I don't think all ways of drawing conclusions are the same. I think we can be more certain of something, especially if we are agreeing on certain foundational beliefs: like if we are working with the idea that we are not in a simulation or otherwise brain in a vat type scenario and other such axioms. Sure, these might be wrong (but pretty much everyone who says 'everying is subjective' or 'we can't be certain of anything' has reached this conclusion based on ideas of perception, epistemology, minds...etc. that they cannot be certain about. Reserving some skepticism about what is considered true can be consistent, it's an attitude not an assertion. But the moment you try to demonstate that the correct conclusion is that one cannot be completely certain, well, you just joined the club of objectivists.

I don't think so. But I do feel it is speculative either way. If virtual particles can suddenly arise in a complete vaccuum, i don't think that area was nothing. It has qualities, potentials, rules, tendencies. It's an area where these things happened. Perhaps that means there must also be a cause, perhaps stuff just happens THERE because of the qualities potential of that piece of space.

rt

Night and day are caused by the earth rotating.

It's an objective truth. — Banno

Well, to me, sort of. We perceive things from specific points in time and space. Here you are using the view from anywhere, as a kind of test. So, we imagine a time experiencing primate type mind getting the same results from any location (and also any of these minds presumably, good old scientific testing). But what if it's actually a block uniiverse. Then there are no causes and effects, just adjacency in the block. The earth isn't rotating there's sort of this long four dimensional earth through some longish portion of the block. When we imagine our way to anywhere viewpoints we take with us still, I think, a lot of what might, at least, be really quite subjective. It might be universal amongst minds like ours. Of course it might not be. Some human minds have claimed not to experience it this way. Some of these were like nuts, but others were physicists who seemed to be pretty functional. I suppose 'experience' might be a bit of a stretch as a verb. And by the way this is pretty exploratory.

And this is what I can manage to imagine my primate, time-unfolding experiencing, in one place mind might be assuming and which might not be true. There might be other things that it is incredibly hard for me or anyone to imagine has skewed what I think is an objective evaluation. The view from anywhere, really needs to be a veiw from an anymind, anyexperiencing consciousness or something. Not just anywhere.

I have thought for years that Nagel meant the view from Nowhere as a pejorative, since we can't have that. It's been decades since I read him. IOW not what we want is a view from nowhere, but more like, there isn't a view from nowhere, but some act like there is. As said, this could be totally off.

Edit:did some checking and it seems like I am wrong. I think I am projecting somethings from the bat essay and assuming stuff. And further while I do agree that we can strive for a view from nowhere or anywhere, we can't do either. At least at this stage of our evolution. Some post singularity mind, who knows? Which is not to say, at all, I think it's all subjective, no point in making an effort toward these views, etc.

I connect this to the other thread on the something form nothing issue, partly to say, hey, I am not addicted to cause/effect models.

It's true regardless of where you are, or of what you see.

It's the view from anywhere. — Banno

I am not sure having a cause and coming from nothing are the same things. That's one. I think an area where virtual particles can arise is a something. There are rules or patterns. There is potential. There's a somewhere. I am not so hinged to causes. In fact, I think this relates to another post of yours where cause is presumed. We'll know it's true if we notice me responding there.:grin:

That doesn't really answer his question. Perhaps he is making an assumption if he believes that, but then you also could be being certain when you say one must start uncertain. Maybe Jimmy was running in the hallway but he was right pointing out you needed a hall pass.

Right, but I was responding to ....

From my point of view, the only thing one can be absolutely sure of is that the present exists. — Cidat

[my emphasis] I certainly build from assumptions that might not be correct. I don't want to just lie on the floor and question everything (and certainly not all the time). We build, we do our best.

I was responding to a post where subjective and objective were being distinguished and he had a kind of mental method, it seemed to me, for distinguishing between assertions (see my post for the flesh of that). I pointed out what I think is a problem with that method of determining if something is a subjective assertion or an objective one. If you think something was wrong with my critique, let me know.

If you eliminate Tim, yes he is no longer there to like apples. If you eliminate the moon, then the earth no longer has a moon. You are taking away one of the components of the assertion in each case, so, the assertions no longer reflect reality. But both statements are objective assertions. If I say baboons or a particular baboon likes fruit X (because they will always choose fruit X if it is amongst the options of food, though will eat other fruits, say, when there is no fruit X) despite the fact that qualia are involved (in the baboon's 'liking'), it seems to me we are still making an objective statement about baboons. Same with Tim.

Tim's own statement that fruit X tastes better than fruit y is subjective. Here Tim is universalizing his taste and potentially making it objective also.

But it seems to me if we, as minds not Tim's, make statements about Tim, even if they involve what for him include subjective experiences, we are or at least can be objective. Saying that the statement no longer works if we get rid of Tim, causes problems for all sorts of objective statements also, if we get rid of the objects of those statements.

Given that we can never be absolutely certain of what is true, is ‘objective truth’:
- what we (as agents) have confidence to act on, — Possibility

People seem to have confidence to act on things with all sorts of criteria and often will realize they don't like their previous criteria and act on the opposite belief, so I don't think one is much use.

I'd just like to add that the idea that we can never be absolutely certain of what is true is an assertion of absolute truth. Now I have been chastized for raising such and issue, but I think it is less picky and more important than it might seem to some people. The conclusion that one can never be certain is likely based on epistemological concerns, perhaps bringing in things like beliefs about perception, the limits of empirical knowledge, the potential for fallibility in premises in deduction and so on. IOW the conclusion is a belief based on a lot of supporting beliefs and we also need to be certain about all of them. So it takes a number of certain beliefs to draw the conclusion that we can't be certain.

I think it's a very good heuristic, in many situations, perhaps most. But I think it's a problematic conclusion since it is itself a counterexample that is based on further counterexamples.r[/quote]

- what we (as logical beings) can state with confidence (ie. propositional logic), — Possibility

Confidence and certainty are attitudes. They don't really give us any epistemological information. People state all sorts of things with confidence and most think they are logical.

- what we (as experiential beings) can understand or relate to with confidence (despite it giving us less confidence to act)? — Possibility

Ibid.

Virtual particles render something coming from nothing a physical commonplace.

Particles pop into existence from nothing all around you, all the time. — Banno

In the context of the universe as it is. The something here would not just be the particles, but whatever the rules or possibilites (or necessities ) of the nothing that allows for this, or perhaps, better put, includes this things coming out of nothing. To me that's something. And also somewhere.

yes, banks are a neat scheme especially with fiat banking and banks being able to simply create money out of nothing that is a real, concrete debt to those they lend it to.

Because people want bullshit products, so bullshit workers make sure that bullshit gets on the bullshit shelves. — Hanover

Sort of. They've been trained since an early age that their surface is vastly more important their experience of life and what they are. Hence the way cars, clothes, hair products and styles, make up, all other status products (or the idea that one should have the version of the product that gives you status) etc. A lot of created wants. With the best cognitive scientists getting highly expensive cracks at developing very plastic young minds.

Then we have financial products. Many of which are just a way for people who are not labouring (via these products) can make money, often even having others doing the purchasing of these products. A lot of jobs doing this selling and getting their cut off products that produce nothing.

Bullshit, by comparison, could be used as fuel, if a poor one, a weapon, once it dries...no, before too. And probably as fertilizers.

We have companies replacing foods that are doing fine, except they are not patented, so, where's the dependance in that.

We got lots of bullshit first setting up the wants, and then the bullshit products can be sold to meet the created demand.

Enjoyed this. I'd add that despite all the advances in technology (or in part because of it?) we work more now for less money, in general. And not coincidentally there are more ways to make money - at least, more forms within the categories - where you don't need to make money. Some of them led to the 2008 crash. I wish I had the economic knowledge to demonstrate who pushed us in this direction and by what nefarious, negligent and careless means. I don't. But my sense is that Keynes should have been correct, in a general way, and the opposite is now true.

.the liberal left chooses to buy them whilst pretending to care about the poor and the planet. — Chester

People can do both those things. We are not binary machines. And often people care more about things that are close to them, even, say, poor in their own country. The right has gone to war to knock down tyrants, at least supposedly, and this was accepted as justification (for example when weapons of mass destruction were nowhere to be found). One would be seen as not patriotic if one didn't support the war in much of the right. It was a just war. But then those same right wing people would buy products that benefit bad regimes. Or look at the Left for being anti-american, for example, for criticizing US foreign policy and its effects on the poor and native groups in South America, where the US was actively intervening and helping dictators.

The best portion of your argument is that perhaps the Left tends to look more broadly when thinking morally. They want it to be good elsewhere, at least, also. Whereas the Right is often more focused at home. More self-focused. So this opens the Left up to more hypocrisy. Perhaps. But given that the US is acting in proxy all over the world, iow tax dollars are going everywhere, this often leads to responsibility taking on the Left that is less present on the right. Doesn't hurt us, isn't so important. The religious right has no leeway here since they are also focused internationally.

But does anyone boycott, I mean in significant numbers, anymore? Wouldn't this be a criticism of the former Left? even then, only sort of?

And should not caring at all about what one contributes to through purchases be considered a better position`? It requires no effort. It is consistant in its inaction and lack of care. So if someone does one thing intended to make things better but does not do this across the board, is this worse than not giving a shit at all?

Why don't the liberal left boycott goods manufactured by despotic regimes ? — Chester

I would guess for the same reasons the right doesn't boycott goods from despotic regimes: laziness, lack of time and energy to go about researching products and governments, selfishness, how hard it is to not support evil in some way or other, their dreams, desires and children, also playing roles in all this. I mean, the right should be just as interested in punishing non-democratic and harsh regimes, if the right believes in democracy and justice.

From my philosophical standpoint, no reality truly matters. Truth is just truth — Cidat

I don't see the connection between these two sentences. Nor what

Would it really matter in the grand scheme of things? Objectively yes, but from a philosophical perspective, I'm not sure. — Cidat

Objectively it matters, but not philosophically? Is philosophy precisely NOT about the objective?

We don't have any proof for other consiousness and it doesn't makes scence. — InfiniteMonkey

Again, we don't know what causes consciousness and what does not, so we can't rule out that consciousness is not in other things, nor can we say that consciousness is created by complicated neuronal sytems or brains. We can't say that until we know what causes it and what does not. Not until we can actually test for its presence and also for the lack of its presence. Not 50 years ago in science it was considered taboo to consider ahimals other than humans were conscious - that is, had subjective experiences. We have a bias and we are clearly not done with it.

You damage the cognitive functions, sure. Our experiences are affected by brain damage sure. That's what happens to us. That doesn't mean that brains are the source of consciousness. Nor does it mean it is the only way for things to be conscious, via brains. Perhaps the damage affects the memory in the experiencing, but experiencing continues - say after a blow to the head. Perhaps other entities also experience, but not via brains. We have no idea what th mechanism is that leads to consciousness. We can't measure it directly. We have a historical bias of assuming first it was only in us (at least in the modern West) then only in creatures like us. Then slowly to creatures less and less like us.

No glial cells involved? What's the mechanism? How do you know this?

Consioussnes has a much higher complexity then communication — InfiniteMonkey

Cognitive functions can be complex, but 'experiencing' may or may not be simple or complex. We don't know the mechanism that causes consciousness. And communication can be unbelievably complex. How are we measuring complexity?

It's an implicit claim about me, not my arguments. You haven't read the OR. You haven't read it well enough or you would agree with me.

That's to the man.

You claiming to know what I didn't do. You are focusing on me or your assumptions about me, rather than what I have written, my points and arguments, etc. Here implying I haven't read what I should have read.

It's rude. A small rudeness, in this case, .

Take care, good day.

That's exactly it, We disagree with each other. Every person in every thread could say to people they disagree with 'study X harder', but it's essentially an ad hom.

Me too. We disagree. We could all tell people we disagree with to study X harder, but it really doesn't move anything forward.

No, you do that :smile:

Vaccines contain disinfectants...thimersol, formaldehyde, for example.

1. The fact that a hypothesis is considered adequate only when all observations have been explained - the hypothesis has to be complete. — TheMadFool

He doesn't disregard it, he does say that many people do. And again this has little to do with Occam no intending to make an ontological claim, but rather methodological suggestion.

I was talking about new drugs. Funding has pretty much stopped for research development for the kind of drugs I mentioned. — I like sushi

Oh, ok. I think that's because generic versions are cutting into profits so the companies are looking for drugs in other areas like oncology.

The issue is the brain is complex and what works for one person does the opposite for others. Psychotropics are certainly the way to imo, but the kind of substances that have a lot of potential have been illegal to research until recently - psilocybin, DMT and other substances are interesting avenues to explore. — I like sushi

I certainly agree that these are interesting avenues. I'd vastly prefer a plant based treatment that has been used for centuries over big pharma's latest side effect monstrosity. And they have way too much control over their own oversight. Revolving door stuff, lobbying, control of candidates.

It is sometimes paraphrased by a statement like "the simplest solution is most likely the right one" — wikipedia

That is decidely wrong. At least it was not Occam's intention or meaning. Further it is not the scientific use of parsimony either. Yes, it is commonly misunderstood as being an ontological hypothesis.

"We may assume the superiority ceteris paribus [other things being equal] of the demonstration which derives from fewer postulates or hypotheses." — wikipedia

And this one, presumably quoting Occam or someone who understand or agrees with him is NOT an ontological assertion. 'Other things being equal' eliminates any ontological claim (that simpler things are more likely to be true).
Here are two explanations not only that the first quote is a misinterpretation of Occam, but really problematic. It's a category error and actually bad science, for example...
https://towardsdatascience.com/stop-using-the-occams-razor-principle-7281d143f9e6
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/08/occams-razor/495332/

I’ve heard several people say the exact opposite recently regarding funding for such treatments - because it’s seriously unpredictable (essentially there is more profit elsewhere). — I like sushi

Well, I looked at the money, just to make sure I wasn't confused. The psychotropic drugs are still huge sellers People like 'magic bullets', my quotes intentional. I'm no fan of psychotropics, though I am sure they've been useful for some people, especially as stopgap measures.

Psychiatry is a discipline involved with treating brain disorders/illnesses with drugs - which most pharmaceutical companies have pretty much given up pursuing because they cannot make a profit from them due to the carpet bombing effect on the brain (depending on the person, or even some specific period of time for a person, the effects of drugs can be completely different). — I like sushi

One point is that I don't think this is true. There has been a deceleration in the growth - in part because some of the patents on common psychotropics are running out. But that's a reduction in the amount of growth, theire's still growth, and that's something they are not going to give up on.

The other part is that brains can surive a lack of external stimulus while continuing to experience. Sensory depirivation can even be experienced as stimulating over short periods of time. That was a bit of a tangent, but mainly I was responding to what seemed to be implicit that the brain's stimuli only come from outside the brain.

Brains can stimulate themselves.

I am pretty sure the pharmaceutical companies are still making a lot of money off of psychotropics.

adderall
Xanax
Alprazolam

are all up there with the most common prescriptions total in medicine, for example.

Occam's Razor is not an ontological hypothesis. It is not suggesting that simplicty is more likely to be true (because things are more likely to be simple, say). It is a methodoligical suggestion that we NOT add entities if it does not add anything. That is, given the choice between two explanations that both work, take the one with the least entities.

I see your point and I agree that there are problems with viewing scientists as morally good, but that's not really the direction I'm coming from. It's not that science is morally good, it's that the method of research used in science can create a foundation of thinking in moral questions. Meaning, that using the methods of verification, falsifiability, replication and predictability in order to calculate the most probable good choice in a moral question respects an epistemic responsibility in any given situation. — Christoffer

In a sense i wasn't questioning whether they are morally good, but if they have all the necessary kinds of skills and knowledge needed to make decisions.

It does not simplify complicated issues and does not make a situation easy to calculate, but the method creates a morally good framework to act within rather than adhering to moral absolutes or utilitarian number calculations. So a scientific mind is not a scientist, but a person who uses the scientific method to gain knowledge of a situation before making a moral choice. It's a mindset, a method of thinking, borrowed from the scientific method used by scientists. — Christoffer

My concern here is that the scientific mind tends to ignore things that are hard to track and measure. For example, let's take a societal issue like drug testing in the work place. Now a scientist can readily deal with the potential negative issue of false positives. This is fairly easy to measure. But the very hard to track effects of giving employers the right to demand urine from its employees or teachers/administrators to demand that from students, also, may be very significant, over the long term and in subtle but important ways, is often, in my experience, ignored by the scientific mind. And I am thinking of that type of mind in general, not just scientists, including non-scientists I encounter in forums like this. That a lot of less easy to measure effects for example tend to be minimized or ignored.

A full range mind uses a number of heuristics, epistemologies and methods. Often scientific minds tend to not notice how they also use intuition for example. But it is true they do try to dampen this set of skills. And this means that they go against the development of the most advanced minds in nature, human minds, which have developed, in part because we are social mammals, to use a diverse set of heuristics and approaches. In my experience the scientific minds tend to dismiss a lot of things that are nevertheless very important and have trouble recognizing their own paradigmatic biases.

This of course is extremely hard to prove. But it is what I meant.

A scientific mind, a good one, is good at science. Deciding how people should interact, say, or how countries should be run, or how children should be raised require, to me at the very least also skills that are not related to performing empirical research, designing test protocols, isolating factors, coming up with promising lines of research and being extremely well organized when you want to be. Those are great qualities, but I think good morals or patterns of relations need a bunch of other skills and ones that the scientist's set of skills can even dampen. Though of course science can contribute a lot to generating knowledge for all minds to weigh when deciding. And above I did describe the scientific mind as if it was working as a scientist. But that's what a scientific mind is aimed at even if it is working elsewhere since that is what a scientific mind is meant to be good at.

I would need to see evidence that people with scientific minds are as empathetic as other people, have emotional intelligence, have good introspective skills so they know what biases they have when dealing with the complicated issues, where testing is often either unethical or impossible to perform, that are raised around human beings. And I am skeptical that the scientific minds are as good, in general, as other people when it comes to these things. I mean, jeez, look at psychiatry and pharma related to 'mental illness', that's driven by people with scientific minds and it is philosophically weak and also when criticized these very minds seem not to understand how skewed the research is by the money behind it, the pr in favor of it, selective publishing and even direct fraud. Scientific minds seem to me as gullbile as any other minds, but further often on the colder side.

Oh, good, he'll never notice.

Digestion cannot be reduced to stomach. So what? — Banno

It would be silly since it leaves out the intestines, for example. But oddly, and I mean from a purely physicalist, non-dualist perspective, people often talk about brains thinking as if it is the only part of the body involved. Like, say, not the endocrine system, not the large neuronal networks around the heart or in the gut. In fact there is a tremendous tendency to focus on neurons alone, since people don't seem aware of all the research on glial cells and cognition. Next time I encounter that kind of unjustified reduction I am going to use your nice quote here. With credit, here, anyway.

It could be that it would be bad for us to worship other gods since they are not really gods. This being from the monotheist perspective. Our worship would be tainted by a confused idea of what is going on.

Compare the above scenario to the fact that when there's brain activity, there's qualia and when there's no brain activity, there's no qualia. — TheMadFool

There is always brain acitivity unless the person is dead. Further the coffee is added to the situation. The brain is not added to the situation.

But again, that situation is not parallel to the hard problem of consciousness.

The hard problem of coffee is HOW the coffee keeps you awake not THAT it keeps you awake.

While it may sound like advanced science, it's really pretty simple. As the brain creates adenosine it binds to adenosine receptors. That binding of adenosine causes drowsiness by slowing nerve cell activity. The adenosine binding also causes the brain's blood vessels to dilate, most likely to let in more oxygen during sleep.

Caffeine looks just like adenosine to a nerve cell. Caffeine therefore binds to the adenosine receptor. But unlike adenosine, it doesn't slow down the cell's activity. As a result, the cell can't identify adenosine -- the caffeine is taking up all the receptors. Instead of slowing down because of the adenosine's effect, nerve cells speed up. The caffeine also causes the brain's blood vessels to constrict. It is, after all, blocking adenosine's ability to open them up. This is why some headache medicines contain caffeine -- if you have a vascular headache, caffeine will close down the blood vessels and offer relief.

Now, you have increased neuron firing in the brain. When the pituitary gland sees all of this activity, it thinks an emergency must be occurring. The pituitary, therefore, releases hormones to tell the adrenal glands to produce adrenaline (epinephrine). Adrenaline, the "fight or flight" hormone, has a number of effects on the body:

Pupils dilate.
Breathing tubes open (which is why people suffering from severe asthma attacks sometimes can be injected with epinephrine).
The heart beats faster.
Muscles tighten up, ready for action.
Blood pressure rises.
Blood flow to the stomach slows.
The liver releases sugar into the bloodstream.

This explains why, after drinking a big cup of coffee, your muscles tense up, you feel excited, your hands get cold and you can feel your heart beat increasing.

So, all that would make it harder to sleep. We know the mechanism. That brains are present when there is qualia (in us, but perhaps not limited to those times) does not mean we know the answer to the hard problem consciousness. We don't know why the make up of the brain leads to qualia. And we also do not know if qualia are limited to brains. I've given some reasons for this last already.

It depends on what you are trying to explain, iow not simply the specific thing you are trying to expain, but what kind of explanation. If we are trying explain why we believe brains are necessary for consciousness, we might use the examples of being knocked unconscious or brain death or chemical effects on the brain. If we want to know how the matter in the brain has interiority (an experiencer) we have to do some other kind of explaining. Since I have no idea what that is, I can't give an example.

Explain why water has surface tension....

The water molecules attract one another due to the water's polar property. The hydrogen ends, which are positive in comparison to the negative ends of the oxygen cause water to "stick" together. This is why there is surface tension and takes a certain amount of energy to break these intermolecular bonds.

The cohesive forces between liquid molecules are responsible for the phenomenon known as surface tension. The molecules at the surface of a glass of water do not have other water molecules on all sides of them and consequently they cohere more strongly to those directly associated with them (in this case, next to and below them, but not above). It is not really true that a "skin" forms on the water surface; the stronger cohesion between the water molecules as opposed to the attraction of the water molecules to the air makes it more difficult to move an object through the surface than to move it when it is completely submersed. (Source: GSU).

Other molecules in the water are being pulled all directions, whereas the ones on the surface are forming bonds, based on the positive and negative parts of the water molecules towards the sides, more than other directions. This means they cohere more. This means they resist being separated more that others and water has a high surface tension, compared to other liquids because its molecules are very dipolar.

That's getting into the how and why, which is what the hard problem is about. Why does and how does consciousness arise in brains - so even if it is a physicalist monism, how does it arise? You're not answering this. You are trying to rule out dualisms. I don't think your argument works, but it's not dealing with the hard problem. It can be viewed as a kind of explantion, sure. But it's not explaining the answer to the hard problem.

The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explainingwhy and how sentient organisms have qualia or phenomenal experiences—how and why it is that some internal states are subjective, felt states, such as heat or pain, rather than merely nonsubjective, unfelt states, as in a thermostat or a toaster.

Where does one look for an explanation for something aside from the sufficient and necessary conditions for it? — TheMadFool

If you don't know the mechanism or cause of consciousness, you can't claim to know what the necessary conditions are or the sufficient conditions are. You can make arguments as you did that brains are enough, but the hard problem is precisely how does it arise. And we don't know that? We don't even know where it isn't. We do not places where it is. And those places are able to do all sorts of cognitive functions, like remember, and generally report. But we have no idea if these functions are necessary for raw experiencing. So, I see two problems with the OP: it doesn't actually address the hard problem - which is how does consciousness arise? and then since it doesn't address the how, we can't even know where to limit consciousness to.

The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explainingwhy and how sentient organisms have qualia or phenomenal experiences—how and why it is that some internal states are subjective, felt states, such as heat or pain, rather than merely nonsubjective, unfelt states, as in a thermostat or a toaster.

You're arguing against dualism, say. That's not the same issue. It's related, but it doesn't solve this problem.