If you ever think of anything would like to say, then please always feel free to message me! I always enjoy our conversations. — Bob Ross

Much appreciated Bob, the same extends your way. You are a credit to these forums and it is always a pleasure thinking with you!

Idealism, in the sense that there is no proof of something outside of our perception, has been refuted. — Philosophim

Don't forget to kick a rock too.

Don't forget to kick a rock too. — RogueAI

Your post is a metaphorical rock kick at me. If you feel I am wrong, start a new thread demonstrating that what I have stated is refuted, is not. I'll discuss with you there.

This from page 7 of the 'Being No-one' precis. It confirms the same point the Feldman paper makes about the lack of a scientific account of the subjective unity of experience.



It's an interesting paper, with lots to consider, but settled science, it ain't.

settled science — Wayfarer

What's that? :roll:

Something you could point at which purportedly ‘falsifies idealism’.

What are you talking about?

...but shape is intrinsic to stones and the COVID virus and countless other things. — Fooloso4

"Shape", or as having a "shape", or being "shaped", is how we represent things. The "shape", in appearance, as an image, or phenomenon, is itself a representation, a sense representation. The shape, or sense representation is then further understood by the mind through the application of geometrical figures.

Obviously, the supposed independent object is nothing like the representation or "shape" of the sense image, as high powered microscopes have revealed to us. And so, we have the obvious further problem of what is the real "shape" of the object. Is it the shape derived from the image of directly seeing? Is it the shape seen under a high powered microscope? Or is it a indescribable shape like quantum physics shows us?

So, we have all sorts of different "shapes" to choose from, for description of the very same supposed independent object, depending on one\s spatial-temporal perspective. Since all these various shapes are valid, right down to and including the non-descript shape of quantum physics, we ought to conclude that there is really no specifiable "shape" which is intrinsic to the proposed independent object.

By Aristotle's law of identity the "form" that the thing has, which is proper to the the thing itself, as its true identity, is separate and distinct from the "form" which we assign to the thing. The form we assign to the thing is its "shape", which is supported by geometric figures. The form which the thing really has, as its true identity, proper and unique to itself only, is a type of actuality which we cannot apprehend through sensation and spatial "shapes".

Good question: no. Solipsism is the idea that everything is in my mind, whereas analytical idealism is the idea that both our minds are in a universal mind. — Bob Ross

In my view :

Subjective Idealism and solipsism aren't ideas, but a tautological understanding that the meaning of all propositions is ultimately reducible to whatever is perceived or thought in the first-person at the end of the day.

Naturalism isn't an idea, but an understanding that the meaning of inter-subjectively valid propositions, such as those concerning the properties of natural kinds, cannot be identified with particular thoughts and experiences of the first person. For this reason, scientific naturalists talk about meaning in terms of potential experiences through the use of conditionals, counterfactual analysis , and perspectivally invariant abstract properties.

But this shouldn't be taken to imply that naturalism discounts experience as being it's semantic foundation - after all, naturalists pride themselves for judging the validity and soundness of their theories in terms of empirical evidence. And every naturalist must determine for themselves how they should privately cognize the inter-subjective propositions expressed by their fellow community. The assumption that naturalists can relate to their subject matter implicitly appeals to the existence of semantic "bridging" rules for converting the inter-subjective representations of naturalistic language into phenomenal first-person understanding.

So i don't consider Naturalism and solipsism or idealism to be incompatible per-se. I see them as comprising different semantic aspects of thought and language. Nonetheless, their logics are radically different, lending to the false impression of conflict.

E.g "Being is perception" is an unavoidable tautology of non-representational idealism that is necessarily appealed to whenever an observer interprets a physical proposition in terms of his personal experiences (regardless of whether he self-identifies as an idealist) .

On the other hand, "perception is representation" is an unavoidable tautology of naturalism for universalising intersubjective semantics in an abstract fashion that isn't dependent upon the perceptual judgements of any particular observer.

Taken together, "Being is Perception" and "Perception is Representation" don't necessarily imply that "Being is Representation", as is often naively assumed by materialists, if one understands these principles as referring to different and non-overlapping aspects of semantics.

Now, sometimes I do hear physicalists rightly point out that an analytical idealist is not actually providing an explanation to consciousness at all but, rather, simply positing it as fundamental without a detailed account of mind — Bob Ross

Kastrup attempts to answer this through 2 similar metaphors in Why Materialism is Baloney : The Whirlpool and The Membrane.

to me, it isn't that impressive for one's metaphysics to align with scientific knowledge but, rather, one should be holistically determining the best metaphysical theory based off of parsimony, explanatory power, internal coherence, external coherence, reliability, intellectual seemings, etc — Bob Ross

To do that, our whole language and logic should go through a transformation and even then it can not give an account of reality all the way.
So a metaphysical theory can never be wholly because of the nature of "theory".
The way our mind works is materialistic which means dualistic and it can only explain something within space-time meanwhile the fundamental reality must be beyond space-time /or spaceless-timeless.

It is not coincidence that in all traditional metaphysics you see the theme: The truth that is spoken is no longer the truth.

I suspect most people on this forum are physicalists or at least not idealists (; — Bob Ross

I am certain about that. I have conducted a Yes/No poll on "Does thinking take place in the humanbrain?" and 80% answered "Yes". About the same time, I launched a discussion "You are not your body!" and had the same kind of response. I never tried again, of course to raise such issues! :smile:

Any thoughts you may have pertaining to this subject. — Bob Ross

I see. OK. As a first response, I find "analytic idealism" very interesting and quite plausible as a theory. But I don't agree with Kastrup on a couple of important points and I also find a few "wholes", i.e. important things that are missing from his theory or theories. I had tried a lot to find answers about them but I couldn't. E.g. he talks so much about "in consciousness" and I have never found a piece of information about what he thinks/believes consciousness is. No description at all. Then, he maintains that the "self" is an illusion. But then he connects it to the "ego", i.e. the "constructed self", which of course is an illusion. But then I have never heard from him describe what the individual himself, as a unit of awareness, i.e. the "I" or "YOU", stripped from any additives, is. This is certainly not an illusion!

These things are very important and they must be always expressed and clarified. Major Eastern philosophers and Western philosophers based on Eastern philosophy, always do that. With axamples and repetitions and everything. Sometimes to an annoying point! :smile: But are never left with question marks. The are very practical. And you can apply what they say immediately in life. You can have the experience of what is being said. You are not left with your mind full of concepts and no actual reality, knowledge.

See, the hunderds of "-isms" we have in Western philosophy clearly show that. They are all at the level of the mind, of concepts. And "analytic idealism" is one of them. As all the other kinds of idealism, physicalism, dualism, and so on and so on.

So, at a conscptual level, I like "analytic idealism" more than other system, esp. because of the term "analytic" which alludes to logic, reasoning, and ssystems analysis in general. (BTW, in my computer programming profession, I have worked also as a "software analyst"! :grin:)

Are you referring to the hard problem of consciousness? — Bob Ross

No. This is a topic by itself. And a huge one! :smile:
(I have expressed my views on this subject in here a few moths ago ...)

The form this takes is not something intrinsic to the objects, but is inferred by the mind. — Wayfarer

Agreed, but with respect to the case at hand, the form of the perceived, but as yet undetermined, object, is not the same as the shape of it, which is its extension in space and belongs to the object alone.
———-

On Pinter: “objects in an unobserved universe have no shape”.

For we as humans, an object, whether observed or not, to have no shape makes explicit there is no extension in a space for it, which presupposes the unobserved universe is not itself a space, an inference for which there is no logical justification.

That experience is sufficient to grant us the authority to say what an observed object is, we are not thereby authorized to conceptualize what the unobserved is not.
———-

Omnibus-ing can be fun.

On the unity of subjective experience:

Let’s do some real science. Let’s hook up a nifty machine, expressly constructed to measure neural correlates relating perception of your favorite breakfast meal and the pleasure you get from it, to a material manifestation. What you should see is a graph or an o’scope pattern, so big or modulated or whatever for this degree of taste, lesser or something else for that degree.

Oh but wait a New York (CityUniversity) minute….neural correlates are on the nano-scale, but the probes attached to the machine are mini-scale. Dammit, that’s just not gonna work, you’ll wreck the very neurons you’re trying to get a measurement from. Ahhh…so just quantum-ize the probes, insert them into this pathway, then that pathway, or better yet, insert a whole boatload of ‘em in all sorts of pathways just to find out which one actually reads out as “bittersweet, but slightly overcooked”.

But first, solve or disregard the observer problem whereby merely inserting the probes disrupts the influence of the natural components on each other….

Well, crap on a cracker, Mr. Bill. There’s no ‘scope ever possible to build that will read out as bittersweet but slightly overcooked, but only as representing 140 phosphorous ions across a 56pm cleft under 12nv activation potential.

And there ya go. Your love of scrambled eggs is nothing but 140 ions, etc, on this probe, too much pepper on that probe, put only this much jelly on the toast on still another, and so on, and on and on.

If you find that uncomfortable, and who wouldn’t with all those probes, let’s use dyes of different colors then all you have to do is suffer the needles. Now you’re see red dye where bittersweet is and blue dye where overcooked is, and you’ve got your breakfast experience in multicolored science. Yea. Wonderful.

Screw it. Magnetic imaging? Ultrasonic vibration? Some new and unproven futuristic space-age gizmo? Won’t make one whit of difference. For any scientific methodology, you’ll get nothing but what that method gives you, but it will never ever give you what you give yourself.

To quote my ol’ AM radio (remember AM radio? Anybody?) buddy Paul Harvey, and now you know the REESSSSSTTTT of the story.

(Sigh)

I read Kant and I didn’t think he really did a good job of arguing for the categories. — Bob Ross

He argued only enough to suit the overall purpose. All he needed to do in justifying a systemic conclusion (the possibility for human empirical knowledge), is demonstrate the necessity of a certain set of antecedent conditions. It’s just a simple “if this then that” logical construct.

Speculative metaphysics writ large.

The argument is developed that it is the mind which picks out and differentiates things, attributes features to them and idenfities how they interact, and so on. — Wayfarer

And the counter-argument is that because things are different they interact in different ways. We can observe this and describe this but these interactions occur whether we identify them or not.

The larger argument is that consciousness continuously structures experience this way ... — Wayfarer

The pattern formed by three pennies is different than an object with three spikes that latches on to the three receptors of another object. So, yes, we make connections but it does not follow that things do not have structure and are not connected to other things based on their structures. Structural biology is a good example. At various levels living organisms have structure. Consciousness can identify these structures but consciousness does not make them. If they did not have these structures there would not be living organisms.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/quantum-theorys-measurement-problem-may-be-a-poison-pill-for-objective-reality/

I am unsure as to what you mean here: could you please elaborate? The hard problem of consciousness is absolutely a metaphysical problem, as it pertains solely to metaphysics and has nothing to do with science. — Bob Ross

The question of why and how biological functions give rise to experience has everything to do with science! Blocking such inquiry because it does not fit your metaphysical assumptions is the metaphysical, that is, conceptual problem.

What assumptions? — Bob Ross

Start with the title of this thread.

Philosophy of mind is metaphysics ... — Bob Ross

Metaphysical questions are raised in the philosophy of mind, but if your metaphysics excludes scientific inquiry then it is a dead end. It is embodied minds that we must deal with, and so science is not merely a "supplement". It is fundamental to the inquiry. We do not have to take a stand on physicalism. We do not have to decide whether or not mental states are physical states, but we should not exclude the physical organism out of some metaphysical conviction.

... science should not be in the business of ontology ... — Bob Ross

The question of being is a philosophical question, but that does not mean that science, which deals with actual beings, is excluded from ontological inquiry. Although the term had yet to be invented, Aristotle is a good example of how one does not exclude the other but form a whole.

Firstly, again, we don’t experience that the world is physical either ... — Bob Ross

Right, we don't experience that the world is physical, our experience includes things that are physical.

... we infer it from the data — Bob Ross

How is the data transmitted to us if not physically?

Metaphysical questions are raised in the philosophy of mind, but if your metaphysics excludes scientific inquiry then it is a dead end. It is embodied minds that we must deal with, and so science is not merely a "supplement". It is fundamental to the inquiry. We do not have to take a stand on physicalism. We do not have to decide whether or not mental states are physical states, but we should not exclude the physical organism out of some metaphysical conviction.


:up:

And the counter-argument is that because things are different they interact in different ways. We can observe this and describe this but these interactions occur whether we identify them or not. — Fooloso4

Do you think the mind is a product of such physical interactions?

Do you think the mind is a product of such physical interactions? — Wayfarer

I am not able to give a full blown theory of mind, but will say that I think there is more to it than just physical interactions.

Thank you. I see that question as the basic issue in this debate.


I have a reference which is originally from an essay about Buddhist philosophy but which provides, I think, a useful summary of the background of the debate between idealism and materialism (with some comments added in parentheses).

The Term 'Idealism'

The term "Idealism" came into vogue roughly during the time of Kant (though it was used earlier by others, such as Leibniz) to label one of two trends that had emerged in reaction to Cartesian philosophy. Descartes had argued that there were two basic yet separate substances in the universe: Extension (the material world of things in space) and Thought (the world of mind and ideas). Subsequently opposing camps took one or the other substance as their metaphysical foundation, treating one as the primary substance while reducing the other to derivative status. Materialists argued that only matter was ultimately real, so that thought and consciousness derived from physical entities (chemistry, brain states, etc.). Idealists countered that the mind and its ideas were ultimately real, and that the physical world derived from mind (e.g., the mind of God, Berkeley's esse est percipi, or from ideal prototypes, etc.). Materialists gravitated toward mechanical, physical explanations for why and how things existed, while Idealists tended to look for purposes - moral as well as rational - to explain existence. Idealism meant "idea-ism," frequently in the sense Plato's notion of "ideas" (eidos) was understood at the time, namely ideal types that transcended the physical, sensory world and provided the form (eidos) that gave matter meaning and purpose. As materialism, buttressed by advances in materialistic science, gained wider acceptance, those inclined toward spiritual and theological aims turned increasingly toward idealism as a countermeasure. Before long there were many types of materialism and idealism.

Idealism, in its broadest sense, came to encompass everything that was not materialism, which included so many different types of positions that the term lost any hope of univocality. Most forms of theistic and theological thought were, by this definition, types of idealism, even if they accepted matter as real, since they also asserted something as more real than matter, either as the creator of matter (in monotheism) or as the reality behind matter (in pantheism). Extreme empiricists who only accepted their own experience and sensations as real were also idealists (Berkeley being a notable example). Thus the term "idealism" united monotheists, pantheists and atheists. At one extreme were various forms of metaphysical idealism which posited a mind (or minds) as the only ultimate reality. The physical world was either an unreal illusion or not as real as the mind that created it. To avoid solipsism (which is a subjectivized version of metaphysical idealism) metaphysical idealists posited an overarching mind that envisions and creates the universe. (This is the 'mind-at-large' posited by Bernardo Kastrup.)

A more limited type of idealism is epistemological idealism, which argues that since knowledge of the world only exists in the mental realm, we cannot know actual physical objects as they truly are, but only as they appear in our mental representations of them. (This is near to how I (Wayfarer) understand it.) Epistemological idealists could be ontological materialists, accepting that matter exists substantially; they could even accept that mental states derived at least in part from material processes. What they denied was that matter could be known in itself directly, without the mediation of mental representations. Though unknowable in itself, matter's existence and properties could be known through inference based on certain consistencies in the way material things are represented in perception.

Transcendental idealism contends that not only matter but also the self remains transcendental in an act of cognition. Kant and Husserl, who were both transcendental idealists, defined "transcendental" as "that which constitutes experience but is not itself given in experience." A mundane example would be the eye, which is the condition for seeing even though the eye does not see itself (a philosophical axiom of the Upanisads. This is also the reasoning behind the argument about the 'blind spot' of science). By applying vision, and drawing inferences from it, one can come to know the role eyes play in seeing, even though one never sees one's own eyes. Similarly, things in themselves and the transcendental self could be known if the proper methods were applied for uncovering the conditions that constitute experience, even though such conditions do not themselves appear in experience.

Even here, where epistemological issues are at the forefront, it is actually ontological concerns, viz. the ontological status of self and objects, that is really at stake. Western philosophy rarely escapes that ontological tilt. Those who accepted that both the self and its objects were unknowable except through reason, and that such reason(s) was their cause and purpose for existing - thus epistemologically and ontologically grounding everything in the mind and its ideas - were labeled Absolute Idealists (e.g., Schelling, Hegel, Bradley), since only such ideas are absolute while all else is relative to them. — Dan Lusthaus

(The essay then goes on to differentiate Western and Indian philosophy, which is based more on epistemology, but which is not directly relevant to the above.)

Hello Creativesoul,

Could you put the "hard problem" in question form please? The question needs to have an acceptable answer, by my lights. So, if you could formulate a question that has a potential/possible answer that you would find satisfactory, it would be super helpful. I want to make sure we're on the same page.

Fair enough my friend! To formulate the question in a manner to avoid any anticipated misunderstandings, I would like to clarify some terminology first (that will to utilized therein). Otherwise, I find that physicalists and idealists tend to both talk passed each other with vague questions (e.g., “physicalism can’t account for awareness”, “physicalism can’t account for why I see the color red”, etc.). Without proper explication of the terms, it isn’t self apparent (at least to me) that there is is a hard problem being expressed (in a question form).

For intents and purposes hereon, I will deploy a distinction between mechanical awareness (or ‘awareness’ for short) and qualitative experience (or ‘experience’ for short): the former is an account of how a mechanical (or otherwise mind-independent: consciousness-independent) being can acquire information of its environment that ultimately allow it to navigate (e.g., mimicking the brain, we can reverse engineer AIs that are increasingly becoming aware in this sense, as they can interpret their surroundings), whereas the latter is how a conscious being has qualitative, subjective experience of its surroundings (e.g., subjectively experiencing redness, feeling pain, hearing sounds, seeing objects, etc.).

With a lot of the discussion on the hard problem, the same sentence, depending on if the person is targeting contextually ‘awareness’ or ‘experience’, can be interpreting as expressing a soft problem, solved problem, or the actual hard problem. For example, the question “how does one see greeness?” could be interpreted two ways: “how does one acquire the information of the greeness?” or “how does one qualitatively experience greeness?”. A physicalist can explain easily how a brain mechanically interprets the world to acquire the information that such and such is green, but this doesn’t explain in-itself why a subject also qualitatively experiences the greeness: the qualia is an over an beyond, unexpected, phenomena when viewed from a physicalist’s metaphysical perspective. So, it is incredibly important not to get hung up on how physicalism accounts for ‘awareness’, because even if there is an aspect that we don’t fully understand yet, it is theoretically possible for one to explain it someday under physicalism: not so much for ‘experience’.

Now, to get to the question you asked for: “can physicalism possibly account for qualia under its reductive physicalist methodological approach without appeal to an obscurity?”. That is essentially the question that expresses the hard problem of consciousness. If one answers not, then it is a hard problem; however, if they answer yes, then it is a soft problem.

Bob

Hello Janus,

If there are many minds and many mental states, and they are not connected with one another, then how to explain the unarguable fact that we experience the same things in the same environments?

If I am understanding you correctly, then I would answer that they are ‘connected’ in the sense that they are perceiving the same objective world: it just isn’t fundamentally a physical world.

I don't deny that the way we perceive things is peculiar to humans because our brains and perceptual organs are constituted in the same ways, and in ways more or less similar to animals. But other animals, judging from their behavior, perceive the same things we do in the same locations that we do, which suggests that there are real structures there, which are independent of being perceived.

Firstly, I agree that all conscious beings capable of perception are perceiving the same world, even in the case that they can only perceive it as well as their faculties allow them.

Secondly, from an analytic idealist perspective, the fact that our perceptions converge on an objective world does not entail that the objective world in-itself (of which we are representing on our perceptions) is physical. Instead, it is argued that it is mental.

Think of it this way: think of a video game. In the video game, let’s say there’s a tree that the character can view if they go walk over to it. This tree is objectively there in the video game, and the character should expect for other characters, all else being equal, to see the tree where it is if they were to go view it. He would likewise expect that the tree will still be there, all else being equal, if nothing changes when it takes a stroll and re-visits it later. Likewise, he would expect the lower perceptive creatures, like his pet dog, to also have a perception of that tree. However, that character would be gravely mistaken to think that the tree thereby exists in-itself like he is visualizing it as, in fact, it is actually a bunch of 0s and 1s on the hard drive of the computer. The information about the tree is being represented in the tree that the character sees, but it doesn’t exist as the tall brown and green thing that he perceives in virtue of that. Likewise, if we posit that the video game has been coded to mimick real life, then it would also be true that the more capable a creature (in the game) is to perceiving, the more accurate, in terms of the information, will be represented. Thusly, it may be the case that that the tree is has green leaves, and that is objectively coded into the source code in 0s and 1s, but the color blind character, having not the ability to represent color, will mis-sight of its green leaves.

The hard problem is only a problem for physicalists if they presume that consciousness is not physical

Perhaps you are referring to property dualism (i.e., irreductive physicalism)? Personally, I don’t think it is a valid position in itself and thusly would argue that it either dissolved into substance dualism or reductive physicalism. In the case of the former, it has the hard problem of interaction; in the case of the latter, it has the hard problem of consciousness.

The subjective "feel" of conscious experience is not available to third person observation, so it is not the business of science to explain it.

I agree that science will not explain, nor is it its business to, but a reductive physicalism is required, by their own view, to expect neuroscience to explain it one day.

Why should we think that everything whatsoever can be explained in terms of physical models?

I think that this is exactly why science is about creating a map (i.e., quantifying the qualitative), and says nothing about the territory.

Bob

Hello Sime,

I appreciate your response!

I had a hard time understanding what you were conveying, as I think we just use terminology differently, so let me ask some questions pertaining thereto.

Subjective Idealism and solipsism aren't ideas

By “idea”, I was meaning it in the colloquial sense of the term. Technically, those are metaphysical theories. One is a sub-type of idealism that does not hold there is an objective reality but, rather, that all that exists is to perceive or to be perceived (e.g., the tree doesn’t exist other than an image within your perception). The other is the theory that all that exists is one’s own mind, or, epistemically speaking, one can only know the existence of their own mind.

but a tautological understanding that the meaning of all propositions is ultimately reducible to whatever is perceived or thought in the first-person at the end of the day.

I don’t see how this is an accurate representation of what the two theories purport, but, again, I don’t think I fully followed what you mean by them being ‘tautological understanding’. Could you elaborate more?

Naturalism isn't an idea

Just to clarify, again, I was using “idea” in the colloquial sense and not idealist sense.

Naturalism isn't an idea, but an understanding that the meaning of inter-subjectively valid propositions, such as those concerning the properties of natural kinds, cannot be identified with particular thoughts and experiences of the first person.

I don’t agree with this (assuming I am understanding you correctly): naturalism is the view that either everything can only be explained by reduction to natural properties (i.e., methodological naturalism) or that natural properties is all that exists (i.e., ontological naturalism). The latter can be interpreted as strictly a materialist or physicalist metaphysical worldview, or more loosely as simply any metaphysical view that holds properties in the world as naturalistic (such as potentially analytic idealism).

Why would it be the “understanding [of] the meaning of inter-subjectively valid propositions”?--and why would it be anything that holds there is an objective world (“cannot be identified with particular thoughts and experiences of the first person”)? Supernaturalism also meets that criteria as far as I am understanding you currently (but correct me if I am misunderstanding).

So i don't consider Naturalism and solipsism or idealism to be incompatible per-se

I agree with you here.

"Being is perception" is an unavoidable tautology of non-representational idealism that is necessarily appealed to whenever an observer interprets a physical proposition in terms of his personal experiences

I don’t see how this is true. For example, both physicalists and analytic idealists hold that being is more than perception. No one inevitably speaking in terms of their experiences forcing “being” to be perception. Why would that be the case?

"perception is representation" is an unavoidable tautology of naturalism

It just depends on how you are using the terms. For me, regardless of naturalism, it is (essentially) a tautology because they are synonymous.

for universalising intersubjective semantics in an abstract fashion that isn't dependent upon the perceptual judgements of any particular observer.

Could you elaborate on this? I did not understand this part.

Taken together, "Being is Perception" and "Perception is Representation" don't necessarily imply that "Being is Representation", as is often naively assumed by materialists, if one understands these principles as referring to different and non-overlapping aspects of semantics.

To me, this is logically invalid. You are arguing for using a proposition X has both X and another proposition Y (i.e., that ‘perception’ refers to two different semantical meanings in the different statements you made), which is against the rules of formal logic because then one cannot formulate anything with it coherently. Thusly, to me, you are arguing that:

(X == Y) [being is perception] && (Y == Z) [perception is representation] && (Z != X) [representation is not being]

Which has a logical contradiction in it. I get that you wouldn’t hold the words “perception” and “perception” in your sentences as equivalent, but this just doesn’t make any sense to me to argue that. Why would one use the same word differently in the same argument? Doesn’t that make the argument harder to convey?

Bob

Hello TheMadMan,

So a metaphysical theory can never be wholly because of the nature of "theory".

I agree that metaphysics is meant as an good general theory, and not absolute truth.

The way our mind works is materialistic which means dualistic

I don’t think our mind works materialistic: I think that the modernist era has produced a predominant metaphysical view in favor of materialism. Also, why would our mind working materialistically entail duality? Are you saying materialism entails irreductive materialism?

and it can only explain something within space-time meanwhile the fundamental reality must be beyond space-time /or spaceless-timeless

I agree. It is hard to explain eternity with our temporal nature for sure.

The truth that is spoken is no longer the truth.

Do you mean that metaphysical theories evolve? Or that they don’t give absolute truth?

Bob

Hello Alkis Piskas,

Thank you for sharing your thoughts!

I launched a discussion "You are not your body!"

I see: are you an idealist?

he talks so much about "in consciousness" and I have never found a piece of information about what he thinks/believes consciousness is.

This is fair: idealism’s weak point prima facea is that it doesn’t give an incredibly detailed depiction of consciousness, which it is positing as fundamental. However, the important thing to note is that it is being posited as fundamental and thusly necessary. Every metaphysical must stop its explanation at something which is metaphysically necessary, and for idealism it is mind. So there’s going to be a bit of obscurity in how it works not only because we have been living in a physicalist world so long that we haven’t bother to try and look for explanations in mind but also because we are trying to understand the bedrock of reality (which is certainly much harder to understand than entities within phenomenal experience).

With that being said, I can elaborate on his distinction between being “in consciousness” and “having consciousness”: the latter is when a being exists fundamentally as matter and has the property of consciousness (i.e., qualia), whereas the former is when the being is within fundamentally conscious activity (i.e., me and you has alters in one universal mind that it having conscious activity in a primal sense).

I don’t think Kastrup claims to know exactly how all of consciousness works, but I think he would say that consciousness is, at its base, mental events “interacting” with each other (like how when you vividly dream the entire world is representation from your dream character’s perspective of the environment that is within your real mind that is dreaming). We, like your dream character in a vivid dream you may have, are perceiving what that mental activity (in the mind) looks like from our perspective: it is our faculties representing as best it can that mentality.

Likewise, he stresses that “consciousness proper”, under analytic idealism, is not to be confused with physicalist usages of the term “consciousness”: the latter is just an emergent “add-on” to the organism (as it is the surface of awareness as a subject), whereas the former is the entirety of the organism. Under analytic idealism, consciousness can be attributed to the entirety of your being, including your organic processes that you don’t directly control, and the aspects that are within your every day-to-day experience is what “bubble up” to the tip of the iceberg: your ego (in the psychological sense of the term). Under analytic idealism, the involuntary processes of your stomach, for example, when viewed from our perception, is the extrinsic representation of mental processes that are attributed largely to your mind as a conscious being (albeit can be manipulated or altered by external influences). Physicalism doesn’t use the term the same way at all as idealism.

Then, he maintains that the "self" is an illusion. But then he connects it to the "ego", i.e. the "constructed self", which of course is an illusion. But then I have never heard from him describe what the individual himself, as a unit of awareness, i.e. the "I" or "YOU", stripped from any additives, is. This is certainly not an illusion!

I agree. I am also not convinced that the entirety of myself is an illusion, but can get on board with the ego being an illusion. I would say that we, as dissociated alters (or perhaps more vaguely dream characters), are concretely separate from each other and are not illusions. We are concretely separate from others and the universal mind in the sense that two whirlpools in the same body of water are distinct but yet made of the same water.

The disassociated boundary (or dream character boundary if you like) is conscious experience. Unlike non-conscious objects, it is very clear (in a non-arbitrary way) where my conscious experience ends and yours begins if we were to touch hands. There is no illusion here.

I think, to be fair, Kastrup is more claiming it is an illusion in the sense that the whirlpool thinks it is concretely distinct but, in fact, when it dies down will reassimilate into the body of water: our minds (as dream characters or disassociated alters) are distinct but when they die off reassimilate into the universal mind. To me, this just means that we reassimilate into nature, which is what I would expect and not that we are illusions.

Bob

Hello Mww,

He argued only enough to suit the overall purpose. All he needed to do in justifying a systemic conclusion (the possibility for human empirical knowledge), is demonstrate the necessity of a certain set of antecedent conditions. It’s just a simple “if this then that” logical construct.

I am just hesitant to say that our minds interpret the mentality in hypothetical judgments. I am not saying it is wrong, I just don’t see what the proof is of that. Could you elaborate on the proof?

Bob

Hello Fooloso4,

The question of why and how biological functions give rise to experience has everything to do with science!

What you described here is a purported soft problem of consciousness, which would, indeed, be expected (under physicalism) to be explained eventually (or at least possibly) by science. However, the hard problem is metaphysics proper. A scientist does not decipher in their job that there is a hard problem of consciousness (i.e., that there is a conceptual explanatory gap between mechanical awarenss and qualitative experience): on the contrary, the moment that dawns on them they are engaged in metaphysics and not science. Science is about empirically testing things to better understand behaviors of those things, metaphysics is about understanding that which lies beyond the possibility of all experience (but yet still meaningfully pertains to reality). In this case, the hard problem is only ever postulated by application of pure reason: not any empirical tests.

Blocking such inquiry because it does not fit your metaphysical assumptions is the metaphysical, that is, conceptual problem.
…
we should not exclude the physical organism out of some metaphysical conviction

I think you may have misunderstood what I was saying: it is not that science isn’t a consideration when coming up with one’s metaphysics (on the contrary, empirical adequacy is important for any metaphysical theory to be taken seriously); but, rather, it is only a negative criteria: one can only negate certain metaphysical theories with scientific facts, whereas the vast majority or perfectly coherent with science yet are directly incompatible with each other (e.g., physicalism and idealism). This is why I referred to science as a supplement in metaphysics: one’s metaphysics should adhere to scienctific knowledge, but that doesn’t prove the theory--one also needs to consider parsimony, intellectual seemings, internal/external coherence, logical consistency, explanatory power, etc.

but if your metaphysics excludes scientific inquiry then it is a dead end. It is embodied minds that we must deal with, and so science is not merely a "supplement".

I don’t see how you can claim I am both excluding scientific inquiry (in my metaphysics) and considering it a valid supplement. By supplementation, I mean that it strengthens the metaphysical theory (but does not prove it) to be empirically adequate.

The question of being is a philosophical question, but that does not mean that science, which deals with actual beings, is excluded from ontological inquiry.

If you are a strong scientific realist (viz., you think that science produces true results of what entities fundamentally exist), then I understand why you would claim this. However, I deny this. Just like trees, I hold that atoms are a nominal distinction and they do not exist in the underlying ontological structure of reality but, rather, they are extrinsic representations of fundamentally mentality. Science tells us that we should expect this to behave as though there are atoms and, I would go so far as to say, that there are phenomenally atoms, but not that there are noumenally atoms.

Right, we don't experience that the world is physical, our experience includes things that are physical.

By ‘physical’, I was not referring to the colloquial usage of the term (i.e., something with solidity, shape, size, etc.) but, rather, what it means in relation to physicalism: something that is mind-independent. In the sense as it is used for physicalism, it is an abstract inference and does not exist within our experience.

How is the data transmitted to us if not physically?

Think of a vivid dream you have had, there is nothing physically being transmitted while you are flying in the sky (in your dream) or walking the dream world streets: it is mental events occurring from your mind and they are still occurring. The brain activity measurable when you are dreaming is simply the extrinsic representation of that mental process. Same thing with the objective world, being in a universal mind.

Bob

I'll put it this way: there can be matter without mind but not mind without matter.

:up:

What you described here is a purported soft problem of consciousness, which would, indeed, be expected (under physicalism) to be explained eventually (or at least possibly) by science. However, the hard problem is metaphysics proper. — Bob Ross

In Chalmers own words, from "The Hard Problem of Consciousness":

The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information- processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it’s like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it’s like to be in them. All of them are states of experience.

It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information- processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it’s like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion? It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does.

How is the data transmitted to us if not physically?

Think of a vivid dream you have had ... — Bob Ross

This example works against your claim. If I am anesthetized I do not dream. Signals in the nervous system are blocked.