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
indirect realism says those same brains and eyes are mere appearance. — plaque flag
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
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
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
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
'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
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?Suppose aliens come to us. Can we study them to a point that we decide that they are very likely conscious? — Jabberwock
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
I think all the evidence points to the fact that the only world we share is the publicly accessible empirical world. — Janus
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
But even in that context, our understanding is conditioned by cultural consensus. — Quixodian
I don't believe that story because even animals can see and respond to things they have never encountered — Janus
I was t saying that for rhetoric. You were pretty haughty sounding there. Information processing is not necessarily scientific, though it is technical. — schopenhauer1
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
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
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.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
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
https://iep.utm.edu/perc-obj/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.
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
I'm not saying that we just see appearances, but that we just see things as they appear, and can appear, to us. — Janus
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
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.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
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.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
:up:We all live with our own private mythologies, and I would not have it any other way. — Janus
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
This quote from Hume is what I have in mind: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
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
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