At what point does modeling not feel like something? — schopenhauer1
Not exactly, I am saying that changeless unity, changeless identity, and changeless wholeness are mental abstractions. — Janus
In other words, if the modeling feels like something, who is to say this feels like something doesn't go all the way down? — schopenhauer1
But what is it that is fluctuating in the first place? — Aaron R
The answer is obvious. — apokrisis
Complex brains do complex modelling. When I use my eyes, I create a model of a world from some pattern of illumination falling on my retina. And key to that model is also the "me" that is place in time and space as a "receiver" of that point of view. — apokrisis
We can just as reasonably draw a conclusion about a slug having the kind of experience that would follow from not having that level of reality modelling. — apokrisis
None of this is rocket science. It is obvious from the type of modelling being done what we might expect that type of modelling to feel like. — apokrisis
But we can still answer questions about how far down some kind of experiencing would go when it comes to organisms and their self~world modelling. — apokrisis
What is this "me"? This "illusion"? If you go back to mere description, you have lost the trail. — schopenhauer1
And how far is that? — schopenhauer1
I think you're conflating experience with consciousness. — Janus
Is there any sense in which we can say that there are unities, identities and wholes "out there" in nature? Must we not say, then, that there is some principle of unity at play within nature itself? And furthermore, how is it that the mind is capable of creating such abstractions in a world of pure change? — Aaron R
Say it is temperature that is fluctuating; there is no changeless entity: temperature that is fluctuating; the fluctuating is temperature, since temperature is never changeless. — Janus
I would say there are changing unities, identities and wholes in nature; but I wouldn't say they are "out there" in any absolute sense. — Janus
The pan-experientialist view is based on the idea that everything that exists experiences, in the broadest sense of that term, just as the pan-semioticist view is that everything that exists interprets. — Janus
A sign cannot be interpreted by an interpretrant unless it is experienced (not necessarily, or even mostly, consciously) by the interpretant. — Janus
I'm not sure how to answer this. The answer that the question seems to beg for is "nothing", but that seems incoherent. — Aaron R
But this "experience". How do we measure it in any sense? — apokrisis
So there just ain't any good reason to claim that the whole of nature has experience when the only intelligible definition of experience is the one that points to the difference it makes in terms of reactions or relations to have something extra by way of autonomy, intelligence and self-interest. — apokrisis
So see what you did there. You slipped in the mediating sign as something dead, static, inert - a mere physical mark that symbolises and thus needs an interpreter with a mind to read it as being about something real out there in the world.
This is the weird thing you and schop both want to do. You want to oppose realism with idealism. You want to oppose an ontology of dead matter with an ontology of living mind. — apokrisis
And I know you don't want to countenance anything you can't measure; but that says more about you than it does about the immeasurable. — Janus
The statement that the riverbank experienced the erosive force of the river is a perfectly intelligible one. — Janus
in a relational sense, insofar as they are signified object and interpreted sign they are not the interpretant. — Janus
One day you'll stop seeing through the lens of your own presuppositions and understand what I am saying. It seems to me to be fairly close to what you are saying, but differs on a couple of fundamental points. — Janus
We might well choose this more mind-like framing so as to highlight deficiencies in a more matter-like framing. — apokrisis
I have no trouble understanding your defence of a dualism that would allow you to claim noumenal status for "mind". — apokrisis
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