Then you're using 'reduction' in an unusual way. What you're describing is nonreductive physicalism. — frank
Few would accept that definition at this point. — frank
If I’m misunderstanding what they’ve said please explain it better. — Wayfarer
I skimmed this discussion but didn't spot anything relevant to my question. Could you point me to a specific post? — EricH
Pain is thought of as an experience, not a behavior. — frank
but I could still in principle verify that collapse has not occurred for me. — Kenosha Kid
Pain is not an experience, in the truest sense. Experience is always of a known cause, pain is not. One will have a direct corresponding pain or pleasure given an experience which is its cause, but one will not necessarily have a direct corresponding experience caused by pain or pleasure itself, re: a simple headache. — Mww
One kind of property that minds have, that matter does not, is the subject of logic — Wayfarer
I was think of experience as just awareness if things. — frank
How are you using it? — frank
the self/mind is unknowable (although not in the way the 'new mysterians' mean it.) That's why I referred to the Bitbol paper, 'It is not known but it is the knower', — Wayfarer
One kind of property that minds have, that matter does not, is the subject of logic. Such principles as ‘the law of the excluded middle’, and by extension, many of the mental operations common to thought, abstraction and language, such as ‘like’, ‘not like’, ‘equal to’ and so on, are internal to the nature of thought - they are purely the relation of ideas — Wayfarer
So the universe that our species evolved in is an advanced simulation running on some sort of "computer" in a "higher" reality.
What would you call that? — Count Timothy von Icarus
what I'm not seeing is how this ties into the materialism vs. idealism debate in this discussion — EricH
the self/mind is unknowable (although not in the way the 'new mysterians' mean it.) That's why I referred to the Bitbol paper, 'It is not known but it is the knower',
— Wayfarer
But however unknowable to us the self/mind is , can we assume that it is constant in itself, unlike intentional objects which are contingent , relative and fleeting? Or is this self constantly change alongside objects of experience? — Joshs
Thus logic originates in embodied interactions between organism and environment. — Joshs
You notice how you've subtly made the mind or self an object by asking this question - an 'it'. The mind, the self are not an object. There is no 'it' but then neither is it correct to say there is no mind or self. That's a very subtle point but crucial to get. — Wayfarer
the principles of logic are discovered, not invented; however the brain evolves, it has to conform to them, it doesn't produce them out of itself. — Wayfarer
If you are saying instead that logic is an empirical endeavor( discovered rather than invented) then I agree. — Joshs
The concept of biosemiotics requires making a distinction between two categories, the material or physical world and the symbolic or semantic world. — Howard Pattee, Physics and Metaphysics of Biosemiosis
The problem is that there is no obvious way to connect the two categories. This is a classical philosophical problem on which there is no consensus even today. Biosemiotics recognizes that the philosophical matter-mind problem extends downward to the pattern recognition and control processes of the simplest living organisms where it can more easily be addressed as a scientific problem. In fact, how material structures serve as signals, instructions, and controls is inseparable from the problem of the origin and evolution of life. Biosemiotics was established as a necessary complement to the physical-chemical reductionist approach to life that cannot make this crucial categorical distinction necessary for describing semantic information. Matter as described by physics and chemistry has no intrinsic function or semantics. By contrast, biosemiotics recognizes that life begins with function and semantics. ...
Even in the most detailed physical description of matter there is no hint of any function or meaning. The problem also poses an apparent paradox: All signs, symbols, and codes, all languages including formal mathematics are embodied as material physical structures and therefore must obey all the inexorable laws of physics. At the same time, the symbol vehicles like the bases in DNA, voltages representing bits in a computer, the text on this page, and the neuron firings in the brain do not appear to be limited by, or clearly related to, the very laws they must obey. Even the mathematical symbols that express these inexorable physical laws seem to be entirely free of these same laws.
But I see logic as innate to the structure of the mind, an innate capacity. In that sense, I'm sympathetic to the generally platonist view. — Wayfarer
It is assumed that the sophistication of the brain allows for the origination of logic, but the principles of logic are discovered, not invented; however the brain evolves, it has to conform to them, it doesn't produce them out of itself. — Wayfarer
You notice how you've subtly made the mind or self an object by asking this question - an 'it'. The mind, the self are not an object. There is no 'it' — Wayfarer
It is assumed that the sophistication of the brain allows for the origination of logic, but the principles of logic are discovered, not invented; however the brain evolves, it has to conform to them, it doesn't produce them out of itself. — Wayfarer
This is a good idea for a new thread. — Tom Storm
how do the structures of logic and language humans appear to have as innate occur in a physicalist universe? Did Chomksy plead mysterianism to this one too? — Tom Storm
The mind is not an object, yet you're an idealist? — khaled
Laws of logic are about how we think, they're not inherent in the world itself. Otherwise we wouldn't have different logics. — khaled
you seem to think that having any concept of "pattern" or "structure" automatically counts as a form of idealism — khaled
the human intellect grasps, first in a most indeterminate manner, then more and more distinctly, certain sets of intelligible features -- that is, natures, say, the human nature -- which exist in reality as identical with individuals, with Peter or John for instance, but which are universal in the mind and presented to it as universal objects, positively one (within the mind) and common to an infinity of singular things (in the real).
Thanks to the association of particular images and recollections, a dog reacts in a similar manner to the similar particular impressions his eyes or his nose receive from this thing we call a piece of sugar or this thing we call an intruder; he does not know what is sugar or what is intruder. He plays, he lives in his affective and motor functions, or rather he is put into motion by the similarities which exist between things of the same kind; he does not see the similarity, the common features as such. What is lacking is the flash of intelligibility; he has no ear for the intelligible meaning. He has not the idea or the concept of the thing he knows, that is, from which he receives sensory impressions; his knowledge remains immersed in the subjectivity of his own feelings -- only in man, with the universal idea, does knowledge achieve objectivity. And his field of knowledge is strictly limited: only the universal idea sets free -- in man -- the potential infinity of knowledge. — Jacques Maritain
I would assume idealism is a position that proposes the existence of ideas as a separate sort of object from matter, — khaled
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