ou're saying that if the world is such that all moments exist eternally, then we cannot see it as it is because we see only the present moment, or the moments which are serially present to us over our lives. But all that shows is that we only see a part of the world, not that the part we see is not seen as it is. — Janus

The flow of time is that we experience the present always turning into the past (in memory), such that the only moment which exists for us is the present. That's why the eternalism view of time is one that had a lot of support prior to Relativity, because it was consistent with how we experience time. We can't visit the future or the past, so it's like they don't exist. But the block universe says otherwise.

The flow of time and the present moment being special (what exists) are what is the illusion if the block theory is true.

That so many caveats have to be made for "the world being as it appears" is evidence the world is decidedly not as it appears. Three wouldn't even be such a distinction if that were not the case.

Not really; just that the world is not always as it appears to us at the moment. — Janus

Is that a difference that makes a difference?

Ah. You think "change is successions in time" is an example of a true statements having nothing whatsoever to do with the world!

But the floor changes between here, where it is wood board, and the bathroom, where it is tile. There was all this stuff, post Kant, about time being one of several dimensions. — Banno

However, if that means the flow of time is an illusion because the future and past all exist as part of the block universe, then that is yet another example of how the world is not as it appears to us.

it reinforced my prejudice that Kantian metaphysical notions didn't survive 19th century developments in maths and physics. — Banno

Don't be so hasty. This video suggests otherwise, at least form some physicists:



This is a form of the Copenhagen interpretation of QM in which the wave function is just quantifying our knowledge of the system, not the underlying physical reality. The idea is that we set up experiments that have a certain relationship with what's being measured, and we make observations of the experimental results. This is a correlation between the world and our observations. But we can't say what the reality is when we're not performing the experiment. There is one, but it's hidden from us beyond the correlation. Kant is brought up as is anti-realism regarding the math (but not the world as it is).

And thus the suggestion is that theories like MWI and the Pilot-Wave are pointless, because we can't know the state of the world without performing an experiment.

... are easy to test and clearly not metaphysical. Never heard of conservation of information though. — Olivier5

The Black Hole Information Paradox is a big issue in physics because information loss would mean processes cannot in principle be time reversible, which is not the case with most of physics. Thus there is ongoing theoretical work to resolve the paradox. There is some deep relationship between information, energy and thermodynamics, I believe.



The question I have with this sort of thing is where is the empirical basis? It's not like we can observe a black hole evaporate and then measure the state of the Hawking Radiation to see whether any info was lost.

A state of affairs is, at least, like a proposition. But perhaps different in the sense that no-one needs to have stated or believed it. Presumably mice ran behind trees before humans emerged to notice that kind of thing. — Andrew M

Sure, but for whom was the mouse behind the tree? A predator? The mouse? Certainly not the world. States of affairs are a bit tricky. They can contain hidden perspectives like "behind X".

-as if snow could be another color. — Harry Hindu

Never heard of yellow snow? You can certainly have polluted snow which is brown or black. You could also pour food coloring on it. Snow cones are a thing.

It's like saying, "Water is H2O", which is only true in the pure sense. Water often has other things mixed in. It's something to keep in mind in these philosophical discussions. The real world is messy.

Not perceiving the world as it is is different from it being impossible to know the world as it is, which seems to be the charge leveled. First, the way we see the world is related in some manner to how the world is, and second, we have different senses and various tools we've made to augment them to investigate. Science investigates the reality behind appearance, and comes up with theories to explain how things appear.

Granted, as Wayfarer would point out, that does mean we have to take into account how our intellect understands the world in theory formation and what not. We investigate the world given the kinds of minds, bodies, tools (and language) we have. The world though is just whatever it is, including how it appears to us. We do our best to make sense of that, which is somewhere between the naive appearance and a deeper understanding.

So, we don't have to be skeptics in the ancient sense, but we should acknowledge the difficulties and how humans often get things wrong.

because experience and behavior are inseparably linked. — Pfhorrest

Do you think this is the case with meditation, inner dialog, imagination, hallucination and dreaming?

I’ve always been under the impression that’s exactly the opposite of what “as it is” implies, which technically expands to “as it is in itself”. — Mww

It is the opposite. That we have to work hard, applying a rigorous methodology of experimentation with a heavy reliance on math, resulting in many counter intuitive or surprising results means the world as it i differs considerably from the world as it is.

The whole realty/appearance distinction, which wouldn't be a thing if the world appeared to us as it is.

Besides, Kant is wrong. I know this, because I’m a naive realist! — Wayfarer

Naive realists tend to be rather dogmatic about their perceptions.

That person must be, it seems to me, seeing the world as it is.....to a degree. Or they could not do that over and over. Sure, it's a perspective. We are time bound, localized creatures with limited senses. Senses that see the world, to some degree. — Coben

To a degree. I'm not espousing skepticism, except to dogmatic claims. I think we know a lot, just not with certainty. But much of that knowledge came with a lot of work, and the invention of various tools to get beyond our senses.

Janus and Marchesk are playing at philosophy. It's a word game that they drop as soon a they stand up from their armchair and start doing the things. — Banno

Uh-huh. We made this shit up. Not like Hume, Kant, Locke, Pyrro, Schopenhauer, Rorty, Meillassoux or a hundred other philosophers haven't made or discussed similar argument in the entire history of philosophical inquiry.

Jeez, you didn't even quote the end of the sentence. I cannot imagine a more openly evasive response. — Coben

Maybe I was waiting at a bank teller on my phone and couldn't finish responding to the post.

I am going to ignore you from here on out. — Coben

If you can't stand the heat, get out of he damn kitchen.

As it is means exactly that, not a world filtered, incomplete and filled in with sensations.

Yes, we do perceive something about the world as we're running through the field. That which we evolved to see to avoid those sort of obstacles. No, it's not as it is.

Maybe a clarification is in order. We do not perceive the world exactly as it is. We perceive it as hominids. But that's so far from the complete picture that there's no need to explicitly state "exactly".

There is no, non-relational, context free "as it is" to be seen. — Janus

Agreed. Perceiving is relational. It’s also conscious.

— Marchesk
Sure, it is also a perspective, based on observations. So, it can't be binary. Whatever evidence there is that my seeing is limited, filtered, interpreted, — Coben

Then we cannot be perceiving it as it is! I echo Wayfarer in that this pretty standard philosophical
fare, and not new at all.

So, can we make statement about the world that are true, and know that they are true? — Banno

Empirically speaking? Not really. We have less than certain facts and theories explaining those facts, subject to further revision and new facts.

There’s a SEP entry on the problem of perception. It’s as old as philosophy. The short of it is people noticed that we’re subject to illusions, hallucinations and perceptual relativity. Add to that the science of how perception works, and how often science has overturned our intuitions about the world, and it’s clear that the world appears different than it is.

Stove's Gem. We can only see the world with our eyes, therefore we cannot see the world. — Banno

We cannot see the world as it is, only as it looks to us.

Remember the black cat radiating heat? You don't see a thermal cat.

But I still think the statement that we don't see reality doesn't hold. — Coben

Don't see reality as it is. The bolded part is the key part. We do perceive reality. But we do so from a certain perspective.

will be based on what you think are accurate observations of reality. — Coben

The best we can do is rely on what science reveals about the world. That's an abstracted view, but it gets at the properties and processes of things as they are, if imperfectly.

These I call original or primary qualities of bodies . . . solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest, and number.

Secondly, such qualities which in truth are nothing in the objects themselves but powers to produce various sensations in us by their primary qualities, i.e., by the bulk, figure, texture, and motion of their insensible parts

http://www.wutsamada.com/alma/modern/lockquo1.htm — John Locke

Sounds, colors, heat and cold, according to modern philosophy are not qualities in objects, but perceptions in the mind.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/color/ — David Hume

People universally believe that objects look colored because they are colored, just as we experience them. The sky looks blue because it is blue, grass looks green because it is green, and blood looks red because it is red. As surprising as it may seem, these beliefs are fundamentally mistaken. Neither objects nor lights are actually “colored” in anything like the way we experience them. Rather, color is a psychological property of our visual experiences when we look at objects and lights, not a physical property of those objects or lights. The colors we see are based on physical properties of objects and lights that cause us to see them as colored, to be sure, but these physical properties are different in important ways from the colors we perceive. (Palmer 1999: 95)

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/color/ — Stephen Palmer

If sensations of perception are generated by our biology, then the world we perceive is not the way the world is, but rather the way we humans interact with the world based on the kind of sensory organs and nervous systems our ancestors evovled.

The sparrows dancing from one bit of snow to another are real. Being able to observe that is real.
I am not sure what is being asked for beyond that. — Valentinus

All the stuff sparrows and humans can't sense. Also, how sensation is a relation based on the interaction between reflecting light, eyes and brains, for example. The photons of a narrow range of light look like they are combination of three primary colors for normal sighted humans, because we have three kinds of rods in our eyes. Some birds and other animals have more, and can see a wider range.

I mean, even color blind men can often run through a field with holes, grass lumps, and cow poop and thistles and reach the other side, even after running at great speed, with no injuries and still shiny nikes. It sure seems like to some degree they are seeing the world. And to that degree or in those ways also incredibly well. — Coben

Yes, but what if Sarin gas, deadly radiation or Smallpox were released on the field. Would a person see that?

I know you're not creativesoul but was that an example? (:razz:) — Coben

I have an inner ineffable confidence which cannot be expressed properly in words that if Banno commits to this thread, it will get close to 100.

How's that?

My tetrachromat girlfriend telepathically communicates with her pet robin. I can assure you we most certainly can. — Outlander

Ha!

That's not the interesting question though. The interesting question is, if no-one can see it, is there a world as it is? — Echarmion

Yes, but not one which is perceived. A mathematized world is the best we can do. Even if there are limits to our knowing the world as it is, this doesn't mean there is no way the world is. Epistemology and ontology need not be conjoined at the hip.

Object Oriented Ontology is one such effort under speculative realism which attempts to flesh out things as they are. It starts by noting that all objects are correlated to one another, which means the exact nature of the object is never transmitted, only as it is correlated to another object.

Surely this will be resolved before 100 pages.

What it's like to not exist for p-zombies.

The Friends of Qualia didn't seem to want to engage with that, either. — Banno

I do agree on one thing regarding p-zombies. A world of zombies would not include talk of colors, tastes and pains. And thus, there would be no qualia or hard problem debate. The philosophical zombies could not originate such notions.

I suspect some of you would rather live in that world.

If we keep talking about things as they are, definitely. Very quickly too. — khaled

Is Banno's coffee bitter and sweet as it is? Will defeating Covid be inherently sweet?

This idea can be extended to animals that perceive colors differently. Are they seeing the world as it is? Yes, in relation to their perceptual capabilities. But not necessarily in relation to ours as human beings. — Andrew M

What about in relation to as things are, or at the very least, as modern science describes those things?

It's absurdly ignorant of what we know about how our bodies work, and how differently computers and robots work. — Daemon

There is Ned Block's The Harder Problem of Consciousness using Commander Data from Star Trek as a superficial functional isomorph as discussed in this podcast:

https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2019/07/01/ep219-block-papineau/

Block's argument is that we can't tell whether consciousness is functionally or biologically based, so we couldn't tell whether an android would be conscious.

There's a children's version, one I mentioned earlier, here: The Mark of Zombie

Now, doesn’t all this talk of qualia and consciousness and zombies and non-zombies and hyper-consciousness and dim consciousness and conscious minds and unconscious minds strike you as insane? — Banno

No, but it can be made to sound insane. One should note that the entire article is written from the third person. We only ever hear the reports of the astronauts, without the first person ever being portrayed. And yet we all have first person experiences, so we know what that's like.

The first sort is conscious things – things like you and me, cats and dogs, and chimpanzees and tigers. These things, the conscious things, have experiences: they experience the redness of red, the paininess of pain, the yumminess of yum, and so on. Philosophers call these experiences qualia. Qualia, by definition, are the sole preserve of conscious things. — The Mark of Zombie

Except saying the "redness of red" can be misleading. It's really just pointing out that red, pain and yuminess are the stuff of conscious experiences. It's something more than a detector discriminating color or Siri telling me it's cold outside.

Evidently, it is easy to mistake Dennett as trying to deny the qualitative characters of sensation on the basis that sensations do not have his four special properties, rather than merely denying that sensations have his four special properties. Dennett has introduced this confusion through his misuse of the term 'qualia'. — Luke

Good post. Something that has never been settled in this thread is whether the qualitative characters of sensation inevitably lead to the one or more of the properties Dennett is eager to quine, and whether what's left over from quining is anything more than a functional account.

If there is something more, then the hard problem remains hard, and if there is not, then there is no reason to talk of conscious sensations. What doesn't work is to talk of colors and pains, but pretend this is not a challenge for physicalism.

The Friends of Qualia didn't seem to want to engage with that, either. — Banno

I'll get on with reading the entire paper and get back with a response or two. I'm in the middle of several things, which is causing my qualia to dance about.

...as opposed to being mislead by Platonic forms... — Banno

The forms need not be platonic. They can just be patterns in the physical. I don't think Chalmers is a platoniist. I believe he has a paper defending nominalism.

...which made no sense to me. Why bother with such odd locutions - a sure sign of things going astray. — Banno

Because you're bing misled by ordinary language and the way English phrases sensations as if they were objective.

What's that about, then? — Banno

I agree that structural invariance makes sense, while absent, fading and dancing qualia do not. Chalmers is a functionalist plus qualia.