It should be intuitively obvious that consciousness includes a mental component and a corporeal component. Cases in point: wakefulness, sleep, coma, etc. — Galuchat

How is it obvious? What's an example of evidence for the idea that consciousness is a composition?

Consciousness seems to me to be some kind of information architecture. It is composed of all the various sensory impressions from our various sensory organs, and they all can appear at once. This seems to imply that the brain in a central nervous system is the central location where the information from the senses come together into a seemless model of the world, and it is this model that we reference in order to make any decision and perform any action. — Harry Hindu

Statements are compositions of words, and beliefs about the world are models of the world, but consciousness...? I don't think consciousness is a composition, nor a model, of anything but a capacity to identify and use objects and their compositions (including representations and models of them).

It occurs to me that the expressions 'being aware of' and 'being conscious of' are clearly synonymous, whereas the noun 'awareness' and assumed distinctions from 'consciousness' seem popular in talk of psychology.

Both have an intentionalistic sense: you are (fully or partially) aware/conscious of something (i.e. awareness/consciousness is about something). Derivatively you might be able to be aware/conscious of the fact that you are aware or conscious of something (but not the awareness/consciousness itself, because the reference relation separates the awareness/consciousness from what it is of/about, and puts them on two different logical levels.

In cases where the lives of two humans differ a lot in capacities, interests, and ways to interact with the world they have little to talk about. At some point they will no longer understand each other, and when their lives are so different that they no longer share a frame of reference it will no longer be possible to translate expressions from one to the other; they would be like two different kinds of animals.

I sometimes get to read that female architects demand to be identified as architects, not as female architects. The assumption seems to be that the word 'female' changes the meaning of the word 'architect' in some unwanted ways. Or that it would preserve unwanted conventions.

Granted that the profession used to be dominated by men, and that injustices still exist, e.g. in salaries or status, which is the case in many professional fields.

But would it really matter to drop the word 'female'? I don't think it would raise anyone's salary nor status.

We ought to interpret posts in ways that maximise communication. Nonsensical posts mean or do more than no posts.

The clergy used to be brutal beyond comprehension. — jkop


The problem is that people don't accept that meaning, often because of its historical baggage, which is a non-sequitur anyway. — Mariner — Mariner

Huh? What would different meanings of the word 'god' have to do with the fact that most of the great philosophers' works are based on argument, not blind reference to the authority of the divine or incomprehensible. That's why they're called philosophers, not preachers.

We apprehend that there are limits to the human intellect. Because of these limits, there are things which the human intellect cannot comprehend. We assume that a higher intellect can comprehend these things, and this is not at all arbitrary. — Metaphysician Undercover

Call it 'faculty' or 'higher intellect' or what you like. A possibility to comprehend the incomprehensible doesn't follow from there being limits to human knowledge, nor from things that we don't comprehend yet; obviously it is an arbitrary assumption.

A possibility to some day comprehend things that we don't comprehend yet, however, arises from research, and little prevents humans from doing research.

If you are implying that many of the great philosophers were closet agnostics or atheists — Mariner

The clergy used to be brutal beyond comprehension.

It's not an arbitrary assumption though, it's an identification. What is identified is that which is beyond human comprehension. — Metaphysician Undercover

Identification? Identification is the function of reference, and it is possible to refer to almost anything, such as fictious, alogical, or impossible things. But from reference it does not follow that the things we refer to would exist.

What remains arbitrary is the assumption of a faculty with which it would be possible to comprehend the incomprehensible. That's what's arbitrary and used ad-hoc by the religious and the mystics.




Sure, many of the great philosophers lived in societies in which they could be murdered if they would admit being agnostic or atheist. Most of their work, however, is philosophical, and does not rely on blind reference to divine authority.

What if it's not necessarily an "arbitrary assumption" at all, but a lived experience; and one that you cannot understand simply because you have never lived it? — John

To have or live the experience is neither necessary nor sufficient for understanding it. Moreover, it is relatively easy to evoke the experience of the presence of something covert or incomprehensible, for example by will power, empathy, drugs, or indoctrination/psychological suggestion. Like the experience of nothing.

The religious or mystical faculty is what comprehends this aspect of reality — Noble Dust

What's ad-hoc and non-philosophical is the arbitrary assumption of a faculty for comprehending things beyond comprehension.

34% religious on a philosophy forum! :-O

Being religious and being philosophical have two different senses: unlike the philosophical the religious ultimately allow reference ad-hoc beyond human comprehension: e.g. "god did it!", which is philosophically unsatisfying.

This scene from "Interstellar" sums up well of the social critique in the film — ssu

Oh yeah, the new dark ages. :-( But the anti-intellectual life on Earth makes a great contrast to the depicted science and space travel. It reminds me of a quote of Bertrand Russell (from Why Men Fight):

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin -- more even than death.... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man. — Bertrand Russell

Primer — Luke

That's a great film made with little means.

they are not "philosophical" in the sense of having some intellectual puzzle or dislocation at the center of their narrative; more like spiritual and even mystical. — SophistiCat

I tend to think that what sets a philosophical film apart from a poetic film is that the narrative arises from some intellectual puzzle or dislocation. For example, on the nature of the world, perception, or ethics.

Has anybody mentioned Ingmar Bergman's films? — ssu

The questions in Bergman's films seem more religious or psychological or poetic than philosophical (e.g. existential angst, dreams).

What do you expect when no question is asked in your OP :/

How could you put together shapes to compose "I'll stop at the store on the way home tonight and get milk."?

In the OP and elsewhere it is assumed that some animals understand or imagine only so much of the world whereas others, such as humans, have the capacity to understand or imagine different or more features of the world. It might, then, seem meaningful to ask whether a future human could have the capacity to understand or imagine features of our world that we don't. Or whether we are incapable to understand or imagine what future civilizations will be like.

But it is trivially true that discoveries have an effect on one's capacity to understand or imagine the world. Proto-human monkeys had no human language, nor a theory of evolution, with which they could understand or imagine what a future civilization is. Once we have language etc. it is easy to imagine future humans having discovered new features of the world that we don't understand yet.

We can't imagine the unimaginable, nor comprehend the incomprehensible, for the obvious reason that it has nothing to imagine nor to comprehend. We might, however, have the capacity at time t1 to understand what we will discover at t2, but obviously don't since it is yet to be discovered.

Passion changes with experience, or when the things that we're passionate about change. These days there is a lot of great music instantly available online, which in the long run can make our attitude to great music more blasé and non-passionate than ever. I'm not a mathematician but I understand that people can be passionate about the subject; there are websites and courses produced by passionate enthusiasts, quite different than the sedative books I had to endure in high-school.

Imagine if people felt the same passion for wanting to have an orgasm, for advancing technological innovation, knowledge, science and improving the world of humans in general? — rohan

People might feel the same passion, but seldom for the same things (e.g. not all people want to have orgasms, some find them unpleasant even, perhaps like a loss of control or something?).
For example, people who excel in the sciences can be replaced or set-up to look bad by people who excel in power games. Conversely, those who excel in power games can get a bad reputation when they are revealed by those who excel in investigating mismanagement, and so on.

Philosophy is the activity of thinking, reading, or writing about the nature of things, or unanswerable questions. Its methods are what it takes: for example clarity of expression, valid and sound argumentation, curiosoty, intellectual honesty, insight, regard for truth and so on.

I'd say the two are connected in the sense that without truth the human intellectual enterprise is re-directed from saying things about the world to performative utterances which are neither true nor false but do things, such as signal how advanced or superior the speaker is while pretending to say something about the world or the nature of truth. Unclarifiable unclarity does that, and it is impossible to refute.

Allegedly, higher education rewards bullshit over analytic thought.

Solaris (2002, which I think is a very good remake of the Soviet original). It could be the plot for a philosophical thought experiment (e.g. like Twin-Earth, or something on identity, ethics etc.), for what would you do if you wake up next to a real copy of the person you just dreamed of? Say, a dead wife but who is then alive again, or what if you dream of yourself and wake up with a copy of yourself being there next to you?

the purpose of emotional feelings is to reflect the meaning of the event that triggered it. If the feeling is positive, then the event must have been positive. — Samuel Lacrampe

So, for example, the positive feeling that a junky might have when s/he finds some drugs would reflect the positive meaning of what? Why must it be positive? And whence the assumption that emotions would have a purpose?

If the feeling is negative, then the emotion must have been negative. — Samuel Lacrampe

The emotion is the feeling.

The conundrum is how we know if something is appropriate if we rely on emotions for motivation but they do not lawfully link with events. — Andrew4Handel

Emotions are effects on the organism caused by one's environment, actions, or thoughts. I suppose some emotions can be evaluated as "inappropriate" in case they cause unnecessary trouble, or are very painful, for instance. That's how we would know.

Some life beings don't have the notion of ,,seeing" because they don't possess this sense. Intelligent animals like dogs or dolphins cannot understand what philosophy is no matter what. — Eugen

Being blind or lack the capacity to see shapes, for instance, does not mean that shapes would somehow become inaccessible, unimaginable, or impossible to understand. Being deprived of sensory stimulation or imagination does not imply that the world or the future civilization would suddenly disappear. Dolphins don't use the word 'philosophy', but they might still do what the word refers to, say, have a notion of a life worth living; some of them commit suicide, recall.

It's a matter of evolution and no matter how ugly may sounds, the reality is that in many aspects we're superior to animals. In the same time, we can think that evolution has no limits and life beings can take superior forms that possess traits that we can't understand - not just 5 senses, but billions; beings that can easily understand notions like ,,infinite"; etc.. — Eugen

Let's say you had 100 more sense organs, or that your body had been the result of another 100.000 years of evolution, or have some artificial enhancements etc.. Would that make you somehow better at understanding the world, and imagining future civilizations? How? What would you be able to know that you can't already know?

So my question would be: is it possible that life beings evolve so much that the current human would be inferior to them as a worm is inferior to us in the sense of the capacity of understanding? — Eugen

A worm encounters shapes and behaves accordingly, a blind man can feel or imagine shapes by touch or hearing descriptions from those who can see them. Astronomers deduce the presence of dark matter, a sea urchin does not have a brain even, yet it can identify the presence of predators, scoop up gravel to camouflage itself and so on. We are in many ways part of our environment; its past, present, and future.

There is a Wittgensteinian private language confusion at work here. — sime

Where? Are we confused when we speak about our experiences in a public language? All talk is public, one does not assume a private language by talking about one's private experiences.

Experiences are ontologically subjective, but talk about them ontologically objective and possibly epistemically objective.

Confusion arises from talk of the subjective and the objective which does not clearly distinguish the ontological from the epistemological (hence the many "philosophical" metaphors in this thread instead of arguments).

I see many metaphors here used against psychology, but I think they are misleading.

The fact that experiences are ontologically subjective does not make them epistemically inaccessible. It is possible to talk meaningfully about experiences, recall, and some of that talk can be epistemically objective, supported by knowledge of physiology, chemistry and so on.

Does "everything" include potential entities that could and could not happen, exist in our world or not exist, and are abstract, fictitious, or imaginary?
Do we include "everything" in addition to material things, non-material things, spiritual things, etc.? — wax1232

Alexius Meinong thought that abstract, fictitious, imaginary things really exist, and the early Ludwig Wittgenstein thought that facts in logical space are the world and that they determine both what is and what is not the case.

A club for cats on mats.

..disagreements are mostly over how we see the evidence or facts — Sam26

If seeing something is the evidence, then the disagreements are not over how we see it but how we interpret it. The question "How we see it?" is already answered: "By seeing it", referring to how anything is seen.

A civilization hundreds of millions of years in front of us would be something that we simply cannot understand it? — Eugen

I don't think the mere passing of time would prevent us from understanding what a civilization is like in the future. Do you know of something that would prevent it?

A civilization is

..any complex society characterized by urban development, social stratification, symbolic communication forms (typically, writing systems) and a perceived separation from and domination over the natural environment by a cultural elite. ... — Wikipedia

If an animal doesn’t have the notion of consciousness, that civilization would have a ,,super-consciousness” that we simply cannot literally comprehend or even imagine its functions and purposes? — Eugen

It seems fairly clear that most animals can identify whether others are conscious or unconscious (e.g. asleep or dead). In this sense animals are both conscious and have the notion of consciousness.

..a civilization hundreds of millions of years more advanced than a civilization hundreds of millions of years more advanced than us would be incomprehensible for the second one and so on? — Eugen

Would a large number of years make things incomprehensible or unimaginable? How?

Or there might be a ultimate state from which things are understandable and could be imagined even if technology is much more advanced? I would like arguments please.
Thank you! — Eugen

The "ultimate state" from which things are possible to understand and imagine is, obviously, the state of having the capacity, which is biological. Human as well as non-human animals have it; it enables us to identify what our current environment is like, and what it might be like in the near future. That's how we can adapt to our environment, improve it even, build homes, buildings, cities, organize our knowledge, use symbols, predict things, imagine alternative things, or fiction, and construct a civilization which is sustainable enough for future generations.

I find it relatively easy to imagine possible civilizations in a distant future, there is a literary genre for it, science fiction, in which some are more or less convincingly described.

..it's worthwhile to arm oneself with as many anti-Randian tropes as time and nausea allow. — ZzzoneiroCosm

What's the threat? Does Rand's statement make sense even?

It might be worthwhile to note, however, that by pretending to take Rand seriously Ryan & Co appear to understand something that their opponents don't, and thus cannot criticise, or their criticisms can be arbitrarily dismissed as "misunderstandings".

it's more than likely the last chance of that kind to come along. — Wayfarer

Better luck next time when other kinds of chances come along.

Whenever a major project gets cancelled or the economic cycle stagnates we sometimes invent our own projects in hope to attract investors. In case we fail, or don't get paid, we can at least recycle some of the results and knowledge in future projects.

..so you think a skeptic would say there are forbidden things? — Kai Rodewald

Lots of things are forbidden, that's why we have laws against them, deterrent penalties, shared as well as personal morals.

Forbidden by whom? — Kai Rodewald

I forbid my cat to steal the chocolate because of the consequences. My duty forbids me to poke her in the eye. It is often easy to find out whether something is right or wrong by research, or hypothetical deduction, for example, in relation to its consequences or our duties.

Right and wrong are found, they don't suddenly appear out of nowhere for no reason inside the head of some authority (disregarding the trigger happy moderator who deleted our first exchange of posts).

I don't think I suggested that intelligent life in the cosmos was going to get wiped out -- just here. — Bitter Crank

The phrase "end of the world" seemed to refer to something more fundamental than the end of intelligent life here.

The assumption of a perpetually life-sustaining local environment seems improbable anyway. But organisms adapt, and by the time our sun burns out we might have already moved to an artificial planet, or space ships heading towards other habitable planets. Likewise, it does not seem improbable that intelligent life on other planets have already found ways to adapt to a universe in which suns burn out.

That doesn't mean anything alive, or once alive, will survive along with it.

I think it's safe to say that, oh, maybe 20,000 air bursts would generate enough widely distributed radiation and dust to cause some pretty seriously problems for the biosphere. — Bitter Crank

So if 'the world' doesn't refer to the world but biological life in the world, then the idea of a decisive end to it is still dubious, because if life is possible here, then it is possible elsewhere in millions or billions of planets that orbit suns under the same or similar conditions. It is improbable that all of their biospheres would get polluted at the same time and forever.

I heard someone mention that if all of today's nuclear bombs would explode now on the same place the explosion might correspond to an earthquake of a magnitude of 9 on the Richter scale. That's a big earthquake, but the world wouldn't end. The atmosphere might get polluted for a while, and parts of the oceans, but the world wouldn't end.

If the world ever ends, it might require the converse of the Big Bang, say, a cosmological implosion, a Big Slurp.

..a more clear way of expressing the rule I think you are referring to is that metaphors must be 'apt'. rather than 'true'. — unenlightened

At least they ought to be apt, but some metaphors are less apt than others. I think they can be metaphorically false even.

For example, a rose is thorny, beautiful and fragile, and so is love; hence a rose seems apt as a metaphor for love, or at least a certain kind of love. But other kinds of love are neither thorny nor fragile, but smooth, big, strong, or burning, in which case solid rocks, burning flames, or fire might be more apt as metaphors.

This reassignment of words relative to what the metaphor refers to is, I think, ultimately set by the features of the kind of love that one refers to. In this way the reassignment of words can be more or less apt, or metaphorically false. For example, it might be metaphorically false, or at least misleading, to use a thorny, fragile, old-fashioned rose as the means to refer to a burning modern love.

Truth is one of the rules of some of the games. ... It's not a rule of "Story-telling" or "Poetry". Thus one does not ask if the ring of power was really destroyed in Mt Doom, or in what way my love is like a red red rose. — unenlightened

Is not metaphorical truth another rule?

So... what is the first rule of Philosophy Club? — Banno

If a club is an association of people united by a common interest or goal, then Philosophy Club is a club whose members are not united by a common interest or goal, a club without members. Its first rule might, therefore, be that it's not a club.