We see the things themselves, the world is what we see: formulae of this kind express a faith common to the natural man and the philosopher— the moment he opens his eyes; they refer to a deep-seated set of mute “opinions” implicated in our lives. But what is strange about this faith is that if we seek to articulate it into theses or statements, if we ask ourselves what is this we, what seeing is, and what thing or world is, we enter into a labyrinth of difficulties and contradictions.
What Saint Augustine said of time— that it is perfectly familiar to each, but that none of us can explain it to the others— must be said of the world. [Ceaselessly the philosopher finds himself] obliged to reinspect and redefine the most well-grounded notions, to create new ones, with new words to designate them, to undertake a true reform of the understanding— at whose term the evidence of the world, which seemed indeed to be the clearest of truths, is supported by the seemingly most sophisticated thoughts, before which the natural man now no longer recognizes where he stood. Whence the age-old ill-humor against philosophy is reanimated, the grievance always brought against it that it reverses the roles of the clear and the obscure. The fact that the philosopher claims to speak in the very name of the naïve evidence of the world, that he refrains from adding any thing to it, that he limits himself to drawing out all its consequences, does not excuse him; on the contrary he dispossesses [humanity] only the more completely, inviting it to think of itself as an enigma.
This is the way things are and nobody can do anything about it. It is at the same time true that the world is what we see and that, nonetheless, we must learn to see it— first in the sense that we must match this vision with knowledge, take possession of it, say what we and what seeing are, act therefore as if we knew nothing about it, as if here we still had everything to learn. But philosophy is not a lexicon, it is not concerned with “word-meanings,” it does not seek a verbal substitute for the world we see, it does not transform it into something said, it does not install itself in the order of the said or of the written as does the logician in the proposition, the poet in the word, or the musician in the
music. It is the things themselves, from the depths of their silence, that it wishes to bring to expression.
But we have made machines with visual sensors that take different actions when presented with different colors. If they don't see blue, then something extra is going on with us. If we give them sensors that detect physical damage, and program them to move the part that is being damaged, but they don't feel pain, then something extra is going on with us.Blueness and pain are qualia. They are unnecessary subjective experience. and unexplained.
— Patterner
In my view, blueness and pain are actually just as caught up in the causal nexus as everything else. Pain is used to explain behavior. Aspirin is used to explain the cessations of pain. As I see it, there's only one network of concepts whose meanings are radically interdependent. — plaque flag
You do not experience blueness or pain?I don't really understand how this is an answer. Why do you believe in "conscious experience", blueness, pain etc.? — goremand
Because things work just fine without our subjective experience of them, and because the mechanisms that explain perception, memory, behavior, etc., don’t also explain our subjective experience of those things. if any physical process, or group of physical processes, suddenly demonstrated signs of consciousness, we would be fairly shocked. Balls on the pool table, bouncing around in the only way they can due to the initial conditions and the laws of physics. The grand gigantic number of things going on inside of a hurricane. The earth itself is a system made up of an incalculably high number of smaller systems. Every kind of energy is bouncing around, parts of more feedback loops than we can imagine. But we don’t suspect the earth is conscious. If we did, we would wonder how on earth it is happening. How do physical processes bring that about?Why believe there is anything "unneccessary" to explain in the first place? — goremand
There is a way in which there is something it is like to be me that does not apply to our machine that distinguishes colors and reacts to them in different ways — Patterner
You do not experience blueness or pain? — Patterner
You do not experience blueness or pain?
— Patterner
No, not as defined by you.
This what I meant by "laying claim to words" earlier, you have claimed the word "blueness" and "pain", and now I look stupid by having to deny that I experience color or pain. It is very important that you answer my question directly, no matter how stupid it sounds: why do you believe that you feel pain or that you experience blueness? — goremand
I can’t say I understand, everything you’ve written. But I agree with everything I understand.Yes, I believe in consciousness or subjectivity, but I'm a direct realist (which is maybe the source of the misunderstanding?) I think of consciousness as being, as awareness of the world. The world exists for me. If I daydream, then even that is part of the world with the firetruck and the cloud. It just exists differently--but still in the same and only causal-semantic nexus of interdependent entities. — plaque flag
:up:I can’t say I understand, everything you’ve written. But I agree with everything I understand. — Patterner
This what I meant by "laying claim to words" earlier, you have claimed the word "blueness" and "pain", and now I look stupid by having to deny that I experience color or pain. It is very important that you answer my question directly, no matter how stupid it sounds: why do you believe that you feel pain or that you experience blueness? — goremand
I don’t think I feel pain. I feel pain. — Patterner
If you think I don’t, I would like to hear your argument. — Patterner
If you think I am laying claim to the words, I would like to hear what you think a more accurate claim for them is. — Patterner
I think Husserl is correct in that we have a sort of categorial intuition. As humans, we live among concepts as much as colors. — plaque flag
Yes, that’s what I meant. And I know because I feel it. How doI know I have five fingers on both hands? Because I see them. How do I know the toast is burning? Because I smell it.Perhaps you meant "I don't just think, I know I feel pain"? But I'm not interested in how confident you are, I want to know how you know. — goremand
It doesn’t matter what the origin of thunder is. You can claim it’s an act of god. That doesn’t stop an atheist from hearing thunder.To illustrate with a different example, let us say that I defined "thunder" as an act of god. That would mean all the atheists of the world would have to say "I don't believe in thunder", which would make them look pretty foolish. — goremand
Ok but well, that intuition is bound to vary from one person to another. If we want meaningful discussion and not just sit around in a room and think (though I guess Husserl loved that) we can't insist only on our preferred way of conceptualizing. I someone has a problem with how you conceptualize experience you can't get around this by saying "it's irreducible". — goremand
In the past, I've argued pretty reductively against a focus on subjectivity, and it's true that rational norms and concepts are primarily public and ego-transcending, or philosophy would be impossible.In essence, basic statements are for Popper logical constructs which embrace and include ‘observation statements’, but for methodological reasons he seeks to avoid that terminology, as it suggests that they are derived directly from, and known by, experience (2002: 12, footnote 2), which would conflate them with the “protocol” statements of logical positivism and reintroduce the empiricist idea that certain kinds of experiential reports are incorrigible. The “objectivity” requirement in Popper’s account of basic statements, by contrast, amounts to a rejection of the view that the truth of scientific statements can ever be reduced to individual or collective human experience. (2002: 25).
Popper therefore argues that there are no statements in science which cannot be interrogated: basic statements, which are used to test the universal theories of science, must themselves be inter-subjectively testable and are therefore open to the possibility of refutation. He acknowledges that this seems to present a practical difficulty, in that it appears to suggest that testability must occur ad infinitum, which he acknowledges is an operational absurdity: sooner or later all testing must come to an end. Where testing ends, he argues, is in a convention-based decision to accept a basic statement or statements; it is at that point that convention and intersubjective human agreement play an indispensable role in science:
Every test of a theory, whether resulting in its corroboration or falsification, must stop at some basic statement or other which we decide to accept. If we do not come to any decision, and do not accept some basic statement or other, then the test will have led nowhere. (2002: 86)
It doesn’t matter what the origin of thunder is. You can claim it’s an act of god. That doesn’t stop an atheist from hearing thunder. — Patterner
Have you looked into Popper's idea of basic statements ? — plaque flag
Yes! Exactly right. Describing it and defining it are very different things. We couldn’t guess all the different definitions/explanations/theorized causes for pain that are believed throughout the world. But we felt pain when we were babies, not knowing anyone believed any explanation at all. And we still feel pain when someone sneaks up on us and jabs us with a needle.It doesn’t matter what the origin of thunder is. You can claim it’s an act of god. That doesn’t stop an atheist from hearing thunder.
— Patterner
Yes it does, technically. If thunder is an act of god, by definition, then if god does not exist then no one can hear thunder. The "thunder" we would hear would not be thunder, as it did not come from god, but something else.
I think you need to consider the difference between defining something and describing it, the two are very different. — goremand
Contentious claim indeed, sir ! Could you justify it carefully with one hand in an open flame ? — plaque flag
Sure, and then I'd probably pull the hand back and start screaming, as that is the usual functional response. The functionalist account is in no way lacking in terms of explaining human behavior. — goremand
I don't resent functionalism as a mapping strategy, but on a more serious ontological level it looks absurd to me. — plaque flag
You seem to imply that your words are as empty of meaning as those of a stochastic parrot. — plaque flag
Do you not see that you are making the bold controversial claim here ? — plaque flag
You seem to miss that science and philosophy exist within a 'field' of normatively. Speaking of human speech acts as merely causal is a self-subverting psychologism. — plaque flag
Really? That's not obvious to me, you'll have to elaborate. — goremand
Kant’s most basic idea, the axis around which all his thought turns, is that what distinguishes exercises of judgment and intentional agency from the performances of merely natural creatures is that judgments and actions are subject to distinctive kinds of normative assessment. Judgments and actions are things we are in a distinctive sense responsible for. They are a kind of commitment we undertake. Kant understands judging and acting as applying rules, concepts, that determine what the subject becomes committed to and responsible for by applying them. Applying concepts theoretically in judgment and practically in action binds the concept user, commits her, makes her responsible, by opening her up to normative assessment according to the rules she has made herself subject to.
The responsibility one undertakes by applying a concept is a task responsibility: a commitment to do something. On the theoretical side, what one is committed to doing, what one becomes liable to assessment as to one’s success at doing, is integrating one’s judgments into a whole that exhibits a distinctive kind of unity: the synthetic unity of apperception. It is a systematic, rational unity, dynamically created and sustained by drawing inferential consequences from and finding reasons for one’s judgments, and rejecting commitments incompatible with those one has undertaken.
The essential point is that in characterizing an episode or a state as that of knowing, we are not giving an empirical description of that episode or state; we are placing it in the logical space of reasons, of justifying and being able to justify what one says. — Sellars
Your belief that an atheist cannot hear thunder if someone says it is god's will is probably an important topic. But, yes, a different topic.Well it's really just a tangential point, I will rephrase the question so we get back on track: why do you believe that pain has a qualitative component? As you know I view pain only as functional, what is the problem with this? — goremand
Well it's really just a tangential point, I will rephrase the question so we get back on track: why do you believe that pain has a qualitative component? As you know I view pain only as functional, what is the problem with this? — goremand
But the thing is the image does not "contradict what we know". To those who understand how light travels through water, the image is a straightforward representation of reality, no-one is getting fooled. — goremand
The problem I see with viewing pain as only functional is that it is not functional. — Patterner
Yes, I agree. I was speaking for those who say consciousness is only our observation/recognition of what is happening. A byproduct. (I'm not wording that well...) It does not have any causal power. It merely observes that nerves are sending a signal that damage is being done to some part of the body. But the physical chain reaction that is set in motion would move the body so that it is no longer in contact with whatever is causing the damage. In that scenario, pain is not functional.The problem I see with viewing pain as only functional is that it is not functional.
— Patterner
It is functional, evidence shows that organisms without a pain response don't live long (as do people who have a condition that prevents them from feeling it). But it can be both functional and not functional, though mostly it is functional. — Darkneos
The notion of being 'rational' is essentially normative (ethical). One prides oneself on not being credulous, on [autonomously] thinking for one's self. One is ashamed to contradict oneself, embarrassed to find oneself caught in a performative contradiction. One resents being described as a kind of 'machine' that did not reasonably (autonomously) decide but was rather 'programmed' by its environment. 'You are just saying that because you are white/black, male/female, rich/poor, straight/gay.' — plaque flag
Rationality is universal. It applies to all of us in the rational community. You don't get your own logic. Neither do I. It's an aspect of a humanism which has liberated itself from scripture. Both the species and its individuals are grasped as autonomous beings, ideally subject only to the laws they themselves recognize as legitimate. Basically, rational people all agree that they have a sort of better self in common, namely a rationality that binds them all. 'May the best human win [ may we fallibly defer for now to whoever makes the best case.]' — plaque flag
If the same events would take place due to the laws of physics if I did not have the false belief that what I think is at all relevant, then why have the false belief that what I think is at all relevant? It is difficult to understand why evolution would select for this. — Patterner
Phantom pains exist. Those aren't functional. — Marchesk
It actually does contradict what we know, you know need to know how light works to know that's an illusion. This is just wrong and we know the water is fooling us by "bending" the stick. — Darkneos
I would not have thought that I have been giving the impression that that’s what I believe. I was stating a position that some people believe that makes no sense to me.If the same events would take place due to the laws of physics if I did not have the false belief that what I think is at all relevant, then why have the false belief that what I think is at all relevant? It is difficult to understand why evolution would select for this.
— Patterner
Personally I don't believe evolution is to blame, I think the concept of qualitative properties is the product of culture. But I also don't believe that qualia is the result of some vestigial or useless "ability" as you seem to do, I think it is simply a mistaken idea that can be gotten rid of just by changing your mind. — goremand
It actually does contradict what we know, you know need to know how light works to know that's an illusion. This is just wrong and we know the water is fooling us by "bending" the stick. — Darkneos
To be rational is just to act in accordance with the norms of reason, which have nothing to do with being "autonomous" or any other strange fantasy. — goremand
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