Penrose has some good ideas, but as a mathematician, he seems to be swayed by the long-successful physical method of Reductionism, which divides things into ever-smaller sub-categories. Rather than dividing Reality into a third category, I prefer to view it as a universal Whole with no hard (objective) dividing lines between classes of things. That makes me a Monist.I found it interesting that Roger, in this context of existence, refers to himself as not a dualist but a trialist (a different form of Trialism) where he believes in: mind, matter, and mathematics as things existing universally, objectively. — 3017amen
Roger, in this context of existence, refers to himself as not a dualist but a trialist (a different form of Trialism) where he believes in: mind, matter, and mathematics as things existing universally, objectively. — 3017amen
I like Donald Hoffman's analogy of perceived reality as the display screen for a computer, where the actual workings are concealed behind the screen. What we see are symbolic icons, not the ding an sich. :nerd:Everything is just “mathematical structures” which is to say information. The physical world is the mathematical structure of which we are a part. — Pfhorrest
That’s basically my view as well. Everything is just “mathematical structures” which is to say information. The physical world is the mathematical structure of which we are a part. Empirical observation of physical things is the passing of information from those things (which are defined by their function, what information they transmit in response to what information they receive) to ourselves, the output of their function becoming the input to our own function, our phenomenal “consciousness” or experience. Our actual consciousness in the useful sense, access consciousness, is in turn just a reflexive feature of our own functionality. Math, mind, and matter are all the same things, ontologically speaking at least. — Pfhorrest
There are two different senses of "consciousness" we need to distinguish. One is a completely functional ("mechanical" if you like) sense, called "access consciousness", which is uncontroversially replicable by a machine. If you built something that could act and talk like a human being, including reporting on the states of its brain-equivalent the way that we can, that would be access conscious.
The remaining question besides that is about "phenomenal consciousness", which is just the having of any first-person experience at all. The robot described above might just be reproducing human behavior, without actually having any first-person experience of its own, at least so they say. My answer to that question of phenonemal consciousness is just, yes, everything has it, but the character of any individual thing's phenomenal consciousness varies with its function exactly like its behavior does. So anything that behaves exactly like a human, including in internal ways, has the same experience as a human does. Things that have very different, much simpler behaviors, like rocks, still technically have a first-person experience, but there is as little to say about what that's like as there is to say about its behavior.
Tying back to abstract stuff, on my account that having of a first-person experience is just being the recipient of a transfer of information. The interesting things about human conscious experience is the way that transfers of information loop around in complex reflexive ways within us: most of the notable aspects of our experience are experiences of ourselves experiencing ourselves experiencing ourselves experiencing... eventually, the rest of the world. But if we just experienced the world and then didn't do anything with that experience (like remember it, where memory is itself precisely such a loop of self-experience), we wouldn't have the interestingly complex consciousness that we do; we would just be like rocks, passively receiving information and not doing anything with it. — Pfhorrest
Tying back to abstract stuff, on my account that having of a first-person experience is just being the recipient of a transfer of information (as all interactions between all things are transfers of information). The interesting things about human conscious experience is the way that transfers of information loop around in complex reflexive ways within us: most of the notable aspects of our experience are experiences of ourselves experiencing ourselves experiencing ourselves experiencing... eventually, the rest of the world. — Pfhorrest
“[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.” — Arthur Schopenhauer
But there’s a deep cognitive or perceptual mistake going on in our minds. This is that we instinctively and reflexively divide the Universe into ‘self and other’. — Wayfarer
But where or what is that backdrop, if not in the brain-mind of h. sapiens? — Wayfarer
Why do you say that this is a mistake? Don't you think that there is a real separation between you and I, and that my thinking is distinct from your thinking? — Metaphysician Undercover
Where I would question Penrose, is in respect of his argument that the Universe pre-exists human consciousness. You see, this fantastically complex organ that we have - the brain - is actually an incredibly sophisticated simulator. The whole universe, including the ancient past, billions of years before h. Sapiens came along - is projected by this simulator. It is senseless to ask how or in what way the universe exists ‘outside of’ or ‘apart from’ that simulated act — because we’re never outside of it. — Wayfarer
But there’s a deep cognitive or perceptual mistake going on in our minds. This is that we instinctively and reflexively divide the Universe into ‘self and other’. That is one of the fundamental daemons — automated configurations — of consciousness. It’s a self-executing routine that operates prior to any statement about ‘the world’. That sets up the backdrop of the ‘ancient universe’ with us as recently-arrived organisms. But where or what is that backdrop, if not in the brain-mind of h. sapiens? But naturalism doesn’t see that, for the obvious reason that it’s nowhere to be found in the objective domain; it is prior to or underlying any objective judgement. — Wayfarer
That which is ontically closest and well known, is ontologically the farthest and not known at all; and its ontological signification is constantly overlooked. — Heidegger
What is “familiarly known” is not properly known, just for the reason that it is “familiar”. When engaged in the process of knowing, it is the commonest form of self-deception, and a deception of other people as well, to assume something to be familiar, and give assent to it on that very account. Knowledge of that sort, with all its talk, never gets from the spot, but has no idea that this is the case. Subject and object, and so on, God, nature, understanding, sensibility, etc., are uncritically presupposed as familiar and something valid, and become fixed points from which to start and to which to return. The process of knowing flits between these secure points, and in consequence goes on merely along the surface. — Hegel
Doesn't this open up the old can of worms? The brain in this case is just one more part of the simulation. — jjAmEs
I think you are leaving out part of the Mobius strip. Where is the world that preceded the brain but in the brain? And yet where is the brain if not in the universe that preceded it? Why wouldn't your argument work against the prior existence of your own parents? Did they really exist before they engendered you? — jjAmEs
That which is ontically closest and well known, is ontologically the farthest and not known at all. — Heidegger
Naturalism as a theory seems more about a secular attitude — jjAmEs
t’s real but not ultimate. Ultimately we're not outside of or apart from reality. Philosophy is concerned with reality as lived, not simply with objective analysis. Wittgenstein said 'We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.' — Wayfarer
Where I would question Penrose, is in respect of his argument that the Universe pre-exists human consciousness. You see, this fantastically complex organ that we have - the brain - is actually an incredibly sophisticated simulator. The whole universe, including the ancient past, billions of years before h. Sapiens came along - is projected by this simulator. It is senseless to ask how or in what way the universe exists ‘outside of’ or ‘apart from’ that simulated act — because we’re never outside of it. — Wayfarer
I agree that we tend to ignore the backdrop of a functioning language, and this is precisely because it functions so well when we aren't doing philosophy. — jjAmEs
But what I was really trying to get at is that you can't make mind into an object. You can't get outside it. You can't, as it were, consider reason 'from the outside', because to consider reason requires the use of reason. So theories about the nature of mind founder in some fundamental way, because we can't make mind an object. Whereas, theories about objects of various kinds have a left-hand side and right-hand side, we don't stand in that relationship with the mind, as it's not other to us. — Wayfarer
We deal with the world through the objective stance, through making objects of things and working out how objects interact, which is fundamental to scientific method. But the 'nature of mind' is not amongst the objects of science; rationality is what makes science possible in the first place. Whereas, we foolishly believe that science 'explains' reason in terms of adaptation. See the problem? This is basically very much like Husserl's criticism of naturalism, if I understand it correctly. — Wayfarer
The important point is the role of the mind in establishing temporal sequence - on any scale. — Wayfarer
The problem though, is that you've described the universe as a product of the human brain: — Metaphysician Undercover
my universe must be distinct from your universe. — Metaphysician Undercover
But what I was really trying to get at is that you can't make mind into an object. You can't get outside it. You can't, as it were, consider reason 'from the outside', because to consider reason requires the use of reason. So theories about the nature of mind founder in some fundamental way, because we can't make mind an object. — Wayfarer
But the 'nature of mind' is not amongst the objects of science; rationality is what makes science possible in the first place. Whereas, we foolishly believe that science 'explains' reason in terms of adaptation. See the problem? This is basically very much like Husserl's criticism of naturalism, if I understand it correctly. — Wayfarer
Mostly, it's about control. — Wayfarer
Ultimately, we are separate and distinct, but the very same thing which separates us, the medium, we can manipulate and use as a tool to unite us. — Metaphysician Undercover
Science does concern itself with the nature of mind, though. What about psychology? — jjAmEs
I’m reading through Dermot Moran’s Introduction to Husserl’s Crisis of European Sciences — Wayfarer
Modern psychology is a very confused discipline. — Wayfarer
So as much as I enjoy these exchanges, and I really do, I have made a promise to myself to log off until I hit the 20,000 word mark, which is going to probably take the rest of April, so I’ll bid adieu for now. — Wayfarer
When is something explained? We are often satisfied with prediction and control. — jjAmEs
I can't see us as ultimately separate and distinct. To me the self as a concept depends on a community, and the reverse. To be human is to be social, to be one among others. — jjAmEs
Prediction is not explanation at all. People have been predicting that the sun will come up tomorrow, for a very long time now, most of that time without any real explanation of why it should. — Metaphysician Undercover
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-explanation/#DNModFor the explanans to successfully explain the explanandum several conditions must be met. First, “the explanandum must be a logical consequence of the explanans” and “the sentences constituting the explanans must be true” (Hempel, 1965, p. 248). That is, the explanation should take the form of a sound deductive argument in which the explanandum follows as a conclusion from the premises in the explanans. This is the “deductive” component of the model. Second, the explanans must contain at least one “law of nature” and this must be an essential premise in the derivation in the sense that the derivation of the explanandum would not be valid if this premise were removed. This is the “nomological” component of the model—“nomological” being a philosophical term of art which, suppressing some niceties, means (roughly) “lawful”. — link
But some people are satisfied with prediction, as explanation, and this is evident in the attitude that some have toward quantum physics. They think that because physicists can predict certain behaviours, they therefore understand the phenomena which they are predicting. — Metaphysician Undercover
What's interesting about QM is that a satisfying intuitive grasp is not necessary to use the theory. — jjAmEs
To me there's something like a spectrum that runs from pious theory to worldly practice. — jjAmEs
For they made me see that it is possible to achieve knowledge which would be very useful for life and that, in place of the speculative philosophy that is taught in the Schools, it is possible to find a practical philosophy by which, knowing the forces of actions of fire, water, air, the stars, the heavens and all the other bodies that surround us, as distinctly as we know the various crafts of our artisans, we should be able to use them in the same way for all the applications for which they are appropriate, and thereby make ourselves, as it were, the lords and masters of nature. — Descartes
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