Is that all you have to offer? — Banno

All I have to offer to this supremely sterile debate.

I suggest cracking Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle to gain some insight into folks' fundamental pathological desire to repeat themselves.

He calls it the death instinct and you're in its shadow again and again and again and again.

Well, folk insist on making the same errors.

But I note that you are still here. What's good for the goose...

Any thread is what you make of it.

death instinct — ZzzoneiroCosm

:chin: Death instinct vs. Eros (life energy)

you are still here. — Banno

A feckless attempt to draw you away from metaphysics once and for all. Your ethics threads are more interesting and more fruitful.

Now you see me, now you don't. :fire: :yawn: :fire:

Death instinct — Agent Smith

... The organic compulsion to repetition... The hypothesis that all instincts have as their aim the reinstatement of an earlier condition. — Freud - Beyond the Pleasure Principle, p. (toward the end)

@ZzzoneiroCosm

I think I have a death wish and I have no idea that I have it!

:fear:

The only way I can access these files on another person's consciousness is to literally be them; impossible, as of now, and ergo, the hard problem of consciousness — Agent Smith

Then, every human being has a unique consciousness and the problem of a bat is just the problem of every single life form having unique consciousness

Then, every human being has a unique consciousness and the problem of a bat is just the problem of every single life form having unique consciousness — Jackson

Aye!

As for my comment that this situation (current science) which the hard problem of consciousness calls home is probably temporary, vide infra:

Based on your pupil dilation, skin temperature, and motor functions, I calculate an 83% probability that you will not pull the trigger. — Terminator T-800

↪Wayfarer No, my friend, for the reason that "subjective experiences" are not objective; to require that subjectivity be described objectively is a category mistake, which is why (most contemporary philosophers (of mind) and almost all cognitive neuroscientists consider) Chalmer's "Hard Problem" a pseudo-problem. — 180 Proof

So two distinct categories exist, the objective and the subjective , the first person and the third person? One could call this the hard dualism, or deny the subjective aide as Dennett does and end up with a hard monism. In either case, whether one considers this spilt a problem to be solved or not, one is accepting the traditional dualism between subjective and objective.
Neurophenomenologists , enactive cogntive scientists and postmodernist philosophers neither dismiss or reify the hard problem. The dissolve it by showing the subjective and the objective to be inextricable aspects of all experience rather than separate categories.

The dissolve it by showing the subjective and the objective to be inextricable aspects of all experience rather than separate categories. — Joshs

Modern science invented the idea of subjectivity. Brief comment, but I can defend it.

Modern science invented the idea of subjectivity. Brief comment, but I can defend it. — Jackson

That’s right , by inventing the idea of objectivity. Objective reality is incoherent without a subject to apprehend it.

That’s right , by inventing the idea of objectivity. Objective reality is incoherent without a subject to apprehend it. — Joshs

Exactly. Look how often we conflate "objective" with "objectively true" and subjective with "my opinion/perspective."

I'm referring to other people's (,e.g. Chalmer's, Nagel's, McGinn's) dualism. Banno is spot on; the subjective-objective distinction and the subsequent "problem" of describing one in terms of – reduced to – the other is incoherent (i.e. category mistake). — 180 Proof

This is question begging. If there is a category mistake, then the primary question still remains unaddressed: What is it about the phenomenal and the tangible that distinguishes them so significantly that they be placed in separate categories?

To claim they are simply two objects of the same substance that have drastically different properties begs another question: What is it about the one than lends itself to certain properties that the other does not have?

If all "category mistake" ultimately means is that they're just very different things and you can't use the same descriptions for both of them, you've offered no explanation; you've just reiterated without explanation that the two are just two very different things.

How are they different?

f all "category mistake" ultimately means is that they're just very different things and you can't use the same descriptions for both of them, you've offered no explanation; you've just reiterated without explanation that the two are just two very different things.

How are they different? — Hanover

:up: Yep. See my similar response here:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/699747

Not until six pages in does Nagel even define what "like" means. Footnote 6, "Therefore the analogical form of the English expression "what it is like" is misleading. It does not mean "what (in our experience) it resembles," but rather "how it is for the subject himself."

This always troubled me. It seems his whole idea of "like" is vague or inchoherent. — Jackson

The expression is just one way of approaching the concept. For some it works. For others it's confusing. It's not supposed to imply any comparison.

It's not supposed to imply any comparison. — bert1

Says Nagel. But what else does the word "like" mean?

Says Nagel. But what else does the word "like" mean? — Jackson

I'm not sure it has a meaning abstracted from the sentence. Consider the northern expression "Does it heck as like". You can't really abstract the meaning from how the individual words are normally used.

It's not supposed to imply any comparison.
— bert1

Says Nagel. But what else does the word "like" mean? — Jackson

Here’s Dan Zahavi’s version of it:

“Compare your experiences of perceiving an apple and remembering a banana. In one respect, these experiences are very different. They differ both with regard to their object or content and with regard to their act type or attitude. In another respect, however, the two experiences have something very fundamental in common: in both cases, it is for you that it is like something to have them. Arguably, for every possible experience that we have, each of us can say: whatever it is like for me to have the experience, it is for me that it is like that to have it. What-it-is-like-ness is properly speaking what-it-is-like-for-me-ness.

On our view, this for-me-ness is a universal feature of experience. Some philosophers maintain that this for-me-ness is a philosophical myth, with no psychological
reality whatsoever. Others accept the existence of for-me-ness but do not think it is an essential or even universal characteristic of consciousness. We have argued for our view that it is universal and essential elsewhere (Kriegel 2003 and 2009; Zahavi 2000, 2005, 2011, and 2014) and will take it for granted here.
The for-me-ness of experience still admits of two crucially different interpretations. According to a deflationary interpretation, it consists simply in the experience occurring in someone (a ‘me’).

On this view, for-me-ness is a non-experiential aspect of mental life – a merely metaphysical fact, so to speak, not a phenomenological fact. The idea is that we ought to resist a no-ownership view according to which experiences can occur as free­floating unowned entities. Just as horse-riding presupposes the existence of a horse, experiencing presupposes a subject of experience. In contrast, a non-deflationary interpretation construes for-me-ness as an experiential aspect of mental life, a bona fide phenomenal dimension of consciousness. On this view, to say that an experience is for me is precisely to say something more than that it is in me. It is to state not only a metaphysical fact, but also a phenomenological fact. Here the relationship between experiencing and the subject goes deeper than that between horse-riding and the horse.We favor a non-deflationary interpretation of the for-me-ness of experience.”

Consider the northern expression "Does it heck as like". — bert1

Never heard that and do not know what it means.

It's not important. Maybe the point to make is that the question:

"What is it like to be a bat?"

means the same thing as:

"How does it feel to be a bat?"

No comparison is invited.

Similarly "Is there something it is like to be a bacterium?" just means "Do bacteria have experiences?"

It's just another way of expressing a concept. If you have any sentences you find problematic I could try and translate them into equivalent ones that don't use the word 'like'. Would that be helpful?

"How does it feel to be a bat?" — bert1

Yes. How does it feel to be me? How does it feel to be the person in front of me at the grocery store? I have no idea and I do not think it is a real question.

This may not be a good comparison, but I think of Wittgenstein's notion of private language. You ask some how tall are you and the person puts his hand on the top of his head and says, "this tall."

Nagel's idea of experience seems to be a kind of solipsism.

Privacy is certainly an issue yes. When I burn my hand, you don't feel anything. There is something private about experience.

Privacy is certainly an issue yes. When I burn my hand, you don't feel anything. There is something private about experience. — bert1

'Private language' means you have a language no else has.

Sure. Now answer the question - what is skydiving like? What would that answer look like?


What more would one expect or eccept in answer, except what it resembles.

One may not be able to say what it is like to skydive or to bat, but one might show it; in a poem, a video, or a painting; and it will not be exact nor complete, but that will not make it wrong. — Banno

If you ask how it feels to skydive the answer could be "exhilarating", "terrifying", "boring", "disappointing" and so on. No need for 'resemblance' language.

True, a poem might use metaphor; I don't know how that would work in a painting or video, though.

What is it about the phenomenal and the tangible that distinguishes them so significantly that they be placed in separate categories? — Hanover

What?

If you ask how it feels to skydive the answer could be "exhilarating", "terrifying", "boring", "disappointing" and so on. No need for 'resemblance' language. — Janus

You are saying what it is like to skydive by naming experiences had elsewhere, and in skydiving.

What more would one expect or eccept in answer, except what it resembles. — Banno

You are saying what it is like to skydive by naming experiences had elsewhere, and in skydiving. — Banno

No, I spoke in general terms of feelings, not other experiences or resemblances. If I had said skydiving is like bungee jumping that would be "naming experiences had elsewhere" or citing resemblances.

But that would not tell you how either skydiving or bungee jumping felt for me in any case, because even if you bungee jumped you would know only how it felt for you, not for me. I could say something like " you feel you are flying" or "you feel the powerful force of the air rushing past your face and body" but these are already easily imaginable, and so do not tell much that would not already be known.

...that would not tell you how either skydiving or bungee jumping felt for me in any case, because even if you bungee jumped you would know only how it felt for you, not for me. — Janus

We can, and indeed do, talk about what it is like; the adrenaline, the free-fall, the stomach in your mouth.

Hence, the notion that "you would know only how it felt for you" is wrong: if it is ineffable, it is not a case of knowing something.

All you can say is that only you can have your experiences; but that says nothing.

We can, and indeed do, talk about what it is like; the adrenaline, the free-fall, the stomach in your mouth. — Banno

All feelings, which if the person had experienced them, they would recognize. Do you have an actual point of interest to make or are you just enjoying being pedantic?