I don't think the so called hard problem can ever be solved. All our explanations are functional, that is therr nature, so how on earth can there be any kind of explanation of the sort we want for qualitative conscious experiences?

A conscious-centric framework will not even be able to explain consciousness because it is possibly the most trivial concept we have since it is the primitive base of all knowledge. There is absolutely no constraint on what can be considered to be an experience. It seems plausible to me that there are an infinite multitude of experiences that we could never even imagine for different possible kinds of sentient agents. Once you think like that, can you even point out what it means not to be conscious or be an experience? I am not even sure anymore, especially if someone like a panpsychist thinka that even the simplest possible micro-thing can have some form of experience that is just extremely, unfathomably basic.

There's no possible characterization of consciousness. It is utterly primitive to us as information-processing creatures. All we can do is fit it in as best we can with the rest of science. Since consucousness has no actual characterization, the only thing we can do is juxtapose with useful physical concepts like people already do in neuroscience. Physical concepts are doing all the hard work and science hasn't found any evidence of dualism. Sure, panpsychism could be true but again since consciousness lacks any decent characterization, which of our concepts do the heavy lifting in relating experience to the rest of reality? The physical concepts.

Again, explanations are inherently functional. Experiences are not. There will never be a good explanation of consciousness and anything useful to our knowledge will be functional and so inherently at odds with describing or explaining experiences. Maybe physical concepts don't explain consciousness like we want them to but physical concepts are central to any kind of useful explanations about fundamental reality. I think fundamental ontology is likely impossible to comprehend and the next step is a computational or informational explanation of why that is and for how that hard problem arises in intelligent machines like us in the first place.

Actually, thinking about it, I don't even really know what it means for the universe to be physical either in a similar way, since all I have is my experiences and my experiences definitely so not provide a direct link to the physical reality beyond my sensory boundaries. In so far as physical models are just predictive instruments that usually involve math substantially, then the boundaries of what it means to say the universe is physical (in the sense of our models) or mathematical blurs. But then, maybe its trivial, because we can impose mathematical language on almost anything in some way.

What does it really mean for the universe to be mathematical though? Doesn't seem like its about platonic math objects floating around but if not that I have no clue what it means that the universe is math.

But not the significance that know-how doesn't give a determinate know-that

I have been talking specifically about synthetic a priori knowledge of what is intrinsic to embodied experience: spatiotemporality, differentiation and the other attributes I mentioned. — Janus

Well I would say there is still a difference between know-how and know-that when worded like that.

You keep mentioning objectivity, which has nothing to do with what I've been arguing — Janus

Well what have you been arguing?

It's not mere speculation because experience is something we can reflect on and analyze. Metaphysics is not based on experience at all but on imaginative hypothesizing. — Janus

I think in many ways reflecting on experience is just that though. I feel like people can have radically different views of what experiences are, what feelings are, what they actually perceive, and how do people make something of their perceptions other than by intuition?

I don't believe you can. — Janus

Hmm, thinking about it, I think it might be difficult if your intuitions are set on counting rather that quounting. But maybe a quonter would find no problem with it.

inevitably evolve out of experience — Janus

But so what? Unless you can show that someone cannot use those "parasitic" concepts and that they don't or can't work, then what is to say it matters what is "natural" when that itself is dependent on contextual factors of how your brain is structured and the things you happen to learn. I am the type to think that just because everyone agrees on something, doesn't make it some how unique or objective. I think ultimately what is "natural" just boils down to something like an impelled preference and I don't see that as a valid way of arguing that something is somehow unique, correct or objective.

Well, it's not what I mean. Armchair speculation I would class as metaphysics, not phenomenology. — Janus

I don't really see how phenomenology is not another form of armchair speculation in a similar way.

I don't see the relevance at all, and no one seems to be able to explain clearly what it is, so... — Janus

The relevance for what? Its simply the issue of whether the descriptions you ascribe to behavior is uniquely determined as opposed to underdetemined or indeterminate.

We are not blind to considering how counting and the basic arithmetical operations can be instantiated using actual objects. This is not the case with quus. — Janus

I can demonstrate quus with objects just as well as I can with addition. Neither am I blind to doing that with counting. What I am blind to is a good description of what counting or quantities are. I know these things very intuitively, I am very good at doing them. Its difficult to give a explicit account in a way that I would personally find satisfying imo.

You can derive addition from counting. Counting basically is addition. — Janus

I dunno, it seems to me with what

— "Moliere

has been saying that what these concepts mean and how they relate to each other is not trivial in a way that questions whether counting actually does much at all in this context. You want to use the example of counting tonshow you can get to what we deem thr correct answer but I think demonstrating your ability to meet a goal is not the same as specifying a description or meaning of what you actually did.

I'm not seeing the relevance to deciding whether addition, subtraction, multiplication and division are basically derivable from counting operations. — Janus

If you can't derive addition from counting then how are you proving you are doing addition?

If it was them having fun surely they would be bored of it by now. The persistence of this phenomenon us what you would expect if it was just our minds playing tricks imo. Similar with ghosts.

Thinking about that Im curious whether more people believe in ghosts or aliens.

Ive always found that the way humans have interacted so far with "aliens" is too bizarre for it to be actual aliens and is more likely just like Peoples minds playing tricks. I mean UFOs have been seen for decades and they seem to be really common. Like people are seeing this stuff all the bloody time.

Its just like... what kind of super advanced alien civilization would do that. Its like bizarre trolling behavior just basically spamming space craft all over earth for decades on end for no apparent reason. Just doesnt make any sense to me that UFOs are actual intelligent aliens.

It is proven under Fine's theorem here:

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?cluster=2543155278787880428&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&as_vis=1

That Bell violations are equivalent to the absence of joint probability distribution for all variables which is equivalent to the presence of incompatible joint probability distributions caused by non-commuting variables.

That is suggesting that Bell violations are caused by non-commuting variables and this is a completely formal result; in other words, it does not matter why the variables do not commute, they will cause Bell violations so long as they fulfil the formal conditions that characterize non-commuting observables. Quantum mechanics fulfils these exact criteria; in having non-commuting variables it will have Bell violations as a necessary mathematical consequence. That is absolutely sufficient for the "mystery", without requiring a physical explanation since the relation between Bell violations and joint probability distributions is completely formal, even if it looks really really bizarre.

The something that is "at work" is the non-commutativity in the spin measurements (it causes the absence of global joint distribution) which has a natural local explanation in that 1) canonical position-momentum commutation is a generic feature certain kinds of random dynamic systems, even classical ones 2) 3d descriptions of rotation inherently have non-commuting properties for formal reasons which you can actually demonstrate for yourself by applying successive rotations in different orders even to your own hand.

My point in making that distinction was that some concepts, like counting and addition come naturally, and other concepts like quaddition are arbitrary artificial constructs. — Janus

I don't really understand the connection as I have read in your comments so far tbh. Neither do I see a real significance in the distinction between "natural"and "artificial" concepts.

I don't see the phenomenological dimension of philosophy as "armchair speculation", but rather as reflection on what we actually do. — Janus

Well thats more or less what I mean.

I see the quus issue as not merely under-determined, but trivial and of no significance, and I wonder why people waste their time worrying about such irrelevancies; but maybe I'm too stupid to see the issue, in which case perhaps someone can show me that I'm missing something. — Janus

Well most philosophical issues are arguably trivial and doesn't make much difference to what people do in the world. Most people haven't even heard of these issues so why do they matter. As I have already said, the quus issue has no relevance or consequence for people's ability to do things but I think if you are interested in notions of realism or whether we can have objective characterizations, problems like this are very interesting and central.

The causes of our thoughts are presumably neuronal processes which have been caused by sensory interactions; my point was only that we are (in real time at least) "blind" to that whole process. I don't believe we are phenomenologically blind to activities like counting and addition and I think it is a plausible inference to the best explanation to say that these activities naturally evolved from dealing with real objects. I'm not claiming to be certain about that, just that it seems the most plausible explanation to me. — Janus

I think if you consider that quantitative abilities and counting might be primitive processes we cannot non-circularly decine then I would say actually, yes we are blind to these. We are able to count, we don't know why we can, just like someone extremely good at mental math wouldn't know why they are so good at problems other people find impossible... the answers just come to them very quickly. Addition and counting as the same and would involve other blind processes like the ability to immediately discriminate the things you are counting etc etc.

Yes they obviously are natural abilities and they evolved but again, this is completely missing the point. The point isn't about our ability to do things, this is uncontroversial. Its about descriptions and characterizations of the things we find ourselves doing.

Not quite, If I am understanding you correctly. Its saying that because quantum mechanics under this interpretation is solely about long run statistics of many repeated occurrences, realism is not about the indefiniteness of individual particles, it is about entire probabilitu distributions. These probability distributions are realized by those many repeated occurrences or experimental runs, each involving a particle with definite properties at any given time.

Fine's theorem proves that a Bell violation is just equivalent to a lack of joint probability distribution. It doesn't matter why there is a lack of joint probability distribution, it doesn't matter exactly what forces are acting on the system and why, as long as there is a lack of joint probability distribution in this setting, Bell inequalities will be broken as a formal requirement. It is in that way that it is an artifact of statistics; the violation is very real, just that it is an artifact of the lack of joint probability distribution. This lack of joint distribution is caused in quantum mechanics by non-commuting observables and I believe this non-commuting nature is just a necessary fact of certain types of randomly behaving systems like quantum mechanics seems to describe.

Not really, I think it is literally true that we are being created moment by moment—until we are not. — Janus

Yes but for the purpose of this topic it doesn't really matter. Talking about the nature of the self is does not really have an impact on what I mean when I say we construct concepts, at least not in this context from the way I see it.

I don't see a slippery slope, but rather a phenomenological fact that we make a conceptual distinction between what is merely logically possible and what might be actually, physically or metaphysically, possible. We don't know what the real impossibilities are, but we inevitably imagine, whether correctly or incorrectly, that there are real, not merely logical, limitations on possibility. — Janus

And my point ia you are doing this with pretty much every conversation you are having about philosophy. Philosophy is an armchair science so a huge amount of its arguments rely on this same kind of conceivability of what seems correct, what seems possible, logical, metaphysical or otherwise.

I think we mostly do assume that there is a fact of the matter, but of course we have no way of knowing that for sure or of knowing what a "fact of the matter" that was completely independent of human existence could even be. — Janus

I don't think there can be a fact of the matter independent of human experience and even within experience, people find themselves unable to determine a solution to issues like this quus one. Its chronically underdetermined, there is no objective way to see it that can definitely rule out all of the others. Thats the vision that makes most sense to me anyway.

If you wanted to count a hundred objects you could put them in a pile, and move them one by one to another pile, making a mark for each move. Then if you wanted to add another pile of, say, thirty-seven objects you just move those onto the pile of one hundred objects, again marking each move. And then simply count all the objects or marks. I don't see why we should think that all the basic operations of addition, subtraction, division and multiplication cannot be treated this way. We really don't even need to make marks if we have names for all the numbers and we can remember the sum totals. — Janus

Again, this has nothing to do with what we can and cannot do. The whole point is this underdetermination occurs in spite of these abilities. You said earlier that you don't even really know the causes of your thoughts or how they arise. So you know the causes of your understanding of addition? Or quantity itself? Can you actually articulate non-circular definitions of these concepts. I'm not sure you can, they are totally intuitive and implicit. You can demonstrate to me how to add but you can't tell me the rule and the only way I can even learn off of your demonstration is that I have a brain intelligent enoigh to learn, mirror, make inferences but then again we have no personal idea why or how our brains do that. We don't know what makes it that an idea suddenly clicks and why. I can apply the same quus-type thought experiment to the concepts that you are using in this scenario. We can equally do this counting thing exactly in the way you wanted but the point is not being able to count or perform addition, its to have uniquely determined descriptions of what you are doing.

so it is not we who construct, but we who are constructed from moment to moment — Janus

Semantics really, isn't it?

There is no self!

but that means no more than that imagining ourselves having been different involves no contradiction. How can we find out if it is really possible? — Janus

Well you start to get into a slippery slope here because modality is something we make use of all the time whether in daily life, intellectual discussion, conceptualizations etc. This kind of skepticism, while very fair, is also I think is an argument against all your thinking, not just in this discussion.

On the otherhand, I could just ask you whether you think you could use the operation quus. Yeah, I'm appealing to the same kind of modal quandry but I would be surprised if you said you were unable to.

There's also examples on real life where people categorize concepts differently, like colours in different cultures. Of course, some Amazonian tribe will see the same colours as us, but they will categorize them differently, which is essentially the crux of this problem.

It seems obvious we can interpret what we observe in different ways; that is different people can. Or one person may be able to imagine other possibilities than those which are simply found to be the case. — Janus

Yes, and what is in question is whether there is a fact of the matter about who is correct.

Depends on what you mean by arbitrary. There is a reason we tend to label things in a certain way and its to do with how our labelling and descriptions are literally physically, mechanically caused by a complicated brain that has evolved to infer statistical structures in our sensory inputs and learn.

Maybe in that way, it is not arbitrary, because our brains have evolved to do a certain thing, they do it well and, and there tends to be similarities in what human brains do, whether as due to social influences or without those influences.

At the same time, does this mean our concepts could not have been otherwise, for what ever reason? I don't think so. Is our brain not an arbitrary structure which could have been different in some way and so learned concepts differently? yes. Those concrpts are obviosly motivated by what we observe, just I don't think it doesn't mean we can't interpret what we observe in different ways in principle

Even just the fact that people can come up with ideas like quus shows that there are arbitrary ways we can define, construct, draw the boundary on things. We might think of them as unintuitive but I think that kind of reasoning is as arbitrary as the concepts themselves.

I'm afraid this "separate ontological being" makes no sense to me. If you do believe in such a realm, surely you are back to something like a Cartesian dualism

Yes, I don't believe in that. There was a typo. Should have been : "But that doesn't mean you believe..."

But that doesn't imply the former are physical or even that they are caused by or embedded in the physical.

How else can you conceptualize your thoughts though without some form of dualism. We live in a universe explained by physical models that explain models of our brain which functionally explain in principle our entire mental lives. Even if you're agnostic about ontology or hard find it an inherently noncoherent concept like I would, these things are hard to ignore. Its very powerful. Its much more than a parallel relationship I think; they aren't really even because the mind just isn't anywhere independent of the brain in any meaningful way.

But that doesn't mean that the emotional state is physical

Well it really depends what you mean but my purpose really isn't to kind of re-engineer all our concepts into physical one. But again, even if it is not a physical concept, those feelings we have are inherently to do with our brains.

You might say; "Ah ... but the physical observables are the real thing!" However if you did that, you would be denying your own subjective experience as real because it isn't observable (by any normative meaning of 'observable'), even by you.

I don't think its about making a choice between different things being real, its about the explanatory options open to us, and where they lead, which generally goes toward the brain and computational theories etc.

For Physicalism to be up to the job ...
Expand it's conceptual repertoire to include psychical concepts ... but then it no longer falls under any normative definition of 'Physicalism'.

Again, I think this is just implying a naive kind of physicalism which i dont believe people endorse generally. Its like saying that a physicalist shouldnt take a field like psychology seriously or accept its concepts. Its like saying that anyone who accepts psychology can't be a physicalist. This is obviosly not true. Again, just because we have experiential and psychological concepts, doesn't mean we don't want to in principle exain them at some level thriugh physicla models without requiring any other kind of dualistic notions. Thats all I'm really saying ... I think.

Hope that mind can eventually be explanatorily reduced to (not just mapped onto) physical concepts ... but you and I don't believe that's possible; a long history of scientific 'failure' casts a severe doubt about the possibility; and I think it is logically incoherent.
If one of these get-outs works for someone, fine. But the cognitive dissonance is not to my taste.

I just disagree with the idea that, in order to be a physicalist, you have to believe that everything needs to be reduced and explained in some precise, neat, final way. I think we are limited observers and there can be in principle good physical or informational or computational explanations for the limits of what we can and cannot explain. We may not be able to explain everything, we may not be able to have finalize coherent fundamental ontologies about the universe. But I think within what we can explain there is just this centrality by which everything seems to revolve around and which we describe as the physical. I look around the rooma nd see physical things, I think about where my experiences and thoughts come from and think in terms of the brain. etc etc. we have come a hell of a long way in learning how brains and minds work.

I don't think rules are imposed, they describe behaviors — Janus

Yes, that's what I said, you must have interpreted impose differently. But my point is we construct those descriptions.

Sorry, late reply. Ideally I would like to think of myself as having an anti-normative stance philosophically, generally anyway. I'm not really sure what rationality is and think it probably means various things in different contexts. I think it is probably something that follows conventions more than we think, is fallible. What is rational depends on what people's preferences are too, in the sense that you might not look at someone rationally if you cannot even see what end they are trying to meet, or perhaps even if youre just a staunch believer that acts need "useful" ends.

I think what I just said is trying to get at a kind of rigorous version of what rationality is but then again I don't think that really has much to do with common sense rationality in daily life. As I said I don't even know what rationality is really but its a very intuitive concept in daily life.

If what we do seems to be the product of these kind of blind processes as Wittgenstein seems to emphasize in Philosophical Investigations, then it will never really matter how we explicitly characterize something like this because life, society must go on anyway and constraints on what is "good" or "rational" will inevitably emerge in a self-organizing way, whether we have a proper understanding of them or not. I don't think there can be any strong objective notion of rationality though.

Once you concede that a purely physical stance is insufficient, how can you be a physicalist? I agree entirely that 'physical' needs a lot more work to define it, but whatever the definition is, it seems to me that there will be aspects of life which physical concepts don't account for. If you can actually provide a sufficient definition of the physical, then you have solved the Hard Problem. — Christopher Burke

Because this is to say that your conceptualizations are the same as your ontology of the world. For instance, everyone believes in feelings which you might label "love", in everyday life peopke may not be able to or want to characterize that physically. But that doesnt mean you dont believe in a universe where there is something called love floating about with its onwn separate ontological being to physical things. Its still something that is embedded in the physical very much so. The fact I can make a conceptual separation is just trivial.

I think the crux here is the implicit assumption that physical = real. — Christopher Burke

No I think its about needing something more than the physical to explain reality. Yes obviously we have things above physics like biology and aocial sciences bit they all seem to be grounded in the physical.

- Physical representations keep changing. 19th century physicists would have said the world is really made of atoms. Modern physicists would regard that as simplistic and have recourse to the much more epistemic concepts of fields and information. Has fundamental reality changed as we've changed our theories about it? A bit implausible. — Christopher Burke

Again, its about needing something more than these models, regardless of what those models say specifically.

Reality, since we have good grounds for assuming it contains conscious agents, is more complex than solely physical concepts can handle — Christopher Burke

I don't really understand what extra things would be needed to explain conscious agents above things related to the natural sciences, math, computation, information theory etc.

But that mode of representation is insufficient to represent all of life as experienced. — Christopher Burke

Well this is fair but I think it is also in some ways a straw man because most people who say they are physicalists will not have some kind of naive physicalism where they believe the only way to describe the world is with physical concepts. Of course we can talk about organisms, the weather, love, sport, green... whatever.

Maybe it refutes physicalism in thr way youre thinking about it but I think most physicalists would find that characterization of the issues extremely trivial. I could come to the point of [3] coherently by this type of thought process but then when I look around, what do I see? The world is full of physical things and everything seems to be grounded in the physical, even my consciousness with respect to brains.

I have actually said earlier in the thread that technically I shouldn't call myself a physicalist but i keep finding myself on this side of these debates which just reflects my intuitive leanings as opposed to a rigorous ontology.

A more rigorous view would note the difficulty in defining "physical" coherently but then I think this is going away from what motivates the physicalist perspective: that a functioning model of how the world works doesn't require dualism or some separable phenomenal machinery to it that is independent from our physical models. There is nothing else to explain about consciousness.

This just shows a misunderstanding of what is at stake imo. It is clearly obvious that in general, people do not have a problem in performing coherent behaviors that help us fulfill goals and desires in the way we want. The point is that describing this behavior and its "rules" is chronically underdetermined, chronically indeterminate. It is clear that we do not perform behaviors in a top down way as a consequence of explicit conceptualizations of rules. Rather, rules are post-hoc classifications and inferences we impose on our own behavior. Our behavior and our abilities arise in a completely implicit, automatic fashion; they are the product of complex neuronal processes that are completely hidden from us and can endow our thought and abilities with a Humean kind of arbitrariness which we often don't stop to take the time to notice. People in A.I. often talk about the problem of interpretability where by our machine learning programs chuck out solutions which are difficult for us to understand or we have no idea how it came to the solution. They can do things in ways that from our perspective seem very non-linear. I think the exact same happens in our own cognition and brains, which should not be surprising given the fact that a brain is just a big machine learning architecture. I think we often consider our own cognition human interpretable because we explain concepts in terms of other concepts which our brains have already chucked out but look at the Munchausen trilemma in philosophy: this approach doesn't go very far.

If someone could prove you were doing quaddition it would equally defeat the point of the thought experiment in the same way that proving someone can do addition would.

I think 'reducing' should be confined to when one is accounting for a thing by referring to that thing's subparts. — Christopher Burke

Yes, this is what I have been talking about all along. But at the same time, a reduction is a special case of a correlation in the way you're talking about. You have two different representations, the original one and the reducex one and you are creating a mapping between them which is as you would describe a correlation.

No physical concepts can be applicable to the phenomenal image. — Christopher Burke

I don't think any concepta can be to be honest, and in light of that, I don't think you can say the physicalists picture is more flawed in another. There is no alternative kind of more complete picture I think.

When I am talking about reduction here, I am talking about an explanatory relationship. If experiences are purely representations or information about trees, then why should these representations carry information (that can be explained by) about brain states. Trees are the way they are totally independent of my brain. Trees have a shape that is nothing to do with my brain. If I then explicitly represent that shape information, that shape information should have no information about the inside of my brain in it.

Which indicates the most coherent categorisation of the human condition (I believe): we are what-it-is-like-to-be our representations. A bit of reality representing those bits of reality we encounter, including ourself. — Christopher Burke

Yes and I think we cannot know what that what-it-is-like bit really means as I believe you suggested somewhere earlier

Better to see it as correlating parallel representations — Christopher Burke

Well I think this is more or less what reducing is when we believe that this correlating as cogently justified under some context. Now the question is whether there is some justification for reducing the tree to a brain. There is some sense in which it can be because there is a mapping between information in the outside world and your brain states which is physically mediated (i.e. by travelling light, surface reflectance properties, receptor stimulation and neural potentials). However, this isn't the same as the mapping when I construct a description of a tree. The physical mapping aforementioned is incidental since the tree itself is independent of my brain and the physical means information is carried to my brain. The question is, why when I am trying to desceibe a tree, the description I get is my brain. Given the independence suggested just now, there is no actual reasons. Trees are not brains and are totally separated. If my experiential states are representations of trees that map to components of trees, there is no reason why I should be able to examine my experiences and find that I can reduce it to brain activity, because my experiences are simply not about my brain if they are not representations of it.

Its interesting there's this impression that Kripke has misunderstood Wittgenstein or not even attempted to but I find Kripke's interpretation more or less aligns with what Wittgenstein seems to say throughout the book imo. Maybe I am misinterpreting it towards my philosophical inclinations though (but I don't actually believe that).

That's not just a reflex ... — Christopher Burke

Not saying that cats necessarily have analogies but I think these animals are much more complicated than people give tjem credit for and this dichotomy between human deliberation and reflexive animal instincts is not correct

how is it possible to know "what trees in the outside world are made of"? Surely we only 'know' our constructed biophysical representations of the observed putative bit of reality we have labelled as a tree. — Christopher Burke

Yes, this is more or less what I mean. We infer constructs in the physical science from those perceptual representations so that those constructs explain properties of those representations. Its more or less circular in that perceptual representations should only be reducible to things thay share the properties of those representations, things which have those properties because they have been directly inferred from them. The point is that trivially it shouldn't really make sense to reduce it into something which is not itself. It would he a weird world if that were possible or at least cogently defensible.

To know/experience is to represent. So we cannot logically claim that reality is physical, psychical, informational, whatever. All we can do is represent it in convenient ways depending on our purposes, and all these modes have their uses. — Christopher Burke

Yeah, I do make this point in a couple other posts on this thread. As some other posters have pointes out, it is difficult to make physicalism into something cohesive and coherent.

Nonetheless, I think what motivates people who intuitively think of themselves as or defend physicalism is I think the central role of the models we construct in the physical sciences and how other models, constructs, things fit around them. When I look around me in the world... physics. But turns out, making this into something useful or tangible is difficult. I have started to think that maybe physicalism, naturalism, other similar ideas perhaps are often adopted in opposition to, in reaction to ideas of dualism or that there needs to be a separate mental thing because there are things that we find difficult to explain. So maybe it is often adopted without a coherent ontology in mind but is like an anti-dualist stance. I dunno, thats just a thought.

But, we need a system in our brains that is effective to organizing the outside world's as manifested by our sensations so that the species can continue to reproduce and propagate their genes. It is a process that involves many factors that intersect to — Justin5679

Well you've just evoked the motivation for that part, ha!

I think this is a fair point that I overlooked: if one were to “not follow their intuitions”, that may actually help them navigate the world. However, upon further reflection, this is a paradox (which annihilates it as a possibly viable alternative) principle, as in order to follow it one would have to intuit that it is true that they ‘should not follow their intuitions’; but if that is true, then they should not ‘not follow their intuitions’; but if they are intuiting that as true (which they would have to to accept it), then they should not not ‘not follow their intuitions’...ad infinitum. They would not be able to operate, which is means no knowledge of the world whatsoever. — Bob Ross

I may actually have to go back on my agreement on this one because thinking about, someone might be able to just formulate a more specific rule which tells them when they should and should not follow intuitions, which may avoid this.

So, for me, I don’t think this kind of reasoning is sufficiently elaborated on by saying “follow your intuition”--as, for me, that sounds like all levels would contain intuitions. — Bob Ross

This is fair I think.

They would not be able to operate, which is means no knowledge of the world whatsoever. — Bob Ross

Yes, agreed. I guess I do kind of agree with you on this point in the way you're putting it now, I think I was just thinking about the notion of "objectively best way to get knowledge" in a different way beforehand which I would be more skeptical of.

Rather, I mean that when explaining a set of data (about reality), do not extraneously posit entities (as it is superfluous and corresponds to nothing confirmable in reality). — Bob Ross

I still think I disagree profoundly on this one. If it is not about picking the correct explanation then I don't see an obligation to pick the more pasimonious explanation that would be independent of some further contextual details.

I do not merely mean intuitions but, rather, all forms of evidence (which includes intuitions). — Bob Ross

Yes, fair. I don't think this changes my interpretation of what was said however since I was explicitly thinking that we accept or reject evidence in a way which has recourse to intuition so I was actively envisioning both of these being subsumed under "follow your intuition".

It is an inevitable rule that we must follow if we want to know the world as best as we can. — Bob Ross

It seems to me most likely the only coherent way of approaching knowledge but if it doesn't necessarily give me knowledge I don't see it as objective. If someone has particularly bad intuitions then maybe a different rule would give them knowledge better.

and it isn’t that evidence is purely ‘intuitional’ — Bob Ross

I think my point thought evidence being intuitional is that if you look at some evidence and accept it then ask yourself why you accept it, it leads to intuitions eventually. You may have a reason why you think that evidence is good, but then ask yourself why that reason is good, and then the reason for that reason and so on... I feel like it would just end up at intuitions and so in a sense, everything we do here is on some level driven by intuition.

Like I said previously, strictly going against one’s intuitions will almost certainly lead to accepting that which is false. — Bob Ross

But my point is that it depends on the context so I can't say it is objective unless I rule out that alternative contexts (e.g. having awful intuitions) are possible, which I cannot do. There will be contexts when going by someones intuitions will be counterproductive too.

Because it claims to know extraneous information about reality, since it deploys extraneous explanatory entities to explain the same data about reality. It is purely imaginative and non-factual “knowledge”. — Bob Ross

I think the notion of parsimony I'm more used to is about what seems most parsimonious choice between some options so it is in some sense a subjective thing and not really about factual knowledge. The way you have described it just now seems to be more or less equivalent to "just pick the correct explanation" which is a bit redundant since you don't know what that is. Who knows maybe what you thought was the most parsimonious explanation may turn out insufficient under further evidence which would be an example if the rule not working out.

I don’t think this works, as you are saying that if it strikes you as the case that the counter-evidence (which would change your mind) was true, then you should do the opposite and thusly not change your mind. I don’t see how one would be receptive to evidence if they always have to negate their intuitive reaction to the situation, as they would be obligated to never accept counter-evidence that they would normally accept. — Bob Ross

I was assuming a separation between one's initial intuitions and the process fo evaluating evidence but this is a good point that they could converge in the sense that accepting or denying evidence would rely on intuition.

However, at the same time this conception seems to be viciously circular in a way that almost defeats the purpose of framing the question the way you did when it could have been done simpler - just follow your intuition (because I am using intuition to accept or reject evidence also - or perhaps you could frame it as "follow your intuition and then when you get an intuition that this last intuition was wrong, follow the new intuition"). I don't see how this could be an objective rule though as your intuitions could be faulty and never lead you to truth, never lead you to accept the correct evidence or interpret it in the correct way. It presupposes something about our intuitions which may not be objective; in fact, in a scenario where we have no reason to think our intuitions are very good, including intuitions about evidence, going against intuitions may still be as effective a way to find knowledge.

I agree that it makes very little sense to not follow your intuitions in the way i described above in the bold part, and it makes little sense to something like take up a belief which you believe to be wrong. At the same time, just because this is the only really coherent way to go about looking for knowledge, doesn't mean it objectively gives us knowledge.

If they both explain the same data, then it is extraneous to accept the more complicated theory: it is just superfluous and, thusly, there is no legitimate reason to accept it — Bob Ross

But so what? Some people may have a preference for superfluous explanations. Why does that matter if a superfluous one is just as good at predicting what we want to predict as the non-superfluous one?

but I do think that it is a factor for ‘knowing the world’ better, if that makes any sense. — Bob Ross

Yes, I think almost everyone wants their beliefs to be logically consistent and not to actively select inconsistent models or views of the world.

I actually think I more or less agree with a fair amount you talk about in the last two posts you make about information and the "arms-length" separation of observer, though maybe I would describe it in different language. I definitely do have a different perspective but there is definitely stuff I agree on, I think.




I thonk you are begging the question by presuming dualism, presuming some separation that needs to be explained. My belief is dualism is false and so there is nothing to be explained but at the same time, there's nothing stopping me from having concepts of both the mental, the physical, or various other things.

Are you saying that taking what doesn’t strike you to be the case as the case would be equally legitimate as doing the contrary?

Yes, because at the end of the day, aslong as you are receptive to evidence and change your views based on that then it should lead to the same result.

Of course, what one thinks is necessary could be different than what another thinks, but that is not of concern for this principle itself. — Bob Ross

Yes, but why should one have to use parsimony if a non-parsimonious explanation is just as good? If the non-parsimonious one gets the job done, is there really a requirement to use a more parsimonious one?

True. But if you believe something with higher confidence than something else, then why would it ever make sense to, when in conflict, take the less confident belief as true over the more confident one? This seems irrational to me and clearly not a good way of ‘knowing the world’. — Bob Ross

Yes, true it subjectively doesn't make sense to take the less confident belief to be true but then if you are mistaken about your high confidence beliefs then this practise will systematically give people wrong answers.

I will grant that it doesn't actually make sense to go against this principle but at the same time this principle is not guaranteed to give you knowledge.

but its usefulness, to me, says nothing about its truth — Bob Ross

This is fair ; I am probably just less inclined tp believe that there is a strong line here between truth and models or that even truth is something that we can access beyond the restrictions of employing models.

Well the way I stated it in the OP was meant to just be a counterargument against irreducibility so that a physicalist could use it. But I think my view here is mostly just an argument against dualism. I don't think I am truly a physicalist, and clearly from various replies in this thread it can be seen there are some deep issues with turning the intuition of physicalism into a cohesive viewpoint but its the kind of intuition or view that reflects well on my sympathies so I often put myself on that side in a debate that can very polarized.

At the same time, as I have said in several posts in the thread, I also don't think we can have access to a good characterization of what a fundamental ontology could be. In light of this, I don't think my view of reality has a real base, it is just filled with the models we have from the natural sciences and how they relate to each other; my inclination then is that embracing ontologies centered around experience add to this network of models in ways that are either not necessary or not very interesting/useful from my standpoint.

I feel like my views don't need something more to explain existence because it appears to me from various areas of philosophy and neuroscience that as observers we are just naturally limited in how we can think and characterize the world and so there are just things about existence we cannot have epistemic access to in a coherent way. We cannot ever look at the world in a way that is independent of how our brains have been structured, the things that they are capable of doing and their limits.

Edited: paragraphing, "intuition of physicalism", "have epistemic access to"

1. Intuitions (i.e., intellectual seemings): one ought to take as true what intellectual strikes them as being the case unless sufficient evidence has been prevented that demonstrates the invalidity of it. — Bob Ross

Obviously your intuitions may be wrong but it also seems to be that I could apply the opposite rule and it wouldn't necessarily have an effect on how well I gather knowledge.

2. Parsimony (i.e., Occam’s Razor): entities ought not be multiplied without necessity. — Bob Ross

I just don't see why this needs to be the case. I can imagine someone applying this and it turning out that the correct option had more entities than they woukd have deemed necessary.

3. Coherence: the belief (in question) should cohere adequately with one’s higher-prioritized beliefs about the world. — Bob Ross

Your higher-prioritized beliefs may be wrong.

4. (Logical) Consistency: there ought not be logical contradictions in the belief nor in contrast to higher-prioritized beliefs. — Bob Ross

This one I agree with most and is most intuitive of what we want to do but at same time maybe sometimes we do hold inconsistent models about the world which nonetheless are useful.

That may be, I just thought that these rules would have to work all the time to be objective but I can imagine scenarios where the rules you suggest would sometimes would fail.

Its not about generating consciousness but the idea that if something putatively non-experiential can generate experiential concepts, this leads to absurdities which make dualism implausible. P-zombies are an example of such absurdities. Of p-zombies are biologically identical to us they will say they have consciousness and have thoughts on the hard problem of consciousness even if they don't have experiences. This is absurd which can then be used as an argument against dualism.