Hello Philosophim,

It sounds like you are in agreement with me that the best choice in the scenario is to use the pattern, but you disagree that it is an example of a possiblity outweighing a probability: is that correct?

You say:

If you do not consider the X and Y properties as relevant, you choose the probability. If you consider the X and Y properties as relevant, you do not have a probability that considers the X and Y properties. Therefore you choose the pattern. You're comparing an apple to an orange and trying to say an orange is more rational. You need to compare two apples and two oranges together.

Which indicates to me you are agreeing with me that the pattern is the most cogent choice in the scenario, but you are disagreeing whether that conflicts with the probability. Is that right?

We don't compare the two because they don't apply to the same situation, or the same essential properties. We compare coin flip with coin flip with what we know, and sunrise to sunrise to sunrise with what we know. The hierarchy doesn't work otherwise. You're simply doing it wrong by comparing two different identities Boxes without X and Y, and boxes with X and Y, then saying you broke the hierarchy.

I honestly don’t understand how I could be misusing the hierarchy if the two options are a probability or possibility (fundamentally).

The probability and the possibility are both being used to infer the same thing, so it is disanalogous to:

Probability: A coin has a 50/50 chance of landing heads or tails.
Possibility: The sun will rise tomorrow

The implication with your example is that they are completely unrelated, but the probability and possibility in my example are both related insofar as they are being used to induce a conclusion about the same question. That’s why you have to compare them.

Another way of thinking of this is that any induction used to infer a conclusion is related to other possible inductions thereof, because they fundamentally are trying to answer the same question. If they were completely unrelated (like you would like me to believe), then one would not be capable of deciding which induction is most cogent to hold.

If you are right that the probability of a pulling a BWOA and the possibility of a BWOA having design X are completely unrelated, then you would not be able to determine which induction to use in the scenario because that requires you to compare them since they are both being used to make an induction about the same question. It’s impossible in the scenario for them to be completely unrelated!

We don't compare the two because they don't apply to the same situation, or the same essential properties.

Just to hone in on this: they absolutely do!!! The question is “does the box have air?” and they are both within that situation that I outlined: to answer that question you must compare them or answer with “undeterminable”. When I said “throw your hands up in the air”, I wasn’t meaning that you don’t like it, I meant figuratively (in a fun way) that you cannot determine which induction to use in the scenario if you are saying those two inductions (which are used to answer the same question) are completely unrelated. There would be, in that case, two inductions that could answer the question which cannot be evaluated as more or less cogent than the other.

The point was to demonstrate that patterns are less cogent than probabilities. We both agree on this then

We don’t agree on this. All your example demonstrated was that patterns extrapolated from random pulls from a sample are not more cogent than probabilities pertaining to that sample. That is not the same thing as proving that patterns are less cogent than probabilities.

Bob

Hello Philosophim,

I hope your Saturday is going well Bob!

To you as well!

Disregarding your first point for a minute, this is what I'm trying to inform you of. A relevant factor is an essential property. A non-relevant factor is a non-essential property in regards to the induction. Anytime you make the design relevant to an induction, a pattern in your case, it is now a relevant, or essential property of that induction. Again, can you make the pattern induction if you ignore the design? No. Therefore it is an essential property of that pattern. .

I don’t have a problem with this: you seem to just be noting that I wouldn’t have made that exact inductive inference without the pattern which, to me, is a trivial fact. If there’s three cards of 2 aces and 1 king and I hedge my bets that I will randomly pull an ace because there is a 66% chance, then, of course, I could not have made that exact inductive inference without the probability because that is what I used: but, my question for you is, why explicate this? What relevance does this have to the scenario I gave you?

I agree that the calculated probability (which is not an inductive inference) is not considering Y and X while the inductive inference about X and Y is; but this doesn’t make it an unfair comparison; and the scenario hasn’t changed because of it: there is a probability you are given and there is an inductive inference you could make either (1) based off of that probability or (2) off of the experiential pattern. In this scenario, they are at odds with each other, so you can’t induce based off of both (as they have contradictory conclusions): so you have to compare them and determine which is more cogent to use. If you think this is an unfair comparison, then please elaborate more on what you mean.

Also, a real example, like my scenario, can’t be negated by saying it is an “unfair comparison” because, in reality, you would have to compare them and choose (as described above). In the scenario, you wouldn’t just throw your hands up and say “UNFAIR COMPARISON!” (:

Probability 49/51% of getting either A or B.
Pattern I pull 1 billion A's and 1 billion Bs.

This is disanalogous because in the scenario you didn’t pull a billion times design X → BWA (and ditto for the other one). I agree that if that were the case then the probability is a better pick.

The point with the scenario is you are coming in with experiential knowledge that shifts how you will play the limited 100 sample game. You, in this example, are talking about knowledge you get by randomly pulling in the limited, small sample game.

Probability of getting either A or B with design X is 75% or Y at 25%
Pattern I always pull an A with X, and always pull a B with Y

This is disanalogous for the exact same reasons as the above one.

Probability 49/51% of getting either A or B, (X and Y not considered).
Pattern I always pull an A with X, and always pull a B with Y (X and Y considered)

Yes, and you can’t just say “unfair comparison”: in the scenario, like the real world, you have to compare them: I specifically made in so that you have to compare them to make an informed decision. You are going to induce it is either with air or not based off of either the probability or the pattern.

Likewise, if you are saying that the probability is a better choice in the scenario, then you are thereby conceding that you can compare them.

Why would it be more cogent to predict the next coin is heads rather then saying it could be either on the next flip?

It wouldn’t. If all you know is that you are performing a 50/50 random coin flip, it doesn’t matter how many times you get heads: it’s the same probability. This is disanalogous to the scenario because your knowledge of the design correlations is not derived from the sample size.

You are not comparing inductions properly. The first induction does not consider X and Y. You cannot say a later induction that does consider X and Y is more cogent than the first, because the first is a different scenario of considerations

The scenario is the exact same: they are both a part of that scenario. In it, you clearly have to choose which you think is more cogent to go off of. You can’t just throw your hands up in the air.

I hope this finally clears up the issue!

I wish it did, but I still don’t think you have addressed the scenario properly. You seem to keep conflating it with a straightforward comparison of a probability vs. knowledge acquired from randomly pulling from a sample: obviously the former is more cogent. There’s no debate in that.

This has forced me to be clearer with my examples and arguments, and I think the entire paper is better for it.

Likewise, this has made me be clearer in my scenario (;

Bob

Hello Mww,

I only said what my mind is not. I’ve said before I don’t hold that minds are anything beyond an object of reason, which negates that I may be what’s referred to as a substance dualist.

I see. Would you say that your mind does not exist in the things-in-themselves? If so, then what other possible options (to you) are their for where it “resides”?

Ok. Why must it be? For a mind, or something else which serves the same purpose, to be a thing-in-itself makes necessary it is first and foremost, a thing. Says so right there in the name.

It has to be a ‘thing” (either of a mental or physical substance) if it to be distinguishable from nothing: only things which do not exist are not of a substance. Are you saying that ‘mind’ is just an emergent property from something else (that is the thing-in-itself)? I am having a hard time pinning down what you are saying here. Bottom line, to me, the mind, or whatever it is emergent from, must be traced back to something which is a thing-in-itself. If it is not itself the thing-in-itself, then it is an illusion. If it neither an illusion nor a thing-in-itself, then it doesn’t exist.

This looks like a way to force acknowledgement for the existence of a mind.

It’s meant to force acknowledge that the mind is of something. Either it is the thing-in-itself, emergent of a thing-in-itself, or it simply doesn’t exist.

The thing-in-itself is a physical reality

How could you know that if things-in-themselves are purely negative conceptions?

Which still requires an exposition for mental substance such that mind can emerge from it.

One could claim that something is eternal and of a mental substance. It doesn’t necessarily have to be emergent from. I am just trying to pin down what you think a mind is, and so far is seems like just ‘reason’ and ‘the unknown’.

Are you using Descartes for that exposition? It’s in Principia Philosophiae 1, 51-53, 1644, if you want to see how yours and his compare.

Thank you for the reference, but, unfortunately I have not read that nor was I able to parse your citation to find it in a free PDF version of the book. Could you perhaps include in a the excerpt if you already know what you are referencing? Otherwise, no worries.

I am not accounting for reality; I’m accounting, by means of a logical methodology, reality’s relation to me.

yes, but you are fundamentally saying that reality, true reality, is beyond our epistemic limits. And this entails a long of, in my opinion, unparsimonous positions (e.g., cannto know of object permanence, minds, one’s mind being a representative faculty, etc.).

But I know with apodeictic certainty the conditions under which the relations logic obtains, and from which my experiences follow, do not contradict Nature, which is all I need to know.

How do you know it doesn’t contradict nature if you can’t know anything about true nature? These are the kinds of weird implications I see if I were to commit myself to transcendent idealism.

Do you see that neither of your follow-up’s relate to what I said?

No I don’t see that. But let me try to address:

Possible knowledge, knowledge not in residence, cannot be from experience that is.

Why can possible knowledge not be from experience? Wouldn’t you have to know that your mind isn’t producing the objects? And wouldn’t that requiring knowledge of the things-in-themselves?

To experience is not necessarily to know, but to know is necessarily to experience.

Agreed.

Justification for claiming things-in-themselves are being represented in experience, should never be a question up for debate, and if it does arise as such, it can only be from a different conception of it.

Why??? This is just a flat assertion: I am asking exactly that! If you can’t know anything about the things-in-themselves, if you are truly trapped within your phenomenal experience, then why would you even know there are things-in-themselves? It seems like you are just appealing to an intuition here. I have no problem with that BUT I can do the same exact thing about things-in-themselves.

To represent a thing-in-itself in its original iteration, is self-contradictory, insofar as the thing-in-itself is exactly what is NOT developed in the human intuitive faculty for representing sensible things.

Again: why??? It’s just flatly asserted that we can’t question (e.g., ‘it’s self-contradictory’) that there are things-in-themselves, but all of my knowledge that I am represented something is phenomena! I thought those shouldn’t tell us anything about the things-in-themselves? The schema Kant as come up with here undermines itself to me.

Then why isn’t such cogent account given by the understanding that’s already dictated our understanding of the world?

What do you mean? I didn’t follow this part.

So it turns out, not only does reason ask understanding to bend its own rules, but justifies the request because it has already bent its own principles

If I am understanding you correctly, then you are using the “understanding” vs. “reason” semantics from Kant (which is fine). If so, then I would say that (1) your ability to acquire the knowledge of the ‘understanding’ is just metaphysics (and is no different than what I am doing) and (2) I reject Kant’s formulation of it as merely an exposition of ‘reason’ as opposed to the ‘understanding’. Maybe if I was convinced that we really had these twelve categories of the understanding and such, then I would be metaphysically cut off from further inquiry beyond that.

Maybe expound whatever proof you found convincing for Kant’s twelve categories: that might help me understand better.

If that happens, there are no checks and balances left at all, and there manifests an intellectual free-for-all where anything goes, an “…embarrassment to the dignity of proper philosophy….”, so those old-time actual professional philosophers would have us know.

As of now, I don’t buy this. We use parsimony, coherence, intuitions, reliability, consistency, empirical adequacy, etc. and this doesn’t require us to limit ourselves to transcendental investigations.

Bob

Hello Philosophim,

It is correct that the essential properties of a known identity, and the essential property of an induction about that identity are not the same.

It seems now that you are referring to two things by “essential properties”: what is essential to what one induces something is and what is essential to what that something is. Is this correct?

Firstly, when I say that the design is not an essential property of what they are, I am not referring to “the essential property of an induction about the identity” of them: I am referring to “the essential properties of a known identity”--in this case, the box.

Secondly, I am also not even claiming that the designs are essential to inducing what box it is (which would be the latter thing in your quote), because that would imply that if I didn’t know the design then I couldn’t induce at all what box it is—which is clearly wrong. I am saying that it is a relevant factor. To say it is essential means that I couldn’t decide what it is (inductively) without knowing the designs. If I didn’t know the designs in the example (with all else being equal), then I would go off of the probability.

If by “essential property of the induction” you just mean that I am using designs to make my induction, then I have no problem with that; but that has nothing to do with the substance of the scenario nor does that entail that it is essential to the induction. The point is that the colossally observed pattern of design → box, in this particular context, outweighs going off of the minuscule probability.

If you agree that there is a separation between these two things (which you seem to agree in the above quote), then I don’t know why you said:

True. But if you're going to later include, "I believe property X is a property that indicates it has air," then you've made it an essential property to identifying whether it has air. Basically you're saying its not an essential property, but then in your application, it is

It is not an essential property of the identity of the boxes, but is relevant to inducing which box it is. You are simply noting that, at a minimum, that the designs are relevant to inducing which box it is and then conflating that with my claims that they are not essential properties of the identity of the boxes.

If it was non-essential, then it would have nothing to do with your induction of whether the box has air or not.

This is false. Something being essential means that it cannot be removed, so to say that it is “essential to an induction” is to say you cannot induce either way without that essential factor. However, if the situation changes, then the induction changes. For example, in the scenario where I’ve always experienced gravity pulling things to the ground for 40 years, I am going to induce that the next thing will fall that I drop. However, if it were the case that I’ve experienced gravity not work in those 40 years 500,000 times more than it work, then I would say it won’t fall (all else being equal). Gravity working in the first example is not an essential property of my induction of whether the object will fall when I drop it, because my induction would change if the factors changed. Sure, I wouldn’t have made the same inductive conclusion if that factors changes, but it is not essential to know gravity is working all the time to be able to make an inductive inference in this case.

If you include the "non-essential" property as essential for your induction to the outcome of the box, then it is no longer non-essential to your belief in the outcome of the box's air or not air identity.

This is irrelevant. Again, you just noting that I am using the design in my induction, which doesn’t negate the fact that design is not an essential property of the identity of the boxes.

If that’s all you are saying, then it doesn’t matter for the scenario. You can’t somehow deduce the probability of the designs in the sample of 100, and that was the whole point. Since the person calculated the 51% probability off of the essential properties of the identity of the boxes, which doesn’t include designs, there is no way to know probabilistically which design they will have: it is an induction.

Regardless of the pattern of design, we still know that any box has a 51/49 probability in regards to its air. But if we later consider the design in believing whether the box will have air or not, its now essential in that belief

It is not essential to the belief about the probability, because it wasn’t used in the calculation of it. Just because you use the designs in your inductive inference, does not mean it has any relation whatsoever to the probability of pulling a type of box. That’s a non sequitur.

You don't get to decide what's essential or non-essential in application. In application, the design is now essential in your belief on whether it holds air or not. You can deny it, but you haven't proven it yet.

It is relevant to whether the box has air or not; and this has nothing to do with whether it is an essential property of the identity of the boxes. So I am failing to get what your point is here? You have seemed to veer off into an unrelated observation (but I could be wrong). The probability is still 51% that you get a BWOA, and that BWOA could have design X (despite you experiencing strong evidence to support otherwise).

And the miniscule difference is irrelevant. Its still 1% more rational. Or .0005% more rational.

And this is really what is under contention: for you, it seems as though really strong inductive observations don’t matter if you know a probability and I disagree. If I have experienced a BILLION times design X ↔ BWA and I join a thought experiment where they have 100 boxes (of BWA and BWOA) and they tell me there is a 51% chance of getting BWOA and the box presented to me has design X, then, on the first pull, I am going with it being BWA.

You are saying that having a 1% more chance of getting BWOA is a better bet (inductively) and, consequently, that this box is going to be the first you’ve experienced (out of a previous BILLION) that does not have design Y.

In order for that to be the case, you would have to argue for a really unparsimonious general account of what is happening in the thought experiment. E.g., you would have to argue that perhaps the gamer makers are deceptive, that they have got a hold of a really rare manufactured set of BWOAs without the normal design that is associated with and decided to use those rare ones with you (a normal person), perhaps broke the law, etc. These are just examples, but you get the point.

Now, where I think you are right, is if the probability is not miniscule (e.g., 99% it is a BWOA). Since that calculation is deduced from the sample of 100, then that means there are 99 BWOAs. In that case, I think the probabilistic odds outweigh the experiential evidence of the correlation, and so it is more reasonable to go with BWOA.

I can even make the scenario even more specific to prove my point: imagine that, on top of what has already been said, in this scenario you also have strong inductive evidence that, although there can be a BWOA with design X, it costs an insane amount money to manufacture it with any design other than Y. You, as a normal person, engaging in a basic thought experiment (of pulling a box from 100 sample size) should not expect, given a miniscule 1% difference, that a BWOA has design X.

My point is that the entire situation matters, and it isn’t as easy as saying “probability > possibility” when making informed inductive decisions. If that were the case, then we end up with really unparsimonious explanations of things.

If X > Y, and no other considerations are made, its always more rational to choose X

Correct. But this is a scenario where other considerations are made. So this is irrelevant. If all you knew was that there was a 51% chance of it being a BWOA and all else being equal, then, yeah, go with the probability.

Patterns are a more detailed identity of a cogent argument than possibility alone,

Correct. I am saying that the patterns in this case weigh into the inductive inference: it isn’t as easy as going with the probability for the sake of going with it.

Bob

I think what you are trying to say is that if one is using something as a consideration of what something is (i.e., its identity), then it should be an essential property: but that just simply doesn't follow from you methodology. I can claim that I distinctly know that a BWA is just a (1) box and (2) has air in it.

I can experience design X with BWAs my whole life and never refurbish its definition to include design X as an essential property: and that is how the scenario is setup. So you can't side-load the designs into the 51% probability because they should be essential properties because in the scenario they are not. If that makes any sense.

The probability was calculated with only the aforesaid two essential properties. The designs were not considered for it.

Bob

Hello Philosophim,

Here is where you also have to clarify. Does the design of X or Y have anything to do with the probability?

No they do not. It is a 51% chance that it is a BWOA, and that is calculated solely of it’s essential properties, which is that it (1) is a box and (2) has or does not have air in it.

For example, if the ration of X airs to Y airs was 3/4, then X and Y are essential properties to the probability. Both of these can co-exist.

So on one hand we could say overall, there's a 51% chance of no airs vs airs, not considering X or Y. Then we can drill down further, make X and Y a part of our observations, and note that X has a 75% chance of being no air, while Y has a 25% chance of being air. These are two different probabilities, and we could even math them together for an overall probability if we wanted to.

The scenario does not give you a probability of a box being design X or Y and you cannot calculate it given the information for the scenario. So, although you are correct that that probability would be separate from the probability of pulling a BWOA or BWA, you can’t use that probability. That fundamentally changes the scenario if you did.

Once you start including an attribute in your probability, it is now essential to that probability. While you are considering X and Y, you're not considering the how heavy they are right? Anything you don't include in the probability is non-essential. Since you don't care about the weight of each box, it doesn't matter. Once you notice X and Y designs, and start actively noting, "Hey, X's so far have all been with air," then you've created a new probability, and X is essential to that probability.

No. Again you are confusing what is essential to calculating the probability, which in this case is the essential properties, and what is useful for infering what a thing is (when you can’t know that it meets the essential properties).

Although in this scenario weight is not something to consider (to keep things simple), how heavy it is could play a factor into what you guess if you experienced a strong correlation of two distinctly different weights with BWOAs and BWAs a BILLION times. The weight is still an accidental property, but the sheer correlation in the actual world (which can happen) makes it cogent to factor that into consideration since you can’t know by looking at it if it has air or not.

If it is known information that the X or Y is irrelevant to the design, then you cannot make a probability based off of it when referring to the boxes in general

There’s no probability afforded to you of whether has a design X or Y. So correct. But that was never the claim I was making. The billion experiences of X → BWA and Y → BWOA is inductive evidence: it doesn’t give you a probability and that is the whole point.

If it is unknown whether the X or Y is relevant to the air inside of the box, then you could start to note a probability that is again, separate from the box disregarding the design.

No you couldn’t: the antecedent there doesn’t necessitate the consequent. If I am unsure if X and Y are relevant to whether it is a BWA, I don’t thereby gain knowledge of the probability of nor do I gain inference-like knowledge that it does. I think you may be confusing an inductive inference with a probability proper. Unless you know the numerator and denominator (and divide them) then you cannot claim to know anything about what is probable or improbable.

I think the part of confusion Bob is you keep making non-essential properties essential to an induction, but think because its non-essential in another induction, its non-essential in your new induction. That's simply not the case. Once you start including the X or Y as a consideration, it is now an essential consideration for your new induction. That's your contradiction.

There’s no contradiction (that I can see): maybe explain where it is in more detail.

Let me clarify something though: what is essential to the inductive inference is not the same thing as what is essential to the identity of a thing. I think you may be conflating those two here.

Personally, I would say that it is useful and more rational to the inductive inference to go with BWA (in this scenario) (rather than saying it is essential: I am not sure what that would entail, as we are not talking about essential properties there).

I can say the designs are not essential properties of the identity of a BWA and BWOA while holding that the designs, given the inductive evidence and super low probability given of pulling BWOA, are relevant to inferring (guessing) what it is (even though it isn’t an essential property of it). Again, I will refer you to the example of the human drawings.

There is absolutely no contradiction here.

Non essential properties never weigh in or outweigh the probability of something occurring. If they do, they are now essential to that probability

Correct. You keep focusing too much on the probability. The idea is that there is a probability which is calculated independently of the designs, but it is a miniscule difference. Now, couple that with the inductive knowledge that the design is always consistently (a BILLION times) associated non-essentially to the boxes and that knowledge outweighs going off of the probability.

A reason or a factor is a property of something. If you wish to interchange it, its fine. The point still stands.

If by this you just mean that we use the essential properties to calculate the probability, then I agree. But reasons are not properties of the things.

I am saying it is less rational to go with the 1% chance or 0.00000001% chance that it is a BWOA as opposed to a BWA in this specific scenario. — Bob Ross

Only if you consider the X, Y design of the box. In which case, it is now an essential property of your induction, and you've made the separate probability as I noted earlier.

It’s not though. I am saying that there is a strong correlation between this design and this type of box, and I know that this box doesn’t have to have this design--but it has had this design a BILLION times anyways. There’s a difference between something being essential to what a thing is, and it being accompanied by something else consistently.

Bob

Hello Mww,

Things-in-themselves concerns things. Minds are not things. Things-in-themselves do not include minds.

Are you a substance dualist? It sounds like you are saying there are minds which are of a mental substance and there are things-in-themselves which are a part of a physical substance. Otherwise, I do not know what you mean here.

I am not a mind; I am a conscious intelligence, a thinking subject

But, traditionally, a mind is a conscious intelligence—a thinking subject which has qualia.

Notice the conspicuous lack of mention for the thing-in-itself. My body is never absent from my representational faculties, insofar as they are contained in it, thus is always a thing and never a thing-in-itself.

I agree that the body is not a thing-in-itself, but the mind (or something else) must be. Even if the mind is not a ‘thing’ in the sense of being of a physical substance, it is a ‘thing-in-itself’ of a mental substance. ‘Thing’ here is being used more vaguely as a purely negative conception (like Kant used it). It could be a mental ‘thing’ or a physical ‘thing’.

I didn’t say mind was merely reasoning.

Sorry, I must have misunderstood then. What is a mind to you then?

It is not impossible what I consider as thinking really isn’t, but is in fact merely the material complexity of my brain manifesting as the seeming of thought. So, what…..you’re trying to say that because it is not impossible for thinking to be other than it seems, the door is thereby left open for my thinking to be a manifestation of something even outside my own brain? Perhaps that’s no more than the exchange of not impossible regarding brains, for vanishingly improbable for external universal entity.

I am saying that you can’t prove, because you think we cannot know anything about the things-in-themselves (even probabilistically speaking), that (1) other people have conscious experience and (2) that your own thoughts are associated with an ‘I’ which is beyond the phenomena.

You can’t appeal to probability nor plausibility for #1 or #2 because you are saying we cannot know the things-in-themselves, and those claims are about them: even if it is about fundamentally mental ‘things’.

Time and space aren’t properties of objects per se, but you are, under transcendental idealism, producing them under space and time. — Bob Ross

No. I am not producing objects. I am producing representations of them, and those under, or conditioned by, space and time.

Correct, I misspoke: I was saying that space and time are produced by your mind, not that the objects themselves are. They are produced by your mind because they are the pure forms of intuition that your mind uses to represent objects.

Saying that the objects only exist in your perception is just to say that there no corresponding object beyond those forms of space and time — Bob Ross

Sure, but no one has sufficient justification for saying objects only exist in perception, which makes the rest irrelevant.

You can’t appeal to the lack of justification for objects existing in perception because, according to Kant and you, we cannot know anything about the things-in-themselves: we can only know the phenomena. If there’s no justification for saying there are objects (of which you can’t make if you can’t claim stuff about things-in-themselves), then we simply cannot know. If we cannot know, then you can’t say there is object permanence. My point is that you cannot refute (even probabilistically) the claim that your mind produces the objects without making an assumption about the things-in-themselves, which you aren’t supposed to be able to do.

Semantics, huh? Why don’t we just agree that if you know a thing, you’ve experienced it.

I said:

It can agree with this, as a matter of semantics, if you are saying that possible knowledge is that which one experiences; but then this just pushes the question back: why can’t we say that possible knowledge goes beyond our experiences?

If by “if you know a thing, you’ve experienced it”, you just mean that you’ve experienced something, then, sure, that is true; but it is an uninformative tautology.

The question up for debate here is whether you have justification for claiming there are things-in-themselves that are being represented in that experience—not that having an experience is having an experience.

Why wouldn’t that be true? The truth of that doesn’t affect the premise that if a thing is known it must have been an experience, and doesn’t affect possible experience.

You can’t claim that possible knowledge goes beyond our experiences (quite frankly: your experiences) because that is non-phenomena, which are, by definition, things-in-themselves; and you cannot know anything about those.

Of course. The categories are nothing but theoretical constructs. It is merely a logically consistent speculation that understanding relates pure conceptions to cognition of things. Pretty hard to experience a theory, right?

But this is exactly what people who venture into understanding the things-in-themselves do! They speculate about them and come to the most reasonable conclusion in coherence with experience. So why think we cannot do that?

Now, for me, this is exactly backwards. I mean…what comes first, the appearance of a thing, or the representation of it? Our understanding of the world is dictated by our representational faculties.

The appearance, then the representation. We come to know that is the case from the other way around.

We extrapolate that the representations we see are just that: representations. And there are appearances that come first to those representations. Our understanding of the world is dictated by our representational faculties, but that doesn’t mean we can’t give cogent accounts of beyond that; which includes the claim that we are beings that exists in a transcendent world with representative faculties.

Ehhhhh…..we just have different ideas of what entails metaphysics.

That’s fine! As long as we understand what each other are saying.

While it may be fine to say it is understood for something to be beyond the possibility of all experience, it remains the case that understanding is not authorized to say what that something is

Then you can’t claim that you have a mind. You can’t claim that you have representative faculties. You can’t claim that your representative faculties use pure conceptions. These are all beyond the possibility of all experience.

Understanding cannot inform what things are not conditioned by the categories,

But you cannot equally know, by your previous claim quoted above this one, that there are categories: they are likewise beyond the possibility of all experience.

Yours wants the content of a conception as metaphysical, which is an exposition of it; mine wants that there are conceptions, including their content, not thought spontaneously as in understanding in conjunction with a synthesis of relations, but given complete in themselves from a pure a priori source.

Correct. Which, under yours, then, you must be, by my lights, an epistemic solipsist. You must not know if there is object permanence, etc. because all your reprsentations are purely a priori and cannot be derived farther back than that. It just seems to me like an incredibly unparsimonious account of reality.

Bob

Hello Philosophim,

"The odds of any box being without air are 51%, and the only thing that matters to the identify of the box, is that its a box,"

To clarify, I am saying that the odds of any box being without are is 51% and the only thing that matters to the identity of the box is that it (1) is a box and (2) has or does not have air in it.

Something can be useful to identifying a thing without it having to do with the identity (essence) of that thing. For example, it is not a part of the identity of being human to draw art. You can be a human and never have drawn art and you may be so disabled that you literally can’t do it. However, if I am walking in the park and see some extravagant art (perhaps graffiti), then I can reasonably inductively infer that that was a human that did it. Philosophim, I identified the origin of the art to be human, while never conceding that the identity (essence) of a human is that it draws art. Likewise, it is actually and logically possible that an alien drew the art, or it formulated naturally as a freak accident.

Accidental properties of a thing, such as experiences a strong correlation between humans and drawing and never experiencing anything else doing it, can influence rationally what we identify as being the case.

then the non-essential properties of the box do not matter to the probability. If X and Y are non-essential, they don't matter to the probability then. I think that's a straight forward conclusion right?

That is correct. But I think you are perhaps misunderstanding: the probability is given to you by a person who knows whether each box (out of the 100) has air in it. They are using strictly essential properties to calculate the probability because they can know whether the boxes meet those 2 essential properties. However, when they present it to you, you can’t know if the box meets your criteria because you don’t know if it has air in it: that’s the whole point!

Now, the probability being unaffected by the unessential properties does not entail, in itself, that it isn’t rational, depending on the circumstances, to use them to infer what you think it is.

Are you saying that the probability of 51% is only a guess?

No. It is the actual probability of pulling a box without air.

Or that we only think that the design of the box is irrelevant?

Irrelevant to what? To the probability that was calculated? Yes. To your evaluation of what you think it is, no.

The scenario is only granting implicitly the former, not the latter.

In other words, is our 51% open to change, and do we not know if it depends on X or Y?

The probability stays the same regardless of what design they have because the guy in the back room knows whether they are (1) boxes and (2) they have air in them. Those are the essential properties, so he uses that to calculate the probability. We, on the other hand, only know they are boxes and that they either do or do not have air; but with consideration of the rest of the context as well (e.g., we’ve experienced them strongly correlated with those designs a billion times each).

, if X and Y are unessential to the probability, then they are unessential to the probability. Any results from experience, if we know the probability is correct, would not change the probability. Therefore no matter if we simply pulled 99/1 airs to no airs, that doesn't change the probability. The outcome of the probability does not change the probability.

I agree with you here, but I think you are focusing too much on the calculation of the probability and not that it is a minuscule difference in probability. Imagine there was a %50.00000001 chance that you will pull a BWOA. Now imagine that you’ve experience in your lifetime (1) only BWAs having design X, (2) design X only being on BWAs, and (3) you have experienced #1 and #2 a BILLION times. Imagine, likewise, same thing for BWOA but with design Y. This extra info doesn’t change the fact that you are 0.00000001% more likely to pull a BWOA.

Now, imagine that the box pulled has design X. Given that there is only a 0.00000001% chance more of pulling a BWOA and the sheer incredibly correlations you’ve experienced inductively of BWA → design X. I think that you are warranted in claiming it is a BWA instead of going with the probability. It is more probable that it will be a BWOA, but by 0.00000001%.

Take away the probability for a second, just think of the inductive aspect I am talking about. If you only ever saw design X on BWA and never anywhere else a BILLION times throughout your life. All through society where you have gone and travelled, it’s always the same o’le design X → BWA. You confirmed each time (a billion times) that the box did have air in it and it had design X. The next time I show you a box with design X, forgetting about probability for a second, what would be the most cogent answer? Clearly that it is a BWA. This is no different than thinking that gravity will work the next time you drop something. Actually, in this case, since it is a billion times, you have stronger reasons to think that a design X → BWA than gravity working next time you drop something (as I doubt you’ve experienced thinks drop a billion times yet in your life).

Now, the only extra information we add into the scenario is that there is actually a 0.00000001% in the sample of 100 that this design X is not BWA (as its BWOA). By my lights, if you go off of the probability, then you are saying that you would rather hedge your bets on a 0.00000001% difference that this design X box presented to you is the first box out of a billion and 1 that is going to break that life-long correlation you have experienced. To me, that 0.00000001% difference doesn’t outweigh.

Now, if the person told me that after each guess the presented box is not returned into the sample and they tell me if my guess is correct, then each time I guess I do have to consider that the probability is changing and eventually that outweighs my experiential knowledge of the correlation. If there’s a 99% that it is a BWOA, then I am definitely going with that.

I don't consider confirmation bias irrational by the way, I think that's a bit harsh.

As far as I’ve understood confirmation bias, it is the tendency to seek out a result without sufficient justification for it. It’s like placebo effect: if I think that aliens are ruling the world and I start actively seeking out reasons to believe it, then I will definitely find them. Not because it is true, but because I am intensely trying to fit the world to my narrative. This is irrational.

Confirmation bias is not, as far as I understand, the same as inductive and abductive reasoning. You can assume rationally that gravity will work for the next thing you drop because you have sufficient evidence, which wasn’t just a result of you trying to fit the world to you wants, that that will be the case.

Back to your point where I feel you changed the context a bit. You noted that it wasn't possible for you to have experienced a Box with Y that did not have air. I had assumed you had. That's true, you don't know if its possible for you to pull that box. Despite the odds, you never have. And yet you know its probable that you will, and its only incredible luck that you haven't so far.

I was just clarifying that, under your terms, you couldn’t claim to know it is possible for a BWOA to have design X.

Likewise, in the scenario, I am not saying that you know that there actually is at least one BWOA which has design X. You don’t have that information. You just know that it is logically and actually possible that a BWOA could have a design X: but “possible” here is being used in the standard philosophical sense and not your sense (because you hold that you have to experience it for it to be possible). So, in your terms, you cannot claim it possible despite it being logically and actually possible.

If the odds for the air or not air do not depend on X or Y, then each X and Y has a respective 49/51 split as well. This is just a logical fact.

No they don’t. The probability of one having design X or Y is completely unknown to you. The probability of picking a BWOA or BWA is irrelevant to the probability of it having a particular design. To know that you would have to know how many in the actual sample have design X and how many have design Y and divide that by 100: you simply do not know this in the scenario.

If you flip a coin ten times and it comes up heads ten times, does the non-essential property of you being in your living room change the odds of the coin's outcome? Of course not

That’s disanalogous: I am not saying that non-essential properties always weigh in or outweigh the probability of something occuring. That’s why I picked this very specific example scenario.

Also, you being in your living room wouldn’t be a non-essential property because it isn’t a property of the probability. Is an unessential reason or factor: not a property.

However, if you’ve experienced a billion times living rooms having a strong gravitational pull than non-living rooms, then, yeah, I think that unessential factor becomes at least a relevant factor. I think this is what you mean by:

"Every time I flip a coin in the living room, it changes the odds to where I always flip heads," then the living room is no longer a non-essential property to the coin flip, but has now become, in your head, an essential property of the coin flip.

Same as if after you count all the X and Y boxes that have ever been made, and sure enough, it turns out that all X's are airs, while all Y's are not airs. The odds didn't change

Sure. I already agree that the probability itself wouldn’t change.

you could say that all boxes with X have air, while all boxes with Y's don't, and applicably know this. It just so happens that there are 49 billion X's, and 51 billion Y's.

No, the sample size for the scenario that you are drawing from a sub-collection of them in the real world. You don’t know that there are 49 billion X’s and 51 billion Y’s but, rather, only that in this sample of 100, there are 51 BWOAs and 49 BWAs. That’s it.

Perhaps the issue you're really holding here is that you want to make decisions that are less rational sometimes.

No philosophim, I am saying it is less rational to go with the 1% chance or 0.00000001% chance that it is a BWOA as opposed to a BWA in this specific scenario.

Bob

Hello Philosophim,

1. Probability is 51% that the box does not have air.

To be clear, this means that any box given has a 51% change that it does not have air in it. So regardless of box design, its a 51% chance that it does not have air.

Correct. The box is, at random, picked from the group and presented to you. The probability is 51% that it does not have air.

The only essential property for a box is that it is a six sided box.

This definition is circular. But I get the point and, for intents and purposes, let’s go with that for now.

If it has air, its a box with air. If it doesn't, its a box without air. Anything else is non-essential.

Correct.

We'll call call a box with air a BWA, and a box without air a BWOA because I'm tired of typing those phrases. :)

Lol. Sounds good! (;

Any box you pick has a 49% chance of being a BWA, while it has a 51% chance of being a BWOA.

Correct.

Now lets include some non-essential properties. What they are is irrelevant. Lets call them properties X and Y.

They are not irrelevant: they are irrelevant to the identity of the thing. That is not the same thing as them being irrelevant flat out.

So I can have a BWA with a X, and a BWA with a Y.

Yes it is logically possible (I am not using “possibility” in your sense here). On top of that, in your terms, it is possible that a BWA has design X and not proven to be possible it has design Y (because you have only experienced it with X). It is, likewise, possible that a BWOA has design Y and not proven to be possible that it has design X (ditto reasoning).

Does this change the probability of the BWA being picked? No. Its still a 49% chance

Correct.

What about a BWOA with a X and a BWOA with a Y? No, still a 51% chance of being picked.

Correct.

This is because we know that X and Y are non-essential the the probability.

For fear of you equivocating here, I am going to stress that all this means is that the probability is independent of whether they have design X or Y. The wording “non-essential” could be equivocated there as having to do with non-essential properties, which has nothing to do with this claim.

Lets say that I pull any number of boxes. It turns out that I only pull BWAs with X's and WBOAs with Y's. I've never pulled a BWA with a Y or a BWOA with a X, but its still within the odds that I can.

Is is possible that I could? Of course.

It is not provably possible under your terms that a BWA could have a design of Y because you haven’t experienced it before. Just to clarify.

But does that change the probability? No, non-essential properties don't affect the probability.

Correct.

Therefore it is still more rational to assume over the course of picking more boxes that I should always guess that I'll pull a BWOA, whether that's a X or a Y.

No. You are forgetting that you have experienced this correlation a billion times each (and none vice-versa). Yes, it is logically possible (note: I am not using “possible” here in your terms) that, even after experiencing X with BWA a billion times, the box is design X and BWOA but you are more justified in inferring that it is a BWA since the probability is so close to each other.

Let’s make it even more obvious what I am getting at: imagine that in the scenario you also know that, although you don’t know which design the box will definitively have (because it is a non-essential property), only design X and Y have ever been associated with either a BWA or BWOA. Now, to clarify, this does not make the designs essential properties: I am saying that these unessential designs have, by happenstance or purpose, been associated (correlated) with them in the past. Maybe there’s a law in place that you have to make BWA’s with X and BWOA’s with Y, but the actual definition of them both doesn’t include X and Y as essential properties (which is entirely possible).

Now you have really good reasons to believe that when you see a box presented to you with design X, although designs aren’t essential properties, that it is a BWA. Is it logically and actually possible that someone broke the law (or what have you) and made a BWOA with X? Absolutely. But guessing BWOA on the X designed box when there is merely a 1% more chance it is such isn’t very cogent given these circumstances.

If you believe that because every BWA you've pulled so far is a X, therefore its more reasonable that a box with a X is going to be a BWA, that's not rational, its just confirmation bias.

Firstly, I am not saying that you have drawn a billion times from the sample of 100. I am saying that you have experienced, independently of drawing from the 100, a billion times each correlation.

If I were saying that just because I pulled a BWA last time that the next will be BWA, then I would agree that is irrational and confirmation bias: that’s not what I’ve been saying.

Secondly, if you would like to call what I just clarified as irrational, then you would have to say all inductions and abductions are irrational because that is how they work. Take Hume’s problem of induction, which you mentioned in your OP: you would have to say it is equally irrational to hold that the future will resemble the past. But this is nonsense: it isn’t irrational to induce or abduce: it can be quite rational.

Your biased results don't make something more or less cogent. It is always more rational to believe that the box will be a BWOA whether its an X or a Y.

Wrong. If I know that the designs X and Y have always been associated with either box and that there is a colossal correlation between X → BWA and Y → BWOA and the probability of one is only 1% greater than the other of occurring, then I am rationally justified in thinking that an X will be accompanied by a BWA (although I could most certainly be wrong). So when they present one at random to me and I see it is an X and only 1% less likely that it is a BWA, I am justified in claiming it is a BWA.

You are basically hedging your bets on a minuscule 1% difference and expecting, given the contextual background knowledge you would have, that this next one will be the only one out of a billion and out of every single one that you have seen that will break the correlation.

I think you are right to assume that if we were to keep drawing, returning, amd re-shuffling the boxes that it would even out over time to 51% being BWOA—but we are talking about one selection here.

With that simplified, does that answer your question?

No. I think the above explains why I think that.

Bob

Hello Philosophim,

Why are the boxes accidental? Lets not just say they are. Lets prove they are.

They are accidental because they have been defined as non-essential: distinctive knowledge is definitional. That’s all the proof that is required.

For the personal knowledge within the scenario, I defined a box as “a container with a flat base and sides, typically square or rectangular and having a lid” and defined an “box-with-air” as a “box” + “air”. That is the proof that it is unessential what design the boxes have, because I have defined “box-with-air” and “box-without-air” to have everything but those two factors as unessential.

It is known that they randomly switch between box designs for air and not air, and it turns out the box design X and Y have exactly 50% change of having air or not air.

Firstly, in the scenario I gave, there is no probability known about how many they design in X or Y fashion; so this isn’t analogous. Secondly, that can be your reason for defining a “box-with-air” and “box-without-air” as having designs that are always accidental, but an accidental property is just an unessential property; which does not necessitate that there is a 50/50% chance of it occurring.

Now, lets say that I receive a billion boxes of X, and a billion boxes of Y. low and behold, it turns out all the X's have air, while all the Y's don't. Its an incredibly improbable scenario, but it can be independently verified that yes, its completely a 50/50 chance that either box has air or not.

This is irrelevant, because you don’t know in my scenario that it is a 50/50 chance; and it is not, by definition, true that something which is an accidental property has a 50/50 chance of occurring.

This contradicts your own definition of accidental properties:

The properties which I find are important to me for my memory, the curly fur and hooves, are identities of the sheep I call essential properties. Properties I observe which are irrelevant to my identity of the sheep, I call accidental properties. Accidental properties allow me to remark on how the identity is affected beyond its number of essential properties.

Your definition simply does not equate “accidental properties” with “something which is proven beyond definition as non-essential”. It clearly defines it as “that which isn’t an essential property of the thing in question”. Regardless, in my scenario, when I say that the designs are accidental, I do not mean that they have an equal chance of occurring nor that there is a defect in my ability to identify (such as you color blind analogy): I mean more broadly that the designs are unessential properties.

The designs are accidental, not an accidental property then. If you have no foreknowledge of whether box X or Y should or should not have air, then you have not yet decided whether X or Y design are essential or accidental to the identity.

Firstly, by your own definition of it, any non-essential property is an accidental property (i.e., “ Properties I observe which are irrelevant to my identity of the sheep”)—it is irrelevant if you have foreknowledge of all the potential properties of a thing. If you define a sheep as [X, Y, Z] essential properties, then it is necessarily the case that a property which is not X, Y, or Z is unessential and thusly accidental. Now, you can refurbish accidental properties to become essential ones given new knowledge; but that is different than your lack of knowledge of a property being undecided yet.

Secondly, whether the first point is true is irrelevant for the scenario I gave: I said definitively that what I am distinctively calling a “box-with-air” and “box-without-air” is those two aforesaid properties, and all the rest are unessential ones. So you can’t validly claim that my accidental properties are no longer accidental. It is a matter of definition, which is distinctive knowledge.

Also, we have to clarify what we're referring to here. If we're referring to the core identity of the box itself as a particular type of measuring tool where air doesn't matter, X and Y are accidental. If we're referring to the probability of whether a X or Y box has air or not, then the box design is no longer accidental to our point!

I think you are thinking beyond the scenario, when I am looking for you to address specifically the scenario given. I am saying that the core identity of a box and “with-air” vs. “without-air” is those two aforesaid properties, and everything else is an accidental property. I can do that because it is distinctive (and not applicable) knowledge in the scenario, which is definitional.

No. In the scenario when you are determining the most cogent solution, the box design is not an essential property of anything. I am specifically saying that the design is irrevelant to the definition thereof: I am not saying that the design for the airless box has some necessary component to it that enables it to vacuum out the air.

Likewise, you aren’t calculating the probability of it having air in the box: you can’t. You will never be able to calculate the numerator and denominator for that question: the only probability you know in the scenario is that there is a 51% chance that the box does not have air.

Taken another way, a type of dog can be green or blue. Whether its blue or green is irrelevant to knowing the identification of the dog. However, you later discover that 74% of these dogs are green, while 25% are blue, and 1% could be any other color. When you are asking, "Is this dog that I cannot see behind a screen green or blue," at that point the probability of the color becomes an essential set or properties in knowing the outcome

It is not an essential property of what a “dog” is (which I think you agree with me on that) and it is not an essential property of anything—it is essential to answering the question nevertheless. An essential property is a property first and foremost, which is of a concept (i.e., distinctive knowledge of a thing): you have no concept here to attach the color to. This is implicit in your example: “ The properties which I find are important to me for my memory, the curly fur and hooves, are identities of the sheep I call essential properties”. I think you are confusing something being essential for answering purposes with an essential property.

To sum up an accidental property - A property which is completely irrelevant to one's assertation or denial of the identity.

This contradicts your definition in your OP:

Accidental properties allow me to remark on how the identity is affected beyond its number of essential properties.

These definitions are incompatible with each other. If an accidental property is actually something which is completely irrelevant to its assertation of the identity of a thing, as opposed to merely being not within its set of essential properties, then not all non-essential properties are accidental (i.e., not all non-essential properties meet your first quote here of a definition just because they meet the second quoted definition). I think you are thinking that in virtue of a property being non-essential it doesn’t matter for identifying the said thing, but that is a separate claim than that it is non-essential (and currently in dispute).

I am saying that, although it doesn't matter for meeting the definition of a thing, the accidental properties play a role in identifying it pragmatically (and am thusly questioning your separate claim that non-essential properties are irrelevant for identification purposes).

To see if you understand, take your example again and try breaking it down into clear and provable accidental or primary properties for the context.

I already did this in my post outlining the scenario:

2. You hold that the only essential properties of a box-without-air is that it is a box (i.e., a container with a flat base and sides, typically square or rectangular and having a lid) and it is not filled with air in its empty space (within it).
3. You hold that the only essential properties of a box-with-air is that it is a box (i.e., ditto) and it is filled with air in its empty space (within in).

I am shaping an identity distinctly out of discrete experience. There’s no further proof needed. If I say, for this example, “green” is “the number one”, then the set of essential properties for “green” is [“1”]. There’s no further proof required.

Second, clearly demonstrate what is a possibility, probability, and plausibility.

A possibility is something which has been experienced before at least once. In the scenario, the billion experiences of each are the experiential context for it being possible that the box presented is filled with air or not.

A probability is a quantitative likelihood: a numerator divided by a denominator, where the latter is the whole quantitative sample size and the former is the selected items within the sample size that one wants to know the likelihood of occurring. In the scenario, the only probability given is that there is a 51% chance that the box is a “box-without-air”, and any deducible information therefrom (e.g., there’s a 49% chance that it is a box-with-air).

Only after that careful dismantling, try to prove that you can make a plausibility more cogent than a possibility.

I am saying that:

Since the probability that it is a box-without-air is negligible (because it is only a 1% difference) and the experiential association of the box-with-air with design X, although the design is not a part of its essential properties, so many times (viz., a billion) warrants claiming that the first random box pulled from this sample, being of design X, is a box-with-air.

In this scenario, the incredibly strong correlation between design (X or Y) and the box type (air or airless) outweighs merely going off of the probability. This doesn’t mean that a strong correlation between design and box type always outweighs probability.

Bob

Hello Philosophim,

If these are truly accidental properties, then they are not in consideration

Why would resemblance and inductive association to the accidental properties in relation to the essential thing not be a consideration?

I am saying that, in this hypothetical consideration, the designs are accidental: it isn’t a question of whether people are implicitly claiming them as essential properties (in this scenario).

The definition of an accidental property is just that it is non-essential: that doesn't mean that it is irrelevant to the context of the situation.

Since the probability that it is a box-without-air is negligible (because it is only a 1% difference) and the experiential association of the box-with-air with design X, although the design is not a part of its essential properties, so many times (viz., a billion) warrants claiming that the first random box pulled from this sample, being of design X, is a box-with-air.

As a reminder of an accidental property, these are properties that are variable to the essential. So a "tree without branches" would have no bearing on its identity as a tree. So we can eliminate the variables X and Y from our consideration.

Thank you for the clarification, but I was under that understanding as well. My point is that the accidental properties are not removed absolutely from the consideration of what is most cogent to hold. This scenario is a great example to me.

As it is irrelevant whether the design matches X or Y, if I am given a box and I know that probability is 51/49%, then the more reasonable guess is to guess that the box I am given is the 51% chance that it does not have air.

This is true if you are removing a large portion of the context of the scenario I gave which, arguably, isn’t the scenario anymore. Are you claiming that the scenario in which you are simply given the knowledge that there is a 49/51% chance is equivalent to the scenario I gave for epistemic purposes? I find that hard to believe that you would disregard all of the rest of that context.

Implicitly, what most people would think in this context is, "Box X is designed to have air, Box Y is designed not to have air." These would become essential properties for most people in their context of encountering billions of each kind and having the same outcome in regards to air.

To clarify, this is irrelevant. The scenario outlines explicitly that they are accidental properties.

If its truly accidental, then the person would not even consider Box X or Box Y as being associated with having air, because it doesn't matter.

In the scenario, as I hold the possibility is more cogent than the probability, I can say that I do not hold that the design X of the box has anything to do with its essential properties but yet it factors into what is most cogent to bet on. Resemblance and inductive association matter to me.

The examples so far are doing nothing to counter the underlying claims about essential and non-essential properties, they're really examples in which you need to correctly identify if a property is essential or non-essential based on the person's context. Once that identity is complete, everything falls into place.

But the whole point is that I outlined it very clearly what the essential and accidental properties were. Pointing out that most people wouldn’t assign them that way is irrelevant to the thought experiment.

You don't have to have an example at all to question my conclusions Bob, its like an equation.

The point here is that I think the equation is incorrect because, in this scenario, it is not more cogent to claim that the box is a box-without-air (due to there being a 51% probability) when the rest of the context is expounded. Without that context, then my claim would be different. You basically just countered a straw man of the scenario: one in which a box is handed to you and you are only given the knowledge that there is a 51% chance it is a box-without-air and a 49% chance it is a box-with-air (and there are no other options). But that wasn’t the scenario, unless you would like to claim that they are equivalent for intents of epistemic evaluation?

Bob

I would like to add a 7th aspect to remove any ambiguity:

7. Design X and Y look absolutely nothing alike.

Hello Mww,

I don’t think there’s sufficient warrant to claim there are other minds in any case, but it is nonetheless reasonable to suppose there are.

Why would it be reasonable if you cannot know anything about the things-in-themselves, which would include other minds? Wouldn’t it be most reasonable to be an epistemic solipsist?

I recognize the ubiquity of the conventional use of the word, but I personally don’t hold with minds as something a human being has. I consider it justified to substitute reason for mind anywhere in a dialectic without detriment to it, given the fact it is impossible to deny, all else being equal, that every human is a thinking subject. On the other hand, I am perfectly aware I am a thinking subject, which authorizes me to claim reason for myself, and that beyond all doubt.

But there are things about you as a mind you cannot prove of others without venturing into metaphysical claims about the things-in-themselves. Yes, we all reason, but that’s really not what a mind is in the context of solipsism. It just seems like an evasion (inadvertently) of the real issue I am trying to address here to say that ‘mind’ is merely ‘reasoning’.

Likewise, you can’t prove, even if that is the case that we all reason, that ‘we’ are the ‘ones reasoning’. Do you agree with me on that?

The absurdity resides in the notion that if non-perception implies non-existence, then my perception is necessary existential causality itself. But it is absolutely impossible for me to cause the existence of whatever I wish to perceive, as well as to not perceive that of which I have no wish whatsoever, which makes explicit the only existences I could possibly be the causality of, is that which was already caused otherwise, which is all my perceptions could ever tell me anyway.

Yes, but if you can’t know anything about the things-in-themselves, then you can’t know that it is absurd for your mind to be producing it all.

Then there is time. If I am the cause of an object’s existence merely from my perception of it, then the time of my perception is identical to the time of the object’s existence, which is the same as my having attributed to that object the property of time. But time, as well as space, can never be assigned as a property, therefore the time or space of the object’s existence cannot be an attribution of mine

Time and space aren’t properties of objects per se, but you are, under transcendental idealism, producing them under space and time. Saying that the objects only exist in your perception is just to say that there no corresponding object beyond those forms of space and time: it isn’t to say that the objects themselves can be attributed the property of time in the same manner as the property of being red.

In order to know a thing in the strictest sense, it must manifest as an experience. What is impossible (in terms of knowledge) about that, is that minds of any form are never going to manifest as an experience.

It can agree with this, as a matter of semantics, if you are saying that possible knowledge is that which one experiences; but then this just pushes the question back: why can’t we say that possible knowledge goes beyond our experiences?

Also, as a side note, wouldn’t it be impossible to know that, for example, your mind uses pure conceptions of the understanding to produce the world if we are defining possible knowledge as only that which we experience? Because we definitely don’t experience that.

how would such knowledge be possible? How is it that you think that which the judgement represents, can be known?

Because we can tell that our perception of the world is dictated by our representative faculties. For example, there are color blind people: this is due to their minds representing the world with disabled functionality.

That we cannot know the thing-in-itself has nothing to do with metaphysics. Metaphysics proper concerns itself with solutions to the problems pure reason brings upon itself, of which the thing-in-itself is not one.

It most certainly is. Metaphysics is about understanding that which is beyond all possibility of experience, and that includes transcendental philosophy.

Things-in-themselves are beyond the possibility of all experience.

Good vs bad logic in conjunction with experience or possible experience, for whatever metaphysics, has better service.

Metaphysics predicated solely on logic is bad metaphysics. That only gets them to a logically consistent view. Parsinomy, coherence, empirical adequacy, and intuitions are just some examples of pertinent non-logical factors.

Ahhhh…that’s it? Transcendental idealism shifted the entire idealistic paradigm, so I figured that which attempts to shift it again, would shift from that.

Analytic Idealism, I would say, is just pure ontolotical idealism; whereas transcendental idealism is really only epistemic idealism—it isn’t idealism in the ontological sense. So I wouldn’t say analytic idealism has shifted the paradigm again, this is an old view starting with schopenhauer, plato, etc.

There is a short missive in CPR which sets the ground for its doctrine, which says metaphysics is predicated necessarily on the possibility of synthetic a priori cognitions, then goes about proving there are such things which validates the ground initially set as a premise. That to which synthetic cognitions are juxtaposed, are analytic, so….I just figured the new style of idealism wanted to be grounded in pure analytic cognitions, which are mere tautologies necessarily true in themselves, which, of course, a universal mind would have to be, re: self-evident

I am not sure I completely followed this, but the idea would be to say simply that the universal mind is the best explanation for the world that is given to us. Also, I don’t think it uses Kant’s synthetic vs. analytic distinction; or if it does then it denies that the reality which we can know is purely synthetic of our minds.

Bob

Hello Philosophim,

Good response!

. Making a complex example without carefully and correctly identifying the chain of reasoning, and when it relies on sub-inductions, is not a counter.

Fair point. I think it may be easier for us if we stick to one specific sub-scenario of the thought experiment to really dive into this. So I am going to hit you with a more oddly specific version of this so that I am identifying the exact reasoning chain and see what you think.

So let’s talk about this specific scenario:

A box is selected at random from a sample size of 100 and presented to you. 51 are boxes-without-air and 50 are boxes-with-air.

1. Probability is 51% that the box does not have air.
2. You hold that the only essential properties of a box-without-air is that it is a box (i.e., a container with a flat base and sides, typically square or rectangular and having a lid) and it is not filled with air in its empty space (within it).
3. You hold that the only essential properties of a box-with-air is that it is a box (i.e., ditto) and it is filled with air in its empty space (within in).
4. You have experienced a billion boxes with design X and every one was a box-with-air. Every part of the design is an accidental property except for it being a box and having air (as defined above). You have never experienced a design X which was not a box-with-air.
5. You have experienced a billion boxes with design Y and every one was a box-without-air. Every part of the design is an accidental property except for it being a box and not having air (as defined above). You have never experienced a design Y which was not a box-without-air.
6. The box presented to you (which was picked at random) matches the design of design X.
7. Design X and Y look absolutely nothing alike.

If probability is more cogent in this case, then you should hedge your bets that it is a box-without-air.
If possibility outweighs probability in this case, then you should hedge your bets that it is a box-with-air.

If your claim that probability is always a more cogent bet than possibility, then you are committed to saying that it is a box-without-air in this scenario.

I think the possibility in this case is more cogent, what say you?

Bob

I'm going to leave it there, Bob: it's been fun, but we are inevitably going to continue to go around in circles. Thanks for the conversation.

Fair enough my friend! I enjoyed our conversation and look forward to future ones!

Have a wonderful day!
Bob

Hello Philosophim,

Absolutely no worries on time! (:

Firstly, I want to disclaim that, although I read your discussion board posts herein, I may be misremembering a thing or two (inadvertently); so please feel free to abruptly correct me here and there if I do (and I apologize in advance).

After coming to understand your methodological approach better, I think that the hierarchy of inductions, as a hierarchy of categories (e.g., probability, possibility, plausibility, and the irrational) that definitively trump one another (e.g., probability is always more cogent than a possibility, assuming they are at the same point within the chain of reasoning), is insufficient to account for cogency of inductions.

To provide my reasoning on this, I would like to lead you through a thought experiment and see what you think. I am going to do it sequentially so you see my full line of reasoning.

For this thought experiment, I am going to refer to a “box-without-air” and a “box-with-air”. By both, I mean a glass box which has a trap door close to the top which has room to place objects that upon pressing a button fall through the trap door. So we can place a wooden cube in that top space, click the button, and observe it fall through the trap door and land at the bottom of the box. Now, by a “box-without-air”, I mean just that the air has been removed from the box (so it is like a vacuum sealed container). By “box-with-air” I mean a normal box that has air in it.

You and I are sitting on the porch (of one of our houses: whichever) and we are presented with a “box” (which is a trap door box described above) that is either a “box-without-air” or a “box-with-air”: we aren’t told which it is. It has a wooden block in the upper floor area that will fall once the trap door is released.

We are asked: “how fast will the wooden block fall once the trap door is released?”.

You calculate an estimation of X m/s^2, which factors in air resistance. I, on the other hand, make the exact same calculations and estimations but minus the factoring in of the air resistance.

I ask you: which of our beliefs is more cogent to hold? This is going to depend on if it is more cogent to factor in air resistance, which depends on whether it is more cogent to believe it is a box-without-air or a box-with-air. Now, at this point, I think both of our reactions is to invoke the hierarchy of inductions to decipher who is correct. Let’s narrow down this experiment to make things interesting (and explicate some worries of mine).

Let’s say we don’t know the probability of either and we have both have experienced a wooden block fall from a trap door within a glass box before that was a “box-without-air” and a “box-with-air”.

We can’t appeal to probabilities, so our strongest form of induction is out. Now we can both invoke the second strongest, which is possibility to defend our beliefs (which are at odds with one another). So how do we resolve it? I think the solution could be, since it is a comparison of the same category of knowledge (i.e., possibility) and the same link in the chain (i.e., first chain link), prima facie, the quantity of experiences of each could suffice. So if we have both experienced 100 times “boxes-with-air” and only 50 times “boxes-without-air”, then we could say that most cogent solution is to believe that the box has air in it.

But, let’s make this more interesting (; . Let’s say we have both experienced the “boxes-with-air” 100 times on the moon (in special labs thereon) and the “boxes-without-air” 50 times on the earth (in normal neighborhoods in which we live). Now, although the quantity is in favor of saying the box is full of air, it is more cogent to hold that it is without air because our experiences of the “boxes-with-air” compared to “boxes-without-air” is located far away from where we are currently encountering a “box” (which is on the porch on earth). So now, location is the deciding factor. Likewise, we could say, to make things equal, that we’ve experience them the same amount (but still in those drastically different locations) and, according to your view as I understand it, we would have no means of deciphering which is more cogent even though, to me, it is clearly that it is a “box-without-air” (in this case). We can’t appeal any category within your inductive hierarchy to explain this cogency nor can we appeal to the number of instances within a category: it’s purely location this time that breaks the tie.

But we can go even deeper: let’s say that we’ve experienced “boxes-without-air” only once and “boxes-with-air” a million times (and both within the same reasonable locale), but the box we are presented with (of which we are calculating the fall acceleration) looks identical to the one “box-without-air” we have experienced and absolutely nothing like the “boxes-with-air” we have experience (way more many times). It feels just like the “box-without-air”, has the same structure, same colors, same mechanisms are there, etc. The sheer matchability of uniqueness makes it more cogent to hold that it is a “box-without-air” even though we are comparing two possibilities and one possibility clearly has a larger quantity of experiences in its favor—yet it isn’t more cogent. It is purely the uniqueness identified in the box that is the differentiating factor.

Now, let’s make it completely break (by my lights) the induction hierarchy: let’s prove a plausibility is more cogent than a possibility and probability under certain conditions. Let’s say we don’t know the probability, and we’ve never experienced a “box-without-air” and we have experienced a “box-with-air” a million times. But, we inspect the box that is presented to us (which we are calculating the fall acceleration for) and see that it has “box-without-air inc.” on the bottom (engraved thereon). We google that company and find reasonably that it is a real company, they make actual “boxes-without-air”, and this box (which we are inspecting) looks exactly like the ones in the photos on their website. Now, all of that is a plausibility: we haven’t done anything about that company except for google them. We do, however, have know that it is possible that it is a “box-with-air” because we have experienced it before (many, many, and I mean many times): but, I submit to you, that that possibility is less cogent than holding, in this nuanced case, that the box is a “box-without-air”. The plausibility has outweighted the possibility in my eyes.

Likewise, let’s say I know the probability of the box being a “box-without-air” is 90% and that the box brand says “not an airless box inc.”. Upon only googling around, the “not an airless box inc.” is adamantly against the idea of selling and using boxes that are capable of creating an airless vacuum (perhaps its against their religious beliefs). Firstly, the sheer fact that there is a probability and the other is a plausibility entails that one should go off of the former under your view, but, I submit to you, it is actually more cogent to hold that it is a “box-with-air”. Secondly, even though there is a high probability that it is a “box-without-air”, given the nuanced circumstances, it is more likely that this one is not one of them. Now, importantly, this is an example of a probability being outweighed by a plausibility.

By point here is that, upon further reflection, it is insufficient to use the inductive hierarchy you have proposed because they do not supersede eachother absolutely in the manner you have proposed. The context and circumstances matter, of which are not elaborated upon in your expounding of your view. Such as, simply as examples, location and uniqueness. Likewise, I do think that plausible evidence can outweigh probable evidence (as seen above).

I wanted to get your take on this: am I misunderstanding or misremembering the view here?

Bob

Hello Philosophim,

First of all, as I have stated before, I think that this methodological approach is severely underrated and underappreciated (especially in this forum): it is a deceivingly simple but yet an incredibly effective pragmatic approach!

After thinking about it more and reading your new post here, I have some reservations (or perhaps confusions (; ) I would like to voice to you (pertaining thereto); however, I know we already had a long conversation (and I would imagine you probably moved to a new thread due to the immense number of posts between us) so I wanted to reach out preliminarily and ask you if you would like me to voice the concerns or not? This is your board, and I want to respect that. So, absolutely no worries if you were wanting to hear from other people and would like me to refrain from continuing/starting a conversation again about it.

Just let me know either way. I look forward to hearing from you.

Bob

Hello Mww,

One of the subtleties of metaphysics in general, is the recognition that only through reason can reason be examined, from which follows that all that is reasoned about is predicated on what is reason is. This is, of course, the epitome of circularity, and because it is inevitable, it best be kept to a minimum. No one has admitted to having sufficient explanation for how we arrive at representations, even while many philosophize concerning what they do in a speculative theory, justifying their inclusions in it. So saying, to posit an additional representational faculty, doing what it does and we not being able to say how it does what it does, stretches circularity beyond what couldn’t be explained beforehand.

This is fair.

I mean you are correct, in that there are things, such as those you listed, that I have no warrant to claim, either as fact objectively, or as irreducible truth subjectivity, which is exactly the conditions under which transcendental philosophy is to be understood.

Oh I see. Are you agreeing with me then that:

[/quote]For example, under transcendental idealism I don’t think you can claim: there are other minds; that you have a mind; that you have representative faculties; that objects persist in their existences even when you are not perceiving them, etc[/quote]

yet you hold with the mind as a representational faculty, which is something impossible to know without the antecedent knowledge there is a mind, and, the nature of it is such that it has representational capabilities.

I am not following which part of this is impossible knowledge (other than your claim that we cannot know the things-in-themselves). Yes, I think we can know that there are minds that represent the world around to themselves: what is impossible (in terms of knowledge) about that?

If conception is itself a metaphysical function, and if possibility is a metaphysical condition, then whatever is conceivable must be metaphysically possible.

Why would conceptions be a metaphysical function?

No matter what was turned around from, or by whom, I never said nor hinted there is no metaphysics beyond transcendental philosophy, or that all metaphysics is necessarily predicated on transcendental philosophy’s critical method.

I apologize: I must have misunderstood you. I thought you were claiming that we cannot perform valid metaphysics beyond transcendental philosophy—as we cannot know the things-in-themselves. Is that incorrect?

One can attempt to solves pure reason’s problems, including the one of singular importance, any way he wishes, depending on the preliminaries he uses.

I wasn’t saying that you were defining metaphysics as only transcendental philosophy but, rather, that you would claim we cannot do metaphysics beyond transcendental investigations because that is impossible knowledge for you.

Perhaps you might be so kind as to reiterate what your whole point originally was, with respect to what you said there.

With respect to what was said there, I was saying responding to:

except in the sense that whatever it is that appears to us as invariant objects does so reliably, which suggests, but doesn't prove, that the in itself is invariant – Janus

And here’s the problem: you can’t say that things-in-themselves cannot be thought of as knowably having object permanence and then turn around and say that the phenomena suggests that the things-in-themselves have object permanence. The phenomena do not suggest anything about the things-in-themselves under Kantianism. Period.

And the part you quoted was here (in its full context):

Janus, you are conceding here that you can, at the very least, get at what is suggested of the things-in-themselves via the phenomena, which is clearly not compatible with Kantianism (in its original formulation). I personally agree with you, but then you can’t turn around and claim, like a Kantian would (which was my whole point originally with Mww), that we can’t do metaphysics beyond transcendental philosophy. Your argument for object invariance here is exactly that: a metaphysical claim pertaining to the things-in-themselves.

I am discussing with Janus about whether one, as a Kantian, can claim there is object permanence. Janus believes so (under the conditions they are explaining), and I say no. When I invoked you I was just tying in our conversation that I think we can go beyond transcendental metaphysics, and I think you would say we can’t (because knowledge of the things-in-themselves) is impossible. I think this is a self-undermining under Kantianism (for many reasons that we have already expounded).

I apologize if I misrepresented you there, please correct me where I am wrong.

Do you have an idea as to why your system is called analytic idealism, insofar as it is a metaphysical doctrine?

It is originally called ‘analytic’ idealism because it is formulated under the Analytic school of philosophy, but I like it, beyond that personally, due to my definition of objectivity: so I prefer saying “analytic idealism” over “objective idealism” because I don’t like misusing the term ‘objective’ in that manner. Technically, it is a form of ‘objective idealism’ as formulated by Kastrup.

Bob

Hello Janus,

If things-in-themselves are responsible for producing the phenomenal things, and the phenomenal things are reliably invariant (to varying degrees according to the phenomena under consideration, of course) then we can say that things in themselves reliably give rise to invariant phenomena. That doesn't say anything about the things in themselves being invariant in themselves, though.

I think it does, because the only way a thing a representation can be invariant is if either (1) the mind of which it is produced simply fabricates it as such, or (2) the object of which it is representing (which is a thing-in-itself) is invariant. There’s no other options by my lights.

What I meant there is the same as what I said above; we have no warrant for saying that things-in-themselves are invariant in themselves, but we do know that they are invariant in the sense that they reliably produce invariant phenomena

I understand what you are saying here, but this is predicated on the idea that there is another option, plausibly, other than #1 and #2 above.

In positing things-in-themselves as being the things that give rise to the appearance of phenomenal things I'd say Kant must be committed to that much.

I don’t think so because I think #1 and #2 are the only options, and Kant denies #2; so #1 is the only thing plausibly left. Otherwise, Kant (and you) would be saying that the invariance of the phenomena are not fabrications of one’s mind and they aren’t a reflection of the objects themselves—but if the latter is true then they their invariance must be due to the mind.

Now I admit that there is a tension here in the Kantian idea that we know absolutely nothing about things-in-themselves, but I don't think it amounts to an outright inconsistency.

I think, given what I said above, it is an inconsistency. Either the mind’s representative faculty cause the invariance, or the things-in-themselves which are being represented do: there’s no third option. So to make a claim like “we can know phenomenal invariance but nothing about the things-in-themselves”, to me, is claiming a third option that can’t exist.

If "the nature and relations of objects in space and time" and space and time themselves are human representations, human perceptions, then it would seem to follow that these cannot exist apart from human experience.

By my lights, if space and time are pure intuitions, then the phenomenal permanence must be in our minds representative faculties (and not the things-in-themselves)—unless one wants to posit a second outer space and time beyond our minds. If this is the case, though, then there’s no reason to believe that there are outer objects (things-in-themselves) in any sense that we perceive them, and thusly, that they have permanence (other than our minds creating them fictitiously as permanent).

All he is saying is that the phenomena of perception cannot exist absent perception, and that seems right, doesn't it?

I don’t think that’s just what he is saying: our perceptions are all we can know according to him; they are perceptions of X, and X is never knowable. Thusly, we can’t even know that the things-in-themselves have object permanence, which I think is highly unparsimonious.

I'm only talking about the natural expectations of the dog that objects don't simply disappear when not being perceived

If don’t think you can know that the things-in-themselves produce the permanence (which you can’t if Kant is right), then the only other option is that the mind creates it as a matter of fiction—which would mean that it isn’t there when you aren’t perceiving it.

It might seem inconceivable to us that something could produce a world of differentiated and diversely invariant objects without being differentiated and invariant in itself, but it doesn't follow that we therefore know that the in itself must be differentiated and invariant

To me, it does. Otherwise, you are invoking magic, which is always unparsimonious. (1) the mind of which it is produced simply fabricates it as such, or (2) the object of which it is representing (which is a thing-in-itself) is invariant.

Likewise, to say that the phenomenal invariance is caused by something which itself is not invariant is to say that it is a mere appearance and thusly there isn’t really object permanence.

Think of it this way: if the things-in-themselves are not persisting when you are not representing them but yet your phenomenal experience of them is that they are persistent, then the only option available to you is that the mind is fabricating it and thusly the persistence is an illusion: the object doesn’t persist when you are not looking at it because that persistence is a feature of your mind.

We might think that to be the most plausible explanation, but quantum physics might make us think twice about that

I don’t see how quantum mechanics is helping your case: could you please elaborate?

Bob

Hello Mww,

You can think all day long it takes three lines to enclose a space, but you’re not going to prove it with apodeitic mathematical certainty, unless you physically draw three real lines in a relation to each other corresponding to the image representing your thinking.

But the image I draw won’t necessarily be accurate and thusly will not prove it in itself. For example, take a circle: the circumference is 2πr. There is no circle, Mww, that you can draw for me that will actually have a circumference of exactly 2πr. The proof is within the abstractions and the drawings are approximations thereof and, consequently, afford no such apodeitic mathematical certainty on there own.

Agreed, not part of our construction of the world, which begins with phenomena, whereas mathematics ends with them

I think you may be saying something different than me while still agreeing on mathematical anti-realism: you seem to be saying that math is ingrained into the a priori construction of the phenomenal world, whereas I am not even granting that much.

I think that our mathematical formulas are good estimations of our qualitative experience, which is necessarily not quantitative—so there’s no math in it. Reality is fundamentally a clash of wills.

For me, a thing I have yet to experience is already metaphysically possible, simply because it is conceivable as a thing, or a manifold of things, such as a world of things

But not all conceivable things are metaphysically possible. For example, under your metaphysics the understanding is not a phenomena: so it is metaphysically impossible for the understanding to be a phenomena. However, we can both imagine a world where the understanding is phenomena. But that doesn’t matter because, under your metaphysical view, that’s impossible because there is nothing you believe than actualize that potential.

You’re saying a thing is metaphysically possible insofar as some existence with the potency to actualization some possible thing hasn’t done it yet, which is tantamount to a non-natural causality.

I don’t see how this follows. Something can have the potential to be actualized metaphysically and be perfectly natural. For example, under my view, it is actually and metaphysically possible for the ball at the top of the hill to fall to the ground because I belief the world has to offer such things that could actualize it.

Now, I accept the transcendental conception of a non-natural causality, but not with respect to the actualization of metaphysically possible things.

I didn’t follow this point: what do you mean by the “non-natural causality” in transcendental philosophy? And what do you mean in terms of its contradistinction to the “actualization of metaphysically possible things”?

For example, under transcendental idealism I don’t think you can claim: there are other minds; that you have a mind; that you have representative faculties; that objects persist in their existences even when you are not perceiving them, etc…… — Bob Ross

Transcendental philosophy is a speculative methodology. It doesn’t work by claims, which imply possible truths, but by internal logical consistency in the unity of abstract conceptions, same as yours.

I am failing to see how this was a response to my objections that you quoted. What do you mean by “it doesn’t work by claims”?

Perhaps, but not more knowledge. So we have between us, one philosophy which demonstrates that some knowledge is impossible given this set of conditions, and another philosophy which demonstrates that the former impossible knowledge really isn’t, given a different set of conditions, which in effect, only demonstrates another form of impossible knowledge.

What is the other form of impossible knowledge that my theory conceives?

Idealism, in whichever denomination, is always predicated on a subject that cognizes in accordance with a system contained in the form of his intellect

Correct.

I rather think your idealism has to do with the cognitions, whereas my idealism has to do with the system proper;

I think from your perspective I am “skipping over” the representative faculty of my mind which is supposed to the ultimate metaphysical dead-end. Whereas, I think we can extend the same metaphysical inquiries to all of reality.

yours concerns what is thought about, mine with thought itself.

I can agree with this to a certain extent; but I also hold that our minds are representative faculties—however, I don’t think it is cogent to claim that we can only go that far. Likewise, as a side note, I am not thoroughly convinced of Kant’s 12 categories: I appreciated Schopenhauer’s idea of the understanding as simply the PSR of becoming better.

Yours is limitless, mine self-limiting.

Fair.

When considering the pros and cons of each, parsimony should be the rule.

Parsimony, internal/external coherence, empirical adequacy, intuitions, explanatory power, reliability, and credence. I would say.

Bob

Hello Janus,

I'm not becoming hostile, just impatient. I just don't believe that you are grasping what is meant by things in themselves. So, I am not going to deal with or respond to anything other than that one point at this juncture.

Fair enough. Since we began this discussion as a conversation about Kantianism, I am going to assume you mean to be explaining it in terms thereof—unless you specify otherwise. In other words, I am going to assume by “thing-in-itself” you are referring to it in the Kantian sense: please let me know if you are a neo-Kantian or something else.

The idea of things-in-themselves is not meant to be interpreted as claiming that there are things just like those that are perceived that exist independently of human perception; the "thing" in there is a kind of placeholder for some unknowable X

I agree. Kant calls it a purely negative conception.

So, object permanence cannot reasonably be thought to apply to things in themselves

I agree.

except in the sense that whatever it is that appears to us as invariant objects does so reliably, which suggests, but doesn't prove, that the in itself is invariant

And here’s the problem: you can’t say that things-in-themselves cannot be thought of as knowably having object permanence and then turn around and say that the phenomena suggests that the things-in-themselves have object permanence. The phenomena do not suggest anything about the things-in-themselves under Kantianism. Period.

In truth, we never perceive whole objects, but only views of them from different perspectives, so we construct the notion of whole objects from the various views (and feels) we have of them, and the fact that we can act on them, and the whole picture of a world of objects of more or less invariance is woven together with remarkable consistency by the brain/ mind.

Would you say that we, then, get indirect knowledge of the things-in-themselves? I think that none of the above (that you said) is compatible with Kantianism, but I personally agree with you. Kant argues adamantly that we have absolutely no clue what the things-in-themselves are—not even a reverse engineering of the phenomena. See:

We have intended, then, to say that all our intuition is nothing but the representation of phenomena; that the things we intuite, are not in themselves the same as our representations of them in intuition, nor are their relations in themselves so constituted as they appear to us; and that if we take away the subject, or even only the subjective constitution of our senses in general, then not only the nature and relations of objects in space and time, but even space and time themselves disappear; and that these, as phenomena, cannot exist in themselves, but only in us – CPR

Perhaps you can be a neo-Kantian, but you are clearly contradicting Kant here.

Part of this picture consists in the idea of object invariance; this idea is inevitable, even animal behavior shows that they expect objects not to simply disappear when they can't be seen. I observe this when I throw the ball for my dog and it inadvertently goes into the long grass; he never stops searching for it until he finds it showing that he expects it to be there somewhere and not to have simply disappeared.

Janus, you are conceding here that you can, at the very least, get at what is suggested of the things-in-themselves via the phenomena, which is clearly not compatible with Kantianism (in its original formulation). I personally agree with you, but then you can’t turn around and claim, like a Kantian would (which was my whole point originally with Mww), that we can’t do metaphysics beyond transcendental philosophy. Your argument for object invariance here is exactly that: a metaphysical claim pertaining to the things-in-themselves.

It is exactly what you are arguing against right here:

So, if anyone says that they think this or that metaphysical explanation is the most plausible, that really only speaks to their own personal preferences. That, in short, is all I've been arguing for.

So, I haven't been arguing that it is provable that the in itself is invariant or that phenomenal objects are "permanent", but that object permanence is the inference to the best explanation in the empirical context, and that regarding noumenal invariance we really have no idea how to assess which explanation would be the more plausible because we have nothing to compare any explanation with

“noumenal invariance” and “object invariance” are the same thing: they are both a metaphysical claim about the same things-in-themselves. By definition (of “object invariance”), we are talking about whatever persists beyond your phenomenal experience and is thusly non-phenomenal (i.e., noumenal).

Bob

Hello Mww,

The true origin of the possibility of our proofs, is in reason and is a priori.
The origin of the proofs themselves, is in understanding, and is a posteriori.

I thought the origin of the proofs themselves, being in the understanding, would be a priori, would they not?

Or are you claiming that the possibility for math is within our understanding (and thusly a priori), but that we cannot know a priori the mathematical relations of objects a priori?

If so, then I agree.

Also, just a side note, I am a mathematical anti-realist; so, for me, math is not a priori in the sense of being a part of our construction, via the understanding, of the world around us. But I understand from a Kantian view what you are saying.

Useful application…..is empirical, for which the phenomenal is constructed, but by understanding, according to conceptions. Understanding is incompetent to construct synthetic principles a priori, but only to construct the conceptions and the synthesis of them to each other, representing the content of those principles. Transcendental application, is neither useful nor empirical, the form of which is merely syllogistic and thus having no empirical content.

Agreed.

Jeeezz, I hate that expression. Like…..what other world is there? That other worlds are not impossible says not a gawddamn thing about the one we’re in. And we’re not in a possible world; we’re in a necessary world.

It isn’t that the possible worlds exist but, rather, that under one’s metaphysical commitments there is an existence with the potency to actualize the thing, and as such the thing is considered metaphysically possible.

We can be more certain of logical possibility than metaphysical possibility, and actual possibility less than the former and more than the latter.

Metaphysically necessary merely indicates a condition in a thinking subject. End of story.

If by ‘condition’ you mean the belief that there is an existent thing which has the potency to actualize the said thing, then I agree.

This just says, while mathematics is that which exhibits absolute certainty, and we are ourselves the author of mathematical procedures, then it is true absolute certainty is possible for us.

I don’t see how this is true if the application of math is a posteriori. There is no absolute certainty in that, unless you are claiming that our constructions of the same things-in-themselves will never waver.

The cautions lay in thinking that insofar as absolute certainty is possible, we are thus authorized to pursue the experience of some object representing it. But that just won’t work, because the objects being pursued are not those we construct of ourselves, but are thought to exist in their own right. And they might, but there are no mathematically derived principles given from pure reason, and by association there can be no absolute certainty contained therein, that can support the reality of that object.

I feel like you are agreeing with me on my previous statement here: correct?

The certainty of mathematics can not be imitated in philosophy.

When you say we have absolute certainty in math, are you just referring to what we can know via our faculty of reason? Like, theoretically, we can be absolutely certain that 1 + 1 = 2 without appeal to the empirical world?

Is a universal mind an absolute certainty deduced from mathematical principles?

I don’t think we can deduce any existent thing from math. Math just doesn’t afford that information, nor does logic.

If not, the object, represented as a universal mind in our understanding, is a mere philosophical possibility

The universal mind isn’t represented to us as a thing-in-itself--it is the thing-in-itself and, as such, is the substrate of the reality in which we live which is what we represent to ourselves: not the Universal Mind.

If all our representations are derived from ideas contained in that which is not itself a certainty, why should we trust that our representations arise from it?

We can’t be certain of virtually anything. We can’t be certain that there is a law of gravity, that math applies to objects in so and so manner, that logic applies to objects in so and so manner, etc. I am a neo-schopenhauerian and, as such, am a neo-neo-Kantian.

I have no problem admitting that we cannot be certain in metaphysics whatsoever—including Transcendental Philosophy. I, nor you, can be certain that there are twelve categories of the understanding, or that the understanding constructs the representative world around us. So I just don’t see why this is a problem I guess.

If I can grasp that all my representations belong to me

But I would say we can get at, just like how metaphysically your representations are of your mind, other aspects metaphysically of reality. Just because you are representing things doesn’t mean that we are barred from investigating the things-in-themselves.

And, also, I feel like in order for your argument here to work, that you have to concede that your mind is a thing-in-itself. Otherwise, I have no clue what you mean when you say that it belongs to you.

and never doubt or question that they do

There’s no certainty in the claim that your conscious experience is a representation produced by your mind: it is based off of a cumulative evidential argument. It explains the data of your experience the best. If you have some proof that provides absolute certainty, then please share it!

why would I shadow that certainty with that which has decidedly less so, by thinking to myself that my representations are merely offshoots of something else?

Because, just like how it makes the most sense that your mind is representing the real world, it makes sense to account for object permanence and other minds as within an objective world and that that objective world is fundamentally mind.

While you are correct in saying it is possible, what’s missing is why I should even consider the possibility that analytic idealism holds more persuasions than the transcendental idealism I currently endorse?

Because, in my opinion, the transcendental notion that we cannot know the things-in-themselves is self-undermining: your mind is a thing-in-itself and transcendental philosophy is an evidence based analysis thereof. It is doing nothing special in comparison to the rest of good metaphysics. And this is barring you, I think, from fleshing out your whole metaphysical view (because you think that you simply cannot know the things-in-themselves). What’s missing is your account of the rest of the world.

For example, under transcendental idealism I don’t think you can claim:

1. There are other minds.
2. That you have a mind.
3. That you have representative faculties.
4. That objects persist in their existences even when you are not perceiving them.
5. Etc…

So…..what do I gain by granting my representations have their irreducible origin somewhere other than in me?

I think a more plausible explanation and account of reality. I can account for object permanence, other minds, my mind, my representative faculties, etc. no problem: I don’t think you can.

Bob

Hello Janus,

Fer fuck's sake, Bob, how many times do I have to tell you I'm not claiming that object permanence or independence is a feature of, or inference about, anything more than the phenomenal world of human experience.

Firstly, Janus, I don’t know why you are getting so hostile. I am trying to have a good faith conversation with you about your perspective on Kantianism, and all you are doing is insulting me left and right. Relax my friend! If there is something I am misunderstanding about your view or misrepresenting, then please always feel free to point it out and I will try to re-understand what you are saying. There’s no need to insult one another (:

So, I didn’t understand you to be claiming that the ‘object permanence’ only pertains to the phenomenal world for you, in terms of what you would claim to know. Originally I do not feel that you claimed that:

Object permanence is inferred on account of the experienced invariance of objects. It is an inductive, that is fallible, inference, not a deductive, infallible inference.

As you said the above and ‘object permanence’ typically refers to the claim that the objects persist in the context beyond human representations of the world (which would be beyond the phenomenal one).

Anyways, it doesn’t matter, because you are now clarifying that by it you mean something different—something like us using object permanence as it pertains only to the phenomenal world.

Here’s my problems prima facie with this claim:

1. The idea that object persist in the phenomenal world doesn’t make sense unless you are claiming that the phenomenal world are not representations but, rather, productions of your mind or a thing-in-itself. The Kantian idea of the phemonenal world is that just that of the representations we have—object permanence in those representations would entail that there is something which you perceive, something you represent, which continues to exist wherever you last perceived it which would entail it is outside of your mind and thusly in the things-in-themselves.

2. If you say that your phenomena suggest that there is object permanence, and #1 is true, then you are equally conceding that you can know of the things-in-themselves beyond merely that they exist (even if it is inductive or abductive reasoning).

You don't pay attention to anything I write, apparently, or else you distort it in the reading. I've already explained numerous times that everything I have been saying relates only to the phenomenal world. When is that going to sink in?

I understand that you are claiming you can only know of the phenomenal world, and I am trying to show you that it is a self-undermining argument (in terms of Kant’s argumentation at least). For example, see #1 above.

It’s not that I am ignoring what you are saying, I am challenging it.

Our representations of the phenomenal world are neither completely accurate nor completely inaccurate; a fact which has no bearing whatsoever on the question of whether we know the world as it is in itself (which simply as a matter of definition we don't, because anything we know is by definition the world as it is for us).

Again, here’s another similar problem to #1 above (I think) with your view: you can’t claim any bearings on accuracy or inaccuracy if you can’t know anything about the things-in-themselves; and if you want to use ‘accuracy’ and ‘inaccuracy’ to refer to the phenomenal world, then you are claiming only that some phenomena are more useful then other phenomena. The moment you claim that a set of phenomena are truly accurate or inaccurate to any degree you are thereby comparing them to something other than phenomena, and that is, by definition, the things-in-themselves. I think to be a Kantian there are much more commitments to be consistent than Kant wanted.

No Bob, those minds may be a part of the world in itself, but the mind as we know it is the mind as it appears to us. Kant's twelve categories are analytically determined by reflecting on the ways in which we understand phenomenal objects.

I am not talking about the brain. I am talking about those categories Kant’s comes up with that are a part of your representative faculty. Unless you want to claim that your representative faculty exist as nothing then you will have to concede that they exist as a thing-in-itself.

More unargued assertion; it's not interesting, Bob

It is all metaphysics because metaphysics is the study of that which is beyond the possibility of all experience—and transcendental philosophy is all about trying to infer the representative faculties from experience but those faculties are necessarily beyond all possible experience as the necessary preconditions thereof.

Kant does not argue for a soul, at least not in the CPR.

I think, given his background, he was; but, at the very least, he argued for a thing-in-itself ‘I’ of the synthetic unity of apperception. See ‘Of the Originally Synthetical Unity of Apperception’ section 12 of CPR for the whole argument, but here’s an excerpt:

The “I think” must accompany all my representations, for otherwise something would be represented in me, which could not be thought; in other words, the representation would either be impossible, or at least be, in relation to me, nothing...All the diversity or manifold content of intuition has, therefore, a necessary relation to the “I think,” in the subject in which this diversity is found.

However, if the “I think” exists, it is a thing-in-itself—not phenomena. And if it is a thing-in-itself, then Kant is contradicting his claim that we cannot know about the things-in-themselves.

Bob

Hello Janus,

Object permanence is inferred on account of the experienced invariance of objects. It is an inductive, that is fallible, inference, not a deductive, infallible inference.

But it is a metaphysical claim that you cannot make if you are claiming that we are barred from understanding the world in-itself beyond our human nature. You can’t claim even inductively that object have permanence in the real world, because the real world is human-nature independent.

If you are going to continue to distort what I've said like this, then I see little point in continuing. I have nowhere argued that our representations are inaccurate in a metaphysical context

I said:

I think, for your argument to work, you would have to prove that our human representation of the world is completely inaccurate—otherwise, then we have no reason to believe that we cannot get validly at metaphysics.

I didn’t say you argued it. I said that is the only foreseeable argument to me for you view.

I think that if we don’t have good reasons to believe that we are ‘stuck in our human-nature box’ (so to speak), then the most parsimonious solution is to assume we aren’t (until its proven otherwise). So, to me, you would thusly have to prove that we can’t. So, let me refurbish my statement: I think you would have to argue that our representation of the world gives us no insight into the things-in-themselves (instead of being inaccurate), and I that’s where Transcendental Idealism starts self-undermining (e.g., but all this transcendental investigation is actually transcendent investigation of the mind as a thing-in-itself--but then we can get at the things-in-themselves).

What could they possibly be inaccurate in relation to if the in-itself is unknowable?

To clarify, I apologize, I should have said that you need to prove that we cannot get at the things-in-themselves—not that they are completely inaccurate. But, again, I wasn’t distorting your view: I was saying what I thought you would need to prove: not what I thought you were claiming.

They are only accurate or inaccurate within their own context, i.e. within the empirical context; it is only there that we can get things right or wrong.

This didn’t make sense to me: if you are claiming that we cannot know about the things-in-themselves, then you can’t know whether they are accurate or inaccurate at all. All you can do is compare phenomena to each other, and that, according to Kant, tells you nothing about the things-in-themselves.

This is a rubbish claim, Bob, and it has already been explained to you a few times as to why it is erroneous.

I don’t see how it is rubbish. For example, even we are describing that we have a priori, transcendental aspects of our minds, then aren’t those minds a part of the things-in-themselves and we are describing that mind-in-itself? For example, his twelve categories are aspects of a thing-in-itself called a mind. But he also claims we can’t know anything about things-in-themselves. Please explain to me what about my line of reasoning here is rubbish.

Kant's a priori claims are only about the nature of intuitions, i.e. that they are spatiotemporal, and regarding the categories of judgements about phenomenally experienced objects

Sort of. Firstly, Kant’s claims about the nature of intuitions is that we have receptibility and sensibility which, by my lights, entails that it is a part of a mind or something in-itself. Now, as Mww pointed out, Kant doesn’t actually say it is in a mind-in-itself; but then one has to hold that these receptive and sensible faculties that one has is just a part of nothing (if it isn’t a part of the things-in-itself, then there is nothing else it could be a part of).

Secondly, the categories of judgments are also either (1) ontologically nothing or (2) ontologically a part of a thing-in-itself (which contradicts Kant’s claims).

The transcendental ego is the closest he gets to looking like making a metaphysical, in the traditional sense, claim, but it not;

All of his claims are metaphysical. Transcendental philosophy is metaphysics.

So, I see the transcendental ego as a phenomenological, not a metaphysical, posit

My read of it was that he was arguing for soul.

Bob

Hello Mww,

As long as there are people willing to do it, or any sufficiently correlating method, all the sands on one beach could be added to all the sands on another beach….no problem

That’s fair, but arguably there is a limit to what can be empirically proven in this manner—all I have to do is sufficiently raise the numbers; but I get your point.

I think you are saying that math is a priori in the sense that it is actually a part of the logical construction of our phenomena experience (i.e., it is transcendental), and I was more talking about a priori to our cognitive faculty of the mind (in the sense of just thinking—not the construction of our phenomenal world).

My point is that, regardless, the true origin of our proofs in pure math is a priori in the sense of our faculty of reason (in the colloquial sense) and our proofs (arguably from a transcendental idealist’s perspective) of the useful application of math is a priori in the sense of our faculty of reason’s ability to construct the phenomenal world according to principles.

Still, if phenomena/mind are valid metaphysical conceptions, and if they arise logically in a methodology which requires them, then they are logically necessary

Logical necessity pertains to the form of the argument: the proposition (or term) cannot be false. For example, a = a will be true all the way down in a truth table.

What do you mean by “if they arise logically in a methodology”?

And because logic is a metaphysical practice, and the conception is already a methodological requirement, then it could be said that they are metaphysically necessary.

Metaphysical necessity is essentially that it is true in all possible worlds—or that the thing in question exists and there exists nothing with the potency to stop it existing. I am not sure that I followed what you meant here: could you elaborate?

Bob

Hello Philosophim,

I think this was a misunderstanding of an implicit part of the definition of observation. As I defined it was always intended to be qualitative experience.

Observation is the receipt of some type of information. This could be a sense, sensation, or even a thought. Another way to look at is is "undefined experience".

Oh I see: the issue I would have here is that a “sense” can be purely quantitative (unless perhaps you also define it as having to be qualitative?). For example:

The AI is the observer and identifier, the camera merely provides the information for the AI

Although, yes, the camera doesn’t identify anything, both the AI and the camera can be explained by reduction to its parts and relations of those parts, and thusly there is no qualitative experience needed to be positing to explain anything.

I think, in the case that I am right that there is no qualitative experience for the AI (and camera), you would classify it as not ‘observing’ because that word entails for you ‘qualitative experience’. However, to me, something can be interpreting its environment (which is what I mean by ‘observation’) and have no qualitative experience (i.e., ‘observation’ in your sense of the term). If I use your terms here, then I would say the AI isn’t an observer (because it isn’t qualitatively experiencing), but it does interpret and navigate its environment (regardless of the fact that it isn’t qualitatively experiencing). I think you would just have to come up with a new term for the latter if you re-define the former in that manner.

Regardless of our opinions on what definitions to use, we cannot use the term 'quantitative experience'. This simply does not work

It doesn’t work within your terms (now that I know that you mean ‘qualitative experience’ by ‘experience’), but the point is that you can have an ‘observer’ in the sense of being capable of comprehending its environment (i.e., it is ‘aware’) and yet doesn’t qualitatively experience. So, to me, you could have a ‘quantitative experiencer’ in this sense.

If you note that a being can have a quantitative experience, then you are conceding that we can know what a beings subjective experience is like through objective means.

Not quite. I am saying quantitatively experiencing beings, which I only mean by that a being which can interpret its environment, have no subjective experience because is no subject. The AI is not a subject, but it can gather, via quantitative processes, information about its environment. There is nothing to be like an AI from the AI perspective because it doesn’t have a perspective.

No, I noted that an AI is an observer and identifies.
…
We objectively know it is conscious because we quantitatively, or by math, understand how it observes and identifies information through functions and algorithms. But do we know what its like to experience being an ai as it observes and identifies? No.

This goes back to the issue I was trying to get you to answer, so let me invoke your response here:

It is not that the objective does not prove that other beings have subjective experiences. It is only that the objective cannot prove what it is like to BE that subjective experiencer.

If the objective analysis of consciousness is only barred from knowing what it is like to be conscious as opposed to knowing that one is conscious, then I disagree with your distinction (between the objective and subjective analysis).

To go back to the other quote above, just because we can understand that a think can observe and identify information in a quantitative sense does not mean that they are a subject—that they have qualitative experience. This is equally barred from objective inquiry in the sense that I am understanding you to be talking about.

In other words, objective inquiry can tell me that the AI can receive and interpret information about its environment, but that says nothing about whether there even is something to be like it (as opposed to merely not knowing what it is like), because that says equally nothing about whether the being has qualitative experience. To prove that, I would have to be able to conceptually explain how the quantitative processes of the AI produce a stream of qualitative experiences.

But do we know what its like to experience being an ai as it observes and identifies? No.

You are assuming that there is something it is like to experience as an AI, because you are equally assuming that the AI is a subject proper.

I think one mistake we've talked past a bit on is what I mean by consciousness. My points are not concerned with higher levels of consciousness or meta consciousness.

That is fair, but I think here and there you conflate the two when countering my points—that’s the only reason I bring it up. I am not saying that consciousness proper is something which we have introspective access to as the ego, nor that it is the ego itself. I think sometimes you have been implicitly arguing against a view like that instead of mine (inadvertently).

They really are just about whether there is an experiencing being or a mechanical process which has no experience.

So in the sense of ‘experience’ that you are using here, I would say that the AI is a mechanical process which has no experience. However, it can interpret and navigate its environment nonetheless—and this isn’t incoherent with your definitions as you have set them up thus far.

To ease confusion and simplify our points, meta-consciousness should not be brought up as I don't see the need for it. When considering consciousness then, we are discussing the minimally viable level to be conscious. That would be experiencing qualia, which requires an "I".

Fair enough.

First, there is the question as to whether you were conscious, but you didn't remember that you were conscious. From my point of view, consciousness does not require a memory of being conscious. But does it require memory? For our discussion, I suppose it doesn't. Memory would perhaps involve higher level consciousness, but for base consciousness, no

It is always possible that I just don’t remember, but I do remember the areas where I was “awake” as the ego, so I doubt it.

I agree that consciousness proper does not require memory.

Is it that you didn't remember being conscious, or were you actually unconsciously doing things and no one around you knew?

I think I genuinely just, as the ego, didn’t have access to my conscious experience. I am pretty sure I wasn’t perfectly functioning (e.g., some slurred or delayed speech, etc.), but I was functioning enough to converse and do chores (like fold clothes). I was definitely impaired, and I would imagine people could guess I was; but the point is that, from my perspective as the ego, I had no introspective access to the qualitative experience.

Are they conscious and do not remember being conscious, or can the unconscious mind also observe and identify?

Ironically, my citation of brain scans can give us that answer. if it is the case that brain scans can detect that the unconscious mind is shaping what your conscious mind is about to do, then the answer is obvious.

The problem I have with this is that the brain scans can equally explain my position: the mind’s activity is expressed within perception as neural firings in the brain (and other indicators throughout the body): the body is the extrinsic representation of the mind. So, I don’t see how brain scans here exclusively pertain to your view that it is an unconscious mind shaping a conscious mind.

I think this nails the issue down. In the common use of unconscious and conscious, there needs to be the "I", or ego

To me, the ‘I’ and ‘ego’ are different. As long as there is an I, then it is consciousness—the ego doesn’t have to be there.

So to be explicit, a conscious being is an "I" which observes and identifies.

Then an AI isn’t conscious because it isn’t an “I”. Of course it mimicks what an ‘I’ does, but it is just mechanical processes with no true subject.

The question still remains as to whether you simply forgot your conscious experience, or if even an unconscious experience has a subjective viewpoint that we are unaware of.

I would say that the best explanation is neither of those: ‘i’ as the ego, as a higher function of consciousness, was inhibited by the drug and the ‘I’ was still there. ‘I’ was still conscious, but the ‘i’ was unconscious (if you will).

There is a deeper question here as well. Just because "I" am not experiencing, does that mean that the subconscious has a subjective experience that we are simply unable to know?

To me, the subconscious and unconscious are really different degrees of consciousness proper.

You and I disagree on the definition of consciousness. I require a subjective "I". If I understand correctly, in your view the unconscious still has qualia, which I consider needing a subjective "I" to experience.

No, I agree that consciousness requires a subject, I am saying that the ‘I’ is not the ego and the body is an extrinsic representation of mind operations of that ‘I’.

The ‘I’ isn’t unconscious.

In your view however the unconscious subject is still an "I" in the sense that this unconsciousness is potentially accessible to the conscious (speaking generally, I understand there are exceptions).

Sort of. I would say that the ‘I’ is conscious and the ‘conscious’ aspects you are referring to are higher order aspects of consciousness (such as meta-consciousness: introspection and cognitive self-reflection: the ego). That is why I keep bringing up meta-consciousness, because I do think, in this quote, you are using the term ‘conscious’ to refer to ego-contingent introspective awareness, which is to conflate meta-consciousness with the consciouness proper that you claimed you were meaning by that term.

Even if you note that the unconscious experiences qualia, the brain scans detecting what the unconscious is thinking about proves it still comes from the brain.

Again, brain scans equally prove my theory just as much as yours. It doesn’t exclusively prove that the brain, as a mind-independent ‘thing’, produces the mind.

If our perceptions are representations of ideas and those ideas are from minds, then we should expect to see neural activity corresponding to that mental activity from the side of our perceptions (which would include our use of brain scans). We should expect that our bodies are extrinsic representations of our minds in short.

What is your reason for believing that consciousness is not caused by the brain?

Because one can never reduce one’s qualitative experience to the quantitative, which I outlined here:

The form is as follows: “consciousness is [set of biological functions] because [set of biological functions] impacts consciousness [in this set of manners]”. That is the form of argumentation that a reductive naturalist methodology can afford and, upon close examination, there is a conceptual gap between consciousness being impacted in said manners and the set of biological functions (responsible for such impact) producing consciousness

Because it isn’t reducible and granted a full enumeration of all possible metaphysical theories (i.e., physicalism, idealism, substance dualism, and property dualism), it is less parsimonious, in short, to posit the brain as producing mind as it is to account for the world as mind-dependent (within a universal mind). In short, idealism accounts for the world better than physicalism (and the other theories.

How will this line of thinking help society?

I think it helps the same way as any other view: it attempts to give the best explanation of what reality fundamentally is. It can be useful to have a metaphysical theory in one’s back pocket (although, admittedly, some people live just fine without it).

I think it also helps us get past the dogmatic physicalist slumber we have been in for a while (ever since the age of enlightenment). And now we explore non-dogmatically consciousness as, at least, a possible candidate of the fundamental structure of reality.

Or is it merely that you just don't see the logical connections, and believe such conclusions are premature and prevent us from discovering the real alternative?

This is true as well in a sense: most people nowadays just consider consciousness an aftermath of the real world, of which can be thusly easily passed over as not so important; but there is a lot we don’t understand, of which I think we scientifically could investigate just not in the traditional methods, about it: a copernican revolution awaits us.

My approach to philosophy has always been to make greater sense of the general understanding of the world. To take our common language, clarify it, and get rid of the skepticism or ambiguity that causes confusion at a deeper level.

My approach is similar, but less emphasis on conforming to societies norms and language. I try to keep it simple, but I do not fear venturing out if I need to to get at the truth.

Paradigm shifts like yours seem like radical departures from the norm, and I've always wondered at the motivation for such

To be honest, I think idealism could be just as intuitive to people as physicalism in a different society. I think that whichever becomes predominent, the other view is thereby way harder for the masses to comprehend because they can’t step out of their own metaphysical commitments to tackle the other metaphysical theory in its own terms. For me, I know that it took me a long time to take idealism seriously.

The motivation is to give the best general account of reality while increasing explanatory power and decreasing complexity. That’s pretty much it. I just think it accounts for the world in which we live better.

This disagreement is also done in full respect Bob! Fantastic thinking was had by all sides, and I have a much better respect for your position now that I understand better the nature of your definitions and outlook.

As always: same goes to you my friend! I always enjoy our conversations.

Bob

Hello Mww,

But I am necessarily extrapolating it from phenomena.

I could equally claim that it is ‘necessary’ that your mind is a thing-in-itself.

In both cases, it isn’t logically nor actually necessary but rather (debatably) metaphysically necessary.

But none of this holds necessary transcendental absolute certainty that Kant thought it does. It is possible (albeit not plausible) that they aren’t representations of anything.

I disagree large quantity summations cannot be empirically proven, and I disagree reason a priori is itself the proof. The latter is the source of synthetic principles a priori, which make the form of mathematical operations possible, the content be what it may. All empirical proofs require content, which reason alone does not provide, in accordance with the principles, which it does.

Furthermore, reason can only prove within its own constructs, which we call logic. So it is true it is logically provable that some quantity adjoined to another in serial accumulation produces a quantity greater than either of two adjoined, but such is not a proof for particular numbers added together, insofar as to prove that, and thereby sustain the logic, the content for which the principle is the condition, would have to actually manifest, which just IS the empirical proof. In the case at hand, it follows that the great magnitude of the quantities to be adjoined, and the adjoining of them in a mathematical operation, do nothing to violate the principle

Seeing one block and another block and determining there are two blocks is empirically verifiable; but to then use that as a baseline to extrapolate huge numbers being summed together is the application of cognition only. I don’t mean ‘cognition’ in the transcendental idealist sense pertaining to the construction of the phenomenal world but, rather, the higher-order ability to self-reflectively cognize.

You seem to be claiming that simply because we start out with an empirical proof that the rest that is abstractly reasoned about them is thereby empirical: is that correct?

Bob

Hello Mww,

your description here is an attempt at reverse engineering what is outside of your representative faculty by means of what is presented to you by your representative faculty — Bob Ross

That would be the case if the reversal went further than authorized by the normal Kantian method.

I didn’t follow this part: could you elaborate?

Same as transcendental philosophy, except the latter says that things-in-themselves exist while saying nothing about such existence.

Agreed.

All things which phenomena tell me about, are already outside my representational faculties.

As of yet, I think this is an assumption you are making if you aren’t extrapolating it from the phenomena.

An individual may not have enough time to prove it, but it certainly can be proven. The measure is degree of difficulty, not its possibility.

I think it can be proven, just not empirically. Are you disagreeing? We prove it with reason, not empirical tests (e.g., not with counting our fingers). It is a priori.

Bob

Hello Janus,

You obviously didn't read what I wrote above what you quoted, which was that the only way we have of knowing about qualitative experience is being aware of our own or listening to the reports of others about their own. The person with visual agnosia cannot report on any qualitive visual experience because they are not aware of any such thing, so we have no evidence to suggest that they have any qualitive visual experience.

Yes I did:

”The only evidence we have of qualitative experience is our awareness of our own and the reportage of others' awareness of their own.” – Janus

Correct. But that doesn’t mean that it is contingent on our awareness of our qualitative experience. For example, I only come to know that there is a chair in my room via my senses, but it does not follow that that chair only exists as my senses. Likewise, you are claiming that because we only come to know we qualitatively experience via introspection, that introspection is required to qualitatively experience: same error.

Firstly, you are changing the subject. Qualities are necessarily not independent of subjective human experience, whereas chairs may not be.

I didn’t change the subject: it was an analogy. I wasn’t saying those two scenarios are equivalent.

My point was that you are conflating our epistemic access to a thing with its contingency on us for its existence (viz., that we don’t have qualitative experience since we only know we have it when we have awareness of it). That is analogous to saying that the chair of which I see (which I only know via my sense of sight) is contingent on myself (in terms of its existence) thereby—it is a conflation.

Actually, I would have thought you believed that the chair is not independent of human experience; I thought that has been the very thing you are arguing.

I would say it is mind-dependent, but not on my mind. The chair I see is not dependent on my perceiving of it—it exists as an idea on a Universal Mind.

So again, you are not really providing any counterarguments; instead, you just keep asserting the same things over and over. You should be able to understand my argument above, and if you cannot provide any cogent counterargument then our discussion will go precisely nowhere.

I think I have provided ample counterarguments here: you just skipped the most important one when responding (which I re-quoted at the beginning).

Subjective experience, and along with that qualitative experience, may be a post hoc self-reflective rationalization and thus not a suitable descriptor of what is immediately perceived, but I am not claiming that is so, I just see it as a possibility.

I never said that qualitative experience is a ‘post hoc self-reflective rationalization’. You are arguing against a straw man here. Qualitative experience is, to me, defined negatively: the non-quantitative experience which there is something it is like to be such in and of itself.

The body/ brain responding to visual stimuli can be observed, even when the subject is not aware of what is affecting the body, and that is one way of speaking about what the body/ brain experiences.

Again, you are talking about meta-consciousness. A person can have zero introspective access, as the ego, to the mental events that are occurring. I don’t see how this is a “unargued assertion”.

For example, how would it differ from the body/ brain reacting in measurable and modelable ways, ways however of which the subject has no awareness, to visual stimuli?

Under Analytic Idealism, the body/brain “reacting in measurable...ways” is an extrinsic representation of the mentality which is fundamentally occurring. So the “subject” is that organism you see as a body, but that is its outward expression on the dashboard of your experience. What you are describing is the outward expression of a qualitatively experiencing being, which is not equivalent to the ego which sometimes has introspective access to the experiences (for some animals—not even all have it).

Bob

Hello Janus,

In any case, the fact remains that we cannot know. All we know is a human-shaped world, not a tiger-shaped world or an elephant-shaped world or a world without any particular shape; I don't see how that can be reasonably disputed.

Just because we see the world from our human perspective does not mean we cannot formulate accurate metaphysical claims. If that were the case, then you couldn’t infer, for example, object permanence because it is beyond the possibility of all experience.

I think, for your argument to work, you would have to prove that our human representation of the world is completely inaccurate—otherwise, then we have no reason to believe that we cannot get validly at metaphysics.

So, if we are going to take a position on the question of what might be real independently of the human, then we are going to go with what seems most plausible, which is and must remain, a subjective matter.

Metaphysics is not subjective (in that sense) at all: we use objective criteria just like science does.

I won't respond to the rest of your post, because it all seems to me based on the same misunderstanding that Kant and I are making purportedly human-independent metaphysical claims.

My point was that Kant’s transcendental claims undermine his claims about us not being capable of knowing the things-in-themselves.

Bob

Hello Wayfarer,

I would have hoped that brief excerpt would be of use by itself, in respect of the question of the ‘knowledge of things in themselves’. (Knowledge of The Vedas not required!)

I must have misunderstood your post, because it seemed like you were advocating for ideas from eastern philosophy (e.g., that the things-in-themselves are really empty). Although I am not well versed therein, I don’t find it a feasible solution to say that the objective world is really empty—that is no different, in terms of parsimony, as saying it is all produced by my mind only (to me).

Another point is that Kant’s assertion that we can’t know things ‘as they are in themselves’ is simply an admission of the limits of human knowledge. It is a modest claim, not a sweeping assertion.

I agree: that is fair. But I think his project ends up undermining itself. If we can get at that there are things-in-themselves, and arguably that our minds are things-in-themselves, then we can get at ontology.

Bob

Hello Janus,

A person with visual agnosia cannot report on what they have no awareness of experiencing

Correct. So why say they aren’t qualitatively experiencing? This just proves my point.

The only evidence we have of qualitative experience is our awareness of our own and the reportage of others' awareness of their own.

Correct. But that doesn’t mean that it is contingent on our awareness of our qualitative experience. For example, I only come to know that there is a chair in my room via my senses, but it does not follow that that chair only exists as my senses. Likewise, you are claiming that because we only come to know we qualitatively experience via introspection, that introspection is required to qualitatively experience: same error.

Now you can say that the body experiences the physical effects or data that enables the better than random guessing of the person with visual agnosia, in the sense that I have already outlined, but that is not subjective experience, it is equivalent in kind to saying that the stone experiences the weathering effects of the wind and rain.

What do you mean by “subjective experience”? I have a feeling you mean higher order meta-consciousness (e.g., self-reflective introspective, etc.). That isn’t consciousness proper.

No, a person qualitatively experiencing without introspective access is not equivalent to a stone experiencing nor quantitative experience.

Bob

Hello Mww,

Isn’t relation the manifestation of a difference? The very conception of a synthetic a priori cognition, the backbone of transcendental philosophy, specifies a difference in the relation between the conceptions contained in the subject and the conceptions contained in the predicate of a syllogistic proposition. VOILA!!! Using difference to make the gathering of knowledge possible.

I meant ‘difference’ in the post-modern sense: the acquisition of knowledge purely from the phenomena, of which says nothing of the things-in-themselves.

Arguably post-modernism owes a lot to Kantianism: without the idea that we can never know the world beyond what is capable to conform to ourselves entails that reality becomes hyperreality. The map and territory, for practical purposes, blend together.

I think Piece was a closet Kantian anyway, wasn’t he? Early on he called himself a “pure Kantist ”, The Monist, 1905. Also in The Monist, he states pretty much the Kantian doctrine regarding the ding as sich, and the importance of the categories. He abdicated the Kantian pedestal only later, becoming a Hegelian absolute idealist…..for some reason or another. But I get your point.

I am unfamiliar if he was a hegelian, but I do know he was a Kantian in many respects and his views owe a lot to Kant.

Agreed, iff “home” is the human thinking subject.

Correct.

If you’d said we could no longer cognize the object, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one, I’d have just said….yep.

Yeah that’s what I meant.

Things are things in themselves until they are met with human sensibility

But isn’t all evidence of “human sensibility” phenomenal? Isn’t it a metaphysical claim?

I don’t need to think it; I can represent to myself differences in arrangements of matter. Horse are not comprised of wood and fences don’t have hooves. Different phenomena, different things, different things-in-themselves from which the things appear.

Again, according to Kant our phenomena tell us nothing about things-in-themselves; but your description here is an attempt at reverse engineering what is outside of your representative faculty by means of what is presented to you by your representative faculty. That’s my point.

Makes me wonder why you would ask why I maintain a thing-in-itself for each thing that appears.

Because that would require that phenomena do tell you about the things which reside outside of your representative faculty; and then Kant’s original view falls apart if this is conceded.

Bob

Hello Wayfarer,

I appreciate you sharing that information! I have also heard that eastern philosophy coincides with schopenhauerian and Kantian metaphysics, but I am not well enough versed on the Vedas (and such) to comment much further (unfortunately).

Bob

Hello Janus,

Taking the visual as paradigmatic for the sake of simplicity, the environment is presented, or given, to us, meaning that our eyes, optic nerves and brains are affected by and respond to reflected light and our brains produce representations of environments consisting of objects that stand out as such from, but are of course never separate from, the environments. It is acknowledged that ideas condition to some degree what stands out for us, what is noticed. Would anything be seen if there was nothing to be seen?

All of this is dependent on us granting that the phenomena are a valid method of inferring what metaphysically is there—e.g., you observe phenomenally that you are affected by what seems to you to be an environment which you are in, you find that it makes sense to explain other peoples’ difference observations as due to their faculties of representation (such as blind people), etc. However, under Kant’s view, I would argue, if we take him very seriously, then our own minds (or brains) are things-in-themselves (in order for him to claim we have representative faculties)--but, wait, he also says we can’t know anything about the things-in-themselves...so we shouldn’t even know we have minds or brains (in the sense of a mind-independent one).

If one concedes that we can engage in metaphysical inquiries to determine that we have a brain or a mind, then they are equally conceding that Kant’s original formulation of there being an epistemic barrier between us and the phenomena is wrong. That is my point. Then it can no longer be argued that we have no idea about ontology. The gates fly open, so to speak.

If you had never encountered any sense data at all, there would be nothing to reason with and hence no a priori knowledge. Even Kant acknowledged this as far as I remember.

I agree, but this concedes that we can get at what the things-in-themselves are; and Kant will not accept that.

He acknowledges it, yes, but it is an internal incoherency with his view (I would say).

He just argues we must have it ‘because how could it be otherwise’--while also barring us from investigating the things-in-themselves (but, again, wouldn’t our minds be things-in-themselves?).

So, 'every change has a cause' is an inductive inference from experience which has eviolved into our consistent and coherent web of understanding of the empirical via science.

I partially agree. ‘every change has a cause’ is a priori true but we have to use a posteriori knowledge to get there. It is a necessitated by the preconditions of our experience: the pure forms of intuition—i.e., space and time. We don’t, like hume thought, just experience things occur in happenstance with each other so many times that we label it ‘causal’.

For a simple example, if I throw a brick at an ordinary 2.4 mm pane of glass the glass will almost certainly break. If I push something which is top heavy, and precariously balanced, it will fall. If I punch you hard in the face you will likely cry out in pain, and your face will probably bruise. If I hit a nail into soft wood with a hammer it will go in more easily that into hard wood (it may even bend when I try to hammer it into hard enough wood and I may have to pre-drill a hole). These are a few examples of countless other kinds of experiences that lead to the conclusion that all effects have causes, and yet apparently in the quantum realm, not all effects do have causes.

Again, I would hold that causality is necessitated by our pure forms of intuition. There is no ‘realm’ in terms of quantum mechanics. Every effect does have a cause.

One plus one always equals two. I can prove this by placing two objects together, and I can see two objects there or I can focus on each object and see them individually as two examples of one object. The very fact that you say that you don't know "1+1=2" without counting your fingers supports the idea that the formulation is a generalized abstraction from sense experience. It is not reason, but imagination, that tells you that reason without sense data produces no knowledge, because you cannot imagine any knowledge, or anything at all, which is completely separate from the senses.

Not quite. Yes you can count small numbers with objects, but not larger ones. You can’t empirically prove that 8888888888888888 + 2 = 8888888888888890. Likewise, you cannot imagine that calculation either. The only way for you to prove it is with your faculty of reason: which is not imagination.

Bob

Hello Philosophim,

Ok, I think I've finally narrowed down the problem. We have two different uses of quantitative. We have a quantitative observation and a quantitative experience.

It seems as though you are using the term “experience” to refer strictly to “qualitative experience”, which is fine, and if so, then I completely agree with you that ‘quantitative experience’ is a contradiction in terms. However, I was using it in the sense that you were before: mere awareness (i.e., observation, identification, and action). So when I said “quantitative experience” I was keeping in conformance with your schema, which, at the time, was not using “experience” that strictly but, rather, more loosely to include any being which observes (essentially). In this case, there is no contradiction in terms because you can have a being which observes and has no qualitative experience.

All that you have done here is switched the meanings of the terms. The point is that your objective consciousness is only this sort of quantitative experience, where “experience” is mere awareness/observation.

The word quantitative can only be used as an objective outside observation, not an internal one.

I think I agree: an AI is said to have no internal ‘experience’ (in the sense you are now using it) but is understood as still able to observe, and its ability to observe is explained via quantitative measurements. Is that what you are saying?

Lets not use blindsight yet, but something more basic that we can all relate to. There is a nerve that by passes a cell in your lower leg. Its constantly there sending signals, but you're not conscious of it. We can describe this quantitatively of course. But its still a part of you isn't it? Unlike a row of dominos falling (I thought the analogy was quite fine Bob :) ) I can become conscious of that nerve at that cell if I receive a cut. I can have a subjective experience of that nerve cell eventually. I can never have the subjective experience of a set of falling dominos.

So, although I understand what you are saying, I think you are conflating consciousness proper with meta-consciousness; to keep it brief, there is a difference between having introspective access to one’s qualitative experiences and simply having them. Think of a beetle, they are such a low form of life that they have 0 introspective access to their experience, but they are nevertheless experiencing (qualitatively).

Perhaps the confusion lies in that I am not referring to the ‘I’ as the ego. As a subject, I am referring to myself as a complete organism (which I hold is a mind). With physicalist terms, think of it analogous to the ego vs. oneself as a physical organism: is the ‘I’ the ego—no! It is an extension of the ‘I’. So the nerve you are referring to, and all other organic processes of my body, are mind processes (under my view): my mind is having those experiences, but ‘me’ as the ‘ego’ does not have the introspective access to all of all the time. It doesn’t come into “consciousness” when I get cut there but, rather, into the sphere of access my ego has as the tip of the iceberg.

So, I agree that there is a difference between the set of falling dominos (which you won’t ever experience) and the nerve you were talking about; but by ‘you’ I am referring to the complete organism of yourself and that nerve is a part of the experience (and manifestation of your will) of yourself as mind, where when it gets cut, in most situations, it becomes introspectively accessible.

Let’s take a more extreme example to convey my point, when I was younger I tried THC from a dab pen; however, lo and behold, it turns out it was spice (which is a much more dangerous psychotic drug that is made synthetically with harmful chemicals). Not to derail into all the details, but I’ve never had that potent and horrifying sort of experiences in my life (and I hope I never do again): at some points I thought I was dead and others I thought I was going to be. Anyways, spice is so unpredictable and in my case I got its most potent affects, and part of that was going “unconscious” but functioning perfectly fine for large lengths of time. I would just “wake up” in the middle of conversing with someone or folding my clothes to put away in my closet, having every reason to believe I had been doing all this stuff with absolutely no “conscious” experience whatsoever. Philosophim, I think you would consider this an example of being, temporarily, a PZ.

From your perspective, I think you are inclined to say that the qualitative experience was gone during those blackouts, and that I was essentially a PZ during those moments. But, to me, we are thereby conflating the ego with the true ‘I’: I was still experiencing (e.g., folding my clothes, conversing with people, watching TV, etc.) but my ‘ego’ had left the chat, so to speak. Spice had, some way or another, inhibited my higher functioning capabilities, which includes the illusory ego and its introspective access to my qualitative experience. There was still something to be like me while I was blacked out, because by “I was blacked out” I am referring to the ego while by “something to be like me” I am referring to the true self. Hopefully that makes some sense. I use that example because it is the most extreme one I can think of that would prima facie work in your favor.

Also, something that we have an unconscious embodiment of can only be known quantitatively until we can know it qualitatively. This would match with the finding here

What you are saying does fit fine with the scientific discoveries that we make decisions before our ego is aware of them—but it fits equally (if not arguably better) to say that the “unconscious embodiment” is really qualitative experience proper, and the “conscious embodiment” (you are referring to) is the ego’s introspective access thereto and, consequently, it makes sense that we should expect to identify a person making decisions before their ego is aware of them: the ego is an illusion.

In terms of the rest of your post, I think it is better if we address the objective vs. subjective consciousness distinction more deeply before revisiting the rest, because at this point I will just be countering in the same manner as before (e.g., nothing about what you have said proves the brain produces consciousness, blindsight person isn’t unconscious, etc.). Once the distinction is thoroughly analyzed, I think the hard problem will start to naturally emerge out of it. This is because I think, after hearing your view thus far, that you are holding internal incoherencies with this objective vs. subjective dynamic.

The first thing we need to discuss about it is the conceptual bridge linking the two. I think that you see the objective and subjective as two sides of the same coin, but you equally hold that the objective doesn’t prove the subjective—and these two claims are incoherent with each other.

So let me ask you: do you think we can know a being is subjectively conscious if we know they are objectively conscious?

If not, then this means science, by your own lights, cannot prove someone is subjectively conscious. What does this mean? It means that everyone who knows they are subjectively conscious has no scientific explanation of what that is.

Take yourself, for example: you know you are subjectively conscious. However, you equally hold that objectively observing yourself only gets you to the conclusion that you are objectively conscious, which doesn’t prove anything beyond you being a PZ (at a minimum). This means that no objective can explain your subjective consciousness (since it only gets you to a PZ) and thusly you cannot reduce your subjective consciousness to objective inquiry of brain states.

Now, I think you hold that the brain produces subjective consciousness, even though you equally admit that it cannot since it can only provide that someone is a PZ, because we can affect consciousness by affecting the brain (and, quite frankly, the whole body). Is this correct?

If you agree with the previous paragraph, then you can’t equally claim that objective consciousness cannot give us the understanding that something is subjectively conscious (and thusly cannot claim that objective consciousness only gets us to PZs), or if you do think it only gets us to PZs, then you can’t agree with the previous paragraph: they are incoherent with each other.

Let’s start there.

Bob

Hello Wonderer1,

The analogy that I gave was perfectly fine within the context that it was given. I understand and agree that different systems have different emergent properties: I didn't deny that in my assessment whatsoever. I would suggest you read my conversation with Philosophim in its entirety without taking certain quotes out of context.

Also, I don't see the relevance of your linked YouTube video: so what if they can have domino's perform calculations?

Bob

Hello Mww,

Man, after reading that, it appears you’re more familiar with this stuff than you let on when talking to me. Which makes much of what I say pretty much superfluous.

We are NOT amused!!!! (Grin)

I am familiar with Transcendental Philosophy and do deploy the a priori vs. a posteriori distinction; however, I don’t agree 100% with Kant, and it appears you do. So that is why I am having trying to understand your interpretation of him (as I can tell it is different already from mine).

I assure you that nothing you are saying is superfluous!

Yes, exactly. Knowledge or possible knowledge a posteriori.

I am saying that Kant is using a posterior knowledge to determine that beyond the phenomena there are things-in-themselves which transcend ourselves--but then he equally claims that we can’t gain transcendent access. This is the point where I think this notion of “we can’t know ontology because it is transcendent” is refuted by the very argument meant to be in its favor.

If one takes Kant very seriously, by my lights, then there is no knowledge of things-in-themselves, and, consequently, they have to develop a post-modern pragmatist approach (such as using difference to gather knowledge)--like the American Pragmatist Pierce.

I am just curious how you get around this issue? Or is it even an issue to you?

To know metaphysically is knowledge a priori, as opposed to empirical knowledge. Knowledge a priori as it applies to external reality, in Kant, is impure a priori, insofar as it has empirical conditions contained in the syllogism, and is thereby an inductive inference, a logical function, hence, at least for convenience, is metaphysical knowledge. Which is all the thing-in-itself was ever meant to indicate.

I agree. He intended things-in-themselves as purely ‘negative conceptions’: correct? But, again, if we can reverse engineer from experience that our best guess is that there are things-in-themselves, then I don’t see what is stopping us from hedging our best guess of whether there are Universals or particulars (for example).

The problem is that:

Such is the bane of all speculative metaphysics: there’s no empirical proofs, but only internal logical consistency and strict adherence to the LNC, the only form of certainty we have to guide our contemplations.

Transcendental Philosophy is a form of speculative metaphysics but Kant doesn’t seem to think so. Literally all of good metaphysics tries to extrapolate based off of the real world their best explanations of it and only bad metaphysics ventures so far beyond reality with merely LNC. Kant isn’t doing anything differently here other than trying to keep his metaphysical research as close to ‘home’ as possible.

So we don’t know all things are appearances given from one thing-in-itself, or as many things-in-themselves as there are things that appear. Nevertheless, humans are capable of more than one sensation at a time, either from a single object or from a multiplicity of them. For single objects there’s no conflict, but for more than one sensation from more than one object, and knowledge of things-in-themselves is impossible anyway, we gain nothing by the one-for-all over the each-in-itself, which makes the all-for-one superfluous.

But here’s where I get confused, because I only consider myself a representative being because of empirical observations; and so I have no problem saying the objects conform to my representative faculties; however, this is the same fundamental process I am using to develop all of my metaphysics—there’s nothing special about this that makes it more legit than so-called ‘speculative metaphysics’ when done properly.

Likewise, I view myself as a representative faculty of an objective world, which is a transcendent conception I have—it isn’t acquirable transcendentally.

Maybe not, but the alternative is that I am necessary causality for the entire manifold of all that I perceive. Let the contradictions rampant in that scenario simmer awhile.

How can you be certain that that is the only other alternative? Do you see how these are the same questions you ask of me with the Universal Mind, but yet you seem to be using the same good criteria to make your best guesses about transcendent and transcendental ideas?

Absolutely**, but then, I don’t hold with being barred from metaphysical expositions. I just find ontology unnecessary as a discipline in transcendental philosophy, because the existence of things is never in question as is the manifestation of them in experience.

That’s fair. As far as I am understanding you, you are saying that the only metaphysics we can acquire knowledge of is what is a priori, correct? And thusly ontology is out of the question there.

are you saying that the “appearance” is just the impression of the thing-in-itself on you and the representation is the formulation of it according to your mind’s abilities? — Bob Ross

Nope. Impression of the thing.

If appearances are “the input to the sensory device”, then they impressions of things-in-themselves and the thing-for-ourselves is whatever our sensory devices can take in. Would it not?

You are noting that there is an impression, an intuition, and then an understanding of the thing-in-itself…. — Bob Ross

Nope. Impression, intuition, understanding of the thing.

By “thing”, do you just mean the thing-in-itself has captured by the sensory device?

Hey, give him a break. He’s a seriously-genius Enlightenment Prussian. He’s just reminding the readers, maybe half a dozen of whom are his intellectual peers, that the things of intuition are not things-in-themselves. And things-in-themselves, if they contain or are constituted by relations, such must be relations-in-themselves. Continuing with the passage…..

To be honest, although he was very smart, he says these kinds of contradictory things so much in the CPR that I think he didn’t have the view fully fleshed out.

The subjective constitution of our senses in general, which is to say regardless of whatever appears to us, is imagination and the two pure intuitions. Take away imagination the synthesis of matter to form and therefore the phenomenon is impossible; take away the pure intuitions and objects that should have appeared won’t, insofar as there is nothing for object to extend into, therefore they have no shape, and if they have no shape the can contain no matter, and if they contain no matter, they are not objects at all, and if they are not objects at all, there wouldn’t be anything to appear, a blatantly inexcusable contradiction.

To me this just seems like it is conflating the reasonable inference that we represent reality to ourselves and the reality which we are representing. To me, you just pointing out that if our representative faculty lost its two pure forms of intuition that we would not longer perceive the objects--but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any. The space and time as our intuitions isn’t necessarily the same as the space and time in reality (at least for physicalists).

Notice, too, that the nature of objects considered as thing-in-themselves, presupposes their existence. I mean….how could the nature of a thing be considered, even if the thing is considered as having the nature of a thing-in-itself, if it didn’t exist? But I think you’ve acceded that point, if I remember right.

It does not presuppose there existence as things-in-themselves.

the phenomenon of the horse is separate from but nonetheless related to the phenomenon of the fence

Yes, by why do you think there is a horse-in-itself and a fence-in-itself?

If you think about it, you can see the validity in it. You may have experience with horses, and with fences, and with things that move, but you’ve never seen a horse jump a fence. But you an still connect a horse to jumping a fence even though you’ve never seen it happen, thus have no experience of it. In short, you can easily conceptually image the motion, a certain indication it must be possible without contradicting the natural order, which is a purely logical deduction, which only understanding can provide, exemplifying the prime dualism in human cognition:

I have no problem with this.

Bob

Hello Janus,

The reflected light still enters the eyes, stimulates the rods and cones, leading to neural signals travelling to the brain and stimulating the visual cortex, but there is no subjective awareness of seeing.

I don’t see, upon looking at the empirical experiments of blindsight people, why one would conclude that they no longer qualitatively experience. Just because they don’t identify as seeing doesn’t mean that they aren’t still having it.

All those processes I just outlines are quantitative processes, equivalent in a way to the operation of a camera. You can keep asserting that it is the case that there is qualitative seeing, but I'm not seeing any explanation from you that could convince me of that.

To me, long story short, I believe that other people are typically qualitatively experiencing and unless there’s evidence that a given person isn’t having that then I default to saying they do. Kind of like how I believe that everyone (that is a live) has a beating heart, and unless there’s evidence that a given person doesn’t then I default to saying they do.

Yes you can account for awareness with such quantitative processes, but you can’t quantitatively account for qualitative experience, which to me is “consciousness”, and so I think your approach is flawed. I don’t think you should be metaphysically viewing the scenario as if their qualitative experience is reducible to a quantitative brain.

There is no reason to think that there are not many things in your visual field right now that you are not aware of at all, even though the light from those things is being reflected into your eye and neural signals are being received by your visual cortex. I don't think it makes any sense at all to call all that visual data we are not aware of "qualitative seeing".

This is what I was referring to: qualitative experience is not only what ‘bubbles up’ to the ego. Take breathing: even if you didn’t have introspective access to your experience of your breathing (because you weren’t focusing on it), that doesn’t mean that you aren’t still qualitatively experiencing the breathing.

We can be self-reflective on the small percentage of the overall visual data we have been consciously or unconsciously aware of

Then you agree that qualitative experience (i.e., consciousness) extends beyond what we can self-reflect upon and introspectively access?

but since there is no recall at all the experience os seeing I just don't see any way in which it could make sense to call it qualitiative.

This doesn’t work: think of a squirrel. It has virtually 0 introspective and self-reflective access to its own qualitative experience: is it thereby not qualitatively experiencing? Of course not! The squirrel cannot recall its experiences of seeing—does that mean it isn’t experiencing qualitatively? Of course not!

Introspective and self-reflective access are extra aspects of consciousness and do not belong to concsiousness proper.

Bob

Hello Philosophim,

I feel your definition is not concise enough to give a clear and unambiguous identity. "something it is like to have it in and of itself" is too many words. I can't make sense of it.

No worries. You can think of it like this:

So if I'm seeing, I'm not trying to describe or identify what I'm seeing, I'm just in the moment per say.

The sense of sight (as a qualitative experience) has something it is like in and of itself. In other words, even if I don’t understand that I am qualitatively seeing, there is still something it is like for me to be qualitatively seeing.

"What it is like to have experience". Now, I'm not saying that was your intention, but it was the closest I could get to with the definition.

I think for now this is ok, but I have a feeling I may end up disagreeing depending on how you tie it to the blindsight example.

What I was noting is that there didn't seem to be a discernible difference between qualitative experience and qualia.

The only difference is that the qualia is the instance of it:

I tried to pare this down again. "Qualia is just a stream of qualities that we experience. This is not just any experience though, but experience that we nominally single out to meaningfully navigate our lives".

In other words, your qualitative experience is really a steady flow of experiences with no distinct boundaries between them; and you single out, or carve out, experiences to compare to others nominally. For example, you get a cut and feel the pain, but that feeling of pain isn’t truly separable from your vision that you are having at the time, your thoughts, etc.--it is a steady stream of them all globbed together. Nevertheless, it is certainly meaningful to focus on the pain and try to come up with a solution to resolve it—but the qualitative pain is a part of a mush of a steady stream of qualitative experience. Does that make sense?

Do we give attention to certain experience over others?
…
Or is this about definitions/identities we create out of the stream of experience we have?

I would say both. We have the ability to focus our attention and cognitively assess our experiences, and those are likewise experiences of their own. When we focus on the pain, or we assess “that we are in pain” (as a thought), we are singling out a portion of a inextricable whole of qualitative experience.

"Qualia is what its like to experience". Is this right?

I would say that “there is something it is like to qualitatively experience, and qualia are the singled-out instances thereof (e.g., the feeling of pain)”. I think that’s generally what you are trying say here, but I wanted to be clear.

This leaves me now with a question of what quantitative experience is. I'm going to confess something. Words which have the first few letters the same as another are something my brain easily mixes up. I looked back briefly and am not sure that I did not accidently do that between the words quantitative and qualitative. It is something I've worked on a long time, but I still slip up occasionally.

Absolutely no worries my friend!

So I want to bring back the discussion to quantitative for a second. If a quantitative experience is an experience, is there something that has that experience? For lack of a better term, this would be an "unconscious experience"?

There is nothing it is like to have unconscious experience because it isn’t qualitative; and I think this is where we begin to disagree. You would say that a camera + AI (or what have you) has something it is like to be it, but to me that is only the case with qualitative experience—instances of which are qualia.

Think of it this way, although a crude and oversimplified example, if you flick a domino to start a 1,000,000 domino chain of them hitting each other one-by-one, there is nothing it is like to be those dominos hitting each other. They just hit each other: they are unconscious.

An “unconscious experiencer”, like an AI, is just a more complex version of this: it is mechanical parts hitting each other or transferring this or that—it is quantitative through-and-through just like the domino’s hitting each other. There is nothing it is like to be an AI in the sense like there is something to be like a qualitative experiencer: qualia (in the sense of instances of qualitative experience) have a “special” property of there being something it is like to be it (or perhaps to have it).

In the case of blindsight, the person would unconsciously see the object, but has no actual qualia, or conscious experience of doing so.

In terms of my view, I disagree. The blindsight person still qualitatively experiences (in this case sees) but they have lost the extra ability to understand that they are experiencing. Just like a squirrel, there is still something it is like to view the world through their experiential, qualitative sense of sight. Under my view, they don’t need to the extra cognitive or introspective access to their qualitative experience to be classified as qualitatively experiencing.

Under your view, I think you are saying that they have lost their qualitative experiencing, which I am not following why you think that. But that is what I am understanding you to be saying.

Qualia/qualitative experience is simply subjective consciousness while quantitative analysis is simply objective consciousness. There's really no difference between them

I was so close to agreeing with you here! But the last sentence through me off: there’s a big difference between them. If objective consciousness gives you only knowledge of quantitative experiencers, then you have no reason to believe that they have qualitative experience like yourself. That’s what I meant by there being no bridge between these two concepts of yours whereof you could safely connect them as two epistemic sides of the same coin.

Likewise, if you can’t know anything about other people than objective consciousness, then you are admitting that you cannot resolve the hard problem: you cannot reduce your own subjective consciousness to the quantitative brain because that requires the same objective consciousness inquiry that you agree only gets you to a PZ. So you can’t account for your subjective consciousness as reducible to some sort of objective consciousness.

Also, it wouldn’t make sense (to me) to try to reduce the quantitative to the qualitative, but that’s what is required if you are going to claim that subjective consciousness is produced by the brain.

Here’s where I get confused. You first agree with me that you can’t account for any sort of qualitative experience about other people:

When you say we can tell objectively that a being observes, identifies, and acts upon its environment, you are describing a quantitative being through-and-through (or at least that is the conceptual limit of your argument: it stops at identifying Pzs)--not any sort of qualitative experience. — Bob Ross

Yes, I agree with this fully.

And then immediately thereafter say:

Quantitative analysis (Objective consciousness) occurs when we can know that something that is not our qualia is also experiencing qualia with identification.

If you actually agree that your objective analysis of consciousness doesn’t provide insight into qualitative experience, then you can’t know that other people (through identification) are also experiencing qualia.

The problem in knowing whether something is qualitatively conscious is that we cannot experience their qualia.

And here is the conflation: again, there is a difference between not knowing their qualia (i.e., knowing how they experience their qualia) and knowing that they experience qualia. You can’t prove either of those, and sentences like the above quote make me think that you think the hard problem only applies to the former.

Quantitative consciousness then requires the addition of one other term, "Action". Only through a thing's actions can we ascertain that it can observe and identify

I don’t have a problem with using action, identification, and observance to determine if something is unconsciously experiencing: but this says nothing about “consciousness” in the sense of qualitative experience, and that’s all that matters for the hard problem.

So there we go, in the end we went about defining a few terms which are semantically no different from one another. :)

We are definitely getting closer, that is for sure (;

Bob