You don't have to think of experience as a collection of ghosts, though. You can just note that you do see red, and leave it unexplained exactly how. — frank
That seems tantamount to accepting the ghost as ghost? Which could turn out to be appropriate, of course. I'm just pointing out an alternative. — bongo fury
would that be tantamount to accepting that gravity is mystical? — frank
Having red or blue mental images in the brain, to meet that purpose, is kind of having a ghost in the machine.
Having the brain reach for suitable words or pictures, isn't. And, even better, it suggests a likely origin of our tendency to imagine that we accommodate the ghostly entities. — bongo fury
I don't understand the issue. Pain isn't a property of external world objects. I feel pain. There's no problem here. Colours aren't a property of external world objects. I see colours. Suddenly there's a problem? — Michael
When our nerves are stimulated in certain ways, we feel pain. That pain, even though an "internal" thing, indicates that something is going on outside us, and we react accordingly. — Michael
When our temperature is lowered sufficiently, we feel cold. That cold, even though an "internal" thing, indicates that something is going on outside us, and we react accordingly. — Michael
When our eyes are stimulated in certain ways, we see red. That red, even though an "internal" thing, indicates that something is going on outside us, and we react accordingly. — Michael
Effect: private sense data that cannot be publicly verified as either true or false. — Richard B
Cause: an unknowable something that is out of reach because all we know for certain is our private sense data. — Richard B
But perhaps you need to have brain activity that succeeds in associating the red ball with red surfaces generally, and the blue ball with blue surfaces generally?
Having red or blue mental images in the brain, to meet that purpose, is kind of having a ghost in the machine.
Having the brain reach for suitable words or pictures, isn't. And, even better, it suggests a likely origin of our tendency to imagine that we accommodate the ghostly entities. — bongo fury
Yes. Primarily 'feeling' is a term we use for multiple meanings, one of which is a summary of your mental state "how are you feeling today?". So "I feel pain" and "I feel the grass" have two different meanings. The former being used in the sense of describing a state of mind, the latter in the sense of touch-sensation.
You specifically wanted to talk about the problem of epistemology with regard to perception and not want to get caught up in semantics. Given the, it is only this latter sense of 'feel' we're interested in here, the one which is about you sensing the external world with your nervous system. — Isaac
The indirect realist argues that what we feel in the former sense is a mental representation of what we feel in the latter sense; that what we feel in the former sense is not a property of what we feel in the latter sense. — Michael
Right. So what's the point of it?
If what we're sensing is not a property of anything external to the system doing the sensing, then why is that system sensing anything at all? Why is it only detecting properties it itself has made up? — Isaac
I'm not getting anything of the meta-biological framework your theory sits within.
I don't understand your question. — Michael
I just know that it does. — Michael
I start from a principle that features of human physiology evolved within a system where their cost did not exceed their survival benefit. In such a system, it would be practically impossible for the huge amount of calories mental processes consumes to be justified if all it did was detect internal states of the same system, I can't see the survival advantage.
So I'm asking you what the survival advantage is, or what your alternative meta-biological theory is. Without either I can't see how you can sustain the model with such glaring holes in it. — Isaac
Here's a model of pain...
1. an external state (light) stimulates a nociceptive nerve ending
2. that signal (among hundreds of others) travels through an hierarchical system of prediction engines which attempt to output a response appropriate to reducing the uncertainty of that external state (either by manipulating the external state by acting on it, or by refining the model by further focussed investigation)
3. one of those outputs is to alter the release rate of certain hormones which in turn influence the output of other prediction engines (shifting their priors slightly in favour of certain types of output)
4. This state of affairs, this hormone affected setup, if you were to report it (either to yourself, or to others) you would use the expression "feeling pain" to describe.
If the above were the case then how would it clash with what you claim here to "know" about your feeling pain. If the last thing your brain does, after going through the process of predicting the state of external nodes, is to render a self-report which you respond to as a 'feeling of pain', then how would you distinguish that from the actual functioning of your brain in response to external stimuli? — Isaac
Sure. I'm not totally averse to saying that mental phenomena just is brain activity. What I'm averse to is the claim that being in pain has something to do with me saying "I am in pain" — Michael
But then, applying that to the snooker balls, you're averse to saying that seeing the ball as red has something to do with associating it with red surfaces generally? For example by reaching for the word "red". I thought you might be. Slightly surprised that you reply with "sure".
If you're not totally averse to that, though, how about that being in pain is associating the bodily trauma in question with bodily trauma in general? For example by reaching for the word "pain". — bongo fury
However, I think I'd call myself a realist, rightly, yet deny there even is a sub-stratum. — Moliere
I wouldn't reduce reality to either phenomenology or semantics (or science) — Moliere
That's because without access to the substrate there's no way to check our inferences, or a way to check if there is a relationship between the substrate and the surface. We could only check it against the surface. It may match the substrate, but we'd never know due to its indirectness. — Moliere
I don’t need a language to be in pain. Pre-linguistic humans had headaches. — Michael
They suffered the trauma. My car suffers trauma. And pain, but only metaphorically. They, though, probably also had enough symbolic ability to associate it with trauma in general. Which is how we suffer pain literally. Perhaps. — bongo fury
We don’t just associate pain with trauma; we feel pain in response to trauma. They are two separate things. — Michael
I'm suggesting the pain is the recognition of the trauma — bongo fury
Hmm so you were distinguishing neural alarm from bodily trauma? — bongo fury
Theories need to fit the facts, not the other way around, and it is a fact that the pain I feel isn't a property of the fire that causes me to feel pain.
So either there is a survival advantage to feeling pain, or feeling pain just happens to be a deterministic effect of something else that gives us a survival advantage (e.g. a complex brain that is able to effectively respond to stimulation). — Michael
Exactly. so what is the equivalent situation with 'seeing red' to which you want to extend this physiological response?
Your argument so far seems to be that because pain is a physiological state, then so can 'red' be. But that's woefully inadequate as a theory. — Isaac
Realism is defined as the assertion of the existence of a reality independently of our thoughts or beliefs about it, so a Realist wouldn't deny that there is a sub-stratum. — RussellA
The Phenomenological Direct Realist believes they directly perceive something existing in a mind-independent world even if they don't know its name. The Semantic Direct Realist believes they directly perceive an apple existing in a mind-independent world.
For the Direct Realist, the terms phenomenology and semantics distinguish important features of their view of reality. — RussellA
That's true, but I have an innate belief in the law of causation, in that I know that the things I perceive in my mind through my senses have been caused by things existing outside my mind in a mind-independent world.
My belief in the law of causation is not based on reason, but has been been built into the structure of my brain through 3.5 billion years of life's evolution within the world.
I have no choice in not believing in the law of causation as I have in not believing I feel pain or see the colour red. — RussellA
or evolutionary benefit, if you're working within the same framework as me) — Isaac
Organisms may have features that have no evolutionary benefit. — frank
It explains colour blindness and synesthesia and why some people see the dress to be white and gold and others black and blue and why science describes the world as electrons absorbing or reflecting electromagnetic radiation of certain wavelengths rather than “particles of redness” and is exactly what the experiment I referenced days ago concluded. — Michael
So does the standard model, but without these holes. I'm asking why you choose the model with the holes (or why they are not, for you, holes at all). Why choose a model which creates this difficult to explain phenomena contrary to what we already have regarding evolved characteristics, when there appears to be no call for it? — Isaac
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