If you mean "Is breaking your toe painful?" then, yes, it is. If you mean "Do we have radically private, immaterial experiences?" then, no, we don't. — Andrew M
The really hard problems are the problems the scientists are dealing with. [...] The philosophical problem, like all philosophical problems, is a confusion in the conceptual scheme." — Peter Hacker - Hard problem of consciousness (other views) - Wikipedia
My interpretation (of 'the hard problem'):
It's the inability to explain how and why humans experience pain, etc., that constitutes "the hard problem".
Do you agree with that characterization of the problem? — Andrew M
Consciousness poses the most baffling problems in the science of the mind. There is nothing that we know more intimately than conscious experience, but there is nothing that is harder to explain. All sorts of mental phenomena have yielded to scientific investigation in recent years, but consciousness has stubbornly resisted. Many have tried to explain it, but the explanations always seem to fall short of the target. Some have been led to suppose that the problem is intractable, and that no good explanation can be given.
What is an explanation? How can that which is not observable or comparable by definition by integrated within an objective causal nexus? What can be dealt with is sentences and other signs of consciousness. Does anesthesia work? We think so, and we can give reasons without ever having been put under. From an instrumentalist point of view, we have already made progress on the hard problem. — jjAmEs
Dennett asks us to turn our backs on what is glaringly obvious—that in consciousness we are immediately aware of real subjective experiences of color, flavor, sound, touch, etc. that cannot be fully described in neural terms even though they have a neural cause (or perhaps have neural as well as experiential aspects). And he asks us to do this because the reality of such phenomena is incompatible with the scientific materialism that in his view sets the outer bounds of reality. He is, in Aristotle’s words, “maintaining a thesis at all costs.” — Thomas Nagel
The man who believes himself endowed with an autonomous will thus places himself in another order of things and relates himself to determining grounds of an entirely different sort from when he perceives himself as a phenomenon in the sense-world and subordinates his causality to external determination under natural laws. The fact that he has to represent and think everything in this twofold way is not at all contradictory, for it rests in the first place on his consciousness of himself as an object affected by the senses, in the second on the consciousness of himself as intelligence, that is, as an active subject who, in using reason, is freed from any passive attachment to sensory impressions. — Ernst Cassirer
I reject radical privacy, but not mind-related terminology. — Andrew M
On my model, when Alice looks at the tree, she is not looking at a photograph of the territory (since there is no photograph), she is looking at the territory which has a specific form in relation to her. Her beliefs about the territory are her map (e.g., that the tree has green leaves).
Whereas on your (Kantian) model, Alice is looking at a photograph (the territory in sense) of the territory-in-itself. Her beliefs about the photograph are her map (e.g., that the tree has green leaves). Whereas the territory-in-itself remains unknowable.
Does that capture your model, on your view? — Andrew M
You asked about how the first person bootstraps their knowledge on my model. The answer is that they try something and, if that doesn't work out, they try something else (assuming they survive long enough to do so). And language builds up around those experiences. — Andrew M
Later he happens to pull the stick out and realizes it is straight. He makes a mental note of the implications of this discovery for future reference. And so knowledge and language accrete in tandem with practical experience. — Andrew M
That is, he did not "physically" pull the stick out and, as a separate action, "mentally" realize that it was straight. Instead his realization that it was straight was part-and-parcel of pulling the stick out - a single action (which we can then go on to separate in an abstract sense for analysis). — Andrew M
The model says that on the condition that Alice has identified a tree, she has acquired knowledge.
— Andrew M
Not my model. My model says on the condition that Alice has knowledge, she has thereby acquired the means to identify an object in the world. Whether or not the object is a tree depends on something else.
— Mww
Do you mean that if she has knowledge of the appearance (the photo in my illustration), she can then go on to identify an object such as a tree? Also, what does "whether or not the object is a tree" depend on? — Andrew M
That's why, for instance, Daniel Dennett has to claim that humans are merely and purely objects ('moist robots' he says, semi-humorously); because if the human subject is real, then his project (which is based on positivism and behaviourism) is stymied. And why? Because the mind is real but not objective. — Wayfarer
I also gave the example of anesthesia for surgery. — jjAmEs
But I don't think that one can say that the mind is not objective. — jjAmEs
I'm not defending Dennett, since I don't think consciousness is an illusion. — jjAmEs
While only a sociopath doubts that others have feelings 'behind' their behavior, the notion of the private mind creates an infinite chasm one mind and another. — jjAmEs
[There is] an inevitable confusion and inconsistency even in what [the Empiricist] says: for what the Empiricist speaks of and describes as sense-knowledge is not exactly sense-knowledge, but sense-knowledge plus unconsciously introduced intellective ingredients -- sense-knowledge in which he has made room for reason without recognizing it. [This describes Dennett.] A confusion which comes about all the more easily because, on the one hand, the senses are, in actual fact, more or less permeated with reason in man, and, on the other, the merely sensory psychology of animals, especially of the higher vertebrates, goes very far in its own realm and imitates intellectual knowledge to a considerable extent.
If we abandon prediction and control, then what kind of explanation do we want? — jjAmEs
the point which intrigued him is that the subjects always knew when it was something that was being done from them, and could distinguish it from something they themselves were doing. — Wayfarer
The only 'woo' involved was his observation that the subject was always aware of the distinction between being manipulated by the surgeon and his or her own volitional actions. — Wayfarer
I would be interested to know how that subjectively-observed difference could be validated with respect to neural data. — Wayfarer
Elsewhere you asserted logic is simply a method of thinking.
Are there more? — Mww
Mind is not an object - this is an empirical statement. There are billions of things that are objects - but 'mind' is not among them. The fact that 'it functions socially' is only a statement of something everyone supposes to be true. In fact, the mind is a mystery in the midst of being - that is why materialists feel such a sense of urgency in denying it! If you admit the reality of mind, then materialism is unsustainable. — Wayfarer
Concerning the Thoughts of man, I will consider them first Singly, and afterwards in Trayne, or dependance upon one another. Singly, they are every one a Representation or Apparence, of some quality, or other Accident of a body without us; which is commonly called an Object. Which Object worketh on the Eyes, Eares, and other parts of mans body; and by diversity of working, produceth diversity of Apparences.
The Originall of them all, is that which we call Sense; (For there is no conception in a mans mind, which hath not at first, totally, or by parts, been begotten upon the organs of Sense.) The rest are derived from that originall.
...
The cause of Sense, is the Externall Body, or Object, which presseth the organ proper to each Sense... — Hobbes
According to philosophical materialism, mind and consciousness are by-products or epiphenomena of material processes (such as the biochemistry of the human brain and nervous system), without which they cannot exist. — Wiki
https://faculty.sites.uci.edu/pkylestanford/files/2016/10/InstrumentalismRoutledge.pdfMore recently, Stein (1989) has argued that the dispute between realism and instrumentalism is not well joined: once realism has been sophisticated (as he suggests it must be) to give up its pretensions to metaphysically transcendent theorizing, to eschew aspirations to noumenal truth and reference, and to abandon the idea that a property of a theory might somehow explain its success in a way that does not simply point out the use that has been made of the theory, and once instrumentalism has been sophisticated (as he suggests it must be) to recognize the scope of a theory’s role as an instrument to include not just calculating experimental outcomes, but also adequately representing phenomena in detail across the entire domain of nature and providing resources for further inquiry, there remains no appreciable difference (or no difference that makes a difference) between the two positions. — link
The reason I keep referring to Dennett is that he is a textbook materialist; if you want to understand what that theory means, then he's the go-to. So he's not a straw man, he's the genuine article. If you want to criticize materialist philosophy of mind, then look no further. — Wayfarer
The 'hard problem of consciousness' is that, no matter how complete a functionalist theory of mind is, there is always going to be an explanatory gap. It wouldn't be a problem, were it not for those who say 'what "gap"?' 'What is left out?' Because when you can't answer the question in their terms - that is, objectively - they say: "aha! It's nothing, see!" That's because, as I say, it's not an objective reality; rather it is that which the whole concept of objectivity is founded on. But 'the subject forgets himself' - as Schopenhauer puts it. — Wayfarer
The kind that that is the subject of philosophy as distinct from science. — Wayfarer
I’m reluctant to admit we have methods of thinking corresponding to the plethora of subjects being thought about. — Mww
he 'magical woo' involved is simply that of interpreting signs and signals, without which no discoveries of the kind you mention would ever have been made. Such discoveries depend on reason, but the ability to reason doesn't depend on such discoveries. — Wayfarer
1. The interpretation of a physical theory has to rely on an experimental practice.
2. The experimental practice presupposes a certain pre-scientific practice of description, which establishes the norm for experimental measurement apparatus, and consequently what counts as scientific experience.
3. Our pre-scientific practice of understanding our environment is an adaptation to the sense experience of separation, orientation, identification and reidentification over time of physical objects.
4. This pre-scientific experience is grasped in terms of common categories like thing’s position and change of position, duration and change of duration, and the relation of cause and effect, terms and principles that are now parts of our common language.
5. These common categories yield the preconditions for objective knowledge, and any description of nature has to use these concepts to be objective.
6. The concepts of classical physics are merely exact specifications of the above categories.
The classical concepts—and not classical physics itself—are therefore necessary in any description of physical experience in order to understand what we are doing and to be able to communicate our results to others, in particular in the description of quantum phenomena as they present themselves in experiments.
— summary by link of Bohr
https://newlearningonline.com/new-learning/chapter-7/husserl-on-the-task-of-science-in-and-of-the-lifeworld[In] my naive self-consciousness as a human being knowing himself to be living in the world, for whom the world is the totality of what for him is valid and existing, I am blind to the immense transcendental dimension of problems … I am completely … bound by interests and tasks … [and] a certain habitual one-sidedness of self interest … I can, however, carry out the transcendental re-orientation in which … I now have, as a new horizon of interest … a new, infinite scientific realm—if I engage in the appropriate systematic work …
[One] kind of thinking … tries to bring ‘original intuition’ to the fore—that is, the pre- and extrascientific lifeworld … The proper return to the naïveté of life—but in a reflection that rises above this naiveté—is the only way to overcome [this] … naiveté …
In science we measure the lifeworld … for a well-fitting garb of ideas … It is … a method which is designed for progressively improving … through ‘scientific’ predictions, those rough predictions which are the only ones that are possible within the sphere of what is actually experienced and experienceable in the lifeworld …
Considering ourselves … as scientists … the manner of scientific thinking puts questions and answers them theoretically in relation to the world … Cofunctioning here are the other scientists who, united with us in a community of theory, acquire and have the same truths or … are united with us in a critical transaction aimed at critical agreement …
For the human being in his surrounding world there are many types of praxis, and among them is this peculiar … one, theoretical praxis. It has its own professional methods; it is the art of … discovering and securing truths with a certain new ideal sense which is foreign to [extra]scientific life, the sense of a certain ‘final validity’ … — Husserl
. I'm saying that 'the mind' is a publicly tradable concept. — jjAmEs
— Hobbes — jjAmEs
To me the essence of materialism is something like a taking of the physical substratum seriously. It's not a denial of sensation or thought but a belief in some kind of substratum or matrix/matter with a controlling influence on 'mind.' — jjAmEs
I ask again what kind of explanation is sought? — jjAmEs
If the brain operates under a strict, singular, mechanically deterministic method, however complex it may be, why wouldn’t the merely philosophical operate under some method as singular, strict and logically deterministic, with some arbitrary corresponding complexity? — Mww
the conditions under which a method operates, shouldn’t determine the rules of the method. — Mww
There's nothing dualist about it - concepts are the simple residuum of the effects of sensations. — Wayfarer
https://www.iep.utm.edu/perc-obj/#H2Sense data are seen as inner objects, objects that among other things are colored. Such entities, however, are incompatible with a materialist view of the mind. When I look at the coffee cup there is not a material candidate for the yellow object at which I am looking. Crudely: there is nothing in the brain that is yellow. Sense data, then, do not seem to be acceptable on a materialist account of the mind, and thus, the yellow object that I am now perceiving must be located not in the material world but in the immaterial mind. Indirect realism is committed to a dualist picture within which there is an ontology of non-physical objects alongside that of the physical. — link
And this Seeming, or Fancy, is that which men call sense; and consisteth, as to the Eye, in a Light, or Colour Figured; To the Eare, in a Sound; To the Nostrill, in an Odour; To the Tongue and Palat, in a Savour; and to the rest of the body, in Heat, Cold, Hardnesse, Softnesse, and such other qualities, as we discern by Feeling. All which qualities called Sensible, are in the object that causeth them, but so many several motions of the matter, by which it presseth our organs diversly. Neither in us that are pressed, are they anything els, but divers motions; (for motion, produceth nothing but motion.) But their apparence to us is Fancy, the same waking, that dreaming. And as pressing, rubbing, or striking the Eye, makes us fancy a light; and pressing the Eare, produceth a dinne; so do the bodies also we see, or hear, produce the same by their strong, though unobserved action, For if those Colours, and Sounds, were in the Bodies, or Objects that cause them, they could not bee severed from them, as by glasses, and in Ecchoes by reflection, wee see they are; where we know the thing we see, is in one place; the apparence, in another. And though at some certain distance, the reall, and very object seem invested with the fancy it begets in us; Yet still the object is one thing, the image or fancy is another. So that Sense in all cases, is nothing els but originall fancy, caused (as I have said) by the pressure, that is, by the motion, of externall things upon our Eyes, Eares, and other organs thereunto ordained. — Hobbes
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3207/3207-h/3207-h.htmConcerning the first, there is a saying much usurped of late, That Wisedome is acquired, not by reading of Books, but of Men. Consequently whereunto, those persons, that for the most part can give no other proof of being wise, take great delight to shew what they think they have read in men, by uncharitable censures of one another behind their backs. But there is another saying not of late understood, by which they might learn truly to read one another, if they would take the pains; and that is, Nosce Teipsum, Read Thy Self: which was not meant, as it is now used, to countenance, either the barbarous state of men in power, towards their inferiors; or to encourage men of low degree, to a sawcie behaviour towards their betters; But to teach us, that for the similitude of the thoughts, and Passions of one man, to the thoughts, and Passions of another, whosoever looketh into himselfe, and considereth what he doth, when he does Think, Opine, Reason, Hope, Feare, &c, and upon what grounds; he shall thereby read and know, what are the thoughts, and Passions of all other men, upon the like occasions. I say the similitude of Passions, which are the same in all men, Desire, Feare, Hope, &c; not the similitude or The Objects of the Passions, which are the things Desired, Feared, Hoped, &c: for these the constitution individuall, and particular education do so vary, and they are so easie to be kept from our knowledge, that the characters of mans heart, blotted and confounded as they are, with dissembling, lying, counterfeiting, and erroneous doctrines, are legible onely to him that searcheth hearts. And though by mens actions wee do discover their designee sometimes; yet to do it without comparing them with our own, and distinguishing all circumstances, by which the case may come to be altered, is to decypher without a key, and be for the most part deceived, by too much trust, or by too much diffidence; as he that reads, is himselfe a good or evill man.
But let one man read another by his actions never so perfectly, it serves him onely with his acquaintance, which are but few. He that is to govern a whole Nation, must read in himselfe, not this, or that particular man; but Man-kind; which though it be hard to do, harder than to learn any Language, or Science; yet, when I shall have set down my own reading orderly, and perspicuously, the pains left another, will be onely to consider, if he also find not the same in himselfe. For this kind of Doctrine, admitteth no other Demonstration. — Hobbes
I guess it depends on what one means by dualism. I had something in mind like indirect realism. — jjAmEs
[Materialism] seeks the primary and most simple state of matter, and then tries to develop all the others from it; ascending from mere mechanism, to chemistry, to polarity, to the vegetable and to the animal kingdom. And if we suppose this to have been done, the last link in the chain would be animal sensibility - that is knowledge - which would consequently now appear as a mere modification or state of matter produced by causality. Now if we had followed materialism thus far with clear ideas, when we reached its highest point we would suddenly be seized with a fit of the inextinguishable laughter of the Olympians. As if waking from a dream, we would all at once become aware that its final result - knowledge, which it reached so laboriously - was presupposed as the indispensable condition of its very starting-point, mere matter; and when we imagined that we thought "matter", we really thought only "the subject that perceives matter; the eye that sees it, the hand that feels it, the understanding that knows it". Thus the tremendous petitio principii reveals itself unexpectedly.”
. I'm saying that 'the mind' is a publicly tradable concept.
— jjAmEs — Wayfarer
Sure. — Wayfarer
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/#MinBodHisDuaIn dualism, ‘mind’ is contrasted with ‘body’, but at different times, different aspects of the mind have been the centre of attention. In the classical and mediaeval periods, it was the intellect that was thought to be most obviously resistant to a materialistic account: from Descartes on, the main stumbling block to materialist monism was supposed to be ‘consciousness’, of which phenomenal consciousness or sensation came to be considered as the paradigm instance.
The classical emphasis originates in Plato's Phaedo. Plato believed that the true substances are not physical bodies, which are ephemeral, but the eternal Forms of which bodies are imperfect copies. These Forms not only make the world possible, they also make it intelligible, because they perform the role of universals, or what Frege called ‘concepts'. It is their connection with intelligibility that is relevant to the philosophy of mind. Because Forms are the grounds of intelligibility, they are what the intellect must grasp in the process of understanding. In Phaedo Plato presents a variety of arguments for the immortality of the soul, but the one that is relevant for our purposes is that the intellect is immaterial because Forms are immaterial and intellect must have an affinity with the Forms it apprehends (78b4–84b8). This affinity is so strong that the soul strives to leave the body in which it is imprisoned and to dwell in the realm of Forms. — link
What Freud, Saussure and Durkheim seem to have recognized is that social sciences could make little progress until society was considered a reality in itself: a set of institutions or systems which are more than the contingent manifestations of the spirit or the sum of individual activities. It is as though they had asked: “what makes individual experience possible? what enables men to perceive not just physical objects but objects with a meaning? what enables them to communicate and act meaningfully?” And the answer which they postulated was social institutions which, though formed by human activities, are the conditions of experience. To understand individual experience one must study the social norms which make it possible. — Culler
The notion of value... shows us that it is a great mistake to consider a sign as nothing more than the combination of a certain sound and a certain concept. To think of a sign as nothing more would be to isolate it from the system to which it belongs. It would be to suppose that a start could be made with individual signs, and a system constructed by putting them together. On the contrary, the system as a united whole is the starting point, from which it becomes possible, by a process of analysis, to identify its constituent elements. — Saussure
https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~chazelle/courses/BIB/semio2.htmThe arbitrariness principle can be applied not only to the sign, but to the whole sign-system. The fundamental arbitrariness of language is apparent from the observation that each language involves different distinctions between one signifier and another (e.g. 'tree' and 'free') and between one signified and another (e.g. 'tree' and 'bush'). The signified is clearly arbitrary if reality is perceived as a seamless continuum (which is how Saussure sees the initially undifferentiated realms of both thought and sound): where, for example, does a 'corner' end? Commonsense suggests that the existence of things in the world preceded our apparently simple application of 'labels' to them (a 'nomenclaturist' notion which Saussure rejected and to which we will return in due course). Saussure noted that 'if words had the job of representing concepts fixed in advance, one would be able to find exact equivalents for them as between one language and another. But this is not the case' (Saussure 1983, 114-115; Saussure 1974, 116). Reality is divided up into arbitrary categories by every language and the conceptual world with which each of us is familiar could have been divided up very differently. Indeed, no two languages categorize reality in the same way. As John Passmore puts it, 'Languages differ by differentiating differently' (cited in Sturrock 1986, 17). Linguistic categories are not simply a consequence of some predefined structure in the world. There are no 'natural' concepts or categories which are simply 'reflected' in language. Language plays a crucial role in 'constructing reality'. — Chandler on Saussure
You used system in regard to a strict, singular, deterministic; I used method. The method is the rules, the system is the use of the rules. No matter the particulars, the brain (the system) obeys the laws attributed to natural forces (the method). — Mww
should would be destructive, insofar as if the conditions under which the method is used determine the method, the method is no longer rule-based, therefore not a proper method. — Mww
If we can suffice with just “thought”, which I advocate as being the case, why do we need more than one method for it? — Mww
. I'm saying that 'the mind' is a publicly tradable concept.
— jjAmEs
— Wayfarer
Sure.
— Wayfarer
I'm thinking you still don't see what I mean by that. — jjAmEs
My approach is 'mind is that which grasps meaning'. And the reason we can say what it is, is because of the reflexive problem of consciousness, i.e. 'the eye cannot see itself, the hand cannot grasp itself.' That's why I say mind is not an objective reality - it is that which 'objective reality' depends on. — Wayfarer
The problem with Cartesianism is that it posits 'res cogitans;' as a literal substance in an objective sense - something which objectively exists. And that leads to the intractable problem of how this 'ghost in the machine' can pull levers or do anything (which is Ryle's criticism). — Wayfarer
Whereas materialism inverts this, and says that the mind is dependent on its own objects. (This is the realisation that prompted Schopenhauer's remark about the 'olympian laughter':
[Materialism] seeks the primary and most simple state of matter, and then tries to develop all the others from it; ascending from mere mechanism, to chemistry, to polarity, to the vegetable and to the animal kingdom. And if we suppose this to have been done, the last link in the chain would be animal sensibility - that is knowledge - which would consequently now appear as a mere modification or state of matter produced by causality. Now if we had followed materialism thus far with clear ideas, when we reached its highest point we would suddenly be seized with a fit of the inextinguishable laughter of the Olympians. As if waking from a dream, we would all at once become aware that its final result - knowledge, which it reached so laboriously - was presupposed as the indispensable condition of its very starting-point, mere matter; and when we imagined that we thought "matter", we really thought only "the subject that perceives matter; the eye that sees it, the hand that feels it, the understanding that knows it". Thus the tremendous petitio principii reveals itself unexpectedly.” — Wayfarer
Hobbes is just the kind of target Kant had in mind when he criticized empiricism. I won't try and re-state all the details, but suffice to say everything Hobbes writes about the mind, is subject to the criticism 'percepts without concepts are blind'. — Wayfarer
These correspondences between Kant’s and Locke’s frameworks point up some character differences between their corresponding elements. One such difference is that between ‘things themselves’ and ‘things in themselves’. As already mentioned, Locke’s ‘things themselves’ are single corpuscles or aggregates of corpuscles that possess only primary qualities (and powers based on them). They affect our sense organs qua aggregates of corpuscles, and accordingly a sort of motion is communicated to the brain. As a result, sensible ideas are produced in the mind. By contrast, in Kant’s case, ‘things in themselves’ are not known to us, and since space is a form of our sensibility, the idea that things in themselves are in space does not make sense.
...
Now it will be seen that behind Kant’s positing unknowable ‘things in themselves’ and reinterpreting the ordinary external things in space as internal representations, the naturalistic logic of the seventeenth century theories of ideas is tacitly operating. If this were not the case, he would have no reason for regarding the objects of our experience as internal from the start and for grasping them as appearances in contrast to things in themselves. Further, the view that things in themselves ‘affect’ our senses would not make sense without our ordinary experience concerning the causal process of sense perception (or some physical view framed by sophisticating it). That is, it seems that the very framework of Kant’s transcendental idealism could not be established if it were not based on our ordinary experience or more sophisticated physical view. — link
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