We agree -- in reference to your first response on consciousness.

On your second, I need more time to understand what you are saying and formulate a response.

Q1. If epiphenomenalism is true, how come 100% the brain states that produce qualia also produce reporting, while 0% of the brain states who don't produce qualia produce reporting? E.g. Why can I report when I have a quale, but I never say ''I feel X'' unless that X is a quale? — Eugen

Let me suggest this is the wrong question, because it assumes, on pure faith, that brain cells produce qualia, as opposed to qualia signifying the contents of neural states. Signs relate to what they signify, but they are not produced by what they signify. Dogs do not produce the sound or spelling "dog," nor do they produce the concept <dog>, for if they did, ideas would not require thinkers.

A more pointed question, and one that I can see no epiphenomenal response to, is "how we can discuss qualia if they can have no physical effect?" Physicalists assume that concepts are at physical states or, perhaps, operations. So the existence of the concept of qualia shows that qualia can produce either physical states or operations -- and surely expressing the existence of qualia is a physical effect.

Q2. Why do we go to the cinema to watch comedy movies if not driven by pleasure? It is not productive in the sense of reproduction or survival. Not to mention drugs. — Eugen

I think this could have an epiphenomenal answer if we forget the problem I just outlined. We could say that watching comedies produce endorphins and the behavior occurs to secure this effect -- with pleasure being epiphenomenal.

As you mention survival, if qualia could produce no physical effects, their emergence can't be explained by evolution. Natural selection can only select on the basis of the physical effects of an inheritable variation. Epiphenomenalism allows for no physical effects.

So why? — Eugen

Because Harris is not driven by rationality. If he were, he would provide the best case for both sides. As he does not, his works are polemic and so must have an irrational motivation.

A worthy challenge for an educator worth his salt, don't you think? — TheMadFool

No one can put knowledge in a closed mind.

I am sorry you are uneducateable.

But for me it doesn't have to be an all or nothing, as I believe that compatibilism is possible. — A Ree Zen

Compatibilism is bait and switch applied to moral philosophy. The bait is that you can have your moral cake (responsibility stemming from free-will) and Humean-Kantian causality (time sequence by rule) too. The switch is that the kind of "free will" that is compatible with time sequence by rule does not support human responsibility.

To be responsible for an act, one must be the origin of that act. If the act was already predetermined before we were born, clearly it does not originate in anything we did. So, compatibilism is fraud.

But, you may ask, if free will is incompatible with strict determinism, and determinism is a consequence of causality, then surely we cannot be the cause of our acts. Hence, either way, we cannot be responsible for our acts and there is no free will in a sense that would make us responsible.

This argument is fallacious, resting on an equivocal use of "cause." Clearly, if we are the cause of, and so responsible for, our free acts, we cannot be using "cause" in the sense of time-sequence by rule. What other sense is there?

The problem is that most moderns are too lazy to study the history to philosophy. When you do, you find that for over a thousand years, philosophers distinguished two kinds of efficient causality: accidental (Humean-Kantian time sequence by rule) and essential (the actualization of potency).

We all know that if you plant tomato seeds, you are the cause of the tomato plants that subsequently sprout and that there is a rule linking the first event (planting of a certain type of seed) to the second event (the subsequent sprouting of the corresponding plant). This is an example of accidental causality. If you think about it, or if you have read Hume, you also know that there is no necessity linking the first event to the second. Since we have two separate events, there is always the possibility that something may intervene between them to disrupt the expected sequence.

Because accidental causality has no intrinsic necessity, it is a strange basis for arguing that whatever we choose, we choose of necessity, i.e. that we have no free will that would be the basis for moral responsibility.

Those who have done their homework/due diligence know that in his Metaphysics Aristotle distinguished a second kind of causality, which is the kind that makes us responsible for our considered acts. This is essential causality. Aristotle's paradigm case is a builder building a house. Of course, the cause of the building is the builder, and the effect is the house being built. He notes that the builder building the house is identically the house being build by the builder. (These are identical because they are merely different ways of describing the same event.)

Since there is only one event, and not two as in time sequence by rule, there is no possibility of disruption by an intervening event. Since the cause and effect are linked by the identity of the event, this kind of causality acts by its own (and not a prior) necessity. -- The prior physical state of (a pile of building materials) does not necessitate the form of the finished house.

If we think about Aristotle's example, we see that it is simply an instance of a potential (of the materials to become a house) being actualized by an agent (the builder). So, any actualization of a potency by an agent is an instance of essential causality.

We can now see that free choices are not uncaused choices. They are the actualization of one of several possible courses of action by the moral agent. So, causality and free will are compatible, just not the kind of causality modern philosophers think of.

That would be the wrong thing to do. Landing on a side is more likely. — TheMadFool

Ta-da! At long last! That is why your whole line of thinking is wrong.

Like you, I divided the number of possibilities into 100%

There are two sides and one edge. — TheMadFool

So you're saying there is a 33-1/3% chance of landing on edge?

A coin can land on edge or on a side. That is 2 possible outcomes.

That is not the point. I can take your experience and state multiple possibilities: (1) The observation was properly reported, (2) There was interference from an unknown source, (3) you have sensory problems, (4) you have mental problems,.etc. So, if I come up with 4 possibilities, does that make each one have P=25%? And does that change when I think of a 5th possibly, so it suddenly changes to 20%? Of course not.

You chose to state your problem so that there were only 2 possibilities. I did the same. By stating only 2 possibilities (on edge or not), I did exactly what you did and applied the same principle you applied. Doing so shows the absurdity of your principle.

As far as I can tell there's no edge (third option) between real and not real. — TheMadFool

That is irrelevant to the way you assign probability numbers. Is your principle that "the truth of (A or not A) => P(A)=50% and P(not A)=50%", or not? If it is, then according to you, there is a 50% chance of a coin landing on edge. If not, all your claims about reality are baseless.

There is no point in discussing this further.

What are the odds of the flipped coin landing on edge? — Dfpolis

This is a good question, you know, because I think it's happened for real but we should discuss this some other time as it's not relevant to my thesis as there are clearly only two options regarding any observation viz. is it real or is it not. — TheMadFool

It is highly relevant as it relies on the same principle you use to assign a 50% probability to your alternatives. If we can have either A or not A, you say each has a 50% probability. So, since a flipped coin will either end balanced on edge or not, then the probability of its ending on edge is 50%.

As I said, I do not use numbers that aren't counts or measurements to describe reality. So, I would not use subjective "probability." It is only a mathematical disguise for prejudice.

What are the odds of the flipped coin landing on edge?

Are you disputing the precept "Do good and avoid evil"?

What is hateful to a person need not be evil. The Nazis found the just treatment of Jews hateful. Does that make their unjust treatment moral? Of course not. I am not disputing Hillel's maxim as a rule of thumb, only as a fundamental moral axiom.

There are two layers to observational data. First concerns its reality and the second concerns its correctness. For both, we need multiple observers — TheMadFool

We will have to agree to disagree on. I see neither reality nor correctness as being in question, only the adequacy of characterization and interpretation.

The probability calculations are the same for both and the error commited is identical in both cases. — TheMadFool

There are no justified calculations when the "data" used is not the result of counting or measurement. You still have not told me what your position is on the thesis that the probability of a flipped coin ending on edge is 50%. Your failure to respond shows that you are unwilling to fully consider my case.

So, if I'm hallucinating myself conducting a high-precision experiment with hallucinated equipment and hallucinated colleagues, I can publish my findings in a scientific journal? — TheMadFool

It is not a question worthy of the time taken to consider it. Rational people do not waste time on irrelevant issues. If you really think that 50% of your experience is hallucination, please cease posting and seek medical help.

There are two possibilities (real/not real) and either one is as likely as the other. 50% chance of being real and 50% chance being not real. — TheMadFool

And so a 50% chance that flipped coins will wind up on their edge.

Does that single measurement suffice in, say, writing a paper that's to be submitted in a peer-reviewed journal? I don't think so. — TheMadFool

That is a totally different question than asking if the meter reading was real. The question of reality is ontological, that of what suffices for publication is methodological.

I'm mainly interested in the distinction between real and hallucination - this has priority over whatever may follow, right? — TheMadFool

No, it does not have priority. The presumption is that unless you have a medical history of hallucinations, what you see is really there. Priority goes to relevant questions, not to vague and unsupported possibilities. In the first quotation above, you posed the standard of publication in a peer reviewed journal. No such journal has ever asked me to submit medical records showing I have no history of hallucination or mental illness.

How confident are we that a certain observation is real or not? By the way, do you mean that you would assign a value other than 50% to the probability that a single observation is real? What are your reasons for that? — TheMadFool

We are morally certain that our careful observations are correct. Moral certitude means that we can rely on a proposition in good conscience. It does not mean that our belief in it is infallible.

I assign no numerical values to what cannot be counted or measured, because, strictly speaking, it is meaningless to do so. Of course, people do assign probability numbers to their beliefs. One might interpret such probabilities in terms of the odds of a fair bet, but such numbers are not a measure of the probability of a proposition being true, because there is no such probability. If the proposition is meaningful, by which I mean that it asserts some determinable fact, then it is either true or false relative to a determined context.

So the odds of a coin landing on edge is 50%. — Dfpolis

There is no third option between being real and not being real. — TheMadFool

It depends on what you mean by "being real." Still, the existence of a third option is irrelevant to what I said.

Your claim is that "X is either y or not y" justifies assigning equal probabilities to y and not y. Since a flipped coin will either land balanced on its edge or not, then (by your logic) there is a 50% chance that it will end on edge. I do not see how you can escape this conclusion.

All what you said boils down to the issue of whether a single individual's observation is real or not. — TheMadFool

Not by my definition of "real." If your meter read 17, for whatever reason, you really observed 17.

I have no clue whether it's likely to be real or unlikely to be real — TheMadFool

Of course you do. Unless you have a sensory, neural or cognitive disorder, all the clues point to the fact that what you observed what was really there. As I said earlier, your use of "real" is non-standard.

If I assign a value greater than 50% to the probability that means I think it's likely but this contradicts my assertion that I'm uncertain — TheMadFool

Your subjective certainty is more likely to reflect your childhood experience than your observation. If you are only 50% sure that what you saw is real, that says your self-confidence has been harmed -- not that there is any question involving reality.

The only probability value that fits my epistemic state - uncertainty (not knowing whether likely/unlikely) - is 50%. — TheMadFool

So the odds of a coin landing on edge is 50%.

We're not on the same page on this. The very idea of repeatability is to either confirm or disconfirm an observation. — TheMadFool

And its interpretation. Perhaps you observed x because your electronics failed, not because of what you believed was the experimental arrangement. Perhaps your sample was contaminated or unrepresentative. I can think of many possible scenarios, none of which call your experience or veracity into question, only the adequacy of its description.

There's no need to bring up the issue of causality because at the end of the day it's about an observation - whether it can be observed by different people in different settings. — TheMadFool

Every observation of the same supposed type is a different token. None is exactly the same. You report, "I did x, and observed y." Someone else does x, but does not observe y. Does that mean that you lied? Or that y was a miracle? Or does it mean that factors not included in x lead to the observation of y? All are possible, but statistically, the last is most common.

What concerns us is whether a given observation is real or not. Either it's real or it's not. If one person makes an observation then the odds of that being real are 50:50. — TheMadFool

You will have to define "real" in some non-standard way to make sense of this. You agreed with my first point, which means we have a presumption of reality.

On what basis are you calculating the probabilities? The existence of two possibilities does not justify the assumption that they are equal. By your logic, if I flip a coin it may either land balanced on an edge or not, so the probability of a flipped coin ending on an edge is 50%. Care to place a bet?

First, if I observe x, that is presumptive evidence that x happened. There is no a priori reason to suppose that x did not happen.

Second, the purpose of repeatability in science is not to confirm or dispute what you observed, but to see if you have correctly identified the factors causing x. Perhaps x was caused by some extraneous factor you have not identified. If I can set up my experiment using all the factors you identified, and observe x, that is good evidence that you have correctly identified the relevant factors.

Third, there is no rational basis for assigning numbers to things we cannot count or measure. Among these innumerables is the "probability" subjectively assigned to beliefs, and the "utility" of acts and decisions. Bayesian probability is simply transvestite prejudice -- prejudice in mathematical garb. Putting lipstick on it does not make it rational.

In the Sophist, Plato suggests that anything that can act or be acted upon has being. I do not think that "can be acted upon" increases the extension of "being" because if we try to act on something, and it does not react, then however much we are exerting ourselves, we are not acting on it at all -- and if we are not acting upon it, it is not being acted upon.

So, we may say that whatever can act in any way has being. If so, then to be able to do more is to have more being. A being that can act only physically has less being than one that can act physically and intentionally. So, we start to ascend a hierarchy of being terminating in omnipotent being, God.

About abstractions as actualizizing the potential to be known.

It would be unresponsive to what I said.

But true sentences can correspond only to made-up abstractions — bongo fury

Not quite. Abstractions are not "made-up." Objects are intelligible, they can be understood. They are also are conplex, having many aspects, many notes of intelligibility, that can be understood. By becoming aware of objects, we make what is potentially known, what is merely intelligible, actually understood. The problem is that our brains have limited working memories, and cannot fully represent even what we sense. So, we chose to fix on some aspects, some notes of intelligibility, to the exclusion of others. That is abstraction, i.e., attending to some things and ignoring others. What we attend to is there, not made up. It is just not all of what is there.

The question of truth is the question of adequacy. Is our vision of reality, incomplete as it is, adequate? If it is, it is true. If it is not it is misleading and false. Whether or not it is adequate will depend on our needs. A vision adequate to one need may be inadequate to another.

I just encountered your post, and began your paper. I found it well written and open to most of the problems you face.

You write, "what do I mean by the use of the word consciousness and of its derivative, conscious?

In simple terms, I am referring to the internal subjective awareness of self that is lost during sleep and regained upon waking."

I think you are confusing two concepts here. One is subjective awareness of contents, the other, what might be called "medical consciousness," which is full realized in a responsive wakeful state. Medical consciousness is objectively observable, and, I would suggest, part of Chalmers' easy problem. Subjective awareness is found also in sleep, in our awareness of dreams, and its modeling is Chalmers' hard problem.

You might want to define, or at least exemplify, "high level" so that we have something more concrete to reflect upon.

"As we shall see later on, the existence of phenomenal experience is unfortunately not explained by the theory presented here. However, I believe all aspects of the content of that experience are explained; which I think is a significant enough achievement to celebrate."

Perhaps, but that does not warrant calling it entitle a theory of "consciousness." It is merely a theory of neural data processing, sans awareness.

A theory of consciousness needs to address the problem discussed by Aristotle in De Anima iii, 7, i.e. how does what is merely intelligible (neurally encoded contents, Aristotle's "phantasms"), become actually known. It is not enough that we have elaborately processed representations, however extensive the domain they model. We also need to be aware of the contents so represented.

Further, it is not clear that any purely neural model can adequately represent the contents we are aware of. Consider seeing an apple. One neural state represents not only the apple acting on our neural state, but also the fact that our neural/sensory state is modified. There are two concepts here, but only one physical representation. Yes, one may say that each concept has its own representation, but that does not explain how the initial representation gets bifurcated.

Let me be clearer. Organisms interact with their environment, and reacting to incident changes in their physical state (input signals), respond in what evolution molds into an appropriate way. This requires no concept of an external object, of an apple seen. All that is required is that, given a set of input signals, our neural net generate an adaptive set of output signals. There are no other signals telling us that it is not a purely internal change eliciting our adaptive response, but an external object.

So, as there is only one physical representation, how do we bifurcate it into a concept of us being modified, of us seeing, and a concept of an object modifying us, an object being seen?

Unless your model can explain this kind of one to many mapping, I think it is unfair to say that it provides an adequate explanation of the contents of consciousness, let alone of awareness of those contents.

You are welcome.

I forgot to respond to the rest of your question. I suppose that one reason is that I try to be philosophical on this forum, rather than theological. Since you seem interested in learning about the tradition, I will say a bit about it.

Augustine rightly, I think, divides humanity into two cities, the earthly city, whose citizens are motivated by self-interest, and the city of God, whose citizens are committed to the common good. While many might identify the city of God with institutional Christianity, I think this is a misunderstanding, for many so-called Christians are concerned only with their own welfare, and many non-Christians are fully committed to the common good. So, citizenship in the cities is not based on our doctrinal commitments, but on our commitment to doing good and avoiding evil.

This same division is discussed by the 19th c. utilitarian moralist, Henry Sidgewick, who was unable to find a utilitarian reason to prefer one ethical stance to the other. Aquinas sees the division in terms of our "intentionality to God," which has also been called our fundamental option. Again, this should not be projected into the space of doctrinal division. Rather, it should be seen in light of Aquinas' identification of God with Goodness and Truth -- in which "God is good" does assert that He has the property of being good, but that God and Goodness are identical. Thus, intentionality to God, is intentionality to Good, regardless of doctrinal commitments, even commitments to atheism.

In this framework, no one is "sent to hell." Rather, hell is self-chosen alienation in a timeless state of being. It is the very thing one chooses in opting for selfishness over commitment to other beings as well as one's self.

Mystical experience is a shift of awareness, like the shift in how Rubin's vase is seen (as a vase or as two faces). There is no change in the reality apprehended, but only in how it is apprehended. If God maintains the cosmos in being, then God maintaining the cosmos is identically the cosmos being maintained in being by God. (They are just different ways of describing the same reality.) So, by a shift of intellectual focus, we can move our awareness from the cosmos (or our self), to God. Doing so is the basis of mystical experience.

What has this to do with afterlife outcomes? We know, and so experience, what we choose to attend to. Those who attend only to themselves have chosen not to seek the one thing that can satiate human desire, and so wind up "in hell."

I am not well versed in George Fox's teachings or the practices of the Society of Friends. I am familiar with mystical experience as a transcultural phenomenon, and with Christian, and to a lesser degree, Buddhist teaching on the subject.

As one trained in physics, I had acquired a strong prejudice against mysticism, when I chanced to read W. T. Stace's Mysticism and Philosophy, which gives an empirical case for the reality of mystical experience. I concluded from his work that mystical experience is a real mode of knowing, key to understanding a lot of philosophy that makes no mention of it, but not a way of being informed.

While not central to mystical experience, one aftereffect is the quieting of fear and desire -- even among atheists (e.g. Bucke, as explained in his Cosmic Consciousness). So, I see it as quite relevant to the question of quietism you raise.

Thank you for the clarification. While I am a Christian, Aristotle was not.

It seems to me that we should not pin the discussion of a goal to the perspective of any one philosopher, but rather gather insights where they may be found.

St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that there is only one unchanging moral principle: "Do good and avoid evil." — Dfpolis

A vacuous truism Kant's (rationalistic) 'categorical imperative'. — 180 Proof

Aquinas accompanies the Synderesis Principle (Do good and avoid evil) by an analysis of the nature of good and evil. If he had defined "good" as "that which must be done," and evil as "that which must be avoided," the SP would indeed be circular and vacuous. As he does not, the principle is sound and meaningful.

While Hillel HaGadol was wise and leaned, his maxim does not explain the nature of the good or relate it to Elohim. Aquinas' analysis does.

Aristotle starts his Metaphysics by sayng "All humans by nature desire to know." It is not the role of philosophy to sow confusion, but to truly satisfy our natural desire to know. When we know, we know that there is a God who is the ultimate cause of all reality and that contemplation of God quiets the mind.

I would like to know what is un-relative(absolute moral?)moral?And what is relative moral theories?I am a Christian then I need to know those to practice the absolute moral. — nguyen dung

St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that there is only one unchanging moral principle: "Do good and avoid evil." While good and evil are objective properties of acts, they are properties that depend on the circumstances of the act. For example, it is evil to kill unjustly, but what makes a killing unjust depends on the circumstances. If is unjust to kill an innocent person, but it is not unjust to kill someone who is trying to kill you or another innocent person.

In the same way, Jesus taught that the whole law and prophets come down to two laws: First, love God with your whole being. Second, love others as yourself. This is a different way of saying what Aquinas said, for to love someone is to will their good, and oppose evil to them. And, again, what is good or evil for a person depends on circumstances. Feeding a person is good if they need to eat, and bad if it will make them obese and unhealthy.

Relativity (and quantum observtion) is fully compatible with Aristotle's understanding of reality. He tells us that continuous quantity is measurable., and that time is the measure of change according to before and after. Because quantity is measurable, quantitative reality not an actual number pre-existing measurement, but something a measuring process can be applied to, to produce an actual number. If we use a different measuring process, say measuring in a different frame of reference, then we have every reason to think we will get a different measure number.

The same applies to quantum measurements. Their results do not pre-exist the measuring process either, but are the result of the interaction between the system we are measuring, and our measuring apparatus.

You're really flip-flopping on this issue. First you say that theory must be accurate or else complete fiction — Kenosha Kid

I never said any such thing. In fact, I have said that Newton's theory, being adequate in the classical domain is true in that domain.

And now you're back to theory being law itself. — Kenosha Kid

No. I am using the description to identify an the of reality it seeks to describe.

Quantum field theories do not have 'laws'. — Kenosha Kid

I suggest that you reflect on your willingness to make categorical claims that every physicist recognizes as false. QFT conserves charge, momentum and energy among other quantities.

In light of your lack of qualification, there is no point in responding further.

How was Aristotle wrong in your view?

Don't concern yourself with Kenosha. He knows virtually nothing about how advanced physics works.

And which laws are they? — Kenosha Kid

Those of quantum field theory, e.g. the Dirac and Klein-Gordon equations.

First result is: https://www.quantamagazine.org/there-are-no-laws-of-physics-theres-only-the-landscape-20180604/ — Kenosha Kid

I am truly unimpressed. I already said you are confusing the laws of nature with the laws of physics. The fact that you have no more than a title is a sure sign of intellectual slackness.

Propagators are not laws. They are tools. — Kenosha Kid

They are a mathematical mechanism used to represent the mediation of Fermion-Fermion interactions by Boson fields -- in other words, to describe the laws by which quanta interact.

W bosons. Z bosons. Gluons possibly. — Kenosha Kid

I am getting tired of this. You do not know what you're talking about, The particles you mention are extremely massive.

They are immaterial because it would be a category error to ask what the laws are made of. — Dfpolis

Quantum fields. — Kenosha Kid

No. Quantum fields are subject to the laws of nature. The laws themselves have no extension that can be measured, while quantum fields do. To have extension is to have parts outside of parts, but the laws of nature do not have such parts.

In modern physics, the concept of physical law is archaic — Kenosha Kid

Baloney. If you think this is true, provide a reputable reference.

Instead, you have interaction fields. — Kenosha Kid

Bosonic fields, like all physical fields, are subject to the laws of nature. They correspond to the propagators (Green's functions) in the equations describing the laws of motion.

That is, they have properties, state, dynamics, etc — Kenosha Kid

Indeed, they do. Most also have mass and all interact gravitationally. The laws of nature have no mass and have no gravitational interactions.

Laws evolve. — Kenosha Kid

There is no evidence of this. What has evolved is our understanding off the laws. You are confusing the laws of physics, which are approximate descriptions, with the laws of nature they seek to describe.

This is a fallacy. If you want to make God laugh, start a sentence with 'Science will never'. — Kenosha Kid

It is not a fallacy to say that if a theory contains no term x, it will never have a proposition containing x as a term. For example, Euclidean geometry has no mass concept, and so you will never deduce from it alone that something has mass.

If you think about it, the idea that physics is materialistic is nonsense. physics has a menagerie of particles, but it also has immaterial laws. They are immaterial because it would be a category error to ask what the laws are made of. The laws are discovered in nature, and so they are not human constructs. Nor are the laws our descriptions of them, for to describe something that does not exist is to spin fiction.

In the same way, humans have physical operations and intentional operations. We effect changes to the world, not by only by raw physical movement, but by intentional movement. As there is no primitive in natural science that corresponds to intention or awareness, no matter how we inter-relate the basic concepts of natural science, we will never construct a theory that concludes "and therefore there is awareness."

It is the same human being, a unified being, that performs both physical and intentional operations. Duality does not exist in nature, it arises in the mind. We separate the physical and intentional in thought, but it is not separated in nature. I decide to go shopping and effect that decision by walking, riding or driving to the store.

Every act of knowing has both a known object and a knowing subject, but when we do natural science, we decide to fix our attention on the known object to the exclusion of the knowing subject. As a result, and by choice, science has no data on subjects as subjects, but only as objects. As it has no data on subjective awareness, it can draw no conclusion about it. Failing to recognize this gives rise to the so-called "hard problem of consciousness." Of course, it is not a problem at all, for it has no possible solution. Instead, it is the result of forgetting that we left the relevant data on the table when we started.

So, we live in a world in which some acts are physical, some intentional, and many both physical and intentional. Separating physicality and intentionality in our mind is no more a warrant for dualism than our ability to separate the sphericity from the rubber of a ball in our mind is a warrant to say the ball is made of spherical stuff and rubber stuff.

It's ultimately a question of whether you can feel something while not believing you feel it! — fdrake

Of course, you can not believe what you are experiencing, for example, look at Descartes. He knew he was in his chamber, but chose to doubt it. The problem is that knowing is being aware, while believing is committing.

Looks rather a lot like an inference to me! — fdrake

"I am not in pain now" is not the same as "I have stopped being in pain now." The first is compatible with never having been in pain, the second is not.