we can't say how they'd be different — Moliere

Its ineffable?

Being interpreted as a chestnut does not mean that unseen, it's no longer a chestnut.

What reason is there to suppose that unseen, it is no longer a chestnut? The question

How do you, how could you, know (The tree would still be a chestnut)? — Janus

works as well if you ask "How do you, how could you, know the tree is no longer a chestnut?"

You are committing the error of applying a dualistic, determinate body based logic beyond its ambit: as I said "language on holiday". — Janus

Balls. You want to treat knowing and being true as the same. The are not. Knowing is a relation between an individual and a proposition. Being true does not require a relation to a speaker.

Nice: assertion, ad hominem and aspersion, but no argument. — Janus

You don't recognise the many, many times this discussion has gone before, and each time your account falls apart. As it does again, here. You can't recognise a decent argument.

If you would raise it again, at least try to say something new.

We are born into a world already formed by the perceptions and judgements, evolved over eons in a community of embodied perceivers, and enacted within ever-changing culture and language. — Janus

I agree with that, I think. Not eons, though -- spoken language is much sooner than biological timescales. It seems like eons.

I guess to bring this back to the original question -- to what extent is the brain involved in any of that? Or is it just an organ, like the heart, which is needed but knowledge of it will not shed light on conscious experience?

I guess to bring this back to the original question -- to what extent is the brain involved in any of that? — Moliere

My apologies for indulging @Janus' off-topic confusion.

Its ineffable?

Being interpreted as a chestnut does not mean that unseen, it's no longer a chestnut.

What reason is there to suppose that unseen, it is no longer a chestnut? — Banno

That I agree with. My imagination says the scenario is something without me, but like -- in an always kind of way. Very imaginative. As if species didn't exist.

Eh, you know me by now. I'm easily tempted into my rabbit holes :D

How do you, how could you, know (The tree would still be a chestnut)? — Janus

works as well if you ask "How do you, how could you, know the tree is no longer a chestnut?" — Banno

A tree is an interactive reality; so it's not a matter of whether it would be a chestnut if there were no humans. :lol: Banno: the last of the naive realists.

Balls. You want to treat knowing and being true as the same. The are not. Knowing is a relation between an individual and a proposition. Being true is not a relation. — Banno

In your imagination. We know things via perception; how else? To say that something is true is to say that it has been determined to be true by observation: leaving tautologies and stipulative truths aside. That's not to say that within this human world of embodied perception there are not undiscovered truths, that you lack the imagination to able to see that is the source of your error.

and each time your account falls apart. As it does again, here. You can't recognise a decent argument. — Banno

My account only falls apart in your dualism afflicted imagination. I'll pay a decent argument from you if you finally get around to presenting one. I won't be holding my breath, because all you can seem to able to manage is repetitive assertion and aspersion.

I guess to bring this back to the original question -- to what extent is the brain involved in any of that? — Moliere


My apologies for indulging Janus' off-topic confusion. — Banno

It's not off-topic, either. I'm saying the body-mind interacting with the cosmos, constructs our common empirical reality; it's a collective representation. That empirical reality, which would not exist without us; that is what the notion 'reality' derives from and rightly only refers to.

Humans also imagine there is an absolute reality, independent of our empirical reality, but that is merely an imagining; we just don't know anything beyond the empirical.

I agree with that, I think. Not eons, though -- spoken language is much sooner than biological timescales. It seems like eons. — Moliere

eon
ē′ŏn″, ē′ən
noun

An indefinitely long period of time; an age.

The longest division of geologic time, containing two or more eras.

The largest divisionof geologic-time: used by J. D. Dana especially in dividing the archœan into astral and archæozoic eons.

I had in mind the first definition not the geological one.

Cool.

To what extent do you believe brains are involved in the eons of judgments that've been passed down?

One of the things I'm thinking is how brains pre-date language to the extent that they are shared by many species prior to even our own species.

So, in a way, I guess I'm asking about homo sapiens brains.

At least, if we believe that's different from other brains with respect to consciousness.

brains pre-date language — Moliere

Brain expands the repertoire of an organism's responses to the environment, particularly in cooperation with specialised organs of sense. One way a complex brain can do this is by modelling the result of various responses, in a virtual environment, and for this it can be useful to distinguish things - a chestnut tree from a monkey puzzle, for instance - (trees I can climb from trees I cannot climb).

Some brains get caught up in the modelling process to the extent that they lose the distinction between the model and reality. In particular, they mistake the 'I' of the model for the real organism. Such is the human condition and universal delusion.

So "virtual reality" isn't quite the right metaphor. — Moliere

I think metaphors are always tricky, and they're never quite right (because if the thing you're comparing it to weren't different, it wouldn't open up a perspective). For example:

Your wetware can't walk through walls. It's the reality of walls that counts, not the reality of "the contents of consciousness", whatever they might be. — Banno

Part of this response might be due to the metaphor I used: "contents of consciousness". I mean, in that very post I indicated that I thought consciousness was a "flow" - more generally, I think it's a process. It's not literally a container and therefore doesn't acutally have "contents".

We don't always realise why we use one metaphor over another and that can cause confusion. So, on to the whole section:

Your wetware can't walk through walls. It's the reality of walls that counts, not the reality of "the contents of consciousness", whatever they might be.


By way of pointing out that you are first embedded in the world. You are not sitting in your mind looking out — Banno

There's nothing here I disagree with, but when we're talking about the brain I suppose a wall is - to some degree a wall. If I dream of a wall, the wetware robot is sleeping. My non-brain science take here is that wall is a meaning that can trigger in different circumstances - with walls, with words, with dreams, with illusions... I'm not entirely sure how to talk about this, and I'm no expert in the history of philosophy either.

From the Davidson/Derangement thread I remember we don't disagree about much, but there always comes a point where I can't grasp what you're getting at. Here, for example, I disagree about nothing but I can't figure out what triggered this particular reply.

Brain expands the repertoire of an organism's responses to the environment, particularly in cooperation with specialised organs of sense. One way a complex brain can do this is by modelling the result of various responses, in a virtual environment, and for this it can be useful to distinguish things - a chestnut tree from a monkey puzzle, for instance - (trees I can climb from trees I cannot climb).

Some brains get caught up in the modelling process to the extent that they lose the distinction between the model and reality. In particular, they mistake the 'I' of the model for the real organism. Such is the human condition and universal delusion. — unenlightened

So the brain is an organ of an organism which somehow spawned some time ago -- and we can see its clear evolutionary advantages. In a way the brain enabled information processing without genes -- where once only wiping out a huge portion of a species or dividing them into different environments was the only way a species could "learn", the brain allows a species to learn and mitigate environmental change to a certain extent and in various capacities without wiping out a large portion of a species -- an obvious selective advantage, however it might've come about.

Some brains are able to model. Human brains that have been socialized in particular. At this level I think we're saying -- the brain somehow enables us to model our environment, and I suspect, at least, that language is what enables us to do that. But perhaps it's best to simply say language is a part of how we model things now, rather than put emphasis on language.

Part of our human model is the "I". There's a relationship here between "I" and organism such that our model of our self isn't our self (as is always the case with models -- they are models of something, not the thing). Which would seem to indicate that we are able to virtualize what we are already in contact with, and also forget what we're in contact with. And it's actually the human condition to lose the distinction between the "I" in the model for an organismic self.

Which, if I've got this right so far, means it's the human condition to lose the distinction between my beliefs about myself and who I am. In a way we're constantly in contact with the real, but because of our mental habits as humans we're constantly creating new virtual explanations to -- maybe prop up our beliefs about ourselves? Or to fulfill desires?

But drugs aren't able to fully dissolve the psyche, as you say -- so there's more to it than the brain, all on its lonesome. Disrupting our normal patterns may make us aware, to an extent, of what is modular in our virtual reality, but given the human condition, we're always uncertain, mistaking the model for the organism.

Which would mean that no matter how detailed our model of the brain is we'd still be uncertain about where the model ends and where the organism begins, just by our condition.

To what extent do you believe brains are involved in the eons of judgments that've been passed down? — Moliere

I think @unenlightened has already answered this very well. A complex brain can re-call, re-member and re-imagine events, which better enables learning from past events and preparing for an anticipated future.

How much this is dependent on symbolic language is something to wonder about. Looking at human life in contrast to the lives of "higher" animals it seems undeniable that there is a vast difference in the form of a massively complex human culture, a documented past, and anticipatory enthusiasm-driven momentum for growth and development that we just don't find in other animals.

So, I'd say that it is predominantly symbolic language which is responsible for the greatest difference between us and the other animals. Just what qualities of the homo sapiens brain that make speech and symbolic language possible for humans , but not for other animals I can't say. I don't even know if there have been solid results from research on this, so that would be an area of further investigation.

What unenlightened touches on in his second paragraph I agree with. There are ways in which the discursive mind has diminished our lives, making us in some ways less than the animals. Animals do not suffer delusions, fixations on pet theories, "messianic" complexes and so on; it's a long list of afflictions that come thanks to the great "gift" of symbolic language, of speech and writing. It seems that every "high" has its commensurate "low".

It's more that I don't see how "contents of consciousness" might be "real or not real".

See

But is it a real one? When you ask if it is real, what are you sugesting? No, it's a fake; it's an illusion; it's a forgery; it's a phoney, a counterfeit, a mirage... What is real and what isn't is decided in each case by contrast; there is no single criteria. — Banno

Cool.

So this would suggest our language isn't necessarily a brain thing. The brain is involved, of course, so that's not where I'm going here. And, so it seems, kinds of brains are important. Which species the brain belongs to, how it's presently situated within the body, and so forth. There are limited instances of importing language to other species (notably, when they are part of our social structures) but nothing like what humans seem able to do.

And yet, if it's language that separates us from the beasts, and not brains, then an understanding of language would get closer to this notion of the virtual insofar that we are thinking of language as what's virtual. That's an interesting result if we can justify the inference. At the very least I think it suggests, going along with the general scientific picture of the world at least, that there's at least two functions of the brain. There's the original evolutionary adaptation which we see throughout nature -- the ability for a species to adapt to its environment in ways other than genetic modification -- and then there's this language thing that clearly needs a brain to be used, but that's not enough. There's more to it. And there's more to language than our immediate surroundings. So, philosophically at least, that'd be where I'd pin "the virtual". "philosophically" because the empirical story is way more complicated than this clean picture presents.

I'd just like to point out that if the brain can have dreams that are often mistaken as reality, then it doesn't seem farfetched that the brain is a virtual reality generator. — Shawn

Right! It's a simple enough inference. There are times before when I've mistaken all of what I experience as reality (dreams), and so I wonder: to what extent is it like a dream? Or the virtual, as I've put it -- dreams being a possible case for exploring what's "virtual" about experience, or generated by myself as opposed to the world I seem to inhabit.

Against dreams counting as virtual is how they are composed of elements of the world. So rather than saying dreams and the brain are virtual, we'd say we're experiencing memories that have been encoded into the brain, that dreams are as real as the world we live in, only under different conditions. Which, since the world is real, you'd actually expect a body which is no longer interacting with the world about it to react differently, including the experiential parts (which are just as much a part of the world, rather than virtual)

Some brains get caught up in the modelling process to the extent that they lose the distinction between the model and reality. In particular, they mistake the 'I' of the model for the real organism. Such is the human condition and universal delusion. — unenlightened

:up: :up:

"If a lion could talk, we could not understand him"

I disagree here because a lion cannot talk, and so we cannot understand him. If I interpret "form of life" in a bio-species sense, then the quote makes sense. But if I interpret language as meaningful outside of our material make-up (down to the organ-tissue-cell-atom-electron), in spite of the obvious necessity for a body to be able to speak language, then if the lion could talk he'd the lion would already be part of our form of life (whatever that is).

"If a lion could talk, we could not understand him" — Moliere

If {If a lion could talk, we could not understand him,} then we cannot possibly know whether or not lions can talk.

Embedded implications always take me a long time to think through.

So I'm saying P, in your P->Q scheme where P stands for the original implication, is false.



But then there's the original quote, which if we assume is true, then we cannot possibly know whether or not lions can talk.

Of course my mind comes up with two different interpretations off the bat. But I believe you're committed to the belief that we cannot possibly know whether or not lions can talk.

And right now I agree. We can't know that, because they don't. Tomorrow may be different, though.

It's more that I don't see how "contents of consciousness" might be "real or not real". — Banno

Yeah, I could have phrased that better. I do agree with the quote that follows what I've just quoted (and I remember you saying that more than once, too).

But when you said in your reply to my first post:

Your wetware can't walk through walls. It's the reality of walls that counts, not the reality of "the contents of consciousness", whatever they might be. — Banno

When I'm dreaming of walking through a wall, my wet ware robot isn't even attempting to walk through a wall. It's sleeping. I might be able to walk through a wall in my dream, but the wall isn't a real wall, and the I that walks through it is not my wetware robot (which is sleeping).

On the physical level, a real wall is a wall, and a dream wall is... synapses firing? That seems like a weird comparison to me. We only make that comparison because our phenomenal trees are very similar, I'd say. So, for the present topic, I think the reality of firing synapses is more important than the reality of any walls; that's secondary, I think. Or differently put, wall phenomena connect real walls and dream walls, and they're the only reason I can think of that we can make the connection. Trees and synapses are rather different, otherwise. But since we can connect walls trees and dream walls via wall phenomena, we can compare synapses to sysnapses (well, I don't think we can recognise wall-phenomena-inducing synapses yet, but I hope you see where I'm going with this).

So this would suggest our language isn't necessarily a brain thing. The brain is involved, of course, so that's not where I'm going here. — Moliere

Right, is it just differences in the human brain that enables the development of language, or is it vocal chords or the opposable thumb or a combination? I don't think it makes much sense to consider the brain apart from the whole body, anyway.

As you say , some animals can recognize and respond appropriately to words and phrases,but do they have any notion that the word or phrase represents or refers to anything, or do they merely associate certain sounds with certain activities?

I'm have no definite sense of what you mean by "an understanding of language would get closer to this notion of the virtual insofar that we are thinking of language as what's virtual". Maybe you have in mind an idea that I would agree with: that the world of objects, or as the Buddhists would say "namarupa" or "name and form" is a conceptual overlay to bare perception, where the latter is just sensation; visual, auditory, tactile or whatever. In Buddhist philosophy the state of conceptual-less perception is referred to as Nirvikalpa.

* "Of or pertaining to the absence of conceptual thinking or discursive thought"
* "the state of recognizing reality which is totally freed of the distortions of discursive thought, non-discrimination"

(This ties in with the issues around ineffability).

On this view, the empirical world is not something we directly perceive, but is a conceived abstraction; a world of different kinds of objects and "states of affairs", collectively derived from associating sensory experiences.

Do animals experience such a world? It seems doubtful, since they probably don't name things and conceive of them as kinds, and yet they can function very well, arguably better than we can, although they are not so adaptable to new environments.

But it's a real wall, not part of a dream, through which you cannot walk.

That is, the phenomena of a dream wall are not the same as the phenomena of a real wall. They are different, at the phenomenological level.

Hence, it is an error to suppose that what the dream wall and the real wall have in common is phenomenological.

Right, is it just differences in the human brain that enables the development of language, or is it vocal chords or the opposable thumb or a combination? I don't think it makes much sense to consider the brain apart from the whole body, anyway. — Janus

Good points.

As you say , some animals can recognize and respond appropriately to words and phrases,but do they have any notion that the word or phrase represents or refers to anything, or do they merely associate certain sounds with certain activities? — Janus

And, by extension, do we humans do the same while feeling like we do differently? (the epiphenomenal belief, I think, fits here)

I'm have no definite sense of what you mean by "an understanding of language would get closer to this notion of the virtual insofar that we are thinking of language as what's virtual". Maybe you have in mind an idea that I would agree with: that the world of objects, or as the Buddhists would say "namarupa" or "name and form" is a conceptual overlay to bare perception, where the latter is just sensation; visual, auditory, tactile or whatever. In Buddhist philosophy the state of conceptual-less perception is referred to as Nirvikalpa.

* "Of or pertaining to the absence of conceptual thinking or discursive thought"
* "the state of recognizing reality which is totally freed of the distortions of discursive thought, non-discrimination"

(This ties in with the issues around ineffability).

On this view, the empirical world is not something we directly perceive, but is a conceived abstraction; a world of different kinds of objects and "states of affairs", collectively derived from associating sensory experiences.

Do animals experience such a world? It seems doubtful, since they probably don't name things and conceive of them as kinds, and yet they can function very well, arguably better than we can, although they are not so adaptable to new environments. — Janus

I'll admit I'm not sure what I mean by that either. Reading it now it's just a tautology.

I don't think I have in mind what you're describing. If I did then I'd have more sympathy for Husserl than I presently do, given I don't think it's possible to attain that state, and even go so far as to say that our conceptualizations can even enhance our experience -- that language and conceptualization can, in addition to obscuring, elucidate. It just depends on how you use it.

And, by extension, do we humans do the same while feeling like we do differently? (the epiphenomenal belief, I think, fits here) — Moliere

Well, we say that we understand words and phrases to represent or refer to things, and animals don't say that, can't say that. Epiphenomenalism makes no sense to me because the idea that we understand ourselves to be doing certain things, like feeling certain emotions or feeling that we understand things in a certain way, but are not really doing them makes no sense. unless it is a case of later coming to understand that we were not doing what we thought, but something else, like 'I wasn't feeling love, but possessiveness'.. But such realizations would need to be phenomenological, not strictly empirical, because these kinds of subjective impressions cannot be supported one way or the other by observations of measurable physical phenomena.

I don't think I have in mind what you're describing. If I did then I'd have more sympathy for Husserl than I presently do, given I don't think it's possible to attain that state, and even go so far as to say that our conceptualizations can even enhance our experience -- that language and conceptualization can, in addition to obscuring, elucidate. It just depends on how you use it. — Moliere

I agree there is a certain, ordinary sense in which conceptualization can enrich our experience. But the state, which you think it impossible to attain, has a very well attested history of being reported, both in the East and the West. Of course that doesn't and cannot demonstrate empirically that such a state is attainable, only your own experience could demonstrate that, if you attained it, and then it would arguably demonstrate it only to you ( although it is said in the East that those who have attained can recognize it when others attain it. I don't know about that, but from my own experience I believe the state is attainable. I don't expect you to think of that as evidence, though; for all you know I might be deluded.

pretty sure I just heard some crabs (yes crabs) talking on a beach as i walked past them...

pretty sure I just heard some crabs (yes crabs) talking on a beach as i walked past them... — Changeling

Happens all the time, but the conversation is usually rather dull :

"Hey look what a big claw I've got!"
"Pah! Mine's bigger!"
"What the fuck is that? Looks like a walking coral, hope it's the vegetarian kind, or we're paste."

:rofl:

But it's a real wall, not part of a dream, through which you cannot walk.

That is, the phenomena of a dream wall are not the same as the phenomena of a real wall. They are different, at the phenomenological level.

Hence, it is an error to suppose that what the dream wall and the real wall have in common is phenomenological. — Banno

I find this really hard to talk about, as I'm not that firm with the terminology. Maybe what I'm getting at is more conceptual than phenomenological? The phenomenon of a dream wall is certainly different from the phenomenon of a real wall, but I do think they have things in common (otherwise we couldn't make the connection of both being "walls"), and I think it's because brains are involved in constructing them from accrued baggage, some of which are likely shared. Maybe I should bow out, as I'm feeling out of my depth both with brains stuff and philosophy stuff, here.

Well, we say that we understand words and phrases to represent or refer to things, and animals don't say that, can't say that. — Janus

And yet . . .

pretty sure I just heard some crabs (yes crabs) talking on a beach as i walked past them... — Changeling

It's a good point. We don't expect the crabs or the lions to talk, but some of us might talk to them. Or even claim to hear them.

So, what's the difference? Without an account, then there is no difference. Rather, we have to accept that some people can talk to the whales, crabs, lions of the world.

Or accept, because our biological forms are so different, that we could not understand one another even if we were talking, and thereby infer the various animal whisperers are misunderstanding how to use language. The lion may already be speaking, but there's no way we'd understand what he's saying because we're different creatures.

With these examples it seems queer. Unless you understand yourself to be nothing but an animal, and realize that language may not have all the import that we assign to it. Rather, like the lion roars, so we have our different patterns of grunting to get along. We're just barking while we feel like it all means something.

Epiphenomenalism makes no sense — Janus

Let's make sense of it with error theory.

A usual case error theory begins with is astrology. It's an intricate body of propositions with relations to one another that allows people to make inferences (of a very unspecific nature, as that's how it works in the end). People regularly confer on the subject, and it sounds like people are making claims. The only thing is, every single one of the claims is false. So it is possible for us to carry on at length while having no contact with truth -- it doesn't matter that it makes sense to us, because astrology can make sense to us, and it is false.

Further, combining error theory with the post-modern meta-induction...

If the current scientific picture is the true picture of the world, then for the majority of human history human beings have survived by believing false things. Entire generations have been able to manipulate their environment, reproduce, and preserve and pass down culture without knowledge of this picture. So, similar to the dream inference, we might wonder -- what makes our current picture true? If we were wrong so many times before, then wouldn't we predict that we're wrong again now?

And error theory provides the explanation for how that would be possible -- coherence, intelligibility, without truth.

There's a funny assumption with the Post-modern meta-induction, namely that this picture is true and the previous pictures were false. Rather, I'd say given if entire generations before were able to survive successfully then they must have had some true beliefs, even if it was expressed in entirely different ways, and reinforcing entirely different ways of life. But this is all just to make sense of an epiphenomenal account of meaning -- that language means, but meaning drifts beyond any empirical measurement and has no causal connection to the world or brains.

I think it's false, but it does make sense. And the pair of arguments together makes me ask about making distinctions between brains and whatever else. When is it appropriate to reference the brain in relation to a philosophical argument? Do brains have anything to do with the notion of a subject, or are they just an organ like the heart is an organ and the philosophy somehow "sits above" the empirical facts of brains?