Idealism Simplified
I find myself returning to pure Idealism after a few decades.
From "Hegel's Philosophy of Mind"
§ 465. Intelligence is recognitive: it cognises an intuition, but only because that intuition is already its own (§ 454); and in the name it re-discovers the fact (§ 462): but now it finds its universal in the double signification of the universal as such, and of the universal as immediate or as being, finds i.e. the genuine universal which is its own unity overlapping and including its other, viz. being. Thus intelligence is explicitly, and on its own part cognitive: virtually it is the universal, its product (the thought) is the thing: it is a plain identity of subjective and objective. It knows that what is thought, is, and that what is, only is in so far as it is a thought (§ 521); the thinking of intelligence is to have thoughts: these are as its content and object.
So based on the self-evidence of thought itself (which must be at least as certain as any of its material intuitions, which form the inferential basis for all material scientific theories). Hence in this self-awareness of its own self-evidence, thought both is and thematizes existence in its most real form (and content).
Which does not require any material scaffolding, but does not contradict any material evidence. The culmination of the Cartesian ego cogito.
From "Hegel's Philosophy of Mind"
§ 465. Intelligence is recognitive: it cognises an intuition, but only because that intuition is already its own (§ 454); and in the name it re-discovers the fact (§ 462): but now it finds its universal in the double signification of the universal as such, and of the universal as immediate or as being, finds i.e. the genuine universal which is its own unity overlapping and including its other, viz. being. Thus intelligence is explicitly, and on its own part cognitive: virtually it is the universal, its product (the thought) is the thing: it is a plain identity of subjective and objective. It knows that what is thought, is, and that what is, only is in so far as it is a thought (§ 521); the thinking of intelligence is to have thoughts: these are as its content and object.
So based on the self-evidence of thought itself (which must be at least as certain as any of its material intuitions, which form the inferential basis for all material scientific theories). Hence in this self-awareness of its own self-evidence, thought both is and thematizes existence in its most real form (and content).
Which does not require any material scaffolding, but does not contradict any material evidence. The culmination of the Cartesian ego cogito.
Comments (99)
so is Hegel then saying the universe itself is consciousness (or intelligence)? This bit may also indicate that all reality is perception, which of course would be in line with idealism, the way that it's currently defined.
Bear in mind this is an extension of Hegel's reasoning that (I believe) clarifies the core historical problematic of idealism, that it is somehow refuted (or even refutable) by a naive reductive materialism. I would say Hegel's formulation might be that thought is the form in which reality becomes explicit to itself through the mechanism of history. Mine is (I hope) a modern-informed take.
As was the answer.
The section from Hegel definitely expands further beyond what I explored. However it very nicely expands the Cartesian cogito in such a way as to render intuitively satisfying the sense of the meaning of idealism. Which was my take. Among other interesting aspects is the contention that this self-recognition is its own, "in the name it rediscovers the fact". Elaborating his contention from another section that "we think in names". The mechanism whereby the particular and the universal are unified in and through intelligence.
I guess the famous (or infamous) descarte quote is one of the earliest forms of philosophical idealism...as opposed to visionary idealism, which is a totally different thing.
I definitely would say that the Cartesian cogito supports mind-independence (which I have long believed). Although it doesn't inherently imply idealism, I think it works well with Hegel's formulation above, which explicitly does.
I like it. From an earlier idealist philosopher, but still .
Very generous.
:100:
Plainly an echo of the scholastic doctrine of universals, but reformulated in terms of dialectic. When he says intelligence is explicitly, and on its own part cognitive it is a plain identity of subjective and objective, he is restating the \ scholastic idea of the correspondence of thinking and being but now as a result of a dialectical self-movement rather than as a pre-given harmony originating in the mind of God.
The conceptual incoherence of which is made explicit by "the interaction problem" (as well as violation of physical conservation laws) entailed by Descartes' mind-body (substance) duality, thus rendering idealism (re: mind as ontologically separate from / logically prior to body) a much less parsimonious less cogent philosophical paradigm than naturalism.
I figured that the error is in saying "i think therefore i am", which many criticize as false since existing seems to come before thinking...
I find the argument tendentious in that it presupposes what it seeks to prove, i.e. that thought is fundamental. It presumes that we most directly know our thoughts, and then goes on to make a universal ontological claim based on that presumption. Even if it were true that what we most directly know is thought, that would merely be a truth about us, and the justification of a leap from there to an ontological claim remains unargued.
A further point I would add is that the idea that what we are most directly aware of is thought if true at all, would seem to be true only in moments of linguistically mediated self-reflection. If that were so, it shows us only how language might make things seem to us, and that says nothing about the arguably more fundamental pre-linguistic experience of the world.
The argument relies on the premise that we most directly know our thoughts, a premise which seems plausible only when we are already in a linguistically reflective mode. It then concludes, as though it were self-evident, that thought is fundamental to reality.
But the linguistically mediated reflective mode is not the most common mode of human experience at all. When I am engaged in activities, such as playing or listening to music, painting, wood-working, gardening, playing ball games and an endless list of other activities, it is simply not phenomenologically true that thoughts are what I am most directly aware of.
So, as I see it, the argument doubly fails?the premise fails to be sound, and even if it were sound it would tell us something only about our selves. Basically the argument makes an unsupported leap from the epistemological premise to the ontological conclusion, while the epistemological premise itself is only true, if true at all, in a very particular mode of being.
That does not depict the role of history Hegel insisted upon.
How ever that is framed in the many interpretations, History is the criteria absent from the mythological as various attempts at representation.
I would not like to see people skate by a problem which Hegel intended to bust up the party.
I've no more idea of what you mean than you do, 'gruel.
I'm aware of Hegel's views on history, but they aren't central to my perspective on rehabilitating the validity of the intuition of Idealism. They don't necessarily undercut or limit all of his other descriptions of the relationship between thought and object.
I did not mean to bring up that element as a rebuttal to your thesis. But if the introduction of history is not germane to the argument, why not just stick with Kant where all of this is just the way it is?
this is why I don't fully subscribe to idealism; I accept it on the basis that thought = perception, and those perceptions can "create reality", yet it seems that people like Hegel and Descartes can't really acknowledge the wordless and indescribable aspects of existing.
Quoting Janus
Not exactly what I said. I noted that the self-evidence of material intuition can't exceed that of self-evidence simpliciter, which is to say thought. It isn't an ontological claim, but an epistemological framework for making an ontological claim.To assert anything about reality material or otherwise is already to presuppose the structure of intelligibility in which that claim appears. That structure is thought.
Quoting Janus
To me, this aligns with my further reflections on Hegel's claim that "We think in names." Perhaps not pre-linguistic, per se, but proto-linguistic. And yes, linguistically mediated self-reflection is a kind of culmination of self-awareness, which doesn't exclude or preclude other kinds, whose existence doesn't contradict the characterization.
Quoting Janus
Your phenomenological inventory doesn't actually contradict the premise, which doesn't require us to be constantly reflective, only capable of reflectivity...among other things.
Sure. But I'm reading Hegel right now. And I liked the formulation, it was evocative. If you wanted to reformulate something in more Kantian terms that would also be interesting. Which isn't to say I don't consider the historical dimension worth study, just not in this specific context.
My own views on historicism align more with Collingwood, less an unfolding of Absolute Spirit, more as a reconstructive act of thought. Historical thinking recovers the conditions of intelligibility, just as reflective thought recovers its own ontological foundation.
Quoting ProtagoranSocratist
As for Hegel, I'd say that Will is the culminating synthesis of self-determining awareness that coincides with these 'wordless and indescribable existences.'
Could you describe them for us?
haha, touche...pretty ironic for me to say that, right? It's whatever exists besides you thinking and writing messages on here (as the buddhists and new age people talk about: "feeling the breath coming in your nose", etc.)
Quoting Pantagruel
Huh, i thought that was the hallmark of shopenhauer. I suppose we would have to consult the german translation.
No such problems need to be encountered. We observe that human beings act of free will, and we observe a hole in conservation laws, losses which are commonly written off as entropy. Therefore there is no reason to assume an interaction problem.
Quoting ProtagoranSocratist
You see the beginnings of that in Schellings dark ground, a pre-rational, primal force or will. It is the non-rational foundation that makes freedom, personality, and consciousness possible. Kierkegaard was influenced by this, and studied with Schelling, but went beyond Schellings and Schopenhauers Idealism of the Will with his existentialism.
"No Idea is so generally recognised as indefinite, ambiguous, and open to the greatest misconceptions (to which therefore it actually falls a victim) as the idea of Liberty: none in common currency with so little appreciation of its meaning. Remembering that free mind is actual mind, we can see how misconceptions about it are of tremendous consequence in practice. When individuals and nations have once got in their heads [pg101]the abstract concept of full-blown liberty, there is nothing like it in its uncontrollable strength, just because it is the very essence of mind, and that as its very actuality. Whole continents, Africa and the East, have never had this idea, and are without it still. The Greeks and Romans, Plato and Aristotle, even the Stoics, did not have it. On the contrary, they saw that it is only by birth (as e.g. an Athenian or Spartan citizen), orby strength of character, education, or philosophy (the sage is free even as a slave and in chains) that the human being is actually free. It was through Christianity that this idea came into the world."
Clearly, you're in denial ...
. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_dualism#Arguments_against_dualism
Quoting Pantagruel
I.e. folk psychology (akin to superstition). Smells of a fallacious appeal to popularity / tradition, 'gruel there are no 'immaterialsis' in foxholes. :mask:
Yes, I deny it because I understand the philosophy well. And, I know that Plato solved the so-called interaction problem more than two thousand years ago with the introduction of "the good", which Aristotle developed as "final cause".
In modern days, "the interaction problem" is brought up as a hoax. Defending this supposed problem, as a problem, requires supporting determinism, denial of free will, and denial of the capacity of choice. And that's simply hypocrisy.
:lol:
Quoting bert1
Tell that to neo/Kantians ... :roll:
:up:
Materiality is evident in embodiment and in the body's interactions with other bodies. The conceptualization of materiality is derivative in being an expression of pre-linguistic experience. You say "to assert anything about reality" but any and all assertions are secondary to, and dependent upon, experience.
We are animals. To say that all experience is first and foremost linguistically mediated would be to claim that non-linguistic animals don't experience anything, which would be absurd. Thought, at least linguistically mediated thought cannot constitute the primordial "structure of intelligibility" or else animals could not find their Umwelts intelligible. Our primary experience, shared with animals, is as material entities in a material world, subject to all the physical constraints and opportunities that world imposes and affords.
Quoting Pantagruel
The point is that linguistically mediated self-reflection and what seems self-evident to that reflection should not be 'sublimed' away from its primordial sources in embodied material life, because to do creates the illusion of an immaterial dimensionless point of consciousness, and all the misleading conclusions that follow from that kind of thinking.
Quoting Pantagruel
Our metaphysical conclusions should be derived from, and not stray away from, the whole of the pre-reflective experience that linguistically mediated reflectivity is parasitic upon. Otherwise we land in a "hall of mirrors".
Quoting Janus
:100:
Yes, you've already said that and I never did make that claim, as I clarified. I'm glad we agree.
"The good" is the way that Plato brings ideas from being understood as inert and passive, into being understood as playing an active role in causation. Aristotle described it as final cause, and we understand it as intention and free will.
Following Plato's criticism of Pythagorean idealism and the theory of participation, the dominant metaphysics no longer understood ideas as eternal, unchanging, inactive objects. Instead, ideas were understood as causally active in a changing world, full of intentional beings. In Aristotle's hylomorphism, form is actual and matter is passive. Therefore there is no interaction problem.
The interaction problem reemerges in modern times, when people return to ancient Pythagorean idealism, commonly called Platonism because Plato is the one who exposed the principles, in his criticism of it.
But we always were in a hall of mirrors, to deny that doesnt remove the philosophical dilemma.
Section II. Mind Objective, § 483,4
The intuition of mind is at least as certain and at least as real as that of matter. There is no counter to that argument that is not parasitic on the premise (since it would be an "argument", hence itself a mental product). Naive materialism is a joke without a punchline.
I think what you are describing is the strawman representation of dualism, designed by monists to make dualism look incoherent. You define the two substances as "having nothing in common", and from this strawman definition, which begs the question for the monist, it is impossible that the two substances could interact. Then substance dualism is deemed as incoherent.
But look closely, both are called "substance" therefore they already have something in common, the same name. So "having nothing in common" is already ruled out, from the beginning, as a false representation. Then, to look deeper we would need to inquire what it means to be substantial, "substance". We might determine that this is to be actual. And under the Aristotelian tradition "form" is what is actual. Then we can distinguish two types of form (actuality), that which is united to matter, and that which is separate or independent. In this way we have substance dualism, one type of substance contains matter, the other does not. But there is nothing to indicate that the two types of substance, united with matter and not united with matter, both being actual, cannot interact.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Here:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I think you are using 'substance' in a different way from, say, Spinoza.
I'm substance dualist, by the principles i just explained. Substance dualism is only made to appear incoherent through the strawman representation.
Quoting bert1
I don't know, "substance" is an Aristotelian term, and he distinguishes primary substance and secondary substance, laying the ground work for a coherent substance dualism.
I think that's somewhat consistent with what I said, depending on how one would understand "independently". If things can exist independently of each other, yet still interact, then there is no interaction problem. But if interaction denies independence, then there is an interaction problem. So for example, consider an artefact created in the past. Is that artefact currently independent from its creator or is it dependent on the creator?
The two substances I proposed are material forms and immaterial forms. By the nature of contingency, and the cosmological argument, the idealist might conclude that in an absolute sense, all material substance is 'dependent' on immaterial substance. That is, the material came into being from the immaterial, exemplified by "God". The immaterial is understood as the ultimate source of the material. However, we might still say that material things have a sort of 'independence', as the artefact is independent from its creator. That's an ambiguity between the absolute sense of "dependent", and the relative sense of "independent".
If we insist on rigorous, strict definitions, then we might be inclined to reject this ambiguity. And since material forms are dependent on immaterial forms, the idealist would be inclined to reject the substantial existence of material forms, in a way like that described by Berkeley. That the forms we observe in the world around us are actually composed of "matter" is just an illusion produced because our senses are prone to deceiving use in the way explained by Plato. Then the world can be understood to exist solely of "forms", and the idea that there is matter within these forms is just a conceptual aid, created for the purpose of assisting us in understanding how the world appears to us through sensation.
So the interaction problem is created by those who insist on the use of "matter", and the claim that material things could have independent existence. This is completely inconsistent with scientific observations because matter is a principle used to describe what is passive, inactive, what does not change as time passes, and we observe that everything is active and changing.
:victory: :smirk:
That's an unjustified and unwarranted qualification of my statement. "Material" is purely conceptual, and no observations of active change support the assumption that anything is composed of material.
Roughly speaking:
Idealism: everything is a product of mind.
Materialism: everything is made of physical stuff.
What is this supposed clash? Is the mind not coming out of a brain? Is the brain not a mental construction based on sense data?
So what prevents one from being incompatible with the other? That matter can't think? That's factually false and is relying on old (but justified at the time) Cartesian intuitions.
Or alternatively that mind is above matter? What does this even mean? I find no meaning in this assertion. The problem that can be posed is the problem of the world, either it exists absent us or it does not. That is a legitimate question, because it can be meaningfully debated.
Another question that can be meaningfully debated is how much of the world is a construction of the mind. But the alleged rift or incompatibility between idealism and materialism is merely verbal.
My criticism here is that If materialism is true, then the brain is not merely a "mental construction" even if our models of it, and perhaps even our perceptions of it, are mental constructions (idealism) or brain generated models (materialism).
According to materialism, there would be some mind-independent functional structures which appear to us as brains, and what we experience as thoughts are on the level of the physical brain, neuronal processes.
On the other hand according to idealism, the brain is merely one among all the other ideas which are taken by materialists to be mind-independently real functional structures, but are really, through and through, mental constructions..
The issue between the two is one of metaphysical fundamentality, and if the idea of metaphysical fundamentality is a coherent one, then the incompatibility between the two views is not merely verbal.
The idealists collapse epistemology and ontology, claiming there is no substantive distinction between the two, while the materialists maintain a substantive distinction.
The other point is that when you say that the problem which can be meaningfully posed is the "problem of the world"?the question regarding how much of the world is a construction of the mind (or a brain generated model) just is the salient question the answer to which precisely distinguishes idealism from materialism.
It may be more than merely a mental construction, but it is at least a mental construction, or we would have no way to perceive or model it. I presume you know Russell's quote on this topic, and he was not an idealist. But what he says is factual as far as I can see.
Quoting Janus
Who ascribes these functions? We do. What does a brain do? It produces consciousness, but it does many things which are unrelated to consciousness which are equally important. Why privilege consciousness over many of the other things brains do?
Quoting Janus
You have mentioned structures several times. I can understand epistemic structural realism in physics, but above that, say in biology and so on, I don't quite follow what you are saying.
At least you are framing something which can be discussed that materialism means mind independent structure and that idealism denies that. That's a big improvement over usual conversations on these topics.
Yes, it is; no material object, no sense data, comes with a name already imposed on it.
Idealism is that by which the imposition of names is possible; materialism is that which is presupposed by idealism as that empirical domain of objects to which the names belong.
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Quoting Manuel
Agreed; it is merely another instance of the principle of complementarity, in that, for whatever cognition is possible its negation is given immediately. Idiosyncrasy of the intellectual beast.
:up: :up:
Yeah, I agree with that framing - it is quite sensible and ought to be factual- but it apparently sounds contentious for some reason. Some people get uncomfortable with the idea of mental construction, as if objectivity is thereby rendered suspect or inexistant.
The issue that arises here, then, is whether there is an external world or not. I don't know of any idealist - save for one, an obscure British philosopher - who denies the existence of the world. But I don't understand Hegel, nor am I compelled to read him.
Ehhhhh .I would be far less generous: its pathologically stupid to deny the existence of that external thing, the forceful contact of which is sufficient cause for a displaced appearance, subsequently cognized as a farging bloody lip!!! (Sigh)
Obscure. Historically, British philosophers were empiricists, or at least pseudo-Kantian dualists. Who did you have in mind?
Long time ago, I was urged to check out The Phenomenology of Spirit, but, given my philosophical persuasions, the conjoined conceptions in that title bespoke inevitable conflict. So I never did. Not to mention the serious trash-talkin ol Arthur laid on him and those ridiculous Hegelians in general. You know .that ubiquitous cognitive prejudice we all suffer to some degree of another.
Sometimes it comes down to taste and aesthetics. I tried reading Derrida a couple of times and kept lapsing into a coma. I have no idea if I disagree with him or not.
I agree, it is stupid. But the discussion here is framed as if "idealism" and "materialism" - whatever they are - are somehow opposites. As in if we allow that ideas construct the world then matter does not exist. Or alternatively, if matter exists then ideas are these obscure mystical things. Back in Descartes time views like that made sense - there was a clear intelligible difference between res extensa and res cogitans.
We don't have that distinction along those lines anymore. Descartes was being scientific, to argue along his lines today is to force a distinction that does not look clear at all.
Quoting Mww
I've been reading the English Platonists. Known back then but forgotten today. The one I had in mind was Arthur Collier - who did deny the external world in his Clavis Universalis. Extremely unconvincing if you ask me, just repeated denials.
Quoting Mww
Absolutely. I like Raymond Tallis' quip here, "Hegel is above my cognitive paygrade." He may have some interesting ideas somewhere, but that explicit and conscious verbosity and obscurity is repellent to me.
And yes ol' Arthur's roasting is sublime.
Yikes!! Glad for your recovery.
Agreed on aesthetics. That, and my cognitive prejudice, are both purely subjective judgements, conditioned most likely by mere interest, yours from loss of it, having put forth initial effort towards a end, mine from lack of it, from which there wasnt an effort put forth at all.
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Quoting Manuel
True enough and pretty much why I stay out of it. That and the misconstrued relation between the thinking and existing I. However much a minority classed and personal an opinion that may be.
Quoting Manuel
While res extensa and res cogitans as such may have run their respective courses, dont we still argue a form of intrinsic metaphysical dualism to this day? Even dropping out the notion of substance still leaves two ideas categorically different from, but necessarily related to, each other.
But Im an unrepentant dualist in this more-modern-than-me age, so what do I know.
I wouldn't deny that we think in dualist terms - maybe mistakenly, maybe ingrained as a kind of "folk psychology" (incidentally I hate that term, it makes it sound as if folk psychology is not useful or primitive, whereas it's the way we experience the world) - but I do deny it as a metaphysical distinction.
You may want to say "property dualist" - and that's fine. I can see the appeal. But then I also see the appeal of a multi-faceted monist, which is to say, dozens of types of properties - electricity, magnetism, liquidity, plasma, etc. - all would be different properties of the same stuff.
Either is fine, and here the domain is very tricky and up to choice.
Interesting. Are you saying thinking in dualist terms is not a metaphysical operation? Cant be investigated or talked about from a metaphysical point of view?
Guess Im not sure what you mean.
I use the words "metaphysics" and "epistemology" as narrowly as I can. For metaphysics I mean the world. For epistemology I mean aspects of knowledge.
In this respect I don't think there are "substantial" distinctions between mind and matter, or anything else. No more so than seeing and hearing are metaphysical different.
In some respects, it's harder to think of a bigger difference between seeing something and hearing something. But we would not say these are metaphysical distinctions, these are differences in how we interpret the world. It's the same world but interpreted in vastly different ways.
So, dualism would be a distinction in how we organize the way we think about the world.
Nice.
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Rather more broadly than you, apparently .
For metaphysics I mean the study of the use of reason in determining the possibility, principles, and extent of human knowledge a priori.
For epistemology I mean the study of the possibility, content and method, for human knowledge a posteriori.
For the world I mean the totality of possible experience, which reduces to the study of material things, which is the empirical science of ontology. Other arbitrary non-empirical use of the concept, re: the world of ideas; the world of fine art, etc, merely represents the sum of a certain class of objects as general content, the investigation of which may not rise to the power of science proper.
Always fun bouncing stuff off you.
Likewise, dude. I learn a lot.
Cool.
So which of the trails and tribulations of human-kind shall we rectify next?
If the brain is more than merely a mental construction then it is a mind-independent existent. If it is not more than a mental construction then it is not a mind-independent existent. Our perceptions of the brain ( not our own, obviously, because we do not perceive our own brains) could be said to be mental constructions, but it would depend on what is meant by "mental construction". We are not aware of how our perceptions are pre-cognitively constructed. The predominant neuroscientific view seems to be that our perceptions arise as the kind of "tip"?the part we can be conscious of?of the "iceberg" of neuronal process. When we refer to something as mental, is it not usually a reference to things we can be aware of? If so, 'mental construction' as opposed to 'brain process' or 'brain model' might seem inapt.
Quoting Manuel
I'm certainly not privileging consciousness over the unconscious brain functions. In fact what I say about the term "mental construction" is precisely based on my disavowal of any such privileging. The point is that if the brain is doing things we cannot be mentally aware of, then that would seem to indicate that it is a mind-independent functional organ or structure.
It is true that we, on the basis of neuroscientific study, ascribe the functions, but it doesn't seem to follow that those functions are not real independently of our ascriptions. In fact the obverse seems more plausible.
Quoting Manuel
What about ontic structural realism? It's true that we rely on our perceptions to reveal structures to us, so we know them only as they appear to us. This does seem to leave the question as to what they might be absent our perception of them. That question cannot be answered with certainty, but then what questions can? To my way of thinking it is more plausible to think that our perceptions reveal things about what we perceive, but that there remain aspects which we are incapable of perceiving. So, I don't see it as black and white?I don't see it as being the case that we can know nothing about things in themselves.
Yep, I think this is exactly right.
You can pick - there's no limit. Well, maybe not moral philosophy, I find that stuff a bit dull for the most part.
Quoting Janus
Yeah, it gets tricky. On the one hand, there's something there independent of us. I think most would agree save for vanishingly few idealists (again I know only of one - Collier). On the other hand, if I say what remains is brain or a nervous system, then I am smuggling in what I am trying to show exists absent me.
We can, without going too speculative reasonably imagine that some intelligent alien species may carve out a different kind of organs (or parts of organs) and call that a brain.
As for the definition of mental- that's very hard. I think what you say is how it's used. I'd add unconscious processes to this, but this would make me idiosyncratic.
Quoting Janus
Yes. We may be talking at cross purposes here. And maybe as you suggested we'd have to settle on what a "construction" means. I take it as, whatever the mind does when it interprets sense data.
Something exists absent us but calling it a "brain" assumes that what we are carving out is a "natural kind", that is the way nature carves itself absent us. This seems to happen in physics, in biology the different framing of other creatures arises, I think.
Quoting Janus
I prefer epistemic structural realism - that applies to physics. Does it apply to chemistry or biology? I'm more skeptical here. If limited to physics, then I think we have no substantial issues to clear up.
[quote=Dan Lusthaus, What Is and Isn't Yog?c?ra] The term "Idealism" came into vogue roughly during the time of Kant (though it was used earlier by others, such as Leibniz) to label one of two trends that had emerged in reaction to Cartesian philosophy. Descartes had argued that there were two basic yet separate substances in the universe: Extension (the material world of things in space) and Thought (the world of mind and ideas). Subsequently opposing camps took one or the other substance as their metaphysical foundation, treating it as the primary substance while reducing the remaining substance to derivative status. Materialists argued that only matter was ultimately real, so that thought and consciousness derived from physical entities (chemistry, brain states, etc.). Idealists countered that the mind and its ideas were ultimately real, and that the physical world derived from mind (e.g., the mind of God, Berkeley's esse est percipi, or from ideal prototypes, etc.).
Materialists gravitated toward mechanical, physical explanations for why and how things existed, while Idealists tended to look for purposes - moral as well as rational - to explain existence. Idealism meant "idea-ism," frequently in the sense Plato's notion of "ideas" (eidos) was understood at the time, namely ideal types that transcended the physical, sensory world and provided the form (eidos) that gave matter meaning and purpose. As materialism, buttressed by advances in materialistic science, gained wider acceptance, those inclined toward spiritual and theological aims turned increasingly toward idealism as a countermeasure. Before long there were many types of materialism and idealism.
Idealism, in its broadest sense, came to encompass everything that was not materialism, which included so many different types of positions that the term lost any hope of univocality. Most forms of theistic and theological thought were, by this definition, types of idealism, even if they accepted matter as real, since they also asserted something as more real than matter, either as the creator of matter (in monotheism) or as the reality behind matter (in pantheism). Extreme empiricists who only accepted their own experience and sensations as real were also idealists. Thus the term "idealism" united monotheists, pantheists and atheists. At one extreme were various forms of metaphysical idealism which posited a mind (or minds) as the only ultimate reality. The physical world was either an unreal illusion or not as real as the mind that created it. To avoid solipsism (which is a subjectivized version of metaphysical idealism) metaphysical idealists posited an overarching mind that envisions and creates the universe.
A more limited type of idealism is epistemological idealism, which argues that since knowledge of the world only exists in the mental realm, we cannot know actual physical objects as they truly are, but only as they appear in our mental representations of them. Epistemological idealists could be ontological materialists, accepting that matter exists substantially; they could even accept that mental states derived at least in part from material processes. What they denied was that matter could be known in itself directly, without the mediation of mental representations. Though unknowable in itself, matter's existence and properties could be known through inference based on certain consistencies in the way material things are represented in perception.
Transcendental idealism contends that not only matter but also the self remains transcendental in an act of cognition. Kant and Husserl, who were both transcendental idealists, defined "transcendental" as "that which constitutes experience but is not itself given in experience." An example would be the eye, which is the condition for seeing even though the eye does not see itself. By applying vision and drawing inferences from it, one can come to know the role eyes play in seeing, even though one never sees one's own eyes. Similarly, things in themselves and the transcendental self could be known if the proper methods were applied for uncovering the conditions that constitute experience, even though such conditions do not themselves appear in experience. Even here, where epistemological issues are at the forefront, it is actually ontological concerns, viz. the ontological status of self and objects, that is really at stake. Western philosophy rarely escapes that ontological tilt. Those who accepted that both the self and its objects were unknowable except through reason, and that such reason(s) was their cause and purpose for existing - thus epistemologically and ontologically grounding everything in the mind and its ideas - were labeled Absolute Idealists (e.g., Schelling, Hegel, Bradley), since only such ideas are absolute while all else is relative to them.
With the exception of some epistemological idealists, what unites all the positions enumerated above, including the materialists, is that these positions are ontological. They are concerned with the ontological status of the objects of sense and thought, as well as the ontological nature of the self who knows. Mainstream Western philosophy since Plato and Aristotle has treated ontology and metaphysics as the ultimate philosophic pursuit, with epistemology's role being little more than to provide access and justification for one's ontological pursuits and commitments. Since many of what are decried as philosophy's excesses - such as skepticism, solipsism, sophistry - could be and were accused of deriving from overactive epistemological questioning, epistemology has often been held suspect, and in some theological formulations, considered entirely dispensable in favor of faith. Ontology is primary, and epistemology is either secondary or expendable.[/quote]
I'm nearest to epistemological idealism, although transcendental idealism also appeals to me. But I take Lusthaus' point that Western philosophy on the whole has had an ontological tilt, concerned with the nature of what ultimately exists, although I don't think that can be said of existentialism or phenomenology.
There is a sense of a real evolution here of both the meaning and the nature of the subjective and the objective. I think this might be summed up as "The evolution of understanding of the concept of the thing is at the same time the evolution of the thing which is a concept for understanding." From a subjective perspective. But, equally, it would seem that understanding is itself a property of those things which are understood.
It may, but not necessarily, mean .construction is thought; to construct is to think.
Quoting Manuel
Im bouncing yet again:
The representation of sense data is phenomenon; the interpretation of sense data as phenomena, is understanding.
To think is to construct thoughts by the synthesis of conceptions. To synthesize is to imagine the relation of representations. To imagine is to hold an image. To hold an image is to spontaneously generate schemata subsumed under a general conception.
Spontaneous generation, then, is that function for which speculation fails, further attempts must defeat all antecedent speculations, and speculation with respect to spontaneous generation fails, simply because the logic justifying it, is immediately susceptible to irremediable self-contradiction. Which satisfies the notion that mere construction of thought, while complete in itself, is never enough to obtain a systemic end.
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You know how we treat world as the collection of all possible real things? Why not treat mind as the collection of all possible human mental operational constituency? If we do that in the same non-contradictory fashion as we treat world, all possible human mental constituency is not a limitation to interpreting sense data, in the same fashion as world is not a limitation to any particular which is a member of its collection. World and mind are general conceptions without operational functions belonging specifically to them.
There is no interpretive function in any of the senses, they being physiological apparatuses having only transitional modus operandi; thus, with respect to the intellect, there is only the instillation of a presence, an occassion for which the human actual interpretive mental constituency awakens towards its systemic function with respect to a given cause. If there is no interpretive function in the senses, no determinations as data or information are at all possible from them, which makes the notion of sense data empty, from which follows it cannot be sense data that the mental system interprets.
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It is just a fact legislating the human intellect, that we can logically explain what weve never seen, from which we can infer the possibility of what weve never seen, but we can never obtain any knowledge of what weve never seen.
It is .beneath the dignity of philosophy ., that the enormity of empirical knowledge resident in the current iteration of the human being in general, is sufficient reason to neglect how he came by it.
Nobody considers the notion that if the resident knowledge is all there ever was, he cannot explain to himself how it is he learned anything at all, for it would be impossible for him to differentiate that by which he learns, from that by which he simply remembers it on the one hand .
(re: Humes constant conjunction )
.and on the other, how he can learn by instructing himself.
(Humes dilemma inevitable from mere constant conjunction, re: the impossibility for a priori cognitions in the form of, e.g., pure mathematics, or, the transcendental conception of freedom and its objects given from pure practical reason)
Why is that a human seldom allows himself to acknowledge that rote instruction regarding what he knows, and purely subjective deductive inferences regarding what he knows, is possible only from that singular mental functionality capable of both simultaneously?
Not only is idealism possible as a doctrine, there is an established argument for its necessity as a condition of human intelligence. It only remains to be defined in such a way as to limit its domain within that intelligence, and whence done successfully enough, comes entitlement to overlook the question-begging that comes along with the intellectual condition itself.
Ironically enough, the same applies to materialism, but we dont care about that, insofar as theres no legitimate need to confuse ourselves twice, so we grant the material world and concentrate on what to do with it.
That could be technically correct. My goal is more general, and it would be to say that to construct something (whether it is a phenomenon or through understanding) is to bring into being something which did not exist as (now) thought (representation, image, object, etc.).
The sticky point for others (not anyone in particular) is that they'd say objects exist absent us. I agree that something exists absent us and before us and will continue after we die. But what we call it and how we categorize that is the issue. I think physics does manage to pierce into the mind-independent structure of things.
Quoting Mww
If I follow, I agree. Sounds to me like you are speaking about something like the unconditioned, which fair enough, is granted. But I may be misinterpreting.
Quoting Mww
Possible real things? What about numbers? Those are quite pesky.
The world, as I understand it, is what there is. Yet the most reliable evidence we have for it comes through mathematical formulations which, don't seem to have worldly existence. Or maybe as Tegmark says, the world is mathematical.
To get a better idea of what you are proposing, if you could give an example of something that's not a "personal mental operational constituency", maybe I could better follow. For example, you can say, everything we think of is mental, but X is not, because X is part of the world. Otherwise, I don't quite follow.
Quoting Mww
Not the senses, what we construct from the senses. Our organ's structure sense-data, we then attempt to comprehend what is given to us through our native faculties.
Quoting Mww
That's an interesting path to follow. Strictly speaking, I think we grow (innate) knowledge, not learn, which implies getting something which you never had in any way prior. But we could get side-tracked here.
Quoting Mww
Actually, my main concern here is to attempt to clear up the misleading thinking that says, "matter can't think in principle", which is an assertion not based on evidence.
Then there are those who say that ideas are these crazy things that need to be reduced or explained away in some future science.
Once that's cleared up, I don't know what the debate is even about. It seems to be a preference of words.
Id agree with that regarding phenomena; these are something constructed that did not exist as (now) thought. But understanding just is the faculty of thought, so anything understanding does exists as (now) thought. The difference is, the synthesis intuition uses in the construction of phenomena, re: matter and form, is very different from the synthesis understanding uses in the construction of thought, re: the schemata of relevant categories, or, conceptions.
Quoting Manuel
My thinking as well. Which gets us to the brain thing: there is no doubt regarding the real existence of that object between the ears, but that object is only a brain because one of us, at one time or another, said so. From which follows necessarily, while that thing may always be, and be right where it is, it isnt a brain from that alone. Same for the ears the brain is between. Actually ..same for the very notion of between.
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Quoting Manuel
We were talking about sense data, so I meant the systemic end to be empirical knowledge. Thats all sense data is ever going to give us, and that only iff it is in conjunction with something not that. The unconditioned, which is certainly an end in itself, must be considered transcendental, insofar as no phenomenon representing a sensible object is possible, hence can be conceived through reason alone.
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Quoting Manuel
Crap on a cracker. Fair point; I should have said naturally occuring real things. Numbers are real things iff we inscribe them on Nature, and by that condition alone is their sensible appearance possible. Numbers we think are not real in that sense, which limits them to being valid conceptions of relative quantity, empirically represented by the thing we give to Nature .oh, wait.
Like, what you meant by construction of something that didnt exist? That much is true, in numbers we construct something that didnt exist, but in this case I think what didnt exist must still be thought before it does. Otherwise, how would we know what to put out there as an object? And how would we explain how there are can be so many representations of the same quantity without involving contradictions? And the killer .how is it that mathematics is always synthetic cognition referencing a myriad of distinct operations, but a number is always analytic, or that conception which is called primitive, in referencing only a singular quantity?
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Quoting Manuel
At the risk of argumentum ad verecundiam, and from a human point of view alone, mental operational constituency is sensibility and logic in general, and those reduced to representation, thought, judgement, cognition and reason. Thus, things-in-themselves on one end, and experience on the other, stand as not mental operational constituency. Neither of those enter mental operations, the former being that which gives the operational referent its beginning, the latter that which gives its termination.
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Quoting Manuel
Know what? If we follow that out to an extreme, the brain, being matter, must think, in principle, for it disguises itself in manifestations of a thinking subject.
Like I said no need to confuse ourselves twice. Once, like this, is plenty.
That's probably true when seen from a more micro-scale. But I'd suspect that both acts are creative - in the broadest sense of the term. They create something - phenomenon through matter and form and understanding - applying categories (etc.) - which did not exist as we now acquire them, prior to interaction. These things, while being quite different in specifics, create something from very poor sense data, photons and other particles.
Quoting Mww
That's how I see it. More than anything, I don't take brains to be "real distinctions" in nature, it's what we happen to categorize as relevant to the mental processes of certain animals. This does NOT deny something exists, just that they aren't carved up in nature in this way.
Quoting Mww
All good questions and borrowing Hume's words (from a different problem) - "this difficulty is too hard for my understanding." I have no idea how to proceed with numbers or math.
Quoting Mww
I almost get that. What do you mean by "experience" here? I make no distinction between experience and consciousness.
Quoting Mww
Yup. But the issue keeps arising. All I say is matter is much, much stranger than what we once thought....
Theres dozens of definitions for experience, but I personally favor the one that says experience is knowledge of objects through perception. For consciousness, I go with the definition that says consciousness is the quality of the state of being conscious. It is clear the former is of much narrower pertinence than the latter, for one is certainly conscious of his thoughts as well as his perceptions.
Besides, there is reason to suppose consciousness has its own representation, but experience does not. Consciousness is represented by that to which it belongs, the I or the transcendental ego, while experience on the other hand, nonetheless a statement concerning the condition of a subject, it is so only from the sum of his perceptions, having no concern with the subjects condition relative to his moral disposition or his aesthetic feelings in general.
Consciousness entirely defines the subject in which it is found; experience merely records the limits of a subjects reality.
If we state we are conscious of our experiences we run little risk of ambiguity or illusion. If we maintain that we experience our consciousness, we are in pains to say how without involving both.
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You make no distinction, because you dont think making one solves anything? Do you, in not making a distinction, revert to treating them equally?
Maybe its that when speaking of one there's no need for speaking of the other?
Thoughts?
That's fine. But what do you in a hypothetical scenario in which the traditional five senses aren't working, say a coma, but there's reason to believe there is still consciousness?
Quoting Mww
I use experience as synonymous with "consciousness" because this word has been used in so many ways and brings about different prejudices that I want a neutral term.
As for the "I" that accompanies consciousness. That one is tricky. Using only myself as an example (pun intended or not) I'd say a lot of the time there is an I, for which the conscious experience happens.
But there are rare times, daydreaming or random thoughts in which and "I" is not present. Of course, as soon as you verbalize it gets reintroduced. But I'm not 100% settled on the claim that an "I" accompanies all our consciousness all the time in every possible conscious variation or circumstance, even if it applies, say, in 95% of the cases.
Don't have a big horse in that fight either way.
Quoting Mww
I mostly though that Galen Strawson's use of the word - introduced in Mental Reality - was very useful. No more than that.
I wouldn't say that what remains independently of human perception is merely the brain, but is the manifold of sensitive body, nervous system and brain plus the environment which acts up it, such as to produce perception amongst many other things.
I am not understanding what you are wanting to say with your 'alien' example. I think neurophysiology clearly shows us what reasonably counts as brain and what does not.
I guess we'll have to disagree on what would be the most reasonable scope of the term 'mental'. The idea that some process could be mental and yet be impossible for us to be aware of in vivo, so to speak, just doesn't seem tenable. On the other hand I think it is fair to say that we cannot be directly aware of any neural process in its neurality, so to speak.
Quoting Manuel
I think science shows us that there are functional organic systems in nature, and I would say the brain is clearly one of them. I mean it is the one without which we wouldn't be having this conversation or experiencing anything at all.
I'm not sure what you mean by "the different framing of other creatures". Other multicellular organisms have sense organs, organs of sight, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling just as do, even though their organs may not be configured in just the same ways as ours. We also know that other animals visually detect the same structures in the environment as we do?it is evidenced by their behavior.
You may have loosed what counts as brain when you say:
"the manifold of sensitive body, nervous system and brain plus the environment which acts up it."
The nervous system is then a component of a system of which the brain is a part of.
My alien example is simple, but the particulars are hard to imagine (since we are human beings, not Martians).
Suppose Martians existed and that they have more sophisticated or refined sensory and intellectual capacities. The way they conceptualize the world is different from ours. For them, what we call a "brain", is misleading slicing of what we take to be the organ responsible for thought.
On this view, one could suppose that for them a brain may be a human head, that is to say, not only the organ "brain", but also the eyes, the ears and so on, which, without these additions a brain would not be able to work properly. So they could carve out organs in a different manner- maybe radically so, I can only point to examples I can imagine, not one's I cannot.
Quoting Janus
What about language use? We literally do not know what we are specifically going to say prior to saying it (or typing it.) Clearly we have a vague meaning, which we can express through propositions, sometimes expressing what we wanted to say, sometimes we just get approximations.
The point is that certain unconscious processes - willing, judging, spontaneity, creativity - are things that come out of us without us being consciousness of them until they happen. And I think that without these processes, we wouldn't have consciousness as we understand the word.
Quoting Janus
Yeah we have been stuck on this point before if I recall correctly. I am skeptical that they do. Not that they necessarily experience things COMPLETELY differently from us in all respects, but in some respects they do. Dogs with olfaction have access to a world we barely imagine. Mantis shrimp have 16 color receptive cones which renders the experience they have of the world very different from what we see.
There may be overlap. But I fear excessive anthropomorphizing may be limiting what we can say here.
Dare I say it? Ive no experience with being comatose. Even the deepest sleep doesnt turn off senses, although its unlikely Id exercise my taste buds. Sure my eyes are shut, but they havent been debilitated; theyve just been removed from their objects.
Quoting Manuel
Given that a lot of the time there is an I, rather than have to theorize on when there isnt, and what the differences might be when there isnt, why not just say there always is?
But we both know there isnt a real I; no where in the skull can there be discovered some thing or other identifiable as such. Just as there no such thing as reason, judgement and any of those other metaphysical-ly things these words are used to represent. Hell .wed be hard put to find even one of those representations we have insisted upon since forever.
Quoting Manuel
So there is something from nothing after all. Whodathunkit. (Grin)
Nahhhh ..theres something, always. Every human ever has presented evidence of it, however indirectly that may be, and however fantastically it may be described.
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Quoting Manuel
Yeah, well, thats the brains fault. The brain fools us into thinking we will, judge, create ..but the process the brain tells us it operates under, fondly called natural law according to the very process were in the process of investigating, doesnt give any indication there is any willing, judging or creating going on. Or, for that matter, that there is even any thinking going on.
Neurotransmitters and synaptic clefts give us grapefruit juice, but the how is impossible to prove ..and we get nowhere;
Reason gives us cause and effect and categorical imperatives, but the how is impossible to prove we get nowhere.
The brain, in its fantastic non-overlapping magisteria .
On the one hand by the principle of induction, forces physics itself to be never-ending;
On the other hand by the principle of contradiction, allows metaphysics itself to have an end.
Im afraid to inform you, Good Sir, it is inescapable NOT to have a horse in this fight. As you say, as soon as verbalization occurs, one or the other, or both, hands are active, and even though proofs are always absent, at least we can take refuge in that for which an end is possible.
And theres the answer, right there. The brain produces a thinker, who in turns produces in himself sufficiently conclusive metaphysics, in order to ward off from itself the never-ending search of its physical secrets.
Yeah, right. See the contradiction? Neurotransmitters and synaptic clefts did indeed produce metaphysics, and even if theres no proof of how, it remains that formerly determined nowhere, happened.
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Speaking of fighting .
.The apagogic (indirect) mode of proof is the true source of those illusions which have always had so strong an attraction for the admirers of dogmatical philosophy. It may be compared to a champion who maintains the honour and claims of the party he has adopted by offering battle to all who doubt the validity of these claims and the purity of that honour; while nothing can be proved in this way, except the respective strength of the combatants, and the advantage, in this respect, is always on the side of the attacking party. Spectators, observing that each party is alternately conqueror and conquered, are led to regard the subject of dispute as beyond the power of man to decide upon. But such an opinion cannot be justified; and it is sufficient to apply to these reasoners the remark: Non defensoribus istis Tempus eget. ..**
(**loosely translated as .dude, you brought a knife to a gun fight???)
If we couldnt have some kinda fun with this, why bother doing it.
Of course. In all organisms there is no actual separation between parts of the system. But I think there are good reasons to think of the brain, just as we do of the heart, the lungs and other organs as functional systems in themselves.
Quoting Manuel
I think what you say here supports my view. What we say is preceded, it seems most plausible to think, by neuronal processes, brain processes of which we cannot be aware. So I don't think it is right to refer to them as mental processes, given that I think the term is most apt when applied to what we can be conscious of.
Quoting Manuel
You seem to be misinterpreting me to say that other animals see things in the same way as we do. I'm not saying that at all?I'm saying they see the same things we do but in different ways according to the different ways their sensory modalities are structured.
Ok but, there is a big difference between once having developed your senses, losing them for a while (comatose) and never having developed the senses at all, blind or sensory deprivation at crucial development times, etc.
The question here is, what would a human being's thought pattern be like if they were comatose all throughout? Would they be completely blank? Would they be able to from minimal computation as in 7+5=12? Hard to say. Fascinating though.
Quoting Mww
Ah, yes. The damnable problem of confusing something that is publicly observable with what can be verified. We all have reason (to some extent I'd guess) but we can only see signs of reason in others, we only are acquainted to a limited extent with our own.
To doubt the manifest, funny beings these philosophers...
Quoting Mww
I have a horse, or several, I have no illusions of being "objective", though I try to be charitable and polite - sometimes failing.
Thing is, I'm not sure what I'm betting on at the moment, so I'd don't know whether to call, raise or fold.
Quoting Mww
Not so much a contradiction as just limits of the type of knowledge we have. This would be no issue if we were angles, or God, or at least the merely mysterious would be idle banality at such otherworldly heights. We just happen to stand on two legs and believe we see further than we do.
I personally don't find the hard problem to be the hard problem. Just one of many we have to live with.
Quoting Mww
Great quote!
Maybe the guy with the knife is just crazy enough, that others might pause long enough to be puzzled and by dint of hesitancy get killed. Or maybe knife-guy just gets shot. More likely anyway. . . .
I get that. And that sounds to me to be a reasonable definition of "mental". All I'm pointing out is that without these unconscious processes the mental would not arise. So, it's not easy to disentangle them.
It's not so much the brain (though of course if we lack it, we might not be thinking in high quality), more so what comes alongside consciousness and thinking, which is an obscure apparatus - we cannot introspect into how we do what we do with the mental. But this is just a quibble.
Your definition is fine and I don't deny its usefulness.
Quoting Janus
And herein lies the difference between us. I seem to be on the side that our differences are more pronounced than our similarities. You seem to say that though of course there are differences, we have some structure in common. I don't understand what you mean by structure on these levels. Are we speaking of the seemingly concrete nature of rocks, or that certain food seems to be liked by many animals?
Or is it something more abstract as in, the outline of a rock or a tree is perceivable to certain species.
As for the first case, I'd agree with it to some degree sure. It's the second option that is obscure to me.
I'm going to respond with another quibble. You are again referring to what we cannot introspect as "mental", whereas I think it most plausible to consider that what we cannot introspect is 'neural', and that it is precisely it's character as non-mental that makes it impossible to introspect.
Quoting Manuel
No, I was referring to the different ways different animals' sensory organs are anatomically structured. For example, we know dogs see limited colour compared to us (mostly blues and yellows) due to their lack of red sensitive cones in their eyes.
It may be neural. It may be computational - below the level of the neural, as Randy Gallistel suggests. There are some who think neurons alone don't suffice to explain mental activity, hence proposals like Hameroff and Penrose who speak of microtubules.
There's also the linguistic component discussed by Chomsky a very intricate unconscious model which we can tease out into consciousness to discover its form.
But unless you want to say something, I enjoy talking with you, I think your use of mental is not problematic, as I said it's a caveat, and I mention it because I feel hesitancy to create more distance than there is between the mental and the physical. It's more monist issue.
One may even wonder why we introspect at all, it reveals little of what we would like to know...
:100:
Comatose being the state of unconsciousness? Hmmmm dunno. Seems like comatose presupposes the antecedent state of being conscious, right? One never is first comatose then becomes conscious, far as I know. So can we even say theres any such thing as being comatose throughout?
Methinks tis a perfect example of the logicians term for circular reasoning, and our ol buddy Immanuels transcendental illusion. Logically, if this then that, then that without this is unintelligible. It is transcendental because the subject is reason itself, the illusion is to speculate ourselves as fundamentally conditioned by consciousness, then attempt to speculate what wed be like without that condition.
We might like to say there wouldnt be a thought pattern if we were comatose, but current science has shown brain waves resident in comatose patients, re: sleep spindles. Tested comatose patients were not comatose throughout, though. Not sure any science has been done on a patient that has never been conscious.
Quoting Manuel
Yep.
Quoting Manuel
I wouldnt be able to tell the difference between what Im doing when I introspect and what Im doing when I think. Notice, though, through the ages of dispute over the original, no ones taken introspectro ergo sum seriously enough to argue for it.
Well, far from comatose, we do have examples of people like Hellen Keller, who managed to become a wonderful writer while being deaf-mute.
It's more so, what would a human be like, if they never developed senses, either by genetic mutation, or accident or some other scenario. I'd wonder if there's "something that it's like" to be that, from a phenomenological perspective, "pure thought", absent language.
Quoting Mww
That's what's interesting, philosophically.
Quoting Mww
In part because, outside of language, we don't know what non-linguistic thought is. But few would say that thought is anywhere near exhausted through language. Introspection can be explained to some degree, but it doesn't tell us as much as we'd like. For reasons you've articulated elsewhere.
I would think that since computation can be done on physical machines, we would have little reason to think that neurons are not capable of doing it. If mind is computational and computation is a physical process then it would seem to follow that the mental is really a function of the physical. That seems most likely to me, but it remains an opinion.
Quoting Manuel
Not being familiar with Chomsky's work, I have nothing to support a comment.
Quoting Manuel
I also enjoy your input and perspectives. Difference is good?I don't think we want this place to become an echo chamber. I also agree with you on not wishing to create a substantive difference between the mental and physical, even though I think the distinction is useful in some of our thinking practices.
Well Keller only lost both her sight and hearing after an illness at age two. So she had that much normal exposure to the world in terms of her social and biological development. And through a supportive family, she developed a reasonable system of sign language, such as miming putting on glasses to signify her father, or a tying up of her hair to signify her mother. As well as shakes of the head to mean yes and no, pushes and pulls to mean come or go. A "vocabulary" of about 60 signs to navigate her safe home world.
Then she had a carer who took her at six and taught her a laborious system of spelling out words through tapping out an alphabet on her fingers. From here, Keller having had vital exposure to human speech in her first few years learnt to talk herself. And talk of all the things she could now learn from now having added not just braille, but the ability to decode chalk writing on blackboards by touch, and spoken words from touching a person's moving lips.
But when she gave her public talks, many found her bookish and limited. Maxim Gorky, perhaps unkindly, called her affected and spoilt. Someone speaking of God's disapproval of revolution in a stilted and learnt way rather than with any worldly wisdom.
I know all this from researching these kinds of "parables" and what they reveal about the socially-constructed and language-scaffolded nature of the human mind. They illustrate exactly how language as semiosis plays a central role in structuring what we "phenomenologically experience".
Alexander Meshcheryakov wrote a book, Awakening to Life, about his own work teaching finger-spelling to people born deaf and blind and so really lacking any normal level of exposure to either the sensory world and the socio-linguistic world. They grew up in institutions where their experience was about limited to their internal spasms of hunger or cold, and the rough touch of the hands cleaning and feeding them. Years of training could get them to the level of dressing themselves, feeding themselves, using the toilet. But nothing much beyond as any grammatical structure must be connected to some matching semantic world of lived experience.
So consciousness is not an innate or singular property, but a learnt and developmental process. And in humans, we develop the set of neurobiological habits we would share with any large brained animal. Then we add a socially-constructed realm of language-scaffolded ideas and intellectual habits on top.
All this was already obvious to a Victorian neurologist like John Hughlings Jackson the father of British neurology who had already worked out that the brain is structured hierarchically and topographically. A structure that could model an organism's reality by both breaking it apart and putting it back together at the same time.
When asked about what made the human brain different from an animal's, he said it wasn't merely speech but the fact that speech was an ability to "propositionalise" or make meaningful claims. About anything and everything. "The unit of speech is a proposition," he declared. "We speak not only to tell other people what to think, but to tell ourselves what we think. Speech is part of thought."
Curious that so much that seemed clear enough to Victorian science then got forgotten and all muddled up again.
Dunno. Maybe the autonomic system would still work, but the cognitive system wouldnt for lack of direct sensory input, and the aestetic part wouldnt work for lack of feelings about things of sense, so it looks like none of what is called a priori, like your pure thought, would be available. But hey .probably wouldnt be dead.
Quoting Manuel
Again, dont know, but given the otherwise fully equipped human, Im convinced all thought is absent language.
Quoting Manuel
You mean outside the language we use to speculate on what non-linguistic thought is. I agree we dont know what non-linguistic thought is, only because we dont know what thought is regardless of its modifiers. Just as Im convinced thought is absent language, so too am I convinced at least empirical thought is in the form of images which reflect the state of my knowledge. Even so, I haven't been able to pin down a describable form of pure thought, as it is called by the metaphysicians, a priori.
And I agree with that. I do think mental stuff is physical stuff. Just like gravity is physical stuff or anything else is physical stuff. I don't see a metaphysical difference between these things.
There is no mental vs. physical. If you want to talk about something analogous in modern terms, I think it makes sense to speak of the experiential and the non-experiential. And then the question becomes, how can non-experiential stuff lead to experiential stuff?
Quoting Janus
Absolutely.
It would be boring if we all agreed on everything. Keeps the discussions alive and interesting and it keeps one sharp too, forces one to think clearly about things one may overlook or has trouble explaining.
It is quite remarkable how much language is tied to thought. I haven't read Keller in a long time, so the critiques may be true to some extent.
But it's still a stunning, the human capacity to be able to speak at all absent eyes and ears. I suspect that people who are deaf-mute may be touching on thought (whatever it is) in a less complex way than we do, maybe getting closer to whatever thought may be absent language. But as you point out, it also impoverishes output.
Quoting apokrisis
There seems to be a crucial development window in which children can develop "the language organ", which, if missed, renders language virtually impossible.
Incidentally this seems true of other human capacities. If a child gets no visual input by 4 or some age like that, they won't be able to see.
Quoting apokrisis
I don't see how it's not innate. That it requires learning, only means it needs stimulus, but it comes from inside the creature. The world doesn't "teach" us consciousness, it sharpens and refines what we already have.
Quoting apokrisis
Absolutely. And we can tell in ordinary life, when we ask someone "what are you thinking", we expect propositions, not the "blooming buzzing confusion" that is happening inside our heads all the time.
Being not dead is good. Unless you are an anti-natalist. Which if you are, well, good riddance. I suspect you may be right, there'd be almost nothing going on inside.
Quoting Mww
I'm a big fan of the a priori. To problematize it as unscientific looks quite silly to me. You may be convinced, and I share the intuition, but I can't say what it is. Saying it's a priori is fine, but it leaves me uninformed. And when you begin to explain the a priori, you use language. So, it's a sticky issue.
Quoting Mww
I think that makes sense. And maybe we can say little more than this.
Im talking about self-aware and introspective human consciousness as something beyond simple animal enactive awareness. How language scaffolds what we mean by that level of mind.
Without language, there is nothing reportable because there is no socialised habit of narration. An inner story of that kind is not being created.
I think I follow. True one needs other people to activate consciousness "beyond simple animal enactive awareness." But what other people do is stimulate, provoke, give something to bounce off, in our minds. The interaction comes from others, but consciousness is inside us.
Agreed; the idea has enough problems without being unscientific. It was never supposed to be scientific in the first place, only meant to catalog the objects of certain kinds of cognition as to their source. The ground for the possibility of these kinds of cognitions, and by association their respective objects, is given in every rational human, regardless of the terminology used to describe it.
Quoting Manuel
It does need to be taken in context. I would think youd be informed enough, after it's been described, and what its supposed to do within that description. Doesnt mean you gotta believe a word of it, but youd be informed nonetheless.
Quoting Manuel
Yeah, but when you put out words to explain something with language, that something has already thought by you without it. When you bring in words that explain something to you, there is no sense in them until their relations are thought by you, and its the other guy thats thought first and talked second.
Anyway ..put this to rest?
We've had a good row, and I see no significant issues remaining to clear up at the moment. So, I think we are good here M. :cool: