"Classing all the cases together" is a way of talking about the concepts we formulate as such--those are abstractions that range over a number of unique instances. And sure, insofar as we're talking about concepts, that's fine.
— Terrapin Station

What about insofar as we're using concepts to talk about (e.g. compare and sort) the unique instances? — bongo fury

[That] question seems to be about concepts where they aren't abstractions ranging over a number of particular instances. I wouldn't say that would qualify as a concept. It would just be a name and/or description of the particular. ("Description of" isn't really possible without concepts ranging over a number of particulars, though.) — Terrapin Station

Oh, I get it. I'm right to interpret your "concepts" as mental events analogous to general terms like adjectives. (No?) But when I blithely speak of using them to sort particulars you are alarmed because you see a general term as naming (or pointing at or designating or referring to) a whole class of or abstraction from the instances, as an entity in its own right. You can't see it referring to a particular and still being general? (Correct me.)

But can't a nominalist deny the class or abstraction, and reconstrue a general statement (e.g. a predication or attribution or description) quite simply as shared naming, i.e. as ascribing the property to, or simply pointing out and thereby sorting under the term, all of the instances, severally? I'm not saying that approach doesn't throw up problems. But it's what I was about in the second paragraph.

Re the content of that paragraph, I don't think there's any way to experience someone else's consciousness--I think that in principle that is impossible. — Terrapin Station

Fair enough. Inconceivable, even? If my ability to compare my successive mental events (dynamic brain states) is afforded by continuous neural connection between them, couldn't I in principle get a similar bridge between mine and yours? I mean I can quite believe it might be inconceivable on your view. Just trying to see the view.

"Classing all the cases together" is a way of talking about the concepts we formulate as such--those are abstractions that range over a number of unique instances. And sure, insofar as we're talking about concepts, that's fine. — Terrapin Station

What about insofar as we're using concepts to talk about (e.g. compare and sort) the unique instances? Not fine? E.g.,

Given we're both looking at some distinct particular objects classed nonetheless together under the concept (which is to say, under any or all of my and your countless mental instances of the concept) of 'yellow-wavelength-reflecting', I notice that my dynamic brain states during this period all have properties which it is natural for me to class together as (which is to say, under any or all of my countless mental instances of my concept of) yellow (in the mental sense). And I wonder (as y'do) if my concept of mentally-yellow is roughly coextensive with yours, as I assume is the case with our concepts of EMR-yellow, and as might be tested if I got the right kind of acquaintance with your brain states and their properties?

Is that fine?

Ok, and "yellowness" might be a property of my experience while perceiving an object reflecting a certain wavelength?
— bongo fury

Right, it's a property of that object reflect[ing] that wavelength of EMR, and it's also a property of your experience per se (which is what qualia are). — Terrapin Station

I want to ask: is it a disposition or ability to reflect the certain wavelength?
— bongo fury

With respect to the object (the objective stuff), it's the fact that it reflects that wavelength of EMR, sure. That's not what it is with respect to our experience, though--our mental phenomena don't reflect that wavelength of EMR. In terms of our experience, it's a particular dynamic state of synapses, neurons, etc. — Terrapin Station

Particular in the sense of general but awaiting a clear physical definition (which would decide if a particular brain state was an instance of it)?
— bongo fury

Say what?

No, particular as in particular. And it has nothing to do with definitions, etc. — Terrapin Station

Ok, but I thought you were happy to at least class all the particular cases of yellow-wavelength-reflection together as cases (albeit different particular cases) of possession of "yellowness" (in the objective sense) by an object?

So I thought you would be happy to form a corresponding class of cases (each of them particular and different of course) of possession of "yellowness" (in the mental sense) by a brain state?

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

Particular in the sense of general but awaiting a clear physical definition (which would decide if a particular brain state was an instance of it)?

Right, it's a property of that object reflect[ing] that wavelength of EMR, and it's also a property of your experience per se (which is what qualia are). — Terrapin Station

Ok. One more thing, for now. This property... is it meaningful to ask: what is it? E.g., I want to ask: is it a disposition or ability to reflect the certain wavelength?

Right, it's a property of that object reflect[ing] that wavelength of EMR, and it's also a property of your experience per se (which is what qualia are). — Terrapin Station

Ok. One more thing, for now. This property... is it meaningful to ask: what is it? E.g., I want to ask: is it a disposition or ability to reflect the certain wavelength?

Yes, for maybe the fifth time now, properties are simply ways that things are, characteristics they have. — Terrapin Station

Ok, and "yellowness" might be a property of my experience while perceiving an object reflecting a certain wavelength?

No. And I'm a physicalist, by the way. — Terrapin Station

Oh yes, I knew that. So you assume a physicalist basis, but properties are part of it, not something you would (like Goodman) expect to construct?

Cool. Goodman was agnostic as to what we construct from what, though. Are you siding with what he would have called a phenomenalist basis, as against e.g. a physicalist one?

"Same/different" is qualitative. — Terrapin Station

And we construct quantities from qualities, a la Goodman in Structure of Appearance?

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

What about higher/lower... more/less... same/different ?

Btw, less words is more :up: :up: :up:

Going on my to-do list.

:up:

I hope that this explanation is more intuitive than this one wiki. Any comments? — alcontali

Just in case pictures help anyone with the wiki proof.

Grateful for notification of errors, or suggestions for further signposting or clarification.

Single pdf here.








No toilet humour intended. :chin:

What, in your opinion, is the difficulty with using music as a language? — TheMadFool

I just meant comparing or defining them at all is a challenge. (Fool's errand!)

It could be that language is already musical - there is such a thing as intonation in speech. Do you think this is sufficient to qualify language as musical? — TheMadFool

Yes, exactly... to say nothing of rhythm, tone, dynamics etc.

I think a few people here have emphasised the proportion of overlap of the two circles.

Some have noted the obvious distinction when it comes to semantic function (if there are no words). But, how to understand that very distinction? (Here, of course.)

Perhaps music as a language would require a level of proficiency that either only a few possess or requires an amount of practice that is just too much compared to the usual and easier process of language acquisition. — TheMadFool

Rap?? But of course you meant wordless... except that you envision (I take it) conventions of musical meaning... i.e. words, roughly speaking.

Actually I think I'm correct about what I said. It doesn't matter which note you choose the music is recognizable as long as you maintain the intervals and timings of the notes. — TheMadFool

Yes, along with all manner of analog features, not always preserved from one performance to the next, a melody contains a "core" pattern of relative pitch and duration, which is digital in the sense of being reliably identifiable (equate-able) across instances. Some instances higher than others, some faster than others.

Note that relative pitch is a log scale of frequency, turning ratios into arithmetic differences. Otherwise you will get confused, trying to do the kinds of comparison you are suggesting, which are difficult but worthwhile (and fun).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_%28linguistics%29?wprov=sfla1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_%28music%29?wprov=sfla1

In a world where identity is properly understood, — TheWillowOfDarkness

Grateful for a brief outline.

feelings at the thought of being more feminine,
— Pfhorrest

... i.e. of having a different sexual essence, no? — bongo fury

That's just having an identity. There is no specific set of properties which amount to being more feminine or not. — TheWillowOfDarkness

You should probably take that up with the OP, as the whole sentence is,

But I get good feelings at the thought of being more feminine, just physically, not talking about anything social yet. — Pfhorrest

Willow, I think the only semblance of common ground among everyone (else) here is acceptance of biological sex as an unproblematic (though complex) biological classification.

If you were at least on that ground (but I fear not), then I could read your comment,

There is no specific set of properties which amount to being more feminine or not. — TheWillowOfDarkness

as a critique of essentialism about sex. Would that be appropriate?

IME trans people only accidentally sound like they are employing gender essentialism because of the conflation of gender with what I have dubbed “bearing”. — Pfhorrest

But then you not only reinforce the received, mythical psycho-sexual essences called genders and orientations, you invent some more and call them bearings. This is more essentialism not less. You aren't questioning the abstraction of masculinity and femininity (and all their specious, arbitrary and culture-specific associations) from biologically male and female at all. You are reinforcing it by proposing to measure or survey people according to, for example, their

feelings at the thought of being more feminine, — Pfhorrest

... i.e. of having a different sexual essence, no?

Political, religious, economic, philosophical, musical, sexual and gender subversives... I expect them to subvert, because I see them subvert.

Since money/ownership is a mythical cultural construct. Folks should be combating the cultural construct, not bowing to it while claiming to be trying to buck it.

Somehow, I suspect my version will not garner such enthusiastic support. — unenlightened

Obviously at least half of economic and political theories try to understand money as a social construction, not a natural or theological one. So your comparison is welcome after all.

Don't let people think you actually oppose gender-non-conformism, though? As though you think conventional genders are natural?

essentialism/constructionism. — fdrake

Seems to me that the lost tempers and tribal signalling are mainly about this.

@Swan (and I, and possibly @Bitter Crank, @Terrapin Station and @Artemis) incredulous that gender-non-conformists, of all people, would be essentialist about sex, to the extent even of being able to wish to have a different sexual essence. (As though anyone even had one.)

OP and the mods keen to defend gender-non-conformists whatever their thesis, especially since attacks, and civilised objections too, so often suggest essentialism. Like, a notion that cultural norms have a biological origin. (Which, when I put it like that...)

But the suggestion is often mistaken, i.e. misread, not there.

They actually are named after him according to Wikipedia. Evidently the present owners don't consider Gottfried's mug a selling point, sadly. Nice biscuits though. If not the best of all possible. :scream:

It makes me feel trapped in my self and give me anxiety. — raindrop

I can cheer you up.

See yourself as an information processing machine (don't go away...) levels more complex than any artificial model, but still a machine we could in principle enter...

as into a mill. And this granted, we should only find on visiting it, pieces which push one against another... — Gottfried Leibniz, Monadology

Then notice that, often, it isn't at all clear where one such "mill" or processing system ends and another begins.

Certainly, within a physically defined building or person, processing appears to consist in sharing of information by relatively independent subsystems, but this doesn't lead us to doubt the single collaborative function of the larger whole.

Less obviously, but arguably, information mills and persons, by sharing information (talking, singing, grooming, exchanging letters), often collaborate in a larger system of the same kind that each of them exemplifies individually.

On this view, seeing mind as a function or process instead of a substance, human communication (when it happens) is what we often naively take it to be: a meeting/joining of minds. Only dualistic habits of thought spoil the view, and make us think we are separated from each other, and each trapped in some interior, like an audience in a theatre.

Can anything? (... support a normative?)

Logic can't prove a normative. — Terrapin Station

Can it support it?

I'm somewhat inclined to reject essence. I think that we can speak of things in themselves, but that, when we do, we are really speaking of what they ideally are. The subjective aspect is necessarily present by that there is an ideal. — thewonder

"Essence", "in themselves", "ideally", "subjective aspect"...

For the modern nominalist, all of these notions deserve the same treatment as (and probably more urgently than) do properties, numbers and sets... that treatment being, ditching, or else nominalist reconstrual.

... which is to say, reconstrual in terms of particular objects and the words or pictures pointing at them (and thereby sorting them and classifying them and making patterns of them).

E.g. my favourite book.

You know that scene with the cinema queue in Annie Hall, where Woody is lucky enough to (ahem) marshal Marshall McLuhan against the bloke quoting him? I'm seriously tempted to ask Professor Mazur to see if he can read my previous post, which has so annoyed you, without recognising it as a passable expression of ideas to be found (to my delight and no surprise at all) in the first section of that pdf (for which I'm grateful).

I feel badly misunderstood, but hey, this is the internet...

Another reason to forego point by point corrections to your post here is that I wanted in the first place to shorten the thread, not lengthen it. As I dared to remark right away, between the vast magisterial tracts talking straight past each other,

shouldn't the mathematicians offer the finitist (especially since he objects to the identity of the 2's in 2+2) cardinal arithmetic and see if he is satisfied with that? — bongo fury

IOW, why not be...

a conceptual pluralist in that way. — fishfry

And, as @Terrapin Station deserves credit for often saying (and on this at least we should take notice), "one thing at a time, please".

What I originally said was that it's clear what "conscious experience" refers to. — Echarmion

And I said, that doesn't fit well with the claim that attempts to define and explain it are futile. I proposed, as a way forward, clarification of the reference of the term, from agreed clear cases towards less clear but more explanatory ones.

I meant to welcome your example and merely cast a preliminary glance at possible refinements (less clear cases) ahead. I don't blame you for not being impressed with those off-the-cuff suggestions.

Right, but uncertainties of memory aside, while we "recall" it, we are certainly consciously experiencing. — Echarmion

Yes, and the goal for me is to describe that experience accurately. Rightly or wrongly I sense a need to persuade against a defeatism about that goal. Hence the need to agree common ground.

I am not sure we can know when we are not conscious. How would we differentiate between not having been conscious and simply not remembering? — Echarmion

By the same token, though, popular assumptions about the "integration" of consciousness might be questioned. (E.g. Searle's idea of consciousness as a "field".) Again, I am opposed to defeatism about the prospect of knowledge about such things, even based on introspection. Perhaps we can learn to become less oblivious of the gaps in conscious experience. (Have you tried staying conscious whilst falling asleep?! :nerd: )

Anyway, thank you for hearing my objection to your defeatism, as I saw it, about the feasibility of explaining or defining consciousness.

Out of interest, for my informal survey... roughly at what point, if any, are you prepared to assume complete unconsciousness of a creature/device:

Mammal
Fish
Insect
Plant
State of the art AI
Smart phone
Pocket calculator
Rock
Molecule
None of the above

Thanks

If you are petting a cat right now, that's clearly a conscious experience. — Echarmion

Agreed, and it suggests several less clear cases that might be interesting. Like... me petting, or holding, the cat while drunk or asleep... or, Alexa the automatic cat-petter petting the cat... or, Alexa the autonomous neural-network machine self-trained to pet the cat... or, the cat's mother petting the cat.

If you remember petting a cat, that memory is also a conscious experience, — Echarmion

At least, it probably marks an occasion when consciousness happened, although not necessarily consciousness of the memory, except on the slightly question-begging interpretation of remembering as "recalling to mind". I might be trying and failing to identify the relevant word or picture (etc.) of the scene, or just curiously disturbed by an unconscious association with the scene or those symbols. But of course, my consciousness while petting the cat is not necessarily of the petting, either.

If you remember dreaming about petting a cat, that's a conscious experience that may or may not be based on another conscious experience, — Echarmion

Sure. Plenty of fascinating if potentially illusory data from introspection of transitioning into and out of "waking" consciousness. Man!

Equally, I desire to establish a common ground of agreed cases of non-consciousness. The project is compromised if you (or whoever) has pan-psychist sympathies... How about insects?

Anyway, thanks for at least humoring me by putting aside talk of the data "only existing subjectively" etc. Even if that gesture is only for the sake of argument... which I anticipate with (conscious, if ill-advised) pleasure.

Or, failing that, but still usefully, finding a common ground of clear cases and clear non-cases, and working from there.
— bongo fury

The problem is that conscious experience is so basic that there is no way to give examples. — Echarmion

Not with that attitude...

If I gave you an example, like petting a cat, — Echarmion

Yes! Please! What kinds of cat-petting experiences are clearly conscious and which unconscious? Let's play...

that example would only exist within your conscious experience. — Echarmion

:sigh: Really? No common ground here.

epiphenomenon — fresco

Dualism worthy of Descartes.

It's very clear what we refer to when we use that term. It's just difficult to explain or define it using language. — Echarmion

I would be curious [...] to know how you reconcile the two claims. — bongo fury

I don't see how these claims require reconciliation. Is an explanation using language constitutive for knowing what something is? — Echarmion

I would have thought it constitutive (or required) for being "very clear what we refer to". For being able to show examples of what we do and don't refer to. Which would be explaining and defining it, I would have thought. Ideally, as I say, finding a dividing line between what we do and don't refer to by the term.

Or, failing that, but still usefully, finding a common ground of clear cases and clear non-cases, and working from there.

We might all know when we are thinking, but it doesn't follow that we know what thoughts are. — Janus

But judging cases of thinking and not thinking would be a perfectly good place to start finding out what thoughts are.

My question still stands...are we witnessing 'the demise of philosophy as we know it' ?
Or to put it another way, is 'neurophilosophy' any more iconoclastic than the issues raised by Wittgenstein, the Pragmatists, or the Post Modernists. — fresco

:lol: Obviously no and no.

It's very clear what we refer to when we use that term. It's just difficult to explain or define it using language. — Echarmion

The only way I can reconcile the first (to me inexplicable) one of these claims with the second (perfectly reasonable) one is to hope that you mean to observe, merely, that we can easily enough find clear cases and clear non-cases of conscious experience, while quickly enough failing to find any sign of a dividing line... cases (perhaps less clear) close enough to non-cases to explain what makes the difference.

That would be cool, though. If we could agree some clear cases of both conscious and unconscious experience. And then discuss the less clear ones. We would have common ground, despite having apparently contrary philosophies.

But if what I suggest is of no interest to you, I would be curious anyway to know how you reconcile the two claims.

More than ever I see that mathematical equality is the same thing as logical identity. The same morally and the same technically in any mathematical framework you like. — fishfry

Really? With a child, discussing how the set of 2 pens here plus the set of 2 pens there makes a set of 4?

Wouldn't you want to be ready to climb down from platonist notions or foundations ("2 on the number line", or "the class of all pairs" etc.) and agree that the two separate concrete pairs of objects were being compared and found "equal" in cardinality or size, just as two pens might be found equal in weight, or in length? In other words, equivalent, and in the same equivalence class by this or that mode of comparison (in this case cardinality)? But obviously not identical?

Or would you want to get them with the platonist program straight away, and make sure they understood that 2 on the number line "sends" with itself in a two argument function returning at 4?

Notice they will soon learn to equivocate anyway between identity and equivalence, like any good mathematician not presently embroiled in philosophical or foundational quandary.

Not that @Metaphysician Undercover will be happy with any cavalier embrace of equivocation.

https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/67227/is-there-a-difference-between-equality-and-identity

Some interesting thoughts there. — fishfry

Yes, the irony... that competence in maths should not only involve easy equivocation imputing (with the equals sign) absolute identity here and mere equivalence (identity merely in some respect) there, but then also involve an "identity" (e.g. site menu) sign meaning only a batch-load (for all values of a variable) of cases of "equals", the latter still (in each case) ambiguous between identity and mere equivalence! (The ambiguity removed only by a probably unnecessary commitment to a particular interpretation.)

You see, reason consists of arrows of the type p => q. — alcontali

The type represented by "=>" being, you assume, syllogistic and deductive? Then finite chains will start abruptly, as you say.

Disconcerting perhaps. Depending on the meanings of the p's and q's.

But Hume and Quine have taught us that reason links p's and q's into chains and webs using other types of link as well. Inductive, associative, habitual, holistic. On this more inclusive view of reason, a finite web doesn't need a clear starting point. Morality, science etc. are large going concerns with unclear sources.

Deductive means any token of some p is license to print unlimited tokens of various (according to the rules) q, r.

Inductive, say "-->", means a more restricted licence, wherein some disputable quantity of tokens (or cases in point or sub-types) of some p is licence to print (utter etc.) some disputable variety of tokens of (according to some habit or disposition) q, r.

Deductive means unfettered influence by any one token-printing agent on any other. Contradictions thereby create (under the rules) an explosive mess, whereas consistent chains or webs are orderly, though oddly lacking in initial stimulation (of production of axiom tokens), except from some external sources (suppositions or observation statements or commandments).

Inductive means fettered influence. Contradictions aren't necessarily catastrophic, but the web (and its rules and fetters) isn't easily and uncontroversially traced, nor are sources of activity (completely unlicensed tokens) identifiable.

Deductive systems behave themselves, or soon crash. This is an attractive feature. Non-deductive systems can be chaotic or dysfunctional. Many people have wished to improve them by rendering them deductive, but they are wrong if they assume that kind of improvement to be either necessary or adequate.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/309873

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/374811

As I say, though, at what point does arithmetic become a philosophical puzzle for you, or your child?

Have addition as union of disjoint sets. Is that ok?

There is nothing in "3+5" to take the place of "mother", there is just Jesus and James. — Metaphysician Undercover

There is (implicitly) "sum of". (Not that the analogy follows through completely, as @Zuhair points out.)

But anyway, instead of trying to clear up his actual or perceived misunderstandings about out-and-proudly platonic math concepts, shouldn't the mathematicians offer the finitist (especially since he objects to the identity of the 2's in 2+2) cardinal arithmetic and see if he is satisfied with that?

:ok: :cool: