Philosophers like Pinter — Leontiskos
Dear Wayfarer
I thank you very much for your kind letter about my book “Mind & the Cosmic Order”. As you wade further into the book, I hope you will find it clear and comprehensible. If I make any claims in the book that you would like to question or challenge, please feel free to write to me, and I will carefully think about your point of view and will respond as best I am able.
I am happy to learn that you are a student of Buddhism. I personally have been deeply influenced by Buddhist teachings, and the cornerstone of my own personal ethic is to recognize the absolute value of every sentient being.
If you have any general comments about the book as a whole, it would be very kind if you could send a brief review to the Amazon review page of my book. And once again, please feel free to write to me if there is any issue in the book that you’d like to discuss further.
Cordially,
Charles
Sorry, I don't see the connection. Spinoza is talking about reflective reasoning from (parallax-like) both the perspective of eternity and the perspective of time. Wittgenstein, on the other hand, is talking about the constitutive meta/cognitive constraints of logic-grammar. I suppose for both thinkers the "I" is impersonal (ergo universal? ontological?) ...Perhaps you can share any thought you might have on Spinoza's perspectivism, and connections to Wittgenstein's 'I am my world.' — plaque flag
Imagination is an infinitely resourceful faculty. On the other hand, people do sometimes say they have encountered something, or something has happened to them, which was 'unimagineable' - 'I never imagined that would happen!' — Wayfarer
which part of the mind does the creating the world process? — Corvus
There is now overwhelming biological and behavioral evidence that the brain contains no stable, high-resolution, full field representation of a visual scene, even though that is what we subjectively experience (Martinez-Conde et al. 2008). The structure of the primate visual system has been mapped in detail (Kaas and Collins 2003) and there is no area that could encode this detailed information. The subjective experience is thus inconsistent with the neural circuitry. Closely related problems include change- (Simons and Rensink 2005) and inattentional-blindness (Mack 2003), and the subjective unity of perception arising from activity in many separate brain areas (Fries 2009; Engel and Singer 2001).
Traditionally, the NBP (neural binding problem) concerns instantaneous perception and does not consider integration over saccades. But in both cases the hard problem is explaining why we experience the world the way we do. As is well known, current science has nothing to say about subjective (phenomenal) experience and this discrepancy between science and experience is also called the “explanatory gap” and “the hard problem” (Chalmers 1996). There is continuing effort to elucidate the neural correlates of conscious experience; these often invoke some version of temporal synchrony as discussed above.
There is a plausible functional story for the stable world illusion. First of all, we do have a (top-down) sense of the space around us that we cannot currently see, based on memory and other sense data—primarily hearing, touch, and smell. Also, since we are heavily visual, it is adaptive to use vision as broadly as possible. Our illusion of a full field, high resolution image depends on peripheral vision—to see this, just block part of your peripheral field with one hand. Immediately, you lose the illusion that you are seeing the blocked sector. When we also consider change blindness, a simple and plausible story emerges. Our visual system (somehow) relies on the fact that the periphery is very sensitive to change. As long as no change is detected it is safe to assume that nothing is significantly altered in the parts of the visual field not currently attended.
But this functional story tells nothing about the neural mechanisms that support this magic. What we do know is that there is no place in the brain where there could be a direct neural encoding of the illusory detailed scene (Kaas and Collins 2003). That is, enough is known about the structure and function of the visual system to rule out any detailed neural representation that embodies the subjective experience. So, this version of the NBP really is a scientific mystery at this time. — The Neural Binding Problem(s)
How does phenomenology explain the existence of disagreement between people? And how does it propose that disagreement be resolved? — baker
Charles Pinter is not a philosopher - he's a mathematician with a long interest in neural modelling; all of his previous books were on algebra. — Wayfarer
that the brain/mind receives input from the environment and then constructs its world on that basis — Wayfarer
Your arguments against, I'm afraid, really are just re-statements of Samuel Johnson's 'appeal to the stone' - even down to your choice of representative object! — Wayfarer
We are self-aware as a unified whole - perception of shape, colour and movement appear to us as a unified whole (or gestalt) even though the sub-systems of the brain which process these are separate. Neuroscience hasn't identified the particular brain system that provides for this unification. It's called the 'neural binding problem' and is recognised as a scientific validation of the hard problem of consciousness… current science has nothing to say about subjective (phenomenal) experience. — Wayfarer
Rather than being a collection of pre-specified modules, the brain appears to be an organ that constructs itself in development through spontaneously generated and experience-dependent activity (Quartz & Sejnowski, 1997; Quartz, 1999; Karmiloff-Smith, 1998), a developmental process made possible by robust and flexible developmental mechanisms conserved in animal evolution (Gerhart & Kirschner, 1997).”
“Douglas F. Watt (1998) describes affect as ‘a prototype “whole brain event”', but we could go further and say that affect is a prototypical whole-organism event. Affect has numerous dimensions that bind together virtually every aspect of the organism—the psychosomatic network of the nervous system, immune system, and endocrine system; physiological changes in the autonomic nervous system, the limbic system, and the superior cortex; facial-motor changes and global differential motor readiness for approach or withdrawal; subjective experience along a pleasure–displeasure valence axis; social signalling and coupling; and conscious evaluation and assessment (Watt, 1998). Thus the affective mind isn't in the head, but in the whole body; and affective states are emergent in the reciprocal, co-determination sense: they arise from neural and somatic activity that itself is conditioned by the ongoing embodied awareness and action of the whole animal or person.
Although the physical and energetic coupling between a living being and the physicochemical environment is symmetrical, with each partner exerting more influence on the other at different times, the living being modulates the parameters of this coupling in a way the environment typically does not. Living beings, precisely because they are autopoietic and adaptive, can “surf” environmental events and modulate them to their own ends, like a bird gliding on the wind. Interactional asymmetry is precisely this capacity to modulate the coupling with the environment. If we lose sight of this interactional asymmetry, then we lose the ability to account for the directedness proper to living beings in their sense-making, and hence we lose the resources we need to connect sense-making to intentionality.”
“One of the basic propositions of the enactive approach is that being autonomous is a necessary condition for a system to embody original intentionality and normativity. Unless the processes that make up a system constitute that system as an adaptive self-sustaining unity, there is no perspective or reference point for sense-making and hence no cognizing agent. Without autonomy (operational closure) there is no original meaning; there is only the derivative meaning attributed to certain processes by an outside observer.”
(Thompson 2001)
So to be clear, when I am talking about knowing mind-independent reality, I am talking about knowing things whose existence is distinct and unrelated to mind. Your claim that <If a reality can be known, then it is not mind-independent> is therefore neither here nor there. I don't think anyone in the thread has been conceiving of "mind-independent reality" in this way.
Well, we fix flaws in concrete acts of understanding, but not foundational flaws in the faculty of understanding (the intellect). — Leontiskos
Sure. My point was only that if one accepts the premise that the faculty of the intellect itself is inherently incapable of knowing reality as it is in itself, then no amount of self-reflection or epistemological work will change that fact. I think we are in agreement. — Leontiskos
Your arguments against, I'm afraid, really are just re-statements of Samuel Johnson's 'appeal to the stone' - even down to your choice of representative object! — Wayfarer
If [abstruse theory], then [boulders cannot have shape]
[Abstruse theory]
Therefore, [Boulders cannot have shape] — Leontiskos
As noted previously, it is the nature of 'facts' that is one of the points at issue (if not the main point!) But part of Pinter's case is that there are no facts in the absence of the observer (as detailed in this earlier post.) That is the point at issue.The point at issue is that one cannot simply <present a theory as a justification for excluding facts>. — Leontiskos
I understand that, but if he is writing a book on the mind-world relation then in my opinion he is a philosopher. — Leontiskos
the argument is predicated on the assertion that 'boulders obviously do have shape' — Wayfarer
It is a proposition that contradicts your thesis and one that we have both agreed to. — Leontiskos
The reason it is said not to be an effective response, is that it does not counter the claim that what we experience as an external shape is actually an idea or sensation generated in our sensory-intellectual system. — Wayfarer
My objection is that it seems to me like the influence between the supposedly "mind independent" objects and phenomenal experience is a two way street. E.g., you don't like how your wall looks so you paint it, people think mountains are pretty so they photograph them, etc. The two causally flow into each other without distinction, which is what monist naturalism seems to suggest should happen.
Any division seems artificial to me,conflating a epistemic distinction with an ontological one. To the extent I have a problem with indirect realism, it's the fact that it tends to lead to this sort of soft dualism and hidden humonculi who are there to view the "representations" of the world. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Any division seems artificial to me, conflating a epistemic distinction with an ontological one. — Count Timothy von Icarus
It doesn't really matter if the distinction is artificial, so long as an appreciable number of designata are understood by the term, and able to be spoken about. — Leontiskos
the very concept of perspective is completely unreliable, because, after all, it remains a hidden way of saying that there is an objective reality, from which perspective tries to be different. — Angelo Cannata
Sorry, I don't see the connection. Spinoza is talking about reflective reasoning from (parallax-like) both the perspective of eternity and the perspective of time. Wittgenstein, on the other hand, is talking about constitutive the meta/cognitive constraints of logic-grammar. I suppose for both thinkers the "I" is impersonal (ergo universal? ontological?) ... — 180 Proof
Idealism consists in the assertion, that there are none but thinking beings, all other things, which we think are perceived in intuition, being nothing but representations in the thinking beings, to which no object external to them corresponds in fact. Whereas I say, that things as objects of our senses existing outside us are given, but we know nothing of what they may be in themselves, knowing only their appearances, i.e., the representations which they cause in us by affecting our senses...Can this be termed idealism? It is the very contrary. — Kant
Perhaps instead, as per Bourdieu, 'my habitus' (or Merleau-Ponty 'my flesh' ... Nietzsche 'my body').The limits of my language are the limits of my world because my 'belief' is the meaningstructure of the world, not something 'in' me. — plaque flag
Saying that we are perspectives implies that the idea that "we are perspectives" has a meaning only inside the perspective of those who say it. This is equivalent to say that it is meaningless, because its meaning is entirely limited inside itself, entirely determined by itself. — Angelo Cannata
Perhaps, as per Bourdieu, 'my habitus' (or Merleau-Ponty 'my flesh' ... Nietzsche 'my body'). — 180 Proof
:up:To the extent I have a problem with indirect realism, it's the fact that it tends to lead to this sort of soft dualism and hidden humonculi who are there to view the "representations" of the world. — Count Timothy von Icarus
The separation of form from matter requires two stages if the idea is to be elaborated: first, the sensitive stage, wherein the external and internal senses operate upon the material object, accepting its form without matter, but not without the appendages of matter; second the intellectual stage, wherein agent intellect operates upon the phantasmal datum, divesting the form of every character that marks and identifies it as a particular something. — Aquinas
“Douglas F. Watt (1998) describes affect as ‘a prototype “whole brain event”', but we could go further and say that affect is a prototypical whole-organism event. — Thompson
Some kind of elusive urstuff is Really Out There --- as in Kant, who does not want to be mistaken for an idealist. — plaque flag
Kant... does not want to be mistaken for an idealist — plaque flag
saying that we are perspectives implies that the idea that "we are perspectives" has a meaning only inside the perspective of those who say it — Angelo Cannata
He concludes 'Space does not represent any property of objects as things in themselves, nor does it represent them in their relations to each other'.What then are time and space? Are they real existences? Or, are they merely relations or determinations of things, such, however, as would equally belong to these things in themselves, though they should never become objects of intuition; or, are they such as belong only to the form of intuition, and consequently to the subjective constitution of the mind, without which these predicates of time and space could not be attached to any object.'
Except that scientific method eschews the notion of there being intelligible forms, per se.This translates in my mind into a description of the scientific method. — unenlightened
Except that scientific method eschews the notion of there being intelligible forms, per se. — Wayfarer
I don't think it does. Equations are forms; Classificatory systems are forms. They use another language is all. — unenlightened
My argument is simpy that the mind or brain assimilates sensory and rational information and from this constructs what we understand as 'the world'. I'm not denying that there is a world apart from the mind, but saying that whatever we think or say about that purported world absent any mind is meaningless. I'm struggling to understand what about this is controversial or confusing, it seems very straightforward to me. — Wayfarer
I don't think it does. Equations are forms; Classificatory systems are forms. They use another language is all. — unenlightened
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