The issue of an internal mental state is more of an epistemic issue than a metaphysical one. At least to me. — Manuel

Do you have any interest in Brandom ? His scorekeeping notion of rationality and the self is impressive. What is it to be self ? To be rational ? In my view, he goes a long way to making what we mostly take from granted explicit.

I agree with you that wisdom like aesthetic quality is not an "all or nothing" thing. — Janus

:up:

Indeed, and infinite journey toward the horizon...hopefully with a sense of progress.

I guess it could be intellectually, harmonically sophisticated even though being unlistenable. — Janus

Yes. Turns out this is a great example. Same with some visual art. The spiel of justification is a necessary frame, secretly the essence of the work itself. Like the coathanger in Art School Confidential.

How does the 'occult sphere' of Consciousness figure into this ? Why are people attracted to a position which I'd say is refuted ?

Don't people want to be recognized as valuable within and by a community ?

Isn't solipsism a nightmare then ?

Is the wall-of-sensation or wall-of-representation vision of reality attractive because it offers certainty ? But the tension here is that certainty is valuable where being wrong would be embarrassing. Or get me hurt physically. So do I secretly assume a world stage on which I can say something finally that transcends risk ? Do I identify with the statement as an indestructible piece of Certainty on the world stage ?

But something like ineffable Enlightenment is also possible in this vision of the possibility (perhaps the necessity) of privacy. In the secrecy of my immaterial soul I can know God and nobody can tell me wrong. This only becomes a problem when one talks about it and makes invidious comparisons. "Unlike you, I am talking about the divinity which cannot be talked about." As Hegel saw, the "pure self" (pure mind) was like a shadow of the "thing in itself" (pure supermatter, deeper even than the physics kind, which is presumably map and not territory.)

In all these cases the envelope is the letter, for the envelope 'must' be empty for uninitiated eyes. Chatbots 'must' not have consciousness, even as they threaten to explains themselves better than we can. The pre-solipsist 'must' have an interior which is invisible to 'physical' technology. The mystic 'must' have some Experience which is not too cheap and easy --at the cost of any maniac being able to claim that this or that beetle is in his box. Distinction, difference, isolation. A radical break twixt self and world and self and other.

But do you think someone could come up with a theory that avoids weak emergence as well? — Eugen

We can't skip the semantic phase of this conversation. It's pointless to play with words without more of a grip on what we mean. For me to continue on this, I'll need to feel that my criticism (which I got from Ryle and others) of the typical quasimystical conception of consciousness has been assimilated. Otherwise you won't understand where I'm coming from anyway. And the reverse.

Now, substitute "certain of my synapses firing" for "toaster" and "the taste of vanilla" for "headache". Is the taste of vanilla any better explained than my headaches? — Art48

You make a good point, but you take for granted that 'taste of vanilla' will signify, that we can know what you mean. If you assume some ethereal private Experience in each of us, why or how should 'taste of vanilla' refer to the SAME magic stuff 'in' all of us ?

What exactly do you think consciousness is ?

There's a tendency to think of it as radically other than something which is purely physical or material. But this is, in my view, a superstition, a confusion.

I recommend reading about Ryle. He's one of many to challenge traditional assumptions that keep people running in loops.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ryle/#OffDocConOff

Excellent topic for discussion.

these systems are ultimately fictions that we have created to explain why we must do anything. — schopenhauer1

I think we are thrown into existing, by parents that did as one does or the condom broke. Once the baby arrives, you can't help (unless you are wired funny) but love the little fucker. So the bring it up, knowing perhaps that life is a joke or whatever, but what are you going to do about it ? Friend of mine tried to express the ecstasy of becoming a father. We've lost touch. He's got three now, a hard working man with the picket fence and kids he always wanted, even a wife who stays home.

To me it's more like people find some role (hero myth, ideology) that feels right enough and keep getting out of bed every morning, largely to avoid losing a job, a lover, a home. We cling to what keeps us safe and comfortable. This is to be expected. Moloch demands it ! Those whose source code doesn't have them building a nice little web end up replicating less or not at all.

Is "these systems are ultimately fictions" itself a fiction ? Even the most negative ideology may help the species or the tribe as a whole contribute to the heat death. Antinatalism is the hand of god. It is the thought of genocidal violence taken to the last extreme. It is will-to-power. Does it not cry out after all for the coming of heat death ?

How does one escape metanarratives? A certain kind of 'strong pomo' tends to threaten itself with cancellation. My theory is that we are wired or programmed to perform some version of 'the hero with a thousand faces.' But what the hero myth of the person with the theory of the hero myth ? Self-knowledge, right ? I know and confess that I'm caught in this game of playing the hero, and that's how I play the hero. Does this relate at all to your own thesis and the position it puts you in ? If you inspire agreement and build community, does that not put another brick on the tower for Moloch ?

Sorry! I didn't mean to imply that there's something unreal, spooky, or fatalistic about Reality. — Gnomon

Just to be clear, I am not at all 'afraid' of spooky fantastic theories. My criticisms are semantic. Praise Jesus. I can say it without melting. What interests me is what people can manage to mean by various metaphysical claims. I do not think such claims meaningless, but I do think they are often indeterminate, more so than their creators would like. A big problem is the loss of contrastive force. If everything is Mind, then everything might as well by Matter. It doesn't matter. If everyone is gay, then no one is. If everyone is conservative, then no is. See what I mean ? Distinctions pick things out. A true monism needs no name. But it would seem reasonable for a monist to call 'it' something like The One. Or the (selfcreating selfdiscussing ) Universe.

The Enformationism thesis may be "quasi-Kantian", but it is not Dualistic. — Gnomon

The human Brain is made of matter, which is organized (by natural logical processes) into a Meaning-Seeking machine. So it processes incoming information (data) into abstract concepts that are meaningful to the observer. But, in order to establish a relationship between the observer and its environment, the brain constructs a concept (the Self image) to represent its own subjective perspective*3 on the objective world. No spooky spirits required. — Gnomon

I don't think you've presented a monism. Problematic quotes above.

Just to be clear, I wasn't referring as if leaning on authority. I'm saying that a strong case in those sources is made against a particular assumption. I also don't mean to be condescending.

In the past, I've spent too much time paraphrasing this case. To me it's like watching people trying to square the circle. I ask them if they have seen the proof that it's impossible to do so. In general they either haven't or say they have and do not explain what's wrong with the proof as they keep on trying to square that circle. The hard problem of consciousness is that people think they know what they mean by consciousness in a metaphysical context in the first place. (We use it just fine in real life, let me emphasize.) They have failed to give a meaning to their sign and failed to see this failure. All of this is made clear enough, in my view, for those who are willing to see it.

From this perspective, an idea is a conceptual thing in a world of conceptual things called philosophy, or art or culture, or some other more granular "field of sense"--but the philosophical task is to uncover the real. This goes back to my first criticism: it's assumed by Adorno that the real is the material, whether the material is a table, or the relationship between an employer and an employee, or the freedom to flourish. And while these might have different strengths of conceptual flavour, that doesn't matter much, because this is historically relative and there is always in these cases something real in them. So probably the worst move to make is to try so hard to prove the realness of ideas that you invent a whole landscape out of them. — Jamal

Matter is the shadow of mind is the shadow of matter. 'Pure' matter is as elusive and useless and canceling as 'pure' mind. I love Saussure for driving home the contrastive nature of language. Brandom emphasizes that we just can't understand one concept without understanding many. We are not thermostats.

Whatever the answers, I’m quite happy to say numbers and properties exist, along with thoughts and tables even in the case that they are abstract and dynamic. This is because to say that something exists isn’t to say all that much. It just sets things up (semi-literally) so you can deal with them. I see being in the same way. I can’t shake the thought that the controversies over what exists are motivated by a fear of irrelevance in the face of physical science. — Jamal

Yes to all of this. As I see it, a genuine alternative to scientism is something like hermeneutic phenomenology. Heidegger's reputation is justly wounded, but the kind of thing he does is the right cure for scientism. The lifeworld (just the world for those not locked in scientism) encompasses scientific discourse, religious discourse, etc. I guess the theme is holism. There's no attempt to reduce everything to one mind (God, matter, mind.)

Some versions of antiscientism end up looking like a competing variant. After all, the laws of physics are (for some) already the gleaming mind or essence of God. If only we can squeeze some ethics in there, some 'literary' stuff which is nevertheless timeless and safe from ambiguity. It looks to me like the same old flight from death and change and our fate of having to make it new again and again. Becker's vision of the Oedipus complex is like Nietzsche's will-to-power. If I can find the eternal and static mind of God, I become the Wise Man, the unmoved mover. I have beat the video game. And I might as well be dead.

Yes, there is an alternative to praying at the altar of Plato, it is appreciating human’s incredible ability to create a form of life like mathematics. — Richard B

:up:

And let me add that folks don't hate Plato (necessarily) because they hate Jesus. They sometimes just care about truth, and Platonism doesn't work. To be fair, I know lots of math, and math is exactly the tiny slice of human thinking where Platonism is at least feasible. But leave that little crystal castle and it's a broken theory.

As I said from the beginning, mathematical equivalence classes are only a metaphor for nonmathematical concepts. And even this was only a hypothesis, a path for exploration. Platonism has been found wanting, even if the news of its failure is ignored, so the issue is what to try next.

While I would agree that the brain is physical, in that it is molded matter, I don't see why this denies the mental aspects of matter — Manuel

I don't think we really know what we are talking about with 'physical' and 'mental.' I do not dispute that we have a practical mastery of these terms in everyday blah blah. But metaphysically we often seem to be barking and squeaking without noticing it. Mind and matter is mound and mutter.

We don't know if other people are conscious, we infer that they are, based on how they behave, which most of the time mirrors the way we behave in similar circumstances. — Manuel

I think that this assumption is the wrong way to go. I'm not alone in this. See Ryle and Wittgenstein and Heidegger. Ryle's The Concept of Mind is probably the quickest and most accessibly (though W and H are greater on whole.)

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ryle/#OffDocConOff

It's cool if you aren't interested in this path. But, if you are, I will debate the details.

Seeing is a type of experience. Babies can see, non-linguistic animals can see, the illiterate deaf mute raised by wolves in the jungle can see. — Michael

Sure. But what does it mean to say so ? We who pretend to philosophy (who adopt a certain heroic role and hold ourselves to standards of rationality) are not thermostats switching on in response to stimuli. Claiming to that something sees something only makes sense in a context of time, in the context of what such a statement commits us to in the future (such as revision if we turn out to be wrong or the defense of the implications of our initial assertion.) Whiling seeing itself may be simple, the talk about seeing is extremely complex.

The philosopher is right to remove themselves in the sense of avoiding personal bias. But maybe the attempted (false, impossible) complete removal of the discursive context leads to trouble.

The fact that we need language to talk about the colours we see is irrelevant to this discussion. — Michael

I'll drop it if you want, but the 'obsession with language' looks to me like a natural development in the dialogue. The presupposition that Reality is 'under' or 'apart' from language might be the problem. Is language in the object or subject ? Or is itself split ? Is the subject/object split fundamental ? And so on. Lots of trouble.

Objects may only make sense enough even to think about only a 'space of reasons.' This is not to deny (or affirm) some 'ineffable' something (raw feels, Consciousness, Being) but only to point out how tangled things becomes when people try to theorize about precisely that which eludes language. It's easy to end up with mystic tautologies. I myself have written quasilogicomystical manifestoes about the thereness of redness and the thereness of the there. There is color. There is space. Existence exists.

I think your point is reasonable, but you are ignoring that 'see' is part of a system of concepts. What does it mean to claim to see ? What do I commit myself to ?

Right! That's what makes it hard to specify some set of conditions for a sign. Along with everything else we've said so far. — Moliere

Yes. And we can note why Saussure said a system of differences without positive elements. In other words, the game of chess would still be (essentially) chess even if everything, even the game itself, was renamed. So a sign system is designed only up to isomorphism. But the 'positive elements' (the arbitrary, contingent paintjob) strangely hint at the presence of such a system. Writing 'poison' on a bottle is no better than writing 'hisdfhsdfsd' on a bottle unless a particular arbitrary convention is established. I imagine that various neurotransmitters are just as arbitrary. But a historical 'conversation' is established even in Darwinian evolution. There's a nerve that runs from the brain to the throat but goes under the heart, for stupid historical reasons (marginal costs of stretching it just a little more were always low, etc.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO1a1Ek-HD0

But just because this writing is "larger" that doesn't mean "better" -- just — Moliere

The ant example is something I take more seriously as an example of a sign than cellular signaling. At that point I'm not sure if we're speaking in metaphor or not anymore, — Moliere

I think (?) we are forced to speak in varying intensities of metaphor, within or upon a continuum of metaphor.

At the moment I'd say we don't need consciousness for a sign system. But I see the value in looking at ants, because the interplay between individual and tribe is still visible.

What would reading their poetry be ? Deep question. Do ants have consciousness ? But I don't even know what 'consciousness' means exactly. Humans use it in criminal trials and on operating tables. We implicitly (most of us) judge that the dead are not conscious, for we put them in holes or ovens, just as surgeons cut out the wisdom teeth of anesthetized patients.

A little more from the same source:

It follows immediately from such an inferential demarcation of the conceptual that in order to master any concepts, one must master many concepts. For grasp of one concept consists in mastery of at least some of its inferential relations to other concepts. Cognitively, grasp of just one concept is the sound of one hand clapping. Another consequence is that to be able to apply one concept noninferentially, one must be able to use others inferentially. For unless applying it can serve at least as a premise from which to draw inferential consequenceds, it is not functioning as a concept at all. So the idea that there could be an autonomous language game, one that could be played though one played no other, consisting entirely of noninferential reports (in the case Sellars is most concerned with in EPM, even of the current contents of one’s own mind) is a radical mistake.

Another approach to color and the like is to think how color terms play a role in the larger context of conversation. How is a claimmaking human different from a thermostat ? To murmur about consciousness or awareness is not so illuminating. What else can be done ?

The concepts for which inferential notions of content are least obviously appropriate are those associated with observable properties, such as colors. For the characteristic use of such concepts is precisely in making noninferential reports, such as "This ball is red." One of the most important lessons we can learn from Sellars' masterwork, "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" (as from the Sense Certainty section of Hegel’s Phenomenology) is the inferentialist one that even such noninferential reports must be inferentially articulated. Without that requirement, we can't tell the difference between noninferential reporters and automatic machinery such as thermostats and photocells, which also have reliable dispositions to respond differentially to stimuli. What is the important difference between a thermostat that turns the furnace on when the temperature drops to 60 degrees, or a parrot trained to say "That's red," in the presence of red things, on the one hand, and a genuine noninferential reporter of those circumstances, on the other? Each classifies particular stimuli as being of a general kind, the kind, namely, that elicits a repeatable response of a certain sort. In the same sense, of course, a chunk of iron classifies its environment as being of one of two kinds, depending on whether it responds by rusting or not. It is easy, but uninformative, to say that what distinguishes reporters from reliable responders is awareness. In this use, the term is tied to the notion of understanding--the thermostat and the parrot don't understand their responses, those responses mean nothing to them, though they can mean something to us. We can add that the distinction wanted is that between merely responsive classification and specifically conceptual classification. The reporter must, as the parrot and thermostat do not, have the concept of temperature or cold. It is classifying under such a concept, something the reporter understands or grasps the meaning of, that makes the relevant difference.

It is at this point that Sellars introduces his central thought: that for a response to have conceptual content is just for it to play a role in the inferential game of making claims and giving and asking for reasons. To grasp or understand such a concept is to have practical mastery over the inferences it is involved in--to know, in the practical sense of being able to distinguish (a kind of know-how), what follows from the applicability of a concept, and what it follows from. The parrot doesn't treat "That's red" as incompatible with "That's green", nor as following from "That's scarlet" and entailing "That's colored." Insofar as the repeatable response is not, for the parrot, caught up in practical proprieties of inference and justification, and so of the making of further judgements, it is not a conceptual or a cognitive matter at all. — link

https://sites.pitt.edu/~rbrandom/Texts%20Mark%201%20p.html
"Semantic Inferentialism and Logical Expressivism"

I say 'occult' is deliberately pejorative, in this context. — Wayfarer

One more little point: if the goal is to clarify thought and ennoble existence and see reality whole and true, then hiddenness is not exactly the fetish of the philosopher who lives to unveil and shine light.

So there’s a scale of thingyness and an independent scale of abstactness. — Jamal

I like considering more than one dimension. Our human situation is rich. James' pluralism comes to mind. There are lots and lots of kinds of things, perhaps as many as we care to notice or declare.

The static ontology of medium-size dry goods doesn’t feel right. — Jamal

:up:

Some would say that s static ontology doesn’t even work for them either, which I suppose is process metaphysics. — Jamal

Or Kojeve. Or Hegel (as I make sense of him, the system is always tumbling.)

But numbers are more thingy than thoughts, while at the same time being not or less mind-dependent, and not situated in space and time. — Jamal

I think instead of saying math isn't in space and time we should say that math methodically ignores the actual, local spatial and temporal situation. For instance, a Turing machine is understood to have unlimited space (its tape) and unlimited time (it can take as many discrete steps as it needs or run on forever.) No such computer can exist physically. But it's a great reasoning tool, since it saves us from worrying about space and time (which are worried about in complexity theory.)

Another example. The results of group theory in abstract algebra apply to any group, so it's killing an uncountably infinite number of birds with one stone.

There is a difference between phenomenal objects which are temporally delimited and composed of parts, and the objects of thought. — Wayfarer

I agree that we can discursively break the world up and think about the category or concept of a dog as apart from any particular dog. We indeed have that sort of metacognition.

Real dogs come and go. Concepts also come and go, but far more slowly, for the most part. "Impersonal conceptual schemes" (Braver) are something like a shared set of concepts that dominate and limit and make possible the thinking of a mortal generation. This is a synchronic abstraction, for time and the mutation of our concepts waits for no man.

I wouldn't even say they are so different. They are just more abstract. We grasp objects (artichokes and aardvarks) as unities, which makes them countable. If Cantor is right, there are two basic operations of abstraction in this context, ordinal and cardinal. If you haven't read Cantor, this one is a gem:
https://www.amazon.com/Contributions-Founding-Transfinite-Numbers-Mathematics/dp/0486600459/
It's some beautiful, revolutionary math. So I recommend it to anyone who wants in on the infinity of infinities.

You might like:
https://www.amazon.com/Early-Heidegger-Medieval-PhilosophyPhenomenology/dp/0813221870/

A man of faith takes what he can from what he calls Heidegger's "phenomenology for the godforsaken." Lots of scholastic thought in it, as Heidegger started there, eventually incorporating Luther's thought as well as various mystics. The author even thinks that it's only after a kind of atheist moment that a genuine theology is possible. Something like that ! I'm reading it off and on with a pile of other books.

we cannot be factually certain of others and the world — Antony Nickles

Do you not see the strangeness here ? The way this bites itself ?

It's a strange phenomenon, the way this kind of skepticism that speaks (not you personally) thoughtlessly projects itself with an almost infinite arrogance about what others cannot know.

Somehow O somehow the skeptic trapped behind screens which might always be lying...knows that I too, if I somehow exist against all odds, must definitely also be trapped in a world of lying screens.

O ye skeptic of little faith and less humility ! Have ye not thought that I may yet walk with God beyond those walls that ye take for the world entire ?

I'm joking. I don't claim to walk with God. But wouldn't a real skeptic (in genuine doubt rather than theory of knowledge hubris) just not know much about me or about God ?

it's a concession to both reductionism and reification to accept that only physical objects exist. — Jamal

:up:

It's also hard to make sense of the claim that only such objects exist, perhaps because that sense would not itself exist, unless as a physical object ? If senses (ideas) are physical object, what is not physical ? Where's the contrast that makes the claim more than a tautology ?

partly what motivated Markus Gabriel's ontology, in which tables, quarks, numbers, nations, and ideas all exist. — Jamal

Haven't read Gabriel, but I can relate. The world (lifeworld) is a swirling unity of relationships. We believe in quarks because we trust scientific norms which were invented by primates who evolved with the help of DNA which is explained by physics and we are back to quarks.

So, in my view, I directly experience sensations: i.e., the five physical senses, emotions, and thoughts. Everything else is an idea that makes sense of my perceptions.

Therefore, my sensations have a more secure epistemological status than a theoretical construct I create to explain my sensations. My ideas certainly have reality and existence. Matter, maybe, maybe not. — Art48

This is a classic view. It's the model-T of metaphysics. You should at least test drive something from the 20th century. :starstruck:

The symbolism seems to me entirely irrelevant. The idea 2+2=4 can be represented in Roman numerals, binary notation, the Babylonian number system, etc. — Art48

The body is arbitrary but a body is necessary. The dove found that it could fly faster in thinner air and was confident it would fly still faster in a vacuum.

This is why, by the way, the body or vessel metaphor is potentially misleading. An equivalence class is a less mystified approach -- unless Mystification is the Point.

Do you believe ideas exist (or subsist or whatever word you wants to use). If no, then end of discussion. If yes, then do you believe an idea can cease to exist? If no, then end of discussion. If yes, then how? — Art48

We will probably never stop trying to figure out exactly what an idea is (what we mean by 'idea.'). I think they exist (whatever exactly that means), and I think they are at least like blurry equivalence classes. So 'I forget my umbrella' and 'Oh shit I left my umbrella' express the sameenough idea. So the idea is a clump of marks (written sentences) and noises (spoken sentences) that do pretty much the same thing --- so we throw them in the same category for convenience, which, incidentally, seems fundamental to thinking. We make unequal things equal. We ignore differences that make no differences (small enough differences to be neglected by faulty but magnificent self-replicating machines like ourselves.)

An idea can cease to exist if all the marks and noises that belong in its category vanish, such as if we forget about those marks and noises or we die.

To me it seems possible that aliens can find our books after we are gone and learn to translate our ideas into their language (they would have similar-enough equivalence classes to learn something from us, and integrate ours with theirs.) They'd probably have to see how the signs (marks) connected with the residue of our other animal actions besides tying and dragging graphite and ink on paper.

it's perfect for disrupting the notion that a sign must be either visual or aural, and the pheromone example demonstrates how it could even be chemical (and need not include homosapeins -- most social species, I imagine, have language, whatever it is — Moliere

I like the continuity you are emphasizing. Biosemiosis (such as very low level cellular signaling) also interests me, but I haven't got around to studying it closely.

The apparent medium-independence is also fascinating. It's easy for us now anyway to switch between reading and listening. Then of course we speak and hear so many metaphors meant for eyes (visual memory, I guess.)

the words mean, but we are still their creators. And they are up for interpretation, so emphasis on the we: what I intend is not per se what I say. Intent could be important for my listener, but need not be. And it's this interplay between writer and interpreter where meaning originates, — Moliere

I think we are basically on the same page. Meaning is between and within us. The view I criticize seems to assume that the self is infinitely transparent to itself, gazing on 'pure information' or on Exact Meaning which wears marks and noises as its clothing. Exact Secret Meaning is to marks and noises as The Soul is the mere flesh. I use the capitals to emphasize the Theological payload here. God created nature from nothingness. His radical separateness from nature symbolizes (Feuerbach or Becker might say) our denial of our animality and death.

So, it seems you believe in philosophical progress; I don't; I tend to think philosophy by and large has gone backwards roughly since Kant. — Janus

Insane in the membrane ! But it's a free country till they sick the A.I. on our facecrime.

s there some arcane method we might discover that can we employ to make it more determinate? If not, then why bother and why not instead just focus on our actual communication and try to make it as clear as possible, — Janus

No arcane method, just philosophy (and dialogue in general and science and ...)

I am trying to make my actual communication as clear as possible in the brief time given to/as me.

Are you saying that language is inherently somewhat fuzzy? If so I agree with you, but it's all we have to attempt to communicate, and it seems determinate enough. — Janus

Yes, inherently fuzzy. But progress is possible. Enough ? Then close up the bar and let's go home. Because the point of philosophy is (I claim) more clarity, more light, more music.

What exactly is the "metaphor" and the "pseudoproblem" you think it "structures" you are trying to get out of? What exactly does structure mean in this context? — Janus

Good questions ! If sincere, we have dialogue.