:s :-} :-d

Deflating the best explanations because of their authority is adolescent, not philosophical.

ad hominem

reductionism is not assumed in my talk of a biological phenomenon.

Your opening statement was 'Consciousness is obviously a biological phenomenon', which is indeed a statement typical of biological reductionism. If you haven't already noticed it, have a quick read of Thomas Nagel's The Core of Mind and Cosmos.

Thomas Nagel's The Core of Mind and Cosmos. — Wayfarer

Speaking of arguments, throughout that article he claims that "the physical sciences" are incapable of describing subjective experience, but he never actually presents an argument for that claim.

One place where he does present an argument is here:

Finally, since the long process of biological evolution is responsible for the existence of conscious organisms, and since a purely physical process cannot explain their existence, it follows that biological evolution must be more than just a physical process — Thomas Nagel

The problem with that argument is that it is invalid. It can be the case that (a) the long process of biological evolution is responsible for the existence of conscious organisms, and (b) a purely physical process can not explain their existence, BUT that (c) biological evolution is not more than just a physical process.

Admittedly, there's some wiggle room with the phrase "physical process can not explain" in (b). Either he's referring to his repeated claims that the physical sciences can not explain consciousness (which again are claims that he never offered an argument for), or he's saying that consciousness can not be physical--but then his argument would be question-begging.

Of course, when folks on my side of this issue say that consciousness is physical, we are not making a claim about the capabilities of the physical sciences as such. We're making a purely ontological claim, a claim about the sort of stuff that consciousness is comprised of. Whether the sciences could describe/explain consciousness is a completely separate issue from that.

And as always, what counts as an explanation or description isn't well-defined, so arguments that hinge on this idea--as most unfortunately do--are appealing to vague criteria in the first place, which significantly weakens them.

'is comprised of' is grammatically incorrect. 'Comprise' is like 'embraces' - 'the act comprises several minor pieces of legislation'. A correct expression would be 'what consciousness consists of' or 'the elements that comprise consciousness'.

To deflate something merely because of its authority is clearly not philosophical. You're campaigning here against the authority of anything scientific, as if biological explanations would be reductionist, and as if reduction ought to be avoided. But that's nonsense.

If you'd read at least the short intro to John Searle's Consciousness, then it should be easy for you to also understand that there are ways to understand consciousness as a non-reducible biological phenomenon.

Fair enough. I have read quite bit of Searle, and I can go along with that. My post was based on the observation that you were offering a biological response to a philosophical conundrum. If you approach the question in terms of 'how organisms react with the environment', then that is 'biologism'.

So I'm not campaigning against 'anything scientific' at all. The scientific analysis has something to contribute, but it's not the last word, and that appeared to be what you were arguing.

Where I part company with John Searle, is in his view that the nature of mind is ultimately a biological question. But I think he is obliged to hold such a position, because if he didn't, then he would have to defend a metaphysical thesis, like dualism, which, from his perspective, seems to have undesirable implications.

The question you are asking seems to boil down to 'Do we have good reason to believe that there is a real brain, independent of our representations, that is being ( more or less) accurately presented to us via perception?'.

Does that sound about right? — John

Yeah, the OP is an argument against the idea that your conscious experience is being caused by a brain. If there is a physical brain, independent of your conscious experience that is causing/giving rise to said experience, this brain can not coherently be located within your head. Rather, your experience of a head (which we might think contains a brain that is causing our experience) must already be located within a physical brain. And I have argued that this position has serious epistemic problems. Because from the position of your conscious experience, the brain which is causing your experience exists in a noumenal way, outside of your experience. There's a real issue of how on earth you can know *anything* about this brain, including that it even exists. What would it even mean to believe in the existence of this brain? We would have an idea in our

So, the question seems to comes down to whether we have good reason NOT to believe there is a real head with a real brain in it that causes the perception of a head with a brain in it as appears to be the case.

If we don't trust any of what we perceive and treat it all as a play of mere perceptual phenomena then there would seem to be no cause for anything since the notion of one mere perceptual phenomenon causing another is unintelligible.

So, the question seems to comes down to whether we have good reason NOT to believe there is a real head with a real brain in it that causes the perception of a head with a brain in it as appears to be the case. — John

I don't see how that appears to be the case? We can't access this mind independent world, so where is the evidence? As in, what's appearing to us to make this idea seem correct? It's not at all obvious.

If we don't trust any of what we perceive and treat it all as a play of mere perceptual phenomena then there would seem to be no cause for anything since the notion of one mere perceptual phenomenon causing another is unintelligible. —

I'm not sure that not believing your experiences are caused by a physical brain means that you don't 'trust' your perceptions. That seems to be saying that conscious experience = unreal or untrue. As if the physical world is more 'real' than the perceptual one.

Regardless, let's say that I think conscious experience has no cause, or something separate from it which explains it's existence. So I think conscious experience is the 'brute' thing in reality, which has and needs no cause or explanation for its existence.

Well this is no different than what the physicalist does. He merely brings what's 'brute' out a level into a mind independent world and says the physical world just exists and has nothing outside it a which causes or brings/holds it in existence. The physicalist doesn't feel he needs to posit a world or cause beyond the physical world which explains the existence of it. He is perfectly comfortable just bringing what is held to exist by 'brute force' out a level from our experiences. So it's not that the physicalist has a problem with some level of reality being un caused and needing no explanation or cause or thing separate from it which is holding it in existence.

All the person who believes there's only phenomena is doing, is saying that there's really no explanatory value in positing an entire freaking world to explain the cause of our experiences. There's no need to bring what's 'brute' out a level when you can just hold that what is brute is our conscious experience. The physicalist has no problem with some level of reality being brute (i.e. he doesn't feel obliged to explain what is causing the physical world to exist, because he thinks the physical world is the 'uncaused thing' in reality), he just unnecessarily brings that uncaused thing out into a mind independent world. Surely parsimony applies and the entire separate physical world does not need to be posited.

So the point is that *some* level of reality is an uncaused 'brute' thing. Why bring it out a level from our consciousness into an entire mind independent world that doesn't need to be posited. It's only being posited because the physicalist believes that conscious experience needs a cause (and yet for some reason he believes the physical world doesn't...).

Why does the physicalist believe that consoles experience needs something outside it to explain/cause its existence, and yet he's perfectly comfortable with the physical world existing by brute force? Why is the physical world exempt from needing a cause but the phenomenal one isn't?

let's say that I think conscious experience has no cause, or something separate from it which explains it's existence. So I think conscious experience is the 'brute' thing in reality, which has and needs no cause or explanation for its existence. — Dukkha

What about the fact that our perceptions of things often turn out to be wrong? If perception is all that was real, then how is it that we can have mistaken perceptions? A stock example is a straight stick appearing to be bent when half-immersed in water. So in that state, it appears to be bent, but when you take it out of the water, it isn't bent. Don't such cases tell you that your perception might be simply mistaken?

I think you misunderstood me; what I meant is that there appear to be heads with brains in them; that's what actually appears to us. And they appear to be within certain paramaters as to size, constitution, shape, colour and so on. We don't have any say in what is perceived; what appears is what appears.

What about the fact that our perceptions of things often turn out to be wrong? If perception is all that was real, then how is it that we can have mistaken perceptions? A stock example is a straight stick appearing to be bent when half-immersed in water. So in that state, it appears to be bent, but when you take it out of the water, it isn't bent. Don't such cases tell you that your perception might be simply mistaken? — Wayfarer

Yeah, but we can understand mistaken perceptions without recourse to an external world. Illusions, hallucinations, etc (or even this idea of perceptual relativity, a plate appears elliptical from one angle but circular from another, which is correct?), can be understood simply as a different *kind* of perception. As opposed to normal perceptions being veridical to an external world and illusions not. So an illusion is one particular type of perception, and 'normal' perception another. Neither is more real or truthful than the other (at least in terms of truthfully corresponding to an external world).

There's also a conceptual issue with the notion our everyday perceptions being veridical to an external world, and that's that how can conscious experience somehow accurately match what is not conscious experience? So lets take that arrow illusion, where one arrow appears shorter than the other when both lines are the same size. So what we'd be holding here is that there are two lines in an external world which exists separate to our conscious experience of two lines (and the two lines are the same size). But our understanding of lines is perceptual, is it not? A line is something which *looks* straight. I believe what's happening when we think of lines in an external world, is we're imagining how straight things appear to us (horizontal lines) as existing in the absence of a perceiver. What's our justification in thinking that lines in an external world are basically like visual perceptions of lines but existing without someone perceiving it? I mean when I think about external world lines I am imagining a straight thing existing beyond my visual perception (I might imagine it as say lacking colour, or 'being made of atoms', etc, but the point is these are all still my imaginings). But, my understanding of what a 'straight thing' is, comes about through conscious experience (I see straight lines, I feel straight edges, I do maths with its notion of parallel, non curved, etc). It doesn't even really make sense to imagine what the external world is like, because the external world is devoid of imagination.

I don't see how a visual perception can accurately or truthfully represent/correspond to something which is not a visual perception, or any kind of experience at all. I think when we do think it's an accurate representation, all that's happening is we're imagining our visual perceptions (of eg, a straight line) existing in an external world in the absence of a perceiver. I suppose I'm just assuming other people do this, but I don't see how else you can understand your perceptions as being truthful representations without *imagining* the thing which is being represented. And there's no imagination in an external world, the external world is non-experiential, so this is conceptually wrong. The external world doesn't 'look like' anything, so how can how straight lines look to us accurately represent/correspond with the external world?

I think you misunderstood me; what I meant is that there appear to be heads with brains in them; that's what actually appears to us. And they appear to be within certain paramaters as to size, constitution, shape, colour and so on. We don't have any say in what is perceived; what appears is what appears. — John

Well I've never seen the inside of my head and I doubt you've seen yours. It might seem silly but this is still theoretical. Our brains don't appear to us, we posit them. Even things like someone getting brained by the wheels of a school bus and painting the sidewalk - it's still theoretical that the brain existed within the guys head *before* it splattered out and was perceived.

A stock example is a straight stick appearing to be bent when half-immersed in water. So in that state, it appears to be bent, but when you take it out of the water, it isn't bent. — Wayfarer

As an aside, my way of understanding this illusion is that 'see-through' things (eg, water, glasses, glass, plastic, quartz, etc) are not actually see-through. Rather they display what's behind them on their surfaces, and we make the mistake of thinking we're seeing the actual thing beyond/behind the surface because the display is so seamless.

So if we imagine a bent straw in a glass full of water. The explanation is that the part of the straw which protrudes above the glass we are seeing directly, whereas the lower half of the straw which appearss below the lip of the glass and looks kinked, is not the actual lower half of the straw within the water, but rather is a almost completely seamless image on the outer surface of the glass. Seamless as in, we mistake the image for being the actual world beyond the surface.

A way of understanding this is to imagine a pane of glass as like an ultra high-def television screen, which takes it's feed from a webcam situated on the other side of the glass and pointing outwards. And the image is so good we mistake the glass for being 'see-through' and it's the real objects beyond the glass which we are directly perceiving.

You're probably better off not believing this (or rather, realizing this is true - which I think it is) haha. Every time I drive now I feel like i'm driving blind. Because I'm not actually seeing the road/world beyond the windscreen. Rather, I'm 'using' a display on the inner surface of the windscreen to drive the car and not crash. The car might as well not have a windscreen, just a webcam on the hood and a t.v. screen inside displaying the image, because it's basically the same thing. Clear things display what's behind them on their surfaces, mirrors are the same but they display what's in front.

I'll make a separate thread about this. I'm going to assume a lot of people are going to think this idea is crazy.

There's also a conceptual issue with the notion our everyday perceptions being veridical to an external world, and that's that how can conscious experience somehow accurately match what is not conscious experience? So lets take that arrow illusion, where one arrow appears shorter than the other when both lines are the same size. So what we'd be holding here is that there are two lines in an external world which exists separate to our conscious experience of two lines (and the two lines are the same size). But our understanding of lines is perceptual, is it not? A line is something which *looks* straight. I believe what's happening when we think of lines in an external world, is we're imagining how straight things appear to us (horizontal lines) as existing in the absence of a perceiver. What's our justification in thinking that lines in an external world are basically like visual perceptions of lines but existing without someone perceiving it? I mean when I think about external world lines I am imagining a straight thing existing beyond my visual perception (I might imagine it as say lacking colour, or 'being made of atoms', etc, but the point is these are all still my imaginings). But, my understanding of what a 'straight thing' is, comes about through conscious experience (I see straight lines, I feel straight edges, I do maths with its notion of parallel, non curved, etc). It doesn't even really make sense to imagine what the external world is like, because the external world is devoid of imagination. — dukkha

Seeing straight lines, such as ones draw on paper, or occurring on manufactured things, gives you a representation of a straight line. From this representation you can imagine a straight line. But these representations are only tools which guide you in learning what a line really is. The true line is ideal, existing in conception only, as a defined thing, like the true circle is ideal, existing only through definition.

So our understanding of lines is not perceptual. It is aided by perception. This is important to understand, because then you can start to see that the straight lines in the world were put there through construction and manufacturing, and these are processes of producing within the world, a representation of what's in the mind. It is common for people to believe that concepts are produced as representations of what exists in the world, and this is what you imply in that passage. In reality though, concepts are produced as tools which help us to understand, and use the world, while the artefacts, the artificial parts of the world, are reflections of these concepts. That's from Plato's cave allegory. So we understand the line, which is a concept, by means of perceiving representations of it, in the world.

As an aside, my way of understanding this illusion is that 'see-through' things (eg, water, glasses, glass, plastic, quartz, etc) are not actually see-through.

Your way of understanding is incorrect, then. 'You have a right to your own opinions, but not to your own facts', as the saying has it. Transparency occurs because of materials that let light travel through unimpeded.

It is common for people to believe that concepts are produced as representations of what exists in the world, and this is what you imply in that passage. In reality though, concepts are produced as tools which help us to understand, and use the world, while the artefacts, the artificial parts of the world, are reflections of these concepts. That's from Plato's cave allegory. So we understand the line, which is a concept, by means of perceiving representations of it, in the world. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is conceptualism, right? I wouldn't argue against this. Poor word choice on my part, I should have said our understanding of straight lines is ''ideal'' rather than perceptual.

Your way of understanding is incorrect, then. You have a right to your own opinions, but not to your own facts. You have to think straight to pursue philosophy, and you're not doing that. — Wayfarer

This is not an argument. You're just stating your own opinion on clear things as if it's a fact, which you just said we don't have a right to do...

Look up 'transparent' in an encyclopedia. It's not a matter of opinion and so neither of argument, but of fact.

Transparency, transparence or transparent most often refer to transparency and translucency, the physical property of allowing the transmission of light through a material. — Wikipedia

What's this got to do with the phenomenology of glass? Spell it out.

The argument here seems be, if some object has the physical property of allowing the transmission of light through it, when we look at this object, we therefore directly visually perceive the objects on the other side of it.

I'm not sure that not believing your experiences are caused by a physical brain means that you don't 'trust' your perceptions. That seems to be saying that conscious experience = unreal or untrue. As if the physical world is more 'real' than the perceptual one. — dukkha

The physical one can kill you, I'm not sure whether the perceptual one can, even though some movies like the Matrix made it out to be so. I've yet to die from a dream or a perception.

The argument here seems be, if some object has the physical property of allowing the transmission of light through it, when we look at this object, we therefore directly visually perceive the objects on the other side of it.

That is not 'an argument', it is what 'transparency' means.

I'm going to assume a lot of people are going to think this idea is crazy. — Dukkha

Disregard for facts is unbecoming. I don't see anything to discuss.

:-}

I've yet to die from a dream or a perception. — Marchesk

Some people die from the experience of pain, depression, a broken heart, delusion or a reality perceived as unbearable etc..

Do they die from that or the resulting physical ailment?

'is comprised of' is grammatically incorrect. 'Comprise' is like 'embraces' - 'the act comprises several minor pieces of legislation'. A correct expression would be 'what consciousness consists of' or 'the elements that comprise consciousness'. — Wayfarer

How about simply looking up "comprise" in the dictionary?

"Comprise -- consist of; be made up of" (from Google, for example)

Or

"Comprise - to include or contain, to consist of, be composed of" (from dictionary.com for example)

There's a real issue of how on earth you can know *anything* about this brain, including that it even exists. — dukkha

Apparently you're unfamiliar with any sort of anatomical research, for one?

We can't access this mind independent world, — dukkha

What on Earth would lead you to believe that? How, historically, did you come to this view?

Also, if you don't believe that there's a mind-independent world, how do you get to a point of believing that there's a mind in the first place? For example, you experience something like a car, let's say. Well, how do you get to a point of saying "That's just my mind" rather than just accepting it as the phenomena that it is--the appearance of a car, where you'd believe that tha's all there is to it.

This is conceptualism, right? I wouldn't argue against this. Poor word choice on my part, I should have said our understanding of straight lines is ''ideal'' rather than perceptual. — dukkha

You seemed to be arguing against the possibility of a priori knowledge. You argued that we can only produce conceptions through the means of sense experience, like we sense something and produce a concept in representation of the sense image. So are you now ready to acknowledge that this isn't actually the case? Do you acknowledge that the concept is something other than a representation of what is sensed, that sensing aids us in producing concepts within our minds (education for example), but the concept is actually something other than a representation, it comes from somewhere else.

Are you prepared to go where this leads in the Platonic dialogues? Do you apprehend that external objects, things which are sensed by you, are merely representations of concepts, or ideas? This is very evident in artificial things, the sensible things exist as representations of the ideas in the minds which created them, just like the words, numbers, and sensible demonstrations of our teachers exist in the sensible world as representations of the concepts which we are supposed to learn. What about natural things though? How do they achieve their existence?

You can die from experiences as well as knives, which result in physical ailments and death. In the case of a knife it might be loss of blood, in the case of an experience some stress-induced heart failure. You won't get away with murder by selective talk about the loss of blood, or heart failure.

You can also be shot in your sleep, and experience nothing.