cases, we have variation, and this explains increasing complexity. But we can also think of linguistic memes and computer algorithms. Exact or nearly exact copies could work in some contexts.
Small note : Instantaneous replication is hard to make any sense of. So an instantiation must survive long enough to replicate, even if that is only for a few nanoseconds.
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Programming or designing is an intentional act, so I don't think the analogy holds. I'll beleive an AI is conscious when I see it write poetry that is not doggerel, but nuanced, musical and rich in allusions.
You can claim we are just being "superstitious" about our natures, and there may be cases of that, but I don't find it convincing as a general explanation for being reluctant to impute consciousness to AIs.
I don't think there is any one meaning of being; to claim there is would be to claim that the word refers to just one idea, reality or whatever. I don't know what "the being of meaning" refers to; but I know what the feeling or sense of meaning is. I don't favour the reificatory term "qualia", and I have no idea what the "thereness of qualia" could be referring to. Perhaps you mean something like the immediacy of experience?
We don't need to have a grip on experience, it being better to let go, although we do try to get a grip with language so that we can generate the illusion of an actual publicly shared world. Of course I'm not saying that illusion is not, in its own way real and important. There may be altered or higher conscious states where there really is sharing, but we would need to let go of the linguistically actuated "monkey mind" in order to know that.
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I doubt you really believe that machines feel or care about anything. Animals are not merely machines in my view, any more than humans are. The two concepts 'machine' and 'animal' are distinct enough. Machines are not self-regulating metabolic organisms, for a start.
Sense of meaning is an affect, and machines are not sentiently affected. Sense of meaning is an experience, and we have no reason to think that machines experience anything. I think 'immaterial" is a loaded term and so not helpful here. That said sense of meaning is not a physical object that can be publicly observed. We can talk about it; but only imprecisely.
What exactly is this ghost intention ? I 'know' in the usual way of course. But here again we seem to be invoking the divine spark. We are machines created by evolution, so perhaps 'it' can take credit for our inventions as much as we can.
Quoting Janus
Let me stress that we are visceral creatures. Wrap up a clever bot in a soft warm android body that purrs and see what happens. We can't find the souls of our cats in this or that location. Where is this divine spark ? Imagine a young man falling in love with woman who treats him wonderfully who then discovers she's an android, a fact which she's concealed for fear of losing him. How does he determine whether she is 'in' there and worthy of love ? Or is she already worthy of love ?
If we zoom in on a living fleshy brain, do we find consciousness under the microscope ? Or just zaps between cells ? Where is it ? Its where is soft, glued to the body somehow as if hovering around it, playing in its/her eyes and across its/her lips, indeterminately.
I think 'immediacy of experience') hints at the same kind of thing. It's not how but that the world is that is the mystical. It's that there is a world, any kind of world, in the first place. 'Beneath' the concept of red there is [s]redness.[/s] Some people speak of pure immaterial pain, or the hurt of the toothache that surpasses as logic and meaning. I think they are touching on the problem of [the meaning of] being in a Cartesian framework.
It's true that I don't currently project feelings on or having feelings toward machines. I just don't see why I couldn't in principle --- if those machines were more like my cat or wife with respect to my sense organs. It's not logically impossible that my cat is already a machine made by crafty aliens. What if they used DNA and test tubes to build their machines ?
You claim that meaning can't be observed. I don't see how that claim is justified. Bots have learned to talk with us. I agree that it's difficult to talk about, but how is 'affect' to be understood ? What should machines (Pinocchios) be incapable of affect unless it's immaterial and simply assumed to only come with real boys (human beings) ? If affect isn't 'there' in order doings and dispositions, where is it ? I claim it's more of a dance than a pair of legs. Is there something else, something elusive ? Is there an awareness of the there itself in a real boy ? But what is special about the human brain ? Is it the meat ? Or is it just a structure of a function ? And how does 'affect' get a meaning at all if affects aren't essentially public ? Why should you trust that 'affect' has the same reclusive referent for both of us ?
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When I say something is intentional I mean it is deliberate, consciously chosen or created; the usual implication being it is something we care about; nothing to do with ghosts, which I don't care about.
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Is the bot going to feel what happens to that body?
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I think the question about the location of souls, or experience, or consciousness is generated by categorical confusion. Are synthetic organisms that feel things like we do,, and care about what happens to them like we do, possible? Maybe, but we are a long way from that right now.
If your hypothetical android fears the loss of her lover then she is like a human. Do you think chat-gpt feels lonely when no one is conversing with it?
I don't believe consciousness is to be "found" anywhere but via introspection; we might find physiological signs that are taken to indicate its presence but that's about it I think.
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Is it merely a matter of your sense organs? Many weird things are not logically impossible, like God, it doesn't follow that we ought to believe in them. I think we need something more convincing. We can talk about, try to explain in various ways, how we feel with a lover, and we might even spin up some doubts about whether they are really feeling beings like us; it's logically possible they might be robots, but there is no sense of this possibility in our living interactions with them. What to trust...lived experience or conceptually generated doubts that only have their mere logical possibility to sustain them?
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I don't see how the claim that meaning can be observed can be justified. Whatever meaning bots produce is just regurgitation of what we have programmed them with.
Who knows what is special about the human brain? Is it fundamentally meat? Does it produce consciousness or is it a kind of transceiver? How could we tell the difference?
I don't know about you, but 'affect' gets its meaning for me because I experience myself as affected and affecting. I know how I feel, and sometimes in the right kinds of situations seem to be pretty good at discerning what others feel, if I pay attention.
This is from another thread, and it makes the same point I did to you earlier about semantic reference being entirely dependent on our understanding that words do refer:
Quoting Richard B
That is just the kind of excellent and beautiful question I'm trying to dig out.
What does it mean to feel ?
If answering this is no more than a matter of whether typical public criteria are satisfied, then I expect that we will indeed attribute feeling to such bodies as the technology gets better.
If answering this is more than a matter of whether typical public criteria are satisfied, then I don't know and I can't know if you feel or if I feel. This is the hole in the immaterial referent story. I don't think I can 'point' to my immaterial hidden states to generate communicable meaning. Either feeling is plugged into the inferential nexus (and a function of public criteria) or it's not.
Do you imagine 'mind' being summoned into existence 'within' 'matter' as this happens? Will something that can already talk better than most humans begin to 'overhear' itself ? What would convince you from the outside ? What level of performance ?
But what is consciousness ? I don't think we should assume some elusive referent here. We have criteria to attributing consciousness already. The brain (with the rest of the body) 'does' consciousness. I suppose that the structure of the brain is what matters, just as in artificial neural networks. [I've mentioned the forgetfulness of being issue elsewhere, so I omit it here.]
No, they absorb structure (norms) and generate novel sentences.. That's also what we do.
No, I've been attacking a certain theory of reference, not presenting my own. I like Brandom's approach , which he took from Kant, which makes an entire claim the 'atom' of what am I can be responsible for. Concepts get their meanings in terms of the material inferences they license or forbid according to current linguistic norms (like Saussure's structuralism with a new theme, making it richer.)
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Most of us, by all reports, feel, so those of us who do all know firsthand what it means to feel, even if it might be hard to define.
It's also true that people don't only indicate by direct statement, but also by their actions, actions that we have learned to associate with feelings, that they feel. Bots don't do that...maybe they will someday...who knows.
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If a bot had something equivalent to a CNS, the I might be convinced that it feels things, just as I am convinced that animals feel things, even though I obviously cannot know for sure. If a bot started initiating conversation and asking novel and pertinent questions, or produced fine artworks, literature or music that might make me rethink the issue. I haven't encountered anything like that, so....
I tend to think most of us know, even though we cannot precisely define, what consciousness is. We can't precisely define what anything is, if you start to dig into our definitions.
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I don't think that's all there is to what we do. I think we care to explain ourselves, and we like to evoke feelings and associations which seem rich to us with language. I haven't seen bots doing that...all they produce, just like everyday bodily bots, is shit.
I don't understand what you're trying to say there.
Here's some background:
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Normative pragmatism is the idea that discursive practice is implicitly, but essentially, and not just accidentally, a kind of normative practice. Discursive creatures live, and move, and have their being in a normative space. What one is doing in making a claim, performing the most fundamental kind of speech act, is committing oneself, exercising ones authority to make oneself responsible. The commitments one undertakes in claiming (the beliefs one expresses in sincerely asserting something) are ones whose entitlement is always potentially at issue. Understanding someones utterance is knowing what they have committed themselves to by producing that performance, by saying what they saidas well as knowing what would entitle them to that commitment, and what is incompatible with it. Those commitments, entitlements, and incompatibilities are inferentially connected to one another. The space discursive creatures move about in by talking is a space of reasons, articulating what would be a reason for or against what. That is what connects normative pragmatism to semantic inferentialism.
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What is it one must do in order thereby to count as classifying something as being of some kind?
In the most general sense, one classifies something simply by responding to it differentially. Stimuli are grouped into kinds by the response-kinds they tend to elicit. In this sense, a chunk of iron classifies its environments into kinds by rusting in some of them and not others, increasing or decreasing its temperature, shattering or remaining intact. As is evident from this example, if classifying is just exercising a reliable differential responsive disposition, it is a ubiquitous feature of the inanimate world. For that very reason, classifying in this generic sense is not an attractive candidate for identification with conceptual, cognitive, or conscious activity. It doesnt draw the right line between thinking and all sorts of thoughtless activities.
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Classification as the exercise of reliable differential responsive dispositions (however acquired) is not by itself yet a good candidate for conceptual classification, in the basic sense in which applying a concept to something is describing it. Why not? Suppose one were given a wand, and told that the light on the handle would go on if and only if what the wand was pointed at had the property of being grivey. One might then determine empirically that speakers are grivey, but microphones not, doorknobs are but windowshades are not, cats are and dogs are not, and so on. One is then in a position reliably, perhaps even infallibly, to apply the label grivey. Is one also in a position to describe things as grivey? Ought what one is doing to qualify as applying the concept grivey to things? Intuitively, the trouble is that one does not know what one has found out when one has found out that something is grivey, does not know what one is taking it to be when one takes it to be grivey, does not know what one is describing it as. The label is, we want to say, uninformative.
What more is required? Wilfrid Sellars gives this succinct, and I believe correct, answer:
It is only because the expressions in terms of which we describe objects, even such basic expressions as words for the perceptible characteristics of molar objects, locate these objects in a space of implications, that they describe at all, rather than merely label.
The reason grivey is merely a label, that it classifies without informing, is that nothing follows from so classifying an object. If I discover that all the boxes in the attic I am charged with cleaning out have been labeled with red, yellow, or green stickers, all I learn is that those labeled with the same color share some property. To learn what they mean is to learn, for instance, that the owner put a red label on boxes to be discarded, green on those to be retained, and yellow on those that needed further sorting and decision. Once I know what follows from affixing one rather than another label, I can understand them not as mere labels, but as descriptions of the boxes to which they are applied. Description is classification with consequences, either immediately practical (to be discarded/examined/kept) or for further classifications.
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Here, then, is the first lesson that analytic philosophy ought to have taught cognitive science: there is a fundamental meta-conceptual distinction between classification in the sense of labeling and classification in the sense of describing, and it consists in the inferential consequences of the classification: its capacity to serve as a premise in inferences ( practical or
theoretical) to further conclusions. (Indeed, there are descriptive concepts that are purely theoreticalsuch as gene and quarkin the sense that in addition to their inferential consequences of application, they have only inferential circumstances of application.)
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https://sites.pitt.edu/~rbrandom/Texts/Inferentialism_Normative_Pragmatism_and.pdf
From this perspective, 'pain' gets its meaning from the inferences it's involved in: she called into work, because it hurt too bad to stand up. In our culture, pain is understand (for instance) as an excuse or reason not to do something. Assertions are fundamental as inputs and outputs of arguments. Concepts justify or forbid inferential relationships between such assertions. At the very least this theory shines a new light on meaning and the space of reasons, it seems to me.
I started a Discussion on Brandom if you want more info.
That's what the representation is, an object of perception. The "object" is not what the representation represents. The object is the phenomenon, the representation. The question is how is it possible to produce a representation without some sort of decision as to what will be represented. Of the vast possibilities available to be represented, there is a specific representation which is produced which represents a particular portion of the available possibilities. Obviously it is not random as to what will be represented, so don't you think there must be some sort of decision as to which possibilities will be represented?
Quoting Mww
So consider what you say here "phenomena represents only what the senses provide". There must be something which determines "what the senses provide". Of course the obvious answer would appear to be that the physical composition of the body makes that determination. However that is not a real answer, unless you can say why the body is composed in that specific way. You see the body is composed in a specific way, so that the various senses provide particular portions of the vast possibilities, but the question is how could the body get composed in this way without some decisions, judgements. Take the process of trial and error for example, this process can only proceed through judgements.
Quoting Mww
I think that is exactly what an act of definition is, to say what is essential of the thing being defined. It's just that the definition is not yet complete. Therefore it cannot serve as a complete definition in that sense, because there would be other requirements as well. The proposition "human is necessarily animal", is an act of definition. So for you to say judgement is necessarily thinking, is also an act of definition. You have not been able to complete your definition because this is the point which I dispute. So there are two ways in which this cannot serve, one is that it is incomplete, and the other is that the evidence which I presented indicates that your generalization is produced from faulty inductive reasoning.
Quoting Mww
OK, now we're getting down to the point, the matter of exactly what a judgement is. Instead of being distracted by the idea that a judgement is defined by the necessity of thinking, we can put that requirement aside, and look at what "judgement" really consists of. Would you agree that judgement requires possibilities, and is in some way a selection from possibility? With this basic definition, would you agree that no thinking is required to select from possibility? Then if you can put the requirement of thinking aside, and start with the requirement of selecting from possibility, as the essential requirement, we could build a more complete definition from this starting point, instead of your proposal.
Quoting Mww
I used those examples to demonstrate the possibility of judgement without thinking, so that you might allow this as a possibility. I didn't mean that every irrational judgement is necessarily a judgement without thinking, but that it is possible that some irrational judgements might be judgements without thinking. So this is why I mentioned numerous possibilities for judgements without thinking. I also said emotional judgements, and judgements which appear to be random. I wanted you to consider these as possibilities too. And though you might say that some emotional judgements, and some judgements which appear to be random are actually based in thought, I wanted you to accept the possibility that some of these might be made without thought. Once you allow that this is possible, then your proposition that judgement necessarily requires thinking is unjustified.
As an aside, do you believe in free will? If so, do you see that a true, freely willed act would necessarily be free from the influence of thinking? This is what Augustine exposed, that the will is a distinct aspect of the intellect, distinct from reasoning. Then Aquinas showed that while the will is subject, subservient, to the reasoning intellect in common acts of judgement, ultimately the will must be free from this subjection to reason, in an absolute sense. This is how we can explain the problem exposed by Plato, of how it is possible for a human being to do what one knows is not good. Judgement sometimes goes contrary to the thinking.
Quoting Mww
i don't see that you have a valid point. Irrationality is fundamentally not explainable, that's what constitutes being "irrational", that it cannot be explained rationally. It must therefore remain unintelligible. So the fact that I leave irrationality as unexplained is consistent with what irrationality really is. That you think you can stipulate, necessarily, what irrationality is, indicates that you misunderstand irrationality.
Quoting plaque flag
But this is inconsistent with what evolution actually is, as evolving, changing patterns. That certain aspects persist is not the same as saying that the pattern persists, because "the pattern" must encompass the whole, not just a part. So the fact that a part persists is not the same as "the pattern persists".
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This is the problem right here. Variation is not replication. Therefore "replication" is a faulty, 'false' principle. It is not suited for describing evolution. What is essential and fundamental to evolution is difference, not sameness. That's why there is such a wide range of different living beings in our environment.
No. The object of perception is that which is perceived. It is external to the senses, and is merely that by which they are affected, depending on the mode of their presence. Technically, empirical representation is an object of intuition, which is called phenomenon. Herein lay the proverbial veil of perception, from which arises indirect realism, and in which much ado is made of nothing.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That there is a vast quantity of objects possible to perceive, and therefore become possible phenomenal representations, is true, but irrelevant.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yep .represents that particular portion of all possible objects that is actually perceived, and is therefore relevant, insofar as such is the necessary ground of experience itself.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That which determines the possibility of being represented, is the type and structure, the physiology, of human sensory apparatus. No decisions need be made; if an object is present to perception and a sensation follows, there will be a representation of it. And the need for decision for mode of sensation is already determined by the physiology itself, in that it is impossible to see with the ears, and so for each of the senses.
The decision on the form the representation will acquire, as opposed to whether or not there will be one, is an entirely different consideration.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Sure. The senses can provide nothing that has no relation to both space and time.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, we can say we see the extension or shape of its composition, as a specific condition of its space. And we can say we see the changes in the composition, as well as its motion, as a condition of its time.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
True enough, but the question of how an object is composed in such and such a way is not possible from the mere fact it has a certain extension in space, which is all that can be represented in a phenomenon. The questions of the how of composition require conceptions relatable to the object, and intuition contains only two conceptions of its own, space and time.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
True, but that doesnt say trial and error occurs in intuition, which is the source of phenomenal representations, or that there is trial and error going on in the first place, anywhere. Rather than an object having its composition somehow represented, trial and error then suggesting attempts to find out what that composition entails, why not just attribute properties to objects in conjunction with its representation, in which case the objects composition conforms exactly to our understanding of its representation. If this is the way it works, this certain thing of this certain composition, is called a sun comprised of hot burning gas only because we say so, hence how that thing is to be known by us.
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quote="Metaphysician Undercover;797591"]Instead of being distracted by the idea that a judgement is defined by the necessity of thinking, we can put that requirement aside, and look at what "judgement" really consists of[/quote]
Judgement isnt defined by the necessity of conscious thought; it is conditioned by it. That conscious thought is necessary for judgements regarding phenomena, says nothing about what judgement is or does in this regard.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No. There are possibilities and selections from them, but they been examined and selected by the time judgement intervenes. This is what conscious thought is for and why it is antecedent to judgement, hence a necessary condition for it.
Here it becomes clear why the presence of an object removes possibility for it, but still leaves possibility for what it is. This moves possibility to being considered in thought, which is not that there is an object, which is never questioned, but what possibilities are there for how the object is to be cognized such that it accords with its sensation. Turns out, judgement is that by which the relations are validated.
I hear a loud boom, so it cannot be denied I heard something, from which arises a mere phenomenon. I have no immediate understanding of what made the boom, insofar as I am never conscious of my phenomena, but depending on the range of sensations appearing in the boom I perceive, I can conceive a range of boom-causing things conditioned by my experience of booms in general. Here the phenomenon is subjected to the rule of the categories, to which the conception of possibility properly belongs, by which the sensations of which I am conscious is subsumed under a range of conceptions which set the rules by which an object conceivable as sufficient for the phenomenon, is determinable, and is thereby the product of conscious thought. So it is that I have been given the phenomenon via sensibility, but I must think the conception that relates to it via understanding, in order to cognize what caused the boom I heard, which is experience.
Singular judgements, then, regarding perceptions or any empirical cognition, is the correctness, or the validity, of the relation between the phenomenon given to me and my knowledge of its cause. There are other subsets of empirical, discursive judgements, but they all operate under the same general principle.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I dont need to stipulate what irrationality is, for it is nothing but the complement of rationality, which I must stipulate in order to know I havent contradicted myself under the conditions I am given. If I know the one, which I must, the other is just not that.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I never said every judgment required conscious thought, but only those judgements having to do with empirical cognitions. Those judgements concerned with knowledge of real physical objects. The reason I wanted us to get away form perception, sensation and implied deceptions thereof.
Hence the question back on pg 6, hinting at the domain of judgements grounded on how a subject feels about that which he thinks, and while conscious thought is still present, it is no longer a necessary antecedent condition and judgements of this aesthetic form are therefore not validations of it.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
There ya go, getting close. It shouldnt be an aside at all, insofar as judgements connected with this purely subjective domain are part and parcel of the overall human condition.
But no, I reject the notion of free will as a conjoined conception. There is freedom and there is will, but it is the case the will is not free in regard to the objects representing its volitions in accordance with laws, but in another, absolute autonomy, which is a type of freedom, by which the will determines the laws by which it shall legislate itself.
Now it should become clearer that discursive judgements concern themselves with the condition of the intelligence of the subject, but aesthetic judgements concern themselves with the condition of the subject himself, his intelligence be what it may. Under these purely subjective conditions, judgement validates that which the subject does, in accordance with his inclinations, which are therefore contingent, in relation to what his obligations prescribe him to do, in accordance with his principles, which are therefore necessary.
Are we done now?
Ok, so we'll say that the object of perception is that which is perceived. So the question is what chooses the aspects of reality which will be represented by a given sense organ at a given time. Why does hearing give us a representation of some sort of waves, for example? The "what" here is what we understand as sound waves, and the "how" is the actual image of the sound, the perception, phenomenon.
Quoting Mww
How can you say this is irrelevant, when it is the crucial point? Since there is a a vast quantity of possible objects, and only some of these are represented by each sense, then there must be a choice (implying judgement) as to which possibilities will be represented. That is the "what". Furthermore, there must be other judgements as to how the object will be represented, because there is also numerous possibilities here as well.
Quoting Mww
You are wrong here, decisions are required to create that structure. The "human sensory apparatus" is structured in such a way that decisions would be required for its creation. Do you really think that a complex sensing apparatus like that could have been created without any decisions made? Do you not recognize that such a construction project requires decisions? How would that construction process proceed without decisions? Would bits and pieces just come together by chance, and create that highly complex apparatus, just by random chance? Something is clearly amiss with this type of thinking.
Quoting Mww
The fact being considered here is the fact of sensation itself. What is given is sensation, and I am asking how is it possible that there is a being which senses. And the question is being asked in the context of the concept of judgement, or decision. The question is, is it not a necessary requirement for some judgements or decisions to have been made in order for a body which senses to be created, or to simply come into existence, to become?
The example was, suppose we take evolution as a sort of trial and error process. Is it not necessary for decisions to be made for a trial and error process to proceed?
Quoting Mww
The process being discussed is not necessarily a process of trial and error, that's an example. It could be a different sort of process, but it would still require decisions.
What you say here, if I understand correctly, is that the decisions, or judgements are not necessarily "in" the act of intuition itself. I respect that perspective, and that's why I've been arguing that these judgements are required for, as logically prior to intuition, and not necessarily an actual part of the intuition process itself.
There's an example which some TPF participants used in the past, of a thermostat. The thermostat switches the power off and on according to heat or lack of it. Out of all the available possibilities, it takes temperature, and out of all the possible ways of representing, it switches. We would commonly say that the thermostat doesn't make these decisions, it doesn't do any judging, yet judgement of these parameters is necessary for its existence, as having been made prior to it being created. And this would be how we understand the required judgement in relation to the existence of that sort of tool.
That seems to be an acceptable solution to how we understand the role of judgement in the existence of that sort of thing. But when we look at evolving life forms this way of looking at it becomes extremely problematic. That way, that the judgement is prior to the construction, would be the archaic way of looking at God's creation. God would have made the judgements or decisions required for creating each separate type of being, with each of their specific capacities, and God created these species accordingly, from all these different judgements. But the science of evolution shows us that things are not like this.
Evolutionary theory provides us with no reason to remove the requirement of judgement or decision though. It shows us that the judgements, or decisions, are not prior to the existence of the being, like in the case of the thermostat, so we are left with no other place for the judgement except within the being itself. This ought to incline us to look at "intuition" more closely, to see if perhaps there is judgement inherent within it.
Quoting Mww
The issue here is error. Error is very real, and we must account for it. If we all, every single one of us, sees the sun as the sun, and we all agree to call it that, then there would be no problem. But as soon as one person disagrees with this, or hallucinates and sees it in some other way, then we cannot say "the objects composition conforms exactly to our understanding of its representation", because someone is left out by this use of "our". Now we want to say that this person is simply in error, but that opens a whole can of worms, because if there is the possibility of error, this negates the necessity "conforms exactly to our understanding". We can't say that because we must allow for the real possibility of error, to be able to say that the person who does not agree is in error.
Quoting Mww
Come on Mww. If you say that conscious thought is necessary for judgement, that clearly says something about what judgement is. You are stating that conscious thought is a necessary property of judgement, just like if you said animality is a necessary condition of being human. To state a necessary condition is obviously to say something about what the thing is.
And this is the perspective which I am trying to demonstrate to you as backward. From what I've been explaining, judgement is necessarily prior to conscious thought, therefore conscious thought must be understood as conditioned by judgement, not vise versa. This is why our conscious judgements are often overwhelmed by biases and prejudices. Prejudice is base in prior judgement which may not have involved conscious thought. It is imperative that we turn that perspective around, and understand how judgement is prior to thought, in order that we can overcome the harms of prejudice.
We can take deductive logic as an example. Deduction proceeds from premises, and valid deduction will maintain truth or falsity in its conclusions according to its premises. In this way, valid deductive logic cannot be mistaken, if it is valid, error is eliminated. So if there was something like "pure deductive logic", just the formal aspect, with no content, this valid logic would provide us with "pure truth". However, without any content there is nothing there, just the form of the logical process, and this provides us with nothing true about the world.
So we can take the premises as providing content. However, the premises could be wrong. And so we have a source of error. But notice that this source of error involves judgements made concerning the premises, and these judgements are prior to the logical process. Now we can understand that the source of error in unsound premises is these prior judgements. So if we look at the bigger picture, and instead of just looking at the process of logic specifically, we look at conscious thinking as a whole, we can see by analogy that the major source of error in conscious thinking in general, is the prior judgements which are prior to the conscious thinking.
Quoting Mww
See, you are putting judgement after judgement here. You imply that something 'examines and selects' and that is what we call an act of judgement. And you say that this act of judgement has already occurred before judgement intervenes. Do you understand the need to confirm things, to recheck, retest, etc.? That conscious judgement comprises one level of judgement does not exclude the likelihood of numerous other levels of judgement.
Quoting Mww
The possibility of whether or not there is "an object" is questioned though. What process philosophy does is deny the reality of the object saying that all is process, as did Heraclitus' philosophy of "becoming" in ancient times. Once we see that a coherent philosophy can be produced which denies the reality of "the object", then the "possibility" of an object must replace the "necessity" of an object. Now we must consider that sensation gives us only the possibility of an object, because "that which sensation gives us" can be represented purely as activity, without any objects. And cognition which "accords with its sensation" need not consist of any objects. And the object cannot be taken as a given, it may be created by the cognitive act, as a sort of judgement imposed on the possibility of an object.
Quoting Mww
Your premise presumes what you claim, that is known as begging the question. When you state "I hear a loud boom", that premise dictates that you actually heard something. But we cannot start with that assumption unless we are certain that it is correct. We may start with your claim, or proposition, "I heard a loud boom", but then we must allow for the possibility that this proposition is false, therefore it is possible that you did not hear anything. It may have been all in your imagination, or you may be lying, or have faulty memory or something like that. So this example is useless. The presence of an object cannot be taken for granted, it must be approached as a possibility.
Quoting Mww
Yes, you have been given the phenomenon via sensibility, but there is no necessary relationship between the phenomenon and what it relates to. You assume "an object", but that itself must be taken as a possibility. So we are left with the question of why does sensibility give us only possibilities, never any necessities. And the further issue is why do we assume actualities, necessities. That is just a judgement we make, that there is something actual behind all these possibilities.
Quoting Mww
I don't see the point here. Isn't "how a subject feels" just a matter of sensation? You want to get away from sensations to talk about feelings, but feelings are just another way, (other than through conscious thought), that sensations affect us. So judgements based in feelings concern real physical objects just as much as judgements based in conscious thought do. And this is not a useful distinction.
Quoting Mww
I can't comprehend this. Are you saying that the will is free in so far as its volitions must be in accordance with laws, but also that the will determines these laws? Isn't that absolute freedom then? What's the point in saying "in accordance with laws", if the will is free to state whatever laws it desires?
And this part, "the objects representing its volitions", what are these objects here? Are they just possible objects, or the possibility for an object, as described above?
You say "getting close" here, but really our vocabularies are so far apart, and that's why we can't really get close without very lengthy discussion to understand the way each other talks.
Quoting Mww
So you make a distinction between discursive judgements and aesthetic judgements. But I don't see what an aesthetic judgement could possibly be, under the precepts you've described. Are these judgements which are done without conscious thought? If so, then why not allow that all the different animals, insects, plants, etc., also make some sort of aesthetic judgements or judgements of another sort? These judgements would validate what these living beings do.
Quoting Mww
To tell you the truth, I don't think so, but we could quit anytime you want . You haven't convinced me of your perspective, nor have I convinced you of mine. We may be on the road to compromise with your proposal of two types of judgement though. Would you be open to the idea of numerous types of judgement?
The only method for judgement I can use is right between my ears, and since that cannot be the creator of me, whatever that creator is, if it is, is something for which I have no interest.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Been done already. Came up empty. If there is, its going to require a whole new way of looking for it, in order to find it.
Sure, that there may be a decision-making process out there somewhere, is not impossible. But even if there is, what difference would it make to that which is, now. We are what we are, and everything is as it is, whether there was or was not a decision-making process. We and things could have been different but nothing is different than it is, so .who cares. Better to contemplate decision-making in which a change is given because I am the cause of it.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
We? Who the hell is we? Im as certain as I need to be, and you can assume anything you like. I wonder, though, what you do first, when I state that I heard a boom. Do you immediately imagine what its like to hear a boom with your own ears, or do you immediately doubt I heard one with mine? Dunno about you, but when someone tells me about some perception of his, I start by assuming his certainty.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Im not ever going to experience a merely possible object, from which follows a coherent philosophy which denies the necessity of objects, with respect to my experience, is a contradiction.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
An object can be created by cognition, but such object is, at the time of its being cognized, not a sensible object, hence not a phenomenon. These are objects generated by purely a priori conditions and are merely conceptions that are thought, but by which sensible objects can possibly be constructed that represent them. First and foremost, the most ubiquitous of these, are numbers.
The reality of perceived objects, is necessary; the reality of a priori objects, is contingent. The validity of objects a priori, is necessary; the validity of perceived objects, is contingent.
The judgement imposed on the possibility of an object is the same kind as imposed on real objects, only from a different set of categorical schema.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You tell me. Is the sensation you get from pictures you see of objects in the universe, the same kind of feeling you get when you imagine being there?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Take any A-HA!! moment of your life ..assuming youve had at least one ..compare it to stubbing your toe. The latter requires a real physical incident, the former does not, insofar as you can have your epiphany over a merely possible incident and of course theres no sensation in a possible incident. So you could get away with saying feelings are concerned with possible sensations, but the problem then becomes the certainty of that feeling, however it manifests, but without the certainty of the thing that caused it. Then the best you can do is tell yourself you dont know why you feel the way you do, the very epitome of confusion and doubt.
You can mix objective physiological sensation with subjective pain/pleasure if you like, but that wont do in speculative metaphysics. This goes here, that goes there, and by mixing them up a contradiction can be forced, which does nothing but wreck the whole deal.
To say it's not impossible, is to miss the reality that it is logically necessary. It's not impossible that the earth orbits the sun, but to say that this is not impossible misses the reality that it's logically necessary.
The difference that recognizing this reality makes, is that it is an ongoing decision-making process, and it is why we have free will. Conscious decision-making is the tip of the iceberg, that part of the decision-making process which is evident to the conscious mind. Understanding that conscious decision-making is just the tip of a much bigger process helps one to understand what it means to be a human being.
Quoting Mww
This is a fatalist, determinist saying. In reality, the power of choice allows us to change, and become something new at each passing moment. There is no such thing as "what we are", or "as it is", because by the time you say "now", it is past, and there is something new. Therefore "what we are", and "as it is" are always in the past, and we're always moving on from that. The decision-making process is what allows us to be moving on rather than what we are.
Quoting Mww
It was presented to me as an example. You and I makes "we". You may feel absolutely certainty of what you heard, but I'm not. So, I must accept it as a possibility until your assertion is justified. And that's why your example does nothing for me.
Quoting Mww
Your experience is quite different from mine obviously. That's why I was inclined to doubt you when you said you heard a boom.
Your experience appears to be self-contradicting. You told me the object is not the phenomenon. What you experience is the phenomenon. You do not experience objects so your experience produces no necessity of objects. You ought to realize that objects are merely possibilities.
Quoting Mww
If the object is not the phenomenon, as you told me, yet the mind is known to create objects, which are contingent objects, show me how your mind derives a necessary object please.
Quoting Mww
Here's a better comparison. Let's compare when I stub my toe, with when I suddenly get a cramp in my leg. The two sensations, being sudden sharp pain, are quite comparable. Would you agree that they are both "real physical incidents"? The difference though is that I can point to the rock that I stubbed my toe on and blame that rock, saying that it caused my pain. But in the case of the cramp in my leg, there's nothing for me to point at and blame. In reality though, that is simply misplaced blame. The cause of my pain is not the rock, but whatever it is which is going on in my body, just like when I get a cramp, the cause of the pain is whatever it is which is going on in my body.
Likewise, pointing out external things, and saying that these things are the cause of any sort of sensations, is a mistake. These supposed "things" are not the cause of the sensations. Whatever it is which is going on in the human body is the cause. There is no shame in saying I do not know why I feel the way I do. However, there is shame in blaming the rock as "the cause" of your pain, and insisting that you are certain of this, because it is obviously mistaken.
Yeah, my fault, sort of. You began by claiming a necessary decision-making process for construction of human sensory apparatus, and I took that to decision-making for all reality. I should have left it at human sensory apparatus, in which, being a father, Ive witnessed the construction of my childrens sensory apparatus from absolutely none at all, to fully functional, under purely empirical, decision-less, conditions.
I suppose youre left to say that because I made the decision to be a father, my childrens sensory apparatus to come into existence necessarily from that decision alone, which is quite absurd, seeing as how my decision extended only so far as getting laid. My kids shouldnt have had any sensory apparatus constructed, if your argument is the case, but they did. Your argument is flawed.
For a thing to be not impossible is sufficient for its possibility, but to be merely sufficient is very far from being necessary. The necessary does not logically follow from the not impossible, but from that which is not contingent. Your logic is flawed.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
(Gaspsputterchoke) Wha???? A pitiful sophism. Observations prove/disprove logical constructs. If a guy can observe some condition, he has no need for logical constructions regarding the reality of the observation, but he may construct logical explanations for them, iff he actually wants to know.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Unless conscious decision-making just is what it means to be a human being, in which case that process is all he needs, and if there happens to be a bigger process takes nothing away from his being one. Long been understood, a human being can think anything he wants. If he wants to think theres a bigger process, fine. He still has to ask about that bigger process by means of that by which he asks anything, hence is subject to the very same rules as contained in the conscious decision-making process he used for those answers with which hes satisfied.
This reminds me of something you said about a coherent philosophy. A philosophy for which the understanding of the human conscious decision-making process is complete and unabridged, for which there remains no questions that process could ask even of itself, would necessarily be the most coherent philosophy possible.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Fine. You say fatalist, determinist; I say logically incontestable. Even to be something new is to be what we are. We can be forced to change just as much as we can choose to change, therefore the means for of change has no necessary implication; were just as new whether the means is one or the other. Evolutionary change is neither forced nor chosen, but recognition of evolutionary change is not immediate, so carries no more necessary implication regarding newness than either of the other means that are.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
So youre not what you are? If you constantly change into something new, then you are constantly not any thing but only some thing not what you were. But even what you were was only that which was not something before it. You have not much other choice than to say what you are not. To complete the circle, what remains from all of what you can say you are not, is what you can say you are. Which is where you started.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It also limits the illusory appearance that we have.
Like I said a human can think anything he wants. But he really does himself no favors by making a complete mess of it.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
True, the object is not the phenomenon; the phenomenon represents the sensation an object provides. The objects are therefore the necessary material condition for sensation, subsequently the necessary spatial condition for the possibility of phenomena in general. No objects, no sensation, no phenomena.
True, my experience is of my phenomena. I do not experience objects, but only the representations of them.
True, my experience produces no necessity of objects. Necessity is produced in understanding.
If I perceive an object, and if that perception forwards a sensation in conjunction with the mode of its perception, and if the sensation is the means by which a phenomenon is given, then the object is necessary for all that. An object satisfying this criteria cannot be a mere possibility. It is utterly irrelevant that I as yet may not know what this object is from which these internal events follow, but because they do follow it is immediately contradictory to suppose it is only a possible object affecting me, and while the as yet indeterminable object grants the possibility of how it will eventually be known, such undeterminability does not take away from it being a necessary physical presence.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The mind .properly theoretical pure reason a priori ..derives its necessary objects in conjunction with the conceptions under which they are to be subsumed. A necessary object is that object for which the negation is impossible, which makes any necessary object, a logical construct.
That being established, necessary objects the mind derives are not contingent; the reality of them, is, and such reality depends exclusively on the possibility of the phenomena that represent them. Your so-called bigger process is a good example, in that it is possible to logically construct a bigger process of whatever form, and understand it as such, but quite another to experience it, which would only be possible if that process, or the objects contained in it, were susceptible to phenomenal representation.
A bigger process is itself only a conception, as yet with no object that describes what such bigger process entails, what makes it a bigger process, how it is not merely a familiar lesser process with simply larger scope. Whatever that object is, or plurality of objects, however reason constructs, is necessarily related to the conception, subsumed under it, such that the conception takes a form without self-contradiction.
Youre welcome.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It is not a better comparison when only to like kinds when properly it should be unlike kinds.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
So you dont immediately and automatically rub the muscle in the exact location of a charlie horse? You rub the muscle far removed from it? Even if you do neither, your brain locates it, which represents as an image of that very location in fact being rubbed, because muscle extension as relaxation is already understood as the most feasible relief. It follows, with respect to empirical judgements, youve made the first regarding that a rub is feasible, and second, where the rub must occur in order for its feasibility to properly manifest. A-HA!!! moments, it should be clear, are judged not like that in a completed series of them, although the initial judgement may be with respect to an empirical condition, but the concluding judgement will have nothing whatsoever to do with it. It is nonsense to judge the cause of an event in the same way as the effect the event has, when the cause of this and this caused effect on, are related to very different things.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Could be, but only under the auspices of a method which suffices to prove it is, at the expense of whatever method which suffices to prove it isnt.
I've explained to you already, the decision-making process is not empirically observable. You can witness all sorts of different things, and people doing all sorts of different things, but you do not witness any decision making process, except some aspects of your own. Furthermore, empirical observation of the results of decision-making, the consequences or effects of decisions, indicates that one person's decision-making process is not the same as another's. This is why there is difference, and what induces us to say things like "you are wrong and I am right", "you're irrational", "illogical", "emotional", etc.. Because the decision-making process is not empirically observable, in any situation where it exists, it will not be apprehended by an observer, unless the observer proceeds from the appropriate premises, required to determine its existence.
Therefore, that there is a decision-making process occurring in anything other than my own conscious mind, is something which I can only conclude from a logical process, and the appropriate premises which allow for the possibility that there is decision-making process going on there. In other words, if your premise is that decision-making process only exists where it can be observed, you will not find it anywhere other than in your own conscious mind.
Quoting Mww
You see X as possible. I see X as logically necessary. This indicates that your decision-making process is different from mine. It does not indicate that my logic is flawed. It is evidence that supports my position though, that other decision-making processes are not the same as the one in your conscious mind. So it's looking more like it might be your logic which is flawed, not mine.
However, as I tried to explain earlier, it's not necessarily the logic which is flawed here. It's more likely that the premises are what are flawed. The premises, generally, are derived from our empirical observations, and the flaw is in how we generalize from observation. This is induction. Generalizations usually involve unstated premises, which are hidden, and exist as prejudices which influence the decision-making process. So, for instance, you said that you observed your children's development of sensory apparatus, and you never noticed any decision-making, so you concluded that there was no such decision-making going on. The unstated, hidden premise, which misled your decision-making process, is the idea that the decision-making process would be observable. That's a flawed premise which would create an unsound conclusion. but it's not the logic that is flawed, but the premise.
Now, we need to consider the reality of these hidden (and often flawed) premises. These are prejudices which often can influence the decision-making without the decision-maker even knowing, because they are often hidden even to the decision-maker. Therefore we have features of the conscious decision which the conscious decision-maker is not even consciously aware of. Now the conscious decision is not carried out completely by the conscious activity, because we need to allow for the reality of these non-conscious features which influence the decision.
Quoting Mww
You've got this backward Mww. Logic is what provides certainty, not empirical observation. That's the point of my example about the earth orbiting the sun. Empirical observation provides us with possibilities concerning the reality of things, and we use logic to produce certainties, which we call necessities. Then the logical constructs are employed to disprove all those possibilities provided by empirical observations, which are not consistent with the logical necessities. The empirical observation is that the sun rises and sets, the logical construction produces the necessity, or certainty, that the earth is really rotating, and this logical certainty disproves the empirical observation that the sun rises and sets, as a flawed possibility, actually impossible.
The way that you present things is exactly the reason why Socrates and Plato argued so fervently that the senses deceive us. Sense observations do not give us reality, they give us possibilities. This is very evident from the fact that a multitude of different people observing the very same event will always provide differing descriptions. These description, sense observations, are taken by the thinking mind as possibilities for reality. Then we must employ logic to determine which we want to accept as certainties, necessities.
Quoting Mww
This is clearly not the case. Being a human being involves a lot more than just conscious decision making. There is for example, the carrying out of the process called for by the decision, the acting. This is when the mistakes of the logic are really exposed, not in observation as you propose, but in action. Even the assumed certainties, or necessities, of logic can be flawed. So we have three stages. Observation, then employment of logic, then action. Each stage exposes mistakes of the prior stage.
Quoting Mww
The problem is that understanding the conscious decision-making process reveals that it is flawed. It is flawed for the reasons exposed above, much of it is carried out by the non-conscious, as exposed above, with the "hidden premises", and all sorts of premises which are simply taken for granted without being consciously thought about to validate them. So "the most coherent philosophy possible" is the one which apprehends itself as extremely flawed. That's Socratic skepticism.
Quoting Mww
The issue here is that "what we are" implies a present in time. "We are" indicates "now", the present. And when we put "now" into its proper temporal context we see it as a divisor between past and future. The past is determined and cannot be changed. The future is undetermined. However, our way of understanding temporal existence is to extend the determined past into the future, in the mode of prediction. This trends toward negating the reality of "now" as the divisor, by making the future determined equally with the past, by denying the separation between the determined past and the undetermined future.
Now, we realize that this mode of negating the now, and making all of reality determined is inherently wrong, because this would annihilate all the need for judgement. There would be no true possibilities, and no need to make decisions. So we are inclined toward a compromise, a sort of compatibilism. But all this does is cast the "now" into a position of unintelligibility by providing no coherent principles whereby we can separate the determined from the undetermined. Then we tend to base "possibility" on what we, as human beings have the capacity to change (what we could be in the future), and we base "necessity" on what we cannot change (what we are, as derived from the past). So for instance, we cannot stop the sun from rising tomorrow, so this is considered as a determined necessity, but I can prevent the tree from falling on my house in the future, by cutting it down today, so this is not determined. The problem, is that this produces a huge grey area when we do not truly know our own capacities. There is no clear division between what is determined and what is not determined, because that is based solely on human capacity rather than something objective.
So, I propose we go to that divisor, "now", and say that the now makes a clear and precise division between what is determined, the past, and what is not determined, the future. But if the entirety of the future consists of possibilities, with nothing occurring of necessity, then we need to assume a process which "decides" what will happen at each moment as time passes. That must be a decision-making process.
Quoting Mww
Correct, that's what happens when we apprehend the "now" as the divisor. All of reality is either in the past or in the future, as the divisor is a non-dimensional boundary, as a principle, which separates the two. Nothing can be at the boundary so there is no such thing as "what you are", implying your existence "now". Part of you is on one side of the boundary, part is on the other, and there is no such thing as "what you are".
Quoting Mww
Well, it's arguably much worse to look at a complete mess, and insist that there is no mess at all.
Quoting Mww
When you perceive phenomena as objects, and you insist that there must be objects beyond that, as the cause of this phenomena, you are doing just that, taking the mess which lies beyond your sensation, and insisting that it is not a mess. Your argument here is not sound. You have no premise which allows you to conclude that if there is a phenomena there is necessarily an "object" which causes it. You might state this as a premise but that would be begging the question. And, the existence of imaginary things in dreams for example, demonstrates that such a premise is false. So you have no sound argument.
You simply deny the mess by begging the question with, "if the sensation is the means by which a phenomenon is given, then the object is necessary". That which is sensed is not necessarily objects. Your hidden premise (prejudice) is that what is sensed is objects. Rather than recognizing that what is sensed is a mess, and the act of sensation cleans up the mess by presenting to your conscious mind the appearance of objects, as phenomena you simply assume a necessity of objects. You provide no justification for your use of "necessary" here in relation to objects.
Quoting Mww
Right, here you even admit it, a necessary object is a logical construct. But in the last paragraph your premise was that sensation produced a necessary object. So the only necessary objects are those in the mind, produced from conception. That which is sensed is something different, therefore not necessary objects.
Quoting Mww
What happened to this "pure logical process" you were talking about before, the a priori? that is what you said produces necessary objects, why bring in phenomena here? if you believe in a pure logical process, then the reality of objects, and the necessity of them might be purely logical. I denied that idea, of a purely logical process, insisting that there must be content of some sort. However, the content need not be objects, so from my perspective there is no necessity to objects at all, either as mental constructs or as that which is sensed. As mental constructs, "necessary objects" never gets justified because the phenomena cannot provide that justification. And as something independent, the assumption of "necessary objects" suffers the problems described above. So there is really no place at all for the idea of "necessary objects".
Quoting Mww
If the kinds are unlike then there is no similarity and the example is pointless.
Quoting Mww
When I get a cramp in my leg I stand up and walk to relieve it. I do not rub it, there is no external stimulus required, nothing which fulfils your description of "real physical incident". So I think you ought to accept my proposal, a "real physical incident" does not require an external cause, it could be entirely within the body.
Then there is no sufficient reason to think ..
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
.this has any approximation to being the case. If a process is not empirically observable theres no reason to look for the initial premises sufficient to find it. It isnt observable, so how would it be known what to look for?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Nonsense. I add 12 to 30, get 42. You add 18 to 6, get 24. We got different results, but used exactly the same process. While it may be an unauthorized stretch to apodeitically claim what the decision-making process in fact is, it is not so much of a stretch to say that for any member of a given kind, whatever it is will be the same across the spectrum of its members.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You mean this?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
All you say here is uncontested, but says nothing with respect to origins. It is fine for the mediocre understanding, but hardly of metaphysical value. Even the judgement which serves as current bias, was at its inception, the result of conscious thought. All youve done is kicked the can backwards, but havent given it a place to rest.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Right, which is shown by the arithmetic examples above. For empirical conditions, for a logical conclusion regarding real things, the premises are generally derived from observations. And how we generalize from observation, is in fact, how the observation, and by association, the real thing, is understood. From which follows that the premises used for logical conclusions, arise in understanding, therefore whatever flaws there may be in the construction of our premises, also arise in understanding.
For me to misjudge is merely for me to think conceptions relate to each other when some other judgement or some empirical observation, shows my error. For two people to disagree is nothing but one thinking his conceptions relate, the other thinks his relate, but in fact the two sets of conceptions themselves do not relate to each other.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
They may well have argued fervently, but they both took insufficient account of the depth of human cognition. Sense observations give reality; understanding gives the possibility for determining a relation to that reality, and its relation is described by how it is thought, and how it is thought is the conjunction, the synthesis if you will, of conceptions to intuitions, which is a judgement.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Given a representational human cognitive system, these descriptions taken by the thinking mind .properly understanding itself .are not the observation, which gives nothing but phenomena, but are conceptions, as possibilities for how the phenomena are to be thought. Logic is employed with respect to judgements made on the relation of conceptions understanding thinks as belonging to each other (plates over holes should be steel and round, re: manhole covers), or, the relations of judgements understood as belonging to each other, in the case of multiple judgements regarding the same cognition (plates over ditches should be steel but must not be round, re: ferry ramps).
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, there are flaws possible in the conscious decision-making process, but that does not say the process is flawed, but only the use of it, is. And whatever hidden premises there are in conscious decision-making cannot be the responsibility of the conscious agent making the decisions, insofar as it is contradictory to arrive at a conscious decision grounded by premises of which I am not conscious. To simply take for granted bias and prejudice as premises for conscious judgement, is a flaw in the subjects character, not in the process the agent employs in his decision-making. One can be tutored in correcting erroneous judgements, but if he is so tutored, yet decides to disregard the corrections, he is called pathologically stupid. If tutored, and receives the corrections and thereby judges in accordance with them, that is called experience, and serves as ground of all empirical judgements.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, I dont. Logical certainty may not require empirical proof, and indeed, may not have any at all afforded to it, this being a limit of forms, re: A = A. But for any logical certainty, using constructed objects of its own manufacture and representing empirical conditions, only observation can serve as proof of those constructs, re: the sun doesnt rise or fall as the appearance from certain restricted observation warrants.
Empirical observation presupposes the thing, and merely provides the occasion for thinking about the possibilities concerning what a thing is or does, its reality already given by the occasion itself. Logic, on the other hand where observation is not presupposing anything because theres nothing to observe, dictates the possible reality of things. Subsequent observation then proving the possibility, but having nothing to do with the reality of that thing, insofar as it was always an existent thing, just unobserved. At last, an empirical construct directly proceeding from the merely logical, re: things created by an intelligence because the logical possibility for it antecedes from the same intelligence, that never was possible to observe in order to validate the possibility, but rather, the construction is the observation, re: any gas station anywhere in the world.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yeeaahhhno. As if standing up and walking isnt a real physical incident.
The reason is produced by logic, not by empirical observation. I went through that already. You wrongfully apply a requirement of "empirical observation".
Quoting Mww
So says, the person with no philosophical desire to know. Your claim amounts to: 'What I cannot see I have no desire to know anything about'. We venture into the dark without necessarily knowing what we're looking for, but still looking for what we want to know. That is the philosophical desire to know.
An effect has a cause, even if the cause is not observable. This is how we can know God, Who is not observable. Through observation of His effects, and application of logic such as the cosmological argument, we can conclude the necessity of God, without ever observing Him empirically.
Quoting Mww
if you really think so, then I'm sure you could describe this process in detail, which we both used. I'll be waiting. And, I'm just as certain that I will assert that you did not describe the process which was used by me.
Quoting Mww
Do you not understand the meaning of "prior to"? It means before, therefore it says something about the origins of that which it is before.
Quoting Mww
This is the heart of our disagreement. I do not agree with your premise, that how we generalize from observation is how the real thing is "understood". I believe that such generalizations, especially the most fundamental ones (such as my example, the sun rises, the sun sets), which are things we take for granted, cannot be spoken of in terms of "understanding", because if we use this term many would have to be misunderstandings. That is known as the problem of induction.
To state it succinctly, a description does not qualify as an "understanding". So we need to apply a distinction between the application of reason, including deductive forms of logic, which provides understanding, and observation, which provides description. We see this in the scientific method of experimentation. Experiments are designed to test an hypothesis. So the descriptions which are provided by the observations are only conducive toward "understanding", when employed in the proper way, the way of the design of the experiment. I.e., the method must be followed in order that the observations are conducive to understanding.
Now, this casts doubt on this whole proposed structure of understanding, which holds that the premises are derived from observation. What we can see, from the example of the scientific method, is that the premises are derived from hypotheses rather than observations. Then, the observations (descriptions) are formulated in such a way so as to either confirm or deny the hypotheses. This indicates that observations, are fundamentally biased, or prejudiced, as directed purposefully toward the underlying hypotheses which form the basic premises. That the observations have the possibility to support confirmation, or support rejection, of the hypothesis, and therefore appear to be unbiased, does not negate the fact that they are fundamentally directed toward the underlying hypothesis and are therefore biased in that way.
Quoting Mww
I find that to be a very strange way of looking at "misjudgement". It is impossible that you have misjudged unless someone demonstrates your error?
Quoting Mww
This is where I strongly disagree. Like I said last post, sense observations provide only possibilities. All of them. That's why we have a multitude of senses, to allow cross-checking. You thought you heard something for example, but when you look you see it was very likely other than what you thought. And, it's very obvious that observations give only possibilities, when a number of people describe the same event in conflicting ways. So logic demonstrates very clearly that it is impossible that sense observations give reality, they give possibilities.
Quoting Mww
As explained above, you and I have strong disagreement on this matter.
Quoting Mww
This makes no sense. The process is what is carried out, what actually occurs, and this is the use. If you propose a separation between the process and the use, then one would be either a description of the process, or a prescription for the process. Either way, these are not the process, which is what actually occurs.
Quoting Mww
Legally, ignorance is no excuse, and you are responsible for the "hidden premises" which you employ in your decision making. And, it is not contradictory "to arrive at a conscious decision grounded by premises of which I am not conscious", this is simply called invalid logic, unstated premises required to reach the conclusion. The reality of this is very clearly exposed with issues of defining terms, and equivocation.
Through what I wrote above, I can bring the nature of these "hidden premises" further into the light. One form of such premises would be the underlying hypotheses which guide and influence descriptive observations, as explained above. We can refer to these underlying hypotheses as the person's "attitude". So for example a specific type of laziness may incline a person to think that easy money means a good, happy life. Then the person may be inclined to observe the existence of money with the attitude of looking to get it easily, and may be inclined toward fraud or theft, for example. Such "hidden premises", which we call the person's "attitude" influence the person's observations, as well as the person's use of reason, and this is not at all contradictory. Nor is it correct to say that the person is not responsible for decisions which are base in these subconscious premises. One is clearly responsible for such actions.
Quoting Mww
Obviously, flaws in character which affect the decision made, are flaws in the decision-making process. Furthermore, we all have flaws in character, therefore we all employ flawed decision-making processes. We cannot avoid that, and we must face it as reality.
Quoting Mww
The problem is that what you refer to as "pathologically stupid", is very real. And, it exists in all sorts of grades or degrees, such that we all resist education to some degree, then we all qualify as pathologically stupid to some extent. It's very evident here at TPF. What produces this pathological stupidity is what we commonly call "intuition". When we are taught something which is counter-intuitive, we automatically reject it because it is counter to the hidden premises (attitude) which we already hold.
So I proposed to you, that this is a flawed attitude which you are displaying here. We cannot continue to posit "experience" as the ground to everything, because this would create an infinite regress of experience, as if we've all lived forever. That is the problem Plato exposed with the argument of recollection in the Meno. The capacity to learn something new must come from something other than experience, or else we get the absurdity of the infinite regress of "recollection", and all knowledge has existed in each person's soul eternally, as grounded in prior experience.
Therefore we must accept something other than experience as the grounding of empirical judgements, to avoid that absurdity. In modern times there is a tendency toward a proposed division between nature and nurture, what comes to us by instinct, and what comes to us by experience. The instinctual is prior to experience. This is the basis for "intuition", which we are born with to some degree, as innate, prior to experience at its base, and consequently prior to a person's empirical judgement.
Now, if we seek to analyze this "intuition" which is prior to, and the grounding of empirical judgements, we must divorce ourselves from the notion that experience is the grounding of empirical judgement. That would imply that experience could judge itself. So instead, we look for a judgement which is the judgement of experience. And, to be able to appropriately act as a judge of experience, it must be grounded in something independent from experience. Now you should be able to see very clearly, the logical necessity to conclude that there is a type of judgement which is prior to empirical judgement (judgement based on experience), enabling us to judge experience itself. The premise that experience needs to be judged is derived from the inconsistency which is inherent within described experience, that is described above.
Quoting Mww
Well look. You allow for logical certainty without any empirical proof, as "forms". Then you add the condition of "constructed objects" and this we may call the "content". Now you say that this content can only be verified by empirical observation. Do you see that what adding this condition of content does, is reduce the certainty of the conclusions? So it is exactly as I say, the stuff verified by empirical observation only reduces the certainty of logic. In its pure form, logic is extremely certain, but adding content, objects constructed from empirical observation, reduces that level of certainty. Therefore it is exactly as I say, empirical observations have a lower degree of certainty. And, we employ logic in an attempt to reduce the uncertainty which inheres within empirical observations.
Quoting Mww
This is done through the use of the concept of "impossible". Logic dictates the impossible with laws such as non-contradiction, thereby limiting the field of possibility with the elimination of the impossible. That is known as the process of elimination.
Now when you say "Empirical observation presupposes the thing", this is incorrect. As I explained, "the thing" is only a possibility, and this is what Descartes painstakingly demonstrated. With the application of logical principles, such as the law of identity, demonstrated by Aristotle, we rule out as impossible, that there is not "the thing". Many modern philosophies reject Aristotle's law of identity, and the necessity of "the thing". Therefore "the thing" is not given by empirical observation at all, it is given by that logical process which demonstrates that it is impossible to be otherwise, rendering "the thing" as a necessity by showing it is impossible that there not be "the thing". But of course freedom of choice allows us to reject even that demonstrated impossibility (necessity).
You continue to give "empirical observation" undue credit. This has been the issue since the beginning, your assertion that sense observation cannot be wrong.