But a person can experience the world without engaging it in any way. If you mean the character of experience is shaped by interaction, I would agree to some extent. Some of it is just innate, though.

I think the idea that one must start with "atomic" concepts isn't wholly inconsistent with the sort of holism Wittgenstein advocated — Pierre-Normand

Atomism is indispensable. As long as the advocate of embodied consciousness understands that, all is well. It's just a shift in perspective of the sort that already exists in biology, so really, it just comes down to a matter of emphasis.

ecently, I stumbled upon a paper titled "Alignment of brain embeddings and artificial contextual embeddings in natural language points to common geometric patterns" (published last month in Nature Communications) and I asked Claude 3 Opus to help me understand it. I was puzzled by the fact the the researchers had chosen to look into Broca's area rather than into Wernicke's area in order to find semantically significant neural correlates of linguistic representations. Claude 3 informed me that:

"Historically, the Wernicke-Geschwind model of language processing has been influential, positing a division of labor between Broca's area (in the IFG) for speech production and Wernicke's area (in the superior temporal gyrus) for speech comprehension. However, more recent research has challenged this strict dichotomy, suggesting a more distributed and integrated network for language processing in the brain. — Pierre-Normand

On this point I'd offer rather than an objection, just the reason I've had trouble understanding those who talk about embodied consciousness. It's that in order to explain what you mean by holism, you'll use atomic biological concepts. So it's a case where the revolution needs the previous regime to make sense of itself.

This is vaguely inspired by Fodor's criticisms of meaning holism. As appealing as Wittgenstein-inspired meaning holism is, it doesn't work out on the ground. It's not clear how a human could learn a language if meaning is holistic. Likewise, the student of biology must start with atomic concepts like the nervous system (which has two halves). Eventually it will be revealed that you can't separate the nervous system from the endocrine system. It's one entity. But by the time this news is broken to you, you have enough understanding of the mechanics to see what they're saying. And honestly, once this has happened a few times, you're not at all surprised that you can't separate the lungs from the heart. You can't separate either of those from the kidneys, and so on.

This isn't new. As I mentioned, the boundary between organism and world can easily fall away. Organisms and their environments function as a unit. If you want to kill a species, don't attack the organisms, attack their environment. It's one thing. And this leads to my second point: you said that philosophy is the right domain for talking about this issue, but philosophy won't help you when there are no non-arbitrary ways to divide up the universe. Your biases divide it up. All you can do is become somewhat aware of what your biases are. Robert Rosen hammers this home in Life Itself, in which he examines issues associated with the fact that life has no scientific definition. The bias at the heart of it is the concept of purpose. He doesn't advise dispensing with the concept of purpose because there would be no biology without it. What he does is advise a Kantian approach.

So I'll throw those two things at you just as food for thought: you can't dispense with science and atomic concepts, and what you're calling a philosophical problem is really a matter of biases. Maybe an anti-Descartes, anti-Chalmers bias? I know it's not that simple.

I don't think that it's science's job to either establish or disconfirm this thesis. I think the mind/body problem, the so-called hard-problem of consciousness and radical skepticism stem from distinctive philosophical outlooks regarding the disconnect between the "manifest image" and the "scientific image" that Wilfrid Sellars identified as "idealizations of distinct conceptual frameworks in terms of which humans conceive of the world and their place in it." On my view, it's entirely a philosophical problem although neuroscience and psychology do present cases that are illustrative of (and sometimes affected by) the competing philosophical theses being discussed in this thread. — Pierre-Normand

You're suspicious of scientific findings because you think they're tainted by false preconceptions. Are you proposing that science sort of start over with a more holistic outlook? I mean, we have a vast wealth of information about how organisms interact with their environments, and "environment" is not a fixed entity here. Living things transform their environments to suit their needs, such that we could dissolve the boundary between organism and world and see both as a whole. We could and do extend that into the concept of biosphere. The holism doesn't end once its starts.

Which makes me think of Davidson's meaning holism. Have you ever looked into that?

Well said.

A ghost zombie. Hadn't thought of that. — Luke

You see the screen by way of the ghost zombie.

What's the intermediary? — Luke

It's a ghostly entity stranded in our universe who hopes to one day be able to eat your brain.

Whether, for example, I can see the screen in front of me, or whether I am seeing only an intermediary of the screen in front of me. — Luke

You're seeing the screen by way of an intermediary. :razz:

But if you know someone who endorses the "functionalist" label and who views phenomenal states to supervene widely on the brain+body+environment dynamics (like I do), I'd be happy to look at their views and compare them with mine. — Pierre-Normand

I did say you were "quasi-functionalist." I think if science were to show that functional consciousness is indeed a holistic relation between body and world, a functionalist would quickly adapt to that view and insist that talk of consciousness be limited to that relation. Isn't that your view?

Most of the examples that I've put forward to illustrate the direct realist thesis appealed directly to the relationships between the subjects (visible and manifest) embodied activity in the world and the objective features disclosed to them through skilfully engaging with those features — Pierre-Normand

Right. I don't think phenomenal consciousness is involved in navigation of the world as you seem to think it is. Walking, for instance involves an orchestral display of muscle movement which wouldn't happen at all if phenomenality had to enter the process. Consciousness of sights and sounds is a time consuming activity. I'm not saying you couldn't become aware of some of what your body is doing as you interact with the world. Phenomenal consciousness is like a flashlight. You can even direct it to the sensory input that handles proprioception, but your body certainly doesn't wait for you to do that before it orients itself in space.

My stance differs in important ways from a functionalist view, even though it may share some superficial similarities. The key distinction is that I'm not trying to identify mental states like perceptual experiences with narrow functional roles or internal representations realized in the brain. — Pierre-Normand

I don't think there's necessarily anything narrow about the reductionism of a functionalist. A functionalist just doesn't separate functional consciousness from phenomenal. She views the two as necessarily bound together, so that explaining one explains the other.

So when you say this:

In contrast, embodied conceptions sees perceptual experience as an active, world-engaged skill of the whole embodied agent, not just a function of the brain. — Pierre-Normand

What you're saying here is already true of functional consciousness. Every part of your body is engaged with the whole. The flowchart for how it all works together to keep you alive is startlingly large and complex, and along the endocrine system, the nervous system is the bodily government. However, none of this necessarily involves phenomenal consciousness. This is where you become sort of functionalist: that you assume that phenomenality has a necessary role in the functioning of the organism (or did I misread you?). That's something you'd have to argue for, ideally with scientific evidence. As of now, each side of the debate is focusing on information that seems to support their view, but neither has an argument with much weight. We don't know where phenomenal consciousness is coming from, whether it's the brain, the body, or quantum physics. We just don't know.

As I mentioned earlier, yours appears to be a quasi-functionalist view. It's a minority view, but one that's appealing to many. Its weakest point is that it has no force for lack of any evidence. Maybe one day that will change.

Otherwise, we are indeed using direct and indirect differently. I'll leave it there.

Because my comment, to which you replied, was made in the context of the GPT response posted by hypericin, which specifically referred to "mental representations". — Luke

Oh, yeah, I see that. Some of the posters, like @Pierre-Normand have been addressing the issue by going beyond mental representation to the realm of interaction with the world, much of which makes use of representation, but is not mental. Cause for confusion there.

I don't see that as being different to what I said, although let's stick to mental representations — Luke

Why stick to mental representation? That just leaves us with phenomenal consciousness and leaves out the bulk of representational content.

I take this to mean that the phrase "mental representations" can sometimes be used to refer to, or to include, unconscious states/processes, which is unlike how the word "qualia" is typically used. — Luke

I would take that to mean that representation is sometimes in the form of innate nervous responses (like algorithms) that don't involve phenomenal consciousness. This makes up the bulk of our interactions with the world. Something like this:

I had presented a challenge for indirect realists to explain how the phenomenology of perceiving an apple to be within reach, say, can be deemed to be true to the facts (or a case of misperception) if the intrinsic features of the representation don't include such things as expectations that the apple can indeed be reached by the perceiver's outstretched hand. It is those expectations that define the truth conditions of the visual content, in this particular case. — Pierre-Normand

Is the challenge meant to ask why indirect realists don't succumb to global skepticism? Or is it just asking how indirect realists explain how they sort real from unreal? If it's the former, once skepticism has taken over, there's no reason to be either indirect nor direct realist. Reality no longer has any significance. If it's the latter, I think that would be a matter of rational analysis of experience, involving some logic, some custom, some probability. Does that not answer the question?

There may indeed be some usefulness for purpose of neuroscientific inquiry to postulate internal "representations" on the retina or in the brain that enable the perceiver to attune their perceptual contents with their skills to act in the world. But those "representations" don't figure as objects directly seen by the perceivers. Just like those "upside down" retinal images, they are not seen by the embodied perceiver at all. They play a causal role in the enablement of the subjet's sensorimotor skills, but it is those (fallible) skills themselves that imbue their perceptual experiences with world-directed intentional purport. — Pierre-Normand

I think you're offering a quasi functionalist perspective? That's fine, but that view doesn't have a better grounding than any other. We don't know that phenomenal consciousness has something to do with skills. All we know for sure is that we have it. We don't know how the mind works to bring sensory data to life, we just know it's not a passive "blank slate." Would it improve things to just dispense with the terminology of direct and indirect?

Deflationary accounts of truth (such as disquotationalism or prosententialism) stress the pragmatic function of "truth" predicates while denying that truth is a property of the propositions they are predicated of. This sort of pragmatism about truth is somewhat different from the pragmatism of, say, Richard Rorty, who claims that what makes a belief "true" is nothing over and above the fact that believing it is useful. It is this latter form of pragmatism that you may be thinking of. Yet, there is an affinity between those two sorts of pragmatism. (Robert Brandom, who was a student of Rorty, defended a form of prosententialism.) — Pierre-Normand

I was just thinking of a broad deflationism following Frege's insights about the indefinability of truth.

However, suppose we grant you such a pragmatist conception of truth. The question regarding how "inner" perceptual states refer to "external" empirical facts about the world thereby gets translated into questions regarding the pragmatic function that enjoying such phenomenological states can serve. — Pierre-Normand

That would be true if I defined truth as usefulness, but that's not what I had in mind. Contemporary forms of indirect realism start with the assumption that we can rely on our perceptions of things like human anatomy and physiology. Representational models of human perception are natural developments from there.

But once we've noticed that perception can't be a passive process, were left wondering how far it goes and whether the whole issue becomes an ourobourous. That's where pragmatism comes in. Instead of abandoning the whole project because of the unknown, we carry on learning from this thing we've been calling the real world. We just do so with the knowledge in the background that we may be living in a dream. I don't think any of this intrudes on what scientists do.

Edit, btw, deflationists usually do accept that truth is a property of statements.

Couldn't an indirect realist just be deflationary about truth and say their grounding for justifications is practical purposes?

My suspicion, and it might be interesting to gather information on this, is that Overt Christianity in democratic political figures is a curiously 'mercan trait. — Banno

This doesn't bother me. It means they're trying to do what's right. That's not my assumption, it's in the historical record. Since the early 20th Century, American presidents have tried to be do-gooders. I'm not really sure about European leaders. I wonder if they have as little moral compass as the Europeans I've seen on line.

And we've not mentioned Kierkegaard's take on all this, which is to assert that the Binding was a test of faith and that there was no faith as great as Abraham's because he never questioned God — Hanover

In Fear and Trembling Kierkegaard is offering Abraham as an image of a human who has melded with God. He has the "power which is impotence", which means his will and God's will are indistinguishable. Apparently this power is available to those who can accept the universe as it is. Very few can do that, but Kierkegaard was dwelling on the topic just as Nietzsche was (amor fati).

You could probably get something equally profound by reading the label on your korn flakes. The profundity is coming from you, not the flakes, right?

Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden role of Chance in LIfe and in the Markets -- Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"This book is the synthesis of, on the one hand, the no-nonsense practitioner of uncertainty who spent his professional life trying to resist being fooled by randomness and trick the emotions associated with probabilistic outcomes and, on the other, the aesthetically obsessed, literature-loving human being willing to be fooled by any form of nonsense that is polished, refined, original, and tasteful. I am not capable of avoiding being the fool of randomness; what I can do is confine it to where it brings some aesthetic gratification."

I think you can speculate that he had resentment from romantic misfortune, with some evidence. — fdrake

He broke up with her and then wrote his greatest works trying to come to terms with what he'd done to her. He didn't resent women.

I agree that it can be overdone, as if use is some sort of holy grail. Obviously the concept of use is dependent on its negation: the useless, like the sight of a beautiful sky while you're busting rocks.

I wish pragmatists would find something less narrow-minded than "useful". — Ludwig V

Why does it strike you as narrow minded?

Ha! He was a proto-Heidegger.

I agree that the distinction between the role I'm playing and who I am is very important here. But I don't think it was specifically based on existentialism, though it's more than likely that Hannah Arendt would have discussed it in her writing on Eichmann's trial. — Ludwig V

I don't think existentialism is the source either. I'm speculating that it was part of the times some how. Kierkegaard's generation included Abraham Lincoln, who was driven by the same idea: that freedom is found in grasping that you're more than the role you're playing. There's also a similarity between Lincoln's beliefs and what Kierkegaard expresses in Repetition. Maybe it was an odd coincidence, or maybe existentialism is coming from some aspect of a shared cultural story arc.

It captured and reinforced the liberation experienced by many people as WW2 ended. — Ludwig V

Part of that was the Nuremberg trials in which Nazi soldiers were asked to explain their actions. According to folklore, they said they were soldiers, and they were doing as they were told. The basis for rejecting this answer from the Nazis is that it puts all the blame on the role these men were playing, as if they were nothing but the role.

Existentialism starts with a separation between the role you're playing and some other amorphous thing: call it Being, spirit, etc. The point is that you have a choice regarding the role you invest yourself in. You're something beyond any particular role. So the Nazi soldiers could have divested the role of soldier and become something else. It's from an existentialist standpoint that we reject racism, sexism, eugenics, religious intolerance, etc. We start morality from a focus on the subject.

Those who reject subjectivism are saddled with a foundation that welcomes racism, whether they realize that or not.

Thanks. I'm sightly familiar with nihilism. Not enough to have ever heard of positive nihilism. — Patterner

Nihilism starts when people stop grasping for distractions that keep them from facing the fact that "All is vanity.". All that stuff that keeps people struggling and fretting doesn't really mean anything.

From there, you can be happy about it because your heart has been unburdened, or you can be sad because... your heart has been unburdened.

Nihilist discussion groups spend a lot of time talking about both ends of it. Existentialism comes up for obvious reasons.

:up: It overlaps with positive nihilism.

Was Kierkegaard an existentialist? In what sense yes or no? — Corvus

He's been called the Grandfather of existentialism. He drew attention away from grand project building (like Hegel) to the experience of being alive: to that 'quality of being that comes to rest in the sanctuary of the form.'

Dude, you are so lucky. Soon you will be living in a tropical paradise. — Agree-to-Disagree

Yay me.

But there is room until the very last gasp for kindness and affection, and to make what adaptations one can... — unenlightened

:pray:

Among the things that peeped up from the dirt in my woodland garden this spring is a... tropical houseplant. Dude.

This was always my understanding - and, as with the Shapiro reference, I think its true. People f'ing it up doesn't change the basis. — AmadeusD

I think about that every time I vote, so I don't feel so bad. :grin:

I hope that is taught in schools everywhere, Frank. — Rob J Kennedy

I don't think it is. It's a secret.

what do you think would happen if every soldier refused their orders? — Rob J Kennedy

The war would end. That's actually how WW1 ended: a German mutiny. The French soldiers had also mutinied earlier, but the French government managed to get them back to the battlefield. The Russian soldiers also mutinied. It was a weird war.

It's not enough to just notice that soldiers have the power to mutiny. You need a culture that emphasizes that fact: that no one is locked into a role. You can be anyone. You can be the president, for instance. That was the guiding vision behind the creation of the USA. Martin Luther King Jr referenced that vision in a speech he gave on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Crazy, but true: the American vision is about freedom of identity. Voting is a ritual that broadcasts that ideal: that you're responsible for your government.

Thoughts?

I believe, that where posiible, if we were all more responsible for our descisions, we would have a better world. — Rob J Kennedy

Do you mean that if the Nazi soldier took responsibility for his decisions, he'd go home and stop wrecking the world?

The answer to this question resonates on this thread. Of what value is a philosophical idea if it does not change lives? Or does philosophy as an approach to life live on mysteriously within endless discussions of Russell's paradox and something arising from nothing? Much of what I have read is inconsequential, like the pure mathematics I have enjoyed. — jgill

Yes. Where I've seen the OP discussed elsewhere, the issue is a psycho-social one rather than a quest to squeeze nuance out of jargon.

To be blunt - my specialist area - those who have answered "yes" to the question in the OP have thereby shown that they have not understood existentialism. — Banno

You could dwell on the right way to define it, but when a group of people has latched onto the word because it's become useful in their philosophical grappling, you can just let the meaning drift to whatever they mean by it.

So when you were in your 20s-30s did you ever wonder about the power of humans to choose who and what they will be? Or did the abysmal events of the 20th Century leave you hopeless?

There's presently a boom in discussions about existentialism vs nihilism on Reddit. Some of the best subreddits are closed to new members, but there are still good ones around.

which would make it "of" the object, but as a mapping of object behaviours to "rational awareness". — fdrake

The concept of perception has a logical feature that rules out one-to-one mapping, molding, or mirroring. As the parade of sights and sounds changes through time, it's supposed to be the same perceiver through all of it. Without that distinction between change and the unchanging, there will be no perception of time because world and perceiver would constantly track. There would only be the now, in which case none of the content of perception would have any meaning and there would be no memory of it.

If it's just that one is allergic to the historical, spiritual baggage surrounding the concept of the enduring perceiver, it can be visualized as a pattern produced by the brain. But if that is also deemed distasteful, the price for discarding the perceiver altogether is that there is neither direct nor indirect perception. I guess perception would become some sort of myth.