You cannot understand an engine if you do not understand the parts. That is the reductive part. But you can't understand an engine at that point. The parts have to fit and operate together. You have to look at the functional whole. That is the non-reductive part of the process.
If the mental cannot be explained in terms of the physical then the physical cannot be explained in terms of the mental.
Anyway, I will have to assume that by mind-(in)dependent you mean that the existence of the physical universe (matter and energy) is in/dependent of/on our mind.
Then you say, "If it is the latter, then I cannot account for myself as a conscious being." Does this means that you cannot consider yourself as a conscious being?
BTW, for me, examples act as arguments, even better.
I just thought ... Why don't you start by giving a definition or description of "universal mind"?
It seems you're lumping thought, belief, perception, imagination, olfactory, visual, tactile, auditory, gustatory, and all sorts of things into the category of subjective experience
Hmmm... but you explicitly forbid physicalist accounts from appealing to obscurity???
The problem is that attempting to understanding Kantian idealism may very well negate your promotion.
We get into this deep enough, you may find your idealism was Kantian all along, or, if it most certainly was not,
And even if questions regarding Kantian idealism are merely a matter of your own personal interest, satisfying that interest isn’t necessarily to support your thesis.
In short, it’s possible you’re wasting your own time.
Fair enough, let me try to elaborate on those terms.
From an analytic idealist’s perspective, one’s organs that correspond to those senses you listed (e.g., auditory, gustatory, olfactory, etc.) are extrinsic representations of those senses of the immaterial mind within your perception (and other’s perceptions). I am not saying that your senses exist only within your subjective experience, because subjective experience is synonymous, in the case of humans, with perception and your senses are not contingent on your perception to exist (however their extrinsic, physical representations do depend on perceptions). — Bob Ross
Hmmm... but you explicitly forbid physicalist accounts from appealing to obscurity???
I understand that prima facie it seems hypocritical, but let me clarify. I am fine with soft problems having obscurities in their explanations but not hard problems. That is the difference. — Bob Ross
The reductive physicalist can identify and thoroughly explain how all sorts of 'the parts' commonly associated with conscious subjective experience work physically(See Dennett's Quining Qualia). The opponent will simply state that the hard problem hasn't been solved, or say "that's the easy(soft) problems"... Yada, yada, yada.
It's akin to the physicalist pouring hundreds of thousands of grains of sand onto the floor and pointing at the result, while the opponent says... that's not enough to count as a pile of sand. — creativesoul
When one explains an engine, they do so by reducing it to its parts and the relation between them when put together properly. — Bob Ross
The relations between the parts that constitute the engine is weakly emergent from the parts — Bob Ross
With the engine, it is 100% a reductive explanation because once I explain to you the parts and how they relate to each other there is nothing more that needs to be explained about the engine. — Bob Ross
Most idealists do not deny that there are physical things, but they mean it in the sense of tangible objects within experience. — Bob Ross
Physicalists do not mean it this way: they mean that there are actual mind-independent objects beyond the tangible objects within your conscious experience. — Bob Ross
Feathers and all...
If rattlesnake tastes like chicken, then you may know what one tastes like. The experience of eating the rattlesnake is more than just the gustatory aspect... is it not? — creativesoul
There will be some differences, but it's still just putting chunks of meat in your mouth and chewing. — RogueAI
Is it your contention that the experience will be similar to Mary seeing color for the first time? — RogueAI
Eating venison is like eating escargo... by that standard of "what it's like"... — creativesoul
That is a false presupposition. — creativesoul
My analogy assumed that rattlesnake does indeed taste like chicken. If that is the case, I know quite a bit of what eating rattlesnake will be like: like eating chicken. Escargo tastes nothing like venison. Furthermore, one is a mollusk, the other is a deer. — RogueAI
Which includes our mind, doesn't, it? I didn't say only our mind. So what I said is correct.I mean that it is independent of any mind, not just ours. — Bob Ross
But "I cannot account for myself as" is the same as "I cannot consider myself as" that I said. So I corectely interpreted that too, didn't I?I mean that if the world is mind-independent, then there is a hard problem of consciousness — Bob Ross
Do you not think things exist when not being observed? — Janus
that is the common, you might even say default, attitude to things. — Janus
I can imagine a rock existing without there being any conscious observer of it. — Janus
Organs are extrinsic representations of senses within one's perception. Senses are not existentially contingent on perception. However, the organs are existentially contingent upon one's perception.
Yeah...
I'm sorry, but that just looks like a word salad, to put it mildly.
As if one's organs do not exist without subjective qualitative experience. Seems to me to be the wrong way around. The experience, particularly the depth and breadth of human experience, is existentially dependent upon the biological machinery.
Is that the acceptable standard for all accounting practices, or just some of them?
Are you claiming that the position you're arguing in favor of successfully accounts for the hard problem without obscurities?
Oh... and you're equivocating terms to an extent I've not witnessed in quite some time. Particularly the term "perception(s)"
In addition, it seems there's a fair amount of anthropomorphism going on as well.
I'm afraid I simply do not have the time to make all this explicit. So, I'll just have to leave it all as bare assertion, but not for the lack of empirical evidence throughout the thread. Rather, due to the lack of time and personal priorities...
An engine is not an assemblage of found parts. The parts are designed and manufactured as parts of a whole. Even something as simple as a bolt cannot be understood in isolation, without it being a part of a whole.
A biological entity is not put together out of parts. It can be separated into parts but unlike the engine those parts did not exist prior to the living being.
They are not emergent. Once again, parts are parts of some whole. The relation of parts is inherent in the design of the parts. They are designed with their function and purpose in mind.
Of course there is more that needs to be explained!
What is it for?
What does it do?
What is its purpose?
Either a)there are physical things that we are aware of within experience or b) there are no physical things without experience.
Either a) you are a substance dualist or b) you are a monist. If b) then you cannot sidestep an explanation of how mental stuff gives rise to physical things.
Idealists mean there are physically-independent minds. Given the central importance of conscious experience in your account, what do you make of the fact that we have no conscious experience of disembodied minds?
Which includes our mind, doesn't, it? I didn't say only our mind.
Anyway, I will have to assume that by mind-(in)dependent you mean that the existence of the physical universe (matter and energy) is in/dependent of/on our mind.
BTW, what other mind do you have ... in mind, besides ours, that is more advanced and more complex and on which the p.u. could can be dependent on?
What I mean, in these two cases, is that you seem to try to reject my interpretation of your statemnts as incorrect, with no real reason. This only creates unnecessary "traffic" in our discussion and prolongs it without reason to maybe lead to an impass.
But HPC does not say of imply that we should doubt about our consciousness or that we are conscious beings
It is a problem of "mechanics", a problem of scientific explanation, proof, etc. Not of its existence!
Bob, I asked for a simpler description or argumentation if possible, not more complicated!
My formulation of idealism differs from Berkeley's subjective idealism in at least two points: (a) I argue for a single subject, explaining the apparent multiplicity of subjects as a top-down dissociative process. Berkeley never addressed this issue directly, implicitly assuming many subjects; and (b) I argue that the cognition of the non-dissociated aspect of mind-at-large ('God' in Berkeley's formulation) is not human-like, so it experiences the world in a manner incommensurable with human perception (details in this essay). In Berkeley's formulation, God perceives the world just as we do.
are you saying that the raw material is like noumena - there is something there but we don't see it as it is. — Tom Storm
We get into this deep enough, you may find your idealism was Kantian all along — Mww
It (i.e. Mary's room thought experiment) presupposes that it is possible to know everything there is to know about seeing color without ever having seen it. That is a false presupposition. — creativesoul
...you can know about color vision in a theoretical sense - rods, cones, optical nerves, wavelengths, absorption, and so on - without having seen colours... — Wayfarer
There is a factual difference between 'data' and 'information'. 'Data is an individual unit that contains raw materials which do not carry any specific meaning. — Wayfarer
I reject the notion that Mary could know everything there is to know about color vision without seeing color. — creativesoul
In Consciousness Explained, I described a method, heterophenomenology, which was explicitly designed to be 'the neutral path leading from objective physical science and its insistence on the third-person point of view, to a method of phenomenological description that can (in principle) do justice to the most private and ineffable subjective experiences, while never abandoning the methodological principles of science.’ — Daniel Dennett, The Fantasy of First-Person Science
We have to recognise it as raw data to begin with, right? — Tom Storm
Berkeley's subjective idealism was already "analytic" in the sense that he postulated that observation and conception is tautologically equivalent to existence. Many philosophers misunderstand this principle.
For example, they take the principle to imply that unobserved items disappear from existence. But this doesn't follow from the principle, for according to the principle it isn't false that unobserved objects exist, but nonsensical. — sime
I reject the notion that Mary could know everything there is to know about color vision without seeing color.
— creativesoul
That is the whole point of the thought-experiment. It's an argument against reductive physicalism. Compare it to this statement:
In Consciousness Explained, I described a method, heterophenomenology, which was explicitly designed to be 'the neutral path leading from objective physical science and its insistence on the third-person point of view, to a method of phenomenological description that can (in principle) do justice to the most private and ineffable subjective experiences, while never abandoning the methodological principles of science.’
— Daniel Dennett, The Fantasy of First-Person Science
So Dennett is arguing that it is possible, presumably, to know everything there is to know about the seeing of color, without the first-person experience. That is what the Mary's Room experiment is directed against. — Wayfarer
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