Cats can even have a conscious experience of drinking Maxwell House coffee from a red cup without ever experiencing it as such.
— creativesoul

Hypothetically, so pre-theoretical.

Does it matter what is the cat is drinking? Is it the same to say, cats can have a conscious experience of drinking without ever experiencing it as such, which reduces to, can cats have a conscious experience of drinking without ever experiencing it as drinking? — Mww

My apologies... I suppose I could have been a bit clearer. Nice to have a Kantian around to take notice of such details!

:wink:

I meant experience drinking Maxwell House coffee from a red cup as drinking Maxwell House coffee from a red cup. I was merely drawing distinctions between our report of a language less creature's conscious experience and the language less creature's conscious experience.

It's all about the content.

That would be the distinction between rudimentary, basic, language less thought and belief(pre-theoretical conscious experience), and our accounts thereof. As I stated just moments ago, but it bears repeating... it is crucial to separate our account/report of language less creatures' conscious experience from the actual conscious experience of the creature.

...indulging in rampant anthropomorphism.

Me....enjoi-ing. For a change.

Glad I could help.

:razz:

Anthropomorphism is most certainly a mistake that I am conscientious of. It's part of my standard to make certain of not committing it. Rightfully so.

he says nothing precise
— Olivier5

Coming from someone who advocates for the use of "qualia"...

...that's a tad bit ironic if it's meant to be a critique.
— creativesoul

That is so unfair! — Olivier5

Coming from someone who claimed to have taught me how to use the word "pre-theoretical", all the while ignoring the remarkable difference between their's and mine...

... again, that's a tad bit ironic.

:flower:

Sorry, I couldn't pass that up! Just joking with you. Don't take it personally, it's not meant to be.

This seems to me to say that there are actually ineffable private directly apprehensible meaningful experiences. — khaled

Indeed, and had you been reading and/or listening to my efforts in our exchanges, that should not have come to surprise you. I've certainly never denied that much. To quite the contrary, I've been arguing for it, just not the same way that the qualia proponents have been. "Qualia" adds nothing to our understanding of conscious experience. Not our own, which is the only place to start, and certainly not any other 'lesser' animals'.

Just that they are not necessarily formed from "red" and "cup".

Well, given that those are names, names are part of common language, common language is not private, I've stipulated language less creatures for good reason, and common sense alone tells us that a language less creatures' conscious experience cannot include language use as content...

Yeah, not just 'not necessarily', but not at all... ever.

From the cat's POV all that happened is it just drank something disgusting.

I did not say that. I mean, just to be clear. I'm not going to defend that either. That is your account/report of the cat's point of view, not mine. I actually stated what I am willing to say is the cat's conscious experience, from both the cat's point of view(it learned that it does not like the taste of coffee), and in terms of the content of the conscious experience of drinking coffee from a red cup, and how it arrived at that meaningful thought or belief about coffee tasting(conscious experience of drinking coffee from a red cup).

It's crucial to separate our report from what we're reporting upon. That cannot be overstated. Absolutely crucial.

This is not to say that it does not see the red cup, only that it didn't "categorize" it in her experience, didn't emphasize or notice it. Am I understanding this correctly?

Good of you to pause and ask... nice improvement.

Seems you've understood some important aspects of it. She certainly saw the red cup full of Maxwell House coffee, she just did not see it as such. Who knows what it was to her? We can safely say she paid attention to it, we can safely say she noticed it. I mean she drank from it. However, the red cup itself may or may not have been meaningful to her. The coffee tasting bitter most certainly was.

You guys/gals enjoi!

:point:

Dennett counts beliefs as abstract objects... — frank

I would argue against Dennett.

Now we're saying that ideas aren't language dependent?

:brow:

Weird.

And is the argument that sets exist in their entirety prior to our naming and descriptive practices?

he says nothing precise — Olivier5

Coming from someone who advocates for the use of "qualia"...

...that's a tad bit ironic if it's meant to be a critique.

A set isn't a linguistic object. A set is an abstract object: neither mental not physical. — frank

According to???

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

Some of your mind is in your cell phone. — frank

If you say so.

Abstract objects... — frank

Are linguistic constructs based upon subject/object ontology. That ontology, that dichotomy, that linguistic framework is garbage.

Cats can even have a conscious experience of drinking Maxwell House coffee from a red cup without ever experiencing it as such. If she drinks the coffee from the cup, the coffee triggers an involuntary physical response in the biological machinery of the cat. Language less creatures are perfectly capable of direct perception. The cat will respond accordingly. What it's like(for my cat) to drink Maxwell House coffee from a red cup consists of each and every time my cat drinks Maxwell House coffee from a red cup.

The red cup full of Maxwell House coffee. The ability to draw correlations between the coffee, the sipping behaviours, and the autonomous involuntary physiological response(s) of the sensory apparatus. These are the things required for any and all meaningful conscious experience involving tasting Maxwell House coffee from red cups. In the case of the cat's discontent, she draws correlations between her own discontentment and coffee drinking. That's the part of the overall experience that can stand alone as a conscious experience of coffee drinking/tasting. The cat becomes aware of causality, by attributing the results of her drinking coffee(the response of her physiological sensory apparatus) to her own actions of drinking coffee, and in doing so learns that she does not like drinking coffee.

It only takes once.

Clearly she'd had a conscious experience of drinking Maxwell House coffee from a red cup. It's private, in the sense that it happened... to her. It's ineffable... to and from her limited point of view. It's immediately or directly apprehensible to her. It's meaningful to her. She has no language. Clearly meaningful conscious experience is prior to language. That which is prior to language cannot be existentially dependent upon it. My cat's conscious experience of coffee drinking is prior to language. Some conscious experience of coffee drinking exists in it's entirety prior to language. That's pretheoretical.

The problem...

There's no red quale as a property of her experience. There's also no reason to deny the same limitations apply to human conscious experience of drinking Maxwell House coffee from a red cup prior to language acquisition. The cat drinks from a red cup without ever perceiving the red cup as such. That's because there has been no correlations drawn between the cup's color and something else. Some conscious experience involving red cups do not have the property/quale of red, despite the fact that a red cup is an irrevocable necessary elemental constituent thereof.

Physical means mind independent stuff...
— Marchesk

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

Checkmate, Qualiasts? — Marchesk

More than that...

:smile:

Anyway, either way, no Cartesian issues there! — Andrew M

:up:

I loathe the idea that certain very useful apt terms must be tied to certain philosophical positions and the problems that those positions lead to or have.

Social bonding clearly is not innate,
— creativesoul

Nonsense, bonding is found in all sorts of animal species. From parents to mates to social groups — Marchesk

And... social bonding is not innate. These are not mutually exclusive.

By definition, when it seems to you that you are angry you are, in fact, angry. — khaled

Which parts of what counts as being angry is established by social convention?

Sure. Some folk can imagine things being different than what they think they already are, or what they are.

Others just start doing stuff without having some complete picture already in mind.

Wouldn't you say?

I am wondering if there are any new ideas which have not been advocated by thinkers already — Jack Cummins

Sure there are. However, there are none that are completely new. Knowledge is accrued.

I have no idea what creativity is.

I'm aware the constitution worked and I fully expected it to. — Baden

Well, not at all really when in came to the impeachment proceedings, particularly regarding the majority leader publicly confessing that he could not execute the unique responsibility bestowed upon Senators during an impeachment of the president.

He should have been forced to recuse himself.

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?