• Is there an external material world ?
    I do wonder though, what is visualization if it's not "pictures in the head"? — Marchesk

    Using your eyes.

    Or preparing to.
  • Is there an external material world ?
    Even the naked eye is a middle-man between the external world object and the brain/mental experience. — Michael

    Pictures in the head. Where would philosophy be without them?
  • Welcome Robot Overlords
    Yes. — Isaac

    Then drop the causation and correlation talk. Was my point. It makes dualists think you recognise a second res.
  • Welcome Robot Overlords
    And my point was just that neuro-physiologists are unwitting dualists when they quite unnecessarily call a spade the cause or correlate of a spade.
  • Welcome Robot Overlords
    You reminded me of that very thing not two posts back. — Isaac

    But you retracted.

    So, anyway. You do believe (that it is accurate enough to say) that

    such memory logging is consciousness. — bongo fury

    ?
  • Welcome Robot Overlords
    If I say 'a race' is lots of runners all starting simultaneously and aiming for the same line, then an answer to the question 'what causes a race?' might be "a load of runners, a finish line, and a starting pistol going off". Put those three things together, you'll have a race. — Isaac

    But you said what a race is. Have you said what consciousness is?
  • Welcome Robot Overlords
    I suppose it would be more accurate to have said [...] cause consciousness. — Isaac

    Why?
  • Welcome Robot Overlords
    Personally, I believe memory logging of higher order Bayesian (or Bayesian-like) inferences is what causes consciousness. — Isaac

    I thought you believed that such memory logging is consciousness.
  • Does anyone know the name of this concept?
    Anti-difference-of-degree-ism — emancipate

    Or anti-binary-ism. The implication being, usually, that everything is relative. E.g.

    “but everyone is selfish”. — Skalidris

    meaning "well obviously, but how selfish?".

    Edit: Although, by "selfish" Skalidris already meant "too selfish", which is why they are probably right that "but everyone is selfish" is annoying.
  • Does anyone know the name of this concept?
    Yes, it's getting closer. — Skalidris

    Everything's closer.
  • Does nothingness exist?
    Is there ever an object — Joshs

    You mean a thing?

    or just a field of differentials? — Joshs

    You mean a thing?
  • Does nothingness exist?
    donut holes. — 180 Proof

    negative space in a visual field. — Jackson

    uvwd7jmls5r06qum.png
  • "What is it like." Nagel. What does "like" mean?
    the fact that an organism has conscious experience at all means, basically, that there is something it is like to be that organism. — Nagel

    Choose:

    the fact that an organism has conscious experience at all means, basically, that the organism sees some aspects of its environment and not others.

    or

    the fact that an organism has conscious experience at all means, basically, that the organism sees some kinds of picture in its Cartesian theatre and not others.
  • The Supernatural and plausibility
    I assume that the reader is familiar with the idea of extrasensory perception, and the meaning of the four items of it, viz., telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition and psychokinesis. These disturbing phenomena seem to deny all our usual scientific ideas. How we should like to discredit them! Unfortunately the statistical evidence, at least for telepathy, is overwhelming. — Turing, 1950
  • The Churchlands
    Can digital computation produce consciousness? No, because digital computation is an observer-dependent phenomenon, while consciousness is observer-independent. — Daemon

    A proper semantics, such as the Chinese Room lacks, is a game of pretend: the pretending of appropriate connections, between words and things, and between tokens of the "same" word. And it depends on observers, because it's in the nature of an act of pretending that there can't be any inherent and un-observed connections between the act itself (the brain shiver) and any of its many plausible interpretations.

    And if semantics is observer-dependent, perhaps consciousness is what we call the fleeting (or more persistent) occasions of forgetting that it was all pretend. It's an aspect of our pretending, and hence observer-dependent as well.

    The Chinese Room lacks the skills to play the game, and other players may or may not discover that it isn't really joining in. It doesn't understand. It depends, like an abacus, on the involvement of the skilled players, to perform its computations, or conversations. They have to do the pretending of appropriate connections, between words and things, and between tokens of the "same" word. So, lacking the skills, the Room lacks the confusion we call consciousness.

    But it isn't obvious that the Room's limitations result from its digital machinery: that it couldn't be enhanced so as to be able to learn to pretend. Some way down the line.
  • Metaphysics of Reason/Logic
    the reality of X or any of its properties — javra

    Properties and relations are where correspondence gets too grand for me. They are too much like verbs and adjectives to be plausible as contenders for ontological commitment along with X, Y and Z. And they aren't required for asserting truths about X, Y and Z.
  • What is information?
    But isn't the information encoded in a message only one part of what is really an indivisible, overarching entity, the conversation? — Pantagruel

    Like the "self-information" or "information content" (surprise value of an individual message) is relative to the overarching "information entropy" (average surprise value in a whole source or channel of messages)?

    Or are you merely surprised (or informed!) that the theory equates surprise value with information?
  • Metaphysics of Reason/Logic
    In other words, what are our reasons for trusting reason? — Paulm12

    Without it our sentences wouldn't face the tribunal of experience as a corpus but only individually. Reason binds them together.

    Or does it correspond to reality — Paulm12

    Not on any grand scale, no.
  • Institutional Facts: John R. Searle
    That the material in my hand has the chemical composition it has does not depend on us, but that the material in my hand is money does. That the Sun is larger than the Earth does not depend on us, but that it is illegal to steal does.

    Neither money nor the law is a fiction.     — Michael

    Are there institutional facts about immaterial or imaginary things? Or is that what would make them fictions?
  • Institutional Facts: John R. Searle
    Institutional facts aren’t fiction. — Michael

    Oh. Are they hallucinations?

    How aren't they fiction? Weren't you stressing their lack of correspondence with actual states of affairs?
  • Institutional Facts: John R. Searle
    ↪Michael


    So, they are the facts that aren't fiction?
  • Institutional Facts: John R. Searle
    ↪Michael


    Ah. Ok.

    Are there brute facts that exist only inside such a framework?
  • Institutional Facts: John R. Searle
    Yes. See above. — Michael

    That passage addresses only institutional facts?
  • Institutional Facts: John R. Searle
    ↪Michael


    So, no? Ok.

    Are there brute facts outside of such a framework?
  • Institutional Facts: John R. Searle
    [Searle's] distinction between institutional and non-institutional facts, and which things are institutional and non-institutional facts, is one that holds within the framework of an existing language with existing rules and existing meanings that he will accept is a human institution. — Michael

    Does it hold outside of such a framework? Are there institutional facts outside of such a framework?

    An object becoming a bishop or a combination of letters becoming a word are historical events — RussellA

    I disagree. Tanks rolling over a national border is a historical event. A "tank" token's being pointed at one or more tanks (or a "word" token's being pointed at "tank") is a myth, requiring continual reinforcement, itself no less mythical.

    Inscrutability of reference, and all that.
  • What motivates panpsychism?
    ↪bert1


    Browsing TPF?
  • What motivates panpsychism?
    Please tell me what goes in between unconscious and conscious? — bert1

    Er, semi-conscious?
  • What is metaphysics?
    Sure. — Jackson

    For example?
  • What is metaphysics?
    I do not say mind is physical or non-physical. — Jackson

    Do you say that any things are non-physical?
  • An Argument Against Sider’s Hell and Vagueness
    https://www.recoveringfromreligion.org/#rfr-welcome
  • An Argument Against Sider’s Hell and Vagueness
    Hi there,
    ↪Agent Smith
    aka @TheMadFool.

    a net ethical point of +1 and I get my ticket to paradise. Someone else who has [...] a net ethical point of -6 and goes to jahanam. — Agent Smith

    Your suggestion is described by this fourth graph,

    3w3i9odi3iwq04qq.jpg

    from here, https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/560730

    (putting net ethical score horizontal and resulting degree of heaven vertical).

    Whereas the OP appears to favour the second graph:

    7e18c9yni183cb7c.jpg

    (with the same re-labelling).

    I wonder what happens to a person with a net ethical point of cipher/zero? — Agent Smith

    Are you switching to grades of hell/heaven after all? You might want some composite of the two graphs. Gradual increase interrupted by a sudden step change.

    yavrvhjmzziizppg.png
  • An Argument Against Sider’s Hell and Vagueness
    While this is a small bullet to bite, — lish

    It is? Then one wants to ask, is the location of the consequently fine line between least best heaven and least worst hell anywhere special? Or is it arbitrary?

    Might you not as well say, hellishness and heavenliness are reciprocal terms ordering all individual afterlives into a line? All afterlives would be in heaven as well as hell in some degree: the most heavenly is simply the least hellish? "Everything is relative, and on a spectrum"? As in line [2] here:

    [1] Tell me, do you think that a single grain of wheat is a heap?
    [2] Well, certainly, it's the very smallest size of heap.

    Game over. People often finish up claiming 2 had been their position all along. Perhaps it should have been, and the puzzle is a fraud.     — bongo fury



    Or would needing to place the very worst person into even the least grade of heaven be unacceptable, so that you would need to reserve some small corner of hell as heavenly in zero degree? Then your problem, potentially, is to identify a tipping point (e.g. between zero degree heavenly and non-zero degree heavenly) as I say. And then at least the game gets started...

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/562851

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/355842
  • What is metaphysics?
    Briefly this is Russell's way of saying that science does not even define what physicality is: — Jackson

    Sure. A physicalist has no objection to that. Metaphysics as the philosophy of physics.

    But your example was

    If all my thoughts are physical, — Jackson

    Which appears to argue for the non-physics of mind.
  • What is metaphysics?
    Even Bertrand Russell admitted that the very definition of matter was incoherent. — Jackson

    I don't think he meant to posit the existence of non-physical stuff. Do you?
  • What is metaphysics?
    I know there is a physical world. I hardly think that explains reality. — Jackson

    But do you think positing non-physical stuff will help?
  • Can morality be absolute?
    without defining the aspect the spatial designations you use. — Nickolasgaspar

    The dot dot dot meant "please read on for clarification".

    Now if one asks Is sex without consent immoral (rape) then the answer is yes for that specific situation. — Nickolasgaspar

    Well yes, that was my starting point.
  • Can morality be absolute?
    Can morality be absolute? — PhilosophyRunner

    Sure, in two ways: internally and externally...

    If rape is wrong because we have agreed it is wrong, it is good when we change our mind. — Hanover

    But rape is something that moral language has made an obvious example of "not good". So no, the language doesn't have to allow disagreement on the issue. Anyone changing their mind to the extent of wanting to call such a behaviour "good" will not be credited with having contributed to the system of usage. They are deemed simply not to speak the language. They don't know the meaning of "good".

    This doesn't mean that a system exhibiting such internal absolutism can't allow internal relativism as well. It will rely on at least one buffer zone between obviously good and obviously wrong, which creates disputed borders, representing differing or changing minds, or differing contexts. (Lying surely lies on such a border.) But this may well serve to keep obviously good absolutely apart from obviously wrong. As explained here.

    If you mean, rape is good when we change our system, or moral language... well, could we, just like that?

    If you mean, rape is good when we or some alien culture develops or evolves a totally different moral language... well, maybe, but only until the different cultures meet. External absolutism happens because language systems are unbridled in their ambition. They presume to refer universally. So when they discover each other they have to merge, and contradictions have to be ironed out. Statements previously shown true are now shown false. Things that were acceptable in the 80's are now seen to have been wrong. (I guess the song has examples? lol. But obviously history has plenty of serious ones.)
  • Belief
    ...as to the residual character of propositions we have that full latitude of choice that attends the development of gratuitous fictions. — Quine, Ontological Remarks on the Propositional Calculus

    :rofl:
  • What motivates panpsychism?
    why does panpsychism want to put consciousness everywhere? — Daemon

    To praise dualism while pretending to bury it.

    Why does emergentism want to put consciousness in self-organising systems?
  • What type of figure of speech is "to see"
    I hear that's correct.
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