subject of experience is never within the field of vision in the objective examination of phenomena. That's what makes it a 'hard problem' - not that it's devilishly complicated, or that we have to unravel and trace how billions of neural connections work to 'create consciousness', but because it requires a different stance or perspective to that assumed by the natural sciences. — Wayfarer

It has been remarked by some philosophers of science that this observation actually originated with the Indian philosophy of the Upaniṣads in the saying that 'the hand cannot grasp itself, the eye cannot see itself'. — Wayfarer

What about metacognition or self-reflection? I could train to be a neuroscientist, self-experiment and come to some objective conclusions regarding my consciousness? I'm the subject of my own analysis.

It's a rather simple matter: We haven't found the answers yet. For certain then ideas/theories won't match reality on the ground. Odd that ideas about reality should be complete strangers to each other.

seeing sounds — Vince

Category error?

:up: Thanks

What if, just what if, ambiguity & vagueness aren't accidental? In other words, there's a rationale why some words/terms/phrases are vague and ambiguous. In such cases, we should allow language to, you know, do its thing instead of trying to restrict it by imposing rigorous criteria on the word usage. That's to say ambiguity and vagueness are a feature, not a bug of language. We should then use them to full effect instead of steering clear of them.

Philosophy is the systematic analysis - rationality (mainstay), examination of structure - of questions, answers to those questions and, on the whole, all and sundry claims. Philosophy - viewed as such a methodology - is not without criticism (irrationalism).

We needn't worry about the decay of science. Good ideas tend to resurrect even if they do die at a certain point in history. Look at Democritus' atomic theory - it was revived after, what?, a millennia? So, if science is worthwhile and it seems to be, its decline even if can't be stalled/avoided, can one day be brought back to life, Jesus-like - the interim period would be chronicled as a second episode of the Dark Ages.

Life is an accident. We neeeeed Crumple Zones - weak spots to absorb the damage.

.

Sure, ruling with an iron fist sounds amusing
— Ennui Elucidator

Not to me. — Bitter Crank

:up:

What if a baby was guaranteed to be born into a lava pit and you can convince the parent not to do that? You would, correct? The thing is you are not seeing life as properly that volcano. — schopenhauer1

:fire: What an excellent metaphor!

Imagining is a kind of thinking and thoughts are mainly mental images. That's why your vision is the strongest sense.

Your other senses may be present but on a much lower intensity or even not at all. However, imagining is a kind of thinking and it resembles a lot to remembering. That's why sometimes we are not sure whether what seems as a factual memory of the past or created by our imagination. So, to make imagination stronger for other senses than vision, we can "borrow" from actually experienced sounds, smells, tastes and touches. E.g. you can taste the sand in your imagined stay in the desert, by remembering e.g. the disgusting taste and/or feeling you had once eating sand in a beach. You can also hear the sound of the wind that blows and the sand that moves by it, by remembering some experience you had on a beach. And so on. BTW, most often this happens automatically and w/o effort.

Have you tried that? — Alkis Piskas

Yes, but WHY? A webage I found claims that those who are congenitally blind dream in sounds and surely their imagination can't be in images - they lack sight.

References?

You brought up an issue that's been at the back of my mind for quite some time now - that we aren't really aware of the actual processes (neuronal firing) that goes into thinking & perception (have I left anything out?). So the computer icon metaphor fits like a glove - we simply see the results (fully formed thoughts & perceptions), completely oblivious to the mechanisms involved. :up:

What, may I ask, does this have to do with our inability to imagine smells, tastes, touch, sounds like we can sights?

When someone says I'm imagining X, he means it he can see it with his oculus mentis and definitely not that he can smell, touch, taste, or hear X.

Hennepin County (where I live--population 1.3 million) collects $60,000,000 in (mostly) traffic related fines. 17% of the total is a result of moving violations. Please come to Minneapolis and flout our traffic laws. Pay up when you get to court. We weary taxpayers need your help.

20% of the fine revenue is remitted to the state; Hennepin county keeps 80%. A small amount ($3 from a $145 fine) goes to the county law libraries. The percentages vary by county. In most counties in Minnesota it's a 2/3 - 1/3 split.

Federal courts issue billions of dollars in fines for fraud; that is not the same as actually collecting the money from the evil doers. — Bitter Crank

:chin: I recall a thread a coupla weeks ago (for better or worse I can't find it) about how it might be important, even necessary, to maintain a certain minimum level of criminal population so that criminal-on-criminal violence will keep them occupied, leaving good folks alone. I didn't realize that there were direct benefits in hard cash too. It seems one can contribute to the community more by breaking the law than following it. Paradoxical.

I'll come to Minneapolis in a speeding truck...one day! :grin:

Kurt Gödel (mathematician & logician) comes to mind - it's said that he confided to Albert Einstein and one other whose name I forgot that the American constitution has a dangerous loophole that makes dictatorship constitutional. Gödel asked Einstein whether he should inform the judge presiding over his American citizenship about it and the latter gently dissuaded him from doing so. :smile:

Most crimes are prevented by people feeling the need to be law-abiding. That's true for every community. out people are law-abiding. If someone isn't law abiding, they will choose a time and place to commit a crime where the police will not be present -- OBVIOUSLY. Police reduce crime by arresting repeat offenders, and by maintaining a certain level of intimidation (make that necessary intimidation).

To paraphrase Mao, law enforcement is not a tea party. — Bitter Crank

:ok: I'd very much like to see the revenue statistics for fines levied on criminal activity from traffic transgressions to felony fraud. How much does the government actually earn from people breaking the law?

Slavery may be an ultimate--but distant--cause of blacks circumstances. The efforts of (mostly southerners) to suppress the black population, especially through the 'Jim Crow' laws of the 1890s, and the terrorism of the KKK in the1920s and 1930s is an early proximal cause. The Great Migration northward in the 20th century led to intense racial discrimination in northern industrial cities -- another proximal cause.

A third proximal cause is the mid-century flight of capitalists from unionized to un-unionized states. Off-shoring of industry in the latter third of the 20th century (to Japan, China...) is a third proximal cause. Steady attacks on the organized labor movement broke many unions, and helped wages fall during decades of inflation--a fourth proximal cause.

These and other several other proximal causes (re-segregation of schools, for instance) have resulted in significant economic disability for black communities.

However, de-unionizing, falling wages, inflation, and industrial flight have hurt the entire working class (75% of the population at least). Conditions ARE worse for blacks than for most whites because of their longer period of economic suppression. It's hard to argue, though, that unskilled white workers are better off. "Nobody knows you when you are down and out", regardless of your skin color.

We can natter away about racism until hell freezes over and it won't change much. — Bitter Crank

It's all about money it seems. The racial theories thought up to justify discrimination were/are just a smokescreen to make the dehumanizing of fellow humans easier on the conscience. I feel bad.

What is painful is that black communities are over-policed and under-policed at the same time. — Bitter Crank

:brow:

Or heavily policing traffic offenses--both of which are revenue producers (not for the police, necessarily, but for the municipality). — Bitter Crank

Amazing! So, we need criminally-oriented people - traffic violations being a first step towards becoming an outlaw - to fund our municipality? :chin: So, the legal system inclusive of the guardians of the law (the police) are not there to actually prevent crimes but only to ensure that the perps are caught after the crime has been committed. Geez! What a mind job!

Indeed, one can't argue against the numbers: black-on-black crime is out of proportion. That's the current situation, the state of affairs, the reality as it is now. From the now perspective it might seem as though blacks are their own worst enemy and racism has no/a small role to play in the misery of blacks.

However, ask why the situation is like it is for blacks?, and the answer, the explanation, will/might take us back to America's history of slavery, systematic racism.

Particular dates, e.g. 18 Dec. 1865, have gone down in history as important landmarks in the abolishment of serfdom as if the effects of centuries of oppression and privation could be reversed overnight. Facts as they stand - continued racial inequality even to this day, centuries later - demonstrates how naïve it was/is to think so.

You made your claim first. What do you have to back it up? — baker

Imagination (Merriam-Webster Dictionary): The act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality.

No nention of senses other than vision!

Be a sport and give some references for your claim. This isn't a child's game of you said/did it first.

Just read it. — baker

Will! All in good time, all in good time.

What gives is that you're making an unjustified generalization. People differ in how well they can simulate things, via different senses. — baker

My stance is that people can't imagine smells/tastes/touch/sounds as they can visual images or if they can only to a lesser extent.

You claim that this is a hasty generalization. Do you have any references to back this up?

And I didn't say I can perfectly simulate nonvisual sensations. — Yohan

References please. Thank you.

I'll leave you to search for well documented cases of perfectly simulated nonvisual sensations if you want. — Yohan

Chickening out, I see. :grin:

synesthesia — Yohan

Now that's a good lead. Thank you. However, synesthesia is involuntary and also predominantly visual.

I never got round to reading Dorian Gray but fun fact: we look older in our pictures than in real life - something to do with distortions caused by camera lenses.

Speaking to The Telegraph, plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover explained that the angle and shape of the lens play a big role, saying, “The phone's 28mm camera lens does exactly what time does to your face, enlarging the front of your face so that it looks bigger, as well as amplifying the features that get larger as you age. ... What we see when we're looking at ourselves in a mirror is not reality — the reflection in the mirror is a reversed version of the way we actually look. And since we look in the mirror every day, we're very used to this flipped version. It's called the mere effect. — From Quora

I wouldn't call it getting the odor of tabacco on fire. But assuming you are using that as a metaphor for experiencing the smell of tabacco inwardly, without having my olfactory nerves stimulated with present tabacco smoke, yeah. — Yohan

No, no metaphor implied or expressed.

I dunno. How do you visualize? If someone asks you to "experience what it would be life if an apple were before you" you just kind of do it, no? How can you explain how you do it? If someone says "Now imagine smelling a sliced apple"... I just do it. — Yohan

First off, I'm not interested in the kind of thought experiment that deals in imagining being something nonhuman (like an apple). Second, I don't mind speculating on the issue but if your claim - that you can perfectly simulate nonvisual sensations is true - there should be some well-documented case. A reference I could crosscheck would be really helpful. Thanks.

I guess simulation of touch, smell and taste is absent because it doesn't give an adaptive evolutionary advantage. Sight and hearing simulation helps a lot, which explains why it is present Though I'm not really sure about whether they truly are absent. I can for example imagine the taste of pizza, although the simulation of it feels much less intense than the simulation of the sight of it. — Hello Human

Perhaps I'm using the wrong words here but here'a the clearest version of the problem I can manage:

1. I can imagine, visually, eating an icecream.

2. I can't imagine its taste/smell/touch.

N.B. I can, it seems, simulate how icecream sounds like when I take a bite of it.

I can imagine the sensation, but my hand is not actually feeling it, if it was the case it would be called a hallucination. — Vince

Even hallucinations aren't that complete. That's the point I believe.

Different topic I believe. — Vince

Why did you bring it up? You're onto something or so I feel.

I mentioned lucid dreaming in response to this:
Yes, it's possible that dreams could be experienced in all sensory modalities although I haven't come across any documented cases of such instances. I have my doubts.
— TheMadFool

A lot of people, can remember having all sensory modalities during regular dreams after they wake up. In lucid dreams, sensations can be examined carefully at the same time as they are experienced. The result is a highly accurate recreation of reality as far as the senses are concerned. My point is that the more your senses are inhibited as they are in dreams or inside a sensory deprivation tank, the more your brain is taking over to recreate/hallucinate reality accurately. When you senses are uninhibited, you get the opposite effect. — Vince

I get that part - sensory deprivation activating the imagination. You've made some claims regarding dreams, specifically lucid dreams. Initially I was of the view that you were barking up the wrong tree but there's something about lucid dreams that's relevant to what we're discussing although only indirectly it seems.

Because the perception of reality interferes with the capacity to daydream vividly, reducing it to the necessary elements. I can daydream all the senses but mostly one at a time. You seem to have an issue imagining particular sensations. — Vince

So, according to you,

1. The perception of reality interferes with the capacity to daydream vividly

Ergo,

2. We're unable to activate all our senses when daydreaming to produce an experience indistinguishable from reality.

How come "the perception of reality" doesn't have any effect on imaginations that are eye-specific? Why inhibit one sense while letting another sense have a field day?

think you are assuming what you can or can't do is the norm.
I can imagine touch as vividly as images.
I was actually mildly shocked when I learned not everyone can do this.
I can imagine in all five sense modalities.
I don't understand how people choose what to eat if they can't imagine the scents or flavors of the food — Yohan

Suppose you've never smoked in your life or if you're smoker like me, you're not smoking as of now. Now, imagine that you are taking a puff of your brand of cigarette/cigar, take your pick. Like you I can see the cigarette in my hand, I bring it up to my mouth. What usually happens then is some wisps of smoke enter the nostrils and a distinct odor of burning tobacco becomes noticeable. This is happening in my imagination but, for better or worse, sorry to say, no smell of burning cigarettes. Are you telling me that in your case you can actually get the odor of tobacco on fire with your imaginary cigarette?

If yes, how do you do it? I'm curious.

I think Donald Hoffman's notion of our senses as an "interface" between us and the real world, may offer a clue to "what gives?" In The Case Against Reality, Why Evolution Hid the Truth From Our Eyes, he has concluded that our sensory perceptions have “almost surely evolved to hide reality. They just report fitness”. Even so, humans have also evolved another form of “perception” that we call “conception”. — Gnomon

Our senses evolved really for one purpose - survival - but survival and the true nature of reality are two different subjects. — Brian Greene

I was wondering how if our senses don't give an accurate picture of reality, it would aid us in survival? That goes against the received wisdom that to be in touch with reality is key to living a happy and healthy life (most cases of death and injury occur when we believe falsehoods or ignore facts). :chin:

And that’s where the philosophical debates divide. Via conception, we can imagine things we can’t see, and we sometimes find those subjective “ideals” to be more important than the objectively real objects of the physical realm. That sometimes leads to Faith, in which we “believe in things unseen”. Most of what we "know" about the physical world takes the form of abstractions or simulations (or "silumations", if you prefer), that contain only enough detail to allow us to survive the hazards of nature long enough to replicate our genes. But that pragmatic worldview falls far short of omniscience. So, "what gives" is an illusion of reality, not the ding an sich — Gnomon

I've encountered this particular line of thinking in Yuval Noah Harari's (Israeli-born historian) book Sapiens, he calls them imagined orders (religion, money, state, etc.) but these are abstractions and not what I want to discuss. What I want to talk about is the fact that we can visualize with relative little effort but we can't do something similar with the other senses (smell, taste, touch, and hearing).

I'm doing the same experiment and I can "feel" the texture of the sandstone. I have touched sandstone before so I believe I'm using the memory of it. — Vince

You maybe unique, a one of a kind then because most people can't do that. I, for one, can't do that. So you're saying that when you imagine yourself touching a rock with your hand, you can actually feel the rock i.e. your hands register sensations? :chin:

Also, I have had many lucid dreams in my life.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dream
At first glance, the whole experience is indistinguishable from the woken state, until you start scrutinizing your perceptions. For example, one time I tried to look at visual details and they became blurry.
So why is my brain capable of recreating a very accurate image of reality when I'm dreaming but not when I'm awake?
I think it's simply because the perception of reality primes over imaginary perception. Try sensory deprivation. Lock yourself in a dark room for a week or more, and you'll find yourself in the Sahara touching sandstone.(or you'll turn into an ape like William Hurt in Altered States) — Vince

There's the possibility that life could be a dream and then to realize that would qualify as a lucid dream. What's your point though?

Come to think of it that sounds horrific. Imagine if someone suffered from PTSD flashbacks from a painful, violent incident but instead of just severe anxiety also felt the same physical pain as well. — Outlander

Indeed, that would be a major drawback but then we can reverse the polarity and ask "what about all the wonderful experiences some people claim to have, wouldn't it be awesome if we could re-experience them in full/glorious technicolor?, if you know what I mean.

Some people are so familiar with certain sensations they can "almost feel" them with enough thought, say the sand between our toes or the warm sun on your skin. Or even simply reading a very well-written (or at least chock full of superfluous adjectives and nauseating detail) paragraph describing a texture. Not aware of the technical biologic details as to why or why not other than to say that's just not how a properly functioning human brain works, and for good reason. — Outlander

I tend to agree - to be able to activate all the senses when you're imagining something may not always be a good thing.

As I see it, a life in the sense used by the OP - fulfillment - is what people would opt for only if there's no such thing as a soul. Were it that there are souls, life would be important yes - people, ceteris paribus, want to live a good life, morally and otherwise - but it (life) would become just another life, one of countless many lived and will be lived.

The long and short of it is that we want souls and only when that's not possible do we talk about a life which I'll treat as a stand-in for anything else that's the next valuable item on our wish list after souls.

Like the OP. If you parse 'economics' alongside 'work' the meaning is exactly how I framed it. — I like sushi

ALL activity is 'work — I like sushi

How then?

The cost of 'enjoying yourself' exists and it isn't in a matter of monetary value. — I like sushi

Indeed but there's a difference between working for survival and working to earn enough to have a good time every now and then.

These are the basic building blocks of what economics is about. I'm not making it up. A look at any basic introduction to economics and what economics covers will reveal this. — I like sushi

When I said we could be simply playing with words I meant that we're on the same page, we see eye to eye, the dispute between us being only verbal (about the choice of words).

If you think not, the onus is on you to clarify the situation and that because I won't be able to do so, I lack the wherewithal.

The OP is about EMPLOYMENT/JOBS. You don't have to get a job but you'll have to work no matter what if you wish to keep breathing. The person posting this has made clear elsewhere they don't much care for breathing in the first place and that on balanced life=suffering and that that is 'bad'/'wrong'. — I like sushi

I offered my analysis:

$Work \rightarrow Money \rightarrow Food \rightarrow Work$

The above is a raw deal and I believe a good number of folks are in such a or similar circumstances. Life ain't worth it then, no?

Then, I showed how it could be better but then work is just the tip of the iceberg of our woes.

Recreation takes work too. ALL activity is 'work'. — I like sushi

Perhaps we need to make a distinction: boring work & fun work. But we'd simply be playing with words.

Same problem: artificially generating and/or controlling a stellar / supermassive black hole. Not going to happen based on current physics or engineering – we're nowhere near (maybe ever?) being a Type II civilization, Fool. You might as well speculate on how "Dorothy clicking the heels of her ruby slippers" works and using that "magic" to transport FTL to Alpha Centuri. — 180 Proof

:lol: :up:

Scenario 1

$1. Work \rightarrow Money \rightarrow Food \rightarrow Work$

The arrow stands for converted to.

:cry: :sad:

The money we get from work simply gets transmuted via food back into work. So, the belief that we're getting something in return for the work we do - a full belly - is an illusion; after all, the food in our tummies circle back to become work.

Anti-work justified.

Scenario 2

$2. Work \rightarrow Money [For \space (Food \rightarrow Work) + Other \space Activities \space e.g. Recreation]$

:smile: :grin:

The worker makes a little extra which he can spend on himself (whatever he wants). In this case, working has benefits.

Anti-work unjustified.

Nevertheless, even scenario 2 fails to make a case for natalism. Work, even if it's good, doesn't quite do the job of making life worth it.

Compare it to a dream. If it was just as real (sensory identical) or perhaps of a longer duration than what you define as not a simulation, you'd have a whole new set of questions. — Outlander

Like...

The only distinction between dreams and daydreams (the OP's focus) is volitional in character.

Interestingly enough I've had many dreams that at least at one point or another all senses, in the moment of having them, realized dreaming or not, were activated, and that outlier is the sense of smell. Pain, sight and hearing naturally. Touch.. hm? Not quite. I dream often and remember, albeit vaguely many if not most of them, never having a single dream where I physically "felt" (as in feeling a texture) or "smelled" something. Curious, I suppose. Taste, only partially. I've noted unique (similar enough) tastes to food or beverage consumed in dreams, though without the savor. Perhaps, dreams are a window into Hell. Or to be more upbeat, somewhere greater where we are no longer dictated by satisfying our woefully outdated evolutionary wants and needs. — Outlander

Yes, it's possible that dreams could be experienced in all sensory modalities although I haven't come across any documented cases of such instances. I have my doubts.

My question, however, is why are we incapable of deliberately switching on all the senses when we daydream to produce an experience indistinguishable from reality itself? For instance, why couldn't my mind simulate the touch of the rock when I could simulate it visually?

A risk management approach. It makes sense if survival is the prime directive, the be all and end all of life in general and humans in particular. I don't see how that's got anything to do with why mind-generated silumations are done in halves - some senses are not activated as mentioned in the OP.

Maybe there's an intergalactic pandemic (Super COVID-19) and inflation is some kinda social distancing measure! :grin:

expands — 180 Proof

Then contraction (of space) should be possible.

Well idiots need entertainment too. There’s nothing more dangerous than idiocy with too much time on its hands haha — Benj96

You can say that again.

@baker @Wayfarer

Luck & Karma

Synchronicity [meaningful coincidence]

Jung held that there was both a philosophical and scientific basis for synchronicity. He identified the complementary nature of causality and acausality with Eastern sciences and protoscientific disciplines, stating "the East bases much of its science on this irregularity and considers coincidences as the reliable basis of the world rather than causality. Synchronism is the prejudice of the East; causality is the modern prejudice of the West". — Wikipedia

I forgot to congratulate you on your mathematical discovery. Good job!

Such as? — 180 Proof

All time favorite space travel trope: wormholes

There maybe other ways: According to Inflation Theory, space is being created - between the galaxies. Can we not reverse the process - destroy space? :chin:

The old man is only a passenger. "Astronauts" are crewmembers who operate and maintain the space craft. Think of airline flight crew (trained, fit) vs passengers (fat assed, spoiled). "Captain Kirk" is only a tourist (& Bezos' marketing prop). LLAP, Fool. :smirk: — 180 Proof

:ok:

I've already answered this question. Yes. The rest of your post is – assumptions to the contrary are – incoherent. Read e.g. Peirce, Dewey, Popper, Haack ... Witty — 180 Proof

:ok: :lol: You've been helpful, as always.

I still think W's notion of family resemblances is more accurate to the facts of usage than the ancient idea of essences. But each to their own I guess. — Janus

Family resemblance goes to show that meaning assignment of words is arbitrary but not that words are essenceless. Perhaps it's an issue of scope. When I say the word "God" has an essence, I mean it within theism or deism or panentheism or... I'm not saying "God" has an essence that spans these various denominations of God beliefs i.e. not true that "God" possesses an essence in theism and deism and panentheism and...