I'm saying the neurological account is not necessarily physicalist. It's a leap from saying that there are neurological processes involved, to materialist philosophy of mind. — Wayfarer

There is a leap from any empirical account to any metaphysical claim. We really ought to suspend judgement in the absence of any firm metaphysical ground at all. If we wish to make a leap it ought to be what is considered to be the inference to the best explanation. Of course for whatever reasons we are not all going to agree what is the best inference. I'm merely telling you that if I am pressed to say which I think is the best inference, then I'll choose physicalism, but I'm not wedded to it. My natural inclination is to suspend judgement and in my day to day life that is just what I do, because the issue is of little or no importance—little relevance to how I live my life.

So get this clear - you believe that to question physicalism requires positing of another realm? You said it: do you believe it? — Wayfarer

Physicalism is the claim that the fundamental nature of everything is energy. Physics understands matter and energy to be one and the same. What is the other alternative to the realm of the physical? I would say it is the realm of the mind. But we know nothing of mind beyond our own introspective intuitions about our own minds. Of the physical we know a whole world which, being investigated, has yielded a vast body of coherent and consistent scientific knowledge.

Science tells us the universe existed long before humans. I see no reason to doubt that. If that is so, then mind cannot be fundamental unless something like panpsychism is true, or there is a god or universal mind that keeps what appears to us as the [physical world in place. I just don't find those explanations rationally compelling, although I am attracted to them in an imaginative way.

I learned a lot from Apokrisis, including the whole field of biosemiotics, which I've read quite a bit about by now. — Wayfarer

Yeah, I've read some of Salthe and some of Deacon and some of Hoffmeyer and others over the last ten years or so since first encountering Apo. But I don't count myself as an expert. I can understand the arguments, but I don't have the background to assess their veracity. so I maintain an open mind. I don't recall any of them questioning naturalism or physicalism. If you can cite some passages from those writers or others that do then I'll certainly consider them.

What is the alternative to physicalism to explain the fact that we share a world with each other and the animals other than the old "universal mind" model? Nothing else works, even Kastrup admits that. I am not completely close-minded to the possibility of that, but I honestly do see it to be of much less plausibility than naturalism. I'd actually rather believe in the universal mind model, but unfortunately, I just don't find it compelling enough.

To me the Lewontin passage is tendentious babble—nothing substantive to be found there.

I dispute that the brain is physical. The human brain, in context, is the most complex natural phenomenon known to science, with more neural connections than stars in the sky. — Wayfarer

The criterion of what is physical is that its activities have measurable effects. The brain ticks that box. I get that our experience doesn't intuitively seem to be physical. Intuitive understanding is not always a good guide to the nature of things,

substantive evidence or reason — Janus

See the original post. — Wayfarer

I read it before, and I just looked at it again, I know all those arguments like the proverbial back of my hand. They are trivial truisms—they simply say that without the mind, without percipients, there would be no world appearing. How could I take issue with such a tautology, other than to point out its vacuity.

If you think that because no world would appear to humans if humans didn't exist that it follows that human consciousness is fundamental to reality, I can only wonder what has happened to your critical thinking skills. Maybe they have become buried beneath your confirmation bias.

Brandolini's law, also known as the bullshit asymmetry principle, is an internet adage coined in 2013 by Alberto Brandolini, an Italian programmer, that emphasizes the effort of debunking misinformation, in comparison to the relative ease of creating it in the first place. The law states:

The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.

I like that. It reminds me of an injunction sometimes attributed to Mark Twain and other times to George Carlin (roughly paraphrased): " Never argue with a fool because they will bring you down to their level and then beat you with experience".

I'm saying the neurological account is not necessarily physicalist. — Wayfarer

It deals with the brain, which is physical and uses physical methods to study it.

Because you often express it. You said it in the post I responded to - 'what are we to do, believe there is "another realm?" — Wayfarer

So what? I have no fear of other realms. I love imagining them, but I don't count such creative imaginings as anything more than fiction. What's wrong with fiction? Nothing in my book.

However, if we are to be justified in thinking that such imaginings are anything more than fictions then we need some substantive evidence or compelling reason for thinking so. That is just what you apparently cannot provide.

Being personally convinced of something does not constitute any good reason for others to believe what you do. You apparently find that hard to understand. It actually seems to be a kind of narcissism, when it blinds you to the fact that others can disagree with you while understanding your position. I don't see you understanding that. It's a shame.

A pretty poor post, I have to say. — Wayfarer

:rofl: Nice try, but I'm not biting. Desperation breeds denigration it seems.

Just because something can be attributed to neurobiology, doesn't necessarily mean it can be understood solely through a physicalist lens. — Wayfarer

And I haven't anywhere said that it definitely can or that it definitely cannot. One thing I know is that the way perceptual experience might seem to us cannot be explained in terms of a mechanical model of physicality. @Apokrisis always said it can be understood in terms of a semiotic model of physicality, if I read him right. I don't have the background to properly assess the soundness of Apo's posts, and I freely admit that.

As you kind of admit, the problem is that to question the physicalist account is to open the door to - well, what, exactly? — Wayfarer

If you wish to question the neurological account, which is a physicalist account insofar as it looks for explanations in terms of neural patterns and activity, then you need to come up with a compelling alternative.

That is what you have constantly failed to do. Instead, you say proponents of physicalism are suffering from fear of religion. Your view is so skewed that you cannot see the possibility that other find religious explanations simply uncompelling.,

Your anachronistic mechanistic model of physicalism is merely the pet strawman you love to keep knocking down. I know all the kinds of arguments you marshal—for years I used to deploy them myself against physicalism. Eventually I came to see that those arguments are merely reactive, not constructive. They don't proceed from a desire to know the truth, but from a need to destroy what threatens to undermine what you wish to be the case.

It really is a staggering irony that you want to dismiss physicalist's arguments by attempting to denigrate them as being psychologically motivated by a fear of something which you obviously desperately need, and need to justify, and they don't—namely religion. Your arguments are motivated by a fear of letting go of religion. I have an open mind, which you obviously do not.

If it is not the meaning of the words that affects you in a certain way, could random words affect you in that same way? — Patterner

It seems reasonable to think that when we learn a language we learn not only words but the logic (grammar) which determines how words may be grouped together in sentences. If, having learnt a language we have established neural networks that embody that learning then the words, or better sentences and passages, activate these networks and result in the apprehension of their meaning—an interpretation.

Now of course I'm not absolutely certain that is how that works but it seems most consistent with the findings of neuroscience. What else do we have to go on? Do you think our vague intuitions that meaning cannot be physical are reliable sources of understanding and knowledge?

Let's say the semantic and the neurological are not separate at all. We don't understand how they go together, so our first pre-critical thought is that meaning cannot be an attribute of physical (neuronal) processes. Perhaps we just don't understand the physical well enough. What's the alternative? Posit the existence of another realm?

I really am not interested in discussing things with someone who is hellbent on mischaracterizing the view I am defending. — Clearbury

That's up to you of course. But I'm not interested in mischaracterizing your view of solipsism, but in understanding what it consists in. So far, I don't understand your understanding of solipsism.

Is the one mind yours or mine or both? Is it a universal mind of which we are all part?

Of course if there is only one mind the idea that there are many minds is an illusion.

What ↪Wayfarer said is true, but what you interpreted is not what he meant. The "shapes" on a computer screen are indeed physical, but it's their meta-physical*1 meaning (forms) that might affect you : — Gnomon

I am affected physically by what is said (sound) or what I read (light) and this causes changes in the body and the brain, and those changes are my interpretation of the meaning of what I have heard or seen.

You might not agree with this picture of what is happening, but nothing is missing, except of course complete understanding, which shouldn't be a surprise since we don't completely understand anything.

No, mainly on account of the kinds of things they post. — Wayfarer

I think it is mighty presumptuous of you to think that people have "forgotten themselves" just because they think the physicalist account is the most plausible. Seems to me that attitude refects nothing other than your own prejudices.

Aren't you saying the equivalent of, "I don't think comets make any difference, as long as they don't crash into us and negatively impact significant issues"? — Patterner

No, I'm not saying anything like your 'comet' analogy.
What we believe will be determinitive of what we do, broadly speaking. I just don't conceive of our thoughts, feelings, beliefs and desires as being non-physical or immaterial (in either sense). In fact it is on account of their physicality that they can be causally efficacious. Otherwise we would be looking at dualism which comes with the interaction problem.

I'm a materialist and I haven't forgotten myself—I just think of myself as material because I cannot find any immaterial modality of being in myself.

Do you believe that all materialists have forgotten themselves just because Schopenhauer said so?

You question that we have these experiences? — Patterner

I don't question the idea that we experience things.

In response to your question about people being emotionally affected by things that are said to them or by things they believe; I don't deny any of that—I just think it is all physical processes. So, I'm not understanding your puzzlement. I'm not totally wedded to believing that it is all physical processes, that just seems to me the more plausible option. I don't believe there is any determinable fact of the matter about all this.

Right, and furthermore, as you also often say, it doesn’t matter anyway. — Wayfarer

I don't see the point of this comment. Is it meant to be some kind of criticism? When I say it doesn't matter what I believe I mean that I cannot help being convinced by what I am convinced by, and I also believe that is the case with all of us. We don't choose to find most plausible what we do find most plausible, we just find it most plausible. Although maybe some people are more motivated by what they want to be true than by concerns about plausibility—I don't deny that..

Different people may be more or less free of confirmation bias, but it doesn't follow that they have any choice in the matter of whether or not they are affected by it. People don't always understand their own motivations. I don't deny the possibility that I don't understand my own motivations. I am always willing to change my mind, which I have done a few times in the years since I've been participating in philosophy forums, as well as prior to that, ever since I began thinking about these things and reading philosophy. I wonder if you have ever changed your mind. I've seen no evidence of it.

Well, as you never tire of telling me, people tend to believe what suits them. — Wayfarer

I have no emotional investment in believing what I believe. It is simply what I have come to think most plausible. And for the record I say that people generally believe what they think is most plausible. That said, some people are more affected by what they want to believe than others are—I think there is little reason to doubt that.

But, as you well know, that would be described as an intentional activity, revolving entirely around interpretation of meaning, and how that would affect you. As I'm sure you are doing now, as you already said earlier in the thread that you experience 'frustration and impatience' in some of the discussions. They too are not physical states, although they have physical correlates. None of what you're describing can be reduced to, or explained in terms of, physics or physical mechanisms. It would require analysis in terms of linguistics, semiotics, and psychosomatic medicine. The letters and binary code may be physical, but their meaning is not, nor their effects. — Wayfarer

I'm afraid I still disagree. Intentional activities, interpretations and affects can all be understood to be neuronal processes. Of course we don't interpret things in terms of neuronal processes, that would be to commit a category error, but it doesn't follow that interpreting is not a neuronal process. Same for impatience and frustration. You say they are not physical states, but I believe they are neuronal, endocrinally mediated states. although I would use 'process' instead of 'state'.

I believe it is reasonable to think that meaning is understood because of activation of pre-established neuronal networks in the brain. An example would be learning a language. Learning a language sets up neural networks, which are activated when reading or hearing someone speak the learned language. If one has not learned a language at all no understanding is possible.

I could say something to you right now which would raise your blood pressue and affect your adrenal glands. And in so doing, nothing physical would have passed between us. — Wayfarer

That's just not true. If you are talking about what you write on the computer, then I would be looking at shapes (letters, words and sentences) on a screen which means the light from the screen enters my eyes and stimulates rods and cones, causing nerve impulses which travel to the brain and cause neuronal activity which in turn may or may not raise my blood pressure and affect my adrenal glands.

This is my point. It is something with its own ontology above and beyond the physical process of an experience. — Patterner

I'm not sure I understand what you think is redundant. I don't mean that in a smartass way. I mean I'm not sure what you're saying. — Patterner

An ontology is something we posit. If something is real in the physical sense it has effects on and relations with other physical things. What effects do you think our (purported) experience of qualia has over and above the effects of the neuronal and bodily processes which seem almost unquestionably to give rise to it?

I'm not saying that our feelings and creative imagination have no value but that there seems no substantive reason to believe they are not real, physical, neuronal, endocrinal and bodily processes. That from a linguistically mediated "perspective" (which is really just another neuronal process) it doesn't seem that way would seem to be just a quirk of language.

I don't deny that for us the most important things are the emotions and the creative imagination. They enrich life. I see no reason to think of them in some unknowable sense as "non-physical" as if that would somehow impart greater value to them. I think it is only a concern with something transcendent which is imagined to come after this life that leads people to be concerned about a purported disvalue inherent in the thinking that takes things to be just material/ physical. If you don't have that need for the transcendent then what difference does it make if you think things are all physical or functions of the physical?

All that said, I don't think it really makes any difference if people want to have faith in something transcendent if that is what they need and as long as that thinking doesn't negatively impact significant issues in this life on account of them being thought to be of lesser importance.

Ultimately, it's a personal matter and I don't think it really has much place in useful philosophical discussion because it just comes down to personal preference. And yet it seems to be one of the issues that fire people up the most. Could be something to do with the religious conditioning of our thinking which I think we are all subject to even when our upbringings are secular. It still permeates the culture, and it would be interesting to see how things differ if and when religion completely loses its hold. I don't think that day is too far away, but I probably won't see it in my lifetime.

The bottom line for me is that the belief that the world is created by the mind is religiously motivated in a mostly unacknowledged way.

That's obviously false. 'Believing' there are such principles enough to explain why a person does as they do. — Clearbury

Such principles are alive in the community, so your restricted notion of their possible existence is inaapropriate. How else could they exist but as guides to action that people either accept or reject?

God may or may not exist but at least he is imagined as the kind of entity that might exist. People have not imagined free-floating moral principles existing, and as I said even if they were thought to exist in some realm they would have no compelling power. It is only on account of God's purported omniscience and omni-benevolence that his revelation of moral principles is thought to be binding.

I don't believe in God myself but that is beside the point.

Necessary or not, it is a feeling about drinking it that the machine or very distracted person does not have. Isn't that the point? How can something I have that they do not be a redundant feature? It seems to me this is what consciousness is all about. Would you give it up? — Patterner

Sure we enjoy drinking the beer or whatever, sometimes more sometimes less consciously. Drinking the beer may initiate feelings in the body that we can be more or less aware of. I don't see any reason to think machines have such experiences. The redundant feature is that these feelings are reified as a kind of entity we call qualia, which are over and above the drinking of the beer or whatever.

Hostile reactions are only to be expected when people’s instinctive sense of reality is called into question. — Wayfarer

I haven't seen any hostile reactions. I've seen some impatient and frustrated ones.

Yes, that's what I mean. That's why it's not redundant. My experience of it is something extra. Something on top of just drinking it. — Patterner

You can think of it like that, but really your experience of it is nothing over and above your drinking of it, except as an (unnecessary) idea.

She is being illogical as solipsism is the view that only one mind exists. So a person who thinks it is surprising that there are not other persons who are solipsists is being illogical, as by hypothesis there can only ever be one solipsist if solipsism is true. — Clearbury

No, you are still missing the point. If there is only one mind and that mind belongs to just one person (which in this case would be the woman in question) then on the face of it what you say might be true. But if there is only one mind and that mind is god or brahman or some kind of universal or collective mind and we are all illusory separate minds then, in that case, you could logically have many solipsists who would all be wrong if they though they were uniquely the one true mind.

Even positing ordinary solipsism, you can have as many solipsists as you like but only one can be the one true mind and thus be correct in their solipsism. All the others would be mistaken.

Abduction still requires observation and measure of the physical existence. — Questioner

Of course I don't deny the role of observation and measurement and also the existing body of accepted theory. Creative imagination is then required to form an inferential story (hypothesis) out of those observations and measurements. Some hypotheses that withstand extensive testing then go on to become accepted theory.

That's like arguing that God must exist otherwise people wouldn't be able to do what they believe God wants them to do! — Clearbury

It's not really like that because God is imagined as an entity that is omniscient and omnibenevolent, and being so can be the guarantor of the truth of moral principles. Moral principles are not the sort of thing that could exist independently of the mind that posit and/or uphold them. Even if moral principles did exist independently of humans what could guarantee their rightness? In any case moral principles undoubtedly exist in human communities as guides for right action.

You seem to be committing some kind of weird category errors.

All that quote from Russell does is reveal how illogical Mrs Christine Ladd-Franklin is. That is, it reveals that she's not very good at understanding the implications of a thesis - which is surprising in a logician. Russell is making fun of Ladd-Franklin, not making fun of solipsism. — Clearbury

Your definition of solipsism equates to eastern philosophies such as Brahmanism and mind only Buddhism and Western philosophies such as Neoplatonism. In their various ways they posit that there is only one mind and that the supposed existence of many minds is an illusion. On that view Ladd-Franklin is not being illogical at all. It is only in relation to the standard solipsism which says that only my mind exists and that all you others are mere projections of my mind that she is being illogical.

It is no more a story than atomic theory, gravity, thermodynamics, or cell theory. Stories come from the imagination. Scientific theories come from evidence. — Questioner

All theories are stories. some more clearly supported by evidence than others. Scientific theories come from the imagination, just as other kinds of stories do. This is the creative * abductive reasoning) side of science.

I read it. — Questioner

Perhaps your critical thinking skills need a honing then.

does not show us that there actually are such principles. — Clearbury

What do you mean by "actually are such principles". Of course there are such principles otherwise people would not be able to follow them. It doesn't follow that all those actual moral principles are correct.

All what you say means is that we experience the beer when we drink it— enjoy it or dislike it or remain indifferent to it, and machines don't have any of these reactions as far as we can tell.

Yes, well, everyone seems to think plain common sense supports their position. What fun. — Srap Tasmaner

In that case there must be a few different versions of commonsense. Some less common than others?

This is what a realist says, yes. — baker

Right, we all (hopefully) say what seems most reasonable to us personally. No one knows for sure so we are stuck with what seems most plausible. Of course that varies depending on one's starting presuppositions.

But unless one is enlightened, one cannot talk about these things with any kind of integrity, nor demand respect from others as if one in fact knew what one is talking about. — baker

I tend to agree with this, although I would say not only "unless" but "even if". I don't know what it means to be enlightened, or even if there really is such a state, but I'm quite sure it does not mean discursively knowing the answer to all kinds of philosophical questions.

If you believe being enlightened is a real thing, what leads you to believe it, presuming you are not yourself enlightened?

At the very least, no qualitative experience. I think only the Churchlands would be brutal enough to propose we get rid of the concept of experience in all its forms. — goremand

Even positing no qualitative experience seems wrongheaded, let alone positing no experience at all. Don't some experiences feel good and others bad? It seems superfluous to say that we experience a quality of experiences over and above the experiences. I think 'qualia' in its subjective sense as opposed to its 'sense data' sense is a kind of reification, and maybe the latter is too.

We don't perceive red quales we perceive red things. Just different ways of talking I guess, but one seems less parsimonious. Is there any fact of the matter I wonder? It seems redundant to say we experience the quality of beer, for example, rather than just saying we drink the beer. Sure, the beer has a taste, but that is not separate from its fizziness and its coldness, and they are all just a part of drinking it.

Yes, it is, but accurate as a representation of the world? Or as a representation of a perspective on the world? — Srap Tasmaner

Careful...you'll have @Wayfarer coming to tell you that there is no size difference absent a perspective.

:ok:

:ok:

But of course. Qualia is the very thing to be eliminated, there will be no Love and no Redness. That is not the problem but the solution. — goremand

No experience at all?

What leads you to believe I didn't watch the video?

From our temporal view how can statements about future events be true or false? Are you proposing that bi-conditional logic presupposes determinism and other logics indeterminism?

I understand the idea that there is no universal now. No obsevers see time in reverse though do they?

So you think the outcome of the coin toss and everything else has an eternal truth value?

Does it have a truth value before the coin toss is completed?

↪Janus It was Wayfarer who introduced "If everything remains undisturbed then there will be Gold", quoting someone else. — Banno

OK, but it seems the point stands regardless.

Inferences from empirical premises run in both directions, past and future. Both similarly depend on the physical perdurance of matter. There is no substantial difference between them. — Leontiskos

The substantial difference is that for us the past already happened, is thus fixed and has left its traces. The future is yet to happen and so is not (for us at least) fixed.

Take the example @Banno gave. "If everything remains undisturbed then there will be Gold". We know that is true because we have the condition "if everything remains undisturbed". Without that we don't know what the future will be. Nor do we know whether it is already fixed. As to the past we don't really know what actually happened apart from human records or what we can glean from archeology, paleontology and cosmology.

Are past and future truthmakers not just past and future actualities? With your 'Hitler' example there can be no actuality, therefore no truth regarding whether or not he would have been assassinated. When it comes to the past and to the future if the required conditions are asserted, presumably there were and will be actualities which would make what we say now true or false.

Presumably a smear? :wink: — Tom Storm

So it would seem.

What we simply have here is a disagreement about how the world may be. You both are aware of the same accounts, but your inferences take you to different conclusions. I tend to favour skepticism myself. — Tom Storm

Yes, I think this is exactly right. Some proponents of different views seem to think it is self-evident that their opponents are being inconsistent or incoherent and hence wrong by default. I don't think that and go only with what seems most plausible to me or else suspend judgment. If anything, I'd say my most basic position is skepticism—I just don't think we know or even can know all that much.

For what it's worth I think that our understanding of evolutionary processes and particularly the way in which our linguistic abilities have enabled us to overcome environmental corrections which would knock back any other species that depleted its resources, and the understanding that this cannot go on forever, should show us how we should proceed if we want to survive as a species, and stop wiping out other species and ecosystems.

As to why we cannot seem to understand this on a global scale and coordinate our efforts to correct our own behavior, I think the answer is extremely complex and multilayered. I don't hold out much hope to be honest. I think the correction will most likely come in the form of war, even nuclear war or terrible pandemics or both, when resource scarcity really begins to bite hard.

So of course, you will interpret the world and other creatures' behavior, in a way that makes sense to you. — Manuel

I can observe other creatures' behavior towards things in the environment. It's not a matter of interpretation. I can see that their different behaviors towards different things and I know those behaviors are in accordance with how I understand those things—trees, walls, doorways, balls, fire, high places, and cars and so on.

Anyway I've said all I have to say. Anything else will just be repetition.

Yeah, it would make sense for them to perceive threats for survival. Otherwise, we wouldn't have dogs, which would be bad. — Manuel

It seems you missed the point entirely. The point was that innate or not they would have to perceive those threats, which would mean they would have to have functioning sense organs—sense organs not so different from ours.

But we should be cautious in paying to much attention to outer features (eyes, organs), with inner experience. — Manuel

I don't even know what this means. If it means you think we should not make inferences from the similarities of other animals' sense organs and bodies to ours to similarities between the nature of other animals' experience and ours, I don't see why not. I think those structural similarities along with the intelligibility of other animals' behavior towards things in the environment give us very good reason to make such inferences. What else could we possibly have to go on?

If it means we should not feel absolutely certainty about the soundness of such inferences I agree, but I see little reason to doubt it. I don't think we should feel absolutely certain about almost anything in any "ultimate" sense. Science itself remains forever defeasible.

Anyway, I'll repeat that I have nothing more to say on this. If we still disagree then I'm fine with that, even if I can't understand why it should be so.

So what?