There are concepts, but the concepts are not about themselves. — Terrapin Station

No, but the stuff they're about doesn't actually have the properties we phenomenological conceive them having, all 'properties' are concepts related to the stuff (again, presuming there is even 'stuff' at all). I can't see how stuff could have properties. Any time I think about those properties (shape, location, colour..) they're all concepts, some of which I even know to be shaky at least because modern physics can't seem to fit them together.

I'm not saying anything about where it begins or ends or whether it's separated from anything else. Again, I'm not talking about the concept as such. — Terrapin Station

But 'coin' and 'location' are both concepts. Physical matter is a concept.

There's a coin, and it has a location, right? — Terrapin Station

Nope. There's no coin without a person to decide 'this bit of matter ends here and I shall call it a coin'. There's no location without a person to construct a 3d model of a reality which might well have 20 dimensions or none at all (dimensions just being some model we made to help us live).

Take a coin for example. There's a frame of reference that is the coin itself, and there's a frame of reference that's not the coin itself, but that's relative to the the coin from some other position, right? — Terrapin Station

No. I don't see how there can be a frame of reference that is the coin itself. Just identifying it as a coin requires a person. With no one to identify it, it is just stuff, nothing more. (by stuff here I'm referring to whatever it is our perception arise from, noumena, if you like).

I just answered this: the perspective of being those states. — Terrapin Station

But where is that perspective if not in "Particular dynamic state of synapses, neurons, etc"? I'm afraid "At various reference points, including the reference point of being the thing in question." isn't really a coherent location for me.

What? I'm not saying anything about language. What the answer to a question would be is irrelevant. — Terrapin Station

I'm trying to explain why I can't make sense of there being an answer to that question, and as such can't make sense of there being such properties.

Properties are how something happens to be, characteristics it has, even if that amounts to being indefinite. — Terrapin Station

But what be would the answer to "what properties does this object have" without anyone to identify them as such?

Not from tye perspective of being those states. — Terrapin Station

Right, but if "Particular dynamic state of synapses, neurons, etc" is what 'properties' of experience are - in their entirety, then what is missing from the third party account? More importantly for a physicalist, where is that missing thing expressed physically?

Well this is where we differ. I don't think it's incoherent at all. I think quite the opposite in fact. I can't think of what a 'property' might be without someone to define it.

In terms of our experience, it's a particular dynamic state of synapses, neurons, etc. — Terrapin Station

Right, but this now starts to sound physicalist about properties of experience. "Particular dynamic state of synapses, neurons, etc" is definitely something accessible to a third party (at least in theory). I thought you were saying it's something more than that.

How can there be an "our" if there's no "we"? — Terrapin Station

There's a difference, which is really difficult to maintain, between talk that identifies objects we're all used to distinguishing and talk about the non-constructed basis for those things. When I say "inside our minds" I mean to refer to what we culturally (probably even biologically) distinguish as "our minds". When I say "there is no 'we'", I'm trying to talk about what there is that is not thus constructed, that's 'out there' as the stuff we construct objects from.

Yeah, that's a property. In fact, even a homogeneous soup that's indeterminate would be properties. Since properties are simply ways that things are. — Terrapin Station

Yes, but my caveat is important. We couldn't say, that anything was a property of 'it' because even the idea variation, 'lumpiness' as you put it, is suffused with our way of life.

James Hetfield periodically sings "I am the table." — Terrapin Station

Periodically? Thanks to you I spent the entire afternoon with "I am the table" on a loop in my head!

So - the actual 'I am the table'. If I place your hand behind a screen on a table, I stroke both the table in front of you and your hand with the same pattern, I then approach the table in front of you threatening to hit it with a hammer, you have a galvanic skin response exactly as you would if I threatened your real hand. The same parts of the brain fire, and most people report a genuine fear.

Two minutes of deception and your brain is happy to think of the table as part of your body.

I'd definitely make a wager on that. — Terrapin Station

Oh, and I'm just referencing here Ramachandran's (slightly) famous experiments with rubber hands, and tables. I have to go out now so can't explain the whole thing. Will do so when I get back, presuming you don't already know.

By the way: — Terrapin Station

Not sure what that post is trying to say (although he sounds pretty damn convinced he's the table!)

There's no "we," but there's an "our"? — Terrapin Station

Not sure what you mean here.

So the "lumpiness" is a way it is, no? — Terrapin Station

Yes, I think I'd grant that. I can see where you might be going - to say that at least something has at least one property. I think I might well agree with that (with the proviso that such would only constitute a description of my model in your terminology, accepting that my model is definitely flawed by pretending to exclude me from it).

But at least we're here, right? How? — Terrapin Station

No, there's no 'we'. That too is just something inside our minds.

According to you it's a completely uniform sea of property-free stuff. How would it "interact," especially without having/exhibiting any properties? — Terrapin Station

I quite specifically said I imagine a heterogeneous sea of stuff, not a uniform one. I imagine variations in many possible fields, some of which we arbitrarily select to distinguish objects over, others we ignore, others still we probably can't even detect.

Our bodies are us. That's our boundary, fuzzy though it may be on the edges on a microscopic level. — Terrapin Station

I can convince your mind that the table is a part of your body in less than two minutes.

We have a completely uniform sea of whatever, with no properties, and then what? How would a creature appear amidst that, much less one with consciousness? — Terrapin Station

The fact that a "creature" has appeared is again, just a human artefact, as is 'conciousness'. All that has happened is that stuff has interacted with stuff (even 'stuff' is difficult to get out of). No 'creatures' have appeared outside of us, to whom would they 'appear'?

Let me ask you this, if a 'creature' has appeared with consciousness, where do we stop, and some other creature with some other conscious start?

You don't think that there's really a shape of molecules, do you? — Terrapin Station

No, I'm aware it's just a model. I'm trying to get at the arbitrariness of making the distinction on that basis, not present a scientifically accurate account of it.

But you're saying that they're not really a lump of water, carbon dioxide, etc. ices and then a far less dense patch of hydrogen and helium gases, etc., right? — Terrapin Station

"Water" and "carbon dioxide" are still separations we've imposed, why stop one type and begin another based on the arbitrary shape of its molecules. Even some pretty basic chemistry (isotopes etc) shows how this distinction breaks down on analysis.

So let's consider something like a comet orbiting the sun. We've got a chunk of rock--water, carbon dioxide, ammonia and methane ices, mixed with dust. Then we've got space where there's very sparse amounts of hydrogen and helium gas, etc. Then we've got the sun, a very dense aggregation of hydrogen and helium gases in a plasma state, etc.

How would our mental processes alter that? — Terrapin Station

They already have. "comet", "space", "sun". None of these separate things are really separate. We've decided that spatio-temporal patterns are going to be the thing which separates one object from another, as opposed to, say, ecology, information, systems etc.

It tells us something about the world that it must be 'modelled' in this way (in any way) — StreetlightX

Yes, that's what interests me in the models people have, it's basically how I became (peripherally) interested in philosophy.

Anyway, sorry to be obscure. We're far away from perception now, and I don't want to derail. — StreetlightX

Yeah, fair enough, it was an interesting departure.

Oh and by the way, apparently I gather that...

you're yet another person here in the "horrible reading comprehension" crowd. — Terrapin Station

So, welcome to the club, honoured to have you with us.

we are of reality, and don't stand outside of it looking it. "If no people existed, objects would be...?" is still a strange question. — StreetlightX

Yeah, so I guess my 'model' is inevitably flawed by being one without me in it, yet without me there'd be no place to put the model. I still find some need to have one though, flawed as it may be. Do you manage to do without?

Why would that be the only way you can see objects being? How would you even see that? — Terrapin Station

'See' as in conceive of, bad choice of words in the circumstances. I can't conceive how matter could not exist at all (what would we base our perception on), but I can't conceive of it divided up into objects in any sense at all when it's clear that such object division (and existence) can be so readily altered by our mental processes.

Why? — Terrapin Station

Because that's the only way I can see objects being now, and I don't think the absence of people will make any difference.

No, no. If there are no people then there is no perception. It's a bad question ('how would one perceive it if one were not around to perceive it?'. Very silly). — StreetlightX

OK, I see what you're saying. I didn't really answer the question as "what difference do people make" so much as "what model do you personally have of reality" (a model which, for me is obviously unaffected by people because I took him to be asking about what it is I think people's perception acts on). Does that make any sense at all?

So you believe that if no people existed, objects would be in what--some quantum, indeterminate state? — Terrapin Station

Possibly, yes. But at the moment I'm more inclined to think of reality as a heterogeneous sea of stuff (where maybe that stuff is not matter but whatever fundamental thing physics might find beneath matter). Certainly no 'tables'.

Why do you say 'browness' is a property of the table? Surely by your own terms, with nominalist, at best it's a property of 'the bit of the table I happen to be looking at'. Why impart it to the rest of the table, unless you're treating 'the table' as a platonic object?

So how could there be anything that isn't some way or other? — Terrapin Station

Easily, every "way or other" is a judgement we make sufguced with our habits, moods etc. So nothing is some way or other outside of that we perceive it to be, and as @StreetlightX has pointed out, the evidence from the neuroscience of perception is very much that we do not perceive anything absent of local and variable influences from our mental state and environment.

In order to refer to the external matter, we have to use a type term, since that's how language works. So you're again getting confused here because you're conflating concepts and what they're in response to/about/of. — Terrapin Station

Yes but a linguistic affectation can't possess properties can it?

! — bert1

?

Beat me to it (and expressed it better).

So you're an idealist? — Terrapin Station

No, although I could easily be. I think there is external matter. It's the division of some of it into 'table' I think is arbitrary.

"Property" doesn't imply "universal" or "type," by the way. — Terrapin Station

I think it does. I don't think one can discuss a 'property' of a thing without engaging in reifying universals. Even to say 'shape' is one type of property and colour another.

I'm a nominalist, so you're going wrong somewhere. — Terrapin Station

I love this. You see things some way, so anyone else simply must be going wrong! Classic.

I don't think there is such a thing as a 'table' outside of our experience of it, so there's nothing to attach these properties to other than the ones in our experience. Otherwise you seem to be making a universal out of 'table', 'brown', 'wooden'...etc.

What do you think that properties are? — Terrapin Station

I think it's a term used to sub-divide the experience of a thing into arbitrary chunks. It's convenient sometimes, but it's not something that 'tables' can have.

As opposed to talking about the table as the table. Or from the perspective of the table, using "perspective" in the sense it's used in the visual arts. — Terrapin Station

That's not helping I'm afraid, I've no idea what perspective might mean in the visual arts either. It seems you just want to say that some 'properties' are attached to the table where others are attached to our experience of it, but I can't see how properties attach to a table.

(I'm going to stop putting properties in inverted commas, I don't really hold to the concept but it's a phaff to make that clear by my punctuation every time I type it).

Yeah, agreed. I come at this stuff from a very different angle to you, I think, but I feel the same way about this idea that objects (physical or otherwise) have 'properties' somehow attached to them which can later be dissected for analysis - this 'property' is its colour, this 'property' is its shape...and so forth.

But I reach that point out of nominalism, I sense you're getting there some other way?

It's referring to the properties of experience, or we could say "the things in experience," from the perspective of that experience. — Terrapin Station

What does "from the perspective of the experience" mean here? The properties of the experience might well be the brain states it instantiates, but that's accessible via third parties, so that's not it. The difference is something to do with this "from the perspective of the experience", but I cannot fathom what that might mean. I don't understand how an experience can have a perspective.

(a) "The properties of the table"

are different than

(b) "The properties of the table as you experience it"

If for no other reason simply because your experience doesn't literally have a table in it.

(b) are qualia — Terrapin Station

Again, (b), by this definition, might well be brain states completely accessible to a third party. The 'properties' of the table as you experience it might well be the effects it has on the brain, in the same way as the 'properties' of the table in reality could be the effects it has on passing photons, gravity etc..

some people deny qualia, partially because they don't want it to be the case that there's something about mentality that's inherently third-person inaccessible, because that's a problem for tackling mentality from a scientific perspective. — Terrapin Station

I don't see how this helps, we could equally say that some people need to cling to qualia to preserve human-uniqueness, or pet theories about consciousness and free-will. As @fdrake pointed out, there's all sorts of baggage going along with these concepts. Neither party can play the innocent.

once you distance yourself from it, it becomes almost an antropological study of a bunch of humans who have learened to use words in a funny way. — StreetlightX

I think that's true, but I don't think it precludes any value in such an anthropological approach, nor does it preclude an attempt to unravel what is meant by it in their own terms. Unless I've misunderstood what you're saying?

So in other words, experiencing sights and sounds and tactile sensations and so on, and not our judgments and desires and emotions and so on. — Terrapin Station

But part of the experience of sights and sounds is our judgement about them. It's inextricably linked.

All properties that are not quantities (that are not simply numerical). — Terrapin Station

So when you said...

I just don't experience things like that. I've never felt like there's something which it is like to be me. How the hell am I supposed to tell? — fdrake


It's just the qualitative properties of your experiences. You must have qualitative properties to your experiences. — Terrapin Station

And...

I don't understand Nagel's question. Is he asking what it is to be the whole bat, or just it's brain, or what? — Harry Hindu


The qualitative properties of the bat's experiences, from the bat's perspective. — Terrapin Station

You were referring to any property of experience that isn't a numerical?

So the property of judgement (attitudinal properties) which you said you weren't talking about, are they numerical, or excluded for some other reason?

Are you fixated, for some reason on defining things by what they're not? You seem to only want to clarify what you're saying by talking about what it's not. Why is it proving so difficult to say what it is? Are you suggesting that there's such a near-infinite number of properties that would count as qualitative that simply listing them is impossible, leaving you only with the option to say what they're not?

The issue here is trying to define in more precise terms what the expression /question "what it's like" is referring to, or being used to communicate.

So far, after having got over the knee-jerk "...but you know what it means", we've had suggestions that it is referring to something consequent to experience, but which is somehow unique and ineffable (but we haven't established how it has either property). We've had that it refers to qualia, but defining 'qualia' seems no less mired, and we've had that it refers to 'qualitative' properties of experience, but 'qualitative' here seems to just mean 'what it's like', so that doesn't get us anywhere useful either.

It's not saying anything at all about attitudes, preferences, valuations, etc. — Terrapin Station

Unfortunately I'm not trying to establish what it's not saying, otherwise that response would have been very helpful. Call me crazy, but that seems like a rather long-winded way of going about establishing what you mean. What I'd prefer to know is what it is saying.

So,if not attitudinal, then what kind of property are qualitative properties, how does the term qualitative help us understand what 'what it's like' language is trying to capture?

Don't know, but it's also not relevant to the point; it's the fact that they work at all which undermines the model of 'bottom-up' causality. — Wayfarer

How? How would the chemical in the drug causing a release of endorphin be 'bottom-up' yet the learnt response from the venrtomedial pre frontal cortex to the visual stimuli of pill-taking causing a release of endorphin is somehow not? They seem like exactly the same type of causal relationship to me.

Also, if you’re a subjectivist how can you claim that subjectivism is factually correct when subjectivists don’t believe in facts? This is what I mean about relativists. They say silly things like nothing is true and then claim “nothing is true” is true. — Mark Dennis

It is possible to be subjectivist about some matters but not others. Subjectivism is just an empirical conclusion about where a truth-maker might reasonably lie for propositions. The answer to this question might well be different for propositions in different fields of thought. For example the 'truth' of Beethoven is a great composer' is not to be found in the world, but we might reasonably think that the truth of 'I can fly unaided' is definitely to be found in the world. It must therefore be possible to be subjectivist about some matters, but not others.

Individuals who claim there are no moral truths have the potential for a dark hidden bias. A reason why they either hope there are no moral truths or a reason why they want to convince other people of it. Now I’m not suggesting this of you but it’s one that should make you pause when listening to other moral antirealist views. — Mark Dennis

I don't see how this doesn't also affect moral realists who have a strong incentive to appeal to some objective, higher-authority, to get people to behave the way they prefer.

point of them, ... is to plainly suggest 'mind over matter'. The fact that they work at all is inconvenient for materialism. — Wayfarer

So why don't placebos work on people with Alzheimer's Disease? Is the fact that Alzheimer's damages the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (where learnt initiates of neurotransmitters like the pain-reducing endorphin are are mediated), just a coincidence?

What about the fact that Naloxene - an endorphin reduction agent - has been found to eliminate the pain reduction effect of placebos? That just coincidence too, or has Naloxene somehow made it's way over to the mysterious non-material realm where you were hoping placebo effects were coming from?

I'm not referring to qualia in any unusual manner. — Terrapin Station

You said "It's just the qualitative properties of your experiences. You must have qualitative properties to your experiences."

In Nagel, Jackson and Chalmers (three of the major users of the term you were trying to define) it does not simply mean the qualitative properties of your experience without you using 'qualitative' in some specific or technical way (which is why I specified the definition I was using). 'Qualitative' properties, by my definition, are attitudinal responses - like/dislike, positive/negative. These are things which could - in theory - be measured and determined by a third party. The position of Nagel, Jackson and Chalmers is that qualia cannot - even in theory - be reduced to facts which are accessible by a third party, As you later specified with regards to the question of what it's like to be a bat.

Chalmer's P-Zombie, for example, is predicated entirely on the fact that all brain functions (including feeling - happiness, sadness etc) could go in and yet still some aspect of qualia be missing - this elusive 'what it's like' that we're trying to get you to define.

But as Hacker points out, if attitudinal feeling is what they meant then "Such questions can be answered, and one need not be an X or similar to an X in order to answer them. One merely has to be well informed about the lives of Xs"

A lot of what you call my 'reading comprehension' issues are me trying to charitably interpret something you've said that is superficially trite and uninteresting as if it were a meaningful contribution to the debate. To do that I have to do an awful lot of reading in to what little you write. As @fdrake said "More words please".

This is a case in point. My first reaction to that single sentence you felt like gave an definition of qualia was that by 'qualitative', you meant the second definition I quoted - 'what it's like', the 'quality' of the experience. I charitably dismissed that option because to define it that way would be pointlessly circular. Perhaps I was wrong and you did in fact mean to be pointlessly circular?

I'm guessing that you mean Hacker's "Is There Anything It Is Like to Be a Bat"? I'll have to read through that again, but I don't recall him saying anything that amounts to "What it's like' does not make sense in terms of conscious experience" — Terrapin Station

even for the limited range of being transitively conscious of something or other, it would be quite wrong to suppose that there is always or even usually an answer to the question ‘What was it like for you to be conscious of ...?’

It is equally misconceived to suppose that one can characterize what it is to be a conscious creature by means of the formula ‘there is something which it is like to be’ that creature, something it is like for the organism.

The sentences ‘There is something which it is like to be a human being’, ‘There is something which it is like to be a bat’, and ‘There is something which it is like to be me’, as presented by the protagonists in this case, are one and all awry.

it is wrong for Nagel to suggest that ‘we know what it is like [for us] to be us’, that there is something ‘precise that it is like [for us] to be us’ and that ‘while we do not possess the vocabulary to describe it adequately, its subjective character is highly specific.’ It is mistaken of Edelman and Tononi to assert that we all ‘know what it is like to be us’, and confused to of them suppose that ‘there is “something” it is like to be us’. And it is a confusion to think, as Searle does, that for any conscious state, ‘there is something that it qualitatively feels like to be in that state’.

While it’s true everything we define to be ordered has a designer, it’s also true that all designers are intelligent terrestrial animals. There is nothing to suggest designers could be otherwise because we’ve never seen any other possible designer, in the same way we’ve never seen any other source for design. So it would be illogical to assume that the universe could be designed by anything other than intelligent terrestrial animals — aporiap

Exactly.

All the artefacts we know have been designed are also artefacts of the late Pleistocene, so that puts a limit on the age of the universe too.

Also, of all the artefacts we know have been designed, none of them are larger than the earth, so the universe must be pretty small.

Intelligent Design logic is great, we'll have all the mysteries of the universe sorted in no time at this rate.