Blindsight is essentially when a person doesn't perceive anything in front of their eyes due to brain damage, yet better than chance they can "guess" what is there somehow. Surely all of our knowledge isn't gained strickly from perceptions from our senses? Perhaps we can gain knowledge from things we can't even perceive is there? — TiredThinker

They can't describe in detail what is there. They just know something is there. This is the difference between p-zombies and non-p-zombies. The assumption that p-zombies can behave the same way as humans is wrong. Blind-sight patients are unsure about what it is that they are aware of and won't behave in the same way as a human who perceives consciously.

If I say a word has a use, then I'm saying that it has a use within a particular language-game or a particular social context. There may be many uses of a word, so your question, "Used for what?" isn't taking into account that there may not be any one use, but many uses. — Sam26

Ok, but what other uses? That is what I'm asking. Strange that you can't even provide any examples of what it is that you are trying to say.

However, the sense of a word is never the result of your subjective view. We can use words to communicate a subjective view, but we learn to use the words, and the meanings of words, in social contexts apart from the subjective. Not only is this the case, but as far as I can tell, it's necessarily the case. — Sam26

So you've never heard of mass delusions, or ideas that propagate within a group that are just wrong - like the Earth being flat?

Oh, I get it Harry, you're joking, right? You're trying to be funny, because I can't make any sense of this apart from a joke. — Sam26

If words have meaning apart from the subjective and is necessarily the case, then how did you misconstrue my intent as being funny when that wasn't my intent?

Then what's the difference between imagining and remembering - neurologically and phenomelogically?

All of this can be put simply a "Spider hallucinations look like spiders" - no use of "qualia"!

What's relevant about an hallucination of a spider is that thereis no spider. Hence, as you point out, characterising some event as an hallucination presumes realism. — Banno

What does it mean for hallucinations to look like the real thing? How can something that isn't real look like something that is?

And what does it mean to say that the hallucination isn't real? Are you saying that hallucinations themselves aren't real, or that they don't represent anything that is real? If the latter, then aren't we talking about representations (qualia) vs what is represented (spiders)? And are the representations real things themselves?

To even talk about hallucinations and compare them with other things must mean that you think that they are real and have real effects in the real world, and can be compared to real things. How can you compare something that isn't real with something that is?

To be sure, realism is the view that there is stuff in the world that is independent of the mind, so the claim that what is real is stuff in the mind would not count as realism. — Banno

But "real" in what sense? You seemed to agree earlier with the statement, "we are our minds". Are you saying that "we" and our "minds" are not real?

That is, for which there is evidence. I realize in your fantasy land, you have no need of evidence, nor are troubled by lack of it. — tim wood

I'm certainly not saying the Dems are more corrupt. I'm saying that they are equally corrupt and need each other to maintain the status quo. If you have evidence to the contrary, please post it. If it makes you sleep better to say I live in a fantasy land even though I can point to issues that I have switched sides on, like religion, based on the evidence, and you probably cant. Care to share just one idea that you've changed your mind on given the evidence? If not then who is the one living in a fantasy land?

Wittgenstein has an important point, namely, that the meaning of our words or concepts is primarily a function of a norm of use within a given language-game. — Sam26

Used for what? To accomplish what goal? To win the game? Or to communicate? How does one communicate without the understanding of representation -that something (scribbles and sounds) can mean something else (that isn't scribbles and sounds, like apples and trees)? Unless Witt is saying that individuals don't exist, then it would logically follow that individuals will have varying experiences with the rules of any language which will lead to varying degrees of understanding the rules of some language, which is to say that they have a subjective view of any language.

First generation cognitive science used the metaphor of computer to model the mind as an input output device that processes , represents and stores data. That metaphor has been replaced by the biological notion of self-organizing system. Memory is no longer thought of as storage but instead as reconstructive process. — Joshs

Right, that makes sense: so memories are reconstructed from traces, which do not remain unchanged in the process of reconstruction. — Janus

Any links regarding this? How is a process REconstructive without access to the original construction? What does it mean to be self-organizing when natural selection is an external process that has selected, over a very long time, the attributes that enable a neural system to produce behaviors (outputs) given certain sensory information (inputs)? In a sense, natural selection has programmed organisms to handle (store and interpret) sensory data in specific ways to survive.

I think memory, in one sense, just is the totality of "inscriptions", In another sense we could say it is the faculty of being able to recall those "inscriptions" to consciousness. No "container" to be found or required. — Janus

The finite medium where these inscriptions are (stored)? Maybe your confusing memories with memory. Recalled from where?

It's interesting that all the bad things that happen are done by Republicans, — tim wood

Spoken like some who only gets information from sources that confirm their own cognitive biases. It's interesting that all the bad things that happen are done by demons and devils and all the good things are done by us angels. Give. Me. A. Break.

The whole thing was a carnival for alt-right cosplayers, — StreetlightX

:lol:

Riot, insurrection. Words aside, what exactly do you say happened on 6 January? — tim wood

Riots are what they called the violence in the summer of 2020 where public property was destroyed and innocent people were killed. Other called it peaceful protests. Some would call an insurrection a revolt against tyranny. So what happened on Jan. 6th and the summer of 2020? Two ignorant groups were manipulated by political elites into thinking that their lives and freedom were being threatened by another group in order to rile them up to get votes. The two political parties fear the growing number of independents and they are growing desperate in their need for votes without having to be detailed about their plans and defending their inconsistencies, which you have to do with independents, but not with their fundamentalist, close-minded party members who vote for them no matter what.

We all (at least the intelligent people) know that the elites in govt. use their power to keep power and enrich themselves at our expense. When Nancy Pelosi's trading portfolio is as performing as well as, if not out-performing, Warren Buffet's then there must be something fishy going on.

I don't think the 'container' analogy is really a good way of understanding memory. — Janus

Sure it is. Is not memory a container of information?

Thinking of memory as consisting in traces or patterns. like marks left in the sand, seems more apt to me. — Janus

You're confusing data (inscriptions in memory) with memory.

Sure, the idea of mind is how we conceive of what we take to be the faculty doing the thinking and experiencing. It doesn't seem necessary to hold to any particular conception of mind in order to have an understanding of what we take to be the workings of the world.

You are taking it as read that we 'have' "subjective contents"; that is the default understanding, based on the intuitive analogy of the mind as a kind of container, but is it the best way to understand the mind. Wouldn't we need to consider all the other conceivable alternatives before deciding? — Janus

The idea that the mind is working memory is a way of understanding the mind as both the faculty doing the thinking (working) and as a kind of a container (memory). It seems to me that memory is a required concept for understanding mind, as information in the mind persists through time and there is only so much information that the mind can work with and recall at any moment.

Of course; but they are not real spiders. An odd thing about denying realism is that it leads to the conclusion that there are no real spiders, and hence it's all hallucinations; we no longer have the capacity to say that the paranoiac is wrong. — Banno

Sure, but the question was why do hallucinated spiders look like real spiders. How do you explain the behavior of someone hallucinating without "silly" qualia? How is it that something that isn't real looks like something that is unless they both take the same form (qualia)?

Denying realism isn't denying what is real. It just changes the reference to what is real. If there were only hallucinations (which doesn't make any sense without something real), then hallucinations would be the only reality. Reality would simply be a solipsistic mind and that is what would be real. Spiders would exist only as qualia and would be real as qualia, while the notion that spiders exist outside the mind would be the illusion.

Like you, I'm a realist. It's just that I'm also assert that qualia are real, and it would seem to be that you do to if you agree that we are our minds, which are composed of qualia. If qualia were so "silly" then how is it that solipsism could even be contemplated. A p-zombie could never conceive of the idea of solipsism. It would make no sense to them, just like the idea of qualia.

Disproving such a law does not mean that the opposite applies - merely that the law doesn't always apply.

By dismissing the LNC I accept that:
Some contradictory ideas can be both true.
Some contradictory ideas can be both false.
Some contradictory ideas cannot be true in the same sense at the same time. — Hermeticus

Now you're going to have to explain in what instances it doesn't apply and why. Examples would be nice.

Why should the universe (1) make sense (2) to us? — Agent Smith

We are natural outcomes of the universe and its properties that we find ourselves. It's like asking how does anything exist in the way it does? Because that is how this universe works. Natural selection has selected organisms with opposable thumbs and large brains because this form of ours is more compatible with survival in this universe, or at least on this planet. What species has been able spread out like we have all over the globe and into space?

This "law of noncontradiction" has essentially been disproven by the principle of quantum superposition. — Hermeticus

Then the LNC has both been proven and not proven. Remember that by dismissing the LNC you accept ALL contradictory ideas as both being true, not just one.

At the same time, three retired generals wrote in the Post that they were “increasingly concerned about the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election and the potential for lethal chaos inside our military”. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Sounds like Senator Palpatine creating fear to use as a reason to seize more power and to become Emperor.

BLM and the Good 'Ol Boys should just agree on a time and place in some dark alley and have at it and leave the rest of us alone.

I don't think we "have access" to our own minds; we are our minds, at least in part - as you say. SO that way of speaking leads to confusion. — Banno

I don't really know that we are our minds. What of our bodies? Are we not our bodies? If confusion results from saying that we have access to our minds, in what way do we have access to our own bodies, and then to the environment they are part of? Does this mean that "we" can exist apart from our bodies? If not, then wouldn't that mean that we are our bodies and not our minds?

That's indeed a weak point. I suppose an intentionalsit account might talk about something like "persistence" being absent form hallucinations and dreams. Or better, that they are not shared in the way of veritable experiences. — Banno

A schizophrenic's hallucinations are persistent. If they cannot be shared in the way of veritable experiences, then how is it possible to lie to others - to make others believe in things that are not true? How is it that we can get others to behave in ways as if they are hallucinating by lying to them? Asserting that the behavior of others an help you determine if you are hallucinating or not doesn't help at all when the others and their behaviors could be a hallucination as well. Think about how a schizophrenic will claim that everyone is out to get him and they don't believe his ideas about being hunted down by the government.

Besides, none of this addresses why there is even a moment in time where hallucinations can be misinterpreted as being real - because of the shared qualities of the experience itself - hallucinated spiders look just like real spiders. When looking at another brain, either directly or via a brain scan, is it easier to tell the difference when someone is hallucinating or not than it is when you're the one experiencing the hallucination? If so, why the discrepancy when your view of another's brain is always via your own mind? How is it that you can know more about someone else's state than they do if you can only access their state indirectly, and if they are their own mind then why wouldn't they have more direct and accurate knowledge of their own mental state than you?

Phenomenology is often charged by it's critics to be a matter of mere introspection, since it is understood to be dealing, not with publicly available data, but with "subjective contents" supposed to be accessed by "looking within" the mind. — Janus

Yet we can theorize about the underlying causes of behaviors of organic and inorganic matter that we can't observe directly all the time. That's why they're theories as opposed to observations. Only by designing and constructing the right measuring devices can we then observe the underlying causes to confirm our theories. Like Galileo said, "Measure what can be measured, and make measurable what cannot be measured".

Atoms were theorized to exist before observing their existence. Why didn't we refer to atoms as "subjective contents" when we could only theorize their existence as a result of the impact they have on the macro objects we do observe? The same goes for organisms. The difference is that we each have direct knowledge of the existence of our own phenomenological experiences, and which have an impact on our behaviors that can be observed by others, including making statements like "I feel great!" or "I feel awful!" P-zombies could probably only understand and use phrases like, "I am great!", or "I am awful!". So there appears to be a distinction between how something is vs. how it can feel. Is that distinction an illusion, or a "folk" distinction?

The difference that we have when theorizing about the existence of things we can't observe except by the effect those things have on the things that we can observe and theorizing the existence of minds, is that with minds we start off with two different views - the 1st and 3rd person views, whereas, with atoms, we only have a 3rd-person view, yet this 3rd person view is always like a 1st-person view - just from some imagined place in space-time. The problem is that we have these two "opposing" views - which is what creates doubt in that we know the world or our minds as they actually are. The difference in doubting the existence of your mind as opposed to the world is that you only know the world by the "subjective contents" of your mind, so if you doubt your understanding of your own mind, you automatically undermine your understanding of the world.

Being that our "subjective contents" have an impact on how we behave, how are they not as real as atoms, and can be talked about like we talk about atoms like we did after we theorized their existence, but before we observed their existence?

Given that my neighbor replied "You don't know what's good!", it's clear that he didn't operate on the above principle. — baker

They could have meant, "You don't know how I feel!".

The point is that we already have a way of using words that can refer to our feelings in an objective way. The problem is confusing one for the other - our feelings and the object our feelings are associated with, not a problem of language. Our minds and our feelings are just as real as everything else and can be talked about objectively, just like everything else.

As a rule, it seems that people typically conflate the two, their feelings about something and the thing itself. (Gourmet culture is a vivid example of such conflation.)

And this isn't a benign matter. If people wouldn't conflate like that, they couldn't come to statements like "Jews are inferior" — baker

Is this a result of how they see the world independent of language, or how language has made them see the world?

We agree that people conflate the two, but my point was that some people don't, and that there is no limitations in our language that prevent us from talking about the world and the mind objectively.

A more interesting example of the subjective nature we view the world is how we view it as a species vs. other species. Being able to determine what you perceive is real or an illusion is by using your observations of how others behave in a similar instance, is fine for limiting personal subjective errors, but what if we all have the same kind of illusion because of how our particular brains and senses function compared to other species? Using the behavior of others that share the same illusion isn't going to be very helpful. The use of animals, like dogs with heightened senses of hearing and smell are often used in addition to our own senses to determine if the noise you heard isn't just a figment of your imagination.

Now consider how any brain processes information compared to the other processes of the world. The brain takes time to process information, and the time it takes to process that info is relative to the process of change everywhere else. So how the brain perceives the world can be relative to how fast or slow everything else changes. Stable, slow changing processes would appear as fixed, unchanging objects, while faster processes would appear as processes of the objects themselves.

Think of how we perceive the three states of matter. Solid objects are composed of slow-moving, stable molecular interactions. Liquids are composed of faster and less stable molecular interactions, and gases even more so. Could it be that the quantified three states of matter are really more to do with how we perceive other processes relative to the frequency of how our brains process the information? This isn't to say that the interaction between molecules doesn't change, only that our compartmentalized view of these changes is a projection, kind of like digitizing an analog signal.

This would mean that the objects that we perceive are the result of our own subjective frequency of processing information relative to these frequency of change in the other processes that we are perceiving. This would mean that brains as objects don't really exist. Everything is process. This would explain why what we perceive appears differently to how we perceive (objects vs process).

The differences of opinion concerning naive realism, direct realism, indirect realism and so on gain traction from failure to adequately set out the various claims. — Banno

The ideas of direct vs indirect realism themselves are problematic. What type of access do we have to our own conscious minds? It seems to me that we have direct access to our mind and indirect access to the world via the mind - the one and only way we have access to and know about the world. We have direct access to our mind because we are our minds. Minds are a part of the world, so in a sense we have direct access to part of the world and indirect access to the rest of it. Now the boundary between indirect and direct realism becomes blurred and meaningless.

Intentinalist explanations potentially show how a neurological account and an intentional folk-account can both be true.

Intentionalism is a form of direct realism. While other direct realists might say one sees a cup, an intentionalist would more accurately say that one sees it as a cup.

More duck-rabbits, of course. And this needs filling out. But it fits fairly neatly with the neuroscience, avoids the silliness of qualia and shows that we refer to flowers and not perceptions-of-flowers. — Banno

Avoiding the "silliness" of qualia is ignoring the way the intentionalist sees the world. It fails to explain how one can confuse a hallucination, or a dream, for the real thing. How can they be confused for the same thing if they didn't appear similarly (their form and behavior is identical as qualia).

Is the intentionalist referring to flowers, or what they see as flowers? Mirages and hallucinations show that what the intentionalist sees something as isn't always what it is. Using the behavior of others as a means to determine what one is seeing is part of the shared world and not a figment of the mind is just as problematic as your only means of observing others is by the same means that the doubt is attributed to. There is also the issue of different levels of subjectivity - on the level of the individual and on the level of species. Not only are there differences in how individual humans perceive the world, but also a difference in how different species perceive the world. Which species has direct access to the world?

I'm talking about how people usually talk: they usually present their own opinion of a matter of objective fact, even when it is an opinion. They externalize. — baker

Sure, it could simply be a matter of communicating more efficiently. When someone says that the cherry tomatoes are good, it is short for "I feel that the cherry tomatoes are good". For some, using the short-hand version could make a listener think that they are projecting when they actually aren't. I expect you to know I'm talking more about my feeling when eating the cherry tomatoes, and less about the cherry tomatoes. Ripeness would be an attribute of the cherry tomatoes that I wouldn't be projecting as ripeness is a property of cherry tomatoes, not feelings.

Can't help you with that, Harry. Unlike you (seem to be), I'm neither a subjectivist nor a introspection illusionist. — 180 Proof

"The introspection illusion is a cognitive bias in which people wrongly think they have direct insight into the origins of their mental states, while treating others' introspections as unreliable."
-Wikipedia

If you're claiming that brains are the origin of experiences and asserting that all others who disagree are unreliable, then you're as much a introspective illusionist as anyone.

who [...] has had a clearer understanding of what mind is and its relationship to brains [...] why what someone else thinks about this relationship could be better than mine or anyone else's? — Harry Hindu

Call it what you will, Harry, but your "informationalist" position as expressed here suggests introspective illusionism (i.e. naive platonism) to me. — 180 Proof

Don't know how you interpreted skepticism of other people's introspective illusions as me being an introspective illusionist myself. Wouldn't that mean you're one too?

Is your experience of brains an illusion? How else do you or anyone know anything about brains if not by experience?

Kind of like having a map of the territory without including the map's location on the map. The map is as much a part of the territory (the world) as the rest of the world. Why exclude the map when making a map of the territory - if you want an accurate representation of the territory? — Harry Hindu

I should add that when you attempt to include the map as part of the territory when making a map of the territory, it involves jumping down a never-ending rabbit hole where your map includes itself and the territory in an infinite regress - kind of like looking down an never-ending corridor when two mirrors are placed opposite of each other - and kind of like what it is like when contemplating the self - and turning thinking upon itself in thinking about thinking.

From within this experiential world, we manage to conceive of the world scientifically, in such a way that it fails to accommodate the manner in which we find ourselves in it. Hence the real problem of consciousness is that of reconciling the world as we find ourselves in it with the objective world of inanimate matter that is revealed by empirical science. It should not simply be assumed from the outset that a solution to the problem will incorporate the view that science reigns supreme.” — Joshs

Kind of like having a map of the territory without including the map's location on the map. The map is as much a part of the territory (the world) as the rest of the world. Why exclude the map when making a map of the territory - if you want an accurate representation of the territory? There are some that think the map isn't important to represent on the map, as we aren't interested in the map - just the territory. Now, if we were talking about cartography and not geography, then the map would be more important than the territory. The same goes if we are talking about psychology vs physics.

The thing to remember though, is that all great theories can be integrated with the conclusions discovered in other fields. All knowledge must be integrated. The way we talk about brains shouldn't come into conflict with how we talk about minds and vice versa. Any good theory will be able to account for them both without the need to assert that one is an illusion to make their own explanation work.

Normally, when people communicate, the implicit assumption is that the person who holds a position of more power is objective, while the one in the position of power is not objective. For example, when your boss reviews your work, he does it in a language of providing an objective image of your work performance, as opposed to just his opinion of your work. — baker

I'm assuming the boss is using statistics that were produced by a computer, not feelings the boss has about their performance. The computer statistics would be more objective because the computer doesn't care, or bears no responsibility, if the employee is fired or not. The boss could have ulterior motives, or even subconscious biases that they could be applying to the decision to fire or hire.

The distinction between subjective and objective is simply where unrelated reasons and assumptions are used in the process of interpreting sensory data compared to not using unrelated reasons and assumptions to interpret sensory data. Computers don't seem to have that problem of using unrelated reasons to reach a conclusion because they are programmed with a strictly defined and limited work flow and access to information, as well as no goals to use the data they display for personal reasons.

It's unclear is this example would hold, but perhaps mathematics. Or, consider the following thought experiment: suppose a baby is put in a complete sensory isolation chamber, it's not inconceivable to me that they would have internal self stimulation of some kind. Of course, I can't say if this would happen, but it's possible. — Manuel

What is mathematics composed of if not the visual of black scribbles on white paper? If you're talking about what the scribbles represent, then I would still assume that you mean something real and observable, for if you didn't mathematics wouldn't be of much use.

What is internal self stimulation and would the baby be considered "thinking" when in this state? If so, what OF? Does hallucinating and dreaming qualify as thinking? If anything this latter example is evidence that the brain needs sensory input to function properly enough for the entire organism to survive long enough to be meaningful.

Can't help you with that, Harry. Unlike you (seem to be), I'm neither a subjectivist nor a introspection illusionist. — 180 Proof

I think that if you were actually paying attention then you'd know I'm neither of those, too. I'm an informationalist, or relationship/process philosopher. I'm trying to argue that your mind is an objective part if the world because it is information, or process, like everything else. You seem to be a naive realist if you think the world is composed of physical objects, like brains, instead of processes like minds, like the one you have direct access to right now and of which brains and other physical objects that you experience are models of other processes.

Maps are not the territory, but they are made of the same substance as the territory. For maps and their corresponding territory, it is easy to see the similarity because we are neither map nor territory and both map and territory can only be modeled as part of our mental processes. So the similarity has to do with how they are modeled, and the difference between mind and the "phyisical" objects is that one is the modeler (processor) and the others are what is being processed (models).

Perhaps at some point "down the system" these things actually converge, in very primitive organisms but then they develop differently. The one thing that keeps coming to mind is that sense alone, is poor when compared to the intellect alone, in as much as we can separate them in actuality. — Manuel

I just don't see how that could be. My point is that you can't have one without the other. What could you be intellectualizing about if you had no sense? What form does your intellectualizing take if not sensory data (qualia)‽

I actually don't mind labels much. As in, you can be a total idealist and say that we create the world with our minds. Or you can be a metaphysical dualist. If the arguments are interesting and persuasive, that's what matters. I only dismiss "eliminitative materalism", because it's just very poor philosophy. — Manuel

I don't mind labels either as long as they are used in such a way that makes sense when parsed.
If "we" create the world with our minds, then where is the we in relation to our minds, and if the we, the world and mind are synonymous, then I don't see much use for the word, "mind", as there would only be a world and no mind and no we. Minds and we would simply be part if this strange world.

Yeah but "over here" and "over there" are just as much mental attributions as colours are.

A different thing, in that it likely applies to the external world, are some aspects of mathematics. — Manuel

Mathematics are as much mental attributions as colors are. After all, the symbols of math are made up of shapes and colors. Any alien species would probably use different symbols.

It's the relationships/processes that mathematics represent that are real (again it's processes all the way down, of which minds are a type of process). Mathematics is just a way to quantify these relationships/processes into useful objects of thought. It is the processes that are real and what the external world is like more so than the solid, stable, "physical" objects of the process of perceiving and thinking.

What good is cogitation without the senses? Well, not entirely senseless, but look at, say, deaf-blind people, they can read by only pressing their fingers over bumps on a page and get an extremely rich story out of that.

So the senses can be extremely poor compared with the cognitive reply. — Manuel

We know that the brain is adaptable and can repurpose processing power that was used for visual and auditory perception for tactile perception.

A better example would be what happens to people in a sensory deprivation chamber. After a while the brain creates its own input.

Nerve nets eventually started to group together in tighter clusters, which brains evolved from. Brains were selected for their ability to bring information from different sources (multiple senses) into a consistent whole creating a more fault-tolerant system where the information from one sense is used to confirm the information coming from another. Brains were also selected for their ability to attend to these sensory impressions focusing the attention from one part of the mind to another (think of continuing to look straight ahead while focusing your attention on the limits of your peripheral vision).

So it seems to me that primitive minds existed prior to the existence of fully evolved brains, with more complex brains adding to the functionality of the pre-existing mind.

I may sound like I'm leaning towards idealism or panpsychism, but I'm not. Supposing mind is the fundamental component of reality is just as much of a projection as supposing the world is "physical" - whatever that means. The mind is a process, and process is the fundamental component of reality.

Ah, yes, another tabula raza know-nothing. Lazy is as lazy does, Harry. You prove my point. — 180 Proof

Yet it would have been less typing for you and more educational for me and others had you simply used the time you had in forming these snarky replies to just quote his explanation here, in this thread. :roll:

Tell me, 180: who in the world, or in all of history, has had a clearer understanding of what mind is and its relationship to brains, and how did they obtain this clearer understanding, so as I might understand why what someone else thinks about this relationship could be better than mine or anyone else's?

It seems to me that we are all stuck in this same predicament of only having access to our own minds and the world as we perceive it through our own minds, so one is just as likely as any other to have a clear understanding of this relationship.

Please don't bother saying they are neurologists and it's their job to study brains. Studying brains is only studying your perception of brains without acknowledging the fundamental problem of how the mind appears compared to how brains appear and all of their knowledge of brains is only a result of how they appear via the mind. When science itself implies that "physical" objects are made up of the processes of smaller objects, which are in turn made up of smaller objects interacting, etc. ad infinitum, and that objects are mostly empty space, then our perception of "physical" objects doesn't match up to our explanation of the objects we perceive, and that includes brains and their neurons.

Well the senses themselves don't cogitate. So there's no puzzle by itself here. — Manuel

What use are the senses without cogitation? What use is cogitation without senses? Brains evolved later from nerve nets. Feelings existed before integrating them into the whole of the brain.

I said "reading", not "watching videos". I come here to discuss with fellow well-read members, Harry, not to teach anyone what they can learn themselves. There's just too much 'idle (uninformed) speculation driven by intellectual laziness' going on lately. — 180 Proof

Not sure how reading what other people write can shed light on your own mind. Seems to me that the mind is fundamental and anyone that has one can reflect on its properties themselves without being influenced by what other people write. I come here to discuss with fellow free-thinkers that can think for themselves and come to their own conclusions, and not only about what other people write.

To those asserting that there are "physical" brains that model, are at least admitting that there are models, but can't seem to explain where their modeling of other "brains"(?) ends and real "brains"(?) begin. Why is modeling your own brain and body states (first-person perspective) different than you modeling other people's brains and bodies (third-person perspective)?

If the brain models, what you call a brain is a model, but of what exactly? How do you know that the brain you refer to isn't the model rather than what the model is of? If brains model body states then how do you know that the brain you are seeing isn't just the way your mind models other people's minds? What they are essentially saying is the brains of others that they perceive is their own mental model of other people's mental modeling. It must be models all the way down?

Like I said before, third-person perspectives are simulated first-person perspectives. So if you are going to assert that the first-person perspective is an illusion, then you've just undermined all of your third-person perspectives and knowledge you've acquired by them - which is everything you know.

Another strange inconsistency that I've noticed on the part of the Modelers is that they make the assertion that the self is only a model, and not also what is modeled, yet a brain isn't just a model, but also what is modeled.

As I understand it, the moment of the singularity can't be known because time and space themselves started along with it. But the technicalities are beyond my ken. — Wayfarer

This is interesting topic. How would the "beginning of time" appear to measuring instruments and to brains interpreting those measurements?

If time is the comparison of relative change (all measurements are comparisons of relative differences and similarities), then the beginning of time would be when things went from not changing to changing - when change started happening in the universe. But then one must ask the question if the universe is all there is and if there wasn't other change going on outside of the universe that may have caused the universe to come into being - which is just more change - in other words there could possibly be no beginning of time because there has always been change.

If there was no change at all at one point in the multi-verses history, then how can that state of non-change cause change? It's the old question of how something can come from nothing. How can space-time come from a state of no space and no time?

Try actually reading Metzinger. — 180 Proof

I don't see how watching videos of his lectures would be any different, unless me means different things with the same words when he writes them as opposed to speaking them. I don't see why you couldn't just summarize his explanation on this particular question, if he (or you for that matter) really had one.

"According to Thomas Metzinger, no such things as selves exist in the world: nobody ever had or was a self. All that exists are phenomenal selves, as they appear in conscious experience."

How on earth is this supposed to suggest that there's no qualia? Qualia is conscious experience. — frank

What on Earth does he mean by "self" anyway? Is he saying that there are no such things as individual organisms? If there are individual organisms that make up a particular species, then does a self exist even if those organisms don't have the mental capacity to model states of their body? The theory of evolution by natural selection is based on the idea of competing individuals (selves) with the winner successfully passing their genes down the subsequent generations, thereby improving the specie's chances of persisting through time. Ideas are just as real as physiological traits and they both are used to compete, and selected for or against, in the game of survival.

I didn’t say you can’t see code. I said you can’t see code by simply looking at a computer. You can bust open the motherboard and look at it all you want (like looking at a brain) and you won’t see what’s happening in there. — khaled

What is it that you're looking for that you say you can't see? You'll need to define "computer program" because now it seems that you're just moving goalposts. Also, explain what a "computer program" is independent of someone observing it and then what it looks like when someone looks at it and how they would know that is what they are looking at.

With the right software I can see what you’re feeling generally well. Whether it’s fear, anger, etc. Brain scans exist. They don’t show everything, but they are showing more and more. — khaled

That's the point I'm trying to make - what is a "feeling" when looking at it through software or a brain scan as opposed to experiencing it? Why is there a difference at all? Why is there an experience of a feeling in the first-person and also a coinciding experience of neural activity in the third-person? Which perspective is of the feeling as it actually is? In other words, which perspective has more direct access, or knowledge, to the "feeling" and why?

Knowledge is conceptual, both qualitative and quantitative, so it is does consist in qualia. — Janus

The point being that at the most fundamental level, knowledge is composed of sensory impressions: colors, shapes, sounds, etc., aka qualia. Your experience of the words on this screen are composed of shapes and colors, not neurons firing in a certain sequence. Neurons and brains themselves are composed of particular shapes and colors. It is these varying shapes and colors that are used to compare and differentiate other shapes and colors, not a comparison of neural electrical currents.

Your perspective on anything is your perspective of course, not mine. General knowledge of publicly available phenomena is not merely your perspective, even if your perspective accords with it. — Janus

I'm not sure what you mean by "perspective" then if you seem to be attributing it to something independent of a sensory information processing system. There can be no such thing as a perspective independent of some sensory information processing system. In a sense, there are only first-person perspectives with perspectives being a informational structure composed of information about the world relative to the self. Third-person perspectives are simulated first-person perspectives.

lmost two decades ago when by chance I came across the neurophilosopher Thomas Metzinger's magisterial Being No One (I highly recommend the less technical, much condensed summary version The Ego Tunnel). — 180 Proof

All he does is talk about how the brain models the world without addressing how the model relates to the brain itself - why the model is composed of entirely different stuff from the first person perspective (the mind and its qualia) as opposed to the third person (the brain and its neurons).

What are qualia, according to you? — Janus

The components of knowledge. What form does your knowledge take? When you say that you know something what are you pointing to? How do you know you know something?

When I look at your brain, is my perspective of your brain first person or third person? Is my perspective of your mind first person or third person?

Basically he argues that the first-person nature of experience (awkwardly termed 'what-it-is-like-ness') is something that cannot be described in objective, third-person terms — Wayfarer

That's only if you think the world is as you experience it (naive realism) while at the same time believing the idea that the experience itself is causally segregated from the world itself. It's an inconsistent position.

It just amazes me that people are still asserting that qualia are an illusion when the only way they know of the existence of brains in bodies and their behaviors is via their subjective experience of such things. If the way you know the world is an illusion, then your observations, understanding and explanations of the world are an illusion.

You take walking for granted. Learning to ride a bike or drive a car is a science as much as learning that you can walk and then learning how.

How is observing yourself any different than observing nature? Are you not part of nature? Any explanations you come up with about what you are and your relationship with everything else is a product of your scientific thought processes that allow you to make predictions which is basically the only reason we produce explanations in the first place.

We all try to be consistent. If we didn't then no one would understand anything we say or write. It's usually when some of us find that our observations and logic conflict with our feelings is when we throw consistency out the window for the sake of our feelings.

When I observe that I have mind or two legs or two arms am I doing science?? That makes me a scientist? — dimosthenis9

Sure. Anytime you attempt to integrate your observations into an consistent explanation of reality, you're doing science.