but isn't this more or less the same as the axiom of a persistent world under materialism? — sime

Yes, but when you belueve in God, you don't have to justify it! Perfect solution.

I posit that there is no fact of the matter of me having a different subjective experience of red to someone else. because my experience of red can be said to be characterized purely by informational structure in sensory inputs. If we are processing the same kind of structure, there is no fact of the matter that could make it so or distinguish that I was experiencing something different to anyone else. When there are discrepancies in color vision that can be observed, its because the information from the world people are processing is different. To say that someone elses red could be different imo reifies a dualistic conception of mind which I believe is illusory. Its very easy to imagine people having contrary experiences of things like color because its very easy to imagine myself things having different colors in my own perspective. I can conceive of what it would be like for a blue chair to be green instead, and I can clearly picture that. But in some sense, if I were to imagine and generate an actual mental picture of a green chair that in real life was actually blue, what is my brain actually doing? If when I see green in real life, my brain is processing a certain kind of informational structure, then when I imagine a green chair, I am surely just recapitulating that same structure. I can't divorce my counterfactual imaginings from those informational structures, so I cannot actuslly divorce my own subjective experiences and counterfactual imaginings from them either.

If all knowledge comes from experience - as Locke himself says - then how do we know this supposedly non-appearing, measurable 'stuff' we designate 'matter' actually exists?For Berkeley, that’s not empiricism, it’s speculation disguised as science — Wayfarer

I like to say the same about your phenomenal-noumenal distinction. Not very useful, adding extra mystery where none needed.

I’m not alone in thinking that the many-worlds interpretation is wildly incoherent. — Wayfarer

Your views are about as incoherent than Many Worlds. In fact, I think that Many Worlds is actually very coherent. Its fault is not intelligibility but that its just radically strange. Qbists and relationalist views are much more incoherent imo.

I believe that Bohm’s pilot waves have been definitely disproven — Wayfarer

It hasn't. Its extremely difficult to disprove interpretations that reproduce the same empirical predictions.

There's also my favored stochastic interpretation which doesn't have any of the pitfalls of the others and is completely locally realistic.

Nothing to do with ‘echo chambers’ more that you can’t fathom how any anti-realist interpretation could possibly be meaningful. — Wayfarer

Maybe. I just don't think you can say realism cannot possibly be true when these models are not falsified.

Why, do you think? — Wayfarer

Maybe try reading something from the last 75 years!

That is what he shares in common with positivism, but the conclusions he draws from it are radically different. — Wayfarer

Yes; like I said earlier, I just like to imagine he would come to different conclusions in a different context. He seems more cogent than most wooists; albeit, God.

BTW, even Bohm's*4 "realistic perspective" is typically labeled as a form of Idealism — Gnomon

Bohmian mechanicsisjust straightforward realism that happens to involve non-locality.

But, on a philosophical forum, and for philosophical purposes (introspecting the human mind), some form of Idealism — Gnomon

Sure people are going to pick interpretations in ways aligned with their philosophical inclinations. I don't believe we should be picking them as a means to philosophical purposes.

You are missing the point. Husserlian Phenomenology is not at all concerned with material existence as it is focused on the experience of consciousness. — I like sushi

I was directly replying to mention of the combination problem. If my answer was not coherent with the topic, it is because the combination problem was evoked in an improper context.

We are talking about consciousness so it makes sense to start at the source rather than shift to what our consciousness constructs (that is a representation of other in the idea of something being something). — I like sushi

The thing about experiences is that there is nothing much to say about them other than say we are directly aquainted with them and can distinguish them. What else we can do is organize them, relating them to each other, and giving them labels, like what science does.

Not really sure what this is trying to convey. Thefe are several coherent realist perspectives on QM which don't invoke any form of collapse, such as Bohmian, Many Worlds, Stochastic mechanics and possibly others. Your response just seems to me like someone pretending that these theories, which all reproduce the correct quantum behavior, don't exist. You have clearly put yourself in an echo chamber where the only relevamt opinions on QM are those of subjectivists, wooists, relationalists.

But IMO he used the empiricists' arguments (e.g. Locke) — boundless

Berkeley IMO took away the 'physical' using empiricist arguments. — boundless

This is why I think in another context he could have been something like a logical positivist. I just get the impression even from wikipedia that despite being clearly a hardcore apologist of God, he had a mindset and reasonings in common with the analytical tradition, imo.

Can physics provide, and should it aim to provide, a truly objective account of the world? Realism tends to treat this as a yes-or-no question. And that’s where, I think, the problem lies. — Wayfarer

Again, a number of different realist accounts of quantum theory exist. There is no consensus on this at all that quantum theory has gotten rid of realism or something like that.

Whereas more idealistically-tinged interpretations are compatible with the observations without having to question the theory. — Wayfarer

There's various realist positions that don't actually question the theory either!

The question of interpretion of physics is as much one of philosophy as of physics. And Kastrup has got considerable practical experience in physics — Wayfarer

Sure, but there is no like established consensus or even empirical accessibility on these issues where you could appeal to an expert's opinion on "realism" in QM as reliable or unimpeachable. All the experts have different opinions in this field.

It is an argument about emergence, not combination — Wayfarer

The combination problem is more or less the problem of strong emergence from a panpsychist perspective. Replacing combination with emergence does not really solve much because they are similar issues. You could justbite the bullet on strong emergence as a dualist, but then a panpsychist could do the same with combination problem.

Phenomenology (and also idealism) don't face this problem, as they don't presume that matter is fundamental in the first place. — Wayfarer

Given that we have very good idea about the exiatence of microscopic things, I think idealists either has to resort to some kind of solution that has problems like the combination problem: microconsciousnesses combine together, macroconsciousnesses dissociate; perhaps also some ad hoc hand-waving of something like "brains are just what our consciousness looks like through another perspective". Idealism might have some parsimony in terms of "everything is mental", whatever that even means; but I don't think any of these perspectives the fact that the irreducibility of experience means there isn't really any intelligible explanation available to us to explain why reality would have distinct experiences at different scales, how they emerge from each other whether upward or downward; and if not, why science seems to describe structures like brains which seem to have no reminiscence to our own first person experiences. Just saying everything is mental may in some sense be simpler than materialism or dualism, but I don't think it provides any deeper insights or amelioration to these issues.

PHD on philosophy makes you an expert in physics? Does not compute.

His first employment was at CERN — Wayfarer

I really doubt he qualifies as an expert in the field. He doesn't seem to have a physics PHD. "Realism" is also more interpretational / foundational and less to do with what people do at CERN, nor is there consensus on it, I believe.

Yes, but the positivists detested metaphysics. How would Berkeley have been received, explaining that everything is kept in existence by being perceived by God, in that environment? — Wayfarer

Well, in my scenario, he doesn't believe in God anymore. And as much as postivists detest metaphysics maybe Berkeley also detested talk about things that seem to speculatively go beyond what is in appearance which is just what one experiences. Seems like a parallel.

Bernardo Kastrup never says that. His analytical idealism says that the reality of phenomenal experience is the fundamental fact of existence. — Wayfarer

He is always saying that. I have seen him talk about quantum theory and about how he thinks the alleged falsification of "realism" there is some kind of indication that these physical things are only appearances and whats really going on is something deeper. And then he starts talking about diasociative alters and all this nonsense.

Do you believe in ghosts as well then?

Berkeley's metaphysical idealism is polar opposite to logical positivism's hardline materialism. — Wayfarer

But they weren't necessarily materialists, they were first and foremosts empiricists who wanted to constrain what could be talked about in terms of observation. Logical positivism was related to phenomenalism. I don't think he would have been impressed with Kastrup's view which seems to always be alluding to something mysterious under the hood.

I distinctly remember my impression of Berkeley from university was that he had quite scientific mind, he had sharp, cogent arguments. However, he was a Bishop after all. I like to believe that if he didn't have God, and access to modern science instead, he would have been more on my side of the debate.

What Berkeley objected to was the notion of an unknowable stuff underlying experience — an abstraction he believed served no explanatory purpose and in fact led to skepticism. His philosophy was intended as a corrective to this, affirming instead that the world is as it appears to us in experience — Wayfarer

This is not so different from my objections to your insistence on some mysterious divide between phenomenal and noumenal. I don't think his arguments were out of some fundamental distate of objectivity and bias toward subjective woo. I think if he had been around in the early twentieth century he would have been a logical positivist and then made the natural adjustments in light of post-positivism. I don't think he would have been a Deepak Chopra fan.

They actually do have some studies like this on people. Also on animals, the look at their brains during dying.

There are millions of accounts, and thousands have been corroborated. How much evidence do you want? — Sam26

I think these kind of things needs more controlled scientific study. We don't even really have a full understanding or mastery of the brain yet to have a reasonable understanding of what could and could not be happening.

To strip it of evidential value in this one domain is to apply a double standard. In cases where the testimony is specific, independently confirmed, and time-locked to periods of absent brain function, speculation is not a rebuttal. — Sam26

In my opinion its perfectly reasonable to be skeptical in these strange scenarios. Knowledge and evidence here is to sparse substantiate anything as we are talking about some of the most difficult to study phenomena in science generally using methods not exactly renowned for high reliability. But speculating on naturalistic explanations is reasonable considering the body of scientific knowledge we have about how the world works. There is absolutely no reason to prefer speculations that life exists after death or other woo woo imo. Clearly there is bias here. Many of us are biased away from woo woo explanations because of what scientific knowledge and evidence seems to say. Some people are biased in the completely opposite direction, and I have no idea why. Until there is actual good enough data, its difficult for this not to be anymore than people choosing a preference on bias and effectively making a bet. Do you think that the breadth, consistency, reliability of scientific knowledge so far is a reliable predictor that naturalistic explanations will prevail? Or do you want to bet on what has been so far unsubstantiated, conspiratorially evasive, empirically and theoretically murky woo woo?

Absolute madness.

It would have no awareness of the physical stuff that the brain enables us to access. — Punshhh

Then how do dead people have knowledge of physical events suring NDEs when their brain is shut off?

It could just mean that complexity is needed to house consciousness. — Sam26

Well its clearly not if dead people can have complex experiences without a functioning brain.

I dunno, brains seem like a complex, expensive bit of machinery, biologically speaking. Seems weurd that we would go through all the trouble to evolve complicated regions for emotion, processing space, the body, vision, hearing... only to not even need them during these NDEs. Think a similar kinds of bizarreness like this also occurs when thinking about religions, souls, the afterlife. The brain seems superfluous, like why do we need a brain to cognize and emote about God when we would be expected to have some kind of relationship with God in the afterlife.

“We know consciousness can’t exist apart from the brain; therefore, any report that it does must be false—even if it’s detailed, verified, and repeated across cultures.” — Sam26

Why do we have brains if we don't need them for complex experiences?

Doing this also allows asking it questions, like "explain that for a lay person" or " I still don't understand that, please give me examples." — Hanover

Honestly, I don't think A.I. is reliable at doing this. Its only good if you know what you're looking for and are both willing and able to check what its saying. I sometimes use the A.I. on search engines as a quick way to look for an answer, but I always check the sources it gives and if I can't find an unambiguous verification I don't take on the answer. In fact, I find it common that A.I. completely misrepresents knowedge in papers. Its actually very rare the I find that it gives me an answer that right off the bat I don't find questionable to some degree or have skepticism. Its not even that uncommon that I see some sort of direct contradiction straight up in the answer. Albeit, I still think the A.I. still will get a signfiicant proportion of things correct; its just that that isn't really good enough because what we want is consistency, and you can't do that even if quite a small amount of things are wrong. There is then also the issue I think that if you are naive on a topic you might ask it questions that don't actually really make sense, and the A.I. is still going to give you a nonsensical answer anyway.

Did I discuss this with you before, or was that with someone else who referenced the same woefully inadequate model? — Metaphysician Undercover

No clue what you're taking about

This is not really the case. In most instances the goal is to create what happens next, i.e. we want to shape the future, not predict it. The ability to predict is just a means to that further end. — Metaphysician Undercover

This can be framed in terms of prediction, inference, model construction. It is called active inference, a corollary of the free energy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_energy_principle

So there is no conflict imo. At the same time, all these things like desire still work via neurons that are effectively prediction machines.

I realize that's standard way of putting it and I would love to agree with you. But the problem is that a representation implies an original. So to know that a given representation represents the original, we have to examine the original and compare it to the representation. Which we cannot do. — Ludwig V

Well, we don't necessarily need representation in that kind of way. All that we do is predict what happens next. All that we have to be able to do is know how to navigate. If something unexpected happens, the structure of my navigational "map" was wrong. Clearly, the shape of trees represents part of our navigational maps that is quite consistent and enduring. I don't understand in what sense this could not be veridical. It becomes very apparent usually when that fails. I don't need to know everything about trees or everything at exact precision. But I have a pretty good understanding of tree shape, leaf shape that seens consistent.

Do you really want me to trot out the bent stick, mirages and Macbeth's dagger, or perhaps quantum mechanics and relativity? — Ludwig V

I've already said we can be wrong, but when we are wrong, its usually intelligible why we are wrong in terms of not having the right information. In principle one can understand ehy information processing in the brain produces illusions regarding things in the world we understand well physically. My view of quantum mechanics is realistic. I don't think relativity really has the same problems as the alleged difficulties in quantum theory.

I agree that "what happens next?" is important. Whether that's the whole story is another question. Could you explain what you mean by "reduce to" and "in some sense"? — Ludwig V

I believe it is because thats all that neurons do, thats all that state-of-the-art A.I does. Obviously what I am saying must be some kind of simplification but I think it fundamentally characterizes intelligence, to make distinctions and recognize things.

Sure, but do I have to be a mentalist to be a phenomenologist?

specifically, that so-called “sense objects” are only ever known as appearances — Wayfarer

Pictures taken by the camera.

It’s the object's appearance as mediated by the particular structure of the apparatus. Likewise, our perception is not of the thing in itself, but of its appearance as structured by our perceptual and cognitive apparatus. — Wayfarer

Yes, but so what. If I want to know more about the object, I take more pictures, I use other tools to investigate.

What you describe as “information about the world” presumes precisely what is at issue: that the world is available to us as it is, rather than as it appears under our particular modes of access — Wayfarer

Well you have to explain why the world would not appear to us "as is". When I see a tree, is there not something about the shape of that tree which veridically represents how it is? What would you mean about how the shape of the tree appears to us that is different than how it really is which isn't trivial? Sure, I can't see everything about the tree, I don't know everything. But in what way is the stuff I do see not capturing some enduring structure in reality that is consistent? If different modes of access just means that some perspective can access information that others do not, and vice versa, then to me that is just different organisms capturing actual structures in the world that happen to be distinct. A snake might be able to sense heat or infra-red light, or whatever it is, in a way that I cannot. I might be able to hear in a way that a snake cannot. Nonetheless, we are both picking out information regarding events in the world.

“if it works, it's real” — Wayfarer

Its not necessarily just that as if it were purely pragmatics, but the fact that there is nothing more to knowing about stuff than the observable interactions that they have with us, or in principle could have with us. The idea that there is something out therr that in principle cannot interact with anything or make its presence known is nonsensical, grounds for reasonable disbelief and perhaps not even intelligible. Reality as it really is must be effective, must have consequences. All understanding really does reduce to 'what happens next?' in some sense because thats how brains work, thats how state-of-the-art artificial intelligence works.

it's a declaration of faith in the transparency of perception, which is precisely what’s being contested! — Wayfarer

In what way should I be skeptical?

acknowledge the primacy of subjective experience — Wayfarer

I acknowledge that I can only see what I can experience. This is not interesting though.

And that therefore empiricist philosophy errs when it seeks a so-called 'mind-independent object', as sense objects are, by their very nature, only detectable by the senses (or instruments) and cannot be mind-independent in that way. — Wayfarer

Thats like taking a picture of something and calling it a "camera-dependent object". I don't know why you keep phrasing it as if the object is dependent on your mind when you should be talking about what you see or perceive. It just makes it much clearer for everyone else to talk about it in that way.

I would say that sure all our perceptions are in the context of the structure of a brain which, in the context of the whole universe of intelligent things, can be very diverse with different levels of capabilities. At the same time, I would say that they are all picking out or extracting information about structure that exists out in the world independently of us. Different brains, different perceptual apparatus give us different purviews, different informational bottlenecks, and affect our ability to extract this information effectively.

Obviously a lot of the time we are wrong about a lot of things; but, I think my point is that there is no kind of mysterious intrinsic barrier between perception and some way the world really is. All of the information we could want, that there is to know about the world, is available to any information processing system that can interact with the rest of the universe in the right way. Unfortunately, we are just naturally extremely limited, even wuth technology. I don't think the notion of some kind of serene, "objective", platonic, God's eye picture is required to have real information about the world. Information is effective; Can I predict what happens next? There is nothing more than that. And if I can't do that, its not due to some mysterious noumeno-phenomenal barrier, but because I don't have all the information I need or there is stuff I haven't seen.

Hmm, is mathematics a meta-language for relational structure?

Exactly one point in time is a low probability event!

But we all act like it's a low probability event. — RogueAI

If it was a high probability event then you wouldn't be here!

My condolences, very sad to hear.

May you rest in peace.

So to be clear, the first two paragraphs are you and the rest is chatgpt's commentary?

Chatgpt did all the work

then there is no 'brain' as a 'material object' outside minds. In another sense, however, yes: the models are still good for predictions and for practical usefulness. — boundless

But the point is that the scientific study of brains doesn't care about fundamental metaphysics. We just study and describe patterns of what we observe in reality regardless of some fundamental metaphysical description.

The point is that if one is able to explain our intelligibility of the world in terms of brains, it is open to anyone regardless of their metaphysical preference. Providing one can make a good argument that brains are sufficient to explain intelligibility, then it seems less compelling imo to just assert that any specific metaphysical picture precludes intelligibility unless one can give some concrete argument other than incredulity.

are correct at the level of phenomena, not at the level of the things-in-themselves. — boundless

This is meaningless imo. To say something is incorrect means that we get things wrong about it and make predictions that do not come true. But to my understanding of these viewpoints, one could in principle exhaust the correct in-principle-observable facts and still not penetrate the noumena. But then if no one can access it, then in what sense do these things actually have any influence on events in the universe? In what sense is there anything at all to learn about them?

The other alternative is that you are simply saying we have (alot) more to learn about the brain and may have got some stuff wrong, which isn't a particularly radical or troubling claim.