Consciousness has nothing to do with brains. — bert1

So if we replaced your brain with sawdust, you'd still be conscious?

We don't dream that way (as far as I know) because "other people who have minds of their own" is such a basic, never-violated rule of reality. We don't observe, meet, or interact with our own imagined characters in the real world. — Bitter Crank

It would be wild if you dreamed of someone arguing with you that solipsism is true and they were the only mind in the world.

On a related note, I was reminded of the author Robert Louis Stevenson, who used his dream people as a source of stories. He called them the "little people who manage man's internal theater". Apparently women have a different dream management.

Is it the skepticism about mental pictures / symbols in the brain? Do you need them in your intuition of consciousness or perception? — bongo fury

I just have them along with pains, sounds, tastes, thoughts, etc.

An altogether terrifying prospect. This seems to imply that the real universe is different to the one that exists inside our heads. — Mark Dennis

But we already knew this was the case, at the very least because our senses are limited, and many things we only learned about the world after we had the technology to perform experiments and gather data to tell us how the universe was different.

Idealist philosophers aren't saying that anything you think is correct, just because you think it. If they were as naive as you depict them to be, then there would be nothing to discuss! — Wayfarer

Right, but it's a question of why we need to have certain experiences. It's like saying that if we're inside a simulation, what's the point of all the suffering? Why didn't the machines make a Utopia?

Oh wait, they did and the humans kept waking themselves up, because they couldn't accept a pleasant world.

The bent stick can be called an illusion, therefore, because that sensation is not coherently and regularly connected to the others. If we pull the stick out of the water, or we reach down and touch the stick, we will get a sensation of a straight stick. It is this coherent pattern of sensations that makes the stick. If we judge that the stick is bent, therefore, then we have made the wrong judgement, because we have judged incorrectly about what sensation we will have when we touch the stick or when we remove it from the water.

But that raises the question of why there would be sensations of illusion if there are just experiences. We can give a good material explanation for the bent stick appearance, but the idealist one just has an appearance of refracted light for some reason.

The bent stick isn't the best example though as the idealist would probably say those optical experiences are what's need to construct a visual world. So what about disease and microbes? If our body is just a series of experiences, why should be getting sick from invisible microbes or cancers, that we've only learned to see in past couple centuries?

Why is it necessary that we should have bodily experiences of sickness and aging?

Lovely story but I'm not sure that it teaches us anything we didn't know already.
A child learns to speak by imitation. Echoing. Parroting. — Amity

But how does that get turned into understanding? After-all, neither a [arrot nor current AI can make that transition. What is about human children that imitation leads to them learning how to use words?

so I'm not sure what's all that new here. — StreetlightX

The inferential part about perception where the brain is guessing at what the sensory inputs will be is different than what people arguing philosophy say perception is, and the idea that you could arrange experiments to help map that indirect computation onto experience might possibly lead to discovering a causal link, instead of just supposing that argument has determined a priori that such a thing can't exist.

Of course the arrow goes both ways as the brain updates it's guessing with new inputs it receives as it tells the body to move about. Maybe this view of perception would find some agreement from the Kantians, with the inference mechanism being part of to categorizing the sensory manifold.

Are you a philosophical zombie? Because you argue as if you have no conscious experiences. If I ask whether you experience pain, are you going to give me some functional/physiological response?

ell, it's akin to asking why any physical stuff has just the properties it does. — Terrapin Station

Imagine though if atoms had a special property only under certain situations, and we couldn't give a scientific reason for that.

Anyway, nobody has jumped on the inferential view of perception yet. Perhaps I should have made the thread about that instead of another hard problem one.

All of this is true of our situation as we perceive it but says nothing about any purported "reality" above and beyond our perceptions. You can go around in circles about this issue forever, but you are never going to know anything which is beyond our capacity to know, and the question about how things are in themselves is the paradigmatic example of a question that we cannot even coherently formulate. let alone find an answer to. — Janus

This would seem to put us into the same position as a brain in the vat. Meillassoux's anti-correlationist argument is similar to Putnam's argument that a brain that's always been envatted could not truthfully say it was envatted, because it couldn't mean that in the way the brain would actually be envatted.

Correlationism locks us in from truthfully saying dinosuars existed. We can say both, but we can't mean them truthfully. We can only mean them in a correlationist or envatted sense, which would be false.

Thus correlationism denies the truth of evolution. It can appear that we evolved, and it can be pragmatic to say we did, but it cannot be true.

Exactly, and sometimes it seems like that's what critics are demanding. — Terrapin Station

That is something to take into account, but it's also because we can't say why any brain process would have a conscious correlate other than some just do. Which then limits us epistemologically from knowing about other animals, machines and aliens.

The man in theChinese room does understand something - the rules for returning certain scribbles when given certain scribbles. If the scribbles have another meaning then that just means you need to provide the rules for using the scribbles with the different meaning. — Harry Hindu

But that won't past muster with language as use version of meaning, since rule following for translating language is not the same thing as use of words in language games.

The horse has been out of the barn since civilization started. Most of human history was groups of a couple hundred people in tribes. So you might argue that is what we evolved for, however it's kind of hard to walk that back when you have nearly 8 billion and thousands of years of culture based on civilization.

GB is still millions of people comprised of different cultures and ethnicities, and its still part of global markets and politics where its people have access to global telecommunications.

I agree with correlationism. The dinosaur argument undermines it? — frank

Geology and cosmology even more so. The fact that science says we evolved and depend on mindless processes to be here is good reason for thinking correlationism is somewhat misleading. Even the fact of your birth accomplishes that, although Meillassoux focused on death and the world after humans are extinct.

In other words, we form a picture of 'mind' here and 'object' there, and wonder what the relationship is between the two. But there are not two, there is the 'perceiving of the object.' — Wayfarer

Yeah, but there is a brain here and an object over there. Our perception of the object happens inside our skulls, while the object remains outside. Unless it's ingested, then some of it might get into the brain.

especially because they'll give no clear criteria for what fhey require of explanations. — Terrapin Station

That raises the question of whether the explanatory gap lies with the limitations of explanation. Does an explanation have to cause you to experience the transition from explanation to experience?

I'm not even sure what I'm saying here, but part of the problem with not knowing what it's like to be a bat is that no description is going to put you into the state of having a sonar experience. At least, I can't see how it would.

Descental spirit. Not ancestral. Otherwise, correct. — god must be atheist

Well, the primitive human view of time travel is such that they call it "ancestral", since you're from an alternate timeline, and therefore cannot be their descendant, particularly after you convince them to use birth control.

Haha!

That raises question of how does the Chinese Room manage to perform perfect translations. Can that be done by mere rule following?

Then again, doesn't a language game involve rule following?

That's a good point. I guess our great-great-great-great grandparents could have just abstained? But that would have increased their own suffering.

Actually, an even better version of the time machine argument is that you don't create a separate time line unless you do time travel and step on a prehistoric butterfly. If you do, then you've automatically duplicated humanity's sufferring (on average - history might go a bit differently).

So would you create another world of human history?

Keeping in mind, of course, that effective, reasonably priced, and widely available contraception - a prerequisite for anti-natalism - wasn't available until about 60 years ago. — T Clark

Okay, but you take some back with you, or bring a doctor to sterilize. With their consent after you've convince them, naturally. No reason to not start things unethically.

It is too late to be antinatalist. If one were going to nip child-bearing in the bud, one would have to have been actively promoting antinatalism to the immediate descendants of Homo Erectus. The day we became Homo sapiens -- hundreds of thousands of years ago -- was the day you should have been out and about preaching antinatalism. Now with 7.2 billion people, it is just too late. It is impossible to convince 7.2 billion people of ANYTHING. — Bitter Crank

That leads to a thought experiment. Say you stumbled across a time machine in your neighbor's garage, activated it and found yourself among the first modern human beings. You're also aware that like the Avengers, you can't actually change the future, you can only effect a different timeline. So here you are with the first humans, who naturally think of you as the great ancestral spirit come to give them advice. Now's your chance to preach antinatilism, which will be so persuasive that it works.

Do you convince them to not have kids knowing what's in store for the human race? Granted it's different time line but still good likelihood for war, genocide and capitalism. Also, reality tv.

The question is has it been worth it? Now that we're here, we make the best of it. But if you're Captain America, do you skip Peggy Carter and go back to talk the first humans out of procreating, so all the terrible things in history are avoided? Or do you think that hundreds of years of slavery are worth your doppleganger's enjoyment of sipping on some wine while watching The Bachelor?

I think it's worth asking why are people who think that there's an "explanatory gap" likely to accept explanations that are "mapping between rich conscious descriptions and brain processes"? — Terrapin Station

Because many of them like Chalmers want a science of consciousness where it's taken seriously, and they think there is a strong correlation between brain activity and consciousness, so it would be informative to map that out. Also, I think philosophers like Chalmers would change their mind on the hard problem if science showed them a way the gap might be explained.

Presumably, proponents of the hard problem became convinced there was a gap because of arguments in favor of a gap, so they could become unconvinced. That's how it should work. We should change our views when good arguments/evidence become available.

As Kant noted, all we can reference is the phenomena, that which we perceive. We cannot even coherently discuss the noumena or the things in themselves. It makes no sense to ask what something really looks like without referencing what I subjectively see it to look like. — Hanover

But yet somehow we can come up with the wavefunction and talk about black holes and quarks.

To say that there are no independent things is to say there are no distinctions, then why is my mind full of distinctions? — Harry Hindu

Exactly. A mind-independent world makes sense of the variety of experiences we have, including having a body moving about in a world with many other things, people and animals in it. Also, it accords with science which doesn't put human beings at the center of everything.

We've only been around for a short while, and we only occupy a small space. The world is much bigger and older than us.

We cannot say what the wave function "really is" any more than we can say what a tree "really is" above and beyond our experience of, and thoughts about, it. — Janus

But people do guess at what it is. Thus the different interpretations of QM, and someday a clever experiment might provide evidence in favor of one of them.

Are we really going to say for example that Bohm's pilot wave theory or the Many Worlds Interpretation are meaningless just because nobody has figured out a way to test them?

I would suggest that at the border of accepted physics were new theories are being churned out before they can be put to the test, you will find metaphysics.

More on really's role in language.

He seems like he cares. But does he really? Maybe he's just pretending and only cares about himself.

The stick looks bent in water, but is it really? Maybe the water does bend sticks. Or maybe the light is bent by the water.

You say that humans couldn't have built the pyramids, but did ancient aliens really build stone structures on Earth? Or are you underestimating human ingenuity?

Really's role is to question the potential difference between how something appears to be, or is said to be, and how it is.

The temptation here might be to say there is no "how it is", only how things appear to be. But that raises problems. For one, it means we can't say whether the stick is bent by the water or the light is refracted. For another, we can't explain why there are discrepancies in appearance.

If there is no "how it is", then there should never have been a question of appearance versus reality.

So given all that, what is your response to the Wittgenstein approach that metaphysics is an abuse of language? That the Greeks used nouns for everything and we have a tendency to view concepts as things?

@Banno @Janus "Really"

Let's take three medieval monks discussing the Lucretius' poem on atomism. One defends the atomistic metaphysics, arguing that the world is really made of atoms and the void, a second is skeptical, saying it doesn't appear that way, atoms aren't part of our experience. And a third, being a pre-Witty Pyrrhon skeptic says the discussion is bunk, because we can't know any metaphysical truths.

Turns out the atomists were basically correct, at least regarding ordinary matter. So the discussion was meaningful. Even the part about atoms "swerving" randomly has its parallel in quantum indeterminism.

From this, we might be led to conclude that metaphysics is meaningful if future science either confirms or falsifies the basic ideas of said metaphysics.

the wavefunction is theoretical, but so were atoms at one point. This becomes a question of scientific realism. If the wavefunction is only theoretical, then what is it that causes in these experimental results?

then how does physics work? I certainly don’t experience the wave function.

Notice that these are physical issues, not metaphysical. — "Banno

Yes, but they weren’t always.

physics places limits on what we can know, while allowing for the world beyond our knowledge. A good example is the universe beyond our light cone. We know the universe is bigger than our light cone, but we can’t know anything specific about that region of space.

I understand your line of reasoning, but yes I can still understand Wayfarers statement as it’s possible that we’re limited in our investigation of the world as it appears to us.

It’s the same thing as saying it’s intelligible that there could be things we can’t know about. We’re only human.

The world is like chairs and desks and particles and space. What is it that remains a puzzle? — Banno

The world is also like the sun moving through the sky on a flat, stationary land at the center of the cosmos. What remains a puzzle?

The puzzle is the difference between how the world appears to us and how it is.

It's perhaps only metaphysicians that get confused into thinking we can't. — Banno

The issue here isn't whether we language is practical. The issue comes up when you take your first physics class and learn that the world is a lot stranger than everyday experience would suggest. But this goes all they way back to noticing the appearance/reality distinction that got people asking metaphysical questions.

So I think this sort of dissolving is missing the point. I want to know what the world is like, not whether ordinary concepts are useful. Of course they are and we can continue to talk about and move chairs regardless of the physics.

And that would be true if we lived inside the Matrix. But it would completely miss the point when we're asking what sort of world we live in.

But I think you want to say something deeper... — Banno

We're moving about a single chair, and some annoying shit wants to point out that since the chair is made up of molecules, and those molecules don't have a determinate boundary, that we can't say exactly which molecules make up the chair. So there are 1 million chairs for each different collection of molecules that could make up the chair.

But that's a problem since we're only moving one chair. The deeper issue is that our use of "chair" includes a determinate boundary where we can clearly say it's a single chair. But the physics makes the boundary indeterminate. So we have a conflict with how we use chair and it's physical constitution.

But there is no incompatibility here. We can talk about the chair in terms of moving it around the table, and then in terms of it's chemistry. We are still talking about the chair. — Banno

We can, but then some pedantic person might point out that the chemistry entails the possibility that we're moving about more than one chair, since the molecules making it up don't have clear boundaries.

The concept 'existence' applied to 'chairs', or 'molecules' or 'gods' implies nothing other than the functional utility of those concepts which varies according to context and user. — fresco

Going back to this particular sentence. Many religious believers do not understand God or gods existing as fulfilling some functional utility, anymore than they think that about other people existing. I speak as a former believer.

Some more nuanced or philosophically inclined religious believers might phrase things along those utility lines where God is inside us or some principle of the universe, taking into account the lack of empirical supports for gods. But your average believer, to the extent they believe, probably think in terms of God as existing like a person.