Do you get what I am trying to say with these three inter-related arguments, @plaque flag?

I'm sympathetic in general but I think mental and physical events are palpably in the same inferential nexus. [ See my latest OP for more on that. ] Is explanation the right word ? Is conscious stuff or merely being from a perspective --- with being ONLY so far as we know given perspectively ? I reject scientific realism (the independent object) on semantic and empirical grounds. I don't know anything about anything apart from this living brain...it's a lamp I've never dared to unplug. No one who ever told stuff about the world did either, not before they were done talking. I think trying to put the scientific image 'behind' appearance is wacky. My frustration is all the to-me-credulous semantic atomism --- as if stuff just keeps on making sense completely out of context.

Well specifically, what do you think of this?

I am not sure your way of seeing about this, but what I am saying is that it may be the case that "emergence" needs "something" for which to "emerge within" (i.e. a point of view). That is to say, assuming there are these "jumps" (which we call "emergent properties"), whence are these properties taking place? We, as the already-observing observer, have the vantage point of "seeing the emergence" but "where" do these "jumps" take place without a point of view? I guess, as another poster used to say, Where is the epistemic cut?. And also, how would that cut take place without an already-existing observer? What does that new enclosure (of the new emergent property) even look like without a vantage point, or point of view already in the equation?. — schopenhauer1

I guess the tricky part is already lower in the animal kingdom. Are ants a point of view on the world ?Are bacteria ? I feel strongly that cats and dogs are (and so on), but they don't know they are. They recognize entities but not being itself.

One of the problems of correlationism is making sense of the ancestral world. Emergence looks tempting, despite its problems and complexities. But I really don't know.

"To return to the physiologist observing another man’s brain: what the physiologist sees is by no means identical with what happens in the brain he is observing, but is a somewhat remote effect. From what he sees, therefore, he cannot judge whether what is happening in the brain he is observing is, or is not, the sort of event that he would call "mental". When he says that certain physical events in the brain are accompanied by mental events, he is thinking of physical events as if they were what he sees. He does not see a mental event in the brain he is observing, and therefore supposes there is in that brain a physical process which he can observe and a mental process which he cannot.

This is a complete mistake. In the strict sense, he cannot observe anything in the other brain, but only the percepts which he himself has when he is suitably related to that brain (eye to microscope, etc.). We first identify physical processes with our percepts, and then, since our percepts are not other people’s thoughts, we argue that the physical processes in their brains are something quite different from their thoughts. In fact, everything that we can directly observe of the physical world happens inside our heads, and consists of "mental" events in at least one sense of the word "mental".

It also consists of events which form part of the physical world. The development of this point of view will lead us to the conclusion that the distinction between mind and matter is illusory. The study of the world may be called physical or mental or both or neither, as we please; in fact, the words serve no purpose. There is only one definition of the words that is unobjectionable: "physical" is what is dealt with by physics, and "mental" is what is dealt with by psychology. When, accordingly, I speak of "physical" space, I mean the space that occurs in physics."

- Bertrand Russell "An Outline of Philosophy" — Manuel

I forgot to answer here...

Yes Professor Russell had some good insight there. The physical is always our mental description of the physical and thus, we are using mentality to understand physical processes, that are about mentality. Of course, his intellectual partner in mathematics and logic, A.N. Whitehead, went on quite the speculative rampage to explicate how that might look in a sort of neutral monism of processes.

But it grew up from itself within the framework of laws.
— Patterner

Well, not really. It grew up from within itself in accordance with it's nature and then we called the pattern of that growth "laws." I don't think this is a trivial or nitpicky distinction. — T Clark

It's nature is consistent. Not random or chaotic. The strength of gravity and the strong nuclear force, the speed of light, etc., are what they are. They are aspects of its nature that we have noticed, and we call them laws.

Physics expresses itself as chemistry. But the new laws of chemistry are not unrelated to the laws of physics. If the laws of physics were not what they are, the laws of chemistry could not be what they are. The laws of chemistry emerged from, and are dependent upon, the laws of physics.

Same with chemistry expressing itself as biology.
— Patterner

You say "not unrelated to." That makes you seem like a spokesman for reductionism, which I know you're not. I say "not predictable from." To me, that is the essence of why reductionism doesn't work. — T Clark

It's true that we likely could not have predicted many of these things. There's way too much we don't know or haven't figured out. But us not being able to predict liquidity from three properties of H2O molecules doesn't mean those properties are not directly responsible for liquidity. The physical universe is in the form it is in because of extremely consistent characteristics.

I'm a reductionist regarding the physical. I don't believe consciousness is physical, not a thing nor a process. Consciousness is already responsible for amazing things that never would have come about with obituary the physical. So I'm ultimately not a reductionist.

Here's a snippet I will sometimes quote. It's from Ernst Mayr, who is a mainstream scientist, and it's about the fundamental difference between living organisms and inanimate matter. It has to do with the ability of DNA to store and transmit information for which there is not an analog in the mineral domain.

Ernst Mayr, one of the architects of the modern (neo-darwinian) synthesis, has been one of the most outspoken supporters of the view that life is fundamentally different from inanimate matter. In The growth of biological thought [15], p. 124, he made this point in no uncertain terms: ‘… The discovery of the genetic code was a breakthrough of the first order. It showed why organisms are fundamentally different from any kind of nonliving material. There is nothing in the inanimate world that has a genetic program which stores information with a history of three thousand million years!’
— What is Information?

On a more general level, it is an instance of the principle that information-based systems, which includes organisms, embody a level of organisation which defies reduction to physics and chemistry. There's an often-quoted meme by Norbert Weiner, founder of cybernetics, to wit, 'The mechanical brain does not secrete thought "as the liver does bile," as the earlier materialists claimed, nor does it put it out in the form of energy, as the muscle puts out its activity. Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day.' — Quixodian

Yes, I just read that a few weeks ago, as I was trying to learn about semiosis. It is a fascinating point!

One of the problems of correlationism is making sense of the ancestral world. Emergence looks tempting, despite its problems and complexities. But I really don't know. — plaque flag

Heh, well you went full-tilt into it. I am only speculating at the edges. That is to say, I am posing the question, but I am not going to say necessarily, "Thus we always need an observer", but it is simply to ask the fair question, "How is there emergence without an observer in the equation?".

Another little thing to consider is Popper's idea of basic statements --where the rubber meets the road. He skipped over the metaphysical strangeness of the witnessing of a measurement and went right to the 'politics' of what a community will fallibly accept as a report. Seems like a good vector of attack or illumination.

First what? — Bob Ross

I was asking whether you were the real Bob Ross himself or just Bob Ross for Bob Ross.

Prima facie, it doesn’t. However, upon investigation, there are strong inductive arguments for our (1) at least our representative faculties using logic and (2) I would go so far as to say that reality has logic, as a Platonic form, which conditions the universal mind. The ‘realm of appearance’ is informationally-accurate (enough for survival purposes) and, consequently, is an indirect window into the world-in-itself. — Bob Ross

I feel like you are using logic to prove that you should be allowed to use logic ?

How do you know that it is good enough for survival purposes ? If the real you and real everything is hidden, you may be doing very badly down there. What's going on 'up here' in representation might be a escapist daydream from starvation down there. Or maybe down there everything is immortal.

As far as I can tell, there's no possible evidence for any kind of relationship --and so no material with which to make progress one step at a time. It seems to me that indirect realism puts all evidence out of reach.

It seems to me that despite the novelty of biological systems, that they are not different in kind, then their chemical substrates. That is to say, they are still not anything like the loose definition I gave of mental events. They are still physical events, — schopenhauer1

Except I do think biological processes are different in kind from physical or chemical processes in the same sense that mental processes are different from biological/neurological processes.

it may be the case that "emergence" needs "something" for which to "emerge within" (i.e. a point of view). That is to say, assuming there are these "jumps" (which we call "emergent properties"), whence are these properties taking place? We, as the already-observing observer, have the vantage point of "seeing the emergence" but "where" do these "jumps" take place without a point of view? I guess, as another poster used to say, Where is the epistemic cut?. And also, how would that cut take place without an already-existing observer? What does that new enclosure (of the new emergent property) even look like without a vantage point, or point of view already in the equation?. — schopenhauer1

I've never understood the concept of epistemic cut. Does it mean, e.g., the break between chemistry and biology we're talking about? If so, we need to recognize this is an artificial break. It doesn't really represent some deeper sense of reality. I've been trying to fit it into a category and I'm not satisfied I've done it effectively. Is it metaphysics? Whatever it is, the universe without us in it is not aware of it. Is that the point you're trying to make? For me, that just means that the distinction between physical and chemical and biological and mental processes is also artificial. There's just the world wiggling around, doing it's thing.

Basically I am saying, we must keep in mind the incredible difference and distinction between mental and physical versus physical and other physical events. — schopenhauer1

Again, I don't get it.

It's nature is consistent. Not random or chaotic. The strength of gravity and the strong nuclear force, the speed of light, etc., are what they are. They are aspects of its nature that we have noticed, and we call them laws. — Patterner

Those are all just conceptual overlays humans have placed over the world. At bottom, there is only the world doing it's thing. The rest is just our trying to jam it into categories. See my previous post to @schopenhauer1.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/828994

It's true that we likely could not have predicted many of these things. There's way too much we don't know or haven't figured out. — Patterner

The claim is they are not predictable even in principle.

But us not being able to predict liquidity from three properties of H2O molecules doesn't mean those properties are not directly responsible for liquidity. — Patterner

I've already agreed that all biological processes are completely consistent with the laws of chemistry and ditto for all the rest of the hierarchy of scale. I think that's the strongest statement that can correctly be made. If you are saying more than that, and I think you are, I think you're wrong.

It's true that we likely could not have predicted many of these things. There's way too much we don't know or haven't figured out.
— Patterner

The claim is they are not predictable even in principle. — T Clark

Why is that? The world does its thing, one level emerging from the previous, in consistent ways. The more we learn about those ways, the more predictions we are able to make. Things have been a total surprise to us in the past. no one knew enough about anything to have predicted the aurora borealis before people first witnessed it. But people have come to understand things, and we have been able to predict where such things might lead. Einstein figured out a lot of things, which then led to our predictions of the background microwave radiation and gravity waves, which were later confirmed. predicting ways we could use what Einstein figured out, people invented the laser, GPS, and the atomic bomb. I suspect we will predict and invent many other things because of our understanding of the basic principles. So why would we not think what is already known to us, all of which is based on consistent characteristics, could’ve been predicted in principle?

Except I do think biological processes are different in kind from physical or chemical processes in the same sense that mental processes are different from biological/neurological processes. — T Clark

You misinterpret how “physical” is being used in its juxtaposition to mental. It doesn’t mean “physics” as you seem to be using it. There is a way in which atomic, chemical, biological are physical events that are different in kind than qualia, ideas, what-it’s-likeness and so on. This is what I mean by taking this distinction seriously.

Perhaps you have a theory on how they are the same, but that is the distinction. By pointing to differences in physical events to other physical events you are pointing out distinctions within the same kind of events and again, why I’m saying that it’s not taking seriously the difference in kind of mental events from physical events. An atom is not a tree but they are both physical which is different in kind than the sensation of something or a thought or a concept etc.

Hello Plaque Flag,

I was asking whether you were the real Bob Ross himself or just Bob Ross for Bob Ross.

I don’t follow what you mean. If you are talking about my body, then I would say that my body within my conscious experience is a representation of my body-in-itself: thusly, the my-body-for-me is the former, and my-body-in-itself is the latter. Is that what you are asking?

I feel like you are using logic to prove that you should be allowed to use logic ?

See:

Just like reason, senses are impossible to completely untrust or doubt. I don’t see how the use of comparison representations is any form of circular logic, and it seems to be how we penetrate into the world-in-itself indirectly. — Bob Ross

There is nothing higher than reason (epistemically). You cannot dethrone her without thereby trusting her to be able to dethrone herself, and, thusly, the position of a hard skeptic pertaining to logic is self-refuting.

How do you know that it is good enough for survival purposes ? If the real you and real everything is hidden, you may be doing very badly down there. What's going on 'up here' in representation might be a escapist daydream from starvation down there.

I know this because it is much more parsimonious to explain the data of experience by believing that one’s conscious experience is an indirect window into the world-in-itself. Contrariwise, one has to makeup crazy alterative stories to suffice the point you are trying to make; for example, to account for the fact if your representations are completely inaccurate, then it seems that you have being able to live a persistent life in an observably regular world without dying or seeing other people randomly drop dead (since their representations are just a hallucinated-like la-la-land) would be to posit an absurdly epistemically costly explanation of something like “well, it’s because we are in a matrix and stored safely in a encapsulated container in the real world” or “the simulation is fabricating the existence of the people died in the real world, which appear random in the dream world” or, worse yet, “there are no other people”.

Moreover, you didn’t answer my question:

How can you be a direct realist if everything you come to know is filtered through your representative faculties?

As far as I can tell, there's no possible evidence for any kind of relationship

The evidence is that you are experiencing a regular, persistent world and only when your faculties are damaged do you appear to lose one’s ability to accurately-enough represent the world to themselves; and, not to mention, that we have loads of evidence of evolution, which entails that your brain evolved to represent the world for survival purposes: otherwise, you would have been dead by now.

Hello Janus,

I have never claimed that our understanding that every change has a cause is universally applicable, or that it tells us anything beyond how things seem.

You said:

”It is just as much of a 'faith-based' reasoning as PSR or that there laws (as opposed to mere observed regularities): do you reject those as "unprovable" as well?” – Bob Ross

What is observable can be confirmed by observation: no faith required

Either you (1) believe there are laws (which are inductively affirmed by science) and philosophical principles (which are presupposed in science) or (2) you don’t. Laws are not observed regularities: the latter is evidence of the former. If #1, then you are admitting that a significant portion of science is (1) based off of faith and (2) unprovable because it is not observed (as it is an intellectual inference we make inductively). If #2, then you have to reject science, as it cannot function if you reject PSR (at least of becoming: that every change does have a cause); but if you accept it then, according to you, it is based off of faith (because you never observe that every change has a cause). Janus, although you may not explicitly subscribe to it, scientism doesn’t work, which is what you seem to be expounding here.

To me, ‘beliefs’ can be justified and proven with reason, and observations supplement those arguments. I can know things beyond mere observation (e.g., 1 = 1, a = a, p → q, laws of nature, laws of logic, PSR [of becoming], etc.). According to your view, as I understand, we are forced to claim that anything not directly observed is epistemically unjustified (as so-called ‘non-public’ evidence).

What logically follows is what logically follows, no faith required unless we want to claim that what logically follows tells us something more than the premises, and their entailments, from which it logically follows.

This is incoherent with your belief that anything which is not directly observed (and thusly so-called ‘non-public evidence’) is not epistemically justified: laws of logic is not something you directly observe and would consequently be a ‘faith-based’ absurdity under your view.

There is nothing higher than reason (epistemically). You cannot dethrone her without thereby trusting her to be able to dethrone herself, and, thusly, the position of a hard skeptic pertaining to logic is self-refuting. — Bob Ross

:up:

Now that is where we agree.

I know this because it is much more parsimonious to explain the data of experience by believing that one’s conscious experience is an indirect window into the world-in-itself. — Bob Ross

A sophisticated direct realism is more parsimonious still. This is exactly because nothing is higher than reason (for philosophers) AND because the rational discussion is primarily concerned with worldly public objects (the stuff in our world). As discursive subjects establishing truth together rationally, we must already be in the same world. What the indirect realist is trying to account for is bias and error and hallucination. But there are other ways to do this without dualism. One can even accept hallucinations in one's ontology without putting the subject in a bubble.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14575/rationalisms-flat-ontology

Why is that?... So why would we not think what is already known to us, all of which is based on consistent characteristics, could’ve been predicted in principle? — Patterner

Perhaps it's a metaphysical position. I'm not positive it's true or that, if it is, it's truth can be demonstrated. It certainly is true for the foreseeable future.

Now, to contradict that, I'll make an argument that it is true. As Stephen J. Gould used to say, the world is massively contingent. If we reran the history of the world, things would turn out differently. [Vague arm waving about chaos theory and quantum mechanics here] Assuming life on Earth would get started at all, I've heard arguments that it would still have to be based on water and carbon for chemistry reasons. But would it still have to be based on DNA? After single cell life first developed, it just sat around twiddling it's thumbs for a couple of billion years before multi-cell life and sexual reproduction popped up. On the other side, I've heard arguments that life would probably look a lot like it does now because of converging evolution. Even if that's true, it still would be different in very significant ways that, it seems to me, would not be predictable.

predictions of the background microwave radiation — Patterner

I thought this was an accidental discovery by some geeks with a microwave detector in the 1960s.

You misinterpret how “physical” is being used in its juxtaposition to mental. It doesn’t mean “physics” as you seem to be using it. There is a way in which atomic, chemical, biological are physical events that are different in kind than qualia, ideas, what-it’s-likeness and so on. This is what I mean by taking this distinction seriously. — schopenhauer1

I did understand what you wrote, but I don't think the distinction you are making is important in this particular context. As I noted, the universe is just out there wiggling around. We're the ones who put labels like "physical" and "mental" on stuff. Your the one who chose this particular epistemic cut.

By the way, is my understanding of the meaning of that phrase, which I discussed in my previous post, correct?

By the way, is my understanding of the meaning of that phrase, which I discussed in my previous post, correct? — T Clark

Looking on the web, it doesn't seem to me this is what epistemic cut means, but I'm not sure.

No I mean that the phrase itself doesn’t really have a meaning. Like all zen koans there is no conceptual understanding of it, so they say. Hence when people use it they are ignorant of that key fact.

I don’t think beliefs can be justified or proven with reason.

Reason is rooted in emotion fundamentally and even then we did make up the rules for it as well. So that sort of blows a few holes in its reliability. I mean just look at flat earth and vaccine denialism.

Your example doesn’t show you know things beyond mere observation, it’s more just assertions like 1=1.

Science was able to show us the holes in our reasoning through the myriad of unconscious biases we employ each day.

A sophisticated direct realism is more parsimonious still.

But it isn't: you can't account, by my lights, for the fact that our brains are representing the world to us. For example, how do you account for the fact that if your brain is damaged in a particular way, then you lose your ability to see red if you aren't experiencing a representation of the world?

This is exactly because nothing is higher than reason (for philosophers) AND because the rational discussion is primarily concerned with worldly public objects (the stuff in our world)

You are right that our faculty of reason is using one's perceptions as input, but in order to account for many of those perceptions (and their relation to one another) the brain (and, more generally, the body) is best posited as representing the world (i.e., experiencing it via a filtered result from the understanding). You are basically throwing away, by my lights, the vast majority of biological and neurological knowledge that we have gained in the past 2 centuries and saying that, somehow, we are actually not filtering the world but, rather, directly experiencing it. Are you saying that our brains just let the data of experience 1 to 1 pass-through?

I don’t think beliefs can be justified or proven with reason.

You can only ever use reason: you have no choice. How else would you suggest that you can prove something or warrant a belief?

Reason is rooted in emotion fundamentally and even then we did make up the rules for it as well. So that sort of blows a few holes in its reliability.

It is true that reasoning is rooted in emotions; however, we do not makeup the rules of logic: we discover them; and we can certainly fumble our way through such a discovery.

I mean just look at flat earth and vaccine denialism.

It was not a flaw in reason that these were wrong, but, rather, in one's reasoning. Our faculty of reason is our deployment of logic, modality, etc.: it is not a particular chain of derivation.

Your example doesn’t show you know things beyond mere observation, it’s more just assertions like 1=1.

You will never observe the number 1, ever. Nor that 1 must equal itself.

Science was able to show us the holes in our reasoning through the myriad of unconscious biases we employ each day.

I think you are conflating our faculty of reason with the term 'reasoning'.

But I am observing the number 1, right now.

It was not a flaw in reason that these were wrong, but, rather, in one's reasoning. Our faculty of reason is our deployment of logic, modality, etc.: it is not a particular chain of derivation. — Bob Ross

Kinda sounds like a flaw in reason, I mean why should anyone take your word for it? What makes your reasoning better?

You can only ever use reason: you have no choice. How else would you suggest that you can prove something or warrant a belief? — Bob Ross

Allegedly, I get by fine without reason.

Your opening post is very good. It's difficult to put these things simply and clearly and you've done it. For some reason, however, many otherwise clever scientists and philosophers do not. .Late to the party but...

I feel that calling it hidden dualism is a bit misleading because this is a wider problem afflicting the whole of Western philosophy. 'Hidden mind-matter dualism' would be sharper. I wouldn't call it hidden but just rather obvious sloppy or devious thinking. I share the view of you and Chalmers as to the amount of sleight of hand that goes on in consciousness studies. It's an epidemic. . .

But it isn't: you can't account, by my lights, for the fact that our brains are representing the world to us. For example, how do you account for the fact that if your brain is damaged in a particular way, then you lose your ability to see red if you aren't experiencing a representation of the world? — Bob Ross

Note please that you are assuming your own framework -- talking of 'representations' of the world -- in the presentation of the 'problem.' For various reasons, I frame awareness on terms of the direct apprehension of the world --not representation but good old fashioned seeing and smelling and ...

I have no objection to our determining causal relationships between states of awareness and whether the brain is intact. No dualism required.

---He cannot contemplate $\sqrt{2}$, because he's dead.

---He's feeling no pain, because they gave him morphine.

Pain and $\sqrt{2}$ are just entities in a 'flat' ontology inferentially related to other entities like Paris and protons. We 'scientific' ontologists in our demand for justifications are not on the outside looking in --that's a failure of self-consciousness, an 'alienated' failure to notice our own central role.

As far as I understand, the person who first adopted neutral monism, though I don't believe his used this term, was William James. Russell was influenced by it and then developed a version of it. I unsure if Whitehead would accept this very label, probably sticking to "the philosophy of organism".

Whitehead did influence Russell to think of the world in terms of "events", rather than object and properties.

In any case, I think that the actual problem is matter - not consciousness, we know very little about matter, much more about consciousness. But people tend to go the opposite route and say that experience is the problem.