I asked for your measurable definition - the one that would make sense to a scientist wanting to get on with their scientific inquiry. — apokrisis
Your explanation makes more sense to me than the "epistemic cut" notion. — Gnomon
This epistemic irreducibility does not imply any ontological dualism. It arises whenever a distinction must be made between a subject and an object, or in semiotic terms, when a distinction must be made between a symbol and its referent or between syntax and pragmatics.
We ourselves, as physical organisms, are part of that universe (i.e. described by science), composed of the same basic elements as everything else, and recent advances in molecular biology have greatly increased our understanding of the physical and chemical basis of life. Since our mental lives evidently depend on our existence as physical organisms, especially on the functioning of our central nervous systems, it seems natural to think that the physical sciences can in principle provide the basis for an explanation of the mental aspects of reality as well — that physics can aspire finally to be a theory of everything.
However, I believe this possibility is ruled out by the conditions that have defined the physical sciences from the beginning. The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order – our structure and behavior in space and time – but they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms or how the world appears to their different particular points of view. There can be a purely physical description of the neurophysiological processes that give rise to an experience, and also of the physical behavior that is typically associated with it, but such a description, however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience – how it is from the point of view of its subject — without which it would not be a conscious experience at all.
So the physical sciences, in spite of their extraordinary success in their own domain, necessarily leave an important aspect of nature unexplained. — Thomas Nagel, The Core of Mind and Cosmos
You're asking me to define circles so that they have four sides. — javra
The epistemic cut is simply that between knower and known, organism and environment and symbol v what is symbolised. — Wayfarer
Seems to me an interesting philosophical question would be, ‘does it introduce a duality’? — Wayfarer
So again the subject-object distinction is not something that can be neatly reduced to physical laws. — Wayfarer
I'll go out on a limb here, and suggest that the aspect or element of the process that will never be amenable to an objective account just is the subjective experience of any organism whatever - of what it is like to be a microbe or amoeba, all the way up to mammals and self-aware beings. — Wayfarer
So I think there is an ontological dualism here - but not one of two cartesian 'substances' like mind and matter, but of two complementary but separate perspectives. — Wayfarer
Get it straight if you want to claim to have a basic grasp on logic. I’m asking you to define what you might mean by circle. And yes, that is conventionally done in counterfactual fashion. So a circle is not a square for these particular reasons. Anyone with a compass and straightedge can demonstrate the Euclidean proof of the assertion. — apokrisis
Aren’t you weary of your own failure yet? What keeps you going and going? — apokrisis
And folk like Robert Ulanowicz were openly Catholic and god-fearing, but also shrugged their shoulders and said science is science. — apokrisis
For 300 years, the reigning consensus in the West has been that nature is monist and functions according to a single metaphysics. Furthermore, it has been assumed (and still is by most) that continued research will demonstrate that the same laws and metaphysics will eventually fully describe matters in the chasm that living systems inhabit. To doubt that belief is to exhibit what Haught (2000) calls ‘metaphysical impatience.'
What did nature insert to get evolution going? — apokrisis
Accepting process ecology as a legitimate way to describe natural systems would provide significant philosophical and theological opportunities. Starting with the question of free will—it becomes a given in a narrative that posits indeterminacy as an axiomatic attribute of nature. The burden of proof would shift to the determinists, who would then need to demonstrate how neuronal firings make their way through some five hierarchical layers of mind, each with its compliment of indeterminacy, to determine higher-level thought and choice.
Not when you are immediately collapsing the Peircean triadic relation back to the good old dyadic one of Descartes. — apokrisis
The Hard Problem of how mind and matter can interact causally is solved by that. — apokrisis
Thanks. Your post clarified that -- to me -- unfamiliar concept : how to divide Monistic (holistic) Ontology into a Dualistic (reductive) Worldview : philosophy into science.The epistemic cut is simply that between knower and known, organism and environment and symbol v what is symbolised. — Wayfarer
So do you reckon if you'd been the other party in that wager with David Chalmers you'd have won the bet? — Wayfarer
Consciousness was already explained years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness_Explained — RogueAI
Critics of Dennett's approach argue that Dennett fails to engage with the problem of consciousness by equivocating subjective experience with behaviour or cognition. In his 1996 book The Conscious Mind, philosopher David Chalmers argues that Dennett's position is "a denial" of consciousness, and jokingly wonders if Dennett is a philosophical zombie. Critics believe that the book's title is misleading as it fails to actually explain consciousness. Detractors have provided the alternative titles of Consciousness Ignored and Consciousness Explained Away. According to Galen Strawson, the book violates the Trades Description Act and Dennett should be prosecuted.
But none of it matters to Dennett and his readers. They are sufficiently motivated by the fear of spooky woo stuff that they'd prefer to accept it. — Wayfarer
(I think Apokrisis would probably disagree but I'll leave that to him) — Wayfarer
He also wrote a history of the subject that I found useful - like, who's who in the zoo. — Wayfarer
The substantiated position is that consciousness is not empirically observable and you insist that it be defined in an empirically measurable way to be taken into consideration in the first place — javra
The substantiated position is that consciousness is not empirically observable — javra
Substantiated how? — Isaac
Thanks for that information. :joke:↪Gnomon
The article you mention is by Marcello Barbieri - in my reading of biosemiotics, solely due to Apokrisis (to give credit where it's due) I've learned that Barbieri resigned as editor of the journal Biosemiotics, because he felt that it had become too philosophical and influenced by Peirce. He has initiated what he considers a new approach which he calls 'code biology', that, he says, is more concentrated on the science, less on the philosophy (I think Apokrisis would probably disagree but I'll leave that to him). There's a useful intro to his approach here What is information? (different from your own use of the term). He also wrote a history of the subject that I found useful - like, who's who in the zoo. — Wayfarer
If minds are brains — RogueAI
Who said anything about minds being brains?
I was asked for "that aspect of [myself] which visually perceives imagined phenomena". I presented it. Those areas of my brain are the aspects of myself which perceive imagined phenomena. It's an fMRI of someone imagining a scene.
My hand is the aspect of myself which holds teacups. It's not a particularly complicated question. — Isaac
For instance, were philosophical zombies to be real — javra
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