I'm left with the impression that you and I both hold that fear is the only innate emotion.
— creativesoul

What about love and social bonding — Marchesk

What about them? Social bonding clearly is not innate, let alone whether or not it is an emotion.

Love? I'm pretty much along the lines of a Spinozist on love.

Transcendental is natural, by the way, as it does not require the intervention of any god.
— Olivier5

That is an interesting topic for debate in its own right. In practice, naturalism is suspicious of transcendentals, because by definition they're not defineable in purely naturalistic terms; nature is what they're transcendent in respect of, you might say. This shows up in debates about platonic realism and whether maths is invented or discovered. — Wayfarer

It should show up in discussions of meaning... because meaning most certainly transcends the individual and/or community. Naturalism doesn't seem to me to have an issue accounting for meaning. If meaning is transcendental then, it doesn't have a problem with that either...

Physical means mind independent stuff... — Marchesk

Hmmm... and if the mind is in part, physical?

:wink:

The theory that he plays into the fears of the beleaguered white man who sees his power escaping as the nation's culture and ethnicity change, so he harkens back to a non-existent time when things were great and can be now be made great again sounds like a better explanation. — Hanover

Nevermind the tax rate of the wealthy in the good 'ole days...

he managed to lose the election by a bigger margin than any incumbent in modern history. — Baden

The only incumbent to ever lose without a primary challenger, if memory serves me right, and what I was taught once was true.

Interesting post.

I'm left with the impression that you and I both hold that fear is the only innate emotion.

But those meaningful correlations might include the coffee being better when you drink it and the cat being black on a white mat. — Marchesk

Sure, with the introduction of language use, we can talk about and/or compare past and present coffee tasting, black cats, and white mats, and that's one worrisome way of doing so.

Thanks. The same thing I've been saying for the better part of ten years.

:wink:

Banno and a few others around here and elsewhere(mostly academics) have proven immensely helpful. No need to talk in terms of "qualia" or "quale".

Are you claiming that red cups are not external, or that biological machinery is not internal? — creativesoul

No... ...I'm just trying to make sense of your earlier comments which are still unclear to me:

Internal, external, that which consists of both. Conscious experience being of the third; part physical, part non physical; part internal, part external, part neither. — Andrew M

Fair enough.

Conscious experience of tasting bitter Maxwell House coffee from a red cup...

So, the red cups are external, the biological machinery is internal, and conscious experience of drinking bitter Maxwell House coffee from red cups consists entirely of correlations drawn between the bitterness(which results from the biological machinery) and the Maxwell House coffee by a creature capable of doing so.

The content of the conscious experience is the content of the correlations... that includes both internal things and external things, however the correlation drawn between those things is neither for it consists of both.

I've already answered the question of what all conscious experience consists of. Meaningful correlations drawn between different things. I've accounted for all conscious experience of tasting bitter Maxwell House coffee from a red cup.

Did you notice?

And by attribute meaning... — Marchesk

I mean draw correlations between different things.

See the edit, and it ought answer that first question. In short...

No. I meant what I said.

Yes. We can become conscious of the correlations we draw between cats and mats.

Thought and belief are not mental states on my view, by the way.
— creativesoul

I don't know what you mean here. What are they? — Marchesk

They are meaningful correlations drawn between different things. They are what all conscious experience consists of. They are the basic elements thereof.

The red cup, the bitterness in one's mouth, and the connection drawn between the cup and the bitterness by the very creature who just tasted Maxwell House coffee from the red cup.

That's exactly what all conscious experience of tasting bitter Maxwell House coffee from a red cup consists of.

So, I take it that you've no idea what it takes to attribute meaning?
— creativesoul

Kantian? — Marchesk

No. Simple, basic, primitive(if you like) conscious experience kan't be so difficult to understand. Not with today's knowledge.

You seemed to want to defend the use of internal/external and physical/non-physical qualifiers as meaningful when talking about experiences. — Andrew M

Defend? Against what? Was there a valid objection to anything I've said somewhere that I missed?

Are you claiming that red cups are not external, or that biological machinery is not internal?

Should this be its own thread? Or do you we just continue since we left Dennett's quning in the dust long ago? — Marchesk

Whose thread is it?

Oh!

Nah, we can keep it here. It's relevant.

So, I take it that you've no idea what it takes to attribute meaning? Thought and belief are not mental states on my view, by the way.

Are you ready to listen yet?

Well, internal and external are useful when talking about a house (or a theater). They can refer to the internal and external walls of the house, for example. But I'm not seeing their applicability when talking about experience. Their use in that context instead implies a Cartesian theater model.

If you disagree, perhaps you could give a non-Cartesian example. — Andrew M

I've offered nothing but. I'd be more than happy to unpack something I've already said should it seem like it implies such a linguistic framework. I can assure you that I reject mind/body dualism.

Do not be misled by my stage name.

Descartes, had he better understanding of all human thought and belief, would have said...

I think about my own thoughts and/or beliefs as well as others', therefore, I am, and he would have been right.

So you have your own definition for consciousness. — Marchesk

Well, you could say that. We've spent the last two thousand years failing to come to acceptable terms with our minds and how they work. Why not offer a much better 'definition', one that is capable of taking proper account of conscious experience that does not succumb to the historical pitfalls and problems that all of the other ones have?

:smirk:

What's the problem with it? I'm fairly certain that you do not understand it. I could be wrong, but there are not too many folks around here that seem to be capable of unpacking that. That's not a problem with the definition, for it takes into proper account what all conscious experience consists of. Rather, it shows the problem of academia having some very important aspects of the human 'mind' wrong to begin with. The beauty lies in killing several birds with one stone.

What does that have to do with anything I've written here?

Don't be a dick. You won't like it.

Internal, external, that which consists of both. Conscious experience being of the third; part physical, part non physical; part internal, part external, part neither.
— creativesoul

Those predicates are inapplicable if Cartesian dualism is rejected. — Andrew M

I'm not at all understanding what reason there is for any one of us to believe that the terms "internal", "external", "physical", "non-physical" have no use unless they are being used within a Cartesian influenced framework, particularly mind/body dualism???

Yeah, I'm not following that at all, Andrew.

Everything I've said supports the notion of embodied consciousness, and nothing I've said supports any form of disembodied consciousness.

Nothing meaningful is added by characterizing those experiences with physical/non-physical, or internal/external qualifiers.

Oh, but I do beg to differ...

Is it acceptable to use a different definition? — Marchesk

And here yet another obtuse question...

:roll:

Of course it is!

That's exactly what the problem is... the criterion underwriting what counts as conscious experience. Part of a few different definitions is under direct attack. That's the freaking point of the paper.

Shakes head and walks away...

So you have your own definition for consciousness.

Wouldn't that better fall under intentionality, cognition or intelligence? — Marchesk

Is that what counts as an acceptable reply nowadays?

You cannot explain it because there is no it...
— creativesoul

There is a conscious visual experience with red in it. — Marchesk

So the "it" in "what it's like to see red" is a conscious visual experience with red in it?

It'll never stay dead. — Banno

If we cannot somehow, someway, adequately explain what it's like(for our own selves) to see red, then we certainly have no business talking about - or in terms of - "what it's like" to be some other conscious creature. We seem to be fatally disconnected from ourselves on such a rendering...

Odd indeed.

p-zombies are hard to kill. — Marchesk

As is The Flying Spaghetti Monster.

I don't undestand what you mean by "consciousness" then. — Marchesk

The ability to attribute meaning.

Pay attention . Here comes the death knell.

I disagree in that we can say some of their experiences might be fundamentally different from our own, because they have a form of perception we don't. What that is, we cannot say.

It's just noting a hard limit to our understanding, at least as things stand now. — Marchesk

Hold on a minute.

When we're reporting upon another's conscious experience, in order to know what we're talking about, we must be able to take that conscious experience into proper account.

Agree? — creativesoul

:brow:

The paper hinges on the possibility that bats have kinds of conscious experiences we don't. If not bats, then almost certainly dolphins. — Marchesk

Of course bats have conscious experiences. Of course dolphins have conscious experience as well.

The "we don't" part is irrelevant. When we're reporting upon another's conscious experience, in order to know what we're talking about, we must be able to take that conscious experience into proper account.

Agree?

There is a conscious visual experience with red in it. — Marchesk

There's a conscious visual experience with a dog in it.

And???

Maybe "What it's like" is a misleading phrase. — Marchesk

Ya think? Too bad the paper hinges upon it. Go back a few pages and re-read my critique.

I obviously can't explain that — Marchesk

You cannot explain it because there is no it...

Plain and simple.

Ok. Explain it then. What's it like to see red?

Nah. I'm more than willing to set things out for those willing to listen. Given the last few exchanges, including the refutation of "what it's like" that you neglected only to mischaracterize in summary, I'll wait for a clear sign that I'm not talking to myself.

If there's any sincerity in the query of yours, it's vey easy to click on my avatar, then click on my comments, then browse through quickly stopping at the ones relevant to this thread. Most of late are.

Here's a thought, something to kick around.

What if Dennett is right that qualia are incoherent, but wrong about reductionism? — Banno

Then the notion of "qualia" is incoherent, and conscious experience cannot be reduced to physical processes.

That's the position I'm arguing for/from. I'll keep on kicking...

:wink:

That would be interesting. How would we characterize consciousness in that case? — Marchesk

:lol:

Errr... ummm... ahhh... maybe something like what I've been doing?

So the model is of entities interacting in a relational sense, rather than a model where the world is divided in a physical/mental sense. — Andrew M

There's a misunderstanding somewhere. I do not divide the world in a physical/mental sense, or a physical/non physical sense. Internal, external, that which consists of both. Conscious experience being of the third; part physical, part non physical; part internal, part external, part neither.

Nagel has written a lot on this, including the essay that made him famous, 'What is it like to be a bat?' — Wayfarer

If only writing a paper that makes one famous warrants believing that the paper actually says something coherently. I've just critiqued the very idea of "what it's like" earlier in this thread. I stand by that critique.

...He saying, you can give a neurophysiological account of an experience (e.g. 'pain is the firing of c-fibers') but the experience of pain is much more than a descriptive account of the physiology of it.

I don't understand what is obscure or difficult about this idea. — Wayfarer

I was not objecting to that. I agree with that.

I can explain it to you, but I can’t understand it for you. — Wayfarer

Sigh...