I understand all that.

I prefer my logical essences, however, reside in intuition, given from experience, which is given from sense data. That way, I don’t have to re-learn a thing each instance of is presence, and, thereafter I can remember what a thing is a priori, without having it being presented to me at all. And if a new thing is presented to me, all my logical essences, or, which is the same thing, my intuitions, won’t tell me what that new thing is anyway, but only what it isn’t. And if logical essences are retained in sense data alone, I still won’t know what it is, because I have no extant experience of it, hence no resident intuition logically belonging to it and to which it would relate.

“...Understanding cannot intuite, and the sensuous faculty cannot think...”

So first, hallucinations and illusions are real hallucinations and illusions. (Where we're not using "real" in the traditional manner to refer to something objective or that exists extramentally.) But we can know that there are no real pink elephants in someone's apartment when they're hallucinating a pink elephant in their apartment, because other people can see that there are no pink elephants, we can tell this via instruments, as well, and we know a lot about how matter behaves and can behave, what's required for there to be an elephant in an apartment, and we also know a lot about how brains work, including how they work on LSD (if that should be the case in this instance), etc. — Terrapin Station

The problem with this characterization of hallucination is that for instance until a few decades ago we could also say the following:

We can know that there are no real rogue waves on the ocean when people are hallucinating a rogue wave on the ocean, because other people can see that there are no rogue waves, we can tell this via instruments, as well, and we know a lot about how waves behave and can behave, what's required for there to be a big wave on the ocean, and we also know a lot about how brains work.

What's the fundamental difference between the two examples? In the two cases, a few people claim something while the majority disagrees with them, we don't have instrument records that can corroborate what the minority claims, and we have well-tested models that explain how what the minority claims is impossible.

And yet, over 150 years later, measurements corroborated what the minority claimed, and then we had to admit that our models were wrong. So how can we ever decisively conclude what is hallucination and what isn't?

Also, you're basically defining "real" as something that the majority reports seeing, but then that means that if the majority was blind then everything we see with our eyes would be called a hallucination, and then the blind majority would come up with some model explaining how the minority has some real physical disorder that leads them to have these hallucinations.

And so I see these characterizations of 'hallucination' and 'real' as very problematic, it boils down to "X is a hallucination and not real because the majority agrees that it's not real". What's real is defined through consensus, and we don't know whether something labeled as hallucination might not be labeled real some time later, or the other way around. For instance, maybe the idea that "everything we experience reduces to brain states" will end up being seen as a delusion by the majority.

And all of this is one of the observations that lead me to say that 'reality' is defined and constructed by people to a great extent, or rather by minds.

So how can we ever decisively conclude what is hallucination and what isn't? — leo

"A hallucination, in the broadest sense of the word, is a perception in the absence of a stimulus. In a stricter sense, hallucinations are defined as perceptions in a conscious and awake state in the absence of external stimuli which have qualities of real perception, in that they are vivid, substantial, and located in external objective space. The latter definition distinguishes hallucinations from the related phenomena of dreaming, which does not involve wakefulness; illusion, which involves distorted or misinterpreted real perception; imagery, which does not mimic real perception and is under voluntary control; and pseudohallucination, which does not mimic real perception, but is not under voluntary control."

Leo P. W. Chiu (1989). "Differential Diagnosis and Management of Hallucinations" (PDF). Journal of the Hong Kong Medical Association 41 (3): 292–7.

Perception is one instance of an interaction between body and mind. It is the mental effect of sensation (stimulation-response). Stimulation is the reception and transduction of exogenous and/or endogenous stimuli (transmitted mass-energy). Response is the propagation of action potentials in excitable cells.

Expanding on Chiu's definition, a hallucination is a conscious perception having qualities of environment or corporeal state, but no corresponding (exogenous and/or endogenous) stimulus.

A hallucination is real (actual) for the person experiencing it (i.e., a subjective, not objective or intersubjective, experience).

It's not determined by minds, but by what the world is like. We couldn't just decide to assert that P, where P would then be the case.

No one is saying that we can't be wrong. When we're wrong, we change what we're asserting.

If things we're determined by minds, by what we're asserting, then we couldn't discover that we're wrong.

This merely hides the fundamental issue and does not address it in any way. If most people were blind, reports of visual perceptions wouldn't be linked to external stimuli, because most people wouldn't have an explanation for these perceptions based on what they perceive themselves, and so your visual perceptions would be deemed to be hallucinations.

Or some decades ago you would have said a rogue wave is a hallucination, that is "a perception which has no environmental stimulus", or maybe an illusion, "which involves distorted or misinterpreted real perception", because most people didn't believe that rogue waves were things that existed out there, as in they didn't think they would perceive them themselves, and so if they can't perceive it and it doesn't fit into their theoretical models then they conclude it doesn't exist out there in the environment, it isn't external, it is internal.

It's consensus and theoretical models that determine what's hallucination and what isn't. Blind people wouldn't be right to dismiss reports of visual experiences as hallucinations, even if they didn't have these experiences themselves. They could come up with their own model of the world, their own theories, and in them visual experiences would be classified as perceptions in the absence of external stimuli, as hallucinations. In their world, visual experiences would be hallucinations. In our world, they aren't, but we treat some other things as hallucinations, even though in the world of some other people they may not be.

What it boils down to is that when the consensus doesn't perceive something and some other people claim to perceive it, the consensus classifies it as perception in the absence of stimulus, which itself boils down to: "perception that the consensus doesn't have". What is classified as external stimuli is basically perceptions that the consensus has or that it defines as originating from external stimuli. If your perception isn't one that the consensus has, or if it hasn't been defined as originating from an external stimulus, then the consensus says you're hallucinating. It's not more profound than that. If the consensus changes, what is classified as hallucination changes as well.

I think we should do away with the concept of hallucination. To classify an experience as hallucination is basically to dismiss it as irrelevant. Well, the experience of rogue waves wasn't irrelevant to the people who encountered them. Many people who are said to be hallucinating might have experiences that are very relevant to them and possibly to other people as well. Classifying experiences as hallucinations is blinding ourselves and remaining within our own bubble, not opening ourselves to what others experience.

If things we're determined by minds, by what we're asserting, then we couldn't discover that we're wrong. — Terrapin Station

We could change what we are asserting and interpret it as discovering that we were wrong.

It's not determined by minds, but by what the world is like. We couldn't just decide to assert that P, where P would then be the case. — Terrapin Station

If two people are at about the same spatiotemporal location, and they have different perceptions, you're saying they see what the world is like from their reference point, but then because they disagree the first one says he's seeing reality while the other is hallucinating. But the second one can equally say that about the first. So why is a distinction needed between reality and hallucination, why can't we just say that they're seeing the world from their reference point? It seems hallucination only serves as a tool used by the social consensus to dismiss perceptions that some other people have, and to not have to take them into account into their model of the world.

It's consensus and theoretical models that determine what's hallucination and what isn't. — leo

Actually, it's fact which makes that determination.
Believing otherwise is delusion.

We could change what we are asserting and interpret it as discovering that we were wrong. — leo

We don't just do that arbitrarily. We do it because we observe the world to be different than how longwe thought it was.

Re that other comment, again, part of what the world is like is physical "laws." You seem to be misinterpreting my views as saying that no on can be wrong re their perceptions relative to what they believe those perceptions peg ontologically. That's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is that we can be right re our perceptions relative to what we believe those perceptions peg ontologically. And that fact is the only way that we can say that any perception doesn't get the world right in the first place.

Actually, it's fact which makes that determination. — Galuchat

And how is 'fact' determined?

You seem to have ignored everything else I've said.

So we don't agree on what concepts are or how they work. — Terrapin Station

If you say so.

My concept <apple> is not a thing to be constructed, it is just me thinking of apples. I do not see how a concept can apply to all apples if the next apple I encounter does not have the objective capacity to evoke the concept <apple>. That capacity is its intelligibility as an apple.

Also, I haven't the faintest what "find them latent in my sensory representation" or "actualize prior intelligibility" would refer to. To me that just sounds like words randomly strung together. — Terrapin Station

As I have said before, we can sense without awareness, responding to sensory inputs automatically while "lost in thought". Obviously, automatic response requires the reception and processing of adequate information for us to take appropriate action (e.g. staying in our lane while driving and not hitting anything). So specific information is present in sensation, but if we are thinking of something else, we do not actualize its capacity to be known, because we are not attending to it. That is present, but unactualized, intelligibility. Content that can be the object of awareness is latent in sense data prior to our thinking it.

If that does not make sense to you, please ask for a specific clarification.

Re "no basis for applying the concept in a consequent instance"--you construct the concept, and you have a memory. — Terrapin Station

Your theory provides no connection between concepts and things we may encounter. Instead, you are suggesting an entirely imagined world in which the subject can only know itself. An imagined/constructed world of this sort has no capacity for surprise, and so does not reflect the lived world -- which constantly surprises us. So, it is phenomenologically inadequate. Only a world that is intelligible before it is actually known can surprise us.

Now, you might say that I partially construct the concept, but then how do I come to the other part? — Dfpolis

"The other part"? I have no idea what that's referring to. — Terrapin Station

OK, you are not asserting partial construction. So, for you, we imagine everything but ourselves, and given that you have questioned the "I" in "I perceive," perhaps we even imagine ourselves. Of course, that is an ontological absurdity, as to imagine is an act and whatever acts exists. Further, it has an essence which enables it to imagine.

we could start in a scenario where there either are or are not other people (using language) in the environment, — Terrapin Station

No, we can't -- because on your theory we cannot know that there are infants, other people or languages.

Let's say that you already have a lot of concepts on hand--like beetles and wings and eyes and so on — Terrapin Station

Where would these concepts come from? Creatio ex nihilo?

You discover an odd individual insect — Terrapin Station

How can you tell it is an insect if it has no properties that can inform you it is -- no intelligibility? On my view the fact that it has an exoskeleton, six legs, etc. give it the objective power to evoke the concept <insect>. On your view, it has no such capacity.

You look for other single-winged, eye-goop-shooting beetles in the area — Terrapin Station

How can you know that they are single-winged, eye-goop-shooting beetles if they have no objective capacity (intelligibility) to evoke <single-winged>, <eye-goop-shooting> or <beetle>?

per your concept, you decide to call any beetle with more or less one wing, that flies, and that shoots colored goop out of its eyes a cmg. — Terrapin Station

Ah ha! Perhaps your issue is that you think I am some sort of essentialist -- maybe a neoplatonist. I am not. I am not saying that the intelligibility of the objects we encounter fullypredetermine our concepts. They do not. Different people can have different, but equally adequate, conceptual spaces. I might have a concept that extends over set A, and another that extends over set B. You might have one that extends over the union of A and B, their Intersection, or perhaps A minus the intersection of A and B. All of these concepts, different as they are, can have an adequate basis in reality -- an underlying intelligibility.

The reason for this is that concepts are not determined by intelligibility alone, but by the intelligibility we choose to fix upon. If I am interested in As that are not Bs, I will have a concept extending over As less the intersection of A and B, even if I don't name it.

My view is not nominalism because I see concepts not merely as the result of arbitrary choices, not mere constructs, but also as informed by objective features of what is conceptualized. If concepts are me thinking of things, what I think is determined jointly by what interests me and by what I find in reality in pursuing those interests -- by the objects I encounter and by what I choose to fix upon in encountering them. Thus, different people can have different, but equally respectable, conceptual spaces.

If you say so.

My concept <apple> is not a thing to be constructed, — Dfpolis

Right, so I say so, because concepts ARE something that you construct personally. If you don't agree with this, then we disagree on what concepts are and how they work. I already explained how consequent applications of a concept work.

As I have said before, we can sense without awareness, — Dfpolis

The examples you're using for this are not examples where I'd say that you're sensing without awareness. It's rather that there are different "levels" or "degrees" of awareness. Awareness isn't simply off or on, full or nothing. There's a continuum. Is it possible to sense without awareness? Maybe, but such as the driving examples wouldn't work for that.

So specific information is present in sensation — Dfpolis

I'm not a fan of the word "information" in discussions like this. I'd need to clarify the definition you're using.

I hate cutting this off, but I can't stand ever-lengthening posts in reply. My goal is to settle things and move on so that we don't have to talk about them any longer. Ever-lengthening posts don't seem to do that. Let's keep things short. Your last post was longer than the previous, then if I respond to everything in it, the next post will be even longer, etc.

Let's do one point at a time.

Last paragraph.....well spoken. — Mww

Thank you.

For socially redeeming value, which is more anthropology or empirical psychology than speculative metaphysics proper, one needs examine the second and third critiques. — Mww

I sympathize with many of Kant's objectives. I just disagree on his mode of execution.

We don't just do that arbitrarily. We do it because we observe the world to be different than how we thought it was. — Terrapin Station

Yes, but how does that contradict the idea that "things are determined by minds"? Other minds could influence the world we observe in a way different than we thought.

Re that other comment, again, part of what the world is like is physical "laws." You seem to be misinterpreting my views as saying that no on can be wrong re their perceptions relative to what they believe those perceptions peg ontologically. That's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is that we can be right re our perceptions relative to what we believe those perceptions peg ontologically. And that fact is the only way that we can say that any perception doesn't get the world right in the first place. — Terrapin Station

But these physical "laws" are determined through social consensus from what the consensus observes, people who have different perceptions could disagree that these laws have universal validity. If the consensus defines hallucination in reference to physical laws, it still boils down to the consensus defining hallucination in reference to what the consensus perceives.

And then when we're saying that such and such experience is a hallucination, all we're saying is that in the model of the world that the consensus uses, such an experience is labeled as hallucination, whereas it could be that in some other model that some other people use, such an experience is not a hallucination, and that in itself doesn't make the first model fundamentally more correct than the second one, would you agree with that?

And then would you agree that it's possible to have a coherent view of the world in which there is no such thing as a hallucination? But rather that people have different experiences, and sometimes people share similar experiences, and sometimes they don't, and sometimes people can come to perceive things they didn't think they would perceive and that others had reported perceiving without being believed.

If you can't observe the world, how would you observe what other people say to know what the consensus is?

For me, phenomenally, sometimes there's just a tree. There's no subject. — Terrapin Station

There's you isn't there?

Aristotelian-Thomistic moderate realist — Dfpolis

Substance dualism included? — jorndoe

I follow Aristotle and Aquinas in rejecting substance dualism. We define "substance" (ousia) as "this something" (tode ti) -- in other words, we see primary realities as ostensible unities. The mental distinction between physical and mental acts does not make humans two things. Rather, we are unities that can act both physically and intentionally.

As we are not two things, there aren't two things to interact. Instead, intentional commitments are law-like realities that guide physical realizations. As the laws of physics determine purely mechanical motions, so they and our commitments determine human motions.

There's you isn't there? — bert1

On the occasions in question, no. Not phenomenally.

Appearances are what things are really like from some reference point, and there's always some reference point. — Terrapin Station

So is there a reference point when there is just a tree?

The examples you're using for this are not examples where I'd say that you're sensing without awareness. It's rather that there are different "levels" or "degrees" of awareness. Awareness isn't simply off or on, full or nothing. There's a continuum. Is it possible to sense without awareness? Maybe, but such as the driving examples wouldn't work for that. — Terrapin Station

This merely shows that we are defining "awareness" in different ways. What I am taking about is knowing data as opposed to having and/or processing data. Either we know it, or we don't. There is no middle ground.

I'm not a fan of the word "information" in discussions like this. I'd need to clarify the definition you're using. — Terrapin Station

Information is the reduction of possiblity. If we do not know it, it reduces physical possiblity. If we know it, it also reduces what is logically possible.

Let's do one point at a time. — Terrapin Station

Fine. Look at the section beginning with "Ah ha!" and see if that does not resolve our differences.

Again, there's a difference between what's present for one phenomenally and what's really the case ontologically.

Of course there's a reference point if there always is.

Keep in mind that I am NOT necessarily referring to persons, perceptions etc. by "reference point." I'm referring to spatio-temporal locations.

The reference point would be whatever your spatio-temporal location is. That doesn't imply that there's a "you" in the equation in terms of what's phenomenally occurring.

What I am taking about is knowing data as opposed to having and/or processing data. — Dfpolis

You'd have to make the difference clear.

Information is the reduction of possiblity. — Dfpolis

? That's just introducing more confusion. Now we'd need to get into the ontology of possibility, too.

Fine. Look at the section beginning with "Ah ha!" and see if that does not resolve our differences. — Dfpolis

Okay, I'll go back there. (although it might take me a few hours--I've got to leave in a few minutes)

If you can't observe the world, how would you observe what other people say to know what the consensus is? — Terrapin Station

I would say I observe a world that depends on my mind and on other minds, I'm not saying that what I observe is totally disconnected from other minds.

Can you answer my questions?

Reading over that section, it's a major hurdle for me that you seem to be talking about "intelligibililty" (I'm not even a fan of that word, really, because it seems to be used for a wide number of different things in philosophy) as if it's something that occurs objectively. There's no way I'd agree with that.

I would say I observe a world that depends on my mind and on other minds, I'm not saying that what I observe is totally disconnected from other minds.

Can you answer my questions? — leo

This is getting to the questions. I hate going on and on though, so I want to figure out why we're doing that.

So we don't disagree on whether the world is observable.

But you're claiming that, say, the composition of Mount Everest, say, in some way depends upon other minds.

Why would you believe that?

Keep in mind that I am NOT necessarily referring to persons, perceptions etc. by "reference point." I'm referring to spatio-temporal locations.

The reference point would be whatever your spatio-temporal location is. That doesn't imply that there's a "you" in the equation in terms of what's phenomenally occurring. — Terrapin Station

But a spatio-temporal location is insufficient for the appearance of a tree, it seems to me. You need to have an apparatus capable of distinguishing the tree from the rest of the stuff, don't you? That's a bit more than a spatio-temporal location.

Keep in mind that I am NOT necessarily referring to persons, perceptions etc. by "reference point." I'm referring to spatio-temporal locations.

The reference point would be whatever your spatio-temporal location is. That doesn't imply that there's a "you" in the equation in terms of what's phenomenally occurring. — Terrapin Station

Don't you count brain states as part of a reference point, and not just spatio-temporal locations? Or do you mean that when the reference point is a person, by reference point you refer to the set of all spatio-temporal locations that this person's brain occupies?

This is getting to the questions. I hate going on and on though, so I want to figure out why we're doing that. — Terrapin Station

Let me help you figure that out. If a person perceives a ghost, and says that this is not a hallucination, do you think it's really a hallucination and that person is wrong, or that there really is a ghost from the reference point of that person?

But you're claiming that, say, the composition of Mount Everest, say, in some way depends upon other minds.

Why would you believe that? — Terrapin Station

I believe that the very concept of 'composition' stems from minds, and that different minds have different experiences, so minds could disagree about what the composition of Mount Everest is, but some minds could pressure other minds to believe that the composition of Mount Everest is such-and-such, and then these other minds would believe it, and then even if they went to Mount Everest to check for themselves, their belief would influence them in a way that their observations wouldn't disagree with what they have been made to believe, or maybe the observations would disagree in appearance but they would interpret it as errors of measurement or as themselves being too stupid to make correct measurements, and that the only way they could disagree with what they have been made to believe is if they broke free of that belief. In that way other minds influence what we see and what we think we see.

Information is the reduction of possiblity. If we do not know it, it reduces physical possiblity. If we know it, it also reduces what is logically possible. — Dfpolis

Might there be an edit in the works here?

What I am taking about is knowing data as opposed to having and/or processing data. — Dfpolis

You'd have to make the difference clear. — Terrapin Station

Really? What confuses you?

Information is the reduction of possiblity. — Dfpolis

? That's just introducing more confusion. Now we'd need to get into the ontology of possibility, too. — Terrapin Station

You seem easily confused. Something is possible if it does not contradict a contextualizing set of propositions. So, for example, something is logically possible if it does not contradict what we already know.

it's a major hurdle for me that you seem to be talking about "intelligibililty" (I'm not even a fan of that word, really, because it seems to be used for a wide number of different things in philosophy) as if it's something that occurs objectively. There's no way I'd agree with that. — Terrapin Station

Is there a basis in reality for calling new beetle an insect? If so, what do you call that basis? If not, how do you know it is a beetle and not a cucumber?

There's you isn't there? — bert1

On the occasions in question, no. Not phenomenally. — Terrapin Station

This is nonresponsive and evasive. Either you are present, or you are not. Which is it?

Might there be an edit in the works here? — Mww

To wit? Have I missed an error?