It's a perfectly ordinary question with a perfectly ordinary answer – anyone will tell you that a human is conscious much of the time, but a plant never is. — Snakes Alive

LOL! That's just the very, very beginning of the discussion, and people are going to want to know what you mean by a human being conscious. It can mean more than one thing. A little bit more discussion, and you'll find out that people don't always agree on what it means for a human to be conscious.

That's the thing with ordinary language. Everyone can agree when the term is sufficiently vague. But once you start discussing it in any depth, differences emerge, along with difficulties raised by what everyone thought was simple concept on the face of it.

And then lo and behold, you find out some people think that plants are actually conscious (along with rocks and everything else).

That's the thing with ordinary language. Everyone can agree when the term is sufficiently vague. But once you start discussing it in any depth, differences emerge, along with difficulties raised by what everyone thought was simple concept on the face of it. — Marchesk

This is better than the situation in philosophy; vague terms are meaningful, but meaningless ones are not.

There is no "must have" except in purely deductive arguments. But purely deductive arguments do not prove the soundness of their premises; they are merely formal, not substantive arguments, so the "must have" is always going to be a relative, not an absolute, one. — Janus

Yes,that's exactly the point I'm making. Metaphysical arguments cannot say anything meaningful about the soundness of their premises. They may well make valid logical inferences (or deductions) from the connections between the terms they've defined, but they cannot demonstrate even the inductive soundness of the definitions of those terms because the entities they're defining do not have any inter-subjective agreement, we cannot collectively agree on our experience of them to any extent.

You may or may not be aware of Quine's 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism', but this is the point he's making in the second Dogma. Whilst we cannot make a clear an objective dividing line between that which is empirical (science) and that which is metaphysical, we definitely can say that with decreasing empirical basis propositions become more and more vague until they eventually become meaningless.

We can meaningfully discuss gravity because we all agree on our experience of it, we can quite meaningfully discuss conciousness or free will in a limited sense because there is widespread agreement that we at least have such an experience (limited in that we do not all agree on the nature of that experience), but we can have virtually no meaningful discussion about something like universals or tropes because we do not even begin to agree on the nature of the experience that they are attempting to define.

So I don't see metaphysical arguments and systems as fulfilling the role of a search for truth at all, but rather as a search for beauty. — Janus

That's a very reasonable and consistent way to look at it, I'm much inclined that way myself, but that it most definitely not the way metaphysics is actually treated, particularly in lay discussions.

with the problem of consciousness, which is metaphysics, there is a way to become versed to a point where at least the disagreements can be understood. — Moliere

You're begging the question. How do you propose to demonstrate that the disagreements are 'understood'?

LOL! That's just the very, very beginning of the discussion, and people are going to want to know what you mean by a human being conscious. It can mean more than one thing. A little bit more discussion, and you'll find out that people don't always agree on what it means for a human to be conscious.

That's the thing with ordinary language. Everyone can agree when the term is sufficiently vague. But once you start discussing it in any depth, differences emerge, along with difficulties raised by what everyone thought was simple concept on the face of it.

And then lo and behold, you find out some people think that plants are actually conscious (along with rocks and everything else). — Marchesk

And again, you're just talking about the question. Of course the question is more complicated than that, of course people want to know what you mean by 'concious' and different opinions emerge, but that is not the claim that a serious debate in metaphysics is making. The claim that a serious debate metaphysics is making is that there is some means of determining the answer to that question, determining what conciousness actually is, determining which of the differences is actually correct (or even closer to it). It's that assertion that you've failed to provide any justification for.

What possible reason do I have for thinking that an analysis of the sentences used in an argument about those terms will actually yield some information about the way the world actually is?

What possible reason do I have for thinking that an analysis of the sentences used in an argument about those terms will actually yield some information about the way the world actually is? — Pseudonym

Well hopefully one isn't just talking about linguistic analysis when asking questions about the world. Seems like that's what the anti-metaphysical crowd would prefer to do. But when someone like David Chalmers is talking about consciousness, he's not interested in only the words being used, but rather whether subjectivity can be accounted for by an objective view of the world (whether it be physicalism, functionalism, behaviorism, etc).

You're begging the question. How do you propose to demonstrate that the disagreements are 'understood'? — Pseudonym

This is a silly game to play. How could they not be understood once one is well enough versed in the debate?

but we can have virtually no meaningful discussion about something like universals or tropes because we do not even begin to agree on the nature of the experience that they are attempting to define. — Pseudonym

Actually, we can do so by noting that while we perceive individual things, our language is full of universal talk. This is at least partly based on the further perception that some universals have the same property values. This leads to the question of what is it about the world or ourselves which results in creating universal concepts.

The SEP entry spells this out in detail. There's nothing so incredibly esoteric or mystical about the debate that any person of average intelligence sufficiently motivated can't understand.

Some aspects of the various positions and disputes might be technical enough to present difficulties in understanding for non-philosophers, but that would likely be the case for any long standing philosophical discussion.

This is better than the situation in philosophy; vague terms are meaningful, but meaningless ones are not. — Snakes Alive

Any dispute on any topic will require moving beyond vague terms. If I ask whether Thor is more powerful than the Hulk in the Marvel Universe (comics or movies), then this is going to lead to a discussion of who's physically stronger versus who has access to what powers in various incarnations of both characters such that you won't end up with a simple answer.

But when someone like David Chalmers is talking about consciousness, he's not interested in only the words being used, but rather whether subjectivity can be accounted for by an objective view of the world (whether it be physicalism, functionalism, behaviorism, etc). — Marchesk

Firstly, Chalmers himself admits that "in talking about conscious experience, it is notoriously difficult to pin down the subject matter.", but more importantly, you're still talking about the question. Chalmers may well be "interested in ... whether subjectivity can be accounted for by an objective view of the world", but the claim of his (or any other metaphysics of conciousness) is not to demonstrate interest in the subject, but to provide objective (or at least inter-subjective) insights into it. It is not whether he can ask the question that's being disputed, it whether he can answer it. In order to do so, he would first have to define specifically what it is he's investigating and there is no objective answer to that question so the project falls flat before it has even started.

How could they not be understood once one is well enough versed in the debate? — Marchesk

Very easily, I'd say it's self-evident. If a proposition is testable by rational analysis then no two people with equal capacity for rational analysis could arrive at a different conclusion to that test. Yet thousands of people with equal capacity for rational analysis have arrived at different conclusions to that test. It follows then that either rational analysis is not universal, or that those doing the testing have misunderstood each others arguments. How else do you account for differences of opinion on metaphysical matters?

This is at least partly based on the further perception that some universals have the same property values. — Marchesk

Is it? How do you propose to prove that? Maybe it's due to the fact that we find talk of universals to be useful despite knowing that their definition is vague and not at all existent in the world as it actually is. We find the term 'quite' and 'lots' useful too despite the fact that neither refer to a value in the real world which can be identified specifically.

This leads to the question of what is it about the world or ourselves which results in creating universal concepts. — Marchesk

And so it seems we're back to where we started. Yes, it may lead to "the question", but none of this shows any reason to believe we can provide a meaningfulanswer to it.

How else do you account for differences of opinion on metaphysical matters? — Pseudonym

The same way I account of differences of opinions on anything. It doesn't make the disagreements meaningless, the questions that led to the disputes, or the potential answers provided.

And so it seems we're back to where we started. Yes, it may lead to "the question", but none of this shows any reason to believe we can provide a meaningfulanswer to it. — Pseudonym

The answers provided are meaningful, but it's not a settled manner which one, if any, are true.

We can meaningfully discuss gravity because we all agree on our experience of it, — Pseudonym

Oh but we all know that gravity is so much more than our experience of it, from bending spacetime to relativistic frames. And before Newton, there was no concept of gravity, despite our experiences in common of falling things.

Now it's just a matter of time before Quantum Mechanics makes its introduction into a metaphysical dispute.

The same way I account of differences of opinions on anything. — Marchesk

What is that way?

The answers provided are meaningful, — Marchesk

I thought that was the proposition we were debating, you're referencing it as if it were a brute fact. I'm asking to you provide an account of the way in which they are meaningful. In what way does the argument about universals, including any proposed solution, carry meaning?

Oh but we all know that gravity is so much more than our experience of it, from bending spacetime to relativistic frames. And before Newton, there was no concept of gravity, despite our experiences in common of falling things. — Marchesk

Yes, but the point is all these theories have to ultimately account for something which we widely share, or agree on - the experience of objects subject to gravity. All of these theories can be accepted or dismissed on the basis of their ability to account for something we widely agree on.

This is not the case with much of metaphysics where we do not have a phenomenon we widely agree on, the nature of which the theory is attempting to explain. This means that any such metaphysical theory can be refuted either with a flaw in its logic, or with a denial that the phenomenon has the properties ascribed to it, and there's no way of deciding that latter dispute. We widely agree on the properties of the experience of gravity, we do not widely agree on the properties of the experience of consciousness, so any theory to account for those properties is only going to be meaningful to those who agree that those are indeed the properties of the experience, not meaningful sensu lato.

Seems convenient. :D

How about time? You have the A and B theories of time. This is metaphysics. I understand both. They are clear and easy to understand. We can meaningfully disagree on them.

Does the question of time also arise prior to metaphysics?

Have you ever read this book? It's very clear and lucid. Disagreements are spelled out. Reasons are given for why the author thinks this or that position is better or worse.

I've not read the book, but I've read some papers based on it so I'm moderately familiar with the propositions in it, but rather than put the discussion on hold until I've read the whole thing, perhaps you could paraphrase a proposition from it that you think is particularly well reasoned and I'll attempt to use it to explain what I mean (or fail to and have to eat my hat).

Such questions often have no answer, because fictional worlds are ill-defined as well – but even that question is more intelligible than the question of universals.

The dispute over the theories of time doesn't make sense to me, either, no, and I've never heard anyone talk about it without being introduced to it via McTaggart's legacy.

The dispute over the theories of time doesn't make sense to me — Snakes Alive

How is it that the dispute doesn't make sense to you?

So I'm hearing a few different claims from you then. At times you're saying that philosophers don't say anything interesting and at times you're saying that it is nonsensical and at times you're basing this off of not having heard what philosophers say from anyone other than philosophers.

I'm arguing against the claim that what philosophers say, in respect of metaphysics, is nonsense. My strategy is to use examples -- but thus far it seems to me that examples, for you, are either clearly philosophical and clearly nonsense, or clearly not-philosophical and clearly not interesting with respect to whatever it is that philosophers say.

Now, if philosophy is defined as that which is nonsensical of course that would follow just by definition. But it'd be a rather uninteresting theory of philosophy, given what you claim. So how do you sort what counts as philosophy?

Also, are you claiming simply that what philosophers say is uninteresting or not worth your time, or are you claiming that what philosophers say is strictly nonsense (with respect to metaphysics, of course)?

Now, if philosophy is defined as that which is nonsensical of course that would follow just by definition. — Moliere

It's not a matter of definition. We can just look at what philosophy actually does. In fact, the Socratic method literally originated in a series of linguistic confusions. In their leisure some rich Greeks figured out that you could ask, out of context, "What is X?" and tie yourself in knots trying to answer. This was an amusing game, and easily mistakable for inquiry. This technique itself was born out of the influence of the sophists, who made a living doing rhetoric, i.e. teaching wealthy young men how to trip up their opponents by making use of specious fallacies they had discovered, i.e. linguistic tricks.

Well, if we look at what philosophers actually do, then I'm inclined to say they talk, they write, they think, they reason, they ask questions, and they answer questions. I am not inclined to say that the Socratic method originated from a series of linguistic confusions. So clearly "just looking" is not enough.

I'd like to post a briefer answer to this:

There are many reasons to think experience is not primary.

1. We have bodies upon which our experiences depend.

2. Our bodies were born.

3. Human bodies evolved.

4. The universe existed prior to human experience. It's also much larger than our experience.

And so on. — Marchesk

I've been saying that your experience is a life-experience possibility-story, consisting of a complex system of inter-referring abstract implication-facts.

There's no such thing as mutually-inconsistent facts.

So, experience must be self-consistent.

Your experience is an experience of being a physical being in a physical world.

...an experience that, for consistency, would have to include a body. Evidence of previous evolution of that body is consistent with that experience, Not having a body, or evidence of no evolution would be inconsistent with your experience. ...as would evidence that there was no physical universe before you were born.

With your experience of being a physical being in a physical world, your experience of having a body, and of that body having evolved, and of there having been a physical universe before that...All those things are part of a consistence-necessitated physical mechanism consistent with there being you, a physical being in a physical universe.

By the protagonist of a life-experience story, of course a physical world is perceived. Your experience is of being a physical being in a physical world. So, what else would you expect, than to experience a physical world that produced you, and is consistent with you.

That necessity is a truism.

Michael Ossipoff

By the protagonist of a life-experience story, of course a physical world is perceived. Your experience is of being a physical being in a physical world. So, what else would you expect, than to experience a physical world that produced you, and is consistent with you. — Michael Ossipoff

Right, so from that I infer that I'm a physical being. However, the mental is not so easily subsumed under the physical, so maybe I'm not entirely physical.

At any rate, a question does arise as to whether the world is physical, a combination of physical and mental, mental, or something else. This is a metaphysical question, and it's easy enough to see how it came about. It was being debated in one form or another in the ancient philosophical world of several independent cultures.

I agree with this; although I would say some people do take it seriously, in the sense that they are emotionally invested in reality being one imagined way or another, even though those imagined ways are not really clear conceptions of anything substantive. I made a somewhat related point in another thread; — Janus

...such as the thread in which Janus objected that I was disregarding the necessary distinction between "substantive" and "logical". I asked Janus what he meant by "substantive". Janus didn't have an answer, because he didn't know what he meant by "substantive".

So, let me help Janus out, by suggesting a few things that he might mean by "substantive":

1. "Substantive" means "Physical" or "Perceived as physical".

Then the physical world is "substantive" by definition, I don't deny that there's (in some way) a physical world. I merely point out that there's no reason to believe that it's other than a complex system of inter-referring abstract implication-facts.

2, "Substantive" means "More than, or other than, a system of inter-referring abstract implication-facts".

In that case, it isn't that I don't recognize or accept the distinction It's just that I don't agree that anything describable, arguable, or completely discussable in metaphysics is "substantive".

In fact, long before Janus made his "substantive vs logical" objection, I'd been saying the whole of the elements of metaphysics, the whole of what is describable, arguable and completely discussable is insubstantial (...in this 2nd sense.)

And, in fact, contrary to what Janus implies, there is significant disagreement among philosophers, regarding the matter of whether there's anything "substantial" among the elements of metaphysics, the metaphysically describable and arguable things.

Michael Ossipoff

"Substantive" appllies to propositions which refer to, or have implications for, actual experience, which merely logical propositions do not.

I find nothing to disagree with here!

That's a very reasonable and consistent way to look at it, I'm much inclined that way myself, but that it most definitely not the way metaphysics is actually treated, particularly in lay discussions. — Pseudonym

I think that's true; but I would then say that if so, then the discussants do not properly understand what they are trying to do, or they are trying to do something which is not possible.

I’d said:
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By the protagonist of a life-experience story, of course a physical world is perceived. Your experience is of being a physical being in a physical world. So, what else would you expect, than to experience a physical world that produced you, and is consistent with you.

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However, the mental is not so easily subsumed under the physical, so maybe I'm not entirely physical.

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Of course.
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The animal that each of us experiences being, is entirely physical.
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I agree that there’s more to it than that. Of course there is. You know there is.
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Experience is primary.
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Each of us is the protagonist who is complementarily-implied in a life-experience story about our experience.
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That story is for you and about your experience.
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That there are infinitely-many such stories, among the infinity of abstract facts, and inter-referring systems of them, is uncontroversially-inevitable.
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No need to ask why there’s us, why you’re in a life, or why metaphysically there’s something instead of nothing.
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In that experiencer/experienced-world complementarity, the protagonist, the experiencer, is, we’d surely agree, the more fundamental and primary part of that complementarity.
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There’s one of you, and innumerable things in your experienced-world.
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So, there’s metaphysical support for the notion that Consciousness is primary and fundamental, even at the metaphysical level.
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At any rate, a question does arise as to whether the world is physical, a combination of physical and mental, mental, or something else.

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That’s the choice that the academic philosophers offer to us, but I wouldn’t word the possibilities in that way.
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First, it depends on what is meant by “the world”.
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If it refers to this physical universe, then of course it’s undeniably physical. …even if this physical universe is quite insubstantial (in the sense of not being other than the logical system that I’ve described).
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If it refers to the metaphysical world, all that metaphysically is, all that describably, completely discussably arguably and assertably is, then there’s no reason to believe that it or its things are other than the insubstantial-ness that I’ve described.
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If it refers to Reality itself, all that is, in and beyond metaphysics, then little if anything can be said about it, but it most surely isn’t physical.
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Isn’t there a good case for saying that Consciousness, instead of just being part of (even if the main part of) a logical system about an experience of life in a physical universe, is also complementary with that larger collection of all of the (mostly unrelated and not inter-referring) abstract facts, and primary in that complentarity too? (That possible suggestion isn’t part of my metaphysics).
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Someone could say that it’s arbitrary what you call fundamental and primary, but not only our experienced-world, but also all that we know and can describe, discuss, argue and assert, is centered around us. So could we be excused for calling Consciousness fundamental in metaphysics as a whole, and not just in each person’s experience-story and the physical universe that is its setting?
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(That possible suggestion in the two previous paragraphs isn’t part of my metaphysics).
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As I’ve been saying, I make no claim that this physical world or the abstract facts I speak of are real or existent, whatever that would mean. I don’t claim that any of the antecedents of any of the abstract implication-facts that I speak of are true.
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I define “insubstantial” as not consisting of other than the complex system of abstract implication facts that I’ve spoken of. There’s no reason to believe that this physical world isn’t insubstantial.
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If anyone wants to say that this physical world is other than what I’ve described, then they should say exactly what else they’re saying that it is, and what they mean by “real”, “objectively-existent”, “substantive”, etc., if they use such a word.
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I can’t prove that the Materialist’s world, whatever exactly he means by it, doesn’t “exist” (whatever he means by that) in some unspecified way, as an unverifiable and unfalsifiable brute-fact, alongside of, and duplicating the events and relations of, the uncontroversially-inevitable logical-system that I’ve described.
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So I’m not saying that one particular metaphysics is right and all the others are wrong. …I’m saying only that there’s no reason to believe that our physical world is other than what I’ve described.
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I don’t think that metaphysics can be more certain or definite than that.
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There’s no physics experiment that could make that determination.
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But there are definite things that can be uncontroversially-said about metaphysics. …such as things that I’ve been saying.
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And some standards that apply to science apply to metaphysics too. Brute-facts, assumptions, and unverifiable, unfalsifiable propositions are suspect.
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…like those of Materialism.
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Michael Ossipoff

"Substantive" applies to propositions which refer to, or have implications for, actual experience, which merely logical propositions do not. — Janus

The complex system of inter-referring abstract implication-facts that is your life-experience possibility-story is all about your experience..

So, by your definition, it's substantive.

It's about your actual experience. In fact, it is your actual experience.

It is events and things of your physical world, in your experience, as experienced by you. It's that experience.

It goes without saying that that experience story is about your own body, as well as your surroundings as you encounter them and experience them.

"But the physical world seems so physical !"

What else would you expect, of the setting of an experience-story about the experience of being a physical being in a physical world?

As I said, there's no physics experiment that can demonstrate or suggest that your experience is other than the hypothetical experience-story that I've described.

As I always say, I can't prove that this physical world isn't, additionally, something else (whatever else you claim it is) other than the hypothetical system that I've described. ...something else that superflously, as an unverifiable & unfalsifiable brute-fact, duplicates the events and relations of the uncontroversially-inevitable hypothetical system that I describe.

Michael Ossipoff