Andrew M is arguing that perspective is fundamental to knowing - which I agree with. — Wayfarer
Some animals show rudimentary abilities to count and reason, but speech and reasoning is unique to humans. I'm not going to argue it further. — Wayfarer
As for your categorisation of 'varieties of conscious experience', that may be all well and good, but I'm concentrating specifically on rational thought, as I regard that as germane to the OP. — Wayfarer
The hard problem arises as a result of positing an ontological division between one set of features and the other. That is, a solution becomes impossible in principle because it has been defined that way. — Andrew M
:up: Perspective is an attribute of rational thought. Do non-rational animals entertain perspectives? I think not, because they are not capable of abstraction. — Wayfarer
I have to draw attention again to the equivocal meaning of ‘substance’ in this context. ‘Substance’ in normal usage means ‘a particular kind of matter with uniform properties’. ‘Substance’ in the philosophical sense means the fundamental kinds or types of beings of which attributes can be predicated.
So I think what you are actually saying here, is not 'substantial', but 'material' - you're contrasting material particulars with abstractions. — Wayfarer
The individual substances are the subjects of properties in the various other categories, and they can gain and lose such properties whilst themselves enduring. There is an important distinction pointed out by Aristotle between individual objects and kinds of individual objects. Thus, for some purposes, discussion of substance is a discussion about individuals, and for other purposes it is a discussion about universal concepts that designate specific kinds of such individuals. In the Categories, this distinction is marked by the terms ‘primary substance’ and ‘secondary substance’. Thus Fido the dog is a primary substance—an individual—but dog or doghood is the secondary substance or substantial kind. — Substance - SEP
They [abstractions] depend on (are not separable from) concrete particulars. They exist, to the extent that they do, because the concrete particulars that they are predicated of exist.
— Andrew M
But that leads to the question of what 'dependency' means. If you consider such concepts as fundamental logical laws or arithmetical principles, there are at least some that are understood to be 'true in all possible worlds'. Basic arithmetical principles, such as number, are applicable to any and all kinds of particulars; '3' can be predicated of people, apples and rocks. So I question this notion of 'dependency'. — Wayfarer
The main point to keep in mind is that the term substance in our translation of Aristotle is standing in for ousia, which we can think of as the gold medal winner in the ontological olympics. With this understanding of ousia, we can see that it has the ontological status that Plato attributed to his intelligible forms. So now we can articulate the ontological dispute between Plato and Aristotle. Plato thought that the entities that deserve the title Ousia, the most fundamental entities, are suprasensible, intelligible forms. Aristotle, by contrast, thought that the most basic realities are those that serve as subjects for all the rest. And these are such ordinary entities as human beings, and other animals. — Substance and Subject - Susan Sauvé Meyer - University of Pennsylvania
Wouldn't you say that having a perspective (or being conscious) is a bodily process or function like any other? — Luke
I think you and I might have different conceptions of a human perspective. Yours is apparently stripped of all phenomena leaving only an abstract point-of-view singularity. Whereas I see little difference between having a perspective and being conscious (in the first-person), with all that that entails. — Luke
Do you consider observation to be a part of a perspective? — Luke
I think that human aspiration or human digestion could be said to have physical existence? — Luke
As I see it, the first-person/third-person division excludes the possibility of a physical explanation
— Andrew M
Why does it? — Luke
If these are properties of the apple, rather than properties of your perception (or rather than some relation of the two), then it would seem to imply that the apple is objectively spherical and objectively red. Which is fine, but how do you deal with things like seeing illusions where there is a discrepancy between the properties of the object and the perception of the object? — Luke
The hard problem arises as a result of positing an ontological division between one set of features and the other. That is, a solution becomes impossible in principle because it has been defined that way.
— Andrew M
Seems that way to me as well. Dennett also pointed it out. — creativesoul
Some language less creatures can learn that fire hurts when touched. That does not require language. — creativesoul
Entertaining a perspective requires first having one and the ability to think about it as a subject matter in and of itself. Of course only humans can do such a thing, that we know of, for doing so is a process that requires complex language use. — creativesoul
I've seen very little, if anything, that Andrew has argued here that strikes me as obviously mistaken. Andrew also seems to be skirting around, or nearly touching upon what I call existential dependency and elemental constituency. — creativesoul
But they can't conceptualise them. I think we have to be extremely wary about projecting 'perspective' as something that exists outside of, well, the human perspective.Animals can still distinguish objects and colors, even though they lack an ability to use language to represent them. — Andrew M
There's a useful chart at 8:40 in this video (Substance and Subject) by Susan Sauvé Meyer. — Andrew M
As with the train speed example, there is no "view from nowhere".
— Andrew M
But there is, because life evolved long after the universe was around, and science can detail the universe in places where there is no life and no perceivers. — Marchesk
Correlations drawn between color and other things are not so much caused by color so much as they are made possible by color. Color is one basic elemental constituent of all conscious experience of color... that of red/redness notwithstanding. — creativesoul
Some language less creatures can learn that fire hurts when touched. That does not require language.
— creativesoul
That's because it's not language. — Wayfarer
Bacteria can learn. It's basic to any living organism to be able to respond to stimuli. That's what I mean when I refer to 'stimulus and response' - it describes a huge gamut of behaviour, even human behaviour to a point. But language depends on abstraction and on reason. (I don't see why the notion of 'reason' is fraught, either, although I don't know if I want to argue the case.) — Wayfarer
Correlations drawn between color and other things are not so much caused by color so much as they are made possible by color. Color is one basic elemental constituent of all conscious experience of color... that of red/redness notwithstanding.
— creativesoul
I don't see these as exclusive. — Kenosha Kid
By having a different, frequency-dependent mapping between light and perceived colour, we have multiple colours to distinguish and colour itself emerges from that distinction.
If we saw in high-contrast black and white, such that any light below a certain threshold frequency appeared to us black and any light above this threshold appeared the same intensity of white, we would have a single colour of sorts (white) but no differentiation: it is either present or absent. We could not distinguish between a nice purple berry and a dangerous red one, and colour as a linguistic concept certainly wouldn't exist. I'm not sure it would make sense to say we have an experience of colour in this case: we have an experience of light above that threshold. — Kenosha Kid
So where does the red come from? — Marchesk
Wouldn't you say that having a perspective (or being conscious) is a bodily process or function like any other?
— Luke
No. As I'm using the term, it's a logical condition. — Andrew M
In this case, like the "winning the race" example, it would be a logical condition that denotes the end of a process - something that is achieved by looking, thinking, interacting in the world, etc. Which is just what it means to be conscious. — Andrew M
However I don't accept the "first-person" qualification if it's meant to imply a contrast with a "third-person" perspective. — Andrew M
Observation is an activity or process. Perspective is the prior condition (my usage) or the end result (your usage) of that activity. — Andrew M
In effect, it posits ill-defined ghostly entities that are outside the scope of scientific investigation. — Andrew M
I'd just add that the 'objective' qualifiers are misleading, since they imply that the apple has those characteristics independently of a perspective. It's both sides of the subject/object duality that need to be rejected and replaced with a perspective of the world conception. — Andrew M
What is it like to have synesthesia? Some people will see number symbols and letters shaded or tinged with color. — Marchesk
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