But, while everything about the brain and body are physical, consciousness does not seem to be. What properties of particles, or bio-chemical energy running along neurons, or brain structures, suggest that the system can be aware of itself? Or have subjective experience, even without awareness? If beings from elsewhere studied our brains in all possible detail, what would they point to and day, "Ah! They are conscious! You can tell, because of X, Y, and Z." — Patterner

Suppose aliens come to us. Can we study them to a point that we decide that they are very likely conscious?

Just offering a hidden dualism. No big deal. All the other ones been beat to death, so,…..

indirect realism says those same brains and eyes are mere appearance. — plaque flag

Only when considered as objects - when you look at the brain as a neuroscientist or eyes as an ophthalmologist, then you’re viewing them as objects. But in the act of seeing, the eyes and the central nervous system are not objects but integral constituents.

FWIW, I think Husserl makes a good case that even familiar objects have a kind of transcendent infinity. I can't see this lamp on my desk from every possible angle in every possible lighting and so on. — plaque flag

True, you could not see the lamp from every possible angle and lighting, but you could in principle see it from any possible angle or lighting.

I am familiar with the idea of the phenomenon as appearance or representation (indirect realism) which is given completely and certainly. This is the idea that I can't be wrong about how things seem to me. It's a classic and respectable thesis, though I've pointed out my objections. — plaque flag

Right, but that's not really what I'm saying. I'm not saying that we just see appearances, but that we just see things as they appear, and can appear, to us. I'm not really concerned about whether we can be wrong about how things appear to us, that seems to be a separate, and unrelated, question, but there might be a connection I'm not aware of.

More positively, I think we can put seemings and toothaches with doves and quasars on the same plane of rational discourse. Instead of dualism, we have a radical pluralism, you might say. — plaque flag

This reminds me of Justus Buchler's radically pluralist ontology, although I'm not saying that he would necessarily agree; it's too long since I read him and then only cursorily. I think there are things which are publicly available and things which are not, but I don't think of any of them as unreal or non-existent on account of that difference. For me the difference just consists in the degree of determinability with which we can talk about different things.

For me the point in this context is semantic. I suspect that experience informs what we can mean by words. So I, anyway, don't know what I'm saying if I talk beyond my experience. — plaque flag

I allow for the possibility of intellectual intuition, but I do not hold that anything purportedly issuing from that constitutes any inter-subjectively corroborable evidence for anything. So, as an example the idea of an infinite being could just be the dialectical counterpart of our experience of finite beings, or it could be an intellectual intuition of something transcendent: the problem being that there is no way to tell which is the case.

So, people can be convinced of transcendent things by experiences and intuitions they have had, and we can dismiss those as mere interpretations, or wishful thinking or whatever, but since we have no way of knowing what such people have experienced, we are not really in a position to judge as to the validity of the faith that they might have on account of such experiences.

On the other hand, they have no justification for considering their experiences to be valid evidence of anything for anyone else. We all live with our own private mythologies, and I would not have it any other way.

'The Many live each in their own private world, whilst those who are awake have but one world in common' ~ Heraclitus (quoted in John Fowles, The Aristos)

'The Many live each in their own private world, whilst those who are awake have but one world in common' ~ Heraclitus (quoted in John Fowles, The Aristos) — Quixodian

Yeah, I don't agree with that at all; I think all the evidence points to the fact that the only world we share is the publicly accessible empirical world.

Those who have faith in transcendence may have that much in common but comparative religion shows the tremendous differences in interpretation, so it can hardly be called "a world in common".

So, I think that quote is just a nice little bit of fluff that has nothing to do with any justifiable argument for anything.

Suppose aliens come to us. Can we study them to a point that we decide that they are very likely conscious? — Jabberwock

We might believe they are as conscious as we are, depending on the things they say and do. I think it would be a point in favor of consciousness that they built spaceships and flew here. But if we just had their physical bodies to study? What would we look for that would be be the proof that they were? What physical characteristic is proof of consciousness?

Since we have already discussed this, I will be brief here: I disagree that we cannot come to know things at all in-themselves. — Bob Ross

Since the very idea of "in itself" denotes that which cannot be known by us, I think what you are saying cannot be substantiated. Intellectual intuition may give us insight into the ultimate nature of things, but we have no way of knowing whether it does or doesn't, so it remains a question of faith. And faith-based beleifs cannot be argued for, because there is no publicly available evidence for them.

I think all the evidence points to the fact that the only world we share is the publicly accessible empirical world. — Janus

There's an anecdote I often share, re-told in Frank Moorehouse's account of Cook's discovery of Australia. According to Joseph Bank's scientific logs of the first encounter, the Endeavour sailed in to Botany Bay and dropped anchor about a league (little more than a mile) from an indigenous group mending nets and fishing on a sandbank. They were in clear sight and the crew could make out individual details through telescopes. But the indigenes showed no response whatever to the appearance of the ship. It wasn't until a small boat was lowered and rowed towards the shore, some hours later, and began to pull away from the Endeavour, that they started to show any signs of recognising the newcomers, gesticulating with spears and running back and forth on the shore. My hunch is that they didn't ignore the Endeavour, but that they didn't actually see it. It was too remote an object from their life experience for them to actually recognise it.

A second anecdote I learned in cog sci was that of a Pygmy chieftan who was taken by car to a mountain lookout with sweeping views over an African plain. The anthropologists were puzzled by his behaviour, as he began to stoop down and make clutching motions in front of him. After much back-and-forth with an interpreter, it turned out that he was trying to pick up the distant animals on the plains below. He had spent his entire life in dense forest where he only ever saw things at a range of a few meters, so he thought the animals below were small insects at his feet.

The moral is, we see what we're culturally conditoned to see. We all have a consensus worldview, nowadays highly diverse and fractured, of course, due to the enormous variety of information and imagery we're now presented with. But even in that context, our understanding is conditioned by cultural consensus.

They were in clear sight and the crew could make out individual details through telescopes. But the indigenes showed no response whatever to the appearance of the ship. — Quixodian

I don't believe that story because even animals can see and respond to things they have never encountered,

The pygmy story is more plausible, but I think that is probably apocryphal too.

But even in that context, our understanding is conditioned by cultural consensus. — Quixodian

Our understanding may be somewhat conditioned by a degree of cultural consensus, but there is much we disagree about, so I doubt there is any overarching cultural consensus about anything.

I think your commitment to science as an arbiter of truth reflects your cultural conditioning, and it has many philosophical implications.

I don't believe that story because even animals can see and respond to things they have never encountered — Janus

Another story in the same class was about kittens raised in an environment with only vertical barriers. When after some weeks they were introduced to horizontal barriers, they walked into them, at least until they acquired the new behaviour necessary.

I was t saying that for rhetoric. You were pretty haughty sounding there. Information processing is not necessarily scientific, though it is technical. — schopenhauer1

An important aspect of neuroscience is developing scientific understanding of the information processing that occurs in brains. Neuroscience involves knowledge of other relevant sciences such as physics, chemistry, biology, and psychology. Yes, technology plays a huge role in humanity's ability to make progress in understanding the information processing which occurs in brains, but that is fairly tangential to the question of what is being learned in neuroscience.

The brain-in-itself is represented as the brain-for-us. It is ‘mystical’ only insofar as we will never come to know it absolutely with our currently evolved minds (i.e., brains-in-themselves). — Bob Ross

In my estimation, it's much cleaner to say that we'll never run out of things to learn about the brain.

Given that we can't look around our own cognition, the brain-for-us just is the brain-in-itself. I think we have a nonobvious roundsquare situation here.

Perhaps it's because we can look around one another's cognition [ biases , limitations ] that we try to radicalize this and look around all human cognition.

What experience have or could we have apart from the [ life-world-entangled ] human nervous system ? Yet philosophers talk of a radically and explicitly anti-empirical concept as the truly real instead of as a sort of liar's paradox or outright mysticism.

I don't believe science show us the truth about anything beyond how things appear to us, and even then, I am only speaking about the basic observational phase of science, which is just an extension and/ or augmentation of ordinary observation, so I think you continue to misunderstand where I am coming from.

We might believe they are as conscious as we are, depending on the things they say and do. I think it would be a point in favor of consciousness that they built spaceships and flew here. But if we just had their physical bodies to study? What would we look for that would be be the proof that they were? What physical characteristic is proof of consciousness? — Patterner

But how can we know what they say and do? Only by perceiving them physically with our senses. We have no way to get into immaterial mental communion with them. Any evidence that they are conscious would be physical. If we are studying their behaviors, we are studying their physical bodies. We conclude that the body is mental by what the body does. Otherwise we would have to assume they are just self-propelled Chinese rooms.

I think you continue to misunderstand where I am coming from. — Janus

I think you make your position abundantly clear.

I do try to, and yet you continue to misunderstand which is puzzling.

cuts both ways, you know ;-)

I don't pretend to understand your position.

But how can we know what they say and do? Only by perceiving them physically with our senses. We have no way to get into immaterial mental communion with them. Any evidence that they are conscious would be physical. If we are studying their behaviors, we are studying their physical bodies. We conclude that the body is mental by what the body does. Otherwise we would have to assume they are just self-propelled Chinese rooms. — Jabberwock

It is a pickle. They could be p-zombies. My wife could be a p-zombie. Of course, I don't have reason to believe you are even that, since I only see words on my cell screen.

And some chat program might be conscious.

Another story in the same class was about kittens raised in an environment with only vertical barriers. When after some weeks they were introduced to horizontal barriers, they walked into them, at least until they acquired the new behaviour necessary. — Quixodian

Do you have a reference for that?

First let me support me claim about indirect realism, because I think you raise a good but different issue.

The indirect realist agrees that the coffee cup exists independently of me. However, through perception I do not directly engage with this cup; there is a perceptual intermediary that comes between it and me. Ordinarily I see myself via an image in a mirror, or a football match via an image on the TV screen. The indirect realist claim is that all perception is mediated in something like this way.

https://iep.utm.edu/perc-obj/

Just to clarify, I'm saying that the indirect realist uses an 'image' of the brain and its (imaginary?) causal relationship with images of coffee cups to argue that all we get directly are images.

This is like a lawyer using documents as evidence to argue that the documents are forgeries. It's some perverse twist on people quoting the bible to prove the bible is the word of God.

Only when considered as objects - when you look at the brain as a neuroscientist or eyes as an ophthalmologist, then you’re viewing them as objects. But in the act of seeing, the eyes and the central nervous system are not objects but integral constituents. — Quixodian

We agree that the human nervous system is special. The question here might be where or what is the self ? In this context it's the being of the world in its fused sensual and conceptual fullness from a certain 'perspective' [literally in the visual sense, metaphorically in many others.]

But the free/responsible discursive subject is radically temporal --- fundamentally dragging a past behind and on the way to an ideal future, keeping and making promises. To say discursive is to say conceptual. This is where timebinding is crucial and all the beautiful Hegelian stuff about the cloud self comes in : Zeitgeist, delocalized spirt, the immortal graveleaping self-explicating Conversation, dependent on human nervous systems in general but on no particular nervous system.

I'm not saying that we just see appearances, but that we just see things as they appear, and can appear, to us. — Janus

:up:

To me that sounds like direct realism. Respectfully, what work is being done by 'as they appear' ? Are you thinking in Flatland terms (a great little book) ? Perhaps in Reality there's a sphere, but we flatlander humans see only a circle, a projection of the sphere into our smaller world ? If so, it's a beautiful idea. But I still find it a bit paradoxical, as if a beautiful analogy is leading us astray.

It is a pickle. They could be p-zombies. My wife could be a p-zombie. Of course, I don't have reason to believe you are even that, since I only see words on my cell screen.

And some chat program might be conscious. — Patterner

Sure, it all might be possible, but we do not believe that, we conclude that it is likely other people are conscious and that aliens would be conscious, based on physical evidence alone.

Do you have a reference for that? — Janus

It was a long time ago. I checked with ChatGPT and it returned this.

I think there are things which are publicly available and things which are not, but I don't think of any of them as unreal or non-existent on account of that difference. For me the difference just consists in the degree of determinability with which we can talk about different things. — Janus

That sounds good to me. And there are real things that no everyone can see. A biologist or a mathematician has seen patterns that others haven't. Those patterns are part of potential human experience, connected causally and semantically to more familiar and publicly accessible entities.

So, as an example the idea of an infinite being could just be the dialectical counterpart of our experience of finite beings, or it could be an intellectual intuition of something transcendent: the problem being that there is no way to tell which is the case. — Janus

I agree. This goes along with my self-conscious embrace of an 'empirical' [skeptical, critical, rational] ontology as merely one path among others -- which doesn't mean that I wouldn't fight against those who tried to censor forcefully convert me, but it does mean I won't try to censor or forcefully convert others.

We all live with our own private mythologies, and I would not have it any other way. — Janus

:up:

Feuerbach is great on the beauty of this plurality, writing of

a belief in the infinity of Spirit and in the everlasting youth of humanity, in the inexhaustible love and creative power of Spirit, in its eternally unfolding itself into new individuals out of the womb of its plenitude and granting new beings for the glorification, enjoyment, and contemplation of itself
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ludwig-feuerbach/

,

Yeah, I don't agree with that at all; I think all the evidence points to the fact that the only world we share is the publicly accessible empirical world. — Janus

We might reflect too that evidence can only make sense as belonging within such a public world. Rational inquiry presupposes the world.

What do you mean by methodological solipsism? And how does that lead to direct realism? By my lights, direct realism is only possible if we were not representing the world—and we clearly are (by my lights). — Bob Ross

This quote from Hume is what I have in mind:

We may observe, that 'tis universally allow'd by philosophers, and is besides pretty obvious of itself, that nothing is ever really present with the mind but its perceptions or impressions and ideas, and that external objects become known to us only by those perceptions they occasion.

With Kant, even time and space are placed 'in' the mind. So the brain-in-itself may not even be 3-dimensional. There may be no such brain. One can try to imagine (perhaps 'illegally') a radically different reality without brains that we experience as (represent as ) including brains.

But we only embraced this representational approach in the first place because of familiar causal relationships between brains and eyes and roses that we took for real.

The moral is, we see what we're culturally conditoned to see. We all have a consensus worldview, nowadays highly diverse and fractured, of course, due to the enormous variety of information and imagery we're now presented with. But even in that context, our understanding is conditioned by cultural consensus. — Quixodian

:up:

An important insight. Taken too far, one has a self-subverting relativism, yet culture clearly plays a role in perception. We might say that a community lives in its own lifeworld, just as thinkers have talk about the human Unwelt.

Some weird stuff happens here though. Because that means that we can't see around our community anymore than we can see around our species. But we keep pretending we can --presumably because philosophers (for instance) get more distance on their culture than some its other members.