Your "interlocutors" are part of your model, no? — Terrapin Station

Yep. You're definitely getting the hang of this.

So why would it be noteworthy that people you're making up share the model you're making up? It's more curious that some people you're making up--like me--think that you're a philosophical mess.

So why would it be noteworthy that people you're making up share the model you're making up? — Terrapin Station

I never said it was noteworthy. Useful, not noteworthy.

It's more curious that some people you're making up--like me--think that you're a philosophical mess. — Terrapin Station

As you have many times before, you're confusing a model of my construction with a model over which I have voluntary creative control.

I was asking if that assumption was the one you're holding..
— creativesoul

Yes, I understood that, and the answer was, no, that's not the full assumption I'm holding because it does not contain the assumption that I need to convince you otherwise. To clarify, I think non-linguistic primates have a sense of fairness, I'm working on the presumption that you don't (because you stated that fairness requires a pre-existing agreement and that such agreements are impossible without language), I'm arguing in defence of my position, I've no desire to get you to change yours (at this time). Does that clear things up? — Isaac

Yes. That's quite helpful. One minor note, however, to reciprocate that clarity...

I'm suspending judgment regarding whether or not agreement is necessary. I mentioned that and argued for that as a result of the experiments involving humans that was referenced in the beginning of the abstract you've provided. The author made a point to mention both parties entering into an agreement about what was to be expected when they performed specific tasks.

I do think and would strongly argue that language is necessary. It seems to me, as stated earlier, that fairness/unfairness consists of not only unmet expectations, but further those unmet expectations aren't just unexpected, but they are further thought of as being unfair.

This implies some sort of agreement, but I'm not certain that an earlier agreement is always necessary in order for one to think that what happens unexpectedly is unfair/unjust. That further qualification of not just being unexpected, but also being unfair/unjust most certainly requires rather complex language.

Thinking that something is unfair/unjust happens when we're mistaken about what's going to happen. Being mistaken about what's going to happen doesn't always require language use. Thinking that the unexpected results are unfair/unjust most certainly does, for it requires some measure of morality(what ought happen).

That notion of belief grants inference and disposition to act to inanimate objects.
— creativesoul

I have no problem with beliefs being attributed to non-living things, but if you do, then the notion could be limited to such states when expressed in the architecture of a brain. It makes no difference to my defence. The main point is that I don't believe they can be sensibly talked about as having 'content' in the same way a book has 'content', they are not necessarily 'about' other concepts (though they can be). — Isaac

As mentioned before, our views on thought and belief differ in crucial ways. I don't think that that has to be a problem though. We agree on much more than we disagree. That said...

The above could be thought to be an aside, but I think that it's actually the direction that our considerations must go when talking about what it's like to experience X. It seems to me that there is no correct answer to the question, regardless of the value we give to X, because so much of what we're talking about when we talk about experience is the experiencing creature's thought and belief.

When we're claiming that some non human creature has a sense of fairness/justice, we're saying something about that creature's mental ongoings(thought and belief). Thus, it behooves us to know what all thought and belief consist of, lest we have no way to know whether or not some creature or another is capable of forming/holding those kinds of thought and belief.

I'm asking you for exactly what counts as a sense of fairness? What is the criterion which - when met by any and all candidates - counts as a case of that candidate having a sense of fairness? You and I meet the criterion.

What is it such that the non human primate meets it too?
— creativesoul

A sense of fairness, for me, is a belief that some restorative action should be initiated if certain resources in certain scenarios are not distributed either equally (by default) or according to some rule which has been previously established between individuals in a group.

Non-human primates can be said to have met that criteria if the[y] take restorative action (complain, show negative emotion etc) in such scenarios. The evidence is stronger where alternative explanations for those restorative behaviours have been ruled out by careful experiment design such as the use of ultimatum games, tokens, eliminating social hierarchies etc. instead of simple resource distribution. — Isaac

I'm having trouble with the equivalence being drawn between clear discontent due to false belief about what's going to happen(accompanied by and exemplified after unexpected events/results), with complaining and taking restorative action. There's no issue with discontent being characterized as showing negative emotion. However, not all discontent and negative emotion are equivalent to complaining and/or taking restorative actions.

I am not of the opinion that such alternative explanations for apparent restorative behaviour needs to be entirely ruled out before we accept the hypothesis because I think that would imply an unwarranted principle of anthropocentrism. We know we evolved from primates, we should presume, as a default, that they share all of our traits until we demonstrate one to be unique, not presume all of our traits are unique until we prove that they're not. — Isaac

I'm of the opinion that unless and until we know - as precisely as possible - what makes our trait what it is, it is impossible to know whether or not it is unique to humans or not.

One thing I took note of here was that you're attributing a sense of ought to non human primates. Now clearly, if they do indeed have a sense of ought, it cannot be exactly like ours. However, and this is a point that needs made here:All senses of ought must have something in common such that none are existentially dependent upon language - if it is possible for a language less creature to have one. There must be common denominators - on a basic, elemental, rudimentary, language less level - which all senses of ought(all senses of fairness/justice) have in common, including our own. In other words, our account/report(model if you prefer) must be amenable to evolutionary progression. It(a rudimentary language less 'version'(for lack of a better word) must begin simply and accrue in it's complexity. More importantly...

All senses of ought/fairness/justice must follow our model. Our model must not only describe language less senses of ought/fairness/justice, but it must describe the version which is capable of developing in a language less creature's mind(thought and belief), and must also make a good amount of sense while and when doing so.

The minimalist criterion you've offered is restorative behaviours when unequal distribution of resources is experienced, or a breach of agreement where inequality was already agreed upon.

So, whatever these restorative behaviours are existentially dependent upon; whatever they themselves require in order for them to be realized, whatever they consist of cannot include language or language use if we are going to remain coherent when claiming that language less animals are performing them.

The evidence is stronger where alternative explanations for those restorative behaviours have been ruled out by careful experiment design such as the use of ultimatum games, tokens, eliminating social hierarchies etc. instead of simple resource distribution. — Isaac

I'd like to talk about these...

Which ones do you find convincing enough to conclude that those subjects are indeed performing restorative behaviours stemming from and/or showing a sense of fairness/justice? Which experiments show conclusively that those animals are acting out of a sense of what ought be done as compared to what was?

What's the difference between behavioural discontent as a result of the cognitive dissonance that takes place when expectations are dashed by what happens and having behavioural discontent as a result of thinking, believing, and/or 'feeling' like what happened is unfair/unjust, or ought be somehow corrected?

Does all sharing count as having a sense of ought/fairness/justice?

Can one share solely as a result of liking what happens afterwards? I think so. This may be something that can be used in an experiment. What would happen if we offer all of the resources to any particular individual who is not under any duress. Well results have varied, and none of them support what you've put forth. However, perhaps the experiment was not up to snuff, so to speak...

Let's say we have two individuals that have conclusively proven to us that they are not prone to exhibiting dominant behaviour. Not only individuals, but of the same litter/brood/etc. These two would need to have a well established documented history of passive behaviour with one another. It would be best if these two had a history of grooming each other, resting together, playing together, etc. Most importantly, there must already be a habit of sharing behaviour between the two. There must already be results showing us conclusively that these two 'siblings' are prone to equally distributing the available resources between themselves. Otherwise, there is no way to show that they think and believe that they ought correct the situation when the resources are not equally distributed. So...

In addition to having the right sorts of individuals mentioned above, for the experiment, these two are to be kept in separate chambers adjoined with some readily accessible pass-through that would allow either to share resources with the other if they so chose to do so, without threat of consequence. It would be best if the shared wall is clear.

The experiment must begin by developing new daily routines; one where each could be shown as expecting something particular as a reward if they performed some simple task. They will always remain in full view of one another, and close enough to see what the other one has received for performing the same task. There need to be a well documented history of equal reward for each specific task.

Then...

We could introduce the new unexpected result of one receiving much more and/or all of the resources as opposed to both receiving equal amounts. It is here - in this very circumstance - that a sense of fairness/justice would be put on display by virtue of one of them voluntarily offering the other an equal amount of the resources.

because there is no it, the whole concept of 'the experience of seeing red' as opposed to just 'seeing red' is incoherent. — Isaac

This is wrong, because we do have experiences of seeing red without seeing red. Dreams, memory, imagination and optical illusions do not count as seeing red. And as was noted earlier, the part of the brain that creates color experiences can sometimes be stimulated in blind people by other means.

So is experiencing eating cake different from eating cake? — Banno

You can imagine or dream it. You can also do an activity while paying attention to something else, thus not experiencing it. An example would be driving down a highway on autopilot where you're thinking about something else or listening to the radio.

What would be the point in asking such a question? What knowledge would we be getting that we couldn't acquire by thinking about it differently? — Harry Hindu

We're asking if bats have kinds of experiences that we don't because there physiology differs, particularly with the use of sonar. Surely human experience does not encompass all possible experiences in the universe. And a good reason for thinking this isn't so is because sensory organs, brains and body plans differ across animals, and there are tons of things outside of human perception.

A simple one would be seeing in four primary colors, which some animals have the eyes for that and even more.

I think Jackson proves is that there is such a first-person experience that we have, the likes of which philosophical zombies would not have. Which, again, is a complete trivialism because I think everything necessarily has that and it's incoherent to talk about not having it so saying something has it really doesn't communicate anything of greater interest than disagreement with such nonsense. — Pfhorrest

It's not a trivialism when we try to determine whether machines can be conscious, which is also the case for other animals. Does a pig or a cow experience pain, and if so, is it ethical to eat them? Should we medically test rats if they have subjective experiences of suffering?

Those are meaningful questions.

Yeah. I would only be careful: we are of reality, and don't stand outside of it looking in. "If no people existed, objects would be...?" is still a strange question. "If there are no clouds, objects would be...?" - one has to wonder: what even is this question? How does the one relate to the other? It's loaded, but badly. — StreetlightX

The question is asking what the word is like instead of how we think and perceive the world to be, which has clearly undergone lots of revision over time, as we've discovered that world is not what we naively took it to be, and that we can be wrong. So yeah, we're part of reality. That doesn't mean we understand that reality exactly as it is. Turns out it's a lot of work to figure out and plenty of skeptical questions can be raised in the process.

because there is no it, the whole concept of 'the experience of seeing red' as opposed to just 'seeing red' is incoherent.
— Isaac

This is wrong, because we do have experiences of seeing red without seeing red. Dreams, memory, imagination and optical illusions do not count as seeing red. And as was noted earlier, the part of the brain that creates color experiences can sometimes be stimulated in blind people by other means. — Marchesk

And yet those people are seeing red.

I think some folks are possibly conflating ‘imagining’ with ‘feeling’. If so perhaps pointing out that you cannot live out - experientially - an old experience. You can only adumbrate the feeling not feel it as it was.

I can remember/imagine the taste of chocolate, but I cannot taste chocolate now. In certain states - like dreaming - I can taste chocolate (the dream is a direct experience as is a hallucination, being difficult to distinguish between waking, or ‘normal’,states of consciousness).

What It Is Like To Experience X?

The question is not complete, it should go like this:

What it's like for Y to Experience X?

And let's get specific:

What it's like for a human(Y) and a dog(Y) to experience taste(X) and desire(X)? Clearly that missing Y may very easily be the determining factor in describing how it is to experience X, and X may very well be the same in all cases.

But what is this Y all of a sudden and how could have conversation about it make sense without it? Don't know about the second part, but as for the first: Y is "experiencer", the "self", it's the "subjective" in the phrase "subjective experience" that defines 'qualia' and what 'sentience' means. Because the only one kind of experience is subjective experience.

Hard problem of consciousness. I say this self-awareness, i.e. qualia, i.e. sentience, i.e. consciousness, is about hardware and interface, rather than software and signal encoding. In any case there is nothing similar in entire human knowledge that could fit here and explain this _subjective_ phenomena, it has no parallel in any of our sciences, except science fiction. Seriously, some kind of "dream" of the type 'Total Recall' or 'The Matrix' are the only kind of mechanics we know of that could, at least in principle, address this problem.

It's not a trivialism when we try to determine whether machines can be conscious, which is also the case for other animals. Does a pig or a cow experience pain, and if so, is it ethical to eat them? Should we medically test rats if they have subjective experiences of suffering?

Those are meaningful questions. — Marchesk

Yes, but the existence of phenomenal consciousness is a trivialism within the worldview (that I have) that of course pigs and cows and rats experience pain and of course machines can be conscious, if they have the right functionality to do so (which pigs and cows and rats and humans clearly do), because to deny that something with all the functionality a human has to experience (e.g.) pain is in some way not really experiencing it is just nonsense on such a view. The existence of phenomenal consciousness meaningfully distinguishes such a nonsense view from mine, sure, but it's not something that's special about humans, not something that distinguishes us from anything else. The functional stuff about access consciousness totally is, though.

To avoid a semantic debate over the word seeing, we can distinguish a red perceptual experience from an internally generated one. This demonstrates that red experiences come from us and not into the eyes riding on light waves, as if the red somehow jumps onto electrons and enters the visual cortex.

Yes, but the existence of phenomenal consciousness is a trivialism within the worldview (that I have) that of course pigs and cows and rats experience pain and of course machines can be conscious, if they have the right functionality to do so (which pigs and cows and rats and humans clearly do).

How can possibly a computer have 'functionality' which could explain 'subjectiveness' of the experience?

The functionality doesn't explain the subjectiveness of the experience; everything just has subjective experience, but what that subjective experience is like varies with the thing's functionality, just like it's behavior varies with it; the function maps experience to behavior. That's why I'm saying the subjectiveness part of it, the phenomenal consciousness, is trivial: everything has it, it doesn't distinguish between anything. What distinguishes between things is their functionality, and thus both their behavior, and what their subjective phenomenal experience is like.

so what is the functional account of seeing red when processing a particular wavelength of light. What would the code look look like?

What is it like for bits?

That is a contingent empirical question for psychologists/neuroscientists and computer programmers to answer, not a philosophical question.

so you’re basically a panpsychist? Everything has a little bit of consciousness.

So the colour quales and shape quales are distinguished in our experience by something which is not reflected in our experience. — fdrake

Basically. We don’t see photons or molecular surfaces. Rather we see chairs and apples.

Are not properties just among the "things" that appear (if we allow that shapes, colours, textures and so on are even separable from shaped, coloured and textured objects)? — "Janus

If they weren’t separable, then physics would be very much like our naive perception, and the ancient skeptics would have had little material to start with. Bit that’s not the case.

Yes, I explicitly said as much many pages ago.

This, in the sense everyone here seems to be talking, is wrong.

To be explicit - I’m sure some folks here are ignoring this because it’s inconvenient - we don’t ‘see’ a chair. Our immediate field of vision is miniscule. The majority of subjective visual perception is ‘painted in’. There are other instances that show our limited means of focus and attention of how we become primed for certain experiences. If everyone here focuses only some proposed set of ‘input’/‘output’ and ‘processing’ then you’re all missing the point of the subjective experience by pretending what you see with your eyes/occipital lobe/language is the focus of the experiencing ‘act’ ... clearly it isn’t. Don’t confuse the experience with the directedness of subjective experiencing. Don’t ignore the how experience is spacial and temporal simply because you cannot quite reconcile ‘experience’ with these terms in an articulate manner.

In this light we don’t experience an apple or a chair, we experience our intentionality constituted through intersubjective perception.

Expanding language leads to expanding our time consciousness. If you negate terminology from a language you confine conscious understanding. This isn’t something I am making up. There are clear cases that show how language affects time comprehension - to the point where grown adults act like infants being unable to hold and compare two separate concepts (eg. colour and location). These adults were not mentally deficient and some did pick up the ability to hold two concepts at once (because of exposure to a more complex language that took into account connected concepts).

Be wary of those that dodge any possible use of a new concept. Such thinking is essentially dogmatic. That said I do often try and avoid crazy word salads, but not because I don’t find a broader lexicon as useful or insightful, but simply because it’s bloody hard work and once the task is done you’re never sure if you’re going to achieve anything by stepping out of common parse

That our sensory input does not reflect true reality is separate problem from ontology of the subjectiveness of experience.

hat our sensory input does not reflect true reality is separate problem from ontology of the subjectiveness of experience. — Zelebg

Right, but noting this distinction is a rebuttal to the those who want to dissolve the issue by saying that being part of reality means the internal/external distinction is misguided. That our subjective experience of being in the world is different from the world is meaningful and raises an ontological question of subjectivity.

If there was no meaningful subjective/objective distinction to be made, then the problem of perception would have never been an issue, science would mostly back what our senses tell us, and movies like the Matrix and Inception would have never been made. Also, no p-zombies.

But that's not the case, and the issue of subjectivity keeps coming up in its various forms, because it's fundamental to our experience of the world.

Just the very fact that we can dream of interacting with the world without actually doing so is sufficient.

I would say it is akin to visualization; when I imagine the house of my childhood, it is not as though I am looking at it, or at a photograph of it; it's not as if I can look at my visualization and count the bricks, compare their colours and so on; yet I call it visualization nonetheless. — Janus

Some people can visualize to that level of detail. I like you, have never been able to do that. But i do hear my thoughts as if they were spoken.

But I am honestly amused - like it makes me smile irl - to think people look out at the world around them and honestly believe in their heart of hearts that what they see are 'properties'.
— StreetlightX

I mean, I'm mostly on board the embodied cognition train that says we see for the most part "affordances", opportunities for action, sites of relief and rest, goals to arrive at, hazards and safety, speed and rest, and so on.
— StreetlightX

! — bert1

Scratch a Wittgensteinian and you get a Humean.