I don't recall making a claim about objectivity. Could you quote me that post? — Isaac
Actually Aristotle's form/matter distinction was a counter to dualism (in this case, Plato's).
— Andrew M
Didn’t know that, thanks. True that form cannot exist without matter and vice versa. Still it is a duality of sorts, like the two sides of the same coin. — Olivier5
Long story short, I think kicking happens out there in the world, not in people's minds (it's a kind of relation, which is part of the physicist's toolkit). However it doesn't follow that it has an independent existence apart from individuals. Which is why it is abstract, not concrete.
— Andrew M
That makes sense. But I think the same thing applies to individuals. An individual is a being (be-ing) in the sense of the term as verb, yet being, like kicking, does not have an independent existence apart from individuals.
So for me an act of kicking is as concrete as the individual doing the kicking and the object being kicked. And kicking in the general sense, is no more abstract than being or existence in the general sense. — Janus
OK. I think of dualism as an ontological separation thesis, where each dual has its own nature and principles for understanding them. — Andrew M
Perhaps a way to proceed would be to look at the definitions given in the SEP article.
Four uses are provided. The first is the phenomenal character of the experience, which you seem to be adopting. The second is as properties of sense data. The third, as intrinsic non-representational properties. The fourth, as intrinsic, nonphysical, ineffable properties.
The second is out of favour along with sense-data. The fourth is that which Dennett seeks to Quine.
Now I think those of us who reject qualia have been implicitly suggesting that the first entails the third and fourth, and that this is the position taken by Dennett.
How's that? — Banno
↪Daemon
What do you think? Posit an example, and we can have a look. — Banno
We use talk of beliefs in order to explain human behaviour. We can extend this to cats, but the belief is not a thing in the mind of the cat; it's just a pattern of behaviour. That is, the belief is not in the cat, but in the explanation. — Banno
Four uses are provided. The first is the phenomenal character of the experience, which you seem to be adopting. The second is as properties of sense data. The third, as intrinsic non-representational properties. The fourth, as intrinsic, nonphysical, ineffable properties.
The second is out of favour along with sense-data. The fourth is that which Dennett seeks to Quine.
Now I think those of us who reject qualia have been implicitly suggesting that the first entails the third and fourth, and that this is the position taken by Dennett.
How's that? — Banno
Thus, announcements by philosophers who declare themselves opposed to qualia need to be treated with some caution. One can agree that there are no qualia in the last three senses I have explained, while still endorsing qualia in the standard first sense. — SEP
A robot has a relationship with its environment as well. Humans are part of the environment. To assert that humans are somehow special in this regard, is unwarranted.
The practical contact with the world for both humans and robots is via the physical senses.
Experience is information. — Harry Hindu
...you are taking a piece of language and supposing that because we talk as if it refers to something, there must be something to which it refers. You are reifying belief. — Banno
You there? I'd really like to know where this was going. When you have a minute. — Banno
I recently posted an article on 15 years of research that showed that humans really aren't like other animals in terms of memory storage.
Human memory is stored in an overlapping jumbled way compared to other animals like us.
An obvious speculation would be that our ability to abstract is related to this anomoly. So human thought may be truly unique in the animal world (now that our cousins are all extinct). — frank
So if your goal is to say something about evolution, you might have to be tentative.
In order for conscious experience to have been able to have gradually emerged over an evolutionary timeline, it must have been able to have begun at some simple, basic, and/or rudimentary level of complexity, and continue to grow and evolve in it's complexity over sufficient time and repetition into something like exactly what we're doing here and now.
— creativesoul
So, would you describe your overall approach as scientific realism? — Wayfarer
A sure sign that there's no substance to the counter-argument is when a participant focuses upon the author rather than the argument being given. — creativesoul
Thus, announcements by philosophers who declare themselves opposed to qualia need to be treated with some caution. One can agree that there are no qualia in the last three senses I have explained, while still endorsing qualia in the standard first sense. — SEP
You mean like Descartes taking Plato's Forms (the domain of the Intellect) and adding sentience to posit the Cartesian mind?
That debate has been going on for hundreds of years (if not thousands)... — Andrew M
Even if all people were to agree on the perceptual quality that some object has–for instance, that a wall appears white–the Cyrenaics still think that we could not confidently say that we are having the same experience. This is because each of us has access only to our own experiences, not to those of other people, and so the mere fact that each of us calls the wall ‘white’ does not show us that we are all having the same experience that I am having when I use the word ‘white.’
https://iep.utm.edu/cyren/#SSH2a.ii — IEP, Cyrenaics
That construes beliefs as a relation between agents and states of affairs, rather than between agents and statements. — fdrake
I actually agree that our thought is unique in the animal world, — creativesoul
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