Feyerabend — Zophie

Ah. I've still to read him. From what I've heard about him, which may not be completely accurate, his "anything goes" as far as scientific method, seems sound: whatever works in giving you results. If you start with a rigid method beforehand, you're likely going to miss some important information or data. Or so it seems to me.

If the first, 'information' has an empirical component, so I expect that argument would need to be more substantial than an armchair conclusion. If the second, I don't know. :) — Zophie

The information aspect, that of it having an empirical component is interesting. Wheeler's "It from bit" hypothesis is stimulating. I wish there were more popular work on that essay, most of it is too technical. In other domains, I'd like to find a more "neutral" term, but that's just me. As far as anti-realism, Haack and Chomsky disagree. I'm personally agnostic at this moment on such a view.

Not very exciting. My metaphilosophy -- my metaphilosophical orientation -- is supposed to be empiricist and positivist. If I'm in an idealistic mood, that's my preferred framing for relativism. — Zophie

Who would be an example of such a philosopher, generally speaking?

The abstract virtue of simplicity, such as its capacity for further theoretical integration, (almost always) comes at the expense of being a less faithful codification of the informal concept. Or in other words, processing information via any logical or mathematical code inevitably generates a variable amount of 'noise' that would have been essential to the flawless transmission of the original piece of reality that it was intending to meaningfully capture. — Zophie

That makes sense. We can only go so far in any enquiry, given the creatures that we are. So we sacrifice some accuracy for simplicity, for example. Stated like that, who would be an "opponent" or a person who disagrees with this?

This is partly why I imagine the privileged west persists in looking down on/ shunning the more aggressive/ inhumane activities that go on in third world countries. Because it is a “privilege” to be outraged - meaning it doesn't effect you enough to deplete the “shock factor” and so you can afford empathy.

I can imagine if you saw crimes every day you would have an apathy toward them that someone might misinterpret as you having no empathy. The usual “how can you just sit by and let this happen?” As you quite rightly said... there’s only so much empathy reserve. What is normal for one is abnormal for another. — Benj96

It's even worse if you live in a 3rd world country. You don't often don't see the gravity of the problem until you're outside. If your born seeing misery, it's often hard to comprehend it. So yes, absolutely.

The question of "how can let that happen?", is a good one. It applies essentially to everybody all the time. Even in "first world" countries, you don't have to go far to see ugly things. Maybe generally not at the level of a developing country, but bad too.

The only thing that possibly comes to mind is to find a way to ameliorate the situation, if possible, otherwise I think it can be too much to think about all the time.

Those things being different doesn't imply that they're not both caused by stimuli and response. Having a finger move by electric shock is different to fainting, but that doesn't mean one of them has to be modelled differently in terms of causation. — Isaac

Causes and effects are one thing: If a person sees a flashlight, there pupils will dilate. That's a clear sign of cause and effect. That's something we normally wouldn't do in normal life, put a flashlight in front of your eyes. If for whatever reason, you choose to look at a flashlight, you are using your will to continue looking at the flashlight. That's different from causes and effects.

How is it stipulated? One can quite coherently ask the question of whether we have free will from a neuroscientific perspective. We could look for signals driving physiological events associated with decisions (like moving an arm) and see if they are accounted for by preceding signals. How's that 'stipulated'? — Isaac

Do you believe we have free will, experiments aside? If you do, then you'll look at how that's possible using neuroscience. If you don't, like Sam Harris, he'll look to neuroscience to prove his point.

You're assuming the contents of your experience are features of collective experience. I have no idea what you mean by "psychic continuity", I don't feel like I have a consistent 'self' and for me 'categorisation' is distinctly post hoc. It's monumental arrogance to just assume whatever world view you happen to have is somehow foundational to any enquiry just because it's how you happen to see things. — Isaac

Psychic continuity is what Locke described: when we look at an object at time t1, we take to be the same object at time t2. In other words, when you go outside and see a bird in the sky, you will continue to see it as the same bird through out the time span you are looking at it. Maybe I'm a total Martian, but I can't help but recognize the tree outside my window as the same tree the next day. I can't get rid of it if I wanted to.

I'll grant you the "self" argument, people are different in these regards.

You're telling me that when you visit a place for the first time, you don't already know what a river or a statue is? You take time after seeing a place to think to yourself that's a tree and not a light post?

the existence of a simpler way of talking about something doesn't prove the more complex way is false, just, you know, more complex. — Isaac

Good, we agree here.

Now you disingenuously change the claim to physics 'explaining the mind'. — Isaac

Apologies for my verbal faux-paux, I sincerely did not intend to do that. But the point remains. I don't know of a physicist who claims that physics tells us anything substantive of the mind, that was not already obvious years ago: that it's physical.

It's not an interpretation. I've supplied evidence of hundreds, if not thousands, of papers from well respected, peer reviewed journals talking about the subjects you specified. — Isaac

I've given examples already of neuroscience saying things about how the brain interprets information.

How do you know those are two different things? — Isaac

Are you implying they are the same? It seems to me crystal clear that they're vastly different. Having you're finger move by an electrical shock is the same as you willing to move the finger? Press you palm with any object and watch your fingers move. Afterwards move your fingers by yourself. Is that in any way the same thing?

No — Isaac

Again. It is stipulated. And from that perspective, one can study however one wishes. Either we have free will and you can find some way to see if neuroscience as anything to bear on the subject. Or we lack it and we go to neuroscience to prove that we don't have it.

In either case it's stipulated.

Indeed. So how does philosophy magically duck that problem then? The very theorising you're doing right now, the one in which you're trying to dismiss the role of neuroscience is itself replete with the already-embedded assumptions by which you conduct any such theorising. Either no study can say anything at all or you must concede that it is, after all, possible to say something useful about the mind despite the fact that one is using a mind to do so. — Isaac

I'm mentioning specific things: "self", "psychic continuity", "categorization", etc. What's given in experience and must form a part of it for us to form an intelligible world at all.

Of course there are aspects in which neuroscience reveals some things about cognition: the example of Dehaene and how long it takes us to become aware of stimuli in the environment.

Or Libbett's experiments which show our brains activate before we do something consciously.

Neuroscience has managed to show which areas are responsible for speech production as well as areas associated with speech comprehension Wernicke's area. And so on.

So I don't see why you imply that I'm saying that "no study can say anything at all".

The topic of self, psychic continuity and categorization are still with us thousands of years later. But that doesn't touch the point: we could not theorize at all if did not have these things as given. When we speak of the self, at no point do you lose consciousness or stop categorizing, it's always there on every topic.

You'll say that now we know what causes speech or vision, it's X part of the brain that's the cause. But X part of the brain is not part of what we experience as consciousness. We experience speech and vision as manifest activity, not non-mental processes. That these non-mental processes are essential for speech or vision, no one could doubt, but we have linguistics and vision science, which are different than neuroscience. Why do we have these fields? Why don't linguists just study the brain and forget about sentence structure?

Why would your assessment of the likelihood be of any use here. You're not a physicist. If a physicist thinks it likely their subject can say something about mind but you don't, what merit would there be to following your judgement over the physicist's? They should surely know their own subject's capabilities better than you. — Isaac

Which physicist would be crazy enough to say appeal to physics to explain the mind? Who? Sean Carroll? Carlo Rovelli? Brian Greene? Brian Cox? Art Hobson? None of them says anything remotely close to that all. Perhaps you'd like Carroll's The Big Picture, he covers plenty of philosophy as well as many areas in science, quite sympathetic to Dennett too.

I trust physicist for physics. Not for psychology.

You seem consistently to confuse a subject's not saying anything you like the sound of with its not saying anything at all. — Isaac

If that's how you interpret it, fine.

No, the thing is I did not know who you were talking to, if it was to @Wayfarer or to me, and since I'm logic illiterate, I assume it was for @Wayfarer. :lol:

I'm now going back to essentials: what do you mean by relativism? I usually associate it with Rorty and Postmodernists in regards to truth claims. Is that your point, that there are many ways to reach truth (not truth with a capital 'T') or that there are many truths?

I would agree with both, stated at this level of generality.

Edit: I agree that reductionism is mostly pointless.

This reminds me of a similar philosophy I journeyed into a few months back whereby I considered what it would be like to see the world not as discrete objects and things and definitions but one large continuum.

The difficulty is that when seen as an indiscreet unconfined and undefined whole ... speaking of “change” or “transformation” is pointless because from “what” is it “changing” and “leading to”. With no defined objects or descriptions for things... change is mute point. However there are things to learn about interactions from avoiding specifics and maintaining a macroscopic view “big picture”. — Benj96

Perhaps I am skipping or dancing around the problem but I'd take Schopenhauer's views here. The world is my representation - as it appears to me. The changes I'm able to detect are also representations. Behind those representation is will or energy. So at a higher level of complexity we get these differences, which at bottom end in one thing. But I could be way wrong.

For example I would say someone who begins by making note of peoples colour, background, social class, weight, height etc lacks empathy more than someone who begins with the inclusive: well we are all humans we all have the same emotions dreams ideas etc, and only after appreciating that , acknowledge the minor importance of specifics. — Benj96

That looks likely. The issue is it's impossible to have empathy all the time. I think we have only so much empathy we can show - a reserve of empathy if you will.

But yes, the more we distinguish others from ourselves, the easier is to treat them as not human and as not being part of my larger family. That can lead not only to indifference, but to hate too.

We do. It moves because some external trigger sets off a chain of neural signals which evetually lead to acetylcholine being released from motor neuron cells into the neuro-muscular synapse which causes the protein channels to open in the membrane of the neighbouring muscle cell. The resultant ion diffusion alters the structure of tubules within the cytoplasm of the cells causing them to contract. So it moves. — Isaac

Sure. You're speaking about stimuli and reaction. I'm talking about will. We can stimulate many organisms to do one thing or another, that doesn't tell us about the will, or why it moves from one side to the next. In the case of human beings, when we speak of will, science either denies it exists or tells us nothing about it.

You can speak of stimulating a finger to go up, but it's very different from moving your finger. It's a bit like Wittgenstein once asked:

"What is left over if I subtract the fact that my arms goes up from the fact that I raise my arm?"

I can't make sense of this sentence, I'm afraid, perhaps you could rephrase it? — Isaac

I take it that as human beings, we begin with consciousness. What do I mean by such a word? Simply this: the words you are reading, the thought that comes to your mind when I speak of a "tree" or a "pink elephant", the keyboards you can choose to focus on as you type in your keyboard, the light coming out of a window, etc.

I take it that, skeptical games aside, this is evident. Nevertheless these words have meaning as you read them, you can think of a pink elephant in your mind, perhaps weakly perhaps vividly.

You already know that a tree is not a building, nor a piece of plastic. When you go outside and walk, you can pick out a tree and not confuse it with a streetlight and so on. This process of putting things in proper context, of categorizing it accordingly, of understanding that you see a tree is something already given in consciousness.

You can't take these things away and study the world "value free" as it were. It always accompanies most thoughts about things. This can't be studied by looking at the brain because it's always presupposed. It's like trying to think away a mirage on a hot desert day, you know it's a mirage, but you can't take it out of your head, it's still a phenomenon for you.

Really, that seems wildly dismissive of all the work physicists have done. Why would you say it doesn't say much? — Isaac

Democritus based on a good observation said that: " The Intellect speaks first: There seems to be colour, there seems to be sweetness, there seems to be bitterness. But really there are only atoms and the void."

The basic point would be similar, all is atoms and void. One could say that our understanding of atoms has gone way beyond anything Democritus could have dreamed of.

But that's talking about the constituents of matter magnified to such an enormous extent, that is seems to be highly unlikely that physics can say much about mind. It says a lot about matter and the other stuff the universe is made of and is amazing for it.

However Democritus finished that famous quote by saying: "The senses reply: Poor Intellect, do you hope to defeat us while from us you borrow your evidence? Your victory is your defeat."

Physics is amazing, while saying almost nothing of mind. Neuroscience is extremely useful, while not being able to say much about the self, psychic continuity, etc.

I'd like to claim originality for that idea, but it comes from a brief paper by Strawson: https://www.academia.edu/37649217/Dunking_Dennett

That raises the question of how to admit the utility of folk psychology heuristics without making them the be all and end all of one's philosophy of mind — fdrake

That's a hard topic. I'd guess that some aspects of folk psychology can and have been incorporated by the sciences. Others like "belief", "intentionality" and related concepts may not be reducible to science at all.

EG 2, if I learn my partner "hates garlic", that gives me some of their behavioural tendencies and lets me incorporate that into how I treat them. If I'm a hard reductionist or eliminativist or one of those brands, that doesn't stop me from believing "my partner hates garlic" in whatever metaphorical/analogical register mental events lay (to be later mapped to neural ones) and acting upon it. — fdrake

That's a useful way to think about it. It's not possible to get rid of such a vocabulary. There's too many words to find a corresponding scientific concept to.

Again, how are you reaching this conclusion absent of a thorough survey of that which neuroscience does, in fact, know about the brain?

Also, if seeing a tree were more than certain neural activity, then what is the more that it would be? As has already been pointed to... — Isaac

I cited the fact that we have mapped all 302 neurons in C Elegans. We don't know why the thing moves. I don't think that is very promising for our prospects in neuroscience.

What more is there to seeing a tree than the movement or excitation of certain neurons? What I take the tree to mean, how I categorize it, how I relate to it, etc. It comes from the brain all right, but these things are assumed, not discovered.

There's the problem also that neurons might be the wrong place to look, in that case we might have to look at microtubules. But then it goes down to the level of physics. You would not be wrong in saying that seeing a tree is nothing more that the complex behavior of quantum phenomena. I don't think that says much at all.

My answers aren't satisfying to you, or they are evasive, but I can't think of something else to say. It seems evident to me that science can only say so much. We don't know what 95% of the universe is made out of, we call it "dark matter" and "dark energy", but we have no clue what it is. What makes you possibly think that neuroscience is in a better state?

I think Goodman's irrealism is quite good but it seems not to have had that much of an impact in philosophy. Not that I think it's all correct, but his argument has merit.

What that quote says is important: we would not want to muddy our enquiry into the nature of the world with literal unicorns or dragons a much else.

But how do we determine what's not part of the world? We are part of the world, so it's hard to eliminate ourselves altogether from any given picture. That's always been a problem for me. We can say physics tells us about this and I won't protest in the least. But there is the problem of how we discover these things and how we are lead to postulate what we do.

So even physics is tied to the physicist in some manners.

I think I understand your point a bit better. So things and the world could have been otherwise. These possible worlds belong can be thought of as belonging to a class of potential descriptions for each particular world.

When you say there are no necessary facts for this world. Do you have in mind something along the lines of: had the variables during the big bang been a bit different, we would not exist?

If that's roughly on the right track, then what could not exist in any possible world? I'm thinking that circular triangles are impossible, irrespective of the world. Unless you'd go along the lines of saying, we lack the cognitive capacity to think of such an object.

It's quite interesting.

Are the stars really there? — ghostlycutter

Ask Nelson Goodman. He has a few things to say about that.

What's your ontology?
— Manuel
https://philpapers.org/browse/ontology — Zophie

"Everything" is a fine answer. Quine is correct in saying that. Though ontological commitments are problematic.

But, fair point.

So your objection is more empirical and fundamental. I don’t know much about neurology so idk if it’s founded or not. — khaled

In part, yes. Why stop at neurons? Hammeroff says that consciousness is due to microtubules located inside axons. Apparently these microtubules react to quantum states. I don't understand this. But it could be the case. So while we are saying that neurons cause a specific reaction, it could be that what's responsible for us seeing a tree are actually quantum events.

Sure, you can say that. It may be true. It doesn't reach the level of psychology or of manifest reality: saying that quantum events cause me to see a tree may be true. I can't talk about intentionality, the status of fictional objects, how social institutions differ from apparent order in nature, how consciousness binds objects as belonging to one group or another, etc. So these are just different domains of enquiry, or so it seems to me.

What exists? Why stuff of course! In other words I’m a monist. I think the only things that exist are physical though I hesitate to use the word because it’s basically lost all meaning. “Quantum wave states” have no position, speed, defined mass, color or smell but we still call them physical. — khaled

Here we entirely agree. It's a better alternative than substance dualism. So it's does not say much, but how so many different events can be made of one type of stuff is pretty crazy to me.

Thoughts? — 180 Proof

As presented in those threads, it's a bit difficult for me to follow. I mean, if you accept say, the Many Worlds hypothesis of quantum mechanics, then that's one thing: what would be included in these worlds is very hard to say, we can't go into another world to see what they may or may not contain. I'm assuming that in these other possible worlds airplanes could not be made completely out of the stone, such as the one's we have here. Likewise for other such postulates.

I'm not good at logic, sadly. So I don't follow what you mean when you say:

"the world is not the world' (i.e. nothingness, absolute absence / nonexistence) is an impossible world, or a way the world necessarily could not have been ...

..... if impossible worlds do not exist, then 'the world is not the world' does not exist; and if 'the world is not the world' does not exist, then possible worlds exist; therefore possible worlds necessarily exist."

That is, I think you could stipulate possible worlds based on Everett's theory. Or it can be used as a heuristic to come up with thought experiments: if we were further away, or closer to the sun, we could not exist.

I think the difficulty in these topics is attempting to separate what belongs as a construction of the mind as opposed to what's there absent us, which is extremely difficult, maybe impossible.

I think I do follow your facts argument though. I'd agree in so far as the world is not made out of facts, but of different kinds of things. We use facts to attempt to describe these things, but we can phrase these fact in many different ways.

Could you say a little more? Saying love in and of itself is a bit confusing.

I never got an answer. What's your ontology? :)

No? Why would I do that? — khaled

You said: "She slapped him because she was angry”, “She slapped him because <insert causal chain leading to slap here>”. Same thing."

You said it's the same thing.

I could just do this as I have been.

But if this is what you think then why were you asking “how” neurons produce experiences? — khaled

I think in terms of different levels of abstraction. Manifest reality is the ordinary level of everyday life. Neuropsychological explanations are a higher level of abstraction.

What I have in mind when I ask that question is that it seems to me that a lot is left missing. You can say that stimulating X and Y area of the brain is the same as seeing a tree. I think that while in principle you could stimulate the brain to do this, we know way too little about the brain.

The how question is related to emergence. What is the relationship between neurons and seeing color, or smelling wood, etc.,, etc.

It's "sad" insofar as it leaves out many fascinating topics of conversation that Schopenhauer was fascinated by, such as his accounts of the world being a representations, his observations about psychology, physiology, art and much else.

I don't think I have to say which one is more intrusive to another individual in a profound way. — schopenhauer1

I don't have much to add that others haven't already said many times. However, I don't think you'll get far by trying to get people to feel bad for having kids.

Again, relevance? Did you read the OP? Nothing you've said there addresses anything in it. I think you have literally just seen the word 'antinatalism' in the title and then blurted what you blurted. Bizarre. — Bartricks

You are correct. You won't see me again in this thread.

I don't follow.

Personally, I don’t find that anything “breaks” when you say that mental states are physical states. Example: “She slapped him because she was angry”, “She slapped him because <insert causal chain leading to slap here>”. Same thing. — khaled

I mean, you could do that. But it would be very strange. You'd eventually describe everything we do in neurophysiological language. I don't see how that helps us much by way of dealing with other people in ordinary life.

So I prefer Isaac’s view. It doesn’t have to deal with the problems of dualism. Such as: if “seeing a tree” is an experience independent from the physical state, how does it influence it and seem influenced by it? Same with “anger”. How did the emotion move the arm (I would simply say that the emotion is precisely the neural event that moved the arm)? I also prefer minimalist ontologies so that probably plays a role. — khaled

I agree with Strawson's Real Materialism: everything that concretely exists is physical, including experiential states. On this view there is no difference between a "physical state" and a "mental state", because the mind is physical. When we speak of mind, we are simply stressing the mental aspects of physical reality.

How would you describe this ontology, as in what entities would it postulate?

What on earth would give you the impression that I think studying the brain can yield an understanding of all that? What, in fact, makes you think that any sane person would think that? — Isaac

Sorry. I was reading into what you were saying much more than what you did. I thought you were coming from a Churchland perspective. Alex Rosenberg would argue in this manner.

What happens when you look at an fMRI scan then? When your 'manifest reality' includes neural scans, psychological experimental data, EEG and microprobe readouts, saccade diagrams, the actions of lesion patients... What then? You talk as if cognitive scientists are non-human, that the stuff we look at is somehow apart from this 'manifest reality' and we have to, what, invent our own language so as to not pollute yours with what we've seen? — Isaac

I don't see the problem. When you look at an fMRI scan, you're trying to find connections between different activities in the brain and whatever the stimulus may be. Establishing that is far from trivial as you know.

The data given by such devices can offer interesting clues as to how the brain processes information, for example Stanislas Dehaene work, shows that it takes .500 seconds for something to register into conscious awareness half the time, this proves that the vast majority of what goes on in the brain does not reach consciousness. I think that's interesting.

Not at all. You don't need to invent any language. If you are speaking about seeing a tree, I can say I saw a tree and you can speak about into terms of neurophysiological processes in the brain.

Relevance? I do not understand what you are saying. Friend or foe - I do not know — Bartricks

Sorry. Just typing out loud. I know one poster here, who goes by the name Schopenhauer1, who argues about antinatlism, it seems as if Schopenhauer influenced his views. And it is correct Schopenhauer thought life was a curse. But Schopenhauer is so, so, so much more than that.

I'm neither actually. I'm sympathetic to some aspects of antinatlism in that the way the world is going, specifically connected to the topic of global warming, mentions serios consideration of brining someone to this world.

Having said that, I think telling people they should not have babies does not make much sense. Each person has his or her own reasons. They should consider the pros and cons of having a baby. But the focus on pain avoidance is too narrow, in my view.

If you view this as being a foe, ok. I try to avoid painting such black and white considerations in general, not always of course.

Yeah. I don't see a way around it. I'd like to if possible, but so far it's the best I've been able to come up with.

Interesting. The physical-mental divide has its roots in medicine where it distinguishes broken bones from lunacy. When scientists started realizing that some mental ailments have a physical basis, it marked a great advancement that requires the very insight expressed there. — frank

Ah, did not know that. I'd be interested in reading up on some of that literature actually.

Ah, I see. You're suggesting that the universe is alive and conscious of itself, at least some of the debris on the surface of this planet is. Pretty provocative. I'm all for it. — frank

I'm no panpsychist if that's what you mean.

The "What's Your Ontology Thread" that I started. Specifically the 3rd post on the second page. I just don't want to paste the entire thing.

I don't understand. Why is this topic so popular? Heck, one would get the very misleading impression that Schopenhauer (who tends to be associated with this movement) was only about life being bad. Most of his work is showing how amazing our capacities are! His whole metaphysical-epistemological project, and his psychological insights are second to none.

That's quite sad, I think.

If brains and minds are the same thing, then necessarily, if two people are talking about their minds, they're talking about their brains (and vice-versa). Ancient peoples were able to meaningfully talk about their minds and mental states, however, ancient peoples had no idea how the brain worked. The Greeks thought it cooled the blood. If brains and minds are the same thing, it follows that those ancient peoples who were meaningfully talking about their minds and mental states were also meaningfully talking about their brains and brain states, which is an absurdity. — RogueAI

I entirely agree with that. We don't have the capacity to explain mind with neuroscience. How do I link a post of mine? I explain this in detail, I believe.

See how the evil vampire who is actually a nerd living in his mother's basement reins in ontology to the needs of his individualistic worldview. — Banno

All I want is to give structure to my ignorance. It's clear that you obviously know your philosophy quite well.

All I can say is enjoy.

That is correct. I won't be saying much. But there's already so much stuff about "physical" as opposed to mental or opposed to consciousness, that this little bit, is already something. Particularly when strands of physicalism claim that our experience is an illusion, not real.

I don't see why I need to explain mind, in order to say that mind is physical.

I've been quoting this a bit too much recently, but I think it's worth it one more time:

"It is said that we can have no conception how sensation or thought can arise from matter, they being things so very different from it, and bearing no sort of resemblance to anything like figure or motion; which is all that can result from any modification of matter, or any operation upon it.…this is an argument which derives all its force from our ignorance. Different as are the properties of sensation and thought, from such as are usually ascribed to matter, they may, nevertheless, inhere in the same substance, unless we can shew them to be absolutely incompatible with one another.”... this argument, from our not being able to conceive how a thing can be, equally affects the immaterial system: for we have no more conception how the powers of sensation and thought can inhere in an immaterial, than in a material substance..."

(Italics mine)

"...there [is] in matter a capacity for affections as subtle and complex as any thing that we can affirm concerning those that have hitherto been called mental affections."

- Joseph Priestley "Disquisitions Relating to Matter and Spirit"

That's overwhelmingly possible. But I learn, hopefully. :)

Quite. One wonders where ontology is useful, apart from in philosophy circles. — Tom Storm

AI. Ethnoscience. Common sense understanding.

What do we say about numbers or ideas?

I understand that view. I don't necessarily think it need entail someone doubting the existence of flower or cooking. Not if your a realist about experience. Maybe someone like Dennett might take some issue with that. Rosenberg certainly would, for him it's only bosons and fermions. I don't think a life of bosons and fermions is interesting by itself.

The idea is not so much a list, but carving out what belongs where. Frodo belongs to fiction, that doesn't mean he is not a real fictional character. Likewise, H20 is what science describes, but it's not what we encounter when we deal with water in our everyday, which is what belongs in manifest experience.

As to what doesn't belong at all. That's a good question. Which is why I'm seeking different views on the matter. But again, I see where you are coming from.

The topic of "the physical" is very problematic. Why assume that mind is not a wholly physical phenomena? One would have to show why physical stuff leaves no room for mind.

I don't see good reasons to assume otherwise.

Ah, there is much that can be said about these matters. I'd tend to agree that thinking in terms of the individual is most parsimonious and classification in general can be fiendishly difficult and very much up to debate. If this is on the right track, as I suspect it is, how do you move from one individual to another?

As for pluralism, is there a minimum in terms of how many entities you allow or does this not enter into your worldview?

Damn man, that's actually a very nice quote, not gonna lie. :)

My ontology is pluralist, I suppose (but also a cop-out of sorts). There is a vast variety of individual things and substances. I think metaphysical pluralism can account for differences in time and space as well as differences in kind, which monism and other taxonomical accounts rarely offer. This also entails nominalism and individualism. — NOS4A2

Interesting, but where is the cop-out? I don't see it.

I tend to enjoy William James quite bit when he talks about this things, but I'm more sympathetic to monism.

What do you mean by individualism in this account?

Agreed, but there's perfectly adequate models of intention in neuroscience. — Isaac

Intentionality is assumed in these models. While it is perfectly true that the mental is a physical phenomena, I think it's a big mistake to forget that the brain is a construction of the mind as well. It goes both ways. We have to stipulate what the brain is, what parts of the body are directly relevant to the brain and so on. For example, are the eye's part of the brain?

It is crucial to remember that we also have another structure that resembles the brain, but is not conscious:the gut brain, containing as much as 500 millions neurons. But as we know, the gut brain is not conscious.

No (although it is). Right now I'm asking you to explain why you think it isn't. You seem to have offered nothing but your incredulity at moment. I mean, it seems completely implausible to me that electron go through both slits at once (or whatever it is they do, I'm no physicist), but I don't refute the physicist with that argument. — Isaac

Absolutely. And I have said many times that the consciousness arises from the brain. I've never denied it. If you think that seeing a tree and all that goes into such an act, such as belief, perception, categorization, psychic continuity and so forth is explained by saying, it's because of actions in the brain, you've said almost nothing. Priestley, Reid and many others knew as much already hundreds of years ago, if not much before that, so it isn't particularly new.

If you think that by studying the brain, we will understand not only seeing trees, which includes all of what I mentioned (categorization, psychic continuity, etc.) then I think you're mistaking different aspects of reality. You have to assume these things before doing any science.

This just seems like a bare assertion. Can I ask what your expertise or understanding is in neuroscience against which you're measuring the complexity of manifest reality to reach such a conclusion? — Isaac

I think it is an evident mistake to think that you need to do neuroscience to do philosophy of mind at all. If what you say is true, then Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant, Russell, Strawson, etc. haven't done anything.

But then this boils down to different assertions: I say that the complexity of manifest reality cannot be explained by neuroscience, we simply know way too little. We don't know how something as simply as C. Elegans does anything and we've mapped all 302 neurons. A human being is a bit harder than a worm: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK154158/

But then you'll reply that all this will be explained by neuroscience, that I am only making an assertion. That manifest reality is explained by processes in the brain is another assertion, which again, says almost nothing about all the stuff we do with our minds. So, we're stuck.

Then the only option available is for you to study neuroscience. I'll focus on manifest reality. There need be no clash, I don't think.