I would prefer to deal with one reality, defined as actuality.
This means that:
1) All experience is objective and subjective.
2) Some experience is also intersubjective.

@Mww, would you say that mentioned mental constructs are part of the same larger world (outside reality) as the experienced?
If so, then @Galuchat's inquiry seems to indicate a need to differentiate among hallucination and perception, yes? — jorndoe

Yes, but not for that reason.
If reality is to be defined in terms of experience (an awareness event consisting of perception and cognisance), my inquiry ("Are hallucinations real?") indicates a need to differentiate between typical or natural perception, and atypical or unnatural perception (i.e., hallucination, a type of misperception). And different types of perception implies different types of experience, which implies different types of reality.

So, what do we call these different types of reality?

That is how implication often works. It allows us to move from the data of experience to new realities, many of which are available to experience. — Dfpolis

This is more nonsense, given your definition of reality in terms of experience. So, we are done here.

Are hallucinations real? — Galuchat

Yes. They are real experiences potentially informing us of the reality of some neurological disorder. — Dfpolis

So, they are an encountered experience type of experience potentially informing us of the encountered experience of some neurological disorder.

This is nonsense.

Are hallucinations real?

Natural science seeks to discover general principles for understanding objective reality in abstraction from the knowing subject. — Dfpolis

If reality is "what we encounter in experience" and experience is "the data we have to work with", then reality is: what we encounter in the data we have to work with.

What is objective reality, and does it require subjective reality?

Fair enough. Cheers.

"Reality" first means what we encounter in experience... — Dfpolis

I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.
IOW, is there a second, third, fourth (etc) elaboration of the meaning of reality (what we encounter in experience)?

It depends on how you explicate your terms.
1) What does "actuality" mean to you? Is it accessible, or quarantined?
2) Are you thinking of "events" as disjoint, or simply points in a continuum we happen to be fixed upon? And, how do you conceive awareness?
3) By "Awareness" i mean what makes intelligibility known. So, it rises above sensory perception in that we can perceive and respond in complex ways without being aware in the sense required to know. — Dfpolis

1) Actuality is accessible through perception (sensation effect).

2a) Events as points in a continuum we happen to be fixed upon.

2b) Awareness consists of perception and cognisance (automatic and/or controlled acknowledgement).

3) Automatic cognisance is recognition (identification based on association with tacit knowledge)), controlled cognisance is cognitive appraisal (evaluation of context involving slow brain pathway processing through frontal lobes)), and automatic and controlled cognisance is appraisal (Two-Process Model per Smith & Kirby, 2009; or Multilevel Sequential Check Model per Scherer, 2001).

"Reality" first means what we encounter in experience...
When you make "reality" mean more than, or something other than, what we encounter in experience, you're creating a mental construct. — Dfpolis

If I make:
1) Reality synonymous with actuality,
2) Experience an awareness event, and
3) Awareness a perceptive and/or cognisant condition,

have we made similar assertions?

This is what dream does. It unplugs the connections between the sections of an event, if that is how it works, and re-plugs parts of the memory loop to unplugged parts of other memory loops. — god must be atheist

This agrees with the Continual-Activation Theory of Dreaming, a neurological explanation of memory consolidation during sleep, and dreaming as by-product.

"The type I dream, a thought-like mentation, is the consequence of the memory replay when the declarative memory data is retrieved from the temporary memory store to the conscious subsidiary systems of the working memory for processing during NREM sleep. On the other hand, type II dream, a more dream-like mentation, often occurs during REM sleep, when the procedural memory is being transferred from the temporary memory to the long-term memory."

Zhang, Jie (2004). Memory Process and the Function of Sleep. (6–6 ed.). Journal of Theoretics.

What laws of physics are involved here? — Glenn Turner

"...boids and all of the other marvellous computer models of collective animal behaviour, from ant colonies to herd animals on the prairie, would remain little more than hi-tech parlour games, had physicists not begun to see that they are really a form of non-equilibrium statistical physics."

Ball, Philip. (2004). Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another. (pp. 152-156). Random House. London.

I'm looking specifically at a formalism with an application to law (and/or ethics). The categorization of actions into permissible and impermissible with corresponding sub-categories related to the justification in ethics or law is the end goal. — JosephS

See Robert Schirokauer Hartman's scientific axiology. Marvin Charles Katz ("prof" on the old forum) was one of his students.

I think that the quantification of ethics (morality/immorality) is possible, and that its application in the formation of public policy is appropriate.

For those who prefer to conflate mystery (a form of ignorance) and incommensurability, consciousness is a hard problem.

I view the "Hard Problem of Consciousness" as a conceptual mystification, and consciousness (mass noun) as a set of sensitivity-awareness (body-mind) conditions which vary.

For example, human beings may be:
1) Conscious: uninhibited (physiologically unconstrained) and actively aware,
2) Semi-Conscious: inhibited (physiologically constrained) and passively aware, or
3) Non-Conscious: inhibited (physiologically constrained) and unaware.

Nevertheless, neuro-phenomenology can potentially have sense in the first-person, in terms of an association between sensory experiences and brain-probing-experiences, as for example in an experiment in which the subject records his experiences when probing his own brain. — sime

Please provide a link to your paper when published.

Hence language is not mere communication. — Banno

Incorrect.
Language is not communication, full stop.
It is a mental modelling system used by advanced psychosemiotic organisms (i.e., human beings).

Shannon provided a definition of information.
I don't endorse it as a general definition of information.

Read Shannon's paper, I'm not interested in defending his work.

The best articulated definition comes from information theory. — Banno

Didn't Shannon not really define the term? — Terrapin Station

OK - I understood Shannons entropy equation as a definition of information, but I may have read too much into that. — Banno

Shannon's equation quantifies information, which he defined as the reduction of uncertainty.

What I take away from the Mathematical Theory of Communication isn't the math, it's the communication concept.

So ... knowledge is when words are used to put information to work? — Marchesk

Knowledge is semantic information, which may be empirical (based on experience, such as tacit/implicit or declarative/explicit knowledge), or pure (based on metacognition).

Language is formal (not material, efficient, or final) cause.

You are not only informed what someone is saying, but informed that someone is saying something - that language is being used. — Harry Hindu

I agree.
The former is semantic information, and the latter is physical (specifically, first inorganic, then organic) information.

I have said that "Information is the result of communication." Specifically, information is a decoded message.

When someone is speaking (or has written) to me, I hear (or see) words (which are associated with concepts that have meaning). This is extrinsic mental communication (communication between minds), which first requires inorganic (then organic) data encoding, messaging (transmission, conveyance, and reception), and decoding; and finally, requires semantic data decoding.

Since the OP concerns human language (code consisting of a set of words having paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations, hence; semantic content), it concerns all these types of information.

The mind is nothing but information as an effect of the interaction between your body and the world. — Harry Hindu

You could say everything that exists (actuality) is the sum of efficient cause (the laws of nature or intentionality) and final cause (information).

The mind processes experiential and metacognitive information.

Language is not moving information from one head to another.
It's doing things with words. — Banno

I agree.
Language is a code used for intrinsic and extrinsic mental communication (data encoding, messaging, and decoding).

Intrinsic Mental Communication: communication within a mind.
Extrinsic Mental Communication: communication between minds.

Information is the result of communication.

Thought includes:...
Are propositions or the propositional form an aspect of this? Is yes, how? As an oject of some action?
If no, then how do you invision thought? — frank

Propositions are verbal.
Thoughts may be verbal and/or non-verbal. (Paivio, 2007)

Paivio, Allan Urho. 2007. Mind and its Evolution: A Dual Coding Theoretical Approach. Mahwah, NJ. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Does the universe have a location?
Everything, whatever that may be: does it have a spatial or temporal location?
I argue no, there would have to be space and time beyond it for that. — frank

The Universe (everything) is all existence (all spatial and/or temporal extension).

Space is finite or infinite multidirectional distance. Space implies objects.

Location is a geometrically defined part of space.

Time is finite or infinite unidirectional duration. Time implies events.

So, the OP is nonsense, because it makes no sense to refer to:
1) A location for all existence.
2) Temporal location.
3) Existence beyond all existence.

If something is said to be right or wrong in Ethical terms, doing so must be based on values that have already been accepted. What choice do the values provide? — RW Standing

A choice between moral or immoral action. But this choice is relevant to normative ethics, not meta-ethics (basis of ethics).

Before the deluge. I started this off not with founding ethics in reason. But with using reason to classify and arrange ethical values diagrammatically. In the way they logically relate. — RW Standing

And this is relevant to descriptive ethics.

I agree.

To what degree can reason influence emotions? — Wallows

Barrett, Lisa Feldman. 2016. The Theory of Constructed Emotion: An Active Inference Account of Interoception and Categorization. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2017, 1–23. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsw154.

I'm aware of higher brain functions ability to suppress impulses and direct behavior. — Wallows

Brains transmit, convey, and receive, action potentials. Minds "suppress impulses and direct behavior".

Yet, to what extent, "valence dimensions" can be appraised by reason is something that I would be interested in uncovering. — Wallows

Let me know what you find.

I understand the issue as a complex interrelated dynamic between emotions and reason. — Wallows

I agree.

But, I don't understand the details here. For example, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can serve as a backdrop where Hume's sentiment towards reason being the slave of the passions, as not being entirely true, at least not on face value. — Wallows

I am unfamiliar with CBT and Hume, however; I agree that if Hume's sentiment is that reason is the slave of the passions, it is not entirely true.

I think that emotions:
1) Are a mind-body response to an awareness of the circumstance(s) of an object of concern.
2) Have intensity, duration, arousal, and valence dimensions.
3) Are caused by a triggering event, affect, personality, and context recognition or appraisal.
4) Produce affect display, motivation, and action/behaviour.
5) Are an automatic mental process. (Kahneman, 2011)

So, cognition is clearly involved in constructing emotion. (cf. Barrett, 2016)

Also:
1) Cognitive dissonance may result from a contradiction between thought and emotion, attitude, motivation, intent, volition, action, or behaviour. (Festinger, 1957)
2) Affect and motivational intensity may broaden or narrow cognitive scope. (Harmon-Jones, et al., 2013)
3) A peripheral (emotion-based) method of persuasion tends to activate heuristics rather than reasoning. (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986)

It's a commonsensical approach in my view, to throw away the prejudice of ancient philosophers towards the emotions, along with many of the rationalists, and instead embrace one's emotions towards the ethical. — Wallows

I agree, with the caveat that one also embrace one's reason toward the ethical.

Morality is modelled by the human mind through the operation of ethical learning, ethical categorisation, ethical knowledge, ethical evaluation, conscience, introspection, and self-judgment. As such, it is an inherent part of a typical human being's nature and maturation, and has many subjective (personal) and intersubjective (cultural) manifestations.

Empathy is identification with, and the vicarious experience of, the thoughts and/or affect(n) of another person, which:

1) Describes moral events as those which satisfy fundamental human needs, and immoral events as those which do not satisfy fundamental human needs.

2) Is an ethical perception faculty (i.e., the sense of morality) which is inherent to human nature (except in the case of certain mental disorders) and entails ethical evaluation.

3) Has affective and/or cognitive components.
Rogers, Kimberley; Dziobek, Isabel; Hassenstab, Jason; Wolf, Oliver T.; Convit, Antonio. 2007. "Who Cares? Revisiting Empathy in Asperger Syndrome". J Autism Dev Discord 37 (4): 709–15. doi:10.1007/s10803-006-0197-8. PMID 16906462.

Is there anything to read on this matter that you guys know of? — Frotunes

Try this:
Handbook of the Philosophy of Science
Volume 8: Philosophy of Information edited by Pieter Adriaans and Johan van Benthem
General Editors: Dov Gabbay, Paul Thagard and John Woods

Humorous writing style.
Best case scenario: grandiloquent.
Worst case scenario: word salad.
Bottom line: nobody who values their own time will bother to determine which (if not both) case(s) pertain(s), much less your intended meaning(s).
Upshot: similar to many (if not most) other posts on this forum.

Hi, CurlyHairedCobbler here. — CurlyHairedCobbler

Hi, @CurlyHairedCobbler. @Galuchat, here.

I'm surprised that having studied both psychology and philosophy you are using simplistic concepts like 'reason' and 'truth'. — fresco

I'm surprised you would admit to having simplistic conceptions of 'reason' and 'truth'.


Maybe if you returned a greeting and brief introduction to @CurlyHairedCobbler, she may be more inclined to answer one of your 15 questions in a new thread.

The rationalization of time through weeks etc, and the rationalization of value through money are things that a lot of people don't like, but how did you people manage to overcome the pressure of the cage that tells you what you should do and when you should do it, and did you manage to fly away? — virginia west

I rationally chose not to conform.

No opinion regarding my second question (here)? — Galuchat

OK, I'll give you a clue: Bennett and Hacker make the same two assertions, but if you want the elaboration, you will have to read their book.

I assume PMS Hacker is a competent logician and philosopher of mind, but admit that you may regard him as "stupid" per above.

Thanks for proving my point regarding lack of credible scientific evidence.
No opinion regarding my second question (here)?

Why aren't there similar objections to talking about the specific functions of other organs/systems? — Terrapin Station

Where is mind and its components? As always, I'm only interested that you cite credible scientific research in answering this question. You have not provided it in the past, and I doubt that you will be able to provide it now.

Because of this, I don't think mind exists. But I do think that psychological predicates can be attributed to animals. Given the first assertion, and apart from elaboration, is the latter assertion logical (i.e., does it make sense)?

Speaking of ignorance: what part of "Bennett is an internationally renowned neuroscientist" don't you understand?

Oh wow! Big names.
I'll have to rush right out and buy those Gazzaniga books then, not.

If you read Bennett and Hacker, you will become familiar with the logical errors which many eminent scientists (e.g., Gazzaniga) have made. Then read as much cognitive science as you can.

Bennett, Maxwell Richard; Hacker, Peter Michael Stephan. 2003. Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

So, you have been equivocating. We are done here.

I would say the brain is used by our minds to compute things. — AJJ

The relationship which obtains between brain and mind is one of correlation, not causation. However, you are free to cite credible scientific research to the contrary.

The brain isn’t doing any computing per se, just reacting to stimuli. — AJJ

In its most general sense, a computer is an input-output processor.
Brains receive exogenous and/or endogenous neural signals from sense organs (input), perform sensory processing at relevant locations, and produce environmental or corporeal state perception (output).