I would keep away from Hume if I were in your shoes, which in a way I am, at least at the moment you read these words.

The external world is an extremely difficult topic. Assuming more people exist other than I - which is a mere assumption, for I can do no better - we don't know what 95% of the universe is made. 27% or so, is called dark matter - which is a misleading name, it might not even be matter - the rest is dark energy, also a misleading name.

So we only partly understand 5% of the universe. But we must postulate 95% of it with stuff we know virtually nothing about, except that if it is not postulated, the 5% we do know doesn't make sense.

Now, if you take it that physics to be, outside our immediate perceptions, the most reliable knowledge we have, then it shouldn't be terribly surpassing if we cannot make much sense of the external world, because the topic is much more difficult than physics.

So, we postulate what we need, in order to make sense of the world. If that includes other people, so be it. We cannot attain certainty in empirical affairs.

It's a mere problem of taste. Didn't do it for me at all.

But I can see why other people may think it's very good.

Speaking of Zen, one "pop" book (a novel actually) that spurred on a mini-industry was Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values. I'm just looking now that according to one source, Philosophy Now, it is the bestselling philosophy book of all time. I find that hard to believe, but if true, is a shame.

That a clear example of (in my opinion, of course) pretty bad "philosophizing", it was so pretentious and vacuous that I could get more than halfway through. Though I'm sure some swear by this book...

So the pop-thing is mixed. I do think there are quite interesting and unique "philosophical" aspects to some aspects of pop-culture, which should not be looked at derisively, as can happen.

But then there's the bad stuff we all know about...

That is not panpsychism though. Matter is capable for many things under specific conditions but we don't go around talking about i.e. Pancombustism, or Panflatulencism or Panphotosynthesism.
Actually this is a great point you made, because this is the WHOLE argument of our current Scientific Paradigm. — Nickolasgaspar

That's exactly right. But then I don't see why we can't speak of pancombustism, or panphotosynthesism or pan-everything. That's a problem for the panpsychists who focus on consciousness at the expense of everything else.

Even if the claim is as broad and vague as possible, it's nonetheless true, in so far as we get all these processes from combinations or interactions between matter or "physical stuff".

Now ,we can rule out panpsychism or consciousness in structures without similar biological gear, because such structures lack sensory systems(no input) or a central processing units capable to process drives and urges (which are non existent),emotions, capability to store info (memory), to recognize pattern, to use symbolic language, to reason, etc etc. — Nickolasgaspar

But I don't see a principle by which sensory inputs and processing units couldn't be created by people, in a non-biological creation. Again, I don't think it's plausible, but I don't think it's impossible either.

As for panpsychism, the reason I don't think some formulation can't be ruled out, is that there is obviously something about matter that when so-combined, leads to experience. Granted, it's in brains that such combinations arise, so far as we can tell.

But even so, if matter did not contain the possibility of consciousness as a potential, then experience couldn't happen even in brains.

This doesn't suggest that, as some panpsychists have argued, that particles have experience. That's a bit much.

I was replying to his specific claim that we don't know if matter can be conscious. I think it can, when so modified in specific configurations leading to brains. Brains are molded matter. But I make no reference to the quantum properties of the universe to explain experience, so biology very much matters.

Yet I don't think we can rule out panpsychism, or even the possibility that consciousness could arise in other types of material, such as silicon and metal.

I don't personally believe in either of the abovementioned options, but I can't rule it out.

That specific example can be easily carried to past philosophers. But some of the stuff, say PKD writes, or Pynchon or even a character like Hannibal Lecter, these don't fit neatly into a specific philosophical lineage.

Or at least, it seems to me it could lead the conversation to the philosopher, instead of the character.

But yes, The Matrix can be used as an example for Descartes, Berkeley or Kant or Schopenhauer, Putnam, Bostrom, Baudrillard, etc.

Will some people get more out of reading Descartes and Kant? Depends on the person. They do have a larger wealth of ideas than film (in my opinon), but, there are aspects of the film which don't fit neatly with any philosopher. All I'm saying is that there can be interesting philosophical/psychological and ethical matters that could be discussed absent specific figure X.

But your point is quite valid.

I think there are historical reasons that lead us to conclude that consciousness is a property of matter. But it also depends on what you think matter (or more broadly "the physical) encompasses.

We don't know that consciousness is limited to brains. We don't know what causes it. Often when this is mentioned, the response is that we know that you can be made unconscious by various actions. Actually all we know is that we don't remember things from that period. Neuroscience says a lot about cognitive functions and their connection to neurons and glial cells and...so on. But that there is awareness/experiencing. — Bylaw

I agree. We do not know if experience is limited to brains. It could be the case that panpsychism is true, or a variant of the idea that some kind of proto-life is found in all the universe.

It could be. But it could be wrong. We don't know enough to be sure about this.

It's a delicate issue. I think there are pop tv-series, movies and maybe even games, that certainly have quite interesting philosophical concepts and art is often the most direct way to expose complex ideas pertaining to mood, insight, looking at persons thinking process and so on.

Suppose someone finds an interesting character in a TV show. They want to find out more about what makes this character "tick". These "... and Philosophy" books can be good to expand on certain themes in a show.

But then there's a bit of a dilemma: do you use the show as an excuse to introduce people to Plato, Augustine, Descartes? Or do you directly expand on the character itself, without pushing the classics on the reader?

I think there's room for both, but my general feeling is that they tend to opt with the second option, that of introducing Aristotle or Sartre or whoever. Which is fine, but then many of these books end up looking similar.

It's more honest to expand on what the person finds interesting in the show, than forcing Aristotle (or whoever) on to the reader.

Of course, there must be some authors who can combine the show with a historical figure and do a good job with it, but it often feels contrived. Perhaps a reference or two to some classics would do a better job than introducing Bentham for the 50th time. Might be a personal thing...

Sure. And some aspects of other biological organs are also quite puzzling, baffling even.

So, we have this thing in our head that produces thoughts, it has many neuronal connections and many connecting regions which cohere in very subtle and complex manners that lead to our experience.

But then we also have "the gut brain", which has hundreds of millions of neurons and can apparently suffer from Alzheimer among other diseases. Why aren't we conscious of it the overwhelming majority of the time? Why isn't it conscious itself?

https://academic.oup.com/acn/article-abstract/37/3/595/6535686?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Could nature have found a more efficient way for organisms to get rid of waste that did not include going to the bathroom, as it were?

So, one can be confused at these too, but, as you say, certain very curious psychological mechanisms apparently determine what we find baffling, and what we don't. There is only so much we can focus on at a given time, so I guess it makes some sense.

Of course, and philosophy wouldn't be nearly as interesting if we all agreed. I find unanswerable questions - especially in the pursuit of the thinking that leads to it, to be quite exquisite reasoning and I admire that process because I find a certain beauty to it and it leads to epistemic humility (not addressing you in any way as arrogant or anything remotely like that, just to be clear.)

However, I completely understand with, sympathize and enjoy people who think this specific aspect of philosophy to be a waste of time. It can be, if you don't find it interesting, it is.

As for the last part, sure, they need to present the relevant evidence for big claims, but I do believe there is a rather nebulous territory in which some scientific arguments can clash productively with philosophy. But some areas not, like, it would be silly to deny QM because you don't think it's coherent, or that someone would dispute that the amygdala plays a role in anxiety.

So, it's complex. :)

I won't quibble with the comments about animals, it's a matter that won't get us far, since we agree on the practical considerations.

The same should be true about Metabolism, constipation, mitosis, memory, photosynthesis, conductivity, liquidity, fluidity, replication, organization, emergence etc. As a scientists we should ignore the "why" questions and try to answer the how and what questions. — Nickolasgaspar

And it is a very good list, and I agree that all these things are quite baffling, as I think existence should be.

I am surely not going to get in the way of a scientists and suggest them what they should, or should not do. Science has been a spectacular success story since it lifted off in the 17th century and it should continue as far as it can.

Nevertheless, in a philosophy forum, one that features people interested say in Plato, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Wittgenstein and so on in the tradition, it is quite important to deal with these why questions, to differing degrees and with different perspectives in mind. It's built into the fabric of the discipline.

But on the practical dealings of the experiments, and data collection and theories, that's mostly up to the scientists.

Now, if a scientists were to say, that free will is an illusion or that we don't actually perceive colour, we only think we do, then the philosophers can have say, and rightly so, in my opinion.

Sure. I don't see any a-priori prohibition as to why silicon could not produce consciousness.

But since we don't understand it very well in our own case (human beings), and cannot prove other animals are conscious, to say that an AI has experience can be misleading.

We assume (and I think with good reasons) that other animals are conscious, but since we cannot get inside other species heads (or nervous system), there will remain some doubt about this.

We don't fully understand many things in nature i.e. organization,electricity, gravity, light, life, quantum behavior etc etc but that doesn't mean we haven't identify the responsible mechanisms for them and use this knowledge to come up with predictions and applications.
I get what you mean but these type of statements look more like an excuse people give to avoid doing the hard work (studying the actual science of the field). They sound more like a "why "question (why matter can do that) highlighting our surprise for being possible. — Nickolasgaspar

There is nothing here with which I disagree.

The puzzle, for many people, and I assume even some scientists is the why question. And there should be space for surprise. There seems to be nothing in the "physical stuff" of nature which could lead one to conclude "consciousness comes from that". If there were, then, it wouldn't be surprising.

However, I don't see why this would entail people giving up on neuroscience at all. There is plenty of good research being done in the field with all sorts of practical applications. Some of it can have bearing on practical stuff concerning experience, such as the Libbett experiments, which have to do with will and when we become aware of us making a decision.

Or the work of Stanislas Dehaene, or Thomas Metzinger. Plenty of interesting material.

The issue is not one of not being able to find neural correlations, or not being able to form theories, whether that of embodied cognition or computational approaches, or whatever else is fashionable.

It's much simpler than that: we don't understand how matter can think. We simply lack an intuition of how the stuff we see in the world, could, in certain combination, lead to experience.

There is no doubt neuroscience is very useful. But I doubt we will understand how matter can think, we only know it is so in our own case.

Very much so.

Him and Chomsky, whom McGinn got the idea from.

There is some truth to this post, no doubt. Especially when one considers the sheer amount of books on the neurophysiology of consciousness, which tell you... very, very little about it.

But certainly not in principle. Consciousness is a phenomenon of the brain, which needs interaction with the environment to awaken its dispositional knowledge, which, if absent, doesn't lead anywhere.

If we had a much more sophisticated and intelligent cognitive system, we could discover how it is that brains produce experience. But we don't, so we are going to remain puzzled about how this phenomenon could ever arise from such an organ.

Welcome!

Hope you have fun here, it's a great place to deepen one's knowledge on many topics in the field.

Don't be afraid to express your opinions, because, ultimately all of us may be wrong. :cool:

So, you think the origin of morals is indeterminate? — Bob Ross

It's a bit tricky. It's species-dependent in so far as evidence pertaining to other animals being moral is shaky, some apes show the first glimmerings of such a capacity, but it's nowhere near the level of sophistication we show when we make moral judgments.

So, it's "objective" in the sense that human beings tend to agree on moral judgments, much more frequently that is otherwise stated, but we do not know if hypothetical alien species would necessarily have the exact same morality we have. It doesn't have the same level of objectivity physics has, for instance.

I don’t think I quite understood this part: why? — Bob Ross

As mentioned above, despite some tenuous evidence that other species may have morality in very specific occasions, the degree in which we have morality is not paralleled by anything else we see in the biological world.

This probably shows that in having a sophisticated moral capacity, we are speaking about a new level of complexity in nature, in which understanding is limited.

Again, if another, more intelligent alien species exists, that also had a moral system somewhat similar to ours, they might very well be able to explain why "murder is wrong" or "rape is wrong" in terms other than "it's wrong, you wouldn't like to be murdered or raped."

At bottom of these judgments, there's a feeling of repulsion or wrongness that is hard to verbalize.

I suspect there could be more to say instead of relying on feeling, but we don't know enough - we don't have a sufficiently large understanding - to explain these things in more depth.

Welp, Finland enters NATO tomorrow. It's one way to decrease security, but we know that states only pretend to care about security issues - they usually just make the whole situation worse.

I know. I was merely teasing, as he sounded a bit hesitant about it.

It'll be great. Literature has plenty of material for philosophy.

Ah. I see. So all we have to do is wait for @Noble Dust to create a thread about PKD. Damn, that's like a big responsibility. Not easy to create a thread about one the most philosophical of sci-fi writers. Wonder how that will go.

But no pressure. :lol:

Well, I mean, what did you make of it?

Assuming you haven't 100% finished, I'll just say, a certain part of it, is quite "trippy", for lack of a better word, in the best sense of that word.

I think this is the "real" hard problem, actually. The problem is matter in general, not consciousness more narrowly considered.

First of all, baryonic matter makes up about 5% of the universe, whereas 27% is made of, so- called "dark matter" (which isn't even clear is "matter" at all), and then most of it is "dark energy", which we also don't know what it is.

Now, of the 5% of the matter we do know and love, we do not know its inner nature nor why it came to be (as opposed to anti-matter or something else), and why there is so little of it in the universe.

From all these very serious complications, one then can proceed to ask how consciousness may arise out of specific configurations of matter, or why matter works without direct contact, or how can quite insubstantial particles form living creatures, or colours or music, or almost anything else.

So yeah, matter is the hard problem. Consciousness is the specific configuration of matter we are best acquainted with out of everything there is, so it is (or should be) the least mysterious aspect of matter, while still admitting that it is, in a sense, mysterious.

It's a very good essay, and she makes some excellent points. This type of approach seems to me be quite pertinent and potentially very useful for ethical matters, as well as politics and political discourse.

It seems to me that it is much harder to do this, with say, epistemology and metaphysics. It could be done, to an extent, but the practical use of these fields is not immediately apparent.

Nevertheless, there is much here which is very valuable. And it certainly doesn't hurt that she writes very well, which is always a treat.

There a some good point in that, but also some serious issues, the fields he claims to be exhausted (Kantianism, Existentialism, etc.) are not.

If he has read the classic, Descartes, Leibniz, Hume, he should clearly see that what motivated the questions they asked were the consequences of the science of the time, that has very little practical consequence. Might as well criticize literature for not helping ordinary folk.

A few other issues.

He has merits in terms of too much specialization and obscurantism - and the fact that all of it has moved to academia is not ideal either.

Nevertheless, the "ivory tower" critique - which has merit, no doubt - is not at all exclusive to philosophy. It's a privilege, one that should be treasured. And if some can make these ideas communicable to the masses, such as Magee or Russell, then all the better.

Of course, being the one to claim the whole field is stagnant can create the impression that the person writing is enlightened, which is suspicious to say the least...

Ah, ok - yes that summary was quite useful, thanks for that.

But, imagine that someone does sincerely believe it is right to kill an innocent person as they take a walk passed their house: are there any absolutely obligatory judgments that you can point to to condemn their behavior? That would be a metaethical question. — Bob Ross

In this example, I think so. To kill an innocent person for no reason, is not only irrational but outright evil. I mean, it's even a bit embarrassing to spell out why killing an innocent person is evil. These types of cases have been talked about in depth by others.

Having said that, I think it's important to realize that, at a certain point, it boils down to this is wrong (or this is good), without any further understanding of what this wrongness entails, beyond it being wrong.

I suspect that our understandings aren't elaborate enough to explore this topic with much more depth. If an alien species exited that had a higher overall intelligence, they would know significantly more about these topics.

Alas, that's my intuition, could be totally wrong.

VALIS? Meh. I thought it was average. I suppose the fact that it was semi-autobiographical made it more tolerable. But Horselover Fat? Come on, it's silly.

Flow My Tears the Policeman Said, A Maze of Death and Martian Time Slip were much better.

And of course,A Scanner Darkly.

I forgot quite a bit, as I went on an obsessive binge and read like 14 books of his in three weeks. At my peak I was doing one a day. I couldn't get enough. But the consequence of that is that my memory of a lot of them is extremely patchy, if that.

The Issue with The Three Stigmata... is that it's also rather heavily theological, and that can push away some people who would otherwise participate.

A Skanner Darkly is also very deep - about identity mostly, but lots of material. Several others, but Ubik can be interpreted in many ways.

I don't think a thread needs more than 4 or 5 people. And his books are also rather short, can be read in three or four days without much trouble.

It's up to you.

Very much so. He has other philosophical ones too, but this is among his very best.

And it covers quite a lot of territory. Not a bad idea to do a thread about this novel or PKD in general.

Hope you like the whole thing. It's quite a trip!

Also looking forward to your thoughts about it.

In some ontologies based on objective idealism, all thinkable, perceivable and feelable objects exist regardless of whether they are the objects of any finite subject's consciousness. — Ø implies everything

This sounds like a complication. An object is an idea regardless of the subjects experience? Why postulate an object which can (perhaps) never be encountered by a subject and also claim its ontological status beforehand?

There could be some phenomenon that cannot be encountered by our kind of experience.

In an ontology based on objective idealism, there could be a "place" for its intrinsic nature to exist as well, despite perhaps our fundamental incapacity to mentally access that nature. — Ø implies everything

I think that's fair.

Can you bring awareness to your awareness itself? Can a subject be its own object? Even if it can, we know from experience that it is not so at all times. — Ø implies everything

Correct. Schopenhauer addresses this point rather well, about us being both subject and object. And yes, our self-consciousness fluctuates.

However, for this to then be idealism, experience would need to be derivative from experience; if not, then one would not be dealing with a monism, and thus, it would not be idealism. Bernando Kastrup conceptualizes this derivativity as experience being to experiencer what waves are to water. — Ø implies everything

Why can't idealism be monist? One could speak of the different aspects of the mental.

Kastrup uses this analogy, and it has some force. Sure, there is only water, but the activity of waves is an attribute or property of the water: water can be wavey, given certain circumstances.

In other circumstances, water can't be wavy, for instance if it is forzen. So while we are still speaking of water, we should consider the epistemic conditions that allow us to label something as wavy, or frozen. Which takes us somewhat beyond "just" water.

What if it is all an illusion; what if the self is just a construct of thoughts that belong to no-one, but that insist on belonging to someone? Can I not write on a paper, "Hey, I (this paper) am alive!". Perhaps an idealist reality can have objects that falsely proclaim the existence of a self. — Ø implies everything

There is a sense in which the self is an illusion, or rather, a fiction, in Hume's phrase. But beyond our own conditions of having selves, to extend that to objects and attribute to them this aspect of "self", is not warranted, regardless of ones ontology.

just consciousness when seen from the dissociated boundary. — Tom Storm

That's the one aspect of Kastrup which I think goes way beyond any evidence or even intuition. To extrapolate from dissociative personality disorder and apply it to objects is a massive leap, which doesn't look tenable.

I think Kant suffices, or Cudworth - whom Chomsky specifically references.

Still, Kastrup is quite interesting on many topics.

I suppose one formulation of idealism would be: there are only ideas and nothing else.

So, all there is are ideas, and ideas come from minds. If this is the argument, then we cannot say that there is non-mental stuff. The interaction problem does not arise.

One problem that arises out of such a formulation is pointed out by Galen Strawson, I think correctly. If there are only ideas, then the person who has the ideas, is also an idea.

But this is a problem, because an idea is (or should be) an idea for someone, a subject. But if the subject is an idea, then who is it that has the idea? Another idea? We could say a mind has ideas. But then the mind too would be an idea. That's not too coherent.

But, that's a very vulgar and general formulation of idealism, there are many others, which are quite sensible.

it is reasonable to suppose by the term appearance is meant mere presence, by them both — Mww

One has some leeway in how these terms can be used, it's not something set in stone.

Why "mere" presence? As opposed to presence.

I'm not much into the philosophical dimension of ethics, but this topic sounds somewhat interesting. I suppose I'd take the pragmatic approach here and ask the question, what practical differences in our conception (and action) of morality follows from one being either a moral realist or an anti-realist?

I mean, one can claim that they don't believe that murder is a crime. But rarely do such views lead to such acts. On the other hand, those who are serial killers, may actually believe this, and act according to this belief.

But then even they (frequently, not always) acknowledge that what they did was morally wrong, and society labels them as lacking a fundamental component of being a human being, correctly, in my view.

Aside from related examples, I don't see a big issue. But someone could clear up my confusion here, as I know almost nothing about such topics.

I'd have to go back to my paperback copy of Hume's Treatise to confirm. I don't think he denies that the mind attributes properties to objects in a certain way. In other words his attribution of effects coming from objects as opposed to us attributing effects to objects is not entirely clear, it can be read in several ways.

But being a good empiricist, he calls effects brought forth by the mind "animal instinct", which is a definite downgrade from Kant's more sophisticated account. His focus suffers, in that he doesn't, and probably cannot, given his principles, elaborate on many functions of said instinct.

Other than this caveat, I have no issues with what you have said, which is well put, as usual.

I assume that this particular charge was brought forth because the prosecution thought it was the strongest case against him, legally speaking. After so much time - and with the campaign for the White House going strong, they wouldn't want to bring forth charges that might be easier to get out of.

And yes, there are strong political currents guiding this investigation. And US presidents have committed far worse crime than using campaign funds to pay off a porn star - that is mere peanuts.

It will be interesting to see if this somehow complicates his candidacy for the White House, or if it will only strengthen people to support him more.

Perhaps looking at several of Susan Haack's articles - many of them freely available on academia.edu, could offer some help.

Alternatively, you can try to look at Peirce: A Guide for the Perplexed.

I have not found exactly that, there are several versions, some take articles from different periods of his life and arrange on a topical basis: the introduction to some of these books can offer some framework. So too could Peirce's correspondence with Lady Welby.

Thing is, his writings in a single volume can be erratic, as he wrote on everything. Editors have tried to correct this.

Good luck.

Do you want me to argue against that or to comment? I don't disagree with what you say.

People insist they see a tree, and they are correct, but only as a consequence, without knowing or caring about the antecedents necessary for how it is a tree, only a tree, and not any other thing. — Mww

One can - and should - speak about the necessary cognitive conditions that allow us to classify something as this particular tree as contrasted with some other tree, or indeed some completely different object.

And absolutely, the ground of phenomena as (re)presentation is very interesting and important. But it can be parsed out of the question of "do I directly see a tree", that is, for the sake of answering the question narrowly, it need not enter.

You could include it and argue, correctly in my view, that this unknown thing is the ground of my presentations, but since we (arguably) cannot cognize this is any positive manner, I don't see how this helps in answering the question.

Hoffman incidentally disagrees, he does think we can get to the grounds of things, by pursuing theories that suggest that spacetime is not fundamental. I think this is a mistake.

There is plenty more to say, but it would lead to issues that could take this conversation significantly outside of Hoffman's thinking, and this thread already is veering off the OP.

What justifies that assumption ? How is he seeing around his own wall of perceptions ? — green flag

Around the wall of his own perceptions? I don't quite follow. You can think about your thoughts - as in, I can think about me typing these letter right now, but I don't get "out" of myself, in fact cannot do so.

He is interpreting beingthere in terms of perceptions given to a self. This is not starting without presuppositions. This is picking up a tradition uncritically. This is taken inherited frames as if they are the deepest and truest necessity. — green flag

Of course we have a given, and of course it is a construction. We cannot help doing so. But "dasein" is also an assumption - giving primacy to a certain kind of unreflexive action, but why is that mode of being more primordial than another mode of being?

It looks to me as if one chooses what aspect of our lives we want to take as a given, and give that primacy. It can be practical activity, it can be perceptions, it can be economic conditions or even word -use.

Why isn't it "We think, therefore we are" ? I am not saying that people are plural. I am saying that the 'virtuality' of the self (as a way of being a body and a social institution) is probably singular because it's easier to manage a single body in a social structure with a single set of statements to be responsible for. Imagine two souls in one body. — green flag

It can be. Several propositions can be taken to be primary or obvious, from "I am" to "We are" (taking into account that we are made of many organs that work is co-operation, or we can think about ourselves as particles) and even "thinking an idea". Thinking of a diamond is arguably as good as thinking of a self, in terms of such foundational experiments.