Are sensations mind dependent?

lorenzo sleakes

Since Galileo and continuing through Descartes and Locke is the assertion that sense qualities only exist in the mind or soul of perceivers and are not really out in the world. Berkeley also accepts mind dependence and therefore draws the conclusion that since all we know about the world is sense qualities than the whole world must be mind dependent.

But there is no strong argument for believing in this mind dependence. Galileo needed to only say that the color of a falling object is irrelevant to its place in physics, not that it has no color. In distinguishing between primary and secondary qualities Locke needed to only say that certain spatial configurations and movements of matter had the power to create sensations but not that the sensations have to exist "in us".

If certain configuations of matter cause certain sensations then objects are really colored as naive common sense realists claim. However, the view is also compatible with indirect realism for the brain is continuous with the matter of the world and so as the world may be colored so may be a visual field within the brain. Then sense qualities are created through psycho-physical laws that existed before the evolution of brains and those laws biological evolution did not invent but employed.

I speculate as to what these psychophysical laws may look like by ignoring (for now) the seperate problem of subjective awareness and considering qualities as purely physical.
see https://philpapers.org/rec/SLESTU

Manuel

Hard to say. It appears as if a kind of mind or at least a central nervous system, is needed to register sensations.

Nevertheless, it does look as if plants have some type of sensation, or at least, behave as if they do. Perhaps sensation is somewhat broader than what we take it to be.

Or perhaps they're not, and they do depend on mind.

unenlightened

Every living cell is sensitive to environmental conditions and makes nuanced responses of absorption or ejection of different chemicals. Even my computer is sensitive to passwords and my thermostat to temperature.

↪lorenzo sleakes

I had a quick look, and I am already a direct realist, so of course you are right. I like the analogy of watching the game on a black and white tv. I can remember watching snooker on a black and white set. The commentators had some work to do describing the game. :razz:

We know, 'because science', that eyes sample the sea of photons and we know also that there is a continuum of wavelengths. One makes a spectrum of the light from a star, and finds therein a huge amount of information, that one cannot see directly, and this huge amount of information is potentially available at every point in the visual field. The human eye takes 3 somewhat overlapping samples and we know, 'because biology', that other life forms take more or less samples at each point and see more or less colour-wise. The more different samples, the more information, up to the limits of the divisibility of the spectrum. And yet still, with all this understanding and agreement about how vision works, there is this disagreement - which has to be, surely, about how we choose to think about it, because the reality – the physics is already agreed? And how did that happen?

Art48

A different perspective is that sensations are ontologically primary and fundamental. Mind is the idea of that which experiences sensations. Matter is an idea we use to make sense of sensations.

Wayfarer

↪lorenzo sleakes

You may be interested in browsing the chapter extracts of a book on this topic, Mind and the Cosmic Order, by Charles Pinter, which argues the opposite of what you are saying. Pinter says that the mind is what distinguishes form, colour, and spatial relationships, which it interprets in terms of gestalts, or meaningful wholes, and that none of these are real in the absence of mind (although he doesn't limit this to the human mind but the entire realm of 'the animal sensorium').

However, the view is also compatible with indirect realism for the brain is continuous with the matter of the world and so as the world may be colored so may be a visual field within the brain. — lorenzo sleakes

I don't know if the brain, or any living organism, is 'continuous' with matter in that sense. Certainly the fundamental material elements in both are all those of the periodic table but the differentiators for living organisms are the ability to maintain homeostasis, to retain information in the form of memory, to act intentionally, and so on. There is nothing on the level of physics or chemistry alone which accounts for those attributes of living organisms (which is the principle insight behind biosemiotics).

180 Proof

Sensations are nervous system-dependent.

lorenzo sleakes

↪180 Proof

you are stating current dogma, but in both cases mine and yours there are no currently known laws through which the sensation red or pain springs into existence. Your view is of a hypothetical ncc (neural correlates of consciousness), mine a hypothetical universal correlates of qualia. So in both cases science is incomplete and something new is needed. But in your case biological evolution generated something radically new. My view is more consistent with what we mean by physical law in that it existed earlier in the evolution of the world and highly complex things like billions of neural signals dont generate simple elementaries like a patch of red. My view, a kind of panqualityism has the same motivation and is consistent with panpsychism in its attempt to avoid a miraculous radical emergence of the mental from the physical under the most recent highly complex circumstances.
Evolution employed existing laws, didnt create new ones. Animal evolution is limited to existing rules and can't for instance invent gravity because it would be beneficial to not fly off the planet.

180 Proof

you are stating current dogma — lorenzo sleakes

On the contrary, I've stated a demonstrable biological fact (re: cell biology). Feel free to refute it with more than mere speculation.

lorenzo sleakes

A different perspective is that sensations are ontologically primary and fundamental. Mind is the idea of that which experiences sensations. Matter is an idea we use to make sense of sensations — Art48

Are you saying that matter and mind are merely useful fictions and dont really exist? I would agree that sensations are epistemologically primary - all of our knowledge is based on them. But then we can theorize that matter and mind are real in that matter lies behind and helps make sense of sensations and mind is real in its capacity to experience them. Hume and then James in his radical empericism attempts to eliminate mind as a thing in itself and view it as merely a sequence of experiences. But to me it is more common sense to see mind as something distinct - a capacity to experience. In panpsychism matter and mind end up being the same thing which includes a capacity to experience. Other minds cannot be directly perceived but are inferred as the hidden cause behind teleological activities.

lorenzo sleakes

↪180 Proof

you have proven nothing. some people think that even individual living cells may have some form of sentience in which case a nervous system is not even necessary. But even if a nervous system is necessary does that mean insects or clams are sentient?

180 Proof

↪lorenzo sleakes

:roll:

Manuel

↪180 Proof

What, you come here asking for proof? What's up with that?

:nerd:

Alkis Piskas

Are sensations mind dependent?
... sense qualities only exist in the mind or soul of perceivers and are not really out in the world — lorenzo sleakes

A sensation is by definition something created in the mind.

Definition of "sensation" from Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
a. A mental process (such as seeing, hearing, or smelling) resulting from the immediate external stimulation of a sense organ often as distinguished from a conscious awareness of the sensory process
b. Awareness (as of heat or pain) due to stimulation of a sense organ
c. A state of consciousness due to internal bodily changes

Definition of "sensation" from Dictionary.com (former Oxford LEXICO):
1. The operation or function of the senses; perception or awareness of stimuli through the senses.
2. A mental condition or physical feeling resulting from stimulation of a sense organ or from internal bodily change, as cold or pain.

I have just brought up two standard references, although one can find a lot more.
It is very clear the sensation is a mental phenomenon.

So, at least for me, the answer is yes, sensations are mind dependent.

180 Proof

↪Manuel

:smirk:

Art48

Are you saying that matter and mind are merely useful fictions and dont really exist? I would agree that sensations are epistemologically primary - all of our knowledge is based on them. But then we can theorize that matter and mind are real in that matter lies behind and helps make sense of sensations and mind is real in its capacity to experience them. — lorenzo sleakes

If I call them fictions, then I have a burden of proof. But it seems plain they are hypothesized entities, theoretical constructs. Sensations are fundamental and unarguable. If I'm a brain in a vat, then the matter I experience doesn't really exist but the sensations unarguably do. Mind is our name for an hypothesized entity that experiences sensations. Mind and matter are theoretical constructs; they are hypothesized entities, which may or may not exist in reality.So, if someone says sensations are mind dependent, then they are explaining the undeniable (i.e., sensations) in terms of theoretical constructs (mind and matter) which may or may not exist in reality. Explaining the certain in terms of the uncertain seems a risky strategy.

lorenzo sleakes

↪Art48

the common sense view is that mind can experience things outside the mind in the world - the blue sky, the green leaves, the singing birds.

Art48

↪Art48
the common sense view is that mind can experience things outside the mind in the world - the blue sky, the green leaves, the singing birds. — lorenzo sleakes

The common sense view also says the Earth is flat and stationary.

NOS4A2

↪lorenzo sleakes

Sensations are by definition mind-dependant. As it is and as it was, it represents another layer of abstraction inserted between what is sensed and what is doing the sensing, leading some to believe that we somehow sense sensations and nothing besides.

Sensations, like impressions, perceptions, qualia, feelings, etc. arises from the inability to be objective about one's own body and its interaction with the rest of the world. A noun-phrase serves rightly to fall upon the subject: our body, its parts, the things we come into contact with; but considering the predicate as a subject forces us to use another noun, making a nothing into a thing in the grammar and in thought. it's place in the grammar subverted, the body is excised from consideration, replaced as it was with a pseudo-object. it isn't long before these objects get their own predicates and we are half-way into believing that these things can and do exist.

Better to realize this and be comfortable with this linguistic discrepancy, or to repudiate the use of the term entirely, which is exceedingly difficult.

Art48

Sensations are by definition mind-dependant. — NOS4A2

You are free to define "sensation" however you wish.
For me, sensation is primary. It's what I actually experience. It's reality.
Mind, on the other hand, is a concept that describes the hypothetical experiencer of sensations.

NOS4A2

↪Art48

Do you experience experience? Or sense sensations? It’s like saying that I walk a walk. In any case, it feels like we’re multiplying zeroes, at this point.

180 Proof

The common sense view also says the Earth is flat and stationary. — Art48

:100:

Art48

Do you experience experience? Or sense sensations? — NOS4A2

Sensations are what I directly, immediately experience.
Mind and matter are ideas which make my sensations coherent.

NOS4A2

↪Art48

If sensation is reality, what are you sensing?

RogueAI

What on Earth would a "mindless sensation" be?

Art48

If sensation is reality, what are you sensing? — NOS4A2

Sight, taste, touch, smell, sound

NOS4A2

↪Art48

You are sensing sensations. You see sight. You smell smells. It’s not reality because it doesn’t apply to anything in reality. All we’ve done is taken a predicate, abstracted it, added a suffix or modified it in some other way, and moved it to the object position, holding it up as reality. Soon it will be a subject where it can do its own things and have a life of its own, all at the expense of what performed the action and whatever objects the action was performed upon in the first place.

lorenzo sleakes

What on Earth would a "mindless sensation" be? — RogueAI

a mindless sensation is a blue sky before anybody sees it and a thunder clap with nobody around to hear it.

lorenzo sleakes

Sensations are what I directly, immediately experience.
Mind and matter are ideas which make my sensations coherent. — Art48

yes .. sense data is the foundation of all theory. Matter and mind are such theory. But somewhere in your theory there must also be a place for sense-data itself. When did this foundation of everthing we know first appear in the universe? How does it relate to the other theories in a coherent whole. In my theory it is a product of matter which minds can then become aware of.

Art48

You are sensing sensations. You see sight. You smell smells. It’s not reality because it doesn’t apply to anything in reality. — NOS4A2

Sensations (or sense data) IS reality.
They are what I directly and immediately know to exist.
Ideas such as mind, matter, ego, etc. are concepts.
In a mirage, the idea of water arises in my mind but there is no corresponding reality of water.

NOS4A2

↪Art48

They are not reality because they cannot be instantiated. They are without a referent. If I ask you to represent your abstraction with a single instance of it, you cannot point to anything but yourself, which is not a sensation or an experience or a sight or a taste as far as I can tell. I am left to observe only your words.

Art48

They are not reality because they cannot be instantiated. — NOS4A2

I don't understand. What can't be instantiated? The visual perception of white or black? The auditory perception of the rain? The odor of food cooking? In what sense is the sense data delivered by my five physical senses not instantiated?

Are sensations mind dependent?

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