Hello Philosophim,

Good response!

. Making a complex example without carefully and correctly identifying the chain of reasoning, and when it relies on sub-inductions, is not a counter.

Fair point. I think it may be easier for us if we stick to one specific sub-scenario of the thought experiment to really dive into this. So I am going to hit you with a more oddly specific version of this so that I am identifying the exact reasoning chain and see what you think.

So let’s talk about this specific scenario:

A box is selected at random from a sample size of 100 and presented to you. 51 are boxes-without-air and 50 are boxes-with-air.

1. Probability is 51% that the box does not have air.
2. You hold that the only essential properties of a box-without-air is that it is a box (i.e., a container with a flat base and sides, typically square or rectangular and having a lid) and it is not filled with air in its empty space (within it).
3. You hold that the only essential properties of a box-with-air is that it is a box (i.e., ditto) and it is filled with air in its empty space (within in).
4. You have experienced a billion boxes with design X and every one was a box-with-air. Every part of the design is an accidental property except for it being a box and having air (as defined above). You have never experienced a design X which was not a box-with-air.
5. You have experienced a billion boxes with design Y and every one was a box-without-air. Every part of the design is an accidental property except for it being a box and not having air (as defined above). You have never experienced a design Y which was not a box-without-air.
6. The box presented to you (which was picked at random) matches the design of design X.
7. Design X and Y look absolutely nothing alike.

If probability is more cogent in this case, then you should hedge your bets that it is a box-without-air.
If possibility outweighs probability in this case, then you should hedge your bets that it is a box-with-air.

If your claim that probability is always a more cogent bet than possibility, then you are committed to saying that it is a box-without-air in this scenario.

I think the possibility in this case is more cogent, what say you?

Bob

I'm going to leave it there, Bob: it's been fun, but we are inevitably going to continue to go around in circles. Thanks for the conversation.

Fair enough my friend! I enjoyed our conversation and look forward to future ones!

Have a wonderful day!
Bob

Hello Philosophim,

Absolutely no worries on time! (:

Firstly, I want to disclaim that, although I read your discussion board posts herein, I may be misremembering a thing or two (inadvertently); so please feel free to abruptly correct me here and there if I do (and I apologize in advance).

After coming to understand your methodological approach better, I think that the hierarchy of inductions, as a hierarchy of categories (e.g., probability, possibility, plausibility, and the irrational) that definitively trump one another (e.g., probability is always more cogent than a possibility, assuming they are at the same point within the chain of reasoning), is insufficient to account for cogency of inductions.

To provide my reasoning on this, I would like to lead you through a thought experiment and see what you think. I am going to do it sequentially so you see my full line of reasoning.

For this thought experiment, I am going to refer to a “box-without-air” and a “box-with-air”. By both, I mean a glass box which has a trap door close to the top which has room to place objects that upon pressing a button fall through the trap door. So we can place a wooden cube in that top space, click the button, and observe it fall through the trap door and land at the bottom of the box. Now, by a “box-without-air”, I mean just that the air has been removed from the box (so it is like a vacuum sealed container). By “box-with-air” I mean a normal box that has air in it.

You and I are sitting on the porch (of one of our houses: whichever) and we are presented with a “box” (which is a trap door box described above) that is either a “box-without-air” or a “box-with-air”: we aren’t told which it is. It has a wooden block in the upper floor area that will fall once the trap door is released.

We are asked: “how fast will the wooden block fall once the trap door is released?”.

You calculate an estimation of X m/s^2, which factors in air resistance. I, on the other hand, make the exact same calculations and estimations but minus the factoring in of the air resistance.

I ask you: which of our beliefs is more cogent to hold? This is going to depend on if it is more cogent to factor in air resistance, which depends on whether it is more cogent to believe it is a box-without-air or a box-with-air. Now, at this point, I think both of our reactions is to invoke the hierarchy of inductions to decipher who is correct. Let’s narrow down this experiment to make things interesting (and explicate some worries of mine).

Let’s say we don’t know the probability of either and we have both have experienced a wooden block fall from a trap door within a glass box before that was a “box-without-air” and a “box-with-air”.

We can’t appeal to probabilities, so our strongest form of induction is out. Now we can both invoke the second strongest, which is possibility to defend our beliefs (which are at odds with one another). So how do we resolve it? I think the solution could be, since it is a comparison of the same category of knowledge (i.e., possibility) and the same link in the chain (i.e., first chain link), prima facie, the quantity of experiences of each could suffice. So if we have both experienced 100 times “boxes-with-air” and only 50 times “boxes-without-air”, then we could say that most cogent solution is to believe that the box has air in it.

But, let’s make this more interesting (; . Let’s say we have both experienced the “boxes-with-air” 100 times on the moon (in special labs thereon) and the “boxes-without-air” 50 times on the earth (in normal neighborhoods in which we live). Now, although the quantity is in favor of saying the box is full of air, it is more cogent to hold that it is without air because our experiences of the “boxes-with-air” compared to “boxes-without-air” is located far away from where we are currently encountering a “box” (which is on the porch on earth). So now, location is the deciding factor. Likewise, we could say, to make things equal, that we’ve experience them the same amount (but still in those drastically different locations) and, according to your view as I understand it, we would have no means of deciphering which is more cogent even though, to me, it is clearly that it is a “box-without-air” (in this case). We can’t appeal any category within your inductive hierarchy to explain this cogency nor can we appeal to the number of instances within a category: it’s purely location this time that breaks the tie.

But we can go even deeper: let’s say that we’ve experienced “boxes-without-air” only once and “boxes-with-air” a million times (and both within the same reasonable locale), but the box we are presented with (of which we are calculating the fall acceleration) looks identical to the one “box-without-air” we have experienced and absolutely nothing like the “boxes-with-air” we have experience (way more many times). It feels just like the “box-without-air”, has the same structure, same colors, same mechanisms are there, etc. The sheer matchability of uniqueness makes it more cogent to hold that it is a “box-without-air” even though we are comparing two possibilities and one possibility clearly has a larger quantity of experiences in its favor—yet it isn’t more cogent. It is purely the uniqueness identified in the box that is the differentiating factor.

Now, let’s make it completely break (by my lights) the induction hierarchy: let’s prove a plausibility is more cogent than a possibility and probability under certain conditions. Let’s say we don’t know the probability, and we’ve never experienced a “box-without-air” and we have experienced a “box-with-air” a million times. But, we inspect the box that is presented to us (which we are calculating the fall acceleration for) and see that it has “box-without-air inc.” on the bottom (engraved thereon). We google that company and find reasonably that it is a real company, they make actual “boxes-without-air”, and this box (which we are inspecting) looks exactly like the ones in the photos on their website. Now, all of that is a plausibility: we haven’t done anything about that company except for google them. We do, however, have know that it is possible that it is a “box-with-air” because we have experienced it before (many, many, and I mean many times): but, I submit to you, that that possibility is less cogent than holding, in this nuanced case, that the box is a “box-without-air”. The plausibility has outweighted the possibility in my eyes.

Likewise, let’s say I know the probability of the box being a “box-without-air” is 90% and that the box brand says “not an airless box inc.”. Upon only googling around, the “not an airless box inc.” is adamantly against the idea of selling and using boxes that are capable of creating an airless vacuum (perhaps its against their religious beliefs). Firstly, the sheer fact that there is a probability and the other is a plausibility entails that one should go off of the former under your view, but, I submit to you, it is actually more cogent to hold that it is a “box-with-air”. Secondly, even though there is a high probability that it is a “box-without-air”, given the nuanced circumstances, it is more likely that this one is not one of them. Now, importantly, this is an example of a probability being outweighed by a plausibility.

By point here is that, upon further reflection, it is insufficient to use the inductive hierarchy you have proposed because they do not supersede eachother absolutely in the manner you have proposed. The context and circumstances matter, of which are not elaborated upon in your expounding of your view. Such as, simply as examples, location and uniqueness. Likewise, I do think that plausible evidence can outweigh probable evidence (as seen above).

I wanted to get your take on this: am I misunderstanding or misremembering the view here?

Bob

Hello Philosophim,

First of all, as I have stated before, I think that this methodological approach is severely underrated and underappreciated (especially in this forum): it is a deceivingly simple but yet an incredibly effective pragmatic approach!

After thinking about it more and reading your new post here, I have some reservations (or perhaps confusions (; ) I would like to voice to you (pertaining thereto); however, I know we already had a long conversation (and I would imagine you probably moved to a new thread due to the immense number of posts between us) so I wanted to reach out preliminarily and ask you if you would like me to voice the concerns or not? This is your board, and I want to respect that. So, absolutely no worries if you were wanting to hear from other people and would like me to refrain from continuing/starting a conversation again about it.

Just let me know either way. I look forward to hearing from you.

Bob

Hello Mww,

One of the subtleties of metaphysics in general, is the recognition that only through reason can reason be examined, from which follows that all that is reasoned about is predicated on what is reason is. This is, of course, the epitome of circularity, and because it is inevitable, it best be kept to a minimum. No one has admitted to having sufficient explanation for how we arrive at representations, even while many philosophize concerning what they do in a speculative theory, justifying their inclusions in it. So saying, to posit an additional representational faculty, doing what it does and we not being able to say how it does what it does, stretches circularity beyond what couldn’t be explained beforehand.

This is fair.

I mean you are correct, in that there are things, such as those you listed, that I have no warrant to claim, either as fact objectively, or as irreducible truth subjectivity, which is exactly the conditions under which transcendental philosophy is to be understood.

Oh I see. Are you agreeing with me then that:

[/quote]For example, under transcendental idealism I don’t think you can claim: there are other minds; that you have a mind; that you have representative faculties; that objects persist in their existences even when you are not perceiving them, etc[/quote]

yet you hold with the mind as a representational faculty, which is something impossible to know without the antecedent knowledge there is a mind, and, the nature of it is such that it has representational capabilities.

I am not following which part of this is impossible knowledge (other than your claim that we cannot know the things-in-themselves). Yes, I think we can know that there are minds that represent the world around to themselves: what is impossible (in terms of knowledge) about that?

If conception is itself a metaphysical function, and if possibility is a metaphysical condition, then whatever is conceivable must be metaphysically possible.

Why would conceptions be a metaphysical function?

No matter what was turned around from, or by whom, I never said nor hinted there is no metaphysics beyond transcendental philosophy, or that all metaphysics is necessarily predicated on transcendental philosophy’s critical method.

I apologize: I must have misunderstood you. I thought you were claiming that we cannot perform valid metaphysics beyond transcendental philosophy—as we cannot know the things-in-themselves. Is that incorrect?

One can attempt to solves pure reason’s problems, including the one of singular importance, any way he wishes, depending on the preliminaries he uses.

I wasn’t saying that you were defining metaphysics as only transcendental philosophy but, rather, that you would claim we cannot do metaphysics beyond transcendental investigations because that is impossible knowledge for you.

Perhaps you might be so kind as to reiterate what your whole point originally was, with respect to what you said there.

With respect to what was said there, I was saying responding to:

except in the sense that whatever it is that appears to us as invariant objects does so reliably, which suggests, but doesn't prove, that the in itself is invariant – Janus

And here’s the problem: you can’t say that things-in-themselves cannot be thought of as knowably having object permanence and then turn around and say that the phenomena suggests that the things-in-themselves have object permanence. The phenomena do not suggest anything about the things-in-themselves under Kantianism. Period.

And the part you quoted was here (in its full context):

Janus, you are conceding here that you can, at the very least, get at what is suggested of the things-in-themselves via the phenomena, which is clearly not compatible with Kantianism (in its original formulation). I personally agree with you, but then you can’t turn around and claim, like a Kantian would (which was my whole point originally with Mww), that we can’t do metaphysics beyond transcendental philosophy. Your argument for object invariance here is exactly that: a metaphysical claim pertaining to the things-in-themselves.

I am discussing with Janus about whether one, as a Kantian, can claim there is object permanence. Janus believes so (under the conditions they are explaining), and I say no. When I invoked you I was just tying in our conversation that I think we can go beyond transcendental metaphysics, and I think you would say we can’t (because knowledge of the things-in-themselves) is impossible. I think this is a self-undermining under Kantianism (for many reasons that we have already expounded).

I apologize if I misrepresented you there, please correct me where I am wrong.

Do you have an idea as to why your system is called analytic idealism, insofar as it is a metaphysical doctrine?

It is originally called ‘analytic’ idealism because it is formulated under the Analytic school of philosophy, but I like it, beyond that personally, due to my definition of objectivity: so I prefer saying “analytic idealism” over “objective idealism” because I don’t like misusing the term ‘objective’ in that manner. Technically, it is a form of ‘objective idealism’ as formulated by Kastrup.

Bob

Hello Janus,

If things-in-themselves are responsible for producing the phenomenal things, and the phenomenal things are reliably invariant (to varying degrees according to the phenomena under consideration, of course) then we can say that things in themselves reliably give rise to invariant phenomena. That doesn't say anything about the things in themselves being invariant in themselves, though.

I think it does, because the only way a thing a representation can be invariant is if either (1) the mind of which it is produced simply fabricates it as such, or (2) the object of which it is representing (which is a thing-in-itself) is invariant. There’s no other options by my lights.

What I meant there is the same as what I said above; we have no warrant for saying that things-in-themselves are invariant in themselves, but we do know that they are invariant in the sense that they reliably produce invariant phenomena

I understand what you are saying here, but this is predicated on the idea that there is another option, plausibly, other than #1 and #2 above.

In positing things-in-themselves as being the things that give rise to the appearance of phenomenal things I'd say Kant must be committed to that much.

I don’t think so because I think #1 and #2 are the only options, and Kant denies #2; so #1 is the only thing plausibly left. Otherwise, Kant (and you) would be saying that the invariance of the phenomena are not fabrications of one’s mind and they aren’t a reflection of the objects themselves—but if the latter is true then they their invariance must be due to the mind.

Now I admit that there is a tension here in the Kantian idea that we know absolutely nothing about things-in-themselves, but I don't think it amounts to an outright inconsistency.

I think, given what I said above, it is an inconsistency. Either the mind’s representative faculty cause the invariance, or the things-in-themselves which are being represented do: there’s no third option. So to make a claim like “we can know phenomenal invariance but nothing about the things-in-themselves”, to me, is claiming a third option that can’t exist.

If "the nature and relations of objects in space and time" and space and time themselves are human representations, human perceptions, then it would seem to follow that these cannot exist apart from human experience.

By my lights, if space and time are pure intuitions, then the phenomenal permanence must be in our minds representative faculties (and not the things-in-themselves)—unless one wants to posit a second outer space and time beyond our minds. If this is the case, though, then there’s no reason to believe that there are outer objects (things-in-themselves) in any sense that we perceive them, and thusly, that they have permanence (other than our minds creating them fictitiously as permanent).

All he is saying is that the phenomena of perception cannot exist absent perception, and that seems right, doesn't it?

I don’t think that’s just what he is saying: our perceptions are all we can know according to him; they are perceptions of X, and X is never knowable. Thusly, we can’t even know that the things-in-themselves have object permanence, which I think is highly unparsimonious.

I'm only talking about the natural expectations of the dog that objects don't simply disappear when not being perceived

If don’t think you can know that the things-in-themselves produce the permanence (which you can’t if Kant is right), then the only other option is that the mind creates it as a matter of fiction—which would mean that it isn’t there when you aren’t perceiving it.

It might seem inconceivable to us that something could produce a world of differentiated and diversely invariant objects without being differentiated and invariant in itself, but it doesn't follow that we therefore know that the in itself must be differentiated and invariant

To me, it does. Otherwise, you are invoking magic, which is always unparsimonious. (1) the mind of which it is produced simply fabricates it as such, or (2) the object of which it is representing (which is a thing-in-itself) is invariant.

Likewise, to say that the phenomenal invariance is caused by something which itself is not invariant is to say that it is a mere appearance and thusly there isn’t really object permanence.

Think of it this way: if the things-in-themselves are not persisting when you are not representing them but yet your phenomenal experience of them is that they are persistent, then the only option available to you is that the mind is fabricating it and thusly the persistence is an illusion: the object doesn’t persist when you are not looking at it because that persistence is a feature of your mind.

We might think that to be the most plausible explanation, but quantum physics might make us think twice about that

I don’t see how quantum mechanics is helping your case: could you please elaborate?

Bob

Hello Mww,

You can think all day long it takes three lines to enclose a space, but you’re not going to prove it with apodeitic mathematical certainty, unless you physically draw three real lines in a relation to each other corresponding to the image representing your thinking.

But the image I draw won’t necessarily be accurate and thusly will not prove it in itself. For example, take a circle: the circumference is 2πr. There is no circle, Mww, that you can draw for me that will actually have a circumference of exactly 2πr. The proof is within the abstractions and the drawings are approximations thereof and, consequently, afford no such apodeitic mathematical certainty on there own.

Agreed, not part of our construction of the world, which begins with phenomena, whereas mathematics ends with them

I think you may be saying something different than me while still agreeing on mathematical anti-realism: you seem to be saying that math is ingrained into the a priori construction of the phenomenal world, whereas I am not even granting that much.

I think that our mathematical formulas are good estimations of our qualitative experience, which is necessarily not quantitative—so there’s no math in it. Reality is fundamentally a clash of wills.

For me, a thing I have yet to experience is already metaphysically possible, simply because it is conceivable as a thing, or a manifold of things, such as a world of things

But not all conceivable things are metaphysically possible. For example, under your metaphysics the understanding is not a phenomena: so it is metaphysically impossible for the understanding to be a phenomena. However, we can both imagine a world where the understanding is phenomena. But that doesn’t matter because, under your metaphysical view, that’s impossible because there is nothing you believe than actualize that potential.

You’re saying a thing is metaphysically possible insofar as some existence with the potency to actualization some possible thing hasn’t done it yet, which is tantamount to a non-natural causality.

I don’t see how this follows. Something can have the potential to be actualized metaphysically and be perfectly natural. For example, under my view, it is actually and metaphysically possible for the ball at the top of the hill to fall to the ground because I belief the world has to offer such things that could actualize it.

Now, I accept the transcendental conception of a non-natural causality, but not with respect to the actualization of metaphysically possible things.

I didn’t follow this point: what do you mean by the “non-natural causality” in transcendental philosophy? And what do you mean in terms of its contradistinction to the “actualization of metaphysically possible things”?

For example, under transcendental idealism I don’t think you can claim: there are other minds; that you have a mind; that you have representative faculties; that objects persist in their existences even when you are not perceiving them, etc…… — Bob Ross

Transcendental philosophy is a speculative methodology. It doesn’t work by claims, which imply possible truths, but by internal logical consistency in the unity of abstract conceptions, same as yours.

I am failing to see how this was a response to my objections that you quoted. What do you mean by “it doesn’t work by claims”?

Perhaps, but not more knowledge. So we have between us, one philosophy which demonstrates that some knowledge is impossible given this set of conditions, and another philosophy which demonstrates that the former impossible knowledge really isn’t, given a different set of conditions, which in effect, only demonstrates another form of impossible knowledge.

What is the other form of impossible knowledge that my theory conceives?

Idealism, in whichever denomination, is always predicated on a subject that cognizes in accordance with a system contained in the form of his intellect

Correct.

I rather think your idealism has to do with the cognitions, whereas my idealism has to do with the system proper;

I think from your perspective I am “skipping over” the representative faculty of my mind which is supposed to the ultimate metaphysical dead-end. Whereas, I think we can extend the same metaphysical inquiries to all of reality.

yours concerns what is thought about, mine with thought itself.

I can agree with this to a certain extent; but I also hold that our minds are representative faculties—however, I don’t think it is cogent to claim that we can only go that far. Likewise, as a side note, I am not thoroughly convinced of Kant’s 12 categories: I appreciated Schopenhauer’s idea of the understanding as simply the PSR of becoming better.

Yours is limitless, mine self-limiting.

Fair.

When considering the pros and cons of each, parsimony should be the rule.

Parsimony, internal/external coherence, empirical adequacy, intuitions, explanatory power, reliability, and credence. I would say.

Bob

Hello Janus,

I'm not becoming hostile, just impatient. I just don't believe that you are grasping what is meant by things in themselves. So, I am not going to deal with or respond to anything other than that one point at this juncture.

Fair enough. Since we began this discussion as a conversation about Kantianism, I am going to assume you mean to be explaining it in terms thereof—unless you specify otherwise. In other words, I am going to assume by “thing-in-itself” you are referring to it in the Kantian sense: please let me know if you are a neo-Kantian or something else.

The idea of things-in-themselves is not meant to be interpreted as claiming that there are things just like those that are perceived that exist independently of human perception; the "thing" in there is a kind of placeholder for some unknowable X

I agree. Kant calls it a purely negative conception.

So, object permanence cannot reasonably be thought to apply to things in themselves

I agree.

except in the sense that whatever it is that appears to us as invariant objects does so reliably, which suggests, but doesn't prove, that the in itself is invariant

And here’s the problem: you can’t say that things-in-themselves cannot be thought of as knowably having object permanence and then turn around and say that the phenomena suggests that the things-in-themselves have object permanence. The phenomena do not suggest anything about the things-in-themselves under Kantianism. Period.

In truth, we never perceive whole objects, but only views of them from different perspectives, so we construct the notion of whole objects from the various views (and feels) we have of them, and the fact that we can act on them, and the whole picture of a world of objects of more or less invariance is woven together with remarkable consistency by the brain/ mind.

Would you say that we, then, get indirect knowledge of the things-in-themselves? I think that none of the above (that you said) is compatible with Kantianism, but I personally agree with you. Kant argues adamantly that we have absolutely no clue what the things-in-themselves are—not even a reverse engineering of the phenomena. See:

We have intended, then, to say that all our intuition is nothing but the representation of phenomena; that the things we intuite, are not in themselves the same as our representations of them in intuition, nor are their relations in themselves so constituted as they appear to us; and that if we take away the subject, or even only the subjective constitution of our senses in general, then not only the nature and relations of objects in space and time, but even space and time themselves disappear; and that these, as phenomena, cannot exist in themselves, but only in us – CPR

Perhaps you can be a neo-Kantian, but you are clearly contradicting Kant here.

Part of this picture consists in the idea of object invariance; this idea is inevitable, even animal behavior shows that they expect objects not to simply disappear when they can't be seen. I observe this when I throw the ball for my dog and it inadvertently goes into the long grass; he never stops searching for it until he finds it showing that he expects it to be there somewhere and not to have simply disappeared.

Janus, you are conceding here that you can, at the very least, get at what is suggested of the things-in-themselves via the phenomena, which is clearly not compatible with Kantianism (in its original formulation). I personally agree with you, but then you can’t turn around and claim, like a Kantian would (which was my whole point originally with Mww), that we can’t do metaphysics beyond transcendental philosophy. Your argument for object invariance here is exactly that: a metaphysical claim pertaining to the things-in-themselves.

It is exactly what you are arguing against right here:

So, if anyone says that they think this or that metaphysical explanation is the most plausible, that really only speaks to their own personal preferences. That, in short, is all I've been arguing for.

So, I haven't been arguing that it is provable that the in itself is invariant or that phenomenal objects are "permanent", but that object permanence is the inference to the best explanation in the empirical context, and that regarding noumenal invariance we really have no idea how to assess which explanation would be the more plausible because we have nothing to compare any explanation with

“noumenal invariance” and “object invariance” are the same thing: they are both a metaphysical claim about the same things-in-themselves. By definition (of “object invariance”), we are talking about whatever persists beyond your phenomenal experience and is thusly non-phenomenal (i.e., noumenal).

Bob

Hello Mww,

The true origin of the possibility of our proofs, is in reason and is a priori.
The origin of the proofs themselves, is in understanding, and is a posteriori.

I thought the origin of the proofs themselves, being in the understanding, would be a priori, would they not?

Or are you claiming that the possibility for math is within our understanding (and thusly a priori), but that we cannot know a priori the mathematical relations of objects a priori?

If so, then I agree.

Also, just a side note, I am a mathematical anti-realist; so, for me, math is not a priori in the sense of being a part of our construction, via the understanding, of the world around us. But I understand from a Kantian view what you are saying.

Useful application…..is empirical, for which the phenomenal is constructed, but by understanding, according to conceptions. Understanding is incompetent to construct synthetic principles a priori, but only to construct the conceptions and the synthesis of them to each other, representing the content of those principles. Transcendental application, is neither useful nor empirical, the form of which is merely syllogistic and thus having no empirical content.

Agreed.

Jeeezz, I hate that expression. Like…..what other world is there? That other worlds are not impossible says not a gawddamn thing about the one we’re in. And we’re not in a possible world; we’re in a necessary world.

It isn’t that the possible worlds exist but, rather, that under one’s metaphysical commitments there is an existence with the potency to actualize the thing, and as such the thing is considered metaphysically possible.

We can be more certain of logical possibility than metaphysical possibility, and actual possibility less than the former and more than the latter.

Metaphysically necessary merely indicates a condition in a thinking subject. End of story.

If by ‘condition’ you mean the belief that there is an existent thing which has the potency to actualize the said thing, then I agree.

This just says, while mathematics is that which exhibits absolute certainty, and we are ourselves the author of mathematical procedures, then it is true absolute certainty is possible for us.

I don’t see how this is true if the application of math is a posteriori. There is no absolute certainty in that, unless you are claiming that our constructions of the same things-in-themselves will never waver.

The cautions lay in thinking that insofar as absolute certainty is possible, we are thus authorized to pursue the experience of some object representing it. But that just won’t work, because the objects being pursued are not those we construct of ourselves, but are thought to exist in their own right. And they might, but there are no mathematically derived principles given from pure reason, and by association there can be no absolute certainty contained therein, that can support the reality of that object.

I feel like you are agreeing with me on my previous statement here: correct?

The certainty of mathematics can not be imitated in philosophy.

When you say we have absolute certainty in math, are you just referring to what we can know via our faculty of reason? Like, theoretically, we can be absolutely certain that 1 + 1 = 2 without appeal to the empirical world?

Is a universal mind an absolute certainty deduced from mathematical principles?

I don’t think we can deduce any existent thing from math. Math just doesn’t afford that information, nor does logic.

If not, the object, represented as a universal mind in our understanding, is a mere philosophical possibility

The universal mind isn’t represented to us as a thing-in-itself--it is the thing-in-itself and, as such, is the substrate of the reality in which we live which is what we represent to ourselves: not the Universal Mind.

If all our representations are derived from ideas contained in that which is not itself a certainty, why should we trust that our representations arise from it?

We can’t be certain of virtually anything. We can’t be certain that there is a law of gravity, that math applies to objects in so and so manner, that logic applies to objects in so and so manner, etc. I am a neo-schopenhauerian and, as such, am a neo-neo-Kantian.

I have no problem admitting that we cannot be certain in metaphysics whatsoever—including Transcendental Philosophy. I, nor you, can be certain that there are twelve categories of the understanding, or that the understanding constructs the representative world around us. So I just don’t see why this is a problem I guess.

If I can grasp that all my representations belong to me

But I would say we can get at, just like how metaphysically your representations are of your mind, other aspects metaphysically of reality. Just because you are representing things doesn’t mean that we are barred from investigating the things-in-themselves.

And, also, I feel like in order for your argument here to work, that you have to concede that your mind is a thing-in-itself. Otherwise, I have no clue what you mean when you say that it belongs to you.

and never doubt or question that they do

There’s no certainty in the claim that your conscious experience is a representation produced by your mind: it is based off of a cumulative evidential argument. It explains the data of your experience the best. If you have some proof that provides absolute certainty, then please share it!

why would I shadow that certainty with that which has decidedly less so, by thinking to myself that my representations are merely offshoots of something else?

Because, just like how it makes the most sense that your mind is representing the real world, it makes sense to account for object permanence and other minds as within an objective world and that that objective world is fundamentally mind.

While you are correct in saying it is possible, what’s missing is why I should even consider the possibility that analytic idealism holds more persuasions than the transcendental idealism I currently endorse?

Because, in my opinion, the transcendental notion that we cannot know the things-in-themselves is self-undermining: your mind is a thing-in-itself and transcendental philosophy is an evidence based analysis thereof. It is doing nothing special in comparison to the rest of good metaphysics. And this is barring you, I think, from fleshing out your whole metaphysical view (because you think that you simply cannot know the things-in-themselves). What’s missing is your account of the rest of the world.

For example, under transcendental idealism I don’t think you can claim:

1. There are other minds.
2. That you have a mind.
3. That you have representative faculties.
4. That objects persist in their existences even when you are not perceiving them.
5. Etc…

So…..what do I gain by granting my representations have their irreducible origin somewhere other than in me?

I think a more plausible explanation and account of reality. I can account for object permanence, other minds, my mind, my representative faculties, etc. no problem: I don’t think you can.

Bob

Hello Janus,

Fer fuck's sake, Bob, how many times do I have to tell you I'm not claiming that object permanence or independence is a feature of, or inference about, anything more than the phenomenal world of human experience.

Firstly, Janus, I don’t know why you are getting so hostile. I am trying to have a good faith conversation with you about your perspective on Kantianism, and all you are doing is insulting me left and right. Relax my friend! If there is something I am misunderstanding about your view or misrepresenting, then please always feel free to point it out and I will try to re-understand what you are saying. There’s no need to insult one another (:

So, I didn’t understand you to be claiming that the ‘object permanence’ only pertains to the phenomenal world for you, in terms of what you would claim to know. Originally I do not feel that you claimed that:

Object permanence is inferred on account of the experienced invariance of objects. It is an inductive, that is fallible, inference, not a deductive, infallible inference.

As you said the above and ‘object permanence’ typically refers to the claim that the objects persist in the context beyond human representations of the world (which would be beyond the phenomenal one).

Anyways, it doesn’t matter, because you are now clarifying that by it you mean something different—something like us using object permanence as it pertains only to the phenomenal world.

Here’s my problems prima facie with this claim:

1. The idea that object persist in the phenomenal world doesn’t make sense unless you are claiming that the phenomenal world are not representations but, rather, productions of your mind or a thing-in-itself. The Kantian idea of the phemonenal world is that just that of the representations we have—object permanence in those representations would entail that there is something which you perceive, something you represent, which continues to exist wherever you last perceived it which would entail it is outside of your mind and thusly in the things-in-themselves.

2. If you say that your phenomena suggest that there is object permanence, and #1 is true, then you are equally conceding that you can know of the things-in-themselves beyond merely that they exist (even if it is inductive or abductive reasoning).

You don't pay attention to anything I write, apparently, or else you distort it in the reading. I've already explained numerous times that everything I have been saying relates only to the phenomenal world. When is that going to sink in?

I understand that you are claiming you can only know of the phenomenal world, and I am trying to show you that it is a self-undermining argument (in terms of Kant’s argumentation at least). For example, see #1 above.

It’s not that I am ignoring what you are saying, I am challenging it.

Our representations of the phenomenal world are neither completely accurate nor completely inaccurate; a fact which has no bearing whatsoever on the question of whether we know the world as it is in itself (which simply as a matter of definition we don't, because anything we know is by definition the world as it is for us).

Again, here’s another similar problem to #1 above (I think) with your view: you can’t claim any bearings on accuracy or inaccuracy if you can’t know anything about the things-in-themselves; and if you want to use ‘accuracy’ and ‘inaccuracy’ to refer to the phenomenal world, then you are claiming only that some phenomena are more useful then other phenomena. The moment you claim that a set of phenomena are truly accurate or inaccurate to any degree you are thereby comparing them to something other than phenomena, and that is, by definition, the things-in-themselves. I think to be a Kantian there are much more commitments to be consistent than Kant wanted.

No Bob, those minds may be a part of the world in itself, but the mind as we know it is the mind as it appears to us. Kant's twelve categories are analytically determined by reflecting on the ways in which we understand phenomenal objects.

I am not talking about the brain. I am talking about those categories Kant’s comes up with that are a part of your representative faculty. Unless you want to claim that your representative faculty exist as nothing then you will have to concede that they exist as a thing-in-itself.

More unargued assertion; it's not interesting, Bob

It is all metaphysics because metaphysics is the study of that which is beyond the possibility of all experience—and transcendental philosophy is all about trying to infer the representative faculties from experience but those faculties are necessarily beyond all possible experience as the necessary preconditions thereof.

Kant does not argue for a soul, at least not in the CPR.

I think, given his background, he was; but, at the very least, he argued for a thing-in-itself ‘I’ of the synthetic unity of apperception. See ‘Of the Originally Synthetical Unity of Apperception’ section 12 of CPR for the whole argument, but here’s an excerpt:

The “I think” must accompany all my representations, for otherwise something would be represented in me, which could not be thought; in other words, the representation would either be impossible, or at least be, in relation to me, nothing...All the diversity or manifold content of intuition has, therefore, a necessary relation to the “I think,” in the subject in which this diversity is found.

However, if the “I think” exists, it is a thing-in-itself—not phenomena. And if it is a thing-in-itself, then Kant is contradicting his claim that we cannot know about the things-in-themselves.

Bob

Hello Janus,

Object permanence is inferred on account of the experienced invariance of objects. It is an inductive, that is fallible, inference, not a deductive, infallible inference.

But it is a metaphysical claim that you cannot make if you are claiming that we are barred from understanding the world in-itself beyond our human nature. You can’t claim even inductively that object have permanence in the real world, because the real world is human-nature independent.

If you are going to continue to distort what I've said like this, then I see little point in continuing. I have nowhere argued that our representations are inaccurate in a metaphysical context

I said:

I think, for your argument to work, you would have to prove that our human representation of the world is completely inaccurate—otherwise, then we have no reason to believe that we cannot get validly at metaphysics.

I didn’t say you argued it. I said that is the only foreseeable argument to me for you view.

I think that if we don’t have good reasons to believe that we are ‘stuck in our human-nature box’ (so to speak), then the most parsimonious solution is to assume we aren’t (until its proven otherwise). So, to me, you would thusly have to prove that we can’t. So, let me refurbish my statement: I think you would have to argue that our representation of the world gives us no insight into the things-in-themselves (instead of being inaccurate), and I that’s where Transcendental Idealism starts self-undermining (e.g., but all this transcendental investigation is actually transcendent investigation of the mind as a thing-in-itself--but then we can get at the things-in-themselves).

What could they possibly be inaccurate in relation to if the in-itself is unknowable?

To clarify, I apologize, I should have said that you need to prove that we cannot get at the things-in-themselves—not that they are completely inaccurate. But, again, I wasn’t distorting your view: I was saying what I thought you would need to prove: not what I thought you were claiming.

They are only accurate or inaccurate within their own context, i.e. within the empirical context; it is only there that we can get things right or wrong.

This didn’t make sense to me: if you are claiming that we cannot know about the things-in-themselves, then you can’t know whether they are accurate or inaccurate at all. All you can do is compare phenomena to each other, and that, according to Kant, tells you nothing about the things-in-themselves.

This is a rubbish claim, Bob, and it has already been explained to you a few times as to why it is erroneous.

I don’t see how it is rubbish. For example, even we are describing that we have a priori, transcendental aspects of our minds, then aren’t those minds a part of the things-in-themselves and we are describing that mind-in-itself? For example, his twelve categories are aspects of a thing-in-itself called a mind. But he also claims we can’t know anything about things-in-themselves. Please explain to me what about my line of reasoning here is rubbish.

Kant's a priori claims are only about the nature of intuitions, i.e. that they are spatiotemporal, and regarding the categories of judgements about phenomenally experienced objects

Sort of. Firstly, Kant’s claims about the nature of intuitions is that we have receptibility and sensibility which, by my lights, entails that it is a part of a mind or something in-itself. Now, as Mww pointed out, Kant doesn’t actually say it is in a mind-in-itself; but then one has to hold that these receptive and sensible faculties that one has is just a part of nothing (if it isn’t a part of the things-in-itself, then there is nothing else it could be a part of).

Secondly, the categories of judgments are also either (1) ontologically nothing or (2) ontologically a part of a thing-in-itself (which contradicts Kant’s claims).

The transcendental ego is the closest he gets to looking like making a metaphysical, in the traditional sense, claim, but it not;

All of his claims are metaphysical. Transcendental philosophy is metaphysics.

So, I see the transcendental ego as a phenomenological, not a metaphysical, posit

My read of it was that he was arguing for soul.

Bob

Hello Mww,

As long as there are people willing to do it, or any sufficiently correlating method, all the sands on one beach could be added to all the sands on another beach….no problem

That’s fair, but arguably there is a limit to what can be empirically proven in this manner—all I have to do is sufficiently raise the numbers; but I get your point.

I think you are saying that math is a priori in the sense that it is actually a part of the logical construction of our phenomena experience (i.e., it is transcendental), and I was more talking about a priori to our cognitive faculty of the mind (in the sense of just thinking—not the construction of our phenomenal world).

My point is that, regardless, the true origin of our proofs in pure math is a priori in the sense of our faculty of reason (in the colloquial sense) and our proofs (arguably from a transcendental idealist’s perspective) of the useful application of math is a priori in the sense of our faculty of reason’s ability to construct the phenomenal world according to principles.

Still, if phenomena/mind are valid metaphysical conceptions, and if they arise logically in a methodology which requires them, then they are logically necessary

Logical necessity pertains to the form of the argument: the proposition (or term) cannot be false. For example, a = a will be true all the way down in a truth table.

What do you mean by “if they arise logically in a methodology”?

And because logic is a metaphysical practice, and the conception is already a methodological requirement, then it could be said that they are metaphysically necessary.

Metaphysical necessity is essentially that it is true in all possible worlds—or that the thing in question exists and there exists nothing with the potency to stop it existing. I am not sure that I followed what you meant here: could you elaborate?

Bob

Hello Philosophim,

I think this was a misunderstanding of an implicit part of the definition of observation. As I defined it was always intended to be qualitative experience.

Observation is the receipt of some type of information. This could be a sense, sensation, or even a thought. Another way to look at is is "undefined experience".

Oh I see: the issue I would have here is that a “sense” can be purely quantitative (unless perhaps you also define it as having to be qualitative?). For example:

The AI is the observer and identifier, the camera merely provides the information for the AI

Although, yes, the camera doesn’t identify anything, both the AI and the camera can be explained by reduction to its parts and relations of those parts, and thusly there is no qualitative experience needed to be positing to explain anything.

I think, in the case that I am right that there is no qualitative experience for the AI (and camera), you would classify it as not ‘observing’ because that word entails for you ‘qualitative experience’. However, to me, something can be interpreting its environment (which is what I mean by ‘observation’) and have no qualitative experience (i.e., ‘observation’ in your sense of the term). If I use your terms here, then I would say the AI isn’t an observer (because it isn’t qualitatively experiencing), but it does interpret and navigate its environment (regardless of the fact that it isn’t qualitatively experiencing). I think you would just have to come up with a new term for the latter if you re-define the former in that manner.

Regardless of our opinions on what definitions to use, we cannot use the term 'quantitative experience'. This simply does not work

It doesn’t work within your terms (now that I know that you mean ‘qualitative experience’ by ‘experience’), but the point is that you can have an ‘observer’ in the sense of being capable of comprehending its environment (i.e., it is ‘aware’) and yet doesn’t qualitatively experience. So, to me, you could have a ‘quantitative experiencer’ in this sense.

If you note that a being can have a quantitative experience, then you are conceding that we can know what a beings subjective experience is like through objective means.

Not quite. I am saying quantitatively experiencing beings, which I only mean by that a being which can interpret its environment, have no subjective experience because is no subject. The AI is not a subject, but it can gather, via quantitative processes, information about its environment. There is nothing to be like an AI from the AI perspective because it doesn’t have a perspective.

No, I noted that an AI is an observer and identifies.
…
We objectively know it is conscious because we quantitatively, or by math, understand how it observes and identifies information through functions and algorithms. But do we know what its like to experience being an ai as it observes and identifies? No.

This goes back to the issue I was trying to get you to answer, so let me invoke your response here:

It is not that the objective does not prove that other beings have subjective experiences. It is only that the objective cannot prove what it is like to BE that subjective experiencer.

If the objective analysis of consciousness is only barred from knowing what it is like to be conscious as opposed to knowing that one is conscious, then I disagree with your distinction (between the objective and subjective analysis).

To go back to the other quote above, just because we can understand that a think can observe and identify information in a quantitative sense does not mean that they are a subject—that they have qualitative experience. This is equally barred from objective inquiry in the sense that I am understanding you to be talking about.

In other words, objective inquiry can tell me that the AI can receive and interpret information about its environment, but that says nothing about whether there even is something to be like it (as opposed to merely not knowing what it is like), because that says equally nothing about whether the being has qualitative experience. To prove that, I would have to be able to conceptually explain how the quantitative processes of the AI produce a stream of qualitative experiences.

But do we know what its like to experience being an ai as it observes and identifies? No.

You are assuming that there is something it is like to experience as an AI, because you are equally assuming that the AI is a subject proper.

I think one mistake we've talked past a bit on is what I mean by consciousness. My points are not concerned with higher levels of consciousness or meta consciousness.

That is fair, but I think here and there you conflate the two when countering my points—that’s the only reason I bring it up. I am not saying that consciousness proper is something which we have introspective access to as the ego, nor that it is the ego itself. I think sometimes you have been implicitly arguing against a view like that instead of mine (inadvertently).

They really are just about whether there is an experiencing being or a mechanical process which has no experience.

So in the sense of ‘experience’ that you are using here, I would say that the AI is a mechanical process which has no experience. However, it can interpret and navigate its environment nonetheless—and this isn’t incoherent with your definitions as you have set them up thus far.

To ease confusion and simplify our points, meta-consciousness should not be brought up as I don't see the need for it. When considering consciousness then, we are discussing the minimally viable level to be conscious. That would be experiencing qualia, which requires an "I".

Fair enough.

First, there is the question as to whether you were conscious, but you didn't remember that you were conscious. From my point of view, consciousness does not require a memory of being conscious. But does it require memory? For our discussion, I suppose it doesn't. Memory would perhaps involve higher level consciousness, but for base consciousness, no

It is always possible that I just don’t remember, but I do remember the areas where I was “awake” as the ego, so I doubt it.

I agree that consciousness proper does not require memory.

Is it that you didn't remember being conscious, or were you actually unconsciously doing things and no one around you knew?

I think I genuinely just, as the ego, didn’t have access to my conscious experience. I am pretty sure I wasn’t perfectly functioning (e.g., some slurred or delayed speech, etc.), but I was functioning enough to converse and do chores (like fold clothes). I was definitely impaired, and I would imagine people could guess I was; but the point is that, from my perspective as the ego, I had no introspective access to the qualitative experience.

Are they conscious and do not remember being conscious, or can the unconscious mind also observe and identify?

Ironically, my citation of brain scans can give us that answer. if it is the case that brain scans can detect that the unconscious mind is shaping what your conscious mind is about to do, then the answer is obvious.

The problem I have with this is that the brain scans can equally explain my position: the mind’s activity is expressed within perception as neural firings in the brain (and other indicators throughout the body): the body is the extrinsic representation of the mind. So, I don’t see how brain scans here exclusively pertain to your view that it is an unconscious mind shaping a conscious mind.

I think this nails the issue down. In the common use of unconscious and conscious, there needs to be the "I", or ego

To me, the ‘I’ and ‘ego’ are different. As long as there is an I, then it is consciousness—the ego doesn’t have to be there.

So to be explicit, a conscious being is an "I" which observes and identifies.

Then an AI isn’t conscious because it isn’t an “I”. Of course it mimicks what an ‘I’ does, but it is just mechanical processes with no true subject.

The question still remains as to whether you simply forgot your conscious experience, or if even an unconscious experience has a subjective viewpoint that we are unaware of.

I would say that the best explanation is neither of those: ‘i’ as the ego, as a higher function of consciousness, was inhibited by the drug and the ‘I’ was still there. ‘I’ was still conscious, but the ‘i’ was unconscious (if you will).

There is a deeper question here as well. Just because "I" am not experiencing, does that mean that the subconscious has a subjective experience that we are simply unable to know?

To me, the subconscious and unconscious are really different degrees of consciousness proper.

You and I disagree on the definition of consciousness. I require a subjective "I". If I understand correctly, in your view the unconscious still has qualia, which I consider needing a subjective "I" to experience.

No, I agree that consciousness requires a subject, I am saying that the ‘I’ is not the ego and the body is an extrinsic representation of mind operations of that ‘I’.

The ‘I’ isn’t unconscious.

In your view however the unconscious subject is still an "I" in the sense that this unconsciousness is potentially accessible to the conscious (speaking generally, I understand there are exceptions).

Sort of. I would say that the ‘I’ is conscious and the ‘conscious’ aspects you are referring to are higher order aspects of consciousness (such as meta-consciousness: introspection and cognitive self-reflection: the ego). That is why I keep bringing up meta-consciousness, because I do think, in this quote, you are using the term ‘conscious’ to refer to ego-contingent introspective awareness, which is to conflate meta-consciousness with the consciouness proper that you claimed you were meaning by that term.

Even if you note that the unconscious experiences qualia, the brain scans detecting what the unconscious is thinking about proves it still comes from the brain.

Again, brain scans equally prove my theory just as much as yours. It doesn’t exclusively prove that the brain, as a mind-independent ‘thing’, produces the mind.

If our perceptions are representations of ideas and those ideas are from minds, then we should expect to see neural activity corresponding to that mental activity from the side of our perceptions (which would include our use of brain scans). We should expect that our bodies are extrinsic representations of our minds in short.

What is your reason for believing that consciousness is not caused by the brain?

Because one can never reduce one’s qualitative experience to the quantitative, which I outlined here:

The form is as follows: “consciousness is [set of biological functions] because [set of biological functions] impacts consciousness [in this set of manners]”. That is the form of argumentation that a reductive naturalist methodology can afford and, upon close examination, there is a conceptual gap between consciousness being impacted in said manners and the set of biological functions (responsible for such impact) producing consciousness

Because it isn’t reducible and granted a full enumeration of all possible metaphysical theories (i.e., physicalism, idealism, substance dualism, and property dualism), it is less parsimonious, in short, to posit the brain as producing mind as it is to account for the world as mind-dependent (within a universal mind). In short, idealism accounts for the world better than physicalism (and the other theories.

How will this line of thinking help society?

I think it helps the same way as any other view: it attempts to give the best explanation of what reality fundamentally is. It can be useful to have a metaphysical theory in one’s back pocket (although, admittedly, some people live just fine without it).

I think it also helps us get past the dogmatic physicalist slumber we have been in for a while (ever since the age of enlightenment). And now we explore non-dogmatically consciousness as, at least, a possible candidate of the fundamental structure of reality.

Or is it merely that you just don't see the logical connections, and believe such conclusions are premature and prevent us from discovering the real alternative?

This is true as well in a sense: most people nowadays just consider consciousness an aftermath of the real world, of which can be thusly easily passed over as not so important; but there is a lot we don’t understand, of which I think we scientifically could investigate just not in the traditional methods, about it: a copernican revolution awaits us.

My approach to philosophy has always been to make greater sense of the general understanding of the world. To take our common language, clarify it, and get rid of the skepticism or ambiguity that causes confusion at a deeper level.

My approach is similar, but less emphasis on conforming to societies norms and language. I try to keep it simple, but I do not fear venturing out if I need to to get at the truth.

Paradigm shifts like yours seem like radical departures from the norm, and I've always wondered at the motivation for such

To be honest, I think idealism could be just as intuitive to people as physicalism in a different society. I think that whichever becomes predominent, the other view is thereby way harder for the masses to comprehend because they can’t step out of their own metaphysical commitments to tackle the other metaphysical theory in its own terms. For me, I know that it took me a long time to take idealism seriously.

The motivation is to give the best general account of reality while increasing explanatory power and decreasing complexity. That’s pretty much it. I just think it accounts for the world in which we live better.

This disagreement is also done in full respect Bob! Fantastic thinking was had by all sides, and I have a much better respect for your position now that I understand better the nature of your definitions and outlook.

As always: same goes to you my friend! I always enjoy our conversations.

Bob

Hello Mww,

But I am necessarily extrapolating it from phenomena.

I could equally claim that it is ‘necessary’ that your mind is a thing-in-itself.

In both cases, it isn’t logically nor actually necessary but rather (debatably) metaphysically necessary.

But none of this holds necessary transcendental absolute certainty that Kant thought it does. It is possible (albeit not plausible) that they aren’t representations of anything.

I disagree large quantity summations cannot be empirically proven, and I disagree reason a priori is itself the proof. The latter is the source of synthetic principles a priori, which make the form of mathematical operations possible, the content be what it may. All empirical proofs require content, which reason alone does not provide, in accordance with the principles, which it does.

Furthermore, reason can only prove within its own constructs, which we call logic. So it is true it is logically provable that some quantity adjoined to another in serial accumulation produces a quantity greater than either of two adjoined, but such is not a proof for particular numbers added together, insofar as to prove that, and thereby sustain the logic, the content for which the principle is the condition, would have to actually manifest, which just IS the empirical proof. In the case at hand, it follows that the great magnitude of the quantities to be adjoined, and the adjoining of them in a mathematical operation, do nothing to violate the principle

Seeing one block and another block and determining there are two blocks is empirically verifiable; but to then use that as a baseline to extrapolate huge numbers being summed together is the application of cognition only. I don’t mean ‘cognition’ in the transcendental idealist sense pertaining to the construction of the phenomenal world but, rather, the higher-order ability to self-reflectively cognize.

You seem to be claiming that simply because we start out with an empirical proof that the rest that is abstractly reasoned about them is thereby empirical: is that correct?

Bob

Hello Mww,

your description here is an attempt at reverse engineering what is outside of your representative faculty by means of what is presented to you by your representative faculty — Bob Ross

That would be the case if the reversal went further than authorized by the normal Kantian method.

I didn’t follow this part: could you elaborate?

Same as transcendental philosophy, except the latter says that things-in-themselves exist while saying nothing about such existence.

Agreed.

All things which phenomena tell me about, are already outside my representational faculties.

As of yet, I think this is an assumption you are making if you aren’t extrapolating it from the phenomena.

An individual may not have enough time to prove it, but it certainly can be proven. The measure is degree of difficulty, not its possibility.

I think it can be proven, just not empirically. Are you disagreeing? We prove it with reason, not empirical tests (e.g., not with counting our fingers). It is a priori.

Bob

Hello Janus,

You obviously didn't read what I wrote above what you quoted, which was that the only way we have of knowing about qualitative experience is being aware of our own or listening to the reports of others about their own. The person with visual agnosia cannot report on any qualitive visual experience because they are not aware of any such thing, so we have no evidence to suggest that they have any qualitive visual experience.

Yes I did:

”The only evidence we have of qualitative experience is our awareness of our own and the reportage of others' awareness of their own.” – Janus

Correct. But that doesn’t mean that it is contingent on our awareness of our qualitative experience. For example, I only come to know that there is a chair in my room via my senses, but it does not follow that that chair only exists as my senses. Likewise, you are claiming that because we only come to know we qualitatively experience via introspection, that introspection is required to qualitatively experience: same error.

Firstly, you are changing the subject. Qualities are necessarily not independent of subjective human experience, whereas chairs may not be.

I didn’t change the subject: it was an analogy. I wasn’t saying those two scenarios are equivalent.

My point was that you are conflating our epistemic access to a thing with its contingency on us for its existence (viz., that we don’t have qualitative experience since we only know we have it when we have awareness of it). That is analogous to saying that the chair of which I see (which I only know via my sense of sight) is contingent on myself (in terms of its existence) thereby—it is a conflation.

Actually, I would have thought you believed that the chair is not independent of human experience; I thought that has been the very thing you are arguing.

I would say it is mind-dependent, but not on my mind. The chair I see is not dependent on my perceiving of it—it exists as an idea on a Universal Mind.

So again, you are not really providing any counterarguments; instead, you just keep asserting the same things over and over. You should be able to understand my argument above, and if you cannot provide any cogent counterargument then our discussion will go precisely nowhere.

I think I have provided ample counterarguments here: you just skipped the most important one when responding (which I re-quoted at the beginning).

Subjective experience, and along with that qualitative experience, may be a post hoc self-reflective rationalization and thus not a suitable descriptor of what is immediately perceived, but I am not claiming that is so, I just see it as a possibility.

I never said that qualitative experience is a ‘post hoc self-reflective rationalization’. You are arguing against a straw man here. Qualitative experience is, to me, defined negatively: the non-quantitative experience which there is something it is like to be such in and of itself.

The body/ brain responding to visual stimuli can be observed, even when the subject is not aware of what is affecting the body, and that is one way of speaking about what the body/ brain experiences.

Again, you are talking about meta-consciousness. A person can have zero introspective access, as the ego, to the mental events that are occurring. I don’t see how this is a “unargued assertion”.

For example, how would it differ from the body/ brain reacting in measurable and modelable ways, ways however of which the subject has no awareness, to visual stimuli?

Under Analytic Idealism, the body/brain “reacting in measurable...ways” is an extrinsic representation of the mentality which is fundamentally occurring. So the “subject” is that organism you see as a body, but that is its outward expression on the dashboard of your experience. What you are describing is the outward expression of a qualitatively experiencing being, which is not equivalent to the ego which sometimes has introspective access to the experiences (for some animals—not even all have it).

Bob

Hello Janus,

In any case, the fact remains that we cannot know. All we know is a human-shaped world, not a tiger-shaped world or an elephant-shaped world or a world without any particular shape; I don't see how that can be reasonably disputed.

Just because we see the world from our human perspective does not mean we cannot formulate accurate metaphysical claims. If that were the case, then you couldn’t infer, for example, object permanence because it is beyond the possibility of all experience.

I think, for your argument to work, you would have to prove that our human representation of the world is completely inaccurate—otherwise, then we have no reason to believe that we cannot get validly at metaphysics.

So, if we are going to take a position on the question of what might be real independently of the human, then we are going to go with what seems most plausible, which is and must remain, a subjective matter.

Metaphysics is not subjective (in that sense) at all: we use objective criteria just like science does.

I won't respond to the rest of your post, because it all seems to me based on the same misunderstanding that Kant and I are making purportedly human-independent metaphysical claims.

My point was that Kant’s transcendental claims undermine his claims about us not being capable of knowing the things-in-themselves.

Bob

Hello Wayfarer,

I would have hoped that brief excerpt would be of use by itself, in respect of the question of the ‘knowledge of things in themselves’. (Knowledge of The Vedas not required!)

I must have misunderstood your post, because it seemed like you were advocating for ideas from eastern philosophy (e.g., that the things-in-themselves are really empty). Although I am not well versed therein, I don’t find it a feasible solution to say that the objective world is really empty—that is no different, in terms of parsimony, as saying it is all produced by my mind only (to me).

Another point is that Kant’s assertion that we can’t know things ‘as they are in themselves’ is simply an admission of the limits of human knowledge. It is a modest claim, not a sweeping assertion.

I agree: that is fair. But I think his project ends up undermining itself. If we can get at that there are things-in-themselves, and arguably that our minds are things-in-themselves, then we can get at ontology.

Bob

Hello Janus,

A person with visual agnosia cannot report on what they have no awareness of experiencing

Correct. So why say they aren’t qualitatively experiencing? This just proves my point.

The only evidence we have of qualitative experience is our awareness of our own and the reportage of others' awareness of their own.

Correct. But that doesn’t mean that it is contingent on our awareness of our qualitative experience. For example, I only come to know that there is a chair in my room via my senses, but it does not follow that that chair only exists as my senses. Likewise, you are claiming that because we only come to know we qualitatively experience via introspection, that introspection is required to qualitatively experience: same error.

Now you can say that the body experiences the physical effects or data that enables the better than random guessing of the person with visual agnosia, in the sense that I have already outlined, but that is not subjective experience, it is equivalent in kind to saying that the stone experiences the weathering effects of the wind and rain.

What do you mean by “subjective experience”? I have a feeling you mean higher order meta-consciousness (e.g., self-reflective introspective, etc.). That isn’t consciousness proper.

No, a person qualitatively experiencing without introspective access is not equivalent to a stone experiencing nor quantitative experience.

Bob

Hello Mww,

Isn’t relation the manifestation of a difference? The very conception of a synthetic a priori cognition, the backbone of transcendental philosophy, specifies a difference in the relation between the conceptions contained in the subject and the conceptions contained in the predicate of a syllogistic proposition. VOILA!!! Using difference to make the gathering of knowledge possible.

I meant ‘difference’ in the post-modern sense: the acquisition of knowledge purely from the phenomena, of which says nothing of the things-in-themselves.

Arguably post-modernism owes a lot to Kantianism: without the idea that we can never know the world beyond what is capable to conform to ourselves entails that reality becomes hyperreality. The map and territory, for practical purposes, blend together.

I think Piece was a closet Kantian anyway, wasn’t he? Early on he called himself a “pure Kantist ”, The Monist, 1905. Also in The Monist, he states pretty much the Kantian doctrine regarding the ding as sich, and the importance of the categories. He abdicated the Kantian pedestal only later, becoming a Hegelian absolute idealist…..for some reason or another. But I get your point.

I am unfamiliar if he was a hegelian, but I do know he was a Kantian in many respects and his views owe a lot to Kant.

Agreed, iff “home” is the human thinking subject.

Correct.

If you’d said we could no longer cognize the object, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one, I’d have just said….yep.

Yeah that’s what I meant.

Things are things in themselves until they are met with human sensibility

But isn’t all evidence of “human sensibility” phenomenal? Isn’t it a metaphysical claim?

I don’t need to think it; I can represent to myself differences in arrangements of matter. Horse are not comprised of wood and fences don’t have hooves. Different phenomena, different things, different things-in-themselves from which the things appear.

Again, according to Kant our phenomena tell us nothing about things-in-themselves; but your description here is an attempt at reverse engineering what is outside of your representative faculty by means of what is presented to you by your representative faculty. That’s my point.

Makes me wonder why you would ask why I maintain a thing-in-itself for each thing that appears.

Because that would require that phenomena do tell you about the things which reside outside of your representative faculty; and then Kant’s original view falls apart if this is conceded.

Bob

Hello Wayfarer,

I appreciate you sharing that information! I have also heard that eastern philosophy coincides with schopenhauerian and Kantian metaphysics, but I am not well enough versed on the Vedas (and such) to comment much further (unfortunately).

Bob

Hello Janus,

Taking the visual as paradigmatic for the sake of simplicity, the environment is presented, or given, to us, meaning that our eyes, optic nerves and brains are affected by and respond to reflected light and our brains produce representations of environments consisting of objects that stand out as such from, but are of course never separate from, the environments. It is acknowledged that ideas condition to some degree what stands out for us, what is noticed. Would anything be seen if there was nothing to be seen?

All of this is dependent on us granting that the phenomena are a valid method of inferring what metaphysically is there—e.g., you observe phenomenally that you are affected by what seems to you to be an environment which you are in, you find that it makes sense to explain other peoples’ difference observations as due to their faculties of representation (such as blind people), etc. However, under Kant’s view, I would argue, if we take him very seriously, then our own minds (or brains) are things-in-themselves (in order for him to claim we have representative faculties)--but, wait, he also says we can’t know anything about the things-in-themselves...so we shouldn’t even know we have minds or brains (in the sense of a mind-independent one).

If one concedes that we can engage in metaphysical inquiries to determine that we have a brain or a mind, then they are equally conceding that Kant’s original formulation of there being an epistemic barrier between us and the phenomena is wrong. That is my point. Then it can no longer be argued that we have no idea about ontology. The gates fly open, so to speak.

If you had never encountered any sense data at all, there would be nothing to reason with and hence no a priori knowledge. Even Kant acknowledged this as far as I remember.

I agree, but this concedes that we can get at what the things-in-themselves are; and Kant will not accept that.

He acknowledges it, yes, but it is an internal incoherency with his view (I would say).

He just argues we must have it ‘because how could it be otherwise’--while also barring us from investigating the things-in-themselves (but, again, wouldn’t our minds be things-in-themselves?).

So, 'every change has a cause' is an inductive inference from experience which has eviolved into our consistent and coherent web of understanding of the empirical via science.

I partially agree. ‘every change has a cause’ is a priori true but we have to use a posteriori knowledge to get there. It is a necessitated by the preconditions of our experience: the pure forms of intuition—i.e., space and time. We don’t, like hume thought, just experience things occur in happenstance with each other so many times that we label it ‘causal’.

For a simple example, if I throw a brick at an ordinary 2.4 mm pane of glass the glass will almost certainly break. If I push something which is top heavy, and precariously balanced, it will fall. If I punch you hard in the face you will likely cry out in pain, and your face will probably bruise. If I hit a nail into soft wood with a hammer it will go in more easily that into hard wood (it may even bend when I try to hammer it into hard enough wood and I may have to pre-drill a hole). These are a few examples of countless other kinds of experiences that lead to the conclusion that all effects have causes, and yet apparently in the quantum realm, not all effects do have causes.

Again, I would hold that causality is necessitated by our pure forms of intuition. There is no ‘realm’ in terms of quantum mechanics. Every effect does have a cause.

One plus one always equals two. I can prove this by placing two objects together, and I can see two objects there or I can focus on each object and see them individually as two examples of one object. The very fact that you say that you don't know "1+1=2" without counting your fingers supports the idea that the formulation is a generalized abstraction from sense experience. It is not reason, but imagination, that tells you that reason without sense data produces no knowledge, because you cannot imagine any knowledge, or anything at all, which is completely separate from the senses.

Not quite. Yes you can count small numbers with objects, but not larger ones. You can’t empirically prove that 8888888888888888 + 2 = 8888888888888890. Likewise, you cannot imagine that calculation either. The only way for you to prove it is with your faculty of reason: which is not imagination.

Bob

Hello Philosophim,

Ok, I think I've finally narrowed down the problem. We have two different uses of quantitative. We have a quantitative observation and a quantitative experience.

It seems as though you are using the term “experience” to refer strictly to “qualitative experience”, which is fine, and if so, then I completely agree with you that ‘quantitative experience’ is a contradiction in terms. However, I was using it in the sense that you were before: mere awareness (i.e., observation, identification, and action). So when I said “quantitative experience” I was keeping in conformance with your schema, which, at the time, was not using “experience” that strictly but, rather, more loosely to include any being which observes (essentially). In this case, there is no contradiction in terms because you can have a being which observes and has no qualitative experience.

All that you have done here is switched the meanings of the terms. The point is that your objective consciousness is only this sort of quantitative experience, where “experience” is mere awareness/observation.

The word quantitative can only be used as an objective outside observation, not an internal one.

I think I agree: an AI is said to have no internal ‘experience’ (in the sense you are now using it) but is understood as still able to observe, and its ability to observe is explained via quantitative measurements. Is that what you are saying?

Lets not use blindsight yet, but something more basic that we can all relate to. There is a nerve that by passes a cell in your lower leg. Its constantly there sending signals, but you're not conscious of it. We can describe this quantitatively of course. But its still a part of you isn't it? Unlike a row of dominos falling (I thought the analogy was quite fine Bob :) ) I can become conscious of that nerve at that cell if I receive a cut. I can have a subjective experience of that nerve cell eventually. I can never have the subjective experience of a set of falling dominos.

So, although I understand what you are saying, I think you are conflating consciousness proper with meta-consciousness; to keep it brief, there is a difference between having introspective access to one’s qualitative experiences and simply having them. Think of a beetle, they are such a low form of life that they have 0 introspective access to their experience, but they are nevertheless experiencing (qualitatively).

Perhaps the confusion lies in that I am not referring to the ‘I’ as the ego. As a subject, I am referring to myself as a complete organism (which I hold is a mind). With physicalist terms, think of it analogous to the ego vs. oneself as a physical organism: is the ‘I’ the ego—no! It is an extension of the ‘I’. So the nerve you are referring to, and all other organic processes of my body, are mind processes (under my view): my mind is having those experiences, but ‘me’ as the ‘ego’ does not have the introspective access to all of all the time. It doesn’t come into “consciousness” when I get cut there but, rather, into the sphere of access my ego has as the tip of the iceberg.

So, I agree that there is a difference between the set of falling dominos (which you won’t ever experience) and the nerve you were talking about; but by ‘you’ I am referring to the complete organism of yourself and that nerve is a part of the experience (and manifestation of your will) of yourself as mind, where when it gets cut, in most situations, it becomes introspectively accessible.

Let’s take a more extreme example to convey my point, when I was younger I tried THC from a dab pen; however, lo and behold, it turns out it was spice (which is a much more dangerous psychotic drug that is made synthetically with harmful chemicals). Not to derail into all the details, but I’ve never had that potent and horrifying sort of experiences in my life (and I hope I never do again): at some points I thought I was dead and others I thought I was going to be. Anyways, spice is so unpredictable and in my case I got its most potent affects, and part of that was going “unconscious” but functioning perfectly fine for large lengths of time. I would just “wake up” in the middle of conversing with someone or folding my clothes to put away in my closet, having every reason to believe I had been doing all this stuff with absolutely no “conscious” experience whatsoever. Philosophim, I think you would consider this an example of being, temporarily, a PZ.

From your perspective, I think you are inclined to say that the qualitative experience was gone during those blackouts, and that I was essentially a PZ during those moments. But, to me, we are thereby conflating the ego with the true ‘I’: I was still experiencing (e.g., folding my clothes, conversing with people, watching TV, etc.) but my ‘ego’ had left the chat, so to speak. Spice had, some way or another, inhibited my higher functioning capabilities, which includes the illusory ego and its introspective access to my qualitative experience. There was still something to be like me while I was blacked out, because by “I was blacked out” I am referring to the ego while by “something to be like me” I am referring to the true self. Hopefully that makes some sense. I use that example because it is the most extreme one I can think of that would prima facie work in your favor.

Also, something that we have an unconscious embodiment of can only be known quantitatively until we can know it qualitatively. This would match with the finding here

What you are saying does fit fine with the scientific discoveries that we make decisions before our ego is aware of them—but it fits equally (if not arguably better) to say that the “unconscious embodiment” is really qualitative experience proper, and the “conscious embodiment” (you are referring to) is the ego’s introspective access thereto and, consequently, it makes sense that we should expect to identify a person making decisions before their ego is aware of them: the ego is an illusion.

In terms of the rest of your post, I think it is better if we address the objective vs. subjective consciousness distinction more deeply before revisiting the rest, because at this point I will just be countering in the same manner as before (e.g., nothing about what you have said proves the brain produces consciousness, blindsight person isn’t unconscious, etc.). Once the distinction is thoroughly analyzed, I think the hard problem will start to naturally emerge out of it. This is because I think, after hearing your view thus far, that you are holding internal incoherencies with this objective vs. subjective dynamic.

The first thing we need to discuss about it is the conceptual bridge linking the two. I think that you see the objective and subjective as two sides of the same coin, but you equally hold that the objective doesn’t prove the subjective—and these two claims are incoherent with each other.

So let me ask you: do you think we can know a being is subjectively conscious if we know they are objectively conscious?

If not, then this means science, by your own lights, cannot prove someone is subjectively conscious. What does this mean? It means that everyone who knows they are subjectively conscious has no scientific explanation of what that is.

Take yourself, for example: you know you are subjectively conscious. However, you equally hold that objectively observing yourself only gets you to the conclusion that you are objectively conscious, which doesn’t prove anything beyond you being a PZ (at a minimum). This means that no objective can explain your subjective consciousness (since it only gets you to a PZ) and thusly you cannot reduce your subjective consciousness to objective inquiry of brain states.

Now, I think you hold that the brain produces subjective consciousness, even though you equally admit that it cannot since it can only provide that someone is a PZ, because we can affect consciousness by affecting the brain (and, quite frankly, the whole body). Is this correct?

If you agree with the previous paragraph, then you can’t equally claim that objective consciousness cannot give us the understanding that something is subjectively conscious (and thusly cannot claim that objective consciousness only gets us to PZs), or if you do think it only gets us to PZs, then you can’t agree with the previous paragraph: they are incoherent with each other.

Let’s start there.

Bob

Hello Wonderer1,

The analogy that I gave was perfectly fine within the context that it was given. I understand and agree that different systems have different emergent properties: I didn't deny that in my assessment whatsoever. I would suggest you read my conversation with Philosophim in its entirety without taking certain quotes out of context.

Also, I don't see the relevance of your linked YouTube video: so what if they can have domino's perform calculations?

Bob

Hello Mww,

Man, after reading that, it appears you’re more familiar with this stuff than you let on when talking to me. Which makes much of what I say pretty much superfluous.

We are NOT amused!!!! (Grin)

I am familiar with Transcendental Philosophy and do deploy the a priori vs. a posteriori distinction; however, I don’t agree 100% with Kant, and it appears you do. So that is why I am having trying to understand your interpretation of him (as I can tell it is different already from mine).

I assure you that nothing you are saying is superfluous!

Yes, exactly. Knowledge or possible knowledge a posteriori.

I am saying that Kant is using a posterior knowledge to determine that beyond the phenomena there are things-in-themselves which transcend ourselves--but then he equally claims that we can’t gain transcendent access. This is the point where I think this notion of “we can’t know ontology because it is transcendent” is refuted by the very argument meant to be in its favor.

If one takes Kant very seriously, by my lights, then there is no knowledge of things-in-themselves, and, consequently, they have to develop a post-modern pragmatist approach (such as using difference to gather knowledge)--like the American Pragmatist Pierce.

I am just curious how you get around this issue? Or is it even an issue to you?

To know metaphysically is knowledge a priori, as opposed to empirical knowledge. Knowledge a priori as it applies to external reality, in Kant, is impure a priori, insofar as it has empirical conditions contained in the syllogism, and is thereby an inductive inference, a logical function, hence, at least for convenience, is metaphysical knowledge. Which is all the thing-in-itself was ever meant to indicate.

I agree. He intended things-in-themselves as purely ‘negative conceptions’: correct? But, again, if we can reverse engineer from experience that our best guess is that there are things-in-themselves, then I don’t see what is stopping us from hedging our best guess of whether there are Universals or particulars (for example).

The problem is that:

Such is the bane of all speculative metaphysics: there’s no empirical proofs, but only internal logical consistency and strict adherence to the LNC, the only form of certainty we have to guide our contemplations.

Transcendental Philosophy is a form of speculative metaphysics but Kant doesn’t seem to think so. Literally all of good metaphysics tries to extrapolate based off of the real world their best explanations of it and only bad metaphysics ventures so far beyond reality with merely LNC. Kant isn’t doing anything differently here other than trying to keep his metaphysical research as close to ‘home’ as possible.

So we don’t know all things are appearances given from one thing-in-itself, or as many things-in-themselves as there are things that appear. Nevertheless, humans are capable of more than one sensation at a time, either from a single object or from a multiplicity of them. For single objects there’s no conflict, but for more than one sensation from more than one object, and knowledge of things-in-themselves is impossible anyway, we gain nothing by the one-for-all over the each-in-itself, which makes the all-for-one superfluous.

But here’s where I get confused, because I only consider myself a representative being because of empirical observations; and so I have no problem saying the objects conform to my representative faculties; however, this is the same fundamental process I am using to develop all of my metaphysics—there’s nothing special about this that makes it more legit than so-called ‘speculative metaphysics’ when done properly.

Likewise, I view myself as a representative faculty of an objective world, which is a transcendent conception I have—it isn’t acquirable transcendentally.

Maybe not, but the alternative is that I am necessary causality for the entire manifold of all that I perceive. Let the contradictions rampant in that scenario simmer awhile.

How can you be certain that that is the only other alternative? Do you see how these are the same questions you ask of me with the Universal Mind, but yet you seem to be using the same good criteria to make your best guesses about transcendent and transcendental ideas?

Absolutely**, but then, I don’t hold with being barred from metaphysical expositions. I just find ontology unnecessary as a discipline in transcendental philosophy, because the existence of things is never in question as is the manifestation of them in experience.

That’s fair. As far as I am understanding you, you are saying that the only metaphysics we can acquire knowledge of is what is a priori, correct? And thusly ontology is out of the question there.

are you saying that the “appearance” is just the impression of the thing-in-itself on you and the representation is the formulation of it according to your mind’s abilities? — Bob Ross

Nope. Impression of the thing.

If appearances are “the input to the sensory device”, then they impressions of things-in-themselves and the thing-for-ourselves is whatever our sensory devices can take in. Would it not?

You are noting that there is an impression, an intuition, and then an understanding of the thing-in-itself…. — Bob Ross

Nope. Impression, intuition, understanding of the thing.

By “thing”, do you just mean the thing-in-itself has captured by the sensory device?

Hey, give him a break. He’s a seriously-genius Enlightenment Prussian. He’s just reminding the readers, maybe half a dozen of whom are his intellectual peers, that the things of intuition are not things-in-themselves. And things-in-themselves, if they contain or are constituted by relations, such must be relations-in-themselves. Continuing with the passage…..

To be honest, although he was very smart, he says these kinds of contradictory things so much in the CPR that I think he didn’t have the view fully fleshed out.

The subjective constitution of our senses in general, which is to say regardless of whatever appears to us, is imagination and the two pure intuitions. Take away imagination the synthesis of matter to form and therefore the phenomenon is impossible; take away the pure intuitions and objects that should have appeared won’t, insofar as there is nothing for object to extend into, therefore they have no shape, and if they have no shape the can contain no matter, and if they contain no matter, they are not objects at all, and if they are not objects at all, there wouldn’t be anything to appear, a blatantly inexcusable contradiction.

To me this just seems like it is conflating the reasonable inference that we represent reality to ourselves and the reality which we are representing. To me, you just pointing out that if our representative faculty lost its two pure forms of intuition that we would not longer perceive the objects--but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any. The space and time as our intuitions isn’t necessarily the same as the space and time in reality (at least for physicalists).

Notice, too, that the nature of objects considered as thing-in-themselves, presupposes their existence. I mean….how could the nature of a thing be considered, even if the thing is considered as having the nature of a thing-in-itself, if it didn’t exist? But I think you’ve acceded that point, if I remember right.

It does not presuppose there existence as things-in-themselves.

the phenomenon of the horse is separate from but nonetheless related to the phenomenon of the fence

Yes, by why do you think there is a horse-in-itself and a fence-in-itself?

If you think about it, you can see the validity in it. You may have experience with horses, and with fences, and with things that move, but you’ve never seen a horse jump a fence. But you an still connect a horse to jumping a fence even though you’ve never seen it happen, thus have no experience of it. In short, you can easily conceptually image the motion, a certain indication it must be possible without contradicting the natural order, which is a purely logical deduction, which only understanding can provide, exemplifying the prime dualism in human cognition:

I have no problem with this.

Bob

Hello Janus,

The reflected light still enters the eyes, stimulates the rods and cones, leading to neural signals travelling to the brain and stimulating the visual cortex, but there is no subjective awareness of seeing.

I don’t see, upon looking at the empirical experiments of blindsight people, why one would conclude that they no longer qualitatively experience. Just because they don’t identify as seeing doesn’t mean that they aren’t still having it.

All those processes I just outlines are quantitative processes, equivalent in a way to the operation of a camera. You can keep asserting that it is the case that there is qualitative seeing, but I'm not seeing any explanation from you that could convince me of that.

To me, long story short, I believe that other people are typically qualitatively experiencing and unless there’s evidence that a given person isn’t having that then I default to saying they do. Kind of like how I believe that everyone (that is a live) has a beating heart, and unless there’s evidence that a given person doesn’t then I default to saying they do.

Yes you can account for awareness with such quantitative processes, but you can’t quantitatively account for qualitative experience, which to me is “consciousness”, and so I think your approach is flawed. I don’t think you should be metaphysically viewing the scenario as if their qualitative experience is reducible to a quantitative brain.

There is no reason to think that there are not many things in your visual field right now that you are not aware of at all, even though the light from those things is being reflected into your eye and neural signals are being received by your visual cortex. I don't think it makes any sense at all to call all that visual data we are not aware of "qualitative seeing".

This is what I was referring to: qualitative experience is not only what ‘bubbles up’ to the ego. Take breathing: even if you didn’t have introspective access to your experience of your breathing (because you weren’t focusing on it), that doesn’t mean that you aren’t still qualitatively experiencing the breathing.

We can be self-reflective on the small percentage of the overall visual data we have been consciously or unconsciously aware of

Then you agree that qualitative experience (i.e., consciousness) extends beyond what we can self-reflect upon and introspectively access?

but since there is no recall at all the experience os seeing I just don't see any way in which it could make sense to call it qualitiative.

This doesn’t work: think of a squirrel. It has virtually 0 introspective and self-reflective access to its own qualitative experience: is it thereby not qualitatively experiencing? Of course not! The squirrel cannot recall its experiences of seeing—does that mean it isn’t experiencing qualitatively? Of course not!

Introspective and self-reflective access are extra aspects of consciousness and do not belong to concsiousness proper.

Bob

Hello Philosophim,

I feel your definition is not concise enough to give a clear and unambiguous identity. "something it is like to have it in and of itself" is too many words. I can't make sense of it.

No worries. You can think of it like this:

So if I'm seeing, I'm not trying to describe or identify what I'm seeing, I'm just in the moment per say.

The sense of sight (as a qualitative experience) has something it is like in and of itself. In other words, even if I don’t understand that I am qualitatively seeing, there is still something it is like for me to be qualitatively seeing.

"What it is like to have experience". Now, I'm not saying that was your intention, but it was the closest I could get to with the definition.

I think for now this is ok, but I have a feeling I may end up disagreeing depending on how you tie it to the blindsight example.

What I was noting is that there didn't seem to be a discernible difference between qualitative experience and qualia.

The only difference is that the qualia is the instance of it:

I tried to pare this down again. "Qualia is just a stream of qualities that we experience. This is not just any experience though, but experience that we nominally single out to meaningfully navigate our lives".

In other words, your qualitative experience is really a steady flow of experiences with no distinct boundaries between them; and you single out, or carve out, experiences to compare to others nominally. For example, you get a cut and feel the pain, but that feeling of pain isn’t truly separable from your vision that you are having at the time, your thoughts, etc.--it is a steady stream of them all globbed together. Nevertheless, it is certainly meaningful to focus on the pain and try to come up with a solution to resolve it—but the qualitative pain is a part of a mush of a steady stream of qualitative experience. Does that make sense?

Do we give attention to certain experience over others?
…
Or is this about definitions/identities we create out of the stream of experience we have?

I would say both. We have the ability to focus our attention and cognitively assess our experiences, and those are likewise experiences of their own. When we focus on the pain, or we assess “that we are in pain” (as a thought), we are singling out a portion of a inextricable whole of qualitative experience.

"Qualia is what its like to experience". Is this right?

I would say that “there is something it is like to qualitatively experience, and qualia are the singled-out instances thereof (e.g., the feeling of pain)”. I think that’s generally what you are trying say here, but I wanted to be clear.

This leaves me now with a question of what quantitative experience is. I'm going to confess something. Words which have the first few letters the same as another are something my brain easily mixes up. I looked back briefly and am not sure that I did not accidently do that between the words quantitative and qualitative. It is something I've worked on a long time, but I still slip up occasionally.

Absolutely no worries my friend!

So I want to bring back the discussion to quantitative for a second. If a quantitative experience is an experience, is there something that has that experience? For lack of a better term, this would be an "unconscious experience"?

There is nothing it is like to have unconscious experience because it isn’t qualitative; and I think this is where we begin to disagree. You would say that a camera + AI (or what have you) has something it is like to be it, but to me that is only the case with qualitative experience—instances of which are qualia.

Think of it this way, although a crude and oversimplified example, if you flick a domino to start a 1,000,000 domino chain of them hitting each other one-by-one, there is nothing it is like to be those dominos hitting each other. They just hit each other: they are unconscious.

An “unconscious experiencer”, like an AI, is just a more complex version of this: it is mechanical parts hitting each other or transferring this or that—it is quantitative through-and-through just like the domino’s hitting each other. There is nothing it is like to be an AI in the sense like there is something to be like a qualitative experiencer: qualia (in the sense of instances of qualitative experience) have a “special” property of there being something it is like to be it (or perhaps to have it).

In the case of blindsight, the person would unconsciously see the object, but has no actual qualia, or conscious experience of doing so.

In terms of my view, I disagree. The blindsight person still qualitatively experiences (in this case sees) but they have lost the extra ability to understand that they are experiencing. Just like a squirrel, there is still something it is like to view the world through their experiential, qualitative sense of sight. Under my view, they don’t need to the extra cognitive or introspective access to their qualitative experience to be classified as qualitatively experiencing.

Under your view, I think you are saying that they have lost their qualitative experiencing, which I am not following why you think that. But that is what I am understanding you to be saying.

Qualia/qualitative experience is simply subjective consciousness while quantitative analysis is simply objective consciousness. There's really no difference between them

I was so close to agreeing with you here! But the last sentence through me off: there’s a big difference between them. If objective consciousness gives you only knowledge of quantitative experiencers, then you have no reason to believe that they have qualitative experience like yourself. That’s what I meant by there being no bridge between these two concepts of yours whereof you could safely connect them as two epistemic sides of the same coin.

Likewise, if you can’t know anything about other people than objective consciousness, then you are admitting that you cannot resolve the hard problem: you cannot reduce your own subjective consciousness to the quantitative brain because that requires the same objective consciousness inquiry that you agree only gets you to a PZ. So you can’t account for your subjective consciousness as reducible to some sort of objective consciousness.

Also, it wouldn’t make sense (to me) to try to reduce the quantitative to the qualitative, but that’s what is required if you are going to claim that subjective consciousness is produced by the brain.

Here’s where I get confused. You first agree with me that you can’t account for any sort of qualitative experience about other people:

When you say we can tell objectively that a being observes, identifies, and acts upon its environment, you are describing a quantitative being through-and-through (or at least that is the conceptual limit of your argument: it stops at identifying Pzs)--not any sort of qualitative experience. — Bob Ross

Yes, I agree with this fully.

And then immediately thereafter say:

Quantitative analysis (Objective consciousness) occurs when we can know that something that is not our qualia is also experiencing qualia with identification.

If you actually agree that your objective analysis of consciousness doesn’t provide insight into qualitative experience, then you can’t know that other people (through identification) are also experiencing qualia.

The problem in knowing whether something is qualitatively conscious is that we cannot experience their qualia.

And here is the conflation: again, there is a difference between not knowing their qualia (i.e., knowing how they experience their qualia) and knowing that they experience qualia. You can’t prove either of those, and sentences like the above quote make me think that you think the hard problem only applies to the former.

Quantitative consciousness then requires the addition of one other term, "Action". Only through a thing's actions can we ascertain that it can observe and identify

I don’t have a problem with using action, identification, and observance to determine if something is unconsciously experiencing: but this says nothing about “consciousness” in the sense of qualitative experience, and that’s all that matters for the hard problem.

So there we go, in the end we went about defining a few terms which are semantically no different from one another. :)

We are definitely getting closer, that is for sure (;

Bob

Hello Philosophim,

Let me clarify my terminology with more technical verbiage as, although I do think we are progressing, I think we are (1) using the terms differently and (2) our usages thereof still contain nuggets of vagueness.

Also, you brought up some good points, and I just wanted to recognize that: you are genuinely the only other person on this forum that I have discussed with that forces me to produce razor thin precision with my terminology—and that is a good thing! The more rigorous the discussion, the better the views become.

To better relate the terms together, in contradistinction to how you use them and to shed light on some of the issues I have with your view, I am going to revert back to ‘qualia’ being best defined as ‘instances of qualitative experience’; but by ‘qualitative experience’ I would like to include in the definition the property of there being ‘something it is like to have it in and of itself’.

I think this fits more what I am trying to convey, as I think you are thinking that ‘qualitative experience’ and ‘qualia’ are two separate things: the former being non-quantitative experience and the latter being a ‘mental event whereof there is something it is like to have such in and of itself’. Consequently, I think you view the hard problem as pertaining to the latter and not the former; whereas, I am trying to convey that the hard problem pertains to both.

Within my terms, non-quantitative experience (i.e., the experience of qualities) is necessarily coupled with the property of there being something it is like to have it in and of itself. For you, I think your argument only works if you deny this claim.

If I see something qualitatively (viz., non-quantitatively), then I would say that there is necessarily something it is like in and of itself to see that something (in that manner as a stream of qualities). So, to clarify, ‘qualia’ is just an instance of a stream of qualities that we experience which we nominally single out to meaningfully navigate our lives; and the experience of the stream of qualities has of its own accord the property of something it is like to have such. For me, the qualitative seeing of the green apple is inextricable from there being something it is like to qualitatively see the green apple: I anticipate you denying this claim.

In terms of ‘sensations’, I only hold they are qualitative if we are talking about a fundamentally qualitative world, which would entail a mind-dependent world, and not a mind-independent one. If we are talking about a world that is mind-independent (such as being fundamentally matter and energy) then I think, to be consistent to that view, there are fundamentally no qualities: it only exists with the emergent property of our minds from our brains. Our nerves, for example, although from our qualitative experience seem to be gathering qualitative senses, are really taking in objectively quantifiable measurements—there’s no quantities there.

In terms of ‘perceptions’, I am still referring to our mind’s (or I think in your case: our brain’s) interpretation of those sensations (which are quantitative or qualitative depending on the aforesaid factors).

By “consciousness”, then, I am referring to ‘qualitative experience’ which, I will stress, includes the property of ‘there being something it is like to have such in and of itself’.

You didn't answer my question about the difference between conscious and unconscious either.

I apologize: I must have forgotten! By “unconscious”, I mean something which is not ‘qualitatively experiencing’ (e.g., a camera taking in light and processes the environment in the form of a picture).

In every normal case of those words, we would say that what is qualitative can be received unconsciously, but what is qualia is what is received consciously.

Agreed, because “consciousness” colloquially is used very loosely. However, I must stress that there is nothing qualitative (in terms of sensations) being received by your body (and ultimately processed by the brain) if the brain is producing the mind: the qualities that you observe are soley within your conscious experience as an emergent property of a quantitative brain and body. The world, according to that view, and correct me if you disagree, would be purely ontologically quantitative. The qualities simply aren’t there—they only exist within the emergent minds.

Are we saying then an unconscious being has qualia?

I think my attempt to refurbish the terminology created some confusion: I apologize. To answer: no. An unconscious being is purely made up of quantitative, physical stuff and never comes in contact with qualities.

A P zombie would be completely qualitative right? It would have to see and act upon different stimuli. If you start to say that qualitative processing is also qualia, then is a P zombie a conscious being? Because we would be saying there is something it is like to have such in and of itself.

I am saying that the PZ doesn’t qualitatively experience and its sensory inputs do not take in qualities—it is quantitative through and through; and, consequently, there is nothing it is like in and of itself for its experiences.

and you already said that we can match the brain to qualitative experience. Which means we've now associated brain states directly with subjective experience. If it can observe, identify, and this is confirmed in its actions, we just say its a qualitative analysis or objective consciousness that doesn't concern itself with any other type of qualia.

Saying we can “match” and “associate” brain states and mental states doesn’t mean that the former produces the latter. When you say we can tell objectively that a being observes, identifies, and acts upon its environment, you are describing a quantitative being through-and-through (or at least that is the conceptual limit of your argument: it stops at identifying Pzs)--not any sort of qualitative experience.

I think if you are going to claim there is a bridge between “objective” and “subjective” conscious, then you will have to prove that the former gives us knowledge of a being qualitatively experiencing as opposed to merely observing, identifying, and acting.

So, in short:

Objectively, subjective consciousness is explained by brain states.

You have an explantory gap between the objective and subjective aspects, since objectively you are only talking about quantitative measurements and nothing qualitative. The hard problem is about how we have qualities at all that get produced by the brain, and an inextricable aspect of that is that the streams of qualities have in and of itself something it is like to have such.

This is a very real problem you'll need to address Bob. If there's no difference between qualitative and qualia beyond qualitative being a specific type of qualia, then it doesn't disprove my argument. The "subjective consciousness" of higher qualia that you note would still just be qualia. If the qualitative is just a form of qualia, brain scans can explain qualitative actions, therefore qualia.

I am not saying that qualitative experience is a type of qualia. And to clarify this, let me start here:

Self-reflection is also qualia. I don't understand how its not

Self-reflection, such as introspection and cognition, are also qualia; but my point was that the self-reflective thought “I am seeing the color red” is not the same as the qualia it is referencing, which is what I thought you were talking about. They are both a part of qualitative experience. Likewise, I was trying to note (way back when) to the fact that having a qualia in the form of a thought does not mean that you are qualitatively experiencing qualitative experience: it doesn’t double up like that (which is what you were saying about meta-consciousness). Meta-consciousness is a higher order aspect of consciousness which isn’t required to say that a being is qualitatively experiencing.

Again, I am as of yet to hear a proof from you, scientific or othewise, that “brain scans can explain qualitative actions”. Scientifically, the explanations of actions are quantitative.

Objective consciousness is the expression of the actions that something subjectively experiences

So far, I would say this is an assumption under your view. If it is not, then please provide a proof. I failing to see how the exact same expression of actions, which are supposed to be quantitative (as your qualitative experience of other peoples’ actions do not matter: they are in your head only), could not be a PZ.

Objectively, it doesn't matter exactly what the subject is experiencing from its perspective. If the person states they see a tree, we don't need to know exactly how they subjectively experience a tree to believe they see a tree right?

This is partly why I like my original definition of qualia, because I think you are conflating the hard problem with only what is it like to have qualitative experience in and of itself, when you can’t likewise even prove qualitative experience itself by virtue of the brain.

Does that negate that the truck is ultimately run by magnetism, even though we don't understand why exactly magnetism actually works? No

The problem, as I outlined in my proof, is that it is provably impossible to prove brain states produce mental states, so this is disanalogous. I agree with you here though (in terms of the actual example you gave).

But in the case of the brain, it is physical, and it impacts consciousness
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No, the pill is physical because it fits the terms of what physical means.

It is important to note that the ‘physical’ brain and pill you are describing is only within your qualitative experience: you will have to prove abstractly that there is also a mind-independent (i.e., physical) pill and brain. I am of yet to hear a proof of this.

Its like truth Bob. We can never know the truth. The truth is what is

We can come to understand different things that pertain to the truth. Truth is just a relationship between thinking and being. I can know that 2 + 2 = 4 or a = a and that is a part of ‘the truth’.

Did you know some people cannot visualize in their mind Bob?

My point is not that we simply haven’t been able to prove consciousness arises from the brain nor that we simply cannot come to understand what it is like to have qualitative experience: I am saying you can’t prove the brain produces qualitative experience.

More than a, "But it doesn't quite answer everything." Doesn't matter.
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There must be more than doubt, or skepticism, or the idea that our current knowledge cannot identify or understand certain aspects of reality.

This is just a straw man of my position. I am not invoking a ‘in-the-gaps’ or ‘from ignorance’ kind of argument: I already provided a proof that reductive naturalism cannot account for qualitative experience:

The form is as follows: “consciousness is [set of biological functions] because [set of biological functions] impacts consciousness [in this set of manners]”. That is the form of argumentation that a reductive naturalist methodology can afford and, upon close examination, there is a conceptual gap between consciousness being impacted in said manners and the set of biological functions (responsible for such impact) producing consciousness

What does your replacement offer? If brain states do not cause consciousness, then what have we been doing wrong all these years in medicine?

Medicine is unaffected by whether the brain produces consciousness.

"All of existence consists,it is claimed,solely of ideas—,emotions,perceptions,intuitions,imagination,etc.—even though not one’s personal ideas alone."

I did look up the paper, and wanted to point this summary out. Bob, we've already discussed knowledge before. This author is a person who clearly does not understand knowledge

I don’t see how the quote you gave of him demonstrates that he doesn’t know what knowledge is.

Knowledge is not the testing of our dreams in comparison to reality, if that is what you are trying to claim. Under idealism, the ‘objective’ world is fundamentally ‘subjective’ in the sense that is mind-dependent: that doesn’t mean we can just whimsically make up what is true of reality and what isn’t.

Now move to a new location. Does your consciousness move with you? Can you by concentration extend your consciousness out past your body to where you were?

This doesn’t prove that the brain produces consciousness: this is expected under my view as well because the brain is a (parital) extrinsic representation of my mind. This just doesn’t matter if you can’t float outside of your body at will.

Therefore the only reasonable conclusion is that consciousness follows physical movement,

Consciousness doesn’t follow physical movement: it is the necessary preconditions of experiencing a physical world.

I would imagine that you hold that our dreams are purely within our minds (and not ‘of reality’). Have you ever had a vivid dream where you assume a conscious character within it? That ‘physical’ world, even by your lights, is obviously not actually physical (fundamentally). Now imagine that I told you that your conscious experience in that dream world was ‘following you as a physical being in it’--you would rightly point out that the conscious experience, being a dream and all, is the primary precondition for the experience of the physical dream world.

No different with reality for all intents and purposes.

That's an avoidant answer Bob. I don't hold to idealism and physicalism because I often find they are summary identities that are not logically consistent when examined in detail.

I don’t think I avoided anything: a view being logically consistent doesn’t make it cogent to hold as true. I can make any view, if you give me long enough time (depending on how absurd it is), logically consistent. Logical consistency is just about not having any logical contradictions which only pertains to the form of the argument.

Unless you can show me why its not logical to hold that matter and energy can create consciousness internally,

And this is why I brought it up: I don’t need to prove that. I agree that it is logically consistent: so is mine! Logical consistent is a basic prerequisite for candidate metaphysical theories: it doesn’t mean much beyond that. In other words, it isn’t saying much to be logically consistent (although that is a good thing).

You either need to present a logical alternative, which I have not seen so far, or demonstrate where my logical claim fails explicitly.

A logical alternative of what exactly? My purpose with the hard problem was to refute the positive claim that it is emergent from the brain—I haven’t explained my alternative view yet. I can if you would like.

Its not "associate", its real claims of knowledge and science.

It being real claims of science doesn’t mean it isn’t a proof of association.

A squirrel likely may not be able to evaluate its own qualia. That has nothing to do with being conscious at the most basic level.

Agreed! This was my point with the blindsight person! They are conscious, they have qualia and qualitative experience, but they don’t understand self-reflectively that they do.

The word includes "meta", which essentially means, "about the subject", and the subject is physics, or the physical.

For now, I think it is best to agree to disagree on what metaphysics means.

I am discussing matters of experience. Anything that cannot be experienced, is outside of what can be known.

This doesn’t work. To be brief, by your lights, we cannot know that “every change has a cause”, that “88888888888888888 + 2 = 88888888888888890”, or that ‘a = a’. You will never prove that empirically.

This is getting long, so I will stop here. I look forward to hearing from you,
Bob

Hello Mww,

Working backwards: our representations are not all alike, therefore our sensations are not all alike, therefore the effects things have on sensibility are not all alike, therefore not all things are alike, therefore not all things-in-themselves are alike, insofar as for any thing there is that thing-in-itself.

I agree and think this is true if we were speaking about what you can empirically know (but that’s just studying phenomena which tell us nothing of things-in-themselves); but how do you know metaphysically there are things-in-themselves and not a thing-in-itself?

By your own concession, we aren’t supposed to know reality fundamentally is, so how can you say that a part of that fundamental reality is things-in-themselves as opposed to one thing-in-itself?

To me it doesn’t make sense to say we can gain just enough metaphysical access to know that there are things-in-themselves, but then claim we can’t go further when it is the same exact abductive reasoning we use for all of it.

By my lights, you cannot be certain that there are things-in-themselves just as much as I can’t be certain that there is a Universal Mind.

Because appearances are necessarily of something? I’m kinda struggling with the triple negative. At any rate, appearances aren’t inferred, they’re given. Perception is, after all, a function of physics, not logic implied by inference.

What I am trying to do is show you that if you want to go the truly skeptical route that we are barred from metaphysics (or at least ontology) then to be consistent I think you would have to also rebuke transcendental philosophy: you are using abductive reasoning to infer “appearences are necessarily something?”--there’s no certainty in that. This is no different than inferring that the best explanation of what reality fundamentally is is a Universal Mind—there’s no certainty in that either.

First off, appearances are not representations, they are affects on the senses.

Appearances are perceptions, which are representations that your mind generated of the sensations.

Not yet mentioned, is the speculative condition that appearance denotes only the matter of the thing as a whole, which leaves out the form in which the matter is arranged, the purview of productive imagination, from which arises the first representation as such of the thing, called phenomenon, residing in intuition.

Oh are you saying that the “appearance” is just the impression of the thing-in-itself on you and the representation is the formulation of it according to your mind’s abilities? If so, I can get on board with that.

Odd to me as well; there is no dynamic of representations vs. thing-in-themselves, they have nothing to do with each other. Empirically, the dynamic resides in the relation between things and the intuition of them. Logically, and empirically, the dynamic resides in the relation between things and the conceptions of them. There is another dynamic, residing in pure reason a priori, in which resides the relation between conceptions to each other, where experience of the conceived thing is impossible, re: eternal/universal Mind and the like.

I think you are just fleshing out more deeply what I was trying to get at with the “representations” vs. “things-in-themselves”. You are noting that there is an impression, an intuition, and then an understanding of the thing-in-itself—and that last step is the phenomena. I don’t have a problem with this, but my point is that you can’t come to understand these functions of the mind without abductive reasoning about the phenomena--the end result of that chain of interpretation. So Kant can’t say stuff like:

We have intended, then, to say that all our intuition is nothing but the representation of phenomena; that the things we intuite, are not in themselves the same as our representations of them in intuition, nor are their relations in themselves so constituted as they appear to us; and that if we take away the subject, or even only the subjective constitution of our senses in general, then not only the nature and relations of objects in space and time, but even space and time themselves disappear; and that these, as phenomena, cannot exist in themselves, but only in us

If the relations between the phenomena tell us nothing about the things-in-themselves, since they are just the “subjective constitution” of our senses, then you cannot claim:

Working backwards: our representations are not all alike, therefore our sensations are not all alike, therefore the effects things have on sensibility are not all alike, therefore not all things are alike, therefore not all things-in-themselves are alike, insofar as for any thing there is that thing-in-itself.

Because this is an extroplation of the relations of phenomena: you are saying that this phenomena relates to another in a manner that suggests they are representations of different things. Kant is barring this (as seen in the above quote).

You’d pretty much have to be, holding with a Universal Mind, right?

Correct. But I don’t hold substance monism to fit the view, I think substance monism is the best explanation of the universe in general.

Nahhhh……metaphysics is an unavoidable pursuit, when reason seeks resolution to questions experience cannot provide. Transcendental philosophy merely points out the conditions under which such resolutions are even possible on the one hand, and the circumstances by which the resolutions may actually conflict with experience on the other. The mind is, as my ol’ buddy Golum likes to say, tricksie.

That’s fair, but then I would like to know the symmetry breaker between abducing there are things-in-themselves and, let’s say, everything being a part of one substance. Or that it is a part of a mental substance. Or that there is a Universal Mind. All of these are abductive, metaphysical attempts to explain the world, and some explain more of the data more parsimoniously than others.

For example, I don’t think, under your view, you can hold object permanence because you can’t know anything being your representative faculty, of which the very forms are supposed to be in your head. So how do you know the red block actually persists existing as you viewed it once you turn around? How do you know it exists at all other than a phenomena?

Ok, not an idea. If not an idea, and not a thing, for a human then, what is it? What does it mean to say it is mind, rather than it is a mind?

It was a typo: it is a mind. But it ends up arguably being the only mind and we are just off-shoots of the same mind.

To say it is mind that has ideas makes it no different than my own mind.

Because solipsism isn’t a parsimonious view. You can’t explain other people, object permanence, etc. without positing an objective world around you. Sure, you could say that it is just your mind, but it doesn’t account for the data very well.

To call it eternal mind adds a conception, but by which is invoked that which is itself inconceivable, re: mind that has all ideas, or, is infinitely timeless.

It is outside of space and time. Yes, that it a tricky conception to wrap one’s head around, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

Still, as long as universal mind theory doesn’t contradict itself, it stands. If it contradicts other theories, then it’s a matter of the relative degree of explanatory power philosophically, or merely personal preference conventionally. There is the notion that reason always seeks the unconditioned, that abut which nothing more needs be said, which certainly fits here. It used to be a theocratic symbol having no relation to us, but it’s since graduated to an extension of us. Not sure one is any better than the other.

That is fair: I think that is what metaphysics is about—giving the best general account of reality.

Bob

Hello Janus,

No, Kant is merely saying that if there are appearances, then logically speaking, there must be things which appear, whatever the in itself existence of what appears might be.
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We know there are things which appear as phenomena, but we also know that these appearances are not the things, and that we cannot know what the things are apart from how they appear to us.

This is where the obscurity sets in with Kant (for me): what do you mean “logically speaking”? If you can’t point to your experience of things being representations of other things, then why do you think they are representations at all? You can’t point to scientific inquiry into the brain: those are studies of phenomena which Kant thinks tells us nothing about what is being represented—but then why think there is something being represented in the first place?

No, I won't have to concede that, because I don't think reason without sense data produces knowledge. It is not a valid inference from the fact that sense data combined with reason produces knowledge to a claim that reason on its own can produce knowledge.

I see. This doesn’t work though. For example, if reason without sense data produces no knowledge, then you do not know that “every change has a cause”. You don’t know that “a = a”. You don’t know that “1+1=2” without counting your fingers (so to speak). You don’t even know that “reason without sense data produces no knowledge” without appealing to pure reason. Some things are a priori true, and that means they do not require sense data.

Bob

Hello Tom Storm,

I hope it's the latter and not just business as usual. Which I guess is a Christian view - love your neighbour as you do yourself. The reason being we are all the same being... :wink:

It is basically the golden rule but without Christian metaphysics per se. I don’t think most Christians agree with Kastrup, because his view is more of a pantheism/theist hybrid.

I personally can't identify reasons to change how I interact with the world, regardless of the metaphysics or ontology posited. So I am wondering how useful it is to even have views on ontology, other than a common sense account, which may not be true, but has the virtue of working well enough as a frame.

I think for most people it drastically changes their behaviors because they depend heavily on their metaphysical views to guide them; but, for me, like you, I see many rational views and all of which can contain people with fruitful, moral, and thoughtful lives.

I like to say that I worry more about the average man that agrees with me than the sophisticated man that completely disagrees with me. Not to mention I’de rather live with the latter than the former.

Bob

Hello Janus,

I think it all depends on what you mean by "qualitative seeing". People with colour agnosia can "guess" with not perfect, but greater than random accuracy, what colour card is being held before their eyes, for example. They are not actually aware of seeing the colour, but that greater than random accuracy of guessing shows that the data which would normally produce an experience of colour is registered by the brain and can be more or less reliably accessed even though the conscious qualitative experience is absent.

I would say that they are still seeing the colour card, to some degree, if they can accurately guess them; and the fact that sometimes they can’t means that they no longer have introspective access to those qualitative experiences.

By “qualitatively seeing”, I mean something which is not-quantitative (viz., it has no definite quantity) and there is something it is like to see in and of itself.

My point is that I would not refer to the brain's mere registration of the data as qualitive experience or seeing. If you don't agree, then all we will be arguing about is terminology, and there cannot be a definitive right answer. So, I'm saying that to me, it makes no sense to speak of qualitive experience in the absence of awareness of that experience.

I think you are conflating consciousness proper with meta-consciousness: there can be a qualitative experience and something it like in and of itself to see of which the person, as the ego, does not have introspective (or perhaps cognitive) access to.

Conscious modeling is conceptual modeling made possible by re-cognition. We say things have qualities because we recognize similarities. Take red as an example; we call red things red because they look similar to one another, and there is a great range of different red. But on either side towards yellow and blue we reach points where we would say a thing is orange or mauve or purple.

I see: is this like our ability to self-reflective on our perceptions? Is that what you are saying?

Bob

Hello Philosophim,

1. The definition of qualia

I think that, in hindsight, it isn’t helping our conversation to call qualia “subjective experience” (in your case) nor “qualitative experience” (in my case) because the meaning of the word just gets pushed back into what “subjective” and “qualitative” mean; and I don’t think we are agreeing on that aspect. So let me try to use a more technical definition of ‘qualia’: ‘a mental event whereof there is something it is like to have such in and of itself’.

Let’s go back to the blindsight person. When they see, there is still something it is like to see (qualitatively) as they do, but they cannot identify that they are the one’s having it. Another example is a person who has dreams but doesn’t identify as having them: they still have the dream and there is something like to have the dreams, but they have lost the cognitive ability to self-reflectively identify with having it. In these cases, there is still something it is like in and of itself to qualitatively experience (e.g., to see in the case of a blindsight person or to dream in the other case) and, thusly, they still have qualia. However, it is a different discussion whether they have meta-consciousness, which, to make it clearly, I would say can include both self-reflective cognition and introspection.

Let’s take another example: blinking. Most of the time, ‘I am’, as the ‘Ego’, do not have introspective access to my qualitative experience of blinking but, lo and behold, if ‘I’ focus on it (e.g., you tell me “don’t forget to blink!”) then it “bubbles up” to the “ego” and I have introspective access. In both cases, there is still something it is like to experience blinking even though I do not have introspective access, as the ego, in both scenarios. The conscious experience is still happening.

2. You believe that because we cannot measure the subjective experience of being conscious, that this proves that we cannot claim that consciousness comes from brain states. I note that science and medicine has for years evaluated objective consciousness through medicine and has determined that brain states cause consciousness. I also note that we cannot measure the subjective experience of consciousness, but that it is irrelevant to the conclusion that brains cause consciousness as objective measures of consciousness aren't trying to evaluate subjective measures, just objective outcomes

You switched the terminology mid-argument here: the first sentence is about “consciousness” in the sense of qualitative experience—i.e., qualia—and the second was about mere observance/awareness. Pointing out that science can evaluate the “objective consciousness”, which is just mere awareness with no necessity of qualia, has nothing to do with the claim in the first sentence. If you are going to say we can evaluate “objective consciousness”, in the manner you have described, then you can’t equally claim that that gives us insight into “subjective consciousness” which is what you would need to prove “subjective consciousness” is caused by brain states. This is why keeping the terminology very tight is vital, I think you conflated “consciousness” multiple times the above quote.

Perhaps its the construction of your sentence I disagree with, and maybe not your underlying point. The problem is you keep saying "impact" as if its different from "cause". They aren't. Now, does that mean they are the entire cause? No one could say that. But you can't separate "impact" from "cause". They are essentially the same thing.

Yes, agree that normally by cause we mean “physical causality”. What I mean by “cause” is the actual reductive explanation of phenomena and not necessarily a physical chain of impact. So, for me, “impact” and “cause” are two different things. If you would like to use them as synonymous, then we could use “cause” and “explanation” to denote the same distinction I am trying to make.

What I think you're trying to get at, as this is what the real problem of "consciousness" is, is that you cannot see the internal subjectiveness of a function

My problem is that you seem to be claiming that “objective consciousness” and “subjective consciousness” are two sides of the same coin, and the side we see is just relative to our epistemic access (e.g., my private qualia looks like observation, identifying, and action from a public eye); but by this “objective” observation of “consciousness” we gain absolutely no insight into the being also qualitatively experiencing—there is a disconnect there in your argument. When I refer to “consciousness”, I am talking about that private qualia that we definitely cannot empirically observe (which I think you are agreeing with me here) and this has no connection to an empirical merely observation of a being observing, identifying, and acting upon its environment.

Let me try to be very specific. I think, under your view, you cannot account for your qualia as reducible to brain states (but you can reduce your ability to observe, identify, and act upon your environment as reducible thereto) and you cannot know that anyone else has qualia—you can only effectively know the PZ aspect. Thusly, you cannot claim that science, which is empirical analysis that you concede gives us no knowledge of beings having qualia, has proven that qualia is reducible to the brain but you can claim that science can reduce our ability to observe, identify, and act upon our environment. Do you see how these are completely separate claims? And that the hard problem pertains exactly to the part which you cannot prove is reducible to brain states?

Hands down Bob, alcohol changes the brain which causes drunkenness. That's not debatable. What you seem to think is that because we cannot measure the internal subjective experience of consciousness, that we can't say the brain causes consciousness. That doesn't work. Its illogical.

What is illogical about claiming that the phenomenal world, which includes brains, is an extrinsic representation of the mental?

What is illogical about saying that we have cannot account for “consciousness” in the sense of qualia (qualitative experience) in terms of the reductive naturalist approach? Again, I think you may be conflating your use of “consciousness” in terms of “objectively” with “subjectively”--and the hard problem only pertains to the latter. The objective aspect you refer to doesn’t matter in terms of whether the brain causes or doesn’t cause mental events.

If a cue ball impacts the eight ball, it causes it to fly in a particular direction.

Correct, but from my perspective, as an idealist, what is fundamentally going on there is a representation of mental events—there are no mind-independent cue balls hitting each other: there isn’t series of cue balls that exist beyond consciousness experience (other than as ideas in a mind). The physical causality you are referring to is what it looks like from our perceptions of those ideas playing out, so to speak.

Our inability to do so does not mean that the external results of brain stimulation suddenly do not cause consciousness. Its proven. There's no gap here. The only gap is again, our inability to measure something as a subject itself.

Being able to associate people’s mental activity with brain states doesn’t prove in itself that the latter causes (i.e., reductively explains) the former: you keep bringing up examples of this as if it does prove it. Why do you think it proves it?

We're so close on agreement here Bob! The only problem is that we have reduced qualitative experience to brain states repeatedly in science and medicine for decades. I really feel at this point you're just using the wrong words to describe a situation. We can measure qaulitative brain states to measure levels of consciousness as an outside observer. we can never measure qualitative brain states to measure levels of conscousness as an inside observer, the subject itself.

I am confused, as you agreed with me that we cannot reduce “subjective consciousness” to brain states and that is all that matters for the debate on the hard problem—and there has never been such a proof in medicine nor science. Please send me anything that you think proves it in either of those fields.

What you are referring to, I think, is our ability to affect consciousness with what looks like from our perceptions as physical objects (e.g., popping a pill to get rid of my headache, cutting part of a brain off and observing the person’s personality change, etc.). This doesn’t mean that we have a reductive, conceptual account of brain states producing mental states. Within my perspective, popping a pill is just an extrinsic representation of mentality: the pill doesn’t fundamentally exist as something physical.

Again, you'll have to explain what you mean by physicalist.

I mean a person who holds that the world is fundamentally mind-independent: it is made up of non-conscious, mind-independent ‘parts’. Idealists, on the other hand, is a person who thinks it is mind-dependent: it is made up of a mind and everything is in mind.

No, objectivity is something that can be logically concluded to the point that any challenge against it fails. A falsifiable claim that cannot be shown to be false essentially.

What do you mean by “logically concluded to the point that any challenge against it fails”? Do you mean logical necessity?

I would say that objectivity is that which its truthity is will-independent.

Also, “a falsifiable claim that cannot be shown to be false” is a contradiction in terms. If it is falsifiable, then it is possible to shown to be false, whereas an unfalsifiable claim is something which cannot be shown to be false.

Would you mind linking to a philosopher who believes that mind does not come from the brain? I would like to read from one.

In terms of modern day philosophers, Bernardo Kastrup is a good one. You can read his free papers at https://www.bernardokastrup.com/p/papers.html . I would recommend reading Analytic-Idealism: a Consciousness-dependent Ontology for a good general quick-ish read.

In terms of older philosophers, which are still pertinent but didn’t flesh out the views 100% accurately, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is a must pre-requisite, then Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation (both volumes), and Berkeley’s A Treatise Concerning Principles of Human Understanding. I would suggest just starting with Kastrup for an introductory read.

I'm not sure what you mean by "mind-independent". The brain and the mind are one.

Not quite. Either the brain produces the mind, and thusly the mind is an emergent property thereof (and so they are not one and the same) or vice-versa.

The point is it is logically consistent to hold that matter and energy can create consciousness internally.

Something being logically consistent doesn’t make it true in metaphysics nor science: idealism and physicalism are both logically consistent.

So I agree with you here but not with your implication that it gives your view the upper-hand.

Then this disagrees with every notion of qualia I've ever known. If "you" are thinking, that's "your" qualia. Qualia is "you" experiencing something

Not at all: if by “thinking” you mean the normal usage of the word (e.g., I am thinking “I want some bread”). Think of lower-life forms, like squirrels: they don’t self-reflectively know (cognitively) that there is something it is like to see from there eyes nor that they qualitatively experience in general. According to your definition, then, one would likewise have to have the over-and-above cognitive abilities to gain self-knowledge of one’s qualia, which is different than the qualia itself.

Your proposal of qualia seems to imply a person can be conscious of something, but not have qualia of that something.

Not under my definitions. But under yours: yes. That is the whole point I am trying to make: under your argument your “objective consciousness” is referring, in terms of what it can prove, to only PZs.

"4" and "red" are just concepts that we give a limit to, but we're talking about the qualia of experiencing "4" and "red". You're a person thinking "2+2=4". Why is that any different from "I see the color red"?

Correct. But the cogitated “2+2=4” or “I am seeing the color red” are self-reflective notions of the qualia--they are not the qualia themselves.

I view the term "metaphysical" as its most base definition. "Analysis of the physical"

This isn’t what metaphysics means: it is the “study of that which is beyond the possibility of all experience”. For example, are there Universals or just particulars? Does the ‘now’ have ontological privilege (or is it a timeblock)? Is the world fundamentally mental or physical? These are metaphysical questions.

Your definition implies more like our self-reflective cognitive abilities, which has nothing to do with the subject.

So really this is the ability for a being to be conscious of more abstracts than another. If that's the case I don't see how higher consciousness affects any of the points here. Its still consciousness, just more of it.

You can think of it as “better” consciousness while they all are still consciousness.

I look forward to hearing from you,
Bob

Hello Mww,

Things-in-themselves can be inferred the possibility of sensations in general a priori. The thing as it appears, and from which sensation is given, makes the non-existence of that particular thing-in-itself impossible

I see. If this is true, then how is it inferred therefrom that there are multiple things-in-themselves and not a thing-in-itself?

However, I still would like to push back a bit: how can you infer that it is impossible that appearances aren’t of nothing? Is that simply absurd to you?

Transcendental analysis of the conditions for human knowledge doesn’t care about ontology; all that is represented exists necessarily, all we will ever know empirically is given from representations, therefore all empirical knowledge presupposes extant things.

I still struggle with this because, to me, I infer that the appearances are representations by comparison of other appearances (e.g., they inject me with a hallucinogen drug and my representations becomes significantly different than when I am sober, etc.). But if representations tell us nothing about things-in-themselves then it is odd to me that it can even be inferred that there is a dynamic of representations vs. things-in-themselves in the first place.

The only reason for positing the thing-in-itself, is to grant that even if things are not perceived, they are not thereby non-existent.

How do you know this if representations tell you nothing about things-in-themselves? Also, why not hold that all the “things” of appearances of one thing-in-itself?

It is meant to qualify the semi-established dogmatic Berkeley-ian purely subjective idealist principle esse est percipi, by stipulating that it isn’t necessary that that which isn’t perceived doesn’t exist, but only for that which is not perceived, empirical knowledge of it is impossible. It just says existence is not conditioned by perception, but knowledge most certainly is.

I agree with you here; but under Kantianism, how does one know there necessarily are things-in-themselves? It seems like Kant is just ruling out the alternatives because they are “absurd”.

Oh, that’s easy: once this thing, whatever it is, appears to perception, that thing-in-itself, whatever it was, disappears, that thing no longer “in-itself”, as far as the system is concerned.

Oh I see and agree—I thought you were saying something else there.

Can’t be substance, insofar as substance is never singular, which implies a succession, which implies time, which is a condition for knowledge, and by which the imposition makes the impossibility of knowledge contradictory.

I am a substance monist, so I am unsure by what you mean by “substance is never singular”: could you elaborate?

Permanence is that by which the thing-in-itself, is of. Which makes the notion that if I’m not looking at the thing it isn’t there, rather foolish.

How do you know they are permanent simply because they are beyond your representation of them?

The real world for us, is just how we understand what we are given. The world is only as real as our intellect provides. Whatever the world really is, we are not equipped to know, and if it really is as we understand it, so much the better, but without something to compare our understands to, we won’t know that either.

So would it be fair to say that you think we are barred from metaphysics (other than transcendental inquiries)?

If it’s not a thing, why does it have to exist in a thing? That which exists in a thing is a property thereof, and logic is not a property. All I’m going to say about it, is that logic resides in human intelligence, and attempts to pin it down in concreto ultimately ends as illusory cognitions at least, or irrational judgements at worst.

It has to exist in a “thing”, in the sense of of a substance and of an entity, because otherwise I don’t know what you mean by “existing”. How is logic not a property of an entity? If it isn’t a property, then I don’t have the ability to do logic because that would be a property of my mind, would it not?

There’s no legitimate reason to think that, insofar as it contradicts the notion that the universal mind does no meta-cognitive deliberations, which it would have to do in order to determine what laws are, and the conditions under which they legislate what it can do, which determines what it is.

I apologize, that was a poor choice of words: the Universal Mind does not “adhere” to the laws but, rather, sustains them.

In other words, the Universal Mind, if it doesn’t exist, cannot be legislated by law, which means if it is legislated by law it must exist. Which means it cannot be merely an idea.

The universal mind is not an idea, it is mind that has ideas and those ideas are the Platonic, eternal forms which are expressed within space and time, which are conditions of our minds.

But all universals are ideas……AAAARRRRGGGGG!!!!!!

Correct, but I am saying that those ideas are within an eternal mind.

Bob

Hello Tom Storm,

Out of interest - let's assume we do accept analytic idealism as our ontological situation - what practical changes would this initiate in terms of human behavior? How much changes in terms of morality, human rights, climate change, political discourse, in short, how we live?

There’s the answer Kastrup will tell you, and there’s a grimmer answer I will tell you.

Kastrup’s:

Morality stems from our understanding that we are fundamentally hurting ourselves when we hurt others, because we are of the same mind—so why do that? Morality for Kastrup is likewise objective, as there is Telos to the world, and something we should commit ourselves to.

He argues that physicalism leads to nihilism, whereas idealism leads to happier, more fulfilled lives.

He argues that politically we should be aiming to slower preserve all life, because consciousness is all that ontologically exists and we are a part of the same mind.

My answers (in summary):

There is no morality beyond what you hold yourself to—what lies in the depths of your heart.

Any view can lead to nihilism, although some more than others, and anyone can be happy under any of them—nihilism is a reflection of one’s psychology and nothing more.

One’s political views are going to be dependent on one’s morals and amoral goals—no metaphysical view in-itself tells us what to do here, but it can end up being what formulates our morals (e.g., if we shouldn’t hurt what is a part of ourselves and we are of the same mind, then we shouldn’t hurt eachother).

Bob

Hello Janus,

The existence of things in themselves is an inference from the invariance and intersubjective commonality of sensations.

This concedes my point about Kant: he is using phenomena to reverse engineer that there are things-in-themselves while claiming that phenomena do not tell us anything about things-in-themselves.

And I submit to you that all ideas of substance are groundless. The world seems physical and substantial and from that experience and the reificational potentiality of language we naturally extrapolate the notion of substance. We really have no idea what either physicality or mentality are in any substantial sense.

They can’t be groundless if you consider reason a valid method of gaining knowledge, which you will have to if you agree with science. In that case, we can extrapolate insofar as safely can. For example, we can know that two substances would not have interaction with each other, and this is only via pure reason. I don’t think that claim is groundless.

Bob

Hello Janus,

“I would argue that they do not “see” in the same manner (i.e., one is qualitatively seeing while the other is just quantitatively processing its environment), so I think you are equivocating when using the term “seeing” in this sentence to refer to both.”
--Bob Ross

I would argue that if there is no awareness of seeing that it makes no sense to speak of qualitative seeing.

I am unsure as to your point here in terms of your quote of me. I was saying that you were equivocating ‘seeing’ when referring to quantitative processing of one’s environment vs. qualitatively experiencing one’s environment.

Moreover, one can be qualitatively ‘seeing’ without having the self-knowledge that they are, so I am unsure as to what you mean by “no awareness of seeing” somehow entails that there is nothing to be said about them qualitatively ‘seeing’.

Again I would say that being disassocited from experience is the same as having no (qualitative) experience

This is just false. There are people who are disassociated from themselves, who have lost all sense of self, but we don’t say that they thereby do not exist simply because they can no longer identify with their existence. Likewise, one can have qualitative experience while failing to identify as having them.

Quality is a judgement which is all in the conscious modelling.

What is the “conscious modelling”?

Bob

Hello Philosophim,

We may be at an impasse here Bob. I respect your view point, but I can't agree on this one. Being able to express doubt about a theory does not disprove a theory. A scientific theory is not like the layman's meaning of theory.

Firstly, I agree that “theory” does not refer to the same thing as it is used in colloquial speech in science, and I was using it in its scientific sense.

Secondly, the problem is that the more we understand the brain + consciousness and the actual methodological approach science uses (i.e., reductive naturalism) the more we understand that our old ways of scientific explanation simply do not work with consciousness.

So I am saying that the scientific theory is wrong in the sense that it doesn’t prove what it thinks it does and, quite frankly, the only way to reconcile it in favor of it is to reach towards metaphysics.

I will refer back to the argument:

The form is as follows: “consciousness is [set of biological functions] because [set of biological functions] impacts consciousness [in this set of manners]”. That is the form of argumentation that a reductive naturalist methodology can afford and, upon close examination, there is a conceptual gap between consciousness being impacted in said manners and the set of biological functions (responsible for such impact) producing consciousness

And your response:

No, there is not a conceptual gap between the biology and the experience. Get someone drunk and they become inebriated. This is due to how alcohol affects the brain. No one disputes this. The only gap is you don't know what the other person is subjectively experiencing while they are drunk. Objective consciousness vs subjective consciousness.

I am not disputing, nor does the above argument contend, that medications and drugs affect our minds—I am not saying that, under a view where the brain does not produce consciousness, I would expect someone who gets drunk not to become impaired. I am likewise not claiming that we shouldn’t expect neural activity corresponding to where alcohol inhibits brain functions.

What I am saying is that explaining the qualitative experience that drunk person has in terms of the brain functions, as opposed to those functions being the extrinsic representation of mental activity, has the explanatory gap of ‘I see how those functions impact consciousness, but how do those functions produce consciousness?’. This can be clearly see, at least by my lights, in the abstract form of any argument reductive naturalism can afford in terms of explaining consciousness.
When you say “ The only gap is you don't know what the other person is subjectively experiencing while they are drunk”, I feel as though you are somewhat agreeing with me but you still do not agree that the qualitative experience is different than our conceptual account of the brain functions. For example:

I'm not sure that's the right comparison. Its not "also have a qualitative experience", its "why is that a qualitative experience?" The interpretation of the wavelength by the brain is the qualia is it not?

Seeing with a brain scanner that alcholol inhibits this and that doesn’t produce any conceptual explanation of how the brain functions (inhibited or still functional) are producing the qualitative experience (e.g., the drunk person’s experience of seeing the color red) of that person. That’s where the explanatory gap is. Likewise, the interpretation of a wavelength and your brain’s ability to acquire that it is green doesn’t conceptually explain your qualitative experience of the greeness. If you already hold that the brain produces consciousness, then, yes, I would expect you to try to explain the mental event as the wavelength interpretation: but whether one can actually give a conceptual reductive explanation of that is what is in question.

I think you may agree with me here insofar as you hold some aspect of our subjective experience as off limits (and thusly non-reducible to the brain), and, in that case, it is important to note that if you agree then I think you are conceding that you do not have an conceptual account of how a mind-independent brain allegedly produces consciousness and, thusly, you cannot prove it. I am not saying it is impossible nor that it isn’t the case: I am saying you cannot prove it if you cannot conceptually reduce mental states (such as seeing the color red) to brain states—and, no, as seen in the form of the argument, appealing to how functions impact consciousness says nothing about them producing consciousness.

I'm having a hard time understanding the difference between those terms. If you have knowledge of something, you are aware. And if you are aware, that attention is qualia is it not?

No. Awareness is more generic than being conscious in the sense that I am using it. The former is just the ability to quantitatively observe one’s environment (like an AI) while the latter a qualitative experience of one’s environment (like a human). An AI does not know what it is like to see red qualitatively: when it ‘sees’ red, it is just mechanically registering that it was red based off of wavelengths, but it has no qualitative experience of it.

To me it appears you're comparing unconscious awareness with conscious awareness.

Yes I am. If a being has no qualitative experience, they may be still aware of their environment (like an AI, or a speed gun).

The man sees something that he is not aware of. I suppose I would say his unconscious mind sees the object, but his conscious mind does not. So comparing that to your point, the unconscious mind would see green, while the conscious mind would not experience the qualia of green, but he would know that it was green. Is that a good comparison to what you're saying?

This isn’t what I am saying, but I would like to go with it to explain my previous points above: when you explain that he knows that it was green you can easily explain this in terms of brain states (and what not), but you can’t explain why, when the person doesn’t have blindsight, why they consciously experience the greeness. The conceptual gap lies exactly between the explanation of how a being unconsciously knows the color and consciously experiences it. Under the conceptual explanations of physicalism (that the mind is produced by the brain), there is absolutely no reason why there would be a qualitative experience of the greenness on top of the brain merely mechanically interpreting the wavelengths.

Now I am not saying that about blindsight (but only wanted to use it to hopefully convey the conceptual gap better), I am saying two things:

1. Blindsight patients only prove that people can lose the ability to identify with the conscious (qualitative) experience, and that is indicated by them:

A) Clearly being able to see; and
B) Answering that they aren’t seeing; and because I
C) Consider it a better explanation to hold that all life is qualitatively experiencing (so long as they are alive), so I think it makes more sense to say that they are qualitatively experiencing.

In terms of C, obviously I anticipate you are going to disagree with that, but the justification is depending on the resolution of the hard problem (or lack thereof). So I will put a pin it for now.

2. Blindsight patients, if #1 isn’t the case, demonstrate potentially that they have lost (at least partially) there meta-consciousness (i.e., the ability to be aware of their qualitative experience). So, instead of being unable to identify with their qualitative experience but it still is happening, they may not even have it anymore (because of something getting damaged). Again, I think animals can be qualitatively experiencing without being aware that they are: without having self-knowledge.

Does this also fit into your definition of awareness and experience? So in blindsight terms, we would say he is aware of the object in front of him, but he does not experience it in his qualia.

Exactly! I am not actually claiming that the blindsight person is aware of the object but not conscious, but this is a perfect depiction of the conceptual gap with a reductive methodological approach. Appealing to reductive accounts only provides evidence of a person being aware and not experiencing: the experiencing they are having is extra phenomena that isn’t expected under that account (physicalism) of the world.

Now I think you may be able to see the conceptual gap in explaining the qualitative experience of the greeness (of the pen) by appealing to “the wavelengths are interpreted by the brain as green”: the latter only explains bare awareness and doesn’t explain at all why there would be qualia. Thusly, this doesn’t prove that the qualitative experience of the greeness is reducible to the brain’s interpretation of the wavelength: this is the conceptual gap.

He's asking, "Why is there subjective experience?" He's not saying, "Its impossible for the brain to produce subjective experience". He says it seems unreasonable, but it clearly does

I agree. I think that Chalmer’s is still trying to explain consciousness by a physicalist metaphysical account of the world and he didn’t fully see it as an irreconcilable problem. But that is usually how hard problem’s are first formulated: the person still has allegiance to the core theory that they are positing a dilemma for. Nowadays, I think it is recognized a lot more, by philosophers in philosophy of mind, as irreconcilable for physicalism.

My point is that “but it clearly does” is incredibly unwarranted. He give’s zero conceptual account reductively of how it “clearly does”. I think he was still thinking just in the sense that brains affect conscious experience.

Nothing we study about the brain will ever give us insight into its subjective experience. It is outside of our knowledge. That's why its a hard problem.

Given what I have said hitherto, if you agree with me that we cannot gain insight into qualitative experience then you are equally conceding that we cannot reduce qualitative experience to brain states; which means you have no proof that the former really is from the latter.

According to Chalmer's here, it is not presumption. That is the easy problem.

Chalmer’s never said that consciousness (as qualitative experience) being explained through the brain is an easy problem, he said that awareness aspects of consciousness (such as the functions which you quoted later on) are easy problems. His use of the term “consciousness” includes ‘awareness’ and ‘experience’. Within his schema, yes, the awareness aspects of consciousness are easy problems (if that is what you are talking about). But he isn’t saying that qualitative experience is an easy problem.

I do not care about physicalism, dualism, or idealism. I care about logical consistency, philosophical schools of thought be damned! :) To me its like I use a martial arts move that does not fit in with karate and someone berates me that it destroys karate. If the move is effective at defending oneself, what does it matter?

I respect that, but the terms are good quick and general depictions of the fully thought out, logically consistent, metaphysical views. If you hold that the brain produces consciousness, then the only logically consistent views available to you are physicalist accounts of the world: there’s no way around that.

It is not that the hard problem comes about from physicalism, its that the hard problem is for our ability to understand the subjective nature of consciousness an an objective manner

I have to push back here: it is absolutely due to one’s metaphysical commitment to the brain producing consciousness, which is only claimed in physicalist accounts of the world (by definition). Your second sentence implicitly depends on a physicalist account of the world being true; and this just muddies the waters when someone uses it implicitly but denounces it explicitly. Philosophim, if you think that the brain produces consciousness and the brain (and the world) is mind-independent, then you are a physicalist. By ‘physicalist’, I do not mean one oddly specific and straw manned position, I just mean that you are subscribing to a view that is a part of the metaphysical family of views under physicalism. I don’t see how you can argue around this.

Dualism and idealism are not objective, so of course the hard problem doesn't exist. When you don't care about objectivity, a lot of problems go away

If by “objective” you mean “something which we can empirically observe”, then no metaphysical theory, including physicalism (including the view that the brain produces consciousness), “cares” about “objectivity”. This is why I worry when you denounce physicalism but then implicitly use it in your arguments: it seems like you think you aren’t engaging in metaphysics.

They can know what consciousness is objectively. They simply can't know what a consciousness experiences subjectively. Brain state A can be switched to state B, and every time they do, you see a Cat, then a Dog in your mind. You can tell them this, but no one knows what that experience you have of seeing a cat or dog is like.

Again, please remember that “they can know what awareness is objectively”--not experience.

Again, I think we're in agreement that it is impossible for science to ever know what it is like to subjectively experience from the subject's viewpoint. This in no way backs a claim that the brain does not produce a subjective experience.

If science can’t prove that you experience, then (1) you are engaging in metaphysics when you claim that the brain produces consciousness and (2) experience is irreducible to the brain states because we cannot conceptually prove it (by the reductive naturalist method, which is the same one science uses).

So in your viewpoint, if I am actively thinking, "I know 2+2 equals 4", is that qualia? If not, what is it?

I would say that it is qualitative in the sense that it occurred at a timestamp within a steady flow of qualitative time, but it was non-spatial—so not qualitative pertaining to that. Likewise, I would also hold that the imagination is qualitative. I hold that our faculty of reason is a sense that takes perceptions in as its input and generates concepts of them.

Also, for my sake, instead of saying, under a philosophical theory x results, can you simply give me the logic why X results? My experience with people citing such theories is that everyone has a different viewpoint on what that theory means, so I want to understand what it means to you.

I will do my absolute best! I agree that people tend to hide being names and badges; However, I think it is important to note that you are making metaphysical claims, not just scientific ones.

What is higher consciousness? Why is higher consciousness different from lower consciousness?

Through evolution, not all conscious beings have the same capabilities—e.g., my dog lacks the cognitive capabilities to abstract his perceptions as much (or at all) like I can. Likewise, some beings are qualitatively experiencing, but have no perceptions (i.e., they cannot represent the world to themselves), such as some plants. Higher vs. lower consciousness is the abilities/faculties a being has in relation to others. We evolved to have higher capacities and abilities than other animals.

Perceptions are sensations which a mind processes into a representation of the world.

Correct.

You seem to imply that our direct attentiveness to it is not required. So in the case of blindsight, the man is conscious of that which he cannot attend to

I believe so (if I am understanding you correctly). My mind’s ability to identify with or have self-knowledge of the qualitative experience is different than merely having it. He cannot “attend to it” because he isn’t meta-conscious or perhaps he simply can’t identify as “his self” having them (so it could be an ownership thing).

Finally, here's a link to a fairly good philosophy professor online who breaks down the hard problem. I'm posting it so that you know I understand the subject, and to also help clarify what I mean by the hard problem, and why we should just separate consciousness into objective and subjective branches.

I never doubted that you have studied and looked into the hard problem! I think we have different interpretations of it.

Thank you Bob for taking the time to really break down your methodology for me. This subject comes up every so often and I find most people are either unable or unwilling to really go into the details. Another long discussion already, but one that I am glad to explore!

As always, I am glad to explore it as well!

I look forward to hearing from you,
Bob

Hello Philosophim,

I'm not really arguing for it. Its just what is considered fact at this time. If you want to prove that minds do not come from the brain feel free, but you'll need to challenge modern day neuroscience, psychology, and medicine.

The point is that I don’t. It is not a scientific fact that brains produce consciousness. It is a scientific theory, but scientific theories are either more facts (i.e., explaining the how in terms of another how) or metaphysical commitments. In the case of physicalism, which is the term for the claim you are making, is a metaphysical commitment that most scientists agree with. That’s not the same thing as science proving the brain produces consciousness.

As for the hard problem, I still think you misunderstand it. " Explaining why consciousness occurs at all can be contrasted with so-called “easy problems” of consciousness: the problems of explaining the function, dynamics, and structure of consciousness. These features can be explained using the usual methods of science. But that leaves the question of why there is something it is like for the subject when these functions, dynamics, and structures are present. This is the hard problem." -Internet Encyclopedia of philosophy

I partially agree with you here because “consciousness” and “something it is like to for the subject” are being used ambiguously there. This is why I always note a distinction, when discussing the hard problem, between awareness and experience: the former being “how a being has knowledge, be aware, of its environment” while the latter is “how a being has qualitative, subjective experience of its environment”. All problems pertaining to ‘awareness’ are easy problems for physicalism: the hard problem pertains to everything about ‘experience’. Explaining functions, for example, is an easy problem—e.g., a being can know that something is green by interpreting the wavelength of light reflected off of the object. However, explaining how those functions produce experience is a different story—e.g., why does the being also have a qualitative experience of the greeness of the object?

My distinction is pretty standard and honestly I think your link just explains it more ambiguously. For example, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness:

The hard problem of consciousness asks why and how humans have qualia[note 1] or phenomenal experiences.[2] This is in contrast to the "easy problems" of explaining the physical systems that give humans and other animals the ability to discriminate, integrate information, and so forth

I really like this post about it: https://consc.net/papers/facing.html . Section two really explains the distinction well (to me at least).

The hard problem even admits that consciousness is explained through the brain

I think you may be misunderstanding. Yes, the hard problem presumes, in order to even be a problem in the first place, that one is trying to explain consciousness by the standard reductive naturalist methodological approach. However, this is not the same thing as it being true. The hard problem is only such for physicalism, not other accounts such as substance dualism and idealism.

My solution to this is to just simply note that referring to the experience of the conscious subject itself is "subjective consciousness". Knowing what it is like to be the subject of any one conscious being besides ourselves is currently impossible.

This isn’t a solution, it is semantic distinction between what we can know (i.e., that beings can interpret their environment and observe it) and what we can’t (i.e., that they are conscious in the qualitative sense). To me, you are admitting that we can’t know people are conscious in the sense of the term that matters for the hard problem: the hard problem isn’t pertinent to beings that merely observe, act, and identify—those are soft problems for physicalism.

The only people questioning that mind comes from the brain are philosophers.

I generally agree and would say that this is due to the fact that mainly only philosophers are brushed up in philosophy of mind and, consequently, realize that we, at the very least, have no clue what consciousness is (and of course others try to give accounts of it). Most scientists aren’t engaged in philosophy which, like I said before, is the proper subject for this matter (i.e., metaphysics); instead, they metaphysically commit themselves to physicalism (most of the time) without every explicitly engaging in metaphysics themselves.

The hard problem does Mind coming from the brain is like oxygen theory, while the idea it does not is like phlogiston theory

I don’t see how this analogy holds. The scientific theory that brain produces mind is purely metaphysics.

But feel free to prove here first that the mind does not come from the brain and lets see where that takes us

Again, I am not claiming that the mind does not come from the brain but, rather, that we cannot prove (even theoretically in the future) because reductive physicalism affords no such answers—the methodology fails in this regard. I can prove that much, and that is all I need to prove to claim that you are not warranted in claiming that the mind comes from the brain.

To keep it short, my proof is the examination of the form, absracted, of what methodological reductive naturalism (physicalism) can afford with regards to consciousness. The form is as follows: “consciousness is [set of biological functions] because [set of biological functions] impacts consciousness [in this set of manners]”. That is the form of argumentation that a reductive naturalist methodology can afford and, upon close examination, there is a conceptual gap between consciousness being impacted in said manners and the set of biological functions (responsible for such impact) producing consciousness. The best reductive naturalism can do is provide better insight into how the brain affects the mind (i.e., “this [set of conscious states] is impacted by this [set of biological functions] in this [set of manners]”), but this doesn’t afford any conceptual explanation of how the conscious states are allegedly produced by the brain states. Once one understands that, one immediately likewise apprehends that science can afford no answer either because it is predicated on the reductive naturalist methodology.

That would be my shortened argument.

Likewise, whether the brain produces consciousness is widely recognized as a matter of philosophy of mind which is metaphysics and not science. Yes, most scientists are physicalists, but that isn’t a scientific consensus—that’s scientists having a consensus. — Bob Ross

While this is an interesting thought, is this something you can demonstrate?

Taking into consideration the abbreviated argument above, it becomes clear that science cannot afford an answer and consequently the answer to the claim goes beyond the possibility of all experience which, to me, is the definition of metaphysics.

How do you explain modern day neuroscience? Medical Psychiatry? Brain surgery?

From an ontological agnostic’s perspective, those fields are getting much better at understanding the relation between brain states and mental states but they say nothing about what consciousness fundamentally is.

From an Analytic Idealist’s perspective, the strong correlation between mental and brain states is because the brain, along with everything else that is physical in a colloquial sense of the term (i.e., tangible, solid, has shape, etc.), is a extrinsic representation of the mental. I see the color green and the highest level extrinsic representation of that, when examining my brain with a scanner, is the neural activity we see within our perceptions--our representations of the world around is. Think of it like the video game analogy: if a character, Rose, hooks up another character, Billy, to a brain scanner and observes Billy qualitatively experiencing a green tree, she would be factually wrong to conclude that the Billy’s brain states were causing his mental experience of it because, in fact, the tree and his brain and body are fundamentally representations of 0s and 1s in a computer. We conflate our dashboard of experience with what reality fundamentally is—mentality.

Rose wouldn’t be wrong in noting that any scientific inquiry she could do on brain states and mental states (of billy) will be useful and will help them gain better knowledge to navigate the territory—but it says nothing about the itself.

Second, the easy problem confirms that yes, science knows that the brain produces consciousness.

What easy problem confirms that?

Please find me a reputable neuroscience paper that shows that the brain most certainly does not produce consciousness, and then also provides evidence of what is.

If I could, then I would be proving myself wrong. The point is that science doesn’t afford an answer, so it would be contradictory of me to provide you with a scientific explanation, which is a reductive naturalistic approach, to afford an answer.

Finally, just as an aside, how do you explain the mind seeing? The eyes connect through the optic nerve straight to your brain. It has no where else to go.

I would say, in summary, that the extrinsic representation of qualitatively seeing a world, from the side of another being that is qualitatively seeing, is light entering the physical eyes and brain interpreting it—but this is just the representation of it on our dashboard of experience. Under Analytic Idealism, the information is accurate (enough to survive at least), but the way it is represented is not fundamentally how it (ontologically) exists (like the tree in a video game).

This would seem to me that meta-consciousness is "qualitative experience of qualitative experience".

Not quite. Meta-consciousness is the knowledge of one’s qualitative experience: I am not qualitatively experiencing my qualitative experience—I have one steady flow of qualitative experience. The point is that, under Analytic Idealism, you are still conscious when you are in a coma—you just have lost your meta-consciousness and other higher level aspects to consciousness (such as potentially the ability to cognize). Consciousness isn’t just what bubbles up to the ego under Analytic Idealism—you are fundamentally qualitatively experiencing until you die. Under physicalism, this is not the case at all: consciousness is an emergent property and, as such, is only “on” when the higher levels of your brains abilities are “on”--thusly you aren’t conscious when you are in a coma.

At the least, I don't see how it counters my point about Blindsight. The person does not have any qualia, or consciousness, of seeing what is in front of their eyes.

Let me ask you this: what about blindsight indicates, to you, that they don’t have qualia? Simply because they can no longer identify that they are seeing?

Isn't it the attention to these, the conscious experience of them, that is qualia?

No, that is an aspect, a ability, of higher conscious forms. A being can be qualitatively experiencing while having not the capability to self-reflect about it. If you couldn’t self-reflect and acquire self-knowledge then you wouldn’t know that you just smelled that flower: you would just smell the flower—there wouldn’t be a self-reflective “I just smelled a flower”.

I suppose I'm looking for a separation between the meaning of qualia and perception or senses

To me, perceptions are representations of the world, which are qualitative (and thusly are constituted of instances of qualia). Qualia is any instance of qualitative experience, so, to me, there could be a being with qualitatively experiences but isn’t capable of providing itself with a reflection (a representation) of the world around it. For example, I think some plants, which are just strictly stimuli responses to the environment, are qualitatively experiencing (in the form of basic stimuli responses) but are not perceiving anything.

Sensations, on the other hand, are just the raw input which is also qualitative.

Generally I've understood qualia to be that conscious experience of sensations or perceptions, not the mere flooding of light or sound into one's body.

That’s fair. It is usually referred to in that manner simply because humans and higher animals are what are typically considered in the debate, but I would say that it equally applies to any instance of qualitative experience—not just higher conscious life forms.

Back to blindsight, it seems much like the inability to give a conscious focus to what one is perceiving.

But they are still perceiving and perception is qualitative.

Let me clarify what I'm stating. Qualia is the subjective experience of the thing which is observed to be objectively conscious. Qualia is not necessary for us to conclude something is objectively conscious. The reason for this, is we cannot objectively assess qualia. We cannot prove what a conscious being is experiencing, or not experiencing at a subjective level. Therefore we do not consider it objectively, but can only consider it from their subjective viewpoint.

So then are you advocating for epistemic solipsism? To me, this confirms that you can’t actually claim that objectively conscious beings are subjectively conscious and, thusly, we cannot know that there are other subjects but, rather, just that there are other observing beings.

How is this any different from magic then Bob?

Magic is when something poofs into existence from thin air—I am arguing that fundamentally reality is mind and, thusly, that the physical world is what the ideas within that mind appear upon our dashboard of experience. This is no different than when you have a dream and assume the character of a person (of which usually resembles yourself in real life) and view the “objective” dream world from that person’s perspective; and only after waking up do you realize that the entirety of the physical was just a representation of ideas. I don’t see how this is magic.

Thank you again Bob for your clear and deep thoughts on the subject!

And same to you my friend! I always enjoy our conversations!

Bob

Hello Mww,

Things-in-themselves aren’t what appear, never become a sensation, so, yes, those are what we don’t know.

If it never becomes a sensation, then it sounds like you are saying we never come in contact, even indirectly, with the things-in-themselves, is that correct? If so, then how do you know they even exist? If the representational system isn’t getting, as input, sensations of the things-in-themselves, it sounds like, to me, the former is completely accounted for without positing the latter.

Remember: the thing and the thing of the thing-in-itself are identical.

I didn’t follow this part: what is a “thing of the thing-in-itself”? Is that the substance of (or in) which the thing-in-itself is of?

The only difference is the exposure to human systemic knowledge/experience criteria, which reduces to time.

If we aren’t exposed to it as sensations (see my first quote of you), then how are we exposed to it?

We can’t know the thing-in-itself because it doesn’t appear in us. If that specific box….the only one that appeared to your senses…..had stayed at the post office, you’d never know anything of it, even while inferring the real possibility of boxes in general, iff you already know post offices contain boxes.

But when you do look in the box, are you seeing an indirectly contacted box-in-itself? Or is the box-in-itself completely barred from your reach?

If ontology is the study of what is, and what is implies what exists, and to exist is to be conditioned by space and time

If what exists is what is conditioned by space and time, then space and time do not exist.

it follows that if logic is not conditioned by space and time but only time, thereby out of compliance with the criteria for existence, then the study of its ontological predicates from which its ontological status can be determined, is a waste of effort.

Are you saying that the logical part of our representational system (for each and every one of us) only is conditioned by time? So it exists within the temporal world but non-spatially?

Keyword: things. With respect to ontology, logic is not a thing.

But it has to exist in a thing: what thing are you saying it exists in? If it is outside of space and time, then I would think you are claiming it is a thing-in-itself.

I want to get back to something you said the other day, something like….the universal mind change the world to fit out knowledge, to which I thought it better that our knowledge changed to fit the constant world. If I got that right, I might have a thought up a decent counter-argument or two I’d like you to shoot down, in accordance with your thesis.

Please feel free to critique away! I would love to hear your counter-arguments!

However, I think what you are referring to was one of my questions pertaining to your view and not mine (but correct me if I am misremembering): you were claiming that, despite us having no knowledge of the things-in-themselves which makeup the real world, we can still know that our knowledge of the world changes faster than the rate at which the world actually changes (or something along those lines); and I was merely inquiring how you could know that if you can’t know anything about the things-in-themselves—i.e., the real world. I still don’t understand, as of yet, how you resolve that.

In terms of my theory, I don’t think that the Universal Mind changes the world to fit our knowledge but, rather, our knowledge changes to fit reality (which is fundamentally a Universal Mind). The Universal Mind doesn’t have cognitive deliberation, isn’t meta-conscious, nor does it have the ability to enumerate possible motives: it is the most basic, fundamental will which makes up reality and we emerged as evolved beings which have developed the ability to do such “higher level” things. As far as I can tell, the Universal Mind adheres to strict laws.

Way back when, and in the interest of the most general of terminology, that which contacted the bottom of human feet has never changed, even though through the ages more and more knowledge has been obtained about it.

Long ago, some humans knew the moon as some lighted disk in the sky. They also knew of periodically changing ocean levels, but had no comprehension of tidal effects caused by the moon and even less comprehension of effects a mere disk can have. Nowadays the relation between the tides and the moon are the same as they ever were, but there is resident knowledge of that relation derived from principles

I have no problem admitting that our knowledge, in terms of our ability to cognize and deliberate as higher conscious forms, tries to conform to what the world is and, thusly, we slowly learn and adapt our theories to better account for it. My point was that I don’t see how you know that about reality when “reality” under your view, as I am understanding it, is things-in-themselves.

Bob