OK, but can you also quote where does this refer to? Thanks. — Alkis Piskas

When you say:

"Right this person, is YOU. YOU, as a human being, the same YOU since you were born, not your body, which is in constant change. You can trace YOURSELF in your mind since you were a child to this moment. It is always ONE thing."

I think that's correct. That's the idea of a self as distinct from a body, as I understand it.

What could a more strict sense be and how else can you think of a bodies? The kind of objects considered in Physics? Or something else? — Alkis Piskas

Yes, mostly physics. We have our intuition of what bodies are then there's the more in depth study of them. In our intuitive sense, it makes no sense to say that we are our bodies, anymore than it makes sense to say that we love or laugh with our brains. Or walking with our legs.

People do these things, not individual organs.

Even a dead body is still considered a person by the great majority of people. — Alkis Piskas

We treat them as such, especially following death, such as funeral and the like. But I don't think if you ask any of them is that thing in the casket an actual person, any of them would say that it is a person.

That's hard to say. I don't personally like the word "theorist" too much, I think it is often invoked by people who studied the social sciences, as I have, (international relations, comparative politics, history, etc.) as a kind of badge of honor when there are no theories here worthy of the name.

So maybe a system builder, perhaps, of "rationalistic idealist" variety. Whatever the name, I think there are similarities between a vast range of different fields. But it starts with the subject, I think.

But by all means, criticize or argue. Otherwise I won't learn as fast.

What's deep is usually dependent on the type of person you are. You may be into ethical problems or epistemology or aesthetics.

There are, however, a series of questions pertaining to each field of philosophy which have been with us in some form or another since our early history. We've answered a few of them.

Most of the one's talked about these days are the really hard problems. So it's almost by definition that if you're interested in what philosophers talk about, you are interested in deep questions. Deep, meaning, difficult to make sense of.

I'd like to smooth out a metaphysical system I like to find as many continuities as possible between most fields of knowledge, if at all possible.

It's probably a good idea to avoid stupidity, in as much as one is aware of it in the first place.

A whole other issue, which perhaps is correlated would be to give some structure to our ignorance. That's what I think of when I learn something, becoming more aware of my own ignorance.

Whatever else stupid people may or may not have in common, modesty or humility is not frequent.

I think @Xtrix is right about you.

Anyway, it was fun.

Whiskey isn't pungent? Tangerines aren't pungent? Tea leaves?

We must smell things quite differently.

I never said that. Anybody could've be born to a tribe. Drinking stuff coming from bottles is not irrational behavior actually. Or it doesn't seem so to me.

I'm just saying that you might what to reconsider what you take something obvious to be.

I frequently do engage with my mind. I come here for further engagement...

It's obvious, isn't it?

I'm not so sure. If you send bleach to tribe in the middle of the jungle, it isn't clear to me that they wouldn't drink it to see what it is.

As for engaging my brain. Well, I'd have to take it out of my skull, which would perhaps cause some problems so far as living is concerned. I'd prefer not to.

I think that in one sense you are correct. If by "body" you have in mind what we commonly refer to as human bodies, meaning your limbs, your stomach, your legs and so on, then of course it doesn't make sense. It leaves out the notion of person. And a body (in this sense) is not a person. One can go to a morgue and see many bodies but no persons.

In a more strict sense, we don't know what bodies are. Or where bodies stop being bodies. I have yet to see a person existing absent a body. And my mind is part of my body.

But the main thrust of your argument is sensible.

Yes, I do. It's a pragmatic approach to life. I'm told that it's dangerous to drink bleach so I don't drink bleach. — Michael

:lol: :lol:

:up:

Surely you don't know unless you try?

There are plenty of very fascinating mental phenomena. Deja vu is one of them, it's kind of surreal and strange. Doesn't mean it's true, in the sense of you actually experiencing the same situation again. In fact, it's likely false. However, just because the experience isn't true, does not take away from its power or impact. We should appreciate such experiences, as they aren't too common.

As for the supernatural stuff, I mean, if we're still not clear as to where the natural stops being natural, why go on to postulate something beyond? We can only speak of "super" or "extra" or "meta" naturalism once this domain has been exhausted. Seems to me we are very far from exhausting it.

When we reach such levels of complexity as human behavior, it is not clear to me that these models are discovered much, interpretations can vary significantly, yet they all seem to capture some aspect of the human psyche: perhaps they exaggerate one aspect at the expense of others.

It seems more probable, given the choices, that it is enforced with a bit of discovery sprinkled in. Yet insight into human psychology often does not go much beyond the wisdom of the ancients, so far as human behavior is concerned or even observations about what is good for a person to do. These insights can be translated into psychological terms, and they can be helpful.

But it is a difficult problem.

It takes a quite a bit of effort, in my experience. What makes it worse is the fact that many people disagree on what these words mean.

The Sanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is good, though not infrequently technical.

Honestly, I suggest you read through Galen Strawson's Mental Reality. That's how I began. It was an effort, had to read it several times to get it fully. But it was well worth it. Defines terms and controversies rather well. Maybe it'll be easier for you. But it's worth a shot.

Maybe we can't. But I'd speculate that things-in-themselves make sense in an ontology, though this can be debated.



That's a fair attitude, makes sense.

How do you know ghosts and the like are fictional? What if you added a sense organ to the existing five and with that detected the presence of what people have been calling ghosts? What then? — TheMadFool

We're now talking past each other. I said (some) people already see "ghosts". You can find them in these entertainment channels were some guys get a camera and go to so-called haunted places and end up seeing at best some static or a flash of light.

So people don't need extra faculties to "see" them.

Ontological significance would be significance pertaining to the nature of the world. Hallucinations fit the same bill. But these aren't ontological per se, they are epistemic. Hallucinations don't have ontological weight. There are no hallucinations in the world.

Things change if you put them in a fictitious "epistemic-ontology", pertaining to the way our minds, in some circumstances, project these things, with little by way of causal connection between world and mind. In an epistemic-ontology analyzing fictions, we can say that we add entities to the world which do not exist.

We could say the same thing about trees, but we have good reason to believe trees have casual powers, not only for us, but likely to other creatures, like birds, who use them to build nests or whatever else they do.

So the ghosts thing doesn't add anything new. In fact, they are as old as human culture, when we had primitive beliefs. Sophisticated compared to anything else, but pails in comparison to what we understand now.

Well, if you want to go that route, you'd probably want to say that these are natural phenomena as in the end, all processes are. Yes, the brain is the end point of it all, but that doesn't mean we should give much importance to phenomena which have been repeatedly shown not to be what people claim: things belonging to a different reality outside of nature. I don't think that's coherent.

At best you can say ghosts are like hallucinations. Which is fine. But I don't think these things "expand" our mental or sensible faculties, in fact, they fit into the ones we have.

Why stop at ghosts? We then need to grant literal existence to not only the Abrahamic God, but to Satan, the Flying Spaghetti monster and everything else. I think it muddles our ontology.

It would be more helpful then to develop an ontology of fictional entities and include all the characters of all the novels in the world, which are as real as ghosts. You can do that if you wish, but it would be an infinite task, just a list of all possible mental entities.

But these things don't add to the faculties we already have.

Well, that's the thing. Some suggestible people already (claim) to see ghosts, demons, angels, without any extra cognitive faculties. In fact, I suspect all of us did if you go far enough back in our history.

So I think we would expect other aspects of reality much more ample than ghosts. Think, like of prodigies who can count thousands of numbers of pi by associated numbers with colours. Or being able to read a book to pages at a time and capturing all the content.

Such cases exist.

Mmm. That's where I think this thought experiment can be misleading. This paranormal stuff, ghosts and the like, are all quite ancient registers of our evolutionary history. We used to believe in animism, fire has life, the Gods get mad and the dead roam the life of the living, wanting revenge or looking to quell a pain before going to the after life.

The evidence for almost all of this is non-existent. Ghosts are hallucinations, fire is not alive and the Gods don't control thunder or love. Another thing is to talk about something like intuition, in which very little is known - it's very hard to study. But plainly some people have good intuitions other do not.

The case of the photoreceptors proves that one mutation can reveal an aspect of reality most of us just cannot experience. We can, if feeling suggestible, feel ghostly presences and even make sense out of the idea that thunder is due to some human-like God wanting to harm us. We have access to these things already, but the reality attributed to them does not withstand scrutiny, so far.

The kind of thing I have in mind, hinted at photoreceptors are real phenomena which we cannot access even if we wanted to. We can't see more colours than the ones we see, save very few exceptions. Likewise, we cannot smell nearly as well as most other mammals. In this vein, an intelligent alien (if they exist - we don't know, prospects are iffy) could well organize reality in different ways.

They could smell like dogs, see much more of the visual spectrum and intuit how non-mental stuff leads to mental stuff, the way we intuit how apples fall. The difference here is one of lack of capacities not venturing into areas which lead back to the dark ages, burning witches based on testimony.

So I get your drift, but I'd be cautious.

Yes, very much so:

https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-found-a-woman-whose-eyes-have-a-whole-new-type-of-colour-receptor

That true, if transhumanism turns out to be correct, that is, that we can "super-evolve".

But I don't think transhumanism is quite reliable. But, I hope I'm wrong, it would be interesting to fine tune oneself to such degrees. Perhaps.

Yeah, I don't think people think they are intentionally making the world a worse place by doing what they do - not implying that you said this by the way.

It seems to me that that would then be an issue of what area of concern would be the one you should focus on improving, instead of stupidity, per se.

Yes. I think that's accurate, and I don't have a reason to think it should be otherwise, once we shed our naïve realism.

Dreams are interesting. Of course, when we are awake we tend to easily point out what was out of order or made no sense when comparing dreams to waking life. Skeptical games aside, we don't do the inverse much, that is, when dreaming, comparing "real life" to dream life, as it were.

Sorry, I missed your post initially. I mean, if we were able to go to a habitable place, say, in the Andromeda galaxy, then we should be able to experience phenomena the way we do here. As of now, we can only experience the distant past of things in space - likely forever, unless some crazy new physics develops, which, while not impossible per se, seems highly unlikely.

We can experience the Sun here. If we were instantly dropped on Mercury we would either burn or freeze instantly. So there are practical parameters in which experience is possible for organisms.

However, when it comes to mental phenomena, I think it's not crazy to suspect other types of forms of organizing the world are available to other creatures. Perhaps they appreciate something which is meaningless to us. Or again, they can see infrared light, which we detect via instruments.

If we evolve aspects of our brain (or sense receptors) we could have more acute perceptions. As is the case of people who have 4 light cones instead of the traditional 3.

I suppose one way to start would be to try an identify a situation or a scenario which most people would consider stupid. If we can't agree on that, then there's a problem.

What, then, is universally stupid (most of the time)?

Lots of good stuff to go over in that post. Obviously, such an OP can be taken as not being satisfied with how much we have and can know and is thus seeking more than what we have available to us. Such an approach can invite naïve spiritualism a la "new age" types.

I can't help that too much, save to say that it's not the intention. As it currently stands, absolutely we look for shortcuts and ease of access when we construct our model of the world. It has to be (at least in part) a matter of efficiency in natural selection: if we had to spend several hours to make out an image of the world, we'd be eaten alive.

Yes, our maps can and often do mislead us when we try to navigate the territory. But our maps are quite a treasure too, it seems to me, even if it leads many to the edge of the world.

I hope you find it to your liking.

Well, as far as I know, most mathematicians are Platonists in some sense.

As for "ordinary objects", it's hard to articulate such a view, given that what we perceive - including concepts - are likely unique to us, that is to say, a bird or a dog very likely has no such notions of ordinary objects. So our view of rivers and apples are unique to us, I'd venture to guess.

But the noumenal substratum would still apply to all creatures endowed with a certain level of perception. Something like that.

Yes. The curious aspect of this, within the modern-day rationalist tradition exemplified by Chomsky and McGinn, is that the stuff "out there", is quite peripheral to the magnitude of impact we feel "in here".

That is to say, our exposure to any object in the world, is so brief, quick and fleeting, that only very brief exposure leads to an image which we have no reason to believe exists "out there", as far as manifest reality goes.

McGinn's short book,Inborn Knowledge: The Mystery Within, is quite instructive, I think. It's quite strange really. And if you consider not only the images we get, but the concepts we attribute to things, it's pretty amazing how much we bring forth in constructing the given.

Actually, photon-detectors detect photons. They're specialised bits of equipment to do just that. The idea that photons (and atoms) are what is 'really there' was really being called into question already by the time of Arthur Eddington's book, Nature of the Physical World, between the Wars. — Wayfarer

Yes. Correct. It's a shorthand description. We detect photons through equipment.

Eddington's book is quite good, if a bit dated. But he has the merit of pointing out the main issue of how much is left unsaid, once everything's been analyzed in physics.

I think Whitehead has merit too, but he is often too obscure. But if you take the classical pragmatists, they were quite sober in how they assessed the situation.

Contemporarily, I think only Tallis really stands out as making a similar point to Eddington.

On the other hand, people like Rovelli and Sean Carroll, though the latter a bit scientistic, are quite sensible. So times may be changing.

I would assume Dennett or Rosenberg or Churchland(s), would have something to say. Not that I can tolerate that literature for too long...

It may be a common idea, there are quite a few in the idealist tradition who believe in this. But I at least wanted to narrow it down somewhat.

I personally don't know about the observer effect in QM. I know Wayfarer argues that it is important, highlighting some of the people who think observation is important. Most physicists do not. Doesn't mean the majority is right, but it makes one pause a bit.

I suppose Bryan Magee articulated this view quite well. I think it's likely true, in ways we can't comprehend.

Much of that is probably true. But it goes well beyond the topic of the OP.

Yes.

We may, for example say factual claims about fictional works. For instance, Winston Smith in Orwell's 1984 is a male and a party member, even though there is no Winston Smith in the actual world.

:ok:

Pretty much.

I think it's science fiction. I think the goals are noble, but that it amounts essentially to a religion, wildly exaggerating what we can do with our knowledge and capacity of science.

But would not mind being proved wrong.

Yes an advanced alien would say that. The fact is that we intuit the Sun going round the Earth, we can't help seeing this clearly every day. We know that this is a mistake when we compare our image to the way the structure of the world is set up mind-independently.

Yes, we find patterns, and we have an excellent pattern for 5% of the universe. Maybe it turns out that the postulated dark matter/dark energy is a miscalculation. Or it could be a particle we have difficulty detecting. It leaves the option open: some intelligent creature may have a more comprehensive pattern built up.



It would be nice to be able to ask. :)

But in that case I think there would have to remain things that can only be experienced indirectly by any being — AJJ

Yes. I suspect this is the case. Perhaps the grounds of reality are non-representable in nature, but nevertheless we are able to perceive its effects indirectly, in the form of photons or even colour-experience in everyday life.

I know, this is wild, but there's something to this idea.

It flatters the physicist if ordinary life is 'really' made of mathematical abstractions. But doesn't that lead to a mess? Mathematical abstractions are (we'd be tempted to say) 'mental.' And code, in the matrix example, is a human convention that we build in to hardware in the first place. — Zugzwang

I think this depends on how one thinks about metaphysics. If by metaphysics one takes it that the world is described by physics and that physics tells us everything about the world, that is a poor metaphysics. As you seem to suggest, the world we experience is far richer than the surprising things physicist find out when they work on models.

And yes, I think that's the "tough cookie", as it were. Some "scientistic" types would say the world is just physics and biology. But physics is discovered via math. And I literally don't know something less "realistic" (mind-independent) than mathematics.

That sounds right, and this could be framed as us being likely to keep finding more useful patterns in experience (or rather inventing, projecting, and learning to trust such patterns.) — Zugzwang

Patterns which by necessity have to leave stuff out. Usually "noise" in the data, though not always.



That's fine. Though I find the God terminology to be quite loaded.

I think something like "things-in-themselves" (or noumena) , could serve as a concept which indicates this kind of talk.

And on each view I expect there’d remain things we can only experience indirectly, like electrons. — AJJ

Yes. Which paradoxically is our most secure type of knowledge, outside of our own perceptions.

Actually, I think something like that is not completely crazy. Perhaps we have access to parts of the visual spectrum they do not have, as in, we can see purple, but they can't. They see some colour "bluelet", which we cannot. We could appreciate music which for them would be noise, and so on.

I agree, it is a problematic question to answer in what meaningful way do things exist if nobody could perceive them no matter a creature's cognitive makeup.

I suppose on an atheist view any things that we or any other being can’t be even indirectly conscious off may as well not exist, so they don’t matter. — AJJ

I don't believe in the Abrahamic God, so I would be an atheist in this respect. As to the question of if such an "supreme entity" exists, well then I'd have to be agnostic too.

If we can't even be indirectly conscious or aware or cognizant of something, would that settle the question of if such entities could be said to exist in nature?

I know it goes completely off Occam's razor, but it's a useful exercise for thought, at least for me.

Our instruments detect what we can't detect though our senses, although not yet dark matter. — PoeticUniverse

Yes, that's true. What I'm trying to point out, is that there are things in the world which our instruments cannot capture, simply because we don't have the capacity to detect these phenomena at all. We can only make machines that greatly amplify what we have access to in small amounts such as the electromagnetic spectrum.

With that in mind I think the question is this: why would anything that is in God’s consciousness be off limits to ours? — AJJ

I didn't intend to focus on the God aspect, so I modified the OP a little. I used the concept as an illustration of our limits.

As it stands now, the God we tend to postulate has "the good" we have, magnified infinitely. Something like that.

An idea that illustrates what I have in mind would be that an Intelligent Alien can, for example, perceive how quantum indeterminacy happens in an intuitive matter. Much the way we intuit how the Sun goes around the Earth.