One of the aspects of this is qualia, which is about being able to consider the verge between subjectivity and metaphysics — Jack Cummins

Are qualia about that? Arent qualia things like sound and vision (the personal experiences aspects). Consider the body as that between inner world (content of matter) and outer world (ouside aspect of matter). The body is the interface of both and cant be separated from these two worlds (the brain in a vat is an impossibility).

the traditional form of dualism was not Descartes’ mind and body dualism, but Aristotle’s matter-form (hylomorphic) dualism. It would be impossible to try and explain that in a forum post, not that I’m by any means expert in it. But one of the points is that Aristotelian dualism did not conceive of the mind and body as separate substances, in the sense that Descartes did.

Another point is that the term ‘substance’ does not mean in philosophy what it means in ordinary language. Substance in philosophy means ‘the bearer of attributes’. ‘Substantia’ - ‘that which stands under’ - was the translation of Aristotle’s ‘ouisia’ but that term is nearer in meaning to ‘being’ than what we think of as ‘substance’ (which is a material with uniform properties). But that in turn requires an explanation of what ‘form’ and ‘substance’ mean in terms of Aristotelian metaphysics which is a deep and difficult subject in its own right. However something to bear in mind is that Aristotelian metaphysics is still kept alive in various forms of Thomism, that is, philosophy descending from the work of Aquinas. To that extent, it’s still a living tradition.

Phenomenology re-frames the question, by concentrating on the nature of lived experience, rather than on positing abstractions such as mind and matter. It offers a way out of the apparent dichotomy posed by Cartesian dualism. Specifically enactivism and embodied cognition offer a radical alternative, but again hard subjects to sum up in few words. The key book is The Embodied Mind by Varela Thomson and Rosch, revised edition 2015.

The only place you’ll ever read about ‘qualia’ is in discussions by a clique of mainly American academic philosophers. In my view it’s a nonsense word and best left alone unless you want to get drawn into the cul de sac that all those types are bogged down in.

I should also mention Bernardo Kastrup. There was a thread on him a few years back, but since then he’s published a shed-load of books. Look him up.

Yes, qualia are sight and sound, but I think that while it involves the brain it does raise the question of what is out there. Also, while disembodied consciousness is problematic it is also moving into other dimensions, or the realm of imagination. It is hard to know where mind and matter end or merge here, and which impacts most. The brain can damage experience but we could also ask whether the 'mind' can damage physical organs, on a psychosomatic level.

I am inclined to agree that it is possible to get bogged down by the idea of qualia. Thanks for your recommend reading and 'The Embodied Mind' sounds good, so I will try to find it. I have not read much Aristotle, but I do have his 'Collected Works', so I will have a read of this because I have probably read more of Plato.

The MBP was dis-solved in the 17th century by Spinoza (re: property dualism). Furthermore, given that mind is an activity or process (i.e. minding) and not a thing, the dualistic fetish of "mind" separate from, or without, "body" (or brain) is a category error (e.g. dancing without legs? digesting without guts?) So what's the point, Jack? What are you after besides what others may think of this non-problem?

And why confuse the scientific problem of explaining 'mind' with antiquated metaphysics of making up shit without evidence or sound reasoning about 'mind'?

Is it just because it's easier to speculate without empirical or naturalistic constraints – playing tennis without a net – than defeasibly reasoning about it?

In other words, why do you – many others too – assume that 'mind' is a metaphysical question and not a scientific problem?

Maybe you didn't follow my debate with Hanover in June and connect the arguments therein to the topic at hand. Maybe you should, and then explain what is wrong with my position against a 'metaphysics of mind' (re substance dualism) or, if you prefer, what is right with the opposing position against an 'epistemology of mind' (re: property dualism) which I'd defended.

The holy three unity:

The inner world (magic content of matter giving human consciousness), made possible by processes of matter, in neurons, analogue to the outside world.

The outside world made possible by matter and spacetime. Physical processes going on there relying on the innerworld's perception and vice-versa.

The in between world that is the you or me. This is the world of people. We are in constant contact with both at once. The both are shaped by one another and have there impact on the interface that we are. The intermedium flows through spacetime thereby experiencing processes of the inner as well as the outside world. We have, being the intermediate shells some control of both and are carried along at the same time.

Before human existence or creature existence in general, there was one world only. All three worlds were unseparated yet.

I read some but not all of your debate with Hanover. I think that it is relevant, but not sure that it covers my question entirely. However, I will have a look at that thread and see what I think after that.

Also, while disembodied consciousness is problematic it is also moving into other dimensions, or the realm of imagination.

What other dimensions do you mean? You presuppose that disembodied consciousnees is possible in the first place. Its impossible in principle.

It is hard to know where mind and matter end or merge here, and which impacts most. The brain can damage experience but we could also ask whether the 'mind' can damage physical organs, on a psychosomatic level. — Jack Cummins

Mind and matter merge in the body. The mind can alter the body and certainly influence it. By the very Nature of the mind its very unlikely that the brain can do damage to the body as the body can do to the brain. Though you can always automutulate.

I think that disembodied consciousness is not possible. The closest one could get to that is 'out of body experiences' but I am not saying that the separation between mind and body which is felt can be assumed in a literal sense. The experience can be seen as a state of dreaming consciousness, which is, of course, going into the realm of imagination.

Today, I have been reading, 'A Revolutionary Way of Thinking,' by Charles Kreb, which looks at the mind, body, spirit perspective of Chinese thought.It draws upon the Eastern perspective of there being 'subtle' bodies, and this makes sense to me, but I am sure that many people on this forum would not embrace such a view. This is an approach which underlies some thinking about healing, including the existence of meridian points in the energy body. It also involves a picture in which the subconscious pattern of thoughts are seen as interconnected to the physical body, as a complex feedback loop. In such a view thoughts can affect the body and vice versa. I am not saying that I am sure of this viewpoint, but I think that it is worth thinking about, even though I am aware that such a way of understanding is likely to be extremely unpopular by many within the Western philosophy tradition and on this site.

Im inline with the Chines view! Every night before sleeping I stimulate consciously the unconsciousness to take care of my body. Well, I used to. I have otber stuff to worry about these dsys.

I'm a bit of a broken record, but I believe Chomsky has provided ample evidence for what I'm arguing. The mind-body problem was a metaphysical concern - about the nature of the world - back in Descartes time, so 17th century. The reason Descartes postulated a "res cogitans" is because he could not use his materialism to explain certain mental phenomena.

But it turns out Descartes' (and other scientists and philosophers of the time) materialism is false, Newton showed this, that the world is not a machine (not mechanical which was what materialism meant, the universe was conceived like a giant clock based on direct contact). There is action at a distance without physical contact. So what we have is a ghostly world, not a mechanical one. The whole "ghost in the machine" is a complete reversal of what actually happened if you look at the people involved in this affair.

With no conception of body anymore, one can't formulate a metaphysical distinction - a distinction in the world - between body and anything else. At least not on these terms. So, whatever else anyone may say about this, I think it's clear that the problem is epistemic and not metaphysical.

We just don't understand how the stuff of the world could be so minded. But it is. We just have to accept it as a fact of our cognitive makeup that we can't make sense of this.

Going back to Descartes, the awareness of the 'I' was about going within oneself, but alongside this, was the exploration of the outer world, and empirical investigations. — Jack Cummins

Saying: "the awareness of the 'I' was about going within oneself" makes it sound like a resource or a means of understanding only available to a person isolated from other persons. At least some part of Descartes' purpose was to oppose any view of subjectivity that did not accept the manifest quality of it.

That is a country mile from explaining where to find this "I" amongst what is not "I"

:cool: But you can still answer some of the questions I raised without referencing the debate (which only elaborates more on my previous post). I know you don't like to be confronted directly but that's just me, mate, taking the b.s. by the horns. :smirk:

I think the mind/body problem as metaphysical consideration is soon going to be fully antiquated by quantum neuroscience. The essence of a percept simply emerges from material processes, namely quantum superposition e.g. the visible spectrum, basically a "color" or resonance amongst matter, the most accessible example of this being a mental image in the brain. These resonances are blended and projected by specially adapted molecules, cells, tissues, brain regions into extremely complex hybrids that we recognize as sights, sounds, thoughts etc., essentially the components of first person cognition, and are not constrained to the brain as we know it but can occur within many additional types of material substance, in association with quantumlike and nonlocal "coherence field" phenomena (comparable to quantum coherence) that have not yet been classified scientifically, though we have plenty of primal intuitions in this realm to guide introspective facets of the relevant research.

In my opinion, metaphysics is obsolete except for its historical significance and role in expansion of reasoning intuitions via novelty thought experiments. Many subsequent scientific models will be influenced by metaphysical conceiving, but metaphysics as fact is becoming obsolete.

In my opinion, metaphysics is obsolete ... — Enrique

Cataphatic metaphysics (i.e. deductively positing categories/universals), I completely agree, is obsolete but not apophatic metaphysics (i.e. deductively negating categories/universals) which has not yet been adequately explored. It's my preferred approach for acid testing impossible (self-contradictory) concepts or models used in defeasible discursive practices such as natural sciences, historical sciences, legal theory, formal systems, etc. Scientism, however, doesn't seem a viable, or coherent, alternative to speculatively creating 'new' concepts (metaphor-paradigms) adequate to our theoretical problems or interpreting their theoretical solutions accordingly. In other words, a nail (re: science) can't hammer itself.

I have to admit that I find Spinoza's writings a bit difficult to come to grips with, but at the same time I do think that in many ways, mind can be seen as a process. I think that such a perspective is probably compatible with the ideas of quantum physics and, probably, the neuroscientists. I guess what I am trying to argue against is a philosophy of mind which is too reductive.

In this respect, I do believe that Bergson's idea of the 'mind at large', which was drawn upon by Huxley, is useful. I am not necessarily trying to say that there is a hidden reality as such, although I do believe in the collective unconscious as an underlying source, even though I know that this concept is seen as outdated by many psychologists and philosophers. I think that they frame the idea a bit wrongly by seeing it as abstract and 'supernatural'. I see it more as an underlying aspect, or as Sheldrake suggests in his idea of morphic resonance, a memory inherent in nature, including mind itself.

It is interesting to think of the possibility of metaphysics being replaced by images. I am wondering where language would fit into this and whether it would involve a new way of mental processing.

As far as metaphysics being seen as obsolete, I think that since the time of Wittgenstein, we have been moving into a direction of it being seen as make it up as you go along speculative nonsense. However, while metaphysics as a focus may be fading, it is implicit in philosophies of mind and as assumptions underlying all psychological perspectives. In that sense, I think that it is important for it to be seen as worth discussing.

Yes, I think that the idea of the 'I' does convey some focus on the isolated individual. But, we do exist as aspects of a larger whole and as separate beings. Even the understanding of 'I' consciousness is constructed in the shared language of social meaning through language. We live in a world of other minds and we could ask to what extent an individual mind exist because minds operate on shared cultural meanings and discourse?

But, we do exist as aspects of a larger whole and as separate beings — Jack Cummins

Can we ever know this larger whole? Or we just cant because we are not the larger whole?

I think that it is impossible to know the full extent of the larger whole because it is so large. We have to draw on anthropology and history. But the idea of knowledge of other minds is limited. We may draw upon shared assumption, but the question is to what extent are there similarities or differences, and, for this reason, I have always seen Kant's idea of the categorical imperative as a little bit problematic. We don't all want the same thing in life. So, it may come down to understand of the universal and the unique, but we can never know all these individual unique subjectivities.

One of the reasonable comments! :smile:

I expressed myself poorly.
Descartes argues that "I", the thinker, the one who can doubt what is understood, cannot doubt that such thinking is happening. To arrive at the necessity of the isolated thinker is not to view oneself as a resource or explain the necessity in any way:

As a result of these considerations, I begin to recognize what I am somewhat better and with better clarity and distinctness than heretofore. But nevertheless, it still seems to me, and I cannot keep myself from believing that corporeal things, image of which are formed by thought and which the senses themselves examine, are much more distinctly known than that indescribable part of myself which cannot be pictured by the imagination. — Decartres, Second Meditation, translated by L.J. Lafleur (emphasis mine)

How it came to be that such an "I" should exist amongst thoughts of what is not I is not explained nor can it be from this vantage point.

I guess what I am trying to argue against is a philosophy of mind which is too reductive. — Jack Cummins

By "too reductive" do you mean philosophical analyses which conceptualize 'mind' as emergent (e.g. embodied cognition, functionalism) from non-mental processes and therefore not a fundamental feature of nature, or reality (like e.g. panpsychism or absolute idealism or neo/platonism)? If so, why is being "too reductive" in this sense problematic for you?

It is not that I really mind how the mind and body relationship is described and I do think that it is emergent. I am just not convinced that it is as clear cut as some philosophers have tried to explain it and I don't rule out the possibility of panpsychism because it may be that consciousness is not exclusive to sentient beings. For all we know, the stars may have some kind of consciousness. As human beings we judge the idea of consciousness with reference to our human experiences and it may be that presents a limitation. But, getting back to the metaphysical, I think that there is probably so much that is beyond our understanding. Science is taking us there, but if humanity exists, it may be that in several centuries time, our current conceptions will be seen as outdated.

I do agree that the 'I' is hard to explain as an entity rather than us being a mass of experience. I believe that it is this which lead to the idea of dualism in the first place, because even if it is illusory, it involves a certain sense of distance or separation from the body and experience itself, and it is this 'I' of consciousness which many believed to be an inner aspect of consciousness which could even survive death potentially. It may be that the 'I' has an inflated sense of ego consciousness, but the I sees itself as having some independent existence in many ways.

I do agree that the mechanical basis of the body has collapsed. I think that our own language of explaining it has broken down too. I am not sure really whether it makes any more sense to say that the physical or the material are more real. They could be seen like two sides of the same coin and, ultimately, it could be about not simply going beyond dualism but about going beyond duality. Opposites exist, but within the scheme of an underlying larger duality.

Now that our intuitive notion of body has collapsed, the rest remains terminological - which does not imply it is trivial, at least not to my eyes. "The physical" and "the material" are essentially the same thing in philosophical usage. As for what's "more real", that's a bit hard to navigate.

I think we can say what feels more intuitive or more immediate, such as our mental properties. But I wouldn't say (and I'm not implying that you do) that my mind is more real than my body. As far as we can tell, mind is the result of a certain configuration of matter. So it's not like we have the mental on the one hand and the physical on the other.

I do agree that the 'I' is hard to explain as an entity rather than us being a mass of experience. — Jack Cummins

I was hoping to separate Descartes' project from any that would explain the difference between identity and experience. Rather than viewing the isolation as a desiderata, consider it as refuge from the churning struggle over what a person was and why they were here. Wars over religion, the Inquisition, the struggle to have a nice bath, it all gets too much after a while.

Descartes does not own the isolated self. Think of it as a studio apartment he is renting from who ever built the place. He has access 24/7 but is not permitted to furnish the place; And don't even think about having girls stay overnight.

I believe that it is this which lead to the idea of dualism in the first place, because even if it is illusory, it involves a certain sense of distance or separation from the body and experience itself, and it is this 'I' of consciousness which many believed to be an inner aspect of consciousness which could even survive death potentially. — Jack Cummins

I am suggesting that the duality of Descartes was, ironically, an attempt to escape the duality discussed for centuries regarding the soul.

... it may be that consciousness is not exclusive to sentient beings. — Jack Cummins

I don't understand what you mean here. "Consciousness", I think, denotes sentience.

I don't rule out the possibility of panpsychism ...

Okay. Do you mean a 'formal possibility'? a 'metaphysical possibility'? an 'empirical possibility'? In any case, panpsychism make no sense to me for reasons I've discussed elsewhere. For instance, if "consciousness" (i.e. sentience) is a fundamental property of nature (or reality) like spin, charge, fields, etc, then how is it that amputees consciously experience 'phantom limbs' (& phantom sensations, itching, pains, etc) or brain injuries can completely change someone's conscious self-identity (i.e. personality) as in dissociative disorders? Or psychotropic medications can 'regulate' self-awareness and subjective experience?

I think that consciousness does imply sentience, although some people seem to believe that machines can be conscious, but that doesn't quite make sense to me. I am not sure that the ideas of panpsychism really but I do think that it may be about energy fields. This would explain the experience of phantom limbs after amputations.I think that part of the issue about consciousness here is whether it involves self identity. That is what constitutes the 'I' of consciousness, although I would assume that animals don't have a sense of ego identity but have some continuity of memories. The apparent experience of 'dualism' seems to me to be bound up with ego identity and it is possible that the practice of mindfulness is important here in enabling people to understand embodiment through greater sensory awareness.