I don't believe any arguments or claims are non-contextually true, or even if they were, that we would be able to ascertain it. That's why there always has been, and no doubt always will be, so much disagreement in philosophy. My skepticism does not apply to empirical or logical truths that can be, within their contexts, ascertained with a reasonable degree of certainty.

Which brings us right back to scepticism 101. — Wayfarer

That's true. I'm not sure about you, but I don't see skepticism as being a bad thing. I like the idea of letting go of the need to know, being able to live with uncertainty and thus cultivating ataraxia. I see that stance above as all as truthful in being able to live in accordance with our actual situation.

But -- to start with, wholes and views aren't opposites; they're different sorts of things altogether, and it's exactly this ambiguity that's troublesome. — Srap Tasmaner

Imagine you have an extremely limited view of something, so limited that you cannot tell what it is you are looking at. Say you are looking through binoculars and you see a patch of brown, then you change the focal length, and you realize it is a brick, then you change it gain and you realize it is a wall of bricks and changing it again you see that the wall is a wall of a building. Are you seeing a building now? Perhaps not, as it turns out it is just a freestanding facade.

So would you rather say we perceive partial objects, out of which we construct a whole in our minds, conceptually, or that we have views of (presumably whole and complete) objects? I've substituted "have" there, but you can stick to "perceive views" if you intended to treat a view as a sort of object. — Srap Tasmaner

It seems to me we could say that any sensory perception of anything that we recognize as being anything at all would count as a perception of a particular, and particular kind, of object iff it turns out that our recognition is not mistaken.

If the model is that there's something out there, and then our sensorium, and then finally, at the greatest remove from what's out there, our intellect, are phenomena the input to the sensorium, or the output of the sensorium? I'm thinking it's output, which is to say, the input for the intellect. — Srap Tasmaner

Since we are not conscious of the process of input to the sensorium, I would agree that phenomena (defined as recognizable sense objects) are the output, so it seems we agree on that.

But that too is ambiguous, and if we expect this account to align with the findings of neuroscience, we have to decide whether to count the processing of perceptual data as part of the intellect or part of the sensorium. If you say intellect, then phenomena are almost nothing, the firing of neurons without considering where those impulses go (must go). But if you say sensorium, then an awful lot has already been done, without your awareness, before it reaches the intellect. — Srap Tasmaner

I don't see a separable intellect in the process. The idea of the intellect is the idea of a "faculty", an idea which probably does not map well onto a neuroscientific understanding of the brain. It seems to be a kind of reification. Taking vision as paradigmatic, the instant reflected light enters the eye, the proceeds has begun, and it (in the right circumstances) terminates with recognition. But we are conscious only of the recognition (or lack of it). And reading on I see you seem to be saying something similar here:

And that's fine, still seems like this is the way to go because that signals processing isn't incidentally unconscious but necessarily so, and we get to call phenomena whatever the first things are that we even can become aware of, whether we happen to be or not. — Srap Tasmaner

But at what point do we get objects? That's the question. Does perception make available to awareness uninterpreted views? That looks unlikely. Color constancy suggests that whether something is an object determines how its color is presented to your awareness, and you have no control over this. It seems your perceptual apparatus is already making decisions about which parts of your so-called field of vision are objects, or anyway something has. — Srap Tasmaner

I think perception sometimes presents us with uninterpreted views, but generally not uninterpreted views of familiar objects (unless it is a very unusual circumstance like we have taken a psychedelic for example). If psychedelics switch off the part of the brain that recognizes familiar objects, allowing other parts of the brain which normally do not communicate with one another to communicate, then such an experience of being unable to tell what you were looking at would seem to make sense.

And if objects are only offered to your awareness pre-assembled, we might say, then objects are constitutive of phenomena, not the other way around. The alternative is to take intellect to include this unconscious processing, but then I'm really not clear what phenomena are supposed to be. Not views certainly. Not color patches. I really don't know what. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, but as my looking-through-the-binoculars example shows, there is always an ambiguity as to just what is the object; is it a brown patch, a brick, a wall, a building or a free-standing facade? That information may not be given just in the view but may require further investigation. Also, it remains true that we don't generally perceive whole objects at any given time, so memory must be involved in our construction of whole objects.

An example would be Copernicus' realisation that the orbits of planets were elliptical whilst searching for the Platonic ideals in his observational data; — Wayfarer

I'm pretty sure that was Kepler, not Copernicus.

Perhaps there is a mode of certainty that transcends discursive understanding. — Pantagruel

A mode of feeling certain or of being certain? You cannot be certain of any discursive understanding unless it is true by definition, as is the case with mathematics. Scientific or empirical knowledge can never be absolutely certain, although almost-certainty is possible in the context of experience; for example, if I am standing in the rain I can be certain that it is raining where I am standing (leaving aside the seemingly tiny possibility that I am being elaborately hoaxed).

Like Gautama I could feel absolutely certain that I have reached perfect enlightenment, but I could never be absolutely certain of that, discursively speaking, because it's always possible that I am delusional.

So, the odd thing is that even if we can have intuitive intellectual knowledge of reality, we cannot be certain that we can, no matter how certain we might feel about it.

Yes, insofar as we reach the limits of current scientific capabilities. I think that the science of the mind is hitting a wall now, and that quantum physics is coming up on that same wall as far as the link between the observer and the observed. — Pantagruel

Right, we don't know whether the observer collapses the wave function or whether it occurs all the time on account of any macroscopic interaction, or whether the collapse is even a real phenomenon or an artefact of human conceptual understanding. And I think that as long as we remain in the dualistic mode of thinking in terms of observer and observed, subjects and objects, we will never understand the real nature of things, which I tend to think is non-dual. That said I wonder whether any other mode of thought or understanding is even possible. Maybe we can instinctively 'get a feel' for the nature of things, but as soon as we try to render that feel into discursive terms the confusions, inconsistencies and aporias emerge.

Firstly, Janus, I don’t know why you are getting so hostile. — Bob Ross

I'm not becoming hostile, just impatient. I just don't believe that you are grasping what is meant by things in themselves. So, I am not going to deal with or respond to anything other than that one point at this juncture.

As you said the above and ‘object permanence’ typically refers to the claim that the objects persist in the context beyond human representations of the world (which would be beyond the phenomenal one). — Bob Ross

The idea of things-in-themselves is not meant to be interpreted as claiming that there are things just like those that are perceived that exist independently of human perception; the "thing" in there is a kind of placeholder for some unknowable X. So, object permanence cannot reasonably be thought to apply to things in themselves, except in the sense that whatever it is that appears to us as invariant objects does so reliably, which suggests, but doesn't prove, that the in itself is invariant.

In truth, we never perceive whole objects, but only views of them from different perspectives, so we construct the notion of whole objects from the various views (and feels) we have of them, and the fact that we can act on them, and the whole picture of a world of objects of more or less invariance is woven together with remarkable consistency by the brain/ mind. Part of this picture consists in the idea of object invariance; this idea is inevitable, even animal behavior shows that they expect objects not to simply disappear when they can't be seen. I observe this when I throw the ball for my dog and it inadvertently goes into the long grass; he never stops searching for it until he finds it showing that he expects it to be there somewhere and not to have simply disappeared.

So, I haven't been arguing that it is provable that the in itself is invariant or that phenomenal objects are "permanent", but that object permanence is the inference to the best explanation in the empirical context, and that regarding noumenal invariance we really have no idea how to assess which explanation would be the more plausible because we have nothing to compare any explanation with. So, if anyone says that they think this or that metaphysical explanation is the most plausible, that really only speaks to their own personal preferences. That, in short, is all I've been arguing for.

If I may interject a question as someone with only a superficial understanding of Kant...

Isn't it a bit of an overstatement to say we know *nothing* of the thing-in-itself? Why not a more nuanced view, in which we know a limited amount about things-in-themselves, but some of us know more than others, depending on the thing under consideration. — wonderer1

The thing in itself is posited as being what gives rise to the thing as it appears. we cannot be conscious of the primary effect on us of things, we can only be conscious of how we come to represent those things to ourselves.

Imagine the universe without humans; what would it be like? Of course, we have no idea, except to say that it wouldn't be like anything, but if we were there it would appear in just the kinds of ways it does, or so we imagine.

Look at it another way: is the world in itself a concatenation of energetic structures that are somehow isomorphic to the structures we perceive? Or is it a world of things that look just like the things as they appear to us. The former seems like a reasonable conjecture, but the latter is naive realism and in view of our scientific understanding of perception and even just on critical analysis seems absurd. If the latter were to be the case, then it would seem there must be a God or universal mind to whom things (which are ideas in its mind) look to it, just as they look to us. Which would make our senses windows onto the mind of God, or some such thing.

You can’t claim even inductively that object have permanence in the real world, because the real world is human-nature independent. — Bob Ross

Fer fuck's sake, Bob, how many times do I have to tell you I'm not claiming that object permanence or independence is a feature of, or inference about, anything more than the phenomenal world of human experience.

I said:

I think, for your argument to work, you would have to prove that our human representation of the world is completely inaccurate—otherwise, then we have no reason to believe that we cannot get validly at metaphysics.

I didn’t say you argued it. I said that is the only foreseeable argument to me for you view. — Bob Ross

But I would have to argue that, if my argument depended on it, which it doesn't. You don't pay attention to anything I write, apparently, or else you distort it in the reading. I've already explained numerous times that everything I have been saying relates only to the phenomenal world. When is that going to sink in?

Our representations of the phenomenal world are neither completely accurate nor completely inaccurate; a fact which has no bearing whatsoever on the question of whether we know the world as it is in itself (which simply as a matter of definition we don't, because anything we know is by definition the world as it is for us).

For example, even we are describing that we have a priori, transcendental aspects of our minds, then aren’t those minds a part of the things-in-themselves and we are describing that mind-in-itself? For example, his twelve categories are aspects of a thing-in-itself called a mind. — Bob Ross

No Bob, those minds may be a part of the world in itself, but the mind as we know it is the mind as it appears to us. Kant's twelve categories are analytically determined by reflecting on the ways in which we understand phenomenal objects.

All of his claims are metaphysical. Transcendental philosophy is metaphysics.

So, I see the transcendental ego as a phenomenological, not a metaphysical, posit

My read of it was that he was arguing for soul. — Bob Ross

More unargued assertion; it's not interesting, Bob. Kant does not argue for a soul, at least not in the CPR. He does argue in the CPJ that we have practical reasons for believing in freedom, immortality and God, but that is a whole other kettle of fish, and is not relevant to the question of whether we know the in-itself * which, for the last time, by definition, we do not).

Nice video! I had heard of those kinds of experiments, but never seen them in action.

What I was trying to convey in saying, "Of course that's fallacious in all sorts of way. Not least, it's an appeal to consequences.", is that I don't expect people to see what I said prior as a rational argument. Just reinforcing that this is a matter of subjective preference on my part. — wonderer1

Right, I think I see what you are saying there now, although I can't see humans recognizing their natures as anything but a good thing, or at least a necessary prelude to good things, and I'm not sure that's merely a personal preference as opposed to an objectively good thing, socially speaking..

Morally, I think it's misleading because it is used to justify a willingness not to hold people responsible for their actions. — T Clark

I know what you mean, but such thinking is perhaps lacking in subtlety. Society has little choice but to hold people responsible for their actions, so there is pragmatic, even if not purely rational, warrant for that. To hold people responsible is not necessarily to blame them, though, but would necessarily entail restraining them by whatever means required, in order to stop them committing further crimes, or in the case of lesser infractions, shunning them or shaming them, in the hope of discouraging them and others from committing undesirable acts. The point there of restraint and even punishment, if necessary, would be to act as an example to others, hopefully persuading them not to commit similar socially unacceptable acts. Whatever works.

Perhaps it depends on your preferences. Few long term determinists, that I have observed, fail to recognize the monkeymindedness of retribution. I think humans recognizing their nature is a good thing.

Of course that's fallacious in all sorts of way. Not least, it's an appeal to consequences. — wonderer1

Do you mean that determinists still blame others for their actions erroneously? Assuming it is, I would say that perhaps they can't help doing that, even if there might not be any rational warrant for it.

I don't understand what you are saying in your last sentence.

Metaphysics is the outside borders of science. It's an epistemological distinction. The idea that reality consists of four elements is completely erroneous. But the concept of the four elements was a metaphysical characterization of the nature of being. Just as science itself consists of metaphysical presuppositions. That metaphysical characterization was displaced when scientific understanding revealed the underlying atomic nature of all such physical phenomena. And the boundaries of metaphysics were pushed back further. Paradigm-shifting, as you described. Science more replaces metaphysics or perhaps validates a certain set of metaphysical presuppositions, I guess you would say. Then the metaphysical question gets asked at a higher level of abstraction. — Pantagruel

As I said earlier I agree with Popper that metaphysical speculation can inspire scientific investigation, but I think this would only apply to metaphysical speculation which is informed by science and takes off from places where current scientific knowledge reaches its limits.

I don't agree that the idea that reality consists of four elements is completely erroneous, though, it is reflected in the modern understanding that matter can be solid, liquid, gas or plasma. The idea expresses what the ancients actually observed, different modes of phenomena.

That's a very interesting point. So often I've heard people say that chemistry evolved from alchemy and astronomy evolved from astrology. I'm interested in your use of the word 'replaced' as in, I imagine, 'superseded' by? What happens in this process of replacement? Are paradigm shifts still seen as an appropriate way to describe the evolution of human thought models? I wonder what the process was that led alchemy to be superseded by chemistry - was alchemy in any way foundational in this process? — Tom Storm

It seems reasonable to me to say, insofar, as alchemy dealt with substances, which chemistry also does, that in that sense chemistry evolved from or out of alchemy, and similarly with astrology and astronomy. But both alchemy and astrology (more so the latter) still exist as disciplines, which science does not take seriously.

So, I see it as being the case that the mainstream paradigm has shifted, and not only in those disciplines, but overall, to the kind of empirical model of investigation, observation, conjecture and experiment which characterizes science as we know it today.

The central aspect of modern science is the postulating of mechanistic causal hypothetical explanations for observed phenomena, which entail predictions about what should be observed if those hypotheses are true. Alchemy and astrology do not involve those kinds of hypotheses, so that's why I speak of a paradigm shift.

So, to answer the question as to whether alchemy was foundational in the advent of chemistry, I would say only insofar as it had enabled its practitioners to be familiar with the general characteristics of the substances it dealt with, like melting points and reactions with other substances and so on; things which can be directly observed. Same with astrology; mapping the stars and recording their movements and so on.

Just because we see the world from our human perspective does not mean we cannot formulate accurate metaphysical claims. If that were the case, then you couldn’t infer, for example, object permanence because it is beyond the possibility of all experience. — Bob Ross

Object permanence is inferred on account of the experienced invariance of objects. It is an inductive, that is fallible, inference, not a deductive, infallible inference.

I think, for your argument to work, you would have to prove that our human representation of the world is completely inaccurate—otherwise, then we have no reason to believe that we cannot get validly at metaphysics. — Bob Ross

If you are going to continue to distort what I've said like this, then I see little point in continuing. I have nowhere argued that our representations are inaccurate in a metaphysical context, and nothing I've said depends on such a claim. What could they possibly be inaccurate in relation to if the in-itself is unknowable? They are only accurate or inaccurate within their own context, i.e. within the empirical context; it is only there that we can get things right or wrong.

My point was that Kant’s transcendental claims undermine his claims about us not being capable of knowing the things-in-themselves. — Bob Ross

This is a rubbish claim, Bob, and it has already been explained to you a few times as to why it is erroneous. Kant's a priori claims are only about the nature of intuitions, i.e. that they are spatiotemporal, and regarding the categories of judgements about phenomenally experienced objects. The transcendental ego is the closest he gets to looking like making a metaphysical, in the traditional sense, claim, but it not; it is just formulating the idea we all have of being a subject which is not empirically observable, i.e. that is transcendental. Kant does not reify this idea to claim the existence of a substantial self, as Descartes does, as far as I know. So, I see the transcendental ego as a phenomenological, not a metaphysical, posit. @Mww ?

Yes. And my claim is that the idea of determinism is meaningless if prediction is not possible, even in theory. — T Clark

The Three Body Problem has been known about for more than 300 years. It establishes that it is impossible even in principle to predict the future of sufficiently complex systems. However, that the prediction of the future is impossible does not entail that determinism is false, much less meaningless. It is not meaningless simply by virtue of the fact that it can be imagined as a metaphysical possibility.

Perhaps you meant that it is meaningless in the sense that it is of no significance to us whether or not the Universe is deterministic, and I would agree with that.

Yes, if I think so, although I don't need your free non-existent apples since I have as many of my own as I want.

Metaphysics becomes science in the same way poetry becomes music or literature becomes dance, through a shift in modality of expression. — Joshs

I don't think poetry actually becomes music or literature dance, but poetry may inspire music and literature dance, just as metaphysics may inspire science.

To your non-existent friends? So you might think.

But explaining clearly what is added to an apple by existing...? — Banno

You can't add anything to or subtract anything from an apple that does not exist, except in thought.

It's not difficult to understand an apple that is not sweet, or an apple that is not red - but an apple that does not exist? What is it? — Banno

It is not an existent apple, but is merely the thought of an apple; am imagined or non-existent apple.

The pre-existence of the soul is not the same idea as metempsychosis. I am not sure if the latter idea is explicitly espoused by Plato, or even the Neoplatonists. My familiarity with their works is too scant, but I suspect that just a few references even to the pre-existence of the soul were made in Plato's works through the voice of Socrates, and that even there it was treated more as a speculative possibility than an established fact. Pythagoras seems to be the only strong proponent of the idea, but even there I believe we only know his ideas as far as they were referenced by later thinkers. I'm open to being further educated on all this though, since I'm certainly no scholar of ancient Greek thought.

Whatever may be the case regarding Plato and the Neoplatonists, I don't think it was a belief that captured the minds of a significant part of the culture, as there were always rival schools of thought: for example, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Skeptics, the Cynics, the Epicureans, so what I am saying is that it never became a central cultural motif in the West.

What once was alchemy and religion and folklore becomes organic chemistry and medicine. A grand unified theory would unite the quantum and cosmic domains. It's metaphysics until it isn't. — Pantagruel

It seems wrong to say that alchemy, religion and folklore became chemistry and medicine. In keeping with the idea of significant paradigm shifts in human thought and investigation "were replaced by chemistry and medicine" seems more apt.

I agree that what might be classed as metaphysical speculation (abductive reasoning or extrapolating imaginable possibilities) certainly plays a role in science, but I can think of no examples of metaphysics becoming science.

‘Brahmanism’ refers to Vedanta. Both it and Buddhism seek mokṣa or Nirvāṇa, release from the cycle of birth and death. There’s no real equivalent in Western culture. — Wayfarer

There is no real equivalent in Western culture because the speculative notion of rebirth has never played a significant part in that culture.

Correct. So why say they aren’t qualitatively experiencing? This just proves my point. — Bob Ross

You obviously didn't read what I wrote above what you quoted, which was that the only way we have of knowing about qualitative experience is being aware of our own or listening to the reports of others about their own. The person with visual agnosia cannot report on any qualitive visual experience because they are not aware of any such thing, so we have no evidence to suggest that they have any qualitive visual experience.

For example, I only come to know that there is a chair in my room via my senses, but it does not follow that that chair only exists as my senses. — Bob Ross

Firstly, you are changing the subject. Qualities are necessarily not independent of subjective human experience, whereas chairs may not be. If I don't subjectively experience a chair, then there is no qualitive experience of a chair, although of course the chair may be there nonetheless. Actually, I would have thought you believed that the chair is not independent of human experience; I thought that has been the very thing you are arguing.

So again, you are not really providing any counterarguments; instead, you just keep asserting the same things over and over. You should be able to understand my argument above, and if you cannot provide any cogent counterargument then our discussion will go precisely nowhere.

What do you mean by “subjective experience”? I have a feeling you mean higher order meta-consciousness (e.g., self-reflective introspective, etc.). That isn’t consciousness proper.

No, a person qualitatively experiencing without introspective access is not equivalent to a stone experiencing nor quantitative experience. — Bob Ross

You just keep making the same unargued assertions over and over. Subjective experience, and along with that qualitative experience, may be a post hoc self-reflective rationalization and thus not a suitable descriptor of what is immediately perceived, but I am not claiming that is so, I just see it as a possibility.

The body/ brain responding to visual stimuli can be observed, even when the subject is not aware of what is affecting the body, and that is one way of speaking about what the body/ brain experiences. The body/ brain experiences many, many things in this kind of sense of which we are not aware. I see visual agnosia as being like that: the body/ brain is affected by visual stimuli but the subject is not aware of it, so for me it makes no sense to speak of qualitive experience in that context.

If you have a different definition of qualitive experience, then we are talking past one another. And if you do have a different definition, you haven't yet revealed what that definition is. For example, how would it differ from the body/ brain reacting in measurable and modelable ways, ways however of which the subject has no awareness, to visual stimuli?

All of this is dependent on us granting that the phenomena are a valid method of inferring what metaphysically is there—e.g., you observe phenomenally that you are affected by what seems to you to be an environment which you are in, you find that it makes sense to explain other peoples’ difference observations as due to their faculties of representation (such as blind people), etc. However, under Kant’s view, I would argue, if we take him very seriously, then our own minds (or brains) are things-in-themselves (in order for him to claim we have representative faculties)--but, wait, he also says we can’t know anything about the things-in-themselves...so we shouldn’t even know we have minds or brains (in the sense of a mind-independent one). — Bob Ross

All of that was just an outline of what appears to be the case empirically speaking. I make no human-independent metaphysical claims based on that. But I will say that, when speculating about what might be real in itself, it seems to me more likely that what gives rise to a differentiated world would be differentiated in itself, than not.

In any case, the fact remains that we cannot know. All we know is a human-shaped world, not a tiger-shaped world or an elephant-shaped world or a world without any particular shape; I don't see how that can be reasonably disputed.

So, if we are going to take a position on the question of what might be real independently of the human, then we are going to go with what seems most plausible, which is and must remain, a subjective matter. It really isn't a topic worth arguing about, because when people disagree based on their personal presuppositions or preferences, then they will inevitably merely end up talking past one another. The other reason i think it doesn't really matter is that it is of no real significance to how we live our lives in this world of appearances, the only world we know.

I won't respond to the rest of your post, because it all seems to me based on the same misunderstanding that Kant and I are making purportedly human-independent metaphysical claims.

Your reasoning is necessarily subjective. The rules of logic are objective but they are rule-based procedures which guarantee validity even in the case of the most absurd syllogisms, and they tell us nothing about the nature of things.

our logic is derived from generalizing from the analysis of our experience of material objects,
— Janus

So empirical philosophers say, but the counter to that is that we would not be able to generalise or abstract without the prior existence of the rational faculty to count, compare, abstract and reason — Wayfarer

I said it could be both (with the implication that it could be either) but you conveniently omitted that part when you quoted me, in order it seems, as usual, to attempt to dismiss my arguments by characterizing them as some form of your despised positivism.

And the counter to your counter is that without the experience of the senses and embodiment we would have nothing to count, compare, abstract and reason about, and would thus never develop those faculties.

Suffice to refer to enactivism. 'Enactivism rejects the traditional dualistic view that separates subjective and objective aspects of experience. Instead, it proposes an embodied and situated perspective, where subjectivity and objectivity are intertwined and mutually constitutive.' Subjects and objects co-arise and are mutually dependent. — Wayfarer

I think this shows a misunderstanding of enactivism and phenomenology. Remember that Husserl brackets the question of the independent reality of the objective or external world, because that question is not its concern. So, of course, within human experience subject and object arise together, but that says nothing about what the in-itself reality of what appear to us as objects, including our own bodies and brains, is. That we cannot know what this in-itself reality is, is what Kant's philosophy is all about. I know it's a difficult point to get, it requires a shift away from our ordinary thinking, so I feel for you.

Indeed, nothing can be said about what exists independently of human faculties (including reason) as whatever that might be, is beyond the scope of knowledge. Regardless, I have the view that the law of the excluded middle and other such basic elements of reason, are not dependent on human faculties, but because we have the faculty of reason we are able to discern them. It's precisely the ability of humans to grasp such facts which constitutes reason. — Wayfarer

Sure, for subjective reasons you like to believe that logical laws are independent of human reason, but you don't like to believe that material objects are. It could be both; our logic is derived from generalizing from the analysis of our experience of material objects, and they are thus both independent, or not, of our experience, depending on your preference.

The bottom line is, we don't and cannot know the answer to that question and are therefore left with going with what seems most plausible, or perhaps most agreeable, to us personally. Either that or we have the option of simply suspending judgement on the matter, which is my preferred option, since I don't believe the answer to an unanswerable question can be important to human life.

That said, the fact that we face an unanswerable question is a very important fact about human life, as it explains so much about us. And how we deal with that unanswerable question, that is what it leads us to believe is also important, as it can be the source of happiness and misery on a personal level, and ideology, repression, division, hatred, enslavement, torture and many other evils on the societal level. Perhaps the world would be a much better place if everyone could suspend judgement and give up arguing and even fighting over it.

So, you are wrong to say this is just more of my subjectivism; we are all subjectivists when it comes to how we deal with this unanswerable question, and you not liking that fact ain't going to change it one iota.

Asking that question seems to suggest that a computer is conscious, does it not? — NotAristotle

Only if information processing is considered not only necessary, but sufficient for the advent of consciousness; in other words, I don't think so. I think concern and significance are necessary elements of consciousness. We are conscious of what matters to us. Nothing matters to the computer.

So is my idea of ‘7’ different to yours? (Better not be, else it might be hard to do business.) — Wayfarer

It would be hard to do business if your idea of 'tree', 'car' 'road', 'building' and countless other examples were significantly different enough from one another to make communication impossible. '7' is just a name for a certain number of anything. Because number is manifold and addition, subtraction, multiplication and division are possible, then the whole system of complex mathematics can be evolved form a few simple rules. All those basic functions can be physically instantiated though, for example on an abacus. And modern calculators and computers are physical instantiations of the ability to complex mathematics, more complex than we can.

So'7' in a way is just like any other rule, except that mathematics is the most complex coherent system of logical rules that we know of.

It's not an assumption, it's an axiom. The law of identity and other such principles of logic are assumed by the laws of inference. If they didn't stand, then you wouldn't be able to propose any kind of 'if:then' argument. They're woven into the very fabric of language and reason. — Wayfarer

The law of identity, number and "other such principles of logic" are axioms of human reason, and as such say nothing about what exists independently of human reason.

This is no different, in principle, than saying that the ideas about material objects are categories of human reason and say nothing about the existence of anything independent of human perception and judgement.

One might ask the question as to what about the structure of a computer allows for information processing.

This is where the obscurity sets in with Kant (for me): what do you mean “logically speaking”? If you can’t point to your experience of things being representations of other things, then why do you think they are representations at all? You can’t point to scientific inquiry into the brain: those are studies of phenomena which Kant thinks tells us nothing about what is being represented—but then why think there is something being represented in the first place? — Bob Ross

Taking the visual as paradigmatic for the sake of simplicity, the environment is presented, or given, to us, meaning that our eyes, optic nerves and brains are affected by and respond to reflected light and our brains produce representations of environments consisting of objects that stand out as such from, but are of course never separate from, the environments. It is acknowledged that ideas condition to some degree what stands out for us, what is noticed. Would anything be seen if there was nothing to be seen?

I see. This doesn’t work though. For example, if reason without sense data produces no knowledge, then you do not know that “every change has a cause”. You don’t know that “a = a”. You don’t know that “1+1=2” without counting your fingers (so to speak). You don’t even know that “reason without sense data produces no knowledge” without appealing to pure reason. Some things are a priori true, and that means they do not require sense data. — Bob Ross

If you had never encountered any sense data at all, there would be nothing to reason with and hence no a priori knowledge. Even Kant acknowledged this as far as I remember. Once we have sensory experience then reason can generalize from that experience, and will then know, a priori, that any future experience must conform to those generalizations. As an example, we see all objects extended in space and enduring through time, so we generalize to the a priori idea that no object could be experienced except spatiotemporally.

So, 'every change has a cause' is an inductive inference from experience which has eviolved into our consistent and coherent web of understanding of the empirical via science. For a simple example, if I throw a brick at an ordinary 2.4 mm pane of glass the glass will almost certainly break. If I push something which is top heavy, and precariously balanced, it will fall. If I punch you hard in the face you will likely cry out in pain, and your face will probably bruise. If I hit a nail into soft wood with a hammer it will go in more easily that into hard wood (it may even bend when I try to hammer it into hard enough wood and I may have to pre-drill a hole). These are a few examples of countless other kinds of experiences that lead to the conclusion that all effects have causes, and yet apparently in the quantum realm, not all effects do have causes.

One plus one always equals two. I can prove this by placing two objects together, and I can see two objects there or I can focus on each object and see them individually as two examples of one object. The very fact that you say that you don't know "1+1=2" without counting your fingers supports the idea that the formulation is a generalized abstraction from sense experience. It is not reason, but imagination, that tells you that reason without sense data produces no knowledge, because you cannot imagine any knowledge, or anything at all, which is completely separate from the senses.

I don’t see, upon looking at the empirical experiments of blindsight people, why one would conclude that they no longer qualitatively experience. Just because they don’t identify as seeing doesn’t mean that they aren’t still having it. — Bob Ross

This is just going around the assertion merry-go-round now, Bob. I'm going to put my case once more in a nutshell and then leave it there. The only evidence we have of qualitative experience is our awareness of our own and the reportage of others' awareness of their own. A person with visual agnosia cannot report on what they have no awareness of experiencing.

Now you can say that the body experiences the physical effects or data that enables the better than random guessing of the person with visual agnosia, in the sense that I have already outlined, but that is not subjective experience, it is equivalent in kind to saying that the stone experiences the weathering effects of the wind and rain. Experience in that sense is not qualitative but quantitative; it can be observed, measured and modeled.

You don't need to know all the physical facts of an engine to figure out what it is and what it does. The same should be true of brains, but it's not. No matter how much an alien/machine intelligence studies a working brain, it will not know if it's conscious or not. — RogueAI

You are assuming that the percentage of all the possible facts that could be known about the brain that we currently know should be sufficient to understand consciousness, and this is merely an assumption, not something you know.

Right, and the further question is that, if we don't want to live harmoniously with others, does morality then become altogether redundant for us, or would it only do so if we lived a completely solitary life (a condition which is extremely rare)? This is basically the question as to whether planning to live disharmoniously within society, as a criminal, pedophile or serial killer, for example could ever be a good life strategy.

Probably most do want to. If one doesn't want to there is always the option of living alone in the bush.

At the core, that we do cooperate does not imply that we ought cooperate. — Banno

We ought to cooperate to socially and personally acceptable degrees if we want to live harmoniously in a community.

I would say that they are still seeing the colour card, to some degree, if they can accurately guess them; and the fact that sometimes they can’t means that they no longer have introspective access to those qualitative experiences.

By “qualitatively seeing”, I mean something which is not-quantitative (viz., it has no definite quantity) and there is something it is like to see in and of itself. — Bob Ross

The reflected light still enters the eyes, stimulates the rods and cones, leading to neural signals travelling to the brain and stimulating the visual cortex, but there is no subjective awareness of seeing. All those processes I just outlines are quantitative processes, equivalent in a way to the operation of a camera. You can keep asserting that it is the case that there is qualitative seeing, but I'm not seeing any explanation from you that could convince me of that.

I think you are conflating consciousness proper with meta-consciousness: there can be a qualitative experience and something it like in and of itself to see of which the person, as the ego, does not have introspective (or perhaps cognitive) access to. — Bob Ross

No, I'm simply referring to the normal ability to be aware of what we are seeing or have seen and we are by no means aware of most of the potential visual data that is being received by the eye. There is no reason to think that there are not many things in your visual field right now that you are not aware of at all, even though the light from those things is being reflected into your eye and neural signals are being received by your visual cortex. I don't think it makes any sense at all to call all that visual data we are not aware of "qualitative seeing".

is this like our ability to self-reflective on our perceptions? — Bob Ross

We can be self-reflective on the small percentage of the overall visual data we have been consciously or unconsciously aware of. The rest has not been noticed in the first place and is lost forever I would say. In the person with visual agnosia, there is no conscious awareness of seeing, even though some data may have been unconsciously registered by the brain. That data enables the person to guess with somewhat greater accuracy than random guessing as to what that data is, but since there is no recall at all the experience os seeing I just don't see any way in which it could make sense to call it qualitiative.

It seems obvious to me that the alien/machine intelligence could know every physical fact there is to know about brains, and still not know the most salient fact: they're conscious. Do you agree? Doesn't that put brains in an entirely new class of things: things you could know all the physical facts about and still not understand them completely? — RogueAI

Firstly, I doubt it's possible to know all the physical facts about anything let alone brains, and secondly most of what we call physical facts are conceptual models given in mechanistic causal terms. So, for me it appears that what you are claiming just amounts to saying that brains cannot be understood entirely in terms of mechanistic models, which I have no argument with. In fact, I think the same goes for biology in general. There are other modes of investigation and understanding on the horizon it seems, and I think it's too early to pronounce on what they will be able to come up with.

That all makes sense to me, although I would add to this:

we would have realised how we had allowed fossil fuels to hijack our reasonably clever human social systems for its own mindless purpose. — apokrisis

that the motivator for the willful blindness to the science was economic: the greed of some for money and power and the general complacency that comes with comfortable levels of prosperity,

I already said the engine is easier to understand being far less complex, and also because our models are mechanistic and the engine is a machine, and it just may not be possible to understand how the brain gives rise to consciousness mechanistically. What more are you angling for?

You would have to pull the engine apart and examine the components and analyze their functions and inter-relations in the overall process of its running in order to understand how it works. This is just what neuroscience is doing with the brain. The brain is much more complex than the engine, though, and you cannot pull a living brain apart to examine its structures and since the functional components are microscopic and not obviously mechanical in functioning like the engine the task is much more complicated and difficult.

Taking vision as the paradigm, the fact that the brain produces visual images (as does a camera) and also the seeing of those images, and the awareness of seeing those images seems impossible to explain in mechanistic terms. Perhaps we will never be able to give a comprehensive causal account of that process since causal models are generally mechanistic in nature. It doesn't follow that anything magical or supernatural is going on.