Unless there wasn't a time when consciousness didn't exist. If it is fundamental, a property of things, as, for example, mass and charge are, then it was always there. There was always experiencing. Yes, reality started perceiving itself when structures of perception evolved. At which point, there was the experience of perception.

I have a lot of sympathy with your stance and there is an interpretation of my stance which fits with yours. But it comes from an entirely different root to what is being discussed in this thread.

I’ve been thinking of raising the issue of electrical charge and consciousness. As you mention charge, this seems like an appropriate time.
It occurs to me that consciousness might be emergent from the presence of charge in matter (mass, or extension, ie spacetime). Or the other way around, the presence of matter (spacetime) in charge. Although when it comes to extension in space and time and charge, they are all a consequence of extension and rely on it to have existence.

To put that simply, space/time/charge emerge together. Consciousness could be emergent in the presence of charge in matter. The animating part, electricity. We can see how electricity and charge play a fundamental role in life processes. Particularly in the central nervous system, indeed in thought, sentience and the exalted state of consciousness observed in humans. We are an electrical processing device, which processes information for the purpose of increasing our chances of survival.

So rather like your train set aeroplane analogy. We have developed a processing device to be better at survival, but inadvertently produced something which could take us out into space.

This is that the Buddha's teaching is like the stick used to stir a fire to help get it burning. But when the fire is burning, the stick is tossed in.

A beautiful metaphor, something I have acted out many times. Thankyou.

No, science has not yet put together the entire puzzle that will answer the question of consciousness, but all the pieces of the puzzle so far point to consciousness being a function of neurological processes. Any other theory is just a matter of wishful thinking. — Questioner

:100:

‘The promissory notes of materialism’

‘The promissory notes of materialism’ — Wayfarer

...says the ChatGPT subscriber.

Do you think there is ever going to be a paradigm that does not have self and other? What does it mean to not have self-other? Will all minds and consciousnesses merge into one?
— Patterner

I can only say that 'transcending the self-other distinction' is a recurring motif in mysticism and the perennial philosophies, generally. That is why 'Nirvāṇa without remainder' is said to be only possible on the far side of death. — Wayfarer

For millennia, various traditions have been trying to accomplish this. But the practitioners still answer to their individual names, and it's said the goal can't be achieved while alive.

What is your vision off the future? Will we no longer use the sciences that developed by ignoring consciousness? Will we not live in houses, not use electricity, not use propulsion systems and math to launch ships to Mars and beyond?
— Patterner

I don't believe interstellar travel is at all feasible for terrestrial creatures such as ourselves. We might be able to send ultrasmall computers via laser energy, but we'll never send large metal and composite material vessels with living organisms in them. Mars is a possibility, but the idea of colonizing Mars is a Musk fever dream. (I'm writing a 'psi-phi' novel on this very theme at the moment, although constantly sidetracking myself with forum posts.) — Wayfarer

Fine, let's use another example. Will doing away with the subject–object paradigm mean we will no longer use our current sciences to try to find or develop better energy sources?

Although I really don't have any idea what your position is, I know that we both think consciousness is a bigger, and/or more ubiquitous, part of the universe than many people posting here do. That doesn't mean we will, or should, discard physical sciences. There probably are times when one aspect of reality is not needed for, and possibly interferes with, our pursuits in one area or another. There will probably always be people wasting their time trying to prove that things like sodium ions passing through the membranes of neurons produce consciousness. But it might be equally foolish to insist that we cannot find way to produce lighter, stronger metals without first figuring out how to add consciousnes as an ingredient.

Any other theory is just a matter of wishful thinking. — Questioner

Another expert psychologist on the forum! What causes materialism? Too much breast milk?

What exactly is he discerning in this essay? Bitbol is not claiming that he can determine what reality is like independently of experience. Notice at the outset, he says 'no alternative metaphysical view is advanced.' He is claiming that reason can notice when it has overstepped its bounds by mistaking the conditions of experience for objects within experience. That critique does not establish an alternative ontology - it is ameliorative rather than constructive. — Wayfarer

Indeed, and this point is well taken. However, there's a real tension in Bitbol's position. The issue is not that he wants to engage in a critique of reason, but that his critique relies on a normatively binding use of reason to establish limits, while simultaneously denying reason any standing to make normatively binding claims about reality. In contrast to Nagarjuna, Bitbol's critique is not merely therapeutic. He makes claims about correctness, error and order which raises the question: are these claims themselves unconditionally valid, or merely perspectival? If they are unconditionally valid, then reason seems to have precisely the kind of authority Bitbol denies it in ontology. If they are not, then it becomes unclear why his critique binds anyone who does not already share his stance.

There's a Buddhist metaphor that comes to mind. This is that the Buddha's teaching is like the stick used to stir a fire to help get it burning. But when the fire is burning, the stick is tossed in. There's another simile, the 'simile of the raft'. This compares the dharma to a raft 'bound together from fragments of sticks and grasses' (hence, nothing high-falutin') which is used to 'cross over the river' but which is discarded when the crossing is accomplished (Alagaddupama Sutta.) This has been compared to Wittgenstein's 'ladder' metaphor, that philosophy is like a ladder that is discarded after having been climbed. — Wayfarer

Yes, this is philosophy as therapy. People can (and do) find real value in such an approach, but the persistent worry is that if reason is simply discarded along the way (e.g. ladder, veil, raft, etc.), what is left to adjudicate insight from delusion, depth from emptiness, transcendence from regression?

Because it's not true, — Wayfarer

To the extent that you’ll not see the word “true” in a scientific paper, this is accurate. The most that a scientific paper will claim is that “this is the best explanation for the evidence collected.”

Are you claiming that what Bitbol is saying is “true?”

yet a very large number of intelligent people seem to accept that it is. — Wayfarer

Thus raising questions about their intelligence?

Would you question the intelligence of the MIT Consciousness Club, whose members aim to build a bridge between philosophy and cognitive neuroscience? They do this by exploring how “neurological activity gives rise to human experience.”

Maybe we can look at one aspect of neurological research into consciousness, and determine how it would appear through the lens of Bitbol’s analysis.

Consider the perceptual reality monitoring theory of consciousness (PRM). PRM is a higher-order theory of consciousness, meaning it associates the emergence of consciousness with the emergence of the reality monitoring function - i.e. perception (sensory input) > signal evaluation > reality tagging (signal reliable?) > consciousness/cognition/thoughts.

Philosopher Matthias Michel, (co-leader of the MIT Consciousness Club and the Old Dominion Career Development Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy), takes a science-based approach to his work, and investigates PRM. This past year, he published Sensory Horizons and the Functions of Conscious Vision – which explored distribution of conscious (vs. unconscious) vision in aquatic and terrestrial animals.

In the last section of the paper, he writes:

“… we offer an argument that seeks to explain, rather than merely describe, this co-evolution of model-based planning and consciousness.”

His conclusions suggest:

“… by selecting a coherent set of representations among the myriad representational activities the mind is engaged in, a reality monitoring mechanism grants those representations the epistemic profile that is typical of our conscious representations. Through this lens, reality monitoring and the capacity for model-based planning are deeply intertwined, offering a new perspective on the functions of conscious vision.”

So – what would be Bitbol’s critique of this investigation? What step in reality monitoring is made invalid by the measurement question of quantum mechanics?

And because ideas have consequences. — Wayfarer

Scientific knowledge is not “ideas” but the only substantiated knowledge we have, based on the best evidence. It can be examined and tested – for example in function-based theories of consciousness. Can Bitbol’s claims be tested?

Which is why strict scientific realists, like Sir Roger Penrose, say that quantum theory must be wrong or incomplete. — Wayfarer

Well, if the physical evidence contradicts the mathematical model, I would say it is the mathematical model that must be adjusted, because it is impossible to adjust the physical evidence.

For millennia, various traditions have been trying to accomplish this (i.e. 'divine union'). But the practitioners still answer to their individual names, and it's said the goal can't be achieved while alive. — Patterner

The discussion was the emergence of consciousness as the 'self-other' distinction basic to the emergence of organic life. It is also a basic theme in phenomenology.

The issue is not that he wants to engage in a critique of reason, but that his critique relies on a normatively binding use of reason to establish limits, while simultaneously denying reason any standing to make normatively binding claims about reality — Esse Quam Videri

I think your concerns about ‘the discarding of reason’ are perhaps overblown. Bitbol is not trying to establish normative limits on reality in the Kantian sense of legislating what can or cannot be the case tout court. Rather, he is diagnosing a performative incoherence in a specific epistemic stance —namely, the assumption that consciousness (I actually prefer ‘mind’) can be treated as a fully objective explanandum from inside the very practices that presuppose lived experience. Phenomenology, generally, is dealing with the philosophical conundrums that arise from 'objectification'.

Well, that is an impressive research program! Not questioning that, at all. There is an explosion of similar kinds of research under the heading 'consciousness studies'. One of the triggers was the 1996 publication of David Chalmer's essay Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness'. This was the paper that articulated the 'hard problem' of consciousness. So as not to get bogged down in too many digressions, it is worth recapitulating some of the key ideas and paragraphs from this paper.

One is the contrast between 'easy problems' and 'the problem of consciousness'. Chalmers says the 'easy problems' - problems which easily admit of a scientific explanation - are:

*the ability to discriminate, categorize, and react to environmental stimuli;
*the integration of information by a cognitive system;
*the reportability of mental states;
*the ability of a system to access its own internal states;
*the focus of attention;
*the deliberate control of behavior;
*the difference between wakefulness and sleep.

He says 'There is no real issue about whether these phenomena can be explained scientifically. All of them are straightforwardly vulnerable to explanation in terms of computational or neural mechanisms.'

But, he goes on:

The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience.

It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it is like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion? It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does.

If any problem qualifies as the problem of consciousness, it is this one. In this central sense of "consciousness", an organism is conscious if there is something it is like to be that organism, and a mental state is conscious if there is something it is like to be in that state.

I should note, I think 'the hard problem' is a polemical or rhetorical construct. It's purpose is only to point out that the first-person, experiential quality of experience can never be properly captured from a third-person perspective. So it's not a problem to be solved, in that sense, and (some have said) a misuse of the term 'problem' on those grounds (i.e. properly described, it is a mystery, not a problem.) But I'm bringing this in, because it serves to focus on what exactly is at issue in many of these discussions.

So – what would be Bitbol’s critique of this investigation? — Questioner

I can't speak for Michel Bitbol, but I will point out that phenomenology is usually found in these programs, for the reasons given above. Chalmers is not himself associated with phenomenology but many other researchers in the field are. This is in recognition of the criticism of phenomenology, that the third-person accounts of conscious experience must necessarily omit something of fundamental importance.

Key Concepts in the Phenomenological Approach to Consciousness Studies

Researchers often use several key "tools" or concepts derived from classical phenomenology (like that of Edmund Husserl or Maurice Merleau-Ponty):

Intentionality: The idea that consciousness is always "consciousness of something." Every mental act has an object (a thought, a feeling, or a physical thing).

The Epoché (Bracketing): The practice of setting aside "natural" assumptions about the external world to focus strictly on how a phenomenon presents itself to the mind.

Neurophenomenology: A modern sub-field (popularized by Francisco Varela) that seeks to "naturalize" phenomenology by using rigorous first-person descriptions to help scientists understand brain activity patterns.

So, the opposition here is not between 'phenomenology and science'. It's between 'phenomenology and reductive materialism', where 'reductive materialism' is the belief that the first-person nature of subjective experience is insignificant or secondary to the objective description. Daniel Dennett is the natural foil for these arguments, as he believes that first-person consciousness is essentially derivative from unconscious cellular processes.

Can Bitbol’s claims be tested? — Questioner

Not relevant. Falsifiability is a criterion used to distinguish empirical from non-empirical claims. Bitbol's arguments are not empirical arguments, but are based on reasoned inference from the apodictic nature of first-person experience.

Incidentally, in respect of neurological modelling of first-person experience, take a look at The Neural Binding Problem, specifically The Subjective Unity of Perception. It acknowledges the hard problem of consciousness, saying that 'enough is known about the structure and function of the visual system to rule out any detailed neural representation that embodies the subjective experience'.

I've posted this before. In Until the End of Time, Brian Greene writes:

I don’t know what mass is. I don’t know what electric charge is. What I do know is that mass produces and responds to a gravitational force, and electric charge produces and responds to an electromagnetic force. So while I can’t tell you what these features of particles are, I can tell you what these features do. — Brian Greene

He emphasizes the "I don't know" in the audio book. If he doesn't know what charge is, I certainly don't. Plus, I'm the one saying particles have subjective experience. So I'm in no position to rule out too many ideas. :grin:

I will say, though, that I'm skeptical of something pulling "double duty" like that. Charge does an awful lot in the physical realm. It's a major factor in how particles interact. It's why we have solids, liquids, and gases. It's why one solid, liquid, or gas is different from another. It's why flight is possible. It's why we have DNA, the electron transport chain, ATP, blood cells carrying oxygen. It's why oil is a good source of energy. It's why everything.

I would be surprised if charge was also the root of consciousness. Doing double duty in the two realms seems like a lot to ask. Fine that an engine to run a car also produces heat. It wasn't the goal, but it's easy enough to see how it happens. Do you have thoughts on how consciousness is either (what I guess, for lack of a better phrase, I'll call) a primary function of charge, as causing particles to interact and combine to form solids, liquids, and gases is, or an unintended side effect, the way heat from an engine is?

The discussion was the emergence of consciousness as the 'self-other' distinction basic to the emergence of organic life. It is also a basic theme in phenomenology. — Wayfarer

It seemed that you were trying to use the fact that people have been thinking along certain lines for millennia to support the idea that there is no self and other. If that's not what you meant, I apologize. I don't know what you meant.

The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience.

It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it is like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion? It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does.

If any problem qualifies as the problem of consciousness, it is this one. In this central sense of "consciousness", an organism is conscious if there is something it is like to be that organism, and a mental state is conscious if there is something it is like to be in that state.

Good quote. Thanks for sharing it. I enjoyed reading it.

And no, neuroscience hasn't solved the hard problem yet.

I should note, I think 'the hard problem' is a polemical or rhetorical construct. — Wayfarer

I want to note that the way the word "problem" is used in science means something yet to be discovered. (Science doesn't consider any problems unsolvable, lol) So "the hard problem" is not a construct at all, hard consciousness really does exist, but it is a matter of future research. What may be said, though, is that the different understandings of how - or if - the hard problem may be solved has become a polemic and rhetorical matter.

It's purpose is only to point out that the first-person, experiential quality of experience can never be properly captured from a third-person perspective. — Wayfarer

But does the scientist need to feel the actual sadness, or the love, or the anger, that the subject of the research feels in order to discover how that emotion is generated? I would say no. The subject can communicate how they feel, and the brain activity mapping it (or whatever methods are used) will point to its source.

the first-person nature of subjective experience is insignificant or secondary to the objective description. — Wayfarer

I think this represents a misunderstanding of how the science is done.

but are based on reasoned inference from the apodictic nature of first-person experience. — Wayfarer

Science does not put the apodictic nature of first-person experience aside, but rather includes it in its methodology, which relies on more than subjective inference.

As a side note - I went down a bit of an internet rabbit hole today, starting by Googling "Schrodinger's Cat." It led me to an excerpt from a short story written by Ursula Le Guin in 1974 - entitled "Schrodinger's Cat."

Here it is - a dialogue between the nameless narrator and a dog called Rover -

‘… We cannot predict the behaviour of the photon, and thus, once it has behaved, we cannot predict the state of the system it has determined. We cannot predict it! God plays dice with the world! So it is beautifully demonstrated that if you desire certainty, any certainty, you must create it yourself!’

‘How?’

‘By lifting the lid of the box, of course,’ Rover said …

Oh, there are so many "what if?" questions to be asked!

But first we need to open the box!

It acknowledges the hard problem of consciousness, saying that 'enough is known about the structure and function of the visual system to rule out any detailed neural representation that embodies the subjective experience'. — Wayfarer

So far.

I want to reiterate - that when science speaks of a "problem" they are referring to something that needs further research.

But does the scientist need to feel the actual sadness, or the love, or the anger, that the subject of the research feels in order to discover how that emotion is generated? — Questioner

The scientist needs to actually verify the emotion is really there, before investigating the cause. With humans, this is easy. We all just assume we feel emotions because we're all built the same way, but what about alien emotions? What about machine consciousness? Will we ever be sure a machine is feeling the emotion it says it is? How on Earth could we verify that?

The scientist needs to actually verify the emotion is really there, before investigating the cause. — RogueAI

Neuroscientific investigation has a whole battery of tests to measure emotion.

alien emotions? What about machine consciousness? Will we ever be sure a machine is feeling the emotion it says it is? How on Earth could we verify that? — RogueAI

That's outside the purview of this discussion.

Neuroscientific investigation has a whole battery of tests to measure emotion. — Questioner

I would say neuroscience studies the physical processes and correlates associated with emotional states. If you were unable to orgasm, neuroscience is not going to help you understand what an orgasm feels like. Suppose Mary falls and hits her head and says she can't feel any emotions anymore. Her body still displays all the physical signs of emotions, but Mary claims to never actually feel any emotion anymore. How would neuroscience verify this claim? Suppose her brain is studied and everything is normal. Do we not believe her?

"That's outside the purview of this discussion."

Is it? I thought this was about the primacy of consciousness. Is it only about the primacy of human consciousness?

I want to note that the way the word "problem" is used in science means something yet to be discovered — Questioner

In this case, the problem is more of a categorial one. It is the missapplication of objective methods to a subject which evades objective specification.

I want to reiterate - that when science speaks of a "problem" they are referring to something that needs further research. — Questioner

Sufficient research has been done to establish that there is no place in the brain where the detailed, unified visual world we experience could be neurally encoded. The architecture of the visual system is now well mapped: high-resolution information is confined to a tiny foveal region, processing is massively distributed across specialized areas, and no stable, full-field representation exists. What remains unresolved is not a gap in empirical data but a conceptual gap between this well-understood neural machinery and the phenomenology of a coherent, stable visual world. In that sense, the issue is no longer “awaiting further research” in the usual scientific sense; it is an explanatory problem about how subjective experience arises at all.

In short, appealing to “further research” in this context amounts to what Karl Popper called the 'promissory notes' of materialism: the repeated assurance that a purely physical explanation will eventually emerge, even despite the empirical evidence.

----

Happy New Year to all, I'm probably a time zone ahead of most others here, back in 2026! :party:

Think of an intelligible order as a scheme or system of rationality. Within that order or map, things work a certain way, according to certain criteria.
... — Joshs

Sorry, perhaps I am missing something, but all I see here is an explanation of how intelligible models work but I don't see an explanation about why they do.
On the other hand, if we say that we do know (albeit imperfectly, in a distorted way etc) the 'things in themselves', the reason why they work is clearer.

The point is there is no one correct map, model or scheme of rationality that mirrors the way the world is. Our knowledge is not a mirror of the world. It is an activity that continually modifies the nature of the world in ways that
are meaningful and recognizable to us. There is no intelligibility without a pragmatic refreshing of the sense of meaning of what is intelligible. — Joshs

The fact that there is no 'perfect model' that mirrors the way the world isn't enough to say that we get no knowledge of the 'things in themselves'. In other words, my question is: according to all these thinkers is there a reason why our predictive models work? Is it just a 'brute fact'?

I don't agree that it suggests those things. If consciousness is not there from the beginning, then physical arrangements are evolving for purely physical reasons. If physical arrangements were evolving for purely physical reasons, then it seems rather bizarre that they one day found themselves in just the right configuration to produce consciousness. I mean, holy cow! :gasp: — Patterner

It does at least suggest that sentient beings came into existence, i.e. there is a first point of their coming to be. And it clearly suggests that the existence of each one of the sentient beings in this world isn't a necessary fact.

I do accept both things. However, this doesn't exclude the possibility that some form of consciousness is fundamental as it is suggested by the second 'horn' of the dilemma.

My worry, though, is that the antinomy only arises if we assume that intelligibility itself must be grounded in a conscious subject, rather than being intrinsic to being as such. — Esse Quam Videri

Yes that's a jump in my argument, I admit that. However, note that it makes sense as an hypothesis. If this is not so, we have no explanation on why entities are intelligible. It is again a 'brute fact' we have to accept. Personally, I don't see much advantage than accepting that there is no intelligible order in the 'in itself' and we just 'get lucky' in our attempts to understand things.

Following a more Aristotelian line, I would want to say that intelligibility is not something projected onto the world by consciousness, nor is it a mere coincidence. Rather, being itself is intelligible: it is structured, law-governed, and dynamically ordered in ways that can be grasped by intelligence. Consciousness is required for the act of understanding, but not for intelligibility to be operative in reality in the first place. — Esse Quam Videri

As I said above, I'm not sure that being 'understandable' ('intelligible') makes sense without any relation to an 'understanding' ('intellect'). I see this as an evidence of a non-contingent Intellect, i.e. a Divine Mind, but I agree with you that intelligibility alone doesn't prove that.

This is why I’m still inclined to think the force of the antinomy depends on collapsing two distinct explanatory orders. Questions about how consciousness arises in the world concern the order of efficient causality. Questions about knowing concern the structure and operations of consciousness as oriented toward grasping the intelligible order of being in-itself. The latter does not, I'd argue, require that consciousness be ontologically fundamental. — Esse Quam Videri

I agree with that. It doesn't force the conclusion but indeed it does point to that direction!

That is a penetrating critique of Nagarjuna's philosophy, and I think it exposes a major instability in his thought. I get the impression that this instability is by design, though, in the sense that Nagajuna's aim is not to produce a philosophical system, but to force the mind out of any such system. As such, his critique causes the mind to cycle endlessly between affirming and denying both conventional and ultimate reality, never finding a stable resting point between the two. On this interpretation, the generation of aporia is intended to work as a therapeutic device, kicking the mind out of it's attachment to representation and into...well, that's the question. Enlightenment? — Esse Quam Videri

Yes, I agree. The 'ambiguity' is intentional and, indeed, Nagarjuna seems to insist that what he is doing is to reject ontological theories, not affirming one. However, assuming that he indeed rejected definitively his opponents' theories, there is a big step from that to say he managed to show that all possible ontological theories are inconsistent. He seemed to clearly believe that and this belief is IMO also shared by the authors of the Prajnaparamita sutras.

However, he arrived at a point in which there is an unresolved tension. On the one hand, he cannot reject the world of appearances and its order. On the other hand, he claims that, ultimately, all ontological claims about 'reality' are inconsistent. However, the very fact that appearances 'appear' and show a structure 'cries' for an explanation. Perhaps, he is right and there is no such an explanation and the answer is 'silence'. I'm not sure of that. Anyway, I happen to think that if there is no metaphysical 'Absolute', his 'view' is in fact correct. However, I remain unconvinced that there is no metaphysical Absolute.

Like you, though, I think this approach works "too" well, as it undercuts any stable ground from which Nagarjuna can assert the "reality" of emptiness, nirvana, samsara, karma, or anything else. In other words, his (non)-doctrine of emptiness seems to be left teetering precariously on a precipice with nihilism on one side and naive realism on the other. Some might see this as a boon, but I'm not so sure. — Esse Quam Videri

Agreed. Interestingly, in the seventh chapter of his Mulamadhyamakakarika, he writes:

33. With the non-establishment of arising, duration and destruction, the
conditioned does not exist. With the non-establishment of the conditioned,
how could there be the unconditioned?

34. As an illusion, a dream, a city of the gandharvas, so have arising, endurance
and destruction been exemplified. — Mulamadhaymakarika, 7.33-34, Kalupahana translation

So, his argument about that the unconditioned is 'illusion-like' rests on his conclusion that the conditioned is 'illusion-like'. To me this is a logical jump and, anyway, only makes sense if one already accepts that the conditioned is 'illusion-like'. It is indeed fascinating, maybe it is true. It also rejects any kind of 'reductionism' because there is no 'ultimate layer' in which 'provisional truths' are reduced to. Every entity is ultimately as unreal/real as the selves and this is quite different to what even other Buddhist argued (i.e. that the 'selves' are just arbitrary labels we impose on fundamental entities).

But I'm unconvinced. Perhaps, the existence of the 'unconditioned' is precisely the reason why the 'conditioned' isn't just an appearance.

I hear you! Obviously this is a deep and difficult question, but again, my orientation is shaped by my reading of Buddhist philosophy. You will recall that there is an unequivocal statement in the Pali texts, to wit, 'there is, monks, an unborn, unmade, unfabricated', and that if there were not, there would be no possibility of escape from the born, the made, the fabricated (reference). 'There is!' Of course, what that means - what precisely is the unborn, unconditioned - is beyond discursive reason. Probably also out of scope of naturalism, which puts it out-of-bounds for most here. — Wayfarer

Yes, I agree with that. Also, even if the positive 'there is an unborn' is interpreted as Nagarjuna does, it is beyond the scope of naturalism. Indeed, Nagarjuna would reject all metahpysical position and naturalism isn't an exception. I believe that the naturalists that think that Nagarjuna agree with them do not appreciate how radical his views are. He doesn't merely think that there is no 'metaphysical absolute' but he goes all the way to think that all ontological theories must be false.

He does indeed. I'm also reading some of Bitbol's essays on Buddhism and he acknowledges this. That will be the subject of the third essay (if the next two are accepted by Philosophy Today.) — Wayfarer

:up:

BTW, I wish a Happy New Year to everyone.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I think this clarifies the disagreement quite a bit, and I appreciate the acknowledgment that the move to panentheism is an hypothesis rather than a forced conclusion.

Where I still want to push back is on the claim that, absent such an Intellect, intelligibility must be either brute or a matter of coincidence. From an Aristotelian standpoint, intelligibility is neither a coincidence nor an unexplained remainder, rather it is grounded in the very structure of being itself as intelligible relations (form, order, lawfulness) that do not depend on being understood in order to be what they are.

Of course intelligibility is relative to intellect in the sense that it is what the intellect grasps. But that does not entail that intelligibility is ontologically dependent on an intellect in order to exist. The relation is asymmetric: intelligence is ordered toward being because being is intelligible, not the other way around.

At some point, explanation has to bottom out. My suggestion is that it can bottom out in being in-itself without incoherence, rather than requiring a further appeal to a cosmic subject. The latter may well be a reasonable metaphysical hypothesis, but I don’t yet see an argument that shows the former to be unstable, self-undermining, or equivalent to brute facticity.

So I think we’re now at a more precise question: is intelligibility a fundamental feature of being itself, or must it be further grounded in a non-contingent intellect? That seems to me a genuinely open metaphysical choice, not one settled by the antinomy as such.

Happy new year to you and to all!

Bitbol is not trying to establish normative limits on reality in the Kantian sense of legislating what can or cannot be the case tout court. Rather, he is diagnosing a performative incoherence in a specific epistemic stance —namely, the assumption that consciousness (I actually prefer ‘mind’) can be treated as a fully objective explanandum from inside the very practices that presuppose lived experience. — Wayfarer

Quite right. However, in order to diagnose the purported performative incoherence, Bitbol must presuppose universally binding normative standards of judgment (correctness, error, and order) that he then withholds from metaphysical inquiry. If the standards are universally binding, then reason has authority beyond any particular stance, and it becomes unclear why that authority should suddenly stop at metaphysics. If they are not universally binding, then Bitbol’s charge of incoherence loses its force because the diagnosis is only valid from within the (non-universal) scope of the framework from which it is made.

Sorry, perhaps I am missing something, but all I see here is an explanation of how intelligible models work but I don't see an explanation about why they do.
On the other hand, if we say that we do know (albeit imperfectly, in a distorted way etc) the 'things in themselves', the reason why they work is clearer. — boundless

They work because the world (including us) changes with respect to itself in a manner that is recursive, self-reflexive and self-referential. This gives its continual self-transformation an intimate and intricate character. From the vantage of human experience this translates into the perception of the order of pattern. The world never doubles back on itself, but its differentiation implies self-similarity. It continues to be the same differently for us. A world which changes in this intimate way can allow for the anticipation of new events on the basis of both similarity and difference with respect to previous events. Instead of talking about this ongoing intelligibility in terms of a mirroring , copying or representing of an external world of ‘things in themselves’ by a subject-in-itself, we can think of intelligibility in terms of the ordered, assimilative way the knower makes changes in themselves.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. — Esse Quam Videri

Thanks also to you for the interesting exchange.

Where I still want to push back is on the claim that, absent such an Intellect, intelligibility must be either brute or a matter of coincidence. From an Aristotelian standpoint, intelligibility is neither a coincidence nor an unexplained remainder, rather it is grounded in the very structure of being itself as intelligible relations (form, order, lawfulness) that do not depend on being understood in order to be what they are. — Esse Quam Videri

Intelligibility, however, implies the potential to be understood. At least at the level of potentiality, intelligibility does refer to such an Intellect. This doesn't automatically mean that such an Intellect exists, but it is a 'clue', as it were, that that Intellect does exist. Not a proof, but a clue.

Note that Aristotle himself, however, endorsed the idea that a Divine Mind exists. I know that one can make an Aristotelian model without reference to such an Intellect, but it nevertheless is interesting that apparently Aristotle himself thought that the two ideas are connected.

Instead of talking about this ongoing intelligibility in terms of a mirroring , copying or representing of an external world of ‘things in themselves’ by a subject-in-itself, we can think of intelligibility in terms of the ordered, assimilative way the knower makes changes in themselves. — Joshs

But note that even within your own model intelligibility doesn't pertain to the subject alone but also to the 'world'. So, it would seem that the 'world' in which the subject exists also has a structure, an order that is somehow related to the changes the knower makes in themselves.

In other words, unless you admit that such changes are done arbitrarily, you need to say that 'what is outside the subject' has a structure, an order. And I'm not sure how this doesn't imply that the 'world external to the subject' is intelligible (at least, in principle).

It does at least suggest that sentient beings came into existence, i.e. there is a first point of their coming to be. And it clearly suggests that the existence of each one of the sentient beings in this world isn't a necessary fact. — boundless

Agreed.

I do accept both things. However, this doesn't exclude the possibility that some form of consciousness is fundamental as it is suggested by the second 'horn' of the dilemma. — boundless

No, it doesn't exclude that possibility.

:up:

Neuroscientific investigation has a whole battery of tests to measure emotion.
— Questioner

I would say neuroscience studies the physical processes and correlates associated with emotional states. — RogueAI

Indeed. What's a unit of emotion? What's the highest level of emotion ever measured with these tests?

What's a unit of emotion? — Patterner

Are you suggesting there are not ways to determine how a person feels?