To be an object, a state which may be experienced, can only entail being more than an object, else existence (thing-in-itself) is reduced to our experience (our representation of a thing). — TheWillowOfDarkness

I don't see the logic here at all. Why does being an object entail being more than an object? Why must a thing be more than what it is?

So any unknown object must also be an unknown subject-- any unknown thing, like anything, is more than any representation of it. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Since a subject is an article apprehended to be discussed or otherwise dealt with, it is overtly contradictory to speak of an unknown subject. That's nonsense.

The point is that any state must be an object AND a subject. Fictional entities aren't an issue because they don't exist. They.aren't a state of the world. (unless we are talking within the context of their fictional world, in which case they are both subject and object). — TheWillowOfDarkness

I don't see how you can believe this. A fictional thing is clearly a subject, that is why we can talk about unicorns and things like that, they are subjects. By what principle do you assert that such subjects are also objects? That they are not objects is the reason why we say that they are fictional.

I'm still trying to understand what it could possibly mean to be a "non-reductive materialist". if the mind is not reducible to material, then "states of the world" surely are not either. So states of the world are not material (otherwise they would be reducible to the material) yet states of the world are obviously not merely thoughts about states of the world either. It seems to me, then, that the non-reductive materialist cannot really be a materialist in any ordinary, or even in any coherent, sense at all.

As to whether the mind is a mystery; isn't it a mystery if we don't, or especially if we cannot, understand what it is? And isn't the world itself a mystery in this sense? As to "magical woo": isn't that just a meaningless fashionable derogatory catchcry? Or else explain to me what exactly you think it is.

I'm saying all objects are subjects. — TheWillowOfDarkness

What does your ping-pong ball say to that?

@Tom - I am more than familiar with the theory of evolution, but I don't accept it is the all-powerful explanatory theory you make it out to be. It is primarily a biological theory about the origination of species, and so what it says about the nature of mind must always view the question through a biological perspective. And when that is applied to philosophy of mind, the result is 'biological reductionism', of which Daniel Dennett is a world-famous exponent.

For sure, I don't know. I haven't heard it say anything to me, but then I may not know everything about the ping pong ball. It might be screaming out to me in some language I do not understand. Perhaps part of sound of the paddle hitting the ball is a crying for me to stop.

But that sort of a little beside my point. A subject is defined by being more than experience of it. It's not a question of consciousness, sapience, sentience or communication. Anything that's more than an experience of it is a subject, concious or not.

That's funny, because the meaning of 'subject' that is alternative to "aware experiencer" or "conscious agent" is something along the lines of "area of discourse"; and under this definition the subject is precisely what we can talk about.

It might be screaming out to me in some language I do not understand. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I know just how it feels. :’(

:D X-) >:)

Of course, come to think about it, conversely Willow knows just how it feels as well.

It more or less the opposite. A subject is what is NOT discourse. That which is more than any experience. Existence (thing-in-itself) which is never any representation (experiences).

Talking about it isn't a problem. In talking about the what's more than experience, we aren't claiming our discourse as the thing-in-itself. Subjects are still so regardless of whether we talk about them or they speak to us.

It sounds to me like you are claiming 'noumenon' and 'subject' are synonymous. I can actually see some logic to this idea, but I doubt it is the logic you would acknowledge. Still, this seems to be a very eccentric use of 'subject'.

If you make up your own unconventional meanings of terms, then you have the advantage that you can always disagree with everyone no matter what they say, and with the advantage that they will never be able to work out exactly why you disagree; a fact which renders your position inviolable.

Depends, there's a whole school of thought which uses the "noumenon" as an excuse to say we don't reallu know anything, as if our experiences not being the thing-in-itself meant we don't really know the thing. To this, I would object in the strongest possible terms. It's substance dualism or "magical woo (in a wider sense, I take this to mean: "presence, force, state or action outside the world" )," where our experiences are considered of a seperate realm and having nothing to do with what exists.

As a distinction between existence and representation though, it works perfectly. What is,at stake is not knowledge, but the role of knowledge in existence..

The distinction means representation or ideas cannot form existence. No state can be dependent on experience because that amounts to reducing an object to its representation.

No matter how accurate a representation (e.g. "Willow is a poster on ThePhilosophyForum"), it's not enough to define existence. Experiences cannot give existence. No matter what is know, it takes more than that idea to form existence.

Recognising subjects is sort of the ultimate refutution of idealism. Idealism is a reductionism: anything I might encounter (supposedly) given by my representation. Without that experience, the state (supposedly) cannot be.

To a lot of philosophy, recognising the subject is strange indeed, for it's constituted by denying the subject-- idealists say states are given by representation, substance dualist dismiss that subjects exist, etc., etc.

For anyone other than the materialist, the subject is sort of the enemy. If the rock (as opposed to "the world" ) in front of me is more than my representation, I cannot claim it depends on my representation or knowledge. For anyone who thinks discourse is the be all and end all of existence, the subject cannot be part of the world. It must be put beyond the world, either in some disconnected transcendent realm or by not having a presence at all.

You seem to want to accuse me of making up new terms which have no bearing on arguments of the past. I am not. My point always been focused on the errors of substance dualism. You appear to saying I'm using terms differently, so the positions, such as substance dualism or idealism, cannot be mistaken. As if because what I'm saying isn't really "materialist," it doesn't show that positions opposed to materialism are incoherent.

To this I say you are not paying attention to what I have argued. My initial was a statement directly opposing substance dualism: minds are states of the world, not something of another realm. You objected this was only an "obvious truism." How can this be so when a major, quite possibly the major if we go by Western philosophical canon, metaphysical postion on mind and body explicitly denies minds are part of the world?

Regardless of whether we call this postion "non-reductuve materialism" or not, it's still calling out the error of substance dualism. It's still identifying that the materialists (regardless of any errors they make) are correct to object to substance dualism putting minds outside the world.

The fact is, though, that we really do only know things, know what things are, in the context of them being experienced by us. Put another way, we only know things in their perceptual relations with us, and as they are conceptually modeled. What things are in themselves, or even whether they are anything in themselves or whether the idea of them being anything just in themselves is even coherent, we cannot know.

"thing in itself" is just a literal translation of what came to be referred to as "essences", the idea, simply being repeating Socrates in saying that we don't have access to the forms... well, you know... you don't.

And for fun, the word "essence" comes from "essentia" which used to refer to non-abstract or monetary properties.

I thought it was simple 'esse', the Latin 'to be', therefore 'essence' being 'what a thing truly is'. But SEP says:

‘Essence’ is the standard English translation of Aristotle’s curious phrase to ti ên einai, literally “the what it was to be” for a thing. This phrase so boggled his Roman translators that they coined the word essentia to render the entire phrase, and it is from this Latin word that ours derives. Aristotle also sometimes uses the shorter phrase to ti esti, literally “the what it is,” for approximately the same idea.)

I can't help but notice the similarity between the first phrase 'what it was to be', and the phrase associated with the topic of qualia, namely, '"what it is like to be" something'.

You're right, I remembered that wrong, I thought I read it on the wikitionary but doesn't seem to be there, and looking into the etymology it originally meant what one would think it would mean, coming from the process of distillation, it meant "the basic ingredients which give something its particular character". I must have membered that wrong.

I agree with you and John and Wayfarer because for me those things which are considered in some way external to the world, mind, consciousness and experience, are of the world, part of the world. I know that john says the noumenon is unknownable(at this point for us), but for me he is saying that it is unknowable in abstraction, as a subjective experience. But this does not mean that it is not known through the body as the world. So we both do and don't know the noumenon. Also Wayfarer says the world expresses the mind, so there isn't material absent mind. But this does not mean that there is no noumenon, or thing in itself in the world that we know through our bodies. We all agree and talk about the same thing from different perspectives.

All is in the world, we just don't know what the world is intellectually in abstract subjective terms, whilst we do know it and know there is nothing external to it through our bodies and living in the world.

I'm still trying to understand what it could possibly mean to be a "non-reductive materialist". — John

It's quite simple - theories at the appropriate level of emergence cannot be reduced. e.g. the theory of evolution cannot be reduced to quantum field theory.

if the mind is not reducible to material, then "states of the world" surely are not either. — John

It means that the "states of the world" cannot be explained in purely physical terms. In the end, any complete astrophysical theory will have to take account of intelligent life in proximity to stars, and what they choose to do.

Everything obeys the laws of physics.

A word people seem to be avoiding here is 'supervenience'. Current Academe mostly argues that the mental supervenes on the physical. So everything is physical underneath, as it were, but mental events have their own language and descriptions. That's some sort of starting-point for physicalists. Then - if I may be so bold as to try and summarise - the issues are

(a) Is this even a reasonable starting point? 'Everything obeys the laws of physics', for instance, won't do: is that the current laws, liable to be overturned in future, or the future imagined perfect ones? But if it's the future ones, mightn't they actually include what's currently called 'mental' within their purview? So should we just define 'physical' as 'non-mental'? There are various formulations to try and summarise what 'physical' would mean, and to counter the argument that you just end up in Galen Strawson's phrase with 'physicSalism'.

(b) If it is a reasonable starting point, what's the phrase 'the mental' doing? What are beliefs? What is phenomenological experience? What meaning do first person accounts have? Is all our mental stuff just epiphenomenal? Or does it occupy a discrete realm (as Davidson's anomalous monism argues)? Or is every little thing mental, hence panpsychism, which might leave a physical explanation intact? Or is every little thing protopanpsychic, a more attractive version to a naturalistic explanation, since it would say, all stuff has the potential to be experiential, and at some point in evolution various biochemical events occurred to trigger 'consciousness' or whatever it is?

Pardon me, I'm actually immersed in a module about this stuff at the mo'. See, and I managed to describe it without using that awkward beginning with qu-....

'Everything obeys the laws of physics', for instance, won't do: is that the current laws, liable to be overturned in future, or the future imagined perfect ones? — mcdoodle

Over the last 200 years, the understanding of the laws of physics has reached a point where we know certain principles that all future laws will respect: unitarity, conservation laws, computational universality, Lorentz invariance ...

When quantum mechanics and general relativity are unified, do you really think that will render the statement "everything obeys the laws of physics" false?

But if it's the future ones, mightn't they actually include what's currently called 'mental' within their purview? — mcdoodle

It's past laws that did that. All sorts of inexplicable phenomena were "explained" by positing some strange essence or force - phlogiston, vital forces, etc. Of course, as these were investigated, they were found to be fictions, yet flammable substances still burn and life goes on.

Consciousness is very much a mystery, but pretending to solve it by declaring that matter possesses some unyet discovered physics that only manifests itself in the human brain, seems strikingly unscientific.

If it is a reasonable starting point, what's the phrase 'the mental' doing? What are beliefs? What is phenomenological experience? What meaning do first person accounts have? Is all our mental stuff just epiphenomenal? — mcdoodle

These things are software feature.

and I managed to describe it without using that awkward beginning with qu-.... — mcdoodle

The idea that animals have qualia, is an improvement on the idea that everything does. It is still unscientific and wrong.

What would you think it would happen to the pehonomenal experience, to the self and/or to the consciousness when there is no "awareness of consciousness"? Would it stop its existence? — Babbeus

Yes. It's not some single object that moves around. Consciousness, sense of self, etc. only obtain when particular brain states obtain. That it only obtains sometimes is no different than saying that something like the need to urinate only obtains sometimes. It obtains when your body is in a particular state, and not otherwise. You don't need to posit that you ALWAYS have a need to urinate, just sometimes it's hidden in the background, do you?

Or to take it out of the realm of the body, it would be like needing to say that an arroyo or wash is always flowing with water, just sometimes the water is hidden in some other metaphysical state or something like that.

Subjectivity is a domain in the realm of objectivity. — jkop

I'd have no idea how you'd be defining the two terms in that case.

When we say that we saw Alice walking across the street, we don't mean that we had a subjective experience of seeing Alice. We mean that Alice was really walking across the street. — Andrew M

You should be saying that you had a subjective experience of seeing Alice--that's what seeing Alice is, after all, but of course you're also saying that you trust your subjective experience to be an accurate perception of something objective--Alice crossing the street. Alice crossing the street isn't identical to having the experience of seeing Alice cross the street of course.

OK, but when you say " mind is an abstraction over matter." it makes it look as though you are asserting that matter is more than a mere abstraction but that mind is not. If mind is not a mere abstraction, and it is not reducible to matter, then that seems to leave the question as to what it is unanswered. — John

They are both abstractions and they are both real. But there is a dependency and a direction of dependency. Mind depends on matter, just as universities depend on buildings. But mind is neither reducible to matter nor something immaterial in addition to matter.

That's my account of the logical landscape here. As you note, that leaves open the question of what mind and matter is.

You should be saying that you had a subjective experience of seeing Alice--that's what seeing Alice is, after all, but of course you're also saying that you trust your subjective experience to be an accurate perception of something objective--Alice crossing the street. Alice crossing the street isn't identical to having the experience of seeing Alice cross the street of course. — Terrapin Station

By your definition, a mindless facial-recognition-equipped robot would have the "experience" of "seeing" Alice.

This is of course nonsense. The sequence of events can be explained, and even predicted, with a simple theory of how a computer works with certain software running. To impute any subjectivity to the robot is just superstitious irrationality.

But mind is neither reducible to matter nor something immaterial in addition to the matter. — Andrew M

Bravo!

All sorts of inexplicable phenomena were "explained" by positing some strange essence or force - phlogiston, vital forces, etc. — Tom

Whereas, now it's dark matter and dark energy.

Why do you think that Dennett has latched onto that phrase 'moist robots' to describe humans, then? — Wayfarer

Because he doesn't preclude robots being conscious. Searle similarly says, "'Could a machine think?' The answer is, obviously, yes. We are precisely such machines." (Minds, Brains and Programs)

But are humans merely machines or merely animals? Is it the vital spark of immaterial phenomena that accounts for the difference? Or is a different logical conception of the machine required that doesn't, itself, reduce to the machine?

Mind depends on matter, just as universities depend on buildings. But mind is neither reducible to matter nor something immaterial in addition to matter. — AndrewM

But mind can also act on or have causal influences over matter, in fact, it does this all the time. For instance, in the case of brain injury, the mind is able to re-route its activities so as to repurpose parts of the brain to fulfil its needs. The subjects of 'mind-body medicine', psycho-somatic illnesses, the placebo effect, and neuroplasticity are evidence for such abilities. Whereas if mind was purely a consequence or result of cellular interactions, these couldn't be accounted for, as all of the causation could only act from the physical to the mental.

Humans are 'rational animals', i.e. able to grasp through abstract thought, language, intuition and imagination, things which animals cannot. In my view, machines are not sentient, being simply assemblies of switches. They can emulate some activities of intelligence, but they are not beings. If we were to create a truly sentient machine, then we would have to endow it with rights, as it would no longer be a machine, but a being (although this distinction is invisible to the likes of Dennett, it is concealed by the 'blind spot' referred to earlier.)

Humans are not 'machines' according to the definition of that word. Such sentiments are simply the lingering influence of yesteryear's mechanist philosophies.

Actually, it is worth repeating the quotation I provided a couple of days back on the matter of whether machines could be intelligent, from Rene Descartes

If there were such machines with the organs and shape of a monkey or of some other non-rational animal, we would have no way of discovering that they are not the same as these animals. But if there were machines that resembled our bodies and if they imitated our actions as much as is morally possible, we would always have two very certain means for recognizing that, none the less, they are not genuinely human. The first is that they would never be able to use speech, or other signs composed by themselves, as we do to express our thoughts to others. For one could easily conceive of a machine that is made in such a way that it utters words, and even that it would utter some words in response to physical actions that cause a change in its organs—for example, if someone touched it in a particular place, it would ask what one wishes to say to it, or if it were touched somewhere else, it would cry out that it was being hurt, and so on. But it could not arrange words in different ways to reply to the meaning of everything that is said in its presence, as even the most unintelligent human beings can do. The second means is that, even if they did many things as well as or, possibly, better than anyone of us, they would infallibly fail in others. Thus one would discover that they did not act on the basis of knowledge, but merely as a result of the disposition of their organs. For whereas reason is a universal instrument that can be used in all kinds of situations, these organs need a specific disposition for every particular action.

— René Descartes
Discourse on Method and Related Writings (1637), trans. Desmond M. Clarke, Penguin

But that's a question which doesn't make sense. To ask whether we know supposes there is something in representation to understand about the thing-in-itself. As if we could have something experience which gave us details.

Since the thing-in-itself doesn't have any detail in representation, there is no quality or detail to ascribe or describe. Any such detail would be our representation, and so not knowledge of the thing-in-itself at all. There no other content to it. The thing-in-itself can only be the thing-in-itself, else we are reducing it to some representation.

From this, we know anything(thing-in-itself) can only be itself. We know that anything being more than itself is incoherent. To say we "cannot know whether there is anything more than the thing-in-itself" is to ignore what we know in the distinction between representation and the thing-in-itself.