Now let's look at a past event. You have found a coin on the street, in the heads position. There is no chance that it could have been found at that time and place in the tails position, because it was in the heads position. The fact that it was in the heads position excludes the chance (possibility) that it was in the tails position. — Metaphysician Undercover

That's not true. Possibility is not actuality. What happens is not a measure of possibility.

If that were so, possibility would be incoherent because only what happened could occur. Every event would be pre-determined and there would only be on possible outcome in the future. Possibility would be an illusion present by lack of knowledge about the future.

Instead, possibility is a logical truth, one that does not change or alter with respect to what happens in the world. Consider I six-sided die in a traditional example. It's always true there are six possible outcomes. No matter what I end rolling, it is true the other five number were possible-- that's why one of the many numbers I rolled was a possible outcome, rather than the necessary one. I had chance to roll other numbers, I just didn't.

Free will is actually one of the best examples to demonstrate this. If we were to believe your account of possibility, no-one could make a choice between two possible options. What they end up doing would be the only action the could have taken, as them acting in a different way, in that time and space, would exclude any possibility the might have acted otherwise.

For free will to function, possible options have to be available, no matter what someone ends up doing. That's how we can say the murder had a choice about whether to kill someone. Despite the fact they acted one way, it was possible they could have acted otherwise. Other outcomes at points in space and time have to be possible if free will is to be coherent.

How?

That's not necessarily true. That is a false dichotomy. Hard Problemers just do not make the category error of explaining experience by simply referring to causes when we are looking for correlates (how it is that physical things are experiences). — schopenhauer1

Experiences are states of the world. That's what it means to be "physical." Not a reduction of one state to another, but to be a state of the world. Your accusations of strawman are missing what the criticism of the "hard problem" is. No-one is trying to explain experience by reducing it to a correlate. They are saying experiences, themselves, exist. The sort of explanation the Hard Problem wants is incoherent. Description of experience is given by "experience," not by "caused by X." If we have the correlates in question, existing experience and an existing brain together, we have a full account of the cause of consciousness. There no extra link to explain. Our existence beyond of descriptions is a different subject entirely and has no relevance to describing the causality of experience.

Actually many probably think quite the opposite- that the world is more than our descriptions and hence why they say that the descriptions (the material causes) do not seem to answer the "hard question". — schopenhauer1

The "hard question" is incoherent. If the world is more than our descriptions, how there be a description which gives that? The issue with the "hard problem" is not that the world is thought to be more than descriptions, it is that fact is somehow meant to have description. For the Hard Problemer, even the world outside language is meant to be given in language.

I don't know where you get that from. You are saying really contradictory things. First you said that hard problemers only look at descriptions (models?) and now you admit that they don't do that but instead quite the opposite, that it is beyond mere models. However, Hard Problemers do seem to posit plenty of ideas that are descriptions but realizing that descriptions can only approximate what is happening, using imperfect language.

I don't know what you mean that we would have to detail the nature of us, in language, as more than language. Language is being used to convey things that are metaphysical- pretty heady stuff, so yeah, it's going to probably involve more than just a straightforward scientific description (if that's what you even mean by "more than language"). — schopenhauer1

You have to remember they view models as only approximate. Using models, for them, means to only approximate what's happening, rather than describing the world. They think we can't give descriptions of the world at all-- that knowledge is only about our ideas rather than stuff that's occurring outside our language.

Solving the "hard problem" would be to state in language that which is outside language. If I could give an account of "experience," that was "experience" rather than a mere description of it, then the supposed issue would be resolved.

Are you perhaps discussing New Mysterians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_mysterianism ? This particular set of adherents may fit the description you say, but they seem to only be a subset of hard problemers. Not all hard problmers are New Mysterians. — schopenhauer1

Nope. They are just a bit more honest than the other Hard Problemers. They realise the argument of the "hard problem" requires consciousness to beyond understanding and so make that argument. This understanding is just as true for any other Hard Problemer, it's just they haven't realised it.

They aren't willing to reach for answers though, for any answer is dismissed as inadequate. Whatever we say will be "just a model" and so a failure, even our description of our own extension beyond language. Instead of understanding what we are, beings who are more than language, they treat us like we are a mystery-- "We don't really know what we are.Wooooo."

When I say they do not understand Being, this is what I mean. They view our inability to give full description of ourselves as a failure of knowledge. Supposely, to resolve the "mystery," we would have to detail the nature of us, in language no less, as "more than language."

Fundamentally, they cannot accept we are more than language. When confronted with our extension beyond language, they say we don't make sense, that we are logically impossible, rather than realise that existing means to be more than language, so we actually make perfect sense.

That only repeats the error of Plato. The forms of the world are considered an inevitable outcome of enteral logic. But this isn't true. No form of the world is inevitable. It always takes an action of the world to make it so. For a grammar to be used, someone has to exist using it. It's not inevitable by the logic rule of grammar.

All rules of grammar are true. Even those of language which is never spoken. They are eternal. But this doesn't define they are spoken. Only bodies can do that. The realm of infinite intellectual meaning has no power here.

And this why language ought to be thought of in aesthetic or "phenomlogical" terms. It turns us away from the fiction that the world is made from infinite meanings of intellect back towards the worldly states which constitute it.

The rational structure of inevitablity, world out of form, is the greatest metaphysical blunder of philosophy. It gets the relationship of logic to the world backwards. Form doesn't make the world. World expesses form-- there are rational patterns to the world, but they are an expression of what they world is doing, not a constraint which defines what the world must do.

The point is there is no catergory error. Experiences are physical states. They are of the same existence as everything else. Not in the reductive sense of "only being a brain", but in sense of experiences being of the world. To be an experiencing being is to be material, a distinction of the material world, which may be described.

A proponent of the "hard problem" does not agree. They view the world to be of their experience rather than experience to be of the world. The reason they struggle with Being is because their position is trying limit existence of anything to their description. Deep down they cannot understand the world is more than what we say about it, for they view our world to be limited to our experience.

When we have a model, they insist we only describe our experience and not the world. Understanding Being is closed to them because they limit knowledge only to properties and parts which are stated in language. They deny the world can be more than what they say.

This is why they say "doesn't make sense" whenever that which is more than language-- identity, causality, meaning-- is spoken about-- they foolishly think the world only extends to their experience. For the world to be more, to be a person who is more than what is said or thought, is thought to be impossible.

But that's the problem. The issue isn't a failure to recognise models work, it's the inability to understand the world is acting. In other words, they do not understand how descriptions work. Supposely, to describe anything that occurs in the world, we have to be that state ourselves-- supposedly description of me experience fails because it's not the being of my experience.

Knowledge doesn't work that way. To describe doesn't require being. It just needs an awareness. Descriptions don't need to be what they are describing. Indeed, that's exactly what characterises a description: a state of representation of something else.

"Your experience (you are really referring to the being who experiences)" being more than any description of it cause (e.g. brain) or even description of your experiences (e.g. sadness, knowledge of this forum, happiness, etc., etc.) is to be expected. This doesn't mean descriptions fail. Or that what is described isn't part of the world. It merely means any person is more than any description or them.

The difference between being (existing) and describing (representing) always means there is more to the world than any description, no matter how accurate. Even if I were to spend hours stating what you'd done in life, it would still only be a description. The world contains more than just my description: you. Not a failure of description, but the truth that more than my description exists.

Those who consider there is a "hard problem." Or those who consider descriptions of the world to be talking about something seperate to the world.

Most likely disagree. I'm saying this who think there is a "hard problem" are fools concerned with worshiping ignorance-- when we know something about the world, they say it's impossible.

Well, that's actually the problem. Models are considered to have nothing to do with the world, so no casual description will ever make sense.

Since causality is understood as symbolic but not worldly, no description will ever make sense to them. No matter how much we describe, the cry will always be: "but you've only describe a model. The world being like that doesn't make sense." According to them, we can never know the world. Knowledge doesn't make sense to them.

The point is the affect is embodied. It not symbolism which sends and responds to the message. Bodies do that. Without bodies all you have is a meaning which is not expressed by anything in the world. So it is for every instance of knowledge, symbolism and culture. Those differences are worldly, are stuff bodies do. There is no chain of being. The intellectual and cultural are not seperate from biology.

Indeed, with respect to differences in the world, they are only there because of it. If human biology suddenly lost its lingistical response tomorrow, the organisation of human society and interaction would alter overnight. The culture you consider so transcendent of biology would be gone. Biological states cause its presence or absence. Our world is not present by symbols. Its differences are bodily, a range of objects expressing the symbolic.

To put into the context of Beings, the problem is that objectification is located in The Chain of Order, not in Beings that are objects.

If something says: "You're an object" it doesn't constrain my meaning. I could still mean basically anything-- I could be Prime Minster, a great artist, an equal among others, more than what anyone else says I mean etc.,etc.

To be an "object," a state of the world, means exactly nothing. Existence preceeds (or is regardless of) essence to quote the insight Sartre doesn't fully realise the implication of.

There is no order I am reducable to, no assertion of meaning which can capture or constrain who I am. Any imposition of Order others assert of me, I defy in my expression of infinite meaning.

Now they might force all sorts of horrible things on me, they might make my life a misery or even destroy me, but they can never take my logical identity. I will always be a state of the world which expresses a meaning more than the Order they try to reduce me to.

Treating people as objects is not defined by saying they are objects. It's formed in reducing them to an Order which supposedly grants the wisdom of who they are and what they mean.

The Chain of Being is abhorrent because it treats people and the wider world as a means to achieve an imagined utopia. Order steamrolls the Being of everyone and thinks them mere 'objects' to be used.

That logic is precisely the problem.

Culture and discourse are embodied practices.
They formed out of biology interacting with the environment. And yes, this means there is no Great Chain of Being, just a whole lot of states of the world, various interactions of biology and environment. Culture is not a force that exists above and separate to our embodiment.

More like you are confusing stated hierarchies with nature: a manifestly grotesque equivocation of the meaning of people and the world with principles of what the world is meant to be.

You are continuing to the Great Chain of Being which views the world as defined by something outside itself-- the principle of hierarchy that supposed to determine states of the world. Everyone and everything is supposedly "divinely planned" by semiotics rather than being themselves.

If that is so, how come you still insist on the 'hard problem?' What is missing in the account which says states of bodies cause states of consciousness?

I'm not talking about the identity of an object though-- the presence or absence of an object isn't its form. My point is the object is material (all existing thing are of the same realm), not that its meaning is exhausted in existing or not existing.

Until we start talking about it terms of consciousness. Then you'll insist experiences aren't of the same realm as bodies, speaking as if experiences/sensation/language were not part of that world we know.

Language is a feature of sensate bodies. Culture is something human bodies do. So is logical reasoning. Language is an expression of sensate bodies not an opposition to them.

There no going back to nature because our embodiment has been here all along.

Do you remember our earlier discussion on knowledge in this thread? All sensory knowledge inuited. If I'm to recognise the bookshelf in front of me, I need more than just the object in front of me. If I did not intuit the distinction between the bookshelf and the wall, I would not know either. To sense something is to invited it. The distinction between sensing and intitung you are trying to draw is incoherent.

But you have said it. According to your argument conciousness cannot be part of the world because it's not sensed/intuited/experienced in the same way as other things.

Your appeal to speculation is a contradiction. If something cannot be part of the physical world, then there's no way it "might be true." The "cannot be apart" excludes any such possibility. If something might be part of the (physical) world, then "cannot be a part" is false.

I'm not playing the reductionist. My point is that the world cannot be reduced to the objects that we say are "sensed" in opposition to "intuited." The material extends beyond them. There are things which are not empirical sensations of a point in space.

So you don't sense pain? Happiness? You don't intuitively feel others have thoughts and feelings? You don't know the child who touches the hot stove will suffer?

Experiences are sensed all the time. Much of philosophy is just irrationally prejudiced against the idea because it doesn't involve a particular sensory experience. The result is we ignore and dismiss the existence of consciousness. Conciousness becomes this thing which "doesn't makes sense" because we told ourselves it's impossible to sense, that it can't be part of the world we know.

This is the reductionism of idealism-- if I can't see, hear, smell, taste or touch it, then it can't be part of the world. Everything is reduced to a set of particular sensations rather than being recognised itself.

How so? What do you think "physically" entails? And how do bodies have it but not conciousness?

It's worth pointing out the influence of this link has greatly diminished in the secular West. Over the last century, in stated philosophy at least, we've been slowly undoing this immaterialism within social tradition.

It would not be amiss to say most of cannot see just how intertwined they are. Since our culture shifted to understand the world (particularly people) in term of themselves rather than otherworldly order, we now laugh at the latter. The underlying immaterialist influence had been mitigated by culture that says it's bullshit-- we can almost treat it like it's "innocuous" whim precisely because it suppressed in culture.

If it were accepted as profound, as a couple of commentators here wish, it would again become a (more) dominate justification for social oppression. To pose The Order (e.g. men naturally better than women, white people naturally better than black people, etc., etc.) would be supposed as coherent description of the world.

I did in my previous posts: states of conciousness are states of the world, are linked in its causality, making conciousness of the same realm as any state of the world.

Such descriptions are not abstract. In pointing out the connectionss of things in causality, atoms, statues and people, we are doing the opposite of abstraction-- we haven't supposed talking about the how the world works is just a matter of speaking in terms of measured atoms or the mathematical equations of physics.

It's not abstractions which are at stake. The failure of the materalist reductionist is to ignore the presence of consciousness and it's relationship to causality.

The materalist reductionists are actually very good at abstracted causality. They give rules which measure causal relationships all the time. Where they fail is to describe causality in terms of the many present states.

Materialist reductionist pick out an abstracted causes to conciousness perfectly well (e.g. the brain). In this respect they are better than the immaterialism reductionists who just say "Consciousness woo."

They do not describe consciousness as a presence though. The one thing the cannot say is: "Material states of consciousness exist and are caused by various states of the world (e.g. brains).

Nothing is caused by abstract entities. Causality is always a matter of an actor and an effect. Things cause other things. The case against the materalist reductionist is not built on a failure to understand abstracted causality. It's argued on the basis of non-abstract causality-- on the failure of the materalist reductionist to describe causality in terms of the things which act.

Nope. Conscious states are material. They are part of the same world as bodies-- just a different state of the world.

"Non-physical" is the immaterialist reductionism talking again. Supposedly, states of consciousness are meant to belong to a different realm because they are distinct from bodies. It's part of the ideology which denies existence to consciousness, putting it in another realm as if it had nothing to do with rest of existing states.

For sure, but that only speaks to the problem. Are people formal laws, prime numbers or intellectual objects? What about the rest of our world? No. They are far more than that. Indeed, they often confound the meanings of "order of nature": parts of the world act in ways we have never measured before, Kings cease to rule, men cease to have authority over women, etc.,etc. The world is always more than this notion of rational intelligence which is meant to give us everything.

Indeed, here you sound exactly like the materialist reductionist-- just worship the "order of nature" and you will have all the wisdom you ever need. Reduce life life to this formal law, this prime number, this underlying vital connection everything-- like measured atoms are to the materialist reductionist.

It is, in your words: "the only worthwhile end." Like materialist reductionist, you reduce life, only you do it to the idea of connection to everything rather than atoms.

The materialist reductionist is only dealing with the hangover of the immaterialist reductionist. Their inability to take consciousness seriously is because they've brought with them the idea of "the cause outside nature." The reason they deny consciousness is because they think it's impossible for a cause of consciousness to be within nature. In their minds, they have to exclude consciousness for material causality to make any sense. Like the immaterialist, they are too busy caught up in the worship of the order "consciousness is outside the material" to understand the world that's in front of them.

The point is that, in considering the "order of nature" to be outside nature, we draw meaning not in terms of the world, but in terms of fictions which are not the world. Our eyes turn away from agents, what they do to each other and how they act towards each other.

Life and knowledge become not an act to understand human life and it's interactions with the world, but rather a quest to ignore it. Instead of respecting the meaning of our lives and how we treat others, insight into life becomes a question of serving the supposed "order of nature."

The world is put aside to worship the order which lies outside. We fail to understand our lives and how they relate to meaning-- Kings rule because all that matters is the divine order, men dominate over women because "it's the order of nature," etc.,etc. Everyone is too busy looking at the utopia of God's authority to notice what's happening in the world.

Consciousness. A state of the world that is consciousness. No reductionism. No need to be defined by an other terms.

I've said in the past that people do not take the existence of experiences seriously. This is what I mean. Anyone who thinks there is a "hard problem" thinks considers existence consciousness to be impossible. They either try to reduce to the brain (reductionist materialists) or trying to pose it as a transcendental infinite -- a reduction of the world to meaning-- that has nothing to do with the world (idealists).

I know you did. That's my point. You always jump to that reductionist position, even though I hand't argued it at all. The idea consciousness would, itself, be a state of the world is considered impossible.

As for what it could mean, nothing more than the ordinary description of cause and effect: X (body interacting with environment) which then results in a distinct state, which is neither the body or environment (an experience).

It's no different to saying, for example, that letting go of a rock causes it to fall. In that situation there is a cause (hand realising the rock) which results in a distinct effect (the falling rock). Yet, we don't go around saying we don't know how the falling rock is caused, unless we somehow explain how it's the same thing as the hands which released it. Consciousness should be no different.

What else would we have? Anytime we "derive," we are relying on what we already know-- X must mean Y. We can't "derive" without first knowing something. As such, what we derive is reliant upon the relationship we already know by intuition. We can't get outside what we know (or don't know) to conclude what must be true regardless of knowledge.

I never said any such thing. States of body cause conocious states is what I argued, not that conocious states were states of body.

I'm doing anything but leaving out that which is not states of body. My argument is actually saying states of consciousness are not states of the body-- they are instances of existing conciousness not any part of the body.

This is what I mean about you maintaining reductionism. Like any reductionist ( whether they be materialistic or idealistic), you view the existence of consciousness as nonsensical. So much so that you read any argument about consciousness as reductionist, even when it's exactly the opposite.

Now that this confusion is resolved, I'll ask again: what exactly is missing in an account of conciousness that says states of consciousness (which are NOT a state of the body) result from states of the body interacting with the environment?

How is it reductionism to say, for example, that "mystical woo" isn't responsible for consciousness? If I say that states of experience result out of states of the body interacting with the environment, what has I left out? What truth am I missing?

Only because there is a certain reductionism within Derrida's thought. In the eagerness to avoid reduction of meaning to anyone discouse, it leaves too little behind of any discouse. To say that any discouse has specific relevance, even Derrida's own, is regarded as ignorance of reductionism.

Here we may turn Derrida's (apparent) discursive scepticism against him. If we take his challenge to discouse literally, we are supposedly never right to insist on the meaning of one discouse over another, even his own. Thus, Derrida's metaphysic tends not to be-- by both his critics and supporters-- described in terms of what it's trying to get at (no discouse is exaustive), but rather as a supposed mess of contradiction which says our discourses have no meaning.

Only because you maintain the reductionism of the elimativism/idealism, rather than moving on to a different metaphysic, one which has no interest in saying "the other side" has nothing to do with meaning.

"Mystical woo" only amounts to reductionism because your metaphysics are still locked into the idea that identifying causes of the world means saying nothing else is relevant.

Derrida is really an advocate for metaphysics. What he argues against is reduction of the world and logic to a particular discouse. The major point of his philosophy is to stop confusing the presence of our metaphysics with the full extent of meaning and the world. His project is really to eliminate reductionism, a metaphysical point: no instance of discourse gives the entirety of meaning or the world.

That's precisely the fear and hatred of the world being spoken about. The idea that somehow, states of nature are more than themselves, that they somehow come from different realm.

It's a simultaneous hatred of the world AND the meaning expressed by it. We ignore what we know about the world (e.g. that our experiences exist and are part of nature, that states of the world cause each other) and try to make it about a fiction instead (the "final cause" outside the world).

In doing so, we also ignore the infinte. The unity of the world, which is necessary, is misread as a finite state given by final cause (e.g. God, the transedencent)-- such that we think unity isn't there ( Nihilism) unless final cause if there to add it in.

The Allegory of The Cave is only an apt description of ignorance of the world. And it that ignorance of the world that immaterialism, with its reduction of the world to fiction, covets.

That's not a reductionist argument though. It's a causal one. Rather than precluding the existence of consciousness or saying it's the same as its cause, it merely argues an experience is caused an object which is not itself.

Here's where we see the reductionism of immaterialism. Supposedly, the given argument has rejected the existence of consciousness by saying it's caused by other states. An assumption which only makes sense if it is taken that consciousness has nothing to do with the material-- without that reduction, the possibility of material states causing the distinct instances of consciousness cannot be discounted.

Necessity is not in conflict with chaos, but rather an expression of it. Order is not an absence of possibility. It's expressed through it--when the world does something at "random," the necessary order of that state is spoken by the world.

Any actual state is born of possibility rather than eliminating it.

No-one said it was or had to be total. That was your supposition. You're the one who says any prevention of suffering must be total to be effective. How we ever to make progress in such an environment? If you are saying all prevention of suffering is actually worthless because its not total, then how is there a distinction between preventing suffering and causing it?

Neither is better than another becasue neither reaches the goal of eliminating all suffering. Even anti-natalism becomes no better than having children because it can't eliminate all suffering-- it remains true that all those people suffered be for their death.

Supposedly, we can't, in your words, prevent suffering once alive. If total absence of suffering is the standard, this inability extends to the death of all life too.

You are saying prevention of suffering cannot work-- you outright said it: "because I do not think we can prevent suffering once alive." Every instance of prevention, under your argument, is a failure because it doesn't totally eliminate suffering.

I'm talking in the sense of existing without suffering. In the sense of eliminating certain instances of suffering, it can work perfectly well. "Sagehood" as read by Schopenhauer misreads the nature of suffering and its prevention. Supposedly, all suffering must be eliminated to reach Nirvāṇa. Although not in the spirit of Buddhism (in practice, it really suggests: "Suffering is not something you should endure extra suffering for. That's just dumb. Eliminate it), the reading is consistent a literal reading of some of the texts.

In this respect, Buddhism presents a fiction of "hope" as a stepping stone to eliminating particular instances of suffering. We might not ever become above all our suffering, but the idea (however brief) is sometimes someone breaking out of a nihilistic funk.

The philosophical pessimist isn't intersted in such fictions. They want to look at the horrors of the world, describe them and take us forward in that knowledge-- to recognise suffering an act appropriately towards it.

It's not about being sages though; that's the illusion of "coping" with suffering talking-- Sagehood and Buddahood are a falsehood. Supposedly, people are meant to achieve this state where they are impervious to suffering. Never happens. There is no such thing as "coping" with suffering.

Prevention, however, is different. In moments where suffering doesn't exist in the first place, there is no problem. I am arguing Stoicism creates these moments. Not false "coping" with suffering, where we try to tell ourselves our suffering isn't a lie, but an absence of these moments, where some of our worst anxieties over not getting what we want are eliminated.

If someone becomes a Stoic and changes from a person who flies off the handle at every disappointment, to someone who's disappoint passes or never becomes life consuming, states of suffering have been prevented. There's no illusion to on longer feeling constantly upset of anxious about what they world did not give you-- it's a real absence of a suffering.

Your pessimism is still caught under the illusion of "coping." It treats suffering like is something which could be resolved, as if it were a matter of "coping." As a result, you read instances where suffering is prevented as "coping." The Stoic's victory (prevention) over suffering (prevention of anxiety and disappointment) is misread as their philosophical falsehood (that one can "cope" with suffering). Unless, we undo suffering we are supposedly "just coping." That's not how it works. Suffering is never undo. Life hurts a lot of the time. Victory (i.e. prevention) over suffering doesn't change this, it merely gives us some wonderful moments where we are not burned with a suffering.

Your position is not pessimistic enough, for it still treats suffering as something to resolve, and ignorant of prevention, as it treats undoing suffering as the standard for preventing suffering.