On a representationalist view, there is a separation of (subjective) experience from the (objective) world. The subjective experience has to be synthesized from the signals coming from the environment. Hence the binding problem.

Whereas on a non-representationalist view, what we perceive just is the world (which we have attendant thoughts and feelings about). The signals coming from the environment enable us to perceive what is there. — Andrew M

But even in the non-representationalist view we don't perceive a tree (an external object) directly but only as "marks" left by incoming photons in our nervous system and these "marks" are a representation of the tree, not the tree itself, so I don't understand why such a view would be called non-representationalist.

When an OCR machine recognizes an alphabet character or a self-driving vehicle recognizes a pedestrian crossing the street, does it do so via a representationalist method or a non-representationalist method?

The brain and the mind are two sides of the same medal. — Raymond

As if an abstract non-entity can be a force. — Mww

How would your analysis differ if its object was (what is usually thought of as) a physical entity or process? — SophistiCat

Trying to pull these ideas together.

Our understanding of the mind-brain relationship is ultimately limited by language
Using language, I can say "I feel a pain" or I perceive blueness"
But when I use language to talk about the relationship between the mind and the brain, what I can say about the relationship is necessarily limited not by the truth but by the nature of the language.

The difference between "I am conscious" and "My mind is conscious"
When I say "I am conscious", I am speaking in the first person as an inside observer of my consciousness.
When I say "my car is in the garage", I am speaking in the third person as an outside observer of my car. I would not say that "I am my car.
When I say "My mind is conscious", I am speaking in the third person as an outside observer of my mind.

The "mind" exists in language and the mind may or may not exist in the world
In any discussion about the mind, there are two aspects: the "mind" as a word being part of the language game and the mind existing as a real thing in the world.

Either minds exist or they don't

If minds don't exist
If minds don't exist, then minds can still be discussed, as unicorns can be discussed.

If minds do exist
If I say that "my mind exists", then I am speaking as an outside observer, and as an outside observer I may be mistaken.

If I say that "I am my mind", then I am speaking as an inside observer of my mind. But this leads to the problem that the mind is discussing itself, leading to a circularity, in that the statement becomes either "I am I" or "my mind is my mind".
The statement "A is A" may be logically true, but it gives no information as to what "A" empirically is.

We can discuss the mind without ever knowing whether it exists or not
If minds don't exist, we can still discuss them as we can discuss unicorns
If minds do exist, then the mind would be discussing itself, leading to the problem of circularity, meaning that the mind would be unable to determine the truth of its own existence.

IE, even though "minds " exist in language, it is logically impossible for us to determine whether they exist in the world.

Only minds can discuss, though.

If the mind is physical, then thoughts are physical. If a thought is physical, it consists of physical energy. If physical energy can be validly quantified as e = mc^2, then our physical thoughts, which consist of structured physical energy, then consist of physical mass multiplied by the speed of light squared. Ergo, our physical thoughts have physical mass.

Where's the logical fallacy in this? — javra

In "If a thought is physical, it consists of physical energy." There is no justification given, and it simply does not follow. Many things appear to exist, that do not consist of "physical energy". For instance: space, time, the surface area of a cube, the direction of a movement, a hole in the ground, an angle, 1 million dollars, the law of excluded middle, a novel, or the formula "e = mc^2".

People can speak of substance dualism, property dualism or monism untill they are blue in the face, but the truth is that nobody knows what constitutes a mind, yet. So let's not jump to conclusions.

When I say "My mind is conscious", I am speaking in the third person as an outside observer of my mind. — RussellA

I think this is a crucial point. You perceive the mental content, while someone else (or you looking in the mirror) sees looks at it from the outside, the material part. Though to look at a working brain is very difficult! You can only see tiny parts of its inside and to look at a working brain truly set apart from a body is just impossible. You can never see the working inside of the brain, except maybe by images given by scanning techniques.

Only minds can discuss, though — Olivier5

Would not disagree.

If dualism is true, then the mind is a different substance to the brain. If monism is true, then the mind is a synonym for the brain.

In both cases, the mind is doing the discussing.

By and large yes, and thus the existence of minds cannot be denied. That's the cogito.

If I say that "I am my mind", then I am speaking as an inside observer of my mind. But this leads to the problem that the mind is discussing itself, leading to a circularity, in that the statement becomes either "I am I" or "my mind is my mind".
The statement "A is A" may be logically true, but it gives no information as to what "A" empirically is. — RussellA

I would understand "I am my mind" as saying something about your concept of personal identity, i.e. "'I' (my self) is nothing other than my mind (whatever that is)".

We can discuss the mind without ever knowing whether it exists or not
If minds don't exist, we can still discuss them as we can discuss unicorns
If minds do exist, then the mind would be discussing itself, leading to the problem of circularity, meaning that the mind would be unable to determine the truth of its own existence. — RussellA

I don't see a logical problem here.

Also, we should clarify what it might mean to deny the existence of minds. One can intelligibly argue that most traditional philosophical concepts of "mind" are defective, or that simpleminded (heh) folk concepts of "mind" are inadequate. What else?

mental content — Raymond

The problem with words.

Yes, if I perceive mental content, I would say "I am conscious of the mental content", rather than "my mind is conscious of the mental content".

Yes, if I perceive mental content, I would say "I am conscious of the mental content", rather than "my mind is conscious of the mental content". — RussellA

Yes. The mind is there like the world is there. You are not your mind or the world, but you can't live without them. It's not you who does the thinking, it's you experiencing the thoughts. You can try to influence them like you can try to influence the world. Thoughts just happen like the world just happens.

Many things appear to exist, that do not consist of "physical energy". For instance: space, time, the surface area of a cube, the direction of a movement, a hole in the ground, an angle, 1 million dollars, the law of excluded middle, a novel, or the formula "e = mc^2". — Olivier5

Thinking about these examples of things that appear to exist but are not made of energy or matter, some of them (the surface area of a cube, the direction of a movement, a hole in the ground, an angle) can be defined as "morphological or "topological". They are shapes, i.e. forms. They are about how material things are configured. There's something objective in them. E.g. you can fall in a hole and die; the exposed surface of a rock does gets eroded faster than the inside, an inertial object does maintain its direction of movement, etc. They belong to what Popper called World 1: the set of material things and the shapes they take.

Other items in the list could be labelled "cultural": money, a scientific or logical law, a novel. Cultural objects exist in human societies, as beliefs, ideas, works of art, conventions and norms that are enforced, eg by police and tribunals, through scientific peer review, or by some other social mechanism. They belong what Popper called World 3: cultural objects, such as novels (not the paper and ink objects that are part of world 1, but the text, the novel itself).

In between World 1 and World 3, Popper placed the world of human thoughts, World 2. World 1 underpins World 2, which underpins World 3.

(In my own version of this pluralist view, the world of biology (living organisms) deserves a 'World', and Popper's Worlds 2 and 3 are rather similar so I lump them together and personally count the following 3 'worlds': 1) unanimated matter, 2) biology / life, 3) private thoughts and cultural/socially shared thoughts and objects.)

Evidently, life is a prerequisite for thoughts and societies, so thus defined, world 2 still underpins world 3.

These 'Worlds' are just categories of things in existence, not 'substances' nor 'properties' (whatever those words mean, which isn't clear to me). And there are obvious relationships and connections between 'worlds'. The point of postulating three 'worlds' is simply to assert the existence of non material things, such as the novel Pride and Prejudice. But even in the material world, things have shapes, and shapes have no weight, although they can be measured otherwise, eg they might have a volume.

"'I' (my self) is nothing other than my mind (whatever that is)". — SophistiCat

I agree that "I am my mind".

If I want to understand the nature of the mind, I cannot look at the minds of others, which will forever be closed to me, in that I could never discover what beetles others have in their individual boxes.

My only recourse is to try to understand my own mind, which is accessible to me, but with the consequence that my mind has to think about itself.

I have no problem with the concept that my mind can think about something outside itself, such as the range of the Cybertruck, but I have a problem with the concept of my mind thinking about itself. Does it mean that my mind is thinking about my mind thinking about my mind thinking about my mind, etc. As Schopenhauer wrote: “that the subject should become an object for itself is the most monstrous contradiction ever thought of”

IE, if I cannot understand the nature of the mind by looking at the minds of other, and I cannot understand the nature of the mind by looking at my own, then I will never be able to understand the nature of the mind.

I reject the concept of “qualia” outright, as superfluous....
— Mww

Thanks! You omit those words (as superfluous) but, as I understand it, retain the underlying representationalist model. — Andrew M

Remember the times. Pierce, 1866, inflicted “quale” on the metaphysical world for one reason only: Kant didn’t elaborate on his infliction of “pure aesthetic judgement” on the metaphysical world. Or, I suppose....his elaboration was so complex its validity escaped everyone, so they speculated on their own. Given that Pierce was a Kantian, at least he was in 1866, and given that it is the case that he defined “qualia” as “the character of phenomenal experience”, it is clear he speculated his way far from the original, insofar as all experience has phenomenal ground, hence the notion of “superfluous”, and, experience doesn't even have “character” in the Enlightenment transcendental sense, hence the notion of speculative advancement of a standing theory.

Subsequent elaborations removed qualia from the phenomenal character of experience, per se, to manifestations of the “feeling of what it is like to have a phenomenal experience”, which predicated the concept on the affect of sense data has, that is, sensation, as elaboration over phenomena, on the subject’s feelings. This elaboration in effect twice removed qualia from Kantian metaphysics, in the first because, re: Pierce, experience doesn’t have character, and second, because, re: Lewis, 1929, while experience is certainly predicated on sense data given from objects of perception, feelings just as certainly are not. Continuing these conceptual monstrosities through time just made it easier to counter them, as they got further and further removed from the inception of them.

But back to the beginning......representations are all and only given from sensibility as intuitions, or understanding as conceptions. A representational model of cognitive metaphysics leaves room for qualia, obviously, because they can be thought, and furthermore they stand as valid conceptions insofar as they do not carry an intrinsic contradiction.
————-

Which gets us to......

The theorem:
One can hold with such representational model, while abstaining from incorporating qualia in it.

....which in turn dialectically mandates....

The proof:
Major:
It is really quite irrelevant that there is a quale representing a “feeling of what it is like”, if there is no aesthetic judgement made in relation to it. If we have the feeling and make no judgement, the feeling, and by association its cause, doesn’t matter. If we have a feeling and make a judgement on it, we have cognized that which belongs to the judgement as it relates to its cause but not always with a sufficient determination of it.

Minor:
We know this to be true, given we are sometimes presented with an occasion where we do like (instances of the beautiful which is always a pleasure) or do not like (instances of the sublime which is always a pain), the feeling we get from some thing or other of our experience, but can’t say why. And if we can’t say why, if we cannot judge a sufficient cause of the feeling, there’s no reason, under these beginning conditions, to say qualia are anywhere involved. It follows logically that if we cannot attribute qualia to some feelings, we loose justification for attributing them to any feelings, given that all feelings are, in and of themselves alone, regardless of degree or kind, all exactly equal as merely a human condition.

All that to posit this conclusion:
Qualia do nothing but give feelings an unwarranted cognizable object, and thereby make it so there is no need for aesthetic judgements to which cognizable objects actually belong, which is anathema to every single transcendentally conditioned human that ever lived. In other words.....all of us.

So there, dammit!!! How come everybody doesn’t know this already???? Obvious to even the most casual observer, right??? ‘Course it is.

It is really quite irrelevant that there is a quale representing a “feeling of what it is like”, if there is no aesthetic judgement made in relation to it. — Mww

Qualia have been posited as qualities of consciousness, as opposed to relations. They stand in relations and thus ground a structure of relations but qualia themselves are not relations and have no internal structure. They seem to fit the qualitative, unstructured character of basic elements of consciousness, for example the experience of red color, which is a homogenous, monadic redness. Qualia fit into a fundamental metaphysics of qualities and relations where both qualities and relations are seen as inseparable from each other: if there are qualities there must also be relations between them, and if there are relations there must also be non-relations (i.e. qualities) between which the relations hold. While relations can also hold between other relations, they must ultimately be grounded in non-relations, otherwise relations would be undefined.

If I want to understand the nature of the mind, I cannot look at the minds of others, which will forever be closed to me, in that I could never discover what beetles others have in their individual boxes. — RussellA

I don't see why not, unless you have very specific methodological requirements for such understanding. Taking "mind" in its ordinary sense, we certainly can have insight into other minds. Without that we would not have been able to relate to and interact with other people. Psychologists even have a term for this commonsense understanding of other minds: Theory of Mind.

I have no problem with the concept that my mind can think about something outside itself, such as the range of the Cybertruck, but I have a problem with the concept of my mind thinking about itself. Does it mean that my mind is thinking about my mind thinking about my mind thinking about my mind, etc. As Schopenhauer wrote: “that the subject should become an object for itself is the most monstrous contradiction ever thought of” — RussellA

I really don't understand this problem with "mind thinking about itself." Isn't this what self-consciousness is? Perhaps you have some unrealistic expectations of what thinking should be like? To think about something is to have some idea, a few reflections about the object of your thought - not an instant and complete knowledge of the thing "as it really is" at that moment.

They stand in relations and thus ground a structure of relations but qualia themselves are not relations and have no internal structure. — litewave

Be that as it may, it only goes to sustain my opinion for the superfluousness of qualia, in that the Kantian categories adhere to that very same criteria and serve the same general purpose.

Many things appear to exist, that do not consist of "physical energy". — Olivier5

I'm in agreement with this, and is what I basically maintained in the context of this thread in regard to the mind and its contents. That it's absurd to maintain that "the idea that a unicorn, being an existent thought, is a mass / physical energy endowed physical thing that is not real" is one of the (acknowledgedly minor) points I somewhere hereabouts previously made. The point wasn't addressed.

if I cannot understand the nature of the mind by looking at the minds of other, and I cannot understand the nature of the mind by looking at my own, then I will never be able to understand the nature of the mind. — RussellA

Agreed, which means this.....

I agree that "I am my mind". — RussellA

....is wrong, and is only corrected by shortening it to “I am”, which immediately reconciles the contradiction stated here......

Schopenhauer wrote: “that the subject should become an object for itself is the most monstrous contradiction ever thought of” — RussellA

.....and has the added benefit of being apodeitically certain.

Many things appear to exist, that do not consist of "physical energy". For instance: space, time, the surface area of a cube, the direction of a movement, a hole in the ground, an angle, 1 million dollars, the law of excluded middle, a novel, or the formula "e = mc^2". — Olivier5

:clap:

I really don't understand this problem with "mind thinking about itself." — SophistiCat

The difference between the self or subject and any object of knowledge whatever is precisely that the self or subject is never an object of cognition as a matter of definition.

The classical statement of this problem comes not from Western philosophy but from the Upaniṣads. The 'sage, Yājñavalkya' is asked to provide an account of ātman, the purported 'inner controller' or 'ultimate subject'. Yājñavalkya says

You tell me that I have to point out the Self as if it is a cow or a horse. Not possible! It is not an object like a horse or a cow. I cannot say, 'here is the ātman; here is the Self'. It is not possible because you cannot see the seer of seeing. The seer can see that which is other than the Seer, or the act of seeing. An object outside the seer can be beheld by the seer. How can the seer see himself? How is it possible? You cannot see the seer of seeing. You cannot hear the hearer of hearing. You cannot think the Thinker of thinking. You cannot understand the Understander of understanding. That is the ātman. ¹

This idea is the subject of an interesting lecture by Michel Bitbol, philosopher of science, It is never known, but it is the knower.

The difference between the self or subject and any object of knowledge whatever is precisely that the self or subject is never an object of cognition as a matter of definition. — Wayfarer

Ah well, that's that sorted out then :roll:

The method of "postulating" what we want has many advantages; they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil. — Bertrand Russell

Didn’t think you’d like it, but I did try.

I'm in agreement with this, and is what I basically maintained in the context of this thread in regard to the mind and its contents. That it's absurd to maintain that "the idea that a unicorn, being an existent thought, is a mass / physical energy endowed physical thing that is not real" is one of the (acknowledgedly minor) points I somewhere hereabouts previously made. The point wasn't addressed. — javra

Okay then, sorry if I misunderstood your argument. Unicorns don't exist on planet earth other than as a human fantasy -- though we can't rule out that they might 'exist for real' elsewhere in this vast universe -- so the question seems to be: how many Joules for a dream?

That strikes me as the wrong scale. Fantasies are not measurable this way, but they do exist on a different 'plane' or 'world' than that of matter and energy. That's where dualism (or pluralism) is "truer" or better than monism: it helps depict our reality in a more efficient and useful manner. Unlike any type of monism, pluralist philosophies try to recognise the diversity and complexity of our experience. They don't try to put square pegs into round holes. I suppose their disadvantage is that they don't offer a fully coherent view of the world.

I don't get it. I once heard Neil deGrasse Tyson (astrophysicist, science educator, author) say that the total amount of energy in the universe is $0$. Supposing included in that calculation is all matter (mass energy equivalene: $E = mc^2$). 0 Joules of energy is like saying "I have 0 pets." The "pets" is meaningless or something like that. Lawrence Krauss wrote a book called A universe from nothing.

Physicalism has no leg to stand on, right?

This idea is the subject of an interesting lecture by Michel Bitbol, philosopher of science, It is never known, but it is the knower. — Wayfarer

That Bitbol lecture is a blast, but it does not argue for the impossibility of self-knowledge. Rather, it argues that one must recognize the knower as a condition for knowledge, that it is necessary to put back the human mind at the heart of any human knowledge, rather than try and abstract of it.

Against Schophehauer apparently, I would think that self-awareness is a key feature of the mind. There's a mise en abîme somewhere there, and one of my favorite hypotheses is that our two brains produce such an effect by perceiving one another.

That's not to say that it is easy to know oneself. It is in fact very hard, due to the issues that Bitbol and your Buddhist text raise. But not impossible.

So I'm puzzled by statements like this:

"One cannot combine colour, form and dimensions into perceptions, just as one cannot put events into holes (sic) - this form of words makes no sense." — History of Cognitive Neuroscience, pp37-38,55 - Bennett, M. R., Hacker, P. M. S. — Wayfarer

Maybe because you conceive of perception differently to B&H (and, I might suggest, ordinary language users). Color, form and dimensions are characteristics that objects have. Perception is the process by which we become aware of an object with such characteristics. It's not a process of purple, squareness and boxhood being synthesized in our minds or, alternatively, brains.

BTW, I'm not sure why you added "(sic)" to the quote. B&H were pointing out that it's a category mistake.

I'm not going to press the point, as I really don't have a lot of interest in deliving into all of the literature about a very complex problem in cognitive science. Suffice to say though I'm not at all persuaded by their dismissal of it, and nothing you've said conveys any sense that you've really gotten the point of the argument. It has nothing directly to do with 'qualia'. — Wayfarer

Qualia is central to the argument in the paper you originally quoted:

The subjective unity of perception

We will now address the deepest and most interesting variant of the NBP, the phenomenal unity of perception. There are intractable problems in all branches of science; for Neuroscience a major one is the mystery of subjective personal experience. This is one instance of the famous mind–body problem (Chalmers 1996) concerning the relation of our subjective experience (aka qualia) to neural function. Different visual features (color, size, shape, motion, etc.) are computed by largely distinct neural circuits, but we experience an integrated whole." — The neural binding problem(s) - Jerome Feldman

But even in the non-representationalist view we don't perceive a tree (an external object) directly but only as "marks" left by incoming photons in our nervous system and these "marks" are a representation of the tree, not the tree itself, so I don't understand why such a view would be called non-representationalist. — litewave

Because we're not perceiving either a neural or a mental representation of the tree, we're perceiving the tree itself. Further, the 'binding problem' assumes there must be a unified representation or image, which the non-representationalist view rejects.

When an OCR machine recognizes an alphabet character or a self-driving vehicle recognizes a pedestrian crossing the street, does it do so via a representationalist method or a non-representationalist method? — litewave

Non-representationalist for the self-driving vehicle - it's recognizing objects in the environment, not "perceiving" an image. Could go either way for the OCR machine, i.e., whether one would say it's recognizing the alphabetic character on the paper, or on the captured image.

This elaboration in effect twice removed qualia from Kantian metaphysics, — Mww

:up:

insofar as all experience has phenomenal ground, hence the notion of “superfluous”, and, experience doesn't even have “character” in the Enlightenment transcendental sense — Mww

So I'm curious whether you think that statement is compatible with the view that experience is grounded in the world, understood as that which we can point to around us (and which do have characteristics, e.g., the red flower in the vase).

while experience is certainly predicated on sense data given from objects of perception, feelings just as certainly are not. — Mww

And also whether that statement is compatible with saying that what we perceive are objects in the world (which we have attendant thoughts and feelings about).

(I note that you mention "sense data", but also that it is not "sense data" that is perceived, since it is not an object of perception).

One can hold with such representational model, while abstaining from incorporating qualia in it. — Mww

Thanks, I think I'm clearer on your view now. I might come back to this later.

Taking "mind" in its ordinary sense, we certainly can have insight into other minds — SophistiCat

If I touched a hot stove with my bare hand, I would know my subjective experience.

If I see someone touch a hot stove with their bare hand and instantly jump back exclaiming, I can understand what I have objectively observed, but I can never know what subjective experience that person may or may not have had.

I really don't understand this problem with "mind thinking about itself." — SophistiCat

I agree that to think is to think about something, and to be conscious is to be conscious of something, such as trees and pains.

There are different types of self-consciousness.

1) If the object of my consciousness is a pain in my arm, then I am being conscious of my self, and in a sense self-conscious.

2) If the object of my consciousness is my consciousness itself, then this can also be called self-consciousness.

In order for me to understand the nature of the mind, my object of consciousness cannot be the minds of others, which I can never know, but rather my object of consciousness must be itself.

The question is, is consciousness of itself possible ?

all experience has phenomenal ground.....
— Mww

So I'm curious whether you think that statement is compatible with the view that experience is grounded in the world, understood as that which we can point to around us..... — Andrew M

Hmmmm. “In the world” implies spatial location, and because experience is not in the world, I would go with “grounded by the world”. This removes the ambiguity of location but leaves the necessary implication of time, insofar as experience always presupposes its objects.

A common rejoinder is the notion that phenomena are themselves in the world, but this is not the case. Phenomena are “the undetermined objects of intuition”, most easily grasped by comparing phenomena to the information transferred along the nerves. This separates the external object from the impression it makes on our senses, and because we are never aware of such physical transfer, it fits with the “undetermined” in the metaphysical definition. Convention puts phenomena in the world; critical reason does not.
————-

.....that which we can point to around us (and which do have characteristics, e.g., the red flower in the vase). — Andrew M

Ever wonder how it became “red flower in a vase”? How does something....anything.....get its characteristics?
————-

while experience is certainly predicated on sense data given from objects of perception.....
— Mww

And also whether that statement is compatible with saying that what we perceive are objects in the world..... — Andrew M

Yes, what we perceive are objects in the world, that which impresses, or affects, our senses.

....objects in the world (which we have attendant thoughts and feelings about). — Andrew M

No, we have thoughts and feelings about representations of perceived objects in the world. It behooves the purely physicalist-minded, to remember 100% efficiency of energy transformation is absolutely impossible for human sensory apparatus. Because there is necessarily energy loss, that which is upstream from sensation can never be the same as what is downstream from it. If the latter is different in some way, it can no more than merely represent the former to some arbitrary degree.

That relieves us of invoking the tautological nonsense of saying things like, “there are no basketballs, ‘57 DeSoto’s.....and no “red flowers in a vase”.....in my head”.
————-

(I note that you mention "sense data", but also that it is not "sense data" that is perceived, since it is not an object of perception). — Andrew M

Correct. Which gets us back to how objects get their characteristics. Sense data is quite general, yet characteristics are particulars. That the particulars are derivable from the generals doesn’t say how the one is separated from the other, if that is the case, or annexed to the other, if that is the case.

All that reduces to.....is it a red flower in a vase because it just is that, or, is it a red flower in a vase because we say it is just that. Personal preference?

Color, form and dimensions are characteristics that objects have. Perception is the process by which we become aware of an object with such characteristics. It's not a process of purple, squareness and boxhood being synthesized in our minds or, alternatively, brains. — Andrew M

Apparently so.

I don't think science would collapse. It would be like the beginning of the last century when they thought the subject of science was this 4 dimensional universe of macroscopic objects. Then the quantum cowboys came along and discovered weird things and it turned out that the ordinary physical universe is only a simple thing compared to the weird thing.

Likewise with mind-brain. If they discover non physical mind, brain stuff will seem relatively simple.