If there is no hard problem, we should be able to reach scientific or philosophical consensus on those types of questions. — Marchesk
I'm not making it difficult. What I'm asserting IS indirect realism.Sure. But you've made indirect realism difficult by locating all the properties with the perceiver. — Marchesk
The indirect realist agrees that the coffee cup exists independently of me. However, through perception I do not directly engage with this cup; there is a perceptual intermediary that comes between it and me. Ordinarily I see myself via an image in a mirror, or a football match via an image on the TV screen. The indirect realist claim is that all perception is mediated in something like this way. When looking at an everyday object it is not that object that we directly see, but rather, a perceptual intermediary. This intermediary has been given various names, depending on the particular version of indirect realism in question, including "sense datum, " "sensum," "idea," "sensibilium," "percept" and "appearance." We shall use the term "sense datum" and the plural "sense data." Sense data are mental objects that possess the properties that we take the objects in the world to have. They are usually considered to have two rather than three dimensions. For the indirect realist, then, the coffee cup on my desk causes in my mind the presence of a two-dimensional yellow sense datum, and it is this object that I directly perceive. Consequently, I only indirectly perceive the coffee cup, that is, I can be said to perceive it in virtue of the awareness I have of the sense data that it has caused in my mind. These latter entities, then, must be perceived with some kind of inner analog of vision. — Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
...an objective property of perceptions.Minds do perceive shapes, but as far as we can tell, shape does not depend on the perceiver. That's what makes it an objective property. — Marchesk
I didn't ask about location. I asked about shape. Why do minds take the shape of brains when I look at them? The mind can still be located in the head, but why the shape of a brain in the head?Probably because that's the biological center for having minds. — Marchesk
This is all assuming physicalism is everything else that we have to fit consciousness into. Like Schop, I don't know anymore than anyone else does.
But we can make it broader than that. It's fitting the subjective into the objective, on the empirical grounds that the objective is what gives rise to minds that have experiences.
But yeah, if we're giving an account of reality that leaves out imagination, that's a problem. — Marchesk
Think of light as the TV screen. We don't see objects. We see light, which explains the optical illusions of mirages and bent sticks in water. We look at the TV to indirectly get at the football game in another city. We don't see the game, we see the TV, which transmits information via causation. — Harry Hindu
When looking at a distant star, the light takes thousands of years to reach your eye. The star could have exploded yet the light is still traveling across space and interacting with your eyes. When you see the "star" what is it that you are attending in your mind? — Harry Hindu
didn't ask about location. I asked about shape. Why do minds take the shape of brains when I look at them? The mind can still be located in the head, but why the shape of a brain in the head? — Harry Hindu
Why does the mind take a shape in another mind at all? — Harry Hindu
Sometimes I get the impression that what folks mean by "nonphysical(s)" is something like, "We're just not going to bother doing ontology and we're instead going to talk about things in 'functional' terms per common language." — Terrapin Station
"properties have to be properties of something. Do you agree with that?" — Terrapin Station
t would have to be some sort of substance, object, etc., no? Even if you're positing nonphysical objects, substances--whatever that would be. — Terrapin Station
I mention property dualism because it doesn't say there is a nonphysical substance mental states belong to. Rather, brain states have non-physical properties. — Marchesk
So you're not positing nonphysical properties of some nonphysical substance, but nonphysical properties of physical substance? (Remember that I'm asking you about this in terms of ontology) — Terrapin Station
If there is no hard problem, we should be able to reach scientific or philosophical consensus on those types of questions. — Marchesk
Right, dualism is just one possible answer to the hard problem. — Marchesk
I see your argument as not advancing anything other than what we know. People experience quale, we can converse about it. — schopenhauer1
omething that scientists can work with. That is, differentiating sentient creatures from non-sentient creatures (which we can point to) and providing testable hypotheses for explaining those differences. — Andrew M
Why do minds take the shapes of brains when I look at them? — Harry Hindu
Probably because that's the biological center for having minds. — Marchesk
e live in an inter-subjective world such that the mental lives of others are beyond doubt, — Janus
I think starting from the presumption of radical private-ness and separation is one of the less fruitful ways, since it's logic leads straight to epistemological solipsism. — Janus
Think of light as the TV screen. We don't see objects. We see light, which explains the optical illusions of mirages and bent sticks in water. We look at the TV to indirectly get at the football game in another city. We don't see the game, we see the TV, which transmits information via causation. — Harry Hindu
Isn't that what I said, just using different words?That doesn't sound right. We see the game via the TV. Otherwise, how would you be able to see what goes on? The tv is a means by which we can remotely watch a game. Even in person, we're still seeing the action via light. That's how vision works. — Marchesk
So what are you saying - that you're watching a "home video" of the star as it was when it was a "adolescent"?The star as it was thousands of years ago. — Marchesk
But what is being questioned are the existence and nature of "physical" objects, which a brain would qualify as being. I don't really see the need to bring in the incoherent "physical" vs. "non-physical" distinction. Let's just say that there are objects. What is being questioned is whether or not these objects are of the mind only (solipsism), of the world only (naive realism), or something else, like a (causal) relationship between the two - mind and world?Why do minds take the shapes of brains when I look at them? — Harry Hindu
Probably because that's the biological center for having minds.
— Marchesk
I don't get this. We don't look at minds at all. We attribute the functions that we call mental to the perceptible physical object we call the brain. Of course, the CNS and in fact the living body with its essential to life functions are necessary for the occurrence of mental phenomena, so it's not merely the brain. — Janus
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