I don't think consciousness is outside the range of human perception; you perceive yourself to be conscious, no? — Janus
Am I not allowed to argue for what I believe can and cannot be coherently philosophically investigated? — Janus
We can know nothing whatsoever about whatever might be "beyond being". The idea is nothing more than the dialectical opposite of 'being'. Fools have always sought to fill the 'domains' of necessary human ignorance with their "knowing". How much misery this has caused humanity is incalculable. — Janus
Moreover, were consciousness perceivable then the philosophical problem of other minds would not be a problem of any kind. — javra
Evolution and cosmology were examples pertinent to young earth creationism cases of science denial.
Do you still deny that there is scientific evidence for physicalism? — wonderer1
Physicalism is, in slogan form, the thesis that everything is physical. The thesis is usually intended as a metaphysical thesis, parallel to the thesis attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher Thales, that everything is water, or the idealism of the 18th Century philosopher Berkeley, that everything is mental. The general idea is that the nature of the actual world (i.e. the universe and everything in it) conforms to a certain condition, the condition of being physical. Of course, physicalists don’t deny that the world might contain many items that at first glance don’t seem physical — items of a biological, or psychological, or moral, or social, or mathematical nature. But they insist nevertheless that at the end of the day such items are physical, or at least bear an important relation to (or supervene on) the physical.
although the existence of something independent of the mind is conceded, everything that we can know about this mind-independent reality is held to be so permeated by the creative, formative, or constructive activities of the mind (of some kind or other) that all claims to knowledge must be considered, in some sense, to be a form of self-knowledge.
What I quoted was not an argument, but an angry denunciation. — Wayfarer
Again, you're just singing from the positivist playbook — Wayfarer
one as consciousness does not perceive owns own consciousness. — javra
You sound victimized. Let's refresh. — javra
You view this as "an argument for what you believe" whereas to me it is nothing more and nothing less than an emotively expressed authoritarian assertion: one which wants to disallow me from thinking freely. — javra
Answer my question, Wayfarer, and then I'll answer yours.So, again, please demonstrate how, as you claim, 'the established facts of evolution and cosmology are "equally compatible" with idealism (i.e. antirealism) as they are with physicalism'.
— 180 Proof
First please demonstrate why idealism implies anti-realism in the first place. — Wayfarer
The topic raisrd by OP is "the nature of esoteric forms of philosophy" and not "secular culture". Stop trying to shift the goalposts. :sweat:secular culture
So what is 'mind'? AFAIK, basically mind is a recursive (strange looping, phenomenal self-modeling) aspect of More/Other-than-mind – a nonmental activity (process ... anatman), not an entity (ghost-in-the-machine ... X-of-the-gaps), that is functionally blind to its self-recursivity the way, for instance, an eye is transparent to itself and absent from its own field of vision. — 180 Proof
Again, changing the subject – or you're just confused, sir: "metaphysical physicalism", which you claim to "take issue" with, is not synonymous with "scientific materialism". :roll:scientific materialism — Wayfarer
The jist of my criticism of that post: Insofar as mind is nonmind-dependent (i.e. embodied), only conceptions – interpretations – of nonmind are "mind-created" abstractions from nonmind (i.e. mappings of the territory). Consequently, "idealism" equates mapping (meaning) to the territory itself as if from outside the territory (re: transcendence / transcendental (i.e. dis-embodied viewpoint)) – which is a cognitive illusion, or delusion :sparkle: – whereas "physicalism" proposes using (useable) aspects of – abstractions from – the territory for mapping other aspects of the territory ineluctably from within the territory (re: immanence i.e. embodied viewpoint). IME, modern scientific practices work in spite of the former 'metaphysical bias' and are facilitated by the latter methodology. This is why I think idealism and physicalism are not "equally compatible" with modern science.This post outlines why I don’t believe there’s any specific conflict between idealism and science.
I never claimed or implied "idealism implies anti-realism"; I think the terms are interchangeable because they both, in effect, denote a 'rejection of the nonmind-dependence of mind.' (i.e. both imply a version of dis-embodied cognition). :sparkle:First please demonstrate why idealism implies anti-realism in the first place. — Wayfarer
You keep saying that 'we' do not know and can never know the forms - does this 'we' include Plotinus, Proclus, all the philosophers before and since? — Wayfarer
Consider that when you think about triangularity, as you might when proving a geometrical theorem, it is necessarily perfect triangularity that you are contemplating, not some mere approximation of it. — Edward Feser
Many others have claimed to know something we do not. I am not inclined to believe them based on their reports of mystical experience. — Fooloso4
Individuals with certain mental capacities are capable of grasping complex mathematical concepts far beyond the ken of most folks. — Pantagruel
If someone claims to have mathematical knowledge it can be demonstrated. Can the same be said of someone who claims to have mystical knowledge? — Fooloso4
"Mystical" could in one sense just mean "beyond our current understanding." — Pantagruel
If someone claims to have mathematical knowledge it can be demonstrated. Can the same be said of someone who claims to have mystical knowledge? — Fooloso4
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectionism* The second wave blossomed in the late 1980s, following the 1987 book about Parallel Distributed Processing by James L. McClelland, David E. Rumelhart et al., which introduced a couple of improvements to the simple perceptron idea, such as intermediate processors (known as "hidden layers" now) alongside input and output units and used sigmoid activation function instead of the old 'all-or-nothing' function. Their work has, in turn, built upon that of John Hopfield, who was a key figure investigating the mathematical characteristics of sigmoid activation functions.[2] From the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, connectionism took on an almost revolutionary tone when Schneider,[4] Terence Horgan and Tienson posed the question of whether connectionism represented a fundamental shift in psychology and GOFAI.[2] Some advantages of the second wave connectionist approach included its applicability to a broad array of functions, structural approximation to biological neurons, low requirements for innate structure, and capacity for graceful degradation.[5] Some disadvantages of the second wave connectionist approach included the difficulty in deciphering how ANNs process information, or account for the compositionality of mental representations, and a resultant difficulty explaining phenomena at a higher level.[6]
The current (third) wave has been marked by advances in Deep Learning allowing for Large language models.[2] The success of deep learning networks in the past decade has greatly increased the popularity of this approach, but the complexity and scale of such networks has brought with them increased interpretability problems.[7]
This touches on my interest in intuition, understood as deep learning in neural networks. It seems to me that there are two seperate issues involved.
1. Having demonstrable knowledge.
2. Having an explanation for that knowledge. — wonderer1
my impression is that intuition has been mysterious and subject to being explained in supernatural or mystical terms until the 1980s — wonderer1
Moreover, were consciousness perceivable then the philosophical problem of other minds would not be a problem of any kind. — javra
"The philosophical problem of other minds", seem to me to be more a problem that some people have that is caused by philosophy rather than something to be taken very seriously.
Yes, we can't very reasonably say we perceive other minds, but I certainly have plenty of good reason to think that I recognize other minds. I.e. that minds have recognizable signatures. Don't you have good reasons to think so as well?
Isn't the performative contradiction rather obvious? — wonderer1
Does anything more follow from "is possible" than is possible?
— Fooloso4
Possibly. — Pantagruel
Ha! And possibly not. — Fooloso4
The question is, to what extent is knowledge instrumental in actualizing the possible? — Pantagruel
A savant card-counter could win a huge amount of money from a game of blackjack that would leave most people broke. — Pantagruel
That they can do this is not merely a theoretical possibility. They can demonstrate their ability to do this. How does one demonstrate that there is a realm of Forms that they have knowledge of? — Fooloso4
Brain scans of Buddhist monks exhibit a variety of unique features, including enhanced neuroplasticity. — Pantagruel
Brain scans of Buddhist monks exhibit a variety of unique features, including enhanced neuroplasticity. — Pantagruel
If a Buddhist monk’s worldview — javra
at least some Buddhist monks have actual knowledge into the nature of reality that others don’t grasp ... — javra
... then the empirically verifiable benefits of their upheld worldview upon their Central Nervous System would by entailment be nothing more than a wild coincidence devoid of any explanation. — javra
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