It's interesting you say that, and it may be different for different people, but I think it is easier to be honest with others, an honesty of expression which may or may not consist with being honest with oneself. — Janus
I also want to say that although that position is what seems reasonable to me. I don't think there is any imperative that it must seem reasonable to you, because in matters that cannot be determined either empirically or logically, I think what is acceptable or rejectable comes down to personal assessments of what seems plausible or coherent. — Janus
In principle we can know exhaustively whatever is accessible to our senses, both what is available naturally and what is available to our senses however augmented technologically. — Janus
I see that as no reason to claim that there is nothing more than what can be known, in principle via the senses. — Janus
To understand is “to be sympathetically or knowledgeably aware.” Understanding through rationality and logic alone do not allow for sympathetic awareness or love, let alone any relation to the illogical or unknown. What is excluded from mattering must form part of our understanding, if we are to be fully accountable. — Possibility
We inhabit our cognitions, and we know they cannot be explained in in terms of themselves: thus, we cannot but assume that something more that we cannot be aware of is going on. — Janus
The alternative is phenomenalism, which seems to be incapable of explaining anything. — Janus
I have the power to legislate my own norms in a technical sense only, if I abandoned any sense of pragmatism, any desire for compromise, or any concern for consequence, then I can legislate my own norms. So long as I have some sense, there's a significant limit to it. — Judaka
I'm having trouble tracking some of these tangential topics. Is this about what we "ought" to believe? — Judaka
Understand the limitations of rationality and logic, that most philosophers seem blind to. — Judaka
There is no "whole truth", we are forced to select truths and logic, one must. If you understand this, you can put to rest any notion of "whole truth". — Judaka
The well-documented cases of multiple personality disorder show that one person may experience being multiple personalities. From the common perspective it is one person, and the multiple personalities are a disordering of what is the 'normal' order. — Janus
I agree with you that when we study the brain, just as when we study anything else, we are studying the brain as it appears to us. We have no idea what it, or anything else, is in itself apart form how it appears to us. — Janus
But "the mind" does not appear tous, it appears as us. — Quixodian
existence itself implies and requires a perspective. Things don't exist from no point of view, they exist within a context, and the mind provides that context. But we don't notice that, because we're looking from it, not at it. — Quixodian
:up:Husserl believed all knowledge, all science, all rationality depended on conscious acts, acts which cannot be properly understood from within the natural outlook at all. — Quixodian
True, but what this nexus is, is very much the question at issue. — Quixodian
One brain per body, no? — Janus
Autonomy allows me to control myself, and it makes sense for me to adapt to my environment. That doesn't mean I think highly of it. — Judaka
:up:I really don't like the labels either way and think they are not very useful, or were part of a historical context that perhaps doesn't pertain to every argument about philosophy of mind. — schopenhauer1
You're not progressing your argument by obfuscating and trivialising. I don't think you're clear about what is actually being called into question, and why it matters. What is called into question in 'facing up to the problem of consciousness' is the applicability of the natural sciences to the nature of experience. — Quixodian
We are sensing an actual object that is interacting with the organism, yes. So in the sense that I think we are actually perceiving an object and not some intermediary, call me a direct realist then.. However, do brains process the inputs in a way that was shaped by the environment? Yes, so perhaps that is indirect realist. — schopenhauer1
One reason I hate these debates of direct and indirect realism is this notion of "mental representation" and what that really means. It's very vague and becomes a weird sticking point. — schopenhauer1
If there were no boundary, it is simply subject to whatever chemical and physical influences act on it - it would dissolve or break up. Whereas an organism has to maintain itself (which is homeostasis), seek nutrition, avoid threats, and replicate. That is the origin of the self-other divide. — Quixodian
But there's no way you could capture an experience in a description. — Quixodian
You'd have to flesh that out...Otherwise it's words coherently put together that don't mean much for me. — schopenhauer1
The physical sciences can describe organisms… as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order – [their] structure and behavior in space and time – but they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms or how the world appears to their different particular points of view. — Thomas Nagel
It's a weird point, so I'm not surprised if I didn't find the best words.How is this "dependence" upon a particular "embodied" scientist?
Perhaps I'm not interpreting what you say properly. — jgill
As a squirrel, a fish, a bat, a rat, and a bee all have their own view, and yet, do they have direct access to the world too? If it is different, then certainly there is something that mediates between directly observing the object, and processing it (i.e. indirect realism). Surely something is causing differences upon the objects perceived between species. — schopenhauer1
Direct realism assumes the human animal has a god-like view of the universe. — schopenhauer1
But we are back at square one. Some processes are not mental. Why? Or if they are, how do you get past the incredulity of saying that rocks and air molecules, or even a tree has "subjectivity" or "consciousness", or "experience"? — schopenhauer1
I take there to be no higher meaning than that, do you? — Judaka
We follow them because they're useful, and partially because we're compelled. — Judaka
This is not a trust in a preexisting we, but a trust in the promise of a we, a not yet we which will always remain not yet, defined by our differences. I have stated elsewhere, "the true we is never we, never stabilized in a name for we, always undone before being constituted, only identified in the non-identity between you ... and me ..."A conversation "could do no more than put the we back into question"
If you're going to highlight my choice, let me ask, how much of a choice do I even have? How would it serve me to ignore the established norms? — Judaka
Why do we need to add a temporal dimension? — Judaka
If we take a page from self-consistency theory in psychology, we can say that the self is a continual achievement of the construing of events, and among the most important event is one’s own self-reflections. — Joshs
Thus the self is no more internally integral than the events the person is able to construe intelligibly. Examples of a disordered self include emotional distress. Emotions such as guilt, threat and anxiety can represents situations which put into question the coherence of our core sense of self. — Joshs