• What It Is Like To Experience X
    the misattribution of uniquely human attributes to that which is non human.
    — creativesoul

    Yes, that is what I'm asking you about. If my null hypothesis were that attributes such as a sense of fairness were not unique to humans, what kind of experimental result would force me to think otherwise. Or are you suggesting that something other than empirical evidence should force me to hold a different null hypothesis?     — Isaac

    Those are not the only options. I'm saying let's look and see if a sense of fairness/justice is unique to humans.

    Is a sense of fairness/justice unique to humans?

    That is the question here. In order to know that we must first know what our sense of fairness/justice consists of. What does our sense of fairness/justice require in order for it to begin working? I've been setting this out.

    We have to know what it is that we're looking for.
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    When I ask or tell myself what I’m thinking, I must have already thought it, in order to have something to ask or tell myself about. — Mww

    The above is thinking about one's own thought and belief. That is linguistic belief because it is existentially dependent upon language use.



    No language is used whatsoever... — Mww

    That would be non linguistic thought and belief.

    Here there is a distinction to be made between unspoken thought and belief that is existentially dependent upon prior language use, and thought and belief that can be formed and/or held by a language-less creature.

    I can sit on a chair and think about triangles without using language. I cannot if I've never used language. Thus, such thoughts are themselves existentially dependent upon language even if our having them in the chair is done in silence.
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    You said "I found it rather odd that they chose some experiments/games which are not even capable of showing in humans what they are wanting the same experiment to show in non humans?", yet you seemed to be saying, in the rest of your posts (maybe I've got this wrong), that humans were unlike non-human primates in their abilities in this regard. So I thought you would have an experiment in mind which showed as much to your satisfaction, but maybe I've misinterpreted what you're saying. — Isaac

    It seems that you're asking me which experiment I would prefer, without ever setting out what it is that we're looking to prove. I'm strongly objecting to anthropomorphism; a.k.a. the personification of something other than a person; a.k.a the misattribution of uniquely human attributes to that which is non human.

    Bayesian Reasoning is one. A sense of fairness is another. You've recently expressed ambivalence regarding the act of misattributing thought and belief that is unique to complex common language users to creatures without; that's what attributing some human thought and belief to non human primates amounts to. That's the conversation backdrop.

    What does the dot experiment prove with regard to whether or not some non human animal can possibly use Bayesian reasoning, or have some sense of fairness/justice?

    Are you walking back the earlier claim? You've recently denied offering the experimental results of the grape/cucumber trials as support for also saying that the participants were working from some sense of unfairness/fairness and/or justice/injustice. That denial is false. It contradicts what happened. You did propose such.

    In order to have a sense of fairness/unfairness or justice/injustice, the candidate under consideration must have already experienced reality not matching up to expectations. Unexpected results are part of what a sense of fairness requires for it's own emergence. The results are thought to be unfair/unjust solely as a result of not following an earlier agreement. In order to develop a sense of justice/fairness, the candidate must perform a comparative assessment between what they expected to happen and what did happen. To do this requires naming and descriptive practices. That how one begins to become aware that they have a worldview.

    What's the difference between a non human primate's clear behavioural signs of discontent because they did not receive what they expected, and discontent as a result of having a sense of justice/fairness?

    A clearly understood agreement being broken.

    It has been said that the primate felt cheated as if he did the same work as her(his partner) but did not receive the same reward. It is clear that his expectations were left unmet. Clearly, his behaviour put his discontent on display for all to see. There is nothing to further suggest that those unmet expectations were also further thought - by him - to be unfair.
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    ↪Isaac


    Red Herrings.
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    ↪I like sushi


    Click on my avatar. The site provides a good one. Read through some of my own topics on thought and belief, meaning, and truth... There's a common theme in all of them, if I've been consistent. That is an aim of mine.
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    Being conscious is having/forming thought and belief.
    But if there is a thought without "self" isn't that just the same as philosophical zombie or a computer?     — Zelebg

    Not on my view...
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    What experiment would you set up to show that humans had this feature? — Isaac

    I've been watching, reading, and listening to quite a bit.

    Which feature?
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    We experience tactile, auditory and motor, as well as taste and smell and many kinds of somato-sensory visualizations I would say. Well, at least that's my experience. I suppose it's not a given that we are all the same.
    — Janus

    Yeah, I agree. We can actually see a lot of this happening in the brain. When you imagine a tree, the visual cortex is engaged in a very similar way to when you actually see a tree. What happens next is (I think) quite remarkable. Signals are sent to the eyes to move them in the direction the tree would be if it were there.     — Isaac

    On what ground does one make this last claim?

    What metric does one use to distinguish between eye movements and eye movements in a particular direction for a particular purpose? How can signals be sent to move the eyes to see a tree that is nowhere to be seen? If it is nowhere there is no way to move the eyes in that direction.

    The same could be said of any and all eye movement that may happen during the experiment. That's a problem isn't it?

    The rest of that post seems to rest upon this notion of "signals sent to the eyes to move them in the direction of a imaginary tree."
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    ↪I like sushi


    Read my posts here in this thread.
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    I'm failing to find sense in experience happening to someone who is not aware the experience is their own. I'd say 'to experience' is the same thing as being conscious, and I also fail to see how consciousness makes sense without self-awareness. — Zelebg

    Consciousness comes before self consciousness. Self consciousness is being aware that one has thought and belief. Being conscious is having/forming thought and belief.
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    I thought you said above that there was no subjective/objective dichotomy? That is essentially the position phenomenology works from, so I’m baffled as to what you’re referring to here.

    You don’t have to like it. I’m just telling you what it is.     — I like sushi

    I said I reject the dichotomy.

    Also, understand that Husserl (“The father of Phenomenology”) was logician. He was very wary of historicism and psychologism. He aimed to bring the ‘subjective’ into the field of play — I like sushi

    I've nothing further.
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    ↪I like sushi


    There's no need for talking in phenomenological terms. It adds nothing but unnecessary complexity. It cannot account for that which consists of both subjective and objective things. Experience is one such thing.
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    Personally I see Phenomenology as a bridge between the historical opposition of Idealism and Realism. — I like sushi

    Whereas I reject them all on the exact same ground. They all work from grossly inadequate notions of human thought and belief. They all employ some of the same inherently inadequate dichotomies as well.
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    The subjective/objective dichotomy cannot take proper account of that which consists of both, and is thus... neither.

    Experience is one such thing.
    — creativesoul

    In simplistic terms, yeah.     — I like sushi

    Use that as a measure. Phenomenology is dead in the water.
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    Is experience possible without self-awareness? — Zelebg

    Some. Not all.
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    He felt quite strongly, so it appears, that the natural sciences were set up against subjective consciousness on firm yet not infallible grounding. — I like sushi

    I would agree with Husserl in that regard...
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    The subjective/objective dichotomy cannot take proper account of that which consists of both, and is thus... neither.

    Experience is one such thing.
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    What it's like to experience anything is determined - in large part - by the experiencing creature's thought and belief.

    Thus, there is no single correct answer to what it's like to experience something.

    We can still know what's common to all thinking and believing creatures' experiences by virtue of knowing what's common to all thought and belief.
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    ↪I like sushi


    That was a serious question and a serious reply thereto.

    It makes no sense at all to bracket out the tree, when we're talking about seeing the tree.
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    I'm not so sure personification is unwarranted. — Isaac

    Attributing thought and belief unique to humans to non humans is not only unwarranted, it's also a misattribution of meaning as well.
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    The tree you see (with your eyes) is a transcendental object of experience. The point of transcendental reduction is to bracket out your concern for a tree ‘being there’ (as it may be a dream). — I like sushi

    So, for some reason or other some folk want to intentionally neglect the tree?

    :worry:

    What is so obvious is that it is a tree, yet what it is that makes it ‘obvious’ is the ‘aim’ of the phenomenological investigation. — I like sushi

    That's what we named it? Investigation over.






    ↪Isaac


    I'm curious what you think...

    Some people were claiming that some of those experiments offered adequate evidence for concluding that very young children and some non human primates are recognizing the existence of other minds...

    I did not and do not agree with that conclusion, not based upon the evidence I'm privy to.

    The experiment involved the subjects observing two specific objects being placed into a particular container/box. There was more than one container. They showed their own surprise when they looked for themselves into the box and did not find what they were expecting to find.

    Then, under similar enough circumstances(I suppose), they observed another looking into the wrong box and showed that that bothered them in some way. The speaker claimed that such displays proved somehow that they recognized that the other had a mind???

    I found it rather odd that they chose some experiments/games which are not even capable of showing in humans what they are wanting the same experiment to show in non humans?
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    ↪I like sushi


    Is the tree I see a phenomena?
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    Secondly, I'm not necessarily arguing that non- human primates have an abstract concept of fairness/justice like ours. For a start I think it more likely we'll find our concept isn't quite so abstract and top-down acting as we think, not that chimpanzees have topgdown acting abstract concepts, more that we don't. — Isaac

    I agree with that general sentiment. It's a matter of finding the common denominators between their thought and belief and our own. Consider evolutionary progression and ours must begin simply anyway. Theirs must and does as well. Senses of fairness are rather complex results from rather complex thought and belief.

    An important consideration in support of the quote above...

    Top down techniques require language use, as do bottom up techniques. Those are two names for two different techniques of reasoning. Both are existentially dependent upon common written language. Non-human primates' thought and belief cannot be. Non-human thought and belief does not - cannot - consist of either.
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    What is the aim though, seriously. Does it have a goal in mind?
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    ↪I like sushi


    Different strokes, and all... I find talking in such terms to be very unhelpful.

    I see trees, not phenomenal representations thereof.
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    Not all thought and belief should be deemed "a report" because some exists prior to language.
    — creativesoul

    Cool. Thanks.

    I guess my concern, with respect to understanding each other, was to eliminate “report” as a metaphor, as in the case where, say, the senses “report” their perceptions to their respective receptors. Of course, the metaphoric report from the senses, while such machination certainly “exists in its entirety prior to language use”, isn’t a thought or a belief either, until or unless such machination is taken into account by a thinking subject.     — Mww

    Nada.

    A worthy concern...

    Nah, metaphor is poor philosophy. To say the senses "report" is to be involved in anthropomorphic thinking(the personification of the senses). I reject such talk/approaches.
  • Intellectual honesty and honest collaborative debate
    Brilliant.
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    ↪Isaac


    I haven't forgotten about the studies. I've been doing a little bit of research into recent studies that are very similar, and a few podcasts which seem to reference the same/very similar studies. I'm particularly interested in the ones where coins are used in exchange for rewards.

    They are very intriguing. Sadly though, one researcher in particular(regarding rhesus or macaques) was drawing unwarranted/unjustified/invalid conclusions that amounted to the personification of the the animals(anthropomorphism). However, not all of them did nor do all seem prone to make such mistakes.

    Thanks again for drawing my attention to this...
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    Everything is phenomenon
    — I like sushi

    If that's the case, then the notion itself can and ought be cast aside for it cannot be used to further discriminate between anything at all. It becomes superfluous, unhelpful, and offers nothing but unnecessarily overcomplicated language use.
    — creativesoul

    Eventually.....maybe....we would have arrived here, at this very place. It is not correct to say everything is phenomenon, but rather, every object of sensibility, called appearance, united with an intuition by imagination, is phenomenon.     — Mww

    Spoken like someone who likes Kant's Noumena.





    I admit Kantian epistemological metaphysics is historical...to be kind. It is, nonetheless, complete in itself, and incorporates enormous explanatory power. — Mww

    Kant was my favorite for a very long time. There are serious issues of inherent inadequate explanatory power however. That which exists in it's entirety prior to humans is relegated to Noumena, and as such is grossly neglected. The problem, of course, is that we can most certainly know much about such things, just not when and if we're using Kant's framework.




    If you insist on casting phenomena aside, what would take its place? — Mww

    Nothing. There's no need for phenomena. We can remove it without losing anything. It's removal does not result in something missing. Rather, it results in something gained. Clarity by virtue of removing an unnecessary entity. The simplest, most basic rudimentary level thought and belief all involve that which is directly perceived. However, Kant denies direct perception of reality. Thus, Kant did not and could not draw and maintain a distinction between non linguistic thought and linguistic thought.

    He also did not draw a distinction between thought and belief and thinking about thought and belief. That distinction can yield knowledge of existential dependency and elemental constituency.
  • Intellectual honesty and honest collaborative debate
    Here is your argument in simpler form...

    Perfect is unassailable.
    One is assailed.
    Therefore, one is not perfect.

    The primary premiss is false. All perfect answers are true. Some true answers are assailed. Thus, it cannot be the case that if one is assailed, then one is not perfect.

    Being assailed does not equate to being false, mistaken, or imperfect. Being false is one feature of being an imperfect answer. Being incomplete is yet another. We may not be able to know everything about perfection, but we can certainly know that being assailed doesn't equate to being wrong and/or mistaken.


    Be well.

    :smile:
  • Intellectual honesty and honest collaborative debate
    If you cannot know if an answer is perfect, then what sense does it make to claim that if one is assailing the answer, then the source of the answer is not perfect? — creativesoul
  • Intellectual honesty and honest collaborative debate
    If you’re not able to understand the argument you don’t have to respond to it. — Mark Dennis

    Please show the argument. Then I'll respond accordingly.

    Did you notice mine?
  • Intellectual honesty and honest collaborative debate
    I suggest that you carefully re-read our exchange. It would be helpful to do so while believing that you've missed something important... because you have.
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    understanding is imperative to good, productive, and valid discourse. I'm assuming we both seek just that...
    — creativesoul

    Absolutely. In keeping with that, please elucidate “report” for me, if you would, please. I realize you’ve probably done that already, sometime ago, but as I said......I’m very much nearer my expiration date than my born-on date, so my retention isn’t what it used to be. Humor me?

    Here’s how it relates to the dialogue:

    All experience consists entirely of the thoughts/beliefs of the creature having the experience.
    — creativesoul

    I claim that we cannot even offer an adequate report if we do not know what all thought and belief consists of.
    — creativesoul

    Correlations drawn between different things are the building blocks of everything ever thought, believed, spoken, written, and/or otherwise uttered.
    — creativesoul

    Is it that the combination of all three of those has something to do with “report”?     — Mww

    Those three things are thought and/or belief statements. My offering them is to offer a report of my own thought and belief. The notion of report I'm using is quite simple, 'layman' even. I mean, there is no inherent nuance for you to be overly concerned with aside from the following common sense measure of understanding:That which is being reported upon always exists in it's entirety prior to the report.

    The first claim is just plain common sense language use.

    The second claim has been arrived at via (a heretofore undisclosed)deductive means. To shed a bit of light on that means, I'll offer this:We first look to what all thought and belief statements have in common that make them what they are. We keep in mind that in addition to being a common denominator of all thought and belief statements, these proposed basic elemental constituents must be able to exist in their entirety prior to language. Otherwise, our notion of human though and belief fails to be amenable to an evolutionary progression from no thought and belief(at the moment of biological conception) to the complex metacognitive endeavor that we're currently an active participant in.

    The third claim is the conclusion arrived at from the groundwork 'elucidated' upon above.
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    understanding is imperative to good, productive, and valid discourse. I'm assuming we both seek just that...
    — creativesoul

    Absolutely. In keeping with that, please elucidate “report” for me, if you would, please. I realize you’ve probably done that already, sometime ago, but as I said......I’m very much nearer my expiration date than my born-on date, so my retention isn’t what it used to be. Humor me?

    Here’s how it relates to the dialogue:

    All experience consists entirely of the thoughts/beliefs of the creature having the experience.
    — creativesoul

    I claim that we cannot even offer an adequate report if we do not know what all thought and belief consists of.
    — creativesoul

    Correlations drawn between different things are the building blocks of everything ever thought, believed, spoken, written, and/or otherwise uttered.
    — creativesoul

    Is it that the combination of all three of those has something to do with “report”? I grant that everything ever spoken, written and/or otherwise uttered is the superficial rendition of the concept “report”, but I hesitate whether everything ever thought and/or believed should be deemed a “report”.     — Mww

    A report is an account of what's happened and/or is happening. They are all meaningfully based in thought and belief formation(drawing correlations between different things). With that in mind, not everything ever thought and/or believed should be deemed a "report" because some thought and belief is prior to language. Reports are existentially dependent upon language. That which exists prior to language is neither existentially dependent upon reports nor consists thereof. Not all thought and belief should be deemed "a report" because some exists prior to language.
  • Intellectual honesty and honest collaborative debate
    To be perfect is to be unassailable, so it stands to reason that if you are being assailed then you are not perfect. — Mark Dennis

    No. It doesn't seem like that claim stands to reason at all, does it? Reason tells us that it makes no sense to claim the source of an answer is not perfect. That's precisely what you propose in the OP.

    Are you changing your mind?
  • Intellectual honesty and honest collaborative debate
    only perfect beings can recognise perfect answers or other perfect beings. — Mark Dennis

    It would follow then that either you're perfect or you cannot know if an answer is perfect. If you cannot know if an answer is perfect, then what sense does it make to claim that if one is assailing the answer, then the source of the answer is not perfect?

    :brow:
  • Intellectual honesty and honest collaborative debate
    A perfect answer given by a perfect person wouldn’t be assailed because everyone would know it was a perfect answer. — Mark Dennis

    Only if everyone knew the perfect answer. If the perfect answer was against common wisdom, the answer would be assailed...
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    ↪Isaac


    It's very interesting, and I'm not finished investigating. Thanks for your subsequent clarifications on what you're claiming...

    :smile:
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    ↪Isaac


    No. Ooops. If thats true. Open mouth, insert foot. I'll attent to it more.

    Keep me in line!

    :yikes:
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