Is your disagreement with @Banno only that you take him to be claiming that all beliefs are in propositional form, as opposed to claiming that all beliefs can be rendered in propositional form? Because I imagine you would agree that all beliefs can be rendered in propositional form. If this is so, then I can't see what you two could be disagreeing about.

Everything Dennett writes is an elaboration of that theme. — Wayfarer

But so what? He's not saying humans are mindless or without meaning. If humans are mindful and meangful what would it matter if matter were not?

Materialism claims that matter is intrinsically real — Wayfarer

I know what 'intrinsic' means. I want you to tell me what 'intrinsically real' means. Materialists say that matter existed prior to humans, that is that matter is not dependent on us or our perceptions. Is that what you mean?

Only in respect of whether Dennett's philosophy is valid. — Wayfarer

His philosophy is valid if it is consistent with its premises. I haven't noticed any glaring inconsistencies in Dennett's works. This is the criterion of validity for any philosophy. Dennett's premise is that matter exists independently of humans; matter either exists independently of us and our perceptions or it doesn't. No one really knows the answer, and I don't think there is any way to demonstrate the truth regarding that question. So people's opinions fall on one side or the other. What would you expect? That everyone should agree? Do you want to claim that people who beleive one thing or the other are therefore morally better and happier people?

Subjective opinion, once again. — Wayfarer

What more could it be? Or if there is an objective metaphysical truth how could it be demonstrated to be so? This is the question you can never answer despite your wishful assertions.

Exactly as he explains in Darwin's Dangerous Idea. — Wayfarer

Oh, have you read the actual work? Can you cite some text from it to support your contention?

There's only one point at issue - the insistence that matter has intrinsic reality. When that's seen through, the rest collapses. — Wayfarer

What does "intrinsic" mean there? Does it make the question different than asking whether matter is real? If so how? Please explain.

On the other hand, if I accept for the sake of the argument that the question is meaningful, and is different than merely asking if matter is real, and has an answer that is true or false, then please explain how we would go about finding out whether matter has intrinsic reality.

If it cannot be demonstrated whether matter has intrinsic reality or not, then it becomes a matter of opinion. In that case some will believe it does and others that it doesn't. Why would it be corrosive if those who believe it does do not seek to force or require others to share their view? Or vice versa? You seem to require that others must share your view or else "they just don't get it". So I think your attitude is divisive in that you don't believe a rational person could hold an opinion different to yours; if so, does it not then follow that it is (socially) corrosive in that would seek not to allow for diversity of opinion?

You're talking to yourself man. — Wayfarer

No, I'm talking to you. The question is whether you will take heed or not. Past experience tells me you will not.

How is Dennett's philosophy "corrosive"? If holding such a philosophy hasn't turned him into an unfeeling robot, or someone with no enjoyment in life, then what is the problem with it?

If you are simply not interested in it, then fine, don't read his work or comment on it (which, respectively, you haven't and therefore shouldn't anyway). If you want to critique it then study it and attempt to refute it, point by point.

Your characterizations are not philosophical critique, but childish expressions of your strawman thinking and unfounded distaste in my view. Your personal feelings of distaste are not philosophically interesting.

Here's an example:

If he really lived out of what he believes is the case, he would be nothing like the genial bearded fellow of his persona. And he even acknowledges that!

Daniel Dennett [takes] a different view. While it is true that materialism tells us a human being is nothing more than a “moist robot”—a phrase Dennett took from a Dilbert comic—we run a risk when we let this cat, or robot, out of the bag. If we repeatedly tell folks that their sense of free will or belief in objective morality is essentially an illusion, such knowledge has the potential to undermine civilization itself, Dennett believes. Civil order requires the general acceptance of personal responsibility, which is closely linked to the notion of free will. Better, said Dennett, if the public were told that “for general purposes” the self and free will and objective morality do indeed exist—that colors and sounds exist, too—“just not in the way they think.” They “exist in a special way,” which is to say, ultimately, not at all. — Wayfarer

For fuck's sake! He acknowledges it? The quoted passage is not Dennett speaking. You are making yourself look like a joke, Wayfarer.

I had an argument with another poster on a different philosophy forum long ago, which I think ties in with the question here. The poster in question created a thread questioning whether it is wrong to condemn torture (of terrorists, spies, kidnappers and so on) if we think that we would, in certain circumstances, torture them ourselves.

The scenario he created was this: the person who has kidnapped your wife or daughter or son or husband, someone you love dearly in other words, has been caught by the police but will not divulge where they are being held, If the kidnapper is not there to give them food and water they will soon die. The question is, would you torture the kidnapper to get him to reveal where they are being held? The poster in question argued that if you say you would then you are a hypocrite if you don't agree that torture is morally acceptable in certain circumstances.

I argued that this is wrong, and that even if under certain circumstances we might feel morally justified in torturing someone, it does not follow that we should advocate that torture is generally morally acceptable in certain circumstances. The reason for this is that moral choices always come down to what a person can live with in conscience, and sometimes what we can live with conscience, and even what we would find it morally unacceptable not to do, may transgress the general rule.

:up:

Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters. — Dōgen

That's one I've quoted myself on these forums more than a few times. I'm a fan of Dogen, even though I don;t agree with everything he says. That one I do agree with and I have used it as an analogy with the transition from naive realism, to idealism and back to a sound critical realism.

I know I keep saying this, but it’s exasperating that a well-read intelligent thoughtful philosophical person can’t see it. — Wayfarer

Do you really believe Dennett doesn't enjoy his life, doesn't enjoy music, nature, poetry and whatever? If he does enjoy life, then what is he missing? When he says that the redness of red, and the painfulness of pain are illusions he is not saying that red is an illusion or pain is an illusion. There is a nuance there which I think you fail to see, probably because you haven't read the man himself. Perhaps you simply can't bring yourself to read Dennett; it might be a waste of time for you; but no more, and probably ;less, of a waste of time than leveling inapt criticisms at him. I think you just have a polemical antagonism to Dennett "and his ilk" and can't see beyond it. I think it is good, and very useful, to read those we find ourselves disagreeing with, more than it is to read those we find confirmation of our own beloved ideas in.

That said, there is no problem with disagreeing with Dennett. I don't share all of his conclusions myself. But the issue is not one of 'the good guys on one side and the bad guys on the other' as you seem to be framing it. The disagreement is over possible ways of interpreting the human situation, ways none of which can be definitively tested; so it comes down to being more of a matter of taste than anything else in my view. When it comes to that, to matters of taste, surely you are not going to demonize someone because they don't think much of Bob Dylan as a poet, are you?

I don't agree. Why would you say that? Do you really believe Dennett would deny that being awake and being asleep are different states? He's not so stupid.

Tautology. — Agent Smith

Not merely a tautology; two different states of being.

I read it quite a few years ago. From my recall the idea is that we survive in the memories of others.

There's no difference between me, asleep, and me, awake! — Agent Smith

Of course there is a difference; when you are awake, you are awake, and when you are asleep you are asleep. This is basic.

Some may see consciousness as an illusion, as Dennett does, — Jack Cummins

This seems to be one of the most persistent misunderstandings, seemingly almost impossible to correct in those who hold it. Dennett does not see consciousness as an illusion; he sees the common notion of consciousness, the "folk" conception of consciousness, as being an illusion.

For instance, Kant's view is that a thing in itself causes us to perceive phenomena, and that our cognitive apparatus arranges the matter of sensation in space and time. — Amalac

If the notion of causation has its relevance only in the context of thought about phenomena (it being a form of judgement) then how could it make sense to speak about something noumenal causing perception of phenomena?

I’m pointing it out, I’ve by no means ‘swallowed’ it. It’s been swallowed whole by your mate Dennett. ( :clap: for the capital ‘R’, though!) — Wayfarer

I'm not sure Dennett would agree with you about what you think he thinks. In any case if you haven't swallowed the idea that the physical is lifeless and meaningless, then you would have no need of the transcendent as a source of meaning, and nor would you have any problem with physicalism. So, I must admit, I'm finding your position a wee bit puzzling.

*

Many of the discoveries of modern quantum physics defy logic, for instance the 'wave-particle' nature of subatomic bodies. — Wayfarer

It's not true that the wave/particle duality "defies logic" it merely defies our understanding of physicality.

So I dispute that as a general matter that we do see what 'things really are', even if we know enough to know a tree or an apple when we see one. — Wayfarer

What could it mean to "see things as they really are"? Are you not making an unwarranted assumption that things "really are some ultimate way". Why should that be necessary?

I think it is unquestionable that ideas were reified by (some of) the ancients, such as Plato. Those thinkers believed ideas had an existence independent of the human mind; whether in a realm of forms or the mind of God.

Empirical science cannot deal with meaning; it was not that, at some point, a "decision" was made to abandon it. The irony is that you seem to see physical existence as meaningless; whereas as I see it as being replete with meaning. That makes it look to me like you have swallowed the common notion that matter is lifeless and meaningless.

It's not a blind spot for science, but an acknowledgement of its limitations. The fact that there are some people for whom what science can examine, analyze and understand exhausts the Real doesn't entail that such an attitude is in any way essential to science itself.

I've explained my objection above, for the third time. Yes, I can explain how thought works. I would not talk in terms of "thought connections" for all the reasons mentioned heretofore. — creativesoul

As I read it the OP is merely asking whether only the logical connections between thoughts reveal "reality" or whether other connections such as the imaginative, intuitive, metaphorical, analogical, magical and so on also reveal "reality" or some aspects of it, so your objection that talking about thought connections is equivalent to talking about "connection connections" seems somewhat inapt.

I agree that it seems to the modern mind that the ancients (in their ignorance or innocence) reified ideas like goodness, beauty, virtue, justice and so on, and this is the extra "dimension" that nous has that the modern conception of intellect lacks. Where I disagree is that you say this tendency to reify ideas has been "forgotten", rather than giving what I see as a more accurate description, that would say it has (at least been thought to have) been overcome (although obviously not entirely, since probably more than half of humanity still think this way), seen through, transcended or whatever.

Of course you can disagree that this overcoming has been a step towards greater understanding; that argument is always going to be open-ended, and which pole you support will depend on your basic presuppositions concerning the nature and provenance of the human imagination and intuition,

The reason I say that is because I think there was an implicitly different understanding of the nature of the world before modernity. Where we understand the world in terms of objects and forces, an impersonal conglomeration of basic physical forces. — Wayfarer

You haven't said what you think that "implicitly different understanding" consists in. If you can't say what it consists in, then you have no evidence that such an understanding existed. If you can say what it consists in then there is no barrier to understanding it now. Of course, understanding it does not entail agreeing with it; although you do often seem to conflate understanding with agreement.

Anyway, what I suspect at back of all this, is that ‘nous’ has a meaning which modernity, generally, literally can’t understand. It’s something that was lost in the transition to modernity, to understand it requires a shift in perspective. — Wayfarer

I think this is BS. If a modern can understand the assumptions underpinning the idea of nous that were made by the Ancient Greeks then one can understand the concept as it was understood by the Greeks. If moderns cannot find out what those assumptions are, then sure, moderns could not understand them, and consequently could not understand what nous meant for the Greeks.

Those assumptions are either accessible to the modern mind or not; if not then, as some claim, it is simply impossible for us, due to anachronism, to understand nous as the Greeks did. But in that case, we literally could have no idea how they understood nous, and could not justifiably saying anything positive about it at all; including making claims about the Greek understanding being "higher or lower".

It depends if he can back up his claim to have had Covid in December, despite not having been in isolation while positive.

Dubious. — Banno

Yes, he was either diagnosed with Covid in December or not. And being diagnosed with Covid in the past 6 months is either sufficient grounds for an exemption from having to be double vaccinated in order to be here and play in the Australian Open or not .The Australian government should have a clear policy on this and stick to it without prejudice or political motivation.

If he was not in isolation while positive that reflects poorly on his judgement and/ or character, but it is irrelevant to whether or not he is entitled to a medical exemption.

Ok, but to me that's what the metaphysical law of identity, as with all other laws of thought, intends to capture: our inescapable, predetermined, "primordial" limitations / boundaries of thought. — javra

I don't see identity as a metaphysical concept, but as a logical one.

I don't get how there can be difference discerned without there being discerned difference between identified givens. Could you elaborate? — javra

I'd say it is the similarities between the perceptible characteristics that kinds of things have in common with each other which enable us to recognize them as particular kinds of things. As I said, animals can recognize kinds of things. It is the differences between the perceptible characteristics of kinds of things that allow for different kinds.

I agree that you need to have the general concept; house, apple or whatever in order to recognize something as a house, apple or whatever. Animals recognize steps as 'to go up or down', doors as 'to go through' and so on, but they presumably don't think; this is a door and so on, because that requires symbolic langaugae. So, I think you would need language and the reflexivity it enables to be able to recognize that you are seeing something as a house, apple, stairs, door or whatever, but you need familiarity with those things in order to develop the abstract concept.in the first place.

I think identity has nothing really to do with this. Identification, as in recognition, which animals also do, yes, but identity is an after-the-fact abstraction in my view. So, for me identification is not identity; it is more primordial than the abstracted concept of identity, the idea of something being itself. What is primordial, in my view, is difference.

The various forms, shapes or patterns, which I think must be presented to our senses "raw" is one of the, perhaps the main, characteristics of thongs which enable things to be recognized.

In the world, an apple "is" an apple, an apple "is not" an orange, an apple falls from the tree "because" of gravity, an apple "is the same as" an apple, an apple "is different from" an orange, etc. — RussellA


You're simply repeating some basic logical relations, such as the law of identity and the rules of valid inference. — Wayfarer

I take @RussellA to be talking about perceptible actualities like we don't see apples turning into oranges, we see differences between them on which identification, and hence the abstracted notion of identity, is based and so on; he's not merely "repeating basic logical relations".

He may correct me, but I think he is pointing out that logical relations are abstracted from, derived from perceptible actualities. This seems obvious to me, and it seems that you just refuse to believe what is obvious because it doesn't suit you.

Cannot. That is exactly the point. Talking in terms of "thought connections" like the OP chose to do is an inadequate method for better understanding what thought is and how it works. — creativesoul

Can you explain how thought works other than in terms of association, whether logical, metaphorical, magical, poetical, or whatever?

Wrong.

(kidding) — Xtrix

:ok:

That's actually historically accurate. Locke speaks about this extremely lucidly in his Essay. A lot of what he said has been forgotten.

I shared a quote here by him, though the whole chapter is fantastic:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/387/tpf-quote-cabinet/p11 — Manuel

:up: Great passage: I must read Locke one day!

Yeah, I think we sometimes verge on the fallacy that we know so much, when I think it's the opposite. Which makes what we do know all the more impressive. There's no reason why a species should understand anything about nature. — Manuel

Exactly! The world is intelligible to us, to be sure, if it weren't we could not survive, we would be helpless in the play of blind forces. The intelligibility of their surroundings is also essential to any animal's survival. But this intelligibility is not absolute understanding, and nor should we deduce from the fact of intelligibility that we have any capacity for absolute understanding.

I guess they could be seen as different in the sense that the first definition is broad and the second is more of an attempt to target one’s intuition of what the first definition means. — Paul Michael

I'm not seeing how "individual instances" necessarily mean "what it is like to have individual instances". I think the latter is largely an artifact of reflection; that is, a post hoc rationalization which leads to reification of qualia as something over and above lived experience.

Yes, we are, but everything we are aware of falls within the larger context of the universe/reality. So we are aware of the universe/reality, just not all of it in its totality. — Paul Michael

I think it is more accurate to say that we are aware of parts of the universe, parts of reality, and of course we logically conclude that there must be a whole which is greater than the parts that we see. The whole can never be an object of awareness though.

The hard problem is trying to explain why there is a difference in the evidence used to assert that you are aware vs.asserting that others are aware. How you come to know that you are aware vs. knowing others are aware is totally different. — Harry Hindu

You might think that is a hard problem, but it is not the so-called "Hard Problem". I don't think it is a hard problem at all; it seems obvious to me that you intimately know you are aware because you are yourself, and do not know others are aware in the same way, because you are not them.

Rationality is nothing more than valid deduction and plausible (as we are wont to believe) induction. You might think that rationality can also create ad hoc conjectures, which cannot be tested, to explain the nature of things as it is understood, but no: it is imagination which creates such "theories" in its unfettered way.

Rationality holds no sway over our basic presuppositions, since any theoretical inductive support for presuppositions involves deploying other presuppositions, which in turn depend on further presuppositions, and so on. The only support for science, apart from its overall cohesiveness, is the fact that it works. Presuppositions cannot be tested for workability.

What would happen to this endeavor if all thought consisted of connections? We would be exploring the possibility of connections connections...

See the problem? — creativesoul

Can you think of any thought which is not associative, or in other words, "connective"?

I don’t think there is a difference, but I was attempting to illustrate what I was referring to by the word ‘qualia’. — Paul Michael

And yet the two definitions you gave are different.

To me at least, being aware just means having a live first-person perspective of the universe/reality. — Paul Michael

Aren't we aware of things, other entities, events and environments rather than "the universe/ reality". I think we conceive of the latter, but are not aware of it, meaning that they are ideas, not experiences or percepts.

I mean, it is true that in terms of acquaintance, we are best acquainted with experience than anything we study in nature. — Manuel

Is there any experience without acquaintance with nature, or any acquaintance with nature without experience? I think experience is just a word to denote that we have awareness. To my way of thinking the so-called "hard problem" is a kind of illusion based on thinking that what matter is is clearly understood; that it is something like "dead" particles that could not, according to our conception, possibly give rise to what we think of as "immaterial" subjective experience. The hard problem then seems to me to be an expression of incredulity based on ignorance.

Qualia are typically defined as individual instances of subjective, conscious experience. — Paul Michael

There’s only so far we can go with language and communication in general, but I would elaborate on the meaning of the term ‘qualia’ by saying that they are individual instances of what it is like to have sensations, perceptions, and thoughts. — Paul Michael

So are qualia "individual instances of subjective, conscious experience" or ."individual instances of what it is like to have sensations, perceptions, and thoughts"? Is there a difference?

Isn't "what it is like to be aware" lest confusingly expressed as "what it is to be aware", in the sense of "how does it feel to be aware", since the idea of comparison is inapt in this context? And does how it feels to be aware of something differ from the apprehension of the qualities of whatever it is we are aware of?

Things can be of the same type but entirely different forms for example a collection of musical instruments. A human as a rational agent will recognize that they’re all musical instruments due to grasping the idea of music which an animal would not. — Wayfarer

That is simply typing according to function, nothing to do with one particular kind of form, Dogs can recognize different kinds of bones, balls and food bowls, and know what to do with them. All animals are "rational" agents (capable of recognition and comparison) to different degrees. It is symbolic language which enables humans to abstract and elaborate.

The form of the object is not its shape but the recognition of the type of thing that it is. — Wayfarer

What reason is there to think that one of the basic criteria for counting various things as being of the same kind is not that they are of similar shape? Add to that size. colour, kind of surface (visual and tactile texture and pattern), density, opacity, and other perceptible and/ or measurable characteristics; and you have all the criteria you need for recognition of type.

Applied some analytic philosophy to the analytic philosophers that lost their way because you are talking about a book they hate. — Ennui Elucidator

Yep. you nailed it! The lurking bigotry behind the feigned reasonableness of Lewis' article, and Banno's OP. Anachronism of the one-eyed dick.

For instance, is the universe accurately described by physicalism, and are the innumerable consequences in respect to ourselves of the universe’s so being (or not being) thereby true (or untrue)? — javra

Problem is that you can never know. Is there any point entertaining a question, the answer to which could never be determined (beyond entertaining it just once in order to realize what alternative possibilities are imaginable)?

I guess we have no choice but to ask what decision should we make in a world where we can not make decisions. — T Clark

"My biggest problem is what to do about all the things I can't do anything about"—Ashleigh Brilliant

I'm not seeing the relevance. Plato's critique was against all poetry, all art, and should itself not be taken as literally as you seem to want to. Vernani's criticism of Dante came at a time when Dante's work had not yet enjoyed a "long tradition of interpretation". And the critique of Whitman is an ad hominem criticism of the failings of the man, his vanity and his politics, not a criticism of the quality of his poetry.