I asked if it actually did. there's no rational argument can be brought to bear on that question. It's answered with examples. — Isaac
"The mind" is not an empirical object, to be sure, but it is also not determinably anything more than a concept. — Janus
How could the mind be a concept? The mind is the faculty by which concepts are grasped. — Wayfarer
Is it possible to examine thoughts by introspection? — Janus
As usual, I have no idea what you're talking about. The Markov boundary is a statistical feature of a network. It's not an object. It is at the membrane, not the membrane itself. — Isaac
That's the point. They seem external. The authors identified the models associated with them seeming external, but they are not actually external. — Isaac
So to study a thought, considered as an abstract object in itself, and without regard to the content of it, it must be turned into a conception. How can we conceive of something that has no content? — Mww
All that does for us is confuse the matter, insofar as that which we re-create cannot be distinguished from that which is already in consciousness, which means we might not have re-created anything, but just recalled it. In which case, we’re studying something we already know all about. — Mww
Which brings up another issue. If it is the case that thoughts are singular and successive, then each thought is of its own time. If it is impossible to jump back to the time of a thought and to jump to the future of a possible thought, then no thought can be studied insofar as its time is not the time of the thought that studies it. — Mww
Much more parsimonious, and less self-contradictory, to study what it is to think, rather than study a thought. We might be alright if we limit introspection to the examination of the relation of faculties to each other, but introspection becomes hopelessly tangled if we use it to examine the faculties themselves. — Mww
The only way to study anything at all, is to represent it as a phenomenon if it’s a real object, or as a conception if it’s an abstract object. But the human system, predicated on relations, can cognize nothing by a single representation, insofar as a single representation doesn’t have anything to which it relates. So to study a thought, considered as an abstract object in itself, and without regard to the content of it, it must be turned into a conception. How can we conceive of something that has no content? — Mww
You understand why that is implicitly empiricist? In any case, the examples of philosophy are, of course, the philosophers — Wayfarer
systems theory ontologies — Metaphysician Undercover
Are you suggesting that it can be deduced rationally that philosophers succeed at doing what they claim to do? That we can rationally determine that it a philosopher claims to study 'the unconditioned' that they succeed in that endeavour? — Isaac
thoughts cannot be understood except as they are expressed in language. — Janus
Content just is symbolic, linguistic; what else could it be? — Janus
It seems we are thinking all the time, while not being conscious of most of it — Janus
I have no idea what a systems theory ontology might be. Systems theory is a modeling tool. It makes useful predictions and sets up the parameters of useful frameworks. It doesn't bring things into existence. The cell pre-existed systems theory, which merely describes how the cell functions in statistical terms. — Isaac
do you see from the evidence I've provided you with, that systems theory would be a very flimsy sort of tool for modeling the true reality of things like the universe and a cell? — Metaphysician Undercover
you don't seem to hold philosophy in much esteem. — Wayfarer
I don't see it as a competition — Wayfarer
you don't really see how it could be anything else — Wayfarer
I'm no expert on philosophy, not by a long way, but I don't think that my disagreeing with certain philosophical approaches is, alone, evidence that I've not understood them — Isaac
I do know that it’s a different subject to cognitive science. — Wayfarer
All I'm trying to do here is bring what I know (cognitive science, psychology) to the discussion, together with the consequences I think that knowledge has for our options with regards to metaphysical positions. — Isaac
from an empirical pov the OP question is meaningless - it goes without saying that there’s an external material world — Wayfarer
You must mean one’s thoughts cannot be understood by another except as they are expressed in language. — Mww
What else it could be is precisely what it is. Content of any particular thought is the schema/schemata of the conception/s representing it. The schemata are represented by images. Therefore the content of thought is the schema/schemata of the conception/s contained in it. A symbolic, linguistic representation nowhere yet to be found. Images as representations are rational, imbued in all humans; language as representation is cultural imbued in particular humans. Images are common across all subjects, words are not.
But surely you know all that, so.....what gives? — Mww
Yes, we’re thinking continuously while conscious, and the fact we’re not aware of most of it is reflection on our laziness on the one hand, and the simplistic, repetitive lives we lead on the other. So busy impressing everybody else we overlook ourselves. Got this one-of-a-kind intellectual gift, and don’t know shit about how it works.
(Wanders off, muttering insults, kicking the fake rubber tree pot and the way out.....) — Mww
Yet you've raised the apparent consequences of the double slit experiment in this very thread. Are you suggesting that wasn't an empirical observation? Or are you suggesting that, for example, a naive materialist need take no notice at all of that empirical result because empirical data need not constrain our metaphysics? Is materialism rescued after all? The main evidence thrown against it is from quantum physics. — Isaac
You can’t question what is observed - that is the empirical fact. — Wayfarer
here we are dealing with 'things' (loosely speaking) that have various 'degrees of reality'; when the particle is observed, it is 'actualised' by the observation. And we don't like that because it undercuts scientific realism
Realism wants to say that what is being observed would exist regardless whether observed or not - and in one sense that is true. But it's not true in any ultimate sense. And that is what is thrown into sharp relief by physics
So their existence is not un-ambigious, which is what is the real problem for physicalism and realism.
Realism wants to believe that there are particles which exist whether or not the measurement is taken; this is what is thrown into doubt by the double-slit experiment
the inconvenient truth is that the hardest of hard sciences, namely physics, has now torpedoed this [naive realism] beneath the waterline.
What's going on here? — Isaac
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